As Barbara has just wisely noted in response to my posting about Edward Hu and his theology of arrows and holes earlier today: "That's the dumbest thing I've heard yet!"
Barbara's remark came through just as I was logging in to add a footnote to that posting, summing up my argument: dumb, dumber, dumbest. Any Christian community that hopes successfully to present the message of the gospel to the culture at large while relying on arguments as crude and adolescent as Mr. Hu's arrow and hole argument is deluding itself about its chances of having a positive influence as it evangelizes the surrounding culture.
With its rich, centuries-old theological traditions putting reason to the service of faith, contemporary Catholicism should be downright embarrassed to have spokespersons like Edward Hu going to bat for it in the public square. Until Catholics with a firmer grasp of our tradition--and, above all, of the good news of the gospels--succeed in shutting down these inane conversations about arrows and holes and God's overweening concern with fitting arrow to hole that are fully displayed for all the world to read at one Catholic blog site after another right now, the church's mission of evangelizing the surrounding culture--whether that evangelization is old or new--doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding.
Not, at least, among thinking, morally aware human beings with a commitment to basic principles of fairness and justice--not to mention, to basic principles of rationality--who are the kind of human beings organizations with any concern for their future ought to be seeking to draw to themselves and their mission . . . .
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