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Gary-- O'Collins (who's even older than you are) has spent too much time in an obsequious academic culture (and the academy - especially in Europe - is far worse in that regard than the church). He's offended by Pullman's literary attack (which in fact is curiously and obviously double-minded), so instead of taking the occasion to preach the gospel, as the much more literary Abp. Rowan Williams did (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/03/good-jesus-christ-philip-pullman), he simply fulminates (which, BTW, is the very opposite of being "Jesuitical"). O'Collins misses the fundamental point Williams starts with: "This is not a speculation about the beginnings of Christianity ... It is a fable through which Philip Pullman reflects on Jesus, on the tensions and contradictions of organised religion -- and indeed on the nature of storytelling..." "A very bold and deliberately outrageous fable, then, rehearsing Pullman's familiar and passionate fury at corrupt religious systems of control -- but also introducing something quite different, a voice of genuine spiritual authority." The whole review deserves to be read, because Williams is doing exactly what a bishop (episcopus) is supposed to do - announce the good news to the world at large (or in this case, that part that reads the Guardian); from words like his, some "have seen through the surface froth of religion and heard the voice Pullman himself obviously finds so compelling." O'Collins OTOH is just an academic. A belated happy birthday, CGE On 8/12/10 5:46 PM, Gary MacLennan wrote: > It's my birthday today -68- and I can believe it! so I thought I > would indulge myself a little on the list, if comrades will excuse > that. This piece from the Guardian caught my attention. It was a > report on a book by a Jesuit, Gerald O'Collins, criticising the > author Philip Pullman's book on Jesus and him having a bad twin etc. > I haven't read the book and do not intend to. Though my admiration > for it was increased by seeing that it irritated the Catholic Church, > so it can't be all bad... > > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
