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steve
管理人員
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Posted -
2004/10/11 下午 12:30:03
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An excerpt from today's Apple Daily Forum by David Tang (a.k.a. Cigar Tang) :
…… I found great intellectual comfort in Catholicism and came to respect the authority of the Church. Indeed, I love ceremonies which people nowadays undermine, foolishly, in my mind because ceremony is a tribal instinct that elevates our humanity. I am also convinced that religious objectivity is something we definitely want to hold on to. Even at the innocent age of l4, I remember the raging controversy of Pope Paul's Encyclical on birth control, "Humanae vitae"(Of human life), and thought to myself that I must read and understand it so that I could argue the same way as the Pope. I did and still do, even if there is now virtual universal acceptance on contraception amongst non-Catholics, as well as a lot of devout Catholics. When the present Pope John Paul circulated his first Encyclical "Redemptor hominis" (Redeemer of humanity), I also recall how impressed I was by the way in which the Pope asserted human dignity and deplored the exploitation of the earth.
So I was appalled to read about Alexander VI and the more I read about other invidious popes, the more I became horrified. I came to realize that a great number of them scarcely qualified for decency let alone respect. …… But thankfully, especially in recent times, the dignity of the papal position has been restored.
That's why I remain a papist. I know it's not at all fashionable nowadays to be a papist and I can understand why. The Catholic Church is often viewed as having lost touch with reality, and papal authority, even within the Church itself, is often regarded with suspicion. But human nature is such that it's much easier to disobey than to obey. Yet, whenever I go into a church, I cannot help feeling a spiritual authority which I esteem. This mystery comes naturally to me and I can only identify it as faith. I have never failed to appreciate the pathos of those words written by Matthew when Jesus said to the Apostle Peter: "And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven." It is a marvellous sensation to have faith, a few rotten popes notwithstanding!
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