Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion by de Botton Alain

Author:de Botton, Alain [de Botton, Alain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0307476820
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2012-03-06T07:00:00+00:00

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Although we have located this scene in Europe, it could unfold almost anywhere in the world. Comparable moments of despair are to be witnessed every day in the Chapel of Our Lady of Good Health in Kuala Lumpur and the Shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows in Rhineland, Missouri, in the Grotto of Unyang Dedicated to Our Lady in South Korea and the Nuestra Señora del Espejo in Venezuela. In these sanctuaries the desperate will glance up at the Virgin, light candles, say prayers and speak of their individual griefs to a woman who is not only Redemptoris Mater, mother of the redeemer, but also Mater Ecclesia, mother of the Church in its entirety and so, symbolically, of all its members.

From a robustly rational perspective, Marian devotion seems to exemplify religion at its most infantile and soft-headed. How could any reasonable adult trust in the existence of a woman who lived several thousand years ago (if she ever lived at all), much less draw comfort from a projected belief in her unblemished heart, her selfless sympathy and her limitless patience?

The drift of the question is hard to refute; it is simply the wrong question to raise. The apposite point is not whether the Virgin exists, but what it tells us about human nature that so many Christians over two millennia have felt the need to invent her. Our focus should be on what the Virgin Mary reveals about our emotional requirements – and, in particular, on what becomes of these demands when we lose our faith.

In the broadest sense, the cult of Mary speaks of the extent to which, despite our adult powers of reasoning, our responsibilities and our status, the needs of childhood endure within us. While for long stretches of our lives we can believe in our maturity, we never succeed in insulating ourselves against the kind of catastrophic events that sweep away our ability to reason, our courage and our resourcefulness at putting dramas in perspective and throw us back into a state of primordial helplessness.

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