Sections:

1)Some Ideas on the Existence of God

2)Why be a catholic?

3)Crisis of Faith & the instiutional church

4)Atheism: "Help My Unbelief"

5)Atheism, faith and love

6)"Faith Through Crucible of Doubt" (Two Prophets: Dostoevsky and St. Thérèse of Lisieux)

7) In search of God - and of Christ

 

Atheism: "Help My Unbelief"


Pope Paul VI rated atheism as "the most serious problem of our time" and Church Council Vatican II moved from a position of mere condemnations to one of pastoral sympathy. Perhaps the best analysis of this problem of unbelief is expounded by a brilliant Jesuit priest, Michael Gallagher, in his little classic, "Help my Unbelief", now alas, out of print, but I have his permission to use it as I wish on my website. Fr. Gallagher writes most convincingly on this theme because HE went through a crisis of faith and indeed of atheism. He has explored this phenomenon at great depth and I shall avail myself of his many findings, the result of deep research.

The problem of God is not just one of truth or error but rather how people experience their lives in the complexities of today's world amid its new pressures - indeed in a most profound new crisis of culture. What is needed is a genuine dialogue with the world.

For the first time ever, a Catholic Church Council - Vatican II - took atheism, not only seriously but sympathetically. The old condemnations gave way to a serious attempt to describe the realities of unbelief in our modern world and to try to understand the hidden causes troubling the minds of atheists. We witness now a new appraisal of atheism on three counts:

1. A new and deeper realisation of the complexities of unbelief.
2. A new level of compassionate understanding of unbelievers.
3. The need and desire for mutual dialogue.

This point must be stressed: many saints and famous theologians have gone through phases of atheism which some called "the dark night of the soul" - St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Teresa of Avila, St Therese of Lisieux. This crisis helped them ultimately to purify and deepen their faith and also, to understand more profoundly the anguish and frustration of fellow atheists.

Some suggestions to atheists and agnostics:

1. Admit your intellectual limitations. If there be a god, then he is infinite and eternal. St Augustine, once an atheist, was so right when he said: "If you were not incomprehensible, O Lord, you would not be god - for how can the FINITE ever understand the INFINITE." And so pray thus: "God - IF you exist - help me". Prayer is most important in the quest for God.

2. Try to lead a good moral life. Never overlook the crucial role played by a person's basic attitude in any journey towards faith - or any away from it. And so the great Cardinal Newman - who experienced a phase of atheism himself - could write: "With good dispositions, faith is easy but without good dispositions, faith is not easy."