How to train as a theologian

Ross Douhat, a New York Times columnist, has rightly been condemned by lots of very clever and saintly Catholics for daring to write about "The Plot to change Catholicism" despite having "no professional qualifications for writing about the subject". For those who missed the attack on Mr Douhat, here is a copy of the humble and modest letter produced by Fr John O' Malley SJ, Professor Massimo Faggioli and a few others. It is also backed by Fr James Martin SJ, so you know it must be good.

They have a point of course. The reason that so few Catholics take the words of Jesus Christ seriously is that - to His shame - He never managed to get any theological qualifications. Come to think of it, He worked with his father as a carpenter without even getting a B.A. in hammering-nails-into-pieces-of-wood, so it's no wonder that none of His tables and chairs survive to this day.

But then a shocking thought struck me. As you all know, I write a spiritually nourishing religious blog, but some of my readers may have been misled into thinking it has the same authority as the writings of Professor Maximal Bean and his Jesuit friends. So I decided to remedy this.

How could I resist?

Luckily there are Nigerian websites where you can get a Ph.D. in theology (specialising in Ignatian Discernment, Human Flourishing, and Liturgical Dancing) just by giving them your bank account details. So I did this, and now I can call myself Dr Massimo Eccles SJ, and be sure that my words are authoritative. I suspect that this is also how Richard Dawkins (who of course already had a Ph.D. on chicken-behaviour, which allowed him to write authoritative letters to the New York Times about chickens) suddenly became a renowned theologian.

According to Cardinal Vincent Nichols (yes, really), the key words used by the recent Synod were "accompaniment”, “walking with”, “reverential listening” and “discernment”. Plus, of course "mercy". I'm so glad they got away from things like sin, forgiveness, redemption and salvation, which (I'm sorry to say) are mentioned by people like St Paul and St John whose academic qualifications were distinctly dodgy.

Vincent Nichols and friends celebrate "accompaniment" and "reverential listening".

P.S. If you leave comments on this blog, please also tell us what academic qualifications you have. Comments from the uneducated, like those from the unsaved, may not be published.

How to understand atheists

Broadly speaking, there are three kinds of atheists: trolls, obsessives, and ignorant people. Curiously, most of them use the same catchphrases when debating, so it is not always easy to tell them apart. Having encountered a few of them yesterday, I think I am ready to explain how we more intelligent and well-informed people can help them.

You believe in sky fairies!

Mentioning "sky fairies" or "invisible friends" is a sure sign of a troll who has made no attempt to understand what it is that Christians believe in. Other good terms of abuse are "men in dresses" (actually, having gatecrashed the Vatican changing-rooms, I can reveal that most priests wear trousers under their vestments) and the old favourite "all made up by bronze-age goatherds", as if it were not possible for philosophers and goatherds to live at the same time. Remember, that Richard Dawkins wrote a thesis on the behaviour of chickens, and may thus be described as a plastic-age chicken-herd. That's him sorted.

"You believe in talking snakes."

The "talking snake" refutation of all Christian thinking goes as follows: "Snakes can't talk. Therefore the Bible is fiction. So Jesus never existed. I win."

Either your atheist has read the Bible as far as the Garden of Eden story and then stopped, or else has lifted this argument straight from the works of Richard Dawkins. It doesn't occur to him or her that a God who made Heaven and Earth could easily endow a snake with the power of speech (or perform any other miracle, such as the Virgin Birth). That's what omnipotence is all about, you see. Nor does it occur to him that it is not necessary to believe in the literal truth of the Genesis story to realise that it has a meaning. You know, the Fall of Man, that sort of thing.

Worse than that, your atheist believes that Christians DO NOT KNOW that snakes can't talk. Not being trained scientists (although many are), Christians are not able to understand this simple fact. It must be true that Augustine and Aquinas - of whom your atheist probably hasn't even heard - went through life talking to snakes and wondering why they didn't reply.

"Bad things happen. So God doesn't exist and I hate Him."

This is of course the "Stephen Fry" version of atheism. Stephen Fry is not entirely dim - a 2.1 from Cambridge must be nearly as good as a 2.1 from Oxford - but he does seem to be woefully ignorant. After a lifetime of reading quiz answers off little cards and getting an undeserved reputation for being the biggest genius who ever lived, Fry is apparently unable to deal with any concept that requires more than a little card to explain. Again, he thinks that nobody before him has ever worried about why God permits death and disease, or even about why He permits every single radio and television programme to be infested by a certain charmless bore who thinks bad language is funny.

"You eat shellfish, and so it's perfectly OK for me to have sex with anyone I wish.

Yes, it's another poorly-informed atheist, or maybe just a troll or an obsessive. No, Christians aren't bound by the dietary laws of Leviticus, they've been explicitly superseded by the New Covenant. Yes, murder, adultery, theft, and the like are still considered to be wrong. I don't think I can face explaining this one again: come back when you've read some of the New Testament.

An atheist (reading Eccles's blog, as it happens).

One final argument goes something like this: "All right, then. The Bible isn't historical, because all the people who contributed to it believed in God. Why don't we have some accounts of Jesus's life, death and resurrection written by eye-witnesses who were atheists? You suppressed those, didn't you?" Somehow, I think it's not really necessary to answer that one.

Equal marriage

Now, children, I've been requested to teach you about equal marriage; more precisely, I've been threatened with the sack and the possibility of being banned indefinitely from teaching if I don't, so let's get started.

The owl and the pussycat - icons for equal marriage.

Yes, let's start with the owl and the pussycat. Edward Lear was a great campaigner for equal marriage, and his moving love poem was written as part of the struggle against a society which saw something unnatural in the romance between an owl and a cat. Note that, owing to persecution by the Catholic Church, they were denied a church wedding, and were forced to be married by a turkey that lived on the hill - evidently, a liberal priest in the mould of Giles Fraser.

Giles Fraser conducts a wedding.

Owls suffered a lot from persecution in the Victorian era: many became recluses, condemned by the intolerant society of those times as "Too wet to woo."

An owl, refusing to come out of the closet.

Let's move on now to the story of Alice in Wonderland. Can we have any doubt that she was in love with the white rabbit? Although initially underage, she made several attempts to "grow up," by eating and drinking various controlled substances, but her romance was always thwarted. In the end she gave up the struggle, and threw herself into a looking-glass in despair.

Alice - a victim of Victorian narrow-mindedness.

A more successful romance in the Alice books is of course the love story of the walrus and the carpenter, who celebrated their passion by dining on oysters (a well-known aphrodisiac).

Why can't we be married in church?

Now, children, do we have any more examples of equal marriage that we'd like to discuss? Pooh and Piglet? Yes, that's a very good example, Catherine. They spent a lot of time together, and they were obviously very much in love.

"Christopher Robin thinks I should marry a female teddy-bear. What a bigot he is!"

Well, that's all for today, children. I have to go and teach chemistry to the older children now, and of course same-sex attraction is a very important part of this.

One day a hydrogen atom met another one, and fell in love...