Famed author-of-the moment Dennis Lehane, who wrote “Mystic River”, which was made into the Clint Eastwood-directed movie, offers us his thoughts on the closing St. Albert’s parish in Weymouth, Mass. Sprinkled throughout is Lehane’s disdain for the more mystical teachings of the Catholic faith and a more temporal view of what the Church is.
I’m of the opinion, in fact, that in the northeastern corridors of our country we often ridicule people of religious faith. It’s too easy to paint the faithful of any religion (but particularly Catholicism with its undercurrent of mysticism and rituals of transubstantiation) as hopelessly out of step, modern Bible-thumpers at war with change, with science, with reason.
Rituals of transubstantiation? This from a Catholic? While his thrust is that there is an unfair stereotyping of Catholics, his clear point is that the better picture of Catholics is that which sees them as people who’ve left behind medieval concepts of mysticism and the miraculous.
