Images, Perceptions and Spectacle

The reality and vitality of faith is deeply personal, revealed in community and questioned aloud by the secular media. In recent days all three perspectives are on display.

The Catholic Register’s magnificent and extensive treatment of the forthcoming canonization of Brother Andre is filled with detail and anecdote. It is a big event and deserves attention. The story of Brother Andre is almost magical in its elements and truly inspiring in its arc. And it is one that touches non-Catholics as well as Catholics. At times, of course there is a sense of the perplexed as evidenced in Rosie Dimanno’s treatment of the life of Brother Andre and the after-life of the Saint. At other times, there is great expectation, as in this account of the expected pure tourism potential of yet another Canadian Saint being named. And it is an opportunity to be reminded of how far the touch of Brother Andre extends as reported in this American paper’s account of a a group of very special pilgrims on their way to celebrate. Of course the story of Brother Andre is also a story about Quebec and the changes it has witnessed in the 73 years since his death.

Charles Lewis in the National Post this past Saturday reminds us in a vivid and disturbing manner that faith is often about witnessing. The story of the difficulties faced by pro-life groups on University Campuses is gaining more and more attention all the time. It has been a divisive issue in the past involving court cases and intervention by civil libertarians. But the situation in Ottawa seems to be taking the matter to a whole new level. This is not just a Canadian phenomenon as these news stories from the U.S. suggest and it is not just a student issue given that pro-life faculty are now banding together to create a space where they can discuss life issues.

And if Charles Lewis’ reporting and the example of Brother Andre’s Canonization remind us of the twists and turns of witnessing, the Pew Forum’s survey on religious knowledge is giving lots of us much to think about in terms of what we know and don’t know about religion in general and our own faith in particular. You might have heard the news that Atheists are the best informed when it comes to questions of religion, and Catholics seemed to have done particularly bad as this Washington Post Columnist suggests while calling the poor showing as a ‘scandal of ignorance’. On the other hand, this Washington Post Columnist chose the opposite tack in distinguishing between ‘knowing God’ and ‘knowing about God’. Jimmy Akin at the National Catholic Register in the U.S. makes a brave case for why it might be expected that Atheists are more likely to know about all religions than Catholics and he does ask some good questions about what a general survey on religious facts actually demonstrates.