I have spent an interesting and in part, painful evening. My extended family gathered for a Christmas party. I spoke with one of my brothers, a good man and someone who is always ready with a listening ear.
Well, almost always. We chatted for a few minutes. Then: "So what's with this Catholic thing?"
So I told him how and why I had returned to the faith, all of which he listened to uncritically and with a show of interest. I felt no particular approval or judgment, until....that moment. The moment, I must say, I am becoming familiar with. This is when I explain how I reassure myself against the fear that I've just grown gullible in old age by rationally examining the evidence for miracles in recent history, more or less in our time. In particular, the events at Fatima where..."
At this point, steel shutters come clanging down. Red lights start to flash. I can't remember exactly what my brother said, but it was a very strong steer away from discussing this subject.
This has happened before. That moment. It seems that people who I know, who care for me and would if not happily at least more or less willingly give me five or ten minutes to prate on about any rubbish in the world which might have taken my fancy, these people do NOT want to give me even 60 seconds to raise the possibility of a verifiable miracle in our time.
Why is this? I suggested that perhaps this might have required courage on his part to consider. After all, to open up to the possibility of a miracle was to throw a lot of dearly-held certainty into play.
Rubbish. He declared that he himself when a child had seen things that he could not explain (etc.)
No, I said. I'm talking about something that happened in 1917, in modern historical times, before a crowd of forty or fifty thousand, many of them unbelievers and skeptics.
He was grateful for an opportunity to be somewhat offended about the reference to his courage and thus gain a firm footing in the conversation. He couldn't give a damn, it was certainly not of concern to him whether five or ten or fifty people saw whatever.
I started to press on and then realised that it was quite hopeless, he was simply not willing to hear any more of this. Probably the first time in my memory when this particular brother was simply unwilling to hear another word I had to say on a subject, and emphatic that it was of no material concern to him at all. No, he certainly didn't think I was losing my marbles, it was just of no interest to him.
Someone interrupted and he gratefully fled.
Two possibilities that I can think of.
1. He is fond of me and does not want me to embarrass myself by spouting deluded rubbish about miracles. Painful for him to see how far I had gone down, etc. This doesn't have much logical heft because being a Christian pretty much requires belief in miracles, at least as performed by Jesus. And he doesn't claim to have any objection to my being a Christian. But still, understandable.
2. The other possibility, and the one which I am reluctantly starting to lean towards simply because of the vehemence with which people reject any discussion on this subject, is this:
We can never really know about events in the time of Jesus. Belief in one thing or another about this time is harmless.
But if a miracle, a fair dinkum cast iron fully inexplicable miracle happened in modern times, and a century of effort has failed to come up with an explanation which plausibly explains all the circumstances, which is the case uniquely with Fatima, then my comfort is shattered. I can no longer sit in my pleasant, if slightly desolate, position with myself at the centre of my own universe.
I might have to admit all sorts of uncomfortable possibilities into my life. Worst of all, I might have to wind back the clock of my and most other people's social evolution and re-admit such horrors as the concept of obedience to the word of God into my nice, me-centred life.
I might have to consider the proposition that I am not just here to please myself and to return to oblivious dust at the end of it all.
I might have to look outside of myself and my personal intellectual constructs, put together out of a lifetime's experience and reflection.
I might have to...horror of horrors... humble myself before a greater power.
I am not quite convinced. There is something suspiciously facile about this conclusion and I will treat it with suspicion until I have much more evidence. But I am disturbed by this almost violent shutting up. There is a forcefulness in the refusal which attracts attention.
If only my contemporaries would think it through and realise that, when were teenagers or in our twenties, we had so much more at stake. Following God's edicts would have cost us serious fun time. But not now. We are older, settled in our relationships and have pretty well worked out that it is simply good sense to live a good life. So it is no longer about hell and heaven and all that dire stuff. C has nothing to fear from God's anger.
But abandoning our faith in ourselves as the highest of the high, bowing down in humility to the God of ancient times. No. No. No way.
If only they knew how good it feels to bow our heads to God and beg his mercy, trusting that it is there in abundance.
Sad, eh?
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