As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but
little faith in God. There is a distinction between belief in a set ofpropositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them. I believed
implicitly in the existence of God; I alsobelieved in the Real Presence of
Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of
eternal damnation and the objective reality of Purgatory. I cannot say, however,
that my belief in these religious opinions about the nature of ultimate reality
gave me much confidence that life here on earth was good or beneficent. The
Roman Catholicism of my childhood was a rather frightening creed. James Joyce
got it right in Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man: I listened to my
share of hell-fire sermons. In fact Hell seemed a more potent reality than God,
because it was something that I could grasp imaginatively. God, on the other
hand, was a somewhat shadowy figure, defined in intellectual abstractions
rather than images. When I was about eight years old, I had to memorise this
catechism answer to the question, 'What is God?': 'God is the Supreme Spirit,
Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections.' Not surprisingly,
it meant little to me and I am bound to say that it still leaves me cold. It
has always seemed a singularly arid, pompous and arrogant definition. Since writing
this book, however, I have come to believe that it is also incorrect.
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