Taken from Be Not Silent * James Kullander * The Sun * Issue 378 * June 2007
pp. 7-8
"It is not completely wrong to say that organized religion has been at the bottom of a good many woodpiles. But organized religion also keep human ideal before us. It reminds us that there is a law above the law of the land; that we are each beholden to more than what's expected within any system--including the Church's. This is why so many churches have split dies, and been lost.
" Any human institution will be less that human in some parts of its history; in the case of a church, this can take the form of confusing religion with God. When religion makes itself God--makes itself the end rather than the means of seeing what is beyond us, what transcends our smallness and enlarges our spirits--then that religion has failed."
p. 11
...the old man said that the faith is about Jesus, Mary, and the saints, and those things don’t' change. But the Church is about telling you what to do, and form now on, he would figure that out for himself...We began to realize that the Church is, as the Zen saying goes, only a finger pointing to the moon."
p. 11
"For me Catholicism brings to the world a tremendous awareness of the sacredness of life, the notion that all life is holy, can be made holy, must become holy. What does it lack? The wisdom of the Upanishads...that the institution of religion does not mediate God but points the way to God...I admire the spiritual depth of the Hinduism and Buddhism. I admire the communal nature of Judaism and Islam. These other faiths stretch my mind and make me think deeply about the insight that Catholicism gives me."
