When reading the following, one might think they were reading a critique of the post Vatican II Church. Have a go:
And what is this new idea of religion? It is briefly a religion without God, that is, God as traditionally understood. Religion, according to the twentieth century philosophers and theologians, centers not about God but man. “It is man first and not God,” says one of the exponents of the new notion; “it is as much God only as man may seem to suggest or prove. Above all, it is God revealed by man and not man by God. Our revelation today is from earth to heaven, from clod to God- not vice versa as in the old days.”2 “The Scientific interpretation of natural phenomena,” says another, “has made the interest in God more remote, God’s existence more problematical, and even the idea of God unnecessary. Mathematics and physics are making it increasingly difficult to assign a place for God in our co-ordinations and constructions of the universe; and the necessity of positing a first cause or of conceiving a designer, a necessity which seemed prima facie obvious to a pre-scientific generation, does not exist for us.”3 the word “God” may still be retained in this new idea of religion, but that word takes on an entirely new meaning; it may even reach such a volatile state as to become identified with almost anything from a psychical complex to an ideal. It may even be ignored altogether as it is, for example, by one for whom “new religion will be an outcome of the wants, the hopes and the aspirations of these our times and the near future.”4
However, that my hypothetical contextual position of this passage is not the case. Well, maybe, but the book is "Religion Without God" by Fulton Sheen, published in 1928. So now that you know the source, here's the footnotes:
2 John Haynes Holmes, The New Basis of Religion in “Essays towards Truth,” 1924.
3 H.W. Carr, “Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics,” 1927.
4 C. A. F. Rhys Davids, “Old Creeds and New Needs,” 1923.
My thanks to Fr. Brian Mullady OP for the book recommend!
Fulton Sheen! Wow! That came as a bit of a shock. Thanks for that, Mark.
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