Core

At the risk of offending any past, present, or future readers (which I hope will not take offense!), I felt it important to firmly state my core beliefs in a short little post. Partly to get things straight between my own ears, and partly to make a public statement.

Ahem.

First and foremost, I believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church.

This took me some time. Twenty-five years, in fact, before I had my first “conversion,” and it’s been slowly solidifying over the past two decades since. My three-week hospitalization in 2009 did for my faith what Guthian inflation did for the early universe, to throw out a physics reference and prove I don’t hate Science. I am living proof there are no atheists (or agnostics) in foxholes.

I feel it prudential to mention here a well-quoted remark by Fulton Sheen: “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

Second, and this flows directly from the first, evil cannot be done that good may come of it.

Thus, for me, abortion is wrong. Torture, no matter what euphemism it goes by, is wrong. The death penalty is wrong. Gay “marriage” is wrong. War that does not meet “just war” criteria (you can look it up easily) is wrong. We cannot do evil that good may arise. The ends do not justify the means.

This tends to leave me without a political party. However, though I will never vote for a Democrat, I will vote for a Republican, conditionally.

Third, aside from the Catholic Church, there is no “truth” out there. I’m thinking here about our daily non-spiritual lives. Specifically, every outlet you get your information from comes at you from a slant. There are two points here. A) Every information outlet has an ideological outlook that wants to get you all hopped up hoppin’ mad because B) every one of these outlets wants to make a buck. That’s it. From your children’s college to Fox News to talk radio to the New York Times. That’s it. Tune it out.

Fourth, Life is a puzzle or a riddle to be solved. How theologically sound this is, I don’t know. It’s a belief I’ve adopted years ago and just hold to be true. Subjective, yes, but something that feels right to me. Perhaps it dates back to my pre-adolescence, when I would read with pounding pulse of Newton and Einstein and Bohr solving the mysteries of the universe, detailed in my beloved physics book. It certainly contributes a great deal to my everyday frustration. I’ve tried changing this core metaphor, but I always fall back into it, like a comfortable pair of slippers.

Fifth, the most pleasurable and productive pastime one can do by oneself is … reading! I can experience life way, way back in the past or centuries into the future. I can experience war in all its terror. I can travel to other continents and cultures, other worlds. I can become intimate with a historical figure and learn every detail or his or her life. I can understand – in theory – machines without having to turn a wrench and contemplate the coolness of higher math without deforming an eraser. Well, sort of. You get the drift. But the best part of it is, when I start reading words sentences paragraphs chapters, all the troubles of the little riddle of my life … dissipate.

Sixth, the greatest book ever written – the Bible aside, of course (see Belief #1) – is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. That’s above debate. What the third greatest book may be … well, that’s anyone’s guess and I suppose there’d be at least a million answers to that question. Though I’d be willing to venture a half-dozen or so.

Seventh, I will never ever be able to decide, once and for all time, via some sort of objective criterion, who is a better guitarist: Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix.

There. My core beliefs.

YMMV.