Plagues, Politics, Prayers, by Robert Royal

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*Image: The Healing of the Ten Lepers (Guérison de dix lépreux) by J.J. Tissot, c. 1890 [Brooklyn Museum]

By Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, March 9, 2020

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

 

Robert RoyalIn Sicily, where rainfall this year is 75 percent below normal, local communities are turning to ancient practices – prayer, penitence, processions – to ask God to save crops that would usually be harvested later this year, but stand in great peril.

It’s astonishing what myths and magical thinking still exist in our postmodern world. For example, a sociologist, consulted by Italian media, remarked that the processions were “an effective way to strengthen community” in times of crisis, such as drought or famine. Under cover of such pseudo-scientific myths, whole millennia of human belief and practice about prayer and our relationship to the Divinity simply disappear into the sociological mists.

It’s too bad for the faithful Sicilian farmers that Sicily is not in Amazonia. Otherwise, the sociological fraternity and – who knows – maybe even certain priests, bishops, and cardinals, might treat their ancestral practices, and the very notion of petitionary prayer, with more respect. Pachamama, according to the literature, is (among other things) the goddess of planting and harvesting. And who among our cultural or religious elites today would dare say that praying to Pachamama is really only community organizing? ….

Read more here:  https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/03/09/plagues-politics-prayers/