Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Joe Escalante ·
Jul 29, 2010 at 5:29pm
As reported in the wonderful "First Things," Gothic spook writer Anne Rice claims she's still a Christian but she's evidently fed up with organized Christianity and the Catholic Church. She gave a list of reasons like she refuses to be anti-gay, anti-democrat, anti-science.
Wow, she was really getting some bad information if she thought you have to be those things to be Catholic. She doesn't know the first thing about Catholicism if she hasn't figured this stuff out yet. Who needs her? We don't. Cuckoo, cuckoo....
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Jun '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
In other words, G-d was cramping her style.
May '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Oh dear. I am sad to learn this. I had a very nice exchange of e-mail with her when "Called Out of Darkness" was published. I hope her spiritual odyssey brings her once again to a place of profession in her faith.
May '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Joe Escalante
Wow, she was really getting some bad information if she thought you have to be those things to be Catholic. She doesn't know the first thing about Catholicism if she hasn't figured this stuff out yet. ·
That doesn't speak well for the catechesis in her area. Then again, there's no telling if she is innocently or willfully blind.
I'm saddened to hear it, too. A good portion of her fanbase are people who are attracted to gothic settings and themes. Her conversion (however incomplete) was a ray of light for people who love the dark. I hope many of her readers were curious enough about her conversion to read some apologetics.
I've always struggled to reconcile a similar interest in dark subjects with my faith. One day, I hope to use that -- as Flannery O'Connor, Tolkien and Dante did -- to tell tales of God redeeming humanity from the midst of ugliness and despair.
Jul '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Wow. From her photo I would think she is a well adjusted, stable gal.
Jul '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Well, c'mon...it's Anne Rice, what do you really expect? Given her writing (which I've read a great deal of, don't get me wrong--it's fine, for what it is) and the consistent themes in it, and her son's very open and comfortable homosexuality...the idea that she wouldn't speak out against the Catholic Church was a bit unrealistic. For the record, I think she's right about the leadership of the Church (at present) but that doesn't mean it's reflective of the religion and it's certainly not reflective of Christ's teachings or the majority of the Christians in the world. She could find a better way to articulate what she's saying, and she may be a poor messenger given her late, sudden, inexplicable, and Tom Cruise-like enthusiasm for Catholicism but...the Church isn't a credit to its followers these days. It'll truly be unfortunate if she's the most prominent Catholic saying so in public.
Jun '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
The Catholic Church is guided by scripture and tradition. It's not a big secret what they believe and it's easily discoverable in any Catholic Catechism. Catholics who don't accept it, don't accept it, but that doesn't make them superior theologians to the Pope. It just makes them bad Catholics. No?
May '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
And we all know that the last thing on Earth Catholics would ever consider is voting for a Democrat, right?
Jul '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
etoiledunord
The Catholic Church is guided by scripture and tradition. It's not a big secret what they believe and it's easily discoverable in any Catholic Catechism. Catholics who don't accept it, don't accept it, but that doesn't make them superior theologians to the Pope. It just makes them bad Catholics. No? · Jul 29 at 8:55pm
Agreed, but I think it's a very arguable point right now as to whether the current leadership (not just the Pope but his advisors, who are speaking more and more for the Church lately, it seems) are actually living up to the catechism and traditions that define Catholicism. Beyond the decades of rumor and innuendo about the Pope's own personal behavior, I have a lot of trouble fitting the responses to the many recent scandals into the traditional meaning of Catholic.
May '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
She gave James Dobson a very interesting and sympathetic interview on Focus on the Family a few years ago when her biography of Jesus came out. That, plus the fact she's an artist (you know how those people are), inclines me to cut her some slack.
We are instructed to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Too bad she's working out hers with fear, trembling, and a vast throng of onlookers.
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Connecting Benedict XVI to recent scandals in the Church is an attack. He is a strong traditional leader. He's the right man for the right time. There have been problems in the Bishop / seminary arena, and we've seen that, but Benedict XVI is here to clean up a mess, while holding strong to the Magisterium. He is doing exactly that. His appointment of Opus Dei formed José Gomez as the new Archbishop of Los Angeles to replace Roger Mahoney is about as clear a message as can be sent.
Anne Rice suffers from an incomplete catechism, you are right Aaron. One of the worst sins a Catholic can commit is to lead others astray so I hope her rash statements don't have that effect.
Jul '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Joe, I have to respectfully disagree. The take I've had on things is that even as Cardinal, Benedict XVI was responsible for some of the decisions that got the Church into this situation. I have a great deal of trouble believing that Christ would support protecting priests who molest children or even refusing to expose those accusations to the light of day and this Pope shaped the policy the Church has taken on that issue for nearly the past 30 years. He's allowed the Church to recently compare the molestation of children to the ordination of women, and with his own words he's blamed the behavior of these priests on homosexuality and...given the rumors swirling about his own sexuality for the past four decades, I find that not only undignified and unbecoming of his Office, but highly political rather than spiritual. I see him not as an agent of change but as an attempt to hang onto the status quo just as much as Pope John Paul II's immediate predecessors were. I can only hope his successor will accomplish as much true change as John Paul II was able to do.
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
The Church has had true change and everyone's having a grand time with it as Episcopalians. The New York Times is the entity spreading the lie that the Church equates molestation with the ordination of Women. Not true. Read the original text.
He's gay now? According to who? The Village Voice? Or is he too rigid against gays? I've never heard that one. Strong leaders will get attacked like that of course. More political than spiritual? That is believable only if you go by what the N.Y. Times reports rather than by reading his own Encyclicals and Papal Exhortations.
May '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Agreed, Joe.
How anyone could read Pope Benedict's own words and believe that he is more political than spiritual defies imagination. The NYT and other liberal media painted Cardinal Ratzinger as an attack dog, but he's about as meek and loving a person as one can find. Jonathan, if you loved John Paul II, I would think you would be more willing to believe in one of his most trusted advisors.
The bishops didn't connect the molestations to homosexuality. The facts did. The vast majority of molestations were of young boys, not girls. That doesn't mean the link is causal, but a link obviously exists.
Church policy did not protect the molesters. I wrote an article on the subject earlier this year. The key point:
The Church has handled the situation poorly. But that trailer traces more to poor individual judgments than to a systematic cover-up.
May '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Ignore the "trailer" in that last sentence. =/
May '10
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
Give her time. Sounds like she's going through the growing pains all young Chrisitans experience, especially ones who come to faith as adults. Not even St. Paul or St. Augustine were St. Paul or St. Augustine overnight.
Re: Anne Rice Denounces Christianity
I spent a good part of my life believing that in the modern world, eventually the Church would change to accommodate what I thought was morally right. Then one day I figured out this theory was sad because I really knew nothing about the Church's teachings and writings other than what was sifted through to me in a watered down post Vatican II catechism. Benedict calls the path I was on the "dictatorship of moral relativism."
When I finally started seriously studying the faith, I realized there was no way for me to understand it all, but by adhering to the magisterium while I learned more instead of waiting for it to catch up with my modern Hollywood lifestyle I could at least find peace and happiness. In short, expecting the Church to change for me was a dead end. It's a dead end for the people trying to tear the Church down as well. There are too many people that know and benefit from the truth.