I really don’t care about the content of religious mythology. I don’t think it matters. It might be better for preachers to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey, The Carolingian Epic, La Morte De Arthur, and the Nibelungen than it is to read from the Bible. It might be better to read selections from history and then speak about current events and how they relate. But the idea of a ceremonial leader and a teacher: someone very well educated that the community hires and pays for, and who speaks to the community every week, so that we actually have some sense of membership in something — even if it’s only for festivals and celebrations, births, marriages, foundings, launchings, consolation and deaths, and so we have an excuse to be civil egalitarians in practice by having an occasional meal together and afterward to work on charity together — well, that all seems like a good thing.
I love the Monarchy, History, Mythology and Mankind. Nothing more miraculous than that seems necessary. I love the Pope too, just like I love the Monarchy. The only protection from the mob is having someone out there whose entire purpose is the perpetuation of our extended family, and who can, with caution say, ‘I do not know what is good, but I know what is bad, and this is bad, and this other thing might be better’. Moral leadership when it is powerless except for the use of passionate persuasion is a defense against tyranny of the mob, ideologies, groups or individuals. Monarchy, even only as a vehicle for veto or ascent, is good for the same reason – especially if the nations are small. Monarchy is in history, the most common, best understood, and therefore the natural order of man for this reason. Our parliaments are merely a means of getting more work done – not better work done.
Religion need not be supernatural for it to have mystery and profundity in the beauty of its complexity. As humans we are capable of all that and more on our own. Gods should be a role model. A model we can aspire to, and perhaps one day achieve. I might prefer Arthur or Alexander. But if you have to pick a particular Nazarene instead, I’m all for it. He was a good man to use as a role model. And the consequences of using him for that purpose are nothing if not magical. 🙂