For simplicity’s sake, right now I’ll refer to them as Utah Cousin and Michigan Cousin. Michigan Cousin is the one who has up ’til now been known as Beloved But Obnoxious Cousin. She’s 23. Utah Cousin is 27.

Utah Cousin is in the habit of sending out periodic unsolicited e-mail rants. (He is also in the habit of replying to all whenever anyone sends an e-mail that includes him, which created no small friction between him and my mother a few years ago…but that’s another story.) The most recent one was on the subject of the so-called “National Day of Reason” that was dreamed up as a (one might argue, somewhat sophomoric) answer to the National Day of Prayer. Here is what he wrote, to persons unknown:

http://www.nationaldayofreason.org/

Why?  Why not!Everyone go out and do something useful today.  Give some blood, engage in some commerce, turn your back on a church, write your elected officials a nasty letter 100% protected by man’s natural rights: whatever.As ever: no gods, no masters. [Utah Cousin], who on this point is right, and let no man say otherwise

Ahem. So I wrote back:

Otherwise. Very much otherwise.It amazes me that you try to pre-emptively shut down any sort of response (”..who on this point is right, and let no man say otherwise.”) Surely you can’t be afraid of what us feeble-minded religious types might come up with?
  
Your newly Catholic cousin,
    
[The Clam]

To which he responded:

You’ve got to be smarter than that.  No matter how much propaganda one has absorbed, there’s a little
tiny flicker of reason at the back of the brain signaling the truth.

And I, after some deliberation, responded thus:

Dear heart, I could say the exact same thing back to you, without changing a word. You might want to take a look at this document:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/d ocuments/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).”

I think you either have forgotten or else never knew the intellectual history of the Church. Before you go around characterizing persons of faith as knuckle-dragging Kool-Aid sippers, it would behoove you to do some research.

If you want to discuss questions of faith and reason, I’m happy to do so, as long as you approach the matter seriously and come across as wanting to actually engage in discourse. As long as your ‘discourse’ consists of snark and condescension, however, I am not going to take it seriously.

Much love,

[The Clam]

It never ceases to amaze me – and it probably never will – how people who respected my intelligence (or at least purported to do so) before I became Catholic seem to think that I must have abdicated reason in order to convert.