Wolfe as Heretic

brunians at brunians.org · 19 May 2010, 15:39 · from 2010-May.txt.gz

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From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 11:39:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: (urth) Wolfe as Heretic
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W43FBDA10A167D2011AE70CFE20 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W43FBDA10A167D2011AE70CFE20 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <13861.67.142.130.26.1274283540.squirrel at www.brunians.org>

In what way is this not compatible with Catholicism?

What is Catholic doctrine on this matter?

.

>
>
> In my fairly extensive review of Gene Wolfe interviews I've
> found him to be generally cautious and circumspect with regard
> to revealing the mysteries behind his literary work. But
> occasionally a certain interviewer will inspire him to let
> something important slip. For example, in the Larry McCaffery
> interview I mentioned in another post he is willing to resolve
> the central mystery of Fifth Head of Cerberus.
>
> In the '96 interview with James Jordan I find one of the most
> telling revelations which has helped my personal understanding
> of the thematic underpinnings of the Sun series. Ironically the
> answer is in response to a question about the Soldier series. But
> it displays a part of the stated personal belief system of Gene
> Wolfe which seems to have inspired much of his work. I think it is
> a belief which is not reconcilable with orthodox Catholicism, though
> I can't be sure.
>
>>JJ: Which is another way of saying, do we have fallen angels here
>>or some type of power that really was operative in the world before
>>the kingdom of God?
>
>>GW: That is my personal belief. I think that the gods of paganism were
>>real. But what I tried to do was to write about that pagan world as the
>>pagans themselves wrote about it. If we read modern historians we are
>>reading a very rationalistic viewpoint of this which says that all of
>>these people were absolutely wasting their time by building temples to
>>Ares or Apollo or you name it. And by offering sacrifices in worship and
>>all that it was nothing there. Nothing at all there and that whether it
>>is true or not that certainly is not the way the people who were doing it
>>felt. They were convinced that there was something there and they had all
>>sorts of legends and so forth about the appearances of the god and in
>> fact
>>there is one place in the Acts where Paul and another one of the apostles
>>are mistaken for Zeus and Mercury. Zeus and Hermes, we are mixing the
>> Latin
>>and the Greek which is what I was trying to get away from. They are
>> mistaken
>>for Zeus and Hermes in human form because people in those days expected
>> that
>>you could see Zeus and Hermes in human form. I am not so sure they were
>> wrong.
>>I am not convinced that they were wrong. We love to think how much
>> smarter we
>>are than people of ancient times or biblical times or so forth but I am
>> very
>>dubious about that.
>>
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