I Believe, I Doubt

Gunther Weber has spent his life in religious education. He has been a teacher and has trained teachers, and has written many textbooks and books on the communication of Christian faith. But his faith - which he still professes - has always been accompanied by doubts, and now that he is retired he feels better able to air them. He has many criticisms to make of the new Roman Catholic Catechism: 'The compilation of church doctrines in the Catechism seems to me to be like the catalogue of an ancient cemetery. All the tombs are neatly arranged by plots and rows, and numbered. Originally living experiences of God over thousands of years have been embalmed and laid in stone sarcophagi. Living experiences of trust in God died when they were transformed into "revealed, unchangeable, eternal truths." In the long run faith can only remain alive if, time and again, in trust in God, it exposes itself to the painful journey through the darkness. Those who still keep clinging to the customary officially guaranteed ideas, to rigid formulae of tradition, out of anxiety about losing their certainties, are only watching over tombs containing old bones.' Gunther Weber formerly Director of the Catechetical Institute of Aachen.