Peter Dresser has submitted the following letter to various Catholic agencies for publication or dissemination.
In light of recent events I feel an obligation to make a public credal statement, to briefly explain the nature of my book and to apologise to anyone whom I have unwittingly scandalised or hurt. I did this entirely on my own initiative in the hope that peace and goodwill might prevail.
“I can understand why the article in “The Australian” (October 29) has appalled so many people. It has caused scandal and anger, concern and anguish and has hurt me personally. It saddens me that such hysteria has erupted and I feel obliged as a Catholic priest to quell the tempest as best I can.
At the outset I want to reaffirm my belief in the Divinity of Jesus, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of Jesus. This affirmation is entirely unsolicited and comes from the heart of a person who has cherished his Catholic religion from childhood and has no reason to repudiate or disparage its core tenets.
The comments in the newspaper were taken from a manuscript I compiled prayerfully and reflectively over many years. In that document I attempted to go beyond doctrine and dogma and to discover God’s magnificence and friendship in the world of science and evolution and in the immensity of the universe. It was not an arrogant attempt to spurn or scorn my Catholic theology. It was more an attempt to personalise and retheologise my Catholic faith and so allow my religion to provide greater nourishment for me in my spiritual journey. It was also my intention to emphasise the human nature of Jesus and Mary. It was a very worthwhile and meaningful experience for me and for others with whom I shared it.
The manuscript is not easy to read and so I can readily appreciate that many people have found its content confusing and indeed even “heretical”. Unfortunately people have not appreciated that my explorative theology is not a credal statement. I also employed a jargon in the process which has made the document even more confusing for so many. My sole intention was to make our beautiful Catholic religion and its beliefs more meaningful in our contemporary world. I am distressed that I have caused pain and anguish instead.
With hindsight it would probably have been wise not to have allowed random access to the manuscript. I requested that the web site which hosted this document be closed down and this has happened. At this stage there is very little else I can do except to apologise to anyone who has been scandalised by what was meant to have been a prayerful, refreshing and invigorating document.”
(Fr) Peter Dresser
PO Box 70
Coonamble
NSW 2829
Steve said
Fr. Dresser,
I, for one, happened to find your manuscript to be “a prayerful, refreshing and invigorating document.” Unfortunately, I was only into the second chapter and when I came to the site this morning, found that it had been taken down. Where can I find God is Big. Real Big so that I might finish reading the whole thing?
ray ham said
Dear Peter
I haven’t read your article, but I identify with some of the questions you raise in it. I don’t think you should be apologizing for it or for making it available to other people. How else can Catholics come to terms with the literal interpretations of doctrines like the bodily resurrection and the scientific knowledge we have today? How else are we to come to terms with biblical scholarship that has been around for over a hundred years and is now being widely discussed in the Christian community through the writings of people like Bishop Spong and Michael Moorwood, except by openly discussing issues such as the divinity of Christ and how this is to be understood in today’s world? A student at a Catholic college recently said to me ‘I don’t believe that someone followed Jesus around writing down everything he said!’ How is one to respond to such a comment? By repeating creeds and formulas or by explaining what we know of current biblical sholarship, including Pope Benedict, who says in his foreword to “Jesus of Nazareth” – ‘We have to keep in mind the limit of all efforts to know the past: We can never go beyond the domain of hypothesis, because we simply cannot bring the past into the present. To be sure, some hypotheses enjoy a high degree of certainty, but overall we need to remain conscious of the limit of our certainties – indeed, the history of modern exegesis makes this limit perfectly evident.’
Ray Ham
Adelaide
simon peter said
Yes, your writing was heretical for Catholic teaching. It’s good it was withdrawn.
for your spiritual journey :
—> http://www.peterkreeft.com/home.htm
—> http://www.catholic.com/
Jn 6:68 Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away?
Jn 6:69 And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.
simon said
@ray ham
Faith is not something that we can produce for ourselves. It is not something that we can simply decide to have. We cannot turn it on like a water faucet; it does not work that way.
Faith is a gift from God. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit. This gift is always offered by God, but we are not always able to accept it. In order to accept it, we must want to be good people. We must truly invite God into our lives. We must try to do God’s commands. obey the teaching of the Church. Do not read books which are contrary with Catholic faith. Sanctify yourself with sacraments. Christ said: to believe in me you must do the commands of my Father in heaven. There is no way around it, if we turn away from God and refuse to try to follow His commands, we will not be able to accept the gift of His true faith.