“Mark and Bev Tindall” <> wrote in message news:<>…

Taking Religious Liberties

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

Published: April 4, 2004 (New York Times)

You spent seven years in a convent, but in your new memoirs, ”The Spiral Staircase,” you describe yourself as a failed nun.

I was a lousy nun. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find God. It wasn’t suitable for me. It is suitable for very few people.

……….

What do you consider the most important virtue?

Compassion. No question about it. It goes right across the board in all the world religions. Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.

If there’s so much similarity among world religions, why have wars been fought for centuries?

Because of egotism. Compassion is not a popular virtue. A lot of people see God as a sacred seal of approval on some of their worst fantasies about other people. With the election coming up in the United States, we’ll be hearing a lot about God being either a Democrat or a Republican.

….

That’s fascinating, but I still find your emphasis on compassion simplistic. We know from Freud that all true achievement derives from selfishness. Who cares if Michelangelo was nice to his next-door neighbors?

Religions are not dealing with geniuses. They are dealing with ordinary people.

…….

You had a nervous breakdown before you left the convent. I wonder how you feel about the current widespread use of antidepressants.

We live in a culture where we think we shouldn’t be depressed and we demand things, including good moods. But you should be depressed if, say, your child dies. It’s a shame to miss it by blocking yourself off.

Oh, that’s so Catholic of you to ennoble suffering.

No. It’s a very Buddhist idea. Suffering in itself can be really bad. It can make you into a psychopath. But if we do suffer, it can help us

to appreciate the suffering of other people.

Do you find that more people are turning toward God these days?

No. Not in England, where most people are not interested in institutionalized religion, which they find tired and discredited after the horrors of the 20th century.

Europe seems to be in a post-Christian phase, although the U.S. is not.

You’re a younger nation. In Europe, we are tired and old and we know about our sins.

Is there any hope for the future of religion?

We need to rediscover what is in our religions, which has gotten overlaid with generations of egotistical and lazy theology. The current thinking — my God is better than your God — is highly irreligious.

D.H. Lawrence once said that it’s not religious to be religious.

And Jung once said that a great deal of religion shields us from religious experience

from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/magazine/04QUESTIONS.html?ex=1085025 600&en=b0825ef2ab492113&ei=5070