Saturday, January 28, 2006

Italian Lawsuit Claims No Jesus

Perhaps you've heard about the Italian athiest who sued a Catholic priest for asserting, in his church bulletin, that Jesus exists.

The headline above will take you to a Washington Post article on this.

The priest's attorney Severo Bruno said Father "Righi was not asserting a historical fact when he wrote of Jesus' existence, but rather 'an expression of theological principles.'

"'When Don Righi spoke about Christ's humanity ... he was affirming that he needs to be considered as a man. What his name is, where he comes from or who his parents are is secondary,' he said."

It may be the attorney misspoke, or was misquoted, or his comments mistranslated; but if he were my attorney, I'd fire him if he insisted on making such arguments.

Jesus existed in time and exists now. He was born of Mary, he walked on earth, he teached, healed, suffered and died, and he rose again.

Sue me.

2 comments:

Jenny said...

I don't know, in my husband's RCIA group yesterday, they were told that it didn't matter if Jesus really existed or not because we believe it as an article of faith. Fortunately, he's been doing a lot of reading and thinking on his own. When he told me about it, he prefaced it with "sometimes people say really stupid things to try and sound pious."

Darwin said...

The sad thing is, I seem to recall one of the other RCIA leaders saying something similar back when my wife and I were helping out with that at our previous parish...

The thing that makes me wonder, though, is how in the world the atheist intends to prove that the statement of Jesus existence was _not_ true. It seems like the burden of truth would be on the person asserting falsehood, and although one could assert as a matter of faith (unfaith?) that Jesus didn't exist, one would be hard put to prove it at this remove.