114/227. My Book pp. 160-161. Post No. 1393.

MY COMMENT :

Back in business, earlier than expected. After two consecutive prostate-stints in the hospital, I came home yesterday, feeling no pain and rarin’ to go. This post, like the previous 113, was written more than a decade ago. I am now approaching fifty years as an atheist and have never regretted my decision to abandon both the priesthood and the illusions of faith.

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Forty winks, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the forty immortals of the French Academy, forty days of quarantine, the forty days of Noah’s Deluge, the Israelites’ forty years in the desert, Jesus fasting for forty days and forty nights. And it was, in 2008, exactly forty years since I checked in my capuche and my chasuble.

Numerologists and biblical exegetes could tell us what is so special for me about the number (or better, figure). But I can tell you what has been so special for me about the last four decades.

My papal dispensation from the priesthood, my marriage, our children (my divorce is another story), living in the States for ten years and in France for the last thirty (at time of writing). But those forty years – more than half my life – as a layman, after sixteen years as a Franciscan, including seven as a Catholic priest, have been literally a second life for me, beginning with ten years as a lay-theologian and the last thirty as an atheist. I keep quoting the Gospel text because it sums up my liberation : “The truth will make you free”. Forty years of freedom from meaningless celibacy, including thirty years of freedom from the illusions of faith.

RIDENDA RELIGIO