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At the New York Times, Gary Gutting, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame, has an essay asking if it matters whether or not God exists. This reminds me of the old joke in which a commissar in the late 1920s asks a Russian Orthodox priest why he is rushing. "To go to church," says the priest. "Come with me." The commissar explains that he cannot go because he does not believe in God. The priest asks him why he does not believe in God. The commissar replies, "Because Lenin did not believe in God." The priest drily replies, "He does now."
We have seen Mr. Gutting before. Back in February he penned an article for the same series in the NYTimes in which he mangled the entire idea of ecclesial authority with an ignorance of religion that I found shocking - even for the NYTimes.
Why does the Times publish this stuff? And, as much as I love Notre Dame, I am forced to ask - why is this guy employed there? I ask this not because he knows zilch about Catholicism. I ask it because his writings seem to be very sophomoric.
