WESTERN
Atheism in contemporary Theology
Miguel de Unamuno: Catholic atheist
Miguel de Unamuno, San Manuel
Bueno, mártir, y tres historias más (Madrid, 1933) 79
Brian J. Dendle, The spanish novel of religious thesis 1876-1936
(Princeton University; Castalia: Madrid 1968) 57-8
"Although Unamuno is obsessed by the ideas of God and immortality in his poems
and essays, religion plays only a minor role in his novels. ... Ideology has
little importance in the face of the forces of race, maternity and Nature;
religion is only part of one's inherited culture, not something which can be
subjected to reason or question.
San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1930) is more the expression of an
intellectual paradox than a novel on the religious problem. Unamuno assumes, like
Alarcón and Pereda, that religious faith gives meaning, and thus
"happiness," to the lives of the simple. He therefore postulates the existence of
two "saints" (one clerical, one lay) who, while not believing in God themselves
(a part of God's designs), strive to preserve the faith of the villagers.
The priest Don Manuel does reject certain Catholic attitudes and practices, for
example, the Church's hostility to liberalism, its emphasis on mediation and
contemplation, and, strangely enough, its intervention in social concerns such as
syndicalism. Heretically, Don Manuel declares that there is no single true
religion, and that religions must be judged by their utility in helping nations
to live spiritually:
¿Religión verdadera? Todas las religiones son
verdaderas en cuanto hacen vivir espiritualmente a los pueblos que las profesan,
en cuanto les consuelan de haber tenido que nacer para morir, y para cada pueblo
la religión más verdadera es la suya, la que le ha hecho.
re. cultural/Catholic/Jewish/atheists, see Graham Greene, Charles Maurras,
Michael Harrington, Ahad Ha-Am,Mordecai Kaplan, and
Sherwin Wine.
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