On Love and Religion

Appreciable applause and all appropriate accolades to instructor Ryan Darr for asking “does morality come from God or can it be reached independently?” (On the Campus, December issue). I am formerly a devout regular Mass-attending cradle-Catholic, one of the pray-pay-and obey faithful. But with a recent change-of-heart (and until further clarification), I no longer buy in to the bromide of the Bearded Old Bud in the Bathrobe (the God in the Sky Guy). 

I maintain that the abstract principle of Love is a superb stand-alone substitute sufficiently suited to supplant all the cataloged moralities of the religions. There are no cassocks, catechisms, or cathedrals required to subscribe to the principle and practice of Love. It perhaps might prove itself a universal solution to most every and any problem.

The current COVID crisis is a case in point. The key to neutralizing its health threat are the various vaccines. The vaccines were developed through taking the time to know COVID, to familiarize ourselves with all of its character and attributes, to understand it; which, in short, is to love it.

We now know COVID but to do that we had to get close to it, intimate with it. But that intimacy rewarded us with a vaccine. Love is powerful medicine. Until I am convinced otherwise my moral compass is love, there is no religion required.