Where and how I find God in my life in this troubled world

A leading physician and international humanitarian speaks out

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Dr. Kevin Cahill

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I can recall him, many times, at our diner table dissecting some arcane theological argument with the local priest. It was an unfair intellectual battle, for the priest, who undoubtedly possessed profound faith had, nonetheless, little capacity to explain the basis for his devout beliefs, and my father would pursue the poor man till he surrendered with a defensive mutter: “Ah, but it’s God’s will.”

My father was a wise physician, and he knew life was rarely that simple. He would be the devil’s advocate, one night defending monotheism, and the next arguing passionately for the rights of atheists or agnostics. We were expected to stand our ground, and defend our assigned positions.

Looking back on those wonder-filled years I am reminded of the dilemma faced by the Irish sisters in Brian Friel’s play, Dancing at Lunghasa, when their beloved brother, a missionary priest in Africa, having gone “slightly native,” comes home and tries to explain the universality of religious beliefs, and the indigenous celebrations he would lead for his parishioners in appeasing a reluctant “rain God.” The traditional Irish villagers didn’t want to hear this heresy – they had their faith and their “God” - a complex Father, Son, and Holy Ghost arrangement – and that should be enough for anyone, especially a priest.

But is it? My early kitchen table education was broad and good enough to incorporate other views and, as I began my own life’s journeys, I was very grateful for the stimulating, sometimes perverse, and peculiar philosophical foundation of youth. When I first went to India – more than 50 years ago – I worked in Calcutta, where the Hindu majority believe cows are sacred, and even flies and mosquitoes might possess, in their tiny bodies, a previous being. By the time I left Calcutta, after 4 months, I really wasn’t certain that I might not be a cow in the next life, and I wasn’t really certain it mattered much.

Helping people mattered. Seeing the unique, the beautiful – call it a soul, spirit, the hand of “God” – but finding something special in every human being became the raison d’etre for my life. Obsession with theological conformity and liturgical niceties simply didn’t seem very important, as you discovered “God” in the Somali bush, or in a totally Islamic culture.

We lived for several years in the Middle East. When our second son was born there, I became very friendly with a local Italian missionary who baptized him. Fr. Ruffino once told me that as a young priest, he would measure his success in his first Chinese mission by the number of baptisms he would perform in a year and he would happily send an annual report back to the Vatican. After decades of this satisfying service to the Church he was sent to Egypt where proselytizing for a non-Islamic religion was strictly forbidden, and converting and baptizing were grounds for expulsion. He had to change his criteria; he would give witness by simply being there, but all his other ceremonial roles as a priest were over. There was but one God, and Mohammed was his Prophet. Gradually Fr. Ruffino came to accept that his Arab neighbors were his family, no better, no worse than those he once washed free of original sin in the sanctified waters of Christ.

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