Pundits have long maintained that the only person more arrogant than a newly certified physician is a newly ordained priest. At the age of twenty-nine, with the holy oils of ordination still wet on my hands, I sallied forth to teach theology at the university level. Exuding a brisk air of professional enthusiasm and a suffocating spirit of hubris, I expostulated so brilliantly on the mystery of God that after one semester, there was no mystery left. When I heard an elderly and saintly friar in the monastery comment, “The older I get, the less I understand about God,” I assumed that it was his
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