This is just one of the absurd utterances common to the utopian mind of the progressive. In Hillary's view sincerity is faith's highest value and the actual teachings of the great faiths diminish that sincerity because such teachings are external and, therefore, by definition, superficial and artificial.
If that is true, if she is right, true faith, the best, most complete faith is a radically personal and private act...something like using the bathroom (or engaging in self-abuse.) Uh, I say this because most of us like to use the bathroom alone whenever possible. It's personal!
As a Catholic I understand faith to be something quite different. The Church teaches that faith is not like using the bathroom, it's like sharing a meal, a life-giving meal that commonly nourishes and benefits the lives of all who share it.
Hillary seems to be ignorant of the fact that faith, like freedom, in order to be meaningful, must have a clear object, a creed. For instance, freedom in the abstract evokes nothing definite. Only when it takes an object, such as freedom for this, or freedom from that, does freedom become meaningful. Faith is no different. Faith is belief, and the ultimate value of belief is not determined by simply that one believes, but by what one believes.
We see this expressed in the Great Commission of Christ found in the final chapter of the gospel of Matthew. There Jesus tells his disciples that He has all power in heaven and earth and commands them to go to the whole world, baptize in the name of the Trinity AND "teach them to obey all I have commanded you." In other words, first get their attention by believing in Me, then tell them I've got a few things to say to them: fiduciary faith is to dogmatic faith as means are to ends.
Most of us would agree that sincerity is an admirable personal trait. But faith that is sincere is only a virtue if the object of faith is virtuous. For instance, one could believe in the Devil or Satanism with deep and abiding sincerity, but such a content would make all that sincerity a supreme vice, not a virtue. As my third grade educated father commonly said, "Believe a lie and be damned."
The point here is when one's personal faith has no objective moral and dogmatic content it is little more than a mishmash of feckless sentimentality and warm fuzzies, rooted in nothing meaningful or enduring. Such a faith is not child-like, but simply childish and utterly incapable of meeting the difficulties of life.
Faith is not impeded or diminished, but given substance and meaning when it includes a set of tenets and propositions which can be clearly articulated and commonly shared, as in the Great Credo all Catholics profess every Sabbath.
This objective content makes up the teaching of the organized part of religion Hillary obviously doesn't understand. This "external" content, far from being superficial or artificial, actually roots the soul in the substance of transcendent truth that alone can face and triumph over all the problems we face in life, whether coming to us from without or rising from within ourselves.
Such reality seems to have eluded Hillary's intellect for more than half a century. In lieu of it she has cobbled together her own orthodoxy from the sundry teachings of leftist professors and 60s revolutionaries and made it an object of worship.
Blinded and enslaved by this idol of her own fabrication, she knows little of what true faith is and what is needed to inform and perfect it. I wonder how well she understands the nature of idolatry?
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