[wideawake]

Well, this shift to the symbolic is endemic to both Protestants and Catholics.

This loss of touch with physical reality of creation and the even more fundamental reality of the Lord's commands is instantiated among Catholics with such tendencies as liberation theology and the touchy-feeliness of the Neocatechumenate, among other organizations.

Among Protestants similar movements are afoot: the "Emerging Church" and "Purpose-Driven" gobbledygook.

These Protestant movements may not be as richly symbolic as my favorite human-authored book (The Divine Comedy), but they are symbolic as opposed to real, nonetheless.

[Borges]

These Protestant movements may not be as richly symbolic as my favorite human-authored book (The Divine Comedy)

Why am I not surprised? :-) I read the Mandlebaum translation. You read it in Italian I presume? They say Dante was the first to present humans as specific products of their historical circumstances and not as various heroic types as in Classical times or as the sum of their virtues as in biographies of the saints at the time.