Catholic Commentary

Light of the Nations

2012-02-02T07:48:00.001Z

When the Catechism the Catholic Church talks about the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation (nn.1423-1424), it explains several different names for the Sacrament, each of which brings out a different aspect of the Sacrament.

Today's feast day has what one might call the informal title of "Candlemas", which draws attention to the symbolism of light that is part of what the feast day celebrates. It also draws attention to the Liturgical symbolism of the candle, as a sign of the light of Christ. The formal title in the Liturgy of the "Presentation of the Lord" points more transparently to the Scriptural texts that are at the root of the celebration of the feast day. The two titles are, of course, not contradictory to each other.

One of the striking things about the hymns for Morning Prayer/Lauds contained in the Latin texts of the Liturgy of the Hours is the way in which they make use of the symbolism of darkness and daylight. As a prayer particularly associated with the moment of dawn that is the also the moment of the Resurrection of the Lord, though not always prayed literally at that time, the hymns often make reference to the coming of daylight overcoming or displacing the darkness of night. The symbolism represents the overcoming of the darkness of sin by the light of Christ, and the experience is one of using the every day repeated natural phenemenon of dawn to remind the one who prays of the conquest of sin by the Resurrection of Christ. (Similarly, a character of the office of Night Prayer is to see the coming of night as a sign of the death and burial of Christ, with a looking forward to his Resurrection at dawn.) Not infrequently, the hymns also go on to call the one who prays to conversion of life, to live out the turning away from darkness towards light, interceding for protection from sin and temptation. As is the intention of the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayers sanctify that particular moment of the day by drawing attention to its meaning for the life of grace.

Today's feast day has its analogue every day in the prayer of Morning Prayer/Lauds.

It is, of course, also the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life (see here and here). I might not make it to Mass today, so if you can, do go for me!

Missio Metropolis: New Evangelisation for Liverpool

2012-01-31T07:51:00.001Z

The Archdiocese of Liverpool has been chosen to take part in programme this Lent that will be evaluated to inform the forthcoming Synod of Bishops dedicated to the theme of the "new evangelisation". Details can be found at the Bishops Conference website, and at Liverpool Archdiocese's own website.

What interests me in reading this report is the extent of the engagement of the diocesan Bishop in celebrating the Liturgy and in preaching/teaching during the Lenten season. The eve of Palm Sunday is also going to see a celebration of the Stations of the Cross in Liverpool Cathedral, and event combining a sense of culture and of meditation.

It will be interesting to see how this exercise by a Bishop of his office of teaching will turn out.

Three takes on authority

2012-01-30T16:04:00.001Z

And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority...

These words from the Gospel at Mass yesterday (Mark 1:21-28) provide a kind of strap-line that prompts several thoughts on authority.

The homily that I heard at Mass rather mischievously suggested that perhaps Pope Benedict had sent a goodwill message to Rev. Ian Paisley on his retirement from full time preaching. It pointed out that Rev. Paisley had founded his own church, the Free Presbyterian Church, some sixty odd years ago. In the Roman Catholic Church, however, the successors of St Peter have taught Christian truth with authority for over two thousand years.

In his Angelus address, the present successor of St Peter, Pope Benedict XVI contrasted the authority of power with the authority of service:

"For man", the Holy Father observed, "authority often means possession, power, dominion, success. For God, however, authority means service, humility, love. It means entering into the logic of Jesus Christ Who leans down to wash the feet of His disciples, Who seeks man's authentic good, Who heals wounds, Who is capable of a love so great as to give His life, because He is Love. ...

And the meditation in Magnificat for yesterday was taken from the writings of Mgr Luigi Giussani, founder of the movement Communion and Liberation. The italics are in the original, and reflect an aspect of how Communion and Liberation articulates its charism.

In our particular milieu some individuals have a greater sensitivity to the human experience; in fact they develop a deeper understanding fo any given situation and of others; in fact they are more likely to influence the movement that builds a community. They live our experience more intensely and with a greater commitment. We all feel that they are more representative of us. With them we feel closer to, and stay more willingly in community with, others. To acknowledge this phemenon is to be loyal to our own humanity, a duty spurred by wisdom.

When we discover ourselves helpless and alone, our humanity spurs us to come together. If we meet someone who better feels and understands our experience, suffering, needs, and expectations, we naturally are led to follow that person and become his or her disciple. In that sense, such persons naturally constitute authority.... The Jews said of Christ: "This is one who has authority" and they abandoned the schemes of the Pharisees to follow him.

A better vocation?

2012-01-29T21:26:00.000Z

The second reading at Mass today (1 Cor. 7:32-35) seemed very apposite with the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord occurring on Thursday. That feast is kept in the Catholic Church as a day of prayer for consecrated life.

I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; 33 but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband. 35 I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

What this passage describes - and it should pehaps be read in the context of the account of married life that St Paul gives earlier in this same chapter of his letter - is a preferential love for the Lord of the one who is unmarried. I do not believe that this passage refers just to those who are single simply by circumstances of life; rather, in its reference to those who are "anxious about the affairs of the Lord", I think it refers to those who have consecrated themselves specifically to the Lord in the evangelical counsel of chastity/celibacy.

This preferential love for the Lord represents a better vocation: not in the sense that those who live it should, by virtue of their consecrated life alone, be seen as more holy; but in the sense that the vocation itself is a higher vocation that therefore makes a higher demand on the consent and love of those who live it.

I sometimes wonder whether, in times and circumstances now past, a poorly understood sense of the higher nature of the vocation to religious life might not have created a social pressure or status that meant that some entered that state of life when not really called to it. This might well have been rightly balanced in more recent times by an increased awareness of the dignity of the lay state in the life of the Church.

But I do think that it is unfortunate that an anxiety not to undervalue the lay vocation in the Church can all too readily lead us away from speaking of the vocation to consecrated life, that is, to a life characterised by the vows of the three evangelical counsels, as being a higher vocation in a proper sense.

Faith, heart and reason

2012-01-28T15:55:00.001Z

Two things about today have prompted me to comment on this piece from a parish newsletter. It was published a week or two ago, and one should recognise that it is intended as a comment on the Gospel of that particular Sunday. I reproduce it in its entirety, but will be discreet about its provenance to spare any blushes!.

Six years I studied in Rome. Magnificent, but demanding. Academics, books, papers, theologies, philosophies, journals, doctrines – it goes on. Heads crammed with knowledge. Being brainy. All good stuff, but isn’t Christianity more?

Maybe years of working with people with disabilities, mental health issues, and in prison allows for a bigger understanding about what genuine Christianity is.

It seems that to be a Christian, you have to have met someone who is already -"Christian". It is based on experience. To experience Christianity for ourselves. Christ is passed on "personally". To become a genuine follower of Christ is to have met someone who shines with a Christ-like freedom, a joy, an inner energy, a vitality – and let them rub off on you. Let it be contagious. You catch on to it, and soon yours will rub off on to someone else.

This stuff cannot be "theologised", intellectualised or made into sermons. It is simply a way of living. Way bigger and beyond Rome’s academics. It’s personal, always "relational", and never something private.

Once we see people like this who "get it", who have "caught on" to this bigger Christianity, once we draw close to them and let their ways rub off on us, why would we settle for anything less? It’s just so good, so right, so true.

Christ challenges his first disciples to come and see - for themselves. Come and experience so that his ways may catch-on in them. And their ways on to others, and on to others – and on to others...right down the centuries, and finally to us.

Do we know anyone with these Christ-like ways? Do we have the humility to let their Christianity catch-on in us? Or does pride get in the way? To let it catch on in humility, truth and integrity could transform ours, and others lives - forever.

This weekend the Venerable English College in Rome is celebrating the 650th anniversary of its first founding as a hospice for English pilgrims visiting Rome. Certainly with hindsight, I value the academic opportunities I had as a student in Rome too many years ago now for me to wish to number them. If anything, I now wish I had recognised better the opportuntities that were there.

Today is also the feast of St Thomas Aquinas, whose life reminds us of the role that study plays in the life of the Church, both past and present. The duty to study the content of the faith, in so far as one's circumstances permit, is a commonplace of what used to be termed the lay apostolate.

Whilst Father is correct in identifying the part played by personal contact in evangelisation, and this is the context of the Gospel of that particular Sunday, he is surely wrong in suggesting that the intellectual life of faith is opposed to this in some way. On the contrary, the intelligent is part of an evangelising personal encounter, and to deny its role in that encounter is to reduce the substance of the encounter. For those familiar with the writings of Luigi Giussani, founder of Communion and Liberation, whose charism is founded on an idea of Christian experience, this appears somewhat ironic. The second chapter of his seminal The Religious Sense addresses the necessity of a premise of "reasonableness" with regard to an examination of Christian experience. And part of the weekly task of a parish priest is precisely to express the vitality of Christian life in a sermon!

The forthcoming Year of Faith is going to ask of us a greater attention to the intellectual content of faith, both as what is believed and as an act of consent to that belief. This greater attention to the content of the faith runs throughout Pope Benedict's Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei.

Stray thoughts on counselling and advising

2012-01-28T15:09:00.000Z

From time to time I am involved in "casework" type activities: mostly that involves supporting people in circumstances of their professional work. That role often involves using my professional training and experience to advise someone as to a course of action that they should take. There may be some counselling skills used - sympathetic and accurate listening, for example - but the role is not one of counselling. It involves giving specific advice. There is a second moment in this type of activity, and that is the consent of the person being advised. That person might choose to follow the advice that has been given, but they might also choose not to do so, and there are many things that I can only do with their consent. Expressed at a more philosophical level, there is the necessity of respecting the freedom of action of the other person with respect to the advice that is given.

Another aspect of these situations is the presumptions that are implicit in the relationship that I have to the person I am advising. My working context very often contains an implicit, and sometimes explicit, expectation that I will offer advice, and this expectation underpins the relationship of trust between myself and the other person. This makes it possible for me to offer advice without it going against the freedom of the other person. Often I will have a part in the implementation of the course of action that is followed, and respecting the (implicit) basis of the trust between myself and the other person is critical.

And what happens if the person I am supporting says something to me that I, from an ethical point of view, do not agree with or support?

If I were counselling, at least if I have understood the concept of counselling correctly, the one thing I would not do is advise one course of action rather than any other. Instead, the process is one of supporting the other person to recognise and make their own choice of the course of action.

I do not have first hand experience or knowledge of counselling in the context of crisis pregnancy. What is the intention of such counselling? Is it one of advising, or is it one of counselling in the stricter sense? And does the person approaching a crisis pregnancy counsellor do so with implicit expectations that form the basis of trust underlying the counselling session? Despite the use of the word "counselling", are they expecting to be advised about a course of action? Would client expectations determine their decision to approach one counselling agency rather than another, that expectation then beginning to form a basis for the trust between counsellor and client, and thereby permitting advice in a particular direction rather than another that nevertheless is still respectful of the freedom of the client? In any situation, how does the dynamic of possibly-advice from the counsellor and consent by the client play out?

I wonder whether the current debate about "post conception advice and counselling" is failing to really reach to the root question of how counselling/advice interacts with the freedom of the person seeking that counselling/advice? And within how we understand that interaction lies the answer as to whether or not an abortion provider or a pro-life agency can offer counselling/advice that is, to use the inaccurate language typical of public debate, impartial. Is not a range of different provisions one of the conditions that would permit this impartiality in its genuine sense?

Communication

2012-01-24T17:27:00.000Z

One of the books I received at Christmas was Aung San Suu Kyi's Letters from Burma. I have just "dipped" and read a short chapter entitled "Communication". It offered an interesting reflection when, here in the UK, we are from time to time listening to news reports of evidence to the Leveson inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press. It is the use of the word "commerce" in the following passage that particularly struck me:

Did cave dwellers paint hunting scenes to pass an idle hour or was it fulfilment of an unconscious need to immortalize their deeds for posterity? Or was it an attempt to communicate to others their view of life around them, an embryonic form of media activity? What are newspapers, radio, television and other means of mass communication all about? Some who put more emphasis on the mass than on the communication might say cynically that these are simply about making money by catering to the public taste for sensationalism and scandal. But genuine communication constitutes a lot more than mere commerce in news, views and information.

Commenting on the experience of her own encounters with interviewers, Aung San Suu Kyi writes:

There have been agonising sessions when language difficulties make ti a struggle for the interviewer and myself to communicate with each other. Then there are those sessions when perception, rather than language, is the problem and questions puzzle while answers are misunderstood and are sometimes misrepresented to the extent that there is little in common between what is said and what appears in print. It all shows that communication between human beings is interesting, frustrating, exhilarating, infuriating, intricate, exhausting - and essential.

Experienced professional journalists can make even the last interview of a gruelling day more of a relaxation than an ordeal. They know how to put the questions so that new facets appear to an old situation and talking to them becomes a learning process. They combine thorough, enquiring minds with an integrity and a human warmth that make conversation with them stimulating and enjoyable. Good photographers and good journalists are masters at communication, with a talent for presenting as accurately as possible what is happening in one part of the world to the rest of the globe. They are a boon to those of us who live in land where there is not freedom of expression.

In the light of the events that led to the setting up of the Leveson inquiry, I wonder whether those of us who have not been without the freedom to communicate really value that freedom sufficiently not to abuse it.

Four thoughts on Christian Unity

2012-01-22T09:47:00.000Z

The eight days that lead up to the feast of the Conversion of St Paul on 25th January have been observed for many years as a week of prayer for Christian Unity. This year's week of prayer was the subject on which Pope Benedict spoke at his weekly general audience on 18th January. The first paragraphs of that audience outline the origins of the week in 1908, and its encouragement in the Catholic Church by Popes St Pius X and Benedict XV.

Il compito ecumenico è dunque una responsabilità dell’intera Chiesa e di tutti i battezzati, che devono far crescere la comunione parziale già esistente tra i cristiani fino alla piena comunione nella verità e nella carità. Pertanto, la preghiera per l’unità non è circoscritta a questa Settimana di Preghiera, ma deve diventare parte integrante della nostra orazione, della vita orante di tutti i cristiani, in ogni luogo e in ogni tempo, soprattutto quando persone di tradizioni diverse s’incontrano e lavorano insieme per la vittoria, in Cristo, su tutto ciò che è peccato, male, ingiustizia, violazione della dignità dell’uomo.
[The work of ecumenism is consequently a responsibility of the whole Church and of all the baptised, who must work to increase the partial communion that already exists among Christians towards full communion in truth and in charity. Therefore, prayer for unity is not limited to this Week of Prayer, but must become an integral part of our prayer, of the life of prayer of all Christians, in every place and in every time, above all when people of different traditions meet each other and work togther for victory, in Christ, over all that is sin, evil, injustice, violation of the dignity of man.]

My first two thoughts are prompted by the celebration yesterday of the feast day of a virgin martyr, St Agnes. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have commented on recognising the extent of the imperfect communion that already exists among Christians, respectively in the encyclical Ut Unum Sint n.84 and in speaking to leaders of other Christian communities in Cologne (8th and 9th paragraphs). One of the most striking suggestions of the paragraph from Ut Unum Sint is that, in the witness to the point of death of martyrdom, the unity that is imperfect in other areas of Christian life, as the truest outcome of a "dialogue of conversion" is already perfect. That St Agnes was both a martyr and a virgin suggests another aspect similar to this significance of martyrdom in our understanding of ecumenical dialogue. The living of the religious life, of a life marked by the three evangelical counsels, might also represent a particular moment in the "dialogue of conversion" that is part of the ecumenical endeavour. It represents a radical conversion to Christ and so, if we follow the principle that Pope John Paul II applied to our understanding of martyrdom, at the very least it represents an increase in the degree of perfection in the imperfect communion between Christians of different denominations who live this style of life. We do perhaps underestimate the ecumenical significance of the life of religious among Christians of other Churches.

In his address in Cologne, Pope Benedict made particular reference to the fraternity existing between Christians of different denominations, and cited this as a fruit of dialogue that is perhaps not valued as much as it should be. At ordinary parish level, where the lay faithful in particular can have a very superficial understanding of what ecumenism is really about, expressions of this fraternity in local covenants, pulpit exchanges or joint prayer often fail to accurately reflect the imperfect nature of the communion that exists. Such initiatives can be antithetical to genuine ecumenical endeavour. Where such fraternity exists in a manner more reflective of the imperfect existing communion is situations of collaborative action on the part of Christians, in fields such as hospital and port chaplaincy (within my own experience) and, so far as I can gather, in military chaplaincy. This is suggested at the end of the quotation from Pope Benedict above. Perhaps we should recognise more the significance of works such as these as measures of the extent of the fruit of ecumenical dialogue.

My fourth thought is completely different. Non-ecclesial, or independent, Christian churches, have seen significant growth in recent years. They are, in themselves, a counter sign to Christian unity as each such church adds to the visible division that others see among Christians. Indeed, their completely self defining nature leads me to feel that their use of the word "Christian" is only an analagous use, since there is intrinsically no attempt to relate their present day community to the earlier historical Christian communities. I am not aware that these non-ecclesial churches take any interest in ecumenism.

Advocating for marriage

2012-01-19T20:33:00.000Z

I expect that this event, Talk Marriage, is going to be a very good thing. It takes place in the evening of 7th February 2012, and is free, though you do need to book a place in advance.

The event is ecclesially interesting for two reasons. One of the speakers is a Catholic, a lay Catholic rather than a cleric. The other speakers are leaders in various non-Catholic ministries. For these latter speakers, it is more natural that they should take a lead in a matter such as marriage and not feel dependent on clerical leadership in order to do so. For Catholics, that lay people should be the leaders in the promotion of Catholic ideas in the public sphere, leaders in their own right and not through dependence on the clergy, is a relatively recent insight into what we would call the "lay apostolate".

The second reason comes to mind during the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity. Talk Marriage is indeed an exercise in a particular form of ecumenical activity, namely common activity in the public sphere in favour of a teaching and values held in common. It is an example of a dialogue of life. It is the type of ecumenical activity that can often be lost to sight.

Navestock

2012-01-16T18:04:00.003Z

Zero has been complaining that readers may believe that she has ceased to exist, since she has not been referred to for some time.

This photo, and close up, was taken yesterday, in the Church yard of the Church of St Thomas the Apostle in Navestock, Essex, as we started off on a 6 mile walk. In the background, and at the right hand edge of the main photograph, you can see a low fence around a dip in the grave yard. This marks the place where a landmine was dropped during 1940, causing significant damage to the Church.

Our walk took in a visit to the Diocesan House of Prayer at Abbotswick where we sat in the garden to eat our lunch and had a chat with Sr Gabi before leaving to complete the walk.

The day was cold, but with bright sunshine all day. Navestock is perhaps 10 minutes drive from where we live.

"..an ecumenism worthy of the name .."

2012-01-15T21:31:00.000Z

Monsignor Keith Newton, Ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, has written a pastoral letter to mark the first anniversary of the erection of the Ordinariate. The full text has been posted by E F Pastor Emeritus, here, though I expect it will eventually be posted to the Ordinariate's own website.

The following paragraph struck me, because of its resonance with a remark made by Pope Paul VI in connection with the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970. I have added an emphasis to draw out the resonance.

Of course, there have been some misunderstandings; partly because the Ordinariate has begun in a modest way, many Catholics have had no personal contact with Ordinariate groups or individuals. It is up to all of us to help people understand and to make a reality the vision that Pope Benedict has set before us, that the Ordinariate should be ‘a prophetic gesture’ to contribute to the wider goal of visible unity between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. It is to help us to experience in practice how we can share the gifts we have received to strengthen each other for our mission to a world that desperately needs to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. As we keep the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity this month we should pray even more urgently for the unity of Christ’s Church which Pope Benedict reminded us, during his visit to the United Kingdom last year, is a particular charge and care for the successor of Saint Peter.

These words of Pope Paul VI are taken from his remarks at the Consistory held on 18th May 1970, in respect of the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs. Again, I have added an emphasis to draw out the resonance between the words of Mgr Newton and Pope Paul VI.

They [the Forty Martyrs] will be of the greatest help in the development of the Christian life. They will assist in advancing an ecumenism worthy of the name. They will be a true safeguard to those real values in which the genuine peace and prosperity of human society are rooted.

Pope Paul VI, at the end of his homily during the Mass of canonisation, expressed more completely the ecumenical implications of the canonisation, in words that now seem quite prophetic of the establishing of the Ordinariate:

May the blood of these Martyrs be able to heal the great wound inflicted upon God’s Church by reason of the separation of the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church. Is it not one-these Martyrs say to us-the Church founded by Christ? Is not this their witness? Their devotion to their nation gives us the assurance that on the day when-God willing-the unity of the faith and of Christian life is restored, no offence will be inflicted on the honour and sovereignty of a great country such as England. There will be no seeking to lessen the legitimate prestige and the worthy patrimony of piety and usage proper to the Anglican Church when the Roman Catholic Church-this humble “Servant of the Servants of God”- is able to embrace her ever beloved Sister in the one authentic communion of the family of Christ: a communion of origin and of faith, a communion of priesthood and of rule, a communion of the Saints in the freedom and love of the Spirit of Jesus.

"Nowhere in the gospel do we read that the star guided the wise men"

2012-01-14T07:57:00.001Z

This post reproduces the message from the newsletter of St Patrick's Church, Soho Square, for the feast of the Epiphany, celebrated last Sunday. I saw it when I was checking Mass times for later today. St Patrick's website can be found here.

Today’s feast marks the endof the Christmas Season. Traditionally, the date of the Epiphany was fixed asJanuary 6th – the twelfthday of the Christmas Season but we celebrate the feast today. Two weeks ago weremembered the birth of Jesus Christ, God made man, born of the Virgin Mary.Today we celebrate the fact that his birth was not a private event to be enjoyedand shared by Mary and her close friends and family – rather his birth was tobe shared and revealed to people throughout the world, over and over again.

The wise men travelled firstto Jerusalem because they “saw his star as it rose…” They need help and advice.The star has temporarily disappeared and so they consult with King Herod andhis advisors. When they leave him and resume their journey, they see the staronce again. It’s reassuring presence is there to guide them once more. We don’tknow for how long or for how many miles they travelled without the presence ofthe star, it may have been hidden from view simply because of heavy cloudcover, but they did not give up on their journey. Nowhere in the gospel do weread that the star guided the wise men. We only read that they “saw it as itrose...” and that “there in front of them was the star they had seen rising”.

In between these twooccurrences they travelled blind, walking in darkness but never giving up. Likethe wise men, we are on a journey. We watch as the priest raises the host atthe consecration of the Mass. We are captivated by its simplicity and purityand are drawn forward. Here in our presence is the word made flesh. We partakeof that flesh in communion but then the host is gone. We leave the security ofthe Church and sanctuary with the memory of the Elevation of the Host, just asthe wise men drew strength from the sight of the star which they watched as itrose. Like the wise men we can expect to experience moments of darkness andinsecurity. We are not sure if we are on the right path.

We seek guidance and help andthen there is another fleeting glimpse of the light of God guiding us throughlife. We are not on a floodlit path but on a journey where momentary glimpsesof the power and wonder of God will guide and sustain us.

The birth of Jesus atChristmas was a once and for all event. The feast of The Epiphany reminds usthat that birth brought salvation to all people – including you and me,unworthy though we are. The journey we share is fraught with difficulty andsometimes, perhaps, even danger. It’s a journey that many have taken before us,and many more will follow in our footsteps. We pray with them all: “Lord, yourlight is strong, your love is near; draw us beyond the limits which the worldimposes to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete.”

Shepherds

2012-01-12T17:22:00.004Z

At the present time, my own Diocese of Brentwood is awaiting the appointment of a new Bishop to succeed Bishop Thomas McMahon. The processes of consultation will have progressed during the last months of 2011.

Which all made it quite poignant to be praying for a new Shepherd at a time when the Liturgy of Christmas season has its own reminders of the shepherds adoring the baby Jesus at Bethlehem.

Archbishop of York repudiates marriage?

2012-01-12T17:19:00.000Z

I caught part of Archbishop Sentamu's interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning. As William Oddie points out, it was not so much what Archbishop Sentamu said as what he did not say that is of significance.

I was waiting for the archbishop to go on to say that but, and then explain that though of course, as the Children’s Society says, “the quality of children’s relationships with their families is far more important than the structure of the family that they live in”, that nevertheless a basic determining factor in the quality of relationships within any family is that family’s stability, the sense of security it gives its children, and that all the evidence shows that families based on marriage are very considerably more likely not to break up (that, archbishop is why marriage is the “bedrock of society”, it isn’t just a mantra you are supposed to utter before going on implicitly to deny it). The word but was, however, never uttered by the archbishop, just as in the Children’s Society report he was launching, the word “marriage” doesn’t appear at all, not once.

Pope Benedict XVI's "state of the world" address

2012-01-10T19:35:00.000Z

Each year, Pope Benedict meets with diplomatic representatives accredited to the Holy See. This meeting takes place early in the new year, and takes the form of an exchange of greetings for the new year. The Holy Father addresses the diplomats in an address that can be described as a "state of the world" address.

The address that Pope Benedict gave on 9th January is impressively wide ranging. It shows an outstanding awareness of world events and of their implications for the human person. It is necessary to read the whole address to gain a real understanding of its breadth and depth. Some reactions to the address can be found here: Dignity of the human being is key (Canadian ambassador to the Holy See), Looking long term, not short term (UK ambassador to the Holy See, though his observation about being reminded of the global role of the Holy See is of interest), A sober speech for a sobering world (Australian ambassador to the Holy See, who picks up on the theme of education in the Pope's address).

A number of Pope Benedict's remarks touch on matters of education:

In addition to a clear goal, that of leading young people to a full knowledge of reality and thus of truth, education needs settings. Among these, pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman. .... The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and States; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue....

[An] essential role in the development of the person is played by educational institutions: these are the first instances which cooperate with the family and they can hardly function properly unless they share the same goals as the family. There is a need to implement educational policies which ensure that schooling is available to everyone and which, in addition to promoting the cognitive development of the individual, show concern for a balanced personal growth, including openness to the Transcendent....

In this perspective. it is clear that an effective educational programme also calls for respect for religious freedom. This freedom has individual, collective and institutional dimensions.

Others have commented on how the sections of these paragraph that I have omitted relate the question of the family to that of the promotion of a culture of life. But for an education professional, these paragraphs contain another significant implication. The Coalition Government is promoting a diversification in the governance structures of state funded schools, encouraging (and coercing) the conversion of schools to Academy status and encouraging the founding of Free Schools. The opposition to these policies is articulated in terms of the "privatisation of state education", in terms of the removal of local democratic accountability that exists with local authority schools, and in highlighting the dangers of minority groups being able to found schools without any particular educational expertise. So the pointing out of the first place to be given to families, and then that educational institutions are "the first instances which cooperate with the family", provides a completely new context from which to approach these debates about the governance structure of schools. Whatever governance structure accompanies the state funding, the educational enterprise itself first belongs to parents and families and not to either central or local government. The observation that religious freedom has collective and institutional dimensions also has a clear implication for the part that religious faith might play in the founding of Academies and Free Schools.

This paragraph appears towards the end of Pope Benedict's address:

Finally I would stress that education, correctly understood, cannot fail to foster respect for creation. We cannot disregard the grave natural calamities which in 2011 affected various regions of South-East Asia, or ecological disasters like that of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Environmental protection and the connection between fighting poverty and fighting climate change are important areas for the promotion of integral human development.

This is, of course, reminiscent of the stance taken by CAFOD with regard to climate change and development. It is not the first time that Pope Benedict has spoken in terms such as these about questions of ecology.

But do read the whole address in order to appreciate its wide range and the way in which it brings religious principles to bear upon the situation of the community of nations of the world. To end with, a paragraph of the Australian Ambassador's comment on Pope Benedict's speech, referred to above:

“What I picked up most from the Pope’s speech was his return to the theme of education. Education for young people, education as part of religious freedom and cultural progress in the Middle East and around the world. Having just returned from Bethlehem University where 1 thousand Christian, 2 thousand Muslim students all work together on the same campus I thought the theme was very commendable."

SAGO and Clarification

2012-01-08T21:09:00.000Z

I was rather struck by this post about SAGO. Hang on a moment - do try and work out what it is before following the link!

By accident I also read Clarification which I posted pretty much a year ago, on 14th January 2011. I think I have written something along similar lines more recently - Different Offices. Having re-read the first of these posts, I realise that I wasn't being as original as I thought when writing the second!

In their own ways, both posts relate to the theme of Ben Trovato's post.

An examination syllabus, a Curriculum Directory and the Catechism

2012-01-08T15:00:00.000Z

This post considers the Religious Studies GCSE syllabus, offered by Edexcel, in comparison to the Religious Education Curriculum Directory for Catholic Schools, published by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales in 1996. Two of the units of the former, Units 2 and 3, studied together, are indicated as fulfilling the content requirements at Keystage 4 of the latter, which remains the definitive statement by the Catholic Bishops Conference of what they direct should be the content of religious education in Catholic schools in their territory.

The post is prompted by three events. Firstly, the part played by this syllabus in the controversy surrounding RE at Bonus Pastor School. Secondly, the call by Pope Benedict XVI in the Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei nn.11-12 for attention to be given to study and promotion of the Catechism of the Catholic Church during the forthcoming Year of Faith, a call taken up by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in pastoral guidelines for the Year that include a several suggestions relating to the Catechism. And thirdly, the question asked about Catholic schools by Bishop Michael Campbell of Lancaster in his recent pastoral letter, about which I have already posted.

The Edexcel specification (ie syllabus) can be downloaded here. It is made up of something like 16 different units of which 2 must be taught to provide a full GCSE qualification in Religious Studies; if only one unit is taught it provides "short course" GCSE qualification. Different combinations of units can be chosen to provide teaching across a range of religions or teaching focussed on one religion only, such as Islam, Judaism etc. It is Units 3 and 10 which, when both are taught, provide coverage of the content of the Religious Education Curriculum Directory. As the Edexcel syllabus says in its introduction to the syllabus document:

The two Roman Catholic Christianity units (Units 3 and 10) fulfil the content requirements of the Curriculum Directory of the Bishops of England and Wales (1996), but students will be expected be aware of the broader Christian tradition

and in the "Content overview" at the beginning of Unit 3 (there is an exactly parallel passage in Unit 10, with an almost identical wording):

The unit is based on a study of Roman Catholic Christianity but students will be expected to be aware of the broader Christian tradition....In order to meet Assessment Objective 2, students need to be aware of a range of responses addressing religious and/or non-religious beliefs.

A further remark is incuded in the syllabus at the head of each section of subject content:

Students will be required to: demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the specification; express their own responses to the issues and questions raised by the specification using reasons and evidence; evaluate alternative points of view about these issues and questions.

The Religious Education Curriculum Directory can currently be downloaded from here (but the Catholic Education Service are preparing a new website so this link may not last!). The Directory sets out in detail the expected content of religious education in Catholic schools, from nursery to age 16. It's programmes of study are structured and refer to the four principle documents of the Second Vatican Council and to the parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (cf p.12). An overarching programme of study in four areas of study is then specified in detail for different age groups. Though this document directs what the Bishops expect to be taught in religious education, and has not been superseded since its publication in 1996, theLevels of Attainment that have since been prepared to guide schools in the assessment of attainment in religious education "do not allude to the content of Catholic religious education as outlined in the Curriculum Directory" (cf the Foreword to the Levels of Attainment document itself).

Now it should be said that religious education in any school, and particularly as pupils move in to the later years of schooling, should expect pupils to be able to give reasons for and to argue in favour of their beliefs. Religious education has an element of learning about religious teachings, or, in a Catholic context, of learning about morals and doctrine. It also has an element of critical study, of being able to give reasons for belief. So there is no "in principle" objection to the idea that Catholic pupils should express their own response to what they are taught, give reasons and evidence for their beliefs, and consider other views in this kind of context. Neither is there an "in principle" objection to their being aware of other points of view, particularly in the later years of schooling. However, there is a "but" that needs to be considered.

I can summarise my view of the use of the Edexcel syllabus in Catholic schools by saying that, yes, it can be used to support the provision in the school of a Keystage 4 curriculum that meets the requirements of the Curriculum Directory, but that the use of the syllabus by itself does not assure that provision.

1. In order to meet the requirements of the Curriculum Directory, the scheme of work in a Catholic school needs to expect pupils to give reasons and evidence in support of Catholic teaching so that, in the context of the examinations, pupils are encouraged to present Catholic teaching as their response along with reasons and evidence that support it. It would not meet the requirements of the Directory if the pupils were just left entirely to themselves to give reasons and evidence for any point of view. It is, I would suggest, perfectly possible to achieve this within the expectations of the Edexcel syllabus.

2. In some sections of the Edexcel syllabus this is fairly straightforward. The provisions of section 10.1 on the Trinity and the three persons thereof can be readily aligned to the account of the Trinity on page 14 of the Curriculum Directory, and the more specific provisions for each Keystage in pp.15-18. In other sections, though, it has the potential to be problematical. The provisions in section 3.2 of the syllabus with regard to abortion, for example:

The nature of abortion, including current British legislation, and why abortion is a controversial issue
Different Christian attitudes to abortion and the reasons for them

do not automatically lead one to devise a scheme of work that delivers the relevant section of the Curriculum Directory (p.35), which is supported by reference to nn.2258-2300 of the Catechism:

Love of neighbour is expressed in respect for life at all stages, especially the life of those who cannot defend themselves, including the yet unborn.

So the key point in evaluating a Catholic school's use of the Edexcel syllabus does not derive from the fact of using the syllabus itself. It will come from looking at the scheme of work and resources that the school has in place and comparing them directly to the Curriculum Directory, without making the assumption that meeting the needs of the Edexcel syllabus automatically means meeting the requirements of the Curriculum Directory.

3. There is an implication of points 1 and 2 with regard to the way in which the staff of Catholic schools write their schemes of work for Keystage 4 religious education. It is vital that the scheme of work is written by reading the Edexcel syllabus from the perspective of the Curriculum Directory and in adherence to the Curriculum Directory. If the scheme of work is written without this reference to the Curriculum Directory it is unlikely that it will meet the requirements of the Directory. [A similar comment might be made about a scheme of work based on the Levels of Attainment without reference to the Curriculum Directory.]

This last point brings me back to the three events which have prompted this post. I do not have direct knowledge of the situation at Bonus Pastor school, but it appears likely that their use of the Edexcel syllabus has not guaranteed compliance with the Curriculum Directory. The Catholic character of the RE at Keystage 4 in a Catholic school touches on the question being asked by Bishop Michael Campbell about the purpose of continuing to run schools that are not clearly Catholic in character (though you will need to see my earlier post on this to gain a full impression of my views with regard to the Catholic character of a school). A review of the Keystage 4 religious education provision in Catholic schools to assure that the provision complies with the expectations of the Curriculum Directory (and, indeed, the then President of the Bishops Conference in 1996 mandated compliance in the Preface to the Directory, and I am not aware of that having ever been changed) would contribute to a promotion of the use of the Catechism, to which the Curriculum Directory is referenced, in the light of the Year of Faith.

Epiphany

2012-01-08T09:58:00.000Z

The Solemnity of the Epiphany always brings to mind for me visits to the shrine of the Magi in Cologne Cathedral, first of all during World Youth Day 2005, and during a later visit.

Ordinary form

2012-01-06T00:01:00.000Z

For the vast majority of Catholics in England and Wales, despite the impression that might be gained from the aether, today is not celebrated as the Solemnity of the Epiphany. The Solemnity will be celebrated on Sunday.

The Collect for Mass today is:

Cast your kindly light upon your faithful, Lord, we pray,
and with the splendour of your glory
set their hearts ever aflame,
that they may never cease to acknowledge their Saviour
and may truly hold fast to him.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The language of communion or the language of dissent?: a second essay in style

2012-01-05T23:00:00.000Z

When we talk about the unity of the Catholic Church we refer to a unity that, in its visible components, has distinct elements. There is unity in doctrine, that is, unity in what it is that is believed to have been revealed by God. There is unity in the life of grace, and especially in the sacramental life. And there is unity in the visible hierarchical structure of the Church. As the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n.161, teaches:

The Church is one because she has as her source and exemplar the unity of the Trinity of Persons in one God. As her Founder and Head, Jesus Christ re-established the unity of all people in one body. As her soul, the Holy Spirit unites all the faithful in communion with Christ. The Church has but one faith, one sacramental life, one apostolic succession, one common hope, and one and the same charity.

The Compendium continues, n.167:

Every particular Church (that is, a diocese or eparchy) is catholic. It is formed by a community of Christians who are in communion of faith and of the sacraments both with their Bishop, who is ordained in apostolic succession, and with the Church of Rome which “presides in charity” (Saint Ignatius of Antioch).

For the individual Catholic, it is their unity with their Bishop that defines their visible unity with the Church. It is unity with the Bishop that is mediating of unity with the Pope. With a very limited qualification, the claim to be in unity with the See of Rome but not in unity with the local Bishop is, ecclesiologically speaking, a contradiction in terms. Unity with Rome cannot be played off against unity with the Bishop.

It can be readily seen that those Catholics who do not accept the universal teaching of the Church, manifested in particular in the teaching of the Holy See, are in dissent. But it can equally be argued that those who launch sustained and carping attack on their Bishop are also in dissent, though that dissent takes a different form than that often directed at the Holy See.

This is not to suggest a subservient obeisance to the Bishop, or indeed to the Holy See. The lay faithful are going to use their intelligence to form judgements about the strengths and weaknesses of the way both exercise their office in the Church. But the style of the expression of any such judgements in the media, particularly the electronic media where ideas are spread so quickly and easily, needs to respect the demands of communion at the level of the local Church as well as at the level of the universal Church.

In this context, one can ask whether a campaign of "Bishop bashing" represents a language of communion or a language of dissent.

It's OK to need to be cared for

2012-01-05T08:44:00.002Z

One strand of the coverage of the assisted dying report that I heard on the radio this morning referred to people who felt unable to face a long period of time dependent on the care of others or feeling that they were a burden to others. I think, too, an observation was made that, however good palliative care provision was, it would not overcome this issue.

From time to time I do get to meet people who are getting older, and perhaps are unwell too. For some of them, used to previously having been very independent and self-reliant, coming to terms with the fact that they now need care from others is a challenge. What I sometimes ask them about is times when, earlier in their lives, they were able to help other people - perhaps their children, perhaps other people they have known. I then suggest that it is a kind of natural cycle in human society and human living that there are times when you are able to give care and help to others, and there is a time when you come to need that care from others. It is OK to need to be cared for.

The other side of this question, of course, is how members of society view those of its community who are in need of care. Members of society need to recognise, when they are in a position to be caring, the existence of this natural cycle of caring for and being cared for. Society needs to value carers, and to value them consistently. A proposal for assisted dying/assisted suicide can only undermine this in the culture of society.

The language of dialogue or the rhetoric of dogmatism? An essay in styles

2012-01-04T23:48:00.001Z

What is the purpose of writing? And should those who approach their writing as Catholics do it in a different way than others? And are the different avenues of the "modern means of communication" exempt from this question, or, at least, do they face it in a different way?

Certainly, one aspect of the electronic means of communication is the speed with which they can propagate an idea, both in terms of time (a mistaken observation can be widely spread before it is corrected, if it is corrected) and in terms of distance (an observation made in a particular context in one part of the world might be mis-read in a different part of the world, without knowledge of the particular context in which it was first made). This imposes on those who write for electronic media a particularly serious responsibility with regard to the content of what they write, because, when errors are committed of whatever kind, those errors can be spread so rapidly and so widely. As the Decree of the Second Vatican Council Inter Mirifica teaches:

..... in society men have a right to information, in accord with the circumstances in each case, about matters concerning individuals or the community. The proper exercise of this right demands, however, that the news itself that is communicated should always be true and complete, within the bounds of justice and charity. In addition, the manner in which the news is communicated should be proper and decent. This means that in both the search for news and in reporting it, there must be full respect for the laws of morality and for the legitimate rights and dignity of the individual.

And so, in writing for the electronic media, there should first of all be a great anxiety to assure the truth and completeness of what is written. Care should be taken in reproducing material published elsewhere to check its authenticity and its completeness. In this regard, the dialogical possibilities of internet communications (in the case of blogs, the existence of the comments box or the opportunity to post further comment on another blog) becomes part of this anxiety. A dialogue can exist such that, where a matter is controverted, the participants engage in a shared seeking for what is true of it. This dialogue will only exist if all who take part in the dialogue do indeed see it in this way and are willing to respect that others are taking part in it in this way.

This anxiety for the truth of what is written depends upon a willingness to be focussed on the substance of the matter under discussion and an avoidance of the temptation to personalise attacks. This represents the second strand in the short citation above from Inter Mirifica. The "how" of the communication should respect the dignity of those who will receive it, and also the dignity of those who are taking part in the dialogue that makes up that communication. Writers should avoid, for example, attributing to others motivations and opinions that have not been expressed by those other people, with its consequent misleading of the inhabitants of the aether about the motives and opinions of that those other people.

Following these two strands of the teaching of Inter Mirifica will lead, I think, to a certain style in writing for the electronic media. I would like to suggest that Catholics writing for the different forms of the electronic media should be trying to manifest this style as part of their bringing to their public lives the experience of their living of their faith. I do not know that I have always adhered to it, though comments received from time to time referring to thoughtfulness in posts suggests some degree of success on my part. Among the means of electronic communication, it is perhaps blogging that lends itself most to this style, where the character-limited brevity of Twitter provides a significant barrier to it.

I hope that readers do see in what I write a language of dialogue and not a rhetoric of dogmatism.

[As a PS: Is Catholic blogging really about the wielding of power as suggested in one paragraph of this post?]

Catholic Schools: faith, culture and life

2012-01-02T18:25:00.000Z

Protect the Pope (link to Deacon Nick's post here, and it is worth reading the discussion in the comments before you continue reading this post) has drawn attention to Bishop Michael Campbell's New Year pastoral letter (follow the link at the top of this page to see the full text), and in particular to its paragraph referring to Catholic Schools:

Is it right or sustainable to expect our Mass-going population of 21 000 to support our schools and colleges in which often the majority of pupils, and sometimes of teachers, are not practising Catholics? Is it time for us to admit that we can no longer maintain schools that are Catholic in name only?

There is also comment here. You might like to read this post,too, before continuing

Bishop Campbell places this paragraph in a context of

... a time of great transition for the Church in which Christianity changes from a religion adhered to by the majority out of social convention to once again being a way of discipleship deliberately chosen by some, but not all; chosen by the faithful out of conviction.

I think it is worth reflecting on the purpose of the Catholic School in the light of this pastoral letter.

First of all, I think we should recognise that Catholic schools in England and Wales have a particular historical/political background. One aspect of this is the commitment of the Bishops over many years to provide places in Catholic schools for the children of Catholic families, and the second is the arrangement that might be summarised by the term "dual system" whereby a significant element of the cost of Catholic schools is provided by the state while Diocesan authorities retain some significant controls as far as the governance of the schools is concerned. In this situation, it is very easy to see the Catholic nature of the school as being defined by its pupil intake; and to, at the same time, see a threat to the Catholic nature of the education provided in the school from the collaboration with government. The recent events surrounding the Cardinal Vaughan School had a number of other aspects about which I am not in a position to comment as I have no direct knowledge of the school or the events concerned; but it did appear in some of the public debate that the Catholic nature of the school was seen as depending on its pupil admissions policy. The idea that the Catholic school should succeed in producing pupils who are strongly practicing Catholics might be seen as being compromised by the implementation in the school of state policies consequent on the balance of collaboration between the state and the Church in the running of the school, the introduction of the compulsory teaching of the National Curriculum representing a key moment here.

But this is a very specific historical/political context. If we think about schools opened in mission territories, or, as I have been trying to study in recent months, the schools and universities that are run in the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (in the Palestinian territories and in the Kingdom of Jordan) we can see a model of Catholic education that intends to serve the educational needs of the local population. I do think that it is worth reflecting on the possibility of a Catholic school that does not have a significant proportion of Catholic pupils. This also raises a question about how the activity of the school with regard to specifically religious formation is going to relate to formation to the Catholic faith only.

Secondly, I think we should reflect more deeply on how the Church has articulated its understanding of the nature of a Catholic school. In the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education produced a document on the Catholic School, and this represents the most careful such articulation. It is worth reading the whole of this document in the context of this post. A "strapline" that summarises the view of a Catholic school is that it should promote the integral formation of the person through a synthesis of culture and faith, and a synthesis of faith and life (cf n.37 and n.49):

Its task is fundamentally a synthesis of culture and faith, and a synthesis of faith and life: the first is reached by integrating all the different aspects of human knowledge through the subjects taught, in the light of the Gospel; the second in the growth of the virtues characteristic of the Christian....

The specific mission of the school, then, is a critical, systematic transmission of culture in the light of faith and the bringing forth of the power of Christian virtue by the integration of culture with faith and of faith with living.

In its consideration of the first of these syntheses, there is a thread in the document that would see in the school a sense of a community in learning, that embraces pupils and faculty. The consideration ends with this paragraph (n.43):

The integration of culture and faith is mediated by the other integration of faith and life in the person of the teacher. The nobility of the task to which teachers are called demands that, in imitation of Christ, the only Teacher, they reveal the Christian message not only by word but also by every gesture of their behaviour. This is what makes the difference between a school whose education is permeated by the Christian spirit and one in which religion is only regarded as an academic subject like any other.

In considering the second of these syntheses, the document says (n.45):

The Catholic school has as its specific duty the complete Christian formation of its pupils, and this task is of special significance today because of the inadequacy of the family and society. It knows that this integration of faith and life is part of a life-long process of conversion until the pupil becomes what God wishes him to be. Young people have to be taught to share their personal lives with God. They are to overcome their individualism and discover, in the light of faith, their specific vocation to live responsibly in a community with others. The very pattern of the Christian life draws them to commit themselves to serve God in their brethren and to make the world a better place for man to live in.

Conclusions?

I do think that it is the consideration of the "integration of faith and life in the person of the teacher" that is a far more important question for the Catholic identity of the school than that of how many of its pupil intake are practising Catholics. If the educational enterprise of a Catholic school is seen as one of a conversion that brings young people to a self-sustained Christian life, then one might argue that the less-than-fully practising should be able to access that just as much as the fully practising. Should we not endeavour to see a greater presence in our schools of priests, religious and adherents of the new ecclesial movements in an attempt to address this?

In a situation where the majority of pupils in a Catholic school are either non-Catholic, or are non-practicing if they are Catholic, is the historic commitment of the Bishops to providing places in Catholic schools for children of Catholic families really being served? Would a Catholic school in this sort of situation not be more true to the educational aims of a Catholic school were it to adopt an admissions policy that is not dependent on Catholic affiliation, but work with a faculty that are committed to the promotion of the syntheses of faith and culture, of faith and life? Can this two-fold synthesis be promoted when the pupils are not all Catholics? What are the implications of this for the religious education in the school, which would clearly have to adapt to the circumstances?

Would Academy or Free School status - and therefore the freedom not to teach the National Curriculum - allow Catholic schools to better build a curriculum that synthesises faith and culture and a coherent ethical outlook?

This post does not really answer thoroughly all of the questions being raised by Bishop Campbell's pastoral letter, or even draw together the three conclusions above; and neither does it do full justice to the Sacred Congregation's document. And, of course, different Catholic schools find themselves in very different situations, too. Perhaps more than anything else, I hope that it raises in a realistic way the possibility that the Catholic Church should run schools with a wider outlook than the historic commitment in England and Wales of just providing places in Catholic schools for the children of Catholic families.

Any comments or observations welcome.

A correction

2011-12-29T18:27:00.000Z

One of the problems with blogs is that, if a post on one blog gets the wrong end of the stick, and other blogs then link to that post and promote it, and a google search also picks up that post, then the wrong end of the stick gets spread and spread and spread..... And that is before we think about Twitter et al.

A correction of one such post can be found here: Society for the Purgation of Unorthodox Catholicism?

""If we glorify God, we shall enjoy his peace": Patriarch Twal's Christmas homily

2011-12-28T15:51:00.000Z

Our faiths – Muslim, Jew and Christian – are as one in saying that the adoration of God is a fundamental duty of love: “Give to the Lord, you sons of God, give to the Lord glory and might; give to the Lord the glory due his name. Bow down before the Lord’s holy splendor!” (Ps 29:1-2)

As I am usually wont to say, it is important to read the whole and not rely on an extract. The homily preached by Patriarch Fouad Twal, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for Christmas Day can be found on the website of the Patriarchate, here.

The homily has some very clear political references. For readers in Europe or the United States, those references are instructive.

At a time when Christians in other countries of the Middle East feel threatened, there is an interesting report on the Patriarchate site of a visit by the King of Jordan to a majority Christian town in order to offer Christmas greetings to the people of the town, and through them, to the whole people of the Kingdom of Jordan, and to Christians in general: The King of Jordan meets Christians at Fuheis. This is the King's first such visit. As Patriarch Twal said on that occasion, the model of life in Jordan is a good example of mutual respect, respect for the rights and freedom of each one. It is also an example that cannot be ignored in the Middle East.

There is, with faith, an accompanying question: 'What am I to do?': Archbishop Nichols homily for Christmas Midnight Mass

2011-12-27T21:14:00.000Z

One can get very philosophical about the relation between parts and wholes (Husserl's Third Investigation, for the cognoscenti). As far as the media are concerned, the point is rather simple. Sometimes the part that is covered by the media, or quoted in a news release, does not give a full picture of the whole. I think this is true of Archbishop Nichols' Midnight Mass homily, which has been criticised here.

The full text of the homily can be found on the website of Westminster Diocese (here, though I do not think this will provide a permanent link) and at Totalcatholic.com here. As one can see from reading the whole, the reference to the situation in Bethlehem was an exemplification of a general statement made in the homily, rather than being a major focus of the homily. Whilst it is not unreasonable that this reference should attract comment, it is a shame that it has hidden the rest of the homily from media attention.

....Without Jesus Christ there is no Gospel, no revelation of the immense love of God for each one of us, or of the true meaning of our lives. Yet without our witness to this truth, the Gospel will not be known.

Christ is central to the Gospel and we are essential to its proclamation. In this God, our creator, is dependent on us, his creation. God is waiting for our 'yes', just as he waited for Mary's. God needs our permission for the Gospel to be proclaimed....

There is, with faith, an accompanying question: 'What am I to do?'

Three things.

We are to see clearly the reality of the world around us. As we look at the real circumstances of Christ's birth so too we look with fresh eyes on the anxieties and insecurity which touch many peoples' lives. We are to be freshly attentive to the needs of those who, like Jesus himself, are displaced and in discomfort. We are to see more clearly all those things which disfigure our world, the presence of the sins of greed and arrogance, of self-centred ambition and manipulation of others, of the brutal lack of respect for human life in all its vulnerability. While recognising how complex moral dilemmas can become, we are to name these things for what they are. We too live 'in a land of deep shadow.'....

Then, secondly, we are to look with fresh wonder at those closest to us, seeing again their goodness and their loyalty, their readiness to forgive and their desire to care for us. In offering our 'yes' to the Lord, we are to respond together with kindness and forgiveness, with generosity and compassion to those in need....

St Paul also points to the third aspect of our task. He tells us that hope is the key. We live in a world in which the prospects for the future, in the terms the world can offer, are distinctly shaky. Yet we find an unshakable hope in our Saviour. As we celebrate his birth we remember that he is to come again. And it is this coming that gives us our enduring hope. St Paul tells us that we can only fulfil the duties of faith if we are a people who 'are waiting in hope for the blessings which will come with the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Christ Jesus.'

Christmas 2011

2011-12-26T11:20:00.001Z

From Queen Elizabeth II's Christmas Broadcast:

The importance of family has, of course, come home to Prince Philip and me personally this year with the marriages of two of our grandchildren, each in their own way a celebration of the God-given love that binds a family together.

For many this Christmas will not be easy. With our armed forces deployed around the world, thousands of service families face Christmas without their loved ones at home. The bereaved and the lonely will find it especially hard. And, as we all know, the world is going through difficult times. All this will affect our celebration of this great Christian festival.

Finding hope in adversity is one of the themes of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world full of fear. The angels came to frightened shepherds with hope in their voices: ‘Fear not’, they urged, ‘we bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.’

Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general (important though they are) – but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.

Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love.

In the last verse of this beautiful carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, there’s a prayer:

O Holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us we pray
Cast out our sin
And enter in
Be born in us today

It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord.

Whilst these words speak indirectly of events affecting Britain in the course of the last year - the armed forces in action in Libya and in Afghanistan, the financial crisis, the disturbances in some of our cities during the summer - these words of Her Majesty also speak more directly to two current public debates in British society, debates that are not unconnected. These are the debates about the nature of marriage and about the place of Christian faith in the public life of our country. Whilst preserving entirely the courtesy towards our political processes that is a hallmark of the British Monarchy, I did feel as I listened to these words yesterday that the Queen was offering her own testimony about these matters.

There is a certain parallel between some of the Queen's words and these from Pope Benedict's homily at Midnight Mass in St Peter's Basilica:

Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from attack, but above all to prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down. It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognizing God’s closeness. We must follow the interior path of Saint Francis [of Assisi] – the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions – the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby.

UPDATE: A post at St Paul's - The Queen's Christmas Message - makes rather more explicit the thoughts that I indicated above:

In her Christmas message Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth highlighted the importance of family. This was taken up by the media, but what they did not choose to highlight was the uncompromising references Her Majesty made to Christmas being a Christian festival and to the Christan faith.

Adoration

2011-12-24T11:48:00.000Z

In his address on the occasion of the exchange of Christmas greetings with those who work in the Roman Curia (see fuller coverage, and the full original text), Pope Benedict XVI said:

I still look back to that unforgettable moment during my visit to the United Kingdom, when tens of thousands of predominantly young people in Hyde Park responded in eloquent silence to the Lord’s sacramental presence, in adoration. The same thing happened again on a smaller scale in Zagreb and then again in Madrid, after the thunderstorm which almost ruined the whole night vigil through the failure of the microphones. God is indeed ever-present. But again, the physical presence of the risen Christ is something different, something new. The risen Lord enters into our midst. And then we can do no other than say, with Saint Thomas: my Lord and my God! Adoration is primarily an act of faith – the act of faith as such. God is not just some possible or impossible hypothesis concerning the origin of all things. He is present. And if he is present, then I bow down before him. Then my intellect and will and heart open up towards him and from him. In the risen Christ, the incarnate God is present, who suffered for us because he loves us. We enter this certainty of God’s tangible love for us with love in our own hearts. This is adoration, and this then determines my life.

If we place this alongside Pope Benedict's account of the act of adoration at Marienfeld, during the World Youth Day in Cologne:

I like to illustrate this new step urged upon us by the Last Supper by drawing out the different nuances of the word "adoration" in Greek and in Latin. The Greek word is proskynesis. It refers to the gesture of submission, the recognition of God as our true measure, supplying the norm that we choose to follow. It means that freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total autonomy, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness, so that we ourselves can become true and good. This gesture is necessary even if initially our yearning for freedom makes us inclined to resist it.

We can only fully accept it when we take the second step that the Last Supper proposes to us. The Latin word for adoration is ad-oratio - mouth to mouth contact, a kiss, an embrace, and hence, ultimately love. Submission becomes union, because he to whom we submit is Love. In this way submission acquires a meaning, because it does not impose anything on us from the outside, but liberates us deep within.

and alongside a catechesis shortly after this (I am not able to find it at the moment, but will link to it when I can) in which Pope Benedict described the time of Eucharistic Adoration as a prolonging of the moment of reception of the Eucharist and a moment that leads us back to the moment of such reception, and we have an unfolding catechesis on Adoration. Pope Benedict's most recent words are, of course, very apposite for the feast of Christmas, when Christ comes among us.

Vaclav Havel at Dolphinarium

2011-12-24T11:14:00.001Z

Red Maria has posted thrice about Vaclav Havel, and I am very happy to link to her posts. These posts shed light on Vaclav Havel's relationship to Catholicism, particularly in his meetings with Pope John Paul II and in the Church-State relationship in which he was a participant as the first president of a free Czechoslovakia and, now, the Czech Republic.

The posts are here, here and here.

The poignancy of the events of Vaclav Havel's death and funeral arise for me because of my familiarity with his writings - even so far as going to see one of his plays in West London many years ago - and the fact that, during our visit to Prague, we visited many of the locations that have been associated with him in recent days.

The Christmas crib is embarrassing to secularity

2011-12-21T23:30:00.000Z

The title of this report at La Croix doesn't really translate successfully into English: La crèche de Noël embarrasse la laïcité. The first paragraph of the report reads:

Malgré les hésitations de la mairie, pour la première fois, une crèche a été installée sur le marché de Noël des Champs-Élysées à Paris. [Despite the opposition of the local authority, for the first time, a crib has been placed in the Christmas Market of the Champs Elysees in Paris.]

According to the detail of the report, this has come about as a result of an initiative by a parishioner, a retired gentleman in his 70s, Dominique de Causans. With the support of his parish priest, he first sought the cooperation of the director of the market, who readily agreed to make one of the chalets of the market available to the parish for the purpose of erecting a crib.

« Nous sommes tombés d’accord pour dire qu’un marché de Noël sans crèche, ce n’est pas un vrai marché de Noël. » ["We agreed completely in saying that having a Christmas market without a crib, that is not a true Christmas market."]

The monks of Bethlehem agreed to provide figures, from their workshop.

Mais, la veille de l’ouverture, la mairie de Paris signifie à la paroisse que « la connotation religieuse » du projet risque de « gêner ». Les paroissiens sont déçus, et la presse s’intéresse à l’affaire.

Craignant une polémique, la municipalité finit par autoriser la crèche sous trois conditions : « Que la paroisse n’apparaisse plus comme étant l’organisateur, qu’il n’y ait aucun prosélytisme et aucune présence humaine », résume Dominique de Causans. Accommodement ? « Moi, j’y vois un avantage, car ces critères ont le mérite d’institutionnaliser notre crèche. Peu importe qui est derrière : 15 millions de visiteurs vont passer devant et se laisser émerveiller. C’est cela qui compte. »

[But on the eve of the opening the local authority in Paris told the parish that the "religious connotation" of the project risked "disturbance". The parishioners were disappointed, and the media took an interest in the affair.

Fearing a controversy, the local officials concluded by allowing the crib under three conditions: "That the parish did not appear as being the organiser, that there is no proselytism and no human presence", continued Dominique de Causans. Satisfactory? "Myself, I see an advantage in it, because these criteria have the benefit of institutionalising our crib. Less important is the background: 15 million visitors are going to pass in front (of the crib) and be able to be filled with wonder. It is that which counts".]

The report in La Croix continues to describe similar situations, not all with a favourable outcome from the Christian point of view, occurring in different parts of France. The report observes that the problem here involves a certain malaise on the part of French society. Advent and Christmas are readily seen by many as a celebration of childhood or one's family, but without any reference to its religious or spiritual roots.

We can probably recognise this story in our own local communities. Those places where a crib is set up in a public place, or where a "live" crib is enacting with people and animals playing the parts, represent a real moment of evangelisation of a secularised culture.

Father Christmas

2011-12-20T23:56:00.002Z

I take the title from this post: Father Christmas. It offers an interesting reflection for the forthcoming feast of Christmas.

The event described here is also quite faithfully portrayed in the film Des hommes et des Dieux.

O

2011-12-19T18:24:00.002Z

Several blogs are posting on the "O Antiphons", used at Vespers during the days immediately before Christmas.

The most thorough that I have seen is iBenedictines. The first post of their series - here - explains the antiphons and introduces the first of them. Subsequently, daily posts are addressing each antiphon in turn. These can be accessed from the blogs homepage: iBenedictines.

Vaclav Havel RIP

2011-12-18T20:58:00.001Z

The BBC obituary of Vaclav Havel can be found here.

John Simpson, the BBC's World Affairs Editor, speaks about his own meeting with and knowledge of Vaclav Havel here. This interview comes much closer to communicating what made Vaclav Havel tick than does the obituary. Lord Owen reflects on his life here.

I have cited Vaclav Havel a number of times in blog posts: go here to find those posts which refer to him, or cite his writings.

As John Simpson says in his interview, I too hope that Vaclav Havel's death will encourage people to go back to his writings in order to discover one of the most significant figures of our times.

UPDATE: See further comment here.

The "soul of Europe" and a Christian country

2011-12-18T08:30:00.000Z

Recent days have seen two contributions to discussion about the place of religion, and Christianity in particular, to the present day culture of Europe.

The first was the lecture given by the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, at the Gregorian University in Rome on 12th December.

The second, which referred particularly to the United Kingdom, was Prime Minister David Cameron's speech at a celebration to mark the end of the 400th anniversary year of the King James version of the Bible. The speech was delivered on 16th December.

I would suggest that it is important to read the original texts of these two addresses, and not to rely on media reporting of them.

Each of these contributions has its own distinct character. The Chief Rabbi, in asking "Has Europe lost its soul?", examines the market economy and democratic capitalism of the developed nations in the light of the Jewish (and Christian) faith, and in the context of the financial crisis experienced in recent times. It is, if you like, a presentation of how the Judaeo-Christian religious heritage is relevant to economics today. The Prime Minister asserts the relevance of the King James translation of the Bible, and of the Bible in general, today. He does so on the grounds of its contribution to the language and culture of Britain, on the grounds that the politics of Britain is steeped in the Bible and on the grounds that the Bible has helped to shape the values which define Britain. That having been said, there are some interesting points of commonality (or near but not quite commonality) between the two addresses; and it is very interesting, too, to read them both in the light of the address of Pope Benedict XVI in Westminster Hall, as it addressed the subject of the relationship between religion and political and cultural life. If we quote a part of that address it gives a context for a study of both Lord Sacks and David Cameron's addresses.

The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

I do think that we can see David Cameron's address as an engagement with the agenda set by Pope Benedict's address, even if the passing reference to the abolition of slavery, to which Pope Benedict also referred, was an accidental coincidence. That the Prime Minister of our country should engage with this agenda is very significant, and something that we should not underestimate. I think we can also welcome the wide ranging way in which David Cameron describes the place of the King James Bible, and the Bible in general, in our literary and musical culture (the word "heritage" implies that this occurs only in the past, whereas I think the Prime Minister's address is really trying to say that this is something that still lives in the Britain of today) and in inspiring much social action in our country. This in itself represents a strong assertion against those who would argue that Britain is in some way a "secular country".

However, there are nuances contained in David Cameron's words that need to be read very carefully. The references to "equality" alongside the terms "human dignity" and "human rights" suggest an understanding of human dignity that, rather than being based in a Biblical idea of the image of God, is drawn instead from a contemporary ideology. We need to be very careful how we view the appropriate boundaries implicit, but not made explicit, in this statement about the role of politicians, and by implication, legislation with regard to religious institutions:

.... it’s legitimate for political leaders to say something about religious institutions as they see them affecting our society, not least in the vital areas of equality and tolerance.

David Cameron's strictures against "secular neutrality" and in favour of a willingness to identify behaviours as morally right and or morally wrong, also need to be read carefully. In so far as he offers a source of such moral judgement (David Cameron does use this word at one point in his address) it lies in recognising a Christian contribution to many of the "values" that characterise Britain:

The Bible has helped to shape the values which define our country....

Responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, love… pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities…these are the values we treasure.

Yes, they are Christian values. And we should not be afraid to acknowledge that. But they are also values that speak to us all – to people of every faith and none.

This all remains just a little bit aloof from providing a basis for evaluating specific behaviours and, in a Conservative Party context, one can see how it might appeal to a particular political constituency. It seems to me to be consonant with the Prime Minister's self identification as a "committed .. [but]vaguely practising Church of England Christian".

Lord Sacks lecture contained one passage that interested me, as a physics teacher, quite specifically. The argument that it was the matrix in Europe of Christian life and doctrine, particularly the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that gave rise in the 16th/17th centuries to science as a self-sustaining enterprise with an autonomy from theology, has been made very familiar by the writing of Stanley Jaki. We also see how, today, that self-sustaining science has advocates who use it to attack the religious matrix from which it first arose. Lord Sacks presents a very similar account of the rise of the market economy and democratic capitalism, also in Europe. The Chief Rabbi also suggests how, once independent of its Judaeo-Christian origin, the market economy contains a tendency to erode the moral roots from which it emerged. Contemporay consumerism represents the outcome of this erosion, and Lord Sacks describes it as "sapping our moral strength".

Across the different sections of his lecture, the Chief Rabbi develops a wide ranging Biblical analysis of the strengths and limits of the idea of the market economy, applying that analysis to the present day situation. It is well worth reading, and impossible to summarise in a blog post! He clearly identifies the need for an individual moral conversion (David Cameron also makes reference at one point to lack of a moral code):

[This is] perhaps the most profound truth of the Judeo-Christian ethic. That ethic, based on justice, compassion and respect for human dignity, took moral restraint from “out there”to “in here.” Good conduct was not dependent on governments, laws, police, inspectorates, regulatory bodies, civil courts and legal penalties. It was dependent on the still, small voice of God within the human heart. It became part of character, virtue and an internalised sense of obligation. Jews and Christians devoted immense energies to training the young in the ways of goodness and righteousness. A moral vision, a clear sense of right and wrong, was present in the stories they told, the texts they read, the rituals they performed, the prayers they said and the standards the community expected of its members.

Lord Sacks identifies five features of Judaism, largely shared by Christianity, which protect human living from the unwarranted invasion of the market:

A good society has its own ecology which depends on multiple sources of meaning, each with its own integrity. I want to draw attention briefly to five features of Judaism, largely shared by Christianity, whose role over the centuries has been to preserve a space uninvaded by the market ethic....

So the Sabbath, the family, the educational system, the concept of ownership as trusteeship, and the discipline of religious law, were not constructed on the basis of economic calculation. To the contrary, they were ways in which Judaism in effect said to the market: thus far and no further. There are realms in which you may not intrude.

The concept of the holy is precisely the domain in which the worth of things is not judged by their market price or economic value. This fundamental insight of Judaism and Christianity is all the more striking given their respect for the market. Their strength is that they resisted the temptation to believe that the market governs the totality of our lives, when it fact it governs only a limited part of it, that which concerns goods subject to production and exchange. There are things fundamental to being human that we do not produce; instead we receive from those who came before us and from God Himself.

If you read David Cameron's address alongside Lord Sacks' lecture, you will find a number of points where they come close. These points of proximity are interesting to note, though, as I have suggested, one needs to be aware of the nuances contained in the Prime Minister's address.
It is David Cameron's assertion that Britain is a Christian country, and should not be shy of its Christian heritage, that may be attracting most comment, both supportive and hostile.

My view is that the question is not properly framed as one of whether we should describe Britian in some generic way as a Christian country. It is rather a question of recognising what it is that gives Christianity entitlement to a particular stake in the life of Britain today. I do not believe that a Christian heritage - and Britain certainly has that - represents a sufficient argument on its own for Christians to claim a particular stake in society today. It is the continued living of that heritage today, by those who are active Christian believers and by those who live received Christian values at the level of culture though perhaps not at the level of faith, that justifies a claim for a particular Christian contribution in public life, in politics and in social action. The second element of this claim to a particular place for Christianity in British life is that, in David Cameron's terminology with its inherent weakness, Christian values have something to offer for the good of the life of every human being in society, whatever their religious beliefs or lack thereof. The stronger, and more effective, expression of this principle can be found in Pope Benedict's assertion of the role of reason in discerning the moral foundations of public action, that a realm of the "natural law" is accessible to both believer and non-believer, and his assertion of the role of religion in purifying that exercise of reason.

Additional comment can be found here:

We should not be afraid to say we are a Christian country, Outraged atheists attack and ridicule PM Cameron’s defence of Christianity and Jews and Catholics should unite to challenge aggressive scientific atheism –Chief Rabbi Sacks

Cameron doing religion (and read the comments to this post)

A circle of flowers

2011-12-17T21:02:00.001Z

Two posts on the death of Christopher Hitchens - Christopher Hitchens now knows there is a God, and Pray for Christopher Hitchens - prompted me to recall a story about Madeleine Delbrel. It is related on p.76 of Charles F Mann's biography Madeleine Delbrel: A Life Beyond Boundaries. The story comes from the first days of Madeleine's life in Ivry, a Communist suburb of Paris.

As part of her growing social involvement, Madeleine agreed to care for a cancer patient while his wife was at work. He was close to death, yet still reading l'Humanite, the French Communist newspaper, delivered by his good comrades. Sensing the man's hostility toward her as a Catholic, Madeleine engaged him on a personal level, talking about his favourite jams and jellied fruits. By the end of the afternoon, they had established a warm and jovial rapport.

The next day, Madeleine arrived with flowers, chicken soup and pear jam. When the man did not respond to her greeting, she thought he was asleep only to discover moments later that he was dead. Recovering from her initial shock, Madeleine sent for the wife and summoned enough courage to prepare the corpse for burial. The wife arrived, her face flushed and her eyes brimming with tears. She was accompanied by a horde of Communist neighbours who became a captive audience when she turned to Madeleine and scolded her for arranging the flowers in the form of a cross on her husband's chest. Realizing her blunder, Madeleine sincerely apologized and carefully rearranged the flowers in a circular fashion.

Now, a Catholic should certainly pray for the repose of the soul of Christopher Hitchens, as they should pray for the repose of the souls of all those who have died. And it is not inappropriate to recall the hostility of Christopher Hitchens towards Catholic figures like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. The obituaries and commentaries on his death do to a degree continue the controversy that was Christopher Hitchens' life, and Catholics are entitled to engage in their side of that controversy.

But, at the same time, I wonder whether or not charity asks for a certain discretion? For a prayer that is said quietly, but said nevertheless, and said in the form of flowers arranged in a circle rather than a cross.

UPDATE: An interesting comment by the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture is reported here.

Higgsy

2011-12-17T18:25:00.001Z

Came across these by accident - or, in all probability, by design. You need to read them in this order:
One
Two
Three

UPDATE: A comment advises me that the first post you need to read is actually this one. What I need to know now is: Who invited Pope Benedict to visit CERN, just a few days before Higgsy (might have) turned up?

The New Evangelisation ...

2011-12-16T18:19:00.000Z

... in Soho, described here by Aunty Joanna.

I was particularly struck by the distribution of gift-bags containing a Scripture verse, a medal .... and some sweets.

A few years ago now I was able to take part in one of St Patrick's weekends of evangelisation, and, on another occasion, one of their Eucharistic processions. Central London, busy streets, narrow streets with cafes and shops facing close on to the streets. My memory is of bystanders being quite respectful, though they might not have shared, or had any comprehension, of the faith of those processing.

Aunty's post gives something of the "feel" of these events. They are quite something to be part of, if you have the chance.

What marriage is (2): in the Church

2011-12-15T14:00:00.000Z

The locus of the current debate about what is, and is not, marriage is the world at large. The Catholic Church is engaged in that debate in promoting marriage as it is commonly understood, that is:

... marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.

and in opposing proposals that would allow same sex couples to have a married status (rather than a civil partnership status that is currently possible in the UK) that is legislatively and culturally identical to that of married men and women.

However, the debate is not without its implications for the life of the Church, ad intra. The passage in St Paul's letter to the Ephesians - "Wives, be subject to your husbands ... Husbands, love your wives ..." - does not speak of marriage except in reference to the relationship between Christ and the Church. Indeed, in verse 32 St Paul almost goes as far as to say that, actually, the important point in all of this is that it has to do with Christ and the Church:

This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church (RSV)

So the relationship between man and woman in marriage, for the baptised Christian, represents the relationship between Christ and the Church. Witness by the Church to the nature of the male and female relationship in marriage is, therefore, not just about a witness to a truth of natural law for the correct ordering of human society (this the significance of that witness for the public debate about same sex marriage); it is also a witness to the very nature of the Church herself. What is at one level about the social and political is at another level profoundly a question of theology/ecclesiology. Recognising this intersection of the social and theological in the question of marriage is important for the Church, since it demonstrates that she can do nothing other than oppose the idea of same sex marriage in the spheres of culture and legislation, or she would not be true to her own nature. It would also be helpful if those outside the Catholic Church were to recognise this intersection of the theological and the social, as it would enable them to have a better understanding of the contribution that the Church is making to public debate on the subject.

Hans Urs von Balthasar ends an essay "A meditation on Ephesians 5", an essay first delivered as a contribution to a seminar in 1978 commemorating the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, with the following:

Let us end with this observation. For sexuality as Christians understand it - sexuality that takes as its norm the relationship between Christ and his Church - Christ's words hold true: "Let him grasp it who can". But Christ is saying something more here than that very few men and women will actually grasp his doctrine. He is issuing us a challenge to serious endeavour, the same challenge, essentially, that rings through the whole of the Gospel: Take up your cross every day, sell all you possess, and do not cheat as did Ananias and Sapphira. Why should the sexual area alone offer no challenge to the Christian? Sexuality, even as Eros, is to be an expression of Agape, and Agape always involves an element of renunciation. And only by renunciation can the limits that we set on our own self-surrender be transcended.

The debate about same sex marriage provides the Catholic Church with an opportunity to renew her own self-understanding, and to evangelise those of her community who have become less and less conscious of the ecclesiological signficance of the Sacrament of Marriage. And, of course, to evangelise those of her members who dissent from the teaching of the Church on this matter.

Of Bishops, a homily and a pastoral letter

2011-12-14T21:00:00.000Z

It is unfortunate that the "championing" of a Bishop and his homily by one blog is matched by implicit criticisms of that Bishop and his homily on another blog [and by additional comment such as this that magnifies the positions represented by the two first posts out of all proportion]. I think that both of the posts, in their anxiety to be tendentious, make something of Bishop Davies' homily that is not there in the original. Try to read the report, and full text, on Shrewsbury Diocese's own website, without the filters provided by these two blog posts, and I hope you will see what I mean.

Bishop Davies' homily is a very lovely homily, full of references to the theme of Sunday Mass that will be familiar to anyone who has read Pope Benedict XVI's words on the same theme.

Yes, on the wettest, winter morning as the first generation of Christians put it and YouCat records their voices, “we cannot live without Sunday.”...

It isn’t the incidentals of music or style which draws or deters you from finding your way to Him. Those things may help or hinder us but they’re not why we’re ever here. We are here because we know in the words of St. John Vianney that “He is here, the One who loves us so much He is here.” May we find our way to Him where we know He will always be found.

The reference to a generation that has not handed on the fullness of the faith to those who are today the young? It is a glancing reference, not the centre of the homily at all, and we need to be careful not to read more into it than there is there to be read.

Another Bishop in another place has written a lovely pastoral letter. It's theme is not unrelated to that of Bishop Davies' homily, though delivered in a very different circumstance.

Create silence!’ There’s a challenge here. Surely speaking is a good and healthy thing? Yes indeed. Surely there are bad kinds of silence? Yes again. But still Kierkegaard is on to something.

There is a simple truth at stake. There can be no real relationship with God, there can be no real meeting with God, without silence. Silence prepares for that meeting and silence follows it. An early Christian wrote, ‘To someone who has experienced Christ himself, silence is more precious than anything else.’ For us God has the first word, and our silence opens our hearts to hear him. Only then will our own words really be words, echoes of God’s, and not just more litter on the rubbish dump of noise.

And one can detect Bishop Hugh's Benedictine background (with regard to the silence to be observed in the Oratory of the monastery) as he writes:

There is a time and place for speaking and a time and place for silence. In the church itself, so far as possible, silence should prevail. It should be the norm before and after Mass, and at other times as well. When there is a real need to say something, let it be done as quietly as can be. At the very least, such silence is a courtesy towards those who want to pray. It signals our reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. It respects the longing of the Holy Spirit to prepare us to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

In both Bishop Hugh's pastoral letter and Bishop Davies' homily there is a warmth of faith that communicates itself to the reader. And it is perhaps this that should be the subject of comment among Catholic blogs before anything else.

Catholic Churches can not be used for civil partnerships

2011-12-14T12:59:00.003Z

This post at Catholic Voices argues that regulations that have been proposed to allow religious premises to be used for civil partnerships will have no force with regard to Catholic Churches.

The same post also gives a caution with regard to the possible consequences should same sex marriages be subsequently allowed in law. In that eventuality, it is not at all clear that safeguards for religious communities that do not wish to celebrate civil partnershps will equally apply with regard to same sex marriages.

What marriage is (1): in the world

2011-12-12T19:30:00.000Z

No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.

This is how the document of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons defines the nature of marriage in one of its early paragraphs. The paragraph contains a number of interesting points, apart from its very obvious assertion of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

1. The reference to "ideology".

The term "ideology" has, at least so far as I can tell, fallen into disuse in the years since the fall of the Communist bloc. In part, this may be as a result of a disillusionment with (objective) idealism in public life, and the favouring instead of a style of pragmatism that, though it appears to address social needs and inequality, nevertheless lacks an objective content. Post-modernism is a word sometimes used to describe this.

I think that is is legitimate to use the term "ideology" to describe the role of LGBT activism in UK society. Much of the public debate is conducted in the language of equality, and it can be very persuasive. But behind it is a campaign against "heterosexist assumptions". This, for example, is a paragraph from a suggested model policy of one of the teacher trade unions:

All areas of the curriculum and resources will be closely monitored to see that they do not rely on heterosexist assumptions and that they contain no homophobic material.

One has no objection to checking that teaching materials do not contain homophobic materials; but removing "heterosexist assumptions" represents a step change from the notion of equality as it would be understood by most people.

Another policy statement from the same union defines heterosexism in this way:

The concept of heterosexism includes a focus on both homophobia and sexism and therefore enables us to account for the underlying cultural prejudice against lesbian, gay and bisexual people. This prejudice is firmly tied to dominant male and female identities that rely on heterosexuality as a norm. Heterosexism includes attitudes, behaviour and practices that constitute heterosexuality as the norm. At the same time, heterosexism reflects and encourages a dislike or feeling of superiority towards girls and women.

[....] believes that we can only successfully tackle sexism and homophobia by seeing them as two integral parts of the wider cultural problem of heterosexism.

One should recognise in the pressure of LGBT activists for same sex marriage an attempt to gain a further recognition in law of an "ideology" which would not be recognised or accepted, I suspect, by a significant majority of UK citizens. The heterosexual remains the norm; a small minority of our citizens self-identify as LGBT, and the language of human physiology speaks for itself. One could at this point cite any of the severe critiques of "ideology" offered by Vaclav Havel in his essay The Power of the Powerless, but let this one suffice. In the context of this post, one needs to read its reference to "the power structure" as applying to structures of the media and the influence of organisations such as Stonewall rather than its original application to the power structures of Communist regimes, and there is no intention to make any comparison between LGBT ideology and that of Communist totalitarianism.

As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure. Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances, to become ritual.

2. The idea of "mutual personal gift".

Now I think one has to draw a careful distinction between the use of the term "mutual personal gift" by the authors of the Sacred Congregation's document and the use of the apparently similar term "commitment" in the context of same sex unions. The idea of a "mutual personal gift" delineates an objective content of what is exchanged in the marriage vows; it does not just refer to a motivation on the part of the couple. There certainly is a motivation on the part of the couple; but the matrimonial consent offers an objective content over and above the motiviation of those involved.

The objective content is, of course, defined in relation to the purposes of marriage discussed below. It cannot be reduced to "commitment", even be that faithful and lifelong. To slightly adapt the recent words of Archbishop Nichols, a "commitment" is not a "marriage".

3. The reference to "the communion of their persons".

The term "communion of persons" can be readily appropriated to the word "love". For the advocates of same sex unions this becomes the question: "If we love each other, why can't we marry?" Once again a distinction needs to be drawn between the objective content of the term "love" or "communion of persons" and what can be the subjective experience indicated by the same term. To "love" is not to have fulfilment of my desire or wish for the other person, be that desire sexual in nature or other than sexual in nature. It is to want, and then to act in favour of, what is for the good of the other person. This might begin with an attraction and a desire, but if it stops there it is not love. The "communion of persons", love, requires the movement from eros to agape of which Pope Benedict writes in Deus Caritas Est.

Now the good of the other demands a respect for the nature of the "mutual personal gift" that is marriage and, not only for same sex couples but for others too, this means that the objective content of what it means to love should take a precedence over the subjective.

4. The idea of "mutual perfection" and the "procreation and upbringing of new human lives" as being the purpose(s) of marriage.

In some ways, this last point is the hinge on which the three previous considerations turn. The ideology of the LGBT activists is directly at odds with this statement of the fundamental purposes of marriage. This expression of the purpose of marriage also defines the objective content that comprises the mutual gift of persons that is the marriage covenant. And, in both its elements and not just in one or other of them on its own, it defines the objective good of the other person that is represented by authentic married love.

I was not sure whether or not to have the "(s)" at the end of the word "purpose". There is a certain history in the Catholic Church of the discussion of primary and secondary purposes of marriage. I think I would prefer to see "mutual perfection" and "the procreation and upbringing of new human lives" as different elements of one purpose of marriage, the compromising of one element have a concomitant compromising of the other.

It is worth recognising, as do the opening sentences of the Sacred Congregation's document quoted above, that:

The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world.

It is not just the Catholic Church, but a weight of history and culture that recognises this nature of marriage. This defines the meaning of the term "marriage" and, though there might be a change to the law to allow "same sex marriages", those unions cannot have the same meaning to them as marriage understood as it is by the generality of human society.

Archbishop Nichols on Marriage

2011-12-11T21:52:00.001Z

A clear statement by Archbishop Nichols of his position with regard to marriage and same sex unions can be found at Catholic Voices: Keep Focus on Marriage.

The audio of the press conference at which Archbishop Nichols made his original (controversial) remarks about same sex unions can be found here. There is an answer to a question in the second "Question and Answer" file, as well as remarks by Archbishop Nichols in his presentation in the first audio file.

It is useful to listen to the whole, if you want to get a full idea of what Archbishop Nichols was saying.

Different offices

2011-12-10T14:34:00.001Z

According to the Code of Canon Law - and I cite it by virtue of it being an expression of ecclesiology in practice ("applied ecclesiology", to use a term I have encountered at Maryvale Institute) rather than out of any sense of legalism - the office of a Bishop is described as follows. The emphasis added is mine.

Can. 375 §1. Bishops, who by divine institution succeed to the place of the Apostles through the Holy Spirit who has been given to them, are constituted pastors in the Church, so that they are teachers of doctrine, priests of sacred worship, and ministers of governance.

§2. Through episcopal consecration itself, bishops receive with the function of sanctifying also the functions of teaching and governing; by their nature, however, these can only be exercised in hierarchical communion with the head and members of the college.

And the office of the lay faithful is as follows, again with my added emphases:

Can. 225 §1. Since, like all the Christian faithful, lay persons are designated by God for the apostolate through baptism and confirmation, they are bound by the general obligation and possess the right as individuals, or joined in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation is made known and accepted by all persons everywhere in the world. This obligation is even more compelling in those circumstances in which only through them can people hear the gospel and know Christ.

§2. According to each one’s own condition, they are also bound by a particular duty to imbue and perfect the order of temporal affairs with the spirit of the gospel and thus to give witness to Christ, especially in carrying out these same affairs and in exercising secular functions....

An appropriate expression of ecclesial communion is achieved when each, the Bishop and the lay faithful, exercise the office that is proper to them. The one should not attempt to exercise the office of the other since by doing so they will thereby cease to exercise properly their own office. I would go further and suggest that, should there be a failure in the exercise of their office by one party, it really is not possible in any case for the other to successfully step in and exercise that office in their stead. An appropriate ecclesial life is therefore utterly dependent on the Bishop and the lay faithful exercising their own proper office conscientiously, since the lay faithful cannot make up for the failing of a Bishop and a Bishop cannot make up for the failing of the lay faithful.

It is useful, I think, to put this consideration alongside the words of Pope Benedict XVI in Westminster Hall, when he spoke of the relationship between religion and public life and, implicitly, of how we might view the relationship between the Catholic Church and public life:

The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person.

Reading this in the context of the respective offices of the Bishop and the lay faithful, one can perhaps identify the office of the Bishop particularly with the task of purifying and shedding light upon the application of reason to discovering - and teaching - the objective moral principles that might refer to an issue such as civil partnerships/same sex marriage. The task of then devising particular political or legislative solutions that put these principles into practice, and advocating for them in society, can be identified with the office of the lay faithful. The effectiveness of a Catholic engagement with an issue like civil partnerships/same sex marriage depends on the two different offices being correctly fulfilled by their respective parties. The one party is not going to be able to do the tasks appropriate to the other and have it work effectively for the mission of the Church. A thundering episcopal condemnation may sometimes be appropriate, but not always.

As readers may have realised by now, this is intended as my contribution to the controversy surrounding Archbishop Nichol's remarks about civil partnerships and same sex marriage. Caroline has links to the original sources in the first paragraph of her post Into the maelstrom. I have a lot of sympathy with the analysis in paragraph 4 onwards of Caroline's post. In my own family, there was at one time an exact analogue of Caroline's "Auntie A" and "Auntie B". I recall at the time of the first talk of civil partnerships contributing to discussions along the lines that legislation with respect to pension rights, inheritance etc could have been framed in terms of economic and social inter-dependence (common life). Married status would very clearly meet the requirements of such legislation, even if it was not specially privileged in the legislation. The test could equally be applied to a same sex couple living together, quite regardless of any questions of sexuality or sexual orientation. And, as Caroline points out, to relatives sharing the same accomodation and a common life, and to carers. I also share Caroline's assessment of Archbishop Nichols' remarks, which might be described as confusing, but do deserve a more careful response than that being offered by some. The comments on Caroline's post are also worth perusing.

There are two, perhaps opposing, questions which appear to me to arise from this controversy, one a question for the lay faithful, the other a question for the Bishops. The first is the danger that those who are critical of Archbishop Nichols' remarks (on this matter as on others) set themselves up, perhaps unconsiously but perhaps deliberately, as a kind of "alternative teaching office" to that proper to the Bishop. There are one or two Catholic blogs that I will not include in my side bar precisely because I feel that this is what they are doing. As I have tried to argue above, it is not for the lay faithful to try to take on the office of the Bishop, and they cannot effectively achieve it in any case, and will undermine the exercise of their own proper office at the same time. I wonder also whether this is a danger to which the "traditionalist" Catholic is more prone than others.

The second question is that of discerning what is the most effective way for a Bishop to exercise his office of teaching in a time dominated by broadcast and electronic news media. Is the press conference really the most effective way of presenting Catholic teaching - the purifying of reason proper to religion in the realm of public debate - about civil partnerships and same sex marriage? Is an episcopal blog a more appropriate way? Whatever the medium of its propagation, I do think that this could come back to two means that have been held in regard in the history of the Church's life. I think of the homily and of the pastoral letter. Should Bishops be willing to preach, and to preach regularly, in fulfilling their teaching office? And should they be willing to write more pastoral letters, letters using the principles of Church doctrine to assess the proposals of public debate? One of my favourite examples of someone who did this is Archbishop Oscar Romero, who wrote four long and detailed pastoral letters during his time as Archbishop of El Salvador, and the way in which he did that provides a good example that can be followed. The form of the homily and pastoral letter should allow a more complete and careful treatment of Catholic teaching, not prone to the potential confusion of the media interview or Q and A session at a news conference.

As a concluding thought, it might be worth reflecting on exactly what Pope Benedict XVI attempted in his address in Westminster Hall. He could very easily have condemned the legislation that the UK Parliament has passed with regard to abortion and same sex unions. But he didn't. Instead, he spoke about another piece of legislation passed by that Parliament, namely, the abolition of the slave trade. And he spoke about the principles that underpin the engagement of the Catholic Church, and religion in general, in public affairs.

Year of Faith (7): "By faith ..."

2011-12-09T17:29:00.001Z

I had intended to finish my earlier series of posts about the Year of Faith that Pope Benedict XVI announced with the following excerpt from his motu proprio Porta Fidei. I have added emphases to draw attention to the beauty of this passage, which can be summarised as giving an account of how the Church has experienced its life "by faith":

One thing that will be of decisive importance in this Year is retracing the history of our faith, marked as it is by the unfathomable mystery of the interweaving of holiness and sin....

During this time we will need to keep our gaze fixed upon Jesus Christ, the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2..... In him who died and rose again for our salvation, the examples of faith that have marked these two thousand years of our salvation history are brought into the fullness of light.

By faith, Mary accepted the Angel’s word and believed the message that she was to become the Mother of God in the obedience of her devotion (cf. Lk 1:38). Visiting Elizabeth, she raised her hymn of praise to the Most High for the marvels he worked in those who trust him (cf. Lk 1:46-55). With joy and trepidation she gave birth to her only son, keeping her virginity intact (cf. Lk 2:6-7). Trusting in Joseph, her husband, she took Jesus to Egypt to save him from Herod’s persecution (cf. Mt 2:13-15). With the same faith, she followed the Lord in his preaching and remained with him all the way to Golgotha (cf. Jn 19:25-27). By faith, Mary tasted the fruits of Jesus’ resurrection, and treasuring every memory in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19, 51), she passed them on to the Twelve assembled with her in the Upper Room to receive the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14; 2:1-4).

By faith, the Apostles left everything to follow their Master (cf. Mk 10:28). They believed the words with which he proclaimed the Kingdom of God present and fulfilled in his person (cf. Lk 11:20). They lived in communion of life with Jesus who instructed them with his teaching, leaving them a new rule of life, by which they would be recognized as his disciples after his death (cf. Jn 13:34-35). By faith, they went out to the whole world, following the command to bring the Gospel to all creation (cf. Mk 16:15) and they fearlessly proclaimed to all the joy of the resurrection, of which they were faithful witnesses.

By faith, the disciples formed the first community, gathered around the teaching of the Apostles, in prayer, in celebration of the Eucharist, holding their possessions in common so as to meet the needs of the brethren (cf. Acts 2:42-47).

By faith, the martyrs gave their lives, bearing witness to the truth of the Gospel that had transformed them and made them capable of attaining to the greatest gift of love: the forgiveness of their persecutors.

By faith, men and women have consecrated their lives to Christ, leaving all things behind so as to live obedience, poverty and chastity with Gospel simplicity, concrete signs of waiting for the Lord who comes without delay. By faith, countless Christians have promoted action for justice so as to put into practice the word of the Lord, who came to proclaim deliverance from oppression and a year of favour for all (cf. Lk 4:18-19).

By faith, across the centuries, men and women of all ages, whose names are written in the Book of Life (cf. Rev 7:9, 13:8), have confessed the beauty of following the Lord Jesus wherever they were called to bear witness to the fact that they were Christian: in the family, in the workplace, in public life, in the exercise of the charisms and ministries to which they were called.

By faith, we too live: by the living recognition of the Lord Jesus, present in our lives and in our history.

The different elements of this "by faith" are not just a history that we can read and try to follow. These elements describe the ecclesial constitution of Christian faith, the nature of Christian life as being a participation in the "communion of saints" made visible in a human community. It is an account of an ecclesial and theological reality, as well as being a historical account. So, for example, I would argue that a "Marian character" and the three evangelical counsels form just as much parts of what it means to be the Church as do the Apostolic and missionary characters.

SSPX and "the preamble"

2011-12-03T13:18:00.001Z

Regular visitors to this blog will recognise that is author is not a "traditional" Catholic. Well, he is traditional, but he isn't that sort of "traditional", he is the other sort of "traditional".

I therefore look at the discussions taking place between representatives of the Holy See and the Society of St Pius X with a certain detachment. The interest that I do take in those discussions is not so much for their consequences for the Society of St Pius X but for their implications for the Church as a whole. The confidential nature of the "doctrinal preamble", understandable when seen solely in the context of the dicussions between the Holy See and the said Society, is problematical in this latter context. If we all have a stake in the content of the preamble and in the outcome of the discussions based upon it, then surely we should all be allowed to contribute to the discussions in the Church about it, rather than the Society of St Pius X having some kind of exclusive access to the discussion while "non-traditionalists" remain excluded.

In saying this I am not at all suggesting that the confidentiality of the "doctrinal preamble" should be breached. However, that the Society of St Pius X appear to be not accepting it is something that I learn with a certain sense of relief. I had not gained the impression when it was first proposed to the Society that there was room for re-negotiating its content, though the Society seem to be suggesting that "clarification" may in effect offer opportunity for some re-negotiation. Also very helpful in my view is the publication of the article in L'Osservatore Romano, and carried at EF Pastor Emeritus, by one of the participants from the side of the Holy See in the discussions with the Society of St Pius X. This article addresses the question of assent to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and I think that we can take it as an "indicator" of the negotiating position of the Holy See in its discussions with the Society of St Pius X. Together, Bishop Fellay's interview and Mgr Ocariz's article can be seen as part of a process that allows the wider Church a stake in the discussions between the two parties. One can speculate on how far Mgr Ocariz's article it is representative of the content of the "doctrinal preamble"; one might also see it as a reply to the remarks of Bishop Fellay of the Society of St Pius X, and a careful comparison of Bishop Fellay's interview with Mgr Ocariz' article shows at least one specific point of rebuttal (with regard to whether or not Vatican II is seen as offering doctrinal teaching).

What I find encouraging in the article by Mgr Ocariz is its clear indication that the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, including that on its "controversial" points, and that of the four pontificates since the Council, is not going to be sacrificed in the discussions with the Society of St Pius X. The boundary to the "space for legitimate theological freedom", from the point of view of the Holy See, appears to be quite tightly defined.

It is my own view that it is the Catechism of the Catholic Church that should provide the practical "rule of faith" required by the unity of the Church. This sufficed for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham as former members of the Church of England entered into full communion with the Holy See. Why should not the same "rule of faith" apply to the Society of St Pius X?

".. truly the earth's culmination .."

2011-12-02T23:53:00.001Z

The Meditation of the Day for Thursday of this week in Magnificat is from the writings of Fr Alfred Delp, and opens as follows (my italics added):

That God would become a Mother's son and that a woman could walk upon this earth, her body consecrated as a holy temple and tabernacle for God, is truly the earth's culmination and the fulfilment of its expectation ...

Oh, that this was granted to the earth, to bring forth such fruit! That the world was permitted to enter into the presence of God through the sheltering warmth, as well as the helpful and reliable patronage of her motherly heart!

I added the italics to draw out the closeness of the perspective of this passage to that promoted by FAITH, and exemplified in this article by Fr Nesbitt: The Christ Centred Vision of Creation: The Witness of Scripture and Tradition, and this one by Fr Stephen Boyle: The Centrality of Christ In the Plan of Creation.

World AIDS Day - a cause for hope

2011-12-01T07:28:00.001Z

Media coverage that I have heared - on the radio - over the last couple of days suggests the following two thoughts for World AIDS Day.

The first thought is that a HIV positive status, or the AIDS illness that can follow from it, is now considered to be a treatable illness. It should no longer be seen as a terminal illness or, as it might be expressed in a popular culture, a "death sentence". In developed nations, the condition that attaches to this is that those who are HIV positive receive an early diagnosis, and so there is a call for people to be willing to be tested for their HIV status. The BBC news report here suggests that something like one in five people in the UK decline a HIV test when it is offered. In under-developed nations, the condition is that of ready access to appropriate retro-viral drugs. At a cultural level, one would hope that this development will help to remove the unnecessary stigma that can attach to a positive HIV status..

The second thought relates to the existence of HIV/AIDS among the gay population. One report I have heard on the radio in the last couple of days made a particular call for gay men to be willing to be tested. According to a report on the BBC news website, based on data from the Health Protection Agency:

The number of people living with HIV in the UK reached an estimated 91,500 in 2010, up from 86,500 the year before, with a quarter of those unaware of their infection.

Some 6,660 people were newly diagnosed with HIV in the UK last year.

Data revealed infections likely acquired within the UK almost doubled in the last decade from 1,950 in 2001 to 3,640 in 2010 and exceed those acquired abroad.

This rise is mostly due to infections acquired among men who have sex with men, who remain the group most at risk of HIV infection in the UK, says the HPA.

In 2010, over 3,000 gay men were diagnosed with HIV - the highest ever annual number. One in 20 gay men is now infected with HIV nationally and in London the figure is one in 11.

Our political and social culture needs to be realistic in its response to this specific aspect of the HIV/AIDS situation, whilst at the same time not putting at risk the potential gains with regard to reduced stigma attaching to a positive HIV status that comes from better treatment and management of those diagnosed as being HIV positive.

The new translation: two implications

2011-11-28T17:56:00.001Z

One more public, and one more individual.

First, the public one. I was looking forward to the development of a renewed "style" of celebration to accompany the introduction of the new English translation of the texts of the Mass. This could perhaps be summarised by my expecting a greater sense of faithfulness to the given texts, something totally consonant with the principle of greater faithfulness to the Latin typical (ie definitive) texts that is part fo the new translation. I think I have seen something of this in the parishes I attend, perhaps particularly with the introduction to the Our Father and the dismissal at the end of Mass. However, I am perhaps disappointed in not seeing a more sacred "style" in general. I therefore have sympathy with the question being asked by these two posts: New translation: renewed liturgy? and First Mass With The New Missal.

However, I have found rather beautiful in recent days the new translations of the Preface of Corpus Christi (sung at a Mass for the opening of the Forty Hours devotion in a parish not far away), of Eucharistic Prayer III (used at the aforementioned Mass) and of the Preface for Advent.

The more individual one relates to my praying of the Divine Office each morning. The coming of the new translation of the Missal draws attention to the frustrating choice of hymns and translations (or not in some cases) of the intercessions in the Divine Office. So I now use three different books for this.

I use the Latin for the invitatory, hymn and intercessions. My Latin is far from brilliant, and just good enough to cope with this.

I use the English of the Divine Office for the psalms, Scripture reading, responsory and Gospel canticle. I expect some will not be surprised by the damage to the spine, which is overcome by use of a zip cover.

And I end with the Collect from the new translation of the Missal (I can do this every day now that it is Advent and there is an allocated Collect for each day).

Youtube, a dog in Richmond Park, and the name of the Lord

2011-11-25T16:37:00.001Z

Youtube is a wonderful phenomenon, but it does seem to have a certain lack of accountability. Like blogging, one can post what one likes - and that leaves it open to the positive aspects of a freedom that empowers ordinary users and to the abuse that can also result from that freedom.

This video clip is an example: Fenton the Dog (Original). This video seems to have been reposted in a number of different versions by different people - so I do not know whether the claim of this version to be the original is true or not. This link will take you to the response page I got to a search on Youtube, and you will be able to see the numbers of views of various re-posts of the video. The BBC report on the incident is here, and, if you compare it to the video clip to which it refers, you will notice the editing.

But what I object to is the three-fold utterance of "Oh, Jesus Christ" - that is, a three-fold taking of the name of the Lord in vain. I think I would have objected to hearing it uttered if I had been there as the incident took place, though I might have had some understanding of the context and circumstances that would have mitigated my degree of offense.

But that a video of the incident is posted to Youtube, that it goes "viral", and no-one sees a problem with viewing and propagating it, removes any sense of mitigation. For those with a Christian conviction, this video is offensive. If the remarks had been racist or homophobic in nature, the outcry at their being posted would be quite deafening. Such remarks would have been clearly seen as discriminatory and, quite possibly, as promoting hatred. So why is this video not seen as offensive?

I think there are three guilty parties here. Firstly, and perhaps primarily, those who have posted (and re-posted) the video clip. They should remove it. Secondly, Youtube. They should not be willing to host a video clip that is offensive in this way, and should remove it. And they do not have a category under their "flag as inappropriate" option that allows for this situation - the nearest is "promotes hatred or violence". The third guilty party are all those who are watching the video and finding it amusing.

Perhaps we should all go over and start hitting the "I dislike" button as a way of making the point!

The BBC report deserves some credit for not reproducing the language that gives offense to those of Christian conviction. But it is interesting that the "story" for their report is the risk presented to the deer by dogs that might chase them in the park and not the civil rights of Christian believers!

Brian Sewell (4); the "gay scene" in the frame

2011-11-23T00:00:00.000Z

The extract from Brian Sewell's autobiography published in the London Evening Standard (here), and on which I have already commented (Catholicism in the frame, Abandoning moral constraint and Pleasures of the flesh), also puts the "gay scene" in the frame for some questioning. Let me present this by responding to the following comment made on one of the earlier posts in this series:

The story of Brian Sewell's sexual exploits after he gave up the practice of religion is indeed depressing. He glories in the emptiness of as many as five casual partners in a single evening. Yet, there is too a question for Catholics. Now that we know that some people can only truthfully have sexual relationships with the same sex, if the proper standards of faithfulness and constancy apply, should we really deny them the sort of permanent, creative, relationship of, say, Benjamin Brittan and Peter Pears? The ugliness of Sewell's story is the grimness of promiscuity, not of the homosexuality with which he was born.

Is it possible, as this comment suggests, to entirely separate the aspect of promiscuity in Brian Sewell's account from the homosexual nature of his acts, thereby taking the "gay community" out of the frame?

"Now that we know that some people can only truthfully have sexual relationships with the same sex..." There is an implicit assumption here that would apply to heterosexual activity just as much as to homosexual activity. That assumption might be stated something like "as I am so inclined, so I have to act"; or, as the assumption that a physical sexual activity is a necessary and essential part of a person's life. It is important to ask whether or not this is really the case. Is sexual activity, of any type, really as necessary a condition for human well being as we are led to believe? If one were to agree (and I don't happen to) that "some people can only truthfully have sexual relationships with the same sex" the option of not having sexual relationships at all is still an option, and an option that respects entirely the sense of the inclination involved. It is possible to truthfully not have sexual relations.

If we challenge the assumption - that sexual inclination has to be converted into sexual activity, a principle that applies equally to heterosexual as to homosexual activity - then a clear step is seen to exist between the inclination towards same-sex behaviour and the actual undertaking of that behaviour. This leads us to recognise that there is an ethical step that is taken in moving from inclination to activity. This does apply to heterosexual activity as well, but, in our present context, it recognises the choice that is taken to engage in homosexual activity subsequent to an experience of inclination. In not distinguishing clearly between how we consider inclination and how we consider activity, the point of view represented by my commenter tries to take the "gay scene" out of the frame being set by the London Evening Standard extract. The ethical step in this context - or, to use the language of one of my earlier posts in this series, the breaking through of a moral restraint - is there for both heterosexual and homosexual behaviours. But it has a certain additionality in the case of homosexual behaviour because it involves stepping over the moral restraint represented by the physiological disposition of the male body towards the female body and vice versa. The scenario of the gay couple who are in a faithful relationship does not have the breach of the moral constraint with regard to promiscuity that characterises Brian Sewell's story; but it retains this latter element of overcoming a moral constraint.

So in what respects does the London Evening Standard extract put the "gay scene" within the frame for questioning? At a simple level, those who are in leadership in the gay community need to tell us honestly whether or not it is a community characterised by the promiscuity that Brian Sewell's story portrays, and I say that recognising that promiscuity is going to be a feature in opposite sex relations too. At a deeper level, the implications of the turning away from moral constraints that previously held in society - and this is something with regard homosexual acts that is promoted by the gay community - presents a question to be answered. Is this really in the interests of the common good of society as a whole, particularly when the removing of "internal barriers" is one of the themes in understanding the behaviour of sex offenders? (This is not to suggest that gay people are any more likely to be offenders than others, but only to suggest that a culture that maintains moral constraints will better discourage offending by those likely to offend.) The discussion in these series of posts also challenges the gay community to be willing to talk in the language of behaviours, which represent ethical choices, rather than using the language of "orientation" to reduce the element of ethical choice involved. Along with this is the question of external moral constraints to behaviour such as those that might be provided by religious belief; or the question of the part that can be played by religions in being a moral reference point that calls wider society to a purification of its reason (cf Pope Benedict XVI speaking in Westminster Hall).

Brian Sewell (3): Catholicism in the frame

2011-11-20T13:44:00.001Z

The extract from Brian Sewell's autobiography published in the London Evening Standard - Sex life of Brian Sewell: Story of my 1000 lovers - gains its prurience from the catalogue of promiscuous gay encounters that form the last two-thirds or so of the extract. A certain piquancy is added by the inclusion of reference to Roman Catholicism in the first two paragraphs, with the effect of placing Catholicism in the frame of the reader's perception alongside a promiscuous homosexuality.

Now, it should be clear from any reading of the London Evening Standard extract that Brian Sewell had abandoned entirely his practise of Catholicism in his turn towards promiscuity. In that sense, there is a lot of very clear water - a wide ocean of it, in fact - between Roman Catholicism and the lifestyle that Brian Sewell describes in the latter part of the extract.

...I had found chastity of the imagination impossible to achieve, and that this, now more turbulent than ever, was separating me from the Church. ... I returned to Phillimore Place with no further thought of Mass and have not since been a communicant.

But the first two paragraphs of the London Evening Standard extract give rise to the question as to how realistic is the possibility that Brian Sewell, had he not taken a turn towards promiscuity, might have been ordained as a Catholic priest. The first part of this question is about how realistic Brian Sewell's own intention was. The published extract does not allow us to answer this part of the question - we need to wait until we can read the earlier parts of the book, and perhaps bear in mind that we should be a little wary of relying on Brian Sewell's own perception. The other part of the question is one about whether or not a diocese or religious order would have accepted Brian Sewell for training had be put himself forward. Today, this latter would be covered by the provisions of the Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders of the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, which expect an affective maturity in accordance with Catholic teaching of candidates for the ordination:

... this Dicastery, in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called "gay culture".

Independently of his homosexual tendencies, but not without some connection to them, Brian Sewell would in all probability not meet the requirement of affective maturity.

There is a final manner in which the London Evening Standard extract puts Catholicism in the frame of public perception, though the extract does not enable a conclusion to be drawn. As already noted above, Brian Sewell rejected Catholicism in turning towards homosexual promiscuity. But how far was his previous experience of Catholic life - on his own admission a dry and unconvinced experience - a part of Brian Sewell's disposition towards homosexual activity?

Brian Sewell (2): the abandoning of moral constraint

2011-11-19T17:49:00.001Z

There was in 1959 a change in my life - a change essential for my sanity.

These are the opening words of the extract from Brian Sewell's autobiography published recently in the London Evening Standard and available on their website under the title The sex life of Brian Sewell: Story of my 1000 lovers. I have already posted on one aspect of this piece - the pleasures of the flesh. That post will, I think, indicate to you that the style of life adopted by Brian Sewell after the change of 1959 is not one to which I would apply the descriptor "sanity".

In the first two paragraphs of the published extract, Brian Sewell describes turning away from a practise of Roman Catholicism that was "a dry discipline scarcely spiritual", a practise that had been "much troubled by my sexuality" (ie homosexuality). Now what Brian Sewell would have us believe is that this turning away from Catholicism was necessary for his sanity because it then liberated him to practise his homosexuality, removing the tension in his life that otherwise existed between Catholicism and his homosexuality.

However, if we consider the utter licentiousness in which Brian Sewell describes himself as engaging after this change in his life, then we can perhaps recognise that even his rather dry relationship to Catholicism was actually exercising an important influence in his life before he abandoned it. It was exercising a moral constraint. It is possible to read the first two paragraphs of the London Evening Standard extract and see that, though Brian Sewell admits to finding what he terms "chastity of the imagination" impossible, he had nevertheless sustained a physical chastity in so far as involvement of other people was concerned. Brian Sewell uses the word "turbulent" to describe the pressure on him, though one might also see this as an experience of the necessary effort to try and overcome a temptation to a behaviour that is recognised as morally wrong. It was the experience of a moral constraint, the maintaining of a boundary to human behaviour against a strong desire to cross that boundary. One suspects, from the subsequent events that Brian Sewell describes in this extract, that it was a moral constraint that he was willing to abandon with a certain readiness.

So the question being asked in this post is the following. Was the change in Brian Sewell's style of life a change "essential for my sanity", as he wishes to present it, or the abandoning of a legitimate moral constraint, of value both to Brian himself and to society as a whole, and the abandonment of which led Brian to a life of promiscuity?

Brian Sewell (1): the pleasures of the flesh

2011-11-18T22:44:00.001Z

The London Evening Standard printed an extract from Brian Sewell's forthcoming autobiography in its edition of 17th November 2011. It can be found on their website with the title: The sex life of Brian Sewell: Story of my 1000 lovers. In the print edition it had the title: "Easily a thousand sexual partners in a quinqennium". To date, there appears to have been very little reaction to the piece, or to the trailed accounts of the contents of the autobiography.

The later two-thirds or so of the extract published in the Evening Standard describes a catalogue of casual gay pick ups in the street, at parties and through introductions. There are a sprinkling of longer relationships, though the term relationship can only have a rather analogous meaning in the context. [It is not referred to in the Evening Standard extract, so I think I have encountered it in a review of the autobiography I have read, but there is also the suggestion that Brian Sewell was used as a kind of sexual bait by an employing art auction house when visiting and staying over with clients.]

There is something disguised behind the use of the term "lovers" in the title of the website posting of the extract; it is still disguised, but perhaps less so, in the print edition's use of the term "sexual partners". What is disguised in the title, but abundantly clear in the text itself, is the exploitative nature of Brian Sewell's activities (I hesitate to use the word "relationships" - it just doesn't seem to apply to the encounters being described). He is exploiting other men for his own satisfaction and others are no doubt exploiting him for their pleasure. The extract seems to recognise this, when Brian refers to his "metamorphosis from celibate to whore". The behaviours involved would probably have been recognised as exploitative at the time, in the years from 1959 onwards, to which Brian Sewell's account refers.

Today, I wonder whether we might use the word "abusive" to describe these activities. Procedures for the protection of children and vulnerable adults indicate behaviours ranging from neglect or failure in a duty of care, through a spectrum, to explicitly physical and sexual activity, as being relevant to their considerations. That the activities Brian Sewell describes took place between adults who had, we presume, consented - is this enough for us to take them out of the spectrum of neglectful-to-violent/sexual that would now be considered within the wider sense of the term "abuse"? Are the activities described neglectful of any real care towards the other man involved, in circumstances where freedom of will to consent may itself be impaired? The at least potentially abusive nature of these activities appears to be recognised by Brian Sewell, with his inclusion of the word "violence" and reference to opportunism in the following passage from the extract:

I learned that sex ranges from tenderness to violence, from the short and sharp to the night long, from the security of the bedroom to the thrilling risky business of doing it while standing up in a canoe, and that the opportunist must make his opportunities.

New translation: "And with your spirit"

2011-11-16T14:01:00.001Z

The change from "And also with you" to "And with your spirit" in the new English translation of the texts of the Roman Missal is perhaps iconic of the whole process of the new translation. Some would criticise it as being archaic, as part of a process of "putting the clock back"; others might argue that it is not a phrase that ordinary Catholics can understand. Those who are supportive of the new translation point out - rightly - that the new translation is more immediately faithful to the Latin original, and that it makes more transparent the Scriptural roots of the text, in this case, in the writings of St Paul. These latter two points apply to a number of different aspects of the new translation. My own experience suggests that the introduction of "And with your spirit" is now fairly well embedded in parishes, and has gained the instinctive status previously held by "And also with you".

Thinking Faith have just published what I think is the best consideration that I have seen of the significance of the phrase "And with your spirit". I do not think there was much confusion about it among the ordinary faithful, as the lead paragraph of the article at Thinking Faith suggests. I found Fr Mahoney's account of the patristic and historical background to the suggestion that the phrase in some way relates to the grace of ordination of the celebrating priest very useful. I share with him the view that this interpretation seems fanciful and contrived.

It seems to me fundamentally correct to see the dialogue "The Lord be with you" /"And with your spirit" as being a greeting and a response to that greeting. This is the simple straightforward sense of how this dialogue occurs in the Liturgy, particularly at the beginning of the Eucharistic celebration. It has the nature of a greeting exchanged between the priest and the people.

Taken over into the Eucharist to express the people’s response to the celebrant’s greeting of, ‘The Lord be with you’, the phrase is to be understood fully as ‘And the Lord be with your spirit’.

It also seems to me correct to take the Scriptural origins of the phrase in a literal way, looking at how it occurs in the writings of St Paul. This does not, however, mean that we should underestimate its theological complexity. The account given by Fr Mahoney of St Paul's anthropology of body, spirit and soul is therefore, in my view, the correct way to explain the response and the one that is taken in the resource Become One Body One Spirit in Christ. I would want to add, perhaps, the suggestion that in writing of the "spirit" St Paul also refers to that in man which represents his orientation or openess towards God.

In passing, Fr Mahoney suggests that the debate about how the phrase "And with your spirit" is understood is a debate about whether the priest is seen as being separate from the people or as being one with them.

I wonder also if part of the modern popularity of this interpretation in terms of the grace of priestly ordination is because it can help to propagate the difference between priests and people which the Vatican Council tried so much to diminish and which others are now regrettably attempting to re-establish.

The reference to n.9 of the Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests, where the community of life of the priest with the lay faithful is described, is quite apposite in giving a context to the greeting dialogue understood precisely as one of mutual greeting. I would not agree that, in this passage, Vatican II was making an effort to diminish the difference between priests and people, as this passage needs to be read alongside others in the Decree which discuss those particular gifts and office that a priest receives through ordination, and which do mark him out as different from the people. The relationship between priests and people as described in n.9 is one that should be our goal; but I do not think that it is reversed by a rightful consideration of the specific dignity of the priestly vocation through such initiatives as the Year for Priests.

Year of Faith (6): the profession of faith

2011-11-14T17:51:00.001Z

The Year of Faith promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1967-1968 came to its conclusion with the proclamation of what has since become known as the Credo of the People of God. Issued as a motu proprio, it was first declared by Pope Paul VI as the homily at the Eucharistic celebration that marked the end of the Year of Faith.

In Porta Fidei n.8, Pope Benedict XVI has also called on the Church, during a Year of Faith, to celebrate the profession of faith:

We will have the opportunity to profess our faith in the Risen Lord in our cathedrals and in the churches of the whole world; in our homes and among our families, so that everyone may feel a strong need to know better and to transmit to future generations the faith of all times. Religious communities as well as parish communities, and all ecclesial bodies old and new, are to find a way, during this Year, to make a public profession of the Credo.

The profession of faith has, in the life of the Church, three particular expressions. The first is the question and answer form associated with the sacrament of Baptism and with the Liturgy of Easter Sunday. The second is the form known as the Apostle's Creed, particularly associated with the Church in Rome and with textual sources that reach back to the fourth century, but whose articulation in the twelve articles we have today dates from the ninth century. The third is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, deriving from the Council of Constantinople in 381, which gained a usage within the Liturgy of both East and West.

The profession of faith is something that is a possession of the Church and, at the same time, a possession of the individual believer. It is not an accident that, as part of the preparation for Baptism, a catechumen recieves a copy of the Creed from the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reflects this two-fold ownership of the profession of faith in its first section which is headed "'I believe' - 'We believe'".

167 "I believe" (Apostles' Creed) is the faith of the Church professed personally by each believer, principally during Baptism. "We believe" (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) is the faith of the Church confessed by the bishops assembled in council or more generally by the liturgical assembly of believers. "I believe" is also the Church, our mother, responding to God by faith as she teaches us to say both "I believe" and "We believe"....

180 "Believing" is a human act, conscious and free, corresponding to the dignity of the human person.

181 "Believing" is an ecclesial act. the Church's faith precedes, engenders, supports and nourishes our faith. the Church is the mother of all believers. "No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother" (St. Cyprian, De unit. 6: PL 4, 519).

There is an interesting dynamic that arises from the wearing of an external sign of Christian faith, such as a cross or a witness wrist band. The wearing of such a sign is a witness, a testimony of faith. My own experience suggests that, primarily, this acts as a reminder or testimony to oneself; and that this reminder to oneself is much more significant than any witness or testimony that is given to others who might see the sign. What might be described as a question of conscience, or a "moment of Christian witness", in this regard arises primarily in my view from this testimony of what one believes given to oneself and about oneself. The question of whether others see that testimony is secondary and not always of itself a question of conscience. [I would not, for example, insist on wearing a witness band on my wrist on a hospital ward which has a "bare below the elbows" policy as part of its infection control regime, being happy to remove the witness band before working on the ward and replacing it afterwards.] There is, though, a mutual interplay between the personal nature of this witness and its public nature; it is the wearing of the sign in public that provides the power of the witness to oneself.

[There is a difference here between the Catholic who wears such a sign of witness and an evangelical Christian who might wear exactly the same sign, the difference arising from the ecclesial orientation of the Catholic witness compared to the highly individual witness of the evangelical Christian who lacks the Catholic sense of ecclesial adherence.]

The public profession of the Credo to which Pope Benedict calls the different communities in the Church enters precisely into this dynamic of witness and testimony. It is interesting that Pope Benedict refers to a "public profession" of the Creed. This might, of course, take the form of a Liturgical celebration. But could it not also take the form of a gathering in a public square in a city centre, so that the profession of faith is made in a visible way before others and before the world?

Gay activism and reversed intolerance

2011-11-09T17:53:00.000Z

Alan Craig has posted an exchange of e-mails between himself and and the acting editor of Pink News, under the title Stonewall's Yellow Star? The e-mails make reference to an article that Alan wrote for the Church of England Newspaper, and which he also published on his blog.

I quote from the e-mail sent by Pink News to Mr Craig:

Concerns have been raised that, inter alia, an instruction for people to “rise up” against gay “leaders” could be construed as an incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

I have just carefully read Alan Craig's piece as published on his blog, and nowhere in that piece is there any call for people to rise up against gay leaders. I say that again, in bold, so there can be no misunderstanding: nowhere in that piece is there any call for people to rise up against gay leaders.

This is how Alan ends his piece:

Now is the time for people of courage to rise up and defend marriage, our children and the very foundations of our civilisation.

To attempt to construe this in the way that Pink News are doing involves a certain looseness with the actualite, as one might say. Others might have said this about Mr Craig's piece, but the piece itself says nothing of the sort.

Whilst I might have written the article in a rather different way, I do nevertheless believe that Mr Craig has a perfectly correct analysis in suggesting that gay rights activists are responsible for a reverse bullying and intolerance applied to those who oppose their aims. The archetypal example of this is the one that Mr Craig himself cites in his reply to Pink News - Stonewall's "Bigot of the Year" award.

Berlusconi to go ... and not before time!

2011-11-08T23:25:00.005Z

It is possible for the media to hound a person in public life over events that do not have a direct relation to that person's contribution; and it is possible for the media to do that in a way that does not express the gifts of consideration and charity due towards the human frailty that we all share (but which for most of us does not reach the public domain).

But on the other hand, the ordinary people can legitimately expect "something more" of those who hold public office. One can expect them to demonstrate integrity and a degree of moral decency and, within the range of the charity due towards human failings, to nevertheless offer an example that is worthy of imitation. I think it is putting it mildly to suggest that Silvio Berlusconi has not done this, thereby not only failing to live up to expectations that the Italian people might rightly have had of him but also bringing into disrepute the very idea of public office. News reports of his impending resignation can only be welcome.

La Croix, with the facility of the French language, puts it very nicely with this headline which doesn't really successfully translate into English:

Les Italiens préparent l’après-Berlusconi (Italians prepare for the "after-Berlusconi")

The opening paragraph of their report is as follows - the added emphasis in bold is mine:

Au centre de la vie politique italienne depuis 1994, Silvio Berlusconi, 75 ans, semble plus proche que jamais du terminus. L’incapacité de son gouvernement, contesté de toutes parts, à gérer la crise économique, ses démêlés avec la justice, les scandales de mœurs qui ont entouré sa vie privée lui ont fait perdre sa crédibilité, tant aux yeux des Italiens qu’à ceux des partenaires européens et des marchés.

At the centre of Italian political life since 1994, Silvio Berlusconi, 75 years, seems closer than ever to the end. The incapacity of his government, challenged on all sides, to solve the economic crisis, his troubles with the law, the moral scandals that have surrounded his private life have made him lose his credibility, as much in the eyes of Italians as in those of European partners and the markets.

According to the BBC:

The euro rose sharply against the dollar following the news of Mr Berlusconi's decision.

Len Deighton's Bomber on Radio 4 Extra

2011-11-08T09:19:00.001Z

In recent years, one of the most outstanding pieces of radio broadcasting has been a production of Len Deighton's book Bomber. It combined elements of documentary - interview extracts with those who had experienced bombing, for example - and the story of the book itself. The book tells the story of a night raid on a German city, from its beginning in the briefings on an air base in Britain and on German bases in Europe, to the destruction in the target city and the return of the bombers at the end of the raid. The quality of the production was outstanding, but it was the manner of its broadcast which caught the imagination.

Len Deighton's powerful documentary drama unfolds in "real time" across the day. An RAF Bomber Command attack on Germany is experienced from both sides. Featuring memories from some of the participants in the actual raid. Dramatised by Joe Dunlop, narrated by Tom Baker and starring Samuel West.

The first episode was broadcast at about 2.30 pm, as the raid was being planned. It was then broadcast in three further episodes, spread through the afternoon and evening, so that the action of the raid as it unfolded was matched to the time of day at which it would have occurred. The top of the hour news bulletins in between also ended with a brief reference to the progress of the raid being broadcast, so you got a real sense of immediacy about the story.

When it was first broadcast, I missed the first episode, and caught the second episode by accident - and was then gripped totally until the end of the last episode at about 11 pm. That I hadn't intended listening to it, and that I carried on with my life around the house as I did listen, added to the sense of reality. Radio 4's Feedback programme the following week was inundated with praise from listeners.

This programme is due to be broadcast again on Radio 4 Extra this Friday, so if you have the chance to listen to it, take it. It does not glorify warfare in any way, and, indeed, some of the images that it portrays are quite harrowing. It is one of the most moving pieces of radio broadcasting I have ever heard.

La Salette: a different view

2011-11-07T20:55:00.000Z

Zero and I recently visited the shrine at La Salette. Photographs give the impression that the site of the shrine is larger than it actually is. It is located a 15 minutes twisting, climb up into the mountains, in the French Alps south of Grenoble. On the morning of our first full day, we prayed the events of the apparition by the statues that recall the events (the photograph is not mine, but taken from the page of photographs linked to above).

The second photograph (below) shows the view from outside the shrine on the morning of our return. The movement of the clouds across the front of the mountain facing the shrine made this a fascinating view to watch, with its change of mood accompanying the changes in the clouds. Believe it or not, a small aeroplane had landed and taken off again from the slope that you can see left-of-centre in the photograph, and just above the trees on the slope. The third photograph should enable you to see the sloping landing strip more clearly - look just above the sloping tree line at centre-right in the photograph. The main shoulder of hillside that you can see was, for one day of our stay, home to a flock of sheep and goats - and their shepherd who lived in a house hidden from view.

This fourth photograph (below) was taken in the side valley to the right, where you can see thin cloud along the right hand edge of the photograph above. Two things do not show up well on the photograph. Spread across the near hillside is a flock of some 100 or so sheep and goats - you can see them if you look closely. They had been brought up the valley from their sheepfold (see above) by the shepherd and his three dogs, and they continued on towards the upper left corner of the photograph to spend a day grazing on the upper most part of the mountain. The second thing that does not show up well is the sound of the alpine bells attached to the flock which, literally, filled this valley with a steady musical sound. It could have been a different century!

At the foot of the mountain, in the village of La Salette itself, there is a cemetery containing the graves of some Canadian pilgrims and aircrew. The Canadians were returning from a pilgrimage to Rome in November 1950 when their DC 4 aircraft crashed into a nearby mountain called L'Obiou (I think it might be the mountain hidden behind cloud in the second photograph above). Most of the pilgrims were older in years, and many were married couples. One can just see them having saved up for a once in a lifetime trip shortly after the end of the Second World War. The ages of the aircrew are noticeably younger.

The representation of the apparition at the entrance to the cemetery was made by students from a school in the Vosges region of France, using wreckage of the crashed aeroplane recovered from the mountain side. It was constructed to mark the 60th anniversary of the accident in 2010.

As you will see from my photographs, we were at La Salette at a most beautiful time for colours. I think we were able to see just about every possible colour of leaf as autumn seemed almost frozen at its most colourful.

Year of Faith (5): the idea of a "journey of faith"

2011-11-05T11:32:00.001Z

To describe catechetical programmes, and particularly those associated with the Rite of Christian Inititaion of Adults, as a "journey of faith" has become a common place in some parishes. Different people are seen as being "at different stages or places in their journey of faith". This idea has come to be associated with a reduction in the emphasis placed on doctrinal teaching as part of the catechetical process. Instead of being a person who "hands on" or "hands over" the content of the faith, the catechist is seen as someone who "accompanies others on their journey of faith". From the point of view of doctrine, an unfortunate aspect of this idea is that not accepting certain teachings of the Church can be seen as just being at a "different point in the journey of faith" rather than as being a call to conversion to deeper faith.

There is, of course, an authentic sense to the idea of a "journey of faith", when the word "faith" is taken to refer to the act of the individual who believes and not to the content of what is believed. Then, the journey of faith is one of deepening one's knowledge and love for the Person who is the content of what is believed. The journey is one in the act of believing, not, in the first instance, a journey in or of doctrine itself (though the journey is nourished by doctrinal teaching).

It is in this latter sense that Pope Benedict XVI refers to rediscovering the journey of faith in Porta Fidei nn.1-2(the emphasis added in bold is mine):

The “door of faith” (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime. It begins with baptism (cf. Rom 6:4), through which we can address God as Father, and it ends with the passage through death to eternal life, fruit of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, whose will it was, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, to draw those who believe in him into his own glory (cf. Jn 17:22). ....

Ever since the start of my ministry as Successor of Peter, I have spoken of the need to rediscover the journey of faith so as to shed ever clearer light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm of the encounter with Christ. During the homily at the Mass marking the inauguration of my pontificate I said: “The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.”

Year of Faith (4): the idea of "catechism"

2011-11-03T14:42:00.000Z

In recognising the relationship between the Year of Faith to be celebrated in 2012-13 and the Second Vatican Council, Pope Benedict XVI makes a particular reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The starting date of the Year of Faith coincides with the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Catechism (cf Porta Fidei n.4); and the Catechism has a particular role with regard to defining the content of the Catholic faith (cf Porta Fidei n.11):

In order to arrive at a systematic knowledge of the content of the faith, all can find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a precious and indispensable tool. It is one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council. In the Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, signed, not by accident, on the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Blessed John Paul II wrote: “this catechism will make a very important contribution to that work of renewing the whole life of the Church ... I declare it to be a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and a sure norm for teaching the faith.”

Pope Benedict goes on to explain (the added emphasis is mine):

It is in this sense that that the Year of Faith will have to see a concerted effort to rediscover and study the fundamental content of the faith that receives its systematic and organic synthesis in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here, in fact, we see the wealth of teaching that the Church has received, safeguarded and proposed in her two thousand years of history. From Sacred Scripture to the Fathers of the Church, from theological masters to the saints across the centuries, the Catechism provides a permanent record of the many ways in which the Church has meditated on the faith and made progress in doctrine so as to offer certitude to believers in their lives of faith.

The Year of Faith therefore has a clear import for the manner in which the Catholic faith is taught, be that in the preparation of new converts or in the catechesis of those who are already members of the Church. The Year of Faith represents a call to establish a clear role for doctrinal content in the teaching and living of the faith.

By the end of the Year of Faith, will every parish catechist have become familiar with, if not the content of the full Catechism, at least the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church? And will parish catechetical programmes, particularly those for sacramental preparation, be specified in terms of the questions of the Compendium that they will cover?

Assisi 2011: A decisive stand for human dignity

2011-11-01T08:11:00.001Z

I was away from home at the time of the meeting in Assisi on 27th October. These reports give a summary of the events of the day and a sense of its underlying meaning: Assisi 2011: Card. Tauran on religions building peace and Pilgrims of truth , pilgrims of peace. It has been widely noted that Assisi 3 has not included a time of common prayer - indeed, the element of prayer from the Catholic point of view was expressed at the Vatican on the eve of the day of pilgrimage.

The full text of Pope Benedict's intervention during the meeting is published here, on the Vatican news website. The Pope, to roughly summarise, identifies three key challenges for peace. Firstly, there is a violence that is motivated by religious belief though it is in fact a contradiction of the true nature of religion. Secondly, there is a violence that arises from the denial of God, and the resulting removal of any sense of constraint on the behaviour of a person towards others. And thirdly, there are those who genuinely seek what is true, and therefore ask questions of both religious believers and of non-believers in what is in essence a search for peace. But do read the whole address to get the full sense of Pope Benedict's words.

At the beginning of his address, Pope Benedict referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, an event which took place three years after the first Assisi meeting that was being marked this year. It is interesting to note in this passage the close relation that Pope Benedict draws implicitly between the terms "freedom" and "peace" (my emphasis added in bold):

Twenty-five years have passed since Blessed Pope John Paul II first invited representatives of the world’s religions to Assisi to pray for peace. What has happened in the meantime? What is the state of play with regard to peace today? At that time the great threat to world peace came from the division of the earth into two mutually opposed blocs. A conspicuous symbol of this division was the Berlin Wall which traced the border between two worlds right through the heart of the city. In 1989, three years after Assisi, the wall came down, without bloodshed. Suddenly the vast arsenals that stood behind the wall were no longer significant. They had lost their terror. The peoples’ will to freedom was stronger than the arsenals of violence. The question as to the causes of this dramatic change is complex and cannot be answered with simple formulae. But in addition to economic and political factors, the deepest reason for the event is a spiritual one: behind material might there were no longer any spiritual convictions. The will to freedom was ultimately stronger than the fear of violence, which now lacked any spiritual veneer. For this victory of freedom, which was also, above all, a victory of peace, we give thanks. What is more, this was not merely, nor even primarily, about the freedom to believe, although it did include this. To that extent we may in some way link all this to our prayer for peace.

But what happened next? Unfortunately, we cannot say that freedom and peace have characterized the situation ever since. Even if there is no threat of a great war hanging over us at present, nevertheless the world is unfortunately full of discord. It is not only that sporadic wars are continually being fought – violence as such is potentially ever present and it is a characteristic feature of our world. Freedom is a great good. But the world of freedom has proved to be largely directionless, and not a few have misinterpreted freedom as somehow including freedom for violence. Discord has taken on new and frightening guises, and the struggle for freedom must engage us all in a new way.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell: The Life Scientific

2011-10-25T17:09:00.004+01:00

There is a saying that "the pictures are better on the radio", and I think that this episode of a BBC Radio 4 Programme The Life Scientific is a good example of the saying. I was only able to listen to the first 15 minutes or so before I went out this morning, and have now downloaded the podcast to listen to at my leisure.

If you don't have time to listen to more than the first five minutes of the programme, do listen to that five minutes. It strikingly portrays the sexist treatment that Jocelyn was subject to in the first years of her scientific career, a career that included the "no-Bell" (Nobel) prize awarded to her male colleagues for a discovery that was in essence Joceyln's. If you listen further (to around 11 minutes), you will learn how it was attention to very fine detail - a quarter of an inch of data in hundreds of feet of chart recorder paper, analysed manually - that led to the discover of pulsars for which that prize was awarded.

As I say, the pictures are better on the radio. This programme gives a very nice picture of Jocelyn Bell-Burnell's personality - very clear about what she thinks of her treatment in the early years of her career, but at the same time without any kind of "chip" on her shoulder as a result. It is also fascinating to hear her talking about her discovery of pulsars. The programme also gives a very good picture of what scientific research was like in the days before computers became a part of every day life and before Hubble, describing how Jocelyn helped build her own radio telescope for her PhD and how she had to interpret the recorded observations manually from the chart recorder read out.

Do listen to the whole programme here. This link takes you to other BBC sources relating to the life and work of Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, including her appearance on Desert Island Discs in December 2000.

Year of Faith (3): The "Year of Faith" in relation to Vatican II

2011-10-24T09:59:00.000+01:00

When he comments in Porta Fidei on Pope Paul VI's "Year of Faith", Pope Benedict XVI observes:

In some respects, my venerable predecessor saw this Year as a "consequence and a necessity of the postconciliar period", fully conscious of the grave difficulties of the time, especially with regard to the profession of the true faith and its correct interpretation.

In a similar way, Benedict XVI presents the "Year of Faith" that will commence in October 2012 in a strong relation to the Second Vatican Council. This relation is established in the choice of date for the commencement of the Year, and Pope Benedict quotes Blessed John Paul II to explain it further in Porta Fidei n.5:

It seemed to me that timing the launch of the Year of Faith to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council would provide a good opportunity to help people understand that the texts bequeathed by the Council Fathers, in the words of Blessed John Paul II, “have lost nothing of their value or brilliance. They need to be read correctly, to be widely known and taken to heart as important and normative texts of the Magisterium, within the Church's Tradition ... I feel more than ever in duty bound to point to the Council as the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century: there we find a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the century now beginning."

There can be no doubt about Pope Benedict's commitment to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, or to his belief in the value of the teaching of that Council for the life of the Catholic Church in our own times. Traditional Catholics who might want to read into the Papacy of Benedict XVI some form of retreat from or negating re-evaluation of the teaching of that Council need to take note of this.

Pope Benedict immediately continues, though, and with a footnote referencing his Address to the Roman Curia of December 2005, which contained his account of a "hermeneutic of continuity" with regard to the Second Vatican Council:

I would also like to emphasize strongly what I had occasion to say concerning the Council a few months after my election as Successor of Peter: “if we interpret and implement it guided by a right hermeneutic, it can be and can become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church.”

Can one read the petition coming from a Traditional Catholic background for a "more in-depth examination of the Second Vatican Council" in a way that is compatible with Pope Benedict's vision of the relation between the "Year of Faith" and the Second Vatican Council? As a headline, this petition looks like a challenge to the positive evaluation of that Council expressed in Porta Fidei (though we should note that the petition was published before the announcement of the "Year of Faith"). However, a reading of the text of the petition itself suggests that what it seeks is a detailed point-by-point working out of the "hermeneutic of continuity" and rebuttal of its contrary "hermeneutic of rupture" with regard to the Council. Whilst one might wish to express some caution with regard to the Church politics behind this petition, and to be careful not to promote it as a challenge to a positive evaluation of the teaching of the Council, its substantial content might well provide worthwhile points on which to deepen the Church's understanding of the content of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council during the "Year of Faith".

This and that: mostly about Catholic schools ...

2011-10-23T10:45:00.000+01:00

Whilst in some quarters, the Westminster Diocese's education service is making headlines over its handling of Cardinal Vaughan school, in Twickenham it is the plans to build a new secondary school that are causing quite a different stir: here and here. The exact motivations of the lobby group opposing this proposed school cannot be determined from the media coverage, but there were protest activities against the Papal visit in the same area in 2010. In the context of both of these situations, there is an interesting account on the Catholic Education Service website about Catholic Schools: Mission and Governance. Whilst it notes that

For Catholic schools under the trusteeship of the diocese the Trusts under which Catholic schools are established contain within their objects a requirement to provide education for Catholic children.

it also points out that the Catholic character of such schools is supported in a number of other ways.

And, in a completely different context, another story about Catholic schools: Cardinal ‘fasts’ over court ruling and Hundreds of young people supported Cardinal Joseph Zen on third day of Hunger strike in Hong Kong.

A point made in discussion during yesterday's London event of Aid to the Church in Need was that, since the fall of dictatorial regimes in north Africa and the Middle East, the situation of Christians in those countries has deteriorated. There is a real concern that the new governments that will succeed the dictators will embrace an Islamic fundamentalism that will discriminate against Christians in those countries. Reference was also made to the experience of Christians in Iraq. There is a tempting prudential judgement that it would have been better for Christians had the dictators remained in power. But it really is damaging to Christian testimony when those communities appear as being "sheltered" by regimes whose actions with regard to other citizens are contrary to Christian teaching on the dignity of the human person and the freedom due to each and every person. There is a more authentic witness when Christians are persecuted. I think it is Hans Urs von Balthasar who wrote somewhere that it is the normal condition of the Christian that he or she should be subject to discrimination or persecution and, in consequence, the absence of such persecution should be a cause for an examination of conscience with regard to the quality of Christian witness being given.

PS. The Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign website is here. It is interesting to look at the list of supporters at the foot of the page, as this, and the content of the page itself, gives some context to the "set up and backed by local people" lead.

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof ...

2011-10-22T20:58:00.002+01:00

There is a custom in Europe that, on the Feast of the Epiphany, blessed chalk is used to inscribe the date and the initial letters of the names of the three Magi above the door of your house. Different explanations are offered of the exact meaning of the letters "C+M+B" that are inscribed, one being that it represents the Latin for "May Christ bless this house".

In January of this year, I did this for the first time (OK, the chalk would not write clearly on the paint of the door frame, so I compromised!). This was partly prompted by my frequenting a parish served by priests from Poland and partly by my having neighbours from other European countries. I did think about how I would explain the inscription to anyone who asked me about it, and it is interesting to see where I got to.

I ended up somewhat dissatisfied with explanations such as that about blessing of the house, though the custom does clearly have this aspect to it. They seemed a little bit fanciful, and I felt they were trying to "read into" the practice something that might not have been there in its original inspiration. The fundamental reference, determined because the practice is to place the inscription above the door at the entrance to your house, seemed to me to be to St Matthew's Gospel (Mt 2:10-11, with my emphasis added):

When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him.

One sense of this custom, then, is that every time we enter our own house we are reminded of the way in which the Magi entered the house and worshipped the child Jesus. A second sense is that we are encouraged to make our homes places where, like Mary, we worship God. We might also see it as an invitation to guests who visit our house to recognise and share in these two senses of the inscription. This seems to me the simple, straightforward sense of the practice based in its Biblical source.

But what interests me for the purposes of this post is how the idea of "the house" in the Gospel passage (the house where Mary and Jesus were staying) becomes a different idea (the house were we live today) in the custom of marking our door frames with the letters "C+M+B".

When it comes to considering the new English translation of the Domine, non sum dignus in the Communion Rite at Mass, I think that it is helpful to recognise a similar way in which a Gospel text is used. The new translation makes much more transparent than did the previous translation the reference to the Gospels (Mt. 8:8, with a parallel in Lk. 7:1-10):

Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.

The "under my roof" of the Gospel text (ie the house of the Centurion whose servant is ill, and to which Jesus has been invited) becomes, in the Liturgical text, the "under my roof" of the physical body and soul of the person about to receive the Eucharist, now seen as a "house" to which Jesus-Eucharist is invited. The act of a physical healing becomes the idea of a saving from sin through receiving the Eucharist. Again, I think the Biblical text itself should be allowed to speak to our understanding of how it is used and becomes a different idea in its Liturgical use.

In the light of Andrew Cameron-Mowat SJ's criticism of the revised translation on this point at Thinking Faith, I think it is useful to have some understanding of the dynamic of how the Biblical text is used in the Liturgical context. Since, in the Gospel text, Jesus has indicated that he will come to the house of the Centurion in the immediately preceding verse, the suggestion that the Liturgical text is intended for a situation where the faithful do not as a rule receive the Eucharist seems to me a reading into the text of something that is not there. To go on to argue that the previous translation - "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you .." - provides a better reading for times when many more people do receive the Eucharist is in consequence irrelevant.

Year of Faith (2): inspired by Pope Paul VI

2011-10-21T18:24:00.000+01:00

When I first read news reports that Pope Benedict XVI had announced a "Year of Faith" I thought immediately of the "Year of Faith" celebrated at the initiative of Pope Paul VI from 29th June 1967 to 30th June 1968. That year culminated in the solemn proclamation by Pope Paul of what is now known as his Credo of the People of God. This formed the homily during the concluding celebration of the year on 30th June 1968, and was an extended proclamation of the Nicene Creed used at Mass; Fr Tim gives some idea of its significance in this post. It was subsequently promulgated as a motu proprio. I have on my bookshelves Monsignor Eugene Kevane's Creed and Catechetics which tells the story behind Pope Paul's Credo and provides much documentation relating to the "Year of Faith" and the background controversies in catechetics.
I was therefore delighted to read in Porta Fidei n.4 an explicit reference to Pope Paul VI's "Year of Faith":

It is not the first time that the Church has been called to celebrate a Year of Faith. My venerable Predecessor the Servant of God Paul VI announced one in 1967, to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul on the 19^th centenary of their supreme act of witness. He thought of it as a solemn moment for the whole Church to make “an authentic and sincere profession of the same faith”; moreover, he wanted this to be confirmed in a way that was “individual and collective, free and conscious, inward and outward, humble and frank”. He thought that in this way the whole Church could reappropriate “exact knowledge of the faith, so as to reinvigorate it, purify it, confirm it, and confess it”. The great upheavals of that year made even more evident the need for a celebration of this kind. It concluded with the Credo of the People of God, intended to show how much the essential content that for centuries has formed the heritage of all believers needs to be confirmed, understood and explored ever anew, so as to bear consistent witness in historical circumstances very different from those of the past.

Pope Paul's equivalent of Porta Fidei was an Apostolic Exhortation Petrum et Paulum Apostolos. Reading that exhortation suggests that Pope Benedict has been inspired in a more specific way by Paul VI's earlier "Year of Faith".

Compare Pope Benedict XVI, in Porta Fidei n.8:

On this happy occasion, I wish to invite my brother bishops from all over the world to join the Successor of Peter, during this time of spiritual grace that the Lord offers us, in recalling the precious gift of faith. We want to celebrate this Year in a worthy and fruitful manner. Reflection on the faith will have to be intensified, so as to help all believers in Christ to acquire a more conscious and vigorous adherence to the Gospel, especially at a time of profound change such as humanity is currently experiencing. We will have the opportunity to profess our faith in the Risen Lord in our cathedrals and in the churches of the whole world; in our homes and among our families, so that everyone may feel a strong need to know better and to transmit to future generations the faith of all times. Religious communities as well as parish communities, and all ecclesial bodies old and new, are to find a way, during this Year, to make a public profession of the Credo.

And Pope Paul VI, in Petrum et Paulum Apostolos:

We would be very happy if in every cathedral the Creed were recited expressly in honour of SS. Peter and Paul, in the presence of the bishop, the college of priests, the seminarians and the lay Catholics active in promoting the kingdom of God, men and women Religious, and as many members as possible of the assembly of the faithful. Similarly every parish and every religious house should do the same in the presence of its assembled community. And so we should like to suggest that on a fixed day this profession of faith be made in every single Christian household, in every Catholic association, in every Catholic school, hospital and place of worship, in every group and gathering where the voice of faith can be raised to proclaim and strengthen a sincere adherence to our common Christian calling.

The idea that, on a given day, every Catholic community in a diocese should gather to solemnly proclaim the Creed appears to me a very powerful one.

Year of Faith (1): an opportunity for communion

2011-10-20T17:23:00.003+01:00

Pope Benedict XVI has announced a "Year of Faith", and has published an Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei that outlines the themes that will characterise the year.

The celebration of a "Year of X" has its archetype in the idea of a Jubilee Year and, in our own times, it is the celebration of the Jubilee of the Year 2000, with its preceding three year programme of preparation, that is the most significant such celebration. We have also seen the "Year for Priests", the "Year of the Eucharist" and the "Year of the Rosary".

What each of these different "Years" have had in common is that they represent an exercise of the universal pastoral office of the Successor of Saint Peter. It is an exercise of pastoral office that reaches to the individual members of the faithful - we are all invited to take part in the celebration of the Year - without for all that having any sense of cutting across the office of the Bishop with regard to the faithful of his diocese. These "Years" represent an opportunity for ecclesial communion, of the Bishops with the Pope and of the faithful with their Bishop.

I must admit that I have felt once or twice during the last few months that I was missing the experience of a "Year of X", and was wondering what Pope Benedict XVI would do next in this regard, or even whether the idea of such "Years" had run their course. For all the criticism that has sometimes been aimed at the Holy See's media relations, the "embargo" on the announcement of the "Year of Faith" seems to have been carefully kept.

In my own diocese of Brentwood, where a new Bishop will be appointed at some time in the early part of 2012, the "Year of Faith" seems to offer a very particular pastoral opportunity. A vigorous celebration at the diocesan level of a "Year of Faith" would be a wonderful way for a new Bishop to start his ministry.

Ministry to the Sick: "ordinary" and "extraordinary"

2011-10-18T20:30:00.000+01:00

Evangelical Christianity has its strengths and it has its weaknesses. It can also refer to a range of different realities. There is an Evangelical Christianity that is to be found within the Church of England, for example, which gives to the individuality of that Christianity a degree of ecclesial principle and recognition, a degree of dogma and structured Christian life. And then there is the completely independent evangelical Church, with its self-appointed pastor or pastors, and little or no relation to any other formal Church structure, what one might describe as a completely non-ecclesial form of Christianity.

Pope Benedict XVI commented on the challenge that this non-ecclesial style of Christianity presents to the more established Churches during his recent visit to Germany.

Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss. This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability.

This report of a BBC investigation, and a fuller report here, illustrate the frightening aspect of this type of Christianity, and its utter lack of rationality:

A woman from east London says her friend died after her Evangelical Christian pastor told her to stop taking HIV medication.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said a pastor "prayed with her friend and told her to stop taking her medication".

"She passed away. It was a senseless loss," she added.

At least three people with HIV have died after they stopped taking life-saving antiretroviral drugs on the advice of their Evangelical Christian pastors, a BBC London investigation has found.

It is quite irrational to put to one side the skills of the medical profession with the idea that a prayer for healing can replace medical care, even if we grant that that prayer is part of an authentic charismatic gift. The Christian is called to care for the sick person with their humanly acquired knowledge and skill, as well as in the spiritual realm. The story told in these reports is in very sharp contrast to the situation in Lourdes, for example, where without exception the clinical care of the sick who visit the shrine is fully maintained. The rejection of rationality that the BBC reports suggest characterises this particular Evangelical Church is profoundly inhumane, and that it is undertaken in the name of Christianity makes it all the more abhorrent.

Within the Catholic Church there is an "ordinary" ministry to the sick that comprises, first of all, the engagement of Catholics in the different components of the medical profession as nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, etc and as hospital chaplains and visitors. The second element of "ordinary" ministry to the sick is made up of the Sacramental ministry of the Church, and, in particular, the Sacrament of the Sick. This second element is always in addition to the first, and does not displace it or ask that it should cease. It is a prayer for the healing of the sick person - and this aspect of the Sacrament is perhaps undervalued by many Catholics - but in a way that is accepting of God's will should physical healing not occur. It is certainly not a prayer for healing that is in any way a "test" of the faith of the sick person.

Within the Catholic Church there is also what one might term an "extraordinary" ministry to the sick. This first of all lies in the recognition of miraculous healings, either through the intercession of a particular saint or through the grace of a pilgrimage to a place such as Lourdes. It might be particularly manifested in a novena or campaign of prayer offered to a particular saint for a person who is sick. Secondly, it can lie in a particular gift of healing prayer given to an individual. We should recognise the possibility of this charismatic gift of healing prayer, though due, perhaps severe, caution should be exercised with regards to the claims of a particular person to possess this gift. The circumstances of the exercise of this gift are that it will only rarely receive public recognition by the Church, and healings that occur will equally rarely receive public recognition as miracles. This leaves Catholics with a great freedom in terms of the attitude that they adopt towards these charismatic ministries, some being more accepting of their reality and others being more skeptical. But again, I am not aware of any situations where the expectation is that these "extraordinary" ministries to the sick in the Catholic Church should displace "ordinary" ministry; and particularly that practical medical care should cease in favour of the "extraordinary" ministry.

Assisi 3

2011-10-18T18:17:00.000+01:00

The "Day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world" in Assisi is approaching. My earlier coverage of this event has, if the blog statistics are to be believed, been viewed more frequently in the last week or so.

My two posts are:

"Day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world"

Assisi Three and the question of multireligious prayer

A recent report at news.va - Pilgrims of Truth, Pilgrims of Peace - gives an updated view of the event due to take place next week. It is interesting to see the different Vatican dicasteries that have been involved in preparing the Day.

For the first time there will also be a number of non-believers invited by the Pontifical council for Culture – undersecretary of the council, Mgr Melchior Sanchez de Toca explains why: "It was this Pope's desire to invite some people, non-believers or at least who do not belong to any particular confession or religion.......It may seem a contradiction, but you can find sometimes in non-believing people a spirituality which can help us to examine ourselves and grow in our spirituality"

Unlike previous Assisi events, there will be no praying together in public but rather time for individual prayer and silent mediation during a joint pilgrimage to the tomb of St Francis. Representatives of the world’s religious traditions will then recommit themselves to praying and working for peace in the world...

The invitation extended to atheist philosophers is an aspect of the "courtyard of the gentiles" initiative. Reports indicate that one of the invitees has withdrawn, though this appears to be more to do with the nature of the particular event in Assisi rather than hostility towards dialogue with the Church.

Two translations, two apparitions and the service of God's majesty

2011-10-16T11:07:00.000+01:00

The Latin text of the prayer at the conclusion of Morning Prayer for 29th Sunday of the Year, today, is as follows. The same prayer would be used as the Collect at Mass, if Mass were to be celebrated in Latin.

Omnipotents sempiterne Deus, fac nos tibi semper et devotam gerere voluntatem, et maiestati tuae sincero corde servire.

[My rough translatation: Almighty eternal God, make us always and devoutly to do your will, and to serve your majesty with a sincere heart. BUT: there is a possible translation of "servire" as "obey" and of "gerere" as "celebrate" or "to bear, in the sense of carry". My commas have been placed as in the original, but the placing of a comma before "servire" would then apply that verb to the previous clause as well and indicate more clearly a translation of "servire" as "obey" and "gerere" as "celebrate".]

The English translation provided in the Divine Office:

Almighty, ever-living God,
make us ever obey you willingly and promptly.
Teach us how to serve you with sincere and upright hearts
in every sphere of life.

And the English translation provided in the (now previous - I haven't yet got access to the propers of the new) translation of the Roman Missal:

Almighty and ever-living God,
our source of power and inspiration,
give us strength and joy
in serving you as followers of Christ.

By the time we reach the (previous) Missal translation the connection with the Latin original has become what one might diplomatically describe as "loose", and the detailed nuances pretty much lost altogether. The Divine Office translation appears much more honest as a translation, "willingly and promptly" expressing some idea of "devoutly", "upright" providing a not unfair, though perhaps unnecessary, gloss on "sincere". It's weakness, though, is in the substitution of serving God "in every sphere of life" for the serving of God's "majesty". It is the case that God's "majesty" is served by every aspect of Christian living, both the immediately Liturgical and the generally apostolic. But the idea of serving God's "majesty" is saying more than this, and, whilst it includes the apostolic aspect, it nevertheless suggests a certain priority to the Liturgical aspect.

What has caught my attention is the comparison of the question raised by this translation to aspects of the messages of two Marian apparitions, those at Fatima and La Salette. I was able to visit Fatima last June, and will be in La Salette in ten days time.

The first year of preparation for the celebration of the centenary of the apparitions at Fatima is taking for its theme the apparitions of the Angel that preceded those of the Virgin Mary herself. The words of the prayer of the Angel provide the strap line: "Most Holy Trinity, I adore you profoundly" and are the inspiration of a "pilgrim way" for the year.

At La Salette, one of the appeals made by the Virgin Mary was to respect Sunday as a day dedicated to the Lord and not to treat it just like any other working day. The "beautiful Lady" also encouraged the children to say their prayers with sincerity.

Both of these apparitions contain a call to the direct adoration of God, something that was relevant to the particular context of each apparition and which is still very relevant at a time when Europe is losing its sense of God. In this context the reference to service of God's majesty in the Prayer for the 29th Sunday of the Year has something to say to us, and it is unfortunate that it should be "lost in translation", so to speak.

Let the pupils decide ....

2011-10-12T16:45:00.000+01:00

Now, as someone who teaches Physics, I know that I am somewhat behind the times. If I was really at the cutting edge of the educational enterprise, I know exactly what I would do.

At the beginning of the academic year, in early September, I would sit down with my new AS Physics class and hold an extensive consultation with the students as to what they feel the content of the course should be. The students knowledge of Physics would be sufficient for them to recognise the inter-relation of the different areas of the subject, and to know which parts needed to be taught first as a basis for the later topics. They would also know which parts of the subject were most important for future study and for understanding the world around them. They would even realise that some of the most intellectually "obscure" topics do actually underpin some of the most common technological developments of our time and so, even though they are in all appearance "not relevant", would include them in what they want to be taught.

NOT.

It would be utterly absurd to ask students beginning Physics in Year 12 to determine the content of their own course.

So why should Brook want to do exactly that with regard to the content of sex education in schools, as reported here by the BBC?

Should we laugh or cry?

2011-10-12T16:26:00.001+01:00

The BBC news website is reporting: Over-60s safe sex class in Portsmouth cancelled over 'lack of interest'

The session would have formed part of this year's 60+ festival in the city.

It was advertised as a "frank, fun and factual" event "designed to inform older residents about the truth of sex in later years".

The council said proof of age and Portsmouth residency would have been required by those attending.

I wonder whether Portsmouth council gave any real thought as to whether or not their over-60's population wanted a "safe sex" class before arranging it? Or did they just try to push an agenda onto the over-60's that had little relevance to their genuine needs?

Should we laugh or should we cry?

A Lutheran reacts to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Germany

2011-10-11T16:55:00.001+01:00

At the time of Pope Benedict's state visit to Germany, I posted on two of his addresses, that given to the Bundestag and that given to representatives of the Lutheran church: Benedict XVI: A Pope for Europe and Pope Benedict, Martin Luther and non-ecclesial Christianity. I have since recognised a certain humour on the part of Pope Benedict in the former address. In praising the ecological movement, and by implication the Green Party, he was praising a movement a number of whose representatives had chosen to boycott his meeting with the Bundestag!

First Things have posted a response by an American Lutheran pastor to the latter address. The post indicates that reaction among members of the Lutheran church still retained a certain charitable hostility (and this is not the contradiction it appears if you read the post itself) towards the Church of Rome. This is interesting for us to take note of from the Roman side of the Rhine (sorry, rather a mixed-up metaphor there). As I tried to indicate in my post about this address, I perceive Pope Benedict's ecumenical methodology as being one in which the principles of a non-Catholic theology are taken up and assimilated to corresponding principles in a Catholic point of view, with the intention of achieving dialogue between the non-Catholic theology and a Catholic point of view. If the reaction described in the First Things post is fair, this does not appear to have been reciprocated by some on the Lutheran side. One can see in the post's account a negation of the idea of dialogue among "conservative Lutherans" that is analagous to the similar stance taken by "traditionalist Catholics".

The writer of the First Things post, Joshua D Genig, offers his own appreciation of Pope Benedict's visit to Germany:

He loves his homeland, so he makes his third apostolic visit to Germany in six years (the most of any country except Spain). He loves the dignity of the human person, so he once again spent heartrending time with victims of abuse. He loves young people, so even after a Mass in Erfurt and a flight to Freiburg, he stayed awake long enough to exhort the youth of Germany at a prayer vigil to be the light of the world. And he loves his own church enough that he was willing to bid them to do what would seem to us Lutherans to be the unthinkable for Catholics: to learn from Luther.

Jon Cruddas dropped from Catholic intern programme

2011-10-09T20:45:00.002+01:00

The Romford Recorder, one of my local newspapers, is carrying a report about Jon Cruddas MP. Mr Cruddas, a practising Catholic, is the MP for Rainham and Dagenham, and was due to work with an intern on the 2011-12 Catholic intern programme run by the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. His participation has now fallen through, because of his stance on abortion and gay rights. These views, as stated in the newspaper report, do give a shading to the descriptor "practising Catholic". Even if one might to still grant Jon Cruddas that descriptor (after all, being perfect in the living of the Christian life is not the condition necessary for that descriptor), its implication that Mr Cruddas is a good representative of Catholic participation in public life cannot be granted. It is this latter that represents a problem for his participation in an internship programme which seeks precisely to form young Catholics to be good representatives of Catholic participation in public life.

A spokesman for the Catholic Bishop’s Conference said: “We seek to ensure that their [the MPs on the scheme] views on fundamental moral questions are consonant with those of the Catholic Church.

“One of the MPs we intended to work with this year has views on abortion significantly at variance with the Church’s position.”

Despite the rebuke, Mr Cruddas told the Recorder he will continue to work with the church on a number of local and national issues and said he understood its decision.

“It was just a pity I couldn’t be of help in this instance,” he said. “Simply put, no one likes abortion, but simply outlawing it could lead us back to the days of the backstreet.”

Darinka Aleksic from Abortion Rights, a pro-choice campaign group, said : “We are really pleased Jon stood up for pro-choice.

“There are many pro-choice Catholics. We don’t think his support should bar him from any area of his Catholic duties.”

This last comment is particularly rich!

As a bit of a post-script. Do I think that Jon Cruddas, because of his stance on abortion and gay rights, should be barred from all participation in Catholic events? I do think that it is quite possible that someone who does not hold a consistently Catholic point of view can nevertheless have a contribution to make to developing the Church's work in areas other than those in which they are at variance with Catholic teaching. Working with them on such areas should not automatically be read as giving approval to their differences from Catholic teaching in other areas; but it does need to be clear that they are taking part in the event, not out of any statement of their being a good representative of a Catholic point of view, but rather out of the particular contribution that they can make on the immediate topic under discussion.

UPDATE: This post at Protect the Pope includes some additional material on this topic.

Blessed Chiara Badano

2011-10-09T09:17:00.002+01:00

In September 2010, Chiara "Luce" Badano was beatified. Something of her significance for young people of our times can be found here and in this report of a presentation of her life that was offered as part of the cultural programme of the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid.

Magnificat published the following short account of Chiara Badano's life, under the heading "Saints of Today and Yesterday", for Saturday 8th October. One detail of this account appears to differ from other sources, that is, the description of the initial pain of Chiara's illness being felt in the spine rather than, as other accounts suggest, in the shoulder.

As a child, Chiara Badano, of Savona, Italy, imbibed from her mother a deep love for Jesus and Mary. At the age of nine, she learned of the Focolare apostolate, of which she became a devoted member. Chiara was sixteen when as she was playing tennis she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her spine. It proved to be the first sign of bone cancer. As she underwent a gruelling series of medical treatments, she suffered without complaint. Chiara developed a special devotion to Christ in the mystery of the abandonment he experienced in his passion. During her illness, she spent hours conversing with her mother about her faith. Chiara also experienced the higher states of prayer, finding it difficult afterward to descend "from the heights where I spend my days, and where all is silence and contemplation". She was repeatedly heard to pray in her sufferings, "If you will it, Jesus, I will it too". When on her deathbed a priest brought her Viaticum, she saluted the Blessed Sacrament with the words, "Come, Lord Jesus". Having spoken of Christ as her Spouse, Chiara, nineteen at her death on 7th October 1990, was buried in a wedding gown as she had requested.

The first paragraph of the "Day by Day" meditation for today, Sunday, is then taken from the writings of St Catherine of Siena, and has a happy coincidence of theme:

I Caterina, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, am writing to you in his precious blood. I long to see you clothed in the wedding garment without which I know we cannot please our Creator or have a place at the wedding feast of everlasting life. So I want you to dress up, and to make that more possible, I want you to take off all your selfish ... love.

IEC 2012: Developing the theme (2)

2011-10-06T22:11:00.000+01:00

The Eucharist: Communion with God and with one another is the overarching theme of the Dublin Eucharistic Congress. It is intriguing to look at how this theme is expressed in the Congress Week programme.

One wonders, for example, whether it is adequate to consider Exploring and Celebrating Ministry – Ordained and Lay as one theme given the manner in which the ordained ministry is particularly a ministry of the Eucharist towards the lay faithful. There is a question about the indiscriminate use of the term "ministry" to refer univocally to both the ordained and the lay state. The day might, of course, present this theme in a way entirely consonant with the genuine sense of the overarching theme - the ordained ministry as a ministry of communion and centre of communion for the lay faithful. In a not dissimilar way, it is not clear that the themes of justice and reconciliation, and of suffering and healing, will be developed in a way consonant with the overall theme - though, of course, it is possible that that will be the case.

What I think is of particular note is the theme for the Monday of the Congress: Exploring and Celebrating our Communion through Baptism. The plenary celebration for this day is to be an ecumenical liturgy that celebrates baptism. And the person who will preside at this celebration is the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough. One can ask two questions, from somewhat opposite perspectives, about the choice of a non-Catholic cleric to preside over an event at a Catholic Eucharistic Congress.

1. If baptism, as the first sacrament of initiation, is seen as being oriented towards the last of the sacraments of initiation, that is, the Eucharist, and in particular, reception by the person who has been baptised of the Eucharistic Jesus. If this is so, is it appropriate for someone who is not in communion with the Catholic Church and therefore not in Eucharistic communion with Catholics, to preside at a celebration of baptism that is premised, by virtue of its being part of a Eucharistic Congress, on the orientation of baptism towards Eucharistic communion?

2. Since baptism is the foundation of that imperfect unity that exists between Christians of different denominations, then it appears to be quite appropriate that this celebration of baptism should be ecumenical in nature. Seen from this perspective, the choice of a non-Catholic cleric to preside over the celebration is an authentic challenge to Catholics taking part in the Congress to recognise that degree of unity that does exist. The extent of this unity was emphasised by Pope Benedict during his meeting with leaders of other Christian denominations in Cologne:

I feel the fact that we consider one another brothers and sisters, that we love one another, that together we are witnesses of Jesus Christ, should not be taken so much for granted. I believe that this brotherhood is in itself a very important fruit of dialogue that we must rejoice in, continue to foster and to practice.

Among Christians, fraternity is not just a vague sentiment, nor is it a sign of indifference to truth. As you just said, Bishop, it is grounded in the supernatural reality of the one Baptism which makes us all members of the one Body of Christ (cf. I Cor 12: 13; Gal 3: 28; Col 2: 12).

It is absolutely right that time should be given to consideration of the sacrament of baptism during a Eucharistic Congress whose theme is that of Eucharistic communion. The particular way chosen to do this during the Dublin Congress next June presents an interesting juxtaposition of questions. It is to be hoped that participants and organisers will be sensitive to the significance of these questions for the plenary liturgy on the Monday of the Congress.

IEC 2012: Developing the theme (1)

2011-10-02T14:14:00.002+01:00

I posted recently on the subject of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress which will take place in Dublin in June 2012. In that post, I suggested that there is a discussion to be had about how the overarching theme of the Congress is being developed during the preparation of the Congress.

In presenting the Congress theme - The Eucharist: Communion with Christ and with one another - the official website cites its origins in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council :

Really partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. "Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread". In this way all of us are made members of His Body, "but severally members one of another" (Lumen Gentium, 7).

It is quite appropriate that the theme of a Congress that will take place in the 50th anniversary year of the opening of the Second Vatican Council should draw on a seminal theme of the Council. The page quotes Pope John Paul II:

The church appears in this way as the universal communion of charity, founded in the faith, in the sacraments and in the hierarchical order in which pastors and faithful are personally and communally nourished at the sources of grace, obedient to the Spirit of the Lord, who is the Spirit of truth and love. (Address to the Roman Curia, 20/12/1990, AAS 83, 1991, 742)

The different headings of possible developments of the theme that follow on this same page are, in my view, very helpful, and I can recognise in them some of the aspects of the last International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec, where the theme was The Eucharist: Gift of God for the life of the World.

However, if we turn to look at the first stage of the programme of pastoral preparation for the Congress, I do think there is a question to be raised, a discussion to be held. The website page outlining the first stage theme is here. There is, I believe, an almost imperceptible yet significant shift between what is outlined above about the Congress theme and this statement about Stage 1 of the preparation programme (my italics added, to draw out this shift):

Stage 1 of this catechetical programme marks the beginning of a journey of discovery. It is an invitation to revisit the celebration of the Eucharist and explore it part by part. We start with the Introductory Rite of the Mass, which facilitates the gathering of the parish community. This is the focus of Stage 1.

Instinctively, this seems to me to feel different. And I think it feels different because it represents a kind of reversal of the direction of look. The presentation of the overall theme has a look "from the Eucharist towards the Church"; the presentation of Stage 1 of the preparation programme separates the gathering of the people of the Church from its Eucharistic centre. The gathering of the people is presented in a man-centred way - "the gathering of the parish community" - rather than a Trinitarian-Christ centred way.
As I indicated in my earlier post, I find the choice of icon to represent the first stage of the preparation programme very striking indeed. The question that I think is up for discussion is this: Does the "coming together of the people of the Church" represented by the figures of Mary and St John in the chosen icon really represent the same thing as the rather human "activity of gathering for Eucharist" of the first stage of the preparation programme? In Liturgical terms, does the chosen icon represent the Penitential Rite or does it represent the Communion Rite? If this stage of preparation is going to be reduced to that superficial notion of "gathering" that is the wont of a particularly shallow idea of Liturgy, then I think it will do a great disservice to the development of the theme of the Congress. However, the chosen icon itself has the roots of a much deeper reflection on the nature of communion, ecclesial communion in the first instance as Mary and John's mutual entrusting, but ecclesial communion flowing from Eucharistic communion in the event of the Cross and then turning back towards ecclesial communion in the life of the new-born Church. Now, this does have a movement of looking "from the Church towards the Eucharist", and there is some hint therefore of the approach of Stage 1 of the preparation programme. But the approach of the preparation programme does not complete the representation that is there in the icon of the movement "from the Eucharist towards the Church".

The Theological Document of the Congress explores the elements of the preparation programme in a more detailed way. The section on the Introductory Rites and the Collect (nn.56 ff) does shed some light on the way in which the idea of "gathering" is expected to be treated in the preparation programme. It is worth reading, but does not altogether answer the question being asked by this post.

London's Eucharistic Procession - a great success

2011-10-02T10:04:00.002+01:00

Auntie Joanna reports on yesterday's Eucharistic Procession in London. In the end, I was not able to make it (I still haven't finished moving everything back into my newly installed kitchen!). This appears to have been a great success in every respect - the procession that is, though the new kitchen is also a great success.

Auntie's reports are here, in reverse order of her posting them: There is a really good report...; History was made...; A huge, unforgettable procession ... . The posts contain links to photographs and to other reports, and give a very good feel for what the day was like. The photographs make the weather look very good - but, in the reality, it was probably too good, with temperatures heading towards 30 degrees Celsius.

The photograph above is taken from this flickr photoset, where you can find more photographs.

Film review: The Cardboard Village

2011-10-01T16:26:00.001+01:00

I have just read this film review, and found it interesting. If this film does make it to the UK, I do not expect that it will make general release. So far as I can tell, it is not showing at the London Film Festival.

Where to be on Saturday

2011-09-29T21:42:00.000+01:00

To celebrate the first anniversary of the Beatification of Blessed John Henry Newman, and the 2010 visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain a Blessed Sacrament Procession will take place on Saturday 1 October.

The procession will leave Westminster Cathedral at 1.30pm via Ambrosden Avenue and continue along Francis Street, Vincent Street, Horseferry Road and Lambeth Bridge to St George's Cathedral Southwark.

At 2.30pm there will be Benediction at St George's Cathedral, Southwark.

All are welcome. Come and honour the Blessed Sacrament and witness to the reality of the presence of Christ in London.

The above is taken from the Westminster Diocese website. Westminster Cathedral's website suggests a slightly earlier start time of 1.15 pm.

I am hoping to be able to take part in this Procession on Saturday afternoon (the "moving in" to my newly installed kitchen permitting).

Pope Benedict, Martin Luther and non-ecclesial Christianity

2011-09-26T17:53:00.003+01:00

During his visit to Germany, Pope Benedict met with the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The place of this meeting was the former Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, a location associated with the life and work of Martin Luther. The full text of Pope Benedict's address can be found here.

There are two particular points within this address that I found of note. The first reminded me of Pope Benedict's encounter with leaders of other Christian denominations during his visit to Cologne in 2005. I posted on that earlier address here.

The "strap line" that I used from that address in Cologne:

“The real question is the presence of the Word in the world."

has a resonance with the phrase that Pope Benedict chose at Erfurt to characterise the work of Martin Luther:

“How do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force of [Martin Luther's] whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians?

This later address represents in some way an exemplification of the style of ecumenical dialogue that Pope Benedict in Cologne described as a "small comment", apologising for his expression of a "personal opinion". I find Pope Benedict's willingness to take a prompt from Martin Luther most significant, and, if what Pope Benedict says in his address reflects his general thinking, it is not a prompt just put together for this address but one that influences him more widely.

The second point of note is the reference that Pope Benedict makes to the challenge represented to both Lutheran and Catholic Churches by what one might term non-ecclesial Christianity:

Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss. This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability.

The four weaknesses that Pope Benedict sees in this type of Christianity, and that I have highlighted by adding italics, are interesting. That this form of Christianity is problematical can be seen in my own professional field. It is this form of Christianity that seeks to promote "creation science" or "intelligent design" - both ideas that have little rationality and lack genuine dogmatic content. The problem is that the teaching of a more traditional doctrine of creation gets caught up in the same attacks that secularists then direct at "creation science"/"intelligent design", and an attempt is then made to ban any doctrine of creation from the field of science education.

Pope Benedict's critique of non-ecclesial Christianity is very strong, and so it will be interesting to see how those communities react to his words.

In the midst of these differences, the Pope has stood out....

2011-09-24T09:23:00.000+01:00

How do you put the Pope's return to his homeland into perspective?

This is the first sentence of a report from Berlin posted on the BBC News website this morning.

It is true that there were about 9,000 protesters in Potsdamer Platz, but there were many more participants - more than 60,000 - in the Mass at the vast Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

Compare to about 10 000 protesters in London on the Saturday of Pope Benedict's visit, and 80 000 at the vigil in Hyde Park the same evening. Somewhat the same.

And it is true that some members of parliament did boycott his speech to the Bundestag - but many more stayed, listened and then stood and applauded at the end.

This reminds me very much of the warm applause at the end of the Holy Father's address in Westminster Hall.

After describing the arrival ceremony, the BBC report continues (my emphasis added, because I think this phrase quite perceptively indicates what one might call a Papal uniqueness which is very apparent in visits like this one):

From there, everyone he met seemed like a reminder of the diversity and perhaps the difficulty for a spiritual leader in a secular state: President Christian Wulff is a divorced and remarried Catholic who is, accordingly, not allowed to participate in some parts of Catholic services; Chancellor Angela Merkel is the daughter of a Lutheran priest; Mayor Klaus Wowereit of Berlin is openly homosexual.
In the midst of these differences, the Pope has stood out....

.... the Bundestag is in one of the most historically charged buildings, the Reichstag which was set ablaze in 1933 and then lay in ruins throughout the years of Communism until it was rebuilt as the parliament of a democratic, united Germany.

Pope Benedict stood at the centre of the newly built forum, under the modern dome, and delivered a cerebral discourse on politics and the duty of politicians.

[See here for my own comment on the Bundestag address.]

Benedict XVI: A Pope for Europe

2011-09-23T17:51:00.000+01:00

The invitation extended to Pope Benedict XVI to address members of the Houses of Parliament and other representatives of public life in Westminster Hall during his visit to Britain last year has a very close parallel in the invitation extended to the Holy Father by the President of the Bundestag during his current visit to Germany. And the content of the addresses delivered by Pope Benedict on the two occasions can be very appropriately placed alongside each other, each discussing in a different cultural context and from a different perspective the encounter between Christian faith and contemporary political and social culture in Europe. The full text of the Bundestag speech can be found here, and the full text of the Westminster Hall speech can be found here.

The common hinge on which both addresses turn is that of how we can today find out what is true and right. This in Westminster Hall:

The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.

And this before the Bundestag:

To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains the fundamental task of the politician. At a moment in history when man has acquired previously inconceivable power, this task takes on a particular urgency. Man can destroy the world. He can manipulate himself. He can, so to speak, make human beings and he can deny them their humanity. How do we recognize what is right? How can we discern between good and evil, between what is truly right and what may appear right?

In both addresses, Pope Benedict refers to the limit of the "majority" as a determination of what is right and what is wrong. In Westminster Hall:

If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident - herein lies the real challenge for democracy.

And before the Bundestag:

For most of the matters that need to be regulated by law, the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion. Yet it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough...

The way in which both addresses consider the relationship between religious faith and political and legislative life is also very interesting. On the one hand there is an argument for a rightful autonomy of the political and legislative life of a nation from the demands of religious belief, and on the other hand there is a call for an appropriate participation of religion in the public realm. In Westminster Hall this was expressed in terms of the role of religion in the purification of reason to help inform the discovery of objective moral principles in political life. Before the Bundestag it was expressed in a historical account of how Christianity, rather than proposing a religiously revealed law for adoption by the state, instead pointed in the direction of nature and reason as the basis for the formulation of law. The significance of this insight today cannot be underestimated, facing as it does at one and the same time towards the secularising intent of Europe (which would deny nature) and towards the international growth of the influence of Islam (which, with Sharia law, would deny reason). It also has an important implication for the integrist tendencies of traditionalist movements in the Catholic Church.

Towards the end of his address before the Bundestag, Pope Benedict made an interesting reference to the emergence of the ecological movement in Germany during the 1970's.

Young people had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives. In saying this, I am clearly not promoting any particular political party – nothing could be further from my mind. If something is wrong in our relationship with reality, then we must all reflect seriously on the whole situation and we are all prompted to question the very foundations of our culture. Allow me to dwell a little longer on this point. The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly. Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.

At the time of the Conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, there was talk of an "African Pope" or of a "South American" Pope. Instead, we were given a "Pope for Europe", and these two addresses show just how much Pope Benedict lives up to that title.

POSTSCRIPT: There is a wonderful courtesy contained in both of these addresses, a courtesy that could also be seen as an "omission" from both of them.This courtesy can also be seen as Pope Benedict actually practising what he preaches. It would be a ready extension of his remarks about an "ecology of man" to go on to condemn legalised abortion, but Pope Benedict limits himself to suggesting the direction that reason might take. It is then for those in public office, not for Benedict himself, to take this "purification of reason" and see it through to its consequences in legislation.

Does new Paris "by-law" ban religious processions?

2011-09-22T08:15:00.001+01:00

This report at "defend us in battle" indicates two implications of recent legislation which came into effect in Paris, whose intended aim was in respect of Muslim believers and Friday prayer. The BBC report here describes the background to this recent legal provision, and gives an account of co-operation between Muslim and civil authorities in making available more facilities that can be used by believers for their time of prayer. It should be noted, though, that the introduction of the legislation was prompted by far-right protests. But, if this BBC report is accurate, there does seem to be some prudent co-operation aimed at resolving the situation prompted by those protests.

The first unexpected implication is whether or not this Paris "by-law" legitimises hostility - and the word "hostility" is a diplomatic descriptor of what is described in this report, and in the links from it - on the part of secularist movements towards any public manifestation of religious belief in Paris.

The second implication is whether or not an unintended effect of the legislation will be to ban all public religious events in Paris, such as Marian and Eucharistic processions. These Catholic manifestations of faith were not at issue in the framing of the Paris legislation, but will they now become problematic?

Will any be called Matthew?

2011-09-21T21:48:00.003+01:00

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, announced the recruitment of an extra 2000 tax inspectors at the Liberal Democrat Conference.

More than 2,000 tax inspectors will be recruited to crack down on tax evasion among the wealthiest people in the UK, a Liberal Democrat minister has said.

Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told the Lib Dem conference that this would ensure 350,000 top earners paid their "fair share" of tax....

The renewed drive against tax evasion is designed to prevent the richest people in Britain from hiding the true extent of their liabilities and ensure they contribute to efforts to reduce the UK's huge deficit.

I wonder if any of these tax collectors will be called Matthew?

God of mercy,
you chose a tax collector, Saint Matthew,
to share the dignity of the apostles.
By his example and prayers
help us to follow Christ
and remain faithful in your service.

IEC 2012: an update

2011-09-20T22:39:00.001+01:00

A meeting was held at Brentwood Cathedral Conference Centre this evening to promote interest in the forthcoming International Eucharistic Congress. Sadly, it was not very well attended.

As part of the evening, we looked at images of four icons which are accompanying the journey of the Congress Bell through Ireland in preparation for the Congress. I was particularly struck by the first of these icons, that of Our Lady of Refuge and St John the Evangelist. I borrow from the Congress website the image and the explanation.

The Icon of Our Lady of Refuge and St. John the Evangelist will be based on a 14th Century icon from the Poganovo Monastery. It shows John the Evangelist and Mary as they might have been beneath the cross, evoking the text of John 19:26-27.

This icon will be used to represent stage 1 of the Congress pastoral preparation programme: “Christ gathers us as a Eucharistic community.”

Our choice of this icon is motivated by the idea that it represents the formation of the Church at the foot of the Cross. As St. John Chrysostom reminds us the water and blood flowing from the side of Christ were symbols respectively of baptism and Eucharist. Mary is confirmed as mother of the Church. In the person of St. John, the whole Church is gathered at the foot of the cross. The beloved disciple looks out from the icon, inviting us into this new communion with Christ through Mary. The Icon thus highlights both the Marian and Johannine aspects of the ecclesial community – we are called to be fruitful bearers of the Word and Beloved disciples. "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." (Luke 8:21)

From the presentation at this evening's meeting, I think there is a discussion to be had about the way in which the work in preparation for the Congress, and the proposed programme, develop its theme. I will hopefully post on this in the next few days. Meanwhile, this page at the Congress website briefly outlines the theme, and indicates possible developments of it.

The Congress website now contains a wide range of material relating to the Congress, and is worth exploring.

The Unity of the Church: " ... the fundamental basis for achieving full reconciliation with the Apostolic See..."

2011-09-18T22:11:00.000+01:00

As with the provisions of Summorum Pontificum, I believe that the the text of the "Doctrinal Preamble" provided by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith/Ecclesia Dei Commision to Bishop Fellay of the Society of St Pius X on 14th September is something in which every Catholic has a stake. What it says to the SSPX about the Second Vatican Council, and the attitude that it expects of them towards that Council, will at the same time make a statement about that Council to every Catholic who has in good faith attempted to implement and live the teaching of the Council. If it is conceded to the SSPX that they can in some measure "leave aside" teachings of the Council, then other faithful Catholics are going to be rightfully annoyed, and the purpose of unity that the Doctrinal Preamble seeks to serve will be undermined.

The communique issued following the meeting between Vatican officials and Bishop Fellay is posted here by ZENIT. Before the meeting, there was some talk of Bishop Fellay having been "summoned" to the meeting, but, as the communique describes, the meeting that took place was in reality the outcome of a series of meetings between representatives of the two sides.

While bearing in mind the concerns and demands presented by the Society of St. Pius X about protecting the integrity of the Catholic faith against Vatican Council II's 'hermeneutic of rupture' with Tradition (a theme addressed by Pope Benedict XVI in his address to the Roman Curia on 22 December 2005), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith maintains that the fundamental basis for achieving full reconciliation with the Apostolic See is the acceptance of the text of the Doctrinal Preamble, which was handed over during a meeting on 14 September 2011.

The Preamble defines certain doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine, which are necessary to ensure faithfulness to the Church Magisterium and 'sentire cum Ecclesia'. At the same time, it leaves open to legitimate discussion the examination and theological explanation of individual expressions and formulations contained in the documents of Vatican Council II and later Magisterium.

One blogger titles her essentially sympathetic post about the Doctrinal Preamble Will they submit?, and I think there is something in this choice of title. Another entitles his post SSPX breakthrough in sight. The reality is probably made up of a bit of both sentiments. I think it is important to recognise that, though the Doctrinal Preamble is addressed from the Holy See firstly towards the SSPX itself, it nevertheless has a "reflection back" towards the Church as a whole. I sincerely hope that the Commission Ecclesia Dei has been more aware of this "reflected glance" now than it appeared to have been in preparing the instruction Universae Ecclesiae, which in my view looked only towards those attached to the Extraordinary Form.

An interview given by Bishop Fellay after the 14th September meeting appears to rule out from the Preamble a general distinguishing between the "doctrinal" to which the SSPX will give assent and the "pastoral" which can still be considered still open for discussion. The wording of the communique is very carefully nuanced in this regard.

So I have three thoughts to end with.

1. Since we all have a stake in the content of the Doctrinal Preamble, should it not at some point become the subject of public discussion in the Church rather than just of private discussion between a dicastery of the Holy See and the SSPX?

2. If the rule of faith considered appropriate for those joining the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, and so "achieving full reconciliation with the Apostolic See", is the Catechism of the Catholic Church, why should this same catechism not provide the rule of faith to which the SSPX are expected to adhere?

3. The speculation is that, should the SSPX accept the Doctrinal Preamble, their canonical status in the Church might become that of a Personal Prelature. This might be diplomatically convenient, but I am not sure that it represents the status best reflecting the nature of a priestly society.

The Unity of the Church: ".. ecumenism of martyrs..."

2011-09-18T14:26:00.000+01:00

ZENIT report, under the title "Ecumenism of Martyrs" presented as path to unity, a presentation by Cardinal Kurt Koch, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. This presentation. Cardinal Koch was speaking as part of a round table during an interreligious gathering organized by the Catholic lay Sant'Egidio Community. The meeting was held in Munich.

"Given that today all Christian Churches and ecclesial communities have their martyrs, we must speak of a real ecumenism of martyrs, which contains within itself a beautiful promise: Despite the tragedy of the divisions between the Churches, these solid testimonies of faith have shown that God himself maintains, at a more profound level, the communion of faith among the baptized, attested by the supreme sacrifice of their life," Cardinal Koch reflected.....

"The ecumenism of the martyrs does not only constitute the nucleus of ecumenical spirituality, which is necessary today," the cardinal said, "but it is also the best example that the promotion of Christian unity and preferential love for the poor are absolutely inseparable."

The Cardinal's remarks are made in reference to a teaching of Pope John Paul II, contained in the encyclical Ut Unum Sint n.84 (my emphasis added):

In a theocentric vision, we Christians already have a common Martyrology. This also includes the martyrs of our own century, more numerous than one might think, and it shows how, at a profound level, God preserves communion among the baptized in the supreme demand of faith, manifested in the sacrifice of life itself.The fact that one can die for the faith shows that other demands of the faith can also be met. I have already remarked, and with deep joy, how an imperfect but real communion is preserved and is growing at many levels of ecclesial life. I now add that this communion is already perfect in what we all consider the highest point of the life of grace, martyria unto death, the truest communion possible with Christ who shed his Blood, and by that sacrifice brings near those who once were far off (cf. Eph 2:13).

One of the interesting implications of this teaching is the possibility, at least in principle, that the Catholic Church might canonise, as a martyr, a person who was not a Roman Catholic.

Compare and contrast

2011-09-17T09:53:00.000+01:00

On 17th September 2010 - though it was the Friday and not a Saturday as it is this year - Pope Benedict XVI spoke to a gathering of representatives of public life in Westminster Hall, a gathering that included politicians and representatives of the diplomatic world, the world of commerce, the media, and other areas of public life. This is the occasion during the Papal visit to which I have returned more often than any other. It is certainly the address (text here) to which I have more often referred on this blog than any other of the Papal visit (though I now suspect that the re-organisation of the Papal Visit web site to mark the first anniversary has broken all the links!).

It was significant because it took place amidst a certain hostility towards Pope Benedict's visit. I remember thinking as I watched the event on the live webcast that this was what represented the real welcome being given to Pope Benedict, and not the protests. It was a uniquely generous parliamentary occasion.

I was particularly moved by the way in which Pope Benedict's audience applauded, and kept applauding, at the end of his address to them. There was a real warmth to the idea of this audience applauding Pope Benedict as he moved down the whole length of Westminster Hall.

Compare and contrast.

St Robert Bellarmine on faith and science

2011-09-17T09:25:00.000+01:00

I have a soft spot for St Robert Bellarmine, in part because of his consideration of the relationship between science and Christian faith outlined below, and in part because of the affinity of his stature in the Catholic Church of his time to that of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The account below dates from some work I did in 1997. The principle source for the thinking of Robert Bellarmine is a two volume biography by written by William Brodrick and published in 1928.

In April 1615, St. RobertBellarmine wrote a letter to the author of a book which had defended theCopernican view of the universe, clearly addressing the letter to Galileo aswell. St. Robert Bellarmine fulfilled arole in the Church of his time similar to that of Cardinal Ratzinger in our owntime (ie in 1997). He was a man of great intellectand profound devotion. He was wellinformed about the state of contemporary scientific endeavour and seems to havehad quite cordial communications with Galileo. His letter is strikingly modern, and very concisely presents an answerto the debate as it had come to be presented.

“..It seems tome that your Reverence and Signor Galileo act prudently when you contentyourselves with speaking hypothetically and not absolutely, as I have alwaysunderstood Copernicus spoke..”

This is a reference to the factthat the Copernican view was an interpretation of astronomicalobservations. At least one othersuccessful interpretation was possible at the time, and it is in this sense that theCopernican view represented a “hypothetical” rather than an “absolute”claim. To accept it as a “hypothesis” inthis sense was quite a different thing than accepting it as being the waythings really were.

“..If therewere a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe ... and thatthe Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we shouldhave to proceed with great circumspection in explaining the passages ofScripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to saythat we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which isproved to be true..”

This is the critical passage inthe letter. Underlying it is theconviction that the results of scientific study and the content of Christianfaith are in harmony with each other. When science can offer convincing proof, then it is necessary to lookagain at the way in which Scripture is understood.

“But I do notthink there is any such proof since none has been shown to me..I believe thatthe first demonstration (i.e. that theCopernican view is a workable hypothesis) may exist, but I have gravedoubts about the second (i.e. theexistence of proof that the Copernican view is the way things really are);and in the case of doubt one may not abandon the Holy Scriptures as expoundedby the holy Fathers..”

This is an important balancing ofthe previously expressed willingness to look again at the way in whichScripture is understood. In theseventeenth century there really was not any absolute evidence of the earth’s movementthrough space. In the twentieth centurythere is, and, if he were alive today, St. Robert Bellarmine would accept thatproof and be willing to understand Scripture differently as a consequence.

The decree of 1616, in St. RobertBellarmine’s account of how it was notified by him to Galileo, was that theCopernican view “is contrary to Holy Scriptures and therefore cannot bedefended or held”. In the sense of St.Robert Bellarmine’s letter, this decree still allowed discussion of Copernicusview as a working hypothesis, and this seems to have been the way in which bothBellarmine and Galileo understood it.

Seen in this context, the decreeof 1616 is not unreasonable. However,history has come to see it as a defining moment in the development of a gulfbetween science and Christian faith, with particular ill-feeling being directedat the Catholic Church. This might beaccounted for by the stricter interpretation given to the decree by somechurchmen and by the controversialist stance taken by Galileo, both of whichcombined to lead to Galileo’s trial in 1633. But the inappropriate opposition of science andScripture around which the whole affair developed did not find support amongstthe best Catholic thinkers of the time.

Friday ...

2011-09-17T00:08:00.001+01:00

At Mass this evening, "And with your spirit" definitely seemed to be gaining ascendancy over "And also with you". It isn't a parish where anyone is being difficult and resisting the new translation, but more the fact that some attendees are more attentive to the change than others. But still no use of any Eucharistic Prayer other than number 2!

And then:

Tea and cream cakes.Well, it isn't meat ..... I could claim that this was our "Papal Visit Party", but, in reality it was just self-indulgence. I'm not sure we have quite got the idea of this Friday penance ...

A plain Jane and Eyre time

2011-09-15T22:52:00.000+01:00

Zero and I went to see the new film of Jane Eyre earlier this week. It was worth five stars according to the review in The Times, but we weren't convinced of that (we do occasionally agree on things). We found it a somewhat plain Jane, in which you didn't really see more than slight glimpses of Jane's personality, and in which some scenes that are full of meaning in the original book fell rather flat. It is OK, but not five stars worth.

What struck me most about the film was a feature of its lighting. In many scenes, Jane and Rochester are lit from just one side, so that half the face is lit and the other half hidden in shadow. This has a touch of realism about it - if you are holding a candle in your right hand it will illuminate the right side of your face and leave the left side in shadow - but it was interesting to compare it to the 1996 film by Zeffirelli where no such effect is used. In this earlier film there is a much greater sense of a portrayal of Jane's character, and it seems to be indicated in the greater willingness to film a full face. There were one or two clever flash backs - so that Jane is shown greeting Rochester when it is in fact St John Rivers who has called to tell her about her fortune. This example, I felt, didn't fairly portray Jane's character, suggesting a kind of obsession rather than a romantic love. The music for the sound track is well chosen, but again seems to have the effect of hiding Jane's character and the character of her relationship with Rochester, rather than revealing it.

As the credits began, Zero gave a big stretch and a yawn, and assured me that she had not fallen asleep.

A letter in today's Times draws attention to how different films set the story at different times. The two dating bench marks in the films are the dates shown on Helen Burn's tomb and the dating of the marriage of Rochester to Bertha Mason. Apparently, the new film places the action at a later date than previous representations; and they all place it much later than the timing that the author of this letter suggests is indicated by the internal evidence of the novel itself, which would place it in the first decade of the 19th century.

Sir, Why do successive film directors wilfully misdate the action of Jane Eyre?

A place of reverence or a place of adoration?

2011-09-15T21:25:00.000+01:00

A more philosophical/theological question has occurred to me since posting on genuflections and bows.

We often talk about "reverence in Church", perhaps to decry its lack. In practice, this not infrequently (Oh, don't you love a double negative!) is (and an inversion of word order - I am getting the hang of the new translation!) associated with the question of whether or not people should talk in Church or keep silence. OK, here's the sentence again without comments: In practice, this not infrequently is associated with the question of whether or not people should talk in Church or keep silence.

But is the Church primarily a place of "reverence" or is it primarily a place of "adoration"?

Leaving aside the presence in a typical Catholic Church of the Body of the Lord present in the tabernacle and worthy of adoration, is a Church building in itself a place of "adoration" rather than "reverence"? During the celebration of the Liturgy, yes, the Church is clearly a place of "adoration". But, if a Church building is seen as a sign of the presence of God Incarnate in the world, is that not also the case at times outside of Liturgical or devotional celebrations?

There is a practical implication of this for the attitude of the person who enters the Church, since an attitude of adoration is one in which one will enter the Church to enter into the presence of God, and not just in to a holy place (though one is doing that as well).

And there will be a clear implication for the design of Church buildings. The universality of Christian faith means that it can be expressed in a diversity of architectural styles, and no one architectural style rules over another. But underlying the differences of style, the Church building should represent and foster an attitude of adoration. So, for example, the windows of a gothic style draw us to look upwards as does also the image of the Father above the apse of a more Romanesque style. It is possible for this to be achieved in modern Church architecture, too, though in a different way.

Some of this is reflected in Fr Tim's post A sermon on Church architecture, which reflects on the text My house is the house of prayer (Lk 19.46).

Therefore it is right that our buildings should have a human aesthetic, should recognise the distinction between ground and sky, Church and outside Church, holy place and profane place, earth and heaven.

[Though, being mischievous, and not being a great lover of baroque, I was amused by this sentence which I totally admit to taking out of its context: "Building a baroque basilica is simply an extension of the will of the Lord in celebrating the Last Supper with the greatest solemnity and splendour that was available to Him".]

The question is also one that has an implication for inter-religious dialogue. The Jewish synagogue, with its enshrining of the Torah scrolls, might readily be seen by both the Jewish community and the Christian community as a place of the presence of God and therefore a place of adoration. But what of the mosque? The Muslim community are unlikely to be happy with seeing the mosque as a place of the presence of God, so should the mosque be seen as a place of adoration or more as the place of gathering which, for Christian or Jewish architecture would be an inadequate understanding but which for Islamic architecture might well be a correct understanding?

Of genuflections and bows

2011-09-14T22:20:00.000+01:00

Fr Ray has a post here, along with its comments, that dicusses the relative merits of the bow and the genuflection as "signs of reverence" as the faithful approach to receive Holy Communion standing.

The first question that arises is that of whether a "sign of reverence" is appropriate as you approach to receive the Eucharist. Should we not make a sign of adoration? From a catechetical point of view, the first thing is to be clear in our own minds of the difference between a sign of reverence and a sign of adoration, and, then, to be clear about what we say in parishes about this difference. We might show reverence towards holy objects - a rosary, a crucifix, statues and perhaps particularly within the Church building the altar on which the Eucharist is celebrated. But adoration is given only to the persons of the Trinity, to God. And so we adore the Holy Eucharist, the true Body and Blood of the Lord who reveals to us the Trinity.

The second question that arises is the inconsistency of our practice, both in the strictly Liturgical and in the devotional life of our parishes. The rubrics for the celebration of Mass expect a genuflection towards the tabernacle by the ministers at the start and end of Mass only, and by the priest twice at the Consecration and again just before Communion - so what to do if we pass before the tabernacle at another time during the course of the celebration? So, approaching the altar on which are present the Body and Blood of the Lord, the extraordinary minister ... bows to the altar? bows towards the Sacred species? Which is it that is actually taking place? Is the extraordinary minister reverencing the altar or adoring the Body and Blood of the Lord? And that inconsistency of practice extends to times outside of the Liturgy itself, particularly where the Eucharist is reserved in a tabernacle that is not within the main sanctuary of the Church and where the idea of genuflection almost completely disappears.

Particularly since 2005, when Pope Benedict's catechesis on adoration at World Youth Day struck me as being a wonderful teaching about the nature of genuflection as an act of adoration, I have tried to make of genuflection the two-fold act of adoration of which Pope Benedict spoke: a going down before the God who is our creator and who is so much greater than we are, and an act of union/communion with God. This two-fold movement abolishes any artificial contrast between a so-called "dynamic" understanding of the Eucharist manifested in receiving the sacred species and a so-called "static" understanding manifested in adoration outside of the celebration of Mass. This determines that the act that it is most appropriate to make towards the Eucharistic species and towards the tabernacle is a genuflection, as an act of adoration.

I like to illustrate this new step urged upon us by the Last Supper by drawing out the different nuances of the word "adoration" in Greek and in Latin. The Greek word is proskynesis. It refers to the gesture of submission, the recognition of God as our true measure, supplying the norm that we choose to follow. It means that freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total autonomy, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness, so that we ourselves can become true and good. This gesture is necessary even if initially our yearning for freedom makes us inclined to resist it.

We can only fully accept it when we take the second step that the Last Supper proposes to us. The Latin word for adoration is ad-oratio - mouth to mouth contact, a kiss, an embrace, and hence, ultimately love. Submission becomes union, because he to whom we submit is Love. In this way submission acquires a meaning, because it does not impose anything on us from the outside, but liberates us deep within.

[Within the heritage of the Church there is a style of bow that can also be conceived as an act of adoration - the "profound bow" - but in the usual parish context of England and Wales this would not be the normal act of adoration (which is the genuflection). The "profound bow" is made from the waist, and brings the upper body horizontal - and I have occasionally seen this from a person who for reasons of health is unable to genuflect.]

With the exception indicated in parentheses, the bow is then a sign of reverence, and not a sign of adoration.

My first appeal would therefore be for a consistency in our use of language - we adore the Eucharistic species, and we reverence other sacred objects and, sometimes, persons. We should be asked for a sign of adoration as we approach to receive Communion, and, in the normal understanding of England and Wales, that would be a genuflection; and we should be asked to show reverence towards, for example, the altar in Church, the normal sign of which would be a bow.

And my second appeal would be for a corresponding consistency in practice, both during the celebration of the Liturgy itself and at times outside such celebration. This means always genuflecting in the presence of the Eucharistic species, and not doing anything that makes it appear that a bow towards the Eucharistic species is correct practice.

The outcome might be some considerably less confused parishioners ....

[Postscript: There are, I realise since first publishing this post, one or two situations where the custom is to genuflect, without that genuflection being an act of adoration - but they are situations where the genuflection is associated with the words at that time being said. Within the Liturgy, I think of the genuflection on Christmas Day and on the Solemnity of the Annunciation during the recitation of the creed. In devotional life, I think of the genuflection during the praying of the Angelus. To really get this, the dear person in the pew does need to be aware of the difference between an act of reverence and an act of adoration.]

Middle youth

2011-09-14T12:37:00.004+01:00

"Middle youth" was a term in fashion some time ago to refer, with suitable discretion, to those reaching a certain age.

Middle youth is when

..... a health care professional is complemented by one of her clients because, for the client, she looks like her grandmother ....

..... the builder comments to her about a tradesman who had quoted something like twice as much for the work that he was doing along the lines of "Oh, when they see a little old lady .."

.................. and the October half-term holiday is abandoned in favour of Zero booking in to a health spa for a a long weekend.

Cause for abhorrence, not for pride

2011-09-13T08:52:00.002+01:00

(UK Defence Secretary) Mr Fox will say at an arms exhibition in London he is "proud" that the UK is the world's second biggest defence exporter and that helping the firms prosper is in the national interest. [Source: BBC News]

The teaching of the Second Vatican Council's constitution Gaudium et Spes is that those who enter military service, and carry out their duties in a proper manner, "contribute to the maintenance of peace" (cf n.79). This implies a legitimacy to the reasonable production of armaments to enable them to do that task. It does not, however, legitimise a massive commercial production and export of armaments. In the context of the former confrontation between the nations of the West and the Soviet bloc, the same constitution taught (n.81):

... the arms race is one of the greatest curses on the human race and the harm it inflicts on the poor is more than can be endured. And there is every reason to fear that if it continues it will bring forth those lethal disasters which are already in preparation.

More recently, and writing in the contemporary context, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has observed that (with my emphases added in bold):

Weapons cannot be considered as any other good exchanged on the global, regional or national market. Their possession, production and trade have deep ethical and social implications and they must be regulated by paying due attention to specific principles of the moral and legal order. Among the principles there is the principle of sufficiency, which allows States to possess only the means necessary to guarantee the legitimate protection of their people. [Statement on behalf of the Holy See October 2006]

The Church's social teaching proposes the goal of “general, balanced and controlled disarmament”.[1067] The enormous increase in arms represents a grave threat to stability and peace. The principle of sufficiency, by virtue of which each State may possess only the means necessary for its legitimate defence, must be applied both by States that buy arms and by those that produce and furnish them.[1068] Any excessive stockpiling or indiscriminate trading in arms cannot be morally justified. Such phenomena must also be evaluated in light of international norms regarding the non-proliferation, production, trade and use of different types of arms. Arms can never be treated like other goods exchanged on international or domestic markets....[Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Church n.508]

And referring to some of the types of weapons systems likely to be on show at the DSEI, and likely to be sold to more sizeable overseas markets:

Appropriate measures are needed to control the production, sale, importation and exportation of small arms and light weapons, armaments that facilitate many outbreaks of violence to occur. The sale and trafficking of such weapons constitute a serious threat to peace: these arms kill and are used for the most part in internal and regional conflicts; their ready availability increases both the risk of new conflicts and the intensity of those already underway. The position of States that apply severe controls on the international transfer of heavy arms while they never, or only very rarely, restrict the sale and trafficking of small arms and light weapons is an unacceptable contradiction. It is indispensable and urgent that Governments adopt appropriate measures to control the production, stockpiling, sale and trafficking of such arms [1076] in order to stop their growing proliferation, in large part among groups of combatants that are not part of the military forces of a State.[Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Church n. 511]

When the DSEI exhibition took place two years ago, I was able to take part in the protest vigil that took place the evening before the exhibition opened (see here, and scroll down to the report dated 8th September 2009); the same page reports the protest vigil that took place on 12th September 2011, with Bishop Thomas McMahon of Brentwood Diocese as one of the participants. The Defence Secretary's reported "pride" in the UK's status as the second biggest defence exporter (or, to use a more honest term, as the second biggest arms trader ) is, I believe, at best misplaced and at worst abhorrent.