Tony Blair in Rimini: what is "Faith"?

In his address to the 30th Rimini meeting, Tony Blair speaks of "faith" in a way that has now become customary in public discourse but which has a certain novelty when compared to the way in which the word is used in religious discourse: "Faith", "people of Faith", "the world of Faith", "Faith communities". Interestingly, there is a passage in Tony Blair's address which removes a possible indifferentist understanding of this term (though one could ask whether it treats the different Christian denominations indifferently):

In my foundation - dedicated to respect and understanding between the religious Faiths - I always say clearly: I am and remain a Christian, seeking salvation thru our Lord, Jesus Christ. Globalisation may push people of different Faiths together. But it does not mean we all become of one, lowest common denominator, belief. We are together but retain our distinctive Faith. We respect each other. We are not the same as each other. However, we work together.

The use of the term "Faith" in this sort of way has a certain ambivalence. By the word "Faith" do we refer to the act of believing in certain things, generally seen as religious? Or are we referring to a body of belief, referring therefore to what it is that is believed? In the first of these, the use of the word is essentially undifferentiated in referring to people of widely differing religious beliefs, or indeed, to people whose beliefs might be loosely spiritual but in essence not religious at all. In the second case, the use of the word is still often undifferentiated - but it should not be so. Clearly the different religions have beliefs that differ greatly, so to refer to them under the one word heading "Faith" is to suggest an identity of content that is not fair to the religions themselves. It is to treat religions as a secular phenomenon (a secularist is not going to recognise differences between religious beliefs as being of importance, but simply to put them together as different manifestations of the same phenomenon); and to be fair to religions they need to be treated as religious phenomena. There needs to be an explicit recognition of their supernatural character.

To return to the first of these ways of using the word "Faith", the undifferentiated use may not even be justified here. It is not the case that "Faith" seen as the act of believing is understood in the same way by different religions - the difference in the what is believed has a reflexive kind of effect on the act of believing itself, and how that act is understood.

According to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church we can understand both faith as an act of believing (n.28) and faith as referring to what it is that is believed (n.32) - my emphasis added:

28. What are the characteristics of faith?
Faith is the supernatural virtue which is necessary for salvation. It is a free gift of God and is accessible to all who humbly seek it. The act of faith is a human act, that
is, an act of the intellect of a person - prompted by the will moved by God - who freely assents to divine truth. Faith is also certain because it is founded on the Word of God; it works “through charity” (Galatians 5:6); and it continually grows through listening to the Word of God and through prayer. It is, even now, a foretaste of the joys of heaven.

32. In what way is the faith of the Church one faith alone?
The Church, although made up of persons who have diverse languages, cultures, and rites, nonetheless professes with a united voice the one faith that was received from
the one Lord and that was passed on by the one Apostolic Tradition. She confesses one God alone, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and points to one way of salvation. Therefore we believe with one heart and one soul all that is contained in the Word of God, handed down or written, and which is proposed by the Church as divinely revealed.

There is a certain contradiction between Tony Blair's assertion of his Christian faith, as cited above, particularly if we imply that as referring to Roman Catholic belief, and his continued use of the term "Faith" in an undifferentiated way. There are also curious references in his address to "our Faith" and "our Church", into which it might be possible to read to much, but which would not be out of place in a secularised understanding of religious believing.

Towards the end of his address, Tony Blair offers what might be seen as his definition of what faith is. He refers to the role of Faith as representing God's Truth to the world, "Faith as the salvation of the human condition ... Faith as purpose in life. Faith, not as a mystery we seek to solve; but Faith as a mystery which expresses the limitations of the human mind". One can see something of the Compendium's description of faith as a full surrender of ourselves to God (n.25), but again, perhaps not. And Tony Blair's appeal for the voice of the Church to be heard in the world contains a persisting sense of the ambivalence of the usage of the word "Faith":

That is why the voice of the Church should be heard. That is why it should speak confidently, clearly and openly. Because within any nation and beyond it, in the community of nations, the voice of Faith needs to be and must be heard.

Tony Blair in Rimini: religion in China

At the beginning of his recent speech to Communion and Liberation's Rimini meeting, Tony Blair described a recent visit he had made to China, one of, he said, many visits to a country that holds endless fascination for him.

But, as ever, what I came away with was more than I expected. I also discussed healthcare reform and how China seeks to develop its own welfare state. They are grappling precisely with the relationship between the person, the state and the community and coming up with some interesting and radical solutions that might surprise us. They are studying what we have done, what we have got right and what we have got wrong. They are acutely aware of the balance between the state and the need for individual responsibility, between universal provision and competition. They will do it, of course, in a Chinese way, but the dilemmas and choices in policy we would recognise instantly.

One aspect of Chinese policy is enforced abortion where a couple already have one child. This is clearly a policy approach which involves a totalitarian praxis with regard to the relation of the individual and the state. It is very different than the impression created by Tony Blair's account. Aid to the Church in Need's publication Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for the Faith 2007/2008 reports the forced abortion of the child of the wife of a Christian pastor in China, and of other unborn children (p.26). "They will do it, of course, in a Chinese way .."?

However, there was something else that excited me. I know relations between China and the Church remain difficult for obvious reasons, though I hope in time these can be resolved. But listening carefully to the speeches on the environment, hearing the way they describe the relationship between the individual and government, society and the state, I was struck at how, increasingly, China is developing a narrative about its future that draw heavily on its culture, on its civilisation now thousands of years old, and on its Faith traditions and philosophy: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism. Several people I met talked openly of their Faith and yes, some were Christians, part of a growing Christian movement.

Tony Blair acknowledges "difficult" relations between the Chinese authorities and the Catholic Church; but again one wonders whether the optimistic impression he conveys really does match what is going on on the ground. The "Q and A" compendium that accompanied Pope Benedict XVI's letter to Chinese Catholics in May 2007 contained the following:

5. What is the Holy Father’s vision for a dialogue between the Holy See and the Chinesegovernment?
..... the solution to existing problems cannot be pursued via an ongoing conflict with the legitimate civil authorities; at the same time, though,compliance with those authorities is not acceptable when they interfere unduly in matters regarding the faith and discipline of the Church. The civil authorities are well aware that the Church in her teaching invites the faithful to be good citizens, respectful and active contributors to the common good in their country, but it is likewise clear that she asks the State to guarantee to those same Catholic citizens the full exercise of their faith, with respect for authentic religious freedom (4.7).

Aid to the Church in Need's report indicates that the authorities in China have abandoned Marxist views that religious practice will die away, and so are increasingly seeking support from faith groups for community projects. Christianity, however, represents a particular concern for the authorities, with the communist party anxious at statistical evidence that it is the fastest growing religion in China. Among a range of specific instances of persecution of Christians in 2007/8, the report details the very extensive steps taken to suppress the Catholic pilgrimage to Sheshan on 24th May 2008. Only 80 out of 1 000 planned pilgrims from Hong Kong, for example, were able to travel to Shanghai, where they were prevented from celebrating Mass in churches and prevented from travelling to Sheshan itself.

All of this raises three questions with regard to Tony Blair's remarks about China:

1. Does Tony Blair's experience represent an accurate account of the real position of religious belief and practice in China? In particular, does it accurately represent the position of Christians in China? Are the authorities saying one thing in public, but continuing to do another on the ground?

2. Does the emergence of religion into the language of Tony Blair's encounters in China represent the guarantee of the "full exercise of their faith and respect for authentic religious freedom" which Pope Benedict XVI requests for Catholics? Or are we seeing instead a kind of co-option of religions into the purposes of a Communist state (rather in a kind of parallel to the co-option of the idea of a market economy into the same purposes - Leninism is thoroughly pragmatic)? Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, is of its nature much less readily co-opted than the other religions to which Tony Blair refers, so is its ommission from his remarks an accident? [As an aside, one gets a feeling reading Tony Blair's remarks of the situation that arose during the detente era in Europe, where advocates of peace and compliant religious believers were feted by Soviet authorities who continued to persecute Christian believers.]

3. Is Tony Blair, even as a representative of his Faith Foundation, an appropriate representative of the dialogue between religions and religious belief and the Chinese authorities? It would be unfortunate, for example, if the Chinese authorities were to see him as a kind of substitute partner in dialogue with Catholics when the real partner with whom they need to enter into dialogue is the Holy See.

UPDATE:
More recent reports of anti-religious persecution in China can be found here and here, at the website of Christian Solidarity Worldwide. This link takes you to CSW's report of anti-Christian persecution in the run up to the 2008 Olympic Games. Aid to the Church in Need's reports can be found here and here.

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation - treating religions as secular?

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme last night about Tony Blair and the work of setting up his Faith Foundation. The programme can be heard online, and is due for a repeat broadcast on Sunday at 17.00 (UK time).

One impression I took away from the programme was that there is a real sense in which religious belief comes "second" in the project of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. I do not intend by this any suggestion of hypocrisy in the project; the programme did communicate the sense that Tony Blair has a strong and personally genuine commitment to the project. However, key to the whole idea of the project is an idea of "people of faith coming together in the service of progress" [I cite from memory, but Tony Blair uses a phrase like this early in the programme]; that if people of "faith" come together on practical projects such as fighting malaria and working for the Millennium Development Goals, then progress and harmony will be encouraged. In the principle underlying the Foundation, there is a complete abstraction from the specificness of the different religious beliefs held by the participants in favour of common action, and common action on goals that themselves lack a specifically religious content.

There was an interesting observation in the programme from a student at Yale University, who is following the course on faith and globalisation on which Tony Blair teaches. What he found interesting and challenging in following the course was the question of working out how he, with his Muslim faith, could live in the modern world. This, of course, inserts into the discussion a reference to a specific religious belief, which is precisely what the principle underlying the Foundation tries to leave aside.

I think Tony Blair, throughout the programme, refers only to "faith" and not to "religion" or to "religions". We are talking about the question of "inter-faith". And this is expressed, too, in the title of the Foundation: the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. I recall, soon after Tony Blair was first elected as Prime Minister in 1997, reading about the "new left" project, of which "new Labour" was the manifestation in the United Kingdom. Roughly speaking, this project is one of economic conservatism combined with social liberalism - and, seen in the context of Leninist pragmatism, it is more left-wing than may be commonly appreciated. One of the books I read at that time was Anthony Giddens The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Anthony Giddens was at the time, I think, one of Tony Blair's gurus (for want of a more suitable term). And he is a sociologist - this not meant as an insult. I do not think his book makes any reference to the part that religious communities can play in society. However, during the Radio 4 programme, Tony Blair comments that he had felt that the question of "inter-faith" was an important part of the situation from early in his political career, and I found this particularly interesting.

It is interesting to place this observation alongside the project of the "new left" of which Tony Blair is an archetypal figure, and to then re-read the project of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in that light. Can we see religious belief being "co-opted" in the service of an essentially sociological/secular agenda? In which case the adoption of the language of "faith" and "inter-faith" rather than that of "religions" and "inter-religious" does communicate something of significance. Is it the "new left" agenda that is coming first and the question of religious belief that is coming second in the principle underlying the Foundation? Is there a spectacular failure to recognise religion as religious, and instead a reduction of religion to the sociological and political alone?

I think Pope Bendict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est provides us with a message of caution for any engagement that Catholics might have with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. As Cardinal Cordes pointed out during his visit to Britain, Pope Benedict deliberately placed the consideration of God as love before his consideration of the pastoral and charitable activity of the Christian in the Church. And he pointed out that it is not possible to separate the pastoral and charitable activity of the Church, and of Christians in the Church, from its alignment to the manifestation of the love of God. The abstraction from the specificness of religious belief, precisely as religious, that is in its relation to God and how we come to know God, that underlies the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is not permissible for the Catholic. For other religions, I would suspect that the same applies.

The problem does come very much to the fore if the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is looked at from the point of view of specific elements of Catholic teaching. John Smeaton has posted on this: here and here.

Tony Blair does not teach the Catholic faith

The BBC News website reports Tony Blair's interview with Attitude under the title "Blair questions Papal gay policy"; and The Times reports it under the title "Tony Blair tells the Pope: you're wrong on homosexuality".

The two headlines, of course, each disguise a hidden assumption. The first disguises an assumption that the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality has the nature of a "policy", in a political sense, a "policy" that can be changed. It isn't a "policy"; it is Catholic teaching; doctrinal teaching on faith and morals, to use a quite unambiguous turn of phrase. It is expressed as follows in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the most comprehensive presentation of Catholic faith:

Tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered'. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual compementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.... Homosexual persons are called to chastity.

And, one might add, equally called to chastity (in the sense of abstention from sexual activity) by Catholic teaching are those of any sexual orientation who are not married. I am sure that, somewhere on this blog, I have posted along the lines that the question of a correct understanding of male/female sexual complementarity is not just a matter of morals, but also a matter of theology. It is present in how the nature of the Church (female, bride of Christ) is understood in relation to her spouse (Christ, the bridegroom, male). But I can't find that post at the moment!

And the second headline, though it seems to admit that we are dealing with a teaching rather than a policy, assumes that Tony Blair is allowed to define what is and what is not Catholic teaching. Which he isn't. It should be quite clear now, and the evidence is there in Tony Blair's own words: his views on homosexuality are not compatible with Catholic teaching.

Two clear consequences follow:

1. Tony Blair should not be allowed to be seen as in any way a spokeseman for the Catholic point of view on matters related to homosexuality. The teaching office of the Bishop seems to be a most appropriate vehicle for achieving this.

2. Tony Blair's Faith Foundation should not be seen as representing in any way a collaboration with the Catholic Church. Since its founder is not being true to Catholic teaching - and, one assumes, fidelity to other religious traditions is not going to be a feature of the work of the Foundation - then it should not be seen as a genuine dialogue between the different religions. It will be a forum for liberal religion. As a real exercise in inter-religious dialogue it is a dead duck, and needs to be seen as such. This could be seen by prominent Catholics simply steering clear of the Foundation and not allowing it to be given any credibility.

UPDATE: A more detailed comment on the interview itself, and links to other media coverage, can be found at The Hermeneutic of Continuity under the title "Blair openly attacks the Pope".

Newsweek on Tony Blair

The American magazine Newsweek published an article on its website on 13th December (in the print edition of the magazine 22nd December), entitled "The Double Life of Tony Blair". The tone of the article is intended to be sympathetic to Mr Blair, and I make the assumption that it accurately represents his position as discerned by Newsweek's interviewer.

Now officially Catholic, Blair continues to eschew orthodoxy. Though a devout believer, he stands in opposition to his pope on issues like abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research and the rights of gay people to adopt children and form civil unions. "I guess there's probably not many people of any religious faith who fully agree with every aspect of the teaching of the leaders of their faith," he says.

The latter observation represents an enormous assumption on Mr Blair's part, as one's perception of how many Catholics are faithful to Catholic teaching, for example, may well depend on which journals you read, which news releases you choose to take seriously and which type of Catholic circles you move in. But I think what this paragraph in the Newsweek article clearly indicates is that Mr Blair cannot and should not be considered as an authentically Catholic voice in the issues concerned. Some may like what he is saying and doing, but it cannot be considered Catholic.

Discussing the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the Newsweek article says in part:

"To me what is important is that the whole faith area gets some what I would call muscularity, and certainly strategy." What, then, of the inherent tensions in his endeavor? For at its root, "interfaith understanding" runs counter to any religion's understanding of itself as the best or only path to God. Blair firmly says he wants to put doctrinal issues aside. Religious people must recognize "that other people feel that they have the one true faith, and you see how you can come together." Beyond this, he won't expand.

I think that Newsweek's interpolation that "interfaith understanding is counter to a religion's self understanding as the best or only path to God" is inaccurate - it is careless in the way it states the idea of truth in religion, and in religions, and it shows a lack of any real understanding of the idea of "dialogue". It does, however, raise the question of dialogue quite clearly. If Mr Blair wants to "put doctrinal issues aside", though, he will not promote interfaith understanding. Such an approach might be attractive to people of vague and unclear, or even no religious beliefs; but it is not "interfaith understanding".

Newsweek included a beautiful phrase in their report:

In a way, Blair's foundation is the culmination of his life as a double agent....All this work comes out of Blair's conviction that as globalization pulls the world and the people in it closer together, religion could pull us apart. "We have an obligation to present spiritual faith as something that is positive and progressive and solves problems and does good, rather than something that people only read about because people are killing in the name of it," he says.

One can detect elements of the pragmatic, New Left enterprise in the references to "progressive" and to "solving problems". And, as someone who has taken a public stand on one of the issues mentioned in the Newsweek article, it is good to see the rather different approach of Mr Blair being seen for what it is.

International Eucharistic Congress: you can meet some interesting people on a pilgrimage

There were times during the Congress - usually as the weather decided that it was going to pour down on us yet again, as it did with regularity and severity throughout the week - when the phrase "well, it is a pilgrimage" came resignedly to the lips. And part of being on a pilgrimage is that you can have some interesting encounters during the journey - regular visitors to Lourdes will probably be familiar with this experience.

I briefly met Fr Jean Picher, the priest who was the Secretary General for the Congress, as we registered at the beginning of the Congress. I realised I had missed a trick and decided that, if I saw him later in the week, I would give him a copy of the programme for our parish's Forty Hours Adoration (the theme was that of the Congress itself, and the sub-themes for each day were taken from the icons of the Ark of the New Covenant). I did get the chance to do this, and Father's response, slow and deliberate was: "I am glad to see that the English pray". It took me a few moments to think up a reply to this, and translate it into French: "We need to pray!".

On some days of the Congress I took part in the "ateliers d'approfondissement". These, in plain English, were the discussion groups on the themes of the catecheses - the French does sound more elegant, though. One lady in the group I was in is active in a parish in central Canada. During the discussions she started talking about work she does with children who have made their First Communion, trying to get them to come to Eucharistic Adoration. In other words, out of some 10 000+ Congress participants, I had ended up sat next to a lady who does exactly the same sort of thing with Adoration for children and families in her parish that I do in my own parish! A couple of others in the group had travelled from Vancouver to Quebec for the Congress - which is pretty much the same distance as from London to Quebec. What impressed me, though, was that they had taken that much trouble to travel to the Congress even when they were not able to stay for the whole week, needing to return home on the Thursday to be back at work on the Friday.

Our lunches were packed lunches that we collected from tents as we left the Congress Mass each day. Congress participants were then encouraged to scatter across the site of the conference venue to a number of different tents where there were tables and chairs to eat your lunch. [We did adopt the strategy of having emergency rations with us, as on one or two days the contents of the packed lunch were a little "unusual".] Each tent was named after an apostle - to help with setting up meeting points. On the Tuesday I ended up spending the second part of my lunch talking with a lady and a priest from a Ukranian Byzantine Rite diocese in Canada. There are five Ukrainian dioceses (in communion with the Pope, and celebrating the Liturgy according to the Byzantine Rite) in Canada. It was interesting to learn about how these communities first came to Canada around the turn of the 20th century, at a time when there was a great move to develop the agricultural potential of central and western Canada, a development made possible by the growth of railways. So central/Western Canada is where they settled, as farmers. The lady I was speaking to has kept the farm her parents owned as a kind of memorial/tribute to them, though she does not farm the land. By the time we got to the end of the conversation, I had worked out that the priest was in fact the Bishop of the diocese ... The following day, the Congress Mass was celebrated in the Byzantine Rite, apparently the first time the Byzantine Rite dioceses had celebrated in this way for a major Catholic event, and they were very enthusiastic about having the opportunity to do so.

I had a couple of conversations with people about Tony Blair, who seemed to be viewed quite favourably by Canadians, partly as a result, I think, of a rosy view of his reception into the Catholic church. I tried my best to disperse the aura of sanctity which seemed to surround him - it got a bit tricky trying to explain, in French, that fund raising for Stonewall wasn't a very Catholic thing to be doing.

At the beginning of the closing Mass, because I was near the front to do a reading, I was within 10 m or so of the dignitaries. The chief among these was the Governor General of Canada - "the representative of our Queen - and your Queen - in Canada" as one of the team looking after the readers put it to me. I am afraid I rather suffer from severe indifference towards the monarchy as an influence for good in our society, so I was quite surprised by this strong sense of the position of the Queen in relation to Canada and to me. Sadly, my relative indifference probably communicated itself to the priest who said this to me.

Tony Blair supports Stonewall on the same day as he lectures on faith

St***wall (I try not to namecheck them!) is the most prominent LGBT activist organisation in the UK. What follows is taken from St***wall's website, from a news release dated 4th April 2008 It refers to St***wall's Equality dinner held on 3rd April 2008. h/t to Mulier Fortis. The emphasis is mine.

"Sir Ian McKellen gives keynote speech at fundraising gala 'Tea with Tony' fetches £20,000
....
Sir Ian McKellen, a co-founder of Stonewall, gave a rousing keynote speech about the charity's 'tireless work for equality', paying tribute to Stonewall's 'fantastic team'. He recalled: 'We were part of a historic initiative, that little group in which gay men and women took things into their own hands.' He shared with the 540 guests that he had visited Tony Blair on behalf of Stonewall three months before his election as Prime Minister. 'I reeled off Stonewall's demands, and he nodded, wrote them down and put a tick by them all. Then he said we will do all that.' ...

"Auctioned at the Dinner were a range of items .... The opportunity to have tea with Tony Blair secured a bid of £20,000. All funds raised will go towards Stonewall campaigns such as Education for All, tackling homophobic bullying from Britain's schools."

Well, now we have a public admission of the extent of the influence of gay activists on the Blair government.

On 3rd April 2008, Tony Blair is lending his name to funding raising for a gay activist organisation. [And, just to make clear, St***wall are actively promoting a policy of 'removing heterosexist assumptions' from the work of schools under the name of "equality" - ie demanding that schools, and society in general, treat LGBT lifestyles as absolutely equivalent to heterosexist lifestyles. This is not just about fairness of treatment for LGBT people, it is about working for an ideological change in our culture, an ideological change that is not compatible with Catholic teaching. A possible justification that supporting St***wall is about supporting fairness, without condoning the LGBT concept itself, just does not hold water.]

On 3rd April 2008, Tony Blair is lecturing on "Faith and Globalisation" at Westminster Cathedral, and observing that

"If you are someone ‘of faith’ it is the focal point of belief in your life. There is no conceivable way that it wouldn't affect your politics".

I have real difficulty with this. How can someone, on the same day that they are saying that they are a man of faith (and in this case the faith involved is the Roman Catholic faith) be lending their support to an organisation that profoundly opposes the teaching of that faith? I really can't get it.

Tony Blair "Faith and Globalisation": some comments on a transcript

A transcript of Tony Blair's lecture, the first of this year's Cardinal's Lectures on Faith and Life in Britain, can be found on the website of the Archdiocese of Westminster. I believe there are several points of interest in the transcript. I am going to avoid commenting adversely on Tony Blair's previous record as a Member of Parliament and as Prime Minister (bar one quick comment) - LifeSiteNews is probably carrying the best comment of this type. I am not going to comment, either, on the aims outlined for his Foundation on inter-faith relations - perhaps someone else will comment on that for me. I am sure too that other comments could be made than mine. Fr Tim has some comments that are worth adding to mine, as has Rita.

1. Tony Blair rejects religious indifferentism, and does so explicitly.

"Even if by far most religious people are not prone to the use of terror, at least not nowadays, there are extremists in virtually every religion. And even where there is not extremism expressed in violence there is extremism expressed in the idea that a person’s identity is to be found not merely in their religious faith, but in their faith as a means of excluding the other person who does not share it. Let me be clear. I am not saying that it is extreme to believe your religious faith is the only true faith. Most people of faith do that. It doesn’t stop them respecting those of a different faith or indeed of no faith." [my emphasis]

And commenting on his Foundation, Blair insists that "It is not about losing our own distinctive faith". Where Tony Blair here uses the term "extreme" would others use, pejoratively, the term "fundamentalist"?

Now, it does not take a lot of imagination to see where this principle could be applied in contemporary British society. It is not extreme for the Catholic Church to hold to its official teaching on homosexuality, or to expect the education offered in its schools to be in accord with Catholic moral teaching, most especially with regard to sexual and marital ethics. And this should not be read as lack of respect for those who have different views on these matters.

Though it might have been nice if Tony Blair had been willing to draw the conclusion himself ... But see point 7 below, which might indicate that Tony Blair would not want to apply his principle at the level of specific beliefs.

2. Tony Blair recognises that charitable activity undertaken by religious believers is rooted in their religious faith.

Tony Blair gives a wide ranging list of religious initiatives for justice and the relief of poverty, and then observes:

"For all these actors faith is not something incidental to their actions. It is the wellspring of them, the font, the origin, the thing that makes these people who they are and do what they do ... They believe that they act as instruments of God's love when they perform such actions." [Again, my emphasis.]

This is a theme more fully developed in Part II of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est. Christian charitable activity is not just a work of welfare that could be left to others but a living practice of God's love for others arising from the very nature of the Church; it is an essentially religious activity and not a secular one. If my memory serves me correctly, Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes of the Pontifical Institute Cor Unum has been making the point that Catholics engaged in charitable activity cannot leave their religious faith out of their commitment to charity.

Again, one can see points where this principle has consequences in contemporary Britain. Catholic charities should have the freedom to carry out their activities in ways that are in accordance with the teaching of the Church. Catholic health care facilities (and, indeed, Catholic individuals working in health care facilities) should not be forced to provide contraceptive and abortion services that conflict with Catholic teaching. Catholic adoption agencies should not be presented with the choice either to place children with gay or lesbian couples or to close down. The charitable activity of these institutions cannot be separated from their religious belief in such a way.

Again, it might have been nice for Tony Blair to draw the conclusion himself ... But, again, see point 7 below, which might indicate that Tony Blair would not want to apply his principle at the level of specific beliefs.

3. Tony Blair very usefully presents religion as a force for good in history.

Whilst recognising that there have been times, places and people where religious faith has not been for the good, Tony Blair does give a long list of examples of organisations and activities where religious believers have made a contribution for the good. One might find his inclusion of "the radical and brave liberation priests of South America" in the list a bit undiscriminating, but the reference to "those that in their thousands and hundreds of thousands work in the poorest, most disease-ridden, conflict ravaged parts of Africa this day and every day" seems to show an understanding of the sheer scale of religious engagement in charitable activity.

And, in reaction against militant secularism, he writes:

"But let us also recall for a moment the evils of the 20th century done in the furtherance of political ideology; fascism and the holocaust; communism and the millions of Stalin's victims. And recall how the heroic defiance of those evils was often led by men and women of faith".

4. Tony Blair touches on the question of the relationship of faith and reason.

"I see Faith and Reason, Faith and Progress, as in alliance not contention" [Upper case as used in the transcript.]

"Yet for most people of faith, religious belief is quintessentially about truth. So, science and faith, reason and faith should never be seen as opposites but as bedfellows."

"Faith is a living and growing belief, not stuck in one time in history, but moving with time, with reason, with knowledge, informed by scientific and technological discovery not in antithesis to it, as well as directing those discoveries toward humane ends. Faith is not something separate from our reason, still less from society around us, but integral to it, giving the use of reason purpose and society a soul, and human beings a sense of the divine"

Ifeel there are two weaknesses. The apparent equation of "reason" with "progress", and "reason" with "science" makes one wonder what Tony Blair is trying to denote by the word "reason", and this is only partly lifted when he goes on to see faith as giving purpose to the use of reason. Reason is used in fields of study other than science. And, because there is no distinction made in his comment between different religions, the fact that religions are not uniform in their ability to form a synthesis of modern science with their religious belief is skated over.

It is interesting, nevertheless, that Tony Blair felt it useful to include these references to the relationship of faith and reason. Understanding that relationship is key to establishing dialogue between religious belief and secular culture. The relationship has, again, been much more fully developed by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, and is a repeated theme of Pope Benedict XVI. A discussion of the relation of faith and reason was, for example, what the address at the University of Regensburg was about in September 2006.

5. Tony Blair argues for a positive role of religion in the present times.

"I ... argue that religious faith is a good thing in itself, that so far from being a reactionary force, it has a major part to play in shaping the values which guide the modern world, and can and should be a force for progress. But it has to be rescued on the one hand from the extremist and exclusionary tendency within religion today; and on the other from the danger that religious faith is seen as an interesting part of history and tradition but with nothing to say about the contemporary human condition."

"Faiths can transform and humanise the impersonal forces of globalisation, and shape the values of the changing set of economic and power relationships of the early 21st century"

Again, I think this is an issue that has been addressed more fully (but on a rather smaller scale!) by Pope Benedict XVI in the address that he was due to give in January at the University La Sapienza in Rome, but was prevented from giving. As well as once again addressing questions of faith and reason, Pope Benedict makes a case for the presence of a religious voice in a secular university, explicitly arguing that

"In the face of an a-historical reason that tries to construct itself through a-historical rationality, the wisdom of humanity as such -- the wisdom of the great religious traditions -- is to be valued as a reality that cannot be with impunity thrown into the dustbin of the history of ideas."

6. Tony Blair asserts the inalienable worth of every human being.

"Faith corrects, in a necessary and vital way, the tendency humankind has to relativism. It says there are absolutes – like the inalienable worth and dignity of every human being – that can never be sacrificed."

I really do not know what to make of this in the context of Tony Blair's voting record on pro-life issues. But it is there in the transcript.

7. Tony Blair does not speak with an ecclesial sense, referring to "faith" in a way that abstracts from any specific religion or content of belief.

Throughout, Tony Blair talks about "faith", or "people of faith", and similar. He also refers to "faiths" where we might more commonly talk about different religions, though he does name the major faiths. He also makes reference to "organised religion" rather than to "churches" or "denominations" or "religions". Nowhere do I think he refers to a "church". For someone who has recently been received into the Catholic Church, I find this a bit strange, since the Catholic Church does have such a strong sense of "Church" about it. It also reflects a language typical of those who view religion as a secular phenomenon, and not a religious one - an "organised religion" is a socially occuring phenomenon, and can be studied as such, whereas to refer to a "church" would be to admit something of divine origin in that phenomenon. It might well be that it represents an adjustment to the context in which he is speaking, rather than a lack of ecclesial sense in Tony Blair's personal faith. It does, though, seem to involve a detachment of the idea of faith (as a life stance) from its content (specific religious beliefs) into a kind of abstractness that will be difficult for individual religions to recognise.

8. Tony Blair makes a useful observation that politics is now less about left vs. right than about open vs. closed.

"The forces shaping the world at this moment are so strong and all tend in one direction. They are opening the world up. I sometimes say to people that in modern politics, the dividing line is often less between traditional left vs. right; but more about open vs. closed. Mass migration is changing communities, even countries. People communicate ideas and images instantly around the world, creating immediate political and ideological movements in a ferment of quickly devoured information. Economically the world system is ever more dependent on confidence, robust when things seem good, extraordinarily brittle when confidence dips. The world is interdependent today, economically, politically, even to a degree ideologically.

The divide, then, is between those who see this as positive - the opening up offering opportunity; and those who see it as threatening and wish to close it back down. As you can see from the Presidential race in the U.S., there are new questions that cross traditional Party lines: free trade vs. protection; engagement in foreign policy or isolationism; supporting immigration or opposing it. In these, the issue is less left vs right but open vs closed. And they all derive from a fear that globalisation is throwing people, cultures, countries together but with no common sense of values
or understanding of each other. "

I think that this is a useful characterisation of the present situation. Not only does it have relevance to political movements and parties, but to local communities and to individuals in those communities. It is relevant when we consider how an individual might react to a new neighbour from a different country, for example.