The claim to the title "Christian"

I am prompted to reflect on the claim to the use of the title "Christian" by some recent events. On two occasions recently, the Christian symbol of the Cross has been displayed at political demonstrations in London, thereby appropriating to the intentions of those demonstrations the title "Christian". In the United States, the Turning Point movement, essentially political in character, has used the Christian faith of its founder to appropriate a Christian character to the movement. There is also the claim to identify Britain as a Christian country, expressed eloquently by Danny Kruger speaking in the House of Commons:

When I speak of the Church of England today, I am not speaking about the internal politics of the Anglican sect; I speak of the common creed of our country, the official religion of the English and the British nation, and the institution—older than the monarchy, and much older than Parliament—which made this country.

I have three observations:

1. Beware of a use of the term "Christian" in way that leaves an exact meaning unexpressed. In this usage it might refer to anything from structured Christian bodies, such as the Episcopalian Church in the United States or the Church of England in Britain, to completely independent congregations via networks of Evangelical (mega-) churches. In this usage, exactly who or what is the "Christian" that is referenced? If we are not careful, the use of the term has such wide range of possible references that it becomes empty of substantial meaning.

2. Beware of a politics that is, first of all and in principle, a politics but which then wishes to add to itself the descriptor "Christian". This remains first and foremost a politics and, even if its advocates might profess a Christian faith (but see point 1 above), that does not allow the political stance in itself to be called "Christian". As might be said on the London Underground, we need to "mind the gap" and not permit the "Christian" claim of such a politics to establish for it an unwarranted credibility.

3. There are politicians who profess a Christian faith and, on the basis of that faith, advocate for certain positions in their public life. This, however, is a somewhat inverse of the position described at point 2 above. See the words of Pope Benedict below.

But rather than trying to create a politics that wishes to claim a title of "Christian", Pope Benedict XVI and, more recently, Pope Leo XIV have advocated for a "healthy secularity" in the world of culture and politics.

Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Westminster Hall during his visit to the United Kingdom in 2010:

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. 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.

 Pope Leo XIV speaking to a working group on inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue:

European institutions need people who know how to live a healthy secularism, that is, a style of thinking and acting that affirms the value of religion while preserving the distinction — not separation or confusion — from the political sphere.  In particular, it is worth noting the examples of Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide De Gasperi.

A Man for All Seasons

 I had a "birthday treat" opportunity to see the production of Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons at the Harold Pinter Theatre last week. The stage set and costumes were very much true to the Tudor setting of the play, and the dialogue was very faithful to the published text of the play. 

Since seeing the play I have read again the Preface written by Robert Bolt for a 1961 publication of the play. In that Preface, Robert Bolt offers an "explanation and apology for treating Thomas More, a Christian saint, as a hero of selfhood."

... Thomas More, as I wrote about him, became for me a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off, what area of himself he could yield to the encroachment of his enemies, and what to the encroachments of those he loved. It was a substantial area in both cases for he had a proper sense of fear and was a busy lover. Since he was a clever man and a great lawyer he was able to retire from those areas in a wonderfully good order, but at length he was asked to retreat from that final area where he located his self. And there this supple, humorous, unassuming and sophisticated person set like metal, was overtaken by an absolutely primitive rigour, and could no more be budged than a cliff.

The other aspect of Thomas More that was attractive to Robert Bolt was what he termed "his splendid social adjustment". After briefly surveying the range of Thomas More's social and political life, Bolt observes:

He parted with more than most men when he parted with his life, for he accepted and enjoyed his social context.... But why did a man so utterly absorbed in his society, at one particular point disastrously part company from it?

For a Catholic, the explanation can readily be seen in Thomas More's faithfulness to the universal Christian Church. But for Bolt, writing his play, that Christian faith can only be a metaphor representing a larger context into which a man can be excluded when he no longer enjoys the regard of society. 

More's trust in the law was his trust in his society; his desperate sheltering beneath the forms of the law was his determination to remain within the shelter of society. Cromwell's contemptuous shattering of the forms of law  by an unconcealed act of perjury showed how fragile for any individual is that shelter. Legal or illegal had no further meaning, the social references had been removed.

 I was interested to see that the revived production currently running in London (until early September) did leave the play in the original historical setting of its narrative. But it is interesting to ask how it might have been translated into a contemporary narrative. Where today would Robert Bolt be able to find a leading character who combines the selfhood amidst the ebbs and flows of a society that he discovered in Thomas More?

An aside on the Church of England

 Danny Kruger MP recently spoke in a House of Commons adjournment debate on the future of the Church of England. The record of his speech, two interventions from Andrew Rosindell MP and the response of Jim McMahon MP (Minister for Local Government and English Devolution) can be found in the Hansard Record: Future of the Church of England.

It is of interest to read the content of this debate alongside Pope Benedict XVI's speech in Westminster Hall during his visit to the United Kingdom in 2010, and to read Danny Kruger's own account of the position of the Church of England in the light of the more nuanced presentation of Jim McMahon in his reply to the debate.

In considering the place of the Church of England parish in the life of a local community, Danny Kruger suggests that everyone living within the territory of their local parish is a member of that parish even if they do not enter the church or believe its doctrine:

Even if you never set foot in your church from one year to the next, and even if you do not believe in its teachings, it is your church and you are its member.

The observations of Andrew Rosindell and Jim McMahon in considering the place of the parish in community life are more nuanced. 

It is not just about the church community, the members of the church; it has a wider responsibility to all people of all religions and no religion, not just Church of England members. The Church of England should cherish the importance of the parish as a part of all our communities in the constituencies we represent. 

Where Danny Kruger argues that:

Without the Christian God, in whose teaching these things [freedom, tolerance, individual dignity and human rights] have their source, these are inventions—mere non-existent aspirations.

Pope Benedict suggests that: 

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.

The Church of England undoubtedly has a particular place in both the national and local life of the nation, rooted not only in its being the established Church of the nation, but also because its make up gives it a particular genius for a presence in civic life. This can be seen in play at commemorations such as Remembrance Sunday, and the way in which they are marked both nationally and locally. Though it was not always so - think of the persecution of Roman Catholics at the time of the Reformation - it has also developed that paradoxical protecting of other religious beliefs under the framework of the established religion.

 I cannot help but feel, however, that Danny Kruger's account of the place of the Church of England in the life of the nation combines what at one time would have been described as Erastianism with a presumption for ethical stances that really need a more reasoned defence. It has a tinge of ideology (in a technical sense) about it that will detract from its ability to influence.

Jubilee of Sport

 The Jubilee of Sport is to be marked from 14th - 15th June 2025. The press conference to introduce this jubilee gives some idea of the relationship between the Church and the world of sport and of the events that will form part of this Jubilee. 

The Jubilee itself reminds me of a chapter in Romano Guardini's short book The Spirit of the Liturgy. That chapter is entitled "The Playfulness of the Liturgy" and, whilst Guardini warns that we should read the whole in order to really understand his idea, I offer two quotations in an attempt to summarise the chapter:

The child when it plays, does not aim at anything. It has no purpose. It does not want to do anything but to exercise its youthful powers, pour forth its life in an aimless series of movements, words and actions, and by this to develop and to realize itself more fully; all of which is purposeless, but full of meaning nevertheless, the significance lying in the unchecked revelation of this youthful life in thoughts and words and movements and actions, in the capture and expression of its nature, and in the fact of its existence. And because it does not aim at anything in particular, because it streams unbroken and spontaneously forth, its utterance will be harmonious, its form clear and fine; its expression will of itself become picture and dance, rhyme, melody and song.

And, towards the end of the chapter:

The liturgy does the same thing. It too, with endless care, with all the seriousness of the child and the strict conscientiousness of the great artist, has toiled to express in a thousand forms the sacred God-given life of the soul to no other purpose that that the soul may therein have its existence and live its life. The liturgy had laid down the serious rules of the sacred game which the soul plays before God. And, if we are desirous of touching bottom int his mystery, it is the Spirit of fire and of holy discipline "Who has knowledge of the World" - the Holy Ghost - Who has ordained the game which the Eternal Wisdom plays before the Heavenly Father in the Church, Its kingdom on earth. And "Its delight" is in this way "to be with the children of men". 

There have been many occasions when the Church has engaged with the field of sports. In the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 a Jubilee of Sport took place, during which Pope St John Paul II met with leading protagonists from the field: Jubilee of Sports People. More recently, in May 2024, the French Embassy to the Holy See and the Dicastery for Culture and Education sponsored a conference "Putting Life into Play". Pope Francis' message to that conference is reported on the Vatican News website, with a full text here. I quote below from Pope St John Paul II's homily of October 2000:

Playing sports has become very important today, since it can encourage young people to develop important values such as loyalty, perseverance, friendship, sharing and solidarity. Precisely for this reason, in recent years it has continued to grow even more as one of the characteristic phenomena of the modern era, almost a "sign of the times" capable of interpreting humanity's new needs and new expectations. Sports have spread to every corner of the world, transcending differences between cultures and nations.

The Holy Father went on to compare the commitments needed to be successful in sport to those needed to live a full Christian life:

 "Those that sow in tears shall reap rejoicing" (Ps 125: 5). The responsorial psalm reminded us that persevering effort is needed to succeed in life. Anyone who plays sports knows this very well:  it is only at the cost of strenuous training that significant results are achieved. The athlete, therefore, agrees with the Psalmist when he says that the effort spent in sowing finds its reward in the joy of the harvest:  "Although they go forth weeping, carrying the seed to be sown, they shall come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves" (Ps 125: 6).

At the recent Olympic Games in Sydney we admired the feats of the great athletes, who sacrificed themselves for years, day after day, to achieve those results. This is the logic of sport, especially Olympic sports; it is also the logic of life:  without sacrifices, important results are not obtained, or even genuine satisfaction.

Once again the Apostle Paul has reminded us of this:  "Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable" (1 Cor 9: 25). Every Christian is called to become a strong athlete of Christ, that is, a faithful and courageous witness to his Gospel. But to succeed in this, he must persevere in prayer, be trained in virtue and follow the divine Master in everything.

He, in fact, is God's true athlete:  Christ is the "more powerful" Man (cf. Mk 1: 7), who for our sake confronted and defeated the "opponent", Satan, by the power of the Holy Spirit, thus inaugurating the kingdom of God. He teaches us that, to enter into glory, we must undergo suffering (cf. Lk 24: 26,46); he has gone before us on this path, so that we might follow in his footsteps.

 Pope Francis own particular contribution to the Church's engagement with the world of sport is perhaps in his strong encouragement of a culture of encounter and dialogue, something to which the world of sport readily lends itself. In his message for the conference in May 2024 Pope Francis also encouraged the preservation of a genuine sense of "sportsmanship", of the maintenance of a certain amateur spirit in the way in which people take part in sport.

Pope Leo XIV more recently met with the football team of Naples, winners of Italy's equivalent of the British Premier League. In a slightly different way, he picked up Pope Francis' words in favour of a genuine sportsmanship:

Welcome! And congratulations for your victory in the Championship! It is a great celebration for the city of Naples!

And it is precisely on this that I would like to reflect with you. To win the Championship is a milestone that one reaches at the end of a long journey, where what counts the most is not the one-off exploit, or the extraordinary performance of a champion. The Championship is won by the team, and when I say “team”, I mean the players, the trainer with the entire team, and the sports association.

Therefore, I am truly happy to welcome you now, to highlight this aspect of your success, which I consider the most important. And I would say that it is so also from a social point of view. We know how popular football is in Italy, and practically all over the world. And so, from this perspective, it seems to me that the social value of an event like this, which goes beyond the merely technical and sporting fact, is the example of a team – in the broadest sense – working together, in which the talents of the individuals are placed at the service of the whole.

And there is one last thing it is important to me to say, taking advantage of this occasion. It regards the educational aspect. Unfortunately, when sport becomes a business, it risks losing the values that make it educational, and can even become anti-educational. It is necessary to keep a lookout for this, especially with regard to teenagers. I appeal to parents and sports managers: we must be very careful of the moral quality of the experience of sport at competitive level, because the human growth of the young is at stake.

As a final thought, we might remind ourselves that the Apostle Paul more than once compared the Christian life to an athletic competition (cf. 1 Cor 9:24; 2 Tim 4:7-8), a thought that brings us back to Romano Guardini's account of the playfulness of the Liturgy. The "play" that we can see in the exercise of sport can perhaps be seen as one of those "seeds of the Gospel" of which the Prayer for the Jubilee 2025 speaks:

May your grace transform us into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel. May those seeds transform from wthin both humanity and the whole cosmos in the sure expectation of a new heaven and a new earth, when, with the power of Evil vanquished your glory will shine eternally.

Jubilee of Bands and Popular Entertainment

The days 10th-11th May 2025 are due to be marked as the Jubilee of Bands and Popular Entertainment, with the invitation to take part extended especially to "all members of military, institutional, amateur, folk, village, sports, school and college bands ... together with their families". By the time that this post publishes, arrangements for the Jubilee events in Rome may have been "modified" in the light of events.

Towards the end of his chapter entitled "Music and Liturgy" (in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy), the then Cardinal Ratzinger suggested three criteria that might govern the music of Christian liturgical worship. 

It is related to the events of God's saving action to which the Bible bears witness and which the Liturgy makes present. God's action continues in the history of the Church, but has its unshakeable center int he Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ, his Cross, Resurrection and Ascension. ... the relation of liturgical music to logos means, first of all, simply its relation to words. That is why singing in the liturgy has priority over instrumental music, though it does not in any way exclude it. It goes without saying that the biblical and liturgical texts are the normative words from which liturgical music has to take its bearings...

Prayer is a gift of the Holy Spirit, both prayer in general and that particular kind of prayer which is the gift of singing and playing before God. The Holy Spirit is love. He enkindles love in us and thus moves us to sing. ... Words are superseded, but not the Word, the Logos. ... The Church's tradition has this in mind when it talks about the sober inebriation caused in us by the Holy Spirit. ...

... Christian liturgy is always a cosmic liturgy... The Preface, the first part of the Eucharistic Prayer, always ends with the affirmation that we are singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" together with the cherubim and seraphim and with all the choirs of heaven ... In the celebration of Holy Mass, we insert ourselves into this liturgy that always goes before us. All our singing is a singing and praying with the great liturgy that spans the whole of creation.

Perhaps closer to the intended remit of this special Jubilee might be those initiatives that come under the umbrella of "music ministries", ministries which might, in addition to providing liturgical music in the stricter sense, also provide music for praise and worship outside the liturgy properly so called. CJM Music, based in Birmingham Archdiocese, is an example of one such initiative. Perhaps the most remarkable work from CJM Music is the presentation of the Stations of the Cross entitled Born for This. Now available as a set of resources to enable Church groups to put on their own presentation, it was initially presented each year during Lent by a CJM cast, in different locations in the UK. I recall taking part in one such presentation in Brentwood Cathedral several years ago. I also recall a CD of music for the Year of the Eucharist celebrated in 2004-5.

Certainly within the remit of the Jubilee are those initiatives that produce music that is more general in nature, and intended for wider entertainment, music that might be described as secular music. The range of such initiatives is very wide, and extends from local musical groups up to groups with a national or international reach. I expect that many different nations have celebrations of music, reflecting their own heritage, and rooted in particular regional or cultural contexts. The Whit Friday band contests that take place in the North West of England each year provide an unusual example of one such celebration, and have a parallel to the band concerts due to take place in squares throughout Rome as part of the Jubilee. This BBC news report of the 2024 contests describes the event and explains something of its historical background: Towns and villages gear up for Whit Friday brass band contests. At each contest, a band plays a piece as they march along the village street, before playing the contest piece for the judges.  I think this is a good Youtube video that gives an idea of the event - note the coaches that follow each band, ready to move them on to the next village for their next contest. The range of bands that take part in these contests really does reflect the range of bands anticipated in the invitation extended by this special Jubilee event, including as it does military bands, bands with national and international reputations, college bands and junior bands.

The joy that is to be found in events such as the Whit Friday band contests can perhaps be seen as a seed of the joy that is to be found in living the Gospel.

May the grace of the Jubilee

reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope,

a yearning for the treasures of heaven.

May the same grace spread

the joy and peace of our Redeemer

throughout the earth.

Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture

The days 15-18th February 2025 are being marked as a Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture. The Press Conference held ahead of the event is reported here.

The Constitution Gaudium et Spes (n.53) explains the idea of culture as follows:

Man comes to a true and full humanity only through culture, that is through the cultivation of the goods and values of nature. Wherever human life is involved, therefore, nature and culture are quite intimately connected one with the other.

The word "culture" in its general sense indicates everything whereby man develops and perfects his many bodily and spiritual qualities; he strives by his knowledge and his labor, to bring the world itself under his control. He renders social life more human both in the family and the civic community, through improvement of customs and institutions. Throughout the course of time he expresses, communicates and conserves in his works, great spiritual experiences and desires, that they might be of advantage to the progress of many, even of the whole human family.

Pope St John Paul II was in his lifetime a strong proponent of a correct understanding of the idea of culture, both in his philosophical studies and in his exercise of his mission as the Successor of St Peter. His address to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on 2nd June 1980, during a visit to Paris, contains much of his thinking on the subject and offers analyses of different questions arising with regard to the understanding of culture. My excerpts cannot do it justice, in particular with regard to the way in which it responds to the challenges Pope St John Paul II sees in different aspects of the contemporary situation with regard to culture.

[The] fundamental dimension is man, man in his fullness, man who lives at the same time in the sphere of material values and in that of spiritual values. Respect for the inalienable rights of the human person is at the basis of everything. [n.4]

Man is the subject of culture in that it arises from his own activity; and he is the object of culture in that it is through culture that he becomes more fully man. 

One cannot think of a culture without human subjectivity and without human causality; in the cultural field, man is always the first fact: man is the primordial and fundamental fact of human culture.

And man is always that: in the completeness of his spiritual and material subjectivity.

If the distinction between spiritual and material culture is correct in terms of the character and the content of the products in which culture is manifested, it is necessary to note at the same time that, on one hand, the works of material culture make apparent always a "spiritualisation" of the material, a submission of the material element to the spiritual forces of man, that is to say, to his intelligence and to his will; and on the other hand, the works of spiritual culture show, in a specific way, a "materialisation" of the spirit, an incarnation of that which is spiritual.

In cultural works, this double characteristic appears to be equally primordial and equally permanent.[n.8]

In taking note of the educational dimension of culture, Pope St John Paul II argues that man needs to develop his culture both with others and for others, and so culture becomes not only an individual possession but also a shared heritage. In this light, he asserts a right of a Nation in relation to its culture:

The Nation is in effect a large community of men who are united by varied links, but above all, precisely, by culture. The Nation exists "by" culture and "for" culture, and it is therefore the great educator of men that they may "be more" in the community.

It is this community that possesses a history that goes beyond the history of the individual and of the family....

There exists a fundamental sovereignty of a society which is manifest in the culture of a Nation. [n.14]

 In his Letter to Artists of April 1999, Pope St John Paul II speaks more specifically of the vocation of the artist:

A noted Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, wrote that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.

The theme of beauty is decisive for a discourse on art. It was already present when I stressed God's delighted gaze upon creation. In perceiving that all he had created was good, God saw that it was beautiful as well. The link between good and beautiful stirs fruitful reflection. In a certain sense, beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty. ...

It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”. [n.3]

 After surveying the way in which art and the Gospel have been connected through history, a theme that is also present in the address to UNESCO, the letter ends with an appeal to artists:

Mine is an invitation to rediscover the depth of the spiritual and religious dimension which has been typical of art in its noblest forms in every age. It is with this in mind that I appeal to you, artists of the written and spoken word, of the theatre and music, of the plastic arts and the most recent technologies in the field of communication. I appeal especially to you, Christian artists: I wish to remind each of you that, beyond functional considerations, the close alliance that has always existed between the Gospel and art means that you are invited to use your creative intuition to enter into the heart of the mystery of the Incarnate God and at the same time into the mystery of man.... [n.14]

Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.[n.16]

Jubilee of the World of Communications (1)

 The period 24-26 January has been identified as a particular celebration of the Jubilee 2025 for the World of Communications.

One organisation in the field of communication that I have followed is the World Catholic Association for Communication: SIGNIS, taking particular notice of their work in the field of cinema. Their mission is described on their own website and is indicated in the Directory of Associations on the website of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. It is a world wide association made up of member associations in the different nations and regions of the world. The two predecessor organisations that merged in 2001 to form SIGNIS had their origins as far back as 1928, one being an organisation dedicated to cinema and the other an organsation dedicated to radio.

Bringing together Catholics already working as professionals in the media was the objective that kept together those organisations. The interest of Catholics in the new media was understandable. They saw the opportunities offered by them to present their views and opinions on life and the world and so they naturally became involved in promoting education and values.

The aspect of the work of SIGNIS that I find most interesting is their organising of SIGNIS, Ecumenical and inter-faith juries at film festivals. This includes juries at well known film festivals such as that held in Cannes each year, as well as juries at more specialised festivals. This participation at the major events of the world of cinema by Catholic film professionals strikes me as being a particularly good expression of a specifically lay engagement. It involves an encounter between religious faith and a professional context which can only really be achieved by the action of those who are themselves professionals in the relevant context. In return, it also indicates a respect given by the wider world of cinema to those of religious faith who are able to engage with them in way that is professionally competent.

At the most recent Cannes film festival, the Ecumenical Jury gave its award to the film The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The film, and the background to its production, are described at a Wikipedia page here. If you read down the page you will find an explanation of the film's title and of the two photographs that the director displayed on the red carpet and at other photo calls during the Cannes festival. 

Following a special prize to Wim Wenders on the 50th anniversary of the Ecumenical Jury, the 6 international members of this year’s jury gave their prize to the Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, with this motivation : “When religion is associated with political power and patriarchy, it can destroy the most intimate relationships and the dignity of individuals, as this Iranian family drama embodies. The jury was impressed by the film’s rich symbolism, its generous and hopeful ending, its touches of humour and its heartbreaking tension. The subtlety and sobriety of its writing, both dramatic and filmic, makes it a metaphor for any authoritarian theocracy”.

Things Fell Apart

In recent months I was able to listen to some of the episodes in the second series of Jon Ronson's Radio 4 broadcasts/podcasts Things Fell Apart. I haven't listened to all of them, and I haven't listened to the first series. All the episodes from both series can be found on BBC Sounds: Things Fell Apart. The episodes I have listened to suggest that they are all worth hearing. The stories are unexpected and told in a way that holds attention throughout - sometimes it is only in the last moments that the full import of the story's starting point becomes clear.

There are some clear lessons:

posting something to a blog or to Twitter/X that is not true can, down the line, have unpredictable and serious consequences

posting something that is in itself true, but forms only part of a story, can have the same consequences as above

re-tweeting or re-posting without due care and attention is a potentially hazardous game, as it can propagate something that is not true - see above

beware of taking an idea in one context, with its intended meaning in that context, and transferring it into a new context which gives the idea a completely different and potentially damaging meaning

it is easy, both in the ether and in the real world, to hang on to a discredited story and keep repeating it, again with the risk of unpredictable and serious consequences

if you are someone in a position of public influence, you need to be careful not to pick up a part story and use it to your own purposes/ideological intent

we should be careful not to think of ourselves as heroes (see last episode of Series 2).

Things Fell Apart does not address Catholic subjects, at least not in the episodes I have heard (though Episode 7 should be compulsory listening for those who have bought in to Great Resetting), but its lessons have clear application to Catholics who post to the ether.

My blog does indeed have an example of an unpredictable consequence following a post. The post involved is entitled If You Knew SUSY, posted way back in 2010. Looking at blog statistics at the time, there appeared to be a regular appearance of visits from Maryland in the USA which I couldn't understand. In 2013 a comment to the post explained what was happening. The author of the original article about which I had posted appears to have seen my post and was, I think, referring to it in discussions with his students/colleagues at the University of Maryland. See here: Superstring Theoretical Physicist on Codes of Reality.

Rimini: Meeting 2023

 This August sees the 44th edition of the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples, held in the Adriatic resort of Rimini. Though not strictly speaking an activity of the movement Communion and Liberation, the annual Rimini meeting is very much associated with that movement. The theme for this year's meeting is "Human existence is an inexhaustible friendship", and it is possible to see in that choice of theme a reflection of Pope Francis' writing and activity in favour of fraternity among peoples. 

The theme is presented in the theme and poster for the Meeting 2023. It is interesting, I think, to offer this reflection on the nature of friendship at a time when the public conversation about LGBTQ+ issues so often features the assertions that "we should be free to love who we choose" or that "love always wins" - without any attention to exactly what that word "love" really means.  Pope Francis' message to the meeting takes up the theme:

Addressing the young, the Holy Father exalted the value of true friendship, which expands the heart: “Faithful friends … are also a reflection of the Lord’s love, his gentle and consoling presence in our lives. The experience of friendship teaches us to be open, understanding and caring towards others, to come out of our own comfortable isolation and to share our lives with others” (Christus vivit, 151). And we can couple this with another reflection from Don Giussani: “The true nature of friendship is to live freely together for destiny. There cannot be friendship among us, we cannot call ourselves friends, if we do not love the destiny of the other above any other thing, leaving aside any advantage” (Attraverso la compagnia dei credenti, Milano 2021, 184).

And it is possible to recognise in this the idea of a love understood as wishing what is true and good for the other (cf, I think, Thomas Aquinas).

A scroll down the programme of the meeting, listing day by day each of the main events, gives an idea of the range of the exploration of the theme. Do persevere down it, to get a feel of the very wide range of te engagement with the idea of friendship.

What particularly attracted my attention in the meeting programme was one of the exhibitions, that dedicated to Eugenio Corti's novel The Red Horse. I am linking to the Italian version of the page describing this exhibition, as it is more complete than the English page: Il Cavallo Rosso di Eugenio Corti.

The exhibition offers a re-reading of the 1280 pages of the work, with particular attention to the dynamics that led the author to conceive the activity of writing as a task assigned to him by Providence. In fact, the path intertwines the biography of the Brianza author with the events narrated in the novel, observing, in some respects, almost an overlap between his life and the content of the work.

Eugenio Corti's novel places its characters in a very wide ranging account of the Italian involvement in the Second World War, from the participation in the German campaign in Russia (Corti himself survived that campaign), through the Italian surrender and the subsequent events in Greece (cf Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and its account of the killing of essentially unarmed Italian soldiers by the Germans), to the fighting by Italian soldiers on the Allied side after the surrender. This latter includes, alongside the better known partisan activity in the mountains of Northern Italy, the much less well known part played by Italian soldiers at Monte Cassino. The novel continues after the war, as its protagonists engage with the post-war election and the campaign on the referendum on divorce. 

Alongside the exhibition, a series of presentations introduced participants to each of the key characters in the novel. There are also a series of more academic presentations about Eugenio Corti and his novel. The one of these that struck me was the one entitled "From The Betrothed to The Red Horse: a Lombard connection". Whilst it is now a few years since I read The Red Horse, it is only a couple of months since I finished a reading of Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed. In their different historical settings, both can be seen as classics of Italian literature; both have a setting based in the Lombardy region of northern Italy; both place their narratives within a historically accurate context; and both contain an expression of a profoundly Catholic culture. It is very striking to read The Betrothed after our experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The narrative of the novel is to a significant extent set against the background of an outbreak of the plague brought to northern Italy and to the city of Milan by an invading army. One can recognise in the account of the experience of the plague a number of things that are familiar to us from the COVID-19 pandemic: plague denial in the early stages, with reluctance to limit population movements; isolation of infected households in the city, though enforced more drastically than for our pandemic; overwhelmed medical provision in so far as such existed at the time; conspiracy theories; and, towards the end of the novel, an instance of meeting out of doors with social distancing that might have been part of our regulations in 2020 or 2021.

And my final thought. Another of the exhibitions is dedicated to Giovanni Guareschi's characters  Don Camillo and Peppone, with the title "Always rivals, but never enemies". Guareschi's writing and life story occur simultaneously with the family story described in The Red Horse - his work on posters for the elections in 1948 is referenced in the novel. I first read Don Camillo stories before I left home, as they were on the bookshelves at home. I now possess a complete set, and am currently re-reading some of them.

Pope Francis in Lisbon: Meeting with Authorities, Civil Society and Diplomatic Corps

 Pope Francis met with the political leaders and representatives of civil society in Lisbon, as part of his visit to Portugal for World Youth Day 2023. In much of his address, he drew on Lisbon's connection to the sea, using the idea of the ocean as a connecting theme. This gives Pope Francis' address a certain beauty, particularly when it asks on which course Europe and the West are sailing. Do read the whole here: Meeting with Authorities, Civil Society and Diplomatic Corps.

I choose a paragraph to cite below, which gives a flavour of the address as whole, and which expresses Pope Francis' position on abortion, family life and euthanasia:

The ocean, this immense expanse of water, recalls the origins of life. In today’s developed world, paradoxically, the defence of human life, menaced by a creeping utilitarianism that uses life and discards it – a culture that discards life, has now become a priority. I think of so many unborn children, and older persons who are abandoned, of the great challenge of welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating those who come from afar and knock on our doors, and the isolation felt by so many families that find it hard to bring children into the world and raise them. Here too, we might ask: “Where are you sailing, Europe and the West, with the discarding of the elderly, walls of barbed wire, massive numbers of deaths at sea and empty cradles? Where are you sailing? Where are you sailing if, before life’s ills, you offer hasty but mistaken remedies: like easy access to death, a convenient answer that seems ‘sweet’ but is in fact more bitter than the waters of the sea?” I am thinking here of many advanced laws concerning euthanasia.

Later in his address, Pope Francis makes a plea for a reversal in the decline of the birth rate in Europe and the West: 

Young people are the future. Yet they encounter much that is disheartening: lack of jobs, the dizzying pace of contemporary life, hikes in the cost of living, the difficulty of finding housing and, even more disturbing, the fear of forming families and bringing children into the world. In Europe and, more generally, in the West, we are witnessing a decline in the demographic curve: progress seems to be measured by developments in technology and personal comfort, whereas the future calls for reversing the fall in the birth rate and the weakening of the will to live. A healthy politics can accomplish much in this regard; it can be a generator of hope. It is not about holding on to power, but about giving people the ability to hope. Today more than ever, it is about correcting the imbalances of a market economy that produces wealth but fails to distribute it, depriving people of resources and security. Political life is challenged once more to see itself as a generator of life and concern for others. It is called to show foresight by investing in the future, in families and in children, and by promoting intergenerational covenants that do not cancel the past but forge bonds between young and old.  

The Passion for Evangelisation: St Paul VI in the Philippines

 Pope Francis has resumed his General Audience addresses in which he presents witnesses to the Passion for Evangelisation. His most recent address, on 28th June, gave an account of the life and work of St Mary MacKillop. I was particularly interested to note how Mary MacKillop's work founding schools was presented by Pope Francis as a method of evangelisation:

Wisely reading the signs of the times, she understood that for her, the best way to do so was through the education of the young, with the awareness that Catholic education is a form of evangelization. It is a great form of evangelization. In this way, if we can say that “each saint is a mission, planned by the Father to reflect and embody, at a specific moment in history, a certain aspect of the Gospel” (Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, 19), then Mary MacKillop was especially so through the founding of schools.

The Office of Readings for the 13th Sunday of the Year, which occurred last Sunday, also offered a striking witness to the passion for evangelisation. The second reading was an extract from a homily given by Pope Paul VI in Manila on 29th November 1970. We are now very used to the Pope undertaking apostolic journeys, but this was a more unusual thing at the time of Pope Paul VI. His trip to West Asia, the far East and Australia in 1970 still appears remarkable. The time that he spent in the Philippines was not without controversy.

The reading in the Office quoted the first part of Pope Paul's homily. 

I Paul, the successor of Saint Peter, charged with the pastoral mission for the whole Church, would never have come from Rome to this far-distant land, unless I had been most firmly convinced of two fundamental things: first, of Christ; and second, of your salvation.

Convinced of Christ: yes, I feel the need to proclaim him, I cannot keep silent. «Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!» (1 Cor. 9: 16). I am sent by him, by Christ himself, to do this. I am an apostle, I am a witness. The more distant the goal, the more difficult my mission the more pressing is the love that urges me to it (Cfr. 2 Cor. 5: 13). I must bear witness to his name: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matth. 16: 16). He reveals the invisible God, he is the firstborn of all creation, the foundation of everything created. He is the Teacher of mankind, and its Redeemer. He was born, he died and he rose again for us. He is the centre of history and of the world; he is the one who knows us and who loves us; he is the companion and the friend of our life. He is the man of sorrows and of hope. It is he who will come and who one day will be our judge and - we hope -the everlasting fulness of our existence, our happiness. I could never finish speaking about him: he is the light and the truth; indeed, he is «the way, the truth and the life» (Io. 14: 6). He is the bread and the spring of living water to satisfy our hunger and our thirst. He is our shepherd, our guide, our model, our comfort, our brother. Like us, and more than us, he has been little, poor, humiliated; he has been a worker; he has known misfortune and been patient. For our sake he spoke, worked miracles and founded a new kingdom where the poor are happy, where peace is the principle for living together, where the pure of heart and those who mourn are raised up and comforted, where those who hunger and thirst after justice have their fill, where sinners can be forgiven, where all are brothers.

And, as if he cannot stop, Pope Paul continues:

Jesus Christ: you have heard him spoken of; indeed the greater part of you are already his: you are Christians. So, to you Christians I repeat his name, to everyone I proclaim him: Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega; he is the king of the new world; he is the secret of history; he is the key to our destiny. He is the mediator, the bridge, between heaven and earth. He is more perfectly than anyone else the Son of Man, because he is the Son of God, eternal and infinite. He is the son of Mary, blessed among all women, his mother according to the flesh, and our mother through the sharing in the Spirit of his Mystical Body. 

Reading the homily, one can sense Pope Paul's passion for evangelisation.

But it is perhaps important to look at the second part of Pope Paul's homily, in which he addresses the context of the then social and political situation in the Philippines.

Yet, as far as the positive and happy development of your social conditions is concerned, we can give a positive answer: Christianity can be salvation also on the earthly and human level. Christ multiplied the loaves also to satisfy the physical hunger of the crowds following him. And Christ continues to work this miracle for those who truly believe in him, and who take from him the principles of a dynamic social order, that is, of an order that is continually progressing and being renewed.

And in turn, Pope Paul suggests how Christ can provide a response to the different influences at play in the society of the time (extract below, but it is worth reading the whole of this section for the full flavour of Pope Paul's words): 

To you who are students and can well grasp these fundamental ideas and these higher values, I would say this: Today while you are challenging the structures of affluent society, the society that is dominated by technology and by the anxious pursuit of productivity and consumption, you are aware of the insufficiency and the deceptiveness of the economic and social materialism that marks our present progress. You are truly able to reaffirm the superiority, richness and relevance of authentic Christian sociology, based on true knowledge of man and of his destiny.

Workers, my message to you is this: While today you have become aware of your strength, take care that in the pursuit of your total rehabilitation you do not adopt formulas that are incomplete and inaccurate. These, while offering you partial victories of an economic and hedonistic nature, under the banner of a selfish and bitter struggle, may later increase the disappointment of having been deprived of the higher values of the spirit, of having been deprived of your religious personality and of your hope in the life that will not end. Let your aspirations be inspired by the vigour and wisdom that only the Gospel of the divine Worker can give you.

Review: St Francis at the National Gallery

 Earlier this week we were able to visit the exhibition dedicated to St Francis of Assisi, at the National Gallery in London until the end of July 2023. It is well worth visiting, though I would not be as exuberant in my praise of it as some reviewers appear to be. 

Cardinal Vincent Nichols spoke at the reception at the launch of the exhibition. The review at the Guardian website includes several images that will give you a feel for the exhibition. There is also a review at Independent Catholic News. Please look at these sites to gain an idea of the content of the exhibition, before reading my comments below.

My overall view of the exhibition - my "sound byte", if you like - is that it presents St Francis life in a very sympathetic way. So, for example, the several representations of St Francis receiving the stigmata are accompanied by display notes that presume completely the veracity of the stigmata. The room which explores St Francis relation to the natural environment includes a full text of his Canticle of Brother Sun, so that you cannot but recognise the praise expressed through created things is directed towards God. If you knew nothing of St Francis' life before visiting the exhibition, you would leave it with an accurate and sympathetic first knowledge of that life.

Perhaps my favourite parts of the exhibition were Murillo's painting of St Francis embracing Christ, who reaches down to him from the Cross. From the central room of the exhibition, you looked through the arch that gave entry to the room displaying this painting and its central position in the room.  I also liked the way in which the National Gallery's own set of Sasseta's paintings were displayed around the central room of the exhibition, giving a sense of their being displayed in a church which reflects their original intention. A number of the art works displayed show miracles attributed to St Francis, and these are presented in a way that is empathetic to the reality of miraculous events. 

I was not so taken with the exhibition's display of more contemporary representations of St Francis. Antony Gormley's sculpture, which was intended to greet you as you entered the first room of the exhibition, appeared to me, during my visit, to be being generally ignored by visitors. There was nothing particularly attractive about it either in terms of its form or in terms of the materials used. It failed to express the interest in St Francis on the part of the sculptor described in the accompanying object label.

The two series of abstract images in the last room were, if I recall correctly, intended to represent events in the life of St Francis and its themes. They didn't do anything for me, so I essentially ignored them.  A small display on the wall related to a film clip running on a loop in the centre of the room. This display consisted of posters for films featuring St Francis, and a picture of the front cover of a Marvel comic version of his life story. Why full size images of the film posters could not be displayed is a mystery to me - if the Curzon cinema on nearby Shaftesbury Avenue can line the wall of the corridor leading to their rest rooms with full size posters of historic films, surely the National Gallery should be able to display full size posters. The short section of the film loop that I watched was taken from Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1966 film The Hawks and the Sparrows, running silently with the dialogue shown in English subtitles. To really make sense of this, you would need to know something of Pasolini's political background and of the entirety of this particular film - the section referencing St Francis' life is part of a rather different whole. In looking into this after my visit, I have been reminded of another attempt to appropriate St Francis' essentially Christian life to a more secular apologia: Nikos Kazantzakis' novel about the life of St Francis, God's Pauper.

All this having been said, I think the exhibition is well worth a visit for the reasons indicated in my first three paragraphs above. 

Review: To Kill a Mockingbird

 Aaron Sorkin's stage adaptation of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird has been running at the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue since March 2022, and is currently booking until 20th May 2023. The production is quite exceptional in terms of the script, acting, set and lighting designs. If you have the chance to see it, the play is very highly recommended. It justified completely drawing applause at the interval curtain (I haven't seen that happen before) and a standing ovation at the final curtain.

In most respects, the play is very faithful to the original novel. It very cleverly interleaves the earlier episodes of the novel with the development of the trial of Tom Robinson; and, by using the device of Scout, Jem and Dill acting as narrators alongside the acted scenes, it successfully captures the way in which the novel portrays its events through the eyes of the children. My appreciation of the play was very much enhanced by familiarity with the novel from a recent reading - that familiarity enables a much readier recognition of the significance of scenes in the play. I suspect that someone seeing the play without having previously read the novel will have a very different experience than someone who is already familiar with the story.

There is, however, one area in which the playwright has deliberately chosen to differ from the novel and to thereby place his work within the context of the early 2020's rather than a context of the early 1960's when the novel was written or the 1930's when it is set. According to the progamme, Aaron Sorkin noted that the novel included two significant African- American characters, but that neither of them have very much to say. He also notes that a story of racial tension is told through the eyes of a young white girl, Scout. He therefore wishes to enhance the voice of the black characters and to reimagine the dynamics of the relationship between the black and white characters.

Instead of there being actors to represent the all white jury at Tom Robinson's trial, the seats of the jury box are unoccupied, though the lawyers, Atticus Finch in particular, are shown addressing themselves to the jury. This effectively, though subtly, expresses the absence of an effective black voice in the trial. That the racist rants of Bob Ewell have been drawn from commenters publishing on the Breitbart website - something that is not apparent when you listen to it in the play but is referred to in the programme - indicates a certain relocating of the play to a contemporary time.

There are two sub-plots shown in dialogue between Calpurnia and Atticus that articulate the reimagining intended by the playwright. Calpurnia calls out Atticus when he has presumed that she should say thank you to him for an act which was only the naturally right thing to do. It is the idea that a black person should have a particular demand of gratitude placed on them because of their colour that is here being challenged. (Aaron Sorkin has seen this in a scene in the novel where the coloured community are shown thanking Atticus for his defence of Tom Robinson). She also observes, in the context of Atticus' insistence that even those guilty of racism are people deserving of respect, that he might think about how that respecting of them is at the same time a disrespecting of those who are the targets of their racism. Aaron Sorkin sees this aspect of Atticus' character as excusing the racism that ought not to be excused, and expresses it in this dialogue between Calpurnia and Atticus. For the playwright, this is the flaw in Atticus' character that Harper Lee had already given him in writing the novel; but it could equally be argued that it represents an imposition on Harper Lee's novel from a later, perhaps to some extent ideological, point of view.

I think that Atticus Finch, if he were a real person, could justifiably complain about this re-writing of his character, with its adverse effect on his good name. For most of the play's audience, though, I suspect that the fidelity in other respects to the novel leaves Atticus' good name intact. I came away from the play, though,  feeling that it had not completely captured the character of Atticus that I recall from reading the novel.

All of this is subtle detail to be discovered from reading the programme. The play, seen in itself, remains an outstanding piece of theatre in every way. If you have the chance to see it, I would make sure you take it.

Cultural decolonisation or cultural re-colonisation? The example of the Museum of the Home

Is the current anxiety for "decolonisation" of our culture and some of its institutions genuinely about "de-colonising"? Or is it in reality the replacement of a physical/historical colonialism by a new, ideological colonialism - an ideological "re-colonisation"?

In Bristol, this question has arisen around the figure of Edward Colston (this Wikepedia link includes a description of the renaming of a number of institutions in Bristol previously named after Edward Colston). Money that he made in trade at sea, which included a significant governance role in a company that traded in African slaves, was used in part to fund a wide range of philanthropic and civic projects in Bristol.

In Shoreditch, in East London, the question has arisen around the figure of Robert Geffrye. The museum that is now known as the Museum of the Home was formerly known as the Geffrye Museum, and is located on the site of almshouses that were originally endowed by Robert Geffrye. Like Edward Colston, some of the investments from which Robert Geffrye benefitted were related to the slave trade; and, also like Edward Colston, Robert Geffrye was responsible for charitable endowments.

Should figures such as Edward Colston and Robert Geffrye be excised from our contemporary cultural expression? Today we see the trade in African slaves as being akin to a mortal sin; at the times of Edward Colston and Robert Geffrye the prevailing culture did not see it in that way. Thinking philosophically rather than historically, we should recognise that, whatever the prevailing cultural acceptance at the time, participation in the slave trade represented a denial of the dignity and respect due to other human persons (African slaves). In other areas of their activity, however, we should also recognise that figures like Edward Colston and Robert Geffrye acted in a way which favoured the dignity and respect due to other human persons (the beneficiaries of their almshouses or educational institutions).

They are figures who represent a mixture of wheat and tares, to use a Biblical analogy. Until recently, our cultural expression was very willing to reflect the wheat and to disregard the tares; and now it is perhaps very willing to reflect the tares and disregard the wheat. I think that a just cultural expression needs to reflect a correct assessment of both the wheat and the tares; and that cultural re-assessment may not be a correct assessment if its only outcome is the removal of the names of Edward Colston and Robert Geffrye from institutions associated with them. If their presence is excised, the question is not concluded until we look at what replaces that presence; and a recent visit to the Museum of the Home, formerly known as the Geffrye Museum, raises exactly that question of what has replaced the former expression.

In 2021, the museum reopened after an extensive redevelopment, which added a series of exhibition spaces in what had originally been the basements of the almshouses. The museum has also undertaken a process of engagement with its local community in East London, which is reflected in some of the displays in the new exhibition "alcoves" in the basement and in the narratives associated with the long standing "Rooms through Time" along the main corridor above ground. [One might recognise, though, as was suggested by my fellow visitor, that those who have taken part in the resulting displays are of middle or professional class.]

Of the new displays, I found two to be of particular interest. One used recorded video, photos and objects to discuss the range of religious belief that might exist in the locality of the museum, basing it on the objects of religious significance that might be displayed in a person's home. I found the representation of Christianity disappointing in two ways. Firstly, it didn't express the practical act of charity and advocacy in its relation to specific belief about the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus; and secondly it did not refer to Christian churches. The person who spoke came over as if they might be a Christian without any specific denominational affiliation, which whilst it may be fair to the particular individual who contributed, may not be true of the local community as a whole. 

The other display that I found interesting was one that explored what it means to speak of "home". This was represented by photographs and accounts of residents from the local area. I was struck by how many of he displays described people who had lived long term in rented accommodation that they had made "home". This, I thought, was an interesting exploration for a museum whose "charism" is that of representing the physical displays of homes through time.

The "Rooms through Time" displays  show a series of full size recreations of living rooms from different times. Each display includes the decor - carpets, wall paper, windows, curtains - and furniture of the time. From visits that we made before the redevelopment of the museum, I recall these displays being tweaked to reflect the time of year. Our recent visit was in early December, so the narratives associated with the rooms and materials displayed on dining tables reflected Boxing Day or the Jewish feast of Hannukah. In one or two cases, the new narratives did not really reflect the content of the room, with a certain sense that a narrative had been imposed on a room that did not necessarily express the narrative. A room whose narrative was that of an Imperial Airways pilot contained some features of art deco style - Critall windows, an art deco style dining table, a fireplace - that I recall from an earlier visit to the museum being the real point of this particular display. Likewise, a 60s/70s open plan home with a mezannine sleeping area above a kitchen area to one side of the main living space, is now accompanied by a narrative of a lesbian friend who has been kicked out of her home staying overnight after a late night party (a mattress and bedding on the floor having been added to the previously existing display). Here in particular, the "home" being displayed - a style of open plan living - really does not justify the imposed narrative. In both of these examples, the narrative does not produce a style of home-making - furnishings, furniture, displayed objects - that one would expect in a display of a "home".

Which leads to the question raised at the beginning of this post. Has the former Geffrye Museum, in distancing itself from the person of Robert Geffrye, chosen to replace that former association with a historical colonialism with a new, ideological form of colonialisation?  And, at the same time, to make itself less a Museum of the Home?

Film Review: Emily

 Zero and I went to see the new film Emily, about Emily Bronte. The opening scene shows Emily's death bed, and her older sister Charlotte asking her from where she got the inspiration for her novel Wuthering Heights. The film then takes up that theme of a search for the inspiration, not so much for the novel, as for the inspiration that lay in Emily's own life. And it does this by reading into Emily's life episodes from the novel, and adding a bit of fictionalising that is not present in the novel. At the time of seeing the film I had no familiarity at all with Wuthering Heights, and my efforts at reading Anne Bronte some years ago did not go anywhere. Charlotte Bronte, however, has been thoroughly read over the years. As a result of my unfamiliarity with Wuthering Heights, though, I came out of the film completely baffled by it.

As I post, I am now about one third of the way through Wuthering Heights, and so it becomes possible to have a more intelligent appreciation of the film. If you have not read Wuthering Heights, much of this film will pass you by. One interesting aspect of the film is the way in which, by reading episodes of Wuthering Heights into the relationship between Emily and her brother Branwell, it suggests that the novel's portrayal of the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff takes inspiration from that in real life between Emily and Branwell. I suspect that the film makes rather more of this idea than is really there (some of the transference from fiction to life is almost as literal as to be direct quotation), but a comparison of the two relationships is probably worth a master's dissertation for someone. More easily, one can think that the account of Mr Earnshaw's dissipated life in Wuthering Heights drew in part on Emily's experience of her brother's alcohol and drug addiction.

A first element of pure fictionalising in the film is Emily's romantic affair with the curate of the parish, of which her father is the incumbent. A second element is the scene with Branwell, where he and Emily are shown on the moors acclaiming in favour of "freedom in thought", and having those words inscribed on their forearms. The romance in particular is portrayed in somewhat soap operatic way, and lacks real conviction.  And whilst Haworth probably has a tattoo parlour now, I suspect it did not have one in the Bronte's time! Both scenes represent a reading of a theme from the 21st century back into the 19th century in a way that is rather false to the situation of the Bronte family. The film makers might delight in expressing this in terms of making the story attractive to a younger audience, but that is a thin disguise for the falsity involved.

Alongside the more or less blatant fictionalising, there are other ways in which the film attempts to be very realistic. Scenes inside the parsonage at Howarth do look as if they have been filmed in a way that accurately reflects the rooms of the house itself (though it is too long since our visit to Haworth for me to be able to judge that definitively). Branwell's employment on a local railway station is true to life. There is also an attempt to represent the proximity of the moors to the parsonage.  It is easy to recognise that the placing of Wuthering Heights on the moors of Yorkshire draws on Emily's experience of the moors above Haworth; but it's portrayal in Emily is, frankly, embarrassing.

At one point during a "Questions and Answers" at the Toronto International Film Festival 2022, where Emily premiered, there is a question about the cinematography. It occurs at about 14:38 in this Youtube clip: Emily Q & A: TIFF 2022. I have no idea who the cinematrographers referenced in Frances O'Connor's response are, but it was particularly the scenes (supposedly) shot on the moors that left me unconvinced. Even a gently waving tree branch at one point was not enough to drive the possibility from my mind that the scene had been shot in a studio with effects for the backdrop. I certainly do not think anyone would roll down the side of the moor above Haworth as Emily and Branwell are shown doing in the film without coming to grief very quickly on the rough ground. I was highly amused by the scene showing Ellen Nussey jumping down from a stile, which did not show either the stile or the ground onto which Ellen jumped ..... see above about the thoughts of shooting in studio. Filming took place in Yorkshire and, I believe, at least in part in Haworth, in April/May 2021. Perhaps therein lies the clue to its problem in portraying the moors effectively, as this is a rather short filming timescale to capture the different moods of the moors live. Thunder and storms can perhaps readily and fairly be taken from Wuthering Heights into the film, but they appeared to me as badly chosen from a special effects CD that might be used in theatre; and, at one point, as if there were a screen of "rain" played between the camera and the actors. In two scenes, the parsonage window is opened and delightful bird song heard .... again, it sounded too much like a badly chosen track from an effects CD, as I suspect the Yorkshire moors would more typically host the harsher sound of crows or jackdaws. 

There is one point on which the film touches but which it does not in my view fully develop, and that is the relationship between the three Bronte sisters. There are points where Emily's aloofness from her sisters and the resulting drama is portrayed (eg the mask scene) but I want to explore this more fully in reading a biography of the sisters.

Even now that I have gained a greater awareness of the film's intentions through reading Wuthering Heights, I think I am still finding the film to be rather unsatsifying. Which seems to contrast with other reviews ....

Two Popes in Kazakhstan

There is a striking comparison to be made between the visit of Pope St John Paul II to Kazakhstan in September 2001 and the more recent visit of Pope Francis in September 2022. The records of the two visits can be found at the website of the Holy See: Pastoral Visit to Kazakhstan (John Paul II) and Apostolic Journey to Kazakhstan (Pope Francis).

In his press conference during the flight home from Kazakhstan, Pope Francis said that he had found the social and cultural development of the country a surprise, that he had know little or nothing of the country before his visit. However, his main address during the visit reflected, as did the addresses of St John Paul II during his visit, a familiarity with Abai Kunanbai, perhaps the Kazakhstan's greatest thinker. And, in slightly different ways, both Pope Francis and St John Paul II focussed on the question of freedom of religion and the relationship between religious believers and the society in which they live.

In his 2001 visit, St John Paul II took part in a meeting with representatives of the world of culture. Speaking only a few years after Kazakhstan had gained its independence from the former Soviet Union, he referred to the range of influences that had given rise to a "vibrant local culture, rich in creative developments".

One of your country’s great thinkers, the teacher Abai Kunanbai, put it this way: "A man cannot be a man unless he perceives the evident and the hidden mysteries of the universe, unless he seeks an explanation for everything. Anyone who fails to do this is no different from the animals. God distinguished man from the animals by giving him a soul... It is absolutely necessary that we constantly extend our interests, increasing the knowledge which nourishes our souls. It is important to realize that the goods of the soul are incomparably superior to the benefits of the body, and that carnal needs should be subordinated to the imperatives of the soul" (Sayings of Abai, Chapter 7)....

 St John Paul went on to identify the religious character of such questions, and to give an account of how the Christian believer, whilst convinced that Jesus Christ represents the answer to these questions, bears witness "in full respect for the search which other people of good will are engaged in along different paths":

Questions like this are religious by their very nature, in the sense that they appeal to those supreme values which have God as their ultimate foundation. Religion, for its part, cannot fail to grapple with these existential questions; otherwise it loses contact with life.

Christians know that in Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ, a complete answer has been given to the questions dwelling deep in the human heart. Jesus’ words, his actions and, in the end, his Paschal Mystery, have revealed him to be the Redeemer of man and the Saviour of the world. Of this "good news", which for two thousand years has been on the lips of countless men and women in every part of the earth, the Pope of Rome comes before you today as a humble and convinced witness, in full respect for the search which other people of good will are engaged in along different paths. Whoever has encountered the truth in all the splendour of its beauty must necessarily feel drawn to share it with others. Rather than an obligation based on a law, the believer feels the need to share with others the supreme Value of his own life.

St John Paul II goes on to draw the conclusion for the right to religious freedom in the secular state:

Consequently – even in the context of a soundly secular State, which is obliged in any event to guarantee to each citizen, without distinction of sex, race and nationality, the fundamental right to freedom of conscience – there is a need to acknowledge and defend the right of believers to bear public witness to their faith. Authentic religious practice cannot be reduced to the private sphere or narrowly restricted to the edges of society. The beauty of the new houses of worship which are beginning to rise up almost everywhere in the new Kazakhstan is a precious sign of spiritual rebirth and a sign of promise for the future.

The centre piece of Pope Francis' visit in 2022 was his speech at the opening of the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. In a passage that has echoes of St John Paul II's earlier visit, Pope Francis urged that "Religion is not a problem, but part of the solution for a more harmonious life in society":

Abai challenges us by asking a timeless question: “What is the beauty of life, if one does not go deep?” (Poems, 1898). Another poet, pondering the meaning of life, placed on the lips of a shepherd in these vast lands of Asia an equally essential question: “Where will this, my brief wandering, lead?” (G. LEOPARDI, Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia). Questions like these point to humanity’s need for religion; they remind us that we human beings do not exist so much to satisfy earthly interests or to weave purely economic relationships, as to walk together, as wayfarers, with our eyes raised to the heavens. We need to make sense of the ultimate questions, to cultivate a spirituality; we need, as Abai says, to keep “the soul alive and the mind clear” (Book of Words, Word 6).

Dear brothers and sisters, the world expects us to be examples of souls alive and minds clear; it looks to us for an authentic religiosity. It is time to realize that the fundamentalism defiles and corrupts every creed; time for open and compassionate hearts. It is also time to consign to the history books the kind of talk that for all too long, here and elsewhere, has led to distrust and contempt for religion, as if it were a destabilizing force in modern society. These lands are all too familiar with the legacy of decades of state-imposed atheism: that oppressive and stifling mentality for which the mere mention of the word “religion” was greeted with embarrassed silence. Religion is not a problem, but part of the solution for a more harmonious life in society. The pursuit of transcendence and the sacred value of fraternity can inspire and illumine the decisions that need to be made amid the geopolitical, social, economic, ecological, but fundamentally spiritual crises that many modern institutions, including democracies, are presently experiencing, to the detriment of security and concord among peoples. We need religion, in order to respond to the thirst for world peace and the thirst for the infinite that dwells in the heart of each man and woman.

And like St John Paul II before him, Pope Francis goes on to insist on the necessity of religious freedom, though now with a reference to inter-religious dialogue: "Each person has the right to render public testimony to his or her own creed, proposing it without ever imposing it".

For this reason, an essential condition for genuinely human and integral development is religious freedom. Brothers and sisters, we are free. Our Creator “stepped aside for us”; in a manner of speaking, he “limited” his absolute freedom in order to enable us, his creatures, to be free. How can we then presume to coerce our brothers and sisters in his name? “As believers and worshipers”, Abai once again tells us, “we must not claim that we can force others to believe and worship” (Word 45). Religious freedom is a basic, primary and inalienable right needing to be promoted everywhere, one that may not be restricted merely to freedom of worship. Each person has the right to render public testimony to his or her own creed, proposing it without ever imposing it. This is the correct method of preaching, as opposed to proselytism and indoctrination, from which all are called to step back. To relegate to the private sphere our most important beliefs in life would be to deprive society of an immense treasure. On the other hand, to work for a society marked by the respectful coexistence of religious, ethnic and cultural differences is the best way to enhance the distinctive features of each, to bring people together while respecting their diversity, and to promote their loftiest aspirations without compromising their vitality. 

A post at the blog Where Peter is draws attention to four challenges to religions that Pope Francis describes in his address: Pope Francis' message to world religious leaders. H/T to this post for drawing my attention to Pope Francis' visit to Kazakhstan.

From two different angles, one from the point of view of culture and society and the other from the point of view of dialogue between religions and society, St John Paul II and Pope Francis arrive at the same understanding of the importance of religious freedom for the life of (secular) societies.

It is also worth noting the high regard given by both St John Paul II and Pope Francis to the present day situation of Kazakhstan and to its rich cultural history, in part a result of a geographical location which has prompted a particular experience of encounter with different influences at different times.