Henry VIII: Man and Monarch

This where Zero and I are going today:

Henry VIII: Man and Monarch
Thu 23 Apr
2009 - Sun 6 Sep 2009
PACCAR
Gallery, British Library
Price: Adults £9
(concessions £7 / £5)
Now open until 8pm Monday to Thursday.

We have had our eye on this exhibition ever since it opened, and thought we should get there before it closed. I haven't explored the website for the exhibition yet, but it appears to contain a lot of information related to the exhibition. If you can't make the exhibition, the site seems to be well worth a visit.

UPDATE AFTER OUR VISIT:

We had tickets timed for 11.30 am, on a Saturday - priced at a concession rate of £5 courtesy of Zero spotting a promotion in The Times. The exhibition was busy, but not overcrowded. The organisers "filter" entry, to avoid a bottle neck of people at the beginning, and this spreads people through the exhibition. We spent THREE hours working through the exhibition, so we were ready for lunch at the end. The air conditioning is also a bit on the cold side - so you will need to take a jumper or cardigan or you will be frozen by half way through.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can easily see how Henry VIII's decision to seek the appopriate papal dispensation and marry Katherine of Aragon was going to have BIG consequences later on. The exhibition layout communicated very readily how Henry entered on this course of action at the time, without having any inkling of the later implications.

Another interesting part of the exhibition covered the assembly in the King's library of books that were then being used by his "experts" to assemble a theological case in favour of his divorce from Katherine. I hadn't quite appreciated just how big an operation this was, involving the gathering of books from universities and monasteries throughout the land. Some pages of the summary text resulting from this are displayed in an electronic display - push the button in front of the displayed page, and a blue line appears to direct you to the cabinet containing the original text from which that page came. All rather clever, though it wasn't a part of the exhibition at which one tended to linger. It did communicate the point and extent of the exercise very effectively, though.

Many of the items displayed are documents or manuscript books - the script and the language make them impossible to read directly. However, the labels with each display give a very good account of each document, and, in some instances, where there are marginal annotations by Henry VIII or another, an electronic version of the text is displayed. Push the button - the original text appears, with, a few moments later the annotations also visible, and, finally, a commentary explaining the content and signficance of the annotations. What I found really effective was being able to linger in front of some of these documents and get a bit of a buzz from seeing a manuscript that really changed the history of the country. Perhaps the manuscript of the Act of Supremacy, and the treaties of marriage, were most impressive from this point of view. The love letter from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, on loan to the exhibition from the Vatican is also quite interesting.

The exhibition also gives a good portrayal of the character of Henry VIII. I do not have the expert knowledge of history to know how far it is an accurate portrait. But one can follow a progress from his childhood and education - with its inevitable "gentleness", through the development of a "play boy" mentality (fine when it involved a fair to celebrate the birth of a son, but then not so good when it manifested itself in warfare against France and an approach to European politics grounded in a desire for grandeur), to the determination and brutality that came to characterise the "King's Great Matter", and subsequent developments in the history of England. This is encouraged by the last display in the exhibition, which lists those executed during Henry VIII's reign, giving an example of the sheer arbitrariness of charges brought against those who fell out of Henry's favour.

A section of the exhibition looks at the developments in the Church after the break with Rome. Whilst in many ways Henry VIII remained "Catholic" in the substance of his beliefs, there was nevertheless a project to establish a new order in the Church. This was influenced in different ways at different times by different theological currents - but what is strikingly communicated is the way in which the law of Parliament and the King now became the measure of the structures and practices of the Church. The exhibition demonstrates Henry VIII's keen interest in this process, with some drafts of legislation being displayed with Henry's own amendments and corrections apparent. Ah, the implications of the "King's Great Matter" ...

As in the Family, so in Society

This is the title of an article in the current issue of New City, the UK edition of Focolare's magazine. The article reproduces a talk given by Chiara Lubich in June 1993.

The article raises three questions.

1. Chiara Lubich presents what some will see as a very rosy view of what family life is like, and want to argue that this view is now so unusual that it cannot be considered as relevant to most families today. What is an appropriate response to this view?

2. If one accepts Chiara's view of family life as legitimate, it still suggests a practice of family life that many Catholics will not find familiar. What can Catholic families learn from Chiara's talk?

3. Now, more so than in 1993, a Catholic vision of family life needs to respond to questions of inter-religious dialogue. In particular, is the vision of family life that Chiara presents one that can be shared to any extent by Muslims, for whom one husband can have several wives and therefore, in the Western sense, several families?

This is the text of Chiara's article (I have not been able to find an electronic version to link to).

We are on the threshold of the third millennium. The family, every family can take a lead in shaping this era. Devised by God as a masterpiece of love, the family is able to inspire the guidelines that can con­tribute to changing tomorrow's world.
In fact, if we look at the family, if we were to take an x-ray of it, we would discover enormous and precious val­ues, which if projected and applied to all of humanity have the potential to transform it into one big family.
The family is founded on love, a bond that has many dimensions: love between spouses, among parents and their children, between grandparents, uncles and aunts with nieces and nephews, among brothers and sisters. It is a love that grows continuously, always going beyond itself. In the same way, the love among spouses generates new life and the relation among brothers and sisters becomes friendship. And because authority and the various roles are expressions of love, they are accepted naturally.
In the family it comes sponta­neously to put everything in com­mon, to share everything and to have a single economy. Savings are not hoarding but rather prudent foresight. It is normal to provide for the needs of those who are not yet productive or of those who no longer are.
In the family people of all ages live together. It is natural to live for the other, to love one another.
Even education occurs in a sponta­neous way: it is enough to think of a baby's first steps or his or her first words. Punishment and forgiveness are given only for the good of the person.
The sense of justice is normal in the family just as it is normal to feel the other's guilt and shame. It is natu­ral to suffer and to sacrifice oneself for the family, to carry one another's burdens. Solidarity and faithfulness to one's family are spontaneous.
In the family the other's life is just as precious as one's own, at times even more so; one feels concerned about everyone's health and takes care of those that are not well.
The family is the place where life naturally begins and ends and where the handicapped, the elderly and the terminally ill find acceptance, affec­tion and care.
In the family each member is clothed and nourished according to his or her needs.
The home is built and taken care of together with everyone's participation.
In the family everyone teaches and everyone learns: everything serves for the maturation of its members. Its members may have different cultural values but all these diversities become enrichment for all.
In the family communication is also spontaneous; everyone participates in everything and shares everything.
And so the task of every family is to live its vocation with such perfec­tion that it becomes a model for the entire human family and passes on to it all of its values by example.
In this way the family will become ... a seed of communion for the world of the third millennium.
Is it natural for a family to put everything in common? This could be the seed from which an economic sys­tem at the service of humankind can spring forth, a seed of a culture of giv­ing, of an economy of communion.
Is it spontaneous in the family to live one for the other, to live the other? This is the seed of acceptance among groups, peoples, traditions, races and societies that opens the door to reciprocal inculturation.
Does the passing on of values from generation to generation come sponta­neously in the family? It could then be an incentive for placing new emphasis on education in society. What is more, the example of correction and forgive­ness in the life of the family can be a model for the justice system.
Is another member's life valued as one's own in the family? This is the seed of the culture of life that must enlighten the laws and the structures of society.
Does the family take care of its home and try to make it reflect the harmony among its members? This is the seed of a renewed awareness of the environment and of ecology.
In the family, are studies aimed at the development of the person? This is the seed that can lead to cultural, scien­tific and technological research aimed at discovering little by little the myste­rious design of God for humanity and to working for the common good.
In the family, is communication impartial and constructive? This is the seed for a social communication system at the service of humankind; one that highlights and transmits the positive and that seeks to be an instrument of world peace and unity.
Is love the natural bond among the members of the family? This is the seed of structures and institutions that work for the good of the commu­nity and of individuals that aspire to universal brotherhood, giving value to each individual nation .... God created the family as a model for every other human coexistence. This therefore is the task of families: always to keep the fire of love burn­ing in every home and to reawaken those values that God entrusted to the family in order to bring them gener­ously and without rest to every sector of society.

To offer an answer to my three questions:

1. An adequate phenomenology of the family, which gives full account of the situation of the family in the past as much as of the situation of the family today, will recognise that some manifestations under the title of family represent a deviation or corruption of what is genuinely intended by the phenomenon of the family. Similarly, as Pope Benedict XVI suggested in the address that he had prepared to deliver at La Sapienza, what we receive from previous generations - in this case a more stable and unified vision of marriage and family life - has something genuine to offer to today's understanding.

2. One of the striking aspects of Chiara's talk is the number of points at which it suggests practical implementations of the unity of life that underlies marriage and family life. This should not be a surprise given the particular charism of unity that is a feature of the Focolare movement. One example of this is the suggestion that "it comes spontaneously to put everything in common, to share everything and to have a single economy". There is much here that might inform marriage preparation. As a single person, I am very conscious of the need for unity in a friendship, and am sometimes quite amazed at the lack of unity that I sometimes glimpse among those who are, to use the customary phrase, "in a relationship", or are married.

3. I think Chiara's vision does represent a challenge to Islam. Chiara's vision is implicitly monogamous, and so can only in part be lived out in a polygamous situation.

This moving post by Deacon Pat Kearns offers an insight into one family's attempt to live the unity that Chiara presents in her talk. It also gives an idea of the inter-relation of family and wider society today - and the dangers of the influence being from society to your family rather than the other way round.

Misrepresentation: continued debate about hope in The Times

I found very interesting the letter I copied in this post of two days ago. What I found interesting was the way in which it raised, in the context of the medical profession, the question of hope as part of the discussion of assisted suicide.

Yesterday further correspondence appeared in The Times, replying to Professor Morgan's letter. The first of these letters prompts two questions about the nature of the media, questions which apply to both electronic and print media.

Question 1: As a matter of media strategy, it is not unusual to try to respond to or criticise another writer or speaker without making any explicit reference to what they have said. This is based on the principle that many people might read or hear what you are saying without going to look at what your opponent wrote or said earlier ; you therefore get your point of view over without inadvertently communicating your opponent's point of at the same time. Now, one of the new letters contains the statement: "Professor Gethin Morgan (“Assisted dying and the suicidal state of mind”, letter, Aug 4) displays the assumption, too common among medics, that anyone wishing to die must be mentally ill." If you read Professor Morgan's letter, you will realise that he does no such thing. The letter writer has grossly misrepresented Professor Morgan's letter, so was it ethical for him to write such a letter for publication, even if we admit a legitimacy to the media strategy just described? I would suggest not.

Question 2: Given the possibly un-ethical nature of the letter itself, has the editor who decided to publish the letter also acted un-ethically? Should an editor publish a letter which, as I see it, so clearly mis-represents the contents of an earlier letter? Or does one detect a certain media bias on this question?

To reply to some of the points made in these new letters:

Surely desperate people do need hope? And, as Professor Morgan indicated in his letter, hope does extend beyond the realm of the physical, whereas yesterday's letters limit consideration of hope to just the physical.

Surely a rational thought process leading to a decision for suicide can be quite legitimately the subject of a discussion with a health care professional during an illness? That seems to be a part of the meaning of the word "rational".

The underlying principle of the second two letters appears to be that of respect for autonomy, for the right of an individual to make their own decision. What this avoids is the effect that one person's decision has on others - our decisions in a field such as this affect everyone, both those who might not want to commit suicide and medical professionals who might find themselves having to take part in decisions that they themselves find immoral.

The last paragraph of the third letter opposes considerations of "hope or despair" to those of "compassion and respect for my autonomy". Surely despair is an opposite of compassion, and the promotion of hope is profoundly compassionate?

The Feast of St John Vianney in Ars

This post at Priest's Secretary reports - briefly in text, but perhaps most movingly in the photograph slide shows embedded in the post - on the celebrations at Ars for the feast day of St John Mary Vianney.

General Audience: St John Vianney

Blog-by-the-Sea has put me on to the General Audience address that Pope Benedict gave yesterday. He devoted his address to St John Vianney, whose feast day we celebrated on Tuesday.

The full Italian text can be found here, at the Vatican website. This article at Catholic News Agency gives an account of Pope Benedict's catechesis, including the comparison of the "dictatorship of rationalism" that St John Vianney experienced to the "dictatorship of relativism" that we experience today. This presents a fascinating insight, rooted in, of course, one of Pope Benedict's constant themes, that of the appropriate relationship of reason and faith.

I offer here the original Italian text of these two paragraphs, from the text at the Vatican website:

Lungi allora dal ridurre la figura di san Giovanni Maria Vianney a un esempio, sia pure ammirevole, della spiritualità devozionale ottocentesca, è necessario al contrario cogliere la forza profetica che contrassegna la sua personalità umana e sacerdotale di altissima attualità. Nella Francia post-rivoluzionaria che sperimentava una sorta di “dittatura del razionalismo” volta a cancellare la presenza stessa dei sacerdoti e della Chiesa nella società, egli visse, prima - negli anni della giovinezza - un’eroica clandestinità percorrendo chilometri nella notte per partecipare alla Santa Messa. Poi - da sacerdote – si contraddistinse per una singolare e feconda creatività pastorale, atta a mostrare che il razionalismo, allora imperante, era in realtà distante dal soddisfare gli autentici bisogni dell’uomo e quindi, in definitiva, non vivibile.

Cari fratelli e sorelle, a 150 anni dalla morte del Santo Curato d’Ars, le sfide della società odierna non sono meno impegnative, anzi forse, si sono fatte più complesse. Se allora c’era la “dittatura del razionalismo”, all’epoca attuale si registra in molti ambienti una sorta di “dittatura del relativismo”. Entrambe appaiono risposte inadeguate alla giusta domanda dell’uomo di usare a pieno della propria ragione come elemento distintivo e costitutivo della propria identità. Il razionalismo fu inadeguato perché non tenne conto dei limiti umani e pretese di elevare la sola ragione a misura di tutte le cose, trasformandola in una dea; il relativismo contemporaneo mortifica la ragione, perché di fatto arriva ad affermare che l’essere umano non può conoscere nulla con certezza al di là del campo scientifico positivo. Oggi però, come allora, l’uomo “mendicante di significato e compimento” va alla continua ricerca di risposte esaustive alle domande di fondo che non cessa di porsi.

And my own English translation, with assistance from the Catholic News Agency article, which translates some but not all of the paragraphs:

Far from reducing the figure of St John Mary Vianney to an example, to be just admired, of 18th century devotional spirituality, it is on the contrary necessary to grasp the prophetic force that gives his human and priestly personality a great topicality. In a post-revolutionary France that was experiencing a kind of “dictatorship of rationalism” bent on erasing the very presence of priests and the Church in society, he lived, first - in the years of his youth - a herioc secrecy travelling many kilometres during the night to participate at Holy Mass. Then - as a priest - he stood out for his unique and fruitful pastoral creativity in showing that the rationalism that prevailed at the time was in reality far from meeting the authentic needs of man and therefore, ultimately, was not worth living.

Dear brothers and sisters, 150 years after the death of the Holy Cure of Ars, the pressures of today's society are no less demanding, though perhaps they are more complex. If then there was a "dictatorship of rationalism", today there is noticeable in many situations a type of "dictatorship of relativism". Both of them represent inadequate responses to the just demand for man to make full use of his reason as an element that is distinctive and constitutive of his proper identity. Rationalism was inadequate because it did not take account of human limits and raised reason alone as the measure of all things, transforming it into a goddess; contemporary relativism mortifies reason, because in reality it concludes by affirming that the human being cannot know with certainty anything outside the field of the positive sciences. But today, as before, man "beggar for meaning and fulfilment" searches continually for the exhaustive answers to the fundamental questions that do not cease to challenge him.

Pope Benedict points out in his address that there are some aspects of the life of St John Mary Vianney that constitute his own individual charism, and that we might not expect them to be reproduced in the lives of priests today. On the other hand, there are aspects that are of permanent value for the priestly life today: the living of an intimate friendship with Christ, which spills over into pastoral efficacy in the community served by the priest; devotion to the celebration of Mass and adoration of the Eucharist; faithfulness to the Sacrament of Penance.

Whilst the priest of today might look with awe at the life of St John Mary Vianney - and, rightly, judge that it would not be appropriate today for them to live a life of such severity - nevertheless, they should look to his life to discover the essentials of priestly life and ministry that might renew their lives and ministry today. "I hope nobody is expecting me to do that" is a response that has only some justification; most priests can do some of it, to the growth of their priestly lives and ministry.

More from Trafalgar Square

... OR should I take up a career in photo-journalism?

This is the coverage of Bob Oxtoby's time "on plinth" in the Bolton News (formerly, I think, the Bolton Evening News). It certainly used to be a very good evening newspaper, though it is many years since I saw a print copy. The photograph they have used is one that I took on the morning, and sent up on a CD to Bob. In time, as it turns out, for Bob to e-mail it on to the Bolton News.

My earlier post can be found here.

Quakers and lesbian/gay "marriage"

Over the last few days, I have been giving some thought to the reports that the Quakers were to allow gay marriages. This is reported on the BBC News website here, though if you visit the Religion and Ethics area of the BBC website - here - you will find that the news report's account of Quaker beliefs in general is not very accurate. So far as I can tell, the account of Quaker beliefs at the Religion and Ethics site is accurate - I have no great expertise in Quaker beliefs, but everything at this site accords with the little that I do know about them. The Times report is here.

The Quaker system is very attractive at first glance, and its emphasis on the presence of God "within" each and every person sounds very similar to Catholic teaching on grace as the presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul.

And the flaws in Quaker belief start at exactly that point. Sustained to its logical conclusion, this emphasis will want to say that God is present "within" even as a person comits the most evil of acts. From the point of view of reasoning, it is difficult to recognise in Quaker belief any place for sin and evil - the presence of which in the world is apparent without the need for execptional study. If it is not pursued to this conclusion, it needs to admit that each person has something of God within them, and also something that is of evil (cf the second page on the BBC Ethics and Religon site); and, from the point of view of Quaker-ism as a system of faith, there arises a need for discerning what it is that is of God and what it is that is of evil. There seems to be no rational way of making this discernment, as it rests within the choice of the individual in responding to "the light within", and therefore remains profoundly subjective. Expressed in terms of Catholic teaching, Quaker-ism does not give a proper, objective place to the doctrine of original sin.

This consideration is closely linked to the next flaw which begins to appear at this point. The human person is of his and her nature a being endowed with reason, and a being who is of his and her nature, communal. Communication between persons is based on this rational and social nature of the person. Consequently, we should expect that God's revelation of himself to human persons will also take part in this rational and communal character of the human person. In other words, revelation will be external and public in its character, and it will be given to a community. This is, of course, what we see in Judaism - God reveals himself and dwells among his chosen people - and in Christianity - where the presence of Jesus in the world is continued in the visible body of his Church. Quaker belief is fundamentally irrational, and reduces God's revelation of himself to a personal subjectivism. The silence of the Quaker meeting is perhaps symbolic of the isolated individualism of the Quaker view of revelation.

The subjective nature of Quaker belief about how God speaks to men and women therefore gives rise to both its major strength and, at the same time, to its greatest weakness. It places a very high value on the human person, and expects an identical high regard to be given by every person to every other person. This is the basis for their stand for non-violence and pacifism, a rather wonderful symbol of which is the Friends Ambulance Unit. It also issues in their strong sense of conscience, which could be seen to be a parallel to John Henry Newman's teaching about conscience as the prompting of God in the soul (though Newman's teaching would have an objective content in relation to the teaching of the Church that would not be there in the Quaker understanding). It has a relevance to, for example, how we might regard the person who is seriously ill. The weakness arises because no one Quaker can really communicate to another Quaker, or to someone outside their religion, anything of objective validity about the revelation of God. One can talk about God as love, and about his presence "within" and about the value that must be given to each and every person, but none of this has any objective content, any external or public form that can be communicated to another so as to demand their obedience. A Quaker is not able to teach their belief to another, or to argue for it by reason. In the modern world, it is therefore quite unviable as a system of religous belief capable of synthesis with a modern, scientific understanding of the world. [Note to myself: I must read up about Michael Faraday's religious beliefs in relation to his science.]

All of which is about my wanting to suggest that, slick and easy as the decision of Quakers to allow gay people to marry may appear, it has no rational basis that other religious denominations can want to follow. It is nothing more than a kind of "collective subjectivity", lacking any really objective attempt to study male-female difference. It reflects the weakness of a purely subjective view of revelation - that, when it does emerge into the public domain without objective structures of belief, it is just as likely to approve what is of evil as it is to approve what is of "the light". In a certain, and very real sense, it can't tell the difference.