Christianity and the Occult

 

Why Christians need to take the Occult seriously but not embrace it.

The Lie of Hatred and the Hatred of Lies

 

Why understanding Hatred is crucial in our society.

Reductionism and Groupthink

 

A few thoughts on two insidious aspects of modern thought.

Parsons versus Fletcher

Stephen Parsons of Surviving Church writes:

"One of the weaknesses of conservative Christianity is the claim that there is only a single version of truth and teaching. There is a single way of reading the Bible and the leaders and their group possess it and proclaim it. This ‘truth’ is completely above any need to debate or even discuss. Such a claim is extraordinary when we think about it. It totally ignores the wide variety of cultural and historical manifestations of Christianity that exist. The expression the Bible ‘clearly teaches’ is also palpable nonsense for those who actually take the trouble to read the text for themselves. Consistency and clarity are not there to be found in the Bible, but only in the imagination of one who keeps the book firmly closed. Only in the context of a carefully supervised reading of selected passages during a sermon on Sunday mornings, can this illusion of coherence and consistency be maintained. For the rest of us who study it for ourselves with the help of commentaries, the Bible turns out to be a highly complex work, full of insight, nuance, paradox and mystery but not clarity. It does not suddenly become easy to understand, just because a preacher declares it to be the infallible word of God and makes numerous selected quotes to back up a line of teaching."

Of course, Mr Parsons is reacting to the deeply troubling abuse to be found committed by Jonathan Fletcher, a Conservative Evangelical who has been a leading figure in the CofE, and whose behaviour towards those in his care has been appalling.

Mr Parsons' view of Conservative Christianity is coloured by his rejection of abuse. He sees Evangelical interpretation of scripture as being more absolute than Is justified by history and culture.

I must confess to sharing the dis-ease with certain groups of Evangelicals who act as if the first 1500 years of the Church never happened. My main worry is that Mr Parsons is doing something similar.

Mr Parsons is saying that history and culture need to be involved in interpreting Holy Scripture and yet he does not say which version of history and culture he is using. There are different histories and different cultures. There is a version of history that says that women were ordained Catholic priests from the word go but their ministry was suppressed by a misogynistic regime. There is another version of history that says that the only women to be ordained in the Early Church were ordained in the Montanist sect. Likewise, we can read scripture in our own culture but this is vastly different from the culture of Africa where persecution is very, very real. To say that Conservative Evangelicals ignore 1500 years of Christianity on the grounds that they do not take into account other histories and cultures is to ignore the context of the Bible and the Church in which it grew up and influenced.

If one must take into account other cultures, then one must allow slavery, otherwise one is imposing one's culture of anti-slavery. Why is one right and the other wrong? Why is slavery obviously wrong in all cultures if one believes that another's culture should be respected.

Mr Parsons is setting up his own interpretation of Holy Scripture up against Mr Fletcher's under the assumption that his is right and Fletcher's is wrong. To what authority is Mr Parsons appealing? I suspect that he chooses the commentaries and studies that "challenge the system" which is all well and good but on what authority do they challenge the system. This seems more inconsistent and incoherent to me than Biblical Literalism because the only authority that is appealed to is one's own which is a bit problematic when one is supposed to be appealing to God's authority.

This is why I find Catholicism much more appealing. St Vincent of Lérins explains that Christian Doctrine develops organically and thus transcends History and Culture. The Bible has a context within the Church. While there are a lot of interpretations of the text they differ, not in doctrine, but in sense. I do not believe that the Bible is always literally true but rather that it is theologically inerrant which must take into account other senses than just the literal. The Catholic Church as a whole has been given the charisma of interpreting doctrine.

It is true that there is plenty of wiggle room, especially in the doctrines of eschatology, atonement and anthropology which are without clear position. However, the moral theology has more consensus than Mr Parsons will allow and, if Mr Fletcher is guilty of abuse (which is true) then Mr Parsons is guilty of promoting a morality based on emotional need and the authority of the present moral culture rather than that found in Christ's Church. To say that the idea of clear teaching in Holy Scripture is "palpable nonsense" is to cut off the branch on which one sits.

Mr Parsons is typical of those who follow the Liberal Christianity which I doubt to be properly Christian. He is as guilty of pushing his moral superiority as Mr Fletcher and his ilk. Both will rely on their own authority than submit to the Catholic Faith. Then again, perhaps they will say the same of me. 

Thinking about “Thinking about conservative Christianity and divisions”

I came across this article by the retired CofE priest Stephen Parsons whom I have mentioned before here. Mr Parsons has been a voice for those who have suffered much abuse at the hands of disgraced ministers such as John Smythe and Peter Ball from the Evangelical and Catholic wings of the CofE respectively, and the institutional covers-up that these two abusers have relied upon to continue their work. I am conscious that when he writes, he does so with much compassion for those who have suffered much. In this piece, however, he does display a deeply unfortunate passion for the Liberal Agenda and thus, in my mind at least, undermines his compassion for those who are abused.

I have said very clearly that I believe that the Liberal Agenda is not properly Christian and I have given my reasons. This is something that I have to argue with my friends and family. I do think that the more I see of the Liberal Agenda eating its way through the Established Church and consuming good ministers and worshippers, the more I am convinced that this is a pernicious evil perpetrated to tear people from the loving arms of their Creator. I may be wrong, I must accept that, but this conviction has been growing faster and faster the more I see posts such as Mr Parsons’.

Mr Parsons’ main focus in this article is against conservative Christians, and it seems that, by this, he is concentrating on the conservative Evangelicals. The trouble is that there are conservative Catholics too and it is speaking against us that his arguments do unravel.

We do share many points of agreement. It is true to say that some conservative Christians reject “many of the achievements of two hundred years of scientific research.” There are many who, like the Westborough Baptist Church, scream out their hatred of homosexuals and proclaim God’s approval of their hatred despite this being so very much against the commandments of God. 

As a conservative Anglican Catholic, I accept very many of the findings of Science but I put them in their proper place as discoveries about Creation in itself. Yet, I do not believe that Science is a source of theological authority. Human beings may indeed be compared with the beasts that perish and that is how Science treats us. Scientific studies of the brain produce insights into the biological mechanism that is our body and gives ways of treating disorders, but it still misses out on the existence of the mind, of subjective consciousness and even something as simple as conservation of existence, i.e. why we should continue to be at any given moment. In that Science can be done by the complete rejection of God, we must question its role as being able to contribute anything theologically meaningful. We need God’s self-revelation in order to do anything theological. This means, if we want to believe in God, we have to have something definitive that tells us Who He Is.

And we have just that. Aside from the philosophical “proofs” of the Existence of God, we have the existence of Jesus Christ as a Historical Fact. We have the writings of the Evangelists in which modern scholarship is in agreement with the scholarship of the past that these Gospels are eye-witness testimony to the Life, Death, Resurrection and Teaching of Our Lord which have been passed down through the centuries in a myriad manuscripts copied faithfully from the First Century. That only tiny, non-doctrinal differences occur in these many, many manuscripts shows not only their reliability but, also, the importance that each scribe placed upon these words in order to get them right. So we have the Gospels. And we have the writings that came out of these from St Paul, St John, St Peter, St James and St Jude. We have Jesus, the good Jew, quoting the Hebrew Canon thus giving Christian weight to the Hebrew Scriptures. We have that writings of those who knew Jesus, who knew the apostles and those who read them and listened and wrote about them. We have those great arguments, the Councils in which those arguments were framed and settled. And we have the first millennium in which the Church, though always teetering on the edge of schism was largely in agreement about the Doctrine of Christ that it received.

In short, Conservative Christianity has already thought about, mulled over, and reached clear decisions about things and any of us can read these deliberations to this day. We simply do not need to re-invent the wheel. It is also why Conservative Catholics are in closer agreement to each other than many Evangelicals who do indeed seem to want to re-invent the wheel every time they split.

Thus, Mr Parsons is deeply wrong when he says, “The idea that even the words of Scripture do not give us certainties is very threatening to many conservative Christians.” The idea does not threaten us: it does not make sense to us. I really do not think Mr Parsons has actually thought about Conservative Christians at all. Perhaps he cannot: perhaps he and I have no real language in common with which to come to any theological agreement.

My real issue with Mr Parsons is his lack of Faith and how he is willing to put forward a fear-mongering of his own through a tyranny of whim and emotion whilst trying to undermine the very thing by which Christians know they are saved. Faith is about cultivating something as a certainty even in the face of doubt. We conservatives believe that God exists and cling to that based on the evidence that we have which must be the theological evidence that we have received. For conservative Anglican Catholics, this evidence is Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, Holy Reason, each being the foundation of the next. This is faith, and it is faith in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks and, clearly threatening to the liberals.

Yes. Salvation is indeed a work in progress, but the immutability of Christian Doctrine provides the rod by which my progress in holiness can be measured. We are not “once-saved, always saved,” there is no single moment of conversion. But while we rehearse our formulae, we move along the groove in a record towards the centre that is Christ, not around and around in circles as perhaps Mr Parsons thinks we live.

The truths of Science are horizontal and limited to the 11 dimensions (or whatever it is now) of physical reality and they do not touch upon the real issues of life and death. Science does not give us our morality: it tells us how different patterns of behaviour work through various Game Theoretic methods. Where then does Mr Parsons get the belief that the Church should be “liberal, inclusive and open to the findings of scientific research” especially when “liberal” seems to mean “willing to reject what God commands”, “inclusive” seems to mean “rejecting the notion of sin”, and “open to the findings of scientific research” seems to mean “accepting an authority which cannot make any theological or moral statement”? If the liberal believes that the Bible is not authoritative then why bother with the commandment to love one’s neighbour? Or why not reinterpret “love” to mean whatever you want. Actually, that is indeed what seems to be happening given ECUSA Bishop Michael Curry’s equivocating sermon at the recent Royal Wedding.

In praising the integrity of human nature to be spiritual and creative, Mr Parsons seems not to see that there is this business of sin infecting human nature and both common sense and basic psychology are just as infected aspects of our humanity as anything else. Of all people, he should know how sin destroys lives as he bears witness to it often enough. The reason that Smythe and Ball are exposed is because there is a firm, immutable standard against which they fall short and are seen to fall short. The same is true for the Westborough Baptist Church: they are seen to promote evil because they disobey one of the Lord’s Commandments very obviously. The fact of the matter is that human beings have fallen; they sin; they are sinned against; they sin because they are sinned against and they are sinned against because they sin. If there is no fixed moral compass then sin goes away and all this suffering is irrelevant.

If we try to save ourselves then we fall into the Pelagianism that was condemned by the Early Church. For Mr Parsons, that Pelagianism is expressed when he says, “Does what you believe enrich your life, enable you to flourish as a human being and bring you into touch with a God who gives you hope, love and joy?” whereby we become responsible in telling God how we want to flourish. I see little flourishing of the children slaughtered by Herod. I see little flourishing of St Paul languishing in prison. I see little flourishing of people dying in dark prisons for their faith, for the very certainty, the very conviction of the Faith that Mr Parsons believes “allows absolutely no scope for disagreement or doubt”. In fact, I see in what Mr Parsons says nothing that values the witness of the countless millions who have suffered for the Faith that the Liberal Agenda wants us to hold back on the grounds that we have more to learn about God from sources that are fundamentally opposed to God, such as Scientific Materialism, Freudian Psychology and Cultural Marxism. The Liberal Agenda robs the martyrs of their dignity and robs us of the possibility of being martyrs in our own way.

I am sure that Mr Parsons would agree that the one common theme that characterises the human condition is struggle. We have to struggle with God in order to realise that we should not want to be the people that we want to be, but rather the person that God wants us to be. That means a denial of worldly thinking. It means a denial of the social expectations of political correctness, of the language of entitlement and diversity, of sexual freedom. Sex may be a gift from God but it is not a right, nor is it always a gift that can be exercised. Our Lord suffers because we have to suffer. He did not have to suffer given His omnipotence, but He clearly feels that it is necessary to suffer because of the reality of our own pains. We have to do things God’s way and this means our life becomes that of service to the Gospel in order to proclaim the freedom that is coming in the morning. For the conservative Christian, nothing is more apparent than the fact that we are passing through this life. Mr Parsons would want us to settle down and be comfortable in this life on the grounds that it is psychologically better for us.

If conservative Christianity presents a “take it or leave it” approach to doctrine then this is because we believe firmly in in One God to which the three Creeds bear witness. Yes, God has made us free to choose whatever we want to believe. This doesn’t change the fact that there is One Church, One Faith, One Lord, et c. It means that one’s personal experience cannot be as authoritative as Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Experience is a means of hypothesis to test against the revealed truth. It is valuable but not one single experience is automatically authoritative. It means that we do wander in doubt and difficulty and that we can only ever build on what is already there. If God says that Fornication is a sin, then it is a sin no matter how liberating it feels. If only a heterosexual couple can marry in the eyes of God, then it cannot be changed no matter how badly we feel. If Society expects us to sin, then it is Society that will be judged harshly when God comes again in glory.

Where I am in agreement with Mr Parsons is that the legalism of certain expressions of conservative Christianity needs to stop. The monk obeys the Benedictine Rule because he knows it will keep his community together as they follow the Catholic Faith to God. He submits himself to its discipline, even to its sanctions and stripes, because he knows that his earthly body must be kept in submission to his spirit. Both body and spirit are God's, but both need to be brought into line for the good of the self and of the community in a more perfect love for God. It isn't a question of whether He loves me: I exist therefore I am loved. It's whether I love Him that matters more, and this involves a denial of myself and a conformity to Him. The self that I deny is the one defined by myself, by my experiences and by my society. I am of God's creation, corrupted by the sin of my species, and saved from the Hell of living in these sins by my Creator. If I follow Mr Parsons' programme of progress, I shall find myself drowning in the saccharin senses of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction at actuating my own identity in the very Hell that I long to leave. 

Give me my cross now so that I might stand a chance of resurrection in Christ when the time comes.

The Scale of Political Supernovae

Perhaps, one day, I will get back to my love of Astronomy. There is a great deal of beauty in studying the Universe beyond our little planet and way beyond our little Sun. At every scale, there is something worth studying. We can look at moons and meteors, comets and coronae, planets individually and in context with the others. We have just started to pick up on planets orbiting distant stars. Each time, we can increase the scale from the astronomically parochial Earth-Moon system to galactic, intergalactic and even further beyond. I’ve long been interested in the shape of the entire Universe my own mathematical journey once gave me the language to discuss large-scale structures.

One occurrence that always makes me rather wistful is the supernova – the death of a largish star. When a supernova occurs, it spells the death, not only of the star itself but also the deaths of the planets that surround it. A star ages when it runs out of hydrogen to use as fuel and subsequently begins to create heavier and heavier elements as it tries to keep its core running. It’s like a nuclear reactor but runs on smashing atoms together rather than tearing them apart. As you smash atoms together, you begin to create heavier elements: helium, lithium, carbon, oxygen, and iron. This means that the star can start to collapse in on itself because it is so heavy. This will heat the core up to an extent that it will puff off any remaining gases and lighter particles at an alarming rate. This is the supernova. It is bright, brilliant and, in the scale of the universe very short-lived. What remains can be a dwarf star, neutron star or even the famous black hole.

To put it into perspective, our little Sun will probably not go supernova but rather form a less spectacular event called a nova. It’s like a supernova but on a smaller scale.

But it’s all a question of scale.

On the small scale, our Sun going nova will destroy all life on Earth. It will boil the gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn, evaporate Mercury and Venus, and leave the Earth a cinder floating in space. That’s the small scale. On the scale of the Universe? It will be like a tiny bubble in your lemonade appear and disappear barely noticed.

All of this is way beyond the scale of human beings. In the scale of the Universe, we come and go from irrelevance into irrelevance. Nothing that we do matters to this vast expanse of space.

But it does to God.

And God works on all scales.

I look at our politics of the last few years and I see what I can only understand as the beginnings of a supernova. Political activity and unrest are getting more fervent, social structures are colliding, breaking apart and reforming. In the UK we are heading out into the unknown as Brexit seems to be changing all that we understand about Parliament and challenging our understanding of democracy. It’s frightening, exhilarating, disturbing and the cause of much stress. An end is coming, but also a beginning. A Reformation.

Even when a star dies, its component parts blown into space have the potential to create new structures. The same is true here.

For example, the Established Church is in decline and will soon go supernova. It cannot hold onto integrities which cannot be reconciled because, for all its good intentions and prayers, one integrity has roots that are not of God. It will fall, and what will be left will be component parts which will need to regroup in order to survive. Pope Benedict is right; the Church of the Future will be smaller, less grand but much more faithful.

All this is happening on scales beyond the individual.

Brexit will, in all probability happen. If it does not, then there will be a political crisis and loss of faith in democracy the like of which this country has not seen. Brexiteers will not take a rescinding of Article 50 lightly. If Brexit does happen, then there will be a scale of resentment from the pro-Europeans that will poison political relationships for years to come. It seems that we are in between a rock and a hard place.

We can go absolutely potty and focus in on our little bubble, or little piece of politics. We can become monomaniacally pro-Brexit or con-Brexit and bleat and swear and threaten and bewail when the worst happens. The monomaniac is so sure of his understanding, so at home in his echo chamber, and so utterly convinced of the worst, that he has become a Kripkean Dogmatist. The monomaniac of either party faces his own supernova as that single issue becomes so concentrated that a single event will cause an explosion of personal energy to the extent that life will never be the same again.

Monomaniacs need to change scale for their own health. We need to make our prayers to God and look up.

A time will come when Brexit will be a dim memory, an obscure word in the dictionary which people no longer see as significant in their lives. We need to learn to see ourselves beyond our political upheavals. What politics do we want? How can we live with those of an opposite political ideology? God is on every scale and it is in every scale that we need to make our prayer, not just in the narrow focus of our own monomania. Indeed, if we’re not “monomaniacal” about God, then perhaps we are worshipping an idol of our own making.

Brexit will come and Brexit will go and, until then, we must be courageous and deny our monomaniacal pursuit of doom by remembering that there is always hope. We must be courageous to enjoy the life that God gives us, even in the face of turmoil. The supernova will happen, and there will always be a remnant left behind as the wind blows the lightweight material away. God will not forget us. He is here on our scale, whatever that will be!

Sex and Tolerant Conservatism

Many moons ago, I was introduced by John Beeler to the notion of Tolerant Conservatism, to wit:

Charity and discretion about people’s failings while at the same time not making excuses for those vices either.

The point of the Catholic Faith is to demonstrate what sin is and thus show people who have ears to hear how they have sinned. It is also very much supposed to be a reassurance that, despite one’s sin, God’s love always offers a way back without damnation. We can always be restored to righteousness with no conditions except that we desire to be restored to righteousness wholeheartedly.


I find this incredibly healthy. Even today, I see too many people sit in judgment over other. This judgment is not the same as God’s Judgment: Man’s judgment springs from law which can only say where we have gone wrong; God’s judgment puts things right.


This is why I am so wary of the Liberal movement and its successor – the Progressive movement – both within the Church and in secular society. If by Liberalism, we mean the pursuit of freedom of opportunity for everyone to follow their conscience and excel in what they do, then I am in full favour and a proud Liberal. But that is not what being Liberal means now. Being Liberal now seems about being free to be who we want to be and to be free from the demands of others which may prevent that. The former is more conducive to the cohesion of Society and the latter conducive to its division.


I find it ironic that proponents of this Modern Liberalism only apply it to those who agree with them. As a proud conservative Christian – i.e. one who holds to the traditional teaching of the Church, in particular men and women being substantially different within humanity and fornication being inherently sinful and with all the consequences therefrom– I am judged to be illiberal and therefore not allowed the freedom to be who I am because it impinges on other, more worthy, freedoms of others within Society. I am judged to be homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist and must therefore be censured, censored lest I incense the ire of decent members of Society. This Modern Liberalism is intensely illiberal.


Let us, for example, look at the current question of surrogacy. You may know that the diver, Tom Daley and his (male) partner have had a baby by surrogacy. What we do not hear about is the person who carried that baby in her womb for nine months. We do not hear about her involvement despite the fact that this child bears her DNA. The woman has been whitewashed out of that relationship. The fact of the matter is that two homosexual males have an inherently sterile relationship UNLESS a woman is involved. What we will soon see is that women in poverty will be encouraged to be surrogate mothers for payment. What if the baby is not satisfactory, or disabled, or dies in the womb? I have already heard of a case of a single man who entered into a surrogacy agreement with a woman of little economical means who subsequently bore him a child with Down’s Syndrome. He refused to take the baby or to pay the sum due leaving a woman in penury with a completely dependent child. Is it any wonder that my mind is turning to the Handmaid’s Tale?


Liberalism needs to ground itself in basic facts: we simply cannot be what we want to be. Such a freedom is always going to encroach upon the same freedoms of others. The same desire that wants to see women being regarded as equals within the human genus is actually seeking to define women out of existence because it refuses the basic facts of the sacredness of being a man and the sacredness of being a woman and the intransigence between the two. As a man, I cannot know what it is like to be a woman, and Society doesn’t seem to get this. Society confuses being and doing grotesquely. Look at the retail industry: blue for boys, pink for girls; trucks for boys, dolls for girls; heavy shoes for jumping in mud for boys, pretty princess shoes for girls. Whether or not we have a visceral reaction to a boy playing with dolls, it’s clear that the boy is still a boy and that his preference for playing with dolls does not change what is written in every cell in his body.


Likewise, a stay-at-home father is often regarded as doing “women’s work.” He is not. He is doing his own work in looking after his children and playing a different role from his wife who is earning the money. The work does not rewrite DNA: DNA is a fact, not an opinion and Progressivism needs to ground itself in inalienable facts if it is to do justice to the human condition.


And this is where I am proudly conservative because I regard tradition highly and seek to preserve the corpus of human experience. It seems to me that the Revolutionary Spirit found in the present swathes of Social Justice Warriors seems out to deny the human beings of the past their own existence which has been completed. They are who they were and they were who they are. We have to share solidarity with all humanity throughout all ages because, despite the proud claims of the Progressives, humanity has not changed morally-speaking. Thinking that we have progressed will lead to the Progressives becoming ironically the cause of an enslaved society. It will be the Modern Liberals that will bring about the reality of the societies found in the Handmaid’s Tale, the Hunger Games, 1984, and even the Time Machine.


We can look, say, at the Carry On films which are probably being derided once more. They seem to have gone up and down in popularity since their time due to how politically correct their humour is found to be at the time. However, they are never allowed to be of their time. No, gawping at a woman’s chest is tacky and yet, the heterosexual male naturally finds the female figure attractive. The figure of Sid James lusting after Barbara Windsor is horrific in that Babs is being dehumanised, yet it is also tragic as Sid dehumanises himself as an animal on heat, and it is comedic in that this is how humanity is. That is something that has been expressed in all human culture from the beginnings of human culture. It has always been the source of comedy. Human experience finds much comedy in the figure of the man in the thrall of sexual desire because it is a common experience which conflicts with manners.


It is absolutely abhorrent for a man to force his attentions upon women, and rape is a disgusting way to treat a human being. Yet it is impolite and degrading to remark upon a woman’s body in a way that will make her feel uncomfortable and less-than-human. The comedy arises in this tension between the male animal seeking gratification of his desire and the homo sapiens seeking to rise above his animal instinct and treat a woman with the respect and dignity she deserves. And yet, comedy is the thin median between tragedy on the one side and horror on the other. Conservatism should seek to keep the boundaries by which this line is apparent: tolerance should allow someone forgiveness when they transgress this line and, having transgressed, render remorse, apology and transformation. Every human male should learn to feel disgust at the thought of a woman being raped and seek to check his natural instincts. Every woman should indeed call out any activity that she finds infringes her body autonomy. Both sexes must also recognise that mistakes happen, sometimes with terrible consequences. There needs to be the capacity for forgiveness but it must be recognised that this forgiveness may take a long time to complete and at a cost commensurate with the offence.


Conservatism ensures that we keep to the same standard as always even though some societies have gone against that. Conservatism keeps that ideal standard going above the changes and chances of this fleeting world and, for me, engages in a reflection of the Divine Nature. Conservatism recognises that there are moral absolutes and objective moral values. These values turn Hume’s “ought”s into concrete “is”s. In recognising both the immutability of these values and also the brokenness of human nature, we see Tolerant Conservatism as being a fully Christian view of politics. I don’t doubt that Christians can take other political stances: it is the Christian Royal Priesthood that will sanctify politics. However, the Christian does need to make room for the King of Kings as a king and thus recognise the limits to which human beings are truly free. The fact is that we are free to be the people whom God has created us to be, not whom we create ourselves to be.


The seeds of dystopia are always in our society and they always will be. We need to learn about all kinds of Fascism. Conservatism has its own Fascism as the Nationalist movements of the last century show us; Socialism has its own Fascism which fell largely at the end of the Century and yet still afflicts countries today; we need, therefore, to be on our guard against Liberal and Progressive Fascism which is beginning to build up in our youngsters disillusioned with any ideal that disallows themselves to define themselves as they desire. Once the generation of old-style conservatives has lost control, the Social Justice Warriors will succeed them. They have a chance to see how their politics could become intolerant and alter their stances accordingly. I pray that they will take this chance.

Doctorates in Doubt, Deception and Devilry

Update 28.10.18: It appears that the Imam gave his address immediately after the Eucharist following protest by more level headed thinkers. That he was originally invited to speak during the Mass itself shows what the intention of the powers-that-be were.

Splendid academic dress, isn't it?

For many years, I have longed to find my way into an academic establishment to study Theology, Philosophy and Divinity to as high a level as I could, the goal being, eventually a bona fide Doctorate in Divinity preferably from Oxford.

I have revised my opinion, though not my goals.

First.

Second.

With the greatest respect to my Muslim friends, colleagues and associates, I am a Christian and not a Muslim. It means that I believe the Christian religion to be true and the Muslim religion at best true only in part and thus not the best expression of reality and morals. Since Muslims do not believe that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, their admission into a celebration of the Holy Eucharist as preacher is an affront to both religions. Why? Because either it will be viewed as an opportunity to proselytise the other, or neither party truly believes the tenets of the religion they claim to profess in the fullness that an orthodox expression of either Faith requires.

Why do it? Why have a preacher from a markedly different belief stand in the pulpit of a prestigious university church to preach?

The purpose of a University is the furtherance of knowledge. This means that it is committed to the development of new ideas within the fields of study it offers. In Mathematics, I would expect lectures on Topology, Analysis, Complex Geometry, and the like. I would not expect lectures on the cell structure of members of the fungi kingdom unless that structure was expressly mathematical. Even so, I would expect it billed as Applied Mathematics and certainly not Pure Mathematics, save perhaps as some motivation for a particularly new geometry to be found in the Natural World. I would also not expect a lecture course within Mathematics on “Why mathematicians MUST study the cell structure of members of the fungi kingdom”.

The purpose of a sermon, homily or address at any Christian office of worship must begin and end with the God of the Christian Faith. I cannot say that it is all that clear that Christians and Muslims do in fact worship the same God. Certainly, we both claim to worship the God Who Created the Universe, but I believe in One God in Three Persons, Three-in-One, et c. The Muslim cannot accept this. This is not how they encounter God. It is certainly not how their prophet Mohammed saw God. If neither I nor Mohammed recognise the same attributes of God as necessary, then I can have a healthy doubt that these two gods are the same. Any address by a faithful Muslim will not begin and end with the God as expressed in the words of the Nicene Creed which, if it was said at this “celebration” of the Eucharist, would have been said either before or after this address.

The second purpose of a sermon, homily or address in any Christian office of worship must be to edify, comfort and challenge the faithful in the Christian Faith. If it is not the Christian Faith that is being preached, then it cannot do so.

As far as I see it, truly Christian education and the Christian quest for further knowledge has only two justifications. It is to glorify God and to reveal His glory for the encouragement of the people in the Christian Faith. We should not pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge because that makes an idol of knowledge. This is a trap many modern academics have fallen into: they worship their corpus of knowledge and see themselves as more advanced than their predecessors because knowledge has “progressed”. There is a huge lack of respect that living thinkers have for those who have lived before. Yet, if Christ is indeed God (and I pray that I may have the courage to die for that very belief!) He is the logos – the Divine Reason – and a thinker whom no-one can surpass, living or dead. Likewise the writers of Holy Scripture.

It is a dreadful disease of the University Church that it needs to reconcile knowledge that it discovers outside of the Christian Faith with Orthodox Christian Doctrine by massaging the doctrine so that it ceases to mean what the Early Church believed it to mean. Our Church Fathers will not have come across Hegel’s dialectic, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, or Derrida’s Deconstruction. I doubt that this new thinking would have caused them to bat an eyelid given that many of them died for the Faith that they received from those who went before. However, their lives of faith in God will show up people who try to muddle the Christian Faith into a socially acceptable and “inclusive” mush as being intellectual cowards who haven’t the gall to believe in something with all their heart without capitulating to what seems just and fair to the society in which they live.

I still would love to study for a doctorate in divinity, but I prefer to do so sitting at the feet of Christ through the words that He has given to many humble and intelligent people. I will learn Christianity and Divinity from the poor destitute, not from those who can’t survive without a television set; from those who offer their lives in sacrifice for the good of others, not from those who bleat that their identity has been insulted; from those who have learned to deal with the effects of abuse, not from those who campaign for the right to do as they please; from those who confess and repent of their sins and crimes, even by accepting and owning their punishment, not from those who not only refuse to recognise their sinfulness, but rather want to make it legal and acceptable. Christ tells us who will teach us His ways: the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after HIS righteousness (not their own), the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for the sake of HIS righteousness (not that of Society’s).

The Doctors of the Church – i.e. those who did seek after God’s righteousness and teach it to others – these will teach me much, but it will be in the eyes of those Our Lord mentions in the Beatitudes that I will learn Christ. They will teach me how to loose the bands of wickedness, undo heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free and break every yoke. Notice, that this means that I need to know God’s Righteousness to tell me what is wicked, burdensome, oppressive and coupling with Evil. They will teach me to give bread to the hungry, invite the poor into my house, cover the naked, and make myself available to all people in their true need. The need of any person before even food or drink is the word of God Who gives life. If I distort that word, then I have no love for God nor for my neighbour. If I reinterpret God’s righteousness to make it nice and acceptable and challenging only those who stand up to the godlessness of Society, then I have no love for God nor for my neighbour.

I have so much to learn, and I MUST learn it because I burn to do so for the pitiful love for God that I have in my heart. I love Him so little, but I do love Him enough to seek Him on His terms not in the terms of my own making that go against what the Church has always said.

Nonetheless, I am to learn the Truth and to help others in their search for it. This means that I have a duty to Christian Education first to the glory of God and second to bring people to His glory. As part of that latter, I also see Christian knowledge as a protection against deceit, doubt and the Devil. It is the Devil who wants to be deceived and to deceive us, directly or indirectly. The Doctor who seeks to alter the faith to bring it into line with modern values has been deceived and is sowing doubt. Since doubt and deceit are from the devil, such an educator is not a Doctor of Divinity, but rather a Doctor of Devilry.

I can imaging academics of University institutions either smugly dismissing me as a relic of “old-style” stupid thinking. Others will be appalled at the level of offense that I have caused to the sensibilities of those who just want to be nice and “include” everyone in the Church. I don’t care. I may never wear the fine robes of a DD (Oxon) as did Dr Pusey, but neither will I wear the same robes of a heretical female Episcopal bishop who somehow has become equivalent with a scholar of fine standing and who sought to bring the Church of England back to her roots. I will content myself with learning what the Early Church has always taught without their interference.


I would like to be involved in building and developing seminary education for Anglican Catholic Clergy and Laity alike. However, if I am honest, I do not know what I could teach – I have too little formal theological education. However, I still seek to pursue this: education is not about fine robes, nor pieces of paper, nor letters after the name, nor the respect of one’s peers. It is about loving God and loving His children and helping them to know and love Him better. Certainly this is not the education that you will receive in Oxford!

Stereotypes: Preserve or Abolish?

 

Nearly a year ago, I posted this. I rather think that my point still stands firm, perhaps even more so.

 

I notice that the group under the umbrella of the world’s longest acronym (which begins LGBT…) sits ill at ease with itself. I believe that there is a subgroup, particularly among the Transgender community, who have formed a movement called “Get the ‘L’ out”. Why? Essentially because Lesbians are necessarily “transphobic” i.e. they will not engage in copulation with a “person” who possesses a biologically male pudendum. According to the Transgender communities, there are biologically male pudenda which are designated female and, therefore, if one “identifies” with being a transgender lesbian (i.e. in point of fact, a heterosexual biological male) a lesbian has no business rejecting one’s sexual advances on the grounds of one’s male physiology.

 

The trouble is, that there is this gross confusion between what sex is and what gender is. They are not the same.

 

The former is biological, genetic and objectively measurable. Medicine that is designed for one sex is thus created to cater for the biochemical peculiarities of the individual. Medicine meant for a man will not be suitable for a woman and vice versa. Likewise, biology makes sexual intercourse a danger for the biological female because she can get pregnant, and pregnancy is a supreme, and sometimes extreme, sacrifice of body autonomy. A man who identifies as a woman cannot get pregnant – at least not without major medical modification.

 

The latter is based upon feeling and stereotype. I’ve noticed that there is no definition of what a woman is based upon gender. The reason is that this definition is based on stereotypes of the sexes. Is my son really a girl because he likes wearing pink, or is he actually from the late 18^th Century according to Xavier de Maistre in his Voyage autour de ma chamber? Does he identify with being a woman because he likes wearing a floofy dress, or is he identifying as a typical male child from the late 19^thCentury?

 

It seems to me that the existence of gender dysphoria really comes about because of the sexual stereotypes ingrained in our society. If we see a man with the physique of an overweight construction worker wearing a cocktail dress, we do indeed stare because we know something is incongruous: it goes against something deep within our experience of what it is to be a person in society. However, a cocktail dress does not a woman make. It may be feminine, but not female.

 

We know that stereotypes are built upon sweeping generalisations of sections of society. These generalisations are often unfair, unrepresentative and, even, offensive as anyone in any form of ethnic minority will say. We need only look at the 80s ITV Sitcom Mind Your Langauge! to see how stereotypes belittle in our society.

 

Take away the stereotype and we should be able to cure gender dysphoria… IF gender dysphoria is a disease.

 

That raises an interesting question. Is gender dysphoria a bone fide disease or a disability?

 

If it is, then it ought to be treated and its sufferers helped to function in a society of binary male and female people. One cannot ban people from keeping cats because a percentage of the population is allergic to cats. A disease or disability is necessarily a deviation from the norm. We cannot say that the average number of legs of a human being is 1.999 et c because of those born without legs. We base our understanding of what is normal based on the use of the Mode as average, not the Arithmetic Mean.

 

If gender dysphoria is not a disease, then it must take its place with the democratic allocation of materials to other normal stratifications of society. We cannot make everything left-handed just because a significant minority of the population is left-handed and making all things ambidextrous is not easily remedied (just how do you do ambidextrous scissors? Use your teeth?). We cannot incorporate Sharia Law into our legislation just because there is a significant minority of Muslims in Society. We cannot make all restrooms unisex (and thus deprive biological women of a safe space) on the grounds of a significant minority. That’s undemocratic.

 

It certainly seems very tempting to see gender dysphoria as a form of a psychological condition in which one believes that a stereotype has control over one’s identity. It is a diminution of the self. If one tells a sufferer of gender dysphoria that they don’t believe that a man can be a woman and vice versa, or that pudenda are peculiar to their sex, will often receive the response, “you’re denying my existence!” Given that the sufferer is reducing their identity to a stereotype, it seems that actually the “transphobic” person here is actually crediting the “transgender” person with more existence than they give themselves. The stereotype is actually quite lethal: indeed there is a disproportionate number suicides among the Transgender community than nationally.

 

Quite why that’s the case is a matter of debate: it could be due to the lack of recognition of society and rejection of the family towards the intended gender, or it could be a psychological propensity towards self-destructive tendencies. Either way, there is a brokenness here that needs to be dealt with for the sake of those who suffer from gender dysphoria.

 

I look at children’s clothes in our local store and note that the girls clothes are all pink, pretty, delicate, floofy, and completely impractical for outdoor activities such as running, jumping and climbing trees. My daughter loves running, jumping and climbing, and none of this comes from her desire to be a certain gender. She is a child who loves running, jumping and climbing. And she is a girl who wears clothing which the store designates as being “boy’s” clothes. It’s an unnecessary designation. For little children as the early 20^thCentury shows, there is really no such thing as boy’s clothes and girls’ clothes. The under-fives all wore some kind of floofy dress and sported long hair.

 

In the same store, I see bikinis for the under-tens! Bikinis!

 

It seems to me that there is a complex interplay between sexualisation, marketing and corporate demand which feed off each other. What is the cause?

 

I would say it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, and we find ourselves in medias res where our society is hung up on looking sexually attractive that our children are persuaded that that’s how they ought to look, and thus put demand on the businesses who produce the clothing, use market strategies to get people to buy their product, and thus begin to persuade people that what they produce is sexually attractive… It’s a cycle in which each element feeds the other and thus is unbreakable. We are a society that is so hung up on sex that we perceive it as a right to have sex, and that destroys all of the biological, social, teleological and moral reasons for sex, namely to produce a committed, consenting, loving family in which the genes of both parents can be propagated in the children together with a nurturing respect for each member of the family as they really are.

 

To enforce a right to sex is to endorse rape, and it’s truly shocking that, until the 1990s, a husband could take his pleasure from his wife without her consent. That is certainly not what the Lord Jesus Christ intended, and it is dreadful that the Church of England rather tacitly supported the right of a husband over his wife in this way during its period of being the “Conservative Party at Prayer”. The right to sex is to enforce another stereotype, namely that of the human animal – the belief that we are nothing more than animals who copulate freely in the wild without any social mores.

 

So, should men be allowed to wear dresses and women trousers if sexual stereotypes are to be abolished? That’s a good question. I would argue that a man wearing a dress is not a woman but rather a man wearing a dress, but that he has every legal right to wear his dress. My concern really is to the extent that he wishes to pass himself off as a woman and, more importantly, what is intentions are for doing so. Bruce Jenner is perfectly within his rights to change his name to Caitlin and live “as a woman,” whatever that means, but biologically he is still a man and to deny it is to deny that there is an objective reality in which we do science and make the great discoveries that the Human Race has thus made so far. In order to go to the Moon, we have to believe that the Moon exists as something to go to. In order to cure genetic diseases such as ovarian cancer, we have to believe that the recipient of the treatment actually has ovaries and is, therefore, biologically a woman. That cannot be written out of Society!

 

I do notice that transgender activists (i.e. those who seek to impose the will of a minority onto the majority) refuse to make the definition as to what a “man” is and what a “woman” is, but rather pass the buck back to the questioner declaring that knowing what a “man” or a “woman” is is part of our enlightenment. I had rather believed that the Enlightenment was based upon Reason and Scientific progress. This form of transgender activism is, to my mind, a regression to some fablulous dark age of superstition in which one can change sex by uttering the magic spell, “I identify as…”

 

However, we are talking about real people here – people who look at themselves in a way that is not full, but reductionist. To be honest, we are all like that in some way, seeing ourselves as needing to fulfil some stereotype because we see something attractive in it. We must recognise that the doctrine of Original Sin states very clearly that we are each affected by the sin of the people around us and of those who came before us. We are all broken; we are all in need of transformation; we each see ourselves as being less than the people God created us to be. Accepting that brokenness is not enough – we have to reject it. We need to want to get better, not wallow in our deficiencies and die in them. Sometimes we need to repent, not of sins that we have actually committed, but also of the sins our society commits against its members. Repentance simply means to turn to God and to His light and accept His say and definition of who we are. If we take up self-definition to be our right, then we wrest it from God’s hand. In so doing, not only do we become empty stereotypes, but we also must take upon us the responsibility of being, and that is a responsibility that we are simply too small to bear.

 

 If the Church is to represent anything good for people with gender dysphoria, then it must do so with loving care and dignity for the individual, and recall the problems of stereotypes. One stereotype is that which I have alluded to in this text. A transgender woman is not simply a man in a dress as many would think and it would be unkind and disrespectful simply to dismiss sufferers of gender dysphoria in that way. To say a transgender woman is just a man in a dress is in itself another stereotype, or at least a reduction to an oversimplified view. There is an issue here with how that person perceives themselves. If he comes to church in a cocktail dress, or if she comes to church in a three-piece suit, then we should try hard not to react, but continue to present the transforming nature of Christ’s love to all whom we meet. What we should not do is encourage that dysphoria, particularly in our children whose perceptions of things are necessarily myopic due to their inexperience and confusion. We can do that by ensuring that our stereotypes are seen for what they are and rob them of their control over our identity. This effectively comes when we pull down the idols of our society and replace them with temples to the Living God, Trinity in Unity to Whom all praise, honour and glory belong, world without end. Amen.

Erosion and Hope

I hated Geography at school. I hated it because it tried to be both rigorous and uncertain and often just dull for being neither one nor the other. All the measurements were statistical and general trends were taken to laws. To be honest, I think different teachers and different teaching methods would have helped. As a former teacher, I have to accept that my method for teaching mathematics would not have brought the best out in every single student I have taught. These days, it is an expectation of teachers not just to do our best, but to do the best that can be done anywhere.

That is an unreasonable and silly demand, but leaders in education who have to reduce everything to soundbites in order to do justice to the smallness of their thinking and laziness in building an education community embrace this shoddy idea and force it down the throats of the simple educator. A school motto, appropriately chosen, can certainly inspire; however, this needs to be done with care. My school motto was appropriately Benedictine: ora et labora – Pray and work! This is reasonable, sets the tone and gives each person, teacher and pupil alike, a guiding principle. Something like “The best that can be done anywhere” is unreasonable because it is nebulous, fosters unnecessary competition to constructive collaboration with others, and ultimately promotes a fear of failure. Such a soundbite erodes confidence.

And that is something I did learn about in Geography in (I think) the second form. Erosion is something that occurs via seemingly innocuous means. It is said that the Little Bird of Svíþjóð sharpens its beak on a rock every thousand years and, on the first day of Eternity, the rock will have been worn away. Of course, Eternity is Timeless, but one can see the principle of erosion at work. Over time (possibly centuries, millennia or aeons) little repetitive actions leave an appreciable and indelible mark. Erosion is a sure and certain way of getting rid of rocks. And it is the Devil’s way of trying to get rid of The Rock.

It doesn’t take much looking at the state of the Church and Christian belief in general to see how this erosion is working. On all sides, the Devil is playing the long game by exploiting human nature and, indeed, the transience of human beings to bring down the Rock of Our Salvation and render it of none effect.

Erosion always happens at the cliff face where it is exposed to the elements. Evil is an absence of Good, and the cliff-face between the two exists actually within the rational soul because the rational soul has the free choice between good and evil even if that choice is influenced and affected by ambient good and evil. We are born in sin but not born sinners. Our human nature, while good in itself being creatures of God, is eroded by sin. Were each one of us totally evil, totally lacking in any good, there would be nothing to save. If the human will is so corrupt, why is it to be saved? Why does our Lord adopt a human will as well, if not to transform that as well?

Yet, our flesh is corrupted by Evil which has got in through the fracture caused by the First Sin, and none of us can escape that. It is because Evil has the capacity to erode us, eat us away, that we require Salvation. Our Lady may have been sinless, but she still needed to be saved from this erosive Evil as much as any of us. Death and sin come hand in hand. Even if we don’t sin, the presence of sin around us is lethal. That’s why we all need salvation and why it is easier to save the sinless (in particularly the unborn) than the sinner.

There are several different types of erosion, for example attrition, hydraulic, abrasion, and dissolution. The little bird of Svíþjóð works his erosion by abrasion; acid rain dissolves the White Cliffs of Dover; the chain gang breaks rocks through attrition; the sheer power of water can burst a dam at speed, or slowly fracture a rock by freeze-thaw action. And the Devil uses all of these to try and break the Church.

The sheer inhuman actions of human beings to others is enough to batter people’s faith that they leave the Church. We can see this most clearly in the recent actions and covers-up of paedophile priests. Their actions tar the whole priesthood in the eyes of others, and the fall from the faith convinced that the evil of one means that the whole institution is evil. Sometimes it is hard to see round this war of attrition. The only antidotes are Justice and Mercy. Every action of every human being can be forgiven save that sin against the Holy Ghost. We have to dare to forgive and we have to dare to confess in order to be forgiven. Given the sheer magnitude of some human actions it is easy to see why this is hard and looks to be impossible.

The actions of the secular world abrade the morality of Christians. Tu Quoque arguments are often powerful when they pit the majority against the minority. Christians know that sexual activity outside marriage is sinful and yet it seems to become acceptable because the people who warn against it are in an ever decreasing number. Little wonder that this also leads to a form of freeze-thaw action within the Church whereby what is socially acceptable enters into the Church and slowly forces a split through a series of amendments to canons and practices. We see Christian poetry replacing readings at the Eucharist. Once that has established, Christian poetry is replaced with secular poetry; secular poetry with poetry from different faiths (just to be inclusive); poetry from different faiths with readings from the Q’ran. Slippery slope arguments aren’t always the best arguments but can become so when there is evidence that the slope is indeed slippery in the first place. Once Christian morals have been eroded by abrasion from the outside and eroded by sheer hydraulic action of the waters of chaos from the inside, the structure becomes less believable. The antidote is to reject the authority of the secular world over the doctrine of the Church. The trouble is that the doctrine of the Church is under the same erosion because the whole idea of objective truth is being eroded by the same abrasion and hydraulic action.

Finally, the Rock suffers from dissolution through the direct hatred of people who see it as a force of regression and oppression and fail to see that it is they who are under the subjugation of evil. The pernicious cultural Marxism (which does exist as a thing and is happening throughout every sphere of life) is particularly acidic as its adherents claim the moral high ground without basis and use their might to attack the church through secular means. In the West, this is done through the law courts. Their aim is to dissolve the Church through depriving it of the resources to keep it going. This includes the media through which the Church can broadcast its message. The Social Justice Warriors both within and without the Church brand those of us who adhere to the Traditional Catholic Faith as bigots, misogynsts, homophobic, transphobic et c, because these words (though fantastically misapplied and abused) are convenient. Once they can label the Church with these negative aspects, they can draw the supports away hoping the edifice will collapse.

We need to recognise this erosion carefully. It has already resulted in fractures within the Church, though my confraternity in the other Continuing Anglican jurisdictions are bucking this trend. We cannot let the caustic nature of SJWs, the moral relativity of Society, the deluded liberal element within the Church, and the scale of human depravity pull us away from the loving arms of our Crucified God.

What is the Church to do in amidst uncertainty?

God has given us a remedy for uncertainty at every level. It is called Hope.

Christian Hope is real and it allows us to cling on to God in the raging tempest. Hope is the mechanism by which we can find certainty within uncertainty. Even when Truth itself is being threatened we hold tight to what we know to be true even if the proof of it escapes us for the moment. That proof and evidence will come because God is faithful. We trust God because He is not an abstract proposition but the Supreme Rational Being and who develops a relationship with His Church at the level of the person as well as the level of the Whole.

There is one incontrovertible fact, no matter how hard the Devil tries, He cannot obliterate Good, because he cannot obliterate God. The best he can do is to try and erode the Good out of God’s creation, but even there he fails because every thing that God has created exists and derives the very fact of existence from God. In that the Devil is a creature of God shows the goodness of God and that is why the Devil is so lunatic because he seeks to rip the goodness of his existence from himself. Such is his hatred of God that he would rather burn in Hell than find Eternal bliss. It’s utterly incredible that one would choose this path, but it’s true that not even the Devil can escape the love of God. That’s why Hell burns: it burns with the fury of souls that want to possess their own good rather than the good that is given to them as a gift from the love of God.

Goodness cannot be destroyed. It can be eroded and leached from creatures, but while that creature exists, there is good in it. This is why the priest offers the Chalice of Salvation for His own benefit, for those present and for the WHOLE World. The sting of Erosion is based on the Lie that it is possible for all Goodness to be taken away from creation. Even in the most corrupt human organisation lies the dignity of being human in the first place, lives so precious that God seeks their preservation and salvation at the cost of His Son.

Yes, there are priests and bishops (and deacons) who have abused their position for their own despicable pleasure, but there are so many clergy who do not. And even those abusers can be forgiven, though Justice dictates that there must be an appropriately severe penalty in order for reconciliation to occur.


It’s easy to worry about Erosion that is taking place in our Society. It is truly overwhelming and it seems that there is such little that can be done. But, as I say, the Christian mechanism to deal with states of uncertainty is Hope. Believe me, if your faith is being tested hold firm to God even if He seems unlikely. The erosive forces of evil are deliberately targeting you to get you to give up. Pray hard, and trust even if it seems laughable to do so. Recite the Creeds – all three of them – and hear the Church speak through the centuries bearing witness to the reality of God. Seek out righteousness in your life and stick with it even if you fall: God’s forgiveness is a reality and total, His mercy endures forever! And He wants you to endure forever too! Stick with it: you are NOT totally depraved.

In Defence of *Fr* Chadwick

Again, Fr Anthony's detractor has laid into him in an appalling personal attack and character assassination. I doubt that Fr Anthony will dignify this person with a response. The main problem is that crucial facts that this person has published on his blog are manifestly not true.

It seems that this detractor may have degrees in English but, quite frankly, he has seemingly little education in logic, argumentation or Christian charity. Preoccupied with a quixotic (though with less chivalry) obsession with destroying the Ordinariate and Continuing Anglicanism, he has forgotten people and the love of his neighbour. I mentioned him at the altar this morning so that he might receive God's grace of sight.

The fact is that this person does not know Fr Anthony; he knows only the dreck that is reported to him through his "correspondent". I do know Fr Anthony. I have not only met him, but I have served High Mass with him, eaten with him and conversed with him. Once lines of communication are established one really begins to understand the depth of who Fr Anthony is, and it is worth taking that time.

With regards to his spiritual journey, Fr Anthony will be the first to agree that it has been a complicated path. I am aware of some issues in his ordination history but, by and large, he brings with him a wealth of experience and wisdom that few possess, and which he has acquired through hard graft. His ordination history does not bother me. If he is saying Mass and contributing to our Diocese, is it really any of my business what there is in his past?

His detractor would have none of this. All he sees is hearsay and fake news and uses it to disregard all arguments that are put forward. I notice that he does this to everyone who challenges his point of view.

And what if he tries it with me? Well, he will dismiss me wholesale. To him, I am a heretic with invalid orders. That's his problem, not mine. If he tries to assassinate my character, it would be a waste of his time. I am small fry, of no reputation, of no significance in the Church whatsoever. To God, I am worth something or I would not exist. The same is true about Fr Anthony and his detractor, though the latter forgets this in spades. I'm not speaking as a priest, though that is what I am - Apostolicae Curae is flawed as even Roman Catholics are beginning to see - I am rather speaking as a Christian first and foremost. I'm afraid that it the attitude of this detractor that makes me disinclined ever to swim the Tiber. That won't matter to him, though. I am clearly not his neighbour, nor is Fr Anthony.

As a former schoolmaster, Fr Anthony's detractor disappoints me intellectually in providing posts which are as much beneath his dignity as they are beneath Fr Anthony's. I suggest that he learns to be a human being again.

The Postmodern Babel of Self-Definition

So let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that will unite every discipline, architecture and sculpture and painting, and which will one day rise heavenwards from the million hands of craftsmen as a clear symbol of a new belief to come. (Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto 1919)

Now let us compare this with:

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11: 4)

The Bauhaus Manifesto is a crystallization of ideas of various artists which began the whole idea of Postmodernism. While definitions are always a bit tricky to come by, it seems to be a defining characteristic of Postmodernism to seek to rid itself from the shackles of the Modern and to purge itself of former things which impede its becoming.

If Gropius is indeed representative of the postmodern movement in art and if art is the means by which people can engage with the thinking of others on the basis of a physical Impression of a form, then Postmodernism can only ever end in Babel and its consequences.

We see this happening now with the distortion of language whereby people are now defining what words mean on their own terms and thereby rob the conversation of any common language. The claim that we can always self-identify and have the right to be what we say we are is wholly solipsist because it denies the point of view of others. To say that we are what we say we are denies the existence of objectivity and the right of others to speak as they see.

I notice that there are those who refuse to debate their acceptance of the right to self-identify on the grounds that to engage in debate would be tantamount to debating their very existence. Their only recourse is to protest violently and fight to silence their opposition on the grounds that their opposition is an oppressor and they victims of this oppression.

These folk are effectively confusing adjective with definition. If they are not described by the adjectives that they deem to make up their person then they believe themselves to have been diminished in a real way which they interpret as oppression. An Aristotelian might say that there is a confusion of accident with substance, but the materialist would say that there is no distinction to speak of between the two concepts. For the materialist, we are the sum of our adjectives. Yet, those who believe in the right to self-identification - i.e those who believe that they can control how they are to be perceived - not only are they materialist in their thinking, but also, in that they believe that they exercise this control, seek to bend the world to their will in a solipsist manner. They are effectively narcissists.

Thus with the destruction of the objective, these folk destroy any and all honest scientific enquiry but rather subject all science to personal politics and personal philosophy.

Thus, a world in which the right to self-identification is inherent is a world of noise as people try and live as a society of atoms, never truly interacting, never truly sharing anything of humanity and labouring all the while to define themselves against the oppression of others' language. Truly, this becomes a case of l'Enfers c'est les autres. Never can there be any rest or relaxation because the fight to exist is constant. I wonder if this may be the cause of an increased rate of suicide and the call for euthanasia. 

To be truly social is to be self-giving. Love requires this at the deepest level and to love means to allow others to make a claim on you. To desire to be part of a better society means giving up any pretence to a right of our own self-definition and allow ourselves to be identified by others. We cannot join a group by defining ourselves to be a member. We have to wait for the invitation and the consent of others so that we know we can be accepted as we are and as others see us. If there is no invitation or consent, then to take membership of the group by force is a form of rape. It is an affront to Love and to Society. The result is confusion, scattering, isolation and an existential nightmare.

Already, Western Governments are paving the way for self-identification to become a legal right. The societies they govern are becoming sick, jaded, faithless, hopeless and loveless. The only hope is to recognise that we have an objective existence over which we have no control, to accept that, and further to allow it to bring us closer to other human beings and to God Who in being the Creator has the right to define us as we really are so that we can be truly loved.

The Lie of Progress

In this period of Lent, Christians are invited through prayer and fasting to examine their consciences and make an appropriate repentance. Why?

Every Christian should have the goal of becoming more Christ-like: each of us is to put on Christ and put to death the old man who lives only according to the flesh. It seems very reasonable that there is, for each individual Christian, a perfectly well-defined notion of progress in life. We progress by committing fewer sins and by co-operating with the grace we receive abundantly from Almighty God. Our end is our beginning: perfection in God.

How do we measure that progress, though? Saying, "I committed five sins yesterday and only three today," might give the illusion that progress is being made but yesterday is not the same day as today. You never step into the same river twice.

"Ah!" says my detractor, "you always argue that whatever is sinful does not change in Time. How can you argue this if each day is contextually different from the next?"

Sin is defined in relation to God. Sin always misses God - that's what the term "sin" means, a missing of the target. Since God is Eternal and thus changeless in Time, whatever misses Him must also be Eternal, in the same way that one quarter, the square root of two, and 𝜋 must always miss the set of whole numbers. The time at which these numbers fail to be whole numbers is meaningless. What may change is the gravity of the sin within temporal contexts: murder - that is, the unlawful, premeditated killing of another human being - is always sinful, but the reasons why that murder is committed will differentiate it from being malicious and being weak. Unlawful killing? Which law? Clearly, the law of the one who gave it - God!

Take God out of the equation and there ceases to be any form of universal law. The unlawfulness of murder can be decided by whatever human authority is appointed to decide what law is. One only has to look at the last century to see that it is possible for the extermination of various groups of people to become lawful in human civilisation.

Okay, that's last century. That won't happen today! We've made progress.
If you haven't yet read it, make sure you read and understand Orwell's 1984 and see how already we are being conditioned to think in a certain way.

We know that slavery is wrong, yet still it happens and people are prepared to sanction it. Big businesses paying children a pittance in some part of the world to sew together cheap trendy trainers for wannabe rich kids.

We know that sexism is wrong, yet still women are being treated as an underclass by those who seek to assert their dominance through maintaining sexual stereotypes which serve only to make both sexes caricatures of humanity.Yet, the Western Governments are passing laws by which even the safe spaces of women's restrooms can be used by men by redefining what "men" and "women" mean - or rather by legislating that a word no longer means what it already means by the abuse of grammar.

If the Enlightenment seeks the progress of human beings, what does it see as the goal of Progress especially if part of that "enlightenment" is the destruction of belief in God?

The only goal of an atheist progress must be some form of Utopia to which end human beings are to work. From what little I understand of such a worldview is that Science, Reason, and Humanism are the means by which the ills of poverty, disease, injustice. war, old-age and even death are eradicated. Thus, all human beings become a means to this end and nothing more. If my life ends with my death then,  by virtue of the fact that I would not see Utopia, only work that I do towards it will be my worth as I fade into oblivion. The humanity of those who will see this Utopia will not be shared by those who have died to realise it unless this Utopia possesses the ability to raise the dead. How would that be possible for those, like Blessed John Henry Newman, who have completely gone to dust?

Perhaps I am being selfish and, by refusing to work for Utopia, I am depriving my descendants of that goal just because I want to be pat of it. Is it not better to embrace my existence as a means to the joy of my descendants and, with my dying breath, feel pleased that someone else will have what I have worked for but never had?

It would indeed be worth working for, if it were possible, but I cannot believe that such a future humanist Utopia can exist, perhaps in the same sort of way that an atheist cannot believe in God and Heaven. Personally, I find that there is much more empirical evidence for the existence of God than there is of progress in human nature.

Here and now, there continue to be people who live in absolute (not relative) poverty in Africa and India. Frankly, I believe Our Lord when he says "ye always have the poor with you; but Me ye have not always." There has always been disease and even now we are at the mercy of drug-resistant bacteria and viruses. We still haven't eradicated the common cold. I fail to see how there can be any true justice without the existence of God since injustice continues conveniently unrecognised by the media. Science itself seems to suggest that we cannot naturally live past 120 years old and that this is genetic in nature. As for Death, the Universe itself is predicted to die out via Science. This planet will not survive the death of the Sun. Science fiction may give us the inspiration to go universe-hopping, but there is as much scientific evidence for the existence of other universes as there is for God. If there is a Utopia, it will not last and all the effort of those who strive for its realisation will be in vain anyway.

All I see of this Utopia is anodyne, unimaginative and, quite frankly boring. If they do invent a machine that can raise the dead, then count this as my desire not to be raised in this way. I don't want this resurrection because it won't be a resurrection - I doubt it wil even be me.

The whole idea of working for a Utopia is really a form of Pelagianism which seems to attract the SJWs among Christians. Of course, we need to follow Our Lord's commands and help those in need with the utmost care and love that the dignity of human nature has been given by its Creator. The poor need to be helped; the naked must be clothed; the bereaved need comfort and help. But we cannot pretend that we can work our way to building Heaven on Earth. That's not going to happen. The Kingdom of Heaven is with us now - right now - and this is despite the horrors that take place in the world. The only way to Heaven is to seek God now, accept His rule and await the resurrection of the Dead on His terms.

Unless there is clear evidence the human beings are changing for the better, that the old sins of murder, adultery, coveting, stealing and bearing false witness are dying out, I will remain unconvinced of any progress worth its salt.

Misunderstanding Prejudice

One thing that I notice from such bodies as the Progressive Christian Network and Modern Church is their willingness to denounce Church Doctrines on Ordination and Marriage, and the Immorality of Extramarital Sex as sexist, homophobic, misogynist, transphobic and discriminatory. It occurs to me that those who hold to Church Doctrine (whom, for the sake of argument, we shall call Traditional Christians) are not understanding the language of Progressive Christians (whom, for the sake of argument, we shall allow their preferred epithet). To this end, I think we need to investigate each of the terms as the Progressive element would want us to understand them.

Let's understand a few definitions:

Homophobia: dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people.

Misogyny: dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

Sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

Discrimination: the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

A key word here, is the word prejudice. How do Progressives understand that?

Prejudice: preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

Yet we have to be careful here, what is meant by the noun "homosexual"?

Homosexual (noun): a person who is sexually attracted to people of their own sex.

According to the Progressive Christian Network and Modern Church, Traditional Christian belief is based on either dislike of women and homosexuals, and/or on prejudice against them. 

This is the claim. In order to prove the claim, they have to show that Traditional Christianity either dislikes women or homosexuals or have a preconceived opinion about them that is not based on reason or actual experience.

What evidence do they give to support their claim? Answer: four old chestnuts.

1) Traditional Christian belief states that women cannot be ordained.
2) Traditional Christian belief states that homosexual sexual activity is a sin.
3) Traditional Christian belief states that marriage is between a man and a woman.
4) Traditional Christian belief states that men and women cannot change their sex.

Apparently, (1) displays a dislike of, or a prejudice against women and, by being discrimination against women because of their sex, Traditional Christian belief is both sexist and misogynist. If we replace in (1) the word "woman" with the word "black", Traditional Christian belief would be racist.

Apparently, (2) displays a dislike of, or a prejudice against homosexuals and is therefore homophobic.

Apparently, (3) displays an unjust prejudice against homosexuals, and is therefore discriminatory.

Apparently, (4) displays a dislike of, or a prejudice against transgender/transsexual people, and is therefore transphobic.

First, let us just tackle the minor issue of replacing "women" with "black". This really is a false analogy because it assumes that one social "minority" (to use WATCH's definition of the term) is the same as another. This surely is not valid because in human terms, race is not the same as sex: a community of a single race can grow naturally; a community of a single sex will naturally die. While both do indeed suffer prejudice, that prejudice is not the same, though its effects are truly horrible. Nonetheless, any moral reasoning about race cannot be the same as moral reasoning about sex because it assumes that all social "minorities" are equivalent: they are not and to say so displays a utilitarian ignorance of their peculiar struggles and their peculiar martyrs.

Secondly, all of these accusations require the demonstration of prejudice and that involves demonstrating that Traditional Christian belief is a preconceived opinion not based on reason or actual experience.

First of all, on what is Traditional Christianity based? It's based on a properly basic belief which means that it is a reasonable position to hold without any further requirement of proof. There are lots of properly basic beliefs such as the belief that the person you are talking to really has a mind in the same way you do. If belief in God is properly basic, then reason dictates His revelation of Himself to us. Christianity is the belief that the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth is this revelation, and it is backed up by eyewitness testimony - this testimony can be found in the Gospels. If Christians belief what this Jesus of Nazareth says, then we have to hold fast to the morality defined by God and attested to in the Bible and in the Church.

Of course, whether or not people share this belief isn't the issue. It's whether Tradition Christian morality is based on reason from properly basic premises: it is. Our morality is therefore based on God and not upon the determination of a majority viewpoint.

We know that majority viewpoint is insufficient for determining morals given that there have been instances of majorities performing an ethnic cleansing of minorities, even in the Twentieth Centuries. Morality transcends number.

We also know that there are objective moral values and duties and these are evidence for God. Is there ever a situation in which the torture of a child is morally acceptable? Jonathan Clatworthy seems to suggest that there is.

Traditional Christian belief has always defended its position on the ordination of women, the immorality of extramarital sex, the uniqueness of heterosexual marriage and the immutability of a person's sex based upon what it has received from the revelations from God in Scripture, Tradition and Reason. However, these revelations are called into question by those from without the system, or those who believe that it is only fair to reason from without the system. What needs to be shown here is whether the morals of the current society are indeed superior to Traditional Christianity. On what basis is this morality superior?

Of course, if Traditional Christian belief is true, and I believe it to be, then it must necessarily be superior to all other moral systems because it is based on the being of God Himself. In believing in God, it would be a denial of that belief for me to suppose that another moral system is better than the one that I have received from Him.

Traditional Christian belief is formed from reason from the actual experience of the Church beginning with the Apostles and the Prophets and the properly basic belief in God. To say that this amounts to prejudice is an indictment of the moral systems that are based otherwise. If Traditional Christian belief is prejudicial, then so is the secular belief and indeed any other moral system. It seems quite reasonable, then, that the Traditional Church, in holding to a timeless morality (i.e. based on the existence of God and thus immutably revealed in Scripture, Tradition and Reason) is as innocent of the charges of sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination as the morality that would condemn it.