Summons to celebrate

Well, it's official! Bishop Damien has issued his writ of summons to all the Diocesan Clergy to the Diocesan Synod on 3rd May at Central Hall Westminster. There will be a Pontifical High Mass at 11am followed by synodical business n the afternoon.

It seems strange that I have received a summons rather than an invitation. The Synod may have a lot of technical business, but ultimately we have much to be thankful for and the whole Synod does have the air of celebration about it.

So am I being forced to celebrate? I am summoned certainly and this is because I am a priest and thus a servant of the laity. My bishop requires my assistance to help the laity rejoice in the fact that God has blessed each member through the gift of the Church and, simultaneously, has blessed the Church with the gift of each member of the laity. Delegates are summoned too, but they have a duty to represent the laity of their parish to whom the actions of their priest is accountable.

All laity are indeed invited to the Synod and not summoned. Does this mean that their presence is not necessary? Are they unimportant?

Certainly not!! Far from it. The business of the Church requires those who will do that business - the Delegates and the Clergy who serve their parishes. The laity who are neither clergy nor delegate are welcome to be there to see how things are indeed running. Their presence at the Synod Mass will edify them as well as any Mass, but further, their presence will edify everyone, for these are the people for whom it all matters.

For the Christian, our praise of God is both a duty and a joy. We must worship God, and it is to our joy that we worship God. It is to our health that we worship, not because God in any way needs out worship. Worship can be such hard work: it must involve sacrifice - the willing offering of that which is most dear to the One to Whom all things are dear. Learning the Mass has been hard work for me and I have made so many mistakes, but that's not the point. I am still offering the sacrifice of the Mass to God on behalf of my beloved parish, and it is Christ's priesthood that I participate in that ensures that our sacrifice is perfected before God despite my many, obvious and not-so-obvious shortcomings. However, I find such great joy in doing so. I really enjoy saying Mass and saying it for the faithful few in my parish whose presence is so dear. I have improved and I hope still to improve so that my laity are not hindered in seeing Christ present with us through my failing.

This summons, then, is a duty that I must observe. The laity of the Diocese need me, not because I am important, but because I am called by God to bring them the hope that He promises His Church. This is true for all the priests of the Diocese and, most of all, to the Bishop - the servant of the whole Diocese.

It would be a great joy to me to see the Central Hall pews in Westminster full at 11am on 3rd May so that I can see the laity being nourished with the most perfect joy that comes down from Heaven. This is an invitation to you, dear reader, and it comes with the love of the Church and with the love of the Most Holy Trinity.

Defragging the Anglican Church

I've recently added Bishop Chandler Jones' blog to my blogroll. To have not done so until now is quite an appalling oversight on my part as I've often enjoyed his blogging. Recently, he has reported on the Working group to reconcile the APA and the ACA. This is certainly very very needed and if it takes place then, at last, we can see visible signs that the genius of Anglicanism is clambering out from beneath the ruins caused by unnecessary and heretical revisionism to take its place among legitimate Orthodox Christianity.

I am minded of the many hours I have spent watching my former PC "defragging". This seemed to take the form of an incredibly long list of coloured squares scrambled about, representing (somehow) the state of the computer's memory. The coloured squares would somehow be grouped together and this would somehow make the computer more efficient. Of course, not being an expert in computing this is the very limit of my understanding in the matter. Whatever it really did, defragmentation was certainly a desirable thing for the computer.

It seems that the dust is beginning to settle now after the Episcopal Church broke away from the Catholic Faith, sadly followed by the CofE. 2017 will see the fortieth anniversary of the Congress of St Louis, and this is a minuscule amount of time in the life of God's Church. Thus, any bridging of the gaps that have led to the fracture of Anglicanism will be of enormous value.

The genius of Anglicanism does mean that there is absolutely no need for the different Anglican jurisdictions to merge formally. There does not need to be one primate metropolitan overseeing the entirety of Anglican jurisdictions provided that there is both a general and particular commitment by each bishop to this Orthodox Anglican Communion which is not new but continues from where the rest of the Anglican Communion broke away.

Once the legal instruments are put in place, we will then find ourselves with a process by which we can begin to gather up the fragments.and put them in a place where they will not only flourish, but preach the gospel with a more harmonious voice. Such mechanisms have the potential to be self-replicating and self-repairing if looked after properly. This very much does mirror the defrag of a computer. One does have to be very careful with all computer systems as the possibility of chaotic behaviour can result. My hope is that the actual chaos is over and, like Langton's Ant, the bridge-building can begin and a highway through the desert can be built.

Of course, this is all the vision of an idealist. We still have to combat human nature and the strange vicissitudes of politics and passion. There is much hope out there which the first continuing Anglicans saw. May we follow that hope more carefully!

How I (fail to) understand Protestantism

I must confess that I have come to Continuing Anglicanism rather late. Having spent my life prior in the Church of England, one of the big problems that worried me about the Continuing Anglican Churches was its fragmentation. To my mind (especially during my more Ultramontane season) fragmentation is very much the hallmark of Protestantism which I have always been seeking to avoid. I have always sought the unity of the Church which produced the phrase “I believe one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” within its Creed. The phrase “we are the One True Church” is clearly designed to strike fear into anyone who is not part of that “One True Church”.

I suppose I must ask myself, “what is this Protestantism that I seek to avoid?” After all, there are so many definitions and nuances that are associated with the word that clarification is somewhat necessary if I am to make any head or tail of things and thus communicate with other Christians. If I say, “I am not a Protestant” then I do want to be able to mean what I say.

As I say, the hallmark of Protestantism seems to be fragmentation. My basis for this observation is first and foremost the Reformation where the word became more prevalent following the protests against the Diet of Speyer. The first Protestant movements were clearly Calvinism, Lutheranism, Anabaptism (among others) as each group tried to work out its faith away from the authority of Rome.

Yet we have fragmentation in the 11th Century as the Roman Church separates from the Eastern Church which is why the Eastern Church regards the Roman Church and her fragments as being just as “Protestant”, so we have to be very careful in what we mean. The Eastern Church herself seems to consist of groups that revel in autocephaly than perhaps is good. Fragmentation is clearly not the sole province of the Protestant, nor is it often carefully considered. It is not really true to say that “Protestant” means “not Roman Catholic” since the Eastern Church regards both Roman and “former Roman” (for want of a better phrase) equally Protestant. Does “Protestant” mean “outside the One True Church”? Given that the Eastern and Roman Churches both claim the title, one is rather bound to think so. Yet this does not seem to tally with the idea that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans x.13). The trouble is that we cannot know absolutely the salvation of others, nor do we know absolutely our own salvation. One has to have faith in the mercy of God for that to work. If “Protestant” means “outside the One True Church” then it must also mean “heretic,” “apostate” or “non-Christian”. That is manifestly against what all the Protestant Reformers were trying to do.

So why do I object to being called “Protestant”. First of all, when the word is levelled at me it’s usually meant pejoratively, in the sense of “not being a proper Christian” or “not being a proper catholic”. Being Catholic is important to me because it is one of the marks of the Church and I desperately want to belong to the Church. However, “Protestant” has overtones of not being “proper”. I also really do not want people to see me like another Ian Paisley whose views I simply cannot accept as being charitable. Clearly “Protestant” is a big brush with which to paint someone.

I hope that it’s fair to say that the marks of the Protestant seem to be rather more a via negativa. I base this on the observation that the Protestant, in genuinely seeking to strip away from the faith all kinds of medieval accretions which have built up since East and West split, has also stripped away that which has been affirmed from the first Seven Councils – this often includes the notion of Conciliar authority as well. I do agree wholeheartedly with the rejection of many medieval ideas, namely Limbo, the selling of indulgences, purgatory as a place of punishment, a hierarchy with more political power and monarchy than the gentle love of souls for starters.

However, I do accept the Seven Oecumenical Councils and the Vincentian Canon as the defining principle of what it means to be Catholic. However, that is my principle and a principle that comes from accepting the authority of the “Undivided Church” but that doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily very good at following it! I am after all responsible for my study and I am kept in line by my brother priests and my Bishop of course, but also my brothers and sisters in the laity who always raise good but searching questions. The Lord says that it is my duty to serve them all, so serve them I must.

One may say then that I am using my private judgement to pick and choose my faith as so many do these days. The fact of the matter is that we are all making a private judgement in our Christian profession. We, each of us, work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. It means that we accept a principle of authority and we stick to it. For Roman Catholics, the principle is the Magisterium of the Church which includes accepting the Pope as Infallible. For some Protestants, the principle is sola scriptura and thus further fragmentation follows here when one application of sola sciptura diverts from another. For me and for my Church, the principles of authority are found in Scripture, the Creeds, the Church Fathers and the Oecumenical Councils, which puts us more in line with the Orthodox Church.

Further, the rejection of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Mass is again something that marks out a Protestant. The Church Fathers and the Councils do teach it definitively, but the Roman Catholics rely too heavily on a particular philosophy (namely that of Transubstantiation), likewise the Lutherans (Consubstantiation), and others deny it outright. I, myself, accept transubstantiation as it makes sense to me (in the loosest possible sense of the word “sense”), but I don’t insist upon it primarily because while I hold to a largely scholastic philosophy, Our Lord’s Holy Presence with us goes beyond any form of philosophy or philosophical enquiry. However, I manifestly do not reject the Real Presence at all and find the whole argument of “Our Lord’s body is in Heaven so He can’t be present in the Sacrament” a bit of a category mistake to say the least. This attitude, of course, contradicts the famous black rubric putting me firmly outside the Eucharistic theology of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer and its subsequent editions.

So what do I make of Protestants if I don’t count myself as one of them? Are they heretical? Should I shun them? The trouble with a personal faith is that it is indeed personal. As I’ve said above, there is no absolute knowledge save that absolute knowledge exists. Like Elizabeth I, I do not have windows into men’s souls, nor do I wish it. We are all on pilgrimage and we all walk to the destination which we believe most strongly is the true Way. However, in the darkness of our existence some of us walk in groups, some of us walk alone, others change groups and all seem to be calling the others that they’ve found the Way.

  I believe strongly that I have found the right way, but then I believe that the Church is bigger than just the motley crew with which I find myself walking.  If a Protestant denies the sacraments, then the Sacraments I have will do him no good. The Way the Truth and the Life does shine in the enlightened and humble mind, a mind that is filled with faith, hope and love. I simply cannot reject anyone Protestant or non-Protestant if they are seeking the Truth. Protestants or non-Protestants who are not seeking the Truth in their hearts have already ejected themselves from the Church. For these, my prayers go out most earnestly.

Telling our worth?

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Septuagesima 2014.
Text: St Matthew xx.1-16



If it takes nine men four days to dig a ditch which is three chains long, how long will it take six men to dig a ditch that is four chains long?



Exam questions like this are rather puzzling to many of us. You’ve probably worked out that the mathematical answer is eight days, but that’s just that – a mathematical answer. In reality, we would say, “a fortnight due to the inclement weather,” or, “three weeks if you take into account the tea breaks,” or, “six months if the men work for Rochester City Council”. The mathematical answer is very seldom the real answer.

That brings us to a problem. If we pay each man a hundred pounds for a day’s labour, then we need to ensure that the work is being done. It is surely unfair that one man who digs more than his fair share of the ditch should earn the same amount of money as the chap who leans on his spade for three days drinking tea, and barely digs a yard of the ditch.

This is just common sense, surely? So what then do we make of Our Lord’s words about the labourers in the vineyard. Those who work a full day are paid exactly the same as those who only work an hour. They complain, but the chap in charge says, “Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?” Isn’t that just diddling these first folk out of their earnings, hiding behind the law of contract? It’s just not fair!

[PAUSE]

Our Lord is categorically saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is like this chap in charge. The one who comes to work last earns as much as the one who comes to work first. The amount that is paid them, the penny, is actually a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labour, so all these workers are receiving enough to live on. There’s no question about slave labour here. The main point Our Lord is making is that God does not discriminate between the faithful Jews – the people of the Old Covenant who came first – and the Christians – the people of the new covenant who came later.

However, this doesn’t take into account the fact that the one who came to work first has clearly done twelve times more work than the one who has come last. But what is this work? Just how much is an hour of this work worth? Is this work even worth doing, anyway?”

[PAUSE]

Our Lord is challenging our sense of worth. In a materialist society, everything is given a numerical value and money is paid in proportion to that value.  This is why this parable is hard for us to understand in the present age. The work that He bids us do is simply not like the work we do now; it certainly does not pay the way we expect.

 If we expect more because we do more, then we’re clearly looking at this type of work in the wrong way.  Everyone receives exactly what they need but the first people want more, and that renders both their reward and their work ultimately worthless. They don’t see where the true value lies. Further, those who complain about it are sent away. How may we understand this?

[PAUSE]

Remember, that Our Lord Jesus is the true vine and working in the vineyard becomes the community of God’s chosen people. The labour is cultivating a relationship with God. It is what we get when we complete a task, or run a race.

St Paul; tells us:
” KNOW ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away.”

The reward is everything we need to live life well. If we believe God for purely material gain, then we gain nothing and our labour is a sham – there is no room for grasping for more. God is not a wish-granting genie who rewards us when we please Him. In so thinking, we actually lose our reward. God has offered us a wonderful opportunity to work to get to know Him. We can choose to take that opportunity or refuse it in favour of what we think is better, but is actually worth much less. What is clear is that those who get to return to the vineyard are only those who receive what they are given with gratitude. Many are indeed called but few are chosen. Those who are not chosen rule themselves out by their attitude and intention.

[PAUSE]

As we begin that walk into Lent, now is the time for us to challenge the materialistic elements in our lives. Do we rely on God’s goodness or do we seek to make a profit from our attempt to buy God’s favour? Do we see everything with a price tag or do we cultivate the things in our life that are truly priceless? How do we live in a materialist age without compromising our commitment to loving our God first and our neighbour as ourselves?

We can only reassess our views by stepping back from our lives through prayer, meditation and considering our actions. If we allow it, Lent will help us to do just that and our vision of Our Risen Lord will be all the clearer for it. Is that worth doing, or do we have the wrong sense of worth?

Absurdity, Sisyphus, Chaos and the Church

I am very grateful to a learned colleague at school (who knows much more philosophy than I do) for introducing me to the ideas contained in Camus' Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Like high level theology, I leave languages and their translations to Fr Chadwick and his peers. I am quite interested here in the ideas that Camus puts forward because it does have a bearing on how people live a life without purpose. For Camus, so I'm told, the non-existence of God and the afterlife were self-evident.

Quite how he reaches these conclusions, I know not. Personally, I find it self-evident that I have an immortal soul that will outlast this body. That is my experience of living. Likewise, I find it impossible to imagine a world where either everything is contingent or there is no such thing as causality. That rather offends my scientific sensibility as well as contradicting my awareness of the Divine Consciousness which has its origins beyond me. However, I freely admit that I have no proof that my self-evident truths are indeed true. Indeed, I am more likely to admit that they are completely unprovable.

Camus finds life pointless and absurd. For him there is no meaning of life whatsoever. One may then inquire what prevents the individual from simply committing suicide. Camus' answer is that Man is a rational being in an irrational world, and that it is this absurdity that should be the cause of Man's desire to live and embrace the contradiction of a rational life. This is the basis of his work describing the myth of Sisyphus who is doomed to roll a rock slowly, painfully and laboriously uphill only for it to roll back down again. For Camus, "The struggle itself... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."  For this reason, Camus regards Hope as the worst plague of the lot, trouncing all the unpleasantness that flies out of Pandora's box because it is utterly false. The rock inevitably rolls back to the bottom of the hill to be picked up and carried again. This is fulfillment for Sisyphus! As the rock rolls back, he can pour scorn on his labour. He transcends his own labour.

I'm afraid I can't quite see why suicide doesn't transcend labour, nor why it doesn't pour scorn on the whole act of toiling at life through that last ditch act of free-will. Is suicide surely not an absurd response to Camus' absurd?

For the mathematician in me, I do see something that perhaps Camus was not able to see, and that is the influence of chaos in physical systems. Life indeed may appear absurd or contradictory but this absurdity comes about not only through competing systems but with the system itself introducing feedback. Perturb the system slightly and it oscillates unpredictably from one state to another. The system may be unpredictable but it may not necessarily be irrational. Within Chaos, there is order and from Chaos some order may indeed arise.

This seems to suggest that Hope is now less of an evil but some assurance that there is some underlying order in the Cosmos. For me who sees nothing but contingent producing contingent and finds contradiction in the notion that only contingent things exist, I have enough evidence to convince me of the existence of God.

Yet I do have an appreciation for Camus' ideas here. Daily, I watch society do some remarkably ridiculous things that actually it can't help doing. Law, morality and ethics naturally clash precisely because humanity is a fallen genus and unable to deal with its own existence on a larger scale. I see a Church (or even a Church within a Church) abandon its principles in favour of attracting more members so it can teach them the religious principles that it no longer adheres to. I see those who reject the existence of moral absolutes become the first to take up arms when something appears to be unfair to them.

Many of my colleagues are tired with the uphill struggle and might be forgiven for thinking that their situation is absurd. Like Camus, I believe that Man can indeed rise above his labour, transcend beyond that Sisyphean task of trying to do the impossible. St Benedict reminds us that sometimes the Abbess may ask impossible things of the nun, yet the nun  keeps her vow of obedience and attains greater perfection by attempting the impossible. If she fails, she attributes it to her own fragility. If she succeeds, she attributes her success to God.

For many, that's "bad thinking" a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. The trouble is, it is indistinguishable from  if it were true, but then, the nun isn't producing an argument for the existence of God, she's finding her fulfilment in Him.

Man's transcendence is ontological, for God gives Man his worth beyond his works. If belief in God is absurd as many will say, then St Paul, Kirkegaard and Camus all say that we should embrace absurdity without flinching. Of course, Camus would accuse Kirkegaard and St Paul of flinching in their embrace of God rather than staring hopelessness in the face. But then I don't really regard hopelessness as being self-evident. Quite the opposite in fact. I am hopeful about the future. I think it's rather brighter than Sisyphus would give it credit. Our rocks may indeed roll down the hill, but there's always the opportunity to look over the hill at the other side before one trudges down to pick up the rock once more.

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills : from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord : who hath made heaven and earth."

Purely about purity

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the feast of the Purification 2014

In the Tate Gallery,
there are two paintings
by Barnett Newman.

The painting called “Adam”
consists solely of a dark red background
upon which are two vertical brighter red stripes
on the left of the canvass.

The other painting, “Eve”,
 is that same brighter red as the canvass background
but with a single vertical dark red stripe
on the right.

And that’s it.

There are no other features!

Of course in each painting,
your eye is drawn away from the background colour
to the different colour stripes.

That’s why Barnett Newman put them there
– to draw your eye to what is different.

Your eye is meant to seek out
that which is different.
 It is a master of finding the impurity.

A blank page is useless
until there’s something written on it,
or drawn on it.

Writing only works
because it shows up
against the purity of the white page.

It has probably not escaped your notice
 that purity is also regarded
as a virtue for Christians.

Purity is something that God wants for us,
but what exactly does this mean?

Today, Candlemas,
we remember the purification of Our Lady.
It is the custom of Hebrew women
to come to the temple to be purified
 after childbirth.

The twelfth chapter of Leviticus tells us,
 that after childbearing a woman shall offer
a year old lamb and a pigeon or a turtledove
(or two pigeons if she is poor)
for a sin offering to the priest
“Who shall offer it before the LORD,
and make an atonement for her;
and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood.
This is the law for her that hath born a male or a female.”

This is something
that passes us Christians by
and sounds odd, obsessive
and even downright oppressive.

Why should a woman be regarded as unclean
 just because she has performed
the miracle of giving birth to a child?

Can that really be a sin?

[PAUSE]

Of course, the dangers of infection
without proper medical attention
are quite substantial.

Many women have died
and still do die in poorer countries
due to post natal infections.

Despite the fact that Our Lady is a pure virgin,
she is still very much
in danger from infection.

The rite of purification
is supposed to be a safeguard
given to the Hebrew women to prevent them
from infection.

Of course, it gets hijacked
by the more unscrupulous Pharisees and Priests
to enforce their leadership.

Our Lord Himself does away
with the whole notion of being ritually unclean
when He says,
“those things which proceed
out of the mouth come forth from the heart;
 and they defile the man.
For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
These are the things which defile a man:
but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.”

The Blessed Virgin submits to the purification ritual:
her Son perfects it upon the cross
whereby all may be purified and wash their robes
in the blood of the Lamb of God.

But what is this purity that God demands of us?

If you think about it,
pure gold is gold and nothing else.

Pure water is water alone
without anything contaminating it.

So a pure life is a life that is precisely that,
life without contamination.

Our Lord Jesus tells us that He is the true life.

His purity is without question
because although He is both human and Divine,
His humanity is not an obstacle
to being very God of very God.
 Our Lord Jesus is pure God,
 and His humanity radiates with it.

There is nothing in our humanity
that prevents us from having His life.
We too, could more obviously reflect the nature of God
 if our humanity were pure enough.

 It is what contaminates our life
from within that causes our impurity,
 and why people struggle to see God in us.

Our lives and our happiness
are contaminated by our own tendency
to let impurities grow within ourselves.

In fact, we know that there impurities in our life,
precisely because we know what it is to be pure.

Each day,
we battle resentment, bitterness, anger, lust,
hatred, envy, dishonesty
and lack of charity.
 Each of these is like a seed
and each grows within us like an infection.

They attack our happiness;
they attack our relationships with people;
they attack our relationship with God.

When we recognise these infections in ourselves,
it’s easy for us to become disheartened.

There is no reason to be.

We are not wholly depraved,
and if we seek purity,
and work at being pure,
then we recognise more easily
when we are infected with impurity
and can do something about it.

If we are honest with ourselves
and honest with God,
He will purify us.

“For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:
and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”

Refining is not a pleasant process
 because it brings the impurities to the top.

They are revealed to us
in all their horrid “glory”,
but it has to happen for us to get better.

It is very easy for impurity
which has risen to the top
to be skimmed off
by a skilled hand.

Purification is not an easy thing and,
 indeed we may run from it.

 God, however,
is patient and won’t let us get away
with a single impurity
 until we shine like pure gold in Heaven.

Like Our Lady,
we must submit to the process.

If it hurts, then it can only mean
we are getting better!

That’s better than carrying those impurities
around for Eternity, isn’t it?

Against an Arrogant Church

If there's one thing that the Traditional Church gets accused of, it's arrogance. Time and again, I hear complaints of the RCC hierarchy being deemed "out of touch" and "dismissive" of modern values. I hear of my brother priests (in various jurisdictions) being described as "arrogant" or "hypocritical" or "having their heads too heavenly bound so that they are no earthly good." Priests do get a lot of stick, and sometimes rightly so. We have to remember that the sacramental grace of being alter Christus does not extend to the weakness of our fallen humanity.

But is the Church really arrogant? How do people say that it is? Well, much of this comes down to morality. The Traditional Church is necessarily morally absolutist and absolutism is something that is socially frowned upon. It is almost taboo to be certain of something these days. The main evidence of this seems to be the claims that "atheists cannot be good people" and "only Christians can be good people". Indeed, the objection is raised that the Church has no business pronouncing judgment upon an individual since it has no claim to be the sole arbiter of morality.

This is where the claim of arrogance comes in, for what is arrogance defined if not the inflation of one's own importance? The Church in regarding herself as the sole arbiter of morality would certainly be a pretty hefty claim, but is it indeed an exaggeration?

First, let us be clear that moral absolutism is the claim that objective moral values exist independently of time and culture. The Church must believe that absolute values exist because it believes in an absolute God. Notice please that the monotheistic version of the Euthyphro argument fails to hold when it comes to the existence of God.

Plato's Socrates states "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" This supposedly makes Piety either arbitrary or renders the gods impotent against Piety. These days one might substitute the word "good" for "pious". This is pretty effective against the capricious Greek gods, but what about the True God Himself? As Boethius and Aquinas effectively point out, God is His own goodness. Goodness comes from Him by His very nature of being God. Hence Goodness is neither arbitrary nor above God.

If what is good comes from God, then that good must be absolute because it is of God who is absolute, and the existence of moral absolutes is proven.

So the Church is clearly bound by the morality she receives from God and if so,then she cannot promote any morality other than that which is necessarily imposed upon her. This is not arrogance. One cannot define arrogance as being absolute - this is a very modern phenomena. Arrogance is about assuming that which is above one's capabilities. The Church is not doing that at all. It is abiding by the morality that comes from the Absolute. Arrogance in this situation would be trying to change that morality for something else.

The problem here is when the Church tries to do just that, or when priests acts as one for whom morality is flexible. that's the real arrogance. As I said above, we are all fallen. I cannot really speak for other priests but I am acutely aware that I am fallible and that I have sinned. That doesn't mean that I am aware of all my sins.

However, I can still say "Murder is wrong" without being branded arrogant, because that is the moral fact. What I cannot do is pronounce the sentence of murder on any specific killing unless I am in possession of all the facts. Not all killing is murder, but all murder is killing. I can still say "Murder is wrong" even if I have just stabbed someone to death in front of my Diocesan Synod. To say that my claim doesn't hold because of what I have done is an ad hominem response and doesn't affect the argument.

Yet, the fact remains, I cannot possibly make the blanket generalisation that all killings are murder and I invite my readers to think of as many circumstances as they can. A sweeping generalisation is as much an invalid argument as an ad hominem attack if it cannot be shown to be generally true. Sweeping generalisations are likely to be the product of arrogance since they demonstrate an inflated grasp of the situation.

The Church is not arrogant if it holds to moral absolutism, nor is it arrogant because it intends to proclaim the goodness of God. It is if it tries to apply that morality without careful thought or in situations where she cannot know. We have to remember that there is none good save God Himself. Let us therefore just commit ourselves to bringing the goodness of God into the life of the world rather than trying to point out where it is not. If there is good already there, then more will change nothing. If there is no good there, then the good we bring will improve the situation.

Reflexive Catholicism

Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors. (St Vincent of Lerins: Commonitorium, chapter 2)

Fr Chadwick has been ruminating on the Vincentian Canon which I've quoted above. St Vincent was writing between the third and fourth Oecumenical Councils at a time when the Monophysite controversy was raging before it was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. He writes in order to help the Church find a way of detecting heresy citing the great Heretics,  Novatian, Sabellius, Donatus, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, and Nestorius, all of whom were denounced by the first three Oecumenical Councils. 

Of course, the great phrase defining "Catholic" as "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus" is probably not as easy to apply when Church Fathers or Schools of Theology disagree. The Alexandrian School ultimately produced Arius, and Apollinaris was linked to the School of Antioch. The two schools of themselves were quite orthodox and produced a tension from which our view of the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ was revealed and clarified somewhat; yet they produced extremists whose work required the Councils to resolve.

I can only leave intellectual theology to my betters such as Fr Chadwick and his readers. My question is somewhat more pernickity. St Vincent produces a general statement, and general statements have to apply generally. That's the trouble with Universals.

If one says "Only physical evidence determines the truth" then where is the physical evidence which will determine the truth of that statement? If there's no such thing as absolute truth, then is the statement "there is no absolute truth" an absolute truth or not?

So, the question is, does the Vincentian Canon satisfy the Vincentian Canon? Can we say that "Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors." has been believed everywhere, always, by all?

If we can, then we have a self-consistent definition of Catholicism. If not, then the Vincentian Canon possesses no evidence to be part of the Catholic Faith. If Arianism fails the Vincentian Canon, then we can legitimately doubt that Arianism is Catholic. So what if the Vincentian Canon fails the Vincentian Canon?

Fortunately, it seems from the Commonitorium that St Vincent is setting up the basis upon which the Orthodox Churches understand the Faith. What can be considered more truly Universal than an Oecumenical Council? After all, the whole point is for the Bishops from all around the world to gather together in order to find consensus on matters of Faith in order to preserve the Faith and promulgate it into all territories. Thus in an Oecumenical Council, we have quod ubique in the gathering of the world's bishops, the quod semper in their intention to find and preserve the "faith which was once delivered unto the saints" in a consensus giving us the quod ubique. Thus we see that it is very much the raison d'etre of the Oecumenical Council to produce the Vincentian Canon. If the Councils are thus Catholic, so is the Vincentian Canon and thus it can be regarded as a proper universal statement.

This might be an exercise in raising futility or tautology to a high art for some folk; however, it does actually demonstrate the reliability of St Vincent's definition of "Catholic" as something the Early Church understood before it was thus phrased and as something accepted afterwards. We can accept this definition in good Faith. It means that any Church that accepts the doctrine of the Seven Oecumenical Councils of the Undivded Church is truly Catholic in principle. From the Eighth Council (the fourth in Constantinople) we see the beginnings of the schism which came to a head in 1054.

It also means that we can rule out the weaker definitions that have been promulgated since then. I've already said that the Catholic Church is not a church for anyone but for everyone. "Catholic" cannot mean "all-inclusive" because that would mean that it could include atheists and other religions which rather defeats the central tenets of Christianity. That's certainly not to say that non-Christians are irredeemable. Indeed, if the prayers of the Church at Mass are answered then the possibility does exist. For, at the offering of the Chalice we prayer that it may ascend as a sweet-smelling savour for our salvation and for that of the whole world. 

This does actually bring out another aspect of the Catholic Church that is indeed universal. It should harbour the love of God for all of God's Creation. Time and again do we see the Church fail to do just that and inso failing, it fails to do what Our Lord demanded to be done always, everywhere and by all. That is just the fallibility of Man. The Church may indeed teach infallibly even if it is a case of "whatsoever they bid you observe , that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not." 

One must remember that St Ignatius of Antioch said in his letter to the Church in Smyrna. "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (ὥσπερ ὅπου ἂν ῇ Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ἐκεῖ ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία.) We also have the famous ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Thus the Catholic Church cannot exist where no love is. Without love, it really is all men dressing up in silly clothes and speaking old-fashioned words with no consideration for the meaning. 

If we really do mean that we are catholic with either a C or a c, then we really need to be changing ourselves to become conveyors of the love of God into our communities. We are the ones that have to be for everyone, holding the Catholic Faith in our hearts as well as our minds so that all people can know Christ in us whoever we are, Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female. One certainly does not have to be a Catholic Priest for that, for this is all our calling as Christians.

Epiphamily

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the first Sunday after Epiphany 2014

 

Ben has been found

wandering around Bluewater

having run off from his parents.

 

He is twelve years old,

an only child

and from Inverness in Scotland.

 

He last saw his parents 3 hours ago

when he wandered off to look at

what was happening in Winter Wonderland

and they have clearly not noticed

that he’s gone.

 

He has been given no mobile phone,

no money

and no idea where his parents are.

 

Doesn’t this seem like

 a case of neglect to you?

 

Should we inform Social Services?

 

[PAUSE]

 For those of us who seek

to promote the notion of the functional family,

the loss and discovery of Our Lord in the temple

must come as a bit of an embarrassment.

 

We are presented with

Our Lord deliberately staying away

from His parents

in order to do what He wants to do.

 

Even then it takes Mary and Joseph

a day to realise that He is not with them.

 

Just think of it.

 

We Christians hold

Our Lady and St Joseph up

as model parents,

and we make the categorical claim

that Our Lord is sinless.

 

Does this running away

 mean that the Holy Family are just as,

 if not more dysfunctional

than the average family in Medway?

 

Does this mean that Our Lord Jesus

is not as sinless as one might think?

 

[PAUSE]

Twelve year-olds

are actually quite interesting creatures.

 

A twelve year-old

may have completed their first year at secondary school,

so they are much more confident

about what’s going on

but they still have a sense

of the inquisitive.

 

They want to know things

and do indeed take the trouble to find out.

 

They have not yet had that rush of hormones

that makes the fourteen year-old

find thinking hard and communication more so.

 

Twelve year-olds are at their most articulate

and communicative.

 

They will certainly want to know

where they have come from,

giving rise to some potentially difficult questions

for Mum and Dad to answer.

 

Our Lord at the age of twelve

is no different from any other twelve year-old.

 

[PAUSE]

 

We simply do not know when Our Lord

 becomes aware that He is the Son of God

or how He knows it,

 

We do know that He knows He is the Son of God

 by the age of twelve.

 

We must remember that Epiphany

means “Revelation” or “Manifesting”

and the whole life of Christ is spent revealing

the truth about God and His love for us

in word and in deed.

 

That does not mean that

God’s revelation of Himself to us

 is going to be complete.

 

There will always be things

that we don’t know about Our Lord.

 

What we do know is that

Jesus leaves Mary and Joseph

to go to the Temple to find His Father.

 

 He goes to His Father’s house.

 

Why?

 

[PAUSE]

 

Again, we do not have the full reason,

but we do find Jesus sitting with

the thinkers and teachers and academics

and both asking and answering

some deep theological questions.

 

It is clearly imperative for Him

to “be about His Father’s business”

whatever that business is.

 

It is business that clearly goes

above normal family relationships

and yet it is business which

Our Lady and St Joseph

simply do not understand,

and neither do we – not fully.

 

There are times when the family life of Jesus

does not answer our questions

about how to be a good family

as carefully as we like.

 

Many people try to live their lives by WWJD

 – “what would Jesus do?”

 

If we go strictly by this,

 the example of Jesus here for twelve year olds

seems to be to run off from your parents

 to the nearest Church

at the next available opportunity!

 

When your child is the Son of God

and He seeks to be in the place

where His Father’s presence is closest to us,

this is perfectly reasonable.

 

Surely it is a child’s right to see his father!

 

However,

 if your child is not the Son of God,

running off anywhere without telling anyone

is just not the right thing to do.

 

The family life of Our Lord Jesus

is not meant to be an absolute model

for the good family.

 

 So what does make a family a good family?

 

[PAUSE]

 

You know the answer to that already!

 

It’s Love, that wonderful unconditional love!

 

Any family that

truly and unconditionally loves

each of its members

 is a good family.

 

 

This must involve God somewhere

because God is Love.

 

Our Lord may run off to the Temple

without telling His family,

but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t love them.

 

It means that in order to love His family,

He must find His Father.

 

Love is His Father’s business,

 

            though we cannot fathom

 

                      the depths of that Love.

 

St John tells us,

“Beloved, let us love one another:

for love is of God;

and every one that loveth is born of God,

and knoweth God.

 

He that loveth not knoweth not God;

for God is love.

 

In this was manifested the love of God toward us,

because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world,

 that we might live through Him.

 

Herein is love,

not that we loved God,

but that He loved us,

and sent His Son to be

the propitiation for our sins.”

 

We might not understand that love fully,

but we can certainly trust Our Lord

when he says “seek and ye shall find”.

 

[PAUSE]

 

There are often times when it seems

 Jesus has run off and left us, His adopted family,

 without any reason.

 

Clearly, like Our Lady and St Joseph,

 we need to seek Him

and to help others when they are seeking Him.

 

How can we make sure that our Church

is going to be the place - a good family!

- in which people can find Him?