Poltergeists and personhood

Why the questions raised by paranormal activity affect what it means to be human.

Shout out to @AndyCroftsofficial at the Terror Cellar. 

https://www.instagram.com/theterrorcellarpodcast/

Why the questions raised by paranormal activity affect what it means to be human.

Shout out to @AndyCroftsofficial at the Terror Cellar.

https://www.instagram.com/theterrorcellarpodcast/

Blogday 2024: objectifying ikons

It is hard for me to believe that this is the 19th Blogday for O Cuniculi. This year has been a very turbulent year and I have wondered whether I should have to tell the rabbits to cease looking for my Latin dictionary.

As I write, the winds outside my home are high and I can see the detritus of dead leaves and paper from the recycling bin that's blown open dancing across the sky. It seems to reflect well the wind that is billowing around me. 

The temptation is for me to shut down and disengage. That's not a bad thing in itself: a retreat is necessary so one can take a good look at oneself when the only voices to be heard are those within you and that of God. 

It is important to recognise that the voices in your head are not God's voice - at least very seldom does He speak like that. But in my experience, the Divine voice does not use a voice in my head and this makes sense. God's language is so deep and powerful. Just think! He just needs to speak a word and the thing comes into being. The Divine Word leaps down from Heaven in more than just a communication of language but in a communication of existence. 

When we use words there is always a level of unintelligibility since your subjective experience is necessarily different from mine, but there is still some precision possible. You and I can use the same language to program a computer, or to do mathematics even if we disagree about the syllables and sounds. 

The trick there is that there is something objective that exists independently of our senses but is communicated to us by those senses. Even if we doubt what we see, we don't doubt that we see. Even if we lack the power of sight or hearing, there is always something to sense. Scepticism can only go so far before it becomes incoherent; in many cases, it is not that far.

The rejection of the objective means the worship of the subjective. That sounds like a strong word to use but I think it justified. If there is nothing externally objective then it is the sensations in themselves that determine our value judgements, rather than what exists exterior to our sensation. To disengage fully.and permanently risks this plunge into subjective-induced scepticism and its terminus in solipsism.

St Benedict says that the best kind of monk is the cenobite - those who live in a community with a rule. The Rule is an expression of God's moral objectivity expressed through the Abbot and senior brothers, and to which every monk subscribes. Only after preparation in the monastery - a preparation against solipsism - can a monk become an anchorite or hermit.

Hermitage which raises the subjective self above what exists exterior hears the voice of God in their heads but allows the authority of this voice to become coloured by feelings. Feelings are subjective facts, not objective facts and stem from internal sources as well as external and, for this reason, cannot be an authority either for political decision making or as a means of determining God's revelation to us. The risk of offence cannot be a reason to change the law, especially when others' lives and livelihoods may be at risk. A  Christianity based on the premise that feeling loved is the only sign of being loved is not a Christianity with a cross. The reality of Christianity is repentance - recognising and turning towards God - and the pain of repentance arises from accepting the objective rule of Christ over subjective experience. When the subjective loses to the objective, it plays the wounded victim unless it is given its true created worth by being sacrificed upon the cross that we each must not only bear but, further, venerate.

For me, as the wind blows ever stronger, it is the ikon that grounds me in reality. I have often said, mainly to my friends, that Anglican Catholicism done properly is what the Church of England would have been had it not only accepted the Seventh Oecumenical Council of Nicaea II but embraced it wholeheartedly. For then, the objective reality of the Incarnation would be utterly rooted in our experience of Church,  colouring and informing our subjective selves. Also, the objective reality of the saints would also prevent us from being truly alone and utterly lonely which is where the solipsists invariably find themselves - sometimes eternally.

Ikons are never written to be "aesthetically pleasing" and thus trigger the tyranny of personal taste, but rather to point to true beauty, the Light of Tabor, which can only be the True God. Only God is truly transcendent,  which is why His existence determines in itself what the other transcendentals are, such as Love, Goodness, Beauty, Knowledge, Power and Truth.

People ask why I write "ikon" rather than "icon". The answer is that the word "icon" is being used to describe people. We hear of "cinema icons" or an "iconic performance" and puts us in danger of the idol in which the ikon ceases to point to realities beyond itself and instead points to itself. To write ikon refers back to the eikon found in Holy Scripture and the Fathers and to the images which point to the Inage of the Invisible God - Jesus Christ Himself. This is why I cannot take seriously the objections of some Protestants that to bow the knee to an image is to worship it. If that is true then these Protestants have a very empty understanding of what worship is and the underlying sacrifice of the self that characterises the essence of worship. If the ikon points to a reality beyond it, then it is that reality to which the veneration is paid. To deny this is to deny the objective reality of the God to Whom the Apostles bear witness across the centuries. To deny the Seventh Council is to deny the Incarnation when He Who Is exterior to Creation bursts into it and human nature becomes venerable once more.

While I debate with myself whether O Cuniculi will continue after its twentieth year, central to this will be whether I can continue to speak about invisible truths in a way that is meaningful to a real audience. I pray that I can, but I do wonder whether I need to learn to write ikons rather than words.

God bless you, dear readers! I pray for every blessing upon you in 2025.

Blogday 2023: Disillusionment and Reconfiguration

This blogling is eighteen years old. In the UK, this would make it a legal adult which is quite remarkable for something that essentially began by accident. Here we are, nonetheless, and the changes that have happened, even in this little space of time are not insignificant.

One thing that would be a surprise to the me of 2005 is that I chose to have nothing to do with the Coronation of King Charles III. Back then I was an ardent monarchist; now I would be hard pressed to say that I had any positive feelings to the monarchy. 

This may be a great disappointment to my monarchist friends. In many ways, it is a disappointment to me - I want to be a monarchist, but I have become disillusioned with the British Establishment.

Disillusionment ought to be a very positive thing, really. Illusions deceive because they mask what is true in order to present and sustain a false reality. 

To me, the Coronation was a beautiful illusion which I could not get behind. It gave the illusion that things were in keeping with our history, our traditions and our faith. It gave the illusion that things are okay in British society. It gave the illusion of the respectability and authority of Parliament. It gave the illusion of the respectability and authority of the Church of England in matters of faith and morals.

But things aren't like that.

Parliament has been shown to be run by people who are using it to serve their own interests. The COVID enquiry is demonstrating very clearly that MPs have routinely breached the COVID regulations in order to live a comfortable lifestyle while others who kept the regulations were prevented from being by the side of dying relatives.

The Church of England has shown that it cannot truly make a clear decision because the bishops are disengaged from both the Christian Faith and the people they serve in order to toe a party line in order to meet an agenda determined by the secular society so that it can maintain its position as Established in a country in which Christianity is now a minority.

British society is in the grip of a postmodern deconstruction whereby History is reduced to malleable narratives which mask the objective reality in order to legitimise differing viewpoints based on subjective criteria. Traditions are reinterpreted in order to be acceptable to everyone's narrative except those narratives which affirm a fearful "tyranny of the objective."

Oh dear, I do sound like a miserable party-pooper, don't I?

I rather hope that I am not. One of the realisations that I have had over the past eighteen years is that I am not a Nominalist: there is an objective reality that underlies existence. Well of course, that's God, you might say. Agreed, but where I differ from the postmodern Nominalists is that I believe that things have natures - that they possess a way that they should be. Having completed doctoral research on this has really allowed me to crystallise this in my mind. Having a nature means that we can tell a things purpose and where things have gone wrong. Masek's Maxim essentially says that if one can legitimately ask "what's wrong with that?" then there is a nature from which the thing might be deviating.

A penguin that can fly in air is going against its nature. We can tell something is wrong. This means that Sir David Attenborough can make coherent programmes about penguins. Likewise he can also point to the damage done to the penguins' habitat by showing that something is wrong with the way the penguins are behaving. Penguins have a nature that means that we can tell that they are penguins and not black-and-white ducks.

Likewise, medicine relies on there being a human nature. It is not natural for humans to be continuall coughing, so someone with a persistent cough needs treatment. It is not natural for human beings to be suicidal, so someone contemplating suicide needs someone to understand, be compassionate and help them.

The nature of a good Parliament is that it forms laws for the good of the people, and is itself consistent with the laws that it forms. 

The nature of a Church is that it worships God as Trinity and is consistent with the Gospel it has received once and must deliver that same Gospel to all people throughout Time and Space.

The nature of a monarch is to rule and govern fairly and wisely.

Of course, things fall short. I am not bewailing the imperfection of things. I am bewailing the denial that there is an inherent nature in things - a denial which seeks to give human beings an authority that they do not possess, namely to mould objective reality subject to their desire. This becomes dangerously close to Aleister Crowley's "'do what thou wilt,' shall be the whole of the law."

I believe that Anglican Catholics can play an important part in re-establishlishing nature by acting as a central thread around which society gets reconfigured. I have argued in my thesis that Anglican Catholics are Realists and not Nominalists. This sets us apart from the Nominalism that allowed the Reformation to go far too far. 

A senior Protestant clergyman once said that Anglican Catholicism was in danger of turning into Old Catholicism. I don't see anything wrong in that. If Anglican Catholics have recovered the Catholic faith of the pre-Reformation whilst not rejecting the need for that Reformation, then we are indeed old Catholics of a sort, though not as the type of Old Catholic that has become an episcopus vagante and falling into the morass of postmodern liberalism into which the CofE has fallen. The trouble is that Protestantism has embraced that Nominalism which has allowed it to fragment because, without the binding of universals and natures, there is nothing of substance to keep things together, not even the BCP.

People will say to me that I have missed out on history in steering clear of the Coronation. This may be so but there was nothing there any longer for me. I remember as a boy watching a replay of the coronation of Her Late Majesty and being enthralled by it. That, to me, was a danger because I know that I would not be enthralled this time knowing that the crown would be placed upon the head of the King by hands that have torn the CofE and wider Communion to pieces and witnessed by those who claim offices in the Church to which they are not entitled.

I have been enthralled by Papal elections and took comfort that the traditions performed had retained their reason. Will I be enthralled again when the present incumbent leaves office? I don't know. It depends on how much of an illusion the Holy See casts. 

Respect and disenfranchisement

 

A few thoughts on those who, for whatever reason, find themselves unchurched.

Blogday 2021: Seen and not heard

It's rather a novelty actually writing something down for this blogling, at the moment, that is neither a sermon nor a video. Making short videos is somewhat easier now because they take less time to do and, with my workload increasing, perhaps I am taking the easy option.

Here it is, nonetheless, the sixteenth birthday of this blog. It's a significant year because it marks ten years since I left the CofE and found the ACC in which I think I have flourished ever since. In those ten years, both I and the CofE have changed markedly. I have been able to study properly now, not just get a pat on the head from the established training programmes for being inclusive of diverse "traditions" within the established church. My conclusion has been that the G3 - i.e. the Continuing Anglican bodies that are pursuing organic unity - are true and rightful inheritors of the Oxford Movement and that they form true and orthodox Catholicism in the Anglican heritage which the Tractarians rediscovered and which the modern CofE has sold for a mess of pottage. I am grateful to Presiding Bishop Chandler Jones of the ACA for reminding me that Fr Alfred Patten foresaw the need for the Continuing Anglican Church.

That need has been proved correct. The CofE has shown itself to be a Congregational body in all but name. Now, I am not saying that Congregational churches are necessarily wrong but rather they demonstrate a lack of Catholic cohesion and a marked temptation to believe what they want. It's healthy that no two parishes are the same but it's when they are doctrinally different that problems arise. As Prof Craig Paterson reminded me, if everyone says they are eating different things, can anyone be eating the same meal. Sometimes I wonder if they are eating in the same restaurant. Certainly if "Christian" atheism is tolerated in the CofE then anything goes, but at what cost?

 My problem is that there is an institutional disingenuity within the CofE in trying to hold different orthodoxies to be true. One might be minded of the famous Orthodox Phronema in which continuity with the mindset of the Apostolic Church trumps the use of Reason, but the Orthodox Phronema has, at its heart, the doctrine of the Nicene Creed. The CofE has lost that because it has given liberty to its members to attribute their own meanings to the words of the Creed. Ten years ago, I remember Anglicans telling me that they weren't going to allow the Creed to tell them what to believe. The evidence of that is bearing fruit.

As numbers decline, the CofE is now putting plans together for parishes to be run by groups of lay volunteers. There is a pretence at consulting the congregation, but this is often a lip-service. The forms are filled in and filed, but the decisions have already been made by the Deans, Archdeacons and Bishops before the congregation is consulted. It gives the illusion that the congregation is consulted. The congregation is to be seen and not heard. While I was a member of the CofE, I raised objections which were seen and not heard. I was faced with the duplicity of archdeacons and deans. I am not alone: a good friend actually called out the bare-faced lies of an archdeacon at a PCC meeting. That was over a decade ago. Looking at the Thinking Anglicans site, I am led to believe things have not improved. 

I am somewhat concerned for the fate of Forward in Faith. Recent pictures of the movements of the Bishop of Fulham seem to show the constant, chimere-clad presence of Dame Sarah Mullally, CEO of the Diocese of London. I get the impression that the Bishop of Fulham has been given a short leash from his superior. The impression I also get is that this is what "mutual flourishing" means and that FiF need constant supervision to ensure that their presence in the CofE is mitigated to preserve the "inclusive" and "diverse" nature of the CofE. I get that impression because that toleration-by-limitation-and-supervision was what I personally faced ten years ago when presented with working agreements deliberately designed to restrict my adherence to the Catholic Faith. I said, "satis est!" and found peace.

I found peace by ending the Quixotic idea of holding together two contradictories. Ironically, in letting go of the CofE, I also let go of the Papacy which I had seen as supplying the consistency the CofE was lacking. Once you see Orthodoxy and Catholicism enshrined in the preamble of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and know that the BCP is to be interpreted through the Early Church then you begin to appreciate that Anglican Catholicism has existed since the Roman roads were first trod in these shores. Too long, Anglican Catholicism has been seen and not heard in the UK.

We tend to get shouted down. Every so often, I get a comment by a zealous Roman Catholic telling me that my church and I are not valid. The only reason that they post such things is to publicly denounce me out of hatred or a need to be seen to be right. It can't be love or they would remember to admonish me privately first, or even just to pass over this blog. This is typical of what is happening to anyone trying to promote orthodoxy: we are to be seen and not heard. That has certainly been the view of more than one Bishop of Dover.

The trouble is that, in being seen, the light has been taken out from under a bushel. The moment we are seen, there are questions. The moment there are questions, attempts to suppress those questions become difficult - social changes show us that. The Anglican Catholic Diocese of the United Kingdom celebrates its thirtieth birthday in less than a month. We are still here and we stand with all Orthodox and Catholic Christians in proclaiming the Ancient Faith that will not be politically spun or suppressed. I rather think that this is why this little blogling still exists after sixteen years. 

All this seems to be a CofE-bashing post. That isn't my intention but, given that this is the church that claims the spiritual health of the Nation despite fewer than a tenth of the population asserting their membership, a spiritually unhealthy church based on confusion and wilful obfuscation to achieve political rather than spiritual ends. That said, vast credit and blessings must go to those simple parish priests and lay-folk who simply try, week in, week out, to live out their Christian faith sincerely; those who keep their heads out of politics in favour of meeting the needs of their immediate neighbours; those whose preaching of the Gospel is seen and not heard. There are plenty of those who call themselves Church of England, and I am inclined to believe their testimony over the hierarchy of the CofE. 

As for me? I, too, must keep studying in order to preach, teach and administer the Catholic Faith once delivered to the saints for I have still so much to learn. This will be another busy year of research and writing and I pray, through the merits of St Anselm, St Odile, St Benedict and St Thomas Aquinas, to the Almighty One True God that my work may bear His fruit.

On Ideolatry and Protestantism

A few strands have been coming together in my head recently. First, I have spent much of my social media time over the last couple of days arguing the foundations of the Catholic Faith with an out-and-out Protestant. Everything I wrote, he countered in a way that did not make any sense to me. Clearly, I was not making sense to him. That's not his fault nor really is it my fault but one question came to my mind, "what if I have actually got it all wrong?"

Similarly, as I suspect happens to every Catholic priest of all stripes, just as I was genuflecting before elevating the host, I heard that voice say, "why are you kneeling to a little white circle?" Again, that question arises, "what if I have actually got it all wrong?"

In reading the Roman Martyrology at Prime, I find myself wincing at the phrase "worship of holy images" because that seems to justify the Protestant accusations of idolatry and is not what Ikonography is. With holy images we venerate the saints depicted, "hyper-venerate" the Blessed Virgin depicted and worship the Lord Jesus Christ Whose Holy Incarnation allows us to depict Him. That's what the phrase "worship of holy images" means but it isn't what it says.

The more I think of these instances the more I have become convinced that people are becoming so entrenched in their ideological framework that they are beginning to worship that by defending it unreasonably - especially through cancelling the debate. More and more of us are committing Ideolatry: putting our worldview above God. This means, as I have suggested before, that we are shoehorning God into our worldview rather than letting our worldview expand to receive God.

You might say that it's a bit rich of an entrenched conservative Anglican Catholic to talk of open-mindedness when my worldview is closed to Liberalism. I take the point but I do remember at University having some truly terrible theology shoved down my throat because if I "needed to experience other traditions". To be honest, I try a live and let live approach. If people want to do liturgical dance that's their business. My opinion is that it has no place at Mass or Office but I appreciate that this is what people feel called by the Spirit to do. They might be wrong or I might be wrong but if we are both seeking to be true to the same Holy Ghost then our mistakes are going to be put right.

This is the point. The most ardent Catholic of any stripe and the most ardent Protestant of any stripe will agree on one simple fact that Jesus Christ is a historical figure who actually died and actually rose again from the dead to save humanity from Sin and Death.

I say this but there are those who call themselves Christians who deny even the reality of God Himself. And this is where we really do lose all common language and all I can do is hope and pray that we may find some method of communication. 

The main trouble with holding an ideology is that we often defend its slogans without really taking them to their logical or communal consequences. We sit comfortably within the bounds of our worldview without exploring the horizon.

I do try to practise what I preach but I know that I am far from perfect. One conclusion, though, that I have drawn somewhat reluctantly is that the Church of England to which I once belonged is ideologically Protestant and that the Nineteenth Century Anglo-Catholics with the best will in the world tried to read history as if Cranmer, Parker, Elizabeth I et c didn't intend to build a Protestant Anglicanism. The facts of history say otherwise. The Homilies that the XXXIX Articles requires read are Protestant as is the plain reading of those Articles in that the embrace a soteriology and sacramental theology different from the Primitive Church. Thus from the intention of the Establishment and those who govern that Establishment, the CofE was certainly Protestant from 1559 onwards. 

The painful reality for me is that I spent much of my life as a Protestant. 

Why painful? Is being a Protestant so bad? To my mind, Protestantism is incomplete. In removing the excesses of Papal authority, it threw out that which has been cherished from the beginning of the Church. In crying "Sola!", Protestant ideology misses that some things like Scripture and Faith are never alone nor can be separated from other aspects of Catholic belief. The one thing that has revealed to me the extent of the Protestantism of the Church of England in the 16th and 17th centuries has been the Calvinist ikonoclasm which robbed the faithful of the looking glass into the presence of the Divine. In choosing to remain in the CofE I was accepting the inherent Protestantism despite, like many others, dissenting from it. As long as I remained in the CofE, however nominal, I was accepting the ikonoclasm, the stripping of the altars, and latterly the Liberal Modernism which has changed even what little access to the Catholic Faith the Protestants had.

Thus I find that my current exploration of Anglican Catholicism is a great comfort for, together with the other G4 Churches, the Anglican Catholic Church is continuing the Oxford Movement to its logical conclusion. That conclusion is NOT Rome, at least not the Roman Church which claims ownership of Catholicism and demands inappropriate obeisance to an earthly monarch who, however venerable, holy and true, cannot possess the authority and attributes claimed. In holding the Primitive Faith of the First Millennium and using that as the basis of theology, I can read my Anglican heritage through that, discarding that which does not fit, such as Cranmer's overtly Protestant theology, and supplying what the faith teaches.

Thus I do not have to deny history, nor revise it or half-tell the story, but rather reform the reform and re-place the theological authority which has been removed.

However Protestant the CofE may be, it intended to continue the Apostolic Succession and, if there has been a breach anywhere along the line, it had been made up for by our relationship with other Catholics. But I do not believe there has been a breach - saepius officio has shown that, until 1992, the CofE had valid orders. 

Even then, the Anglican Catholic Church and her communion partners have the express intent of continuing Catholic and Apostolic Orders and thus either we are still Catholic or we have recovered the remnants of Catholicism from the Anglican Communion. Thus, whether we were Protestant or not, we are not now: we have supplied all that Protestantism lacks.

But is this not a form of Ideolatry? Do I worship the Catholic Faith that I promote or do I actually worship Christ? Now that is a good question and, to answer it, I have to look at my intentions: why do I pursue, promote and peddle the Catholic Faith. And the answer to me is clear: it is all about Jesus Christ. It is about seeing Him in the world around, of being sensible to His presence in my life and keeping Him in view. I read about Him in my Bible and I hear His words but, more, I see Him in my ikons, I see Him, touch Him and consume Him in the Mass and thus I take Him into my heart - the core of my being. He is not a theological construct but a person of History as well as Eternity. He is real and not just words in a book. The Holy Ghost convinces me of this and shows me that I can trust what the Lord says: if His body is meat indeed, then that little white circle is truly Him as He is - not through theory, but through what He tells me Himself, and I trust Him. Thus, for me, the Catholic Faith is just the room in which I meet the object of my desire, my life and my happiness. He is not my ideology but my ideology is based entirely on Him. Of course, that's not to say that there are no cracks in the walls in the room in which I meet my God. Perhaps some of those cracks become doors to other rooms.

If we hold to an ideology, then we have to recognise that it is sonething that we only allow ourselves to inhabit under the condition that we need to explore it fully so that we can function and communicate with other human beings with whom we share existence. To do otherwise would be selfish and lead to an ideology of solipsism. I do not believe the Catholic Faith would allow this on the grounds that the Saviour became incarnate to unite Christians in Him.

Blogday 2020: Communication, Communion and Common Prayer

As usual, today I reflect on this little blogling which has now attained the age of fifteen. 2020 has not been a kind year to many of us, and it's rather been like a teenager spending his free hours walled up in his bedroom. An interesting biological fact is that puberty kills off a lot of connections in the brain which enable communication skills. This is why communicable eleven year olds turn into  monosyllabic teenagers.

This has not been a good year for communication. First, as is evidenced by the American Election in the US and Brexit in the UK, people are becoming ideologically divided, and this has ramifications on how we communicate with each other. Some communication is already being stifled in order to cease causing offence to others or inadvertently stray into "hate speech" - a term which still lacks a coherent objective definition. There is a risk that those who are offended by another's words may call on "hate speech" legislation. This is already taking place. We are also seeing increasing violence as people of different ideologies are beginning to clash, especially at political demonstrations.

Secondly, the restrictions in movement and COVID have pushed more communication online where anonymity creates a veil behind which "trolls" thrive. By "troll", I mean one who has the full intent to offend or upset. Here I think of the dreadful comments made about the Duchess of Sussex following her miscarriage. Rather than comfort a woman in mourning, words were used to harm.

A troll is not the same as someone with an intent to challenge another's worldview. If we publicly express an opinion then we must be prepared to allow others to challenge it fundamentally and even robustly.

We are indeed free to say what we wish to say, but all rights have responsibilities as the other side of the same coin. If we tell a joke then our intent should be to make people laugh and not to injure. Yet, many a true word is spoken in jest, and satire has a value in waking us from complacency to a hidden reality to our condition. We have to be careful what the object of our lampooning is. We also have to be careful to see any offence that we take for what it is. At all stages of humour, as I said earlier this year, there must be the unconditional love that thinks the best of another's motives until evidence presents itself to demonstrate their ill-intent. This is based on the fundamental principle of law of "innocent until proven guilty".

Mr Biden seeks to unify an America broken by ideological conflict. He will only do this if he has a principle that both sides of the ideological barrier can accept. Just appealing to "truth, justice and the American Way" is no longer possible if people are now questioning whose truth, whose justice and which American Way.

The Continuing Anglican world might also be similarly divided. Remember, not every Anglican Church can properly call itself "Continuing Anglican" unless it has been born from the Congress of St Louis for that is the moment of the term's definition. For example, the Orthodox Anglican Church doesn't really call itself "Continuing Anglican", even though it does continue what the Lambeth Communion has ceased to practise, because its origins predate St Louis. I will therefore be concentrating on the jurisdictions I know within the Continuing Anglican movement and assume that other extra-Lambeth Anglican Christians supply their own mutatis mutandis.

By the early 1980s divisions occurred within the emerging Continuing Church which resulted in three different jurisdictions and there were further divisions in the 1990s. Yet, by 2017, these jurisdictions are working towards a greater organic unity. It will still take time. That's okay. Good things take time to do well.

At the heart, there is a unifying principle in the Book of Common Prayer, and it is this that holds it together. Continuing Anglicans live out the "Common" part of the Book of Common Prayer and this means we have a good degree of affinity. 

Of course there are details that produce some diversity. Which BCP do we use? For the American Churches, this is easy. The book that was in use before ECUSA started going doctrinally wobbly was the 1928 BCP and did the job, replacing some of the elements that the 1789 BCP omitted, like the Athanasian Creed. Yet, for the movement to grow there needs to be an appreciation of local history, culture and custom. In the UK, we don't have the same history as the US and, as a result, the equivalent Prayer Book is the 1662 BCP which has a rather truncated canon of the Mass. That truncation is not enough in itself to invalidate the Mass but it is enough to produce confusion about the central aspect of Communion, namely the Real and Objective Presence of Christ in the Mass and therefore cause doubt and unease among Anglican Catholics who see as full communion as possible with Christ as central to the life of the Church. It leaves out too much to express adequately what the Catholic Church believes.

 For Protestants who prefer some ambiguity about the objectivity of the Holy Presence, this is fine, but for Anglo-Catholics who believe in the transformation of the Host and Wine in some form of transubstantiation, it is not, despite the design of the Prayer Book to hold different "wings" together. In trying to do away with Papal edict with the deliberate removal of references to the Real Presence and the insertion of the Black Rubric, the Reformers threw out the baby with the bath water. Of course, the fact that the Anglican Catholic Church seeks to replace that which the Reformers omitted is seen by some as Revisionism despite the fact that the Reformers were probably just as Revisionist of the Catholic Faith in the first place. If Anglo-Catholics are revisionist then they are merely revising reforming revisions. (There's a blog title I missed! Rabbits!)

 The Anglican Catholic Church Constitution allows for local latitude in the use of the Prayer Book: the 1928 US Prayer Book is in (very) good keeping with the original BCP of 1549 from which the others sprang. Thus, with the 1549 as the basis and all understanding of the liturgy being read through the doctrine of the Primitive Church (i.e. through the doctrine of the Oecumenical Councils) the Continuing Anglican movement has a potential for global community which can work if people are willing to accept those principles.

I have made no secret of the fact that, in my private prayer, I use the Monastic Breviary  It is deliberately designed so that it translates the old Latin Breviary with the Psalms and collects from the BCP and uses Antiphons in conformity with the epistles and gospels from the BCP. Thus, I am saying the same words with the same intentions as everyone else using the Prayer Book, albeit in a different order. Anyone Prayer Book user who picks up my Breviary will see this conformity immediately and know that, as a Benedictine Oblate, I can follow the Benedictine Offices and yet remain faithful to the spirit of the Prayer Book which, itself, is born of the Catholic Faith in England and desirous to remove the excesses of Roman politics on liturgy and doctrine. The same is true with the missals which the Anglican Catholic Church authorises to be used in conformity with the BCP

This is the genius of both the Prayer Book and the Canonical intention of the Anglican Catholic Church. I am allowed a diversity of practice and yet remain faithful to the spirit of the Catholic Church in England before the Reformation and Post Reformation and the spirit which unifies other Anglican Christians.

I would also like to give some comfort to those who worry about my lack of use of the Prayer Book. If, as and when I am required to say public Offices in a parish church, then I have no qualms about using the BCP for Mattins and Evensong. As a chorister who has sung in many a cathedral, I have a deep appreciation for the Prayer Book Offices. I also recognise that not everyone is Benedictine and thus I must minister to them in the "secular" Offices which are as laid down in the BCP. Were I to be part of a Benedictine community, then I would use the Breviary in that community.

Whether we like it or not, the Prayer Book is part of Continuing Anglican history - indeed part of the history of the Church of England. Whether it is a defining aspect of Anglicanism is debatable: I maintain that there is Anglicanism before the BCP and that the BCP is a product - a good product - of that Anglicanism and thus an expression not a definition of Anglicanism. It proceeds from Anglicanism.

I would also like to give comfort to those Catholics who worry about my love of the BCP. As I have said above, the Anglican Catholic Church reads the BCP through the Catholic Faith. There are many deficiencies in the intention of the Reformers to omit perfectly Catholic and Faithful practices and doctrine. The Sarum Office is the basis of much of the Prayer Book, but is fuller and more in line with the Catholic Faith. The Sarum Office requires the daily recitation of the Quicunque Vult which, in an age of rejecting tradition, can only be a good thing.

As an expression of Anglicanism, both Catholic and Protestant can assent to the spirit of the BCP and use it as they see fit, either by its direct usage or by texts that conform or which have grown up in conjunction with its spirit. If we can all agree that it is a godly book, then we have a unifying principle by which we have some community.

I would say that there is something else, something deeper within Anglicanism that unites Continuing Anglican communities. The Anglican Catholic Church is as Orthodox as Constantinople and as Catholic as Rome. What is perhaps different about us is that we have a higher regard for the laity and need to continue to have that higher regard. This comes from our Anglicanism side. Many of the architects of the ACC were laymen, including the canonist Fr Stahl (God rest him) who was only ordained after his work on our canons. Having been to the Provincial Synod and meeting some of those who were at the Congress made me appreciate that we are not a Church who seeks to make the laity obedient sheep but rather engages with them actively at all levels. We need to let that continue by developing a well-educated laity which doesn't see the need to be ordained in order to get involved in building parishes and preaching the Christian Faith and thus include women fundamentally in the work of the Church rather than just seeing them as nuns, wives and mothers. I have seen personally the activity of many intrepid, strong, intelligent and intimidating women at the Provincial Synod who have been instrumental in building parishes and developing spiritual ministries.

The Continuing Anglican way has this written into itself more than, perhaps, the Lambeth Communion which broke away from us. It is why I wrote my book Whom seek ye? at my bishop's behest in order to encourage the laity not only to be educated but to continue to educate themselves in full commitment to the Anglican Catholic cause. 

As I end this dreadful 2020, I find myself very hopeful about Continuing Anglicanism and the possibility of its growth but then I am always the optimist. We now have mechanisms in place to grow and serve even from our state of smallness. I look forward to what the future brings for us, though the work is going to be very tough. I continue in prayer for this vision,  for God's will to be done and for the unifying presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the community.

This doesn't apply to me

One thing that has become quite apparent to me over the last few months is that many of the British people seem to have lost the ability to be agreeable.

One such manifestation of this is of a large "charity" beach party in the Romney Marsh area during which social distancing was not observed and after which the beach was utterly covered in litter. The organisers have pledged £750 towards the clean up, but one does question what people were thinking, or weren't thinking.

Clearly the whole pandemic situation has brought much confusion to light in our society. We've had expert pitted against expert; we've had advice which has been denounced; and we've had laws which have been ignored by government officials such as Dominic Cummings. It seems quite clear from the reports of his paper-thin excuse that Mr Cummings thinks that the rules don't apply to him.

The wearing of masks has been required in this country. In the US, the wearing of masks has not received universal legislation but remains as a guideline policed by busybodies and the arbiters of social justice. 

We see here two extremes: one is a law that is being ignored; the other is a recommendation that is being enforced. It is a very tricky situation and it means that we really do have to see where our commitments lie.

Our Lord looks at our hearts to make His judgement of us. Our underlying motives are as clear to Him as the daylight. He will know whether we comply with laws out of commitment to the community or disobey them out of selfishness and some belief that the law doesn't apply to us. He will know whether we insist on a recommendation out of respect for a very particular situation or whether forcing someone to comply is an instance of virtue signalling to make us look morally superior.

The Christian has a duty for the good of his community. This is not just a Benedictine thing; it really is a Church-wide thing. Our motivation can only be for the love of God and for neighbour.

There are those who refuse to wear masks because, "the Lord will protect me. I just need to have faith!" To them, the Lord says, "do not put the Lord thy God to the test." We might be delivered symptoms from the disease but we might pass the disease to others.

There are those who will insist that everyone wears masks whom the Lord will describe as straining a gnat and swallowing a camel. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for not wearing a mask.

The Christian commits to the unity of the Church. The Ignatian idea of the local church as being the people gathered around their bishop is a strong model which bears witness to the Gospel if Christ. It only works when the people obey the bishop and the bishop serves his people. The same is true for the relationship between parish and priest. We have to exhibit that commitment in our church working. If the bishop is celebrating in green then his priests should be celebrating in green out of a genuine desire to effect that sense of unity visually.

Of course, for any rule, recommendation and piece of advice there are exceptions and exemptions: that's reasonable. If we seek to use an exemption then we need to examine our heart carefully to see if, deep down, we want the exemption in order just to do our own thing. We can dress our reason for exemption with many convincing words and careful and clever reasonings but, ultimately, we have to be sure that our exemption would be better for the whole community than not.

Either we pull together or we come apart in the storm. Either we work together to contain the virus or we lose more lives to it. Either we seek the good of the community or the community suffers.

If we want to be truly community-minded then let us be so for the sake of God and of our neighbours. The exemption from Love is Hell.

Being right in the com-box

I felt rather sorry for the administrators of a certain Sarum-based Facebook group.

Consider a parishioner asking about the Sarum Rite in behalf of his female priest in ECUSA. All goes very well until some smarty-pants comments with "She?"

The meaning is very clear. Smarty-Pants does not believe that women can be ordained. As far as I am concerned, he is spot on: women cannot be ordained Catholic priests - the Church has spoken authoritatively on that. Yet there are those who believe otherwise for the best of intentions if not the best of reasons. The point is that Smarty-Pants has missed the point. So monoscopic is he that he wants to be right in every single com-box, even when it is not the issue.

The question was about the Sarum Rite and its execution, not on the finer points of Catholic Dogmata.

What irks me most about Smarty-Pants is that I know that I am little different and am just as likely to derail an com-box conversation in order to press an unnecessary point. 

I saw another post in a Gary Larson cartoon group in which a DIY-evangelist posted a picture of Samson along with a form of sermon. The reaction was as expected and it seemed many were driven away from Christ rather than invited to come to him.

This is the difference between invitation and coercion. From what we understand of the parable, we are invited to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. God does not force us to the feast with a battalion of angels armed with red-hot pokers. At all times, we are respected and the context of our social intercourse is due that respect. If we want to invite people, then we have to invite them at a time in which the invitation is appealing, in a way in which makes the invitation appealing. Treading on people's conversations shows a level of contempt for their integrity as human beings.

But then, perhaps social media does not help. it provides too much anonymity, too many hiding places and too little accountability for our words. I saw another FB post which said, "only num-skulls post in com-boxes" and I have some sympathy with that.

The main ingredient in being an ambassador for Christ is humility. The moment that we cultivate a certain smugness for being right, the moment we believe that we are the champions for orthodoxy, the moment we assume the prophet's mantle, the further down the ladder we descend into the grasping hands of the Evil One.

We are living in a world in which polarization threatens to tear us apart and destroy the love that we need to have for our neighbours. We can be more orthodox than St Athanasius but if we have no love and spew our orthodoxy into the face of everyone in every situation and in answer to every question, we are nothing, have nothing and will receive nothing from God because we will have shut Him out of the temple of our own idol of our smugness.

God save us all from com-boxes so that we might become human beings again!

Poles together?

Again I find myself struggling with social media. One of my previous posts unintentionally offended a friend just by the misuse and unqualification of a single word. My aim was to demonstrate the idealistic and unreasoned aims of many coupled with the extremism of a few could be highly destructive. By misusing that word, my post took on an entirely different view which was not what I wanted.

This exemplifies something that is happening in our civilization today. 

I won't pretend that I am not concerned with present events. Indeed, perhaps I am too concerned with them that I want to retreat into a cosy cloister. I am not a sociable animal but I do love my fellow man - or try to at least. What I am witnessing is a polarization of society as a result of initially forced separation. Our Lockdown has kept us apart physically; our social media has encouraged us to engage in separation of ideology. It's no wonder that there is unrest.

Again I refer to the civil unrest due to racial tensions. We do have a problem here and it can only be resolved by refusing to be separated and respecting the humanity of others. We need to be generous enough to allow the other to be wrong.

Unfortunately, that falls into the same problem as the Prisoners' Dilemma. It can only work if everyone commits to coming together for working out the problem rationally. As soon as one person refuses to enter the debate, the goal is lost. 

Should Sir Winston Churchill be allowed to get away with what we now recognise as racist comments? Well, given that he passed away in 1965, we cannot do a thing to bring him to account for them. Is defacing his memory the way forward? Well, it brings the issue to light and allows the pain of others to be heard, but it does not account for the fact that he led this country in a desperate fight on behalf of many minorities against one of the worst racists this world has ever seen. What we can do easily lose in all this is our sense of proportion. I am reminded of Ghandi's racism against those of African heritage and yet look what he does for Indian emancipation.

We have to be reasoned and willing to dialogue with those with whom we disagree with even most profoundly. While I understand that protests give an expression of solidarity and sound a louder note of dissent, destructive iconoclasm which terrifies everyone on every side cannot be allowed to take over. We are returning to the days of digging up Oliver Cromwell in order to try them for regicide and hang in order to feel that justice has been done. This also has its parallel with mad Pope Stephen digging up Pope Formosus at the Cadaver Synod. What justice does it bring?

If we want justice against the dead, we cannot ever hope to administer it ourselves. All we do is vent our frustrations on corpses and statues to the extent that we become unreasoned.

If we want true social justice in which all bigotry, prejudice, slavery, bad blood and various phobias are erased, then that judgement can never be passed by a human being or even a council of human beings. There will always be an accusation of bias or privilege no matter who makes the judgement.

The only true judgement can come from one who knows what it is to be human and from whom all justice flows. Only God can right all wrongs. Only God can bring the dead to account. Only God has the ability to judge every instance of sin fairly and for the good of both oppressed and oppressor alike.

Until that Day of Judgment, we can only do our best, and our inability to create a justice that benefits all human beings means we have no choice but to forge relationships with those who may even wish us dead. This is precisely the content of Our Lord's commandments to love God and love neighbour. It's the best we can do, even to the extent of living together in the most profound of contradictions.

Now, it may well be that one of my readers takes issue with what I have written. If that is the case then I wish it to be understood unequivocally and absolutely that I have intended no offence, no belittling of anyone or their positions, no diminution of their humanity or any aspect of their humanity. I have tried to be honest and truthful. If that offends then I have nothing to say except to express profound sorrow and regret that the offence has occurred and hope that a cup of tea, a biscuit, a prayer and a hand of honest and committed friendship might be some amelioration.

Back to School

The more I think about things, the more I realise that I should not be a Romantic. Before I get myself into too much trouble, I ought to explain.

The more I look at social media and listen to the news, the more I hear noise of different groups of society shouting past each other.

Take the slogan, "black lives matter".

Of course they matter and any Christian with half a brain can see that. The logic is simple:

A) All black people are human.

B) All human beings matter to God.

C) All black people matter to God.

Oh! Hello Barbara!

(A) is easily verified empirically.

(B) is easily deduced from Holy Scripture.

(C) follows because Barbara says so.

Corollary:

(D) If black lives matter to God then they matter to everyone.

Thus by Modus Ponendo Ponens, black lives matter to everyone. Denial of that is a denial of logic, science or of God.

It seems so dry but look at what this does not say.

"Black lives matter" does not say "only black lives matter." What it does suggest is that immediate attention needs to be brought into the state in which black lives are regarded. That this is being focussed on indicates quite clearly that there is an impression that black lives don't matter. 

Let us be clear. If a house is on fire, we don't first treat the house next door for dry rot because "all houses are equal". The immediate need must be addressed. If black people are being led to believe that their lives don't matter, then there is a contravention of the most simple argument that I have reproduced above.

The trouble is that "dry logic" and critical thinking is being passed over for indoctrination rather than education. I am all for Evolution being taught in schools as a dominant scientific theory but I would also like to see Creationism taught as well if only to force students to think about what is needed to convince them of a fact and to cut out the rubbish.

I am not a literary person though I do appreciate the deep truths of the human condition that great literature reveals. The danger is that, without the dry scholasticism, and with an uncritical acceptance of a "woke" agenda unrecognised by the German Romantics, a popularist and unchallenged idealism can take over and read into statements things that aren't there. 

How easily the fact that we are justified by faith becomes being 'justified by faith alone", or "black lives matter" becomes "only black lives matter". 

My own life has been affected by seeing monasticism in a romantic ideal or by pining for chapels rigged up with appropriate decor. My Sehnsucht  might be an emotional reality but it does me no good unless it is examined rationally, dispassionately and precisely. How the popular caricatures of Shelley, Schubert and Schelling would frown at my pressing the human spirit for definition and precision!

If the protests in America and the UK show us anything is that things have been allowed to fester without rational dialogue being allowed to reveal the situation more clearly. Outpourings of emotion and wilful ignorance of people's plight simply will not do: both will fray civilization. Those who clamour for a romantic ideal revolution will be appalled at the reality of that revolution. We see the effects of what happens when emotional reactions control reasoned discussion in both the French Revolution and First World War where an impassioned nationalism, false Romanticism takes over, colours language and stifles Reason.

I will take dry scholasticism over this popular, unreasoned romanticism any day. 

Looking in from the outside

One of the seminal approaches that seem to have been knocking around the atheist circuit for a while is the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) concocted by John Loftus.

"1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis.

2) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

3) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.

4) So the best way to test one’s adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF.

The OTF is primarily a test to examine religious faiths […] The OTF is no different than the prince in the Cinderella story who must question forty- five thousand people to see which girl lost the glass slipper at the ball the previous night. They all claim to have done so. Therefore, skepticism is definitely warranted.” (The Christian Delusion)

It is good to treat claims critically, especially since we base our lives on claims. I therefore have questions that the OTF to answer.

1) What is the test for?
Primarily, it seems that it is a mechanism by which people are encouraged to give up their faith. Or it is another shibboleth by which to label those who hold to a particular faith as being uncritical or less "freethinking". It makes the assumption that religious people cannot be skeptics and that atheism is always more rational. It also assumes that the only true skepticism is atheist.

2) What is this thing called "religion"?
The argument for the reliability of the test mentions likelihood which needs to be made rigorous if it is to be worth mentioning. The mathematics of probability requires, in this case, religions to be completely separate quantities. The probability of winning the lottery is about 1 in 14 million on the grounds that lottery numbers are separated from one another.

But religions overlap. Most religions involve the practice of prayer. As a Christian, I believe in one God. So do Muslims, and Jews and other religions, too. So the religious adherent never truly rejects another's religious faith as being wholly fallacious. Loftus wants us to regard religions as completely separate packages which are given names like "Muslim", "Jew", "Hindu" et al. In fact, despite Geography, religions often follow very similar practices and experiences.

I believe that Muslims are wrong to follow their prophet, and the Muslim will believe that I am wrong to worship Jesus as divine - that is the consequence of our different faiths. But we do agree that the materialist account of the universe is incomplete.

3) Is atheism a religion?
Loftus will say no and that he has no faith, therefore the OTF does not apply to atheism. The question is whether "I don't believe in God" is the same statement as "I believe in no gods". There is an apparent difference as the second statement implies the first. Yet to say that one does not believe in God means that one does not believe in any being that would qualify as God. Thus by implication there is a belief that no being qualifies as God. If this is true, then the lack of belief is a belief in a lack. In this case, atheism itself falls under the OTF.

But perhaps this is too semantic. So let us offer another course.

Atheism is certainly a way of viewing the world and making decisions in life. Thus, if it is not a religious viewpoint, it is certainly a philosophical viewpoint.  Let us therefore try a little mutatis mutandis for the Outsider Test for Philosophical Worldview (OTPWV).

1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of philosophical worldviews due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the philosophical worldview diversity thesis.

2) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s philosophical worldview is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the philosophical worldview dependency thesis.

3) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted philosophical worldview is false.

4) So the best way to test one’s adopted philosophical worldview is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other philosophical worldviews. This expresses the OTPWV.

Thus, we have broadened our horizons to include atheism and agnosticism. We therefore have as good a reason to be skeptical of atheism and agnosticism as we are of any religion.

Even if we regard philosophical worldviews as being mutually distinct (which they are not) the probability of one of them being false is tiny and yet one of them must be the worldview of Reality. It's rather like the lottery: it's of tiny probability that your numbers will come up, but one set of numbers will certainly come up. If that's not a valid use of probability in the OTPWV, then it's not valid for the OTF.

The fact of the matter is that I have assessed my faith critically which is why I sometimes struggle with it. What I have learned is that faith is not something that can always be expressed through philosophical analysis. It must also be there in the heart. If we struggle intellectually or emotionally with God, then it is best to stop and seek silence with Him. It is best to treat God as a being with Whom to engage rather than purely as a philosophical proposition.

When the atheists try and trounce us with their arguments (and even succeed at times) God is there for us in His unknowability but also in His love. Let us learn just to trust Him.

Custard Pies, Spacetime, Joy and Brexit

Joy, beautiful spark of Divinity,
Daughter from Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly One, thy sanctuary!
Your magic binds again
What convention strictly divided;
All people become brothers,
Where your gentle wing abides.

Who has succeeded in the great attempt,
To be a friend's friend,
Whoever has won a lovely woman,
Add his to the jubilation!
Indeed, who even just has one soul
To call his own in this world!
And whoever never managed, he should steal away
Crying from this union!

All creatures drink of joy
At the nature's breasts.
All Just Ones, all Evil Ones
Follow her trail of roses.
Kisses she gave us and grapevines,
A friend, proven in death.
Salaciousness was given to the worm
And the cherub stands before God.

Gladly, like His suns fly
through the heavens' grand plan
Go on, brothers, your way,
Joyful, like a hero to victory.

Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss to all the world!
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.
Are you collapsing, millions?
Do you sense the creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy!
Above stars must He dwell.

The Anthem of the European Union nonetheless!

Of course, with Brexit looming, the UK’s relationship with the EU is certainly uncertain and complex. These are strange days politically and we face some very strange times ahead. The media is simply oversaturating our lives with stories about what we can expect and this divided media is polarising our country with this oversaturation. We find ourselves divided among ourselves. Media is a house divided; Parliaments is two houses divided; the CofE is a house divided. And when a house is divided, the question must be asked, “how can this house stand?”

Clearly, many of us are affected by these deepening divisions. Ex-patriots are facing a serious blow to their personal identity; companies are being sold cheaply to overseas buyers; the person on the street is worrying about how life can go on as normal after the threat of a no-deal Brexit. And with the noise of the divided media, the problem comes down to this: in facing such an uncertain future, whom can we believe?

How about this?

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

We keep looking at the future and we forget to be ourselves here and now. We lose our existence as beings of the present moment. And in the present moment there can be joy!

My Bishop, the Rt Rev Damien Mead, has to juggle his sacred duties with his secular duties – indeed, he, like every Christian, sanctifies his secular duties by bringing them into God. Like all bishops, his burden is onerous. Yet, I notice he still finds joy enough to take a custard pie in the face all in the cause of charity. Here, in amid the heavy concerns of pastoral duty, there is joy in the present moment.

Our Lord is deadly serious, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. He bids us to be present to Him in the here and now as we stand before Him in the throes of sin, or throes of repentance. Of course, we Catholics do not regard the present moment as a detachment from the rest of Time but rather set within it as an interface between past and future both of which have existence in the mind of God but also imperfectly within our own minds as memory and expectation.

We are faced with demons of the past and of the future which contribute to our regrets and fears constantly and also numb us to our interconnectedness in History. Today, we have such a forensic attitude to History and such a Statistical attitude to what is to come. We always see ourselves as the observers aloof to both the past and to the future until it they both conspire to impact into our daily lives.

Whatever Time actually is, whether it is an attribute of God’s being or a creature as utterly subordinate to the Divine command as we are, whatever its purpose is, perhaps a mechanism whereby we have an arena to understand how we exercise our free-will and imago Dei, it is something which exists for our Good and for the fulness of our Humanity. That’s something we forget. And we allow both our experiences of the past and our hopes and fears for the future to make us who we are, forgetting that it is God who makes us who we are, above the shrill screeches of vanquished Evil.

As Space is to Art and Sculpture, so Time is to Music and Speech.

A Musician presents a score as a spatial representation of a work that has its expression in Time. Likewise, we experience a painting in snapshots of Time as our senses experience it. Time and Space are always mixed within our lives – both produce the canvas for our existence. Our Eternity with God as Creations of God will be this interplay of Time and Space perfected. How we temporal beings are to experience this extra tempore I don’t know. One suggestion is that, in creating Time, God has necessarily entered into Time and thus travels with us as the only One with the roadmap of the future. I’m not convinced by that, personally – it makes God too small.

Indeed, any understanding of God that we have is too small. His revelation to us sets some impression of how our relationship is to work. His changelessness means that His Holiness is changeless and thus the nature of Sin is changeless, so the relationship that we have to God is clear for our limit understanding. Yet, God stands beyond our thinking and has the capacity to do things that we can find incomprehensible. He is more terrifying, more unpredictable, more unknowable than our Future, more challenging, more exacting, more revealing than our Past. And that’s why we have to learn to trust Him.

This period of uncertainty presents us with a single challenge to trust in God, face both past and future and be joyful. We have to rejoice in the Lord alway. The way we rescue our pasts and our futures is by learning to be joyful once more. This may sound very existential as if we were Camus’ Sisyphus, and in some sense we really do have to cock a snook at Evil by daring to be joyful despite what it throws at us. But we do so always in context for we cannot disjoint ourselves from either past or present. To be Catholic means to mourn with the martyrs in their torture and to exalt in their witness to God. We shudder at the dismemberment of St James Intercisus, the disembowelling of St Elmo, and at the appalling choice that faced St Gianna Beretta Molla who chose her death rather than that of her unborn daughter and we remember with joy that these have overcome Evil at the very source. Their agonies are past: their present is an Eternal Now with their Creator.

Our agonies are to come, but we are given time to be with God and develop our trust in Him. No, this is not going to be easy and we are weak. Nonetheless, we trust God even when things seem black and we rejoice – we rejoice as best we can, presenting before God every single little things that He has given us with gratitude and humility. There is always something there, even if it is a single painless breath that we once took ten years ago. Our loved one dies, and yet there is a joy that we knew them at all. We fall into poverty, and there is a joy that we have enjoyed a little wealth at some point. We lose our health, and there is a joy that we once ran and jumped and played with abandon. These joys may exist in the past but, in sacrificing them to God we find ourselves sanctifying them for the joy of every human being, past, present and future that they may share in their joy and we in theirs and all may share in the joy of God which is always Now, Now, Now!

I do worry about how Brexit will affect my family, their growth and education and livelihoods and I have fears for my own future too. However, I intend, with the help of my Creator, to walk through the door that leads into Tomorrow with my head held high and all my hope set on Him and Him alone in His ineffable Eternity. There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance…

So let’s bring on Brexit, and live dangerously trusting in God!

Exiting Brexit

My confrere, Fr Anthony Chadwick, is going through the mill with regards to Brexit. This is understandable given that he is an Englishman living in France and has benefitted greatly from the British membership of the European Union. On the other hand, others in my confraternity have been concerned with our membership of the Union and the toll it has been taking on our British identity.


Where, you might ask, do I sit? Well, I have already said something about my views. The trouble is that Brexit is precisely a divisive issue and it is one that cuts across British Society as well as the English Channel (or La Manche, if you prefer). I am glad that I voted to remain in the EU and I am grateful for the democratic process which means that I don’t automatically get my own way. In that I voted to remain, I must necessarily disagree with the outcome of the referendum but agree that, given the outcome, the Government is right to seek how we may exit the EU.


I must say, however, that the media saturation that this issue is receiving is wholly depressing, especially when minor issues are being presented as major, when the government is not allowed to make any movement without the slightest criticism and demand for commentary, and when no respect is given for the hard work of the government officials involved in the negotiation. There is in-fighting in the Government and in all of Parliament to the extent that no-one knows what the right decision is. It seems to my myopic gaze that the media coverage is not helping but rather whipping everyone up into a frenzy.


One observation I make is this. In every report, speculation is being presented as fact. While there may be some obvious consequences to each decision, it is not true to say that these consequences are inevitable. There is many a slip twixt cup and lip as some folk might say. There are no foregone conclusions either in leaving the EU or remaining within the EU. There will be tough times ahead after Brexit, but there are tough times ahead should we remain. Granted that these will not be the same tough times.


As we begin the New Year, there will be all kinds of prediction made as to the outcome of various political situations. Some paint a gloomy forecast with another recession looming. Others paint a gloomier forecast with the climate change wreaking all kinds of havoc. However, as I said earlier all possibilities for our reality are in the mind of God who knows all consequences perfectly and communicates His concern for us through St Paul in Romans viii.28.


The future might terrifying but we cannot change the future until we have greater knowledge of the past and present. However, we Christians have the greatest knowledge of Emmanuel: God is with us. What we make of the Now will influence the Then but there is a greater beyond where the involvement of God will bless all and any outcome and make it more pertinent to our salvation, beautify Creation and glorify His name.


I no longer regard my membership of the United Kingdom as something to hold dear. I am a sojourner as all my fathers were. Holding onto British institutions is of a passing interest to me. The CofE is lost and with it any sanctity of British Tradition, Monarchy, Government. Pomp and Circumstance is empty and pointless in its new secular milieu. I take no interest in Royal Weddings, nor in public events because God is long forgotten unless it is the god who sanctions, welcomes and glories in the sinful folly and moral failings of British Society.


My mandate is clear and I render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and attempt to render unto God that which is God’s. My intention is to spend my life worrying only about what God wants and looking after my family and such flock as He entrusts unto me. There is no point in worrying about the great issues as I am no king nor government official. Their actions will affect me, I know. I will protest injustice, but all I can do is be present to God as I am and seek to become more like Him. If He commands my involvement in politics, then I must obey but being an armchair politician is pointless especially as I am in possession of none of the facts, nor am I likely to be. Whatever He commands of me, I trust Him to supply what I need in order to do it. There is no point in worrying.


2019 will be hard and it will be easy and it will be terrible and it will be glorious! I am terrified and elated in the same measure but all I hear is the voice of the Angel telling me not to be afraid for God is with us. And He is already here in 2019! Alleluia!

Love and Punishment

Ben the Bully taunts Small Paul, "you're a flinched, a quitter and will always be!" Small Paul struggles not to flinch every time that Ben swings at him, narrowly missing him. However, at each swing, Paul's impulse causes him to jerk away and desperately want to flee.

Twenty years later, Small Paul, the police sergeant, takes a bullet in the shoulder meant for Ben and is awarded a medal for gallantry.

The End.

What? Did you want Ben to get his comeuppance? Why?

It's actually quite natural to want to see Ben punished for his bullying of Paul, and perhaps it says something about our sense of justice. We should not expect to get away with wrongdoing. We want offenders to get their just desserts.

Yet, it was Paul who proved Ben wrong. Is that not enough? Do we have a need to see Ben grovelling in the dirt?

It's a good question. Why is Paul's medal not enough for us? Good triumphs. Evil is defeated.

 Schlock horror producer, William Castle, famous for his gimmicks in movie theatres, shot the film, "Mr Sardonicus" with two endings, one in which the titular antihero is punished and the other where he is shown mercy. The audience were then given the choice as to what ending was shown in a manner similar to the audience at ancient Roman gladiatorial contest. They were invited to punish Sardonicus or show him mercy. I don't think I have ever seen the version of the film where he is shown mercy. The villain must get his comeuppance.

Often in films, the more horrible the villain, the more gruesome the death. Think of Major Toht in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", or Bellatrix Lestrange in the last Harry Potter film. 

Evidently, we still possess the desire to attend public executions and howl in derision at the downfall of some perpetrator of evil.

And it's quite Biblical. When Babylon falls spectacularly and completely, the angel says:

"Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her."
(Apocalypse xviii.20)

That really does sound like we are bidden to rejoice in another's misfortune even if they were promotors of evil. In the fourth chapter of the Book of Wisdom, we read of God laughing the wicked to scorn. Of course, we cannot attribute human emotions to God the Father, but we are interpreting some fundamental aspect of God. To rebel against God for whatever reason is foolish and laughable.

Is laughter the right response?

In many ways, laughter is a human response to contradiction or to a surprising outcome. Like the wagging of a dog's is caused by confusion albeit of a happy disposition, our laughter is sometimes a reaction to things that confuse us. You can see this in the beautiful absurdity of Spike Milligan or Monty Python in which the common course of life is subverted or shown up for being silly.

Ultimately, when faced with God, the human being who continues to rebel is committing an act of absurdity at which we might conceivably laugh. Laughter robs an evil act of its power by showing it to be meaningless. We can think of St Laurence telling his roasters to turn him over as he is done on one side, and we see how light the great saints can make of evil because they trust wholly in God even in their last agony.

This is why we don't need Ben any more in Paul's story. His part is played and his scheme to rob Paul of his dignity are thwarted. The focus can only be on Paul's joy as he is recognised as the hero he is. We don't need to see Ben's fall.

And what if Ben were to fall. Could we really take pleasure in the ruin of another human being? We are tempted to. The child  murderer Ian Brady was told to rot in Hell by so many. Given that those beautiful little people he murdered have been robbed from the world, it is right, surely, that we cry out for justice particularly on behalf of those who can cry out no more.

Yet were he to have repented in that last millisecond of his life; were he to have called upon the name of Christ for forgiveness, what then? We have to look at the thief on the Cross. We don't get a say in the matter. We have to accept the fact that it is still possible for Ian Brady, Adolph Hitler and even Judas Iscariot to inherit eternal life with God and, we hope, us. Love must demand every possibility for reconciliation.

But not as we are.

For reconciliation requires transformation, and to be transformed requires us to accept the need for this transformation which will prevent us from existing on our own terms. To accept transformation means relinquishing all that stops love from operating. This is why Pride really is the deadliest sin because it refuses to allow anyone else to have a say in who we are. Pride tells us to continue in our way, regardless. Pride rules out true forgiveness because it insists on terms and conditions which may be impossible to meet.

This is why the proud are deserving of so much pity and why this infuriates them because pity is something they do not wish to invite because it does not come from their will. The gentle waters of Love are as acid to the proud. Not for nothing does St Paul say,

"Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head."
(Romans xii.20)

But that sounds like punishment! "Get your revenge by being nice."

Except, by being good, noble, loyal, humble and valiant, we allow ourselves to be transformed. We recall that in biblical languages, justice and righteousness are synonymous. To obtain justice, we need to obtain righteousness for ourselves, not rob it from another. By being transformed by Christ we gain justice and grow in love which the Devil hates because it corrodes his massive pride through our turning our backs on him.

For Paul, he acquires virtue through a bullet to the shoulder. The scar becomes his badge of honour and his righteousness is seen for what it is. His suffering for the sake of goodness, fighting against his fears, this is how the balanced is addressed. This is how he is transformed and how justice is done.

And Ben?

Well, the challenge for us is always to seek righteousness. And Mercy is of Righteousness. If we cannot be merciful then we do not let righteousness fully into our lives. God wants to show us mercy, but we can only attain it if we ourselves are merciful. This is another reason why Ben must disappear from the story. He has to be allowed to repent and we have to be prepared to meet him again with warmth and generosity. Until he does, we must not allow ourselves to demonise him or make him any less of a human being and child of God. We give him space in his life and in our own, so that he may turn and be transformed just as we must be transformed ourselves.

It is the Christian duty to bring Christ with us into every single part of our lives and meet Him in every relationship with others. That way justice and mercy can be done properly and the Kingdom of God made available to this dark world.

Inventions, Myth and Consciousness

Today, in my Benedictine Breviary, is the Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross. Obviously this is not the same as the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross which occurs on the 14th September when we celebrate the dedication of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. Today, we celebrate the finding - the literal translation of inventio - of the Holy Cross.

Of course, the cross is a symbol that goes beyond the Christian usage. It's pretty much universal, though ascribed different meanings. It can be found as a symbol for burial in the Bronze Age in which it is circumscribed by the disc of the sun. It can be tally marks, two Greek letters, ten in Chinese rod numerals or seven in Shang oracle bone numerals. It is the shape of a man standing with his arms outstretched, or with arms and legs stretched out. Even the Egyptian Ankh is a version of the cross.

If we want to find the true cross, then we have to find the right meaning and that requires a framework - essentially a cultural narrative. The Truth is explored through the narrative of collective human experience. As a Christian, I believe I have good grounds that the Christian narrative epitomised in Holy Scripture and given voice by the Church throughout Time in the teaching of the Fathers gives the most accurate framework for knowing what Reality is through contact with God Himself, the Creator and thus Arbiter of what truly is. That which does not conform to this narrative is deficient and ultimately leads the soul away from God and into Hell.

 I note with a degree of cynicism the thoughts of those who think they know what Hell is. I note that there are those who reject God in favour of finding a deeper meaning in the path to Hell or the path to oblivion. Pop Music has brought out bands like Black Sabbath and, more lately, Ghost which glorify that which is Satanic ostensibly in the guise of entertainment. There is something in our culture which sees skeletons dressed as popes titillating and entertaining because it rebels against the narrative - it tries to tell a different side of the story.

This is something that we might note frequently happens in our society today. How many films are remakes of older versions? I seem to remember a shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho and I wondered why. What's the point of that? If we want to tell the original story, then we put on the original film. I fail to see why remakes are necessary. Many will say that this is to do with updating the special effects or bringing out the "true meaning" of the story imbuing it with extra nuances and details that weren't there originally.

There are those, of course, who would say the same about the Christian Narrative, particularly those such as Bart Ehrmann who seeks the truth by "demythologising" Holy Scripture. As we've seen already,  Myth is something that we cannot really dismiss as not being God's word. Calling something a myth is not saying that it has nothing of the Truth in it.

 Yet, when it comes to the Gospels, there is a fundamental desire to preserve the truth and here History becomes Myth and Myth History. This poses a problem for historians like Bart Ehrmann for whom miracles cannot happen, and so any miraculous doings must be re-interpreted in a "truth" that fits a framework without miracles. He would reject any narrative in which the miraculous plays a part. So would many materialists in the Scientific community. They reject myth in favour of the "truth".

What they cannot see is that the whole of the Scientific approach is written in its own narrative in which parts are played by Aristotle, Hypatia, al-Khwarizmi, Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Mendel, Einstein, Bohr, Lemaitre, Dawkins and Hawkins all play their inextricable and valuable part. Their discoveries are part of the Grand Narrative of "How?" and the story is worth telling because it pertains to something of the truth. The materialist scientific myth is worth knowing both for its explanation and for its failure to be the only means to the "truth". For one thing, it may try to explain consciousness as an emergent phenomenon or as an epiphenomenon in the brain as part of neural processes. While we may often reject views that are subjective, the fact that the subjective exists in the first place is a problem when it comes to believe that human beings are biological machines and therefore theoretically and completely objective. How can the firing of neurotransmitters in the brain translate to the sensation of pain that we all feel, and know how it feels, and yet cannot adequately translate that feeling to others without the use of a narrative, metaphor or analogy - a mini-myth?

As we look at a world that is struggling with itself, we see great examples of pain and suffering emblazoned on our screen in their own narratives. We see the recent atrocity from ISIS turning a captured Syrian into an explosive missile and from that we see a glimpse of the mythology of Hell lying so close to the human soul. We see the stories of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans and we see the myth of the struggle between state and soul, the individual and the Social Machine.

For Christians, the Cross becomes the bridge between our understanding of reality and what reality is. Indeed, we find the true cross by confronting reality. First, there is the reality of pain and suffering in our own lives and in the lives of others. We see it, and we suffer too, not as a bundle of neural transmitters but as human beings who have some degree of empathy, sympathy and love for one another. Indeed, we see our togetherness in suffering and in sin.

Second, we note that the Narrative of the Cross  crosses the Narrative of History. The Cross is an historical fact and this allows for the Christian Myth to be a potent and essential vehicle for the study of Reality because it presents us with God Incarnate. No longer is God a resident of etiological myth but He becomes Historical. We see Christ and we see the Father. Thus, the etiological myth present in the Old Testament bears witness to truth beyond mere History.

Third, we see Hope for all of us trying to find meaning. We no longer have to be the authors of our own myth as the Existentialists would have us do to prevent suicide. We no longer have to be slaves to finding an authentic self from scraps is sensation and the whims of passing fashion. We do not have to be both Frankenstein AND the Creature. The Christian Narrative is a freedom from total self-construction into a co-operative enterprise in which we create ourselves under the guiding hand of a Loving and Eternal Father.

To be authentic is to root our consciousness in God through Christ and unite it with our fellows so that our Narratives weave together and become, perfected by the Christian Narrative, a testament of what is truly real.

We should never be afraid of the old, old story, just the new, new ones that sell their authenticity for the fleeting relevance of Modernity.

The freedom of Jerry Springer

About ten or so years ago, there was a bit of a furore when the BBC decided to broadcast the controversial programme, "Jerry Springer: the Opera". At face value, the work is about the lurid visions of Jerry Springer at the point of death and that is what the composer, Stewart Lee, says that it is about. The opera itself contains much swearing and profanity, and there are some scenes that are very disturbing to the Christian mind. It is clear that Mr Lee is no Christian! That's his choice.

Christian Voice got wind of the showing of this programme on the BBC and managed to whip up 50,000 or so complaints before it had even aired. They tried also to bring the director-general of the BBC to court charged with blasphemy. Shops refused to stock the DVD of the broadcast and Mr Lee himself felt that he could no longer perform as a comedian to a general audience.

You might say, "Good! Serves him right!" But there's a problem and it needs thought.

For my part, I turned on the programme for all of thirty seconds, grimaced at what I saw, and then I turned the television off. Should I not have been complaining more about being offended?

That's the rub. What Christian Voice have effectively done is a spectacular piece of "no platforming." It is exactly the same thing as has been happening on the university campus both here and in America: academics and political figures who hold controversial views and ideas are not being allowed to express them to university students on the grounds that they are offensive. The Transgender debate (if there is such a thing as gender) is a prime example. Prominent feminist Professor Germaine Greer is not being allowed to speak in universities because she believes that there is no such thing as transgenderism. She is accused of hate speech and transphobia because of her views. She offends and must be silenced. However, the fact of the matter is that, as an academic thinker, she has been a loud, clear voice trying to raise the plight of women who are still treated as an underclass around the world. She has a point but, because she dissents from the current mode of political correctness, she must be silenced.

Unfortunately, that is something the Church has been very good at for centuries - silencing dissent.

Why should the voice of dissenters be silenced? There are two reasons that I can think of at this moment.

First, no one wants to hear things that they cherish being trampled on in the mud. There are things that are too offensive for us to bear, and this is good. It shows that humanity is not wholly bad - that each one of us is not wholly bad. It is reasonable to put these things aside if we can, but we should not do so at the expense of the truth when  that truth is important.

For example, I do pray regularly for juries who have to sit on some truly dreadful cases, such as the Fred and Rosemary West case. These people have to suffer the graphic details of the case to determine the truth. However offended they are by the facts, or even by the defendant's views, only the truth can matter. If someone holds terrible views and opinions but has not actually broken the law, then the truth of the matter means that this person is legally innocent, though their moral health is clearly questionable.

The danger then comes in trying to legislate that actually holding an opinion that is offensive. That's problematic because it effectively becomes the Thought Police. Yet, we still have to deal with people in a position of influence using that influence to radicalise and incite hatred in others. What we need to do is to educate people about questioning what they are being taught. This is fine and healthy, and brings me to the second reason why no-platforming occurs.

In the past, the Church has silenced dissenters and heretics (usually by burning in the medieval period) in order to preserve the spiritual health of simple Christians. This makes sense: a parent censors what a child is exposed to because the child is too young to cope with the issues they involve and will misunderstand them to their hurt. Yet, taken too far, this idea stunts good Christian growth. The ideal is to be Christ-like, i.e. sinless. While it cannot happen without the grace of God to begin the process, the process need to be maintained in the will by developing the conscience and through constant repentance. We are all children of God, some further along the road to perfection than others. But we are not all infants. Good Christian education is not indoctrination. It is the presentation of the facts of Christian Doctrine, which is immutable because it is God's revelation to all of humanity as a whole, in order that the individual can willingly be part of the Church, warts'n'all and thus find salvation. This can only happen if the individual is free to choose sin. This, of course, doesn't mean that we have to choose in. As this period of Lent shows, in His temptation in the wilderness, Our Lord is clearly like us: He is free to choose sin. He doesn't.

In silencing dissent, the Church has, in the past, infantilised her children rather than educating them. If we are free to sin, then the Church has precisely the mechanism by which people can return to God. If we sin and are reconciled to God, then we allow our mistake to inform us and make us better. All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. This even includes the effects of our sin. Our growing hatred for sin should prevent us from thinking that we can just sin and repent without tears and penance.  Love for God is the key. Nonetheless, the temporal consequences of our own individual sin must still be endured by all humanity.

In creating such an overreaction to Jerry Springer: the Opera, Christian Voice have given sanction for the strident Trans-Activists and other similar SJWs to silence those who dissent from their views. The trend of no-platforming is precisely due to the censorship that the Church has been involved with. The Councils of the Early Church were called precisely to thrash out the issues on both sides. The result is a clearer understanding of God's revelation to us about who He is and who we are.

The Pharisees crucified Our Lord in order to silence His dissent from the social norms. He in turn seeks debate, risks offending, calls into question, but never once stops loving the people He is fervent in trying to reach. If God has given us the freedom to walk away from Him, then we should afford other people the same courtesy. Love does not coerce: it seeks willing consent.

Freedom of speech may require that we take the consequences of what we say, but that does not mean that we are receiving those consequences justly. We recall that the word "freedom" is often described negatively as "freedom from" - lifting of obstacles, making the crooked straight and the rough places plain. Yet, we forget that "freedom" can be defined positively as the ability to excel in a particular endeavour. Freedom of Speech means that not only are we freed from being silence, but we are also freed from being told what to say in order to express ourselves clearly.

With regard to Jerry Springer: the Opera, I find myself squarely with what has been attributed to Voltaire (but may not actually be authentic to him).

Monsieur l’abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire.

(I wonder if I've got the right quote, Fr Anthony!)

I am sorry that Stewart Lee's career has been affected like this, though I am not sorry that I don't hear such awful things being said. He must be allowed to speak so that we can better hear the truth. Perhaps this is the lesson that he gives us. If the atheist can be silenced by the Church, then the Church can be silenced by the Trans-Activist.

Perhaps, if we are prepared to speak the truth and thus risk offending, we should strengthen our own resolve so that when we are offended, we shrug it off and examine what is said for the truth about us and the truth about God. If God can go to the cross and rise again in glory, then we should be able to get past the rising of our hackles at something unpalatable!