Respice Turrem Davidicam!

I'm busy following Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman's devotions on Our Lady during the month of May. Today's is Mary as the Turris Davidica.

A TOWER in its simplest idea is a fabric for defence against enemies. David, King of Israel, built for this purpose a notable tower; and as he is a figure or type of our Lord, so is his tower a figure denoting our Lord's Virgin Mother. She is called the Tower of David because she had so signally fulfilled the office of defending her Divine Son from the assaults of His foes. It is customary with those who are not Catholics to fancy that the honours we pay to her interfere with the supreme worship which we pay to Him; that in Catholic teaching she eclipses Him. But this is the very reverse of the truth. For if Mary's glory is so very great, how cannot His be greater still who is the Lord and God of Mary? He is infinitely above His Mother; and all that grace which filled her is but the overflowings and superfluities of His Incomprehensible Sanctity. And history teaches us the same lesson. Look at the Protestant countries which threw off all devotion to her three centuries ago, under the notion that to put her from their thoughts would be exalting the praises of her Son. Has that consequence really followed from their profane conduct towards her? Just the reverse—the countries, Germany, Switzerland, England, which so acted, have in great measure ceased to worship Him, and have given up their belief in His Divinity while the Catholic Church, wherever she is to be found, adores Christ as true God and true Man, as firmly as ever she did; and strange indeed would it be, if it ever happened otherwise. Thus Mary is the "Tower of David."

There seem to be Protestants out there who just simply will not be told that Catholics do not worship Mary. If they will not listen to the simple words of the Blessed Cardinal, then I am clearly not going to do much better. However, if they accuse me of conservative intransigence, I can legitimately say "right back atcha!"

It's the last bit of this that intrigues me. Of course, by "Protestant" the Cardinal means those who are not Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox having decided that the Anglican Church of his time was more "Protestant" than Catholic. Yet I have friends who have a convincing claim on the word Catholic who rejoice in their Protestantism. The fluidity of adjectives always puts a spanner in the works. However, there is something in what he says. The investment of Europeans into their spirituality seems remarkably poor. In throwing out devotions to Our Lady, they have thrown out the veneration and sanctity of humanity. "Respect has to be earned" they say. Others describe Christianity as "one woman's lie that got really out of hand".

We have lost the skill of recognising the venerability of human beings, not in worshipping them, but in loving them as the Lord commands. It seems difficult for me to refute Cardinal Newman's correlation between lack of veneration of Mary and lack of religion. I would also notice a correlation between those who do not reverence Our Lady and the lack of love they have for their neighbour. Now correlation is not cause, but all this seems indicative of the lack of estimation that we have of ourselves.

We are nothing but dust. True. We are just fragile little soap-bubbles clinging to a film sandwiched between the past and the future on the currents of Eternity. Some say we are just biological machines. If that is all we are, then we are the greatest tragedy of them all, falling through space in an aether of hopelessness without a point or purpose but an illusion of failed possibilities.

However, if we realise that, in among our failings, fallings and falliblities as a race, God has bothered to be born among us, then it shows us our true worth as human beings - we mean something to God. Our Lady is truly venerable because she is one of us. She is no God and Human like our Lord, just a simple human being. Her venerability comes from her humanity - she was capable, worthy, affirming of receiving in Her womb God Himself, not just the Human bit of God which is the ancient heresy of Nestorianism and refuted by St Cyril.

"Respect must be earned" many say. What does that mean? That they only consider the contributions of others valuable if they meet up with their personal standards? Who made these folk boss of the world that their demands must be met on how much another is worth? Perhaps they should tell me how much they're selling Granny for and, if I have enough, I'll buy her just to save her from their materialistic tyranny!

Unless we realise that each human being actually has an innate worth that begins with the very moment of their conception, we are back to dismissing them as nothing, aborting them from our lives with a frightening ease.

You cannot love someone without respecting them. Respect comes from the Latin meaning to look at, to regard. It's the diametrical opposite of dismissal. Veneration is the act of recognising that affinity someone has with God, another instance of looking very carefully at someone's life.

Respect that is earned is not worth having. It will pass into Eternity on the soap film of existence. If we're looking for true permanence, then we will find it by looking very carefully into the faces and lives of those around us and realising their worth to us that transcends measurement. Perhaps then we might see it in ourselves.

If, by venerating Our Lady, we learn to venerate and cherish others then that, surely, is the worship, not of Our Lady, but of God because we follow His commandment to love.

Falling in Denial

The New Scientist has a very interesting article about the nature of denial as opposed to skepticism. Of course this article is aimed at examining (reasonably fairly in my opinion) the cases and arguments who deny that Evolution occurs, that HIV does not lead to AIDS, that there is no Climate change.

Now, there is a big difference between Denial and Skepticism. We can be skeptical about the claims of Evolution and reasonably doubt the evidence or the inferences made, but to deny Evolution is to take the more convicted position that Evolution doesn't happen in reality. Reasonable argument consists of claims supported by evidence and counterclaims which involve criticisms of that evidence. To take a position of denial is more risky because one ceases to doubt another's claim to be true and to be convinced of its falsehood. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but it can and does lead some into very dodgy ground, for example Denial of the Holocaust.

The trouble with conviction either for or against some claim is that one holds a position to be absolutely true and then find ever more outlandish ways to prove it. Their scientific theories will all have a confirmation bias and a selective nature. It is along this route that we begin to find the conspiracies: the Marriage of the Lord to Mary Magdalen, the Murder of Princess Diana, the Falsehood of the Moon Landings. A denialist will always have the same attributes of a Conspiracy theorist.

In discussing how to "beat" a denialist movement, Michael Shermer states:

We should not, however, cover up, hide, suppress or, worst of all, use the state to quash someone-else's belief system. There are several good arguments for this:

1. They might be right and we would have just squashed a bit of
truth.

2. They might be completely wrong, but in the process of examining
their claims we discover the truth; we also discover how thinking can go wrong, and in the process improve our thinking skills.

3. In science, it is never possible to know the absolute truth about anything, and so we must always be on the alert for where our ideas need to change.

4. Being tolerant when you are in the believing majority means you have a greater chance of being tolerated when you are in the sceptical minority. Once censorship of ideas is established, it can work against you if and when you find yourself in the minority.

Now, these are eminently reasonable and charitable. Would that Christians learn them more carefully. Mind you, we certainly begin to see Professor Dawkins in a more Denialist light.

But what of Christians. I suppose I now do have to ask myself the question "am I a denialist when it comes to the question of the ordination of women?" Folk who know me will know that I am very passionate about this. I am passionate about it because it is actually splitting the Church apart, and the decisions of Synod are not helping.

Well, I have posted before that no-one can escape bias. I do not believe that a woman can be ordained to the Diaconate, Priesthood or Episcopacy given the present Revelation of the Will of God through the Church via Scripture and Tradition. For the ordination of women to be valid, I would need to see a new and clear revelation from God because there is insufficient evidence for it in Scripture (more the reverse in fact) and Tradition has clearly demonstrated the opposite.

I concur that there is a diaconal ministry for women mentioned in Scripture, but there is no further evidence of women "Deacons". There is however, plenty of evidence of women ministry apart from Holy Orders which is much more pertinent: Deaconesses, Readers, Abbesses (who can forget the magnificent St Hilda?), even Doctors of the Church. To say that there is no room in the Church for women ministers is blinkered and foolish.

However, the burden of proof that Women can be ordained is firmly in the camp of proponents of W"O". It is true that St Cyprian says Consuetudo sine veritate vetustas erroris est (custom without truth is the antiquity of error). So one must look at the truth in order to find the depth of tradition. The truth is that Christ taught women, bade them bring Good news to His apostles, venerated them, sanctified them and treated them more highly than any other Rabbi. Yet, even then, even from this, there is nothing more reported by disciples who still found it important to report the Lord's acceptance of women in the same class as men. Martha did make a confession of faith comparable to St Peter, but St Peter is the one taken aside and given the keys by the Lord. This to me points contrary to the ordination of women!

What have I denied? Have I been unreasonable in my denial? Have I not weighed the evidence of Scripture? If I haven't, then tell me; there are comment boxes below.

Arguments for and against Ordination and Women are long and protracted. However, the latest movements from the General Synod to end provision for those who cannot accept the priesthood of women demonstrate that they are willing to legislate against dissenters. They believe that they have won the argument and that Forward in Faith are the denialists. FiF are not denialists: we have simply not found the arguments put forward by the Feminists at all convincing. However there is a difference between winning an argument and being charitable.

If we set out to win souls for Christ by winning arguments, then that presupposes that all people are Vulcan, swayed by logic alone. If the goal is to engage someone in argument and then win that argument but in the process drive the other away by the language one uses, then one has in fact lost the greater prize. Intellectual brownie points mean nothing when the Lord asks us "Who art Thou?" If one makes provision for dissenters, then one at least retains the salt by which to make life tasty.

However, the Synod is in a difficult position. Either it accepts that Women "Bishops" in the CofE will simply not be recognised by a significant proportion of its membership and make a decent provision for us, or it adopts this "Code of Practice" which will not do - will not safeguard those in dissent - and thus lose that proportion. I am convinced that the Code of Practice will come in, in which case I would suggest that the hierarchy of the CofE show one once of Charity and help dissenters to part company on a more amicable and Christ-like basis.

Simply Complex

According to St Thomas Aquinas (Book I, Question 3 Article 7), St Augustine is correct when he says in De Trinitate "God is truly and absolutely simple."

By this, both saints refer to God not being comprised of identifiable bits. Of course the objection arises, "Well, if God is simple, then how can Christians believe in a Holy Trinity?" St Thomas replies (Question 30, Article 1, replying to objection 4)

Number is twofold, simple or absolute, as two and three and four; and number as existing in things numbered, as two men and two horses. So, if number in God is taken absolutely or abstractedly, there is nothing to prevent whole and part from being in Him, and thus number in Him is only in our way of understanding; forasmuch as number regarded apart from things numbered exists only in the intellect. But if number be taken as it is in the things numbered, in that sense as existing in creatures, one is part of two, and two of three, as one man is part of two men, and two of three; but this does not apply to God, because the Father is of the same magnitude as the whole Trinity, as we shall show further on (42, 1 and 4).

Got that?

My point is that when we think about things, even simple things, they can get very complicated, that they present logical consequences that can affect the way we live our lives. It is a fact of life that simple things lead to complicated behaviour. One only has to look at the simplicity of the rules generating fractals (q.v. the Mandelbrot set) the BZ reaction in Chemistry, Langton's ant to see that from a comprehensible rule, the patterns which are caused merge and convolve and self-interfere (feedback) to produce some staggeringly wonderful behaviour.

However, there appears to be among many Christians a desire to be simplistic. There is a desire to purify the faith, to make Christianity more simple by removing from it any problematic parts, so that everybody can climb on board the "Kingdom train" (please don't ask) without any baggage and thus avoid any argument or discussion. Many such folk hide behind the epithet that "we don't need religion, we just need a personal relationship with Jesus."

All Christians have a personal relationship with Jesus. If they don't then they should certainly be cultivating one. We cultivate this relationship clearly by Baptism, repentance, and accepting His rule. However, Christianity just isn't this simple. If one tries to be simple about this, then we remove from our understanding of Christ great swathes of how He relates to us. He is our friend, so we greet Him by embracing Him. But! Hang on a minute! He is our God, so we should fall on our faces before Him. But then, He is our Defender, so we can stand with Him. And then, He is our judge, so we need to approach Him with fear and trepidation.

If we start thinking like this, then we'll never get near Him!

Yes, He is near us. Yes, we can just sit down and be open to Him, and let Him tell us how we can approach Him. This is part of our "personal relationship with Jesus".

However, the Lord presents us with a life which needs must be relational. He bids us not only to have a relationship with Him, but with other people and affirm our belief in Him with other people. Other people make the simple life incredibly complicated.

There is is this idea of free-will (or free-won't if you're a neurologist). God creates us to be free to choose (within some limited sphere of influence) and that freedom to choose presents the logical necessity of that which is Good (i.e. following God) and Evil (i.e. not following God). Yes, that now raises all kinds of Kantian arguments - more complexity. In order to choose either Good or Evil, we have to see Good and Evil, hence the necessity for a Universe in which both Good and Bad things happen - or perhaps this is all philosophical rubbish, but it's more complexity. Simple ideas breed more complexity. Christians just cannot afford to be simple minded!

If we are to relate with others then we need to bind ourselves to each other. Binding of course restricts movement and freedom, and this creates religion, a voluntary renunciation of certain freedoms in order to relate with others who share the same belief, so that we can articulate and communicate that very belief in a language that can be understood by others. Even those who do not say they are religious are actually religious.

It's when people try to change the language of religion that the complications really fly about. Take this statement from Thinking Anglicans (whose very title seems to imply that Conservatives do not know how to think!):

"WATCH has argued for this for the last fifteen years, as there are sound theological reasons for it as well as scriptural warrant: the first chapter of Genesis says we are all made in the image of God, both male and female, and St Paul says that in Christ there is no male or female."

The trouble is that WATCH is trying to present a simple argument for the "ordination" of women from Biblical texts which say nothing of the sort. It is being simple-minded and trying to cut out the complications of the situation.

Both the passage from Genesis and St Paul are referring to common humanity, not common priesthood. Throughout Biblical History, God has made some baffling choices, discriminations which seem almost scandalous to inclusive eyes. Why did God choose Abraham? Why did He then persevere with the Jews? Why did he choose certain foodstuffs, certain ways of sacrificing? Why sacrifice in the first place? Why sacrifice in the first place if it leads to His only begotten Son suffering an agonising Death? Why, at the end of Time, is God going to choose some of us for Eternal Life and others of us for Eternal Death?

There are many and varied answers to these questions within Scripture and Tradition among the Church Fathers and from wise souls. God does discriminate - from the word "Go" he discriminates between Male and Female. Notice that He never discriminates in order to disadvantage anyone, but rather to propel folk into becoming whom He meant them to be. God's discrimination empowers us, and still further defines us more closely than any identity we would wish to give ourselves.

Still, in not one place in Holy Scripture, in not one place in Holy Tradition is there a woman conclusively ordained as a priest. It's simple, but it puts forward so many complications, so many stumbling blocks, so many tears, arguments, frustrations, schisms and hurt among Christians because they try to make things simple which are inherently complicated.

We Christians cannot afford to be simple-minded. We can, however, strive to be simple hearted, to live lives of simplicity by binding ourselves to each other in obedience, community, and constant re-orientation towards Christ. To develop a "personal relationship with Jesus" and also to express that relationship that the Church has with Christ to the world. If we truly trust God, then we accept humbly the limitations He imposes on us and accept that this will bring complications which we must live out in faith until He gives us the wherewithal to resolve them or, more likely, He resolves them Himself.

Beginning of the End or End of the Beginning

I suspect that many Christians are looking at the current events in the world and thinking that perhaps (just perhaps) the Mayans are right and the world will end on 21/12/12. Let's look around.

Environmentally we see Global Warming, Earthquakes in Haiti, China and Chile, and now a volcano in Iceland knocking out a sizeable majority of air travel in Europe. There are struggles and conflicts in Thailand, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. And then of course there is the relentless battery against the Church.

It seems that every Christian body is under attack at the moment. We have governments trying to impose regulations on who we can marry, whom we can ordain and what actions we can regard as good. We have scientists not only preaching atheism in a most evangelical fashion but trying to use the weight of the law to force their views. We have a media which is more concerned with peddling distortions and muck-raking in order a) to earn more money and b) to silence the voices of moral authority. We have historians and authors trying to publish their own fantasies about the origins of the Church at odds with the Tradition we have received. We have infighting, division and schism.

The Lord says: And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled : for all these things must come to pass , but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended , and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise , and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound , the love of many shall wax cold .

The beginnings of sorrows - ah! the Church has suffered many of them since our Lord walked bodily among us. It's very tempting for us to think that the end is very near. We can turn to the Apocalypse with a sense of frightened justification and look for the true Millennium, seek out the one who bears the number 666 (or 616) and await the beast rising from the sea.

However, this is rather rash. It is very easy for us to get nervous and start interpreting the Scripture or Tradition in a way that will alleviate our fear. The Lord says we are always going to hear of disasters - natural, political, social and moral, but we should not take them as necessarily being the End of the World.

I think that the Maccabees had the right idea - within reason.

In the first Chapter of the first book of Maccabees, we read of the enforced apostasy on Israel. We read of the abomination being erected in the Holy of Holies, of the Israelites being told to conform to the worship of Zeus, of Jews forsaking the worship of God for the state religion.

And the Maccabees said "NO!"

Of course, they then take arms and a lot of bloodshed ensues (that's clearly how things were done back then), but in the ensuing war, the orthodox Jews were united.

We are in the same boat, with the world trying to enforce its morals on us by corrupting our leaders and vilifying those who stand against. Like the Maccabees we need to say "NO" and we need to fight, and fight hard.

Of course, the only weapons appropriate to the Christian are Faith, Hope and (most importantly) Love expressed through the Truth, Prayer, and Worship. We must discipline ourselves like good soldiers in living the Christian life well so that the love of God shines through us brightly to destroy the malignant spirits lurking within our societies and to win others by our sheer devotion to God.

And we must come together, unite despite our differences, to show the World that the Worship of the One True God will not be crushed.

The Ordinariate does offer such an opportunity. It is a start, the first wave of what should be the move to Church Unity. I doubt that it addresses all the problems, but it is a start and it is a chance for us to fight back against an antipathetic establishment.

We can only do this if we in one Christian community are prepared to trust each other, make ourselves vulnerable to the other Christian community. We can be defensive and be very scholarly in our defences, building up an impenetrable wall demonstrating that the other is utterly wrong, keeping ourselves utterly pure and isolated waiting for the other to move first; or we can accept that there are differences which may be mutually interpreted as error but the intention to worship, pray and study together is of greater importance and so make a move towards the other.

Let us look for ways to increase the spirit of the Ordinariate in finding ways to become a United Church even if we cannot agree to the details of the Apostolic Constitution. Let us pray for our leaders, especially Pope Benedict, so that further ecumenical dialogue can take place unhindered by hysterical and malignant reports by the media.

Mean, Mode and Median

I loathed Statistics at school. It put me in mind of the tedious double Geography lessons that I would always try to skive out of with a judiciously placed piano lesson. For me, Statistics represented the dirty side of mathematics, where the elegance edifice of pure mathematics met with murky reality. It's only since I've taught the subject that I realise how beautiful it can be.

Yet I've always been troubled by the notion of "average" - i.e. trying to find a single number which best represents a statistic of a population. School statistics gets you as far as learning about the mean, median and mode.

To refresh the memory of my readers who may not have touched upon this for some time, the mean is what we tend to call THE average - add up all the data and divide by the number of pieces of data you have. This is where you'll get your 2.5 children. The mode is the most frequently occurring value of the data, and the median is the middle number that you would find if you arranged all the data in numerical order.

What you may not have been taught in school is that two of these averages are biased!

By biased, I mean that the expected value of the average depends very significantly on the sample of the population that you choose, i.e. if you use a biased average you can't get an accurate value of the average height of the population by recording the average height of 200 people.

In fact, the median is biased and so is the mode. The mean is not. We can reasonably expect that value of the mean of any sample will be the mean of the population. Not so the median and mode.

But let me remind you about the mean: add up all the values and divide by the number of values you have. If you have 10 people and the total amount of money that they have in their pockets is £453.20, then the mean amount that one person has is £45.32. The mean is a rather Procrustean quantity: it levels the playing field by cutting off the bits that are too high and gluing them to the bits that are too low. The mean is a truly communist average.

And yet it is the mean that we think of most when we think of "average".

How willing are we to describe ourselves as average? Does that mean that we fit a Procrustean bed of qualia? If we mean "mean" when we say "average", then to describe ourselves or anyone else as average we are fitting them into a mould within our minds to "aid" understanding. Except we lose information and make our average humans less than human. The mean human being is not a human being.

Human beings are biased.

That's not something to be ashamed of. In fact it is something to rejoice in, provided that we recognise our bias when we make objective judgments. Our bias is the result of our upbringing/heritage/nature/interactions and without our bias we would cease to be the persons we are.

We can have a bias for pure mathematics, but pure mathematics can naturally lead us into contact with the filthiest mathematics going - statistics and theoretical physics. But it is knowing this bias that allows us to engage with the mathematics at its most necessary as a language of pure reason to make reasonable judgments about the universe. However, we should not focus on the mean values but try to see how our reality possesses bias away from what we expect and imprint upon our understanding.

The Feast of the Resurrection

Thomas autem unus ex duodecim qui dicitur Didymus non erat cum eis quando venit Iesus dixerunt. ergo ei alii discipuli vidimus Dominum, ille autem dixit eis nisi videro in manibus eius figuram clavorum et mittam digitum meum in locum clavorum et mittam manum meam in latus eius, non credam.

et post dies octo, iterum erant discipuli eius intus, et Thomas cum eis. venit Iesus ianuis clausis et stetit in medio, et dixit pax vobis. deinde dicit Thomae infer digitum tuum huc et vide manus meas et adfer manum tuam et mitte in latus meum et noli esse incredulus sed fidelis. respondit Thomas et dixit ei Dominus meus et Deus meus. dicit ei Iesus quia vidisti me credidisti beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt. multa quidem et alia signa fecit Iesus in conspectu discipulorum suorum quae non sunt scripta in libro hoc. haec autem scripta sunt ut credatis quia Iesus est Christus Filius Dei et ut credentes vitam habeatis in nomine eius

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said , Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: 31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

St John xxi.24-31

Uncertainty does seem to rule our lives. Philosophically, it is very difficult to be certain of anything since we are capable of questioning everything and anything we like. Our "understanding" of quantum physics remains based upon things that not only do we not know, they cannot be known. Mathematically there are things which may be true but for which there is no mathematically rigorous proof. Science, properly done, can only be agnostic with regard to religious faith.

With regard to the resurrection, we have a stark choice - either Jesus did, or He did not, rise from the dead. Again, it is impossible to prove one way or the other. If it happened, it is a unique event in history and cannot be subjected to scientific rigour. Knowing God, this was deliberate for the Resurrection was not an event to demonstrate that He exists once and for all, else the Incarnation would have taken place with entirely different agenda. No, this Resurrection was for a few little folk to complete their faith. Remembering the words of Iranaeus, evidence is not enough either to convince the unbeliever nor dissuade the believer.

Yet St Thomas is lucky. He doubts in the Resurrection, but He has not doubted the Lord, at least until His Crucifixion. Until that awful night in the garden, he has been prepared to die for Christ, to die for His teachings and to die for love. Clearly, St Thomas had faith in Jesus as a teacher, a rabbi, and as an extraordinary worker of miracles. His expectations, however, overruled his capacity to believe. That is why the Lord was able to convince him with empirical evidence of the gruesome practice of putting Thomas' fingers in His side.

Clearly, there is a type of doubt that is not an enemy of Faith, but rather strives to perfect our personal faith. Faith is indeed certain, but we are not perfect - our perfection comes with an encounter with the risen Christ. What must St Thomas have been like after this encounter? It certainly did not change his resolve to die for the Faith which Tradition tells us happened in India. However, would this have happened if he had not had his faith perfected with his fingers and hands in the wounds of Christ.

In doubting, we recognise the cracks and imperfections in our faith. When faced with the troubles and difficulties and sheer horrors of living, the cracks show and are evident. We have a choice: do we ignore those cracks and pretend that they do not exist only to fall through them later in our lives? Do we give up knowing that we are imperfect, unable to rectify the problems, and succumb, not to doubt, but to unbelief? Or do we recognise that our faith is tiny, almost insubstantial and fragile as Jesus often complained, accept that in humility, and use what we have to trust that the Lord will help us to heal those cracks by more and more experiences of the Resurrection.

Yes, blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. Again, as the Lord teaches us, even a little faith will help us to move mountains - indeed having the tiniest amount will be enough to approach the King of Heaven.

We bring ourselves to the Cross for our sins to be removed. We bring ourselves to the Tomb to remember our fragility even to death. We wait in the garden in hope (the hope which breeds faith which in turn breeds love) for the Risen Christ to work in us the miracle of healing.

I wish you a very happy and fulfilling Pasch.

The Seven Last Words: Into Thy Hands

Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum

Πάτερ, εἰς χεῖράς σου παρατίθεμαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου

Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit

St Luke xxiii.46

A bedtime prayer, taught to Him by His Mother as she tucked Him in to bed at night after a long day.

As the last of His strength fails, He thinks of His family, remembers his childhood, the comfort of a human embrace of love, of tenderness, of warmth that every human being should have. All He sees is the hatred being spewed forth at Him now, yet all He knows is Love.

And having said His prayers, He falls asleep.

And God dies.

The Seven Last Words: It is finished

Consummatum est

Τετέλεσται

It is finished

St John xix.30

Tetelestai! Surely the most glorious word in the Greek language. Here it is practically untranslatable!

Fulfilment, consummation, completion.

This is no cry of despair.

This is no horrid realisation that all the work has been for nothing.

This is triumph!

It is orgasmic in its outpouring of strength and life and blood and sheer, pure and uncorrupted personal love for so so many individual people.

The Anointed One has done exactly what He came to do and He has succeeded.

And He receives, in His last moments, confirmation from the Father that His faith is rewarded.

How do we return that love?

The Seven Last Words: I Thirst

Sitio

Διψῶ

I thirst

St John xix.28

How can God be weak?

The great paradox of the Incarnation is revealed at the Crucifixion. A human body can only take so much. Yet, why desire something to drink if one knows that one is only moments from death? Why not tough it out to the end? Why show yourself to be even weaker and incur further laughter from the crowd?

Even here, Jesus shows that humility is a beautiful gift of God. Rather than show pride, the English stiff upper lip, He shows us that even God is weak and vulnerable. And He bids us recognise our own weakness, and to ask for what we need, even if all seems lost. There is no point in being proud or vain, in boasting in strength, because weakness is an inevitability.

We give Him vinegar to drink.

What does He give us to drink in return?

The Seven Last Words: My God, My God

Heli Heli lema sabacthani hoc est Deus meus Deus meus ut quid dereliquisti me

Ηλι ηλι λεμα σαβαχθανι; τοῦτ' ἔστιν, Θεέ μου θεέ μου, ἱνατί με ἐγκατέλιπες;

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

St Matthew xxvii.46

His faith in His Father is shaken. The final Temptation. The last attempt at diabolical forces to claim victory over God and the world as a Satanic prize. Whither can a dying man go who is gripped by the fear that all he believed, taught and invested in is worthless, empty, black? Psalm xxi(i) is surely the only place.

It speaks the truth about Jesus' present situation: pierced hands and feet, mocking mouths agape, clothes gambled for. And how He knows the truth of these words written nearly a millennium earlier!

But in remembering this psalm, the Lord cannot lose heart for it does not end in dereliction as some psalms do.

I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him

Even on the cross, the Lord can find solace in the Scriptures, just as He did when tempted in the wilderness. The final temptations are just as futile.

As is Death.

The Seven Last Words: Behold Thy Son

Mulier ecce filius tuus, ecce mater tua

Γύναι, ἴδε ὁ υἱός σου, Ἴδε ἡ μήτηρ σου

Woman, behold thy son! Behold thy mother!

St John xix.26-27

Even amid His pain and suffering, even though He is scared, forsaken and so utterly alone, still He thinks of others' welfare. He sees His poor mother without husband or son to care for her now; a woman whose "yes" has threatened her reputation, caused her no end of worry, confusion, and upheaval and finally fulfilled that prophecy of the sword in her soul even as the lance in His side. Even now He cannot ignore that "yes". He turns and sees another "yes" in his disciple who has given up so much for Him, home, job and reputation, who is now without a guide, a leader, without hope - or so it seems.

Together for now as mutual support- a new family woven in grief.

Tomorrow, the Church- a new family woven in joy.

The Seven Last Words: With me in Paradise

Amen dico tibi hodie mecum eris in Paradiso

Ἀμήν σοι λέγω, σήμερον μετ' ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ

Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise

St Luke xxiii.43

But He wasn't in Paradise that day was He? We say in our creeds that Jesus descended into Hell before He rose again from the dead. Or is Paradise merely the same place as Hell, or rather Sheol - the place of the Dead.

Yes, there are ambiguities about what Paradise is, whether it is temporary or permanent, or Heaven or Hades or even a Persian Disney Land (Heaven forbid!). Whatever our interpretations of this saying of Our Lord, there are two key ideas that reassure the Penitent Thief at the Eleventh Hour and any one of us at our Eleventh hours. In the Vulgate, these are two words: Amen (Truly) and mecum (with me).

We do not know what death is like - we cannot know. Our Faith gives us a sufficient measure of certainty due precisely to this Amen and this Mecum.

Truly we are with Him. And He is faithful, even if we are not.

At the point of Death itself when we pour out our final breaths amid our final confessions of abject failure, our silent scream into the night that we fear, we shall hear those words meant for us - Amen mecum. Is there anywhere else that we would want to be?

The Seven Last Words: Father forgive them

Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt

Πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς, οὐ γὰρ οἴδασιν τί ποιοῦσιν

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do

St Luke xxiii.34

But surely, they knew exactly what they were doing? How can you not know exactly what you're doing when you're nailing someone's hands and feet to a block of wood? How can you not know what you're doing when you have been plotting to kill this man for ages because of the threat he poses to your stability? How can you not know what you're doing when you've acted out of anger for the disrespect he has shown you, criticising your way of life, calling you whitewashed sepulchres, foolish and perverse, men of little faith?

Far better, for the sake of the stability of the region that he die and let his teaching end there.

Ah.

But they didn't know.

They haven't been listening.

You see, their malice, their hatred, their blinkered self-interest, their delight in others' pain, is directly responsible for the salvation of the souls of men. If there hadn't been sin and evil in the world, then the world would not have needed saving. As it is, what they are doing is putting an end to the Eternal effects of evil, sin and death.

While they are killing an innocent man, they are crucifying God Himself, and they don't know it.

While they watch His blood flow from His back, His forehead, His hands and feet and eventually His side, they see the New Covenant ratified, that God offers Himself to be so very vulnerable so that we can be free from the powers of Darkness, Death and the Devil, and they don't know it.

While they hear His last words and mock and jeer and spit and laugh, they hear Him offer the same forgiveness, the same freedom from sin as everyone else, they hear Him act as advocate on their behalf as He always said He would and does and will, and they don;t know it.

They are forgiven.

But they don't know it.

Who is more wretched? The bleeding, naked and pained figure dying on the cross, or they?

Rocks and hard places.

I have to admit that crunch time is coming and I will have to weigh up my options shortly as my Parish enters an interregnum, not that I am particularly active within it. I am practically excommunicate from my own parish. My opponents (and there are many) will claim that this is my choice. Indeed it is: I choose to worship Christ at Mass, not have my ego massaged by dumbed-down liturgies, meaningless songs and platitudinous preaching which appears to be the staple of many services [sic] held by the CofE. If our intention is to attend Mass to feed a habit, then that is not a healthy intention for receiving the Blessed Sacrament.

If our intention is to seek the living God honestly and earnestly, in reverence humility, awe and wonder, then we stand a better chance of receiving something far more nourishing when we approach the Altar rail. It doesn't have to be Tridentine High Mass (would be nice though), but it does have to be honest and true to what the Church is. I get more and more infuriated by these folk who try to interpret the Church with their modern "scientific" mindset which they claim to be superior to Scripture and Tradition because it is so "reasonable". Balderdash!

Science is subject to fashion just as much as the High Street. Mathematics is subject to fashion. Worldviews are subject to fashion. Scripture and Tradition are not. They do not change because human beings do not fundamentally change - any glance through the minor prophets would demonstrate that. Of course Traditions grows, but growth isn't change - the roots always remain intact. The old is still there alongside the new, indeed feeding the new, neither rejected as being old-fashioned or newfangled but organically the same substance, indeed inseparable. Not so our Science. Quaternions yesterday, vectors tomorrow. Steady State on Monday, Big Bang on Thursday, D-Branes a week next Thursday. Surplices and tippets the first Sunday in Lent, chasubles and maniples Easter Saturday, but Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. What is reasonable one day will not be so tomorrow.

I limit my ministry to Offices now, mainly from the Anglican Breviary, not that I despise the Book of Common Prayer. I suspect that with my more monastic bent, the Breviary suits me better. The Book of Common Prayer does not contain little hours, or prayers during the day (except, I believe, for the rejected 1928 prayer book). It just seems so incomplete to me, though ask me what needs to complete it and I cannot find an answer for you (other than 6 monastic hours).

When I was turned down for ordination, I was told that the Church to which I was most loyal no longer existed and that I was chasing the past. I wonder how many would-be ordinands were told the same thing. I am suspicious of a form of social engineering taking place within the various boards of ministry. I suppose being rejected from ordination turned out to be the best for me, given the turmoil that exists in the CofE.

Am I waking up to the fact that I have been rather Quixotic in my ideals of trying to salvage what I can from the wreckage of the Church? Elmore is passing away. There are a few good priests, though even of them the majority accept the "priesthood" of women, but I remember that so did Fr Dearmer and so did Dom Gregory Dix - even the greatest minds can be fooled (c.f. Solomon)!

The old buildings still stand but are filled with clutter and emptiness. The CofE is just a pile of rubble which is being robbed like a Roman Villa to build lesser buildings of insipidity and politically correct niceness. In America I hear of Traditionals being forced out of their parish by the Liberal tyranny, their building sold to the Moslems and their projects for the homeless thwarted, but then the smell of brimstone permeates the hierarchy of "E"CUSA.

And the RCC aren't much better - Thiberville as just one instance! Indeed the efforts of a thoroughly traditional (and Anglican) Pope are being stymied by liberals trying to squeeze out the Traditionals. All around the Western World, in Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, Traditionals are being told "You are not wanted" forcing them between rocks (over which they stumble) and hard places (on which they land, nose first). This is another thing that I worry about Anglicanorum Cœtibus - yes we have the love and admiration of the Holy Father, but do we have the love and admiration of the Liberal Bishops when we are more traditional than they?

Is the Continuum the place? It's too divided. Certainly some American Jurisdictions are just so unpleasant and self-satisfied with their own definitions of what it means to be Anglican without the slightest idea of how we English do it (or rather did it). They shout, decry, call themselves prophets, and are so unbelievably rude that I honestly wonder whether any love actually resides in them for all their intellectual puffedness. Besides, I am too papal for most of them anyway.

So to stay CofE albeit nominally, or not? There are just a few embers that need to be extinguished before I decide where to go. However, my decision will have to come soon - rock or hard place. Either will do as long as the rock or hard place is the Rock. I expect to make that decision before Christmass (yes I have put three Ss in Christmass- it's deliberate). Like so many other Traditionals, as it were a monster I have become unto many, but God is my strong helper.

Elmore: two passings

I've been rather saddened to hear two sad things, not that either was particularly unexpected.

The first is that Br Hugh Kelly, the gloriously eccentric internal oblate at Elmore Abbey passed away on March 8th at the age of 81 after a battle with cancer. There are several stories about him which I'm only just hearing, but I remember him entering the Oratory, the wheels of his walking frame squeaking like a monastic choir of church mice, assuming his place in choir and then, emulating Corporal Jones in Dad's Army, always managing to be a beat behind everyone in the chants. I pray that his soul may be raised to the intimate community of God for Eternity.

Second, it has now been formally announced about the closure of Elmore and the movement of the monks to Salisbury, necessitated by the size of the Abbey and the scarcity of monks. It's a sad decision to have made, yet it is the right one, I am sure. I can imagine though that the Doms are going to find this inordinately stressful and destabilising. My prayers are certainly with them.

It seems that the secular age in which we live will deprive us of places of holiness if we let it. It's not that the places of holiness ever really go away, but if we refuse to see them, then we are deprived of them. I look at my parish church and see a beautiful 13th building attached to a pre-conquest tower. It ought to be an holy place, but the clutter, the various not really religious knick-knacks placed hither and thither (especially on the Lady Chapel altar!), the Clavinova instead of an organ demonstrate that there is little reverence or appreciation for what goes on therein. I do not think that my parish is unusual in that. Many parish churches in the CofE are becoming "functional" as opposed to being places of worship.

Please do pray for all monks and nuns and ask God to call more so that the U.K., and indeed all the world may have places of holiness, quietness and peace where one can occasionally be permitted to pass one's finger through the veil to touch the cheek of God.

The Narrow Gate and Hyperbolic Geometry

Playfair's axiom: Given a line l and a point P not on that line, there is a unique line that passes through P that does not meet l.

Those of you of a certain age may well have been taught Euclid's five axioms of geometry. You may even be aware of the controversy of the fifth axiom, the famous "Parallel Postulate" which John Playfair expressed (in my eyes) more succinctly and elegantly than Euclid originally did.



The first four axioms were certainly reasonable enough. They remarked on things we might find quite obvious about our reality, e.g. given two points in space, there is a unique line that joins them, or that one right-angle is the same size as another right-angle. The fifth seems less so: why should it be obvious in our reality that there is only one line through P that is parallel to l?


If one considers a straight line to be the path which joins two points with the shortest distance, then the straight lines on the Earth's surface are arcs of circles with the same centre as the Planet. These are different from Euclid's straight lines, but we don't notice the difference when we are crossing the road as the crow flies to get to Tesco's. In the small scales in which we inhabit, these vast arcs of circles (Great Circles as we mathematicians- failed or otherwise- call them) appear to be no different from what Euclid described as a straight line.


The trouble is, on the Earth's surface, Playfair's (and thus Euclid's) axiom is blatantly false.

In the geometry of the Earth, the Parallel postulate is false. There are no such things as parallel lines on the Earth. Admittedly, the geometry of the Earth also breaks others of Euclid's axioms, in fact any geometry in which there are no parallel will break at least one other of the axioms.

That's not the only way that Playfair's axiom could fail: there could be more than one line through P that doesn't meet L. Here Bolyai and Lobachevsky showed that there are geometries which meet all of Euclid's axioms but not the fifth. (If the lines appear curved, that's because you're looking at them with the wrong eyes.)The most useful of these is the hyperbolic geometry which has a constant curvature, like the sphere or the plane. It's a bit tricky to describe; I suppose that the easiest way to describe it is that everywhere you look, it looks like the surface of a saddle. We usually try to flatten it out, but the lines will then look like arcs of circles which meet a boundary circle at right-angles. The boundary circle isn't really there - it's the hyperbolic version of an horizon. It's called the Poincaré disc.

So why am I going through all this mathematics? What's my point?

It's this business of "One True Church" again, the attitude of "this is the only way to God - the Way." It is clear that the way is narrow, the Lord tells us this much. Yet, I invite you to look carefully at the Poincaré disc. All those lines are straight in the reality of this disc and yet there are groups of lines (mathematically called a pencil of lines) which meet at the horizon. However, hyperbolic lines meet more truly at the horizon than lines in Euclidean space; by that I mean, the distance between those parallel lines, which are straight in this geometry, decreases the nearer they get to a common point on the horizon.

I am still trying to fathom in what way Church Unity can be achieved. If the Christian reality is hyperbolic like the Poincaré disc, then maybe we have got to make sure that if we cannot walk together as Christians, then at least we are travelling in parallel directions on an ever narrowing course to the One True Christ Who lies on the horizon of our vision. If our constant intellectualising (mea culpa) seeks to keep us apart, then let us at least have the charity to allow other Christians the opportunity to travel parallel to us in the hope that together we reach the promised land of the Love of Christ.

Oremus

Homily preached at Eltham College on 1st and 2nd March 2010 based on St Luke xi.1-11.

Let us pray.

[PAUSE for shuffling]

Interesting!

Why did you do that?

All that shuffling and shifting in your seat,
making the benches creak and groan
like an oak tree during
the elephant nesting season.


It’s an automatic response,
a ceremony, that when someone says
“Let us pray”, everyone slumps forward
in their seat.

Does that mean that
you’ve all been hypnotised
so that when the phrase “let us pray” is uttered,
you are to believe that your spines
have turned to rice pudding?

Of course not.

That’s the way you’ve been taught to pray
– bowing your head,
putting your hands together
and perhaps closing your eyes.

And what is it that you do when you pray?

[PAUSE]

It must be difficult
if you don’t believe in God.

What do you do when others are praying?

Sit there and think,
“Oh do come on, you’re boring me silly?”
or does your mind wander
to what you have to do today:
beat year 10 to
the Krispy Kreme Doughnut sale,
create foul and pungent aromas in Chemistry
that will strip the paint off of the walls
as far as D/T
or find 100 different chat-up lines
to entice Pixie Lott out on a date with you.

Perhaps actually, you do pray.

“Please God,
let me launch a nuke tonight in COD.”

“Please God,
let there be a chocolate-covered doughnut left.”

“Please God,
don’t let the test on the subjunctive
be today.”

“Please God,
make Pixie Lott drive by in the limo,
get a puncture have to stop by the school,
just as I am there.

Please help me to lift the car up by one hand
whilst changing the wheel with my teeth,
so that she’ll think I’m hench
and thus want to go on a date with me.”

And what do you suppose
God’s reactions to these prayers are?


[PAUSE]

Perhaps you pray the prayer
that’s being prayed out loud.

Try this one for size,
and this time focus on the prayer itself.

Let us pray.

Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings
with thy most gracious favour,
and further us with thy continual help;
that in all our works,
begun,
continued,
and ended in thee,
we may glorify thy holy Name,
and finally by thy mercy
obtain everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Of course you realise that

the original meaning of "prevent"

was "go before".

How did you cope with praying that?

Oh dear, back to Miss Lott again were we?

If your mind was wandering during that,
don’t worry,
it even happens to the professionals!

St Augustine even moans about
his mind wandering.

But he uses the words
to focus his mind back to prayer.

If, however, all your prayer consists of is
“Please God let me able to do such and such”
and
“Please God make whosits to do blank”
then you are missing the point of prayer.

Yes, prayer is about communicating with God.

How is presenting God
with a shopping list of your requirements
communication?

Are our prayers reducing God
to the level of the Genie of the Lamp,
a being whose only purpose
is to do what we want?

[PAUSE]

So just how should we pray?

One of the disciples asks Jesus the very same question.

He replies with the Lord’s Prayer.

Now that's a homily on it's own!

While some of us know this prayer off by heart,
others of us don’t.

It’s worth looking at it carefully by yourself,
because in it we find that prayer
isn’t just about asking for help
with the problems in our lives, small or great.

It’s about asking for help to live life
with God
in a very personal and intimate relationship
despite the problems that life throws at us.


The Lord Jesus goes on to say that
God does actually know
both what we want
and what we really need
before we even ask Him.

The point is that we recognise His existence
as a figure who cares.

By asking Him for things in prayer,
we recognise that we need Him.


You might think of this as grovelling.

As Monty Python would say

O Lord, please don't burn us,
Don't grill or toast your flock,
Don't put us on a barbecue,
Or simmer us in stock,
Don't braise us or bake or boil us,
Or stir-fry us in a wok.

Oh please don't lightly poach us,
Or baste us with hot fat,
Don't fricassee or roast us,
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don't stick thy servants, Lord,
In a Rotissomat.

Do we pray like this?

[PAUSE]

The Lord Jesus tells us
that we can be bold in our prayer.

We are allowed to ask.

However, that does not automatically
mean that the answer to the prayer will be “yes”.

Sometimes the answer will be “no”
and other times it will be silence.

God is not an ogre
– He is very much concerned with that
which is really good for us,
though we can’t always see
what is really good for us.

Perhaps our prayers would be better suited
to getting to know Him


A reporter asks Mother Theresa of Calcutta
-now Blessed Theresa of Calcutta-
“what do you say to God when you pray?”

She replies “Nothing. I listen”

“And what does He say to you?”

“Nothing,” says the aged nun, “He listens.”

Yes, this does sound like
one of those useless and unfathomable pieces
of Christian mysticism,
but how do we expect to communicate wih anyone,
let alone God without actually listening
to them.

[PAUSE]

When you pray, are you always asking for something?

Or sometimes, just sometimes, do you listen?

Friends of the Ordinariate

This site has been launched as a base for Anglicans in the U.K. to connect with each other with regard to the Apostolic Constitution, regardless of whether they intend to take it up.

Since I am very cautious about the Ordinariate and the way it may separate Anglo-Catholics in the UK at a time when the full CofE is debating how to keep dissenters within the same jurisdiction, I am rather glad of this sort of site.

I am of course rather disappointed to see that the Church of Wales is seeking to follow the same litigious route as the CEO of ECUSA. I am also disappointed by certain groups within the Continuum who are behaving like the Roman Catholic Church (yet are fully opposed to the Roman Catholic Church) and claiming that they have the sole definition of being Anglican (ironic because they are all as English as a Big Mac in every way) and thus refuse the adjective Anglican or Anglo-Catholic to anyone who wants to accept the Ordinariate. As I said below, let them pontificate like that. Adjectives mean nothing in Eternity: the desparate search for unity of spirit does.

The next few years are really going to be remarkable in the history of the Church as jurisdictions push and pull and jostle for the souls of the world. The one(s) that come through will be the one(s) that have the true message of charity and affection for God's fallen creatures. Oremus.

"Both and" and "either or"

Last night, I sat listening to Monteverdi's Vespers of Our Lady written in 1610. It's a piece of music that I've grown up with and I find that what pass for compositions from my mind has been influenced largely from the Renaissance Italian genre. You can always tell this sort of piece as they make great use of space and, given the spacious nature of places like San Marco in Venice and St Peter's Basilica in Rome, you can understand that the architecture influenced the music. Italian Renaissance choral pieces are polyphonic, usually polychoral, and seem to make much use of brass instruments - the famous sagbutts and cornetts.

Having sung in many a choir at Evensong, I've also grown up with the English Renaissance music which is usually on a much smaller scale, more intimate and rather reserved. Even an eight-part piece such as Purcell's "Hear my Prayer" has an intimacy and quiet expression of faith that is no less moving than "Ecce Beatam Lucem" by Striggio. The cultures haven't changed much over the centuries, it is still an English virtue to be somewhat reserved in one's emotive expressions, while the Italians are still passionate and expressive. I know that there are those who tend to bristle when an English countertenor, such as Robin Blaze, sings arias meant for a castrato. Granted that the countertenor voice is not a substitute for the castrato in projection, articulation and range, still there is something objectionable about a man singing notes in the register reserved (these days) for women. It just isn't English.


Yet the English Countertenor sounds glorious when singing Gibbons' "Behold thou hast made my days" or "See, see the Word is incarnate" which tend to be almost academic statements of fact. Of course the Reformations in England did make their mark on music in the Church. Certainly, Tallis and Byrd had to forego the art of melismata (more than one note to a syllable) in order to have their music sung in the Parishes. Yet even so, their Latin work was still tolerated (and possibly encouraged) by Queen Elizabeth. Despite their Catholicism, Tallis and Byrd wrote English music for the English Church and whether in Latin or the vernacular, it was very much a la mode.

Yet, however reserved the exterior of an Englishman, his heart still beats passionately. I am told that Hugh Grant and Colin Firth make the hearts of women flutter despite the fact that they do not race around saving the world from Armageddon.

I listen to these subtly different styles of Renaissance music (the German, French and Flemish schools are just as distinctive) and I wonder about how they might be married. After all, it is quite reasonable to hear Palestrina's Sicut Cervus at an Anglican Mass these days. However, it is less certain to hear Wesley's Hear my prayer or "Sumsion in G" in San Marco and this seems to summarise the attitudes of Anglicanorum Coetibus.

I have said earlier that I applaud the offer shown to Anglo-Catholics by the Holy See, and I still do. I am grateful to them for listening and for thinking how Anglicans can be incorporated into Communion with the Holy Father. However, from what little I understand about the Apostolic Constitution, it seems to me very much an "either or". You can be Anglican, or Roman Catholic - not both.

It seems to me (and I am willing to be corrected) that Anglicanorum Coetibus is to be seen as reclaiming an errant family member who has fallen on hard times and has returned for help. The errant is welcomed back but under conditions for reconciliation given by the richer relatives. It is Rome that is issuing all the conditions, not the Anglicans.

This is not what Traditional Anglicanism is; rather it has a richness of which Rome seems utterly ignorant. Anglicanism is only the poorer relation to Rome in that our communion is suffering from fracture and division by those who are using the tolerant nature of Anglicanism to force their own agenda and fashionable philosophies into her Parishes and others, who have their own definitions of Anglicanism, preventing a meaningful unity to occur. As Christians we have need for Rome, sacramentally so. And Rome, for all her strength, needs us, sacramentally. It is by working, praying and consecrating together that we can go against a spirit in society which cheapens the dignity of the human condition and seeks to numb its members to the suffering of its children.

I am convinced that the "either or" options with which we are being presented do not do justice to the Truth that is yet to be revealed. Our Lord Jesus Christ was one who showed us that "either or" is too restrictive of the Truth but rather incorporates a "both and". He is both Human and Divine. The Christian is (usually) both a saint and a sinner. The "either or"s belong to the Divine Judgment of the Father and demonstrate His Will in the running of the Catholic Church.

I would suggest that, if there is a future for Anglican Papalism now, it is found in the search to become both Anglican and Papal and being true to both natures, even when they conflict. My hope is that those who take up the Constitution will not see themselves as different from the rock from which they are hewn but continue to look for communion with those who choose not to take up the offer. I also hope that those who choose not to take up the offer will look for ways to take up the spirit of that offer.

What we should not be looking for is to make things so complicated as to distinguish between being both "either or" and "both and" and either "either or" or "both and". Let's just be "both and" Catholics, plain and simple. We may not sing the same vocal line, but we are singing from the same hymn-sheet. Surely that makes for a richer, more expressive harmony.

The Passing of the Innocent.

When a light goes out, we find ourselves in a new unspeakable darkness, haunted by the confusing after-images of the light that once shone and now shines no more. Our eyes try to adjust, but the light that illumines us is not the light that once was and grew used to: the world seems darker and different and alien.

Yes, there are other lights in the world which burn as brightly in the darkness but it is not the same. We have to live in the darker world. It may still be possible to discern the world's beauty in this dimmer light. It takes time and patient suffering to deal with the plethora of repetitions of the after-images which will fade in time, but thankfully never really go away.