Science and Religion V: Derren Brown and Dawkins

I've been reading Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown. Brown is a very talented and indeed perspicacious individual who does make some very valid observations about how we use our minds. He is of course more famous for being (for want of a better phrase) a psychological conjuror, able to read people's minds, win at Russian Roulette, transfix pop musicians to walls with needles and spook people in faux-séances.

In his younger days, Brown used to be a rabidly enthusiastic Pentecostal Charismatic, and has since apologised for that, regrettably becoming a rabidly enthusiastic atheist along the lines of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins. His main reason for his loss of faith he ascribes to discovering the non-historicity of the Bible, i.e. he believes that the Bible has been proved to be incapable of accurately describing historical events through editing of Gospels and key texts by various political factions within the Church.

The first thing that I consider is how illogical the "Once saved, always saved" doctrine is. One could argue that because Brown has lost his faith, he never was saved in the first place. But surely when he was a believer, he was convinced in himself that he was saved. If it is possible that one can believe honestly that one is saved and is loses the faith, then where is the certainty of our salvation? Answer: there can be no certainty in knowing that one is saved. One can certainly have hope in the Mercy and Loving-kindness of God that one is saved, but one needs to cooperate with this grace by cultivating the hope that we are given. One can only cultivate hope through the other two eternal remnants, i.e. Faith and Love. These three remain and feed each other.

That's the first aspect of Derren Brown I wanted to consider. The second, and larger aspect, I must confess rattled me. Brown contends that because I am clinging to a system of belief then I am not interacting with the world in its true reality, that I am forcing myself to see things in a particular way and to interpret happenings only in the framework of my belief system. With Dawkins he argues that I can only convince him of the presence of God if I show him some evidence that He exists, and clearly this evidence cannot be Biblical because of his problems with the Bible in its description of reality.

Why did this rattle me? Well, Brown is a very astute student of psychology and knows what to say in a way that will raise doubts in the mind. This I utterly applaud. It is good to have one's faith challenged and I am indeed grateful for the challenge that he provides. However, his main arguments against religion seem to involve attributing patterns to coincidences and not the miraculous.

He cites the behaviour of pigeons doomed to spend their lives in boxes, who end up performing "rituals" which make food appear, despite the fact that the food is administered according to the rules of the scientists studying them. Similarly, people too exhibit the same feature. I myself recognise that, as a schoolboy going to and from school, I used to try to change traffic lights with my mind, and it worked! Except it didn't because I associated the change in the traffic lights with my mental activity, rather than with the necessarily rigid timing system of the traffic lights, and the skilful driving of my father who modified his driving to take into account the myriad number of traffic lights between home and school. So I understand the phenomena that Brown is talking about.

The argument then is that ritual is nothing more than a primitive behaviour caused by the sporadic provision of resources - that the ritual some how provides the cause for an effect. Thus the atheist argument is that the effect that a given ritual is trying to achieve is largely coincidental.

It's true that you only need 23 people in a room for the chance of two of them to share a birthday to be greater than 0.5 (or 50%, but really, we shouldn't be expressing probabilities as percentages).

But consider the following ritual. Pick up a ball in your right hand, stretch out your right arm with the back of your right hand pointing upwards, open your right hand, and lo! the ball falls. (Note: I'm being deliberately precise here. Scientists require precision) Do this several times, and one notes that this always seems to happen, indeed with such a regularity that the fact that I am assuming that the ball falls seems a very reasonable assumption. However, how do I know that this will always happen? How do I know that this is merely a series of remarkable coincidences that have been observed by mankind ever since primitive man picked up a ball in his right hand and opened it? We would be foolish not to see a pattern there, wouldn't we?

My point is that all observed phenomena can be seen to be either the result of some scientific principle in action or as a collection of coincidences. It is how we make the decisions which phenomena are following rules and which are purely coincidental that shapes our understanding of the Universe around us. While Science may prescribe a systematic method for us to make those decisions based on observations, and follow logical reasoning, that very logical reasoning provides neither empirical evidence for a beginning and an end of the Reality it tries to describe. It is not even mathematical, since mathematics has a beginning, namely the objects for study and the axioms which tell us the rules. Science argues from the middle down into the microscopic and up into the macroscopic.

This does lead us onto the observability of God, and the actions that we attribute to His deity. Just how does God work in the world? If God exists, then why is there no conclusive evidence for His existence? Well, I hope that I've answered one idea that conclusive evidence for an omnipotent God would be evidence in the non-existence of an omnipotent God. But Brown does seem to have a point here. Something happens to us - perhaps we heal rather quickly from a serious illness. Now we have a choice, we can:

a) attribute this healing directly to God;
b) attribute this healing directly to the tendency of our bodies to heal itself;
c) attribute this healing to the ingenuity of science to provide a cure for this disease.

Brown rejects (a) because there is no proof that God exists, and thus any attribution of healing to God is speculative and that there is no evidence for the direct interaction of any deity, nor is there any method of testing this empirically. Thus, says Brown, it is foolish to take up proposition (a) since that means we can only be interpreting our healing intrinsically from our belief system rather than extrinsically from the fact that our bodies always make every effort to heal themselves (i.e. statement (b) ), and we have some understanding of various causes and effects that medicines provide (i.e. statement (c) ). However, God may well have effected the healing through (b) and (c) through millions of unobserved influences (i.e. they may have been observable but their significance was not deemed important enough for the time and trouble detailed study) in the universe which have accumulated to the effect that you are now free from illness. In this sense "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test" is not a commandment, but rather a statement of fact. God just doesn't fit into a test-tube!

But I do agree with Brown - there is no conclusive evidence for the existence of God, i.e. evidence which cannot be disputed. The existence and nature of the universe lead me to conclude that God exists, though I recognise myself and my understanding to be far too small to work out how He puts his plans to effect. I have no problem with the scientific explanation that there was a Big Bang, or that I owe my existence to ape-like beings. However, I attribute the responsibility of the cause of these events solely at the feet of God. Nor do I believe that having a religious belief imposes limits on our trying to understand our Reality. There are aspects of Science which are dangerous for humanity - research with human embryos, the race to build nuclear arms to name two - and Science must always be done in a way that holds nothing but the deepest respect for the Human Condition. But ultimately there will always be a mystery to Life which the human spirit is bound to explore and we should be attempting to make our further discoveries for they will always provide something to wonder at, and Christians like me will attribute them to the wonders of God (sorry Derren). God's presence will always remain a Mystery.

But then, this is still not all that Brown and Dawkins are saying! So far I agree with them - scientific evidence for the existence of God is non-existent. But the only conclusion we can draw from that is that we cannot draw any conclusions about the existence of God. That is not what Brown and Dawkins are saying, they are saying "there is no God." They are atheists, not agnostics.

And now we reach an interesting little problem. Scientists demand proof that there is a God. Fine! I can't supply that proof, indeed, that proof cannot exist. That's okay. However, scientists should also be demanding proof that there isn't a God. Now Brown and Dawkins will now have us believe that it is not their responsibility to provide a proof, that the burden of proof is on those who claim that there is a God. But that's not the problem. They have made a definite statement that requires evidence. If Science cannot find proof of God's existence, then that does not mean that they have proved that He doesn't exist.

This now puts Brown and Dawkins into the position of proving a negative.

As a mathematician, I have often proved negative statements. Here's one.

Proposition There is no largest prime number.

For the less mathematically inclined, a prime number is a number that has precisely two unequal factors - itself and 1. So, for example, 3 can only be expressed as 1 x 3.

Proof

Assume: that N is the largest prime number.

Now let

M = 2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 11 x ... x N + 1. Notice that M is strictly bigger than N.

I.e. M is the number formed by multiplying all the prime numbers up to N together and then adding 1.

Now we notice that

- 2 does not divide into M exactly; it leaves remainder 1;
- 3 does not divide into M exactly; it leaves remainder 1;
- 5 does not divide into M exactly; it leaves remainder 1;

and so on until,

- N does not divide into M exactly; it leaves remainder 1.

thus we notice that any prime less than N does not divide N exactly, but leaves remainder 1.

So either M is prime, or is divisible by a prime that is none of 2, 3, 5, ... N.

Thus we have shown that either M is a prime strictly bigger than N, or is divisible by a prime that is strictly bigger than N.

But!

We assumed that N was the largest prime number and we have arrived at the existence of prime numbers strictly bigger than N. This is a contradiction and the only place where our error can have occurred is in making the assumption that there is a largest prime number. QED.

So we have shown that there is no largest prime number. We have proved a negative.

This technique is called reductio ad absurdam. It is a well-founded mathematical technique used to prove the non-existence of certain quantities.

The method works as follows:

1) assume the contrary;
2) using that assumption, make rational deductions until you reach an impossibility which can only have occurred because you made that assumption.

So to prove the non-existence of God, all we need to do is to start with the hypothesis that God exists and logically deduce that this results in a contradiction.

Professor Dawkins and Mr. Brown: there's the method, now off you go...

Anglican Papalism

Fr. Marco Vervoorst had this article on his blog before he swam the Tiber after which he felt it necessary to remove it. Since I am still an Anglo-Papalist I feel that this article by Fr. Brooke Lunn is still important for me. Thus I reproduce it here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anglican Papalism

by Brooke Lunn

This article by Fr Brooke Lunn is reproduced from ‘The Catholic League Messenger’, with his permission, and helps to set the record straight after the publication of a recent book which gives a history of the movement ending in 1960. This is the movement which fed the devotion and practice of our Society and which continues to do so.

Anglican Papalism is a movement, from schism to unity, with a clear idea of our starting point, and a definite sense of direction. The movement’s antecedents go back to the schism, and its future goes forward to its destiny – full communion with the Roman Apostolic See. It is the expression, in a particular historical and geographical context, of the desire for unity in accordance with the expressed will of Our Lord Jesus Christ [John 17]

The usage – Anglican Papalism – goes back scarcely a century, though what it indicates, namely, efforts to heal the break with Rome, go back to the break itself. Because of the widespread misunderstanding of it, it is necessary to be clear about its precise meaning.

My dictionary gives:Anglican…(Anglicana ecclesiain Magna Carta) … Of or pertaining to the reformed Church of England or any Church in communion with it. E17 … papalism n. L19. papalist n. & a. (a) n. a supporter of the Pope or the papacy; (b) adj. Of or pertaining to papalism or papilists: M.18.

Romanizer n. a person esp. an Anglican, who favours or adopts the practices of the Roman Catholic church M19.

From the above we may see Anglican Papalism as a movement of members of the Church of England or any Church in communion with it in support of the Pope or the papacy.

Thus Anglican Papalism is not to be confused with Romanizers. The former belongs in the realm of ideas, the latter in the real of phenomena. The phenomena of Romanizers are relatively easy to perceive. The idea of Anglican Papalism requires much more application in order to begin to comprehend it.

Anglican Papalism – essential points

1. Christian unity
Unity is a fundamental concept running though the holy scriptures:

a) The story of Adam and Eve illustrates the essential unity of the whole human race;

b) We are created in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity, the perfect society, the model of unity in diversity;

c) The story of Cain and Abel illustrates the social responsibility aspect of the essential unity of the whole human race;

d) The struggle to establish Jerusalem as the centre of unity of God’s people over against the high places, and the focusing of this unity on the Temple, is a central theme of the Old Testament, and is still very much present today;

e) Along with this goes the emergence of ethical monotheism in God’s revelation;

f) Jesus’s concern for the unity of God’s people is expressed in various ways, particularly in John 17: ‘that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me;’

g) Ephesians 1: 9-10 reads: ‘For he (God) has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth;’

h) From this follows the need for Christian unity. The French Catholic priest Paul Couturier, who has become known as the Apostle of Unity, saw in the prayer of Jesus in John 17 the basis of his own understanding of prayer for unity, so he produced for his Week of Prayer the formula that the visible unity of the Kingdom of God may be such as Christ wills and achieved by whatever means he wills;

j) God’s will, as Ephesians says, is to unite all things in heaven and on earth, so unity also means the unity of the whole human race, through amongst other needs, inter- religious dialogue;

k) It also means the unity of the whole creation…ecology, the ‘green movement’, and so on.

Unity is the prime motivation of Anglican Papalism. The understanding of what unity means continues to develop, but the basic motivation remains.

2. Rome
Anglican Papalists are convinced that the fullness of the Church is to be found both in the local Church, the bishop and his people, and in the universal Church, the communion of all the Churches with the Church of Rome, the Apostolic See. It is not a case of either/or, but of both/and. Thus full communion with Rome is not just some optional extra, which might be helpful, but is essential for the fullness of the Church. Rome holds a unique place in the unity of the Church, over and beyond the fact that unity necessarily involves all Churches and ecclesial communities and, indeed, everyone of good will who professes the Christian faith.

Section 23 of the ARCIC Agreed Statement Authority in the Church I reads:

If God’s will for the unity in love and truth of the whole Christian community is to be fulfilled, this general pattern of the complementary primatial and conciliar aspects of episcope serving the koinonia of the churches needs to be realized at the universal level. The only see which makes any claim to universal primacy and which has exercised and still exercises such episcope is the see of Rome, the city where Peter and Paul died. It seems appropriate that in any future union a universal primacy such as has been described should be held by that see.

3. Prayer
Prayer is very much to the fore in Anglican Papalist work for unity. The Church Unity Octave, first observed in 1908, originated with two Anglican Papalists. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity developed from this. Couturier, the ‘Apostle of Unity’, was first brought to England through the efforts of Anglican Papalists. Today, the Catholic League is active in promoting prayer for unity. A special edition of The Messenger of The Catholic League, no. 280 (October 2003 – February 2004) was dedicated to the vision of Paul Couturier as part of the observance of the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Also from the Catholic League comes the Christian Unity Prayerbook.

4. Doctrine
It is fundamental to Anglican Papalism that an essential prerequisite for full unity is agreement in the essentials of Christian doctrine. Until Vatican II this was identified in the Creed of the Council of Trent. Today the touchstone is the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994. The work of ARCIC is recognised as of great importance in the search for unity.

5. Liturgy
Lex orandi – lex credendi – lex vivendi … worship, faith, life…Christianity is all of a piece, and all parts belong together in its wholeness. The Catholic Church, as distinct from many ecclesial communities which express themselves primarily through ‘Confessions’ [Augsburg, Westminster, etc.] expresses herself primarily through liturgy. Thus Anglican Papalists give due significance to their convictions through liturgy. This is not the same as saying that Anglican Papalism is primarily about liturgy. It is not. There are many Romanizers who are most definitely not Papalists; and there are Anglican Papalists who would scarcely merit the description of Romanizer. The difference between Papalist and Romanizer is fundamental, yet there remains much confusion; Yet, indeed, many Anglican Papalists are Romanizers. Issues raised by this are dealt with in a Catholic League publication, Liturgy and Unity.

6. Loyalty
Anglican Papalists have been on the receiving end of much unjust criticism – that their position is irrational, hypocritical, disloyal etc. Where such criticism has been just, and this seems to be very rare, the object of such criticism has been exceptional and untypical of Anglican Papalism. Geoffrey Curtis CR, not a Papalist himself, in Paul Couturier and Unity in Christ [p.163] gave a fair appreciation which questioned the charge of disloyalty. This is considered further below.

One of the most frequent grounds for the allegation of disloyalty is the adoption of practices of the Roman Catholic Church. This ground is refuted in Liturgy and Unity, already mentioned above. Another ground is that Anglican Papalists stress the importance of bishops but then don’t do what their bishops tell them to do. There is more than an element of truth in the waggish observation – unlike most Anglicans, I have a high doctrine of episcopacy, but low expectations, whereas most Anglicans seem to have a low doctrine, but high expectations, and I am the one who is least often disappointed! Put another way, I do not subscribe to a doctrine of the infallibility of individual bishops!

Pope Paul VI, who succeeded John XXIII, and had the task of seeing the Second Vatican Council through to its completion, is almost definitely the Pope with the best knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of Anglicans since the ferment of the sixteenth century. He said at the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970 that, on the day when the Church of Rome would embrace firmly her ever-beloved Anglican sister in the one authentic communion of the family of Christ, ‘no offence will be afflicted [sic] on the honour and sovereignty of a great country such as England. There will be no seeking to lessen the prestige and usage proper to the Anglican Church.’ [Rome and Canterbury Through Four Centuries, Bernard and Margaret Pawley, pages 341-342] Anglican Papalists, loyal to all that is of good value in our Anglican heritage, say a heartfelt ‘Amen’ to that.

I now live in retirement in the London Charterhouse. The very first of those Forty Martyrs canonized in 1970 was Saint John Houghton, Carthusian Prior of the London Charterhouse. He was martyred, viciously, on 4th May 1535, because he refused to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church in England. To accuse Saint John Houghton of disloyalty to the Church in England because he supported the papacy would be a manifest travesty. Anglican and Papalist are terms that came into usage later, but Anglican Papalists today look to Saint John Houghton, along with many of his contemporaries, as true witnesses, even unto death, to the conviction which we share with him.

7. England
Anglican Papalists recognise both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in England as rightfully claiming descent from the undivided Church in England before the sixteenth century schism. We do not accept derogatory epithets such as the Italian Mission or the immigrant Irish Church to describe the Roman Catholic Church in England.

One of the powerful motivations of Anglican Papalism is the Christian mission to the people of England, of whatever racial religious or cultural background. We perceive the present disunity among Christians in England as a scandal, a stumbling block to the mission of the Church in our land. It is not just some historical scandal [Henry VIII and all that], but a continuing scandal, an actual scandal, here and now, in which the Churches and ecclesial communities in England today participate. Reunion and unity, for us, mean one visible Church in England, with a common identity, not a stifling uniformity, but unity in an acceptable diversity. What that means for us has been explored in, for example, Liturgy and Unity already mentioned above, and Reuniting Anglicans and Rome – a special issue of The Messenger of the Catholic League (October 1994).

8. Individual reception
Recognising Newman’s dictum about the primacy of conscience, Anglican Papalists see this as applying not least to those Anglicans who enter individually into full communion with Rome. The Catholic League, in recognising this, logically opened membership to all who agree with the four objects of The League and with the doctrinal basis of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

9. Ecclesial communities and corporate reunion
Those Anglican churches, including the Church of England, which have formally moved away from the catholic teaching and practice of apostolic succession in holy orders [as taught in the Ordinal with its Preface accompanying the BCP 1662] are now Ecclesial Communities rather than Churches in the proper sense. This leads to a substantial change in the basis for seeking corporate reunion with the Roman Apostolic See. In no way does it diminish the need for reunion. In so far as Rome recognises ecclesial communities, then this reunion will properly be corporate.

10. Unity of creation
Unity includes Christian unity, unity with other religions and life stances, and the unity and harmony of the whole creation. This is added in as a reminder that our own particular motivations need to be seen in the overall context of God’s will for the unity of the whole of creation, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.

Two Classic Texts
I elaborated the above ten essential points from my own personal experience and understanding of Anglican Papalism over more than half a century. It is an understanding at the beginning of the third millennium. Basic to it are two classic texts of Anglican Papalism – England and the Holy See, by Spencer James in 1902; and The Church of England and the Holy See (the CPCU 1933 Centenary Tractates [Council for Promoting Catholic Unity]).

I take a glance at these to two texts below, as they are critical evidence for the true nature of Anglican Papalism. A recent book, and the reviews of it, reveal the extensive ignorance of the true nature of Anglican Papalism, and the prejudice, misrepresentation, misunderstanding and false judgements deriving from this ignorance. The reason why so many commentators on Anglican Papalism who are not themselves Anglican Papalists are so hostile is complex. This is a challenge to Anglican Papalists. This present article merely attempts to throw some light on what Anglican Papalists themselves understand it to be.

Anglican Papalists’ true home in mainstream Christianity
Anglican Papalism is a movement from schism to unity, from the margins to the centre, from a backwater into the mainstream of Christianity. As such it is the very opposite of extreme. So how is it that it is so frequently misrepresented as extreme? Extreme depends on what one identifies as the norm. If you perceive the Church of England to be the Norm of Christianity, with Dissent wandering off from this norm in one direction, and Catholics refusing to come into line with the norm in the other direction, then clearly Anglican Papalists are out of line with this norm. The term nonconformist makes the point, having been used to describe both Dissent and Catholics.

The evidence does not support the view that the Church of England is the norm of Christianity. It does support the view that the catholic Church is the norm. This is not so much because she is overwhelmingly the largest body of Christians, but more because of her faithful witness to God’s revelation down the ages. That there is a gap between the faithful teaching of the Church and all too much of the actual practice, not just of individual members but also of the members corporately, is recognised in the teaching by the model of the Church as the pilgrim people of God rather than as the perfect society.

This proper norm was recognised by the English Church down the ages until the State imposed an alternative norm in the sixteenth century. Yet the arms of the Archbishop of Canterbury to this day incorporate the Pallium, the symbol of authority conferred by the Pope, thus indicating the proper norm. The Gospels of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, probably brought to England by Saint Augustine himself when sent by Pope Gregory, being used at the enthronement of Archbishops of Canterbury, including our present Archbishop, likewise indicate the proper norm. The ARCIC process has helped to acknowledge the proper norm [e.g. Authority I.23]. The second half of the twentieth century has seen much progress in acknowledging the proper norm of Christianity, though there is still much more to be done here.

A key principle in Spencer Jones’s England and the Holy See is that of proportion. Thus, to treat the Church of England as the norm of Christianity is to get things seriously out of proportion. To treat the catholic Church as the norm is to restore a sense of proportion. Anglican Papalism, with its conscious desire and commitment to pursue the expressed will of Our Lord Jesus Christ for unity, and our recognition that this necessarily involves full communion with the Roman Apostolic See, places our true home right at the heart of mainstream Christianity.

Loyal Anglicans
The loyalty of Anglican Papalists to our Anglican heritage is second to none. Spencer Jones’s England and the Holy See is a classic Anglican text, written for Anglicans by an Anglican. The overriding purpose of the Centenary Tractates of 1933 is to demonstrate that the true home of the Church of England is full union with the Holy See – which they demonstrate most effectively. The title of the series is – The Church of England and the Holy See.

The loyalty of Anglican Papalists to our Anglican roots is seen in many ways, of which the following are some:

1. Anglican Papalists have a good knowledge, understanding and appreciation of our Anglican heritage; usually better than that of fellow Anglicans. The two texts referred to above demonstrate this very clearly.

2. Anglican Papalists clergy and laity have a fine record of devoted work, often in the pastorally tougher parts of The Lord’s Vineyard. I note in The Catholic Herald of 11 November, 2005: ‘H.J. Fynes-Clinton, one of the prime movers [of Anglican Papalism], rarely had a good congregation at St Magnus the Martyr. I was a server at St Magnus from 1951 to 1959, when I went off as a student to Trinity College, Dublin, months before Father Fynes-Clinton died. Latterly, I served the 8am weekday Mass, occasionally attended by local office workers, as well as the lunchtime services. I myself worked in Barclays Chief Foreign Branch just up the road. For the 8am Mass Fr. Fynes would catch the underground from St. James Park, near where he lived, to Monument, close by St. Magnus. He was in his eighties. His GP had told him that this was too much for him, and when Fr Fynes-Clinton carried on nonetheless, his GP said: ‘Well, you’re on your own’. A good congregation? City of London parishes were viewed by many as sinecures. Fr. Fynes-Clinton viewed the parish of St Magnus as the very opposite, a most demanding ‘cure’ of souls. Far from being sinecures, City of London parishes are seen by diligent pastors as among the toughest pastoral assignments. Fr Fynes-Clinton led the way in weekday services in the City. Our community of worshippers in the 1950s at St Magnus had a powerful influence on me, for good, as I believe; and the inspiration was Fr Fynes-Clinton. I wish to say much more on this, but now discipline myself; except to say that the comment, which provoked my response I consider to be unworthy, and ignorance is a poor excuse.

3. Our recognition that we are in schism is an honest self-appraisal, not disloyalty. Were St John Houghton and his fellow Carthusian martyrs being disloyal to the Church in England when they took their stand against the tyrant Henry VIII? Was St Thomas More likewise being disloyal? Was St John Fisher also being disloyal? They were not Anglicans in schism. We are. But the issue is the same.

4. A true, thorough, critical evaluation of all that is good and worthwhile in our Anglican heritage is a necessary exercise of the principle of proportion.

5. The willingness to persevere in the face of misunderstanding, unfair treatment and misrepresentation is a test which demonstrated the loyalty of our forebears who were actively persecuted; and continues to be a test for us today.

6. Anglican Papalists, notably Spencer Jones and Fr Fynes-Clinton, expressed themselves very clearly about the responsibility of bishops to exercise a ministry of unity in witnessing faithfully to God’s revelation. They were absolutely clear that the mind of the Church took precedence over the vagaries of individual bishops. For this they have been criticised as inconsistent, disloyal and undisciplined. Yelton, in Anglican Papalists puts it thus: ‘This was a fairly typical attitude to bishops by those who on the other hand sought to uphold church order, displaying one of the ambiguities which has plagued the Catholic Revival throughout its existence.’ Which prompts the question; was Athanasius wrong to confront the Arian bishops? Was Athanasius ambiguous? What nonsense!

When it comes to charges of disloyalty, those who have in our times changed the fundamental nature of our Anglican heritage should become aware that they are in a very vulnerable glass house.

How others see us
About thirty years ago the local council of churches decided to hold the Week of Prayer service in our church. It was their first visit. The secretary of the council came around to arrange things, and I shewed her the church. ‘The Council won’t like this’, she said, as her nose twitched at a suspicion of incense in the air. ‘Shrines, candles…’ – the usual list of aids to worship in catholic churches which so upset the anti-catholic prejudice nurtured in the English since the sixteenth century. ‘But’, said I, ‘the local catholic Church is an active member of the council of churches, and you have held services there?’ ‘Yes’, she replied, ‘but we expect such things of them. We expect you to know better.’

Even to this day we should be well aware of just how deep-seated is anti-catholic prejudice and ignorance. In so far as this has declined, this has coincided with a decline in the place of religion as a whole in our society. So, Anglo-Catholics, and Anglican Papalists even more so, are criticised because we ought to know better.

An appreciation is given by Geoffrey Curtis CR in his Paul Couturier and Unity in Christ, 1964 [p.163]:We are beginning to see that Anglican Papalists have been unfairly judged. Abbé Couturier saw this very clearly. They are accused by English Roman Catholics of failure in logic and by many of their fellow Anglicans of disloyalty. There may be Anglican Papalists who are a law unto themselves and who ignore the force of the ordination pledges and are thus disloyal to our Church and to its bishops. There may well be an Anglo-Roman underworld as there have been Protestant and Modernist underworlds and, for all I know, an Inferno of ‘Moderation’. But the true Anglican Papalists are not of this calibre. They are a small group with a long lineage in our Church, and many are of the salt of the earth. Their particular standpoint many of them have recognised as involving a call to a life of reparation. Contrary to average opinion this small group is notable for its intellectual power as well as for its holiness. Perhaps the books of Anglican theology of this century that have been most widely read abroad have been books by Papalists – Spencer Jones’ England and the Holy See and Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy; Dr. S. H. Scott’s great work, Eastern Churches and the Papacy, is used by scholars in most parts of the world.

To other Anglicans their position seems neither disloyal to our Church nor, given their convictions, contrary to the logic of charity, but rather sadly disproportioned. We believe that our own Anglican heritage possesses certain Christian values in trust and that these would be jeopardized if we were to submit to Rome as she now is.

That is a gracious appreciation, but I am greatly puzzled that Fr Curtis sees Anglican Papalists as willing ‘to submit to Rome as she now is’ [his book was published in 1964], and so jeopardize our own good Anglican heritage. Submission is the Roman Catholic approach to Anglicans wishing to enter into full communion with the Roman Apostolic See. It is difficult indeed to see how this is compatible with the Anglican Papalists principle of corporate reunion. In number eight of the Centenary Tractates of 1933, Fr Fynes-Clinton has a section headed ‘Corporate Return’. In this he emphasizes: ‘Our schism from Rome was Corporate: the remedy must be Corporate’. Fr Corbould, in the same tractate [pages 25-26…quoted later] lists eight Anglican aspects which might be agreeable to Rome in the cause of reunion.

Fr Curtis was clearly sympathetic to the cause of unity with Rome. This is seen in the biography of Paul Couturier. Also, Fr Curtis was a prime mover in the recognition at the London Charterhouse of the Carthusian Martyrs. What is it about Anglican Papalists that Fr Curtis found to be ‘rather sadly disproportioned’? He is not alone among those of goodwill who seem to misunderstand us. Does some of the problem lie with us, and our possible failure to communicate clearly what our principles are? I remain genuinely puzzled. This is not because I believe that our movement is above criticism. Yet I suspect that some of our critics are more familiar with the fringe elements rather than with essence – not a sound basis for fair judgement.

There is also the phenomenon, still very much with us today, of anti-papalism amongst strongly traditional Anglo-Catholics. Amongst these would be found those content to be called Continuing Anglicans.

A more bizarre hostility is found in a Jesuit reviewing Yelton’s book. His review takes up so much space with abuse of Anglican Papalism that he leaves himself with no room at all to substantiate his false accusations. Briefly damning with faint praise – ‘occasional intellectual brilliance’ – to heaping abuse – misconceived, travesty, dishonest, parasitic, pastorally disastrous…what is it about Anglican Papalism that draws out such unfairness? But one point above all in that review suggests that time should not be wasted on it. ‘For Catholics, papalism is a position which few will understand.’ Recall the dictionary definition of papalism – ‘a supporter of the Pope or the papacy’. A Jesuit whose fourth vow is one of special obedience to the Holy Father in the matter of accepting missions, not understanding papalism? Let’s move on quickly.

A completely opposite and very positive view of us is seen by many Roman Catholics. See, for example, the account of the 17th December 2005 Brugge visit in the February 2006 Messenger. A key ingredient of such good relations is friendship, and an interesting example of this is also to be found in that Messenger, entitled Friendship and Ecumenism.

Fair minded Roman Catholics acknowledge that Anglican Papalism has drawn some of the anti-catholic prejudice away from Roman Catholics. A fair number of Roman Catholics learnt their catholic faith and life in the Church of England. Amongst these only a few ‘kick the ladder away’ or ‘bite the hand that fed them’. The Catholic League, once exclusively Anglican Papalist, now has Roman Catholic members, including Officers and Council members. We are in good heart.

Anglican Papalism since 1960
I take the date 1960 from Yelton’s Anglican Papalism – A History 1900-1960 [p.16]: ‘The real undermining of the Papalist tradition came in the period after 1960, which is not dealt with in detail in this study.’ This judgement is supported by reviewers of Yelton’s book: ‘He has written a study in failure’; ‘A lost cause’; ‘the coup de grace’; and so on. So, given the precise meaning of ‘Anglican Papalism as a movement of members of the Church of England or any Church in communion with it in support of the Pope or the papacy’, consider the evidence.

On 3rd December 1960 Dr Geoffrey Fisher visited the Pope. This was the first ever of an Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope since the sixteenth century schism. Subsequent Archbishops of Canterbury, including our present one, have visited the Pope. Since 1960 the Second Vatican Council led to great improvement in Anglican-Roman Catholic relations. The Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism said [13]: ‘Among those in which Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist, the Anglican communion occupies a special place.’ Since 1960 ARCIC was set up, and continues to do valuable work towards unity. Pope Paul VI, from a position of considerable knowledge and understanding, expressed a most gracious and generous appreciation of our Anglican heritage.

The Catholic League took Vatican II totally on board, and subsequently took the Catechism of the Catholic Church [1994] as our touchstone of orthodoxy. The League’s publications, including The Messenger, continue to promote the papalist cause. Notable here are two special issues – Reuniting Anglicans and Rome in October 1994; and The Unity of Christians: The Vision of Paul Couturier in February 2004.

The Congregation of the English Mission was an initiative of The League regarding corporate reunion, whose explorations for three years to 1990 are briefly described in Reuniting Anglicans and Rome. Much of the work and prayer for unity goes on at the grassroots level and doesn’t make the headlines. A good example is the inauguration of the Emmanuel Chapel in the Begijnhof in Brugge. The years since 1960 have seen some of the most positive gains in the search for unity. Sadly, the last few years have seen a significant turning away from unity with Rome on the part of the Church of England.

For several centuries the religious life of England was largely to be identified with the Church of England, hence Anglican Papalism. The continuing marginalisation of the Church of England in English society raises questions concerning the Anglican dimension of Papalism. We may be moving towards a situation where the need would be better expressed as English Papalism. The 1933 text was The Church of England and the Holy See. The 1902 text, England and the Holy See, may now more accurately reflect the situation.

Whether it be Anglican or English Papalism, the movement remains as necessary as ever, new challenges not withstanding. Seeking the will of Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a lost cause. Failure is not an option. The coup de grace? A tradition undermined? Inevitable flaws? A lost cause? Failure? Shades of Mark Twain: Reports of our death are an exaggeration.

The Jericho-Jerusalem road.

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul’s Church on the sixth Sunday after Trinity, 15th July 2007, based on Deuteronomy xxx.9-13, Colossians i.1-14, St Luke x.25-37.

On the next day,
as he departs,
the Good Samaritan takes out two denarii,
gives them to the innkeeper,
and says to him,

'Take care of him;
and whatever more you spend,
when I come again, I will repay you.'

Just as he is leaving,
the Good Samaritan is accosted
by a rather formidable woman
clearly with a bone to pick.

“Where do you think you are going?”

The Samaritan stops dead,
taken aback by 13 stone
of pure peevishness standing before him.

“I’m going on my way,”
he says, clearly thrown
by this strange demand.
“So you’re going to leave
that poor chap here
are you?

Sure, you pick him up
and patch him up
and bring him here,
but then you leave him.

Why?

Why aren’t you staying
with him until he’s better?

Why aren’t you prepared
to travel with him back to his house
and make sure that he is returned safely?

You’ve paid for his bed and board here,
but how’s he going to get home?”

Should the Samaritan have done more?

[PAUSE]

It is clear to us
that it is the Samaritan
who acts as neighbour
for the victim.

In the Samaritan,
we see one who is willing
to make himself close to the one suffering;

the one who will not allow
distance to become an obstacle
to helping and loving and rescuing.

That’s the whole point of neighbourhood
- you make yourself close
to those folk around you.

But how close is close?

[PAUSE]

How many people would you say
are within 100ft of you
right now?

Would you say that
you are close
to each one of those people?

Let’s shrink the circle down to 10ft.

Are you close to all these folk?


What about at 1ft?

Are you close to the people
right next to you?

There are folk who
are not here in this building today
who are close to you.

You may even have a friend
a thousand miles away
with whom you are closer
than someone ahead of you
in the queue
at the Distribution of the Eucharist,

but it’s possible that
the person next door
might just as well be
on the other side of the world.

This is a phenomenon
that is affecting our Church.

How many people in this parish
do not actually live in this parish?

How many are from Northfleet,
from Welling,
from Dartford?
And how much
this parish benefits
from these folk!


Even though
they are not resident in the parish,
they are still a part of this parish.

But there is another question
that goes along with this idea.

How many people live in this parish
who are not members of the parish?

That number is rising.

The number of neighbours is shrinking.

What more should we be doing?

[PAUSE]

For the Samaritan,
his encounter with Jericho’s answer
to Nora Batty is troubling.

Surely there is a lot more that he can do.


Perhaps he ought to go back
and stay with this chap
and see him safely home,

but this takes him out of his next task,
out of his step on the journey.

It takes him away
from the next victim of robbery
on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

It takes him away
from the next bond of neighbourhood
that he is to forge
as he treads this route again and again.

[PAUSE]

Meanwhile back at the inn,
months pass
and the victim grows whole again.

He decides to wait for
this Samaritan to come again,
to thank him for the kindness that he shows,

to pray with him
to the God whom they worship
albeit in different ways,

grateful for the love
of one man prepared to cross the distance
to become a neighbour.

And so he waits,
and, growing impatient,
he begins to go out onto the road
between Jerusalem and Jericho
in search of this Good Samaritan.

As he treads the way,
he sees a priest and a Levite ahead of him
passing by a small shape
huddled in the roadside.

As the man reaches it,
he sees that it is another man
stripped,
beaten,
bloodied
and bruised,
left for dead by robbers.

He binds the wounds,
puts the victim onto his donkey
and wends his way back to the inn.

And as he travels back to the inn,
the man realises what he must do now:

he must tread the road
again and again looking for others,
so that he might be a neighbour to them.

A new neighbour walks the dangerous road
between Jerusalem and Jericho.

[PAUSE]

We too as a church walk on a journey
with a mission
to bring the love of Christ
to the people of Swanscombe.


It’s easy for us to be directed
away from that mission
by things that we feel we should be doing.

We need to ask ourselves,
“how are we forging the bonds of neighbourhood?

How are we closing the gap?”

Invitations into the Church
and various celebrations
certainly let the people of Swanscombe
know that we exist,


but without the bond-making,
the cultivation of neighbourhood,
we lack the strings that bind us together.

And clearly we are limited in what we can do.

If we consider ourselves
close to everyone in a radius of 100 miles,
then that’s just too much for us.

If we consider ourselves close
only to the person within 1 inch
then we are clearly too individualistic.

Somehow we have to reach out,
to as many people as we can.

We need to close the gap
even the gap between people
we cannot stand!

It’s a big ask - a huge ask.
-an ask that’s beyond us!

So how do we do it?

Is there an All-powerful Neighbour
who will help us if we ask Him properly?

So how do we ask Him to help us?

Do I have an "identify" crisis?

Knowing Me by Benjamin Zephaniah.

I don't often get the chance to reflect on something written by a Brummie West Indian and Ethiopian poet. But then I'm not just reflecting on something by a Brummie West Indian and Ethiopian poet, I'm reflecting on something written by Benjamin Zephaniah, and even then that's not enough because Benjamin Zephaniah is not just a name either.

The whole charade of identity affects us all.

We try to become something completely, to mould ourselves to a brand as if in doing so we become perfect. We should not seek to become the best Christian by becoming the best Protestant or Catholic, the best Roman- or Anglo- Catholic, the best Prayer Book Catholic or Anglo-Papalist, the best N.O. Anglo-Papalist or Tridentine Anglo-Papalist. That way we whittle down the groups with whom we are prepared to interact to ourselves, a single point spinning aimlessly in our own solitude.

Nor should we seek to become the perfect Roman Catholic by trying to commit mutilation of the person God created in trying to turn ourselves into a perfect replica of Papa Benedict?

In the West, we each have a tendency to have an identity crisis. This is due to the rampant individualisation which tells us that we are free to become what we want ourselves to be, and thus we try to discover who we want ourselves to be. We mould ourselves with plastic surgery, mindset thinking and soul-cleansing, follow the latest fad of fashion designed to bring out "the real you" and the result? Identity crisis!

As soon as we realise that God created us and that He has set us free to become the people that He created, the better. What He created is truly beautiful and what we do to ourselves is to take the lily of the field, re-perfume it with Davidoff, spray it pink, and carve up the petals with a pair of scissors so that they spell out "this is me"! By carving ourselves up, we make ourselves smaller, less the person that God made us to be.

We need to be ourselves in the context of other people. We need to have an "identify" crisis by looking out for people with whom we can identify ourselves in as many different ways as possible. We need not have friends that agree with us. It is possible for an Anglo-Papalist to have a close friend who is a Prayer-Book Catholic. The fact that a difference in Ecclesiology exists does nothing to destroy the fact that they identify with being Christians together. They are individuals that identify in a broad aspect of faith. Unfortunately this is not the case throughout the Catholic Anglican and Anglican Catholic spectrum.

Differences and similarities between human beings need to be seen together in context. Having differences should not be the seen as the privation of being able to identify with the other. Likewise having similarities should not be seen as a route for the destruction of the individual.

Can you identify with me here?

What if...?

Homily preached at Eltham College on 3rd July 2007

You are standing at the desk
of Deal or No Deal.

You've managed
to whittle the number of boxes down to two.

In one lies 1p,
in the other a quarter of a million.

The banker offers you £50,000,
and then Noel Edmonds asks you the question
- Deal or No Deal?

So what do you do?

Take £50,000
and throw away the possibility
that you could have won five times that amount,
or do you reject that amount of money
and risk going home with only 1p?

What's your decision?

[PAUSE]


Decision making affects us all.

Would you rather have
a slice of chocolate cake
or a slice of lemon meringue pie?

A glass of cola or lemonade?

Would you rather go out on a date with
Keira Knightley or Jennifer Lopez?

Sorry girls – Dougie or Harry from McFly?

For the most part,
our decisions are either easy to make
or they aren’t devastatingly important.

It’s when the decisions
are potentially life changing that we start to worry.

[PAUSE]

The problem with big decisions
is that we think to ourselves
“what happens if I make the wrong decision?”
and here begins the dreadful practice
of what-iffing.

“What if I’m choosing the wrong university?”

“What if I find that I’m studying
the wrong subject?”

Of course, it’s a good idea
to get as much information as possible
to satisfy our doubts
in order to make a balanced decision.

But the what-ifs can get sillier.

“What if I don’t make any friends?”

“What if the drinking water tastes funny?”

“What if the room faces west?”

“What if I can’t get the Sci-Fi channel?”

University admissions teams
have heard all these including
“What if the Students’ Union building
runs out of beer?”

Actually,
as important as these questions are at the time,
they are largely irrelevant.

We are only asking them
because we are actually scared rigid
that we are leaving school for a new place
– a new phase in our lives.


This is a decision that
is approaching some of you
faster than others.

It is a decision
that you 11 year-olds have already had to face,
but you did not face it alone,
because you had your parents to help you
And they made the choice with you.

By the time you’re in the sixth form,
your parents can only advise,
it is only you who will have
to make the choice
and that is scary.

That’s when the what-ifs come in.

[PAUSE]

The job of the what-if is
to find an excuse not to change,
not to make that life-altering decision.

A what-if sneaks into your mind
like your little brother sneaks into your room
looking for something to pilfer
– your PS2 game,
your iPod
or your something
potentially embarrassing hidden under the mattress.

A what-if hunts around
looking for your insecurity
and when it finds it,
it plays on it undermining your confidence,
building your fears.

The end result is that
making that decision
becomes a source of anxiety and fear.

It is why some of us cannot face making that decision.

What can you do?

[PAUSE]

There is only one question
you have to answer with any decision
you have to make.

“Will I cope if it all goes Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston”

"Will I cope if it all goes wrong?"

The answer is yes. Always, yes.

If you make the wrong decision in life then,
admittedly, life will become uncomfortable
but you will be able to cope.

You will not face the consequences alone
—unless you choose to do so.
Christians look at the Saints
for their examples of how to live,
and it’s amazing just how many fail.

In fact all of them fail at one point or another.

St Peter denies that he ever knew the Lord
-wrong decision!

St Thomas doubts in the Resurrection
-wrong decision!

St Paul starts off
by making life unpleasant for Christians.
-wrong decision!


But their failure is only part
of their route through life,
and at the end of their lives
– and these three gentlemen
all meet violent ends –
they still shine for us today
from their place in Heaven,
just as God promised them.

We all make wrong choices.

We all embark on a project that is doomed to failure.

But that is life, an important part of life,
a beneficial and fruitful part of life.

Indeed failure is just as much
an achievement as success.

If you work hard and succeed,
then you achieve your goals
and get that high feeling of achievement.

However, if you work hard and you fail
then it is disappointing,
but there is much that you will achieve
through all that hard work.

The benefits of success are immediate;
the benefits of failure can only be seen after a while, but there are still benefits.

[PAUSE]

No-one likes to fail,
but we cannot let the fear of failure ruin our life
by preventing us from making
a life-changing decision.

In the end, it is all a question of Faith.

It is all a question of belief that somehow,
though life may get difficult or painful,
though the night be dark
and we be far from home,

we will be sustained and helped
and grow from our experiences
and find a greater,
more lasting happiness.

Christians believe that
this is one of the benefits
of having Faith in God.

What is the decision that you fear making most?

What will you do to overcome that fear?

Mormon Firefighters

This made me chuckle at the Axegrinder's blog.

What do you think?

You just get what you believe in.

This is an attitude that I seem to be hearing quite a bit. So what precisely does this belief state?

Essentially, it's a palliative statement designed to offend no-one. The whole premise of this statement is that when we die we will all go to the afterlife that we have in our belief system. Those who believe in reincarnation get reincarnated. Those who believe that we go to Heaven go to Heaven, and those who believe in nothing, well, cease to be.

Essentially then we are saved by faith alone! - but faith in what we choose to believe.

Of course from a Christian point of view there are several problems. If God created the Universe, then quite clearly it is His idea of Heaven that counts and not ours. If we reject Him then we reject His Heaven which he prepares for us. If we Christians go to the Heaven we believe in then the God we worship is a created god, nothing more than an idol.

There are other problems with this idea besides Christian doctrine. If we are all in charge of our own afterlife, then this points to another solipsist universe. We become the creators of our own ends. What we say goes. If our final end is our decision, then it is limited by our imagination. There is no Eternity in the Human mind. It is clear from our humanity on Earth that no matter what we enjoy, we can have too much of it. A Heaven of chocolate pudding would soon become a Hell as our taste for chocolate pudding evaporates within the first four hours of our attainment of our personal Nirvana.

Well perhaps our taste for chocolate pudding will never fade. Perhaps we will remain in love with our favourite dessert for all Eternity. Well, then surely we would cease to be the human being that we are. We wouldn't be we! Perhaps that's what we're truly frightened of - being the people we are. Perhaps our Heaven is the place where we find solace from the tyranny of existence. In ceasing to be the people we are, we are faced with only one alternative - Oblivion.

But can we really reconcile an afterlife of Oblivion with a life which sees people suffer pain and misery. Could we really turn to the starving child in Africa as that poor little life ebbs out and say "don't worry, there's nothing after this!" Well perhaps that might be a blessed relief, but where's the justice? A life of suffering followed by nothing? Whose imagination is that? What is the point?

Certainly if the Universe is indeed a the product of a Calabi-Yau 3-fold with a 4D spacetime, then there is plenty of room for us to exist without meeting another person - all 6000 million of us and the ones who have ever lived. But an existence where we go where we believe is inconsistent with our life on Earth. We do live with others. Even the most colossal introvert like myself has experiences of others and it is through those experiences that we grow. If our destiny is to go our own separate ways then what is the point of that interaction? If our end is solipsist, then so surely is our beginning. If not, then why is there an existence over which we have no control which evolves into an "Eternity" of our own imagining?

If our existence is not dependent on an uncreated God, then there seems much inconsistency. Sure, it's possible that I believe in God because He satisfies a desire in me for a consistency of my existence. But the fact that I exist and that others exist with me, apart from me, different from me in a diversity of ways, and there still exists some order as we all try to live together point to the necessity for that consistency. The Natural Law shows us consistency of our experience, and that consistency points to a God who made order from chaos.

I am not a solipsist. There's no way that an introvert like me has the capacity to imagine the different people of the world. I believe in a Creator God and I am pleased to rely on His Eternity a truly Transcendent Eternity rather than my paltry understandings of Infinity. I would rather explore the Heaven of an infinite being rather than the vapid and facile imaginings of my own mind. No. I've no idea what heaven will be like. I don't want to know now because I can't know now. All I can do is trust the One who made me.

Ten in the Bed… the sinister version.

Sadly, one of the most hard-working members of my Parish died on Monday after a long battle with cancer. I couldn't preach according to the lectionary because of the nature of the material.
I therefore preached a more personal sermon today, and I publish what I would have said here.

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Swanscombe on the second Sunday after Trinity Sunday 17th June 2007, based on II Samuel xi.26—xii.15 and St Luke vii.36—viii.3.

Leo is desperate. It is now nearly three days since he last got his fix of Heroin. There is only one clear thought in his head: get the next dose as soon as possible. He searches his pockets, his coat, his room. No money. So he leaves his filthy squat lined with dirty newspapers and even filthier hypodermic needles, in a frantic search for money to stop the pain in his stomach.

On his way he meets Kyle. Kyle refuses to give him any money, so Leo stabs him dead with his rusty penknife. He takes from Kyle a grand total of £3.87. Not enough.

Of course, Leo is caught and convicted of Kyle’s murder.

How long do you think his sentence should be?

[PAUSE]

He is sentenced by the judge to 7 years. Too short?

In prison, Leo attempts to kick the habit. But he is always faced with the same symptoms. He sits in the centre of his cell with a gut-wrenching pain in his stomach, his hands shaking almost uncontrollably, dreading the return of his cell mate. Several times he succumbs and manages to get hold of some heroin from the underground trade. But still he must face the withdrawal symptoms, the same symptoms which cost Kyle his life in return for £3.87, the same symptoms which make Leo wish that he were dead.

Does the severe physical and psychological pain of Leo’s withdrawal symptoms change your mind about what his punishment should be?

For what is Leo being punished?

[PAUSE]

In the court, the obvious charge is murder, but killing Kyle was the result of Leo’s desperation for his next fix of heroin. Heroin is an addictive drug, so is Leo’s real sin getting hooked on it in the first place? But it was his girlfriend Britney at his sixteenth birthday party who persuaded him to take heroin in the first place because it felt good.

So what was the cause of the chain of events that resulted in Kyle’s death?

[PAUSE]

Sin begets sin. It’s like a sinister version of “There were ten in the bed.” When the little one says, “Roll over,” someone ends up falling out. Someone said “Roll over” and the result was that Leo fell out. It only has to be a little one.

There is always someone who shouts “roll over.”

Robert forgets to hold the door open for Nancy and it hits her, taking the skin off her elbow. This puts her in a bad mood so she shouts at her secretary Jean for being, in her words, “bone idle”. Jean takes Nancy’s criticisms seriously and tries to compensate by working harder. She spends more and more time at the office trying to sort out what to do, so much so that she forgets about the needs of her children Bradley and Britney who crave attention from their mother and, without her guidance, start to wander away from the straight and narrow. And then Britney gets invited to a sixteenth birthday party where she meets Leo…

So is Robert’s unthinking action the cause of Kyle’s death?

Not entirely, but his actions certainly contribute. The cause of Kyle’s death goes back further in many, many directions and things get more complicated and twisted and we lose track of who caused what.

[PAUSE]

“For by one man came death…” As Christians, we believe that all sin has its source from our very beginning as human beings and we can see that that very first sin has affected humanity all around us, and will continue to do so.

As Christians, we come here every week and say “we have sinned.” How often, though, do we think honestly of the consequences of our actions? A moment’s lack of thought can set the wheels in motion for a murder. This isn’t something we like to think about, but it’s true – each burst of bad temper, each incident of “oh it doesn’t matter, no-one will notice,” each “I wish I were married to his wife” adds to a stream of events which will end in catastrophe for someone.

How could we live with ourselves if we knew the full extent of our actions?

[PAUSE]

One woman knows.

It frightens her. She’s filled with remorse at her actions as she sees their effects on her life and the life of her community. It seems that everyone around her is pointing – sinner! They believe her to be fully responsible for some of the unpleasantness in this town. Her sin is always before her and she cannot shake off the guilt. So what can she do?

She sees Him at dinner in Simon the Pharisee’s house and she begins to weep for her sins, for what she’s done, washing His feet with her tears – and her sins are washed away by His love. She is free from the guilt.

She still has to live with the consequences of her sin. She is still called sinner and shunned by those who have not heard the message of the Son of God. In the eyes of this world, nothing changes. But through her encounter with the living Christ she finds out that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.

[PAUSE]

Through the love of God the effects of our sins are cancelled out. They die with us in this frail and fleeting world. To be forgiven fully, we need to bring all that we have done to Him in honesty. This is why the confession at Mass is so important - we need to say “I have sinned”. We will only be forgiven as much as we are willing to confess. Christ shows us that in His parable.

How much was your confession worth today?

Extra ecclesiam nulla salus

Debate on this has been raging in the Anglo-Catholic Central message board. Is a Protestant sufficiently outside the Catholic Church to be excluded from Salvation?

We might be able to argue contrariwise through the Fathers, maybe even from Scripture itself that anyone outside of the Catholic Faith cannot be saved. However, one thing disturbs me - I Corinthians xiii.

si linguis hominum loquar et angelorum caritatem autem non habeam factus sum
velut aes sonans aut cymbalum tinniens.

I'm sure that we can argue someone outside of the the Church and to Damnation, since St Cyprian is right - there is no salvation outside of the Church. However, Salvation belongs to God.
I am not learned enough to get into this argument on the level of the Fathers, but a mere appeal to I Cor xiii suggests that if we can argue someone out of the Church, then we cannot ourselves be part of it unless we find ourselves in great pain.

How can we speak of the pain of others as Christians and not feel their pain ourselves? Our disunity as Christians is a scandal, and our further schisms too lightly described as "an embarassment". It must hurt us, it must be seen as the worst thing, but if people have no choice but to walk away then what can we do?

That there is a clear demarcation between right and wrong is correct. That we can see a clear demarcation between right and wrong is absolutely fallacious. The boundary between right and wrong is fractal possessing structure on every scale of magnitude. Get too close and you lose the bigger picture, go too far out and you lose the fine detail. Only an infinite mind can resolve an infinite structure. There are things which are irreconcileable within the paucity of our belief.

There are the "pot-boilers" which inflame polemics between the Catholic Church and the Protestant. As I said below, I believe the Catholic Church to be more consistent in its interpretation of the Divine Will from His Revelation. Only when this consistency is rejected do the "pot-boilers" become valid because they are argued from inconsistency.

We cannot adopt consistency and inconsistency. Either the ordination of women is valid or it is not. Since it is not valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church, there is an irreconcilable split between those who hold it and those who don't. Does this damn women "priests" and their supporters? I pray to God that it isn't so, but I do believe that they have put themselves into severe danger.

So the Church is split, rent and fragmented into Communions and all we can do is follow the Rule of St Benedict and never despair of the mercy of God. We must also trust in God's ability to hold contradictions together. Reconciliation can and will only occur as a result of the Grace of God and if I am honest it will only occur at His hands. Until then the talking must occur, but there must also be a time for silence.

Making sense of beyond sense.

In some ways I'm at a bit of a disadvantage being a mathematician. It does mean that taking things on trust is not a natural thing to do. Of course there exists for each of us a level where we are forced to take something on trust, but some seem quicker to do this than others.

Unlike mathematics or science, Religion is not based on assumptions but certain inspirations and revelations, and it is upon these that the whole identity of the religion is based. Looking at the complexity of Catholic Doctrine, I can understand why some feel that it is restricting and stifles the spirit. Why is Christ's message of the love of God and the love of our fellow man not proclaimed as simply by the Church? Surely the doctrine of the Real Presence is unnecessary? Why do we ask the prayers of the dead? There does seem to be an inordinate complexity to all of these issues, but largely how does this complexity arise?

Complexity arises because of consistency. If we in the 21st Century are to find ourselves following the same religion as the Fathers, then we have to be consistent with their teaching. But why is consistency necessary? Is it necessary for our Faith to "make sense"?

It is necessary for us to understand what it means "to make sense". A religion exists to provide some meaning to our lives, to answer questions, to provide us with the means for a well-formed judgment, and a reliable direction for our lives' journeys. It also provides us with some comfortable cloud of unknowing in which, although not all of our questions have answers, our lives can go on regardless of not having those answers. One only has to read the works of the Cappadocian Fathers to see the edges of human understanding when they describe God as having a reality beyond all being, and that even the word "being" does not do justice to his existence because His reality transcends the idea of existence.

This makes our mind boggle and rightly so. Our understanding hits a wall and can proceed no further, but our relationship continues beyond our thoughts and into the darkness of Love.
However, in knowing that there are boundaries to our understanding there is a great temptation for us to be fearful or lazy about the limits of our thought that we feel that we can make statements which contradict our faith but need not be defended because their defense lies within the Cloud of Unknowing.

For example, Dr Ann Holmes Redding claims that it is perfectly consistent to be both a Moslem and a Christian. It may be consistent to live according to societal rules of both Islamic and Religious Cultures which are certainly consistent, but there is no Moslem that would subscribe to the Nicene-Creed as interpreted by the Catholic Church.

I am a Catholic because it is the most consistent expression of the Christian Religion. It eliminates personal interpretation of Revelation. Some may argue that this is a bad thing because it removes the possibility of God's personal relationship with the individual. But a submission to the Catholic Faith is a submission to a stable rock of Doctrine independent of the "winds of doctrine" produced by the winds of Zeitgeist. If the Christian Faith changes from century to century, how can we be sure that it is any way the Faith founded by Christ? If the Fathers held to the Real Presence - i.e. the physical presence of Christ in the Consecrated Eucharistic elements - then we must hold to the Real Presence. If not, then we have to answer the question: when the Presence suddenly cease to be Real? Was the Church so horribly mistaken? If it was mistaken, then how do we know it was right in everything else?
We could just cast the inconsistency into the Cloud of Unknowing and say "Oh well, it's a matter of faith", but if we investigate in honesty then we find that the inconsistency does not lie in the Transcendent nature of God, but rather the doctrine of men.

Of course, we can only make inroads into the unfathomable Cloud if we continue to talk and continue to treasure our beliefs almost simultaneously. God gave consistency to us so that we might have stability and order. It is a typical trait of our God to create order out of Chaos, and while our Church may be buffeted by strong winds at the moment, as long as we hold onto the order that the Church possesses by virtue of her espousal to God, then we shall pass cheerfully and boldly into that cloud validly and with humble boldness and eventually out into the knowledge of God.

It's a mystery...

Homily preached at Eltham College on Corpus Christi 7th June 2006.

A man walks into a Church
and goes into the Confessional.

"Father," he says,
"this is my first confession,
and I have a terrible sin to confess."

"Don't worry, my son,"
says the priest,
"I am duty bound not to reveal
anything said in this confessional."

"Are you sure, Father?

It's a terrible sin that I've committed,
and I'm so ashamed."

"Of course I'm sure, my son.

I cannot utter it to anyone at all,
even you after you leave."

"Then I can confess?

Oh, but it's a terrible sin."

"Yes my Son.

It'll remain between you,
me and God, I promise.

Now tell me all about it."

So the man confesses his sin to the priest.

[PAUSE]

And the priest?

Well he's a man of his word....

[PAUSE]

It's irritating when
our curiosity is not satisfied
- when we run up against something
that we’d like to know
but can’t find the answer.

It causes us frustration.

It's the same feeling
we get when we're trying to fill in
the Times Crossword which,
judging by the complexity of the clues,
seems to have been compiled
by someone who's
had fifty-seven Red Bull's and has been picking the clues
from the Oxford English
dictionary at
random with a pin.

Here at school,
there are many mysteries
that we face as both students and staff.

Why is it that the interactive whiteboard
always fails when the teacher wants
to use a PowerPoint Presentation?

Why do we have to learn
to solve simultaneous equations?

Why is it that the French
can't pronounce the last letters
of any of their words?

[PAUSE]

Life is full of mysteries,
some which can be explained.

Why does toast always land butter-side down?

Well it's because of the relative sizes of chairs,
tables and toast which allow only
time for a half spin of toast
before it hits the ground?

Why are ghosts always grey shadows?

Well, a scientist in Coventry
proved that low frequency vibrations
affect the eyes and brain
to produce sensations in
the peripheral vision
making grey shapes
in the corner of the eye.

How can we find out how old Sir Patrick Moore is?

Well, there's always radio-carbon dating.

[PAUSE]

On a more serious note,
Science and Religion always appear
to be at loggerheads when it comes
to explaining mysteries:
Evolution versus Creationism,
Life after death –
heaven
or nothing at all?

It’s important to realise that
despite explanations,
the issues of the Beginning of the Universe,
the Dawn of Man,
the Meaning of Life
and Life after Death
can only be nothing more
than theories.

No-one was about
at the Beginning of the Universe
to ask God just how He was going to create it.

Three million years ago,
there was no intrepid journalist
scouring the savannah planes with a microphone
grilling gorillas in the hope that
one would say
“well, actually
I’m evolving into
a human being.”

Science deals with observables,
hypotheses that we can test by experimenting.

Religion deals with unobservables,
things that we cannot even begin
to test empirically- by experiment.

How do you test for Life after Death?

Use an unusually long pair of tweezers
to extract people from Purgatory and ask them?

[PAUSE]

The Christian Faith challenges us
to accept that there will always be things
that we cannot adequately explain.

It challenges us
to live without knowing all the answers.

We have no scientific proof of the existence of God –
we never will have
because we can't stick God into a centrifuge.

We cannot understand the Holy Trinity
because there is nothing like the Holy Trinity
within range of our chemistry set.

We have to live with these mysteries by Faith.
Interestingly,
there is no scientific proof
for the non-existence of God –
nor will there be.

Atheism is just as much a matter of faith
as Theism.

So if there will always be
things we don’t know,
what’s the point of finding anything out?

What’s the point of school
if at the end of it we find ourselves
with more questions than answers?

[PAUSE]

Education exists so that
we can handle mystery
in a responsible and respectful manner.

We can only find out
what we don’t know by looking at
what we do know.

We can only affirm
what we believe by testing
it honestly and rigorously
in the world around us.
In education,
we cannot just say “I don’t know” and leave it there.


We have to say
“well, what do I know?”
and go from there.

That’s a good exam tip, by the way.

The major causes of
religious intolerance occur between folk
who cannot handle mystery in a responsible way.

It’s one thing to believe that you’re right –
it’s fine to believe that you are right –
so long as you are honest
about your reasons for believing
what you do,
and are also honest
about what you don’t know.

You have to be responsible in treating those
who don’t share your beliefs
with the dignity that any human being deserves
by virtue of being a human being.

You can only really find out what you do
and don’t know
by talking to people.


An honest debate is good –
debate is necessary! –
even if it does get heated,
as long as, after the debate,
both sides can shake hands and say words of kindness
and appreciation to the other.

What is the greatest mystery in your life?

What are you doing to get to the bottom of it?

Learning for life

Homily preached at Eltham College on 23rd May 2007.

It’s amazing.

By the time you’re ten,
you’ve learned to walk,
talk and communicate,
and deal with a complexity
of emotions,
intellectual demands
and ways of coping
with grown ups.

Ten years
to master an astonishing array of activities
of enormous complexity and intricacy
is an utterly remarkable achievement.

Science has not caught up
with the basic things that a human being can do.

Where is the computer
that can walk
and talk
and think for itself
and engage with human beings
in a meaningful manner?

The answer is not George Bush:
I did say “able to think”.


The human capacity to learn
is a created miracle.

But where does all this learning start?

How does a human being learn?

[PAUSE]

A new-born baby learns who it is
by watching and listening.

In the first year of its life,
when it isn’t eating,
sleeping,
or producing smells that could strip
an Indian restaurant
of its flock wallpaper,
a baby is accumulating,
processing
and utilising a vast quantity of information
from what it sees in the world around,
and it doesn’t stop!

Even as we grow
from being a baby to the people we are now,
we are adapting ourselves
evolving
according to what we see
in the world around us.

Every experience
imprints itself on our minds
and we are changed
according to how we react
to that experience.

We learn to use a lathe
because we see how a skilled professional uses it.

We learn to solve a quadratic equation,
because we see how our maths teacher
solves a quadratic equation.

We learn by what we see happening around us,
and we are changed
by how we perceive them.

“We evolve into the images
that we have inside our head.

We become what we see.”

[Jerry Mander as quoted by Henri Nouwen]

Unfortunately,
most of what we see is television
or lies on the other side
of a computer monitor.

[PAUSE]

We have a brain with
100 thousand million neurons,
which is capable of producing
internal thought pathways
which number 10
to the power of 2.5 billion.

So what is the raw material for its learning?

What is it that is shaping us
as we journey through life?

Baywatch?

Grand Theft Auto?

Pop Idol?

The various and vapid spin-offs
from Big Brother?

Do we honestly expect to learn
what it means to be a human being
through what we watch on television?

It is truly depressing
the number of people
that believe that Coronation Street is real.

What do we hope to learn from soaps?

Perhaps they do provide some useful tips
for the correct way to start a fight in a pub,

or to commit perjury in the hope
of some carnal reciprocation

or deal with that awkward social situation
when your mother’s cousin announces
that he’s been having an affair
with your best friend’s aunt
but that he’s discovered he’s gay
and now wants to get friendly
with the family vet.

[PAUSE]

The only way we learn to live is
by living a real life.

The only way we can become human
is to make those images in our head
as close to the truth as is possible.


[PAUSE]
Some of us have friends on the internet.

We email,
we interact,
we “talk”,
we share information
–perhaps too much information.

But it is still only a half-world.

We miss information
in the way a person communicates
because we fail to hear
the subtle changes of pitch in the voice,
see the slightly worried look
on the face of a friend.
If we live our lives on email,
then we cannot get any more
than a coarse understanding of the people
our friends are.

There isn’t an emoticon
that can adequately express
“I’m glad to hear from you
but I’m slightly annoyed because
the cat has just coughed up a fir-ball
on the rug behind me.”

[PAUSE]

This all sounds harmless.

But...

Consider.

There are many young men
who see nothing but violence
and become both victim
and perpetrator of violent crime.

And this is in London.

They only learn from what they see.

What they see is a disregard for life.

What they see are
ways of getting what they want,
healing a wounded pride
even having fun
by violence.

Their own way is all they seeand getting it at all costs.

The result is a catalogue of names
of lives needlessly snuffed out:

Kodjo Yenga,
Kamilah Peniston,
Adam Regis,
Stephen Lawrence
… the list goes on.


The only hope that they have
is for someone to show them
a different
a better way of living.


They need to see
how respect for other people,
support from other people,
generosity from other people,
actually work.

They need to see this attitude in action
not taught to them in theory.

Who can show them?

[PAUSE]

“We evolve into the images
that we have inside our head.

We become what we see.”

Who are you evolving into?

Vox Populi Aut Vox Serpentis?

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Swanscombe on 20th May 2007, the Sunday after Ascension, based on Acts xvi.16-34.

Can you hear her voice?

There, at the back,
the slave girl in the grubby tunic,
can you hear what she’s saying?

Amid the toil and bustle of Philippi,
all the noises of the street,
all the crowd pressing and milling,
can you hear what she is calling out to you?

This is the girl
who is following St Paul and St Silas
as they preach the wonderful news
about the love of God for human beings.

Listen as she adds her voice to those of the apostles:

"These men are the servants
of the Most High God,
who proclaim to us
the way of salvation."

[PAUSE]
This girl is a marvel.

This girl is gifted with a voice of foretelling.

She can speak with the voice of the future,
and she is responsible
for the well-being
of many of the citizens of Philippi
because of what she says.

Last year, Hermas
the wine-seller
sought her advice over the grape harvest.

She told him it would be a bad year for grapes,
so he prepared himself. In fact not only did he survive the year,
but he also made a tidy profit.

That is why Hermas is richer now,
and happier,
all because of this girl and what she has to say.

He is not the only citizen of Philippi
to have benefited in this way.

So now, what is the slave-girl telling us?

"These men are the servants
of the Most High God,
who proclaim to us
the way of salvation."

St. Paul looks at her in that odd way.
Clearl he is angry.

A prayer to Christ,
a word from him,
and the spirit is cast out.


What’s so wrong with what she’s saying?

[PAUSE]

"These men are the servants
of the Most High God,
who proclaim to us
the way of salvation."

Isn’t this true?

Why is it that St Paul gets his dander up and casts the spirit out?

Surely the spirit was on the side of God – it was telling the truth wasn’t it?

Perhaps St Paul is jealous
that she is stealing his thunder.


After all, he is just a sexist who doesn’t allow women to teach.

What has he got to fear
from a little slave-girl
who has special powers and is using them
to agree with what he’s saying?

Can’t St Paul hear what this girl is saying?

Can't we?

[PAUSE]

No!

It’s not the girl who’s speaking.

Listen carefully.

We cannot hear the girl at all!

We have not once heard her voice.

It is not the girl who’s talking,
it’s this spirit of divination,
a spirit that sees the future.

A spirit that has a name.

In Greek,
the spirit of divination is called Python.

In the Greek speaking world,
Pythonian spirits speak through people
using them like ventriloquists’ dummies.

For us less familiar with the beliefs of the Greeks, t
he word Python has only one meaning
– a large snake or serpent.

What images does that conjure up in your mind?

[PAUSE]

The girl is not speaking
through her own volition,
through her own belief.

She is being controlled by this spirit,
and this is what disturbs Paul.

God has created us to be free to worship Him.

For our lives to be controlled by others,
our choices made by someone else,
our mouths to speak someone else's words
is contrary to the will of God.

St Paul has a choice.

Does he believe the spirit,
or does he cast it out?

And what is Python saying?
"These men are the servants
of the Most High God,
who proclaim to us the way of salvation."

Can’t St Paul use this?

[PAUSE]

What Python says is perfectly true,
but that’s spirits all over.

If you want a false message to be believed
then you have to wrap it up tightly in what is true.

All spirits are aware of God.

Any spirit can speak of God,
whether they are good or evil.

An evil spirit will use the truth
to win people over
before slowly poisoning them
by twisting the truth very carefully.

These men are the servants
of the Most High God,
who proclaim to us the way of salvation."

It sounds okay,
but listen to the wider context.

The girl is not speaking with her voice.
Why should a good spirit prevent
someone speaking from their own will?

The girl earns a fortune for her masters.

The word of God is freely given to anyone who will listen.

The salvation that God gives
comes to us through Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Why then would a good spirit fail
to mention Him
but rather speak only of Paul and Silas
in the hope of making them seem more important
than the message they have to share.

The spirit has sought only
to tempt Paul and Silas with self-importance
to corrupt the message that Paul and Silas bear.

The spirit is removed.

The girl is free.

[PAUSE]

Last Thursday
we saw Our Lord ascend into Heaven,
leaving us without a physical presence
of God on the Earth.

How then do we continue
to live without Him telling us the truth?

How do we hear the voice of God
if there are Pythons snaking around us,
hissing half-truths into our ears,
telling us things which sound okay,
but are not?

There are even voices speaking
in the churches which sound okay,
but are not,
really not!

How do we cut through
the voice of the snake
to hear the voice of love?

[PAUSE]

The only way is to get to know the voice of Love.

The more time we spend listening to God
will we recognise His voice in our lives.

The more we pray,
the more we study,
the more we walk in the Faith,
the more we come together in Church
seeking Our Lord Jesus Christ in truth,
the more easily will we the Holy Voice of God.

So whose voice are you hearing now?

I’m right, you’re wrong.

Well, that’s the inevitable content of the phrase “I believe”: unless you believe what I believe, then you are wrong. Of course, this begs many of those wonderful logical paradoxes such as “I believe I am always wrong.” However, our beliefs in whatever religion/spirituality & c, involve us making a statement of fact which contains some integral premise that we cannot justify with empirical or logical evidence.

Even science is founded upon belief, that what we encounter with our senses, or can make some measurement to determine quantities, or can infer through the use of reason is in someway an accurate impression of Reality. It is possible for a scientist to hold to a religious belief since this requires making statements about some quantity that has an unobservable aspect which may or may not affect the observable universe. A Christian who happens to be a scientist may conclude that the existence of an unobservable God whose empirically observable effects are beyond the scope of scientific exploration, such as the Beginning of the Universe, or in the keeping track of the behaviour of countless billions of fundamental particles pinging about the universe like a colossally frenetic game of table-tennis – if indeed we can understand particles in that manner. It is impossible to observe the beginning of the universe: it is impossible for us to keep track of each and every particle in the Universe. There is therefore the necessity of belief, even among scientists.

And then of course there are people who disagree with your beliefs. Now, either they can convince you that there is an error in your belief, or not. If they cannot convince you of error, then quite clearly their belief is either wrong or at best incomplete. So now it is your duty to convince them of an error in your belief. Can you do so? If you can, then nothing changes for you and everything changes for the other; if you can’t then there is some form of stalemate. Worse, if your belief is diametrically opposed to the other, then only one of you can be right. But of course, your belief is still intact, isn’t it? If you really believe what you believe then you must believe that you are right, otherwise your belief makes no sense. Thus your belief has to be right, and the other’s wrong.

So what do you do now? Keep trying to convince the other person of your rectitude, or give ’em up as a lost cause?

So here is the dilemma facing Christians. How far can we tolerate other’s beliefs?

Now the word tolerate seems to have gained some rather interesting baggage, particularly among the Liberal wing of the Church. “Tolerate” really means “to bear”, “to put up with”, “to carry something which you regard as wrong in respect of another”. However, this last statement seems to suggest some form of capitulation to that which you tolerate.

Do we allow Moslems into our pulpits? Well, what’s the pulpit for but to spread the truth about Jesus Christ? How does a Moslem preach about Jesus Christ? Well, he doesn’t because he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ as being the Son of God. It is debatable that the prophet Isa in the Islamic religion is the same person as the Lord. Certainly He isn’t believed in in the same manner in which we Christians believe in Him. Yet some parishes permit an Islamic person to explain their faith from their pulpits? Why?

It is important to engage in dialogue with others; that’s how beliefs are explored, tested and probed. But should this dialogue occur in the pulpit? What if one sits in the congregation in a flurry of doubt and hears the Islamic faith being preached and thus renounces Christianity for Islam? What service has that parish afforded to that one weak in the faith? It’s all done for the sake of tolerance. I say that the Islamic religion is incorrect, and Islamic person would say that the Christian religion is incorrect. Where we will agree is that our beliefs cannot allow us to do anything but disagree about the veracity of the other’s religion.

Surely, if we wish to engage in dialogue with an Islamic person, then it must be done on neutral territory, not in one another’s place of worship.

This is our basis for tolerance. As Christians, we have a duty to engage people in the Gospel of Christ. Realistically, we will preach better if we say nothing and live our beliefs to the best of our abilities. However, we are called to dare to find that neutral ground, walk into its centre and invite others to come into dialogue with us with the utter assurance that our faith gives us that the Christian Faith is the true Faith. We need to dare to enter into conversation, utterly respectful for the other’s freedom to be wrong, utterly mindful of the presence of God within any human being whatever the belief, but utterly prepared for heated discussion (if there is no heat then the discussion will be palliative and platitudinous). Then, at each adjournment of the discussion, we bring all that we gain from this discussion back to our Church and offer it up to God.

This is what the Church is for. The ministry of the Laity is precisely to bring Christ to the coal face of life and to bring that coal-face to Christ. How can we offer this ministry if we accept other viewpoints as possibly being right? Other views may be valid –possible logical alternatives – but if we sincerely believe what we believe, those views are incorrect, inconsistent, or incomplete.

Either we believe, or we don’t. What do you believe? Am I right?

What is a liturgy for?

I answer this question cognisant of my lack of education on the matter. Do correct me!

Liturgies are a good source of division between Christians, and this is natural. The old formula lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivandi, is perfectly true; we will only live and believe what we sincerely pray. In a world where individualism is rife, we are presented with a multitude of liturgies that we are expected to follow. Each liturgy has the purpose to present us with a passage to God Most High in a way that is meaningful i.e. didactic, unifying, humbling and transcendent.

We have to expect a liturgy to teach us about God because that is the One Whom we are aiming to meet at the culmination of the Mass. We cannot meet Whom we do not know, and while we cannot know Him entirely, we can be brought to know Him better. We should be equipped by the liturgy with all that we need to prepare ourselves for the Truth Inerrant.

We have to expect a liturgy to be unifying. The words of St Paul “though we are many, we are one body because we all share in one bread” demonstrate the purpose of the Mass in the light of St John xvii. We come to Mass to become one with God and to be united in Him. Thus, although we may be individuals and indeed created to be individuals, we need to submit ourselves to the liturgy in order to say and mean that, in the words of Olivier Clément, we are all “one human being in the multiplicity of persons”. We bring to Mass with us the complex welter of emotions and memories of our daily experience in the World. We bring with us the imperfections and limitations of our selves. While we seek unity, the potential obstacles to this unity are precisely our persons altered by the disparity of engaging with life which we have to reconcile when we come home to God in the Mass. True unity is something that can only be achieved by God, which is why a liturgy should be one that can be prayed despite who we are. The contents of our hearts and minds must be brought to bear on the task in hand – the worship and adoration (a wonderful word effectively meaning a divine kiss) of the One Who Is.

We have to expect a liturgy to be humbling. The point is that we come to God as we are, as imperfect folk. A liturgy should be something with which we can become familiar so that we can expect to be guided into recognising not only our shortcomings in the Kyrie but also the indelible dignity of love that we have been created to possess in that are permitted to offer Christ as Sacrifice to God through Christ the High Priest upon Christ the Altar. We have to be honest and real with ourselves in our relationship with God. He does not pretend with us, and that’s one of the many reasons that He has instituted the Mass so that we encounter God as He really is in the Consecrated Host. We do not understand that reality, but we understand that He is real. Likewise we have to understand ourselves as being real, not the strange beings that we create in our heads –humility is the key to that and liturgies must force us to realise our true position in the Universe.

We have to expect a liturgy to be transcendent, after all God is infinitely transcendental. (He certainly does not satisfy a polynomial equation – maths joke.) Not for nothing is the word Sacrament translated from mysterium. If a liturgy tries to explain what is going on in simple terms then it cannot be a liturgy. Part of our humiliation in the eyes of God is that we be confronted with the fact that something is happening that cannot be understood. There must be something in the liturgy that will make our minds boggle and wrestle, that will disturb our souls, that will bring a tremor to our knees as we try –and fail – to comprehend the truth that we are in the Presence of God Almighty. In the Western Mass Christ deigns to descend to us, in the East we are lifted up to Christ. The direction of movement we cannot understand for it is beyond the paucity of our dimensions, but nonetheless it happens.

The Liturgy must also transcend history, for we are all part of an Eternal Church where Time is meaningless because God has made it meaningless for us. Now has no meaning different from Then at Mass. We are presented with a different unity, one that spans the ages. As we offer the pax to the brethren whom we can touch, so must we offer our pax to the ones whom we cannot, those before us and those after us. As Christ Himself says, “the first shall be last, and the last first” thus rendering temporal positions and comparisons meaningless in the context of our Humanity.

In the Church of England, it’s easy to worship in a parish in which the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, and Collect for Purity, are habitually replaced with words that have been chosen to make the meaning of the Mass clear to the congregation. The language is basic and uncomplicated - but it does not inspire, it removes the necessity to engage the brain, it prevents people coming up to receive God with furrowed brow as they struggle with what this reality means for them. When the congregation speaks, it is to utter words of submission to love – “have mercy,” “glory!” “I believe,” “cleanse me.” A congregation responds to the love of God, not to utter a magic spell by going through the motions, a liturgy should not inspire automated responses.

However, that’s what we do – automated responses, wandering minds, grudges borne, selfishnesses acted on. I said below that our Masses are all imperfectly presented, but that they are all perfected. Indeed the perfection comes when all the millions of Masses that have ever happened are seen in the context of a single Mass which has taken place in the ages and outside all ages in the Mass in Heaven. For there the Perfect is always present.

I wait with interest for the expected motu proprio of the Holy Father on the Latin Mass will appear, for it seeks to present the Holy See with a better contact with those who are temporally before us. There is very little as humbling as the realisation that one is saying exactly the same words as millions who have gone before, and presenting oneself with them to God Who feeds us with the same food – Our Saviour, Jesus Christ. May the Church never lose this Truth.