Sunday, June 28, 2009
Ships that pass
Homosexuality was raised again in a homily I heard this morning. The priest criticised the Church for its attitude to homosexuals citing the story of Jairus' Daughter and the woman with a haemorrhage as examples of the acceptance of Christ for all people. However, he said nothing to indicate which particular attitude of the Church to Homosexuality was detestable to him.
If I've got this right, the Church says nothing detestable about homosexuality, the doctrine is: being a homosexual is not a sin, fornication is a sin. Homosexuals are acceptable to God, those who reject Him as King refuse to accept Him and thus render themselves unacceptable. I agree that the issue is not black and white, but there is a clarity to which some folk blind themselves.
The priest also went on to say that Christianity is not a set of rules. How right he was - it's one single Rule, the Rule of Christ. We therefore have duties of obedience to His teaching. Christ condemned sin strongly - we ought to hate it so much that we would rather rip off parts of our own bodies rather than fall into it. Christ also gave us the Way to live despite our sin - follow Him His way. If that is not a rule, I don't know what is.
Of course, the issue is ripping the Church to pieces. I find myself reading the account of the shipwreck in Act xxvii.
It's quite fascinating if we see the ship as the Ship of the Church. How, during the storm, the sailors tried to hold her together with ropes, binding the hull, casting out all that was not nailed down, including the tackle and so on. Why did this crisis occur? Because those in control of the ship decided to sail a dangerous course at the worst possible time for their own convenience.
We see the sailors try to flee the ship, letting down the lifeboats ready to cast away from the storm-tossed vessel, yet they heed the voice of St Paul telling them to stay together otherwise they won't be saved. Interestingly, St Paul doesn't make it clear whether all had to stay on board in order for everyone to be saved. If someone had left the ship, would that have doomed everyone? The text doesn't answer that, but it does in my eyes draw attention to the many splittings that are occurring within Anglicanism and the slow disintegration of the Roman Catholic Church in the light of modern storms. It raises the question of the house divided against itself falling. The Church should stand all together or not at all.
I firmly believe that the Church needs to stay together in order to be the vehicle of salvation. Look what happens to the ship. The prow is wedged fast and unmoveable, the stern is ripped to pieces. One could draw parallels with the wise man building the house on rock and the foolish upon the sand, and it does seem to suggest that those who stick to the core traditional and orthodox doctrines of Christianity and remain unmoveable, whereas those who do not find themselves going through the greater ordeal of fragmentation and disintegration.
There is still much to be positive about. The Eucharist is present by which all are nourished. All make it to shore safely floating on bits of the ship. God's promise is that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church. I take that as a positive sign, that the Church does have a future as the vessel that carries all aboard to Salvation through the wounds of Christ. I just hope and pray that God sends us a decent shipwright very soon.
If I've got this right, the Church says nothing detestable about homosexuality, the doctrine is: being a homosexual is not a sin, fornication is a sin. Homosexuals are acceptable to God, those who reject Him as King refuse to accept Him and thus render themselves unacceptable. I agree that the issue is not black and white, but there is a clarity to which some folk blind themselves.
The priest also went on to say that Christianity is not a set of rules. How right he was - it's one single Rule, the Rule of Christ. We therefore have duties of obedience to His teaching. Christ condemned sin strongly - we ought to hate it so much that we would rather rip off parts of our own bodies rather than fall into it. Christ also gave us the Way to live despite our sin - follow Him His way. If that is not a rule, I don't know what is.
Of course, the issue is ripping the Church to pieces. I find myself reading the account of the shipwreck in Act xxvii.
And when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete. But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon.
And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive. And running under a certain island which is called Clauda, we had much work to come by the boat: Which when they had taken up, they used helps, undergirding the ship; and, fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake sail, and so were driven. 18 And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day they lightened the ship;
And the third day we cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship. And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away.
But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me. Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island.
But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country; And sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms. Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day. And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her fall off.
And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat, saying, This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray you to take some meat: for this is for your health: for there shall not an hair fall from the head of any of you. And when he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in presence of them all: and when he had broken it, he began to eat. Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took some meat. And we were in all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls. And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, and cast out the wheat into the sea. And when it was day, they knew not the land: but they discovered a certain creek with a shore, into the which they were minded, if it were possible, to thrust in the ship.
And when they had taken up the anchors, they committed themselves unto the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and hoisted up the mainsail to the wind, and made toward shore. And falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and the forepart stuck fast, and remained unmoveable, but the hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves. And the soldiers' counsel was to kill the prisoners, lest any of them should swim out, and escape. But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea, and get to land: And the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.
It's quite fascinating if we see the ship as the Ship of the Church. How, during the storm, the sailors tried to hold her together with ropes, binding the hull, casting out all that was not nailed down, including the tackle and so on. Why did this crisis occur? Because those in control of the ship decided to sail a dangerous course at the worst possible time for their own convenience.
We see the sailors try to flee the ship, letting down the lifeboats ready to cast away from the storm-tossed vessel, yet they heed the voice of St Paul telling them to stay together otherwise they won't be saved. Interestingly, St Paul doesn't make it clear whether all had to stay on board in order for everyone to be saved. If someone had left the ship, would that have doomed everyone? The text doesn't answer that, but it does in my eyes draw attention to the many splittings that are occurring within Anglicanism and the slow disintegration of the Roman Catholic Church in the light of modern storms. It raises the question of the house divided against itself falling. The Church should stand all together or not at all.
I firmly believe that the Church needs to stay together in order to be the vehicle of salvation. Look what happens to the ship. The prow is wedged fast and unmoveable, the stern is ripped to pieces. One could draw parallels with the wise man building the house on rock and the foolish upon the sand, and it does seem to suggest that those who stick to the core traditional and orthodox doctrines of Christianity and remain unmoveable, whereas those who do not find themselves going through the greater ordeal of fragmentation and disintegration.
There is still much to be positive about. The Eucharist is present by which all are nourished. All make it to shore safely floating on bits of the ship. God's promise is that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church. I take that as a positive sign, that the Church does have a future as the vessel that carries all aboard to Salvation through the wounds of Christ. I just hope and pray that God sends us a decent shipwright very soon.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Christ in casuals?
That they may also ascend: Marcus Cornish’s new bronze statue for Our Lady Immaculate and St Philip Neri RC Church in Uckfield, East Sussex, shows Jesus in billowing contemporary clothing, defying gravity, looking down at and reaching out to all who enter the church.
What do you think?
Storm in a chocolate bar wrapper.
Homily preached at Eltham College on 5th June 2009 based on the fourth chapter of St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians verses 17 to 32.
It’s break time.
Of course, after a double period of P.E.
with your Games Master making you run
from here to the Lake District
and back
in lead-lined wellies,
your stomach feels as empty
as a Big Brother Contestant’s head
and is just as noisy.
Fortunately,
you have prepared for this eventuality:
in your bag is a King-size Twix.
So you find yourself
a spot in the quad with some friends,
take out your Twix from your bag,
open it up…
And woosh, it’s gone!
Snatched out of your hand
by an 11 year-old interloper!
Before he disappears
around the corner at Mach 7,
you can see him stuffing
your break-time snack into his mouth.
How are you feeling now?
[PAUSE]
Angry?
Furious?
Indignant?
Hungry?
What awful thoughts of retribution
are crossing your mind?
Catch the boy, rip off his arm
and beat him to a pulp with the wet end!
Ritually behead him with your shatterproof ruler!
Do something else even nastier with the ruler!
Ah!
But bear in mind,
you’ve got to use that ruler later in maths today.
Certainly these are inventive thoughts,
but what are you going to do really?
[PAUSE]
There doesn’t seem much you can do.
Your Twix has gone forever.
That boy has vanished
into the group playing Manhunt on the field.
All you are left with
is the rumbling of your stomach,
and the rumbling of your seething fury
at what has just ruined your break.
But why are you angry?
Well, duh!
Because someone has stolen your Twix.
Yes, but why does that make you angry?
Perhaps you are angry
because you are hungry after P.E.
You had legitimately purchased something to eat,
and now it has been stolen from you.
You feel cheated, outraged and still hungry.
The conclusion is that
somehow
you want to retrieve what is rightfully yours
which you can’t seeing that
it is now little more than a load of goo
inside another boy’s stomach.
You want exact some sort of judgement
on the perpetrator of this most diabolical of crimes.
But what judgement do you want to exact?
Revenge,
violence,
hatred,
some form of ridicule?
We know that violence in revenge
achieves very little of any worth.
We know that hatred just builds up
more hatred until violence seems inevitable.
Ridicule creates more ill-feeling
and resentment.
Honestly,
how confident are you that,
in this situation at your most angry,
you can administer justice
fairly, proportionately
and appropriately?
[PAUSE]
We could try turning the situation around.
What motive does the boy have
for stealing your Twix in the first place?
It could be for a laugh.
Granted, you don’t find it at all funny.
In fact,
it does say something very tragic
about a person who believes
that stealing from others should be funny.
Surely he is less someone to get angry with
and more someone to be pitied.
It could be that he’s hungry,
just like you,
but hasn’t had the wherewithal
to buy his own Twix.
It could be
that he has other issues in his life
which lead him to commit acts
which are socially unacceptable
– and Twix stealing is certainly
unacceptable.
Again, would that not mean
that he is in need of help,
not vengeance?
Or else,
he’s just too lazy or mean
to get his own Twix from the refectory?
Why should that bother you?
After all, laziness and meanness
bring about their own punishments in life,
and you aren’t lazy or mean, are you?
[PAUSE]
St Paul says: "In your anger do not sin":
Do not let the sun go down
while you are still angry,
do not give the devil a foothold.”
That’s the trouble with anger.
If it isn’t expressed rationally,
but rather purely emotionally,
it rampages like a fire
and causes damage.
When we are angry,
we need to step back,
out of the situation
so we can see the bigger picture.
That takes an awful lot of self-discipline,
but it’s worth learning.
It seems that it is often easier
for young folk like yourselves
to learn this than many adults.
If you’re unemployed,
then it’s easy to be angry at seeing
“foreigners” coming in and “stealing” jobs.
If we give in to the emotion,
then we end up
seeing valuable contributors to our society
as evil.
It is emotions like these
that the far-right use to stir us
into acts of bigotry and racism.
It is possible to be angry justifiably,
whether you are the victim
of a happy-slap chocolate-snatch,
or whether you are angry
at the way the Ghurkhas have been treated.
However,
we mustn’t confuse our passion
for fairness,
justice and liberty
with an uncontrollable emotion.
Like Joanna Lumley,
we can use the energy from our anger
to find rational,
peaceful and effective protests
in order to get our point across.
What we have to get rid of
very quickly
are the feelings
which threaten to consume us
and lead us down paths
of negativity and destruction,
impairing our judgement
and sense of fair play.
[PAUSE]
Twixes come in twos
– hence the name Twix.
You could offer in future
to give one away
to the very boy who has caused you
all this anger.
“Hmmph,”
you say,
“give me one good reason
why I should share with him.”
Can you give one good reason why you shouldn’t?
It’s break time.
Of course, after a double period of P.E.
with your Games Master making you run
from here to the Lake District
and back
in lead-lined wellies,
your stomach feels as empty
as a Big Brother Contestant’s head
and is just as noisy.
Fortunately,
you have prepared for this eventuality:
in your bag is a King-size Twix.
So you find yourself
a spot in the quad with some friends,
take out your Twix from your bag,
open it up…
And woosh, it’s gone!
Snatched out of your hand
by an 11 year-old interloper!
Before he disappears
around the corner at Mach 7,
you can see him stuffing
your break-time snack into his mouth.
How are you feeling now?
[PAUSE]
Angry?
Furious?
Indignant?
Hungry?
What awful thoughts of retribution
are crossing your mind?
Catch the boy, rip off his arm
and beat him to a pulp with the wet end!
Ritually behead him with your shatterproof ruler!
Do something else even nastier with the ruler!
Ah!
But bear in mind,
you’ve got to use that ruler later in maths today.
Certainly these are inventive thoughts,
but what are you going to do really?
[PAUSE]
There doesn’t seem much you can do.
Your Twix has gone forever.
That boy has vanished
into the group playing Manhunt on the field.
All you are left with
is the rumbling of your stomach,
and the rumbling of your seething fury
at what has just ruined your break.
But why are you angry?
Well, duh!
Because someone has stolen your Twix.
Yes, but why does that make you angry?
Perhaps you are angry
because you are hungry after P.E.
You had legitimately purchased something to eat,
and now it has been stolen from you.
You feel cheated, outraged and still hungry.
The conclusion is that
somehow
you want to retrieve what is rightfully yours
which you can’t seeing that
it is now little more than a load of goo
inside another boy’s stomach.
You want exact some sort of judgement
on the perpetrator of this most diabolical of crimes.
But what judgement do you want to exact?
Revenge,
violence,
hatred,
some form of ridicule?
We know that violence in revenge
achieves very little of any worth.
We know that hatred just builds up
more hatred until violence seems inevitable.
Ridicule creates more ill-feeling
and resentment.
Honestly,
how confident are you that,
in this situation at your most angry,
you can administer justice
fairly, proportionately
and appropriately?
[PAUSE]
We could try turning the situation around.
What motive does the boy have
for stealing your Twix in the first place?
It could be for a laugh.
Granted, you don’t find it at all funny.
In fact,
it does say something very tragic
about a person who believes
that stealing from others should be funny.
Surely he is less someone to get angry with
and more someone to be pitied.
It could be that he’s hungry,
just like you,
but hasn’t had the wherewithal
to buy his own Twix.
It could be
that he has other issues in his life
which lead him to commit acts
which are socially unacceptable
– and Twix stealing is certainly
unacceptable.
Again, would that not mean
that he is in need of help,
not vengeance?
Or else,
he’s just too lazy or mean
to get his own Twix from the refectory?
Why should that bother you?
After all, laziness and meanness
bring about their own punishments in life,
and you aren’t lazy or mean, are you?
[PAUSE]
St Paul says: "In your anger do not sin":
Do not let the sun go down
while you are still angry,
do not give the devil a foothold.”
That’s the trouble with anger.
If it isn’t expressed rationally,
but rather purely emotionally,
it rampages like a fire
and causes damage.
When we are angry,
we need to step back,
out of the situation
so we can see the bigger picture.
That takes an awful lot of self-discipline,
but it’s worth learning.
It seems that it is often easier
for young folk like yourselves
to learn this than many adults.
If you’re unemployed,
then it’s easy to be angry at seeing
“foreigners” coming in and “stealing” jobs.
If we give in to the emotion,
then we end up
seeing valuable contributors to our society
as evil.
It is emotions like these
that the far-right use to stir us
into acts of bigotry and racism.
It is possible to be angry justifiably,
whether you are the victim
of a happy-slap chocolate-snatch,
or whether you are angry
at the way the Ghurkhas have been treated.
However,
we mustn’t confuse our passion
for fairness,
justice and liberty
with an uncontrollable emotion.
Like Joanna Lumley,
we can use the energy from our anger
to find rational,
peaceful and effective protests
in order to get our point across.
What we have to get rid of
very quickly
are the feelings
which threaten to consume us
and lead us down paths
of negativity and destruction,
impairing our judgement
and sense of fair play.
[PAUSE]
Twixes come in twos
– hence the name Twix.
You could offer in future
to give one away
to the very boy who has caused you
all this anger.
“Hmmph,”
you say,
“give me one good reason
why I should share with him.”
Can you give one good reason why you shouldn’t?
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
A week and a bit too early!
There is only One God in Perfect Trinity and Perfect Unity, but there seem to be several lesser holy trinities which point to the true Holy Trinity. St Paul's Faith, Hope and Love spring to mind as does St John's Spirit, water and blood. One could say that SS Peter, James and John also form a holy trinity, but that could be stretching the point: they form a triad rather than a trinity. Faith, Hope and Love seem to form a trinity because they seem to have separate identities but the same essence. The way St John speaks of Spirit, water and blood as separate entities yet sharing a unifying testimony, is a lesser trinity than that of Faith, Hope and Love, since their unity of essence is less obvious.
In my mind, there is another holy trinity. The Venerable Bede mentions in a sermon of his that the Peace "which the world cannot give" can only come about through Love. It seems to me that God provides us with a conceptual mirror of His existence in the relationships between Truth, Peace and Love, since all three are the same thing but have a separation and uniqueness of themselves.
God tells us that Love is the source of all things. It is because of Love that God creates all that is. Truth bears witness to the fact that Love exists and is real and, when it comes into contact with what has been created, Truth bears witness to the reality of Creation and the act of its creation in love. The Creature finds Peace only when it has the assurance of Truth of its creation in Love.
So we find ourselves as restless beings in various forms of agony: a cold numbness of complacency, a feverish endeavour to control things and people, a furious pushing away of that which challenges our perceptions and seeks to unseat us from our confidence that what we hold is true, a sickly obsession to finding an anodyne in what is created, and a nausea of believing that others possess the truth, love and peace that we deserve.
A search for the Truth brings Peace through Love. A desire for Peace can only be found in True Love, and Love can only ever lead us to Peace through the revelation of what is True.
Because we were created in love, we ourselves bear in ourselves the Truth of our reality. We do seem to get confused by this, in that we can confuse our truth as an existence separate from other people, or to convince ourselves that the truth can only ever be reached by certain reductionist techniques. Our truth is totally subordinate to the Truth precisely because our truth is the Truth. The Truth of our reality can only be the Truth that God is. We seem more to be obsessed with the tiny diamonds of Truth that permeate our understanding, hoarding them, protecting them, polishing them and examining them rather than realising that these tiny fragments are merely the intersections of the Truth with our empirical reality.
The Church really does possess this Truth, because the Truth is God Himself, yet she only possesses Him in the sense that He desires the embrace of His Bride and yields to that embrace. Yet, at each instant in time, all we will be able to perceive of the Truth are the fragments we have so far collected, and the fragments that we are finding now. Our possession can never be an ownership, merely an experience of Divine Love.
Yet if the Lord Christ tells us that He is the Truth, if St John tells us that God is Love, and the Saviour also describes the Holy Ghost as a comforter, a bringer of Peace, then the trinity of Love, Truth and Peace offer us an active way of living out our belief in God as lovers, peacekeepers and proper scientists.
In my mind, there is another holy trinity. The Venerable Bede mentions in a sermon of his that the Peace "which the world cannot give" can only come about through Love. It seems to me that God provides us with a conceptual mirror of His existence in the relationships between Truth, Peace and Love, since all three are the same thing but have a separation and uniqueness of themselves.
God tells us that Love is the source of all things. It is because of Love that God creates all that is. Truth bears witness to the fact that Love exists and is real and, when it comes into contact with what has been created, Truth bears witness to the reality of Creation and the act of its creation in love. The Creature finds Peace only when it has the assurance of Truth of its creation in Love.
So we find ourselves as restless beings in various forms of agony: a cold numbness of complacency, a feverish endeavour to control things and people, a furious pushing away of that which challenges our perceptions and seeks to unseat us from our confidence that what we hold is true, a sickly obsession to finding an anodyne in what is created, and a nausea of believing that others possess the truth, love and peace that we deserve.
A search for the Truth brings Peace through Love. A desire for Peace can only be found in True Love, and Love can only ever lead us to Peace through the revelation of what is True.
Ἀγαπητοί, νῦν τέκνα θεοῦ ἐσμεν, καὶ οὔπω ἐφανερώθη τί ἐσόμεθα. οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἐὰν φανερωθῇ ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ ἐσόμεθα, ὅτι ὀψόμεθα αὐτὸν καθώς ἐστιν.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
I John iii.2
Because we were created in love, we ourselves bear in ourselves the Truth of our reality. We do seem to get confused by this, in that we can confuse our truth as an existence separate from other people, or to convince ourselves that the truth can only ever be reached by certain reductionist techniques. Our truth is totally subordinate to the Truth precisely because our truth is the Truth. The Truth of our reality can only be the Truth that God is. We seem more to be obsessed with the tiny diamonds of Truth that permeate our understanding, hoarding them, protecting them, polishing them and examining them rather than realising that these tiny fragments are merely the intersections of the Truth with our empirical reality.
The Church really does possess this Truth, because the Truth is God Himself, yet she only possesses Him in the sense that He desires the embrace of His Bride and yields to that embrace. Yet, at each instant in time, all we will be able to perceive of the Truth are the fragments we have so far collected, and the fragments that we are finding now. Our possession can never be an ownership, merely an experience of Divine Love.
Yet if the Lord Christ tells us that He is the Truth, if St John tells us that God is Love, and the Saviour also describes the Holy Ghost as a comforter, a bringer of Peace, then the trinity of Love, Truth and Peace offer us an active way of living out our belief in God as lovers, peacekeepers and proper scientists.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Trust or Trussed II: The Letter to the Gullations?
If you think about it, one of the lessons that life gives you is that people can't be trusted. However, life does not often teach you who can be trusted until it's too late and thus when you have been deceived. It is when you have been deceived and hurt by one whom you have trusted that you find yourself
This raises the issue of gullibility and over-credulity in people. Can it be that actually all Christians are gullible because they spend their time being controlled by the priests and pastors. They are being told what to think by a Magisterium or by pastors under a specific interpretation of the Bible. Even in this day and age, I still meet people who say effectively: "I believe in God because the Bible tells me He exists and I believe what the Bible tells me, because God wrote it." As arguments go, this is pretty weak. At some point, the Christian must be prepared to examine his faith in exterior to the Scripture.
Moderns reject the Real Presence as a piece of supreme gullibility. The body and blood of Christ cannot be physically perceived, so the believer in the Real Presence is being required to believe in something that is not physically verifiable. This, according to some, is a sign of gullibility, that others are seeking to control others through their belief.
If this is true, then to what end? It seems a strange sort of power to control what people believe if it cannot subsequently exploit that belief to some achievable end. If one just rejoices in what one can make others believe, then surely this rejoicing is deeply limited and become unfulfilling unless it moves into some form of exploitation. That is not to say that it cannot happen. I just doubt whether such a practice would last very long.
If gullibility necessarily leads to exploitation, then under what accusation can Christian belief be seen as gullibility? The ends seem obvious; according to the teachings of Christ, Christians are required to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, forgive one's enemies - the perfect mules for the world all for the pie-in-the-sky promise of eternal life.
So are Christians merely victims of a two-millennia long fraud?
Well, I am convinced the veracity of the Scriptural evidence of the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. I find the testimony of St John in his first letter very compelling.
Again, I just don't see the point in lying about such a thing as this, especially when the core doctrine of Christianity is to help people live life well.
One could refer to the Jehovah's Witnesses and their policy on blood transfusions, but then the comeback is "well, isn't this exactly the same as the Catholic stance on contraception and abortion?"
- hating them for deceiving you;
- trusting less in people around you;
- berating yourself for being so stupid.
This raises the issue of gullibility and over-credulity in people. Can it be that actually all Christians are gullible because they spend their time being controlled by the priests and pastors. They are being told what to think by a Magisterium or by pastors under a specific interpretation of the Bible. Even in this day and age, I still meet people who say effectively: "I believe in God because the Bible tells me He exists and I believe what the Bible tells me, because God wrote it." As arguments go, this is pretty weak. At some point, the Christian must be prepared to examine his faith in exterior to the Scripture.
Moderns reject the Real Presence as a piece of supreme gullibility. The body and blood of Christ cannot be physically perceived, so the believer in the Real Presence is being required to believe in something that is not physically verifiable. This, according to some, is a sign of gullibility, that others are seeking to control others through their belief.
If this is true, then to what end? It seems a strange sort of power to control what people believe if it cannot subsequently exploit that belief to some achievable end. If one just rejoices in what one can make others believe, then surely this rejoicing is deeply limited and become unfulfilling unless it moves into some form of exploitation. That is not to say that it cannot happen. I just doubt whether such a practice would last very long.
If gullibility necessarily leads to exploitation, then under what accusation can Christian belief be seen as gullibility? The ends seem obvious; according to the teachings of Christ, Christians are required to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, forgive one's enemies - the perfect mules for the world all for the pie-in-the-sky promise of eternal life.
What fools we must be - the fools for Christ as St Paul would have it. So St Paul's statement must be the way that Christians address the question "are you not being foolish allowing yourselves to be treated in this way, and all for some vague promise that you can't even provide evidence that it exists in the first place?" This provides the unbeliever with "evidence" that Christianity builds in a failsafe to prevent the believer from realising that he is being taken in.
So are Christians merely victims of a two-millennia long fraud?
Well, I am convinced the veracity of the Scriptural evidence of the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. I find the testimony of St John in his first letter very compelling.
Ὃ ἦν ἀπ' ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν, περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life,
Again, I just don't see the point in lying about such a thing as this, especially when the core doctrine of Christianity is to help people live life well.
One could refer to the Jehovah's Witnesses and their policy on blood transfusions, but then the comeback is "well, isn't this exactly the same as the Catholic stance on contraception and abortion?"
Well, I can understand the doctrine on contraception and abortion. Both contraception and abortion stem from views of the body that are inherently damaging. Yes, there are complicated factors, but again, at the heart of these issues is the question: "are we considering the welfare of all lives involved here?" As a Catholic, I believe in the well-being of the unborn as much as in the well-being of the mother. I also question whether it really is better to let lust rampage through society with the widespread use of prophylactics than to teach people to cultivate a deeper love than to scratch animal itches.
I am not convinced that the Jehovah's Witness prohibition of blood transfusion stems from a similar interest in the well-being of others. It seems more to me like an arbitrary proof of faith than a way of deciding how to live well.
It seems then, that the whole difference between cultic gullibility and religious observance lies in whether or not the practice stems from a coherent philosophy of well-being. The Mass may seem arcane and meaningless to an outsider, but its purpose is to bring people together in a state of respect, love and generosity together with the God in whose existence we believe. Yes, the Mass done properly has much intricate ritual which can confuse and annoy those who do not understand what is going on, but each ritual again stems from a desire to be well in the presence of God and this is verifiable with study. If we believe in a God who desires not only to be present with us but to make his presence objective, then this is surely reasonable. The ritual killing of one's children as practised by the followers of Moloch is not.
Of course, the question of gullibility now boils down to a value judgement. If gullibility involves being drawn into believing something "false" and, as a result of that belief, making a "foolish" action then one needs to qualify "false" and "foolish". One also needs to understand what "well-being" is. All good questions, but they do raise doubt upon the militant atheist stance that religion is the opiate of the gullible.
As a Christian, I should look to everyone's happiness - a happiness that God created each one of us to have. Of course I fail, often miserably but I do not believe that I am being conned by some maleficent conspiracy. Judging by how long the Church has existed and the number of grievous errors she has made (the Crusades and the persecution of the Jews), the fact that she still exists with the same message convinces me that the Way is the way.Friday, May 01, 2009
What you don't really want to hear!
I used part of a previously published sermon that I did not actually preach to form the heart of this homily.
Homily preached at Eltham College on Friday 1st May 2009 based on St John v.1-16
Why is it that Christians are unpopular?
For one thing, they go on and on about
trying to lead good lives
and pointing out
everybody’s sins!
When was the last time you sinned?
[PAUSE]
That’s seems rather a rude question
to be asked first thing
on a Friday morning.
How did it make you feel?
Uncomfortable?
Nervous?
Did you find it a laughable question?
Let’s face it.
You don’t want to be told that you’re a sinner.
Nobody does.
The question of sin is not exactly
an issue which makes
Christianity popular.
The idea of sin seems
outdated these days,
just an irrelevance.
What do you think of when you hear the word?
Something rude?
Is saying the word “bum” in chapel a sin?
Is eating too much a sin?
Can a cream bun really be sinful to eat?
Is sin what an MP does
when he runs off with his secretary?
Or is sin just a Christian’s way
of telling everyone to obey
an arbitrary and pointless set of rules
in order to spoil everybody’s fun?
If that’s the image of sin
that we Christians send out,
then we are ourselves failing
to understand what God wants for us,
and that’s a sin too.
[PAUSE]
Whether we are Christian or not,
there is a sense of
right and wrong in all of us
– within limits!
We would agree that deliberately
wiring someone to
the Van der Graaf generator in the physics lab
is clearly a case of murder
and is something
morally and ethically wrong.
Yet, is it murder
to allow a terminally ill patient to die
by turning off their life support machine?
Further than that,
is failing to hold the door open
for someone a sin?
[PAUSE]
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 twins
Bradley and Britney.
They crave attention from their mother
and, without her guidance,
start to wander away
from the straight and narrow.
Britney,
in order to numb the pain
of being ignored by her mother,
and finding her life meaningless,
gets hooked on heroine.
Later, she is invited to an eighteenth birthday party
where she meets Taylor.
They get pally.
She introduces Taylor to heroine.
He gets hooked, loses his job
and gets kicked out of his home.
One day, 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 Taylor stabs him dead with his rusty penknife.
He takes from Kyle a grand total of £3.87.
Not enough.Of course, Taylor is caught
and convicted of Kyle’s murder.
Who is responsible for Kyle’s death?
Taylor? Britney? Jean? Nancy? Robert?
Do you honestly have an answer for that?
[PAUSE]
It’s being said that
it is the greed of bankers
which is to blame for the Credit Crunch.
Do you really agree with that?
But then how did the greed get there in the first place?
[PAUSE]
It could be said that sin is nothing more
than finding different ways of being selfish.
This is a vast subject
and cannot be dealt with
in a couple of sentences.
But even a little selfishness,
as we have seen,
contributes to the suffering of other people.
[PAUSE]
So it seems that sin is serious.
Worse still, we are all guilty of being selfish.
Yes, you knew it didn’t you?
Christians always tell you that you’re a sinner,
but that doesn’t mean that you’re evil.
Actually,
quite the reverse,
it means you are no better,
nor worse than anyone else.
To realise that we all
contribute to the sufferings of others
is a brave thought,
and to seek to stop that suffering
is an even braver thought.
How?
Well it’s all contained in the phrase
“Love your neighbour as yourself”.
To love our neighbours
means that in addition to enjoying our lives,
we need to include
the interests and needs of others
and build them into our enjoyment of life.
To love ourselves means that
we have to see ourselves as we really are,
warts’n’all
and to be happy with who we really are.
[PAUSE]
Yes, we do need to recognise that
sin is a serious business,
that we do fall short in what we do,
but that is not the end of the story.
However far downhill
you think this world is heading
with corporate greed,
teenage pregnancy,
famine and poverty in the third world,
or even vile acts of genocide,
it really doesn’t have to be this way.
We can start
by following the example
of St Francis of Assisi
and look for the image of God
in every single person around us
and treating them
with compassion and interest.
Christianity is all about realising
that we need the direction of God
to prevent sin from destroying us,
and to trust Him to show us how
to limit the effects of Evil.
God has no desire to see us destroyed by sin,
and that’s why He sent Jesus Christ
to die and rise again.
What God offers all of us
is the opportunity to transform the World
into something brilliant,
free from sin and suffering.
After all, that is the message of Easter.
Isn’t it?
Homily preached at Eltham College on Friday 1st May 2009 based on St John v.1-16
Why is it that Christians are unpopular?
For one thing, they go on and on about
trying to lead good lives
and pointing out
everybody’s sins!
When was the last time you sinned?
[PAUSE]
That’s seems rather a rude question
to be asked first thing
on a Friday morning.
How did it make you feel?
Uncomfortable?
Nervous?
Did you find it a laughable question?
Let’s face it.
You don’t want to be told that you’re a sinner.
Nobody does.
The question of sin is not exactly
an issue which makes
Christianity popular.
The idea of sin seems
outdated these days,
just an irrelevance.
What do you think of when you hear the word?
Something rude?
Is saying the word “bum” in chapel a sin?
Is eating too much a sin?
Can a cream bun really be sinful to eat?
Is sin what an MP does
when he runs off with his secretary?
Or is sin just a Christian’s way
of telling everyone to obey
an arbitrary and pointless set of rules
in order to spoil everybody’s fun?
If that’s the image of sin
that we Christians send out,
then we are ourselves failing
to understand what God wants for us,
and that’s a sin too.
[PAUSE]
Whether we are Christian or not,
there is a sense of
right and wrong in all of us
– within limits!
We would agree that deliberately
wiring someone to
the Van der Graaf generator in the physics lab
is clearly a case of murder
and is something
morally and ethically wrong.
Yet, is it murder
to allow a terminally ill patient to die
by turning off their life support machine?
Further than that,
is failing to hold the door open
for someone a sin?
[PAUSE]
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 twins
Bradley and Britney.
They crave attention from their mother
and, without her guidance,
start to wander away
from the straight and narrow.
Britney,
in order to numb the pain
of being ignored by her mother,
and finding her life meaningless,
gets hooked on heroine.
Later, she is invited to an eighteenth birthday party
where she meets Taylor.
They get pally.
She introduces Taylor to heroine.
He gets hooked, loses his job
and gets kicked out of his home.
One day, 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 Taylor stabs him dead with his rusty penknife.
He takes from Kyle a grand total of £3.87.
Not enough.Of course, Taylor is caught
and convicted of Kyle’s murder.
Who is responsible for Kyle’s death?
Taylor? Britney? Jean? Nancy? Robert?
Do you honestly have an answer for that?
[PAUSE]
It’s being said that
it is the greed of bankers
which is to blame for the Credit Crunch.
Do you really agree with that?
But then how did the greed get there in the first place?
[PAUSE]
It could be said that sin is nothing more
than finding different ways of being selfish.
This is a vast subject
and cannot be dealt with
in a couple of sentences.
But even a little selfishness,
as we have seen,
contributes to the suffering of other people.
[PAUSE]
So it seems that sin is serious.
Worse still, we are all guilty of being selfish.
Yes, you knew it didn’t you?
Christians always tell you that you’re a sinner,
but that doesn’t mean that you’re evil.
Actually,
quite the reverse,
it means you are no better,
nor worse than anyone else.
To realise that we all
contribute to the sufferings of others
is a brave thought,
and to seek to stop that suffering
is an even braver thought.
How?
Well it’s all contained in the phrase
“Love your neighbour as yourself”.
To love our neighbours
means that in addition to enjoying our lives,
we need to include
the interests and needs of others
and build them into our enjoyment of life.
To love ourselves means that
we have to see ourselves as we really are,
warts’n’all
and to be happy with who we really are.
[PAUSE]
Yes, we do need to recognise that
sin is a serious business,
that we do fall short in what we do,
but that is not the end of the story.
However far downhill
you think this world is heading
with corporate greed,
teenage pregnancy,
famine and poverty in the third world,
or even vile acts of genocide,
it really doesn’t have to be this way.
We can start
by following the example
of St Francis of Assisi
and look for the image of God
in every single person around us
and treating them
with compassion and interest.
Christianity is all about realising
that we need the direction of God
to prevent sin from destroying us,
and to trust Him to show us how
to limit the effects of Evil.
God has no desire to see us destroyed by sin,
and that’s why He sent Jesus Christ
to die and rise again.
What God offers all of us
is the opportunity to transform the World
into something brilliant,
free from sin and suffering.
After all, that is the message of Easter.
Isn’t it?
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter 2009
It's all doom and gloom at the moment, isn't it?
The Pope speaks about the terrible loss of life in Italy through the Earthquake.
The Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of the need to use the recession as a lesson in anti-materialism. The first item of News in Blighty is about the Labour Party Spin Doctor attempting to slur the Conservative Party leaders.
So what's different from this age from the time of the Resurrection?
It seems mainly to be the technology we use, and the breadth of our ability to communicate our ideas. We are certainly no more enlightened than those who have gone before us. Our political and economic situations don't hold up much hope for the future; the crumbling fabric of our society in a culture of "grab what you can" certainly doesn't fill us up with hope; and the militant atheists seek to drum up more support with their happy and uplifting slogan of "dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return" - it's such a comforting thought that will win many a person over(!)
And into this hot-pot of Pharisaism and Sadducaism, political unrest, hedonism, barbarity and sadness, one little man does something amazing - He rises from the dead. Not ostentatiously, no big bang that shakes Jerusalem and Rome to their very foundations, no rout of the foreign power, He just appears to those who love Him to show them that their faith is not misplaced.
And suddenly, we realise that life is worth living, even though depressions do assail us and that there is something more. Sure, we have nothing to show for it, nothing that will prove that our hope is well-placed, we just have that hope, and our faith and our love that will confound the philosophers and scientists and the cynics of this day and age, just as it always had confounded them in ages past. The problem is that Truth is bigger than the Human Mind and always will be. Only the Church possesses the fulness of Truth and even then I'm not convinced that she possesses it fully in any one particular instant of Time, but cumulatively the truth discovered in each age piling up upon that discovered previously.
But there is work to be done, for I do not believe that the Church is living out her hope as well she might, for many of her congregations are getting choked by the cares of this world. So what is it that we have to do? Pray! Yes, then what?
The Pope speaks about the terrible loss of life in Italy through the Earthquake.
The Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of the need to use the recession as a lesson in anti-materialism. The first item of News in Blighty is about the Labour Party Spin Doctor attempting to slur the Conservative Party leaders.
So what's different from this age from the time of the Resurrection?
It seems mainly to be the technology we use, and the breadth of our ability to communicate our ideas. We are certainly no more enlightened than those who have gone before us. Our political and economic situations don't hold up much hope for the future; the crumbling fabric of our society in a culture of "grab what you can" certainly doesn't fill us up with hope; and the militant atheists seek to drum up more support with their happy and uplifting slogan of "dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return" - it's such a comforting thought that will win many a person over(!)
And into this hot-pot of Pharisaism and Sadducaism, political unrest, hedonism, barbarity and sadness, one little man does something amazing - He rises from the dead. Not ostentatiously, no big bang that shakes Jerusalem and Rome to their very foundations, no rout of the foreign power, He just appears to those who love Him to show them that their faith is not misplaced.
And suddenly, we realise that life is worth living, even though depressions do assail us and that there is something more. Sure, we have nothing to show for it, nothing that will prove that our hope is well-placed, we just have that hope, and our faith and our love that will confound the philosophers and scientists and the cynics of this day and age, just as it always had confounded them in ages past. The problem is that Truth is bigger than the Human Mind and always will be. Only the Church possesses the fulness of Truth and even then I'm not convinced that she possesses it fully in any one particular instant of Time, but cumulatively the truth discovered in each age piling up upon that discovered previously.
But there is work to be done, for I do not believe that the Church is living out her hope as well she might, for many of her congregations are getting choked by the cares of this world. So what is it that we have to do? Pray! Yes, then what?
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Who's Authority?
How about I state the obvious?
Anglicanism is in a wee bit of a pickle!
Recent events among my friends in the Continuum highlight one thing: that the divisions are getting worse and are having a detrimental effect on Christians of all stripes.
A priestly friend has followed his bishop into an Anglican jurisdiction which some hold to have a question mark over aspects of their belief. I trust my friend and his bishop to be acting according to their consciences and their belief in God for the good of their congregations and for the faithful promulgation of the faith. I also know nothing about the jurisdiction into which they have moved, so I remain rather disinterested (not uninterested) in their situation. They have my prayers.
It does strike me as terribly odd that such a move was necessary in the first place. It is nothing less than a scandal that Anglicanism is deteriorating into divisions and factions according to subtle nuances. It seems that no-one seems to want to do anything together these days.
To be honest, I am the last person to be preaching about not joining in with others, seeing that I refuse to play a full part in my own parish on account of the nature of the ἀτάκτως. But then I refuse to be so disorderly. Am I right to go with my own conscience in this matter, or should I submit myself to the authority whom God has set over me?
This isn't just at the heart of Anglicanism, it's present in Roman Catholicism where goodness knows how many thousands are ignoring our Pope's teaching on contraception, or the orthodox monks who are not exactly averse to giving each other a punch up the bracket! This division is a spirit in society itself. Look at how in this country there is no respect for any form of authority. Eggs are thrown at deputy Prime Ministers, Lords are covered in custard, priests are heckled in their pulpits, teachers verbally abused and ignored by students.
Of course, it all stems from the fact that our leaders have let us down in the past. Popes have been corrupt, Kings despotic, priests failing to practise what they preach, governments failing to listen to the people. It seems then that there is no possible way that the Truth of God's existence can have been authoritatively passed from generation to generation.
The Roman Catholic Church says that she is One True Church that possesses the fullness of Truth, so do the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchates, but they are not united. Anglicans have always claimed to be part of the One True Church, yet do not agree on the source of authority, and the Protestants who rely solely on their Bibles (allegedly) cannot agree on the correct interpretation. It's a shambles!
So how can Anglicanism ever be united if some want to do just what the world wants it to do, others stick to the BCP and various interpretations of that and still others wish to be reunited with the Pope? What is Unity in these circumstances?
So what marks should there be for unity? I doubt that I can ever produce a definitive list that is even remotely philosophically or theologically sensible., but I try in the hope that my feeble mutterings may inspire greater minds to make it clear (assuming that they read this!):
1) That Holy Scripture, Orthodox Catholic Tradition and Right Reason are at the heart of the Christian Faith and are authoritative;
2) That at least the first Seven Oecumencial Councils are authoritative;
3) That the Seven Sacraments are ordered according to Catholic and Orthodox Tradition, that their efficacy is recognised and their importance promoted.
4) That there is recognition of others' adherence to other formularies which do not contradict any of (1) or (2).
5) That all conversation between those of different jurisdictions is conducted with the sole view of standing together in the Presence of Christ and seeking nothing that would scandalise the other, but rather that a mutual exploration of the Truth may be achieved.
6) That all attempts must be made for communio in sacris and that all dialogue to this end should never cease.
For me, these represent a start and a hope that there would be some common ground for building a Church that will give society what it needs.
Society has lost its sense of the sacramental. If we cannot venerate Our Lord in Sacramental form in Church, then how would we teach others to venerate Him in their secular lives? If we cannot live together without trying to tear ourselves apart, how can we show the Body of Christ as a united entity?
One of the reasons I stay Anglican is because I have a trust and respect for my Anglican Prayer-book critics. I cannot hold to the Prayer Book as being definitive of Anglicanism, but they do and admittedly that Prayer-Book has been part of Anglicanism for four-and-a-half centuries. That I believe that Anglican Catholicism stems from the pre-Reformation Church in England is a sticking point that affects the relationships between Anglican Papalists and the Prayer-Book Catholics.
It would be a help for unity if either side here did recognise the various intentions behind the other. The Anglican Papalists do seek corporate Unity with Rome and accept the primacy of the Holy Father (though sometimes, I rather cheekily think that we APs do Rome better than Rome does ;-) ) that we are trying to hold two jurisdictions together, rather than allow them to drift further apart. We seek the impossible and logically contradictory - the reconciliation of the Anglican Identity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nor should we pretend at this stage to know how it should be done.
But then, we APs must stay Anglican for the sake of our Prayer-Book Catholic brethren - after all they have sprung from the same cleft in the Church that we have. Theirs is an integrity that comes from objective criticism and it is in part that they struggle to find the nature of the Anglican Identity, which eludes them as much as Unity eludes us. That Rome needs to hear them is clear, since Rome has not heard the Anglican voice for four-and-a-half centuries, and has not benefited from the scholarship and the Anglican reserve which it needed to hear and has only just begun to hear. But then APs and PBCs must stick together for the sheer sake of a coherent Anglicanism.
It is only in the light of this unity that the Liberals might repent and return. We should not cut these misguided iconoclasts off absolutely either.
Anglicanism is in a wee bit of a pickle!
Recent events among my friends in the Continuum highlight one thing: that the divisions are getting worse and are having a detrimental effect on Christians of all stripes.
A priestly friend has followed his bishop into an Anglican jurisdiction which some hold to have a question mark over aspects of their belief. I trust my friend and his bishop to be acting according to their consciences and their belief in God for the good of their congregations and for the faithful promulgation of the faith. I also know nothing about the jurisdiction into which they have moved, so I remain rather disinterested (not uninterested) in their situation. They have my prayers.
It does strike me as terribly odd that such a move was necessary in the first place. It is nothing less than a scandal that Anglicanism is deteriorating into divisions and factions according to subtle nuances. It seems that no-one seems to want to do anything together these days.
To be honest, I am the last person to be preaching about not joining in with others, seeing that I refuse to play a full part in my own parish on account of the nature of the ἀτάκτως. But then I refuse to be so disorderly. Am I right to go with my own conscience in this matter, or should I submit myself to the authority whom God has set over me?
This isn't just at the heart of Anglicanism, it's present in Roman Catholicism where goodness knows how many thousands are ignoring our Pope's teaching on contraception, or the orthodox monks who are not exactly averse to giving each other a punch up the bracket! This division is a spirit in society itself. Look at how in this country there is no respect for any form of authority. Eggs are thrown at deputy Prime Ministers, Lords are covered in custard, priests are heckled in their pulpits, teachers verbally abused and ignored by students.
Of course, it all stems from the fact that our leaders have let us down in the past. Popes have been corrupt, Kings despotic, priests failing to practise what they preach, governments failing to listen to the people. It seems then that there is no possible way that the Truth of God's existence can have been authoritatively passed from generation to generation.
The Roman Catholic Church says that she is One True Church that possesses the fullness of Truth, so do the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchates, but they are not united. Anglicans have always claimed to be part of the One True Church, yet do not agree on the source of authority, and the Protestants who rely solely on their Bibles (allegedly) cannot agree on the correct interpretation. It's a shambles!
So how can Anglicanism ever be united if some want to do just what the world wants it to do, others stick to the BCP and various interpretations of that and still others wish to be reunited with the Pope? What is Unity in these circumstances?
So what marks should there be for unity? I doubt that I can ever produce a definitive list that is even remotely philosophically or theologically sensible., but I try in the hope that my feeble mutterings may inspire greater minds to make it clear (assuming that they read this!):
1) That Holy Scripture, Orthodox Catholic Tradition and Right Reason are at the heart of the Christian Faith and are authoritative;
2) That at least the first Seven Oecumencial Councils are authoritative;
3) That the Seven Sacraments are ordered according to Catholic and Orthodox Tradition, that their efficacy is recognised and their importance promoted.
4) That there is recognition of others' adherence to other formularies which do not contradict any of (1) or (2).
5) That all conversation between those of different jurisdictions is conducted with the sole view of standing together in the Presence of Christ and seeking nothing that would scandalise the other, but rather that a mutual exploration of the Truth may be achieved.
6) That all attempts must be made for communio in sacris and that all dialogue to this end should never cease.
For me, these represent a start and a hope that there would be some common ground for building a Church that will give society what it needs.
Society has lost its sense of the sacramental. If we cannot venerate Our Lord in Sacramental form in Church, then how would we teach others to venerate Him in their secular lives? If we cannot live together without trying to tear ourselves apart, how can we show the Body of Christ as a united entity?
One of the reasons I stay Anglican is because I have a trust and respect for my Anglican Prayer-book critics. I cannot hold to the Prayer Book as being definitive of Anglicanism, but they do and admittedly that Prayer-Book has been part of Anglicanism for four-and-a-half centuries. That I believe that Anglican Catholicism stems from the pre-Reformation Church in England is a sticking point that affects the relationships between Anglican Papalists and the Prayer-Book Catholics.
It would be a help for unity if either side here did recognise the various intentions behind the other. The Anglican Papalists do seek corporate Unity with Rome and accept the primacy of the Holy Father (though sometimes, I rather cheekily think that we APs do Rome better than Rome does ;-) ) that we are trying to hold two jurisdictions together, rather than allow them to drift further apart. We seek the impossible and logically contradictory - the reconciliation of the Anglican Identity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nor should we pretend at this stage to know how it should be done.
But then, we APs must stay Anglican for the sake of our Prayer-Book Catholic brethren - after all they have sprung from the same cleft in the Church that we have. Theirs is an integrity that comes from objective criticism and it is in part that they struggle to find the nature of the Anglican Identity, which eludes them as much as Unity eludes us. That Rome needs to hear them is clear, since Rome has not heard the Anglican voice for four-and-a-half centuries, and has not benefited from the scholarship and the Anglican reserve which it needed to hear and has only just begun to hear. But then APs and PBCs must stick together for the sheer sake of a coherent Anglicanism.
It is only in the light of this unity that the Liberals might repent and return. We should not cut these misguided iconoclasts off absolutely either.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Marah, Meribah and Massah
I've not written for a long time, and I do want to keep up this blog because I find that it at least allows me to set down my thoughts in total so that people can point at the flaws in my thinking. Very useful, especially when I have people who do disagree with me about what the nature of Anglican Catholicism is.
Alas, (Fr.) Marco Vervoorst has given up his blog, largely methinks due to commitment to his growing family and the fact that Third Blog from the Right has run its course. Considering that it started as Traditional Anglo-Papist, shows what a journey he has been through. Perhaps now is the time for him to have a little rest now that he has found some doctrinal stability.
My recent meanderings through the Old Testament have been following the meanderings of the Israelites as they grumble their way across the wilderness for the promised land which the majority never see due to their sheer disobedience to God.
So far for me, the three Ms have occurred in the course of their wanderings: Marah, Meribah and Massah, i.e. bitterness, and (as the Venite puts it) provocation and temptation. The waters of Marah are bitter until Moses throws in a tree that makes the water sweet, whilst Meribah and Massah have the Israelites crying out accusing God and Moses of seeking only to destroy them and showing a complete lack of faith in God. I've always found it rather fun that this occurs in the Wilderness of Sin!
It's very easy to draw parallels with the plight of the Christians in this century and the Israelites way back when. Christianity is no longer the force that it once was in the West, largely because the standards of the Christian Faith have been eroded by Liberalism, materialism and a militant atheism which is largely hedonistic in its expression.
In all walks of Christianity, there are those who move the goalposts just to make life easy for themselves. One only has to look at the outcry about the Holy Father's latest comments about contraception to see that the populace, rather than listen to the message of continence and self-control, are more concerned with the restraint which one needs to show in one's life. We cannot have life all our own way if we are to live together.
So these are the Christians who stay in Egypt and try to build a life for themselves there, and I pray to God that they be saved. Then there are Christians who, acknowledging the Sacrament of the Eucharist as an effective sign of God's nourishment and Salvation, who pass over the waters of the Sea of Reeds into the wilderness.
And here it is that we find ourselves. There is a lot of bitterness in our hearts. Certainly I see it so much in the lives of the many friends that I now have on the Anglican Diaspora Forum, and on the Continuum blog. The trouble is that we know that something is terribly wrong.
It seems to me that the typical Continuer has an enormous strength of character. They have been able to leave the Parishes, Churches and Congregations of their formative years because they have seen something horribly wrong in the way that their same church has been moving. They know what is right and have the Traditions of the Church ingrained in their blood. But that same strength of character is in danger of pushing them away from those who really do care about them, if they carry with them the bitterness that comes from that separation. Who wouldn't carry that bitterness?
The typical Continuer is also American and, from my English perspective, have a larger than life way of committing themselves to a social code. All the Americans that I have met take their religion terribly seriously. They cling to what is right and refuse to concede an inch, because they fear that it was concession that brought them to the wilderness. They feel charged with being disloyal by their erstwhile jurisdictions. One only has to look at Archbishop Coggan referring to the Continuers as disloyal and Archbishop Carey describing opponents of women's "ordination" as heretics. These words sting.
Yet, I don't think I've seen the word "heretic" bandied about so much as in Continuing Circles. Of course, it's true: anyone who departs from the Traditional teaching of the Church is a heretic - that is what the word means.
What the Continuing Church needs is that tree which sweetens all bitterness. If that isn't the tree of life that comes from communio in sacris then I don't really know what it is.
From my point of view, in my peripheral state in the Church of England, the danger for me and those like me is that of Meribah and Massah, the terrible despair that comes from disbelieving that God can and will sustain them in the wilderness. I suspect that my parish have given up on me completely now. I'm not called to do much, but, since quoting II Thessalonians iii.6 at them, I haven't won many friends!
The antidote for this despair is to hope that something will happen which will lift the gloom that surrounds the orthodox Anglican. There is refreshment available and we do have to turn to God together and be reassured that He has said that He would not abandon us.
Continuers and the relics in the Church of England do have to see that Rome is not the enemy, but Rome needs to recognise herself that she has many Egyptians within her hierarchy, and they do need to be recognised.
If Anglicans began to trust each other a little more, then perhaps our Unity may show sufficient light on the world, and on Rome too, to see what needs doing. Why don't we become the example of Unity to all Christians?
Alas, (Fr.) Marco Vervoorst has given up his blog, largely methinks due to commitment to his growing family and the fact that Third Blog from the Right has run its course. Considering that it started as Traditional Anglo-Papist, shows what a journey he has been through. Perhaps now is the time for him to have a little rest now that he has found some doctrinal stability.
My recent meanderings through the Old Testament have been following the meanderings of the Israelites as they grumble their way across the wilderness for the promised land which the majority never see due to their sheer disobedience to God.
So far for me, the three Ms have occurred in the course of their wanderings: Marah, Meribah and Massah, i.e. bitterness, and (as the Venite puts it) provocation and temptation. The waters of Marah are bitter until Moses throws in a tree that makes the water sweet, whilst Meribah and Massah have the Israelites crying out accusing God and Moses of seeking only to destroy them and showing a complete lack of faith in God. I've always found it rather fun that this occurs in the Wilderness of Sin!
It's very easy to draw parallels with the plight of the Christians in this century and the Israelites way back when. Christianity is no longer the force that it once was in the West, largely because the standards of the Christian Faith have been eroded by Liberalism, materialism and a militant atheism which is largely hedonistic in its expression.
In all walks of Christianity, there are those who move the goalposts just to make life easy for themselves. One only has to look at the outcry about the Holy Father's latest comments about contraception to see that the populace, rather than listen to the message of continence and self-control, are more concerned with the restraint which one needs to show in one's life. We cannot have life all our own way if we are to live together.
So these are the Christians who stay in Egypt and try to build a life for themselves there, and I pray to God that they be saved. Then there are Christians who, acknowledging the Sacrament of the Eucharist as an effective sign of God's nourishment and Salvation, who pass over the waters of the Sea of Reeds into the wilderness.
And here it is that we find ourselves. There is a lot of bitterness in our hearts. Certainly I see it so much in the lives of the many friends that I now have on the Anglican Diaspora Forum, and on the Continuum blog. The trouble is that we know that something is terribly wrong.
It seems to me that the typical Continuer has an enormous strength of character. They have been able to leave the Parishes, Churches and Congregations of their formative years because they have seen something horribly wrong in the way that their same church has been moving. They know what is right and have the Traditions of the Church ingrained in their blood. But that same strength of character is in danger of pushing them away from those who really do care about them, if they carry with them the bitterness that comes from that separation. Who wouldn't carry that bitterness?
The typical Continuer is also American and, from my English perspective, have a larger than life way of committing themselves to a social code. All the Americans that I have met take their religion terribly seriously. They cling to what is right and refuse to concede an inch, because they fear that it was concession that brought them to the wilderness. They feel charged with being disloyal by their erstwhile jurisdictions. One only has to look at Archbishop Coggan referring to the Continuers as disloyal and Archbishop Carey describing opponents of women's "ordination" as heretics. These words sting.
Yet, I don't think I've seen the word "heretic" bandied about so much as in Continuing Circles. Of course, it's true: anyone who departs from the Traditional teaching of the Church is a heretic - that is what the word means.
What the Continuing Church needs is that tree which sweetens all bitterness. If that isn't the tree of life that comes from communio in sacris then I don't really know what it is.
From my point of view, in my peripheral state in the Church of England, the danger for me and those like me is that of Meribah and Massah, the terrible despair that comes from disbelieving that God can and will sustain them in the wilderness. I suspect that my parish have given up on me completely now. I'm not called to do much, but, since quoting II Thessalonians iii.6 at them, I haven't won many friends!
The antidote for this despair is to hope that something will happen which will lift the gloom that surrounds the orthodox Anglican. There is refreshment available and we do have to turn to God together and be reassured that He has said that He would not abandon us.
Continuers and the relics in the Church of England do have to see that Rome is not the enemy, but Rome needs to recognise herself that she has many Egyptians within her hierarchy, and they do need to be recognised.
If Anglicans began to trust each other a little more, then perhaps our Unity may show sufficient light on the world, and on Rome too, to see what needs doing. Why don't we become the example of Unity to all Christians?
Monday, March 09, 2009
How much have you been Lent?
Homily preached at Eltham College on 27th February 2009 based on St Matthew iv.1-11
Do you really know who you are?
How would you go about
explaining who you are
to someone who has never met you?
Well chances are,
shortly after you have told them
your name and your age,
you’ll start talking about
your interests and hobbies:
how you enjoy going to parties
and dancing to Lady Gaga,
or sitting at home
reading The Brothers Karamazov;
how you can wield an epee with remarkable skill
or fill in a Sudoku in four minutes flat.
Are you really you because of what you do?
Let’s just say you are not allowed
to explain who you are by your interests
and what you do.
Who are you now?
Well, now perhaps
you’ll try to say something about who you are
by where you live,
where you go to school.
You might start talking about
what you and your family own,
what make of Apple Notebook you own,
what size shoes you take,
the fact that you love kebabs
or a frappuccino
with extra cinnamon.
Are you really you because of what you own?
So now let’s restrict the options further.
You cannot explain who you are
with what you have.
Who are you now?
David’s son,
brother of Phil,
Eric’s friend,
Mia’s boyfriend?
Is that who you are?
That’s sounds like different people.
What about what you remember?
The time you first lost a tooth,
your first words,
your Bar-mitzvah,
that embarrassing incident
with the spoon,
bouncy castle
and tub of mayonnaise?
That’s all in the past, that’s not you.
Let’s say
you are not allowed to explain who you are
using what you own,
what you have done, do,
or what you hope to do,
who your family and friends are,
what you look like
or hope to look like,
or using any memories whatsoever.
Let’s say that you have to say who you are
without using your physical being
or even your thoughts.
Who are you now?
Are you even you
any more without these things?
If you believe that you still exist
even when these things are all gone,
then congratulations,
you cannot be a materialist.
You have just had a glimpse into the wilderness.
In the wilderness,
there’s nothing to define who you are
apart from you yourself.
You come face to face with the person that you are.
It’s like looking in the mirror,
only without the benefit
of hairspray, Clearasil and deodorant.
Is that something that you’d find pleasant,
stuck in the middle of nowhere
with just yourself for company,
warts and all?
And yet some people choose to do just that!
Spend time in a self-inflicted wilderness
trying to discover who on earth they are.
There are people who try to find out
something about who they are
by leaving things behind
which merely distract them from the truth.
In this day and age it’s difficult
to find a modern wilderness,
though Slough and Gravesend
certainly seem to fit the bill.
Indeed for folk who have families
and commitments it is difficult
to just drop everything to find out who we are.
For this purpose,
the three Abrahamic Faiths –
Islam, Judaism and Christianity -
stress the importance of fasting.
In the Christian faith,
the Lord Jesus Himself
chooses to spend time alone in the wilderness
to find out more about Himself.
Later He tells His disciples that
fasting is a necessity in order
to demonstrate to ourselves
that we are not defined
by our needs even for food.
Fasting in former days meant
spending dawn to dusk without eating.
These days,
a fast for a Christian can mean
to give up something we enjoy
to show that what we enjoy
isn’t the centre of our world,
that there is more to us
beyond what we do, say, think
or even fail to do say or think.
However, fasting is easier said than done.
It’s uncomfortable,
and boring,
and you get withdrawal symptoms.
The twinge of hunger
when a chocolate cake is brought into the room,
that feeling of not knowing what to do
since you’ve stopped watching Skins,
the waking in the middle of the night sweating
because you’ve gone without your fix
of swallowing a tube of Smarties in one go.
If it takes the forty days and nights of Lent
giving up console games
or Facebook
for you to realise this about yourself
and also about other people,
then isn’t it worth it?
Of course,
like the Lord Christ,
you will be tempted to give up,
seek out something
to make it more convenient to you
or to make the withdrawal symptoms go away.
Fasting does take strength of character,
and it is precisely that character
that we try to seek in the wilderness
that Lent provides for us.
You see, you exist.
You exist with a dignity,
a humanity and a personality
that can never be taken away from you.
Though you’re not exactly prepared to admit it,
you are actually worth knowing,
each single one of you.
You cannot be defined by things,
or words,
or actions or even ideas.
You are you
and you have every reason to be proud
of being who you are
– no exceptions.
What will it take for you to give up
before you find out more about how wonderful you really are?
Do you really know who you are?
How would you go about
explaining who you are
to someone who has never met you?
Well chances are,
shortly after you have told them
your name and your age,
you’ll start talking about
your interests and hobbies:
how you enjoy going to parties
and dancing to Lady Gaga,
or sitting at home
reading The Brothers Karamazov;
how you can wield an epee with remarkable skill
or fill in a Sudoku in four minutes flat.
Are you really you because of what you do?
Let’s just say you are not allowed
to explain who you are by your interests
and what you do.
Who are you now?
Well, now perhaps
you’ll try to say something about who you are
by where you live,
where you go to school.
You might start talking about
what you and your family own,
what make of Apple Notebook you own,
what size shoes you take,
the fact that you love kebabs
or a frappuccino
with extra cinnamon.
Are you really you because of what you own?
So now let’s restrict the options further.
You cannot explain who you are
with what you have.
Who are you now?
David’s son,
brother of Phil,
Eric’s friend,
Mia’s boyfriend?
Is that who you are?
That’s sounds like different people.
What about what you remember?
The time you first lost a tooth,
your first words,
your Bar-mitzvah,
that embarrassing incident
with the spoon,
bouncy castle
and tub of mayonnaise?
That’s all in the past, that’s not you.
Let’s say
you are not allowed to explain who you are
using what you own,
what you have done, do,
or what you hope to do,
who your family and friends are,
what you look like
or hope to look like,
or using any memories whatsoever.
Let’s say that you have to say who you are
without using your physical being
or even your thoughts.
Who are you now?
Are you even you
any more without these things?
If you believe that you still exist
even when these things are all gone,
then congratulations,
you cannot be a materialist.
You have just had a glimpse into the wilderness.
In the wilderness,
there’s nothing to define who you are
apart from you yourself.
You come face to face with the person that you are.
It’s like looking in the mirror,
only without the benefit
of hairspray, Clearasil and deodorant.
Is that something that you’d find pleasant,
stuck in the middle of nowhere
with just yourself for company,
warts and all?
And yet some people choose to do just that!
Spend time in a self-inflicted wilderness
trying to discover who on earth they are.
There are people who try to find out
something about who they are
by leaving things behind
which merely distract them from the truth.
In this day and age it’s difficult
to find a modern wilderness,
though Slough and Gravesend
certainly seem to fit the bill.
Indeed for folk who have families
and commitments it is difficult
to just drop everything to find out who we are.
For this purpose,
the three Abrahamic Faiths –
Islam, Judaism and Christianity -
stress the importance of fasting.
In the Christian faith,
the Lord Jesus Himself
chooses to spend time alone in the wilderness
to find out more about Himself.
Later He tells His disciples that
fasting is a necessity in order
to demonstrate to ourselves
that we are not defined
by our needs even for food.
Fasting in former days meant
spending dawn to dusk without eating.
These days,
a fast for a Christian can mean
to give up something we enjoy
to show that what we enjoy
isn’t the centre of our world,
that there is more to us
beyond what we do, say, think
or even fail to do say or think.
However, fasting is easier said than done.
It’s uncomfortable,
and boring,
and you get withdrawal symptoms.
The twinge of hunger
when a chocolate cake is brought into the room,
that feeling of not knowing what to do
since you’ve stopped watching Skins,
the waking in the middle of the night sweating
because you’ve gone without your fix
of swallowing a tube of Smarties in one go.
If it takes the forty days and nights of Lent
giving up console games
or Facebook
for you to realise this about yourself
and also about other people,
then isn’t it worth it?
Of course,
like the Lord Christ,
you will be tempted to give up,
seek out something
to make it more convenient to you
or to make the withdrawal symptoms go away.
Fasting does take strength of character,
and it is precisely that character
that we try to seek in the wilderness
that Lent provides for us.
You see, you exist.
You exist with a dignity,
a humanity and a personality
that can never be taken away from you.
Though you’re not exactly prepared to admit it,
you are actually worth knowing,
each single one of you.
You cannot be defined by things,
or words,
or actions or even ideas.
You are you
and you have every reason to be proud
of being who you are
– no exceptions.
What will it take for you to give up
before you find out more about how wonderful you really are?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Another by the Babylonian waters.
I am privileged to have among my acquaintances Fr Anthony Chadwick from the TAC who pops in on the Anglican Diaspora forum when he can. In response to comments made about my previous post, he has published the following reflection which I find rather reassuring. The fact that he thinks that I am young means he is my friend for life, especially since I was asked by one of the boys what it was like arguing personally with Martin Luther!
Thank you Fr Chadwick.
Thank you Fr Chadwick.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
By the waters of Babylon
I've recently set Psalm 136 to music for a couple of friends. It's a psalm that speaks to me very much at them moment, and I've been reflecting on the exile of the Jews from Jerusalem into Babylon.
Certainly the proper Anglo-Catholics in the CofE do feel that they are in some form of exile, especially from the repercussions of the last couple of Synods. The Continuum Churches too are refugees from the iconoclasm and exist (in many cases) in a fragile and delicate state in pockets in England and with a little more stability in the US. Since the schism in the '70s, the Continuers have, in the eyes of the Anglican Communion, been tarred with Archbishop Coggan's unwillingness to accept them as proper Anglicans.
The fact of the matter is that Anglo-Catholics have been and are being systematically pushed out of the Established Church in Britain. Until the twentieth Century the different wings of the Church were in a delicate stability. The rise of the Liberal theology and the fact that it has been allowed to promote the removal of Tradition has prevented Anglo-Catholics from being able to help guide Anglicanism and from playing its part in effective ministry from within the historic Church of England and thus in English society.
So now with another split looming as the Established Church seeks to announce its final renunciation of being part of the Apostolic Church in putting a mitre on a female head, the Anglo-Catholics go further into exile: some will go to the Continuum, some will go to Rome and some will disappear into the woodwork.
It's interesting to note that in Ezra and Nehemiah, the Jews are allowed to rebuild Jerusalem, and lead a life with some semblance of normal Jewish life despite continuing to be in subjugation to another authority. Life goes on, all appears well, but there is an undercurrent, a deep knowledge that things are not really okay and that there is still something that needs to be put right.
The same is true for the Anglican Diaspora. Life goes on, the sacraments are administered, the gospel is preached, the Offices are prayed but still there is something not right in the homes that Anglicans have made for themselves. The acrimony between some Anglican jurisdictions is merely a symptom of this unease.
It was somewhat of a cheer for me to hear the Archbishop of Westminster's remarks:
He also says, prior to the above statement but more importantly in my reckoning:
This certainly points to the only way forward - Unity not diversity. Again "how" is the problem. With apparent differences in worldview, doctrine and motives, the Church Catholic - comprising of Romans, Traditional Anglicans (i.e. those who truly embrace the qualifying adjective), and Orthodox folk - seems unlikely to come together in the near future. There are, however, signs that there is movement within the Continuum between the ACC, APCK and UECNA which may provide the largest body in the Continuum. Also, if anything comes from the TAC's work with Rome, then that too will be a marvellous thing.
Using an analogy that I have used before and, I am sure, others have used before me, the Catholic Churches should be singing a beautiful piece of polyphony. The
words have been written by God for us to sing, and each church sings in its own octave to produce the harmonies of human interaction with God. However, it is clear that some people think that we ought to be singing in unison, and that one part is more accurate than the others. This is not true, nor is it true to say that we know all the words to the hymn-sheet that God has given us; we can only keep singing the words in front of us which will occur, as often happens in polyphony, in different times to other folk. Only in the light of Eternity will those words be revealed as complete.
If we date the English Reformation from 1534, then we will reach its 490th anniversary in 2024. Considering that 490 is a significant number, it will provide us with a date by which we can hope for the end of the exile of the traditional Anglicans from each other.
And what of the Anglican Communion of which I am a member, albeit in a state of impairment? The Continuum rails against her, and justifiably so since she is trying to excise the four Credal marks of the church by interpreting those marks differently from their original meaning, or consigning them to History as things irrelevant. Yes, there has to be a distance between the Continuum and the Communion, but there still needs to be dialogue between them. In the eyes of the Continuum, I am a heretic because I remain in order to be in communion with my Monastic Community of which my involvement is happily deepening. In the eyes of the Communion, the Continuum is an irrelevance because it isn't properly Anglican. Both sides need the space to walk apart, but to recognise the need for each other as well as the need for the Catholic Churches around them.
I pray for an end to the bitterness among Traditional Anglicans - a bitterness which gnaws at my own soul, if I am honest - and also for the opening of the eyes of the Communion to the damage that it is causing herself and the Churches around it by pushing out from her midst into Exile those who cannot accept the modern follies which she pursues.
Certainly the proper Anglo-Catholics in the CofE do feel that they are in some form of exile, especially from the repercussions of the last couple of Synods. The Continuum Churches too are refugees from the iconoclasm and exist (in many cases) in a fragile and delicate state in pockets in England and with a little more stability in the US. Since the schism in the '70s, the Continuers have, in the eyes of the Anglican Communion, been tarred with Archbishop Coggan's unwillingness to accept them as proper Anglicans.
The fact of the matter is that Anglo-Catholics have been and are being systematically pushed out of the Established Church in Britain. Until the twentieth Century the different wings of the Church were in a delicate stability. The rise of the Liberal theology and the fact that it has been allowed to promote the removal of Tradition has prevented Anglo-Catholics from being able to help guide Anglicanism and from playing its part in effective ministry from within the historic Church of England and thus in English society.
So now with another split looming as the Established Church seeks to announce its final renunciation of being part of the Apostolic Church in putting a mitre on a female head, the Anglo-Catholics go further into exile: some will go to the Continuum, some will go to Rome and some will disappear into the woodwork.
It's interesting to note that in Ezra and Nehemiah, the Jews are allowed to rebuild Jerusalem, and lead a life with some semblance of normal Jewish life despite continuing to be in subjugation to another authority. Life goes on, all appears well, but there is an undercurrent, a deep knowledge that things are not really okay and that there is still something that needs to be put right.
The same is true for the Anglican Diaspora. Life goes on, the sacraments are administered, the gospel is preached, the Offices are prayed but still there is something not right in the homes that Anglicans have made for themselves. The acrimony between some Anglican jurisdictions is merely a symptom of this unease.
It was somewhat of a cheer for me to hear the Archbishop of Westminster's remarks:
Let me be frank. Your struggles with issues on Communion which deeply affect the unity of the Anglican Communion, affect us all. Divisions within any Church or Ecclesial Community impoverish the communion of the whole Church.
We Roman Catholics cannot be indifferent to what is happening to our friends in the Anglican Communion and, in particular, in the Church of England. All I can say – and I would not want to be misinterpreted - is that it is only in a fuller and deeper unity that the truth and the demands of the Gospel are to be discerned. In this sense, unity is a prerequisite to truth and you should not settle for less – even if it takes time.
He also says, prior to the above statement but more importantly in my reckoning:
And although Catholics believe that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, that very wording implies that the Roman Catholic Church is not totally self-sufficient, and that in the riches and gifts of other Christian churches are elements that would contribute to its fullness.
This certainly points to the only way forward - Unity not diversity. Again "how" is the problem. With apparent differences in worldview, doctrine and motives, the Church Catholic - comprising of Romans, Traditional Anglicans (i.e. those who truly embrace the qualifying adjective), and Orthodox folk - seems unlikely to come together in the near future. There are, however, signs that there is movement within the Continuum between the ACC, APCK and UECNA which may provide the largest body in the Continuum. Also, if anything comes from the TAC's work with Rome, then that too will be a marvellous thing.
Using an analogy that I have used before and, I am sure, others have used before me, the Catholic Churches should be singing a beautiful piece of polyphony. The
words have been written by God for us to sing, and each church sings in its own octave to produce the harmonies of human interaction with God. However, it is clear that some people think that we ought to be singing in unison, and that one part is more accurate than the others. This is not true, nor is it true to say that we know all the words to the hymn-sheet that God has given us; we can only keep singing the words in front of us which will occur, as often happens in polyphony, in different times to other folk. Only in the light of Eternity will those words be revealed as complete.
If we date the English Reformation from 1534, then we will reach its 490th anniversary in 2024. Considering that 490 is a significant number, it will provide us with a date by which we can hope for the end of the exile of the traditional Anglicans from each other.
And what of the Anglican Communion of which I am a member, albeit in a state of impairment? The Continuum rails against her, and justifiably so since she is trying to excise the four Credal marks of the church by interpreting those marks differently from their original meaning, or consigning them to History as things irrelevant. Yes, there has to be a distance between the Continuum and the Communion, but there still needs to be dialogue between them. In the eyes of the Continuum, I am a heretic because I remain in order to be in communion with my Monastic Community of which my involvement is happily deepening. In the eyes of the Communion, the Continuum is an irrelevance because it isn't properly Anglican. Both sides need the space to walk apart, but to recognise the need for each other as well as the need for the Catholic Churches around them.
I pray for an end to the bitterness among Traditional Anglicans - a bitterness which gnaws at my own soul, if I am honest - and also for the opening of the eyes of the Communion to the damage that it is causing herself and the Churches around it by pushing out from her midst into Exile those who cannot accept the modern follies which she pursues.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Yeah but no but yeah but no...
Homily preached at Eltham College, 29th January 2009.
Why is it that all the nice foods
are supposed to be bad for us?
You don’t see people
coming out of the BP garage
with a bag of celery,
a regular cabbage shake
and a bucket of pop-corn style
Brussels sprouts, do you?
Sales of Krispy Kreme doughnuts
made with lentils and chickpea sprinkles
would not raise a great deal of money
for the charities supported by the school.
Or should the question really be:
why is it that we prefer food that tastes nice,
to the food that we know is good for us?
If we are truly intelligent human beings,
then we ought to be going with what we know
rather than what our stomach tells us.
We tend to contradict ourselves.
But this isn’t the only area of our lives
in which we live in contradiction.
Why are we the owners
of a vast number of entertainment systems,
video games,
DVD players, et c.
and yet still find ourselves
the most bored people on the planet,
while Iraqi children have hours
of genuine amusement
playing together with a few stones?
What are the other ways
in which we contradict ourselves?
[PAUSE]
Bill and Sid are at a party
and a Rachel Stevens look-a-like walks past,
causing Bill and Sid’s eyes to pop out
like organ stops.
Bill turns to Sid,
and, after the usual comments
about her appearance,
Sid intimates that he would not mind
going out with her.
Bill asks “well, blud,
you gonna aks her out?”
Of course Sid replies,
“no, bro, I wanna be cool.”
“So you ain’t gonna aks her out?”
“No!”
“So how’s she gonna become your woman,
bro, if you don’t aks her out?”
“Is ’cos I’s cool.”
“Yeah but no but yeah but no but
if she tinks you’s cool,
then she’s like
he’s got a woman already, man.”
“Yeah but I ain’t got no woman.”
“But she don know that, bro.
You gotta aks her out.”
“yeah, but then she’ll know I ain’t cool,
and she’s like
no way, you ain’t comin near me.
You see man?”
“Yeah,” says Bill, “skeen!”
[PAUSE]
In case you’re not street,
like me,
Sid finds that he can’t ask the lady out
because that would show that he isn’t cool.
However,
cool guys have already got girlfriends
so she will never know that
Sid wants to go out with her unless
he asks her.
Got it?
With attitudes like that,
it’s hard to understand how any adolescent male
attracts a member of the opposite sex.
It’s a contradiction
that perhaps many of you will have wrestled with,
not that you’d admit it.
Our experience is full of contradictions.
Our language contradicts itself:
why is it that our legs are the only things
with a bottom at the top?
Our politics contradicts itself:
we have to spend more money
in order to save money.
Christianity contradicts itself:
God is Three and God is One,
perfect Trinity in perfect Unity.
Even the Bible contradicts itself.
The second book of Samuel,
chapter 24 verse 1 states:
Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel,
and He incited David against them,
saying,
"Go and take a census of Israel and Judah."
Compare that with
the very same event described
in the twenty-first chapter
of the first book of Chronicles.
“Satan rose up against Israel
and incited David to take a census of Israel.”
So who put the idea of a census
into King David’s head?
God or Satan?
How are we to cope
with the contradictions all around us?
[PAUSE]
Well, contradictions don’t usually hurt us.
You don’t make a mathematician’s head explode
just by saying
“This statement is false.”
Admittedly,
contradictions do confuse us,
make us feel uncomfortable,
cause us to lose sleep.
However,
a good contradiction provides human beings
with an opportunity to see a deeper truth
or to accept a challenge into finding out
what’s really happening.
A mathematical contradiction
tells us a great deal about our assumptions
and our methods of reasoning,
but there is usually some form of resolution
achieved by thinking carefully
about what is really meant
For Sid,
he must look at his situation more carefully.
Why does he need
to be cool in the first place?
Isn’t his idea of what is cool
an obstacle to going out
with the woman of his dreams?
Or perhaps,
he is using the idea of cool
to hide the fact that deep down
he is actually terrified of rejection.
If that’s the case,
then he should ask himself,
(or aks himself)
what he will honestly lose if she says no?
If a leg has the bottom at the top,
then doesn’t this motivate us to ask
why our posterior is called a bottom
in the first place?
The fact that God is both
Trinity and a Unity
points to God’s uniqueness in Reality.
The fact that the Bible contradicts itself
points to contradictions
that lie within every single human being.
Many Christians believe that the Bible is true
in what it intends to teach us, and it is this intention that we have to work out.
We can deepen our Faith
by entering into the Mystery
of what we truly believe in.
[PAUSE]
Contradictions provide that opening,
and confusion becomes the sign
that we are beginning to understand,
if we put in the effort.
Resolving a contradiction takes patience,
effort and the ability to live contentedly
with confusion
until the clouds that obscure our view
are lifted.
Of course,
there are ways of tackling a contradiction
that are foolish, and deeply damaging.
We only have to look at the situation in Gaza
to see an obscene contradiction:
that of trying to build peace through war.
How many other human beings
have made the same mistake?
[PAUSE]
There are times in which,
as St Paul himself says,
we don’t do the good things we want to do,
but instead do the evil things we don’t want to do.
For Christians,
we have to trust God to bring about
the transformation of our actions.
Contradictions will always
be with each one of us,
and it is in looking at them
that we find out more about ourselves
and the people we are growing to be?
If we are trying to be understood by others,
then we must first try to understand ourselves,
so that our contradiction doesn’t become
another’s confusion.
Where are the contradictions in the way
that you live your life?
How are you going to use them?
Why is it that all the nice foods
are supposed to be bad for us?
You don’t see people
coming out of the BP garage
with a bag of celery,
a regular cabbage shake
and a bucket of pop-corn style
Brussels sprouts, do you?
Sales of Krispy Kreme doughnuts
made with lentils and chickpea sprinkles
would not raise a great deal of money
for the charities supported by the school.
Or should the question really be:
why is it that we prefer food that tastes nice,
to the food that we know is good for us?
If we are truly intelligent human beings,
then we ought to be going with what we know
rather than what our stomach tells us.
We tend to contradict ourselves.
But this isn’t the only area of our lives
in which we live in contradiction.
Why are we the owners
of a vast number of entertainment systems,
video games,
DVD players, et c.
and yet still find ourselves
the most bored people on the planet,
while Iraqi children have hours
of genuine amusement
playing together with a few stones?
What are the other ways
in which we contradict ourselves?
[PAUSE]
Bill and Sid are at a party
and a Rachel Stevens look-a-like walks past,
causing Bill and Sid’s eyes to pop out
like organ stops.
Bill turns to Sid,
and, after the usual comments
about her appearance,
Sid intimates that he would not mind
going out with her.
Bill asks “well, blud,
you gonna aks her out?”
Of course Sid replies,
“no, bro, I wanna be cool.”
“So you ain’t gonna aks her out?”
“No!”
“So how’s she gonna become your woman,
bro, if you don’t aks her out?”
“Is ’cos I’s cool.”
“Yeah but no but yeah but no but
if she tinks you’s cool,
then she’s like
he’s got a woman already, man.”
“Yeah but I ain’t got no woman.”
“But she don know that, bro.
You gotta aks her out.”
“yeah, but then she’ll know I ain’t cool,
and she’s like
no way, you ain’t comin near me.
You see man?”
“Yeah,” says Bill, “skeen!”
[PAUSE]
In case you’re not street,
like me,
Sid finds that he can’t ask the lady out
because that would show that he isn’t cool.
However,
cool guys have already got girlfriends
so she will never know that
Sid wants to go out with her unless
he asks her.
Got it?
With attitudes like that,
it’s hard to understand how any adolescent male
attracts a member of the opposite sex.
It’s a contradiction
that perhaps many of you will have wrestled with,
not that you’d admit it.
Our experience is full of contradictions.
Our language contradicts itself:
why is it that our legs are the only things
with a bottom at the top?
Our politics contradicts itself:
we have to spend more money
in order to save money.
Christianity contradicts itself:
God is Three and God is One,
perfect Trinity in perfect Unity.
Even the Bible contradicts itself.
The second book of Samuel,
chapter 24 verse 1 states:
Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel,
and He incited David against them,
saying,
"Go and take a census of Israel and Judah."
Compare that with
the very same event described
in the twenty-first chapter
of the first book of Chronicles.
“Satan rose up against Israel
and incited David to take a census of Israel.”
So who put the idea of a census
into King David’s head?
God or Satan?
How are we to cope
with the contradictions all around us?
[PAUSE]
Well, contradictions don’t usually hurt us.
You don’t make a mathematician’s head explode
just by saying
“This statement is false.”
Admittedly,
contradictions do confuse us,
make us feel uncomfortable,
cause us to lose sleep.
However,
a good contradiction provides human beings
with an opportunity to see a deeper truth
or to accept a challenge into finding out
what’s really happening.
A mathematical contradiction
tells us a great deal about our assumptions
and our methods of reasoning,
but there is usually some form of resolution
achieved by thinking carefully
about what is really meant
For Sid,
he must look at his situation more carefully.
Why does he need
to be cool in the first place?
Isn’t his idea of what is cool
an obstacle to going out
with the woman of his dreams?
Or perhaps,
he is using the idea of cool
to hide the fact that deep down
he is actually terrified of rejection.
If that’s the case,
then he should ask himself,
(or aks himself)
what he will honestly lose if she says no?
If a leg has the bottom at the top,
then doesn’t this motivate us to ask
why our posterior is called a bottom
in the first place?
The fact that God is both
Trinity and a Unity
points to God’s uniqueness in Reality.
The fact that the Bible contradicts itself
points to contradictions
that lie within every single human being.
Many Christians believe that the Bible is true
in what it intends to teach us, and it is this intention that we have to work out.
We can deepen our Faith
by entering into the Mystery
of what we truly believe in.
[PAUSE]
Contradictions provide that opening,
and confusion becomes the sign
that we are beginning to understand,
if we put in the effort.
Resolving a contradiction takes patience,
effort and the ability to live contentedly
with confusion
until the clouds that obscure our view
are lifted.
Of course,
there are ways of tackling a contradiction
that are foolish, and deeply damaging.
We only have to look at the situation in Gaza
to see an obscene contradiction:
that of trying to build peace through war.
How many other human beings
have made the same mistake?
[PAUSE]
There are times in which,
as St Paul himself says,
we don’t do the good things we want to do,
but instead do the evil things we don’t want to do.
For Christians,
we have to trust God to bring about
the transformation of our actions.
Contradictions will always
be with each one of us,
and it is in looking at them
that we find out more about ourselves
and the people we are growing to be?
If we are trying to be understood by others,
then we must first try to understand ourselves,
so that our contradiction doesn’t become
another’s confusion.
Where are the contradictions in the way
that you live your life?
How are you going to use them?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sanctity, Sloth and Secularity
There is none as blind as he who does not wish to see, as the old saying goes.
If you were one of those blind men whom Jesus healed, would that really have been something to wish for. In Monty Python's Life of Brian, we are treated to Michael Palin as the man begging for money as an ex-leper citing loss of earnings as a result of a cruel and callous healing by the Lord.
And what a point he has.
Being blind, you spend your life in a comfortable darkness, used to the fact that people don't exactly treat you especially well, knowing just hunger as you sit there on your mat relying on the kindness of others to lead you, or to drop a coin into your lap with a quiet blessing. It's not a good life, but it's comfortable and it is possible to find contentment in that life. Suddenly, there kerfuffle and confusion, and the next thing you know, someone has spat in your eyes and you are suddenly aware of a painful light where once there was darkness - you can see! An veritable iris of colour and cacophany of sights invades what was once a black and intimate mind. And bang goes your comfortable life!
Of course, there's a detail that's being missed here. By and large the Lord healed only those who wanted to be healed, and although this is not always specifically mentioned by the gospel writers in each healing, it seems to be mentioned sufficiently for us to infer that he would only make see those who wanted to see.
The trouble is that the world is full of people who have no intention of looking, or seeing. As I sat at Mass today, it seemed there was no idea of sanctity. Nothing these days is sacred, which is why probably a lot of people worship it. The Chancel seems to be invaded by all and sundry, conversations started during the Peace continue through to the dismissal, and no-one seems to be aware of the ivory Christ hanging, despised and rejected from the ebony cross above the pulpit.
My Parish is a synecdoche of the world. Christ is there, but no-one really wants to be aware of Him or see the shining light of His radience giving colour and meaning to our existence. If they did, sacred spaces would proliferate, places in which there would be no observable difference from any other part of the world, but in the sight beyond sight it would be a place where the veil of observability was thin.
Look at the numbers of tourists going around Cathedrals in Britain today. They enjoy seeing the intricate masonry, and the majestic construction of stone. They may even stop to listen to the pretty music sung by the choir in the morning or evening. But, will they stop to pray, even if the verger calls them to pray for the world each day from the pulpit at midday? No. They want to see the building, trample across the chancel steps, look under the altar cloth, enjoy the curiosity. Stop and look and see what it all means - never!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that, although the list of the seven dealy sins has changed much over the last 1500 years, the sin of Sloth has always been there. Of course, the world regards sloth as a fondness to stay in bed, but then "God gives to His beloved sleep".
Sloth really means this terrible sin called accidie in Latin. And it's the sin that St Benedict loathes, not just in his insistance that monks should work with their hands, but also it appears as the last instruction to the neophyte in Chapter 4 of the Rule: Et de Dei misericordia numquam desperare -never despair of the mercy of God.
Accidie comes from the temptation to give up, to accept the blindness which comes upon us all periodically. In accidie, we believe ourselves to be irredeemable, past hope, past caring and past tense.
But the world has despaired. It has given up hope, and abandoned itself to the blindness of its own consideration. No-one seems to care. The modern C of E seems happy only to offer the placebo of "inclusivity" to the disaffected rather than rebuild the doors to the sacred. Should we really be happy to let people in whose purpose it is just to trample on all that we hold dear? Or shall we just give up.
But then, you see, they trampled on Christ. The most sacred being in the universe was tortured to death for daring to sanctify the human condition, and in doing so He did sanctify it. It was through his more-than-humiliation that He gave us the window into the Divine, the perfect Ikon of Salvation.
Perhaps then, I ought to take heart lest I myself find myself suffering from accidie. I find it deeply distressing to see that no-one can see, let alone defend, the gorgeous, indeterminable presence of God in the sacred space of the church. The newcomer finds nothing remarkable because the regulars find nothing remarkable and show it in their manner. The only way to battle this sin is to stay put, pray and dare to hope that things will change. In God all thigs are possible.
If you were one of those blind men whom Jesus healed, would that really have been something to wish for. In Monty Python's Life of Brian, we are treated to Michael Palin as the man begging for money as an ex-leper citing loss of earnings as a result of a cruel and callous healing by the Lord.
And what a point he has.
Being blind, you spend your life in a comfortable darkness, used to the fact that people don't exactly treat you especially well, knowing just hunger as you sit there on your mat relying on the kindness of others to lead you, or to drop a coin into your lap with a quiet blessing. It's not a good life, but it's comfortable and it is possible to find contentment in that life. Suddenly, there kerfuffle and confusion, and the next thing you know, someone has spat in your eyes and you are suddenly aware of a painful light where once there was darkness - you can see! An veritable iris of colour and cacophany of sights invades what was once a black and intimate mind. And bang goes your comfortable life!
Of course, there's a detail that's being missed here. By and large the Lord healed only those who wanted to be healed, and although this is not always specifically mentioned by the gospel writers in each healing, it seems to be mentioned sufficiently for us to infer that he would only make see those who wanted to see.
The trouble is that the world is full of people who have no intention of looking, or seeing. As I sat at Mass today, it seemed there was no idea of sanctity. Nothing these days is sacred, which is why probably a lot of people worship it. The Chancel seems to be invaded by all and sundry, conversations started during the Peace continue through to the dismissal, and no-one seems to be aware of the ivory Christ hanging, despised and rejected from the ebony cross above the pulpit.
My Parish is a synecdoche of the world. Christ is there, but no-one really wants to be aware of Him or see the shining light of His radience giving colour and meaning to our existence. If they did, sacred spaces would proliferate, places in which there would be no observable difference from any other part of the world, but in the sight beyond sight it would be a place where the veil of observability was thin.
Look at the numbers of tourists going around Cathedrals in Britain today. They enjoy seeing the intricate masonry, and the majestic construction of stone. They may even stop to listen to the pretty music sung by the choir in the morning or evening. But, will they stop to pray, even if the verger calls them to pray for the world each day from the pulpit at midday? No. They want to see the building, trample across the chancel steps, look under the altar cloth, enjoy the curiosity. Stop and look and see what it all means - never!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that, although the list of the seven dealy sins has changed much over the last 1500 years, the sin of Sloth has always been there. Of course, the world regards sloth as a fondness to stay in bed, but then "God gives to His beloved sleep".
Sloth really means this terrible sin called accidie in Latin. And it's the sin that St Benedict loathes, not just in his insistance that monks should work with their hands, but also it appears as the last instruction to the neophyte in Chapter 4 of the Rule: Et de Dei misericordia numquam desperare -never despair of the mercy of God.
Accidie comes from the temptation to give up, to accept the blindness which comes upon us all periodically. In accidie, we believe ourselves to be irredeemable, past hope, past caring and past tense.
But the world has despaired. It has given up hope, and abandoned itself to the blindness of its own consideration. No-one seems to care. The modern C of E seems happy only to offer the placebo of "inclusivity" to the disaffected rather than rebuild the doors to the sacred. Should we really be happy to let people in whose purpose it is just to trample on all that we hold dear? Or shall we just give up.
But then, you see, they trampled on Christ. The most sacred being in the universe was tortured to death for daring to sanctify the human condition, and in doing so He did sanctify it. It was through his more-than-humiliation that He gave us the window into the Divine, the perfect Ikon of Salvation.
Perhaps then, I ought to take heart lest I myself find myself suffering from accidie. I find it deeply distressing to see that no-one can see, let alone defend, the gorgeous, indeterminable presence of God in the sacred space of the church. The newcomer finds nothing remarkable because the regulars find nothing remarkable and show it in their manner. The only way to battle this sin is to stay put, pray and dare to hope that things will change. In God all thigs are possible.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The Celibate Homosexual
I'd just like to draw your attention to Ed Pacht's fascinating article on the issue of homosexuality and celibacy. It is very much worth a read.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Blogday 2008
Another blogday! My third, as it happens.
I've clearly not written as much as I did last year, when I wrote:
Well, what's changed? Very little on the Parish front. I ceased my sabbatical just after Easter, but I no longer preach in church because there is little point if the liturgy is made up and the Mass lacking direction, and there is no attempt to bring the congregation into the presence of God. Anything I preach is now exclusively at the school.
It's also been a year in which my faith has suffered a bit of a blow at the hands of my rationalism. However, according to the BBC Television series Apparitions, it's good to take one's faith out of the box and give it an airing, though that's the trite way of looking at it. God does not exist just to provide explanations to those who have no intention of believing in Him, nor for those who are unwilling to invest some intellectual effort into understanding this universe. As it is I do feel closer to God at the moment as my exile continues.
Ties with Elmore Abbey have improved. I am now in the process of becoming a novice oblate for which I am thankful. Clearly the monks at the Abbey are the subjects of much prayer in their rather diminished state. The Community has enriched the lives of many folk and, in this day and age, they need to continue for the sake of showing how to live the gospel of Christ rather than bellowing it badly from street-corner megaphones.
As for my rabid Anglican Papalism, well, I haven't had much time to think about it of late, though there appears to be movement happening there. It's hard to call oneself a member of a movement if one is, to all intents and purposes, the only exponent of that movement in one's viewpoint. As Fr Straw points out, what I am looking for as an Anglican Papalist (if indeed that is what I am), does not exist - yet.
I am also pleased to have helped to set up the Anglican Diaspora which has grown steadily since its conception in March. I am grateful to the team of moderators who keep it running well. The Diaspora is just a small attempt to bring together groups of Anglo-Catholics of all hues from around the world in a time when Unity is just not happening, rather the reverse judging from the actions of ECUSA's litigious CEO, GAFCON and Lambeth and the General Synod's declaration that it wants Tradition excised from the C of E by stating that it will not provide episcopal oversight for those who assent to orthodoxy.
One of the areas in which I agree with the Archbishop of Canterbury is that dialogue needs to continue as far as is possible. My question is, how far is he willing to talk with the Continuing Anglicans? He still has ++Coggan's edict to undo before any meaningful conversation can be struck up there, and the C of E needs to hear the Continuing voices as loudly and as clearly as possible as the points that they make are vital to the existence of the Church.
I also pray for greater Unity between jurisdictions of the Continuing Churches. I have seen signs of that in the way that some dioceses have suffragans who are bishops from other jurisdictions. There's a prayer for that to continue to happen.
Study has not been good this year: Latin, Greek and Hebrew have fallen by the side, but musically I've produced a couple of large scale pieces which aren't too bad.
So what of 2009? I hope to get back to studying, though which direction I take is as yet unclear. I also pray for a transformation in attitudes to the Church's worship of God especially in my Parish this year, as it would be nice to preach in the pulpit once more.
Again, my thanks to all readers of this blog and supporters of my online projects. May you all have a God-blessed, fulfilling and thoroughly enthralling 2009.
I've clearly not written as much as I did last year, when I wrote:
At the moment, I appear to be in some self-imposed exile from my parish celebrating only the Morning Office until the Mass is treated with some respect. It's a bit of a bind when the only other parishes within walking distance (and since I don't drive, this is necessary) are an Aff-Cath church where things are done decently but the theology dodgy, and a Roman Catholic Parish which seems to treat the Mass with about as much reverence as the parish I'm trying to leave.So I end this blogyear in some kind of ecclesiastical limbo - certainly not a perfect arrangement, and I hope that this is going to be entirely temporary. Now that I receive communion on a much more sporadic basis, I believe I appreciate the spiritual nourishment better.Whatever state the C of E may be in, I still maintain my links with Elmore Abbey - the only place where I've really felt spiritually uplifted in past years, and it's partly for them that I am loathe to leave the C of E. The Abbey has always represented a weak link between the C of E and the Roman Catholic Church. I find that I need them and on some level they need me, and I find that this is enough for me to remain in a church whose establishment is falling around my ears.
I seem to have spent my year building up my (lack of) understanding of Anglo-Papalism which gets mentioned every other post making me sound like the stuck record of a monomaniacal parrot. It's important because of the confused nature of the discipline. Every Anglo-Papalist is confused on some level and that's because the Church is a confusing place to which to belong. I now have friends like Marco Vervoorst trying to draw me into the Holy See, and others, like my friends from the Continuum trying to call me into a Continuum parish. It just shows what good friends they are, caring about me like that, and it is very much appreciated even if their attempts are not proving successful. However, I pray about the situation nightly, and despite my pressing for a decision, I still feel that I am told to wait for the path to become clear. Perhaps I must wait for the inevitable fragmentation of the C of E - that would make sense (at least to me). I have to be patient, and so must my friends. Intellectual arguments are not enough at the moment.
My Latin is passable, Greek even worse, and Hebrew infinitesimally better, but at least I've settled into the school which is providing spiritual stimulation of an intriguing kind. Having to defend your beliefs to young adults is very bracing and I heartily recommend it.Thanks for reading over the past year. I hope that you will stay with me and pray with me for the Holy Estate of the Church of God, whatever state she's in.
Well, what's changed? Very little on the Parish front. I ceased my sabbatical just after Easter, but I no longer preach in church because there is little point if the liturgy is made up and the Mass lacking direction, and there is no attempt to bring the congregation into the presence of God. Anything I preach is now exclusively at the school.
It's also been a year in which my faith has suffered a bit of a blow at the hands of my rationalism. However, according to the BBC Television series Apparitions, it's good to take one's faith out of the box and give it an airing, though that's the trite way of looking at it. God does not exist just to provide explanations to those who have no intention of believing in Him, nor for those who are unwilling to invest some intellectual effort into understanding this universe. As it is I do feel closer to God at the moment as my exile continues.
Ties with Elmore Abbey have improved. I am now in the process of becoming a novice oblate for which I am thankful. Clearly the monks at the Abbey are the subjects of much prayer in their rather diminished state. The Community has enriched the lives of many folk and, in this day and age, they need to continue for the sake of showing how to live the gospel of Christ rather than bellowing it badly from street-corner megaphones.
As for my rabid Anglican Papalism, well, I haven't had much time to think about it of late, though there appears to be movement happening there. It's hard to call oneself a member of a movement if one is, to all intents and purposes, the only exponent of that movement in one's viewpoint. As Fr Straw points out, what I am looking for as an Anglican Papalist (if indeed that is what I am), does not exist - yet.
I am also pleased to have helped to set up the Anglican Diaspora which has grown steadily since its conception in March. I am grateful to the team of moderators who keep it running well. The Diaspora is just a small attempt to bring together groups of Anglo-Catholics of all hues from around the world in a time when Unity is just not happening, rather the reverse judging from the actions of ECUSA's litigious CEO, GAFCON and Lambeth and the General Synod's declaration that it wants Tradition excised from the C of E by stating that it will not provide episcopal oversight for those who assent to orthodoxy.
One of the areas in which I agree with the Archbishop of Canterbury is that dialogue needs to continue as far as is possible. My question is, how far is he willing to talk with the Continuing Anglicans? He still has ++Coggan's edict to undo before any meaningful conversation can be struck up there, and the C of E needs to hear the Continuing voices as loudly and as clearly as possible as the points that they make are vital to the existence of the Church.
I also pray for greater Unity between jurisdictions of the Continuing Churches. I have seen signs of that in the way that some dioceses have suffragans who are bishops from other jurisdictions. There's a prayer for that to continue to happen.
Study has not been good this year: Latin, Greek and Hebrew have fallen by the side, but musically I've produced a couple of large scale pieces which aren't too bad.
So what of 2009? I hope to get back to studying, though which direction I take is as yet unclear. I also pray for a transformation in attitudes to the Church's worship of God especially in my Parish this year, as it would be nice to preach in the pulpit once more.
Again, my thanks to all readers of this blog and supporters of my online projects. May you all have a God-blessed, fulfilling and thoroughly enthralling 2009.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
The Feast of the Nativity 2008
When you have sung "Once in Royal David's City" for the 500th time, it begins to lose its appeal, no matter how good the treble soloist who sings the first verse. It's even worse for choristers for whom the whole, rather narrow, gamut of Christmas Carols gets trotted out at each festival service over Advent and Christmastide. It's interesting that the same tunes are always used despite the fact that there are others. "While Shepherds watched their flocks by night" has at least 3 tunes that I know, and I am convinced there are more than that. Yet it's always Winchester Old that seems to be used here in Blighty despite the fact that it goes very well to Cranbrook, better known as "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at".
There are many who want Christmas to be the same each year - the same service of Nine Lessons and Carols, the same Midnight Mass, the same turkey dinner with the same number of cranberries in the sauce, the same amount of wine in the glass and the same television programmes on the box. These are also the same people who claim to be Traditionalists, but they labour under a misapprehension.
As I often find myself saying on this little blogling, Tradition is the life-blood, the DNA of the Church which connects humanity to humanity via the divine humanity and human divinity of Christ. The Church carries the details of God's plan for humanity - the laws that He instigated at the beginning of the universe and thus the consequences of our transgression of these laws, the high standards that He has set for His Creation and thus the dreadful realisation that we miss those standards by miles, the good news that, if we but trust Him, if we do not lose hope and believe that He can, this Universe will be perfected and us with it.
Tradition is nothing to do with stagnation. There are things which will necessarily always remain the same and there are things which will change and develop. The sacraments will not change, their form and function remain immutable to provide the same nourishment, assurance, hope to humanity now and ever more as at the beginning. The interpretation of Holy Scripture will not change or alter, for, like the history of humanity, it is already fast. However, our society changes, and we often perceive it to be for the worst. Humanity does not change in its capacity to sin, but attitudes do change.
The expression of brokenness, of heartbreak, of bitterness, of frustration and misery changes even if its cause does not. The world cries out for its Christ to be born in its midst, but the poor creature is blinded to the fact that that Christ has been born, has suffered, has died, has risen again. All of Creation groans to give birth to the new Creation and despairs because the baby that has been born lies hidden under the veil of 2000 years of history. How can this weary world reclaim its sight of that birth?
The answer is simple - through the Church. That's what the Church is for - to point out what has been, what is and what will be. The Church cannot induce labour to bring about the birth of the new Creation, indeed sometimes the Church behaves as if it were the new Creation with its cry of "We are the One True Church". Yet this is not true.
The Church exists carrying within itself the eye of Tradition which allows the view of Christ born, crucified and risen and points to Christ ascended and in glory. The Church exists to pick up the pieces, to minister to those in pain and to pass on this message of hope that the pain will not last much longer. The Church exists to make the blind see the coming of Christ again in the clouds to make clear the Reality of apotheosis.
And the Church forgets this.
Sometimes the Church believes that it has the Holy Panacea - she doesn't. She can only hold those who are in pain and offer them some Unction in the sacraments. Sometimes the Church tries to force eyes open to witness only a meagre facet of the Truth, a facet which the eye does not recognise to be true. Sometimes the Church tries to lay aside the weight of her Tradition to attract those in pain with distractions but in doing so, distracts the sufferers from the Truth. Sometimes the Church becomes obsessed with doing things the same time and again that she fails to engage with anyone but herself, indeed seeks to separate herself from herself in order that she might be pure.
Yet, this is not Church-bashing, this is honesty and demonstrative of one key fact, that the Church has the characteristics of humanity, gloriously contradictory, paradoxical, infuriating, and yet with the freedom that God gave her in the first place. So glorious is this humanity, that God is pleased, not grudging, to become human Himself, to enjoy life with human beings and to redeem the whole stupid lot of them because, despite their stupidity they are so superb a creation that they are worth saving.
The little baby in a manger that we see year after year is our sign of hope. If we are insisting that our celebrations do not change, then our hope is too small and we point ourselves inwardly and away from the Christ-child. If we loathe Christmas because it has become too materialistic, then how do we expect it to improve if we do not seek how it is supposed to improve. It's our job as a Church to prepare the world for the second coming - however it is supposed to happen. We have to carry the gravitas of the past with our eyes fixed on the future of Christ to come.
O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Reality of Unity?
My good friend Ed has just published this over at The Continuum blog.
It's a very good question - "Is achieving unity merely a matter of convincing one another to believe the same things, or is unity really something deeper?"
Clearly, the former idea of Unity can never really be achieved because our belief is shaped by our individual being. Each of us experiences God in a way that is unique to our personal humanity, yet we all share the experience of being human.
The main issue seems to be that there is no universal language of the soul. One can see this in the differences in which St James and St Paul approach the "faith and works" issue. Do these Church Fathers agree on what Faith is and what place works have in our salvation, or does their agreement appear only after their lifetimes as a result of the work of subsequent Church Fathers?
We can agree with what we mean by a door, but if we take the door off of its hinges and lay it across a stream, is it now a door or a bridge? Now here again we can get disagreement, and I dare say that Ed will disagree with me on that!
As an Anglican Papalist realising just how difficult it is to be an Anglican Papalist at this time, the issue of Unity with the Holy See is still of great importance. I maintain my stance that I am already within the Holy See and that all that needs to be done is for the Holy Father to recognise that I am what I say I am and rescind the excommunication of the Orthodox Anglican Church as well as the excommunication of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and recognising that Anglican Orders are actually very valid.
This would achieve the aim of a visible sacramental unity between the two Churches.
However, this is terribly unlikely because all three expressions of Christianity have one thing in common - they are all equally convinced that they have the Truth. Well, actually, that's true. They are the One True Church, individually not together, but they cannot express that Truth in a way that produces a coherent and unifying statement of the Truth. Atheists might argue that this is grounds for disbanding the Church because she does not agree with herself, causing religious hatred between communities.
I remain convinced that if a validly ordained priest says the prayer of consecration over bread and wine then, regardless of this thing called "denomination," Christ becomes Really present, and it is the same Christ irrespective of whether the priest be Roman, Anglican or Eastern.
The divisions in the Church are largely illusory, and I pray that we see just how illusory they are on this side of the veil before the coming of Christ. Until then, I pray very much that one day I shall see an Anglican Archbishop and Easter Patriarch concelebrating Mass with a Pope.
For some of my readers, that will be utterly abhorrent, particularly if they are of the dogmatic mindset. That's the problem with the Reformation - I wonder if it would ever had happened if the Popes and the Protestants had been Franciscans rather than Augustinians and Dominicans, what if they had all been Benedictines instead? This is the trouble, there is no unity of psychology, hence the differences between the monastic orders and understandings.
I wonder then if we are not already united where it counts, through the Ut unum sint of Our Lord's prayer, and that this unity will be revealed finally when He comes in glory to judge both the quick and the dead. I pray that this realisation may appear before then, so that the Church can truly work as one unit. We need to: if we keep splitting then the Church will cease to be, at least as a credible expression of the existence of the love of God in an increasingly atheistic, materialistic and apathetic world.
It's a very good question - "Is achieving unity merely a matter of convincing one another to believe the same things, or is unity really something deeper?"
Clearly, the former idea of Unity can never really be achieved because our belief is shaped by our individual being. Each of us experiences God in a way that is unique to our personal humanity, yet we all share the experience of being human.
The main issue seems to be that there is no universal language of the soul. One can see this in the differences in which St James and St Paul approach the "faith and works" issue. Do these Church Fathers agree on what Faith is and what place works have in our salvation, or does their agreement appear only after their lifetimes as a result of the work of subsequent Church Fathers?
We can agree with what we mean by a door, but if we take the door off of its hinges and lay it across a stream, is it now a door or a bridge? Now here again we can get disagreement, and I dare say that Ed will disagree with me on that!
As an Anglican Papalist realising just how difficult it is to be an Anglican Papalist at this time, the issue of Unity with the Holy See is still of great importance. I maintain my stance that I am already within the Holy See and that all that needs to be done is for the Holy Father to recognise that I am what I say I am and rescind the excommunication of the Orthodox Anglican Church as well as the excommunication of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and recognising that Anglican Orders are actually very valid.
This would achieve the aim of a visible sacramental unity between the two Churches.
However, this is terribly unlikely because all three expressions of Christianity have one thing in common - they are all equally convinced that they have the Truth. Well, actually, that's true. They are the One True Church, individually not together, but they cannot express that Truth in a way that produces a coherent and unifying statement of the Truth. Atheists might argue that this is grounds for disbanding the Church because she does not agree with herself, causing religious hatred between communities.
I remain convinced that if a validly ordained priest says the prayer of consecration over bread and wine then, regardless of this thing called "denomination," Christ becomes Really present, and it is the same Christ irrespective of whether the priest be Roman, Anglican or Eastern.
The divisions in the Church are largely illusory, and I pray that we see just how illusory they are on this side of the veil before the coming of Christ. Until then, I pray very much that one day I shall see an Anglican Archbishop and Easter Patriarch concelebrating Mass with a Pope.
For some of my readers, that will be utterly abhorrent, particularly if they are of the dogmatic mindset. That's the problem with the Reformation - I wonder if it would ever had happened if the Popes and the Protestants had been Franciscans rather than Augustinians and Dominicans, what if they had all been Benedictines instead? This is the trouble, there is no unity of psychology, hence the differences between the monastic orders and understandings.
I wonder then if we are not already united where it counts, through the Ut unum sint of Our Lord's prayer, and that this unity will be revealed finally when He comes in glory to judge both the quick and the dead. I pray that this realisation may appear before then, so that the Church can truly work as one unit. We need to: if we keep splitting then the Church will cease to be, at least as a credible expression of the existence of the love of God in an increasingly atheistic, materialistic and apathetic world.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
An explanation? I doubt it!
I am in two minds about publishing this since it is so deeply personal. However, if it helps someone out of a dark place then perhaps it is worth the exposure.
I relish my time of prayer on Saturday when I have a little time to disappear into a space within myself and meet with God. Of course I usually nod off, but do so remembering that "He gives to His beloved sleep". However, lately prayer has not been a very pleasant experience.
About a month ago, I sat in my chair trying to bring my latest attempts to demonstrate how wrong Dawkins is to the College, when I first heard a voice that came from my own being say "but really now, there is no God. You're just play-acting, aren't you? You're doing your old trick of taking the standpoint of a minority and argue it, just for the intellectual exercise."
To say that I was deeply worried that such a voice can come from me is an understatement. God has been part of my life since birth - I was Baptised and Anglican and have been attending Mass on Sundays for practically all my life, and here is a voice which is my own, telling me that really it was all play-acting and that God did not exist.
Well of course, I found this occurrence disturbing. When you've put a lot of work into the Church, spent time in training and reading, listening and praying with people and preaching sermons, the last thing you want to hear is that not only have you wasted your time, but you've actually missed out on some of Life's joys such as a lie-in on Sunday morning.
My relationship with God is better (when I haven't fallen into sin and crushed myself with guilt) lately since I've made a little more space for Him during Advent. I still have the little atheistic voice within me, but I'm wondering that it's there because I'm moving into a new way of thinking about God and the old way wasn't good enough. Perhaps that voice has been saying that the idea of "God" that I was holding onto is not God, thus the concept of God that I had been holding in my deeply Thomist/Mathematical fashion was not good enough. In that sense my atheistic voice is right God doesn't exist in the way that I though He exists, and that's actually quite a comfort to me.
I have been tracking the source of this voice, and I believe that I have found whence it comes. If we believe in God because His existence explains things, then we come up against the possibility of other explanations. The way that the Lord walked on water may be explicable through hidden stepping stones, or that due to a very special set of circumstances, the Lord made use of special waves which increased the surface tension of the water - unlikely, but it's an explanation- or that it simply didn't happen and the Bible is wrong in the literal sense of Jesus walking on water.
There are some very convincing explanations as to how the plagues of Egypt followed a pattern resulting from a volcanic eruption which also explains the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. However, the idea is that any Biblical account has a rational explanation and that it always has to be scientific.
Of course, the phrase "scientific explanation" has the unfortunate association with atheism, when in fact Science properly done is neutral, and it is only our worldviews that give science a theistic or atheistic spin. It doesn't actually bother me whether or not there is a scientific explanation for the Miracles of Christ, or for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If some occurrence causes me to wonder, or to be struck with awe, or points me to God in any way, then that is a miracle, at least for me. Miracles, like music, are icons in Time, as opposed to Space, windows into the Reality of God.
I remember sitting on a train and being struck by the presence of a hand-hold on the top of the seat in front of me, which brought me to consider its purpose, and the intention of its design, and that brought me to God. In that sense, that insignificant object was a miracle for me. It wasn't there to be explained, or to explain God's existence, it was just there. And God is just there as well.
Sometimes I wonder if using the existence of God as an explanation for why things are is a form of taking His name in vain. The Church has made mistakes in the past in making dogmatic statements about Reality which are untested and never actually stated as articles of faith within Tradition or Holy Scripture. These dogmatic statements can lead us to a "God of the gaps" whereby God explains that which cannot be explained by Science, and as Science probes deeper, God shrinks. God does not shrink, so our concept of God is too small.
There are many exciting questions about the nature of reality that a neutral Science with its truly open mind can seek to answer. It will not find God, because the existence of God is metaphysical not scientific. I have found philosophical difficulties with the Eternity of God in opposition to our free will and His Omniscience. But seeing that Scientifically we do not know what Time is, let alone why we can only move forward and not backwards, our understanding of Eternity leaves us with an Eternity that is only understandable from within Time, and not from God's perspective. Nor do we know all that is to know, because we know that there is truth that we cannot know scientifically but nonetheless exists as being true thanks to Gödel.
Why do I believe in God, then, if His existence is not to be used as an explanation for why I'm here? I believe in God because He's there and there is no vocabulary in my mind that I can use to produce an any more verifiable assertion than that. I have felt Him move within the fabric of my being, and, like Descartes, I do not believe myself capable of generating the sensations that this movement produces. To the outsider, what I am writing is utterly meaningless, but then I'm not writing to convince anyone that God exists.
So, where does that leave me with this voice of atheism still chirping occasionally when I'm trying to pray? Well, I suppose it leaves me exactly where I always have been, but appreciating that I simply do not believe in the same God that the atheists do not believe in. My image of God has been destroyed, and that's a good thing. I've been deliberately trying not to have an image of God for some time. The God that created this universe does not need to explain Himself or to be used as an explanation for why things are. Things are, because He wants them to be and that's all the explanation that a believer needs. I cannot help the unbeliever to believe by explanation because there will always be as counter-explanation which may be more or less convincing.
It does leave me somewhat blinder in prayer, and I suppose the work of the next coming months will be to find out where He has moved to and how I am better to approach Him this time.
I relish my time of prayer on Saturday when I have a little time to disappear into a space within myself and meet with God. Of course I usually nod off, but do so remembering that "He gives to His beloved sleep". However, lately prayer has not been a very pleasant experience.
About a month ago, I sat in my chair trying to bring my latest attempts to demonstrate how wrong Dawkins is to the College, when I first heard a voice that came from my own being say "but really now, there is no God. You're just play-acting, aren't you? You're doing your old trick of taking the standpoint of a minority and argue it, just for the intellectual exercise."
To say that I was deeply worried that such a voice can come from me is an understatement. God has been part of my life since birth - I was Baptised and Anglican and have been attending Mass on Sundays for practically all my life, and here is a voice which is my own, telling me that really it was all play-acting and that God did not exist.
Well of course, I found this occurrence disturbing. When you've put a lot of work into the Church, spent time in training and reading, listening and praying with people and preaching sermons, the last thing you want to hear is that not only have you wasted your time, but you've actually missed out on some of Life's joys such as a lie-in on Sunday morning.
My relationship with God is better (when I haven't fallen into sin and crushed myself with guilt) lately since I've made a little more space for Him during Advent. I still have the little atheistic voice within me, but I'm wondering that it's there because I'm moving into a new way of thinking about God and the old way wasn't good enough. Perhaps that voice has been saying that the idea of "God" that I was holding onto is not God, thus the concept of God that I had been holding in my deeply Thomist/Mathematical fashion was not good enough. In that sense my atheistic voice is right God doesn't exist in the way that I though He exists, and that's actually quite a comfort to me.
I have been tracking the source of this voice, and I believe that I have found whence it comes. If we believe in God because His existence explains things, then we come up against the possibility of other explanations. The way that the Lord walked on water may be explicable through hidden stepping stones, or that due to a very special set of circumstances, the Lord made use of special waves which increased the surface tension of the water - unlikely, but it's an explanation- or that it simply didn't happen and the Bible is wrong in the literal sense of Jesus walking on water.
There are some very convincing explanations as to how the plagues of Egypt followed a pattern resulting from a volcanic eruption which also explains the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. However, the idea is that any Biblical account has a rational explanation and that it always has to be scientific.
Of course, the phrase "scientific explanation" has the unfortunate association with atheism, when in fact Science properly done is neutral, and it is only our worldviews that give science a theistic or atheistic spin. It doesn't actually bother me whether or not there is a scientific explanation for the Miracles of Christ, or for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If some occurrence causes me to wonder, or to be struck with awe, or points me to God in any way, then that is a miracle, at least for me. Miracles, like music, are icons in Time, as opposed to Space, windows into the Reality of God.
I remember sitting on a train and being struck by the presence of a hand-hold on the top of the seat in front of me, which brought me to consider its purpose, and the intention of its design, and that brought me to God. In that sense, that insignificant object was a miracle for me. It wasn't there to be explained, or to explain God's existence, it was just there. And God is just there as well.
Sometimes I wonder if using the existence of God as an explanation for why things are is a form of taking His name in vain. The Church has made mistakes in the past in making dogmatic statements about Reality which are untested and never actually stated as articles of faith within Tradition or Holy Scripture. These dogmatic statements can lead us to a "God of the gaps" whereby God explains that which cannot be explained by Science, and as Science probes deeper, God shrinks. God does not shrink, so our concept of God is too small.
There are many exciting questions about the nature of reality that a neutral Science with its truly open mind can seek to answer. It will not find God, because the existence of God is metaphysical not scientific. I have found philosophical difficulties with the Eternity of God in opposition to our free will and His Omniscience. But seeing that Scientifically we do not know what Time is, let alone why we can only move forward and not backwards, our understanding of Eternity leaves us with an Eternity that is only understandable from within Time, and not from God's perspective. Nor do we know all that is to know, because we know that there is truth that we cannot know scientifically but nonetheless exists as being true thanks to Gödel.
Why do I believe in God, then, if His existence is not to be used as an explanation for why I'm here? I believe in God because He's there and there is no vocabulary in my mind that I can use to produce an any more verifiable assertion than that. I have felt Him move within the fabric of my being, and, like Descartes, I do not believe myself capable of generating the sensations that this movement produces. To the outsider, what I am writing is utterly meaningless, but then I'm not writing to convince anyone that God exists.
So, where does that leave me with this voice of atheism still chirping occasionally when I'm trying to pray? Well, I suppose it leaves me exactly where I always have been, but appreciating that I simply do not believe in the same God that the atheists do not believe in. My image of God has been destroyed, and that's a good thing. I've been deliberately trying not to have an image of God for some time. The God that created this universe does not need to explain Himself or to be used as an explanation for why things are. Things are, because He wants them to be and that's all the explanation that a believer needs. I cannot help the unbeliever to believe by explanation because there will always be as counter-explanation which may be more or less convincing.
It does leave me somewhat blinder in prayer, and I suppose the work of the next coming months will be to find out where He has moved to and how I am better to approach Him this time.
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