Quo Vadis?

On Bishops & Authority

2012-02-07T15:45:00.001Z

For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. (Matthew 7:29)

I simply cannot understand why compromise is not possible on the question of the Ordination of women to the Episcopacy.

The argument goes, if I have correctly understood it, that if the authority of “male only succession” Bishops is derived from the Measure that would somehow undermine the authority of any woman Diocesan Bishop.

The argument seems to suggest an absolute authority vested in a Diocesan Bishop but, honestly, if that is the view of a Bishop’s authority held by those who take this position then, for heaven’s sake, don’t ordain them to any ministry in the church!

For all authority in the Church is both derived and shared. The most Ultramane RC knows that even the Pope’s authority is derived from Jesus Christ and shared with the Apostles and Bishops of the past, present and future. As the Pope doesn’t run the church single handed, nor should or could any Diocesan Bishop. (In any case, no Bishop in the Church of England has any executive power to speak of).

His authority is the authority of the good shepherd, the authority of the one who comes amongst us as one who serves and so it is never about power and is never absolute. So from the very beginning the Apostles shared their ministry and gave others authority: Deacons, Elders, prophets, evangelists all shared the task of proclaiming the Good News “with authority”.

And all Christian ministry and authority is a shared venture. No wise Dean of a Cathedral would risk undermining the role of the Precentor, only a very foolish parish priest would not listen to the advice of his or her churchwardens and no Diocesan Bishop would interfere with an appointment made by one of his Archdeacons.

And this “sharing” of authority is intrinsic. The Bishop, Dean, Vicar or whoever does not share his or her authority because of a whim but because that sharing is essential to the very nature of the authority we are discussing. Ecclesiastical authority, because it is derived from Jesus Christ, is never absolutely held by one person.

As the preamble to the Manchester Motion suggests, Area Bishops have their authority by virtue of the Measure which established the Area System in the Diocese. Has anybody ever seriously suggested that the Diocesan’s authority is thereby compromised?

To be a Bishop is to be engaged in a shared endeavour. Women Bishops will be sharing their work with many other ministers – and not because they are delegating some absolute right to rule but because that is the very nature of the ministry to which they will be called. I do hope that they will share their ministry with some form of “male only succession” Bishops too.

Whatever happened to Anglo-Catholics?

2011-07-15T06:08:00.005+01:00

There have always been different sorts of Anglo-Catholic: ritualists, papalists, high churchmen and women; those who loved the Prayer Book and those who “borrowed from Rome”. I’m not going to list them all but on the whole there have been those who have believed that their ultimate goal was simply to remind the Church of England that she is Catholic, and there are those who have only ever dreamed of re-union with Rome. Alongside both there were the high church latitudinarians who shared much with both. Honestly, I guess most of us were a bit of all three. It is not necessarily the case that the first lot are in “SSWSH” (the group who are staying in the Church of England whilst opposing the consecration of women Bishops); or that the second lot are in the “Ordinariate” or the third in Affirming Catholicism (who embrace the possibility of Women bishops) but these three groupings roughly correspond to earlier, more nuanced divisions within the movement. For our purposes, when I speak of “traditional catholics” I will mean the first two groups.

As something of an aside, it is worth noting that many (especially priests) who might well be described as “Romanisers”, remain in the Church of England keeping a watchful eye on the Ordinariate. The Ordinariate will need to woo these guys carefully over the next few months and years. There are also many who would have been loyal “Prayer Book Catholics” in an earlier generation, who will no more go to Rome than they would become Methodists. It seems to me, as an outsider now, that these folk will have to broke a deal with the Affirming Catholicism camp; somehow!

Until 1992 (or perhaps a little earlier) these people all belonged together. The vote allowing women priests was the watershed which gave rise to the expulsion of the Affirming Catholics from our midst. Since 1992, it has to be said, this group has flourished reasonably well. It is the group that the Archbishop of Canterbury would, I think, most happily identify with. To the extent that “Catholicism” has any sort of future in the Church of England it will be because these people are holding the Catholic torch. At the same time as the “AffCaths” were being denied a place at Anglo-Catholic Altars, a few hundred papalists took themselves off to Rome.

For those who were left in the traditional Anglo-Catholic movement, an organisation calling itself “Forward in Faith” was formed to defend and promote the Catholic cause. It was going to be the one organisation around which all who called themselves Catholic could rally (that is “Catholic” now defined to exclude the AffCaths). Indeed, all who held the traditional faith which denied the possibility of new inventions such as women priests would find a home there. Even evangelicals were wooed and brought into the organisation. But although all were supposed to be welcome into the organisation, the anger, nay fury, of the initial leadership over the ordination of women drove them into a very hard-line position. Almost immediately, it seemed to me, they alienated very many people who should have been the grass roots of the movement. It was reminiscent of 70’s Trade Unionism: the militants were in charge and the moderates were left, on the whole, voiceless.

As for me? Well, I became a Roman Catholic but a year later I came back to the Church of England. I could not find a home anywhere. The only place where I was truly at home in the C of E was in the Company of Mission Priests. Why? Because this group had within itself guys from all three camps; yes, even AffCaths and certainly papalists. It was home because it was Catholic. And the great thing about the Roman Catholic Church today is that one can sit alongside Tablet readers (AffCaths) and Catholic Herald readers (papalists) and know that all are Catholics!

The formation of Forward in Faith took place almost immediately after the vote allowing women priests in November 1992. Very quickly the leadership produced a “Statement on Communion”. They had defined who was in and who was out. Over the next seventeen years F in F became a loathed organisation in the Church of England; not, possibly, down on the ground where good catholics worked hard in their parishes, got on well with neighbours and flourished. But at a national level the organisation was hated. I am sure that is why General Synod gave Traditional Catholics such a hard time in July 2008: they wanted to punish Forward in Faith who were seen as “the enemy”, opposed to all the legitimate developments that the vast majority in the Church of England wanted. So bitter had the fight become that folk were very openly saying that it would be better if we were gone from the Church of England.

Traditional Catholics, it must be stressed, were not, at this stage, opposing legislation allowing women Bishops. All they were asking for was that when the Church of England had women Bishops they might be allowed to be a “church within a church” where no woman Bishop could have jurisdiction. General Synod is overwhelmingly opposed to this option – or to any option, that will allow a Traditional Catholic with integrity to believe that he or she is not totally compromised. We have seen this coming: one day there will be women Bishops in the Church of England and there will no provision within the Church for those who believe that women cannot be ordained. Legally these people may well find themselves under the jurisdiction of one whom they regard as a lay person.

So what to do? Simply, at least at a psychological level, there have been two possible answers:

“In order to stay what I am, I must find a way of remaining in the deepest possible Communion with the Church of England despite her dreadful act of schism. I think the vast majority of Anglo-Catholic laity are in this place.

“In order to stay what I am, I must find a way of putting a great distance between myself and the now schismatic Church of England”. The leadership of Forward in Faith, on the whole, was in this place.

It is obvious how these two positions correspond to the very old divisions in the movement. And although, as I have said, none of us belonged exclusively to one group rather than another, the tensions between the two tendencies has been more obvious and unbearable in the last decade than ever before.

Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Apostolic Constitution which allows the erection of “Personal Ordinaries” for Anglicans entering into full Communion with the Catholic Church, was just what the second group was longing for. They could distance themselves from the Church of England and remain the same and be in Communion with the See of Rome. All the fighting was over – they had everything. They could not believe how generous the Holy Father had been! So excited were they at its publication that some quite forgot themselves. We even had an Anglican Bishop speaking on the radio days after the publication of the document saying that he had no trouble with papal infallibility! He obviously could hardly wait! I have observed elsewhere that the months between the publication of the Apostolic Constitution and the departure of that Bishop and others were extraordinarily stressful. It was not fun having a bishop who was obviously going and a congregation who were, mostly, firmly staying put. I have never known a situation where a Bishop was so disliked by a congregation!

It is in the light of all this that we must understand the recent scandal of the liberation of the assets of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. It is clear that the leadership of that organisation very firmly belong with those who have believed that in order to be loyal to everything they have been they must, somehow, distance themselves from the Church of England. This is crucial: to stay in the Church of England once the “schism” happened would mean being disloyal to everything. By April 2009 (just a few months after the crucial Synod in July 2008) they did not know what the “way out” would be, but they knew that they would have to go somewhere. And so, they changed the Constitution of the Confraternity in such a way that it could easily slip out of the Church of England with them. Whatever we might think of this, it is vital that we understand that the motivation for this move was so that they could remain faithful and the assets of CBS could be used for the work for which they were intended and not be spent by schismatics.

I hardly need to say that most members of CBS were unaware of what was going on. If they had been I think that they would have strongly disapproved. I am as sure as I can be that most members of CBS on the ground, in the parishes, belong to that group of traditional catholics who will stay in the Church of England until the absolute end. They now feel that the money that belongs to them - and which they now need more than ever to fight the good fight of preserving the Catholicity of the Church of England – has been stolen. They will see this as a crime of dramatic proportions. Not only have their fellow Anglo-Catholics deserted them at the crucial moment; they have taken the fighting fund too!

Who is right? I have tried to write this in such a way as to imply that it has everything to do with perspective. But, in the end, it still seems quite obvious that those who joined the Ordinariate should have gone and taken nothing with them. It is the Gospel imperative: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff--no bread, no bag, no money in your belts”. But more than this, in their obsession to get out of the Church of England, they completely failed to notice that many (indeed, the vast majority) of their brothers and sisters were not leaving. The money belonged to the Catholic movement as a whole and not to just to the most powerful minority. I have to say; surely Rome is not so poor that it cannot care for these folk?

So, it was wrong to take the money. It was also totally stupid. By taking it they have alienated the very folk who should be following them in the next few years. I suspect that the decision to take the money will be the death of the Ordinariate.That is the real betrayal and that is very sad.

More on the CBS affair

2011-07-08T17:11:00.003+01:00

Canon Jerome Lloyd OSJV is a very wise man. I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him extensively:

"It is all very sad, in their desperation to create something "proper" in a very small space of time and despite the goodwill of so many, they have taken such a fall before they've really begun.

"There are many contributory factors to blame, no doubt, but overall I suspect a lack of heartdepth Charity looms large. Unless one is prepared to "give all" to such a venture it is unlikely to grow. It's no good people thinking they can leave the CofE one Sunday, walk down the road to the RC Church the next Sunday and everything can continue as it did before. That was more or less the lie that was peddled before the Ordinariate began. Now the reality hits home. What was given in one's Gift Aid to St So-n-so last week with its historic legacies etc would obviously not be enough for something like the Ordinariate; if the numbers had been really significant, maybe, but they weren't were they.

"What I find incredible is the notion that people were expecting a house and stipend "from the off". The leadership should never have permitted such expectations. The rhetoric should've been big on sacrifice, the "cost of conscience" (pun intended) should've been explained and presented as a distinct reality aside from the "dreams" of what might be and the countless "possibilities". People should've gone with the expectation of nothing and themselves worked towards addressing that very likely situation, rather than relying rather presumptively on Divine Providence. But the leadership really is to blame, if blame is due. Their focus was big on numbers and hoped the rest would sort itself out. Naive? Certainly."

I would simply add that the sums are so very easy: A congregation of 20 adults all of whom are earning an average wage could just afford one priest's salary if they ALL half-tithe. They would still not be paying for his house or his pension or the training of his successor. Neither would they be paying for the Ordinary or his trips to Rome. A congregation of forty to fifty may achieve all these things but could they then make a contribution to the running costs of the church building that they use?

The smell of the coffee is so strong its amazing nobody has woken up yet!

Liberalism

2011-07-04T09:31:00.000+01:00

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.

(Blessed John Henry Newman).

The CBS Affair

2011-07-02T08:47:00.058+01:00

A (formerly) Anglican organisation called The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament has made a donation of £1 million to the Ordinariate.

One might think that that was a generous gesture but I am given to understand that five of the six Trustees of the Confraternity have left the Church of England to join the Ordinariate and are now priests in the Ordinariate.The donation was made after a formal application by the Rt Revd Keith Newton, then Bishop of Richborough, in December last year. (Bishop Newton, now Mgr Newton was, of course, appointed Ordinary of the Ordinariate in the following month).

That the five Trustees were still in office even though they had left the Church of England is because a change had been made to the Constitution which allowed Roman Catholics to be members. That change was made in April 2010.

As you can imagine, many members of the Confraternity are NOT happy.

For my part, I believe that this is both plain wrong and amazingly stupid.

I understand that the Trustees of the CBS took legal advice and so I am absolutely sure that they believe that they have done nothing wrong. I believe that their motive was to do good. I am sure that they believed that they were acting wholly in accordance with the Constitution of the Confraternity and that they were doing what they did in order to advance “the catholic faith in the Anglican Tradition.”

But they are wrong. They are wrong because many members of the Confraternity – I would guess the vast majority who remain in the Church of England – will doubt that this money is being spent on a project which is within “the Anglican Tradition”. They are wrong because they have not considered how this will appear: Whatever their motives, this will look like they raided Church of England funds before leaving. One million pounds, I understand, represents half the total assets of the Confraternity. I would very much like to know what proportion of the membership of CBS is now in the Ordinariate. I would be very surprised if it were anything like a half. They are wrong too because, as I understand it, they failed to consult the membership.

And it is very stupid because this could cause such an enormous scandal before the Ordinariate has even got off the ground. Right or wrong, the press will have a field day with this and the Catholic Church will be hugely embarrassed. That embarrassment is not worth one million pounds.

I cannot believe that the Roman Catholic authorities would knowingly allow these men to remain members – let alone Trustees - of the CBS. How could they, having accepted priestly Orders in the Roman Church, believe that the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are made truly present on Anglican Altars? To put it very simply, how can a Roman Catholic member of CBS attend Benediction given at an Anglican Ward meeting? If that RC member is the Superior General the difficulties are multiplied. Will he have to bring the Blessed Sacrament with him?

I have held back from publishing this post until I was sure that allegations were "facts". Todays publication in the Times and on Ruth Gledhill's Blog of various documents has assured me that we are in the realm of fact.

Here is a fact: this is plain wrong! The authorities of the Catholic Church must now put every pressure on the Ordinariate to return the money and on Catholic priests to resign their membership of CBS.

Amendment:

I am given to understand that the change to the Constitution referred to above was made in April 2009.

Lift in the City

2011-06-30T18:57:00.001+01:00

Trinity

2011-06-27T16:02:00.001+01:00

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. John 15:9

When the Sacred Scriptures point to the oneness of God they are, perhaps, pointing to something that human beings long for for themselves. We long for that simplicity whereby heart and mind and action are one and not divided. The most unlikable thing about us is our capacity for duplicity! The Scriptures point to a lack of duplicity in God.

But another way in which we long for unity as human beings is our natural desire to be part of a bigger whole: the family, a community or (dare I say it?) church! Even belonging to the Bridge Club points to this deep desire within us! I suggest that even the most independent soul finds herself most fulfilled as a human being when she is herself within a group. The show-off needs an audience and the independent thinker needs the intellectual community to rebel against.

I suppose marriage is the most basic example of human community. A good marriage is about two people finding fulfilment with each other and through each other; each one becomes more him or herself precisely because of the other. A bad marriage – to point out the obvious – is where one (or both) prevent the other from becoming fully themselves. We all know the subtle and not so subtle ways in which that can happen. We have also all witnessed wonderful marriages where both flourish as independent human beings through a deep love that grows and flourishes too. And we know, of course, that such marriages are never just inward looking: they are not just about two people. A good marriage, whether blessed with children or not, is always inclusive: it welcomes other people within the home and embraces them; it builds up and sustains the community of which the couple are a part. This is most obvious when there are children but even the childless couple, sustained by each other’s love, can contribute enormously to the wider family and community of which they are a part.

And let’s not be coy about this. The “outward and visible sign” of marriage is the sexual union in which the two people find joy, pleasure and fulfilment in each other and at the same time are open to the possibility of another (a child) becoming part of the union. (The Church’s teaching on sexual ethics is all based on this high ideal – but then why base ethics on low ideals?) In this way sex and Holy Communion are the same sorts of thing: they are both sacraments of God’s love which not only “symbolise” but also affect that which is symbolised and, in both Sacraments, the ‘other’ is physically and emotionally most intimately present. It is also worth stressing that the opposite is true: without joyful sex the relationship becomes more difficult to sustain; without Holy Communion our relationship with God becomes more difficult too. Yes, in that scandalously Catholic way, I must speak of the reception of Holy Communion as being ravished by God. (Only in this way can the vocation to celibacy have any meaning or make sense at all).

And so, if we are to begin to get a glimpse of what we mean when we talk of the Trinity, we must explore the Biblical image of the Sacred Meal. And where else to begin but with Rublev's Trinity:

Rublev’s Icon depicts that beautiful story told in Genesis chapter 18. Three men appear to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre. It is worth quoting verses 2-5: “(Abraham) looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My Lord, if I have found favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread that you may refresh yourselves and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’

I hope the Eucharistic reference hit you between the eyes: Abraham offered to wash the feet of the three men and he offered them bread. This is a beautiful story about hospitality and good neighbourliness and how community is created. It is about Abraham’s generosity and it reminds us of the way we all hope to live: generous and welcoming to the stranger. And the banquet was even more generous than Abraham had first suggested: he killed a calf and took curds and milk. This was some hospitality! But this is also a story about the presence of God. As the meal progresses it is clear that in the company of the three strangers, Abraham is somehow in the presence of “The Lord”. It is simplistic to identify each Person of the Godhead with one of the figures in the picture, rather we are invited to see through the picture of hospitality and joyful sharing nothing less than the place where God is met. We are invited to ask who is host and who is guest at this meal. So too, we are forcefully reminded of the story of Jesus and the two disciples on the Emmaus Road after Jesus Resurrection and how Jesus was only recognised in his characteristic activity of the breaking of the bread, in the sharing. (Luke 24: 13-35).

For the two disciples who joined Jesus on the Emmaus Road would have been familiar with this action. It almost defined Jesus. Breaking bread, you might say, is what he did best or, rather, what Jesus does best is what the breaking of the bread symbolises. Jesus shares himself in love. All those meals: the wedding at Cana; the meal where he was told off for eating with tax collectors and sinners; the meal where Jesus allowed his feet to be anointed by the tears of a sinful woman; at the feeding of the five thousand and at the Last Supper itself, these are all stories about Jesus offering hospitality and drawing people into a relationship of love. This is who Jesus is: he is the one who shares himself; the one who gives himself away. At these meals Jesus creates that which we long for, we who are longing for community and love: he creates his church; the gathering of the beloved, his New Israel.

And this is us: we are that woman, those wedding guests, those tax collectors, the hungry five thousand who have gathered to hear every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is us to whom Jesus gives himself as he says “This is me given for you, my life poured out for you”. Jesus embraces us and enfolds in his love as he shares this fellowship meal with us.

But, we discover, this relationship we are drawn into is not merely a fraternal relationship with Jesus our friend and comrade. Jesus draws us into something much deeper than that. He draws us into his relationship with the Father. It is no accident that the profound meditation offered by St John on the relationship with Jesus and his Father come in those chapters immediately before and following the washing of the feet and the sharing of the bread. It is in this context that his says those words to Philip, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’. To have seen this intimate sharing, this total self-giving is to have seen right into the inner dynamic of the Godhead itself. To our great surprise we discover that the One indivisible God is himself a relationship of love. Jesus invites us into the intimacy of this love as he dares us to call God, “Our Father”.

When we encounter Jesus, we observe his filial love for his Father; we witness his total trust, his loving surrender. We see that he makes his life (as well as his death) a total gift, he who comes to do “not his own will but the will of the one ho sent me”. ‘Show us the Father’ asks Philip: “Here he is”, replies Jesus, “he is the one who I trust myself to wholly and utterly, the one to whom I give myself without reserve”. And why can Jesus do this? Surely because he knows that the love which his Father has for him is utterly dependable and can never be damaged or destroyed. Even in death, Jesus knows that this love abides. And for us, of course, the Resurrection is the vindication of Jesus trust in this great love.

Jesus died for the one he called Father, to be faithful to the love that they had for one another. This love was the undergirding principle of his whole life. It was the meaning of his life. This is the one to whom Jesus owes loyalty above all else and to have failed that love would have been to have compromised his very essence. What was it to be Jesus? It was to be loved by the Father; to know that there was nothing else worth living or dying for. What was it to be Jesus? It was to share the Father’s love for his creation and to be the pouring out of love which would bring creation back into a right relationship with God. To be Jesus was to be a life lived for the Father and a life poured out in love for humankind.

So over the first couple of Christian centuries the Church reflected on these things. In answer to the question, ‘What is it to be God,’ the Church replies: To be God is to be One, without division or parts, without multiplicity or rivals. To be God is to be Father: a constant pouring out of love. And in that pouring out of love, Father begets Son: God-toward-us. And there is no way God can be God without being Father , that is without begetting Son. And between them there is an eternal flow of love, a love which overflows and which pours out all over Creation and brings it into being: that Spirit which fills us and converts us into love. And it is that love which Jesus invites us to share as with trembling lips we call out: “Our Father”.

My thought for today:

2011-06-18T12:36:00.002+01:00

As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous; for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go.This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful. I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:5-9

Jesus: glory of the Father

2011-06-16T10:13:00.002+01:00

Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’. John 14:8-9

By any standards this conversation between Jesus and his disciples is astonishing. Philip knows (surely) that even Moses had not seen God’s face, “For no one shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). And yet he is confident that Jesus has seen God. The conversation gets more outrageous: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”.

This is the most exciting moment in the long history of God’s self-disclosure. It needs unpacking.

In the Exodus story alluded to above, Moses asks the Lord, “Show me your glory, I pray” (Exodus 33:18). It is to this request that the Lord replies that no one can see his face and live. (Face and glory are being used interchangeably: the glory of God is his face). Now throughout St John’s Gospel there is constant reference to the “glory” of Jesus. After the wedding in Cana, for example, St John tells us that Jesus “let his glory be seen” (John 2:11) but the word is used mostly when Jesus is speaking about his death: “Jesus looked up to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son.” (John 17:1) We have to ask ourselves, in what possible way is Jesus death “glory”?

It would seem that the answer to Philip’s question about showing us the Father is about something very particular. ‘You want to see God’s face’, asks Jesus, ‘then you must see me. You must see me hanging there on the cross pouring out my life in an act of total love.’ Here is a fulfilment of the Lord’s words to Moses that we had not expected: God’s glory is beheld in a man dying. There, in a tragic human death, we SEE God. For this is what God is: a pouring out of love. Nothing else! Nothing more to be seen!

The God who reveals his love.

2011-06-16T07:40:00.004+01:00

The third most important thing to understand about God is that he is a God who reveals himself. Time and again throughout this blog I have wanted to emphasise this. We would know nothing about God at all except that he chooses to reveal himself to us. This, I suppose, is an obvious corollary to the proposition that God cannot be thought. If he cannot be thought than he has to show himself.

But this “showing” or revelation does not begin (or end) in a religious context at all. The first way in which God makes himself known is through his act of creation. Put simply, every moment is such an amazing event that we are led to suspect that there is more to this “now event” than meets the eye. This precious moment which is “now” is so wonderful that we suspect that it must have come into being because of something much more than through a series of random accidental events which began with a big bang.

In other words, now is so beautiful we suspect it has a purpose. And, to coin a phrase from Thomas Aquinas, we call this purpose “God”.

When I talk about creation I do not (usually) mean an event in the past. Creation is God’s deliberate act to allow “now” to happen. And so prayer begins with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Of course there are moments when “now” seems more wonderful than at other moments but this is illusion. In fact every “now” is marvellous. The Genesis story reminds us of this: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”. (Genesis 1:31)..

And so religion – all religion – begins with a sense that there is one (we know not who) to whom we must show gratitude. And over the course of human history this one (we must call him God for want of a better word) has shown himself to his people. Most especially he has shown himself to the Hebrew people. He has revealed himself (as we had suspected from our experience of “now”) to be a good and loving God.

And this is vitally important. Whatever nonsense some folk believe, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is a good and loving God. If he is angry from time to time (and he is) it is simply the anger of one who loves with a passion (so to speak), one who loves so much that he expects the absolute best from those he calls his own. There is no passage more tender in the whole of the Scriptures than when God promises, through his prophet Hosea, that he will take his unfaithful people back to be his wife: “And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies”.

And so, at long last, we are ready to think about what it might mean to talk about the Trinity.

I believe in one God

2011-06-15T22:28:00.004+01:00

If the first rule in thinking about God is that He cannot be thought, the other first rule is to affirm that He is one.

Christians, together with Jews and Muslims (and some others), affirm first and foremost and above everything else that God is one. The most severe anathemas should fall on those who deny it! It is an idea which has given birth to many martyrs. Jews, Muslims and Christians have died in common cause, to defend this simple truth. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

Martyrs throughout the ages have borne witness to the fact that the God who is infinite possibility will tolerate no rival: not Ceaser; not the King; not Robert Mugabe. No earthly or heavenly power is greater than the God of Israel. And Jewish, Islamic and Christian laws and morals have been based on the very simple understanding that there is no other authority. If we are to call no man on earth “Father” or “Teacher” it is because there is one God to whom all men and women owe allegiance. In our own society it is the whole basis of the notion of the Rule of Law: the king is subject to a higher authority. For me, the only guarantee of political freedom is the possibility of a supreme authority who we are all subject to – even our would-be oppressor s. Since that supreme authority is “infinite possibility” it is an authority which liberates and does not oppress.

The understanding that there is one God emerged in a political context as Israel discovered that she owed allegiance to her Lord God even abroad; that he was Lord not only of their history but of the whole of history. God was not just the Saviour of Israel; he was Lord of the nations and the future was in his hands. That God was God of Persia, of Babylon and of Egypt; that he was in control of the events of history: these are the exciting discoveries of the Hebrew people as the one God revealed himself through Moses and the Prophets. Everything else in the Hebrew Scriptures is secondary to this key revelation.

This one big idea of Judaism, discovered in the ups and downs of a turbulent history eventually came to be expressed in philosophical language, so that by the time the Fathers of the Church are writing in the second, third and fourth centuries, certain philosophical propositions are just plain obvious to them: that God is all-powerful – there is no competing power; all-knowing – He is God of the future as well as the past; that he is “impassible” (un-changing and incapable of suffering) - there is no variation in his goodness; that there is no division in his Godhead and so on. These philosophical ideas simply strengthen the one central claim that he is one.

Crowning all these ideas is the claim that God created everything ex-nihilo – out of nothing. That is to say that everything that exists comes to exist by God’s act of creation alone. Again, this simply underscores the crucial claim of Judaism and Christianity – there is no other power or authority “competing” with God. Even Satan is God’s creation. And, as we shall see in my next post, all creation came into being through God’s act of love.

Thinking about God

2011-06-14T17:49:00.006+01:00

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water that is under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. Exodus 5:8-9a

Readers of my blog may be surprised that I have not posted for a while. Well, here is the reason: I have known for several weeks that my next posting would have to be about the very nature of God. You can see, then, why I have been putting it off! It hasn’t helped that my laptop died. But that's another story!

I have been helped enormously by an article which appeared in the March 2011 edition of the Anchor, the magazine of the parish of All Saints with St Saviour, Weston-super-Mare. The piece is by Humphrey Reader. Here is his penultimate paragraph:

For mathematicians, infinity goes beyond crude ‘bigness’ to a concept with a completely different agenda, something which took centuries to work out and which is still a work in progress. I would suggest a parallel with our understanding of God. At the time of the Decalogue He presents as a possessive and jealous super-tribal-leader. Yet the very emphasis on avoiding idolatry is perhaps a hint (in terms understandable by people of that time) of the importance of reserving absolute loyalty for the indefinite and completely Other rather than man-made representations.

Elsewhere in his article Humphrey quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein, “The infinite is understood rightly when it is understood, not as a quantity, but as an “infinite possibility”’ He insists that infinity cannot be conceptualised for the moment you conceptualise infinity you make it finite.

This mathematical analogy helps us grasp that God is not “a thing or an object among many things”. Just as infinity is not a number so God is not an object. We must always understand that any talk of God which implies that He is something “out there” is to use language allegorically or analogously. The very name of God as represented as by the letters in our alphabet: YHWH, suggests a dynamic becoming: not simply, as in the NRSV “I AM WHO I AM” but, rather, “I am becoming”. (From the Hebrew verb “hayah” meaning “to be”). Wittgenstein’s “Infinite possibility” captures something of the idea.

Mr Reader’s article emphasises the first rule when thinking about God: He cannot be thought. And if you think that you have got an idea of Him, I regret to tell you, you have actually got an idol. God cannot be contained or thought anymore than infinity can be contained or thought. And it is vital in any discussion of God to hold on to this truth.

You may have noticed that those who think that they have got God sewn up tend to be the most dangerous of human beings.

Catholic Witness - Friday Penance

2011-05-13T18:05:00.001+01:00

Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales

An extract from the Spring 2011 Plenary Resolutions

By the practice of penance every Catholic identifies with Christ in his death on the cross. We do so in prayer, through uniting the sufferings and sacrifices in our lives with those of Christ’s passion; in fasting, by dying to self in order to be close to Christ; in almsgiving, by demonstrating our solidarity with the sufferings of Christ in those in need. All three forms of penance form a vital part of Christian living. When this is visible in the public arena, then it is also an important act of witness.

Every Friday is set aside by the Church as a special day of penance, for it is the day of the death of our Lord. The law of the Church requires Catholics to abstain from meat on Fridays, or some other form of food, or to observe some other form of penance laid down by the Bishops’ Conference.

The Bishops wish to re-establish the practice of Friday penance in the lives of the faithful as a clear and distinctive mark of their own Catholic identity. They recognise that the best habits are those which are acquired as part of a common resolve and common witness. It is important that all the faithful be united in a common celebration of Friday penance.

Respectful of this, and in accordance with the mind of the whole Church, the Bishops’ Conference wishes to remind all Catholics in England and Wales of the obligation of Friday Penance. The Bishops have decided to re-establish the practice that this should be fulfilled by abstaining from meat. Those who cannot or choose not to eat meat as part of their normal diet should abstain from some other food of which they regularly partake. This is to come into effect from Friday 16 September 2011 when we will mark the anniversary of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom.

Many may wish to go beyond this simple act of common witness and mark each Friday with a time of prayer and further self-sacrifice. In all these ways we unite our sacrifices to the sacrifice of Christ, who gave up his very life for our salvation.

My love is like a red, red rose.

2011-05-09T01:14:00.005+01:00

I suppose the one thing that unites all religious believers is a view of the world that understands human beings to be more than just “flesh and blood”; that there are more things in heaven and on earth than the mere mechanistic cause and effect of scientific explanation.

A scientist could go a long way to explain how all the instruments in the orchestra make the sounds that they do. Another scientist could explain what is happening in the human body and mind when we listen to music. But no one can explain or define the experience completely because the total music experience is more than the sum of its parts. This is, I suppose, similar too – if not part of – that which we call “religious”.

But the “religious” dimension is more than mere emotions. Religion is some sort of explanation for the whole experience we call life; an explanation coupled with prescriptions for making life meaningful, purposeful and, in some sense, “successful”. Religious explanations are in so many ways totally different from scientific explanations and yet people – particularly in our modern world – are mixing them up. Amazingly frequently people talk about religious explanations as if they were scientific explanations and then reject them because they fail as scientific explanations. This has led, in our own society, to a tragic loss of the religious sensibility, and in the States and elsewhere a terrifying fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism, very simply, assumes that the religious and the scientific explanation are the same type of explanation and are therefore competing with each other. The obvious example is the stories of Creation in Genesis (yes there are two creation stories). Seen as scientific explanations they directly compete with theories of Evolution though there is absolutely no scientific evidence that they are true as science Irrational religion: terrifying!

But worse, the person who sees these stories as mere science misses the profound and important truths which they do contain. As “religious” stories they convey such truths as: that we are dependent upon God; that the relationship between man and woman reflects something within the Godhead; that men and women need the Sabbath rest and (even more important) that the six day world of striving and work only finds its fulfilment when it comes to rest in God. And I could go on. Those creation stories are bursting with meaning as “religious” stories that the “scientific” explanation is incapable of conveying.

I passionately believe that, as human beings, we need these religious explanations to make proper sense of who and what we are. A religious explanation often presents itself to us in the form of a story or a picture. The ultimate religious picture, I would suggest, is the picture of something we call heaven. (It is really worth reading Tom Wright’s book “Surprised by Hope” to help us see that our popular “folk religion” view of heaven is nothing like the Biblical promise of Resurrection). In the New Testament we have the very beautiful and simple story of Jesus’ Ascension. It is a story we know so well that we often forget to ask what on earth it means.

Our mind’s eye picture of the Ascension – reinforced by pop religion and religious art – is of Jesus taking off like Elton John’s Rocket Man to find his new home somewhere “up there”. Of course our mind’s eye picture is not faithful to the picture painted by St Luke in the Acts of the Apostles: “and a cloud took him out of their sight”. We ought to know our scriptures well enough to know that the cloud here represents the presence of God: (The Pillar of Cloud in the Wilderness, the Cloud on Sinai and on the Mount of Transfiguration etc).

In other words, our mind's eye wants to paint a literal picture. But the truth which is conveyed is NOT a scientific truth. This is NOT a story of Jesus growing wings but, rather, a story about his life reaching its fulfilment in God’s presence. (This hope is held out to us all). If we say that he is “up there” without explaining that we are using language in a different way from the way in which a scientist uses language, then the end result will be that people will simply conclude that religion is not true. They will have shut themselves off from so much of what life is really all about.

Nobody would dream of interrogating the poet to ask him exactly how his love is like that red rose! We need to get ourselves out of the habit of assuming that religious and scientific explanation is the same. Religion is dealing with exactly the same world as the scientist, but it is offering an entirely different type of explanation.

Mary IV

2011-05-03T05:23:00.002+01:00

Assumed Body and Soul into Heaven:

This is the heart of the matter! What happened to that flesh which the Eternal Son of the Father took from Mary? What happened to that crucified humanity? What is the fate of the street children feeding from the waste tips of the wealthy; to the body wracked by the pain of addiction; to the woman whose body has been violated by rape and to the boy who has been abused? What will happen to the victims of torture and terror; the slaughtered of the killing fields and the bodies lost in the mud of Passchendaele? Is the woman condemned to a life time of beatings doomed to die a miserable, lonely death? Is the hero who fought to save his comrades gone for nothing? Is the life of that wonderful mother who fought so hard in her battle against cancer utterly pointless? What will happen to the child who died the agonising death of starvation?

This is the heart of the matter and the Dogma of the Assumption boldly asserts that third class citizens, those who are excluded, the inferior and the lowly, are to be lifted high. On the Feast of the Assumption we sing Psalm 113: “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust; from the dung-hill he lifteth up the needy” and we echo Mary’s Magnificat: “He casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly poor.”

The Assumption answers the question about what happened to the crucified Jesus: to the flesh and blood, body and soul he took from Mary. But it answers too the question about our own destiny, the fate of the poor: what are we destined for? Dust or glory? And this is why I am a Catholic Christian which is a religion not of “spirituality” but a religion of flesh and blood and reality. Catholic Christianity is not about cosy feelings and personal fulfilment but about the fate of those children scrambling over the scrap-heaps in desperate search of sustenance. Catholic Christianity is the religion of the God who feeds the poor by giving nothing less than himself.

Mary III

2011-05-02T06:21:00.002+01:00

Conceived without the guilt of Original Sin:

We must not confuse the Church’s teaching that Mary was conceived without the stain of sin (immaculate conception) with the church’s teaching that Jesus was conceived in the womb of a virgin (Virgin birth or Virginal conception).

The dogma (for so it was defined by Pius IX in 1854) depends on our understanding of Original Sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that original sin is a deprivation of original holiness and justice. (§ 405) It is really important to note that before Original Sin the really original condition of men and women is Holy and Just. The same paragraph describes human nature as “wounded” and of us having an “inclination towards evil”. (Baptism is the restoration of this original state of holiness though we are left with the need to struggle against the tendency to sin).

Our Original Sin, then, is humanity shutting out God. We have closed ourselves to the possibility of God. This “loss of Holiness” is a loss of connectedness with him. This is the tragedy of the human condition: we have lost God, the source of life and goodness and therefore we know death as well as life; we know evil as well as good. Life becomes the unfulfilled longing for God ending in death. We are no longer singing the song we were supposed to sing; we are out of tune with God. And no matter how hard we try we cannot re-connect; we cannot hear the tune; we live in darkness.

If the church claims that Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin then she is saying that God restored her (at the very beginning of her life) to the original state of holiness which was proper to the whole of humanity before the fall. In this sense her holiness is not unique to her but is, rather the “natural state” of all men and women. In other words, were it not for original sin, we would all be like Mary. So she is conceived without this obstacle which so impedes us: she is reconnected to God by God. God opens her heart so that she is open to him in a way we cannot be without his grace. Mary is given the possibility of God; she sings his song.

So what does this say about God? The dogma affirms that God will not be trapped by our sinful condition. We are trapped: we cannot fulfil what is God’s purpose for us but God is not so bound. God is not prevented from acting in the events of human history because we have separated ourselves from him. We see this beautifully illustrated in the story of the Patriarchs: no matter how much human beings make a mess of things, God still fulfils the promise he makes to us. Esau sells his birthright and Jacob tricks his father, Laban tricks Jacob and Joseph’s brothers all but do away with him whilst Joseph gets himself thrown into prison and yet, despite all this and more, God’s purpose is fulfilled. God acts in human history and gives his holiness to his people despite them.

And so God gives his holiness to Mary. It is not because of something she has done. This is God’s action so that his purpose for humanity might be fulfilled. And if God has done this for Mary it is because he intends it for us all: what is given to Mary at the beginning of her life is given to all of us when we are re-born in the waters of Baptism. This holiness meant that Mary was capable of receiving God into her heart as she received Jesus in her womb. So too, at our Baptism we are cleansed of our sins and made holy so that we too are able to receive the Word of God and allow it to grow in our hearts. God is not trapped by our sinfulness but even more importantly, nor are we. By the grace of Baptism, we too can sing our Magnificat; we can say “Yes” to God.

Mary II

2011-05-01T06:23:00.002+01:00

Mother of God:

In the early Christian centuries there were fierce arguments about who exactly Jesus is. The argument mattered to people because they were anxious not to blaspheme God or to underestimate the significance of the Salvation event. It mattered that Jesus was fully God and fully human because affirming that affirmed that human beings mattered to God. What is not assumed, the dictum went, is not healed. The title “Theotokos” or “God bearer”, affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, guaranteed that when we speak about her son we are affirming that he is Divine (because she is Mother of God) and that he is human (because she is the Mother of God). We are affirming the most intimate union between God and man: that He took our humanity in order that we might be partakers of his Divine nature.

So, of course, the title God Bearer or Mother of God is about us too. If the son of Mary was not God, what use would he have been in bringing us to God? If he were not man, what on earth had he to do with us? This title above all the titles of Mary is about the destiny of humanity. It is THE title which affirms all that the Church wants to say about the person of Jesus who is God made man and therefore it is THE theological statement which affirms our destiny as human become divine. The title adds not one little jot to our knowledge of Mary but it tells us all you ever needed to know about Jesus and about the dignity of humanity. Eastern Christians still speak of the Deification of human persons as our ultimate end: union with God.

It is also a title about our Vocation as individual Christians who, like Mary, are called to bear God to a world which is hungry for his love and his truth.

Mary I

2011-04-30T12:06:00.002+01:00

Mary and Dogma and Us:

Most dogma is about Jesus. Even dogmatic statements about Mary are really statements about Jesus. But all dogma is also really a statement about humanity. A dogma says we MUST say this because to deny it would be to say something untrue about Jesus and untrue about humanity. In the next four posts I intend to test this in relation to the key things that we say about Mary: that they are really statements about Jesus and the whole of humanity. I will examine four dogmatic claims: that Mary is a Virgin; that she is the Mother of God, that she was conceived without the guilt of original sin and that she has been assumed body and soul into heaven. In each case I will ask what the statement says about the person of Jesus and or the nature of God on the one hand and what each statement says about the nature and destiny of human persons on the other.

Mary ever Virgin:

Recall that image of the feet disappearing into the clouds. It was a bad picture of the Ascension because it was not informed by proper doctrine. It was a bad picture because it was bad theology. We must be careful that our minds don’t paint a similarly naïve picture of the virginal conception of Jesus.

Jenkins’ mocking, “God doesn’t do that sort of thing” is blatantly untrue when we look at the virgin birth in the light of Holy Scripture. Firstly, God is always intervening all over the place in the events of human history and most especially in the history of His people. Secondly, and much more importantly, the Virgin birth is entirely consistent with the Biblical claim that God is creator. The Virgin Birth must be seen in the light of the Genesis story: as Eve was taken from Man so now the Son of Man is taken from the woman. Here is a new creation.

So the doctrine of the Virgin birth in the first place is about God as Creator. This, (with apologies to David Jenkins) is exactly the sort of thing God does. And here, in the conception of Jesus, man is being re-created. The creation of Jesus in the womb of Mary is no mere continuation of the old created order subject to decay; here, by God’s direct intervention, that old creation of sin and death is being made new. Yes, Jesus is the child of Mary and therefore as fully human as you or I. But, Jesus is the child of God: unique amongst men. The story of the Virgin Birth turns out not to be about the absence of a human father but about the presence of God.

The doctrine of the Virgin birth is about God as creator; it tells us that in Jesus, God has brought about a new creation. It is, therefore a statement about us and the possibilities for the rest of humanity. Jesus is the beginning of a new creation not a one-off event in history. In the ARCIC Agreed Statement “Mary Grace and Hope in Christ” the Commission says of the virginal conception that it “points to the new birth of every Christian as an adopted child of God”. If Jesus is a new creation then we who belong to him also have the possibility being made new, of being re-created in his image. “Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new”. (II Corinthians 5: 17)

We are not trapped in the vicious cycle of birth and death which characterises the old creation. As Christians we have been “born again from above” (John 3: 3-5) and so the “miracle” of the new birth of Jesus turns out not to be a unique event at all: we are all born again into the new creation as our Baptismal regeneration places us firmly in the new paradise. The Church speaks of Mary as “Ever Virgin” because, just as with the Grace of Baptism, that new Creation can never be undone. This new thing is not subject to decay.

So, just as when we look at the disappearing feet of Jesus we are totally distorting the doctrine of the Ascension, so too, if our understanding of the virginal conception is nothing more than the absence of Joseph we are totally missing the point!

Dogma and Religious Language

2011-04-27T15:07:00.002+01:00

I did promise something on the Blessed Virgin Mary – and that piece will be forthcoming – but as I was struggling to write it I realised that there was still a bit more to be said about Dogma. The very word will send a shiver down the spine of the intellectual liberal (even though she has one overriding dogma she adheres to) and it usually appears in the form of an adjective describing one who is less than open minded. Though, as I have already suggested, the whole point of Christian Dogma is to insist on a sort of open-mindedness; to preserve the Catholic “and”.

Today, Christians are in love with poetry and imagery, art and iconography but far les comfortable with Dogma. I want to suggest that they are two sides of the same coin and that the Dogma preserves the iconography and imagery and purifies it. (At the same time, the art and image prevent the Dogma from becoming merely dry, empty intellectualism).

You can, perhaps, already see how I might be thinking about Mary here but I am going to put her on one side for now and look briefly at another idea in Christianity which presents itself to us as a Creedal statement and very frequently in art, iconography, music and poetry and so on. As I write I am looking at an icon representing the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. In the top half of the picture Jesus is seated in the heavens (blue circle) which are held up by an angel on either side. The bottom half depicts Mary and the Eleven. Mary too is accompanied by two angels and whilst she looks directly at us whilst pointing upwards to her Son, the eleven are looking all over the place, still in utter confusion before they receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Mary and Jesus have halos the Eleven do not. Mary is dressed in the blue of heaven and the red of martyrdom.

It is a powerful picture but it is not my favourite depiction of the Ascension. My favourite representation is that over the Altar of the Mystery of the Ascension in the Shrine Church of Our Lady in Walsingham. There, the feet of Jesus are seen simply disappearing into the clouds. Perhaps slightly less theologically informed – and I have to say that it is my favourite because it makes me laugh not because it is a good art or good theology!

But the truth is the second image could be hugely misleading. It is too literal, certainly, but in its literalism it depicts the Absence of Jesus and not his presence. In the first picture, the icon, there is no doubt about Jesus presence in the picture. He dominates the picture. And although the Eleven cannot see him there is a serenity in the posture of Mary who seeks to assure us who also cannot see that her Son is indeed present always.

I want to suggest that the first picture is of more use to us precisely because it is faithful to the Church’s understanding of the meaning of the Mystery. The icon needs the dogma. Without sound teaching our religious representations (like the disappearing feet of Jesus) become nothing more than misleading cartoons.

So,what are the Dogmas that inform the image? Well, obviously the statement in the Creed: “And Ascended into heaven.” But who ascended? And it is the dogmatic answer to this question which is crucial. It is He whom the creed has already affirmed as the Eternal Son of the Father and who had taken human flesh and was crucified. The Jesus sat in the blue circle is the eternal Son of God who had assumed human flesh. The picture depicts the destiny of humanity. This picture is precisely about the destiny of those confused men who are looking all over the place in the icon. Mary’s steady gaze reminds us that although we, like the Eleven, cannot see Him we must trust. Look, she says, he is only there!

The Dogmas that the picture draws on are Dogmas concerning the Incarnation and the Church. The picture is about the destiny of human flesh; it is about the fate of the poor; and here the Eleven - that is us - can be reassured that where he has gone we shall surely follow. We are reminded of what the Eastern Churches know so well, that the heart of this picture is heaven where all women and men can call home.

So something odd happens in the promulgation of Dogma. If we were asked we would probably say that Christian Dogma is about God. But actually there is not much dogma which is directly about God. Most dogma is about Jesus but even then the dogma is really about the human beings at the bottom of the picture. Why do we want to insist that Jesus, true God and true man ascended body and soul into heaven? Why does it matter? It matters because the Eleven – us – matter. Dogma says we MUST say THIS about Jesus because to deny it would be to say something untrue about human beings. To deny that Jesus has ascended body and soul into heaven is to deny the destiny of humanity.

Interestingly, when we come to talk about dogmas concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, we are usually doubly under-scoring, for dogmas about Mary are usually affirming a truth about the rest of humanity (we say it about Mary because it is true of all Christians) but we are usually also affirming something about the person of Jesus. Dogma about Mary has, in this sense become a double check: if we say this, what are we saying about the rest of humanity and what are we saying about Jesus? (And if we are saying this about Jesus, what are we saying about humanity?)

So, when we say what we shall say about Mary it will matter. It will matter because really it is about us and about the fact that we matter.

Utter Joy (Part II) !!

2011-04-21T22:53:00.000+01:00

Today members of the Eastbourne Ordinariate were received into the Catholic Church.

It is true: the music and Liturgy were ropey beyond measure but nothing could spoil the beauty and joy of the occasion. I expect the Ordinariate members would have liked to have left church singing and dancing for joy but they will have to contain themselves until the end of the Easter Vigil! I am so thrilled for them!

(To be fair on the parish priest, the Confirmation itself was done beautifully!)

We are now looking forward to Fr Neil's ordination(s) which will both be at Arundel Cathedral.

How to Spot a Heresy – a layperson’s guide.

2011-04-01T22:00:00.007+01:00

I am neither a historian nor a theologian and I’m sure that I have been guilty of huge generalisations and inaccuracies in recent posts but I hope that I have not been too wide of the mark. I hope to goodness that I have not fallen into heresy! And that rather begs the question: What is a heresy?

Now a heresy is wrong. Of course it is. But we need to understand properly what is meant by the word, we need to contrast “heresy” not with “Truth” but with “Catholic”. A heresy is simply a half truth in contrast to The Catholic Faith which is the fullness of the truth. Catholic means universal but the Greek is suggestive of more than this: katholou[1], means according to the whole. This is the very simple difference: the Catholic Faith is the wholeness of the Faith and a heresy is a half truth. Indeed, very often when we hear people who claim to be defending the Truth, we know all too well that they are actually only defending half the truth (and therefore distorting it).

Really importantly, then, if the Church claims that she is “maintained in truth” it is in this sense: that she believes she is saved from half-truths! Heresy[2] is derived from a Greek word which means “to make a choice”. Now, of course, being a Christian means making choices about ones life and relationships, but it does not mean making a choice between truths. There are a number of moments in the history of the development of Christian Doctrine which illustrate this.

The first such moment is when the Church (at the Council of Nicaea AD 325) declared Christ to be “of one substance with the Father”. I don’t want to get into the very complex arguments here but in short the Church was insisting that you must say of Jesus that he was BOTH fully human AND fully God. The Arians (not necessarily Arius himself) insisted that Christ was a demigod, some sort of super-human creature but definitely not God. The trouble with this heresy or half-truth was that it actually compromised BOTH the humanity (super human not human) AND the Divinity of Christ (super human and therefore not Divine). Catholic truth has this habit of being BOTH AND whereas Arianism seemed to be saying neither nor.

The arguments about the exact nature of Christ, his humanity and divinity were to go on for over a hundred years. Again, without getting into the detail, two schools emerged: the Alexandrians and the Antiochenes. The dispute between these two schools of thought was largely diffused by the definitions of the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451). (If you really want to know the ins and outs of their row read “Truly Divine & Truly Human” by Stephen Need SPCK 2008). Now this dispute and its resolution has been important to me in coming to my understanding of the role of the Papacy – and we shall look at that further in the next post – but here it is sufficient to note that the Chalcedon definition refused to allow either School to have its way. Stephen Need says:

Many commentators have misleadingly interpreted this statement of faith as a mere compromise between the Antiochene and Alexandrian Christologies……..But the definition is far more than just a compromise; it is a finely balanced statement of the complex relation between Christ’s divinity and humanity, bringing together elements from both approaches but adding significantly deeper insights into the person of Christ. (My bold)

Once more then, the Church’s task was to reject half-truths. She does not claim in any statement of the Faith to be saying everything that could ever be said – not even about the Faith. All she is doing, when she rejects heresy, is saying “If you are to be consistent with what the Church has always believed, then you must say this at least. To say less than this is to be talking half-truths”. So when Pope Pius XII defined the Dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1950, all he was saying was that if you are going to be consistent with everything the Church has ever believed, you must say this at least. But, of course, that begs the final question!

So, at last, in the next post, we will get to the point of all this: Papal Infallibility.

[1] Kat-, kata-, down, along, according to; + holou from neuter genitive of holos, whole.

[2] From Late Greek hairesis, from Greek, a choosing, faction, from haireisthai, to choose, middle voice of hairein, to take.]

The Church Maintained in Truth

2011-03-30T21:36:00.010+01:00

The tensions in the early church were inevitable. That dynamic of growth moving from the intensity of Jerusalem to the chaos of the diaspora would inevitably lead to conflict. The Jews living outside Jerusalem, indeed outside Judah, would have an entirely different outlook to the Jews who remained in the Holy Land. It was inevitable that Christianity would be attractive to Jews who were living outside Judah because it was a religion for the outsider. So Christianity grew rapidly and chaotically. And whilst the church told a remarkably consistent story there was an explosion very early on. For there were some who came to fully understand the meaning of the Jesus Vocation to “gather the Nations”. This Way, they grasped, was not just a religion for the Jews.

When the dispute broke out at Antioch about what all this meant: should Gentiles be circumcised, for example, it was clear to the Christians of Antioch that they were not competent to judge the matter. In Acts 15 we are told that, “Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss the question with the Apostles and elders”. (Acts 15:2). Jesus choice of the Twelve as “Judges and Rulers” is being honoured and for the first time we see the establishment of a pattern of decision making which was to remain crucial to the Church throughout its history: that meeting at Jerusalem, we might say, was the first Council of the whole Church. It was James, the leader (Patriarch) of the Church in Jerusalem who delivers the verdict.

This particular dispute is important because it establishes very early on that in the tension between the Universal and the local church, the local must defer to the universal. It establishes too the position of the Apostles as the guardians of the Faith: the question is not “What is God saying to us?” but “What has God shown us?” The task of the Apostles is to interpret what they have been given and we shall see, as the history of the Church unfolds, that time and again the church has to answer this question: “How can we faithful to the faith that has been given to us by the Apostles?” The question is never: “What do people today think?” Indeed, Orthodoxy is usually quite counter-cultural.

Astonishingly early on the Church works out how to replace the Apostles. Although there is no direct evidence of the decision, the outcome is clear: the Apostles are replaced with Bishops. There is a famous passage in the letter of St Ignatius to the church at Smyrna where the expression “Catholic Church” is used for the first time: "Wheresoever," he writes, "the bishop appears, there let the people be, even as wheresoever Christ is, there is the Catholic Church." (Ignatius was martyred in CE 117). Already the church is working out how to deal with the local / universal tension. How can the Church be the gathering of men and women from the four corners of the earth AND local? The answer is the Bishop, successor to the Apostles: He will be the guarantee that the local church continue in the teaching of the Apostles, representing as he does the universal church to the local. Where the Bishop is …. there is the Catholic Church ….. just as if Jesus himself were present. And I must stress: this is not a case of the Church trying to reproduce patterns of leadership in the secular world – for the Church is still enduring persecution at this stage in its history.

So as time goes on and as questions inevitably arise about what is or is not the Catholic Faith, it is the Bishops who have to decide. They must answer the question about what “seems good to us and the Holy Spirit”. And so, a pattern is established of calling Ecumenical Councils whenever there are tensions between the various local churches or where there are big disagreements about doctrine. And who are at these meetings? The Bishops, of course; those who had been appointed to safeguard the Faith of the Apostles. Just as the Apostles had met in Jerusalem to decide about "the Gentile question" so, in the future, Bishops would gather to determine the answer to difficult questions. It is not my intention here to go into the particular decisions of particular Councils of the Church but it is important to grasp that those early Councils made some astonishingly crucial decisions. Much of what we take for granted as Christianity today (for example that Jesus Christ is both God and Man, that Mary was “Theotokos” or “Mother of God", indeed the very wording of the Creeds – these were all determined by so called “Ecumenical Councils” (Ecumenical means “of the whole world” it did NOT mean then the meeting of different denominations because there was only the Catholic Church.)

We could of course argue that the outcome of these Councils is the stuff of mere historical accident. Many indeed to want to say that the decisions and the language of the Councils belong to a particular time and place but they are no longer relevant to us. But the fascinating thing is to see just how counter-cultural those decisions were! It is impossible to understand from the pages of history, for example why the very popular heresy called “Arianism” did not become the official religion of the Empire. (Arians believed that Jesus Christ was the highest of all God’s creatures but, nevertheless, only a creature). It was a popular and successful version of Christianity and yet it failed. I am convinced that we have to posit Providence: that when Jesus said that “The Spirit of Truth” would lead us to the truth, he meant it.

In defence of the Gospel

2011-03-30T19:18:00.002+01:00

My journey ended sooner than I had thought but I'm going to keep going with this Blog and use it, as far as I am able, as a tool for promoting the Catholic Faith.

To that purpose I would so like my readers to read the story told by Archbishop Dolan (Archbishop of New York) of his airport encounter. What a very brave defence of the Church!

You can read it here.

The New Testament Church

2011-03-29T18:23:00.003+01:00

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. (Acts 2: 5-11)

I have suggested that when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday morning he really did think that he was going to fulfill the hopes and expectations of God’s people. He really did believe that it was his task to gather (into the Ekklesian) the lost tribes of the House of Israel to worship in the final Temple that he himself was to build. So did his disciples. So did the crowd. The trouble was, of course, that right from the word go there had been misunderstanding. In that conversation at Caesarea Philippi he clearly tells the disciples that he must suffer: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life”. (Matthew 16: 21). Only later do the disciples understand that the Temple of which Jesus speaks is the Temple of his own body. Indeed, Jesus is not just Temple, he is the Sacrifice too.

And so on the day of Pentecost it all begins to come true: that wonderful litany of place-names points to this gathering of the nations. This in-gathering has begun big time and St Luke tells us of “three thousand” and “many” and a further “five thousand” all within a couple of chapters! It has begun, here, in Jerusalem. And the way into this Ekklesian, the New Israel? It is, of course, by Baptism, by crossing the metaphorical Jordan.

But something quite remarkable happens to the New Testament church which even then we could not have guessed at. Almost immediately the church itself endured persecution and became scattered. There remained a small church in Jerusalem but the greater part of the church became dispersed. And here the most astonishing thing happens. It is in the very dispersion of the Christian community that they discover (with the help of St Paul) the real meaning of the gathering of the Nations. It was not that the nations had to travel to Jerusalem but, rather, Jerusalem was wherever the Church was. So, the author f the Epistle to the Hebrews: “You have come to mount Zion” (Heb 12:22); or St Peter: "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ". (I Peter 2:5).

So the Church has a portable Jerusalem! Or as the writer of the Book of Revelation has it: "a heavenly Jerusalem". Why? Because they have a portable sacrifice! “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes”, St Paul tells us. (I Cor 11:26).

After the destruction of he Temple in CE 70, Jews and Christians coped in radically different ways: Jews completely spiritualised the religion of Temple and Sacrifice whereas Christians had a portable sacrifice. That one, perfect, unpolluted sacrifice could be offered anywhere in the world. And so began the great missionary adventure of the Church as she engaged in this two-fold activity of gathering the nations (Baptism) and offering pure worship (Eucharist).

Salve Regina

2011-03-28T22:31:00.002+01:00

Salve Regina, mater misericordiae: vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae. Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle. Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria. Amen.