Category Archives: Anti Catholic

Vain Repetition?

24 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Book Club, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Julian of Norwich, Lent, Marian devotion

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In the Facebook Lent Book Group one member has noted that Sheild Upjohn is very reluctant to take sides in the various theological issues she herself raises. In the chapter on “prayer” this is clearest on two issue which readers of this blog will recognise – praying the Rosary and praying with the Saints.

Our old correspondent, Bosco, was very hot on these issues. Like many Protestants of an Evangelical bent (if that is what he was), Bosco objected to praying the Rosary, reminding us that we had been warned against vain repetition, adding for good measure that we shouldn’t pray to the Holy Virgin (whose virginity he, in rather poor form even for him, denied) or the saints. Ms Upjohn’s delicacy is perhaps understandable. New readers here need only to put “Bosco” into the search bar on the blog to find some prime examples of prejudice uniformed by knowledge, allied to a firm refusual to rethink once informed. It’s a way of being, but not one which commends itself to anyone who does not already hold such views.

Catholic actually pray “with” the Saints, not to them; the same is true of the greatest of the Saints, Our Lady. If you do not believe there is a “great cloud of witnesses” then so be it, but at least do fellow Christians the courtesy of informing yourself what they say they believe. Can devotion be misinterpreted? It can, and those Anglo-Saxons who feel uneasy with overt displays of emotion, may well find themselves feeling that way about some of the devotions practised by those whose culture makes them very easy with such displays; but they might like to reflect that understanding requires more than observation uninformed by knowledge. Empathy matters, and before we rush to judge others, we might think to exercise it.

It raises the issue of what prayer is for? Mother Julian is a good guide here, writing in chapter 41:

Our Lord himself is the first to receive our prayer, as I see it. He takes it, full of thanks and joy, and he sends it up above, and sets it in the treasury, where it will never be lost. It is there before God and all his holy ones – continually heard, continually helping our needs. When we come to heaven, our prayers will be given to us as part of our delight – with endless joyful tasks from God.

chapter 41

I have found praying the Rosary whilst walking an excellent way of taking two forms of exercise, and I know Jessica has found it useful after I recommended it to her. In so praying it helps my mind focus on the Scriptural passages behind each part of the Rosary. The idea that it somehow raises Our Lady to divine status could, I suspect, be raised only by one who brought it with them because of a suspicion that Catholics do that. There has been a very long history of anti-Catholicsm in the Anglo-Saxon world, and even though we are now in a more secular age, traces of it linger, and added to that we have the aggressive secularism which finds all religion a survival of what it dismisses as medieval superstition, without ever understanding it.

Here, again, Julian is helpful. In chapter 25, Jesus offers her a vision of the Blessed Virgin in heaven:

And with this very same expression of gladness and joy, our good Lord looked down on his right side and brought my mind to where our Lady stood during his Passion, and he said, ‘Would you like to see her?’ … as if he had said, ‘Would you like to see how I love her, so that you can rejoice with me, in the love that I have for her and she for me? … Would you like to see in her how you are loved. For the love of you I made her so exalted, so noble and of such worth; and this delights me, and I want it to delight you.

Chapter 25

Sheila Upjohn’s approach is irenic in the best way. Experience has taught he what it has taught others, which is that you cannot really argue about this issue, all you can do is to try to enter into an understanding of why, for so many of us, Our Lady is so loved. That is not a bad pattern for us during Lent.

#lentbookclub is on Twitter as #LentBookClub, Facebook as https://www.facebook.com/groups/LentBookClub, and is using The Way of Julian of Norwich by Sheila Upjohn which can be bought here rather than Amazon. It runs from Ash Wednesday 20210219 to Easter Sunday-ish 20210404 and we are doing a chapter a week, roughly. Folk who are blogging about this are: Graham, at https://grahart.wordpress.com/, Andrew at https://www.shutlingsloe.co.uk/, Eric at https://sundrytimes2.wordpress.com/, Soobie at https://soobie64.medium.com/, Ruth at https://becausegodislove.wordpress.com/. Come join the pilgrimage with Julian to Norwich!

Our Lady and Tradition

04 Tuesday Aug 2020

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith

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What is one to say when someone questions venerating Our Lady? In me it inspires a sense of sadness. It drags the Blessed Virgin into controversy which is of men; oddly, or not, I have never had a woman find this a cause for controversy. One can, of course, pray for those who do this, and one can point out, for the millionth time that no one worships Our Lady. Those who refuse to see the difference between worship and veneration are, alas, like those who cannot see the difference between red and green; it is a form of spiritual colour-blindness. It is when they have resort to the Scriptures to support their views that a reasonable response can be made.

No one disputes that during the earthly Ministry of Our Lord, Our Lady was not one of those who followed Him from place to place. It is certain that we see her telling the servants at the Wedding at Cana to do as He tells them. It is equally certain that she tried to bring Him back home when He was criticised and attacked by those in the locality; so might any mother do for a beloved Son. Were St Mark all we had to go on then little attention would have been paid to Mary of Nazareth; but then were his Gospel the only one, we would be at something of a loss over the Resurrection. But of course, whilst concentrating on one Gospel and neglecting other sources may be the way of the polemicist, it is the way neither of the scholar nor reading with the eye of Faith.

Our Lady was there, with many others, at Pentecost, St Luke tells us this, as he tells us so much more about her. We know about the Annunciation because of St Luke, who also tells us more about the birth of Jesus than anyone else; it is Luke who also gives us the few details we have of His early life. St Matthew’s Gospel covers some of the same ground, but in less detail. Where did St Luke get his information? We cannot know, but we do know he collected information from eye-witnesses, and Our Lady seems the most likely source for all of this.

But let us go back a step. Why do we accept St Luke’s Gospel? Some time ago I asked Bosco what books he thought should be in the Bible, and he told me, no doubt in jest, that it was on the contents page. Of course there was no “contents page” in the original manuscripts, and we know their name and that they are “Scripture” only by the voice of the Church. Jessica wrote interestingly on the early history of the New Testament, and her piece has many references for those interested. The point to be made here is that the same Church which tells us that there are only four Gospels and which names them, also tells us that Christ was born of a Virgin. It does not go into detail about the early life of Jesus, but all the early traditions are agreed that Our Lady was a Virgin, and before relatively recent times, no one save a few heretics, read the Gospel references to the “brothers” and “sisters” of the Lord as being uterine siblings. There is more on this here, but the point is the same, that if we accept Tradition gives us Scripture, then we accept as a corollary that it knows how to interpret it; were that not so then on what basis would we accept the Canon of Scripture? As Austin Ferrers put it:

The fact on which our faith reposes is not the fact of Christ’s history alone, it is the doubtle fact of that history taken together with the existence of the spirit-filled Church which proclaimed that history and lived by its fruits. And the Church accepted the virginal conception as a harmonious part of the sacred story; once it had been set forth it could not be thought away; it belonged so absolutely in its place. Inspired authority established the belief; Ignatius and Irenaeus make it a kernel of orthodoxy.

There is, of course, nothing to stop anyone calling themselves a Christian and believing whatever they want, but they cannot in so doing claim to be orthodox or in the Tradition of the Church whose book they are choosing to read by the light of their own intellect; wisdom might suggest tempering one’s own views with the great cloud of witnesses who have been here before us.

The recent series on the origin of the Canon has, I hope, been a help here, as one of the things it shows is the importance the first Christians attached to “handing on” what they had received from Jesus and the Apostles.

There are limits to what even the Spirit-filled Church can do. She is inspired to proclaim facts and interpret them. She is not inspired to create new facts; that seems to be uniquely the job of people who think they know better. The Creed states orthodoxy. We believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” There is, as St Matthew makes clear, a paradox here. In her “yes” Our Lady not only opened the gate to our redemption, she also opened the door to a personal scandal which could have ruined her life. Even the righteous St Joseph behaved as any man might on learning that his betrothed was with child. Being a righteous man he did not want to shame her, so he was minded to put her aside privately; only the Angel stopped him. Our Lady was willing to bear that for us.

Now, of course, there is nothing to stop anyone claiming that all of this tradition about the mother of Jesus being a virgin is just that, a tradition, but since the same is true about the canon of Scripture, I am not sure that the person making such a claim has not just sawn off the branch of the tree upon which he is sitting. In saying, in effect, “my reading of Scripture is x” he is begging the question of how he knows what is and is not Scripture in the first place.

Equally, there is nothing to stop anyone claiming that Our Lady had other children, although the very idea seems to me impious. But such a claim would need to explain why Our Lord gave over His mother to the care of St John rather, than as was the Jewish custom if there was more than one child, to the next eldest. So again, we ask ourselves whether the evidence of Scripture justifies what the Church has always taught, and we find that it does, and that it is the unorthodox who has to explain why the majority of Christians for most of history have been wrong and he and the few who agree with him is correct. Since, invariably, such critics also criticise the idea that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals, there is a certain irony in their insistence on their own infallibility in whatever matter it is upon which they wish to pronounce.

It takes a great deal of chutzpah, or perhaps it is ignorance, to prefer one’s own reading of Scripture to that of the Church which told us and tells us what it is. I have too little of either to wish to go there. Moreover, when it comes to the Blessed Virgin, I have to admit a bias. She is for me an invariable help in coming to her Son. In this sense, this is a very personal post, as I have found the Blessed Virgin an invaluable help on my journey, and sometimes she has been one of the few lights in the darkness. So, to those, such as Bosco, who insist on being unpleasant about her, I direct one comment. Just what do you think any good Jewish boy would think of anyone criticising his mother?  If your version of Christianity pushes you to disparage the mother of Our Lord, then you, or it, is doing something very wrong.

Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.

Listening to God

21 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Blogging, Faith

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A recent post raised a very pertinent question from our long-time and valued discussant, Jock to the effect that did I really want to go down the road of using the blog to argue with Bosco. It was an excellent point which I took in the spirit it was meant. There comes, after all, a point where reasoning with the mortal equivalent of a brick wall should stop. One simply has to acknowledge that one has done all that is possible and leave the rest to God.

Jock’s comment did, however, raise the whole question of what this place is for, which, in turn took me to some wise comments by Eugene Peterson, which I wanted to share with readers here.

The Christian life consists in what God does for us, not what we do for God … [it] consists in what god says to us, not what we say about God … if we do not return to Square One every time we act, each time we speak,, beginning from God and God’s word, we will soon be practiising a spirituality that has little to do or nothing to do with God. [Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book, p. vi).

How do we do that?

For Catholics there are two powerful spiritual exercises which help: Eucharistic Adoration and praying the Rosary. Daily reorientation toward God is a vital part of our spiritual life, and private prayer can also be an aid, as is guided reading of the Scriptures and sharing one’s thoughts with fellow Christians.

Back to our friend Jock here. I was much struck by what he has had to say about how he has found the experience of being part of a Church so difficult that he no longer attends. I can understand that. As a Catholic, being able to partake of the Eucharistic feast is essential, but there have been times when I have felt guilty about the feelings evoked by some fellow parishioners, and also, to be frank about the feelings I clearly evoked in them. Being English I shall leave it at “not easy,” and move on. Yet, I cannot help but feel that Christians are meant to be part of a community, and to the extent that this place allows a virtual community to exist, I value it, and your participation.

But what I would add is this. If you are an atheist who wishes to prove that God does not exist, then there are better places for you to exercise your own chosen ministry, as I shall not be biting. The same is true if you find Catholic expressions of the Faith beyond your tolerance. Of course you have the right to do that; but what you won’t have is the right to do it here. There is a line between questioning and debating, which I am always happy to do, and denigration and assumptions that Catholic expressions of the Faith are “wrong.” So, taking our friend Bosco as the model here. He can continue his long diatribe against the Catholic Church, but without any further substantive responses from me.

That is because, in the end, this place exists as a community, and whilst a community can have, and often does have, robust exchanges of views, it exists in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Our friend Jock is a good example of this. He is not a Catholic, but he makes excellent points and asks good questions and is (usually) respectful. His contributions here are much appreciated, as are those from other contributors, few of whom as Roman Catholics.

It would be appropriate to end this with an early Christian prayer:

Pour down on us, O Lord God, the Spirit of Your love and ever preserve in the same mutual charity those whom you have fed with the same havenly bread.

 

Images and Bibliotry

20 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Bible, Blogging, Faith

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bishops-bibleSometimes things are just puzzling.

You explain to someone that no one is worshipping images and that they are aids to worship and they respond “how does a crown on a baby help worship christ?” All one can do is say “no one is worshipping the image of the baby with a crown on it” and leave it there, adding that in the presence of either invincible ignorance or sheer refusal to read what is written, there is nothing more that can be done.

When someone writes:

but if i were smart and listened to the cathols that i would know that god really said to make as many statues and images as possible and get down on my knees face first to the ground befor them

all one can do is to be sad that someone who claims to be “saved” resorts to lies, for make no mistake, there is no Catholic who has ever told anyone to make as many images of statues as possible or to worship them. The motives that drive someone to make a statement they must know to be palpably false may be various, but they cannot be of Christ.

There are those here who ask why it is worth persevering with those such as Bosco who manifestly act in ill-faith? Part of the answer is that their misunderstandings are common ones. The extent of the problem is sometimes amazing.

So when Bosco writes: “first, mary didnt give her permission to have the baby, neither was she asked,” he commits the most dreadful blasphemy, in effect accusing God of rape. This point has been answered at length here. Quite how anyone can believe that God is a rapist and still claim to worship Him passes belief. But Bosco is almost irrelevant here, it is his methodology, which is common, which is of wider concern.

Although much of the debate about images concerns art, at root it concerns making anything an idol, and the central problem with the sort of mentality exemplified by Bosco is that it makes the Bible an idol. The Bible is not an instruction manual. It is not self-defining. There is no “contents” page to it, despite Bosco’s statement: “hi good brother. the books in the bible are listed in the table of contents.” It was the Church which decided which books were to be included as “scripture”, and if we take that seriously, to imply that the Church is not authorised to know how to read what it tells us is “scripture” is, to put it mildly, illogical. We see the same lack of logic here:

“as you admit mary is a handmaid of the lord. one of the lowest positions someone could have. how many handmaids are given golden crowns in jolly old england?”

As an exercise in missing the point, this is superb. What is it we read in the Magnificat?

My soul magnifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid;
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed

The whole point is that, from the beginning of the Incarnation, God confounds our expectations. It is not one of the mighty of this earth whom He chooses to be the mother of Jesus, but a lowly maiden; it is not some aristocrat who is the finest of us all, it is Mary of Nazareth.

What Bosco’s method or reasoning shows, alas, is where we can end up if we think that we are the infallible interpreter of Scripture. Here, some wise words from Austin Farrer are helpful: “We cannot hear the voice of God in Christ’s words … unless we have an ear attuned.” We can read the text, we can read the commentaries, we can read the scholarship, but as Farrer reminds us: “there is still something to be done, and that is the most important thing of all: to use our spiritual ears.”

That does not equate to “when we read the text God inspires us to understand it correctly.” God founded a Church and it is through that Church, that is through the whole organised body of Christian minds down the ages to help guide us aright. This is an important point. Biblolatry ties itself into knots trying to say that St Luke’s dates or St Paul’s views on astronomy are beyond criticism, or that the world really was created in six days, as though these are the things that matter and as though, if they are not literally true, all else collapses. It does not matter, God teaches us those things necessary for our salvation in spite of any human imperfections in the text as we have received it.

The idea of inspiration does not mean mean that every word is guaranteed, but it does mean that the Church recognises what is needful for our salvation. There is no part of Scripture that does not illuminate God’s Word to us, but not all parts are equally important. We read aright through the Tradition of the Church, and unless our reasoning faculties work with that, as well as with our own ear of faith attuned to God’s voice, what we think we are taking out of the text is usually little more than we put in. We can listen to the voice of God as it comes to us through His Church with the best tuning we have and the best understanding of which we are capable. Or we can decide we know it all via some unmediated, privileged understanding. This last has a name, Gnosticism. Those who need to look it up will not, I suspect, accept they are Gnostics.

Images and Catholicity

18 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith

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One of the most common charges against Catholic-minded Christians concerns imagery, and one of the most contested areas is one where, if we heeded the message of Christ, we should be most united – because it concerns the Blessed Virgin Mary.

My thoughts here are prompted by yet another long screed from the long-time commentator here, Bosco. There are those, I know, who would say “ignore him,” but that is not, I think a good way. Those same voices will say “but you have made these points before and he will take no notice.” They may be right, but then others may read and they may take notice. The job of the sower is to cast the seed. If it is good seed it will take root in the right soil.

So let us begin with what Bosco says here:

hi good brother. i dont understand. the biblical accounts i mentioned are there for all to see. maybe its the conclusions i draw that you say are wrong.
i maintain that catholic imagery gives false impressions and that catholics have fallen prey to them. yourself included. for instance….the panting of supposed mary holding a baby supposed to be jesus, not even old enough to talk. in the picture they both are wearing big fat gold crowns. there are also graven images of the same with both wearing big gold crowns. this leads people to think they were on top of things right after the birth. but the scriptures dont support this idea. why did mary reprimand jesus for staying behind if he is the king and she is the queen. kings do what they want.

 

When Jesus says he is “the living water,” I am sure that Bosco does not suppose that He is saying that He is made out of water; Jesus is using an image to help us understand. The Church does the same. If we take the images to which Bosco refers, they are aids to understanding. There is the world of difference between, for example, the cherubim and seraphim on the Ark of the Covenant (aids to worship) and the Golden Calf (an object of worship). I am sure Bosco knows this difference, so it is unclear why he persists in a literal reading. It may be that to him kings are “on top of things right after the birth,” but if he were to pause for a moment, two things might become clear. There has never been a moment in history when a king has been “on top of things right after the birth,” and the crowns are an image to help our worship.

What is being symbolised here is the Kingship of Christ. I am sure that Bosco acknowledges Christ is King, so what more natural than an image of Him crowned? His mother is the mother of the King, and as such, is also worthy of a crown. She is also the crown of our race as the handmaiden of the Lord through whom salvation was born into the world. The imagery is clear and an aid to worship.

The critics of Bosco are right, these things have been pointed out to him before. But for Bosco, and others, there is one way, their way, of looking at things, and all other ways are wrong, facts and arguments which are not congruent to that view are ignored. Bosco will not engage with the argument advanced here, which raises the question of his purpose?

heres something else you can claim is false….mary never interacted with jesus ministry after he left home. there is no account of her traveling with him or cooking for the guys or helping him preach or anything. the closest she came was standing outside a house where he was, calling for him, and he didnt even come out to see her. some big queen of heaven. absentee queen. not one word from her.only time she saw him was at the crucifixion, and even then no words of hers were recorded. even at pentacost, no wise words from the all powerful queen of heaven and earth were recorded.

The idea that Our Lady “never interacted with Jesus’ ministry is tenable on only the narrowest reading of what one imagines that Ministry to have been. Without Our Lady’s “yes” to God’s will, there would have been no ministry. In the Magnificat we see the central themes of that Ministry highlighted, as we do in the words of the Song of Symeon. The first miracle sees Our Lady modelling the perfect Christian response to the words of Christ – “do as He tells you.” She is there at the foot of the Cross. Christ’s last earthly command is to have St John care for his beloved mother. It is a sadly impoverished view of Ministry that relegates Our Lady to having no part in it.

you still maintain that im not born again and am usually wrong in my opinions. i go by what is written in scripture while your religion is based on things not in scripture. not only are they not in scripture, they contradict scripture.

There is, as ever, the trope that “I go by scripture” without any acknolwedgement of what Scripture is. The Blessed Apostles show no signs of calling their own work “scripture” and yet the Church, of which they were part and which their Lord founded, recognised it as such. Sciptural fundamentalism is again, a sadly diminished view of what the Apostles did and one of the purposes of the Church which Christ founded.

Then, sadly and predictably, there is the attack on intercessory prayer.

catholic literature vacillates back and forth on some subjects. i read were its good to ask mary to send jesus a prayer request, and i read where you have to go thru mary to get a prayer thru to jesus. the majority says you cant get thru to jesus, that you have to go thru mary. louis de montfort says one can only get to jesus thru mary. i “talk” to catholics in other sites, and it seems to be a 50 50 split on this. half pray to jesus most of the time and half only pray to mary. its not funny anymore when your whole prayer life is wasted praying to nothing. salvation comes from asking jesus to come into your life. if one dies expecting this queen of heaven to save them at the hour of their death, well, their fate is sealed. the reason you or I are here is to work out salvation.mary is fine, but she didnt die for my sins.

I am sure that Bosco has access to a book where the following words appear: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (St James 5:16) These words of St Paul’swould also suggest that intercessory prayer is expected of us:

18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19 and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

Then, of course, there is Jesus Himself, who tells us “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

When we pray to Our Lady, or the Saints, it is asking them to intercede for us before the Throne of God. It is an act of humility and piety.

Now, these things have been explained to our brother Bosco many times, but usually only in the replies to his comments. If he cares to respond to the arguments made here, I guarantee him a hearing. if he simply wishes to restate exploded myths, then he must find someone with greater patience.

Iconoclasm

23 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith

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We have been here before, at least in England and other parts of Christendom. It has been estimated that upto ninety percent of the artwork of medieval England was destroyed at the Reformation. The “Reformers” regarded statues as idols and broke and burnt them. The statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, along with the medieval Abbey, one of the greatest pilgrimage sites in Europe, was destroyed. There was only one way to regard such statues – idolatry – and if you failed to agree, then you too were marked for destruction. Depressing as it is, we seem to be here again.

The original Christian iconoclasts were led by Emperor Leo III (717-741) who banned the use of images and had many destroyed. John of Damascus led the argument against the iconclasts, and at the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787, the Empress Ireme secured a victory against iconoclasm. One of the proximate causes of the crisis was the fact that the new religion of Islam took a very hard line indeed on images, and there had been those in the Church who thought that by taking the same view, they could stem the rise of Islam. They were wrong. So were those who thought that Nicaea 787 had solved the problem.

There seems to be, in our fallen nature, an almost Caliban-like instinct to destroy images our ourselves – perhaps some cannot bear to look into the mirror, like Shakespeare’s Caliban. There will, of course, always be those whose attempt to regulate thought includes governance over what might and might not be displayed in public, whether it is the ankles of a woman or the statue of someone of whom they disapprove.

In democratic countries there is a legal process by which statues can be erected, and there is one by which they can be removed, which is why comparisons with what happened in the former Communist bloc and Iraq are wide of the mark. It may be that there are those who think mob rule preferable to the tedium of democratic process, but it may be unwise to pay them Danegeld.

Historically, destroying representations of people has tended to be accompanied by harming real people. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and every human life is sacred. Orthodox Christianity has tended to eschew iconoclasm for good reasons. now is not the time to change. As a reminder of the past, I include not a statue, but a poem:

 

A Lament for Our Lady’s Shrine at Walsingham

In the wracks of Walsingham
Whom should I choose
But the Queen of Walsingham
to be my guide and muse.

Then, thou Prince of Walsingham,
Grant me to frame
Bitter plaints to rue thy wrong,
Bitter woe for thy name.

Bitter was it so to see
The seely sheep
Murdered by the ravenous wolves
While the shepherds did sleep.

Bitter was it, O to view
The sacred vine,
Whilst the gardeners played all close,
Rooted up by the swine.

Bitter, bitter, O to behold
The grass to grow
Where the walls of Walsingham
So stately did show.

Such were the worth of Walsingham
While she did stand,
Such are the wracks as now do show
Of that Holy Land.

Level, level, with the ground
The towers do lie,
Which, with their golden glittering tops,
Pierced once to the sky.

Where were gates are no gates now,
The ways unknown
Where the press of peers did pass
While her fame was blown.

Owls do scrike where the sweetest hymns
Lately were sung,
Toads and serpents hold their dens
Where the palmers did throng.

Weep, weep, O Walsingham,
Whose days are nights,
Blessings turned to blasphemies,
Holy deeds to despites.

Sin is where Our Lady sat,
Heaven is turned to hell,
Satan sits where Our Lord did sway —
Walsingham, O farewell!

Religious Blogging, Brexit, Trump, and Two Kingdoms

22 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Blogging, Church/State, Lutheranism, Politics

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My dear friend Kathleen and I had a short discussion the other night on her blog, Catholicism Pure & Simple. It was as such things are both productive and friendly. One of the things we touched on was whether it is appropriate for a specifically Catholic or even a Christian blog to touch on things like Brexit and President Trump.

It becomes almost impossible to shirk the debate when our governments intrude on religious beliefs and practices, such as marriage, abortion, freedom of worship and practice.

And so while CP&S has touched on these matters, I seem lately to write of little else, my self imposed remit is political with an American, and Lutheran foundation. That is part of why I’m rarely writing here lately, while congruent if feels just a bit unseemly, and a fair number of you read my blog as well. And there is no point in dragging my friends into the line of fire to no purpose, and that is pretty easy, as our friend Caroline Farrow‘s current problems with the British legal system indicate.

In any case, imagine my surprise as I’m looking around this morning to seeing Dr. Gene Veith of the Cranach blog working on exactly what Kathleen and I were discussing. He excerpted an article by British author Will Jones entitled: Progressives vs conservatives: This is why we can’t just all get along. British, American, British, American, British, Catholic, Lutheran, who says our problems are different. In any case here’s Gene, with Dr. Veith in bold:

. . .The divide [is] between those who believe the world has a given order that ought to be respected because it makes things go best in the long run, and those who do not believe this and think invoking such order is little more than a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful against those they exploit.

The social order, says Jones, expresses itself in institutions such as the family and the nation-state, along with the ideas and practices that support them, such as sexual morality and the rule of law.  Conservatives support them–with religious conservatives seeing them as facets of God’s creation–while progressives find them oppressive.

This conservative respect for natural and social order contrasts sharply with the progressive outlook which is typically hostile to claims of inherent order in nature and society. Progressives tend to follow Marx in regarding such ideas as devices created by the powerful (in Marx’s case, the owners of capital, these days, more likely straight white men) to perpetuate inequalities and restrict people’s freedom of action.

Progressives and conservatives both say they want people to be happy, but they understand very differently what this involves. Whereas conservatives see happiness as emerging from respect for the natural and social order, for progressives almost the opposite is the case: the individual’s pursuit of happiness must as far as possible be achieved by not conforming to the social order. This is because to do so is to become complicit in oppression and to succumb to the ‘false consciousness’ of being happy when enslaved. . . .

Conservatives and progressives differ also in their visions of freedom. Conservatives seek the freedom that comes from respecting the boundaries inherent in the created order. Progressives, on the other hand, aim for freedom from the created order – from biology, from the family, from the nation, from God. As a consequence, progressive freedom has a strong authoritarian bent. This might seem paradoxical, but in fact it follows directly from the progressives’ need to oppose by force the outworking of the order of nature, and to silence those who attempt to point out the problems with this.

So how does Christianity fit with this?

Yes, Christians do believe that God has ordained the family.  The “nation-state” is a relatively modern invention, unknown in the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and tribal societies, but the “state” as some sort of social organization with earthly authorities that restrain evil and protect the good is indeed one of the God-given “estates” for human flourishing (Romans 13; 1 Peter 2:13-14).  Also, Christians believe that moral truths are part of a reality built into creation and human nature (Romans 1-2).  So by these definitions, Christians will tend to be conservative.

No one will be surprised that I heartily concur with them both, and with Kathleen as well. Here is part of one of my comments to her, which sums up my view pretty well.

As a Lutheran, I would point out that the Kingdom of the Left Hand (secular government) is also of God, although not as directly as the Kingdom of the Right hand. And so our governments on earth are also of concern to us. But while I straddle that fence, you, here, are more focussed. And, in truth, I don’t write much on the other blog for that reason as well, since I find my well pretty dry lately on church topics.

And Dr. Veith ends with this, which is certainly appropriate for us to discuss as well.

[…] The Christian’s hope is fixed not so much on this world, which will soon pass away, but on the world to come–on Christ who has atoned for the sins of the world and who will reign as King over the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Is this right?  Am I missing something?  How does this accord with Two Kingdoms theology?

I do think Jones’s analysis explains a lot, from our current political polarization to the behavior of people that we know.  But does it follow that such extreme polarization is inevitable, that there can be no common basis for consensus and social unity?  Is it impossible, in these terms, to have a “center”?  How did we as a nation function in years past?  Were there different ideologies at work?  If so, might we bring some of those back?

 

Catholicism in the public square

06 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith

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In England, and thus by extension the English-speaking world, we inherit a tradition which has been called the “Black Legend,” through which English Catholicism has also been viewed. It makes the Catholic Church the centre of anti-English activities, a cruel, intolerant organisation characterised by the Inquisition. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs  provided a foundational text here, portraying Queen Mary I as “Bloody Mary,” a theme now so ingrained as to be to some extent immoveable.

In his influential “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,” Churchill captures this legend in his treatment of England’s history as one of struggle against the Catholic Powers of Spain and France. The implication of a special English “destiny” was one passed into the American DNA via the idea of “manifest destiny.” All good stories have a villain, and the Catholic Church makes an excellent one in this narrative.

On top of these older narratives, we have a newer one, propagated via aggressive modern secularism, which is hostile to Christianity, but particularly so to the Catholic Church. This new narrative has widened its scope beyond the old victims, who were mainly white male; women and children have been included in the charge sheet. The Church is portrayed as anti-women because of its stances on abortion and contraception; indeed there are some areas where even praising this is seen as “offensive.” It is also hostile to “LGBTI” rights. And then there is child abuse and its cover up. As ever, there would be no smoke without fire, and on the last of these issues, the Church still seems a little tone deaf in some places, and, of course, the large areas where it is not get no attention from its critics.

All of this amounts to a sustained narrative which creates difficulties being a Catholic in the public square. So how do we tell a different story without simply being accused of a biased “revisionism” for its own sake?

In the first place we need to get our history right.

If there was a time when Christianity was alien to England, it was before the invasion of the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 43. By the time of the great rupture we call the Reformation, Christianity had been in these Islands for nearly 1500 years. It did not arrive in the seventh century with St Augustine. Bede is clear that it was already here, and what is sometimes called the “Celtic” Church seems simply to have been the Christianity that was already rooted here before the early fifth century when the Romans withdrew.

England, then Wales and Scotland have a longer history of being “Catholic” than they have of being anything else. Indeed, as Cranmer, Laud and the whole Anglo-Catholic tradition exemplify, a very large section of English Christianity saw itself a a reformed Catholic Church. Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespeare are all products of Catholic culture, as is our education system, as is our law and morality. Reasons of State made it necessary for the English and then the British State to play up the separation from Rome; but that was not the same as separating from what Christianity had given to England, and indeed, Britain.

If we could examine our history afresh and tell this story, rather than the grand narrative of Churchill, then we should make steps in a positive direction. This is not about “revisionism” for its own sake, but it is, as with “Black” and “Women’s history,” a recognition that unless the story of a neglected group is told, it is hard for us to ass that group in a proper historical context.

I would suggest that viewed from this angle, the narrative is one that unites us. The story it tells is of the way in which the Faith created a civilisation with values and norms which are still needed; created an art which still influences us; and created a culture which still matters.

It is not, and never should be, a matter of denigrating in turn those who have denigrated the Catholic Church, but rather one of emphasising the values of the Faith and their positive legacy and continuing influence. It is of saying that Catholics is not “Irish,” or “Spanish” or “other,” it is part of the English spirit. But who will tell that story, who will write that curriculum for out schools, and who will promote the attempt to correct the balance? And equally important, who will do it in a non-partisan manner which recognises that no story is wholly black or white?

I would suggest that if prominent Catholics are looking for good causes, they might do worse than work towards the creation of an Institute that might begin and promote this good work.

We have schools and universities which are world-class, but we have inherited a tradition of reserve and perhaps have so thoroughly taken on board the need to “keep our heads down,” that we have hesitated to take the lead where we are able. We would not want to be accused of being sectarian, not least by those who are.

But there is nothing sectarian in capturing again the ways in which Catholicism is part of our heritage. In 1852 Newman delivered a series of lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England which repay study. He outlined the problem and part of the solution. We are still looking for Catholics who will go forward with the task he outlined then. Shall we, in our time, say the way is too hard and the task too difficult? It was in Newman’s day. It is harder now. It will get no easier.

 

 

Religious illiteracy

12 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Anglicanism, Anti Catholic, Catholic Tradition, Education, Faith

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Of all the defects of modern government, one of the least commented upon is the religious illiteracy of our leaders. It is more than a generation since I was asked, by a student at one of the UK’s top thirty universities whether “Anglicanism was the same as Catholicism?” – and the situation has not improved. Why does it matter? Because, at least here in the UK, decisions which effect Church schools are being taken by people whose minds are so filled with contemporary preoccupations that they have no background against which to operate when taking decisions.

A Government which claims to be Conservative is determined to make all schools teach children from age 4 and up, “age-appropriate” content, that includes information about same-sex marriage and transgenderism.  And, in case anyone should suppose that I am being biased in attributing the Government’s motives to a desire to be ‘up to date’ and ‘on trend,’ let me quote the former Minister, Justine Greening:

it is important that the church, in a way, keeps up and is part of a modern country. We have allowed same-sex marriage, that’s a massive step forward for the better. And for me, I think people do want to see our major faiths keep up with modern attitudes.

Let us pause there and deconstruct what is an Orwellian sentence.

‘Our major faiths’ will, whether they want it or not, be kept ‘up to date’ with ‘modern attitudes’ by the Government because she thinks people want it. Which ‘people’ are these?

One presumes they are not the more than fifty percent of the population who, in the recent British Elections Survey, thought that ‘gender equality’ had ‘gone far enough’. As The New Statesman commented:

It is also worth reconsidering, in the light of this data, the anger and resentment expressed in focus groups and on doorsteps about such prevalent socially conservative views being painted as bigoted, extreme or niche, when they are in fact held by majorities of British adults.

Mrs Greening was speaking for the ‘people’ she knows, the holders of liberal social attitudes which many, perhaps most, of the population do not hold. She has learnt nothing from Trump, or the Brexit fiasco, about the gap between Metropolitan social liberalism and a still prevalent social conservatism. That, of course, does not stop her, and others, claiming to be talking in the name of ‘the people’.

Dame Louise Casey, another senior government adviser, has singled out Catholics in particular. It is “not OK for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage,” she testified in the House of Commons. “I have a problem with the expression of religious conservatism because I think often it can be anti-equalities.” Well, many, perhaps most ordinary people, have a problem with her social liberalism because they think it anti-democratic, and see it as running counter to common-sense; it is unclear why an unelected adviser’s views should take precedence, especially when they are, themselves, redolent of an ancient anti-Catholic bigotry.

Dame Louise, naturally, offers no evidence that Catholic schools are homophobic. If homophobia exists in them, it is not from Catholic but societal sources. The teaching of the Church on care of and respect for homosexuals is clear. As for being ‘anti-gay marriage,’ perhaps Dame Louise is ignorant of the Catholic, and traditional, definition of ‘marriage’?

This socially liberal agenda, an artefact of a minority of the electorate, is to be foisted upon the rest of us for precisely what reason? It is certainly not because people voted for it. The current, admittedly useless, Government, committed itself in its manifesto to lifting the cap on Church schools not being able to have more than 50% of their pupils from a faith background; it has not fulfilled that pledge.

Ministers and their apparatchiks have no understanding of the religious basis on which our schools proceed, or indeed, of religion at all. Catholic, Anglican, Jewish and Muslim Schools are all being presented with an agenda here to which they cannot, in good conscience, sign up. It is an agenda which is not supported by most people, but it will be imposed upon us for our own good. The ties that bind government and people continue to loosen.

That is sad enough. What is sadder is that it being done by people who have no idea of the harm they are wreaking, and no conception of the value systems which have underpinned the civilization they are so busy undermining. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

Newman defends Papal Infallibility

24 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Newman

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It was well-known that Newman had lively doubts about the wisdom of pronouncing on Papal Infallibility, so there was some surprise when, in his response to Gladstone’s critique, he did just that.

Newman’s defence of Infallibility deserves to be read in full, as it remains one of the best I know. That those who were making extreme claims for the dogma were as dissatisfied with it as those who disliked it; but as time has shown, Newman had it about right.

Gladstone had claimed that since the Pope was infallible in matters concerning faith and morals, and since there was no area of life which did not involve at least one of these, he was, in practice, able to command the civic and public allegiance of his subjects: ‘therefore Catholics are moral and metal slaves, and every convert and member of the Pope’s Church places his loyalty and civic duty at the mercy of another.’[iv] Far from shying away from the duty of obedience to those set in ecclesiastical authority, Newman, in the best Protestant style, cited the relevant passage from St. Paul (Hebrews 13: 17) enjoining submission to those placed in positions of authority and challenged Gladstone directly: ‘Is there any liberalistic reading of this Scripture passage?’[v] Catholics held that the Pope was the successor of St. Peter; that being so the obedience paid to him was only that demanded by Holy Scripture itself – and Newman denied utterly that obedience to that authority amounted to ‘slavery’. He drew an analogy between divine and human law. The Law, he argued, was ‘supreme’ and those under it were bound to follow its direction, but no one would claim it ‘interferes either with our comfort or our conscience.’ Newman attempted to correct the English obsession with the power of the Pope. Catholic consciences, like those of any Christian, were regulated by an ancient system of moral theology deriving from sources common to all: the Ten Commandments; the Pauline injunctions of Faith, Hope and Charity; and the practices of fasting, sabbatarianism and tithing; the Pope had little, if anything, to do with these matters. The Pope’s jurisdiction lay in matters ecclesiastical, not in civil affairs; Gladstone’s evident confusion of the two was, Newman commented wryly, the origin of his alarm.

Nor did Newman shy away from Gladstone’s attempt to link Infallibility and the Syllabus. He denied that any of the Pope’s words could be construed as releasing subjects from their allegiance to the State, or as condemning either freedom of the press or of conscience. Failing to anticipate where arguments for the latter would lead, Newman asserted that that no one would say that everything should be published, or that people had the right to unrestricted liberty; every State provided, in its laws, for limits to these things; it was the abuse of such liberty, not the liberties themselves, which the Pope condemned. It was the ‘liberty of self-will’ which was being anathematised, not liberty per se. The Syllabus was, Newman reminded Gladstone, a collection of propositions already condemned in the writings of previous Popes; it had been sent by Pius IX to his bishops, and could only be properly understood in that context; it contained no new matter by the Pope. None of this justified Gladstone’s equating the Syllabus with ex cathedra pronouncements of the Holy See: ‘Utterances which must be received as coming from an Infallible Voice, are not made every day, indeed they are very rare; and those which are by some persons affirmed or assumed to be such, do not always turn out what they are said to be.’ Patience was the ‘sine qua non’ when it came to the interpretation of documents emanating from Rome. It was quite untenable, in Newman’s view, to attribute Infallibility to the Syllabus; from this came all Gladstone’s errors.

Newman’s words are as wise and relevant now as they were then, treading a line between the claims of the Ultramontanes and the liberals. Understood aright, Infallibility is the guard against Christ’s Church teaching error; no more, no less.

[iv] Ibid., p. 39

[v] Ibid., p. 40.