Category Archives: Education

Atque et vale

30 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Education, Faith

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When I started at St Mary’s University in Twickenham in September 2016 I more or less gave up this blog. It was clear to me that participating in the Catholic Culture wars, even inadvertently, was incompatible with my new responsibilities – and anyway, I had a chance to actually do something – that is to help make a Catholic University a strong presence in the Higher Education sector – rather than simply write about these things.

As I retire, after forty-three years in Higher Education, five of them at St Mary’s, it is time to take up the reins again, not to participate in any culture wars – as my more recent posts here should have made clear, I long ago tired of that, but rather to reflect on Christianity in the public square. But first, and here, some reflections as I say “hail and farewell”.

I entered the world of Higher Education, as it then was not generally called, in September 1979 as a lecturer in the School of English and American Studies at the University of East Anglian in Norwich. I was even more blessed than I thought at the time. I knew jobs were going to become scarce, but none of us had any idea they would become so scarce that by 1983 even Mrs Thatcher’s Government, not well-disposed to the sector, would pump some money into what were called “new blood” posts, just to stop the situation becoming impossible. So many of my contemporaries who have jobs, got them then. The Thatcher Government distrusted Universities. It distrusted our claims of professionalism and self-governance, seeing in them little more than self-interested excuses for doing what we wanted rather than what we should be doing. The problem with this was that the Government was not terribly sure what that was, a problem shared by successive administrations, whose interventions would, but for the profesisonalism and resilience of the Sector, have totally wrecked things.

As it is, what successive Governments have managed to do is to load the Sector with a regulatory system which the old USSR would have envied, where the question “quis cusodiet ipsos cusdodes?” (who guards the guardians themselves?) is answered by the creation of ever more guardians; if this was a deliberate job-creation scheme for graduates, it would almost be admirable. As it is, even the present Government (surely in an unhappy catalogue the worst in living memory?) has realised it needs to cut back on the number of guardians. But it still has no idea what Higher Education is for. It seems, if one is to believe its rhetoric (itself an interesting philosophical question, can one believe a word that the Prime Minister utters when he so obviously has no conception of the distiction between truth and whatever suits his purpose?), it would seem that it wants “value for money degrees” and “useful knowledge.” Mr Gradgrind is back; in truth her never went away.

And yet, how ignorant this view of Higher Education is, as the University from which I am retiring has shown. With an Employability rate in the 90% range, in a university which takes more than 60% of its students from backgrounds where no one in the family has been to university, no one could accuse St Mary’s of not caring about getting good career prospects for its students. My academic colleagues put in longer hours than anyone would pay them for before they believe in the real mission of the university; they know our real Mission.

It is that mission which brought me to St Mary’s and it is that mission which took me into Higher Education, and it is a mission with a heavy religious dimension. It is best expressed in St John Henry Newman’s words:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons

Newman

And that, in a nutshell, is what we do in Higher Education. Our job is simple but complex, it is to help every student who is capable of studying and wants to study, to become the best “them” they can be. It’s not our job to say how many scientists, lawyers etc. the country is going to need. No one can know that. Jobs which the Government might say are essential today, may not exist in twenty years time, and jobs no one ever thought of will exist. What is needed are people who know how to think and people who are rounded individuals. Newman got it right in his Idea of a University and it is that mission which St Mary’s has continued.

St Mary’s is a special place because embedded in its DNA is a commitment to teaching. It was founded in 1850 to provide teachers for “Catholic Poor Schools.” It was not founded by any Government, it was founded by the Catholic Church to help train teachers for the Irish immigrants and other Catholics in London. That great and much-understimated man, Cardinal Manning, would not allow the construction of a cathedral in London until every parish had a school. Education pulled men and women out of poverty – and poverty took, and takes many forms.

After the Pandemic, no one can doubt that communities in this country are still blighted by material poverty, and the Churches, Anglican and Catholic, have played a noble part in helping alleviate the suffering it causes. But there is spiritual poverty, there is cultural poverty, there is the poverty of a life lived simply for work, where the riches of family and friends take second-place to the “toad work” as Larkin put it:

Why should I let the toad work

Squat on my life?

Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork

And drive the brute off?

Philip Larkin: Toads

One of the purposes of a University education is to help each invidual find that destiny for which God has selected them, and to equip them with the wherewithal to achieve it. But that destiny has never been just to get rich. We can see what God thinks of such people not only by those to whom he gives riches, but by what he has to say about them in Scripture. Life is a gift, and teaching at any level is a privilege because we get the chance to help others become what is in them – education is about that “leading out” process.

It ws with this faith that I entered Higher Education forty-three years ago and as I retire from my Provostship I can say as St Paul did

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

I now hand on that torch, with confidence, to my successors. There is a very great deal of rubbish talked about what goes on in our universities most of it from people who are not in them. For sure, as we are fallen creatures, not all is Eden, but I thought, as I looked out with pride at my last graduation ceremony as Provost, that of all the ways of spending the life given to me by God, this was one of the better ones. My teachers made a difference to me they could never have imagined, and if by God’s Grace I have been able to do likewise, that is sufficient.

Acts of quiet heroism

02 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Education, Faith

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As might be expected of it, our news media remains in “gotcha” mode, and it is swift to report acts of selfishness and greed in this pandemic. It makes, and rightly so, an exception for Health workers and those who keep the shops running; but it could, and should do more to celebrate what one might call “acts of quiet heroism.” It is in that vein that I will write about more parochial matters than usual.

Two weeks ago I came home, as usual from University; well, not quite “as usual.” The railway termini I traverse were eerily quiet, and when I bought my usual bite to eat for the train, the cheerful man at the kiosk told me he would not be working on the morrow as “business is right down.” Little did we know then what was to come, though, having a portent of it, I had taken care to pack a case as though I were going home for a vacation; though I knew that was was coming would be far from that.

Like most universities, mine exists to teach, and that teaching is mostly done face-to-face. My colleagues love their teaching and give so much to our students; but was it possible to replicate this on-line? It was with that conundrum that a few of us had been struggling for the previous two weeks. The previous day we had announced that we would be moving to on-line teaching after the week-end. It was a bold promise – could we keep it? Did it matter? This was a pandemic, surely the only thing that mattered was that people were “safe?”

As a Catholic university we celebrate our “ethos”; this would test it – and with it, us. A major restructure two years previously had done something odd for our times, it had aimed at the principle of subsidiarity – letting academics have as much freedom as possible to decide how they did what they did best. Would that survive in this time of trial? How would staff rise to the occasion? How would students respond? It was not as though most of us were adepts at this on-line learning lark. The Senior team had been meeting daily to plan for what was coming – but all I could tell my colleagues was to hold their breath and wait to see what the first week of on-line teaching would bring. As things turned out, it was the dog that did not bark in the night.

Assuredly not everything technical went smoothly, but something more important did – the spirit of generosity which we pride ourselves on cultivating. There was plenty to ignite that fractious spirit which rejoices in pointing out the shortcomings of others, and which asks why x or y was not thought of in advance, as well as more than enough material for anyone who wanted to blame someone else. None of that happened; that spirit proved to be a damp squib. Not only did colleagues prove themselves even more innovative and adaptable than even I had expected (and some of the examples we have collected of good practice are simply amazing), they were generous in mutual aid, good temper and generosity of spirit. If, as they do, times like this test whether you live your values, then colleagues – and students – came through.

Conscious that not all our students would have laptops, our IT team sourced and supplied them to those who needed it; its members went above and beyond the call of duty in helping staff and students. Our students mucked in an got on with it, responding to the evident enthusiasm and “can do” spirit of their teachers. I have never felt so proud of leading my teams.

For those students who had to stay in residence, the cleaning and catering staff continued to provide the usual service – albeit at a distance. Some of us even learned what 2 metres looks like! The security staff were there as ever, doing what they do best – providing a reassuring presence for anyone who needed it, knowing that colleagues in Counselling and Student Welfare were on hand for those who needed it.

What emerged warmed the heart. We really  were a community. We pulled together with but one thought – that our students needed us and needed to continue with their studies. From the lowest to highest in the hierarchy we all served, doing whatever was necessary. We did not simply our duty, but whatever the spirit of service demanded. I had wondered what a Catholic university could look like – and amidst the fog of war I saw the vision emerge. Multiple acts of quiet heroism motivated by the ethos which tells us that everyone matters, and that there is no act of service which is too much. The chapel may have had to close, but we, those of all faiths and none, were out there evidencing the spirit of a Catholic university.

Nor, of course, are we the only ones. As I talk (remotely, of course) to colleagues elsewhere, I see the same story. Universities (and their managers) often get a bad press, and sometimes it is even deserved, but what I see (remotely) of my own university and others, makes me want to send up a quiet prayer of gratitude.

I miss walking the historic grounds of my university, and I miss my colleagues and the endless cups of coffee while we try to put things to rights, and I miss the students and their enthusiasm. But I know that these things will be there to come back to. But I know something even better, that we have drawn together as a community in a way we can all take pride in. What faces us yet, we cannot fully know, but with such a spirit, I dare hope that our patroness – the Queen of Heaven – will not think we have failed to rise to the occasion.

Aquatic Endeavors and Kanye West

01 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by in Consequences, Education, Faith, Lutheranism

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Many of us have considered swimming the Tiber, some have swum the Bosporus, some, including one of our founders here, have swum both, looking for an authentic presentation of our Faith. Tom Raabe at Real Clear Religion has some thoughts on another aquatic journey. He thinks, perhaps, some Evangelicals [and perhaps others] might want to consider swimming the Mississippi.

Reasons for their aquatic activities vary. Some like the art and architecture associated with the ancient faiths. Some like the ceremonial aspects–the liturgies, the veneration of icons, the Eucharist. Some like the history that oozes from Catholicism and Orthodoxy, a history that travels through great saints of yesteryear–through Augustine, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nazianzus–but goes largely forgotten in contemporary evangelicalism.

Church-switching among evangelicals has always been popular. It’s become even more so now that so much of the conservative Protestant world has fled so purposely from symbolic architecture and time-honored aesthetics, and has chosen to worship in big boxy rooms with giant worship screens, all-enveloping sound systems, and Chris Tomlin-wannabes singing from the stage. Catholicism and Orthodoxy certainly offer something different from what goes on in that environment.

But evangelicals interested in “swimming” to a different tradition should consider traversing a body of water much closer to home: the Mississippi River, on which is located St. Louis, Missouri, and the headquarters of the premier conservative Lutheran church body in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

He has a point, several in fact, one thing he says, and I want to emphasize is that when we do this we are not changing teams, at worst we are changing positions.

Go ahead and read his article linked above, in many ways, I think he’s got some very good reasoning on his side, especially as the world looks now.

In another although related matter, have you been listening to what Kanye West has been saying? What he is saying, and singing, I guess, not having heard his new album (or any others), sounds better than what many of our priests, pastors, bishops, archbishops, and sundry other Faith leaders are saying. Does he mean it, or is he trying to revive his career? Who knows, but we are the people who believe in redemption, so I think it incumbent to welcome him. One thing that struck Kylee Zempel at The Federalist, and it does me too, is that he is confessing, no he is proclaiming that Jesus is King, and we need to obey him.

I don’t know about you, but for me, that is one of the hardest things about Christianity. Obeying the Lord. If he actually lives that, or even tries, and so far he seems to be, that is a very long step to Salvation.

In Closed on Sunday (Too bad you British let your LGBTQWERTY folks run out the best American fast food and a Christian company) he sings:

Raise our sons, train them in the faith
Through temptations, make sure they’re wide awake
Follow Jesus, listen and obey
No more livin’ for the culture, we nobody’s slave
Stand up for my home
Even if I take this walk alone
I bow down to the King upon the throne
My life is His, I’m no longer my own.

How many of us manage to live that way? If he can, then God is indeed working in him. And so, while I doubt I become a fan of his, I certainly hope we can welcome him to our fellowship. We’re due some representation in cultural matters.

Praise God in all you do.

God and Mammon

08 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by in Abortion, Education, Faith

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The parallels between the world into which Christianity was born and this world are obvious; the major difference is the legacy of the Faith, and the witness still borne to it.

The Roman world recognised no sacred nature inhering in being human: abortion; infanticide; slavery and a material view of life were the norm.  As we move away from our inheritance, it is not surprising to see some of those things reappear. What we want from our life is the only standard by which we judge; as long as it does not go against the Law of the land, we can have it. “Justice” redefines itself as “what is legal” and “what the State allows.” As we have developed the concept of “human rights” around the same principles, it follows that my right to choose trumps some intangible “right to life.” If necessary we can use the flexibility of language to aid us here. You might congratulate a woman on her forthcoming baby, and the shops have cards to that effect; but medically a foetus is a clump of cells that can be removed if the bearer of the lump of cells so wishes.

So Mammon wins out. We can, as Christians rightly lament the plight of those who do not have food, shelter or safety, and we can work for their good, knowing it coincides with the good of the wider society. Nice though the fantasy of charitable giving providing for all the needs of the needy, in practice if the State does nothing then some people starve. What is wrong with the mega-rich in our Society is not that they earn too much, it is that they pay too little in tax. We have obligations as members of a State, and those do not come free. So, for all its imperfections, the British National Health Service ensures that no one is driven to bankruptcy as a result of being sick, nor are they denied the best help because they cannot afford it.

Properly viewed, taxation can be the State’s way of doing what is needed for those who need it most. Where we used to pay tithes to the Church, we pay taxes to Mammon. It is perhaps the uses to which Mammon puts those taxes that we might direct our objections.

As Christians we recognise we have a obligation to others. We have not gone down the route of those early Christians who held all goods in common, but taxation is the way that has been developed to ensure some money goes into a common coffer.

The Churches can and do work with the State in many of the areas mentioned: health; education; social services; welfare; all are spheres where we work together. As the State in the West has begun the process of withdrawal from areas where it was over extended, the Churches have tried to occupy some of those vacant spaces.  Anyone who had worked with a Foodbank or a community group knows that Christian make up a sizeable proportion of those who give their time and efforts freely.

We give freely; but do we give too freely? Do we mistake a common concern for a common motive and common ends? To what extent do we, as organised Christian groups do what any other interest group would do, namely promote our own agenda? If we don’t, then why not? Have we become frightened that we will be accused to doing what everyone else does – that is to work towards our own goals? Or have we convinced ourselves that the goals are then identical?

In the case of tax, it is Mammon who will decide where the money goes, but when it comes to areas where the Churches are putting in money derived from the faithful, the faithful might like to start behaving like shareholders and asking what value has been added to the goals of the Church by the investment made?

Mammon and God can work together well enough for the good of God’s people, but the latter demands that the Churches ensure that good is indeed promoted and beneficial. I doubt we do that often, and am sure we do not do it systematically. Perhaps we should try harder?

 

What is to be done?

07 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in Education, Faith, Politics

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Lenin’s famous booklet, What is to be done? argued that the proletariat would not be radicalised simply though activities designed to secure better pay and conditions. He was right; they weren’t. By extension, one might assert that Catholics have not been converted through an emphasis on how the Church deals with social and economic problems. Indeed, it would be interesting to know how many converts came into the Church because of its social teaching? That is not to say that such teaching is not important, nor to deny the Gospel imperative to help the poor, but it is to suggest that such an emphasis lies to one side of what brings people to Christianity and to the Catholic Church.

Social and economic concerns provides a point of openness to the world, but is not solely the concern of the Churches; if we provide nothing more than what the world can provide, then why would anyone go the extra mile to join a Church?

We either provide a remedy for the spiritual ills of the world, or we are wasting our time, which would be better employed helping those many agencies whose reason for being lies in tackling such ills. We can provide a reason for a bias toward the poor, and we can, do, and should, insert a moral dimension to what might otherwise be a rather utilitarian approach to the poor. We help because they are our brothers and sisters, not because they are suitable objects for our social engineering or because helping them would be a salve to our consciences. We help them because Christ tells us we should.

All of which is to say that while we can rightly concern ourselves with some of the things that are Caesar’s. we do not speak with special authority in those realms; men and woman can do good via working in them, but they do not become more Christ-like by so doing.

A sense of brokenness haunts us. We have many names for that internal emptiness which assaults our most private moments, and we have developed a rich language of therapy to help each other, not to mention a multi-billion pound pharmaceutical industry. Yet with all of that, the problem persists and, like death, is universal.

The purpose of Christian culture is to inculturate the people of the world with the culture of the Kingdom of God, and helping others is simply part of that wider culture. The Good News is that we do not need to get what we deserve. In no way do I “deserve” salvation. I cannot earn it through right belief or orthopraxis. If I were judged by the standards even of this world, I would be lost. But I have a great advocate in Christ, who has paid the price for me.

I am saved by His sacrifice, and I am being saved by it, and at the last I hope that I shall be saved, and that in my way of living I can evidence what He has done for me. If my Faith has no fruits then it is in vain; if my deeds are not done in Him, then they will avail others, but not my eternal soul. That is why knowing Christ is so important. It lies at the heart of everything.

So, for those who have, they say found Him, I cannot and do not say they are wrong. I say only that for me, He is to be found where He said He would be found, which is in His Church. I believe that Church is the Catholic Church, and that being in Communion with Rome is the safest guarantee of that fact. But I would not and do not dare say that others who say they have found Him, and evidence that in their lives, are wrong. I can and do say that the Church is our best assurance, and the best guide against too great a dependence on our own emotionalism and intellectualism.

It is the task of Christian Pastors to proclaim the Good News. Healing is there for what ails us. Do we do that? Is that what people think of when the Church is mentioned? If not, then we might ask what part we play as disciples? Do we give reasons for the hope that is in us? Do we model our Faith or just preach it? If our Faith does not quicken our hearts, then what is to be done?

Across the Divide: Education and Faith

05 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Education

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It is some time since I published here, but seeing that the site is well used by others, I have kept it up and kept an eye on it. I’d like to thank Nicholas in particular for his interesting contributions.

I have had three main reasons for not writing: the first is that any controversy would be unhelpful to the greater cause I serve; the second is time; and the third is that there are enough people offering views on what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church without my adding my mite.

Though I blog pseudonymously, my identity is easily guessed. Indeed, the very week I arrived where I now work, the subject of an unflattering blog piece from me wrote to me here to protest. As I am not in the business of giving egotists attention, I filed the letter in the cylindrical receptacle in my office and decided then and there to avoid any chance of a repeat. In the interim I have been able to help my current University to improve its position in the academic world, which is a much better use of my energies and time. But the question which accompanied me here is now, perhaps because of that, more clamant. What is the place of the Church in education?

In England the Church has been involved in education for far longer than the state. About a third of the schools are Faith Schools, and whether secularists like it or not, the Churches have been, remain, and will continue to be, involved in education. Most Church schools have long waiting lists, and parents will go to great lengths to get their children into one. They must be doing something right.

At tertiary level it is a different matter. It was the need for a Faith-based University to begin to rival the performance at secondary level, which took me to where I am now. But why is the thing worth doing at all? Isn’t Faith a private matter which should be left at the door of any educational institution?

No. The idea that it should be so it, itself, a partisan position. The Churches have huge assets invested in education, and the idea that they should simply be put at the service of those who would like to use them to drive their own agenda has about it a sense of chutzpah which is almost endearing in its bare-faced cheek.

We have passed through an era when education and vocational training became synonymous; it is now widely recognised that what makes people employable are so-called soft skills – the ability to think critically, to solve complex problems, to be creative and to be able to manage people. Lest it be thought that this is special pleading on my part, this list comes from the World Trade Organization, not me. A faith-based education offers a holistic, values-based experience to its students. Anyone who wonders why that might matter to, say, a Banker, might care to ponder the root causes of the crash of 2008. The word “Credit” is from the Latin “Credo,” meaning “I believe.” But if there are no agreed and shared values, if all is relative, how can anyone’s word be their bond? It is every person for themself and the devil take the hindmost. No system of finance or, for that matter, governance, can work on that basis. The best place to lay the right foundations is in schools.

I do not say only Faith-based institutions can offer this, but I do want to suggest that they offer an explicit rationale for the values they espouse, values which still, just, lie at the heart of our civilisation

Of course, any fool can point out that religion has been a divisive force, which is why so many do, but that ignores Original Sin. There is nothing good which fallen mankind cannot put to  a bad use; that does not make it bad.

Viewed aright, the Christian ethic is one of love, and anyone who thinks that is a soft and soppy idea needs to re-read what St Paul says about love. Anyone who has seriously tried to practice that sort of love knows how very hard it is for us. But it is good for us. we are not called simply to tolerate others (a hard enough task for many nowadays) we are called to exercise self-restrain and to love them. A Society as riven and divided as the one in which we live has need of that quality. If it is not inculcated via a Faith-based route, it is unclear who else will provide it.

Our society pays a good deal of attention to physical well-being, and also increasingly to mental well-being. But if we are not careful – and we have not been as a society – these lead down a material route: if I have a healthy body and lots of “stuff” then I am fine. Yet the evidence suggests that our young people are suffering from a crisis of mental health. 

Humankind has always needed more than the material if it is to be healthy; but our impoverished materialism is what is offered, and so when our young want bread, we offer them stones. Again, those educated in a Faith-based system have other indicators of what is an is not the “good life.” Man does not live by bread alone.

The Churches in this country are sitting on a great asset, if one wants to put it bluntly, and if one does, one might add the question of what they are doing to ensure it is well-used? If the Churches do not use that asset properly, then they are poor stewards of a precious inheritance. One of the privileges of my current position is to see the ways in which the Churches are using those assets to make a difference. One might want more, one always will, but the part played by the Churches in the world of education is, on the whole, a noble one.

If Christ will not help us heal, then who else can?

We might reflect on why we have so often given the secularists so much ammunition to show that religion is a divisive affair? It is sin which divides us. If we can follow Him in questioning the lazy assumptions of the comfortable, and in helping those who most need it, then we do His work.

Across the UK the Churches can work together more closely to ensure that there is real diversity in our society – a diversity which includes respect for the part the Churches play in that society. We are not rooted in the shallow soil of Enlightenment assumptions about the perfectibility of humankind, but rather in the insight St Paul offers in Romans 7, which tells us that each of us is the problem. However hard we will the good, we do the bad. Our Faith grounds us in the humility that comes from that, and the fact that the only answer to our fallen nature is Christ.

In a world where “leaders” are expected to be those who always succeed, our Faith reminds us that failure is inevitable, and that what matters is how we use that experience and to whom we dedicate it. The divide in our society, and within us, is to be bridged only by that insight.

 

Something in the Air

13 Friday Apr 2018

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

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Several things caught my eye in Philip’s excellent article the other day. I hate writing posts in commboxes (although I do it far too often), so I thought I would discuss it here.

The first comes from the Catholic Herald, always a good source of information.

[O]n 8 April, I made the 2.5-hour drive to the National Shrine of Divine Mercy Shrine in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for Divine Mercy Sunday. And how could I not? Judging by the licence plates in the parking lots, pilgrims travelled from every corner of the United States. According to the programme, many more flew over from Europe. I practically live down the street.

It was a deeply moving occasion, despite Mother Nature’s lack of cooperation: it was finger-numbingly cold, with snow flurries dropping in and out. Yet 15,000 pilgrims descended on the little mountain town, bundled in parkas and blankets. Some charitable souls drifted through the crowd passing out hand warmers.

Aside from the official proceedings, what struck me most was the demographic make-up. There were Hispanics, Filipinos, Africans, and Chinese – but hardly a Caucasian in sight. That’s grossly unrepresentative of the national Catholic population: 59 per cent are white, 34 percent are Hispanic, 3 per cent are Asian, and 3 per cent are black.

Of course, this has nothing to do with race and everything to do with trends in migration. Immigrants, whatever their faith tradition, tend to be more devout than their native-born counterparts. This is true even in countries like Sweden, where predominantly-white immigrants from Poland are contributing to a boom in the Catholic population.

But are these new Catholics a permanent feature of American and Western European countries? That seems doubtful. A new Gallup polldemonstrates that the rate at which Catholics attend Mass continues to fall since 1955, from 75 per cent to 39 per cent. This, despite the fact that the nominal Catholic population has grown considerably thanks to mass immigration from South America. Meanwhile, attendance at Protestant services has remained fairly stable.

The lack of Protestant immigration actually gives them an advantage with this metric. The children or grandchildren of immigrants who stop practising the faith are more likely to identify – if only nominally – with their family’s religion. Because Catholic immigration is so high, there are many “cultural” or “lapsed” Catholics: those who identify with the Faith, but don’t attend Mass. Meanwhile, Protestants who have “un-churched” are more likely to identify as irreligious.

True enough, out here the Catholic Church is made up of probably close to a majority of Hispanics, of all ages, and who are treated quite badly by the established Anglo congregations, to the point of nearly two churches in one building. A good many of the Anglos strike me as mostly CINO’s (Catholics in name only). Given it is Hispanic immigration, I don’t see it as much in the Protestant churches but suspect it is mostly a lack of Hispanics not a difference in attitude.

The funny part is, Islam also has this problem, they too are losing the immigrants’ children.

Here, again, Pew’s study of Islam in America is enlightening. Nine per cent of ex-Muslims converted to a different faith, and one per cent said they were actively searching for a spiritual path. That means only 10 per cent remain open to engaging with organised religion. The other 90 effectively become secular or “spiritual-not-religious”, which usually amounts to the same thing.

Apparently, it is something in the air in America. part of it, of course, is the churches themselves, I’m not a particularly regular attendee myself. My local church is good on liberal platitudes, on real (what some call, muscular) Christianity, not so much. Other choices such as LCMS are quite inconvenient for me, perhaps it will solve itself, or God will show me a way, but for now, that’s how it is.

In a Federalist article, Mathew Cochrane notes that one of the weaknesses of our churches is that we are driving away men. He quotes Ross Douthat’s “God and Men and Jordan Peterson” New York Times column to good effect.

The men fled; the women stayed.

That’s the story of Easter weekend in the New Testament. Most of Jesus’ male disciples vanished when the trouble started, leaving his mother and Mary Magdalene and other women to watch by the cross, prepare his body for his burial, and then (with the men still basically in hiding) find the empty tomb.

Male absence and female energy has also been the story, albeit less starkly and dramatically, of Christian practice in many times and places since.

Except that is not true, all concerned missed the real story, didn’t they? How many times had Jesus told them he would rise from the dead? None of them, not a single one, believed Him – they went to the tomb to properly prepare his corpse and were gently chided by the Angel:

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise” (Luke 24:5-7).

There is also this,

As one blogger quickly pointed out, two key issues with Douthat’s presentation of the story highlight a disregard for men. First is the enormous factual error: Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both men, were actually the ones to prepare and bury Jesus’ body (John 19:38-42) while the women watched (Luke 23:55-56) and returned with additional spices several days later. Unlike Douthat, Mark the Evangelist is quite right to observe that Joseph “took courage” before going to the guy who just had Jesus executed and asking him for the corpse (Mark 15:43).

Yep, that’s how you are going to attract men, NOT.

Secularism and Religion

16 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Abortion, Church/State, Consequences, Education, Faith, Islam, Politics

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Many here are aware that the basis of western civilization is in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Often we merely assert this, since we have known it all our lives, but it can be examined fruitfully.

I admire Melanie Phillips greatly because not only is she a very good writer and speaker, she is fully capable of thinking through things. And she does so here. Yes, this is a long read, but I think you’ll find it valuable to read the whole thing.

It has become the orthodoxy in the West that freedom, human rights and reason all derive from secularism and that the greatest threat to all these good things is religion.

I want to suggest that the opposite is true. In the service of this orthodoxy, the West is undermining and destroying the very values which it holds most dear as the defining characteristics of a civilised society.

In truth, in the United States, we don’t hear it explicitly very often, but in Britain, it is quite common in my experience. Not to mention very strident, not only from the secularists, but from Randians, and other assorted libertine groups.

Some of this hostility is being driven by the perceived threat from Islamic terrorism and the Islamisation of Western culture. However, this animus against religion has far deeper roots and can be traced back to what is considered the birthplace of Western reason, the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Actually, it goes back specifically to the French Enlightenment. In England and Scotland, the Enlightenment developed reason and political liberty within the framework of Biblical belief. In France, by contrast, anti-clericalism morphed into fundamental hostility to Christianity and to religion itself.

“Ecrasez l’infame,” said Voltaire (crush infamy) — the infamy to which he referred being not just the Church but Christianity, which he wanted to replace with the religion of reason, virtue and liberty, “drawn from the bosom of nature”.

[…] Instead of God producing heaven on earth, it would be mankind which would bring that about. Reason would create the perfect society and “progress” was the process by which utopia would be attained.

Far from utopia, however, this thinking resulted in something more akin to hell on earth. For the worship of man through reason led straight to totalitarianism. It was reason that would redeem religious superstition and bring about the kingdom of Man on earth. And just like medieval apocalyptic Christian belief, this secular doctrine would also be unchallengeable and heretics would be punished. This kind of fanaticism infused the three great tyrannical movements that were spun out of Enlightenment thinking: the French Revolution, Communism and Fascism. […]

In the Sixties, the baby-boomer generation bought heavily into the idea propounded by Herbert Marcuse and other Marxist radicals that the way to transform the West lay not through the seizure of political or economic control but through the transformation of the culture. This has been achieved over the past half century through what has been called a “long march through the institutions”, the infiltration into all the institutions of the culture — the universities, media, professions, politics, civil service, churches — of ideas that would then become the orthodoxy.

From multiculturalism to environmentalism, from post-nationalism to “human rights” doctrine, Western progressives have fixated upon universalising ideas which reject values anchored in the particulars of religion or culture. All that matters is a theoretical future in which war, want and prejudice will be abolished: the return of fallen humanity to a lost Eden. And like all utopian projects, which are by definition impossible and unattainable, these dogmas are enforced through coercion: bullying, intimidation, character assassination, professional and social exclusion.

The core doctrine is equality. Not the Biblical doctrine that every human being is owed equal respect because they are formed in the image of God: equality has been redefined as identicality, the insistence that there can be no hierarchy of values of lifestyles or cultures. There can no longer be different outcomes depending on different circumstances or how people behave. To differentiate at all is to be bigoted and on a fast track back to fascism and war.

So the married family was kicked off its perch. Sexual restraint was abolished. The formerly transgressive became normative. Education could no longer transmit a culture down through the generations but had to teach that the Western nation was innately racist and exploitative.

Subjective trumped objective. There was no longer any absolute truth. Everyone could arbitrate their own truth. That way bigotry and prejudice would be excised from the human heart, the oppressed of the developing world would be freed from their Western oppressors and instead of the Western nation there would be the brotherhood of man.

All this was done in name of freedom, reason and enlightenment and in opposition to religion, the supposed source of oppression, irrationality and obscurantism.

At the heart of it was an onslaught against the moral codes of Christianity. Those moral codes are actually the Mosaic laws of the Hebrew Bible.

[…] What they [Western “progressives” and the Islamists] also have in common is hostility to Judaism, Israel or the Jewish people. The genocidal hatred of Israel and the Jews that drives the Islamic jihad against the West is not acknowledged or countered by the West because its most high-minded citizens share at least some of that prejudice. Both Western liberals and Islamists believe in utopias to which the Jews are an obstacle. The State of Israel is an obstacle to both the rule of Islam over the earth and a world where there are no divisions based on religion or creed. The Jews are an obstacle to the unconstrained individualism of Western libertines and to the onslaught against individual human dignity and freedom by the Islamists. Both the liberal utopias of a world without prejudice, divisions or war and the Islamist utopia of a world without unbelievers are universalist ideologies. The people who are always in the way of universalising utopias are the Jews.

Do read it all, and there is a deal more than I have given you. The full title is: Secularism and religion: the onslaught against the West’s moral codes. It is simply a superb examination of where our basic morality came from, and how it has allowed us to exceed former civilizations by orders of magnitude, and how it has come to be endangered.

Education, what is it good for?

19 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Church/State, Education, Faith

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One characteristic of modern, advanced countries, is that they realise that education is essential. We forget how recently this, now commonplace statement, was not the case. In the UK it was not until 1870 that there was primary and secondary schooling for all, and as late as the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, there were only half a dozen universities in the UK, and most of them dated from the Middle Ages. It was not until 1944 that the UK Government really turned its attention to secondary education. Before then, the main provider of education was the Church.

The Church, of course had a vested interest in the subject, and as, until relatively recent times, it provided the State with many of those who ran its institutions, the State was willing to support its efforts. For all the ill-informed criticisms directed at the medieval Church, there can be no doubt that it was, in effect, the Noah’s ark of classical learning.

By the mid-twentieth century, it was accepted that modern States needed a highly educated work-force. In the UK, with its clear hierarchy of class, that tended to mean that anything utilitarian, was under-valued. When the British State expanded Higher Education in the 1960s, it did so by establishing universities which, despite the hyperbole about them being ‘new’, tended to imitate the established universities. It was left to the Polytechnics to deal with the more utilitarian end of the education market, but even there, the British class system exerted its pull, and as they expanded, many of them looked to imitate the traditional providers of Higher Education.

As usual in the UK, there was much pragmatism but little discussion of first principles. The Blessed John Henry Newman had clear ideas about what a university should be for. It should be a community of scholars, and the older ones should prepare the younger ones to be people able to realise the gifts they had been given by God. His faith in Divine Providence convinced him, in a religious version of market economics, that if Universities did that, then men (and in his day women were barred from Higher Education) would find the place where they could fulfil their destiny. He understood, as all good educators do, that it was the whole person, and not just the intellect, which needed to be brought out (‘e duco’ – leading out, the Latin root of the word).

That is why education, cut off from its religious roots, is in perpetual danger. The State is always myopic. Politicians, wedded to short-termism (usually the date of the next election) will seek to make it fulfil whatever short-term need they can think of. But they need, as the Church has always done, to take account of the sort of society they want to live in. Music and the arts do not happen by accident, and a good society will want them and value them; it will also be willing to pay for them, and allow rich men and women to support them too.

Education is for life, not just for a few years in our youth. If we grasp that it is about helping each of us be the person God meant us to be, then we are at less risk from the fads and fallacies of the age.

Higher Education and the Philistine

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Education, Faith, Newman

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pexels-photo-356086.jpegThe UK Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds, wishes to see a new ‘value for money’ test applied to universities, which, he says, will see cuts to the fees charged to students doing Arts and Social Sciences subjects.

Mr Hinds, who got a First in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, seems to think in terms of the first and third of those subjects. Mr Corbyn is offering to abolish fees, so politically the Tories need to do something to appeal to the young. One might expect a man with an Oxford First to realise that offering something for nothing is always going to trump offering something from which you have to pay; especially with anyone economically illiterate enough to believe the Labour leader. Economically, he seems to think it an easy matter to put a value on a degree. Does it lead you to a good job?

Mr Hinds was educated at a Catholic Grammar School. One presumes he did not come across the Blessed John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University there, or, indeed, elsewhere. But that he went through a Catholic education and should have come out with such a utilitarian view of the purpose of higher education is a disappointment. Managing to study Philosophy at Oxford and still having a purely instrumentalist view of higher education ought to be surprising.

But one does not need to be a philosopher to question whether Arts and Humanities subjects are of lesser value than more vocational ones. That well-known leftist Think Tank (that is joke by the way), The World Economic Forum, has articulated the qualities it thinks desirable in national leaders. Not one of the qualities, which are needed among more than just the ‘leaders’, is discipline specific. All of them require what the Minister himself seems to lack, which is the ability to take the skills one learns at university, skills such as critical thinking and empathetic understanding, and apply them to the task in hand. One hopes Mr Hinds will remember some of those skills before it is too later.

At the moment the UK’s universities stand second only to those of America as an international success story. In the last five years they have faced a revolution in the context within which they work. From a situation where they had to deal with a Government-imposed cap on the number of students they could take, and low fees, they were pushed into a free market where they could take as many students as they could get, and charge up to £9k a year (now £9.25K) to each of those students. The market worked as the market tends to. Many students went where they thought they could get the best value for that money. They based that judgment of ‘value’ on many things, but not money alone. Universities adapted with speed and agility to the new situation. But now, just as they are coming to terms with it, HMG seem determined to change the rules of the game – again.

If Mr Hinds’ views are economically reductionist, they are also regressive. Children from backgrounds where there is enough social capital to realise the value of Arts and Social Science subjects, will continue to do them, but at a reduced price; children from other backgrounds will be deterred. So, within a generation, Arts and Humanities and Social Science subjects will be the the preserve of a social elite at a few “top” universities. Let’s return to the 1930s, it was so much better then.

But above all, Hinds expresses a deeply philistine view of education. Wilde defined a philistine as one who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Value and ‘values’ as not the same thing. What value a society of educated people able to think and make informed decisions about political and economic issues? But let’s not worry, seems to be the argument, ‘value for money’ can be defined in narrow utilitarian terms.

If, as Mr Hinds claims, he wants to continue widening access to Higher Education – a line I support, let us widen it for all subjects, not just the ones a current generation think economically useful, especially when the yardstick used is the wrong one. That a Conservative Catholic should be so confused about the value of higher education is deeply depressing.