Category Archives: Politics

The end of history?

06 Tuesday Oct 2020

Posted by in Faith, Politics, Pope

≈ 18 Comments

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I am grateful to the kind friends who commented on my last post. I thought, and prayed, hard before writing it and publishing it. Aware, as I am, that so many are suffering at this time, I didn’t want it to seem as though I was claiming anything special for myself; we all carry our crosses.
Neo made the point that he did not like the word ‘sustainability’ because it has so often been used as a political tool. I had meant to add some reference to Pope Francis’ words here. Both in Laudato Si! and in more recent speeches, the Pope has spoken movingly of the need to find a better way of our living in this world.

Our hope, as Christians, may be on the world to come, but we are to bear witness to the hope that is in us in this one. Looking around, hope is in short supply. Our political life here, and in America, seems marked by huge chasms

One of the things which we seem to be losing is the sense that we have to live in this world together. What do I mean? Until recently it was not uncommon for politicians and public figures to disagree profoundly without being overly personal about it. There was an acknowledgment that even if our viewpoints were profoundly different, they were held in good faith. That was basic for the sustainability of our democracy. All elections have losers, and if the reaction of the winners is that the losers deserved to lose because they were morally repugnant, then what incentive is there for the losers to accept their fate? Indeed, what incentive is there for the losers to accept the system itself?

Jesus tells us to render unto Caesar the things that are his; but what if he claims all things? If Caesar insists that in terms of public life we ‘keep our religion to ourselves’ and that it belongs strictly to the ‘private sphere’, who is it gets to define ‘private’? Not having made too good a job of this when the Churches had the upper hand, it may seem as though we Christians should just keep quiet, but what’s the use of not learning from experience?

As the churches withdrew from dominating the political sphere, a variety of alternatives emerged, one of which was representative democracy. At times in the twentieth century it seemed to be on the way out, Fascism, or Communism, seemed the wave of the future. Word War 2 saw off fascism and the Cold War ended with the failure of the Soviet Union. It was, some said, “the end of history” and representative democracy was the wave of the future.

That doesn’t seem to have happened. Instead, as the Pope puts it in his new encyclical:

Today, in many countries, hyperbole, extremism and polarization have become political tools. Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion. 

That’s not a partisan point. If I look here on Brexit, people with my opinion have tended to insult Brexiteers, ridculing them for what seems to us their failures of understanding. At best, we have failed to understand what drove so many people in that direction; at worst we have written them off as stupid, venal or unscrupulous. In turn, Brexiteers have tended to insult “Remoaners” as elitists who are in the pay of the Eurocrats and have no love for our own country. And so, to quote Pope Francis again, the result is that:

Their share of the truth and their values are rejected and, as a result, the life of society is impoverished and subjected to the hubris of the powerful. Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and counter-charges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.

If we cannot find a better way of conducting ourselves then representative democracy will whither on the vine. It’s a hard thing to do, it requires us to respect each other and acknowledge that the possession of a majority does not give the ruling party a right to ignore other opinions and to ride roughshod. Yet that’s what is tending to happen. If we do lose it then I suspect we will regret it.

As Christians we owe to Caesar what is his, but we owe to God that sense of being equal in his eyes and unless we acknowledge that in the way we treat each other, then we fail at a fundamentla level.

I Spoke …

27 Thursday Aug 2020

Posted by in Audre, Faith, Politics

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To God last night. He sits, American Indian fashion, on my comforter and keeps me company until I fall asleep. I asked Him, please Lord, let President Trump be in your will for America. Our country is in such dire need – of Him, especially but also a return to what everyone seems to call ‘values’ now but when I was growing up, it was referred to as manners, civility, and consideration for others.


With protests that became riots, and condemnation of police before an investigation has even begun, and the destruction of lives and businesses in several major cities across the country, I’m forced to look at my reaction to all this. I am a Christian. I consider myself a Christian before all the other incidentals – American, woman, mom, etc. I take Christianity seriously and I know that I have to see myself as others see me – do they see Jesus when they see my actions and reactions, when they hear the things I say and write? If I am a Christian, seeing Jesus in me should be the first thing they see because we are told we will be known by our fruits. Our fruits are how we function in every day, routine, humdrum things but more obviously when big things happen – things so big they affect the entire country.


We can never be Jesus, of course, but we are called to live as He has instructed us. We are to add to the 10 Commandments His teachings on how to live a God-pleasing life. Because I am aware of my Christianity, I try to evaluate how I’m doing, in that respect, on a daily basis. Some days I win, some days I lose. But on the days I lose, am I affecting others in a negative way? I am called to be a light to a path leading someone else to Jesus – do I do it?


At a recent Bible study with one of our bishops, I asked how I, as a Christian, am to respond to the less than slow creep of socialism on my beloved America; how am I to respond to the evils of Antifa, to the Black Lives Matter organization. I want so much to be pleasing to God; the Bible tells us that the only way to please God is to believe in Him but we all know that’s not enough. So how do I reconcile my Christianity with what is afoot across this country. Our bishop had an amazing answer. I thought it rather trite when he first said it but upon further reflection he was quite right. He stated that Antifa, BLM, socialism, any terrorist group anywhere in the world is a living, breathing symbol of a disordered heart. Think about that for a moment – a disordered heart. Powerful description, isn’t it. God creates order; everything in nature points to that order – the seasons, the cycles, the ‘times to every purpose under heaven’. The bishop advised that a Christian, in response to all the terrible things that are going on in America, is to pray for a conversion to Christianity. God does not create chaos – He creates order. To be creating chaos is to display a disordered heart, a disordered understanding, a disordered idea of what of what we must do to change things that are not right.


If one converts to Christianity, the first thing one sees is that the ‘change of things’ is really the need to change oneself. Chaos cannot produce order; order produces order. We need to look at ourselves first, order our lives and hearts and minds to the order God has given us and then we can start to look at our homes, our neighborhoods, and our country. St. Matthew’s Gospel, chapter six, verse 33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”


It is well with my soul. I spoke to God last night. 

 

“God talk”: an opportunity?

27 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Church/State, Faith, Politics

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North

Some have taken yesterday’s post to be hyper-critical of ++ Justin, a reminder that the post-modernists have a point when they say the author of a text has no control over how it is read. It seems to me that the Archbishop’s words have been taken out of context, but that even in context, they show a deafness of tone which is worrying.

The Very Reverend Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, commented some years ago that “one of the disappointing and alarming features of ++Justin’s primacy is his refusal to birth his proposed reforms in any good theology.” For Professor Percy, the heart of the problem is “++ Justin’s bewildering reluctance to talk about God.” That is not a problem confined to one Communion. The speed with which, mainly white Bishops moved to condemn the “systemic racism” of their own churches, has been contrasted by some with the want of serious theological talk about the pandemic and the place of Christianity at this time. Others think that unfair and point, rightly, to the good work done on parishes up and down the land.

One of the best analyses of how Christian churches should respond in the aftermath of Covid19 is that of the Bishop of Burnley, The Rt. Rev. Philip North in the Church Times, where he writes:

First, it is revealing something about our national life, and any attempt to rethink the ministry of the Church of England must begin with an attentive listening to the culture that it is our task to transform in Christ.

This is a brave and evangelical approach, but +Philip is clear:

We need priests — and bishops — who see themselves not as functionaries of an organisation, but as free-roaming evangelists in the style of Aidan or Cuthbert.

There is, of course, here the danger identified by Adrian Hilton (“Cranmer”) in his discussion with Professor Percy, that there is “no point teaching if no-one is listening.” But +Philip sees in the events of the past few months a period where, despite churches being closed, people have been listening, and may remain attentive – for a while:

we are seeing the unpicking of the lie that people today are not interested in the gospel. We have, instead, a nation relearning how to pray, looking to us for answers to the big questions, and accessing church life through online means in a way that we could not have imagined possible six months ago. Some studies reckon that one in three of the population have attended online worship since lockdown began. One Sunday, the Christians crashed Zoom.

At the same time, the economic and social consequences of the “lockdown” period are likely to be severe, and that part of parish ministry which has been quietly devoted to foodbanks and helping those bady hit, is only going to increase. As one whose family benefitted from such an initiative during industrial action in the mid-1960s, I can attest to the lasting effect of such a ministry; the Church was there for my family when no one else, including the Union which had called the strike, was.

Bishop Philip is right to say:

We now need to be ready to honour and acknowledge this new generation of lay leaders who have learnt how to use their gifts in Christ’s service, and who will not be happy to be mere consumers again.

To quote Professor Percy again (and yes, I know there may seem to be an irony in juxtaposing him with +Philip in view ofhis part in the former not becoming Bishop of Sheffield, but that just shows God’s providence, and maybe His sense of humour): “Theology and faith is always contextual, but that does not suggest an ultimate capitulation to relativism.” (Percy, Thirty-Nine New Articles, 2013, p. 19). A Church which, in times of crisis, adapts to bring the Word of God in action to those in need, has in the past, and can again, help transform the society within which it is set.

And this is where Professor Percy and +Philip are at one. If the Church is to meet the challenge set then it will need to be theologically-grounded as well as nimble. That would require it to move beyond the current “understanding of the diocese as an organisation, and its bishop and clergy as no more than “leaders”.

a diocese is not an organisation. It is a communion: a network of sacramental relationships flowing from the bishop, which together make up part of the body of Christ. Rather than draw everything into the centre, perhaps we need smaller, looser, central structures, which trust the local and encourage resourceful leadership; a bishop would offer oversight, but not control

In Professor Percy’s words, there needs to be more“God talk” and it needs to inform and drive how the Church reacts:

If A nation is, indeed, turning again to its Church, now is not the time to withdraw and manage decline. This crisis is showing us patterns of ministry which can enable us to reconnect to the culture and recapture imaginations with the gospel.

What +Philip writes, although addressed to a predominantly Anglican audience, is true for all Christian Churches.

There is a hunger for something beyond the material rewards offered by the consumerism that has been dominant in the West for so long. The question is whether the Churches are led by those who can seize the opportunity identified by Bishop Philip North.

White Jesus?

26 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Faith, Politics

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Justin Welby

In an interview on Friday, the head of the Church of England said the west in general needed to question the prevailing mindset that depicted Christ as a white man in traditional Christian imagery.

Thus the Archbishop of Canterbury. The second paragraph is in a sense a non sequitur because if, as he rightly says:

“You see a black Jesus, a Chinese Jesus, a Middle-Eastern Jesus – which is of course the most accurate – you see a Fijian Jesus.”

what on earth could be wrong with seeing a white one in a country where the majority population is white? Still, in the current climate, it is no wonder his words have been seen by some as virtue-signalling to the BLM trend. This interpretation is all the more plausible in the light of his comment about statues and imagery in chg

 “Some names will have to change. I mean, the church, goodness me, you know, you just go around Canterbury Cathedral, there’s monuments everywhere, or Westminster Abbey, and we’re looking at all that, and some will have to come down. But yes, there can be forgiveness, I hope and pray as we come together, but only if there’s justice.”

Of course, real cultural sensitivity might have cautioned the Archbishop of a Church which broke up much of the stauary and art inherited from the Middle Ages, against mentioning that subject, but maybe it’s an example of that “white privilege” we hear so much about that he failed to virtue signal here; a rare missed opportunity, perhaps?

In fact, he specifically did not say that statues in Canterbury Cathedral would be taken down, and he avoided any reference to the way in which the Church might have benefitted from the money of slave-traders and owners in the past; one would like to think that was because of the self-evident absurdity of the idea. Fortunately, in these ecumenical times, the Catholic Church will not be asking for its property back.

Reading the Archbishop’s words, as opposed to the selective use of them by the media and his critics, he’s stating what, in other contexts would be called “the bleeding obvious.” Jesus comes in all colours because all of us tend to visualise Him as one of us, and He is, of course, one of us. Most people know this, and it fails to exercise most of us most of the time; which invites the question of whether the Archbishop was well-advised to stray into this area?

Jesus was incarnate, died and rose again to save all who will receive Him. We are incarnational creatures and we imagine in colour, even in white. It would be wiser to concentrate on this truth.

 

Black Lives Matter

20 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Faith, Persecution, Politics

≈ 36 Comments

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Yes, they do, as do all lives, but let us not use the latter to diminish the claims “Black Lives” makes on us. Historically, migrant people often suffer discrimination. That is not because some “system” is inherently racist – we cannot blame it on something impersonal; it is because mankind is tribal and our nature is a fallen one. The history of “Black Lives” in America is different from in the UK; in the former the ancestors of most “Black Lives” came in slave ships, suffered horrendously, and the marks of that left a deep scar. But that is not to say that “Black lives” in the UK have not also been the subject of discrimination. I am old enough to remember being shocked by some of the words used by adults which I won’t sully the internet with. That this situation is being weaponised by some for left-wing causes should not, and I hope will not, detract from the need to pay attention to the real problems suffered by racial minorities. I missed the protests about the way the Chinese treat their minorities, but I am sure they were equally vociferous within China, although I suspect statues of Chairman Mao may stand a while yet.

What ought to concern us all is the weaponisation of a good cause. That carries with it the potential to polarise society and make things worse. Wherever people feel there are things they are not allowed to say, they do not forget those things, and they are never exposed to the reasons why they might, on consideration, change their attitudes, they become fixed; nay, they become a virtuous cause which dare not speak its name. The most obvious example in the UK is what became the Brexit movement. When what Nixon once called “the silent majority” got a chance to speak, it did so with a vengeance. It may, to some of us, have spoken incoherently and with a force which surprised us, but that is on us; we never asked, we were never told, and so we made ourselves deaf to the feelings of others. We must try to avoid a repetition of this with “Black Lives Matter.” It is about far more than statues, and those focussing on it help the rest of us miss the point, unless we are careful.

Macaulay was correct when he wrote: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” We might now rephrase this, as there is something more ridiculous, that is “woke Twitter.” If we proceed from the assumption there is one “correct” way of thinking and that all who disagree are bad people with evil motives, we end by creating not a society in which everyone thinks alike, but one in which everyone speaks alike; group-speak is not quite the same as group-think, although those in the solipsism usually mistake it for such. It does not last, and when it goes, it usually involves violence and a sharp move to the opposite extreme.

The origin of our ills is us, as St Paul reminded the Romans long ago:

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

There is but one cure for this, and it is not group-think or group-speak. Indeed, here our own Faith risks being misused as a cover, as Jesus warned us when He spoke about how we should conduct ourselves, not trumpeting our virtues or excoriating the sins of others. We are all sinners, and that stone we wish to cast should, if we have self-knowledge, remain in the dirt where we found it. St Paul knew there was but one answer to this sin operating within us:

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord

Law can do only so much, and is, of course, necessary given our fallen nature. But only Christ can warm our hearts within us and make us whole. Before he is “cancelled” let us remember that old ex-slaver lost in the mire of sin, John Newton, who received Christ and turned from his sin to campaign against that very slavery of which he had been a victim and in which he had been a protagonist. He rightly bade us sing of that “Amazing Grace” which had saved a wretch like him.

So, as the culture wars take this new turn, and as good causes are weaponised by some for ends which others will contest, let us stop a while and remember we are on a road where we all get hurt, and that only the love of God saves; but let us rejoice that it is bestowed on all who turn to Christ. Though our sins are scarlet, yet shall we be washed clean – black, brown, yellow and white. In Christ there is no division, in Him we are all one. If we can live that as though we truly believe it, then we shall do better, and we may even begin to apprehend why “Black Lives Matter” is something to which we might all, as Christians, attend with prayerful enquiry.

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?

 

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?

Secularism and Religion

16 Friday Mar 2018

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

≈ 27 Comments

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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.

A return to arms

09 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Blogging, Faith, Lent, Politics

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newman_john_everett_millaisThere has been much else to occupy my time this last eighteen months, and, as explained in my last posting here, the press of business in my new vocation has been such that it would have been unfair to my university to have offered it less than 100% of my time. But evenings and week-ends still exist, and as we approach Lent, I want to use some of that time to return to the themes of this blog.

At its best it has offered a voice not heard elsewhere. It has been too reactionary for the liberals, and not reactionary enough for the reactionaries. I don’t take that as a sign that the positions taken here are, therefore, in some way ‘right’, but simply that they are a voice worth the speaking.

There is much to be gloomy about. I do not suffer from what has been called ‘Trump derangement syndrome”, which is common in the circles in which I usually move. I am a fan neither of the man, nor his style, nor, in so far as he has them and I understand them (both great caveats) of his policies; but nor do I see him as a species of anti-Christ for those who need one. If he is anything, he is a symptom of a political system where the insiders had long given the impression that they regarded the mass of the population as ‘deplorable’; Mrs Clinton simply said what had, until then, been unsaid. I take rather a similar view on Brexit. Give the electorate the impression you regard them as uneducated idiots and then give them the chance to vote in a way that allows them to give you a kicking, and then express surprise. It could only happen in a democracy where the ties that bind are already loosening.

That is my main worry. Whatever it is fashionable to believe, the basic values on which Western Civilization were founded we Christian ones; explicitly so. We believe in the value of each individual not because of some abstract theory of “rights” – that came later – but because each individual is a child of God; it is that sense, and that sense alone in which we are “equal”. It is that sense alone which matters. It matters because it means we never can, nor should, instrumentalise the human person. Whether it is turning people into cogs in a machine in work-setting, or killing the unborn or the elderly for being “useless”, Christianity rightly rejects such an approach to the human person. The princes of this world, under any system of government or economic system, have a tendency to do this, and one of the great gifts of Christianity is to have rebuked them for it. It is unclear who will do this in the absence of a Christian presence.

There is a deep irony in a leading Catholic Churchman appearing to tell us that China is an exemplar of Catholic Social teaching. One of my colleagues has said all that needs to be said on this egregious nonsense here.  To use his words:

Catholic social teaching demands freedom of conscience, freedom of association and the protection of life from conception until natural death. These are not optional extras and nor are they part of the moral teaching of the Church outside its social teaching. These aspects of the Church’s social teaching are fundamental because they have an impact on education, healthcare and the whole structure of political and civil society as well as on economic and social relationships.

That is true of Christian social teaching; there is nothing in that with which Archbishop William Temple and Anglicans of his hue would have disagreed.

We live in a world where on all sides these freedoms are being questioned in the name of identity politics. The idea, once risible, that one should be able to call for another to be silenced because they offended you, is now commonplace. For some of us, this was where we feared that laws prohibiting certain types of speech might lead. There is no satisfaction in having been proven right.

In a Society where people have been schooled to think that truth is relative, it is only natural that individual feeling should have become elevated into the standard by which to judge others. There is not truth, except that all truth is relative, says modern man and (naturally) woman. But for the Christian that cannot be true. There is a Truth, and it is a person, not a concept. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Light, and we cannot (though we often do) relativise that.

We are all sinners. We are all children of God. We are all fallen. In Him all can rise. The old Adam (and if you must, Eve) is rampant in us all. We all of  us do not what we will, but what we often do not will. For this there is but one remedy: Christ Jesus. He reaches out to each of us where we are. each of us comes to Him as we have the Grace so to do.

As the clouds lower over us, amidst th’encircling gloom, as the Blessed John Henry put it, we have but on Kindly Light. Let us pray that He illuminates our hearts, mind and spirit, in the Lent that approaches.

Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Catholic Message

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Abortion, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Politics

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Recently Fr Alexander Lucie-smith published an article in the Catholic Herald. Fr Lucie-smith is a Catholic priest, speaking mostly to Catholics, in a Catholic publication. But his message is one for all orthodox Christians (which should be all Christians), and so it is valid for us all.

This one caught my attention, not least because I admire Rees-Mogg considerably. So let’s take a look at it.

The Church cannot become just another branch of the liberal commentariat

Amen, nor the conservative commentariat, for that matter. The Church (indeed the churches) have a higher calling.

The first reading at Mass on Sunday contained one of the more arresting images from the prophet Ezekiel: “Son of man, I have appointed you as sentry to the House of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, warn them in my name.”

It would be a pretty hopeless sentry who did not keep an eye out for danger, and who kept shtum when he saw something dangerous coming. We all know, because we have heard it said so many times, that the Church is supposed to have a prophetic voice, and to take a counter-cultural stand against the errors and fads of the age. And yet, because the Church is in the world, it often tends to be formed by the world, so both currents are present in the Church: the countercultural, and its opposite, the conformist. The situation today is no exception.

Depressingly, the Church today (by which I mean the leadership of the Church) often seems to speak like just another branch of the commentariat. Take the whole question of climate change. It is very hard to distinguish between the content and tone of a Church document on this matter and an article in the secular press. The discourse in both is more or less the same. This is a pity, because it is a sign that the specific nature of Church teaching has been lost, towhit, the emphasis that environmental degradation is the result of personal sin, and personal sin is always the result of the personal choice of someone, somewhere, to do something objectively.

Personally, I think there is a somewhat different message that Christianity is to bear here. Too much of what passes as environmentalism whether from the various churches or secular sources comes perilously close to simply Luddism, an inchoate longing to return to our pre-industrial past, even if doing so is by violent measures and regardless of the fact that it will inevitably cause great harm to many (especially poor) people both in our own societies and in the rest of the world as well.

I think what we are charged with in regard to the physical world is stewardship, to manage our resources to maximise the results, with the least possible damage, to gain the most for the maximum number of people, and other creatures, as well as vegetation.

Climate change is, of course, real, as it has been for five billion years, I have seen nothing convincing that we are a major driver of it, no doubt we have some influence, and we should maximise our efficiency, in the name of stewardship, if nothing else. But what many want is to return to subsistence farming (likely with wooden plows) causing widespread death by starvation around the world. This is the message many in, and out of the church are carrying, and it is a false one.

Again, with the Church’s social teaching, and its teaching about the structures of sin that create poverty and prevent those born in poverty ever leaving it – has this idea really made an impression? Or does the Church’s talk about economic matters sound rather New Labourish (that is, several decades out of date) and indistinguishable from all the other virtue-signallers who care about the poor but don’t actually do anything about the state of the poor?

Has the Church’s teaching in these two matters degenerated from a matter of right practice to a matter of saying the right thing? Do people ever confess their sins against the environment? Do they ever accuse themselves in the confessional of crimes against the poor?

I don’t really disagree with his premise here, we are doing a poor job of caring for our neighbors. But much of the problem is this. Our churches have delegated inappropriately our duty to those less well off to the state, who has no particular duty in this area. The duty of the state is to ensure justice, from malefactors in our population, and from other states as well, doing so in a just manner.

The duty falls on us as individual Christians, and on our corporate churches to provide help for those less well off. Have we often failed in this duty? Yes, we have. But it remains our duty, and it is not one we can delegate. That our churches have acquiesced in allowing the state to take over our duty is of no account, it remains our duty, but in trying (very badly) to carry out this illegitimate duty, the state has made many of us poor enough that we can no longer effectively carry out our duty, either. Thus the churches have actively hurt the poor.

The one field where the Church does well in communicating a teaching that is certainly not pleasing to the world, but which the world hears and cannot help but hearing, is in the field of bioethics. The Catholic Church is pro-life, and the whole ecclesial pro-life movement stands as testimony to that, and has had considerable success in reminding the world of the terrible sin of abortion. This was in no small part thanks to the constant and energetic teaching of Saint John Paul II and Saint Teresa of Calcutta, to name but two. Here one sees the Church fulfilling its vocation to be a sentry to the House of Israel.

To say that we should wind down the talk about the protection of all life at all stages, because this talk is somehow alienating, would be mistaken. The hostility that the pro-life discourse arouses is a pretty good providential sign that here we are doing the right thing. Well done to Jacob Rees-Mogg and the many others who take a stand that must feel sometimes like that of Elijah on Mount Carmel: “I, I alone, am left as a prophet of the LORD, while the prophets of Baal are four hundred and fifty.” (I Kings 18:22) Elijah was a lonely voice, but he was the one who spoke truth. The prophets of Baal were a bunch of stooges and frauds who ate at Jezebel’s table – a rather good image, one calls to mind so many of the false prophets of today.

This I agree with wholeheartedly. In the pro-life mission, Rees-Mogg and all the others are carrying the authentic Christian (not just Catholic) message. If we don’t agree with him, we are misinterpreting what it means to be a Christian. This has been at the core of Christianity, in all times and all places, and everybody else marveled that Christians didn’t leave unwanted babies to die of exposure, as everyone else did.

It is, like stewardship, and like caring for the unfortunate, a core part of what our fathers in the faith taught, and did. We should pray to do as well.

And yes, I would vote proudly for Rees-Mogg, and I would be very pleased to be in a church with Fr Lucie-smith, as well. It’s doubtful that I would agree with either all the time, as this article shows, but both are excellent representatives of our faith, and our peoples.