Tag Archives: Roman Catholic Church

Pope Francis

10 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by in Faith, Pope, Prayers

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Pope Francis during his weekly general audience in St. Peter square at the Vatican, Wednesday.23 October 2013

Pope Francis during his weekly general audience in St. Peter square at the Vatican, Wednesday.23 October 2013

Of all the topics to approach on my return, that of the present Pope ought, probably, to be the last one. At the moment his reaction to allegations of child abuse in the case of Bishop Barros have raised real concerns about his grasp of such a crucial issue; it is, his critics and supporters (agreeing for once) quite unlike him. But then what would it mean to ‘be like him’?

His critics focus on his reaction to the issue of re-married people within the Catholic Church, rightly pointing to the ambiguity of his stance. If anything is clear in this mess, it is that Francis himself wants to extend mercy to couples he thinks needs it, finds the traditional teaching of the Church an impediment, and is looking to see whether allowing local bishops to make a decision is a way to achieve that objective. In view of the fact that Catholic teaching was formulated to deal with Catholic marriages, and in view of the the fact that many converts contracted marriages in other denominations (whose orders the Church does not recognise) or civilly, there is a case for considering how to deal with a pastoral situation exacerbated by our Society’s inadequate understanding of what a sacramental marriage is; whether Amoris Laetitia is the optimal way of conducting that discussion seems doubtful. But the blunt response that teaching designed to deal with Catholic sacramental marriages has to apply to all marriages, seems worth questioning.

But now the Pope finds himself embroiled in a sex abuse scandal concerning the Chilean Church. Christopher Altieri, a respected Vatican commentator, sums it up admirably in the Catholic Herald:

At this point, there are four possibilities: Collins  [Marie Collins, a former member of the Pontifical Commission on abuse and Cruz [who alleges he was a victim of Fr Karadima’s abuse, and who wrote an 8 page letter to the Pope which she gave to Cardinal )O’Malley] are both lying about the letter; Cardinal O’Malley gravely misrepresented the diligence with which he discharged his promise to deliver it directly to Pope Francis (though Collins has expressed full confidence in him on several occasions); Pope Francis received the letter and did not read it; Pope Francis received it and read it, only to forget about it.

We hear much from the Pope about the rigidity of clericalism, but in all of this there is something of that. It is the echo of the way in which Churchmen of the Pope’s generation deal with these cases as they first came to light, that is within the Church and without regard to external standards of safeguarding. At the very least the Pope needs to clear this up swiftly. But, as with the famous dubia, His Holiness has been swifter to condemn his critics than to answer them. At some point, smelling of the sheep involves deal with them in a transparent way. One can only hope.

Why hope? There is an almost open sense of something like schadenfreude among some of the long-time critics of the Pope at the latest trials, but that is to ignore that, as ever, there are two sides to the story. To say that the Pope has attracted praise from non-Catholics is a double-edged sword to those Catholics who feel betrayed by what they see as his departures from the straight way; but if the Church speaks only to itself in language it alone understands, it betrays its Great Commission. One might feel the Holy Father goes too far in the other direction, but Mission matters. It would be a great shame if yet another Pontificate were to be mired by the enduring legacy of child abuse.

Satan knows his enemy, and he will always target the One True Church. Since the late 50s, at least, we had had what amounts to a Catholic Culture war between modernisers and those who feared that the baby was being thrown out with the bath-water. The fruits of modernisation are meagre, and whilst the German Church maybe extremely rich in cash, thanks to the Church tax, it is, like most other European Churches, poor in vocations and people in the pews.

The Catholic Church is far from alone in fighting this culture war. In my own former Church, the Anglican Church, with a patrimony which has much to contribute to the Catholic Church, a route has been taken which Catholic modernisers can only envy; but they might like to ask themselves whether the current situation there is one they would wish to imitate?

The Catholic Church is identified with the successor of St Peter, and it is a matter of regret that any Pope should become the object of partisan manoeuvrings; but it was, history suggests ever thus, just not so widely known in an era before mass media.

As Lent approaches, each of us can only do what we are taught to do, which is to pray for the Holy Father, our Archbishops, Bishops and Priests, and the Religious. They are the front line of the war against Satan, and they need the support prayer provides.

 

Catholicism and intellectual freedom

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Faith, Newman, Politics, Pope

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The charge has often been, and sometimes still is made that Catholics cannot be fully loyal citizens of any nation or Empire – or even a secular organization, because their primary loyalty lies elsewhere. In modern times we saw it with John F Kennedy when he stood for the Presidency of the USA in 1960, but perhaps the classic statement of it came in 1874. Writing three years after the Vatican Council which had declared the Pope infallible, the British former Prime Minister, Gladstone, wrote (1):

That no one can now become her [the Catholic Church] convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.

In expressing this view, he was saying out loud, so to say, what many British people thought. Embedded deep into the national psyche, not least by two hundred years worth of anti-Catholic black propaganda, was the idea that to be a Roman Catholic was profoundly un-English. Edward Norman has eloquently described the potent, and toxic, mix of patriotism, prurience and Protestantism which made up the mental image of the Catholic for the average Englishman. All of this Gladstone now evoked. At the very least, he demanded, Catholics should give some kind of oath of fealty that they would not vote as their priests told them to.

Gladstone was appealing to feelings which, as recently as 1851, had resulted in a wave of pubic hostility against the restoration by Rome of a diocesan structure in England and Wales, described by the then Prime Minister, Lord John Russell as ‘Papal Aggression’. When Newman converted in 1845, he knew that he would be considered as though he were dead by many of his old friends; indeed, for some of them, death would have been preferable to crossing the Tiber and surrendering his mental faculties to a celibate old Italian bigot.

Newman’s response to Gladstone, which took the form of a letter to the leading English Catholic layman, the Duke of Norfolk still deserves reading as the best, and most reasoned example to a line of argumentation (it would be doing it too much honour to call it an argument) which is not unfamiliar to readers of this site.

Newman first reminded Gladstone that States had ever sought to bring Christianity under their control and, from Britain through to the lands of the East had largely succeeded in either subduing or massacring Christians:

Such is the actual fact that, whereas it is the very mission of Christianity to bear witness to the Creed and Ten Commandments in a world which is averse to them, Rome is now the one faithful representative, and thereby is heir and successor, of that free-spoken dauntless Church of old, whose political and social traditions Mr. Gladstone says the said Rome has repudiated.

Rome, and it alone, stood out against the ‘spirit of the age’, as it always had and must, as Christ’s Church, always do. Where Anglicans:

do not believe that Christ set up a visible society, or rather kingdom, for the propagation and maintenance of His religion, for a necessary home and a refuge for His people

Catholics did; it was their Church, which alone resembled that of Rome of old. But did that, as Gladstone alleged, mean that Catholics could not vote according to their own consciences? Were they, as British politicians had urged since the days of Elizabeth, spies and agents of a foreign power which was hostile to the freedom which was the heir of every Englishman?

The main point of Gladstone’s Pamphlet was that, since the Pope claims infallibility in faith and morals, and since there were no “departments and functions of human life which do not and cannot fall within the domain of morals,”(2) and since “the domain of all that concerns the government and discipline of the Church,” were his, and he “claims the power of determining the limits of those domains,” and “does not sever them, by any acknowledged or intelligible line from the domains of civil duty and allegiance,” therefore Catholics are moral and mental slaves, and “every convert and member of the Pope’s Church places his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another.

These things, Newman declared, were based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Church and of its relationship to society. He saw clearly what many still fail to see, that the secular had their own agenda and were either blind to that, or motivated by hostility to religion. We shall turn, tomorrow, the Newman’s anser.

Christians?

07 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Anglicanism, Blogging, Faith

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Pope with Archbishop

One of the things most commonly said to me by way of criticism of Christians is that they seem to have a hard time getting along with each other; or, as Bosco here often puts it, they say ‘my church is better than yours’. It is natural that someone belonging to a church should think that – indeed, if one pauses for a moment, how astonishing would it be to argue that one was in such and such a church because one thought it in some way inferior to others!

This little reflection was prompted by some characteristically forthright comments from ginny, in the comments section of my last post. Let’s parse it. She begins where I would begin:

Jesus Christ founded a Church. He stated He would do such when He said, “thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church….” He spoke to a man, St. Peter, in front of the other Apostles, witnesses to God swearing to do something in the future that all would see and appointing St. Peter the head of that Church that He would and did build. All the Apostles gathered knew His intent and acknowledged these facts in the way they lived their lives as the first Christians in the Church whose “birthday” is the first Pentecost. Jesus swore that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church and they haven’t for 2,000 years. These are just some of the facts.

Thus far, thus good.  She goes on in equally confident vein, moving from ‘facts’ to what the current POTUS might call ‘fake facts’:

 
King Henry VIII founded a church. It is called the Church of England, the Anglican Church and a few other names, including Episcopalian. Its “birthday” I reckon is the the date of the Act of Supremacy in 1534. Quibble if you will about the date, it is still a good 15 centuries AFTER the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven and the fall of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles at Pentecost. There was no such raining down from Heaven of the Holy Spirit upon King Henry or his court at that time. God did not found the Church of England – a man did – Henry VIII, King of England.

Why is this inaccurate? It is a partisan interpretation, offered by Roman Catholics who, quite naturally, opposed what Henry was doing. But did Henry set out to ‘found a Church’? No, and even were ginny more learned than she is in Henrician studies, she would be unable to find a single document which states what she asserts with all the confidence of someone who thinks they have a ‘killer fact’, when in fact they have damp squib. Henry set out to reform the Church, a task prompted, certainly, by needs of his own, but at no point did he think he was founding a Church. In the nineteenth century the Vatican declared that Anglican orders were null and void, but then, of course, one might have expected that. But does that mean that the Roman Catholic Church takes the view that its members are the only ones entitled to the name of Christian? The answer is not what I suspect ginny thinks it is, and so I quote from Dominus Iesus:

17. Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches. Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy, which, according to the will of God, the Bishop of Rome objectively has and exercises over the entire Church.
On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church. Baptism in fact tends per se toward the full development of life in Christ, through the integral profession of faith, the Eucharist, and full communion in the Church.”

So the Church takes a position of mercy here. There is only one True Church, but there are Churches (the Orthodox) which are not in communion with that Church; this does not mean the Orthodox Church is not a Church. There are other groups of Christians who, unlike the Orthodox, have not preserved the essentials of a valid Church, but these ‘ecclesial communities’ contain Christians.

The polemicist divides, the Church seeks to unite. We win the hearts and minds – and souls – of no one by assuming a position of superiority in such matters. The Church is the field hospital for sinners – and since that is all of us, its doors stand permanently open.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Far Right Rot’?

11 Saturday Feb 2017

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

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2017-02-10-rp-b

Liberal angst runs high in America, so it is perhaps inevitable that the Washington Post should turn its fire on a construct of its own imagining, the until now unknown figure of ‘Breitbart Burke’ a’renegade cleric … undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy’ and one who is ‘using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style.’ The Post has extended its ‘culture war’ to the Catholic Church. An executive editor of the New York Times admitted recently that the media there and in Washington ‘do not quite get religion’ – and goodness me does the Post article exemplify that fact. ‘Breitbart Burke’ wants, we are told, to reassert ‘white Christian dominance’. Sadly, there would be no use reminding the author that the most traditionalist parts of the Church where the Cardinal enjoys most support are in the ‘global south’, and I would conjecture that if one were to mention the name ‘Cardinal Sarah’ to her, she’d go off on one about women and the Church.

It is, she tells us, Islamophobic to think that “capitulating to Islam would be the death of Christianity”; perhaps she is unaware of the fact that most Islamic States in the Middle East have a zero tolerance policy on the building of Christian Churches in their territory? It may well be that someone should explain to her that Egypt still has a sizeable Christian population and used to be wholly Christian; her homework, should she care to do it, would be to discover why it is no longer so, and what happened to the Copts, and what happens to them every day? That the Cardinal understands that Islam is not represented only by those who attend ecumenical gatherings and write for liberal Western media sources, no doubt makes him aware of the answers to questions the journalist is unaware exists; but it does not make him an ‘Islamophobe’. The fact that he does not join in the neo-liberal war-drums calling for a confrontation with Putin, does not mean he is excusing Putin’s actions in the Ukraine.

Unhindered by a regard for facts or a knowledge of history, the author goes off onto a spectacular rant about the parallels with the 1930s ‘when ethnic nationalism was sweeping Europe under Mussolini and Hitler and when fascist forces infiltrated the highest echelons of the church’. She does acknowledge Pius XI’s protests against Hitler, but argues that it was not focussed on the Jews. The Church protested against persecution, full stop – all persecution. It felt, as it feels now, no need to virtue signal by mentioning only those whom the left things worth mentioning. If she really thinks that the rhetoric used by Burke has anything in common with the virulent anti-semitism of the Nazis, I suggest she learns German and digs out some old copies of Der Sturmer

She tips her hand, naturally, when it comes onto the subject of killing unborn children in the name of the ‘rights’ of women – or abortion, as it is called. Putin’s real crime in her eyes is not the Ukraine, which she does not mention, but his support for ‘pro-life causes’. It is ‘fascist’ to favour the preservation of life in the womb. It is to run a ‘far right’ ‘insurgency’ to advocate adherence to the teaching of the Church from the beginning, and to the very words of Our Lord and Saviour.

If the Post wanted to prove that the Washington.New York media does not understand religion, it has succeeded perfectly. If it wanted to show why no one should believe a word it says about ‘fake news’ it is doing a splendid job. If it really thinks that piece is an example of well-informed journalism, I suggest it takes out a subscription to the Catholic Herald and pays a fee for using some of its well-informed articles. As it stands, it is simply an example of how the hysteria over Trump has led to an over-reaction of massive proportions. The saddest thing of all is that it will, alas, prompt some Catholic sources to wonder whether the fact that such a journalist seems to be promoting Pope Francis, is not another reason to distrust him. The article has the words ‘far right rot’ in its strapline – the words ‘far left rot’ more accurately describe it.

Communicating Christianity?

04 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Anglicanism, Blogging, Faith

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come to me

I know only what I have read on the issue of the Protect the Pope blog and its closure. It seems clear from what has been written here and elsewhere that strong feelings prevail: some say the Bishop closed it; those who defend the Bishop say he did all he could to avoid that outcome, and that even so, in the end, it was not his decision to close the blog. The whole thing has become embroiled in  the ‘culture war’ which afflicts the Roman Catholic Church. Those who think of other Christians as their opponents will do what men tend to do – that is dig trenches and get involved in trench warfare; this is particularly so in a Church where the entire hierarchy is male. I am not saying that women cannot behave in such a manner, just that for many of us it is not the first instinct; though there have always been those who will take their knitting to the foot of the guillotine if they think there is a chance they will see the blood of their enemies shed. In all of this there is an absence of self-restraint, obedience and the love of Christ.

Those of us who run blogs will encounter those who come to them to vent, troll and tease. In a way they are easy to deal with; one blocks them. But what to do when some have very strong views and they fail to coincide either with your own views, or, indeed, the ethos you want your blog to have? Several of our contributors have aroused others to ask me why I do not block them, and I have been asked on more than a few occasions why I allow comments to be made about myself and my own Church which are hurtful?

Our Lord recommends we turn the other cheek and that we go an extra mile, and that we love those who despitefully use us; these things are not easy, and I do not pretend I can do them; but I do say I must try to do them; I find the discipline hard, but useful. My fellow contributors have, on the whole, shown an admirable restraint, and have, on the whole, striven to avoid the sort of nastiness which disfigures the comment boxes on newspapers more interested in viewing figures than communicating Christianity. I hope, too, that I try to set a tone which doesn’t encourage gossipy nastiness; that, too, may not stir the custard, but it also fails to curdle the milk of human kindness.

From what I have read it is clear that the Bishop hoped that the Deacon would exercise more restraint, and that when that did not happen, he hoped a period of prayer and reflection would be useful. Instead, the gap was filled with those interested, so it seems to me, with pouring petrol on the smouldering embers. The blogosphere is an area where feelings run high, and the issues on which Deacon Donnelly was blogging had assumed a fresh aspect with the arrival of Pope Francis. It is hard not to read some of what happened over the last year as a move from protecting the Pope to needing protection from him.

Those who have over-egged every remark of the Pope as heralding the advent of a Church very different from the one that exists, have helped create an atmosphere in which those of an orthodox bent felt threatened; the frequency with which nasty people have shown a willingness to play the school sneak and ‘report’ people with whom they disagree to the ‘authorities’, has also poisoned the wells. When the sneaks and the bullies feel that the headmaster is on their side, they tend to get really nasty. It is hard not to think that is part of what has gone on here.

But much as the orthodox Catholics feel threatened and uneasy, it is surely taking the very path taken by their opponents to denounce a bishop of orthodox hue who felt that things needed calming down? We do not communicate much about the true spirit of our Faith when situations get toxic; we invite our many enemies to comment on how much we depart from the commandment to love each other. Love is hard. It requires something many of us, especially strong men, are unwilling to do – which is to sacrifice something of our ego and our desires in a common cause. Where we can do that, love abides, and where we find it hard, there is the challenge to do better.

Perhaps some of you will think it typical Anglican wooliness (and I am sure one of my contributors would) for me to say that both the Deacon and the Bishop come well out of this. The Bishop has tried to bear in mind his pastoral responsibilities both to the Deacon and to the wider community, whilst the Deacon has recognised that the situation is one in which stopping blogging, for now, might be best. Should we not, as fellow Christians, remember both in our prayers and hold them both in esteem for the way in which they have tried, in this broken and messy world, to do their best? There is no right answer here, as in so much of our activity, there is just a pilgrimage together on the Emmaus road where we encounter the Lord in the breaking of bread. If we stop throwing bread rolls at each other, we might find it a good prelude to the proper use of bread for Christians.

Catholic?

01 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Anglicanism, Faith, Politics, Pope

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st peter's keys

Bosco and I have fallen into a long and continuing on-line conversation. There is, as I recently pointed out to him an irony in the fact that he is reduced to quoting sedevacantist criticism of recent Popes to support his caricature of the Catholic Church, since it is in such bodies alone that the very things he criticise the Church for are to be found. The Church does not, as Bosco maintains, teach that Heaven will be full of Catholics; that is left to bodies such as those Bosco cites as critics of the recent opes, and is, indeed, one of the reasons for their criticism. As with Dawkins and Protestant fundamentalists, somehow those one the extremes manage to find each other so that, like drunks, they can lean on each other.

I have no idea where, other than on the Internet, Bosco finds these Catholic Churches full of statues, imagery, incense and all the elements of a Traditional Latin Mass; I’d be very happy if if could find one within 120 miles of where I live; if I want that, I’d have to go to an Anglo-Catholic Church like the one Jessica attends; my local Catholic ones, including the Cathedral, are indistinguishable from most Anglican churches. Indeed, the only real distinction is that the architecture of the latter is older and more beautiful; the 1970s was a decade of barbarous architecture, too much of which seems to consist of Catholic Churches.

As will be the case from time to time, Bosco asked a question which has wider application, hence I reproduce it here:

Say good brother, i have a question for you. Lots of devout catholics believe in no salvation outside the CC, and are upset with the way the CC has been going. Why are you correct and them wrong? Quiav doesnt agree with you on may points. Who is rite? And why should i take it that you are rite? Good brother Diamond claims to be a real catholic. What do we do in these cases….flip a coin?

My answer to him also has wider application, if only because it points up something that is, and remains an issue for many in the West – the issue of authority. I told Bosco that the answer to his question is simple – it is the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church which pronounces with authority. This is problematic for many Westerners whose instincts are democratic. Thus, for some, if the Magisterium says something with which they disagree and which they judge to be against their interpretation of Catholic teaching, then, ipso facto the Magisterium is not the real one; the same goes for Popes. But this is Protestant reasoning. It differs not one iota from the Protestant habit of taking the Book canonised by the Church and then claiming to understand it better than the Church. To think that one understands Catholic teaching better than the body which enunciates it, and to think that one is authorised to pronounce on it with the same authority as the Magisterium – indeed, with the authority which allows the Magisterium so to do, it to take unto oneself an authority one in no wise possesses.

There are a myriad ways this one plays out in real life: sometimes it is pointed out that x or y was not said ‘infallibly’ – but since when were Catholics only to obey just the infallible comments of the Magisterium? Sometimes, it is pointed out that in the past the Church said such and such, and that if it has said something different recently, that does not count; but since when has the Church operated on the basis that individuals get to choose which Magisterium they obey, that of Pius IX or Francis?

It is the case that sedevacantists claim to be Catholics, and that others described by Bosco as ‘devout’ disagree with and criticise Pope France, just as many liberal criticised his predecessor, but what of it?  Yes, we all have the right to invoke our conscience, but a properly-formed conscience will not place itself in opposition to the Magisterium; such a conscience will not claim that there is no ‘real’ Pope; such a conscience will do what Catholics are bound to do, which is to submit to the authority of their Fathers in God; it will not cast around the margins until it finds someone who agrees with its rebellion and join them. Whatever this phenomenon calls itself, it is that of the Protestant.  Christ’s Church is guided by the successor of St Peter. If there is something wrong in the direction he takes, have we so little confidence in Christ and the Holy Spirit that we think error can last? If, as Catholics, we cannot be united, then it is vain to say there are however many thousand Protestant sects; if every Catholic is his or her own Magisterium, there are about a billion Catholic Churches. There is but one, that gathered in obedience to the Bishop of Rome. If you don’t like it, say so and see if you can work to change what you do not like; but if it is the Church itself you dislike, and you want something more like an Anglican or and Orthodox one, then let that conscience take you to where it will be happy.

Only the Magisterium is qualified to speak for Rome. Yes, of course, like disobedient children or unruly sheep, we can argue the toss and  argue about whether x or y is meant; but anyone who thinks that only infallible pronouncements are to be followed, is well on the way to listening only to their own views. That leads you to the infallibility of Bosco, who alone knows who is saved, and, of course, objects to an infringement of his monopoly by the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

 

Eternal truths?

10 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Early Church, Faith

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Judgment

The writer of the epistle of Jude mentions the ‘faith once delivered to the Apostles’. This, we are assured by all manner of churches, is what they preach. For the more Protestant among us, that tends to break down into discussions between those who argue that all these things are in the Bible, and those who argue that not all that is in the Bible is mandated; for the Catholics and the Orthodox, Tradition/the Church also get brought into the mix, on the argument that without the Church you wouldn’t know what was in the Bible, or even that there was a Bible. The classic Protestant objection is that adds to what is in the Bible, the classic rebuttal is to ask where, in the Bible, it tells you that the Bible is the authoritative text. My own favourite is the argument which says the church fell into apostasy soon after the Apostles died; which leaves you wondering why such folk take the Bible seriously as it didn’t exist then; do they think that somehow the Bible was exempt from some great apostasy?

From the time of the Apostles there have been warnings about those who preach a different Gospel, and from that time arguments about who rightly interprets the words of Christ.  Of course, if one group was carrying out the sort of miracles practised by the Lord, it would settle the issue pretty quickly; but despite evidence that there are still miracles being carried on, there is no church which would really care to make the claim that its healing ministry shows that it has that charism.

That is why history and theology – the main topics we discuss here – matter.  There are those who advance the claim that a personal revelation means they have no need of anything save a personal relationship with Jesus – although that was not the model of the church Jesus founded; but even for them, the question of who Jesus is cannot be satisfactorily answered (except to themselves) without some mention of what those called Christians have believed, and do believe.

It is there that the problems multiply. Even within the Roman Catholic Church which has a Magisterium, we see difficulties as those Catholics who accepted John Paul II and Benedict XVI find difficulties with the more free-wheeling interpretations of Francis; indeed, the revival in hope among the aged there is quite remarkable – with claims being made that the antique Hans Kung should be rehabilitated – or whatever the Catholic equivalent is. One shouldn’t mistake dissent for disunity, but it is no secret that many English & Welsh bishops are a pretty liberal bunch.

Outside the Roman Catholic Church it seems to be more or less open shop.  In all churches there are those arguing that traditional theology needs to be made more relevant to our own times. That never seems to mean that there ought to be an emphasis on our sins and the need to repent of them; it always seems to come out as a need to explain away sin and redefine it.

The real schism in modern times is between those who agree that there was a ‘faith once delivered’, but can’t quite agree on its content, and those who think that faith should be constantly reinterpreted in a liberal direction to make folk more at ease – as no one likes to be called a sinner, as the former Irish president recently commented.  Those who react to that by thinking that as we are all sinners, she has a cheek, are on one side of the schism; those who think that she’s quite right and we need to find some more inclusive and welcoming words are on the other.