Conversion and Ecumenism

I have posted the powerpoint file of my presentation on “Ecumenism and Conversion” at the Chelsea Interchuch Council on the EIC’s Website. You can download it from here.

"Year of Grace" update and Chelsea ICC

New update on my “Year of Grace” conversion retro-blog.

I had a great time last night with the good folk at the Chelsea Interchurch Council: over-whelmed by their welcome and well-fed. I gave a talk on the relationship between Ecumenism and Conversion. In the mornning I will post the Powerpoint presentation on the EIC’s website and post the link so you can check it out for yourself.

No semi-divine beings in Christianity, Judaism or Islam

Today I found an began reading a little gem by Fr Aidan Nichols (see previous blog) called “Catholicism and Other Religions”. It is an excerpt from his book “Epiphany : a theological introduction to Catholicism”. Most of the book appears to be published on the “Fr Aidan Nichols Homepage” at the “Epiphany home page”.

Here are some meaty bits:

“The principal Jewish objection to the Church [one could say the same about Islam—David] where doctrine is concerned is her affirmation of the divinity of Christ. However, it can be noted that in the first centuries of the Christian era, the same theological principle guided a process of internal clarification among both Jews and Christians: the infinite qualitative distinction between the uncreated and the created, ruling out as this does any suggestion of intermediate beings or conditions [again, this is an issue for Muslims—David]. Just as Judaism pruned away its more extravagant apocalyptic imagery, and a tendency to angelolatry, so the Church shunned the homoiousion ("like in being [to the Father]") of the semi-Arians and clove to the view that either Christ is consubstantial with God or he is of no transcendent significance whatever. It is possible that it was an initial encounter with an implicitly heretical Christianity rather than direct confrontation with the orthodox tradition of the Nicene faith that accounts for the vehemence of rabbinic Judaism's rejection of patristic Christianity [once again, the same could be said of Early Islam, where the heretical form of Christianity was Nestorianism—David].”

Later he adds, with regard to Islam specifically:

“Catholicism, however, welcomes Islam's grasp of the divine aseity — the terrible distinctness of God from the world — not least in a postChristian epoch in the West where to a vague "new age" religious sensibility the distinction between what is divine and what is not divine is altogether elided.”

All this is, in a sense, what I was trying to get at in my discussion with Charlene Spretnak. Mary is not a semi-divine being, and neither is Christ. Christ is wholly human and wholly divine—two distinct natures united one person—he does not straddle the divide as a “bit-of-both” or “part-man-part-God”.

There’s lots of other really interesting points of view on this, but you can read it yourself.

A Lutheran Pastor peddling "The Goddess Rosary"?

I am indebted to Fr Marco Vervoost (an Anglo-Catholic priest who studied at Luther Seminary with me—go figure why so many of who went through Sem at that time have ended up either in the Catholic Church, or in the catholic wing of the Anglican Church) for this little gem on his Heretics Anonymous page. Follow the links.

Some protestants will say "Look: that's where Catholicism leads you." Answer is: Nope. That's where you end up as a Protestant if you are deprived of the personal Motherhood of Mary.

Note that the "Goddess Rosary" does not name Mary. It isn't about Mary. Mary is decisively written out of the rosary prayer just as the name of her Son Jesus is written out. There is no way this prayer can have any claim to be Christian. It is completely gnostic. Totally disincarnate. If it isn't "anti-Christ" it is certainly "anti-Mary". Shiver...

Be afraid. Very afraid—if you are a Lutheran…

Re-assessing "Missing Mary"

In response to my previous blog “Mary: A person, not a "goddess" or a "metaphor"”, Charlene Spretnak, author of “Missing Mary” replied:

Dear David,

Alas, I am somewhat dismayed by what you posted on your blog re my book, which I feel will mislead your readers and, no doubt, send them running from the book, should they ever encounter it.  Let me try to clarify what I was trying to convey about the "goddess issue" re Mary before you posted that:

I.  Scholars of comparative religion and the history of religion are well aware that many elements in Mary's biblical story -- let alone her syncretic blendings in the various cultures of Europe and elsewhere -- link her historically with attributes and symbols that were earlier associated with various goddesses.  This is simply historical fact, whether one likes it or not.  My point in the book is simply to say that the Church should celebrate this ancient flowing into Catholicism, rather than refusing to discuss it or denying it.

II.  In Missing Mary I do not say that Mary is or should be a goddess, which she obviously is not.  Rather, I note all the cosmological, goddess-like symbols and attributes that she accrued through the centuries.  Again, this is simply a matter of the history of religion.  Then I engage with the Protestant and the post-Vatican II view of such mystical symbols and attributes.  Those who insist that Mary is solely a regular human, just like us, feel that all that spiritual honoring of her from the Council of Ephesus right up to Vatican II was simply a mistake, an embarrassing theological error which should be thoroughly eradicated.  I do not feel that Catholics of those centuries were benighted and were sliding down an errant slope, for there is an obvious theological logic to their glorification of Mary.  First, since she was born without Original Sin, she was from the start in a category different from the rest of humanity.  Second, for centuries it made sense to all those Catholics that since the Incarnation was a mystical event the woman who assented to it and allowed it to occur in her very flesh was part of the Mystery in ways that other humans are not.  Her mystical role in this cosmological event was eventually expressed with mystical, cosmological symbols.  She was perceived to me more-then-human but less-than-divine (that is, not a goddess).  I do not think the millions of Catholics who shared this theological reasoning for centuries were fools or "uninformed."  I think that the post-Vatican II Church's denying of this entire dimension of Mary's spiritual presence constitute a profound loss for Catholicism.

Hope that helps.  Guess we'll just have to disagree on these two points.

Regards, Charlene

I replied:

I think, in two short paragraphs, you have done away with just about every concern I had in your approach. I was feeling very confused up till now because I found myself agreeing with so much I couldn't understand how you seemed to be coming from this other direction. In fact, I agree entirely with what you have said in these paragraphs--there is no need to agree to disagree. (I would still want to be careful about saying she was "more than human" but "less than God", I prefer "truly human" and "fully imaging the divine" sort of thing, but that is probably more a matter of linguistics).

Last night I came to a page in the book where you said as simply as could be said in one sentence: "She is not God". And that made me stop and think that perhaps I had completely misunderstood where you were coming from. Yes, I think we can celebrate the fact that the "stream-of-goddess-consciousness" has flowed into Mary. In fact, Mary makes the goddess-stream true in a way in which it was not true before it flowed into her. If you get what I mean.

I still want to explore further what ramifications this has for our understanding of God as "Father", however. More of that later.

Christianity: "An Unbelievable Evil"?

I started of rather liking this guy on the Stephen Crittenden show the other day. After all, to go from 20 years jail to helping Aboriginal kids in Redfern kick the booze and the drugs is a pretty amazing trip by anyone’s standards. I was beginning to think that redemption was truly possible sans evangelion. But then Stevo asked the 6 million dollar question and the billion dollar answer:

Stephen Crittenden: You don’t have a very positive view of Christianity, do you?

Rocky Davis: Well basically people – I do, I do have – I’ll tell you exactly and I’ll explain myself and clarify myself. We believe in the religion of Jesus, we don’t believe the religion Jesus practiced was Christianity, the religion that Jesus preached is Islam, and we don’t believe that he ever preached Christianity. Christianity is a culture of invasion, and if anyone can tell me that it’s not, I need people to openly debate whether it be on live TV or in front of an audience, that Christianity was used as a weapon to invade all the world’s indigenous peoples, Canadian Indians will tell you, Maoris will tell you, Cook Islands will tell you, Africans will tell you, the English used Christianity to invade and conquer and enslave. Christianity were the founders of slavery. Not Islam. And I was never invaded by a Muslim country. Everywhere the Christians went, they plundered and they robbed and they murdered and they enslaved, and they raped. Christianity is a religion of child molestation. In terms of actual religious theology, Christianity is an unbelievable evil.

Stephen Crittenden: Rocky, thank you very much for being on The Religion Report, it’s been great talking to you.

Rocky Davis: OK no worries, thank you very much.

Stephen Crittenden: There’s a story that’s a marker for the future. Aboriginal Australia with a Muslim face. Rocky Davis of the Aboriginal Dawah project.

Um. Righto. Yeah. Ah…

"In the Churchlet of the Self"

I should have gotten around to blogging this one ages ago, but it hasn’t gone out of date. Its from Diogenes at Catholic World News, and entitled “In the Churchlet of the Self”. A quotation will give you an idea of what he’s railing about:

"To find a church where I could feel like my spirituality would be nurtured like it was in the Roman Catholic Church, where I can be authentically me, and where people have the freedom to decide for themselves what they believe and how they express their faith, is a beautiful thing," she said.
Check out the entire article.

One of the things I had to defend myself against when I became a Catholic was the assertion that “David became a Catholic because he likes that sort of thing.” Really. I could have done “that sort of thing” as a Lutheran, even if my congregations would have just raised their eyebrows a little higher than usual and said “that’s just David”. In the end, being a convert to the Catholic Church is all about submission to something bigger than yourself. I haven’t mastered that bit yet, but I’m working on it. Or maybe the Church is working on me…

"The Gift of Faith" - B16

I have just read through all of the transcript of Papa Benny’s Q&A session with the Roman priests. I was blown away by one response he made on the subject of “Faith as a gift”, and was going to put up a few paragraphs, but I think the whole thing deserves reading closely:

Faith, ultimately, is a gift. Consequently, the first condition is to let ourselves be given something, not to be self-sufficient or do everything by ourselves - because we cannot -, but to open ourselves in the awareness that the Lord truly gives.
It seems to me that this gesture of openness is also the first gesture of prayer:  being open to the Lord's presence and to his gift. This is also the first step in receiving something that we do not have, that we cannot have with the intention of acquiring it all on our own.

We must make this gesture of openness, of prayer - give me faith, Lord! - with our whole being. We must enter into this willingness to accept the gift and let ourselves, our thoughts, our affections and our will, be completely immersed in this gift.
Here, I think it is very important to stress one essential point:  no one believes purely on his own. We always believe in and with the Church. The Creed is always a shared act, it means letting ourselves be incorporated into a communion of progress, life, words and thought.

We do not "have" faith, in the sense that it is primarily God who gives it to us. Nor do we "have" it either, in the sense that it must not be invented by us. We must let ourselves fall, so to speak, into the communion of faith, of the Church. Believing is in itself a Catholic act. It is participation in this great certainty, which is present in the Church as a living subject.

Only in this way can we also understand Sacred Scripture in the diversity of an interpretation that develops for thousands of years. It is a Scripture because it is an element, an expression of the unique subject - the People of God -, which on its pilgrimage is always the same subject. Of course, it is a subject that does not speak of itself, but is created by God - the classical expression is "inspired" -, a subject that receives, then translates and communicates this word. This synergy is very important.
We know that the Koran, according to the Islamic faith, is a word given verbally by God without human mediation. The Prophet is not involved. He only wrote it down and passed it on. It is the pure Word of God.

Whereas for us, God enters into communion with us, he allows us to cooperate, he creates this subject and in this subject his word grows and develops. This human part is essential and also gives us the possibility of seeing how the individual words really become God's Word only in the unity of Scripture as a whole in the living subject of the People of God.

Therefore, the first element is the gift of God; the second is the sharing in faith of the pilgrim people, the communication in the Holy Church, which for her part receives the Word of God which is the Body of Christ, brought to life by the living Word, the divine Logos.

Day after day, we must deepen our communion with the Holy Church and thus, with the Word of God. They are not two opposite things, so that I can say:  I am pro-Church or I am pro-God's Word. Only when we are united in the Church, do we belong to the Church, do we become members of the Church, do we live by the Word of God which is the life-giving force of the Church. And those who live by the Word of God can only live it because it is alive and vital in the living Church.

Why haven't they made this guy into a bishop yet?

Cathnews this morning carried the report that Fr Aidan Nichols has been appointed the “John Paul II Visiting Lectureship in Roman Catholic Theology” at Oxford University.

When I was coming into the Church, I read Fr Nichols’ book “The Shape of Catholic Theology”. It gave me a good handle on the new path along which I was being led (I hesitate to call it a “garden path”). I have since come to see that Fr Nichols is something of an expert on everything, and well deserves the title “Sacrae Theologiae Magister”.

I also had a very memorable lunch with Fr Nichols when he was visiting Melbourne for an intensive course at the John Paul II Institute. Kate Cleary (who was then the librarian of the Caroline Chisholm Library) rang him on the pretext of having briefly met him in the UK and offered to take him to lunch. He accepted (it was that or sandwiches at the Priory…), but was thinking to himself (as he told us over coffee and port) “I must know this woman from somewhere…”

In the meantime, plans changed and Lutheran Pastor Fraser Pearce offered to host the lunch. Myself and another Lutheran, Dr Adam Cooper (who has recently done his doctoral dissertation at Durham) were also invited.

In any case, Kate then arrived at the Priory on the appointed day, bundled him into the car and drove him out through the suburbs to the Donvale manse. All the while Aidan is thinking to himself “I don’t know who this woman is, where she is taking me, or why I am having dinner with a bunch of Lutherans!”

Nevertheless, the lunch turned out to be a spectacular affair (the Pearce’s are excellent hosts) and good theology was talked and ecumenism done. And I can add “Fr Aidan Nichols” to my list of droppable names!

There only remains one question…

That other place to the north...

It will not be a surprise to many that I am a great Dame Edna fan. While I was not very impressed with her song beamed in through hyperspace at the close of the games, I did like the not-very-witty and terribly predictable but also very “Melbourne” poem with which she introduced it:

Ah, Melbourne, the city of my birth,
It’s not as hot as Brisbane,
Or as far away as Perth.
It’s much bigger than Adelaide,
And compared to Canberra it’s bliss,
And if you’ve been to Melbourne,
You can give ***** a miss.

**** (here insert name of prominent Australian capital city not yet mentioned)

The "Ugh" factor in Religious Vilification

Andrew Sullivan of The Sunday Times has written about the new “cartoon controversy” surrounding South Park in an article reprinted in The Australian called “Oh my god, they killed satire”.

At the end, he says:

“Laughter matters because piety begets power. Orwell once remarked that one reason fascism never took off in Britain was because the sight of a goose-stepping soldier would prompt your average Englishman to giggle. Someone is now silencing the giggles. And our world is a lot creepier because of it.”

Maybe there is something in that. But a friend of mine uses a meter she calls “The Ugh Factor”. Goose-stepping soldiers, like country & western singers at weddings and badly played bugles on Remembrance Day, are funny. Menstruating statues of the Virgin Mary are “Ugh”. Or perhaps even “UGHHHH!”

Mary: A person, not a "goddess" or a "metaphor"

I have been churning through Charlene Spretnak’s Missing Mary. I continue to enjoy it, but it raises more questions than it answers, particularly about how the “conservative/liberal” divide is panning out in the States.

She says much that is good, but also much that is way off the mark. Especially concerning is the way she continually talks about Mary as “goddess” or “more-than-human”. Now, what she is reacting against is the “biblical-only” tendency to wipe Mary out of the picture as “just an ordinary human Nazarene housewife”. Fair enough, but I don’t think the answer is to raise her to divine or semi-divine status.

My reactions became especially acute when I read Charlene’s excerpts of a paper by Fr Andrew Greely (yes, that Andrew Greely) calling for the revival of the Mary “metaphor” in the Church.

Lets be quite clear. Mary is not:

1. a metaphor


2. a goddess


3. an idea


4. a principle

Mary is, first and foremost, a person. A real, human person, who was born of real human parents, and who remains a real human person. Three things set her aside from anyone else:

1. She was conceived without sin


2. She became the “Mother of God” by conceiving and giving birth to Christ


3. Upon her death she was assumed body and soul into heaven where she now reigns as “Queen of Heaven”

But none of this means that she is “more than human” or “divine”. She certainly has not been “dis-incarnated” to the level of an idea or a metaphor. The whole point of the Church’s love and veneration and infinite estimation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is that she is all these things, and yet she is still a humble human being.

In this she resembles her Son, and we rejoice in the great grace shown to her for the same reason we rejoice in the Incarnation of her Son: that both Mary and Christ are real human beings, now in heaven. Christ is King, and sits at the right hand of the Father. Mary is “Queen Mother” of Heaven, holding the same position in heaven that the queen mothers of Ancient Israel held in the court in Jerusalem.

The paradox between the humanity and the divinity cannot be resolved by making either Christ or Mary “semi-divine”. Christ, in respect to his divinity, is truly divine (not “semi-divine”). Just so, in respect to their humanity, neither Mary nor Christ are “more than human”; they are, rather, truly human. And that is something so rare in our experience that it might well lead the un-informed to suppose that they are “semi-divine”.

"Dear Benny": The Pope's Question and Answer published

At last, the complete text of the Holy Father’s question and answer session with the clergy of Rome (March 2, 2006) has been published. You can read it here.

Blog or be damned...

In an Online Opinion piece “Blog or be damned?” James McConvill says that it's time for those academics in their ivory towers to embrace the potential of the 'blogging age'.

I couldn’t agree more. My hackles were raised soon after I began this blog when I was discussing with one academic whether or not there should be a rule in the Archdiocesan Code of Conduct preventing employees from blogging. If there was, I said, there should be a rule about employees doing any sort of writing in any sort of journal at all. To which he retorted, “But scholarly journals have an editorial policy that amounts to peer review.”

So how come so much rubbish gets printed in journals that claim to be “Catholic”?

Year of Grace update

I have just done a total recast of my conversion retro-blog, having found a fuller (non-edited) version of my journal on my computer. Take a look if you find this sort of thing edifying. Don’t forget, you have to read it backwards to get it in sequence, as is the way of blogs…

Missio Ad Israel

In his new catechetical series at his weekly audiences on Christ and the Church, the Pope has several times spoken of the “Mission to Israel” as being fundamental to the apostolicity of the Church.

He did it again last Wednesday:

“Jesus is the eschatological shepherd, who gathers the lost sheep of the house of Israel and goes out in search of them, because he knows and loves them (cf. Luke 15:4-7 and Matthew 18:12-14; cf. also the figure of the Good Shepherd in John 10:11 and following). Through this "gathering," the Kingdom of God is proclaimed to all nations. "Thus I will display my glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see the judgment I have executed and the hand I have laid upon them" (Ezekiel 39:21). And Jesus follows precisely this prophetic profile. The first step is the "gathering" of Israel, so that all nations called to gather in communion with the Lord may live and believe.

“In this way, the Twelve, called to participate in the same mission of Jesus, cooperate with the Shepherd of the last times, also addressing above all the lost sheep of the house of Israel, namely, the people of the promise, whose gathering is sign of the salvation for all nations, the beginning of the universalization of the Covenant. Far from contradicting the universal opening of the Nazarene's messianic action, the restriction from the beginning of his mission and of that of the Twelve is an effective prophetic sign.”

"Are you my Mother?"

Something I will blog on more in the future is the question of the orthodoxy (or not) of:

1. Naming God “Mother” as well as “Father”;


2. Saying that God is our Mother as well as our Father; and


3. Describing God as “maternal”, or “mothering”

The three are slightly different, involving issues (respectively) of naming, essence and attributes. I acknowledge that there are places in the scriptures where maternal images of God are used. They are much rarer than many would have you think, but they are there. Yet this is very different from naming God “Mother” (something never done in the Scriptures or the Tradition of the Church) or saying that he is our “Mother” (also never said in Scripture or Tradition). Jesus, for eg., used the image of a mother hen for his own love for Jerusalem, but there is no way we could conclude from this that Jesus himself was in fact female (or poultry, for that matter).

I think the problem stems from the fact that many who use the “Father and Mother” language for God regard such language as simply “metaphoric”, without anything of essence or identity.

There are reports (I have yet to find the official references to them—please help if you can) that a comment along the lines of “God is Our Father, but even more so God is Our Mother” was made by either John Paul I or John Paul II (the sources I found conflict), and much is made of this one off-the-cuff comment (which is a long way from having the status of magisterial infallibility).

Yet the meaning of this comment is doubtful. Does it mean that it is lawful for us to name God “Mother” as well as “Father” (Jesus taught us to call God “Our Father”, not “Our Mother”)? Does it mean that God is ontologically “Mother” as well as “Father” (if so, in what way does God actually conceive, gestate and give birth to us)? Or does it simply mean that God “mothers us”—in terms of nurture and care etc.—as much as he “fathers us”?

Progress report on "Missing Mary"

I have been reading Charlene Spretnak’s “Missing Mary”. She is a good writer, and what she writes is engaging, but I am finding myself incredibly frustrated and confused at the same time.

Her platform, in almost every way, is what you would expect from your regular US feminist liberal progressive. In other words: old-style feminism, “democracy” in the church, birth control, new age ecology, women’s ordination etc. etc.

But there is one difference: she has wholeheartedly embraced post-modernism’s rejection of rationalistic modernism. So, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment all get their just desserts in her pages. Her rhetoric (this is, in its own way, a work of apologetics) is directed against two bogey men.

The first is not surprising: they are the “right wing Catholic conservatives” who use Mary for their “right wing political agenda” (ie. opposition to feminism, women’s ordination, birth control, democracy in the church, ecology etc. etc.).

The second though is really unexpected: they are the “rationalistic, modernistic, reductionistic” progressives of her own camp who have reduced Mary to a “biblical-only”, “Nazarene housewife”, “ordinary human being”, and who have missed out on the really important thing about Mary: she is the cosmological Great Mother Goddess.

Just reading her account of how Chapter 8 of Lumen Gentium came into existence is a headache for the analytical historian. I am still trying to get my head around this one…

The Mystery of the Disappearing Title: Solved!

So now we know. Inspector Kasper of the PCPCU has solved the mystery. Here’s the official line on why the title “Patriarch of the West” was dropped from the Papal titles earlier this year.

On display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet: The Australian rules for Fasting and Abstinence

There is a conversation at the very beginning of Douglas Adam’s classic “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that goes like this:

PROSSER: But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months!
ARTHUR: Yes, well, as soon as I heard, I went straight round to see them. You hadn’t gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody.
PROSSER: The plans were on display—
ARTHUR: On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them!
PROSSER: That’s the display department!
ARTHUR: With a flashlight.
PROSSER: The lights had probably gone out.
ARTHUR: So had the stairs.
PROSSER: But you found the notice, didn’t you?
ARTHUR: Yes, I did. It was "on display" in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, "Beware of the Leopard."

Trying to find the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference regulations on fasting and abstinence is a bit like this. They certainly haven’t gone out of their way to call anyone’s attention to them. Odd, considering all Catholics over 18 and under 60 are obliged to observe them.

My interest in finding our local regulations was piqued by the discussion in Whispers in the Loggia re St Patrick’s day falling during Lent and the various indults granted (or not) by the American dioceses so that the Irish there could eat their traditional corned beef. Of course, for those in the know, this isn’t a problem in Australia, since St Pat’s day gets a “solemnity” rating here, and a solemnity trumps a fast every time (like St Joseph’s day and the Annunciation). Still, I was rather interested to find that the not eating meat thing was such an issue. As it turns out, Australians are not obligated to abstain from meat on Fridays even during Lent.

So here, thanks to Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett of Lismore’s Pastoral letter for Lent of 2004, are the Lenten Fasting Regulations for Australia (with his own pastoral suggestions added).

1) Abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

No meat may be eaten on these days of abstinence*. Catholics 14 years and older are bound to abstain from meat. Invalids, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempt.

2) Fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Fasting means having only one full meal to maintain one's strength. Two smaller, meatless and penitential meals are permitted according to one's needs, but they should not together equal the one full meal. Eating solid foods between meals is not permitted. Catholics over 18 but not yet 60 years are bound to fast. Again, invalids, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempt.

3) Friday Abstinence throughout the Year.

It should be noted that Fridays throughout the year are designated days of penance. The Code of Canon Law states that Friday is a day of abstinence from meat* throughout the year. However, our Bishops have allowed us to choose, if we so wish, a different form of penance rather than abstaining from meat, but there must be some form of penance, for this is the day we commemorate Christ's suffering and death. Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat.

[* Just as an aside, we have to do a little more education about the purpose of such abstinence. It doesn’t make sense to abstain from meat on Fridays if you are going to feast on prawns, calamari, caviar, barramundi and Moreton Bay bugs instead…]

"You don't vote for kings" - but perhaps you could?

I’m a monarchist, not because of any attachment to the English monarchy, but because I believe constitutional monarchy is a better option than republicanism. Australian Republicans need to sort out what their beef is: is it with the fact that our head of state is a foreigner, or is it with the fact that the head of state is chosen through chance of birth rather than through a democratic election?

Here’s a suggestion that may fix both without losing the stability that comes with our established form of government. It’s loosely based on the old Holy Roman Empire model of elective monarchy.

1. The Head of State will be an Australian citizen.


2. The Head of State will replace exactly the position and duties currently occupied and carried out by the Governor General, but without any reference to any foreign authority.


3. The Governors of the States will be retained in their office serving as viceroys of the Federal Head of State and continue to be chosen as they currently are but with reference to the Head of State in Canberra rather than to the British monarch.


4. The Governors of the States will form a Council of Electors (not unlike the College of Cardinals in Rome) responsible for choosing the Head of State (perhaps from a list of candidates who could be proposed by any number of methods).


5. [Nb. This is the clincher:] The Head of State will be elected FOR LIFE rather than a limited term in office.

Yeah, I thought that last one would get you worked up. But think about it: What real benefit is there in changing one’s Head of State every four or five years? Isn’t such a temporary system precisely the way to politicise the office? Life-time office means stability and distance from day-to-day political issues. It also allows time for respect, familiarity and fondness to grow among the citizens for their Head of State. It causes the minimum disruption to the day-to-day business of government.

Of course, voluntary retirement should be allowed, and there could be measures put in place for extraordinary circumstances should the removal of the head of state be required (eg. unanimous agreement of the Council of Electors). I can’t imagine a more cost-effective, non-partisan and non-disruptive way of choosing and maintaining an Australian, non-hereditary Head of State.

And, if we like, we can even call the Head of State “Your Majesty.” Monty Python aside, who says you can’t vote for a king?

Refusing to bow to the Idol of Work

From Pope Benny’s Homily for St Joseph’s Day:

“Work is of primary importance for man's fulfillment and the development of society, and this is why it is necessary that it always be organized and developed in full respect of human dignity and at the service of the common good. At the same time, it is indispensable that man not allow himself to be subjected to work, that he not idolize it, intending to find in it the ultimate and definitive meaning of life.”

Thank you, Holy Father, I feel much better now about leaving the computer and going out to have a pipe.

New Update in my Conversion Retro-Blog

I have just updated my other blog “Year of Grace”, which tells the story of my conversion to the Catholic Church. I found a passage from an earlier version of my journal (which had not been edited) and thought I would throw this in for completeness.

Schütz on the Speaking Circuit

No, I haven't gone professional, but I am doing a couple of public appearences around the traps. Two events coming up:

1) March 29th at the Chelsea Interchurch Council to be held at St Chad's Anglican Church in Chelsea. We are starting at 5:30pm for meal and speaker. I will speak on the relationship between Catholic Ecumenism and Conversion.

2) April 5th at Caroline Chisholm Library in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, for their regular lunch time lecture (1pm to 2pm). I will be speaking on Repentance in the New Testament.

Both good Lenten topics!

George on Conscience again

Do you want to learn something about your local Church? Take a look at Cardinal George Pell’s “omnium gatherum” on JPII’s post-synodal exhortation “Ecclesia in Oceania”.

The paper, which was given in Rome at a Convention on the 40th anniversary of the Vatican II decree Ad Gentes organised by the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, has a strangely detached, almost observational tone to it. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Then, almost as a footnote in the last paragraphs, George launches onto the hot topic of conscience:

“There is also a crisis about the whole concept of conscience, and its proper relationship to important teachings on faith and morals. False views of conscience, particularly the view that the individual's conscience has "primacy" over the teachings of the Church, not only cause havoc in the moral life. They have also have an enormous impact on the practice of the faith. Oceania is not alone in the world in seeing a dramatic decline in recourse to the sacrament of penance. If people believe in a conscience against Church teaching, then their consciousness of sin will almost certainly decrease. Awareness of sin exists so that we can be aware of the possibility of forgiveness. The collapse in conscience has not helped to increase in Catholic believers the sense of peace and pardon.

…The primacy of conscience doctrine has also had some even deeper effects on Catholic identity. Any religion develops a sense of belonging among its , adherents. Believers know where they are situated within time and space; their lives have meaning because of their beliefs about their origin and their destiny. This is particularly so for Christians. Christianity is historical both in terms of longevity and because we believe God himself entered into history in the Incarnation. Christianity is also perhaps the only truly public religion: it embraces every part of the earth and is compatible with every true culture. Furthermore its philosophy and theology of the beginning, end, and ethics of human life is universally acknowledged as an astonishing achievement. Elevating conscience to moral primacy, however, shatters this sense of belonging. If people believe they should live by their own impulses and tastes declared "true" by conscience, the sense of being part of a sacred society that is world-wide, ancient, and guaranteed by Christ to teach the truth, is greatly weakened.”

Revisiting the Goddess Problem?

I have just gotten hold of Charlene Spretnak’s “Missing Mary: the Queen of Heaven and her re-emergence in the modern Church”. I have been having a little email conversation with Charlene since I blogged about her review of “Is the Reformation Over” in NCR. The title is provocative enough. Yes, there does seem to be a re-emergence of Mary following the slackening off of Marianism after the Council, but what does it all mean?

I expect Charlene will provide some answers which may well provide some pointers to why a sizable chunk of the Catholic population have reattached themselves to Marian devotion. But with a chapter heading like “Revisiting the Church’s ‘Goddess Problem’”, I would be surprised if her explanations would cover the phenomenon as a whole.

I am eager to get stuck into it. More comments will come.

I saw Her passing by!

I saw her! I saw her! And do you know what she was doing? She was “passing by”—and quite fast for that matter. On the way to lunch at the Exhibition Building here in Melbourne at about 1pm Wednesday afternoon. I got a wave from Prince Philip; he was on our side of the big limo, and there were only a couple of us at that point on the street. Her Maj was on the other side, and I caught a glimpse of her grey curls and one of those large upsidedown conical hats she has taken to wearing of late.

Any way, nice to know she is actually in town. It was, as I think I remarked, almost twenty years ago that I saw her last, in North Adelaide. She was “passing by” a little slower then. Actually got out of the limo. I wonder, if she had been sitting on the street side of the car this time, if she might not have told the driver to stop, since she hadn’t seen me for so long…

It puts one in mind of the Michael Leunig poem:

“I did but see her passing by, she passed me by quite fast.
I saw her passing by again when several years had passed.
And then at some much later stage she passed me by once more
And there were further passings-by and these I also saw.
I did but see her passing by, I don't know what it means;
Perhaps it's not my problem, but a problem of the Queen's.”

Christian Contradictions

My family and I are in Bendigo at the moment staying with a very close friend of mine, the local Lutheran pastor. We celebrated my 40th birthday together yesterday, so I am feeling officially "old".

Almost instantly upon my arrive, my friend presented me with a book entitled "Christian Contradictions: the structures of Lutheran and Catholic thought" by Daphne Hampson.

This book has formed the centre of most of our conversations for the whole weekend, and I definitely intend to get a copy of my own. It is, in my view, one of the most important works for the Catholic Lutheran ecumenical endeavour that I have read in many years. I will blog further on it when my copy arrives.

Just briefly, her thesis is that Catholic theology has a linear structure and Lutheran theology a dialectic structure, which means that in dialogue the two are often talking past eachother. I think her thesis is spot on for some Lutheran theology and explains a lot of difficulty in the dialogue with Catholics. It also explains something of the tendancy within Lutheranism for (what even some Lutherans call) "gospel reductionism". It needs much more thinking over.

In the mean time, you can read the following reviews:

Ecumenical Review by Eric W. Gritsch (Lutheran)
Christian Century by Michael Root

You can actually buy a downloadable copy of the book for US$30 here.

"Dear Benedict"

Benedict XVI is an innovator. He has introduced an entirely novel mode of Papal pronouncement called “The Question and Answer Session”. He did it first with the priests of the Roman diocese in May 2005, then again at Aoste in July 2005, and with the First Communion kids in October. Now he has held another “Question and Answer” session with the priests of Rome. In these sessions, when the Holy Father speaks “off the cuff” you really hear what he thinks and believes. This is where all your curly questions get answered. And to make it even better, the Vatican has thought it worthwhile to publish his reflections in full on their website. It looks like becoming something of a “Dear Benedict” column…

Click here for the full text (in the original Italian) and here for an edited transcript in English.

Here are some links to his other “Question and Answer” sessions.
First Communion (October 2005)
Priests of Aosta (July 2005)
The Priests of Rome (May 2005)

Prayers to the "God of Muhammad"?

A colleague here at work recently asked me for my thoughts on the following matter. She was a part of a prayer group in which one member regularly began their prayers by saying “God of Mohammed…” What was my opinion? she asked.

I gave a gut reaction, but have been considering it for some time since. I asked the opinion of a priest involved in teaching prayer and in interfaith matters, and he replied with the following thoughts:

1. The phrases ‘the God of Muhammad’ and ‘the God of Jesus’ may appear to be similar but they are vastly different. It is a question of the value of the genitive preposition ‘of’. The ‘God of Muhammad’ can be put in the same category (mutatis mutandis) as the phrase ‘the God of Abraham’ since Muhammad professed to worship the God of Abraham. ‘The God of Jesus Christ’ is essentially different since the relationship of Jesus to God is Trinitarian, while Muhammad’s is not. No need to go further on this.

2. Furthermore, the phrases ‘the God of Muhammad’ and ‘the God of Jesus’, differ vastly when actually said by a Muslim or a Christian. The Muslim will pray to the God of Jesus with the same meaning as when he prays to the God of Muhammad. Not so the Christian. When he prays to the God of Jesus Christ he does so as a member of his body, through him and with him and in him who is the sacrament of the Father. The Muslim cannot logically do this, although spiritually he may in fact do so.

3. Therefore, given these understandings, it seems legitimate for the Christian to pray to ‘the God of Muhammad’ in the same way that he prays to the ‘God of Abraham’, but he will do so in and with and through Jesus.

I appreciated this reflection, but wondered if we could take it further. In my reply, I wrote as follows:

I agree that the issue is about the meaning of the genitive. But I believe there is a third meaning that the genitive can take. The three meanings are:

1) The God worshipped by Abraham/Moses/Jesus/Mohommed
2) The Divinity to whom Jesus was related as the 2nd person (only the genitive with Jesus could have this force, of course)
and thirdly:
3) The God revealed to/by Abraham/Moses/Jesus/Mohommed

In prayer, the naming of God serves a particular function. The Catechism says the following under the 2nd Commandment:

2143 Among all the words of Revelation, there is one which is unique: the revealed name of God. God confides his name to those who believe in him; he reveals himself to them in his personal mystery. The gift of a name belongs to the order of trust and intimacy. "The Lord's name is holy." For this reason man must not abuse it. He must keep it in mind in silent, loving adoration. He will not introduce it into his own speech except to bless, praise, and glorify it [cf. Zech 2:13; Ps 29:2; 96:2; 113:1-2].

This reminds me of what I learnt as a child from Luther's Small Catechism (going ecumenical here...)

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain. What does this mean?--Answer. We should fear and love God that we may not curse, swear, use witchcraft, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks."

The gist of both passages is that God reveals himself by giving us his name which we are to use when we address him in the "I-Thou" relationship. The third use of the genitive suggested above, especially when used in prayer rather than in discourse, is in fact a means of identifying God, and thus a "name" which implies revelation. It is because God has revealed himself in his name to us that we can turn to him and call upon him in prayer. It is the gift of God's name which gives us access to God.

As Catholic Christians we can affirm that  the God whom Muslims intend to worship and to whom they intend to address their prayers is the same as the God whom Abraham, Moses and Jesus worshipped and to whom they addressed their prayers (ie. the first meaning of the genitive formulation)

But that is not quite the same thing as to say that the "revelation" Muslims claim Mohammed received of this God in the Koran is an authentic revelation (implied by the third meaning of the genitive form of address).

The Church has never endorsed the Koran as authentic revelation nor Mohammed as an authentic prophet of our God. Any claims to the contrary are personal opinion only. This does not preclude that there may be a reflection of the true revelation in the Koran, just as we acknowledge that the "seeds of the word" are to be found in other religious writings also.

So, since the Koran cannot be affirmed as an authentic revelation of their God, Christians cannot use the form of address "O God of Mohammed" with the meaning "O God who have been revealed by/to Mohammed" when they pray. To do so would be to affirm as revelation that which is not revealed.

Therefore, I believe that the use of the mode of address "O God of Mohammed" in prayer by Christians is (at least) confusing (because of the variety of meanings) and (at worst) false (because the revelation claimed by Mohammed is not authentic).

I would, however, have no difficulty with Christians addressing their prayers to “Allah”, as this is the same form of address that Arabic speaking Christians use for God. If one wanted to make an interfaith gesture, this would be acceptable.

An American Jew in Rome: reflections on the doctrine of Supercessionism

The journal “Ecumenical Trends” is not available online. Which is a great pity, because it has marvellous material in it from the good folks at Graymoor. The latest edition to arrive on our desk contains a short reflection by Ernest H. Rubenstein, entitled: “The Folly of Supercession: Lessons from a First-Time Visit to Rome”. Is it significant that Mr Rubenstein uses the term “supercession” rather than the term “supercessionism”? We will see.

For those of you who are not up on the discussion, Supercessionism is the big question of the new millennium in Jewish Christian relations. The Wikpedia article on Supercessionism defines it as “the traditional Christian belief that Christianity is the fulfillment of Old Testament Judaism, and therefore that Jews who deny that Jesus is the Messiah fall short of their calling as God's chosen people.” In fact, strict supercessionism embodies the idea that Christianity not only supercedes biblical Judaism, but in fact is the only valid successor. Rubenstein picks up on this point, as we shall see.

Nostra Aetate and repeated declarations of the Magisterium (especially JPII) have made it fairly clear that the Catholic Church no longer accepts the doctrine of strict supercessionism. This does not mean, however, that it does not claim to be “a” or even “the” legitimate successor of the Jewish tradition before Christ. (cf. Nostra Aetate §4 “Althought the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures”.)

In this light, Mr Rubenstein’s reflections on his three day stay in Rome are interesting. He says that he went to Rome expecting to experience the “imperialism” of that ancient city—not least, the imperialism of the Christian claim to that which was rightly Jewish. “Supercession”, he says, “is a theological translation of the idea of empire.” He goes on immediately to acknowledge that “Christianity is not alone in having practiced it”, for, although it is now an historical fact, it was not an historical necessity that Rabbinic Judaism should have become the sole Jewish successor to the biblical religion. He cites the case of the Alexandrian tradition as a possible alternative.

Rubenstein then defines “to supercede” as “to willfully silence alternative continuations of what came before”. I would call that “supercessionism”. I don’t think the idea of supercession necessarily implies the idea of exclusive supercession. Something may legitimately be said to have “superceded” something else, without denying that there may be other superceders .

But perhaps here is where Rubenstein makes his most valuable contribution, as he suggests that it would be better to speak of “succeeding” rather than “superceding”. He writes: “Succession does not necessarily entail supercession. The church may understand itself to succeed, or follow on ancient Judaism, without canceling out the possibility of alternative, living successions.” He suggests, in other words, that there are at least two historical “successors” (rather than “superceders”) of biblical Judaism: Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism.

Commenting on the artistic juxtaposition of the Hebrew Genesis 1:1 and the Greek John 1:1 in the Anglican Church in Rome, he says: “The church seems to be saying: what we understood to have been with God at the beginning of creation, through which he created, is Christ. But it says so without precluding alternatives.” Or at least, I would say, without precluding that others may have alternative interpretations.

And I was most pleased to read the following good common sense, so often missing in the “politically correct” Jewish Christian dialogue. Rubenstein writes:

“In Christian settings, I find references to “Hebrew scripture” or, according to the preferred language of Judaism, “Tanak”, artificial and misleading, however well intentioned. For they obscure what the church must do if it is not to become Marcionite, namely read the New Testament as a fulfillment of the Old.”

He then makes the perfectly obvious, but often missed point that “The Old Testament and Tanak can share the space of the same words, without either superceding the other’s reading of them.”

He makes the interesting observation that this distinction would perhaps be supported if different languages were to be used for the same texts, suggesting the Jews use the Hebrew and the Christians the Latin. He would be closer to the mark if he had suggested that the Christians should take the Greek Septuagint as the standard for their Old Testament, since the Septuagint was the “bible” of the early church (as is reflected in the different books contained in the traditional Christian OT and the Tanak) but the point is interesting. Nevertheless, the fact that St Jerome translated the Vulgate from Hebrew as much as from the Greek would question this suggestion.

There is much to chew on in this reflection. I will try to secure permission to reprint the article on the Commission website.
In the mean time, I find myself wondering along these lines:


If we accept JPII's terminology in which Christianity can legitimately call modern day Judaism our "elder brother" (ie. in which both can acknowledge eachother as legitimate offspring of biblical Judaism), what remains is to ask "Which offspring is the legitimate heir?"

For my Scottish Republican Friend...

And, for a certain republican co-worker and son of a Scottish immigrant who will remain nameless (I don’t want to be hauled in front of VCAT for violation of the RRTA), here is a 6th verse that was once sung. You know the tune, so all join in:

6
Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the Queen!

Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks

It’s the national anthem of the United Kingdom, one of the two national anthems of New Zealand, and the royal anthem of Canada, Australia, and the other Commonwealth Realms, as well as the royal anthem of the British Royal Family.

So how come its not appropriate to be played in the presence of the Queen, in Australia, in the presence of the gathered athletes of the Commonwealth Realms?

Really, how petty can you get. This shows the mean-spiritedness of some republicans. Contrary to the letter in today’s edition of The Age, it would not be sung instead of but as well as the national anthem of Australia. See how inclusive and reasonable constitutional monarchism is, folks?

And what about the claim that no-one knows the Royal Anthem? Deplorable ignorance, you may well say, but then no-one knows the verses to our National Anthem either, according to recent surveys. So, in the interests of Commonwealth harmony, here is the tune and the words (below).

1      God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.

2      O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On thee our hopes we fix:
God save the Queen.

3      Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be pleased to pour;
Long may she reign:
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen.

I especially like the second verse, don’t you?

I think I might go out and buy a ticket to the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games just so that I can stand up and sing it regardless of the official program. Any takers?

(Nb. For all you Australian Lutherans out there, its no. 577 in the Lutheran Hymnal, but without the second verse. Pity.)

Pope Benedict XVI: "The Pope of the Word"

I’ve just read the Holy Father’s message for World Youth Day 2006, and it is a ripper. It encourages young people to conform their lives to the Word of God, taking the theme "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105).

I found myself thinking that Veronica Brady and Paul Collins et al might have benefited from what it says. In particular I noted Papa Benny’s reference to Hebrews 4:12: "Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” It is not only able to do so, it does do so. It stands above, and not beneath, our conscience.

And there is no mistaking B16’s identification of where one will find that Word which holds our consciences up for judgement. He quotes the Catechism (n. 65):

"Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father's one, perfect and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one."

And he goes on to say:

“The Apostles received the word of salvation and passed it on to their successors as a precious gem kept safely in the jewel box of the Church: without the Church, this pearl runs the risk of being lost or destroyed… Love and follow the Church, for it has received from its Founder the mission of showing people the way to true happiness. It is not easy to recognise and find authentic happiness in this world in which we live, where people are often held captive by the current ways of thinking. They may think they are "free", but they are being led astray and become lost amid the errors or illusions of aberrant ideologies.”

And in case folk like Judge Geraghty think he is not referring to the Bible when he says “Word of God”:

“My dear young friends, I urge you to become familiar with the Bible, and to have it at hand so that it can be your compass pointing out the road to follow. By reading it, you will learn to know Christ. Note what Saint Jerome said in this regard: "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ" (PL 24,17; cf Dei Verbum, 25).

They say that JPII was the “Pope of the Eucharist”. Perhaps in years to come they will say that Benedict XVI was the “Pope of the Word”.