Utopian Apocalyptic and Real: a Decalogue for peace in the Middle East

I recently read in one of Terry Pratchett's novels the saying that it is easy to see things that aren't real; the tricky thing is to see the things that are really real.

In an essay entitled "For a Definitive Peace Settlement in the Middle East: Toward a Middle East Union", Fr Samir Khalil Samir SJ outlines of vision that is utopian, apocalyptic, and yet perhaps the only real chance of peace for the Middle East.

He begins with the most amazing statement:

"Everyone lost. Praise be to God!"

The fact that no one "won the war", was a good thing in Fr Samir's eyes, because it " allowed millions of people to see that violence is useless, and that this area will not be pacified by means of war."

While on the one hand, he says that "a perfect solution" to the situation in the Middle East "does not exist", and that "it is necessary to seek and pursue the least imperfect of solutions possible", the 10 point solution he outlines is nothing short of the utopian vision that puts one in mind of Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a dream" speech.

And why not? If the descendants of black slaves can live as equal citizens in the United States, and if the ancient enemies, France and Germany can live in the one European Union, why could not "the wolf be a guest of the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid" (Is 11:6)?

Fr Samir, like Terry Pratchett, believes that sometimes we have to be able to see the real things that (as far as common sense is concerned) "aren't there", if we are to achieve the reality that we seek. Or to put it as he does: "Realism consists in having a utopian vision in order to be able to realise it."

More Evangelisation 101 (for those not doing the Rocket Science stream)

I read a review today by Philip Hughes in the Christian Research Association magazine Pointers (June 2006) of a book called Predicting the Religion: Christian, Secular and Alternative of Futures.

In his review, Hughes reports that one of the authors (Rob Hirst) gives for reasons why some young people continue to attend church (despite the general trend):

A. Their parents generally considered church attendance to be essential.
B. The young people were immersed in the church at an early age.
C. The young people attended church on a voluntary basis.
D. The young people had positive church attending role models who espouse traditional religious beliefs, requiring the commitment to the church.

How many times do I have to say it? It ain't rocket science.

Jesus is out of his box!

Anyone who has visited the ground floor of the Cardinal Knox Centre in recent times would have noticed a large statue of the Sacred Heart in a glass box. It was not the best place to put him, but I understand that the Historical Commission was looking for a good home for him and that was the only free spot that could be found.

I have taken to arriving at work in the morning and tossing a cheery "'morning Jesus" in his direction.

What what a surprise to come to work earlier in the week and discover that Jesus is out of his box! What's more, it appears he has been ousted by nothing less than a didgeridoo!!



Was this a cunning plot in the never-ending battle between indigenous art and Catholic kitsch?

No, it turns out the didgeridoo is the one that was used in the 1973 Eucharistic Congress indigenous liturgy. Because it is fragile, and the fibreglass Jesus isn't, the didgeridoo was placed in the box and Jesus was let out for a breath of fresh air. In short, Jesus is big enough to look after himself.

All well and good, but you never know what some joker is going to come along and do in the meantime...



[Reader: You naughty boy!
Schütz: Please sir, Peter Plustwick made me do it!]

GenY Catholicism: "C+" on the old scale or "E" on the new Vic Education Dept report card?

Here is my “report card” for the Catholic Church on the basis of the results of the Spirituality of Generation Y survey and report.

“In February and March 2005, a national telephone survey was conducted with the assistance of the Social Research Centre. Respondents from all Australian States and Territories were selected randomly using both listed and unlisted telephone numbers, and 1619 completed survey interviews were conducted.”


Almost half of the 13-27 year old Christians in the sample group were Catholic (17.9% as compared to 22.6% non-Catholic Christians). This may be compared to other statistics that has about 27% of Australians registering themselves as Catholic on the census, and NCLS figures that suggest that on any given Sunday there are more Catholics in church than all the other types of Christian added together (about 750,000).

The Survey returned much lower figures than the Census for allegiance to the Uniting Church (about a third), Anglicans (about a half), and Catholics (about three quarters), but higher figures for “Other Christian” and much higher for “No religion”. This seems to substantiate for me a theory I have held for some time, namely the phenomenon of the “cultural Christian”. Individuals belonging to the mainline churches (Catholic, Anglican, Uniting) are much more likely to identify themselves “officially” with these religions (eg. for purposes of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Census forms) even when they no longer actively participate in the life of these communities, than are those who belong to the category of “other Christian”. For instance, a Catholic who does not go to Mass still calls himself a Catholic, but a Baptist who never goes to Church calls himself a “no religion”. Hence the higher “non-participation” rate of mainline Christian denominations.

So what about specific beliefs? I am interested in Gen Y “Catholics” here, compared to the rest of the mob.

25% of Catholics (43% of Anglicans!) compared to 9% of “Other Christians” declared their “belief in God” to be “unsure”—although 90% of those “unsure” still said they believed in an “higher being”, so perhaps that begs the question of what they think the word “god” means.

61% of Catholics (43% again of Anglicans) compared to 74% of “other Christians” related to God “as a person”. Of these 33% related to God in a “close” or “very close” way (27% percent for Anglicans, and 55% for other Christians). Mind you, Catholics were the absolute lowest of any believers except the “no religion” category” when it came to describing their relationship with God as “very close” (only 9%).

Again, Catholics scored the highest for “OK to pick and chose beliefs” (75%--looks like Gen Y has caught Cafeteria Catholicism from their baby boomer parents…) and the lowest (except for “no-religion”) in the “Only one religion is true” category (10%--what a change from pre-Vatican II!). Again, among the Christians, they scored the highest on the “morals are relative” scale (56%). All a bit worrying really. What have our priests and school teachers been telling them, I wonder…

They are more certain that Jesus is God and that he rose from the dead (55%) than the Anglicans (45%) but less certain than “other Christians” (71%). The same pattern is repeated for miracles (59% compared to 46% and 75%), angels (54% compared to 42% and 69%) and demons (least popular despite Buffy: 39% compared to 31% and 55%). However, Catholics are actually more likely to believe in life after death than any other Christian (68% compared to 45% and 66%)—put it down to Mary and the Saints, I guess.

34% of Catholics said they attended church “once a month or more” (compared to 19% Anglicans and 55% other Christian), all Christians equally said they found church to be generally “welcoming” (over 80%), but at the same time about a quarter of Catholics and Anglicans found church “boring” (compared to only 15% “other Christian”).

With regard to private prayer, more Catholics said they prayed privately “once a month or every few weeks” than any other religious group (36%), but were the lowest on daily prayer (21%). Still, 36% said they prayed with their families which was up there with “other Christian” and “other religion” at 36% (Anglicans only scored 17%), which says something about the family and communal nature of Catholicism at least.

Catholics were close to “other Christians” and “other religion” when it came to wearing religious symbols (43% compared to 50%; the Anglicans were more reserved at 14%), but when it came to listening to religious music and attending religious groups, the “other Christian” category equalled the Catholics and Anglicans put together (around 50% compared to 25% respectively).

Finally, the pattern of the Catholics falling somewhere between the Anglicans (lowest) and “other Christian” (highest) was born out in the categories of religious experience: Spiritual worship (12%, 26% and 56%), Answer to prayer (26%, 32%, 59%), Miracle from God (18%, 20%, 40%) and the final parting shot at “personal commitment to God” (34% Anglican, 44% Catholic, 62% “Other Christian”).

So, if this were a traditional school report card, I guess we would probably get a “C+” for being about middle of the road when it came to our success in passing on the faith to this new generation. However, I suspect that if the report card was one of the new fangled Victorian Education Department type, we would be somewhere around an “E” as in “well below the standard expected at the time of reporting”. What say you?

"Keep your Rosaries off my Refugees"?

Very much worth reading is Dennis Shanahan’s peace in the August 18 edition of The Australian: 'Heads I win, tails you lose'.

He writes about the way that a number of Conservative MPs declared that they would vote against the refugee and immigration bill for religious reasons and thus ensured that it never saw the light of day.

And he notes that there has not even been a squeak about this invasion of religious principles into politics from the Greens or the Democrats. He writes:

There's something missing, something that is illogical and contrary to the prevailing political mood and a golden thread that joins this act of conscience with others on a range of moral issues: Where are the attacks on all these people for acting on religious beliefs? Where is Australian Greens senator Kerry Nettle's sectarian T-shirt mocking Joyce's Catholicism and urging him to keep his "rosaries off our refugees"? Why isn't Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison deploring Fielding's links with "Hillsongy types"? Was this not a conspiracy between the churches and proselytisers of the US Bible Belt and our home-grown bible bashers?

By now we have all seen (and possibly filled in) the Democrat’s silly questionnaire of the separation of church and state.

Shanahan comments:

The Democrats' confused campaign to rightly maintain a separation of church and state is being misdirected against the equal right of individuals to hold religious beliefs and use them in exercising their parliamentary duty.

Indians, Swedes, and Americans ...

I recently came across reference to Peter Berger's aphorism that, if India is the most religious nation in the world and Sweden the least religious, then the United States of America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes.

Apparently under the current regime, there is some questioning of the truth of the aphorism, but it’s still funny, and I thought it was worth blogging.

Ecumenical Martyrs "keep plugging away"...

John Allen, in his latest edition of All Things Catholic, has this to say:

“Christianity is supposed to provide an "optic" for reading the world that is different from purely human logic. If that's true, one would expect Christians to make choices that defy conventional wisdom. Traditionally, this has been the role of the martyrs. Less dramatically, however, one can also see it in ecumenists who are still committed to the vision of full, structural unity within the divided Christian family. Despite a fairly persuasive case for futility, ecumenists keep plugging away.”

Yep, that’s us, the martyrs of 21st Century ecumenism…

Later in the column, he reports that Fr Ron Roberson suggests the Catholic-Orthodox Joint International Commission ought to get along better now that Greek Orthodox Archbishop Stylianos of Australia is no longer at the helm. Hmm. It would be both tactless and a risk to my employment to agree with Fr Roberson, but others involved in dialogue with the Orthodox in Australia might just do so.

Future Church in Australia? One Melbourne Parishioner’s suggestion

Without solicitation, Barry Kearney (a parishioner of St Anne’s Parish in Park Orchards) has forwarded his vision for the “Future Church in Australia” to a very large number of folk in the Archdiocese. He rather innocently suggested that we should “feel free to forward or reproduce in full or in part any of these observations, or to criticize”, so I thought I would do just that. I will send an email to Barry letting him know that I have “blogged” him, so “Hi! Barry, and welcome to Sentire Cum Ecclesia for the first time!”

Barry begins by noting that “The Catholic Church in Australia is in serious trouble”. He identified its “main problems” as:

• Falling attendances


• Priests are ageing and are an endangered species


• Its message is not being heard


• Lack of leadership

He dismisses (rightly, I would say) the usual answers (“Allowing women to be priests, allowing priests to marry”)—issues which he believes “are important”, but which “miss the main point ie there are almost no young men or women attending Mass.” You have to admit, that is a good point.

He comments: “Young men of the future cannot be priests if the Mass and the sacraments have no part in their lives. Allowing priests to marry will not bring young men to the Eucharist.  Allowing young women to be priests will not bring them to the Mass either. Nor will allowing young women to be married priests.”

He goes on to say: “Church leaders are sometimes encouraged by large numbers of Catholic Youth attending international or national rallies, but those attending are the exception and the reality is that very few 15-30 Catholics go any where near a Church except perhaps at Christmas and for children’s Baptisms and First Communions. And certainly not at Easter, the most significant liturgical celebration of the Church.”

He has a point there, but I would say that it is precisely in these “exceptions” that the hope of the future Church lies, because those who remain are really committed, perhaps more so than the Catholic youth of any previous era in Australia. I might suggest to Barry (and to you, dear Reader) that he have a look at the Spirit of Generation Y report. It is worth a blog entry all of its own.

At this point, Barry gives us some sense of the solution he is proposing. He suggests a “SWOT analysis” such as any business would use “to review where [the Church is] going”.

Now, the Church has been compared to many things (Vine, Bride of Christ, Temple, Household of God, People of God, Body of Christ), but if there is one model that it is totally inappropriate for the Una Sancta Catholica et Apostolica Ecclesia, it is the “business model”. [Of course, that doesn’t mean that parish priests, bishops, parish councils, and archdiocesan business managers don’t occasionally fall into the trap of viewing the Church in this way.] This is the guts of my criticism of Barry’s paper, so if you don’t want to read the rest, you have it right now. But give Barry his due, and read on to see what he has to say.

Anyway, SWOT, it turns out, stands for “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats”.

I reproduce his analysis in full as follows:

Strengths

• Is the largest Church in Australia.


• Has Jesus Christ as its founder.


• Has as its main source of enlightenment the Bible, which has stood the test of many centuries and is also the inspiration for all Christians.


• Is immensely wealthy, owning real estate worth billions of dollars


• Is involved in popular community endeavours such as primary and secondary schools, hospitals, social welfare eg St Vincent De Paul, Catholic Family Welfare Bureau, overseas aid


• Has an opportunity to give religious education to Catholic children in its primary and secondary schools


• Has thousands of talented employees including bishops, priests, religious orders, teachers, doctors, nurses, ethicists, administrators, pastoral workers


• Has tens of thousands of talented business people and administrators who are willing to offer their gifts


• Has 1,500 Parishes with many talented parishioners eager to make a contribution

Weaknesses

• Is fast running out of priests


• Is organised into Dioceses and Archdioceses and Independent Religious Orders and has no National or even state structure and so suffers from duplication and fragmentation


• Has no national marketing plan and probably no marketing plan at all


• Mass attendance is dropping eg an NCLS 2004 article by John Bellamy and Keith Castle reports that from 1996 to 2000 attendance dropped from 18% to 15%. As older Catholics die and other factors contribute this figure is probably fast approaching 10%.


• Men are outnumbered by about 2-1 in Mass attendance


• Youth are deserting all church involvement after leaving Catholic schools


• Women, despite dominating most functions are denied priesthood


• Priests cannot marry and so many have left the priesthood and good potential candidates are lost


• Leadership seems almost non-existent or is inappropriate or misguided


• Church leaders seem afraid to lead


• The authorities in Rome are either not aware of the crisis in Australia (and USA and Europe) or have no idea how to solve it


• Possible changes to solve the issues are not considered because of the ramifications they may have in 3rd World countries


• There are too many Parishes and this means resources are duplicated and wasted


• Religion is not being taught effectively in schools or more young people would stay connected and involved


• Lay people and clergy are often involved in social justice issues which are divisive eg industrial relations, environment, and which have no religious relevance or priority


• Sexual abuse reports have given the priesthood a bad name

Opportunities

• Australian Youth are looking for spiritual leadership and experiences


• The Church has a captive audience of hundreds of thousands of Catholic children in Catholic schools


• It can get access to the parents of Catholic School children by using School based masses and religious celebrations


• It has millions of dollars that can be made available to research and execute a Marketing Plan/Reorganisation Plan to overcome its problems


• It can use TV and the internet to get its message across


• It can use PR and marketing experts to promote its message

Threats

• As the Church attendances and priest numbers dwindle, there is a danger that Church leaders will take up popularist causes eg environmental and broad based social issues and lose sight of more fundamental doctrine


• The Church may retreat into itself and do nothing, alienating itself from its members until it becomes just a provider of community services eg education, health, help for the poor, and dependent on Government Funding


• It may controlled by extremists who either want to make the Church a relic of the past or the opposite extreme


• It will run out of priests


• It will run out of money as it tries to maintain too many Parishes with too few attendees and contributors


• It will lose members to other faiths or denominations or movements that are more forward thinking or seem more appealing

Now one could argue about the details, but many of his points are valid. However, if you have read this far, you will notice already that there is a certain leaning toward the “business model” of the Church. He talks about resources a lot—both financial and human. Under “Opportunities” we start to hear the language of marketing and public relations. His final comment under “Threats” is about losing members to what might be called “the competition”: “other faiths or denominations or movements that are more forward thinking or seem more appealing” (ie. the mobs that I spend most of my working day liaising with!).

All this points already to what his solution might be: It is this:

• Employ a Marketing/Research Company to carry out 2 years of Research into how to Market/Organise the Church in the future. The marketing brief would include every aspect of Church activities from the Mass, Structure, the Sacraments, Schools, Community Activities, PR, Doctrine, Leadership, Using the Media including Internet, Church Buildings of the future, Vocations


• Apart from essential doctrine, the Marketing company could look at all aspects of Church organisation and activities eg women priests, married priests, national structure, parish restructuring, Religious Education for children, financial, and the future of Religious Orders.

All entirely consistent with the “business model” of the Church, but entirely inconsistent with the real nature of the Church (more on this in a mo).

He ends by giving his own view of Australia’s “Future Church”. It is nothing less than a thoroughgoing restructuring of the Church without much consideration of the essential nature of the Church. Suggestions include the following:

• A proper National structure without independent Dioceses and Archdioceses.


• All Catholic Religious Education under National Church Control.


• All religious orders and their assets under the control of the National Church


• New mega Churches (catering for at least 1000 to 3000 attendees) to replace the archaic local small Churches, which could support married priests and their families or a community of priests, Youth Leaders and Youth programs, better live music ministry and Children’s Liturgy and stronger bases for community outreach.


• A National Marketing and PR Organisation, using Australia’s top Marketing and PR companies, for TV, internet, Cinemas and Newspapers.


• Schools would be used to gain access to the parents of Catholic children to try to bring them back to the Church, and to influence children to attend Mass [I think this is most revolutionary suggestion! – Schütz].


• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess the performance of all Catholic organisations

He concludes by saying that this “is how all Best Practice Businesses operate. We should expect nothing less than best from our Church. We are not getting best practice presently.”

Now, I have a great deal of sympathy for Barry’s perspective. He and his wife are (according to their website) successful business managers, and it probably frustrates the hell out of them to see what an inefficient, lumbering mess the Church is from a business point of view.

One cannot defend a lot of the nonsense that goes on in the Church. But the Church is a society of human beings—more akin to a family than to a business. Anyone who has seen “The Sound of Music” even only a dozen times will know that you can’t run a family on the “Captain Von Trapp” method. Good leadership in the Church has more to do with responsible and loving fatherhood than good business sense (cf. 1 Timothy 3). Business models are entirely inappropriate when what we are dealing with on the one hand are human souls and on the other hand the Gospel of reconciliation between man and his divine Creator.

The real solution is a whole lot simpler—and harder—than Barry’s analysis suggests. The Real Strength of the Church is Jesus Christ. The Real Weakness is human Sin. The Real Opportunity is millions of sinners in the world who need the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. The Real Threat is that we do not appreciate our Real Strength enough and at the same time underestimate our Real Weakness so much, that we will not take the Real Opportunity when it is handed to us on a platter.

Thanks Barry, for your thought-provoking piece, but like I said in a previous blog, it ain’t rocket science—and it ain’t business management either.

If you want a full copy of Barry’s paper, just email him at: barry@footcareinternational.com

New Entry in "Year of Grace"

I have posted a new entry into my “conversion retro-blog”: Year of Grace.

Islam: "Of God" or "of the Devil"?

I was shocked recently by a priest who said to me that he prays every day for the downfall of Islam. As if to explain, he told me that he believes that Islam is “of the devil”, and that the world would be a better place if it had never originated.

Well. See my previous blog re “vilification”, but in return, I not only pointed out that it was perhaps a good thing that the Muslim religion had converted so very many from paganism to monotheism, but that we could have no idea what might have been the alternative. I can imagine Jews not being totally thrilled about Christianity, and even thinking that Christianity was “of the devil”, nevertheless, it was via Christianity that the names of Abraham and Moses, the Torah, the practice of monotheism, etc. etc. came to the entire civilised world, and surely that can be “no bad thing”. Likewise, has not Islam carried the name of Abraham, Moses, AND Jesus to the world? Albeit in a way that we would not endorse, nevertheless, can all this be “of the devil”?

And then that very night I was reading the evening bible story to the kids, and I read aloud this passage:

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

I recently challenged one of my co-workers on the common “snobbery” of favouring other religions according to their “longevity” (ie. regarding Buddhism, Hinduism etc. as more “respectable” than Mormonism and Scientology). He defended himself with the prophecy of Gamaliel:

“So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” (Acts 5:38-39)

Contrary to my friend’s prayers, Islam looks like it is here to stay. Perhaps this is because God is blessing them for blessing Abraham? Perhaps it is because, far from being totally “of the devil”, there is in fact something “of God” in the religion of Muhammad?

Please don't go there! The interpretation of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act in Victoria

There are worrying developments in the business of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act in Victoria. I have, from the very beginning, been a cautious defender of the laws, on the grounds that no Christian should ever be guilty of vilifying another human being (cf. 8th Commandment and the EIC statement “Talking about Other Faiths”).

My support for the laws is based on a clear understanding of the distinction between saying something about a particular belief, and saying something about a particular person or a class of persons that who hold that belief.

For instance, to use an example I gave in conversation with Shannon the other day, a priest who gets up in the pulpit and says that the “teachings of Islam are of the devil” would not be in contravention of the Victorian laws (--he would, however, be in at least a degree of contravention of the 2nd Vatican Council’s declaration on the nature of Islam).

But if he wrote in his Sunday Bulletin that “Muslims are of the devil”, then he most certainly would be in contravention of the law (and of the Christian law of charity), since he would be vilifying the people themselves.

However, it appears that this distinction is in danger of being lost, and at the highest level of interpretation of the law. The following dialogue was recorded by Barney Zwartz of The Age at the current appeal hearing for Pastor Danny Nalliah And Catch the Fire:

Brind Woinarski, QC [for the ICV]: "If one vilifies Islam, one is by necessary consequence vilifying people who hold that religious belief.”
Justice Geoffrey Nettle: "There must be intellectually a distinction between the ideas and those who hold them?”
Woinarski: "We don't agree with that, but in this case it's an irrelevant distinction, because Muslims and Islam were mishmashed up together."
Justice Nettle: "Are you saying it's impossible to incite hatred against a religion without also inciting hatred against people who hold it?”
Woinarski: "Yes."
(Source: The Age, Barney Zwartz August 22, 2006)

Woinarski is quite correct in saying that Catch the Fire "mishmashed” Muslims and Islam together, but it is essential that we maintain the distinction. To mishmash together the idea and the people who hold the idea would be a disaster for both community harmony and religious liberty (as well as plain old clear thinking). Christian theology has traditionally kept these categories quite separate, as in the old saying "Hate the sin, but love the sinner".

The result of going down this line will be a lose-lose situation for everyone.

The Pain of Separation in Interchurch Families: My Lutheran Daughter's First Communion

I have two wonderful daughter, the oldest of whom (Maddy, aged 7) has just received her first holy communion in her parish, St Paul's Lutheran Church in Box Hill. As you can see from the picture, she is receiving communion and I am not.


That's the pain of separation, the pain which increases in us the true longing for unity. It is a reality that we dare not trivialise by premature inter-communion, but which must spur us on to find authentic unity in faith. Pope John Paul II wrote in his letter Mane Nobiscum Domine:

21. The Eucharist is both the source of ecclesial unity and its greatest manifestation. The Eucharist is an epiphany of communion. For this reason the Church sets conditions for full participation in the celebration of the Eucharist. These various limitations ought to make us ever more conscious of the demands made by the communion which Jesus asks of us.

And in Ecclesia de Eucharistia:

44. Any such concelebration [of the Eucharist between separated Christians] would not be a valid means, and might well prove instead to be an obstacle, to the attainment of full communion, by weakening the sense of how far we remain from this goal and by introducing or exacerbating ambiguities with regard to one or another truth of the faith. The path towards full unity can only be undertaken in truth.

Russian Orthodox Church and Ecumenism

I have been reading some interesting stuff about the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church towards ecumenism. None of this is new material, in fact, most of it appeared around about the year 2000. This is led some to compare the main document "Basic Principles of the Attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church toward the Other Christian Confessions" to the document that appeared from the Vatican at about the same time. "Dominus Iesus”. I was also recently corresponding with our local Russian Orthodox priest, who commented that he will is about to leave for Europe, where he would be visiting Bishop Hilarion of Vienna. It is worth googling Bishop Hilarion and ecumenism, as this gives rise to some very interesting material. Here are the links:

Basic Principles of the Attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church toward the Other Christian Confessions (August 14, 2000).

Russian Orthodoxy Faces Issues of the Day and of the Century -- Church and Society, Religious Pluralism, Martyrs and Mission. By Walter Sawatsky

Interview with Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, Head of the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, With the Official Web Site of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia

Greek Orthodox Female Deacons (or should that be "Deaconesses"?)

Pastor Fraser Pearce asked the question, and we found the answer. Does the Greek Orthodox church ordain women as deacons? The answer can be found here, in the America Magazine.

The question remains: are these women ordained as "deacons" or as "deaconesses". You might think this is hair splitting, but in fact the question is not so much as to whether they are "ordained" or not, but whether a deacon and a deaconess are the same species of ordained person.

I find it interesting to compare what the Greeks are doing to the innovation of Bishop David Walker of Broken Bay in instituting a new full-time ministry for celibate, ecclesial women. Note that these women will not be preaching. Bishop Walker says that "I would see these people often in service areas, of actually working with people who are deprived or with disabilities, social ministries, I would see them being on committees that would be helping to resolve issues for the church."

There is absolutely no doubt that there were female deacons (or "deaconesses") in the early church, and, at least in the mind of the Greek Orthodox Church, that these were "ordained" (yes, I am using the pejorative quote marks too). But what was their role? And what was their relationship to the male deacons? Or was the "order of deaconesses" a completely different order to the "order of deacons"?

The fact that the ritual for ordaining deaconesses is quite distinct and has quite a separate history from the rite for ordaining deacons would seem to indicate the latter.

Don't forget to wash your hands...

A mate at work said his sister put this official picture of the Holy Father from the day of his election up in her WC with this caption attached. It's irreverent, but I thought it was funny.

A virtuous man is good, but a virtuous man with a sense of humour is jolly good.

Pope Benedict XVI: I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically. I'd also say it's necessary for my ministry. A writer once said that angels can fly because they don't take themselves too seriously. Maybe we could also fly a bit if we didn't think we were so important.

“The Catholic Church opted for the poor and the poor opted for the Pentecostals…”

John Allen’s “All Things Catholic” continues to be a good read—a little more general and a little less “Vatican-gossipy”, but still informative. Thankfully not overly “US-centric”. He has covered some big general issues lately, and in his latest column he focuses on the situation in the Latin American Church, viz. the threat of the “sects” (read: “Protestants”).

Allen points out that in the 20th Century, more Catholics left the Church for the Protestant “sects” in Latin America than in Europe during the Reformation. Rather than ask the Catholic Church leaders why the Church is haemorrhaging, he does something really radical: he asks a Protestant: Samuel Escobar, “one of the world's foremost Evangelical scholars specialized in missionary studies”.

So how does Samuel Escobar explain the “haemorrhage”? He answers:

“The Catholic Church recently carried out a study of more than 1,000 converts, which concluded that if the church had offered deeper Bible study, better worship, and more personal pastoral attention, these people would not have converted.”

It ain’t rocket science, as they say. Here in Australia, the Catholic Church is also haemorrhaging (as Archbishop Coleridge notes in his inaugural homily), not to the “sects” but to secularism. When I was a pastor, I spent most of my time teaching people in bible studies, improving our liturgical worship, and constant personal pastoral attention. Of course, I only had several hundred parishioners—a dream for most Australian clergy, let alone for the South Americans (where, according to Allen, “in 2001, there were 7,176 Catholics for every priest in Latin America”), but bible study, worship and pastoral attention can be led by lay ministers.

You want to stop the haemorrhage? Then get your parish into the bible, get them into the liturgy, and make damned sure you look after each soul that crosses the threshold of your narthex.

Oh, and by the way, the heading to this blog is a quote from Samuel Escobar about liberation theology in South America. The folk at Redfern might want to take some notice.

New Entry in "Year of Grace"

I have published a new entry in my “conversion retro-blog” Year of Grace.

The End is Nigh! (or at least, Nigher)

I spent last night watching the DVD Islam: Empire of Faith in the Empires series. I had a ready watch the Kingdom of David DVD about the rise of the kingdom of Israel and its later history and found that the excellent, so when I found this DVD in the local library, I borrowed it is well. I watched all three hours of it while folding clothes last night (yes, I had a lot of washing).

I can highly recommend this to anybody who wants to get a handle on the life of Muhammad in the history of Islam. It basically takes us over the next thousand years until the conquest of Byzantium in the 15th century, ending with a fairly short “It’s all downhill from there” type of conclusion. Most of these scholars interviewed in the DVD appeared to be Western and yet I got the impression that they were Western converts to Islam. I would describe its general bias as pro-Islamic, especially so in the account of the Crusades (as perhaps is to be expected), but still extremely informative.

Nevertheless what one is left with at the end of it is a sense of the total interconnectedness of all things. The interesting thing about this series of DVD’s, is that it demonstrates how each of the major civilisations of the world have affected one another, and really couldn’t exist without the other, and cannot be interpreted apart from the other. Yet one becomes equally aware of the fact that great directions in human civilisation have been influenced by random individuals and events without which world history would have been quite different.

And I for one cannot watch this series without getting a sense also that the world now is more interconnected than ever, and that (if I can use the Biblical analogy) the time is fast approaching when we are about the harvest what we have sown in the previous 3000 years.

I know that sounds all rather apocalyptic, and yes it is. That doesn’t mean that the end is upon us of course. 500 years ago Brother Martin Luther predicted the end was nigh as he railed against the devil, the pope and “the Turk”, and all Europe was united (despite its religious differences) by the shocking news that “the Turk” had reached the gates of Vienna. But, again to paraphrase our Lord, “the end was not yet”. I imagine it is “not yet” now either. But we can be forgiven for being a little bit eschatological in our reflections.

Questioning Interfaith Dialogue? Uranus made me do it!

I don’t normally read horoscopes. Astrology is something that made sense in the pre-scientific world, when the earth was in the centre of the cosmos, and the cosmos was divided into sub- and super-lunary spheres. In that world view it made a sort of sense that was almost rational. But in the new cosmology its just silly. [There’s a warning in that somewhere for modern scientism...]

But after reading an old horoscope the other day which said that I would feel much better after my cosmetic surgery, I thought it might be good for a laugh to read the horoscopes a week or two after the period for which they were written. Here is my horoscope for the week of June 25th 2006 in the “Sunday Life” magazine (an insert with The Sunday Age):

[Reader: What star sign are you?
Schütz: I’m Pisces.
Reader: I always knew there was something fishy about you…]

“Hard as it may be to believe, you could still be playing things a little too safe. You’ve coume out of yourself in spectacular fashion lately and made everyone aware of your true feelings. But as the anarchic Uranus makes an about-turn in your sign, you need to secure what changes you’ve made.”

Aha! So I can blame all my recent questioning of the interfaith endeavour on the anarchic effect of Uranus?

You, dear Reader, know nothing of this, but I am, at best, a reluctant convert to Interreligious Dialogue. Every morning I wake up and think: What the hell am I doing? I want to convert the whole world to faith in Jesus Christ (and even more specifically, the Catholic faith in Christ), and here I am defending the right of all people to religious freedom.

Then I have to start again from first principles and work all the way through till I get to the point where interfaith dialogue is an essential part of the evangelising mission of the Church (cf. Dominus Iesus §2 and §22, and Dialogue and Proclamation).

Nevertheless, as some of my colleagues on the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission will attest, I have been a bit of an anarchic pain of late, “biting the hand that feeds me” (almost), by asking really annoying questions about why and the wherefore of multifaith religious experiences (aka “joint prayer”) and the whole issue of conversion and evangelisation in relation to other faiths.

It would be so easy to say a big simple (simplistic??) “NO” to interfaith relations, because of all the fuzziness that is so often associated with this endeavour. Among theologians dealing in the nuts and bolts of interreligious dialogue, there are theories and theologies that make me truly uneasy.

As I seek understanding, I become aware that for me interfaith work is firstly an act of faith, and secondly an act of understanding. The very Gospel I seek to proclaim continues to propel me into the chaos that is the interfaith encounter.

Or is it perhaps that pesky planet Uranus…?

Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer: Australian Democrats Survey

Tom Pietsch, fresh back from his honeymoon and back at his computer, has alerted us to this Australian Democrats anti-Christian survey. Get in there an make a difference.

The questions are terribly loaded, of course. Like:

21. Would you be in favour of legal moves to formalize a separation of church and state in Australia?  

Do you want to tell them, or should I? How do you legally “formalise a separation” for a couple that has never even dated, let alone signed the dotted line on the marriage certificate?

The Book Tag game has caught up with me: now its your turn!

I’ve been “tagged” to take part in this game, but I think I might revisit it a few times. Here’s my first attempt:

1. One book that changed your life:

Fr Fenton nominated Ceremony and Celebration by Paul H D Lange, and yes, I guess that did have a bit of an impact. But so did Eugene Peterson’s "Working the Angles" (I remember being on vicarage reading a passage which said that the pastor’s role is not simply a series of jobs to do, when the door of the other office slammed open and my vicar-father emerged saying “Well, that’s that job done, now for a cup of coffee!”). Perhaps Herman Sasses’ Here we stand could be in for a running… But in the end, I would have to say that two books combined to finally change my life all together: Joyce Little’s “The Church and the Culture Wars” and Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Called to Communion”. After reading those two books I became a Catholic.

[Reader: They said one book, not five.
Schütz: As Michelangelo said to the Pope in the Monty Python skit: “One?”]

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:

Well, along with many others, I would have to nominate “Lord of the Rings” here.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:

I should say the Bible, but I will show how far down the slippery slope of Catholicism I have fallen by nominating Joseph Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity”. I might finally get the time to give every sentence the attention it deserves. I generally advise people to take it in bite-sized chunks and to chew slowly.

4. One book that made you laugh:

Douglas Adams “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. Actually, all five books in the trilogy (sic). I love the line that goes “The huge yellow spaceships hung in the air in exactly the same way that bricks don’t.” Masterpiece.

5. One book that made you cry:

Actually, this is an odd one, but I’m going to nominate Stephen Lawhead’s “Byzantium”. I don’t normally get teary about books, but I can remember being terribly moved by the ending to this one.

6. One book that you wish had been written:

“Interfaith Dialogue for Dummies” (the sequel to “Ecumenism for Dummies”).

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

I’m sorry, but this is a bit obvious: Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code”. There are probably others, like “Mein Kampf” that would be in for the running, but it would be a close fought race.

8. One book you’re currently reading:

Like Fr Marco, I also have books all over the place. The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue edited by Walter Kasper is in my office at work. Next to my bed is N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God, the first volume in his multi-volume work on New Testament history. And in the car, the audio-book of Rumpole's Last Case (I'm taking a break from attempting to listen to all 25 of Alexander Kent's Richard Bolitho series).

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:

The Koran. (I’m waiting for either a decent translation or for when I have finally learnt Arabic…)

10. Tag others.

Shannon Donahoo
Tom Pietsch

What does the Pope think about that? Well, just ask him!

Wanna know what the Pope thinks about the place of women in the Church? About the AIDS epidemic in Africa? About the situation in the Middle East? About gay marriage? Well, forget the speculation, because a bunch of interviewers have just got it all straight from the horse’s mouth (so to speak). They just asked him, and he told them. Not always the answers that they expected, but he told them. For the full transcript of the August 13 interview with the pope by German television’s ARD-Bayerischer Rundfunk, ZDF, Deutsche Welle, and Vatican Radio, just go to the www.chiesa site of Sandro Magister.

Here are my favourite bits:

“The basic theme is that we have to rediscover God, not just any God, but the God that has a human face, because when we see Jesus Christ we see God.”

“Then again, today the West is being strongly influenced by other cultures in which the original religious element is very powerful. These cultures are horrified when they experience the West's coldness towards God.”

“Reawaken the courage to make definitive decisions: they are really the only ones that allow us to grow, to move ahead and to reach something great in life.”

“Of course we have no political influence and we don't want any political power.”

“Everyone knows that the Pope is not an absolute monarch but that he has to personify, you might say, the totality that comes together to listen to Christ.”

“Of course, then we have to witness to God in a world that has problems finding Him, as we said, and to make God visible in the human face of Jesus Christ, to offer people access to the source without which our morale becomes sterile and loses its point of reference, to give joy as well because we are not alone in this world. Only in this way joy is born before the greatness of humanity: humanity is not an evolutionary product that turned out badly. We are the image of God.”

“If in all our single communities we try not to live the faith in a specific fashion but always start from its deepest basics, then maybe we still won't reach external manifestations of unity quickly, but we will mature towards an interior unity that, God willing, one day will bring with it an exterior form of unity too.”

“Christianity, Catholicism, isn't a collection of prohibitions: it's a positive option.”

“The African continent, the African spirit and the Asian spirit too, are horrified by the coldness of our rationality. It's important for them to see that's not all we are.”

“And it's also important that the seat of the Successor of Peter be a place of encounter, don't you think?”

“As you know, we believe that our faith and the constitution of the college of the Apostles, obliges us and doesn't allow us to confer priestly ordination on women. But we shouldn't think either that the only role one can have in the Church is that of being a priest…. And we will have to try and listen to God so as not to stand in their way but, on the contrary, to rejoice when the female element achieves the fully effective place in the Church best suited to her, starting with the Mother of God and with Mary Magdalene.”

“They can do it through catechesis, preaching, or through the presentation of a film, perhaps. I can imagine some wonderful films. Of course, I only know well the Church Fathers: a film about Augustine, or one on Gregory Nazianzen who was very special, how he continually fled the ever greater responsibilities he was given, and so on. We need to study: there are not only the awful situations we depict in many of our films, there are also wonderful historical figures who are not at all boring and who are very contemporary.”

“I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically. I'd also say it's necessary for my ministry. A writer once said that angels can fly because they don't take themselves too seriously. Maybe we could also fly a bit if we didn't think we were so important.”

“I've been taken apart various times: in my first phase as professor and in the intermediate phase, during my first phase as Cardinal and in the successive phase. Now comes a new division. …Let's say that my basic personality and even my basic vision have grown, but in everything that is essential I have remained identical. I'm happy that certain aspects that weren't noticed at first are now coming into the open.”

Question: “Would you say that you like what you do, that it isn't a burden for you?”
Pope Benedict XVI: “That would be saying a bit too much, because it really is tiring. But in any case, I try to find joy here too.”

Thank you, Holy Father, our prayers are with you and for your strength to bear with this tiring but inspiring work!

The Compendium on the Net: Now in English as well as Slovenian...

Yay!!!! The Compendium to the Catechism of the Catholic Church is finally on the net in English!! This is after many months when the only available languages were German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian. Yes, folks, the Romanian and Slovenian translations were up on the Net before the English. I love the way those guys prioritise things in Rome…

New entry in Year of Grace

I have entered a new passage in my “Conversion retro-blog”: Year of Grace, in which I recount my conversation with Jaroslav Pelikan!

[Reader: About time. I thought you would never get to your conversion at this rate.
Schütz: Have you read the "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy"? I think I am progressing nicely compared to that great autobiography.]

Catholic Apologetics 101

I have had a correspondence recently with a bloke who has real problems with the Catholic faith. He writes:

None of my family and friends or any catholic that I know, 100's of them, don't read,study,remember or obey the Bible, they have been taught not to trust it they are religious but don't know Christ. don't know that they can have the assurance and joy of their salvation, their are dozens of verses I could include prove this, have a look for them. Think they get to be with God in heaven because they are such nice people what a joke  ie: works gospel.  go to church when they feel like it because it is just so boring and the teaching  is so irrelivent to thier lives are spiritually dead and have no interest in God they just like to think they do have been fooled into beleiving that their is only salvation in the RCC another lie. The JW and Mormons teach this.

It is not hard to have a little sympathy for his opinions, given what he has seen and experienced of Catholics.

In any case, he asked me to give him bible passages as proof of various Catholic teachings, and I thought, to get some extra mileage out of all my hard work, I would republish what I wrote in this forum. Here it is.

________

Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting me again. I'm glad you're still looking into these matters, and I hope that you will soon find some resolution to them. I will answer your questions as briefly as I possibly can since you're asking specifically for Biblical texts that make reference to these classic Catholic teachings. Nevertheless, I must point out that Catholic teaching is not reached by reading the Bible on its own, but by reading it in the light of the whole tradition of faith which we have received from the apostles.

Purgatory

The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire.
1 Cor 3:15 “If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”
1 Pet 1:7 “Your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, is tested by fire…”

Matthew 12:32: “Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.”
From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.

Mary Never Sinned

The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person "in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" and chose her "in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love" cf. Eph 1:3-4.
The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as "full of grace" [Lk 1:28].

It might be argued that Romans 3:23 (“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”) proves that Mary must have sinned. Nevertheless, we must keep in mind that “all” in this verse does not mean absolutely “all” human beings, because Jesus (who was a human being) was without sin. The Church does not teach that Mary did not need to be saved from sin, but rather that she was saved from the first moment of her conception.

Jesus had no siblings

This requires an extremely careful reading of the Scriptures. Firstly, it is clear that Mary had no children before Jesus. The Scriptures say that she had no sexual relationship with Joseph “before” Jesus was born (Matt 1:25 does not say that Mary and Joseph had sex after Jesus was born).
In addition to this when Jesus was 12 years old, Mary and Joseph and Jesus travelled to Jerusalem (Luke 2:41-50). No mention in this story is made of any other younger children. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any other younger children being present, or for that matter, being left behind for such a long period without their parents in Nazareth.
But the closest reading, must be done in comparing the passages that speak of Jesus’ "brothers and sisters” by name, (eg. Matt 13:55, Mark 6:3) and the names of the women at the cross (eg. Matt 27:56, Mark 15:40). From this it is clear that the mother of those who are named as Jesus brothers is a different Mary, quite possibly, a sister-in-law to the mother of Jesus, such that these brothers are Jesus’ cousins. All of this is discussed at length in the following article: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02767a.htm

Mary taken up to Heaven in full body and soul

Rev. 12:1 “Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.”
This vision of St. John would seem to indicate that Mary is in heaven. Church tradition tells us that Mary lived with St John till the end of her life, so he would be the one most likely to write about it. Also, just because an event is not written in the scriptures does not mean it did not happen. Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome, but this is not written in scripture (eg. it is not mentioned in Acts). Like their martyrdom, the Assumption happened after most books of the New Testament were written.

The 7 sacraments are necessary for salvation

The Catholic Church does not teach that all seven sacraments are necessary for salvation. In fact only one sacrament is necessary for salvation and that is baptism, as is proved by the following verses:
1 Peter 3:21 “And baptism…now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”
John 3:5 “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”
Mark 16:16 “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved”
Acts 3:38 “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Buying of indulgences to get people out of purgatory

450 years ago the Council of Trent forbade the selling of indulgences as a practice condemned by the church.

You can pray to Mary for Intercession

Scripture clearly teaches that we should pray for one another. Scripture also clearly teaches we can ask one another to pray for us. The question is whether those who have died still pray for us. This is proven by this following passage:
Rev 6:9-10 “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?”
This shows that the saints who have died still pray for those who are living.

Praying for dead people

The practice is not forbidden anywhere in scripture, and has been a continual practice among God’s people since the time of the Old Testament, as is shown by the following passage:
"Therefore Judas Maccabeus made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin" (II Macc 12:46).

Jesus goes down and up from and to Heaven into the Eucharist every time it is prepared.

Jesus is not "go down and up from and to Heaven " in the Eucharist. At his ascension Jesus did not become absent from us here on Earth, but remains present in many ways. These include: in his people, in his word, in his ordained representatives, “ where the two or three are gathered together in his name”, and most especially in the Eucharist. That the Eucharist is his body and blood is clearly proven by the words that Jesus himself said:
Matt 26:26-28 “While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

All Miracles in the Bible could always be proven and were witnessed by someone.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It is true that all miracles in the Bible were witnessed by somebody, simply from the fact that they have been recorded. I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say they “could always be proven”. The church teaches that it takes faith to recognise a miracle. Not all those who witnessed the miracles recognised them as such.

Why is this not the case for Transubstantiation?

In a same way, the miracle of transubstantiation is to be received by faith.

Cannibalism is endorsed by eating Jesus at the Eucharist.

The manner in which the body and blood of Jesus is consumed in the Eucharist is not cannibalistic. This is proved from the following passage.
John 6:52 “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
That is, they think that Jesus is talking about cannibalism. Jesus tries to correct their understanding, but does not deny that he is clearly talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.
John 6:53-55 “So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”

Specifically not eating meat on a Friday

Not eating meat on a Friday was a pious custom in the church as a way of remembering the death of Jesus. Although no longer required by church law, it is a form of fasting, which is still commended by the church. Jesus always expected his followers to fast, as is shown by the following passages:
Matt 6:17 “But when you fast…”
Matt 9:14-15 “Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”
This second passage actually connects fasting to the celebration of the death of Jesus.

Jesus had smooth, intact, unblemished skin when he died on the cross (as he is portrayed in RCC churches )

This is not a teaching of the Catholic Church, nor is it a requirement that portrayals of Christ on the cross be lifelike or historical.

Salvation is by works as well as Grace.

This is not a teaching of the Catholic Church. For the clearest teaching of the church on the doctrine of justification see the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in which the Catholic Church, the Lutheran church, and just recently, the Methodist Church, have all agreed on this doctrine:

Christ work on the cross was not enough to pay for our sins we need to add to it

This is not the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Priest are not allowed to marry

The celibacy of priests is a practice of the Western Catholic Church. Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Church of Rome do have married priests. It is not a doctrine, but a discipline which is for the good of the church. It could be altered without any change to the faith of the church. Nevertheless celibacy is commended in the Scriptures as a way of serving God:
Matt 19:12 “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”
1 Cor 7:7-8 “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am.”

Just in case you don't spend enough time on the Web already...

Thanks Arabella for this tip. The Cathnews/Online Catholic guys have launched a new forum called “Catholica Australia”. Peregrinus (who often drops into this site for a chat) has a column there. If you have the time, join the conversation.

More on Creation from Cardinal Schönborn

No. 6 in Cardinal Schönborn’s Creation Catechesis has finally been translated. It is entitled “What is Man that Thou are Mindful of Him? Is man really the "crown of creation?".

Read, learn and inwardly digest, as they say.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition -- in 2006!

Well, they’ve done it again in Spain. Sandro Magister gives us the 21st Century answer to the Spanish Inquisition, this time in the form of a pastoral instruction from the Spanish Catholic Bishops Conference called “Theology and secularization in Spain” issued on March 30, 2006.

It is nothing less than a new and up-to-date “Syllabus of Errors”. It apparently went before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith while Cardinal Ratzinger was still in charge—I wish then that they had decided to adopt it as a declaration for the Universal Church. For there is nothing peculiarly “Spanish” about the errors it condemns. Each and every error is a blight on the whole Western Church.

The closest that we ever got to anything like this for the Australian Church was the “Statement of Conclusions” after the 1998 Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Oceania. At the time, there were many Australian theologians and even bishops who expressed their reservations on this document.

Obviously the Spanish Bishops are made of sterner stuff…

Criticism of Bonandi's proposal for Communing Divorced and Remarried Catholics

There have been a number of reactions to the Sandro Magister piece about Bonandi’s suggestion re communion for divorced and remarried Catholics which I blogged on last week. The most notable of these is by Donald J. Keefe, S.J., Emeritus Professor of Theology Fordham University. Robert T. Miller takes a similar point of view on the First Things blog (see here and here).

I admitted at the time that I had some reservations about the proposal, but I think the reaction of these two gentlemen does not do complete justice to Bonandi’s suggestion. Miller is downright scathing, and presents the penitent in this case as a real scoundrel (as compared to Bonandi, who perhaps presents him as a near saint).

There are two things that really need to be faced with regard to this issue:

1. The reality of personal conversion.How seriously do we take the fact that upon conversion, a person becomes a “new creation”? There is a new beginning when one comes to repentance and faith. What does this mean when one is living in a situation that is deemed both sinful and irreversible?


2. The moral obligation to the spouse.It is too much for Miller to suggest that the only reason the penitent refuses to “live as brother and sister” with his new partner is because he cannot control his libido. When one has committed oneself to a certain relationship (even if this commitment were recognised as illicit in hindsight), an obligation remains. How this obligation is lived out is another question.

I don’t have answers here. I only know that when I converted to the Catholic Church the first thing I had to face was that my marital situation was irregular, and as such barred me from being received into the Church AT ALL! I had to ask myself what the value of my conversion was in the sight of God. Secondly, I had to face the question of what to do if there was no possibility of my current marriage being regularised (through the processes of dissolution and annulment).

In all honesty, I had resolved that, if my current relationship could not be regularised, rather than demanding from my wife a “brother-sister” relationship, I would live as a non-communing catechumen for the rest of my life until such a time as it was possible for me to live according to the requirements of the Gospel.

According to the strict application of canon law, I could have said to my wife “Sorry, we aren’t really married in the sight of God, so I’m leaving you and the kids, and going off to live as a single person. I’ll pay maintenance and all, but you’re on your own from here on.” Would that have been a “holy” action? And yet, it would have immediately gained me entrance into communion with the Church.

Or what would have happened if I had said “Sorry, no more sex. Separate bedrooms, no kissing, no holding hands, no physical affection whatsoever. But I will stay with you and the kids for the sake of our family.” How much “family” do you think would have been left after that?

I know a case where a Catholic man abandoned his non-Catholic wife (whom he married without dispensation from the Church) to shack up with (as Robert T. Miller would have it) his 23-year old secretary; who then received an annulment from his first marriage (because he married without dispensation), and had his new relationship blessed as a sacramental marriage by the Church. And this is an action in harmony with the Gospel?

I know there are problems with the Bonandi proposal. But there are problems with the current application of the marriage laws too, and something needs to be done about it.

Islamic Scholars taking the road less travelled

Very much worth taking a quick look at Magister’s latest column. He again does the English speaking world a favour by translating the main points of an article by Fr Christian Troll, S.J., this one entitled “Progressive Thinking in Contemporary Islam”.

We need to learn to be a little patient with our Islamic cousins. The Christian Church is still trying to come to terms with the Enlightenment after 200 years, and barely coping with post-modernism, and yet we expect the Muslim world to achieve in a matter of decades what we have in centuries? I strongly believe that the theological paths Troll outlines will be the future of Islam, but it might not get there in my generation.

An interesting and very inspiring Imam was in Melbourne recently—surprisingly sponsored by the US Consulate. His name is Imam Yahya Hendi, and you can get some idea about him from his website. He is an imam who has also done a degree in Christian theology from Hartford Seminary, and has also studied Judaism at a rabbinical seminary. A very interesting man, and quite a preacher. He’s out to convert the world—not to Islam, Christianity or Judaism, but to peace.

The Institute for Religion and Democracy: Stephen Crittenden's new Opus Dei?

The award for the most biased journalist in the ABC has to go to Stephen Crittenden. One only needs to take a look at last week's Religion Report and compare it to this week's edition to see that in Crittenden's estimation there are good guys and bad guys in the world of religion.

Amongst the good guys are the Primate elect of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Katharine Jefferts Schori and Anglican Canon Gideon Byamugisha from Uganda. Amongst the bad guys are Dr Thomas Oden, the Institute for Religion and Democracy, and the new Uniting Church Assembly of Confessing Congregations.

From the way he goes on in this week's program, you would think that the Institute for Religion and Democracy was the new Opus Dei of the Protestant world. In fact, I have very high regard for the work of Thomas Oden and have in the past and written about his proposal for "a new ecumenism."

Crittenden seems to think that the only way to get people to listen to the show is to comment on religious matters as if he was commentating on a World Cup soccer match. But not even a soccer commentator would be tolerated, who showed such undeniable bias.

In the end, his journalistic style suffers because he ends up patting on the head those he should be interrogating, and interrogating those to whom he should simply give us an opportunity to listen. He could take a leaf out of Andrew Denton's book, or even Michael Parkinson's. At least from those two we learn more about the opinions of the person being interviewed than of the interviewer.