When even "Sentire Cum Ecclesia" has to whisper...

Spengler (a writer whom I enjoy reading immensely) wrote a piece some time ago called "When even the Pope has to whisper". Now he has a related column entitled "The Koranic Quotations Trap". Both peices are well worth reading. I point you too them because, while I would also like to explore such questions in this forum, "I do not want rocks thrown through my window" (as Nino Culotta, the pseudonymous author of "They're a Weird Mob", wrote in his preface)...or worse.

Since reading Sandro Magister's "Final Appeal" to save Christian Iraq on Monday and listening to >Rosie Malek-Yonan and >Fr Kahil Samir SJ on the Religion Report yesterday, the volume has been turned up for me on what has long been a vague twinge of the conscience--the fact that I work in the area of interfaith relations, and yet (just as Palestine-Israel questions are usually out of bounds for Muslim-Jewish dialogue in this country) so in our Christain-Muslim dialogue in Australia, the current treatment of Christians in many (not all) predominantly Muslim countries goes without mention.

But I don't know exactly what to do about it. Sure, I get the advice about what I should tell "those people", but our dialogue partners would (rightly) protest that they are not the ones committing these atrocities. See for instance the article about Hirsi Ali and her fight against female circumcision in yesterday's edition of The Age. The Islamic Women's Welfare Council here in Melbourne is right to protest that "we don't do that" and "it isn't Islamic", but the problem is that it IS being done by people who ARE calling themselves Muslim (and, as she points out, Christian also, but I have no facts to know whether that is true or not). Blaming Melbourne Muslims for the atrocities committed in the name of Islam against Christians overseas is obviously not the way to go. That will achieve nothing.

I guess the thing that we have to say to our dialogue partners here in Melbourne is: We know you are not the ones doing this. We know you are not intending to introduce such practices in Australia. And we hear you when you say of atrocities against human rights "this is not authentic Islam", and when you say "Islam is a religion of peace", and when you quote the Koran as saying: "There is no compulsion in religion". But what we want to know is what can we do together to help those members of the Ummah (the Muslim Brother/sisterhood) overseas to understand this in the way that you do. We want to know what we can do to foster the same interpretation of Islam overseas that we see you modelling here in Australia.

Now in actual fact, things are happening in this regard, thanks to the Islamic Council of Victoria. In just the last six months, the Commission has welcomed three groups of young muslim scholars (six men and four women) from Indonesia brought out to Australia by the ICV. These young people--philosophers, lecturers, youth workers, public thinkers--were all associated with Islamic reform movements in Indonesia. They are up against a huge battle--against fatwahs that they believe go totally against the grain of authentic Islam--but they are beginning to do the work that is necessary to allow Islam to find a way of peacefully coexisting with and contributing to human society as a whole. They are, in fact, beginning to address just those issues that Spengler raises in his articles. I hope they don't get rocks thrown through their windows...or worse. More than that, I pray that God--Allah--will give them courage to continue their witness to "authentic" Islam.

More on the Fallible Pope Honorius

My thanks to Fr Richard John Neuhaus for this reference which is surely helpful in our assessment of Pope Honorius--who had the misfortune to go down in history as having his (possibly) monothelitist opinion condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. It comes from a letter by Pope Pelagius II (d. 590 -- before Honorius, so it establishes something a point of view against which Honorius' theological slip up may be evaluated) in which he is explaining to the Bishops in the West why he changed his opinion on a certain matter:

Dear Brethren, do you think that to Peter, who was reversing his position, one should have replied: We refuse to hear what you are saying since you previously taught the opposite? If in [this] matter one position was held while truth was being sought and a different position was adopted after truth had been found, why should a change of position be imputed a crime to this See which is humbly venerated by all in the person of its founder?

The application is that Honorius made his comment about Christ having only one will in a letter to Sergius BEFORE the Church had made a definitive pronouncement on the matter. While the theology which is reflected in his opinion was later found to have been heretical, he could not at the time have been (and was not later) considered to be a heretic. And of course, as Pope Pelagius points out, even Peter himself was corrected by Paul with regard to the role of the Jewish law in the Christian faith. The point at issue is that, when corrected, Peter (or his successor as in later history) changed his opinion and adopted and continued to defend the truth which "had been found".

"Was heisst Lutherisch", Pastor McCain?

Over on Pastor Weedon's Blog, Paul T. McCain makes the following comment:

Lutheranism is the pure and true confession of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic faith. We name this confession "Lutheranism" to hold it in contradistinction from every other confession, but Lutheranism is nothing more, nor anything less, than the one true faith. And all those confessions that, to whatever extent, also contain or exhibit this same one true faith, to that extent, are Church, in spite of their particular confession's error.

Oh. Well. I'm glad we got that clear. Now all we need to know is (in Sasse's words) "Was heisst Lutherisch"?

Pastor Weedon, Pope Honorius, and Errors of the Church

I was visiting Pastor Weedon's blog as I do from time to time to keep up with things at the saner end of Lutheranism in the States, and there read his post "On the Platonic Church". Here is the gist of it:

"The Church doesn't err. Never has and never will. Bishops may err. Priests may err. Christian people may err. Whole dioceses may err. But the Church never can err." Hold that thought.

"The problem with you Lutherans is that you have a Platonic notion of what the Church is." Um. Houston...?

Let's see: can anyone point to this "visible" church that cannot err? Oh, not that bishop! Oh, not his diocese! Oh, not this parish or that priest and certainly not that layperson!

...[Roman Catholics] put all their "church cannot err" eggs into the papal basket, though they try to make it clear that it's not about the pope per se, but about the whole church, the infallibility given to the whole. But there sits Honorarius... Granted he didn't make his monothelite leanings an infallible pronouncement ex cathedra, but then again Rome didn't TALK that way then. But, wait a minute? Oh, never mind.

Luther's solution was rather simple...: "Therefore the holy church cannot and may not lie or suffer false doctrine, but must teach nothing except what is holy and true, that is, God's Word alone; and where it teaches a lie it is idolatrous and the whore-church of the devil."

In other words, the Church by very definition is she who has and speaks the Word of God and it is that Word that does not err, lie, or deceive. When "church" presumes to speak what is NOT God's Word alongside God's Word, well, to the extent she does, she forfeits her claim of infallibility, because alongside of the inerrant Word she's mixed in stuff than can be quite fallible indeed.

etc. His basic point is that rather than having faith in the inerrancy of the Church (and therefore trusting that what the Church teaches is God's Word), we should trust in the inerrancy of God's Word and look for the ecclesial community that teaches it in its purity.

Well as far as the argument goes, I have no problem with that. In fact, oddly enough, I believe I have found that visible society upon earth which has unerringly taught God's Word throughout history (and we all know who that is, don't we, dear Reader?).

But for the record, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches the following about the Church's inerrancy:

91 All the faithful share in understanding and handing on revealed truth. They have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, who instructs them [cf. 1 Jn 2:20, 27] and guides them into all truth [cf. .Jn 16:13].

92 "The whole body of the faithful... cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of faith (sensus fidei) on the part of the whole people, when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals" [LG 12; cf. St. Augustine, De praed. sanct. 14, 27: PL 44, 980].

93 "By this appreciation of the faith, aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (Magisterium),... receives... the faith, once for all delivered to the saints... The People unfailingly adheres to this faith, penetrates it more deeply with right judgment, and applies it more fully in daily life" [LG 12; cf. Jude 3].

In addition to this, the Catechism teaches that:

869 The Church is apostolic. She is built on a lasting foundation: "the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Rev 21:14). She is indestructible (cf. Mt 16:18). She is upheld infallibly in the truth: Christ governs her through Peter and the other apostles, who are present in their successors, the Pope and the college of bishops.

and that

889 In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith" [LG 12; cf. DV 10].

890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals.

For the record, the Catholic Church does not teach that popes cannot err. She does not teach that bishops, priests, theologians, or even councils which proclaim themselves to be ecumenical cannot err.

She does teach that the scriptures "firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation" (DV 11), and that "the Roman Pontiff, the head of the college of bishops, enjoys [infallibility] in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith, by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals." (LG 25)

And if you have stuck with me this far, it is probably very significant to note that the same passage in Lumen Gentium teaches that this infallibility "extends [ONLY] as far as the deposit of Revelation extends, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded".

So, yes, Pastor Weedon, Catholics believe that the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church as a whole cannot err. And if you ask me to point to this Church, I can: it is that whole body of the faithful which was established by Christ and the Holy Spirit, which has existed throughout history from the day of Pentecost, and which is governed by Christ through Peter and the other apostles, who are present in their successors, the Pope and the college of bishops.

And I for one find it hard to know how one could ever give assent to the teachings of community which does not believe in such inerrancy (here at least Pastor McCain--see the post above--is consistent). For without this, how am I to know that the measure by which I am judging the truthfulness of the Church's teaching today (the "purity" of its teaching, as Lutherans would say) is in fact a true measure?

And why does Pastor Weedon keep going on about Honorius? Catholics are quite capable of reading history, and the Fathers of the First Vatican Council were well aware of the case of Honorius (if you aren't, take a look at this Catholic Encyclopedia article which is fairly detailed). The Church has never taught the personal infallibility of the pope (cf. Pope Benedict's note in the preface to his new book "Jesus of Nazareth" that no-one should regard his personal book as infallible!). The charism of infallibility is something quite different from being a good or bad theologian. I think the most that can be said of Honorius is that he was the latter. We know from history that he was a good and faithful pastor. In any case, Honorius rather proves the point than not: the Church was not derailed by his error; the sixth Council, which condemned the theological opinion expressed by Honorius in that one letter, got it right in the end; and the Church went merrily on its way into the future built upon the solid Rock of Truth.

Hound of Heaven wins the prize...

Hound of Heaven has sent a cooee from the Cloister which merits a repeat of this papal photo moment--this time together with HoH's suggested caption. I think you will enjoy it.

Will you people be quiet! I'm tryyying to watch the movie!

A Cruel Joke by Eureka Street editors? A critique of Amnesty International's new Abortinon policy and Ad for Bishop Spong on the same page????

This is either a really cruel joke in incredible bad taste by the editors of the Eureka Street website, or... I don't know "or" what.

There is an excellent article by Father Chris Middleton in the current edition of Eureka Street entitled "Pro-choice Amnesty means no choice for members". In it he deplores the unhappy situation in which the change of policy for Amnesty Internation from a neutral position on abortion to a "pro-choice" position leaves Catholic members no choice but to renounce membership in the organisation. In it he quotes English Catholic Bishop Michael Brown (a member of AI for 30 years) as saying:

The world needs Amnesty International. It has touched the lives of countless numbers of people across the world who have been wrongly imprisoned for their beliefs or subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. Long may it do so - hopefully with the active support of Catholics worldwide. But this will be seriously threatened should Amnesty adopt a policy supporting the right to abortion. Those involved in decision-making at international level need to ponder this very carefully indeed.

BUT ON THE VERY SAME PAGE we find THIS advertisment:Readers of "Sentire Cum Ecclesia" will be familiar with the retired Bishop John Shelby Spong. He is no friend of the Catholic Church (or of orthodox Christianity full stop?), and recently on the ABC Religion Report he said:

the abortion battle is basically the last gasp of a white male attempt to control women.

So what gives, you guys at Jesuit Communications? Do you have an explanation, Fr Andrew Hamilton or Robert Hefner?

A "U-Turn" for Interreligious Dialogue in the Vatican? How a little comment is beaten up into a news story...

Many newspapers and agencies (eg. here and here and here) are carrying the Reuters report about a comment made by Cardinal Bertone to the Italian newspaper "La Stampa" in which he reportedly said that the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue will return to being "a dicastery in its own right, whereas previously it had been merged with the Pontifical Council for Culture."

That is perhaps a bit of a beat-up--and probably Cardinal Bertone himself is to blame because of the way in which he worded his comments (although there has been no publication of the entire interview in English, so it is hard to know the context in which he was speaking). As Rocco Palmo correctly notes,

the councils [for Interreligious Dialogue and Culture respectively] were never "downgraded," but simply shared a head; both maintained separate officials and staffs. Their status and competencies continued unchanged.

I am skeptical that Archbishop Fitzgerald will be returned to the role. Contrary to popular accounts, his appointment as papal nuncio to Egypt was not an "exile" but rather a case of fitting the best person for the job, since fluent Arabic is a sine qua non for the position and Cairo is home to the most authorative seat of Islamic teaching--the Al-Ahzar University.

But Cardinal Poupard (who currently wears both hats as president of both Pontifical Councils) is past retirement age and will need replacing soon. His appointment to both positions was only ever seen as a stop-gap measure to give time to find a proper direction for the presidency of both Councils. Papa Benny did the same with the Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples and the Council for Justice and Peace shared the same president, Cardinal Stephen Hamao. The Pope has not been rushing about in a panic chaning the deck-chairs of the Holy See since his election to the See of Peter.

So is this a news story? Has the Bark of Peter done a complete 180 degree turn? Or is it simply a case of "steady as she goes"? My guess is that it is the latter.

"My Chosen Lifestyle against Culture" is No Antidote for Dawkins-Style Atheism

A large op-ed piece entitled "With God on side" in The Sunday Age today takes up Catherine Deveney's gushing review of Richard Dawkin's documentary "The God Delusion?" from last week's Saturday Age. The author, Cheryl Lawrie, works for the Uniting Church "Alternative Worship" project.

It is a valiant but doomed-to-failure attempt to counter Dawkin's tirade. Yes, we all know that about Dawkins'

failure to recognise the not-so-subtle nuances that distinguish between versions of faith and religious expression

, but what Cheryl doesn't appear to appreciate is that to Dawkins and his ilk IT DOESN'T MATTER if you are a fundamentalist or a liberal believer--BECAUSE IT IS ALL IRRATIONAL (see Sam Harris' argument against "moderate" religion here) and THEREFORE dangerous in all its forms. The only "safe" kind of faith is empirical rationalism, ie. Dawkinesque Neo-Darwinian Scientism (but of course, Rachel Kohn has already burst that particular bubble).

Cheryl describes her kind of religious faith:

I'm as sceptical and cynical as the next person. I have a very uneasy relationship with traditional Christian doctrines. I'm not convinced in the slightest that there will be life after death; the creeds don't speak of the truths at the heart of my faith.

I share her scepticism and cynicism (as you well know, dear Reader), but the rest of this causes me to ask: on what is your faith based, Cheryl? You say:

the case for God is pretty flimsy. It's based on beliefs and experiences that can't be measured or proven or validated.

You say:

Dawkins is right, of course — there's nothing rational about a life of faith.

But is it, though? St Justin Martyr, Origen, St Augustine, and St Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II would all be pretty surprised to hear this. So would Pope Benedict XVI, who has built an incredibly strong case over the years for the rationality of faith (cf. the fateful Regensburg Address--which ignited just the sort of reaction Dawkins has been warning against, one might add).

But we need to understand where Cheryl is coming from. For her, faith is an intensely private matter. She says:

At its essence, Christianity is not about doctrine: it's about a lifestyle, and a commitment at one's very core to the notion that all people should have life, rich and full beyond measure.

Now on the one hand, I have no argument with he choice--it is a strong counter-cultural statement against what John Paul II called "the culture of death" (although I wonder if Cheryl would take opposition to that culture quite as far as JPII did). And I am just as certain that Christianity is not about doctrine (Papa Benny said as much in his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est). But the fatal flaw in her description is that Christianity is a "life-style". Lifestyles are private choices that individuals make. You have your lifestyle and I have mine. They are a matter of personal taste, of like or dislike. They are not a matter for rational debate and certainly not any of your business unless my lifestyle is harming anyone else.

In contrast to Cheryl, I am a Christian for extremely rational reasons. They might seem irrational to Mr Dawkins, but I think they are rational enough. They are the reasons outlined by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 and are, simply enough, the fact that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. That is a claim that sounds irrational, but is it rational to dismiss a claim which is supported by hundreds of eye-witnesses and well preserved evidence, and for which there is not one shred of evidence (apart from the fact that it sounds incredible) to say that it isn't true? My faith is built upon the fact that there is historical evidence for the resurrection, and every other article of my faith (and the entire teaching of the Christian Church) builds rationally upon this foundation.

Cheryl, on the other hand, bases her faith on the Sermon on the Mount. For her, Christ is not the basis of her religion. Jesus is there--to be sure--as the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount, but he is simply a voice in the past who is calling us to a lifestyle "against culture". He is not the one who died and rose again on the third day, who appeared to the apostles, who ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. He is not the one who sent his Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost, and who established the Church to be his people, a visible society to be his presence in the midst of the world. And he certainly isn't the one who revealed the rational and objective Truth about God and his love for all people. No, the bottom line for her is (in the words of US "theologian" Sallie McFague) that:

there is a power at work in the universe on the side of life and all its fulfilment. Christianity is simply about aligning one's own life with that power — choosing to live in a way that brings life.

Faith therefore is not:

focusing on what or who God is, ...[but] primarily about reorienting ourselves so that we look at the world through the eyes of God, and respond to it with the heart of God. We continue to do so even when it doesn't seem rational, sensible, or as though it will make the slightest bit of difference.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with Cheryl's chosen lifestyle. But as she herself admits, it is (in the form she presents it) without rational basis and as wooly headed as those who put "Jedi Knight" on the census form as their religion--a vague hope that "the force" will be with you. Yes, it is good and necessary to work for LIFE against the darkness of death in this world--but this work will only grow and result upon the proclamation of Christ the Lord of Life. Otherwise it is pure starry eyed optimism with no power to convince or evoke committment.

At a recent dialogue meeting we were discussing Richard Neibuhr's paradigms of Christ and Culture: Christ of Culture, Christ above Culture, Christ transforming Culture, Chirst and Culture in Paradox, and Christ against Culture. Richard John Neuhaus has recently written a thoughtful article about the modern Christian feelgood religion which is "Christ without Culture". But in the end, Cheryl's "lifestyle" religion is only "My Lifestyle Against Culture" or "Against Culture without Christ".

Freebirthing? My recommendation: Go with a home birth and a midwife...

Also in this morning's paper was the article "No doctor, no midwife — women go it alone" on "freebirthing". It is quite a heartwarming article--you feel for the mother after the medical interventions of the first two births. Child three was at a birthing centre with a midwife, but for child four they decided to go it alone at home--as the title of the article says--with "no doctor, no midwife".

I know that homebirthing midwives are hard to come by and expensive these days. Put that down to a lack of vocational direction for young people who may be called to this profession and ridiculous insurance premiums for homebirthing midwives--but I think it is sensible to have at least an experienced midwife about the place for a home birth.

Both our girls are homebirthed in our bedroom--in a waterpool no less. Picture below taken a few minutes after Mia's birth with Maddy and grandad present. For Maddy we had two midwives and a doctor on order--but she turned up so quickly that only the first midwife made it to the birth, and when the second one arrived she rang the doctor to say he wasn't needed.



So for the second one we decided we would just go with the midwifes. All went well except that Mia didn't start breathing straight away--she only took her first gasp when one of the midwives--growing concerned--took her out of the comfort and security of Cathy's arms in the pool. But they had all the gear (oxygen etc.) there for an emergency, which meant that if any emergency had arisen, they would have been able to deal with most of the immediate dangers there at hand while waiting for medical backup.

(our two midwives)

Cathy and I can highly recommend the homebirth alternative (I was converted after Maddy's birth--a little unsure before then). The only advantage I could see in total "freebirthing" is that you end up saving on the cost. But there are health insurance companies out there that cover home births (not many, but they're there). Our experience has taught us to value the work of midwives and believe that it is probably sensible to have people of experience and sensitivity around to help if you can. Besides, they do all the immediate care for the baby required, and also give afterbirth care in the week following, help with breast feeding etc., and psychological support for both Mum and Dad.

A tale of sadness and hope...

I am having a rare moment of a lazy morning at home on the Sabbath. No, I'm not skipping mass for the sake of a good lie-in (that would be a mortal sin)--it is my intention to attend the Latin Novus Ordo mass at St Brigid's in Fitzroy tonight at 6pm.

So, I have the opportunity of reading the Sunday Age from cover to cover (minus the Sports pages, of course). And there I found this story which was at once sad and hopeful: "We could not ask for more", a side article in another article called "Gene genie: fresh hope in bones battle". It is about at Melbourne couple who both have the dominant gene of the disorder that "was once called 'dwarfism'". The story is that whenever they conceive a child, there is a one-in-four chance that that child will have a fatal genetic flaw that will cause it to die either before birth (resulting in a still-birth) or soon afterwards. The hopeful part of the story is that this (I think) heroic couple are determined to have a family despite these odds--and in fact do now have two children. The sad part of the story (and believe me I am not passing judgement here--just expressing sadness at what must be a terrible choice for these parents) is this paragraph:

"We always said we'd go ahead with the pregnancy as long as there was no fatality with the double dose [of both our genes]," Mrs Daniels said. Meghan is now a happy four-year-old, and Max a healthy baby. But between the two births there was much anguish as, with a second and third pregnancy, each unborn baby had the double dose and the pregnancies had to be terminated as there was no hope of the babies living.

Its that last line of "the pregnancies had to be terminated as there was no hope of the babies living" that gets me. As the article says:

They had the advantage of early warning of the genetic bone disorder, thanks to the discovery of a gene by Associate Professor Ravi Savarirayan.

"By having the knowledge, we didn't have to go through having stillborns," Mrs Daniels said. "We grieved earlier..."

In the midst of life there was death--and the inevitable grief--but what the technology made available was an early clinical death at the hands of the technologists rather than a later natural death as a result of the genetic disorder. I can understand that the former would be less traumatic. I just don't know that it necessarily makes the situation any better.

OK, here's one for you...

I can't for the life of me think of a caption for this one. Can you?

A caption is hardly necessary...

I love this picture. Fr Z. at WDTPRS has asked for captions.

"So? Is the Pope a Catholic?"

New Entry in Year of Grace

For those following my conversion retro-blog "Year of Grace", this is just an announcement that another section of the diary I kept between Easter 2000 and Easter 2001 has been posted.

Cardinal Rodriguez "Reformulates" comments on Excommunicating Pro-Abortion Politicians

I hate to say it, Peregrinus, but Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez has just retracted his controversial statement to TIME Magazine which I commented on in my previous blog. AND (I really hate to say this) I was right and you were wrong. AND since I would really, really hate to go "na, na, na", I won't. Let's just read the CNA report and leave it at that, eh?

Richard J. Mouw On Ecumencial Dialogue and Praying to Saints

Catholic readers may not have heard of Richard J. Mouw. Protestants will have though. He is president of the Fuller Seminary--yes, the home of "Church Growth"--but he is also on the Catholic and Evangelicals Together team with Fr Richard John Neuhaus.

Here is his reflection on one small way in which dialogue with Catholics has cleared away lots of rubbish so he can at least see what the real issues are. This, my friends, is the very humble goal of our dialogue with other Christians (and followers of other faiths, for that matter). First step is always to understand the other, and to allow their own self-description to replace our personal (often false) impressions of who they are and what they do.

Richard J. Mouw has come a long For the record, I believe that Mouw still has a few more steps before he really "gets it" (and he himself is aware of this):

First, he needs to understand what Catholics mean when they say "saint"--ie. a person in whom the saving work and grace of Christ has borne full fruit. Not a "plaster saint", someone better or different from us, but an ordinary bloke (or blokette) like us in whom we can see Christ's redemption fully accomplished.

Secondly, he needs to get over the problem of "talking to dead people". Romans 8 is the important step here: "Nothing--not even death--can separate us from Christ", and we certainly (as even the Lutheran "Apology to the Augsburg Confession" acknowledges) still keep praying for the saints on earth when we are dead. Mouw can ask his brother-in-law Jim to pray for him, not because he can reach him on the telephone, but because his brother-in-law (muddy boots and all) is "in Christ", ie. the essential connection between them is spiritual (in the Holy Spirit) and not physical. Same with the departed saints. Someone who is not "in Christ", even if they are in the same room as you are, cannot intercede for you if this spiritual connection is not there.

But this is a great article and well worth reading.

New Visitors

Good grief--what happened yesterday? I received more than double the normal number of visitors. If you are new, welcome--please feel free to drop in a comment or two and let me know you were here!

Keeping the Pot Boiling for Dawkins

No, not to boil him alive, just to find a way into his infuriatingly annoying web of misinformation and twisted reasoning.

Rachel Kohn authored a rather thoughtful review of the Dawkins documentary in the Sydney Morning Herald (inter alia) last week. Thoughtful in that it got me thinking.

She doesn't quite spell out the full argument, but it goes something like this:

1) Dawkins claims that religion is the "root of all evil", the source of all (or at least much of) human violence against other human beings.

2) His authority for this claim is that he is a "scientist" and "scientific" rationalism will free us from the scourge of religion.

3) Although most of Dawkins' debunkers see the argument as one between atheism and religion, Kohn recognises that Dawkins' real objective is the triumph of scientism over faith.

4) She points to the demonstrable fact that SCIENCE is at least as (if not more) complicit in human suffering than religion. She uses as her main argument the example of the scientists who supported and put into action the philosophies of the Third Reich, but she could indeed have pointed to all manner of technologies that have been provided by scientists which have allowed increasingly large numbers of people to be killed and injured in violent acts of man against man over the last eight centuries. She could have pointed to the fact that while religion has been around since the birth of humanity and (if anything) has actually declined in recent centuries, scientism has risen to new and unimagined heights of supremacy in the last 100 years or so--precisely in line with the immense increase in the number of fatalities resulting from human violence.

4) By this method, she undermines Dawkins' entire argument precisely on the basis of his claimed authority: scientific rationalism, over against the (perceived) irrationalism of faith. There is no need to go into each of his maddening non-sequiturs and false claims--he has had the rug pulled out from under his feet.

The fact which Dawkins does not appreciate, and which Kohn perhaps recognises, is that violence lies deep in human nature, and it will use any justification (even religion) and any means (even science) to achieve its aim of harming the other. It is not religion, or science, or any other external factor which is to blame. It is the heart of man.

And it is my thought that at least there is something at the heart of each religion which speaks to the human heart. The problem with the scientific method--and indeed with scientists such Dawkins himself--is that there is no heart. This is what Terry Eagleton was getting at in his (now classic) review of "The God Delusion" and it is also what Rachel Kohn meant when she ended her review with:

It is this poetic dimension of the spiritual life that Dawkins, Onfray and friends have no ear to hear or eye to see.

Themes that clamour for the attention of the Pastor of the Universal Church

Okay, what themes do you think "clamour for the attention" of the Pope? Eh? What would you like to suggest? Evangelisation? Faithfulness to liturgical norms? Encouragement of regular confession? Promotion of vocations to the priesthood? Deeper catechisation? Defense of the family, the poor and the unborn?

Well, just in case you didn't think His Holiness was listening, have a read of this address he gave to the Bishops of Brazil, which he concluded by saying:

God willing, my dear Brothers, we will find other opportunities to explore these questions that call for our joint pastoral concern. For now, without pursuing them in an exhaustive way, I have tried to put forward the more significant themes that clamour for my attention as Pastor of the universal Church.

If you want to know what's on the Pope's agenda, its all here. But he can't implement it on his own. He needs the help of the bishops--the same fundamental obedience which Christ (in whose name they carry out their ministry) gave to his Father in heaven.

And lest there should be any doubt about the fundamental purpose of the Church and her ministry: "This, and nothing else, is the purpose of the Church: the salvation of individual souls."

I was equally impressed by his statement that:

The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by 'attraction': just as Christ 'draws all to himself' by the power of his love, culminating in the sacrifice of the Cross, so the Church fulfils her mission to the extent that, in union with Christ, she accomplishes every one of her works in spiritual and practical imitation of the love of her Lord.

There is much here that will give faithful Catholics joy. We know that Papa Benny is hearing the "clamour" from the sons and daughters of the Church for the Bread of Life. Let us pray that the Bishops, not only of Brazil, but of the whole world, hear our cry and the pope's entreaty to address these themes.

A Dangerous Evangelical Theologian and Author

Others have written enough on the conversion of Evangelical Theological Society president Francis Beckwith to the Catholic Church. I was simply taken by this comment from an interview in the Washington Post:

His thinking began to change, he said, as he read more deeply into Catholic theology, including works by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. After studying Ratzinger's book "Truth and Tolerance" last year, he said, he called a prominent evangelical philosopher, read him a passage about whether theology is really knowledge, and asked him to guess the author. "He reeled off the names of a bunch of evangelical theologians," Beckwith recalled. "I said, 'No, it's Ratzinger!' And he said, 'So he's one of us!' "

Yes, you can't be too careful reading this particular evangelical theologian. Peter Holmes and I both caved in after reading his "Called to Communion", and I can highly recommend "Truth and Tolerance" which I myself finished reading a month or so ago. I often feel that if evangelicals and protestants and Lutherans etc. just tried reading Ratzinger for a bit, they would indeed find that he is "one of them" -- although there is always the danger that they might find themselves, like Beckwith, as "one of us"!

Pardon me, but aren't you a Cardinal?

I mentioned recently my brief encounter with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga in the corridors of the Cardinal Knox Centre just before I left for Turkey. At the time I was quite flustered and said something silly and foolish as one does on such occasions.

I feel better now that I have discovered that he himself is capable of saying silly things. I wonder if TIME magazine's Jeff Israely not only "caught up with" Rodriguez in Brazil, but also caught him off guard. Listen to this little exchange reported by Rocco Palmo:

Q. Do you agree with the Pope's statement that pro-choice Catholic politicians merit excommunication?

A. It is canon law that everyone who works for abortion is excommunicated. It's not something the Pope invented. If you favor abortion, you are outside the communion of the Church. And it was necessary to say that. There are people in Mexico saying I am Catholic and I support abortion rights. This is a contradiction in its very essence. As a teacher of the Church, the Pope has a responsibility of teaching when something happening is wrong.

Q. Do you agree with bishops who deny giving Holy Communion to the these politicians?

A. This is a different point. For who am I to deny Holy Communion to a person? I cannot. It's in the tradition of moral theology that even if I know a person is living in grave sin, I cannot take a public action against him. It would be giving scandal to the person. Yes, he should not seek [communion], but I cannot deny it from him....

I'm sorry, but may I suggest that "who you are" is the Cardinal Archbishop of Tegucigalapa? And that you have the authority to excommunicate unrepentant sinners? And that in fact the word "excommunicate" means "to deny Holy Communion to a person"? Really, your Eminence, not one of your more thought out replies...

Pastor Weedon on Trusting the Promises of Christ

I reckon Pastor William Weedon has been reading Peter Holmes' story of how he sought and entered the Catholic Church.

Here is a snippet of a post he recently wrote:

A Lot of the Angst that seems to afflict folks nowadays is about where final confidence is reposed. I think that those who take their faith seriously are faced with two options: you can rest your final confidence in the outward communion of some Church (and hope that you happened to pick the right one!) or
you can rest your final confidence in the promises of God's Word.

God's Word says: "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." God's Word says: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved." God's Word says: "This is my body given for you, for the forgiveness of sins." God's Word says: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain them, they are retained." Are these promises of God's Word reliable? Do they mean exactly what they say?, Or is there a hidden clause that runs behind them: PROVIDED you are in the communion of the one and only true Church of Christ, for only there do the promises of God's Word hold true for you.

And here is my comment (which came in at number 31 on his blog--so I figured that unless I put it up here, no-one--maybe not even Pastor Weedon himself--would ever read it):

In your original post, Pastor, you gave two sorts of examples of God's promises:

The first pair said: "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" and "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved." The second pair said: "This is my body given for you, for the forgiveness of sins" and "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain them, they are retained."

I know you didn't make the distinction between the two sets of promises--that is my distinction and (I think) the Church's also. The first set pertain to personal salvation. In this, there is no argument. ANYONE (no matter what heretical sect they normally belong to) who calls on the name of the Lord WILL be saved, and ANYONE (no matter what heretical sect they belong to) who believes in Christ and has been baptised (presumably in the manner instituted by Christ) WILL be saved.

But concerning the other two promises, it is important to
ask: What do these promises actually say? For they concern specifics: "This" and "You". What is the "This"? and who are the "You"? In the former case the promise does not pertain to the bread and wine on my dinner table, nor, in the latter case, does the promise pertain to Joe Bloggs down in the pub. Obviously the "This" and the "You" about which these promises are made pertain to particular bread and wine and to particular persons.

It is therefore not unreasonable for individuals with full faith in these promises to seek that particular bread and wine and those particular persons to whom these promises pertain.

Catherine Deveny meets Richard Dawkins

...and they are in lurrrvvve. It would be a match made in heaven if they believed in such a place.

No, "Deveny meets Dawkins" isn't the latest shmock horror film to hit our shores, it's Deveny's review published in today's edition of the "The Age" of "Root of all evil? The God Delusion" documentary to screen tomorrow night at 9:30pm on the ABC.

Of course, this is Deveny's first "close encounter" with the man whom she adoringly introduces as

a scientist and passionate atheist who has produced a stunning, thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God and illustrates what a destructive force religion is.

We cannot expect that she has read the book. Her review does not even suggest that she is aware that the book exists. After just having had a discussion with my eldest daughter about the way in which "the film" always chops up and dumbs down "the book", it is somewhat surreal to read such a gushing review of a film made about a book whose argumentation was pretty poor to begin with.

So, what, for Deveny, is the best bit about Dawkins' documentary? The fact that he agrees with her. That he says exactly what she has always thought, but in a way that seems much more clever than she could ever say it. And that he--being "a Scientist" (ooh, aah and other sighs of awe) whereas she is only a comedian and part-time journalist--says it with much greater authority and with that "glorious" Oxford accent. But they both have the sneering and the smuggness down pat.

In case you think that Dawkins is just "preaching to the converted" (Deveny tells us), this documentary will "actually convert fence-sitters with truth and reason." Truth and reason? Yeah, right. Funny how "truth and reason" mean one thing for the admirers of Richard Dawkins and a completely different thing for the admirers of Pope Benedict.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Dawkins has at least been preaching to one convert. Here are a few of the adjectives Deveny uses for Dawkins' documentary: "stunning", "expertly researched", "entertaining", "brilliant", "intoxicating", "masterful"...

Yes, dear readers, there is romance in the air. And I think Cathering Deveny is full of it.

On the Salvation of the Unbaptised

In my work in interreligious dialogue, I have often found cause to reflect on the question of the salvation of the unbaptised. Of course, Dominus Iesus is of great importance here, as is the declaration of Lumen Gentium 16 that:

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.

This has often been questioned as a "heresy" of the Second Vatican Council not only by traditionalist Catholics but also by evangelical protestants. However, I have been reading the statement from the International Theological Commission about the fate of unbaptised children (which the press has popularised as the Vatican's "renunciation" of the doctrine of Limbo). This document makes for very interesting reading--especially as an example of the theological method of the Catholic Church (see especially the section headed "1.7 Issues of a Hermeneutical Nature"). I could say much about this document, but one thing that I found today which was especially interesting is this PRE-Vatican II statement by Pope Pius IX that those who

lead a virtuous and just life, can, with the aid of divine light and grace, attain eternal life; for God, who understands perfectly, scrutinizes and knows the minds, souls, thoughts and habits of all, in his very great goodness and patience, will not permit anyone who is not guilty of a voluntary fault to be punished with eternal torments. (Encyclical Letter “Quanto conficiamur”, 10.09.1863 (DS 2866)).

This appears to be very important background to the Lumen Gentium statement and indicates that the Council was not setting out on an entirely new direction with its statement.

The Internation Theological Commission statement also makes a distinction between "first, statements of faith and what pertains to the faith; second, common doctrine; and third, theological opinion" which is very interesting. Specifically, they state that

a) The Pelagian understanding of the access of unbaptised infants to “eternal life” must be considered as contrary to Catholic faith.

b) The affirmation that “the punishment for original sin is the loss of the beatific vision”, formulated by Innocent III, pertains to the faith: original sin is of itself an impediment to the beatific vision. Grace is necessary in order to be purified of original sin and to be raised to communion with God so as to be able to enter into eternal life and enjoy the vision of God.

c) In the documents of the magisterium in the Middle Ages, the mention of “different punishments” for those who die in actual mortal sin or with original sin only...must be interpreted according to the common teaching of the time. ...These magisterial statements do not oblige us to think that these infants necessarily die with original sin, so that there would be no way of salvation for them.

d) The Bull “Auctorem fidei” of Pope Pius VI is not a dogmatic definition of the existence of Limbo: the papal Bull confines itself to rejecting the Jansenist charge that the “Limbo” taught by scholastic theologians is identical with the “eternal life” promised to unbaptised infants by the ancient Pelagians.

e) Pius XII’s “Allocution to Italian Midwives”, which states that apart from Baptism “there is no other means of communicating [supernatural] life to the child who has not yet the use of reason”, expressed the Church's faith regarding the necessity of grace to attain the beatific vision and the necessity of Baptism as the means to receive such grace. The specification that little children (unlike adults) are unable to act on their own behalf, that is, are incapable of an act of reason and freedom that could “supply for Baptism”, did not constitute a pronouncement on the content of current theological theories and did not prohibit the theological search for other ways of salvation.

In summary: the affirmation that infants who die without Baptism suffer the privation of the beatific vision has long been the common doctrine of the Church, which must be distinguished from the faith of the Church. As for the theory that the privation of the beatific vision is their sole punishment, to the exclusion of any other pain, this is a theological opinion, despite its long acceptance in the West. The particular theological thesis concerning a “natural happiness” sometimes ascribed to these infants likewise constitutes a theological opinion.

And then there is this statement which should assure even the most hardened evangelical or traditionalist:

42. No human being can ultimately save him/herself. Salvation comes only from God the Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.

The method adopted by the Commission therefore is as follows (and I am still reading this bit):

This fundamental truth (of the “absolute necessity” of God’s saving act towards human beings) is unfolded in history through the mediation of the Church and its sacramental ministry. The ordo tractandi we will adopt here follows the ordo salutis, with one exception: we have put the anthropological dimension between the trinitarian and the ecclesiological-sacramental dimensions.

It all makes for very interesting reading, and also very deep reflection on the grace of salvation in Jesus Christ.

More on the tomb of St John

You will know my mind is focused on the problem of the Tomb of St John at Selcuk in Turkey. Yesterday, a friend told me there was a story about the tomb having been opened and all that was inside blowing away in the wind. I tried googling this story and came up with nothing. Does anyone else know anything?

In the meantime, I found this piece of information repeated on the net in various places but with little detail:

When he [John] died, according to his will, he was buried on Ayasuluk Hill, which was a graveyard or necropolis. A wooden basilica was built over his tomb in the fourth century A.D. In the sixth century, with help from Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora, a larger basilica was built, the remains of which we see today. From 1920 to 1921, the Greek archeologist, Sotiriu, removed a skeleton from the tomb during his excavations. Many Christians consider this an important site.

But if he "removed a skeleton", to where was it removed?

An extended treatment is found on page 148-150 of John, the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend By R. Alan Culpepper (Published 1994, Univ of South Carolina Press), but this suggests that the tomb was found empty in the excavations by Sotiriu.

Again the question must be: why so little interest on the part of the Church? The article on St John in the Catholic Encyclopedia doesn't even mention the place of his death. Curiouser and curiouser...

Ringing the Bell - John Bell of the Iona Community on Faith and Politics

Just as I was simmering down over Fr John Dear, I decided to go and hear John Bell of the Iona Community speak today. He was being hosted by the Victorian Council for Christian Education and a small crowd gathered for pizza and coffee to hear him speak this afternoon in Port Melbourne.

He is very easy to listen to, bearing some resemblence to Billy Connolly--grey hair, beard and thick Glaswegian accent. But again, as I listened to him, I found myself asking how we can guard against mistaking our ideology for theology.

It started early in the piece when he said that there was too much fuss about same-sex relationships in the church, given that there are only a few scattered references to homosexual activity in the scriptures and Jesus never said anything about it. He said "If God didn't like gay people, why does he keep on making them?" I couldn't resist retorting: "With respect, John, he keeps on making sinners too."

Later on, he talked a little about song writing that takes into account people's real lives. "Why can't we sing songs in church that refer to the stockmarket? Or why isn't the word "kitchen" ever used in a hymn?" Again, while I can just imagine "kitchen" being used in a song of blessing perhaps, I balk a little at singing about the stock market. After all, when you have the Blessed Trinity and the forgiveness of sin to sing about, who wants to sing about the stock market?

He did stress listening to Scripture as a way of making sure that our understanding of God's/Jesus' message is connected to the real world, and was keen to emphasise taking in the whole "panopoly" of scripture. In an exchange at the end of the lecture, he suggested that the best way we can be self-critical about our reading of scripture (to avoid adopting our own ideology as the theology of the gospel) was to listen to scripture "in community". To me this suggests the need to read and interpret scripture in what the Catechism calls "the analogy of faith", ie. congruent with the whole Catholic faith.

John Bell is entitled to his own opinions (he is not, after all, like Fr John Dear, speaking in the name of the Catholic Church). He was interesting to listen to, but I didn't go away thinking "Yeah, he was spot on about this or that". Perhaps the most valuable thing he said was that we need to learn to value Psalm 88 as deeply as we value Psalm 23.

For myself, I think there is more to learn about faith and politics in the second half of Benedict's Deus Caritas Est or in his speeches to the Latin American Bishops on his recent journey to Brazil. Still, I like singing John Bell's songs. Well, most of them anyway. Not the ones about the stock market.

The tomb of St John the Apostle

Those of you who followed my travel blogs will have read about my "discovery" of the Tomb of St John in the ruins of the 6th Century Basilica of St John in Selcuk near ancient Ephesus in Turkey. You can read more about this basilica here and below is a picture I snapped of the tomb itself.
I was surprised that my journey led me to this spot, as I have never before asked myself where St John was buried. All the checking I have done since indicates that this is the only place indicated by tradition for the burial of this important apostle. There is nothing to indicate that at any stage his remains have been removed from this spot. To my knowledge, there is no other place associated with the veneration of St John's final resting place.

Butler's Lives of the Saints has this reference:

St John was buried on a mountain without the town. The dust of his tomb was carried away out of devotion, and was famous for miracles, as St Austin, St Ephrem, and St Gregory of Tours mention. A stately church stood formerly over this tomb, which is at present a Turkish Mosque.

That isn't quite accurate. The church is in ruins, and the mosque referred to is the Isa Bey Mosque (Lord Jesus Mosque!) just down the hill (although in the last years before it was completely demolished by earthquake in the 14th Century, the church itself was used as both a mosque and a church). The Mosque has its own peculiarity in that it doesn't face Mecca, but more on that in a separate blog.

So--considering what a great to do there is about the resting place of other great apostles such as St Peter (St Peter's Basilica, the Vatican) and St Paul (St Paul's Outside the Walls, Rome)--why is this holy place allowed to go unrecognised, unadorned, unkept, unvisited by pilgrims, uncelebrated by the liturgy, and just about un-everything else? Is this a happy situation? I don't think so.

I'm not calling for another crusade or anything, but I ask you: should the final resting place of the beloved disciple, the guardian of the Blessed Virgin in her old age, the Divine Theologian of the most sublime Gospel and the resplendant Apocalypse, be forgotten? What can we do about this?

Will they see the real you when you go senile?

I don't know about you, but I often worry about what I might end up doing when I finally go senile and forget that people are watching me. Okay, maybe this is only a problem I have--but I spend so much of my time making sure that no-one sees the real me under my layers of hypocrisy that I fear that when all my defences are finally torn away by old age they will see my true self and know me for what I am.

All those fears aside, wouldn't it be great if when we finally enter the realm of dementia, what emerges is the saint we have (by God's grace) become in our lives through constant discipleship?

Here's a story that warmed my heart. You will remember I mentioned just before I went to Turkey that my Grandmother passed away. She had been a nurse for much of her life and had nursed my own grandfather when he was suffering from alzheimers.

I was unable to attend her funeral due to my Turkey trip, so my mother sent me her obituary and the hymn sheet of her funeral (she had "And can it be"--I want that one for my funeral too!). The obituary had the following comment--something I didn't know about her:

As Grandma cared for Grandpa her great strength of character shone through. Following his death she started to volunteer at The Vines nursing home. When it was her turn to receive care she did so graciously, always with gentle gratitude and always uncomplaining. Her inherent nurturing instincts continued to kick in and to the amazement and amusement of staff they'd often find her feeding other residents after she'd finished her own meal.

Ah, if only when everything is finally stripped away from me, they might find a saint half so worthy.

Theology, not Ideology; Preach Christ, not your Agenda

Reflecting further on my little tirade against Fr John Dear below, I realise the difficulty we get ourselves in when we embrace ideology rather than theology. Dear advocates the total renunciation of the use of force ("violence", in his parlance)--not just as a personal virtue, but as a policy for states. "Non-violence" is, in fact, his ideology, for which he seeks theological support. In fact, he will bend his theology in the service of his ideology if need be. In this, he is little different from those 1970's proponents of Liberation theology who claimed “The only truth is the truth that is efficacious for liberation” (Juan Luis Segundo) or “The Bible! It doesn’t exist. The only Bible is the sociological Bible of what I see happening here and now” (Hugo Assmann). (Source: John Allen).

But, as always, Pope Benedict shows us "a more excellent way". In his homily at the opening of the CELAM conference in Brazil on Sunday, the Holy Father said:

Not a political ideology, not a social movement, not an economic system: faith in the God who is Love—who took flesh, died and rose in Jesus Christ—is the authentic basis for this hope which has brought forth such a magnificent harvest from the time of the first evangelization until today.

Celebrate Pentecost by Singing Mass in "Tongues" (or at least one particular tongue...)

Yes, dear Friends, here is your third opportunity to experience the treasure which is our Catholic Liturgy as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council meant her to be celebrated: In Latin!

The next mass of the Glorificamus Society will be held on the Feast of Penteocst (Sunday, 27 May 2007) at 6pm at St Brigid's Catholic Church, Fitzroy North, Victoria.

It is to be emphasised that this Solemn Mass is Mass in the Modern Roman Rite (Novus Ordo), but it will be celebrated “ad orientem”, in Latin and with Gregorian Chant.

O dear, O dear, O Dear - Again.

I have blogged about Fr John Dear before. Radio National seems rather taken with him, because months after his visit to these shores, they aired another program starring the starry-eyed priest on Encounter on the 22nd of April (yes folks, I am even catching up on my radio listening from my time in Turkey).

I found this program (which could have been called "John Dear and Friends") thoroughly infuriating. The only sane voice on the whole program (which included said priest, along with fellow non-violence "theologians" Ira Chernus, J. Denny Weaver, and Donna Mulhearn) was that of Bishop Tom Frame, former Anglican bishop to the Australian Defence Force, and now Director, St Mark's National Theological Centre in Canberra. Before we get to his sanity, lets just get a glimpse of what the others were on about.

Ira Chernus: Augustine's Just War theory was a significant turning point if only because of his own massive influence on the history of the Western church. ...As the church became such a powerful institution it was bound to sanction violence in some ways. And Augustine's theology just gave it the most sophisticated stamp of approval.

Ah yes. Big bad violent Church just looking for a theological justification to biff someone on the nose...

John Dear: He [Jesus] is the measure of our theology. Jesus as a teacher of non-violence. That everything he taught was about non-violence. He believed that. What did he teach? Was it violent? Did he come to teach us violence or teach us non-violence? The core passages, all of his teachings, are the Sermon on the Mount. ...I'm just saying, there's no just war and not only are we going to be people of a radical, active non-violence with a universal love, we do it because Jesus says here in one of the only times he describes the nature of God, we do it because God is a God of universal non-violent love. God is a God of non-violence. 'The sun on the good and the bad; the rain, on the just and the unjust.' This turns everything upside down that we've been taught.

Yes, it does somewhat--in that reading--but we will return to the issue of justice in a moment when we get to the sane Tom Frame. For a moment, a little more insanity. J. Denny Weaver has a go at the classical "Christus Victor" theology of the Atonement (not to mention Anselm and Abelard).

J. Denny Weaver: Christus Victor is Latin for the Victorious Christ, and the way you get to that Victorious Christ, there are a couple of different images. One of them is a ransom. The idea is that Satan held and holds the souls of humankind captive and God arranges a transaction with Satan; God promises to give Satan his son and in exchange, Satan will release the souls of humankind, and so that Satan gets Jesus, and the souls are released, and Satan kills Jesus, and thinks that he has defeated God and then three days later God raises him from the dead, and defeats Satan, because Satan couldn't hold Jesus. And so out of that ransom payment, death, resurrection, you get to Christus Victor.

Well, that's a bowlderisation of a beautiful and comforting doctrine if ever there was one. All the way through this program, J. Denny Weaver portrays the atonement as God offering up his Son for a violent death to appease his sense of justice. And I thought "Christus Victor" meant that Christ actually battled the evil of Satan and--by rising from death--won that battle. Silly me. But Weaver "discovers" a pacifist reading of the "Christus Victor" theology:

J. Denny Weaver: the violence that kills Jesus in my reconstructed image here, my reconstructed Christus Victor, the violence that killed Jesus is not God's violence. It's clearly Rome's violence, and in fact to use violence shows the difference of means between the reign of God and the reign of evil.

Right. And in another age they used to say it was the Jews violence. Whatever happened to the understanding that it was Satan's violence, the violence of evil and of our own sin, that killed Jesus? Any way, one more cooky theologian to hear from:

Donna Mulhearn: Yes, I certainly believe there is. Jesus was totally inclusive in the way that he lived. He invited everybody to his table and he was extremely ecumenical. One of the heroes of one of the greatest parables in the Gospels is a foreigner, a Samaritan, someone of a different religion to Jesus, and I think that's our example, that we go into communion and deep fellowship with people of other faiths.

Ah yes, the myth of the "totally inclusive" Jesus. Almost as mythical as the "non-violent" Jesus.

Now don't get me wrong. I oppose violence as a way of sorting out the personal, societal or international problems. I believe that violent actions demean the human dignity of the attacker as well as the victim. But the type of theology being espoused here is true neither to the mega-theology of the atonement nor to the micro-theology of social justice and pacifism. And thanks to Bishop Tom Frame for pointing this out:

Tom Frame: I think to say there's a God of peace or a God of war is to misunderstand means for ends. God is a God of justice amongst the other attributes of God that we read about in the Scriptures. God is a God of Love and there are times when, in order to show love, there's going to be a great personal price. In the Christian tradition there are many ways of responding to social, political and economic and religious questions. There are lots of ways of dealing with strife in the world, a conflict of disagreement and non-violence is but one way. Now it's always preferable not to use force, and I distinguish force from violence; it's always better not to use force to find peaceful, non-violent ways of resolving problems. Sometimes that simply isn't possible because the demands of justice are so great, so compelling and so immediate that some response other than non-violence is necessary. Now I think that at times, and the Christian tradition certainly allows it, that force needs to be used when those demands of justice at least require us to take firm action. For instance to stop people who are being oppressed from suffering further violence against their person. But also to uphold certain principles, which if they were to be violated, would lead to far greater evil.

Tom goes on to point out the instance where Jesus sat down and made a whip before driving the money changers out of the temple (John 2:15). Quoting that passage is resorting to text-proofing--but it takes just this one instance to call into question the whole portrait of Jesus as the uncompromising proponent of non-violence. It wasn't just that he went "into the Temple and threw over a few tables and then sat in the doorway and blocked it" (Donna Mulhearn), he actually made a weapon and used it in a premeditated act of violence. But Tom Frame also calls into question J. Denny Weaver's construction of the atonement theology:

There's certainly a great deal of violence in the Christian story. ...It is the case that Jesus addressed the violence of the world in which he lived, and in so doing, became a victim of that same violence. He died a terribly violent death and it seems to me at that point we have a demonstration of the divine will that God in the face of terrible violence, will himself not resort to violence in order to bring about the salvation of humanity.

To paint the atonment as the act of a callous, violent, patriarchal God handing his own Son over to a violent without a second thought just to satisfy his own hurt feelings is a travesty. God is a God of Justice above all. It seems incredible to me that--in the name of social justice--these social reformers don't get it. If our theology is Arian--forgetting that the Son of God is fully God himself as well as fully human--we will see God's actions only as injust. But if we approach the atonement from the perspective of orthodox theology, we see that in the death of Christ God takes our human violence, the violence of sin, upon himself, so that his forgiveness and mercy may not come at the expense of Justice.

I do not believe that Christianity espouses violence. Even Augustine's Just War theology cannot be interpreted as a defence of violence except by doing voilence to that very theology. It is, nevertheless, a recognition that at times, for the sake of justice, "force" (as Bishop Frame calls it) may sometimes be unavoidable.

As a closing thought (completely hypothetical), I wonder what Fr John Dear would do if he found his a daughter being attacked by a rapist? What response would his doctrine of total non-violence recommend?

New addition to "Year of Grace"

For those of you following my conversion blog (thanks Dixie for your recent plug), I have just made another entry on Year of Grace from the journal which I kept between Easter 2000 and Easter 2001 describing blow by blow my entry into the Catholic Church. We are up to crunch time, and my entry for 16th January 2001 was nine pages long (covering the events of the previous 10 days), so I have divided it up into various sections. Part A today. Parts B-D soon.

The Importance of Being Right

Or perhaps that should be "The Importance of DOING Right"?

What I mean is this. I found myself in the last few days asking myself the question "Am I a traditionalist?"

My answer is: No.

Well, am I a legalist? Again the answer is: No.

So why am I such a pedant for doing things and having things done CORRECTLY?

Possibly because I convinced that if we don't do things right, we won't arrive at the right result.

To use a secular example: Our car is currently at the service station getting a new head gasket installed. I imagine that there are not multiple ways of doing this task. There is one right way and about a gezillion wrong ways. Unless the head gasket is installed correctly the result will be disaster once again.

The same must go for matters of faith.

For instance: When Jesus established his Church he gave a few things to help us be what he wanted his Church to be (eg. Eucharist, apostolic ministry, way of praying etc.). If we chose instead to follow our own ideas of how the Church should be conducting its business rather than Christ's ideas, the chances are that what we will end up with will not be the Church that Christ intended.

The same goes for worship. If we do not follow the guidance of Christ and his Spirit (ie. the right way of worship, or "Orthodoxy") the chances are that we will end up erecting idols to our own vainglory rather than addressing the true God as he has desired us to worship him.

The same goes for vocations. Be a faithful Catholic diocese and watch your scale of vocations to the priesthood go through the roof.

Or here's another example. Pope Benedict is in South America right now. He goes there facing many challenges (as always), among which is liberation theology and the desparate state of many of the local societies and nations. People ask him what should be done about this. Should he not support "liberation theology" in the spirit of the preferential option for the poor.

Yet the Holy Father seems to reply: Do things right and things will be right. Teach people the essence of the Catholic faith and the likelihood is that you will start to see a change for the better in terms of social justice. Get your Christology right and you will get your theology of liberation right. On the other hand, if you use the wrong methods in either of these two cases, you will compound the problem rather than solve it. For more reading on this, see John L. Allen's Brazil reports.

So, it isn't about being traditionalist or legalist. Being RIGHT (or more essentially, DOING right) is essential because, appart from this, it will all turn out wrong.

No matter how carefully you say it...

you will still be misunderstood.

Not withstanding my comments in the previous blog, here is an example of a perfectly moderate, sane and clear argument and what the media made of it. The scene is Italy once more, the source is John L. Allen, and the speaker this time is Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, President of the Italian Bishops Conference:

When the correct, self-transcendent conception of the human person is lost, there are no longer any criteria for distinguishing good and evil. When the dominant criterion is public opinion, or democratic majorities – which can become anti-democratic and violent – then it becomes very difficult to say ‘no.’ Why say no to various forms of legally protected co-habitation, thereby creating alternative figures to the family? Why say no to incest, like in England where a brother and sister have children, live together and love one another? Why say no to the party of pedophiles in Holland, if we’re talking about two free people who come together? It’s important to remember these aberrations against common sense, which are already present in embryonic form. Today we’re scandalized, but if ethical criteria regarding human nature fall away, criteria which are given in nature and not created by culture, it’s difficult to say ‘no.’ If the highest criterion of good and evil is individual freedom, in the sense of self-determination, of free choice, then one, two, or more people can do what they like, because an objective criterion on the moral level no longer exists – a criterion which regards the human being not in terms of freedom of choice, but as a given of nature.

As Allen reports it, the Italian media reduced this reasoned argument to:

Bagnasco compares civil unions to incest and pedophilia.

"As a result", says Allen, "Bagnasco was assigned a personal security detail, and precautionary measures were taken by police at the cathedral in Genoa." AND he received a death threat in the mail in the form of a bullet wrapped in a picture of the archbishop with a swastika cut into it.

Nice. Ah well. I guess this is an instance of what Archbishop Chaput meant when he quoted Georges Bernanos as saying:

When trouble is looking for you, it's primarily a question of facing it, since it would be still more dangerous to turn your back on it. In that case, prudence is only the alibi of the cowardly.

Hey, I'm on a roll now...

The old bloggin' fever has bitten me again!

Here at Sentire Cum Ecclesia we (I use the royal "we") have some pretty strong views. And we like to argue them forcefully. But if I ever take up an arguement it is because I believe the opposing view has reasons for their opinions that are worthy of engagement. In other words, if you ever find one of your dearly cherished opinions attacked on this page, please take it as a compliment. And return the compliment, by leaving a comment pointing out my error. (If you want to read more in this vein, go to the First Things blog where Robert T. Miller says:

Whenever two people disagree, each is committed to saying that the other’s view is false and that his arguments are unsound; that’s just what disagreement means, and no one should be upset at this.

)At the same time, I do believe there are certain rules of engagement and respect that mean that if I really want to make my point, I have to make it in a balanced and sane manner without getting too hysterical. This point is made in the recent case reported by John L. Allen of Archbishop Angelo Amato's rather intemperate

address to hospital chaplains in Italy in which he denounced abortion and euthanasia as forms of “terrorism with a human face” [and]...cited a series of contemporary evils, including abortion clinics, which he called “slaughterhouses of human beings,” euthanasia, and “parliaments of so-called civilized nations where laws contrary to the nature of the human being are being promulgated, such as the approval of marriage between people of the same sex.

Now I happen to agree with him, but when you are addressing people who don't agree with you, you have to moderate your language a little to achieve the desired effect. This point is made perfectly by the Opus Dei numerary and member of the Italian Parliament Paola Binetti, who said in response to the adverse publicity generated by Amato's outburst:

Today, we are all the children of a culture that makes language an element that’s often more important than the content of what one says... Paraphrasing [Marshall] McLuhan, we can say that ‘language is the message.’ In these cases, we have to pay careful attention to express our values in a way that people will receive them, so that we’re not just proposing them, so to speak, for the sake of proposing them. This is the great challenge that all of us Catholics face in this moment.

It is a challenge which we here at
Sentire Cum Ecclesia desire to take up on a daily basis.

"You can't trust those people..."

An interesting comment which I have now heard from both a Jewish Rabbi and a Catholic Priest. The Jewish Rabbi has changed his mind because he attended a JCMA conference and met some of "those people". Hopefully too the Catholic Priest is in the process of revising his opinion--with my encouragement, of course!

"Those people" are, of course, the Muslims. And I can't understand for the life of me how a full quarter of the world's population can be dimissed as untrustworthy simply because of their religion. Of course there are some who can't be trusted. Just as there are people all over the world of all religions (and none) to whom I wouldn't trust with my lunch money let alone anything more valuable. But step one in building a better and more harmonious future is: Trust.

And the best way to build trust is to get to know "those people". A trip to Turkey is a good way of doing this (where you may conclude that you can't understand "those people", but you will nevertheless make a lot of extremely trustworthy friends), but for the fiscally challenged there is always JCMA: The Jewish Christian Muslim Association of Australia. Our 4th Annual residential conference is coming up in July (2-5), and it is the single best way to mix with other Australian Christians, Jews and Muslims I know of. I've been to all three so far and can heartily recommend it. Check them out at their website and get your application in now!

And just in case you thought that Jews and Christians are the real target of militant Jihadists (ie. the one's you really can't trust), you might find this article by the Italian Muslim academic Khaled Fouad Allam ("A totalitarian Islam") illuminating.

Seven Stories of Seven Bishops

If I thought that Turkey was a strange and wondrous place, where the paradigms of the rest of the world failed to apply, it is as nothing compared to China.

For a quick and powerful glimpse at the state of the Catholic Church in China, you have only to go to Sandro Magister's column "Seven Bishops Tell the Story of the Church in China". In these seven short bios of seven living or recently decease bishops, you get a quick but penetrating introduction to all the issues facing Chinese Catholics.

Take the time to read it. You will not regret it.

Catching up with the news

After being in Turkey for two weeks and in recovery mode for one week, I am finally catching up with the news. I have ploughed my way through about 150 pages of news and commentary, including the print outs of all your blogs (dear readers) which you have posted over the last three weeks. A rather monumental job.

From all this, I have gathered that

a) the Motu has not been released;
b) the Lineamenta for next years Synod has;
c) the world has not blown up.

Hopefully, therefore, before my readership metre descends to 20000 leagues under the sea, Sentire Cum Ecclesia will once again be in operative mode and you will be able to return here for the most insightful and humourous commentary on all sorts of ecclesiastical trivia.

Bottom line: Don't stop visiting this page!

Page 161 Meme

Just to put something on the blog to keep what remaining readers I have interested (I will get back into gear sooner or later as I continue to recover from my International Sojourn), I have picked up on Tom's little meme. The rules are:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth full sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

I cheated a little because I went over the Scansoft Dragon Naturally Speaking manual (which gave an expectedly dull and unamusing result) and chose the next nearest book, which happily turned out this result:

It is not the world that is narrowed down but the soul that is broadened out, being no longer absorbed in the particular, no longer looking at the trees and unable to see the wood, but now able to view the whole.

(Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, page 161.)
There is no suggestion of the need to nominate other players--but if you like the idea, have a go. Nb. Doing this sort of thing changed St Augustine's life, so be careful!

Day Twelve: Home again, Home again, Clippity Clop...

Sorry for the long break in transmission. I arrived home on Thursday night after more than twenty four hours of travel (including check in, change of flights at KLIA, getting through quarantine on the Australian side). I was absolutely exhausted and not very well at the end of it, and am only recuperating now. But for the sake of completeness, I should bring my travel blog on Turkey to a conclusion with a report of the 12th day.

I rose early on Wednesday morning at 6:30am and went straight around to the "No Name Internet Café" (which was open! although I was the first customer) to write up the blog for the 11th day. I worked there for about an hour (declining the offer of a glass of tea—much to mine host's annoyance, I think—he wanted the extra lira)and then went back for a small breakfast and packing. I was very anxious that my luggage would be overweight—a concern that was confirmed by Kevin's comment when he went to pick it up to put it in the back of the bus.

We headed out to Topkapi Palace—the original home of the Sultans after the capture of Istanbul. There used to be a monastery on the site but all that remains of this today is the Church of Holy Peace (Aya Eirene). On the way there, Tom saw an ornately decorated building and at first thought that it might be an Orthodox Church. "No it isn't", he said, realising it was a mosque after all, "It's hard to tell a church from a mosque in Istanbul." Not really, I thought, thinking back to my experience in Izmir. If you can see it, it's a mosque. If you have to go looking for it, it’s a church.

Before visiting the palace, we called in at the Journalists and Writers Association, where we caught up with the President, Cemal Usak, with whom I had sat during our first dinner with PASIAD on the night of our arrival. Of all the organisations that we visited that are associated in some way with the Gülen movement, the JWA is perhaps the most clearly connected, with Gülen himself as their honorary president. The association is heavily involved in promoting "Love, tolerance, and living in harmony" in Turkey and around the world. Once again, "love" was the key value. They have been able to brink key leaders from the various political groups together from the whole spectrum of Turkish life, and have organised many local and international gatherings for dialogue and peace activism. Their aim is to overcome the traditional pattern of teaching young Turks to fear and reject those of other nationalities by which they come to view them as enemies rather than as potential friends. But Cemal was quite clear that the JWA is not the "public relations" arm of the Gülen movement. They are an independent body and all decisions are made by the board of directors. He said that they are open to many different ideas and always ready to be criticised.

When we arrived at the Topkapi palace, rain was threatening. Upon entry through the palace gates the first building we saw was the Church/Mosque/museum? of Aya Eirene. I don't know if it was due to the shortness of time or perhaps because the Church was not open but we didn't get to see inside. The Palace is a magnificent structure—complete with a circumcision room!—which houses many great treasures—gold, rubies, emeralds, and precious ancient china. One could easily spend a whole day there to appreciate all these wonders. But the greatest—perhaps the strangest—treasure of all was the arm and skull of St John the Baptist. These gold-encased jewel-encrusted relics were on display with the other palace treasures, having come into the possessio of the Ottomans upon the conquest of Constantinople. Not that I put great credence in the historical veracity of these artefacts, but I found myself wondering—as I did at the tomb of St John—about the way in which revered Christian relics that remain in Turkey are treated.

The threat became a promise as the heavens opened and the rain bucketed down in a way that only the very elderly in Melbourne could remember. We were sopping wet by the time we arrived back at the entrance where Can was waiting to pick us up. Unfortunately, so were about ten tourist coaches and forty taxis. The narrow two way street had now become a three way traffic jam—perhaps Can was in some way to blame as he attempted an eight point u-turn in concert with a taxi and a coach. The man once again proved himself the most able minibus driver in all Istanbul as he extracted us from that mess without a scratch. Truly he could drive a camel through the eye of a needle!

Now we headed out of Istanbul on the south side (passing the other end of the great wall where it met the sea) for a lunch appointment with the foreign editor of the Zaman Newspaper. Turks are quite proud of this paper which, founded in 1986, is the most widely printed newspaper in the world appearing in many languages and editions. Yes, there is an English Australian weekly edition. Lunch was rushed, as we were due at the airport in an hour. Given the political situation in Turkey (the government had just accepted to go to early elections following their failure to win approval for their presidential candidate), it was very interesting to reflect with the editor on possible future outcomes for Turkey, including the ever present question of the EU membership. I would have loved to have chatted for longer, but I was getting as nervous as everyone else about catching our plane. We were beginning to joke that Ersin, our local guide and host, might have to put us all up at his place!

It was still raining when we got to the airport. I left my straw hat behind—it was wet and soggy and had developed a hole—and donned the Fez that I had bought yesterday at the Bazaar. My bags were very heavy. In a last minute act of desperation I grabbed a handful of books we had been given at the publishers and stuffed them in my carry bag. A quick prayer to St Christopher, and then I hoisted the bag onto the check-in scales. My luggage allowance was 20kg. My luggage weighed 29.4kg. But the nice Turkish girl behind the counter let it through without a comment. Either it was because she felt sorry for the funny looking man in the Fez, or because (as we later found out) the plane was less than half full. Once again St Christopher's intercession pulled me through (yes, I know he is a legendary figment of Christian imagination, but that discussion can carry over for another blog).

We farewelled Ersin and Emre (who was staying on for a few days). Tom had already gone on to Hungary to meet his relatives there, and so it was just Ken and Chris, Kevin and Gavin and myself. Gavin got a seat on his own up the front, and Kevin and I were assigned seats together at the very back of the plane, but since there were so many empty seats, we spread out and each had a double seat to ourselves. It didn't make the trip much more comfortable. I watched the movie "The Queen" with Helen Mirran in it, and then prepared to try to attempt to get some sleep. I read Evening Prayer (always an interesting experience while sailing into the darkness 11000m above the planet) and was struck by Psalm 139 set down for this evening:

7 O where can I go from your spirit,
or where can I flee from your face?
8 If I climb the heavens, you are there.
If I lie in the grave, you are there.

9 If I take the wings of the dawn
and dwell at the sea's furthest end,
10 even there your hand would lead me,
your right hand would hold me fast.

11 If I say: "Let the darkness hide me
and the light around me be night,"
12 even darkness is not dark for you
and the night is as clear as the day.

Quite fitting I thought. Although I don't suspect that King David ever knew how fitting it would be on an international airflight.

We left Istanbul at 4pm local time Wednesday, arrived in Kuala Lumpur Airport at 8am local time Thursday and got home to Melbourne at 7:30pm local time that night. I had to go through quarantine, and so it was an hour and half later that I was finally in the arms of my wife and children. Exhaustion, desperation, tiredness, relief and just plain old homesickness had the tears pouring from my eyes.

I would like to have said that it all ended happily ever after at that point, but the car blew its head gasket on the way home and we had to call the RACV etc. etc. so it really was very very late when I finally got to put my head down on my own pillow and snuggle up in my own little bed.

It was a great trip—and I want to thank the Archdiocese for its foresight in choosing to send me, the Australian Intercultural Society (and in particular their Executive Director, Emre Celik) for organising the tour, PASIAD and the other business networks who hosted us while in Turkey, and all the many individuals and families who showed such generous hospitality to the strangers from Australia on our journey. God bless you, one and all!