The Right to Discriminate

[caption id="attachment_2302" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Age September 30: Illustration by Dyson \'The right to discriminate\'"][/caption]

The Age continues to portray the recent success of the campaign for Religious Freedom in Victoria negatively as "the right to discriminate". The cartoon above and the ratio of letters (Three to One against) are examples of this.

But discrimination cannot in itself be declared illegal. All employers have the right to discriminate, and in fact the entire employement process is, in essence, a process of discrimination. Employers discriminate on all manner of issues to determine the best person for the job. What employers do not have is the right to discriminate unjustly. What is at issue between the religious communities and popular opinion is what constitutes "unjust" discrimination. It is not, for instance, deemed unjust for political parties to discriminate on the basis of political preference when hiring employees for certain positions within the party. And I believe there has even been some argument about the legality of those wishing to hire table-top dancers as to whether they could discrimnate on the basis of the sex of the applicant.

With regard to the current issue, there are several issues at stake:

1) Is the person to be hired appropriate for the position?
2) How do we balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of communities and associations to conduct their affairs according to their communal ethos?
3) How far should the State go in legally determining the ethos of communities and associations?

It is not, perhaps, surprising that some religious communities will answer these questions in different ways. Some communities, for instance, the one from which Bishop John McIntyre speaks , may have fewer problems with the prevailing mores in our society than others. They may have different interpretations of what is "appropriate" or "unjust" discrimination. But they cannot claim that they do not employ to some degree the "right to discriminate". I have heard that there are Christian communities in the world which will, for instance, when screening ordination candidates, discriminate against those who are opposed to the ordination of women as priests or bishops. Bishop McIntyre's community may be a case in point. I would regard that as unjust. Bishop McIntyre may not.

It should also be pointed out that it is not inherently unjust to discriminate according to the appropriateness of an individual's mores or personal ethos for various occupations. It would be surprising, for instance, if a person who was a conscientious objector to immunisation would be hired to run the swine flu vaccine rollout. Nor would the RSPCA be likely to employ an officer whose personal hobbies inlcuded blood sports. This is not a question of the employer passing judgement upon the moral life and decisions of the prospective employee - it is a question of whether the employee's moral outlook is appropriate to the job for which they are being hired.

The point is that the right to discriminate exists. The point of disagreement is simply about what is just and appropriate discrimination and what is unjust and inappropriate.

Swimming among Container Ships

[caption id="attachment_2298" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Driving along one of Melbourne’s truck-laden freeways yesterday: not for the faint-hearted or the claustrophobic. Photo: Wayne Taylor of the Age"][/caption]

Geoff Strong of The Age writes:

DRIVING a car on one of Melbourne's freeways or ring roads can feel a bit like paddling a canoe between container ships. It is not for the faint-hearted or the claustrophobic.

He ought to try it with a motorcycle. I have always felt that that experience was like riding between office blocks going 100km/h. To use Strong's comparison, it is like swimming among container ships.

Tomasi UN statement not helpful

I can't find the actual text of Vatican UN Observer Archbishop Silvano Tomasi on the internet, but if reports (see here and here) are to be believed, the statement is not one that could be considered "helpful" in the current climate. Of course, when backed into a corner (as appears to have happened by the specific and targeted attack from "international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union" Keith Porteous Wood), it is perfectly understandable that the Vatican Observer should react defensively. Yet, surely he must know that pointing the finger at the crimes of others was not ever going to be an effective way in which to answer such an attack.

All that being said, the situation in which the Vatican finds itself is somewhat unique. What other body, whose operatives (we cannot say "employees", since priests are not employees of the Vatican but of their local diocese) have been guilty of these crimes, has an international head office that could be held to account in the way some are trying to hold the Vatican to account? It is true, as the Archbishop points out, that the incident of child abuse is no higher among Catholic priests than among protestant, jewish, or in fact no-religion-at-all organisations, but the hierarchical set up of the Catholic Church does mean that the Vatican is an "easy target".

Personally, I find the statistical comparison "no more than anyone else" more than a little distasteful. The Catholic Church should be one place where all people are ENTIRELY safe from such predatory abuse, and I am ashamed that it is not so. It makes the task of evangelisation and of the promotion of the Catholic Faith a hell of a lot harder than it should be.

"A Higher Status than Sainthood"?

How silly some secular reporting is. Cathnews is carrying this story from the Irish Times: John Paul 'to be more than a saint', the main thrust of which is:

AN IRISH Catholic bishop has predicted that Pope John Paul II, who arrived in Ireland 30 years ago today, will most likely have a higher status than sainthood in the Catholic Church. The Bishop of Meath, Most Rev Michael Smith, who was centrally involved in organising the papal visit, said he would not be surprised if Pope John Paul II was made a Doctor of the Church.

I won't speculate about what his Lordship said that gave the reporter the impression that being a "Doctor of the Church" was a "higher status" in the Kingdom of Heaven than "sainthood", but you and I know that it ain't so. There is no higher calling or status that any human being can attain than the beatitude of sainthood. Anything else you might be - like, for eg., pope or a doctor of the Church or a Catholic blogger - is in a different category all together.

However, I do believe that the good bishop is right in his guess about the "Doctor of the Church" status of the late pope. Whether that decision will be made in our life time, I very much doubt. These things take time. St Therese of Lisieux, for instance, died in 1897, was canonised in 1925, but only declared a Doctor of the Church by JPII in 1997. There are only thirtythree doctors of the Church, none thus far from the 20th Century. Perhaps John Paul II will be our 20th Century Doctor? I for one think that the "John Paul the Great" title will only catch on if he is accorded the status of "Doctor of the Church", but I don't think that will be in our generation. Future generations are far more likely to appreciate him than today's.

Of course, John Paul II isn't the only theologian pope with which we have been blessed in the past 100 years. Next to John Paul II, Pope Pius XII would be another, if the number of times his writings are quoted by the 2nd Vatican Council are any indication. It could be possible more easily to proclaim Pius XII a "Doctor of the Church" than a "Saint" in the current climate. "Doctor of the Church" is a statement of the value and authenticity of his teaching, not of the holiness of his life. I don't dispute the latter, but unfortunately, there are still those who are stoking the fires of controversy in that camp.

But of course, we are now in the 21st Century and must be looking ahead for today's "Doctor of the Church". Who could that be, I wonder? Could we have back to back papal Doctors? According to the Irish Times, Bishop Michael Smith:

also suspected Pope Benedict might, in time, become a Doctor of the Church. “In this generation we are very blessed to have had two popes who have made an enormous contribution to church teaching and church belief.”

Cathy and David At the Movies: "District 9"

David:  Peter Jackson produced writer-director Neil Blomkamp's District 9 - a alien/monster genre movie of incredible originality. Wikus Van De Merwe is a company operative who is put in charge of relocating a slum on the outskirts of Johannesburg with military backup. The twist is that the slum occupants are aliens, whose mothership was stranded floating above the city 20 years earlier. In the process of carrying out the eviction, Wikus has an accident with dramatic consequences, which gives him a radical new perspective on the aliens.

 Cathy:  Initially, I found the documentary style at the beginning of the film quite engaging, but ultimately I found this an extremely difficult film to watch. While I appreciated the message about segregation and alienation of those who are different, it was an extremely grim film with much graphic violence. At one stage, I felt like I couldn't watch any more.

 David: Well, it was certainly visceral. Body parts and fluids everywhere. You could almost smell it, at times. I liked the "documentary" conceit too, but it was not consistently followed through, with much of the later part of the movie in more of the traditional "action" style. Everything else in the film was entirely consistent and narratively satisfying. Setting it in South Africa is rather obvious given the theme, but also made the movie work on an intellectual level.

Cathy:  I found it difficult to connect or empathise with any of the characters. The aliens were pretty gross, although I did feel some connection for the alien "Christopher Johnson" through his relationship with his son. Wikus (although extremely well-played by Sharlto Copley) had no sense of compassion or understanding for the plight of the aliens.

David:  By not using well known actors we get to see the characters as real people. Wikus undergoes several transformations in the film which redeems his character by the end. But despite the serious social comment in this film, District 9 has more in common with "Frankenstein" than "Cry Freedom".

Cathy:  The trouble is, despite the alien element, the scenario is not too far removed from a shameful reality. I can see that it is a well made film – it just didn't appeal to me. I'm giving it two and a half stars.

David:  It appealed to me greatly. I'm giving it four stars.

When Good news is reported as Bad

You know there is something fundamentally wrong with the world (or perhaps just with the newspaper you are reading) when the media reports a "Good News" story as a "Bad News" story.

I refer to today's Sunday Age story: Government bows to religious right which reports the joyful news that the religious communities in the State of Victoria have been successful in defending their religious freedom and basic human right not to employ (and in some cases to provide "services" to *) people who do not uphold their "ethos".

I have reported before on the efforts that our community leaders went to to defend us against this threat to our religious liberty. It was a very well organised campaign that showed that the feeling on this subject in the community was not that of the Thought Police who are trying to rewrite our social mores for us by means of the law. In short, the Social Reformers were horrified that religious communities should be able to "discriminate" by employing staff (or providing services to clients) who shared and upheld their religious ethos. Today's decision marks the failure of the psuh to stamp out this "injustice".

And The Sunday Age isn't going to take this lying down. Their "reporter" Melissa Fyfe allows a good deal of editorial bias and comment into what should be a news report. She writes

• that the State's religious communities will be allowed "to continue to discriminate against gays and lesbians, single mothers and people who hold different spiritual beliefs."


• that "church groups" will be allowed "to continue discriminating on the grounds of sex, sexuality, marital and parental status and gender identity."


• That "the decision has dismayed groups that argued that the review was a chance to eliminate entrenched discrimination in Victoria."

So the exercise of religious freedom - the freedom to reject the mores that are being foisted upon us by the New Morality - is now to be condemned as "discrimination".

And, according to Fyfe, "leading discrimination law expert Professor Margaret Thornton said that it was a win for fundamentalist religious groups." So. The religious communities who reject the New Mores are all to be labelled "fundamentalist"!

Just for our information, who are these "fundamentalists"? Represented at the SARC hearings on August 5 were the following organisations:

Catholic Bishops of Victoria
Catholic Social Services
Anglican Church of Australia
Presbyterian Church of Victoria
Islamic Council of Victoria
Christian Schools Australia
Sikh Interfaith Council of Victoria
B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission
Mt Evelyn Christian School
Australian Christian Lobby
Catholic Education Office
Association of Independent Schools of Victoria
Victorian Independent Education Union

When these are all condemned as "fundamentalist", it is hard to see that any room at all is left in the rational, moderate camp. It seems, in fact, that we are all to be written off as "fundamentalist", except for some significant mainstream Christian organisations who no longer espouse a recognisable Christian ethos in the realm of sexual- and bio-ethics.

[BTW, it is worth noting who the supporters of the change in our laws were. They included: the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Law Resource Centre, the Law Institute of Victoria, Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, ALSO Foundation, and Tansgender Victoria.]

(* It is my understanding that an example of such "services" would be the provision of ad0ption services to same sex parents.)

How would this be handled in a Catholic School?

I am very intrigued by this story in today's edition of The Age: School the most dangerous place for young gays.

I wonder how such situations are handled in our Catholic schools?

First, let me say a couple of things:

1) I abhore violence, persecution and victimisation toward anyone, including those who self-identify as homosexuals. Paragraph 2358 of the Catechism says: "[M]en and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies...do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided."

2) I affirm with the Church (always thinking with the Church on this blog!) that (in the words of the Catechism again in the prior paragraph): "Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity [cf. Gen 19:1-29; Rom 124-27; 1 Cor 6:10; I Tim 1:10], tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered"141 [CDF, Persona humana 8]. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."

3) I am surprised that a boy in Year 6 (aged 11 or 12) could already be so sexually aware and mature as to be able to identify himself as "gay".

4) I myself received distressing victimisation and name calling in later primary school and early secondary school in a country school, being called a "poof" simply because I acted differently from most of the other country boys my age with reference to matters of taste and culture. (I did not, at any stage, however, self-identify as "gay" - I would not have imagined such a thing).

So, given all that, how would the situation of this young man be handled in a Catholic School today? What would be the appropriate pastoral response?

Melbourne Catholic Archdiocese assessed as "Low Risk"

Here's a funny thing. I use CA Computer Security, which gives me a running indication of the risk of websites I might visit.

I just noticed that when I go to the Website of the Glorious See of Melbourne, I get a "Low Risk" warning! Apparently the location is "unknown".

I have just sent them an email to verifying the website as bona fide, but I must say I am amused to think what "low risk" might mean in the context of the Church. I would like to think that, in light of what Jesus said about anyone who wanted be his disciple taking up one's cross and following him, that the warning should in fact be "high risk"!

When the rot set in...

[caption id="attachment_2276" align="alignleft" width="235" caption="Gasparo Cardinal Contarini"][/caption]I have recently visited my good friend, Lutheran Pastor Fraser Pearce. There I encountered a book he recently picked up at a second hand book store, "Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg", by Peter Matheson (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1972). It is a superb story, told upon the foundation of a great deal of scholarly research, about the part played by Gasparo Cardinal Contarini at the Catholic Lutheran dialogue meeting in Regensberg in 1541 (the Lutheran delegation was led by Melanchthon, Bucer also present, and Eck too).

The Regensburg Colloquy is a most interesting topic, but at the moment, I just want to make a small comment about a something Matheson says the beginning of Chapter 10 on page 122. There we read:

The turning point of the Regensburg colloquy was the failure to reach agreement on the nature of the church; the death blow was given by the controversy over transubstantiation. This was really most surprising. Why should the boundary between the confessions have been born at this particular point? Was this not a relatively new dogma, promulgated as recently as 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, and one pertaining to the scholastic theory rather than to the substance of the Faith? It seems decidedly out of character that Contarini should dig in his feet on this particular issue, especially when he knew that the success or failure of the colloquy depended on his attitude. It seems ironic that the ecumenical endeavours of the 16th century should have foundered on a teaching which today seems to be dropping slowly but steadily below the Catholic horizon.

Now isn't that extremely interesting? The Regensburg Colloquy took place mere years before the Council of Trent, at which the doctrine of transubstantiation was defined "as most fitting". On the other hand, Matheson was writing his book mere years after the Second Vatican Council, after which it is generally agreed "the rot set in". Is it not astounding that by 1972, Matheson, who seems (by all accounts) an innocent bystander and observer of facts, makes the passing observation that the doctrine of transubstation "today seems to be dropping slowly but steadily below the Catholic horizon."

What can this signify, other than that by 1972, in the 7 years since the end of the Vatican Council, the "rot" had well and truly set into the Catholic Church. This was the era when Bendiction and Eucharistic Adoration was being rejected all over the world. This was the era when all sorts of new theories about how the Eucharist "re-presented" Christ came into vogue. This was the era of "breaking bread together on our knees" (or not, as the case may have been). How surprised Matheson would have been to discover that 35 years later, the doctrine of transubstatiation is well and truly on the rebound, with Eucharistic Adoration playing a significant role in the New Evangelisation, having been encouraged by our two great popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Ask any young person who attended World Youth Day in either Cologne or Sydney what the highlight was, and they will tell you: Eucharistic Adoration with the Holy Father. They may not be able to tell you exactly what transubstantiation is, but they will be able to tell you that "That's Jesus up there".

So. Matheson was mystified as to why Cardinal Contarini should be so contrary with regard to the doctrine of transubstantiation in his dialouge with the protestant leaders. We today find this so self-evident that to require explanation seems superfluous.

On the Jewish Question: "There's no confusion - it's both/and."

I should have blogged on this before, but it has only just come to my attention. You will remember I recently drew your attention to the Uniting Church statement on Christian Jewish relations. In that post, I mentioned the following:

The whole issue of the continuing significance of God’s covenants with the Jewish people remains unclarified in Catholic teaching at this point – even though, I would contend, the broad outlines and boundaries of what we can say are very clear indeed. Things were stirred up a number of years ago by the document “Reflections on Covenant and Mission“, which seemed to claim a “two-fold path of salvation”, one through Christ for the Gentiles and one through the Mosaic Covenant for the Jewish people. Hence, the document concluded, Christians should not evangelise Jews. Both statements are very controversial, although you will find some in the Catholic Church today defending them as if they were official Catholic teaching. They are not – even though some official Catholics do teach them (if you get what I mean).

Well, there has been some development on that front, which happened at the June meeting fo the USCCB (I was on long service leave, so missed the fracka that resulted).

As a bit of background, last year (June 2008) the USCCB meeting voted to make a change to their Catechism in reference to this matter (the change has just been given Vatican recognitio a few weeks ago - things move slow in Rome...). That change is as follows:

United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

(Washington, D.C.: USCCB Publ., 2006)

Revision on pages 130-131

Prior version:

The Catholic Church also acknowledges her special relationship to the Jewish people. The Second Vatican Council declared that "this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts he makes nor of the calls he issues." (LG, no. 16) When God called Abraham out of Ur, he promised to make of him a "great nation." This began the history of God revealing his divine plan of salvation to a chosen people with whom he made enduring covenants. Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them. At the same time, "remembering, then, her common heritage with the Jews, and moved not by any political consideration, but solely by the religious motivation of Christian charity, she [the Church] deplores all hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews." (Second Vatican Council, Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions [Nostra Aetate; NA], no. 4)

New version:

The Catholic Church also acknowledges her special relationship to the Jewish people. The Second Vatican Council declared that "this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts he makes nor of the calls he issues." (LG, no. 16) When God called Abraham out of Ur, he promised to make of him a "great nation." To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his Word, "belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ." (Rom 9: 4-5; cf. CCC, no. 839) At the same time, "remembering, then, her common heritage with the Jews, and moved not by any political consideration, but solely by the religious motivation of Christian charity, she [the Church] deplores all hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews." (Second Vatican Council, Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions [Nostra Aetate; NA], no. 4)

Now when that change was suggested last year, there was some dismay expressed by Jewish groups and Catholics involved in dialogue with Jews in America. According to Daniel Burke of the Religion News Service "some Jewish leaders were perplexed" by the change. Burke reported:

[The change] puzzles Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “Why take a very simple sentence and replace it with a very complicated paragraph?” he asked. “When did the Catholic church decide that our covenant was finished?” Alan Berger, a professor of Holocaust studies at Florida Atlantic University, called the change the latest “in a long line of mixed symbols. It’s very troubling.”

In actual fact it is very simple, but we will get there in a moment. The even bigger news story was what happened at this year's June meeting of the US Catholic Bishops. This time, the document "Reflections on Covenant and Mission" was in the Conference's sights. At the end of the day, they released an extensive clarification of that document called: A NOTE ON AMBIGUITIES CONTAINED IN REFLECTIONS ON COVENANT AND MISSION. This "note" makes the following statements about Reflections on Covenant and Mission (emphases mine):

• When the document was originally published, it was mislabelled as a statement of the "Bishops' Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Committee and the National Council of Synagogues."
• Reflections on Covenant and Mission is not an official statement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
• Reflections on Covenant and Mission was not subject to the same review process that official documents undergo.
• Nevertheless, some theologians, including Catholics, have treated the document as authoritative.
• The section in Reflections on Covenant and Mission representing Catholic thought contains some statements that are insufficiently precise and potentially misleading.

Therefore they make the following clarifications:

• Catholic evangelization relative to the Jews will take an "utterly unique" form—precisely because God has already established a particular relationship with the Jewish people, going back to the call of Abraham.
• It is incomplete and potentially misleading in this context [ie. the context of discussion about the evangelisation of Jewish people] to refer to the enduring quality of the covenant without adding that for Catholics Jesus Christ as the incarnate Son of God fulfills both in history and at the end of time the special relationship that God established with Israel.
• The clear acknowledgment of the relationship established by God with Israel prior to Jesus Christ needs to be accompanied by a clear affirmation of the Church's belief that Jesus Christ in himself fulfills God’s revelation begun with Abraham and that proclaiming this good news to all the world is at the heart of her mission.
• In the proposition that interreligious dialogue is a form of evangelization that is "a mutually enriching sharing of gifts devoid of any intention whatsoever to invite the dialogue partner to baptism”, Reflections on Covenant and Mission develops a vision of evangelisation in which the core elements of proclamation and invitation to life in Christ seem virtually to disappear. The Christian dialogue partner is always giving witness to the following of Christ, to which all are implicitly invited.
• The Church respects religious freedom as well as freedom of conscience and does not have a policy that singles out the Jews as a people for conversion. However, in addition to the fact that she will always welcome "sincere individual converts from any tradition or people, including the Jewish people", St. Paul's complete teaching also refers to the inclusion of the Jewish people as whole in Christ's salvation.
• Reflections on Covenant and Mission, however, renders even the possibility of individual conversion doubtful by the implication that it is generally not good for Jews to convert, nor for Catholics to do anything that might lead Jews to conversion because it threatens to eliminate "the distinctive Jewish witness". This line of reasoning could lead some to conclude mistakenly that Jews have an obligation not to become Christian and that the Church has a corresponding obligation not to baptize Jews.
• The fulfillment of the covenants, indeed, of all God's promises to Israel, is found only in Jesus Christ. By God's grace, the right to hear this Good News belongs to every generation.

Now this “clarification” has been greeted with even more dismay by some in the Jewish and Catholic communities. Writing in the latest edition of “Ecumenical Trends” (Vol 38 No 8), long time participant and leader in the Jewish Catholic dialogue, Fr John T. Pawlikowski (in fact, one of the original authors of Reflections on Covenant and Mission), has written an article called “Catholic-Jewish Dialogue: The Road Remains Bumpy”. In this article he writes:

The document [Reflections] also elicited strong protest from certain conservative Catholic quarters, including a trenchant analysis from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles who spent his latter days trying to “correct” what he regarded as false interpretations of Vatican II on the Jewish question. Dulles, for example, began to question whether Nostra Aetate really asserted a continued covenantal inclusion for the Jewish people after Christ and insisted that we must continue to grapple with the apparent abolition of the Jewish covenant with the coming of Christ proclaimed in the Letter to the Hebrews. ...

In recent months pressure was mounting on the Vatican and the USCCB to correct the so-called ambiguities in Reflections on Covenant and Mission and in other documents including a catechism. … Certainly it is the right and responsibility of CDF and the Bishops doctrinal committee to weigh in on such a document. In the context of genuine dialogue with the drafters their input would have been welcomed given that Reflections was originally proposed as a study document. Unfortunately no such dialogue occurred. As a result, we are left with a document that creates more ambiguities and results on the core question of finality in Christ and conversion of the Jews. ...

Neither the issue of finality in Christ or the need to the conversion of all people are susceptible to easy resolution ... but Nostra Aetate, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and church leaders such as Cardinal Kasper has altered the way we need to think about these questions today. Regrettably these changes are not adequately reflected in the Bishops Doctrinal Commission's statement, leaving our Jewish partners and many in the dialogue with continuing questions where Catholicism really stands on these issues within the Catholic-Jewish dialogue.

Another writer in the same edition of "Ecumenical Trends", Ruth Langer (Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Boston College), simply says of the USCCB’s "Note on Ambiguities":

Its conclusion, that "the fulfilment of ... all God's promises to Israel is found only in Jesus Christ ... the right to hear this good news belongs to every generation" sounds like a statement that God's covenant with Israel is not valid and that those who love Jews will seek to remove them from their Judaism now.

If this is the case, then the inner discourse of the official Catholic community is a call for an annihilation of Judaism even as the public discourse -- exemplified by Pope Benedict's speeches in Israeli May 2009 -- proclaims irrevocable commitment to the Second Vatican Council's commitment to seek "genuine and lasting reconciliation." Is there some failure of communication here? Or is there a failure of integrity?

Many Jews are confused.

I can understand many Jews being confused by these developments, especially when some Catholics have been less than honest about the truth of Catholic teaching. The fact is that the Catholic faith holds a “both/and” position in this regard, in much the same way that it does in many other areas. The “both/and” position entails a necessary tension, nevertheless both positions in this tension are crystal clear.

The USCCB outlined these two positions in their explanation of the changes to the catechism:

By making the change in the USCCA, there is not a change in the Church’s teaching.

Catholics believe that

[1] all previous covenants that God made with the Jewish people are fulfilled in Jesus Christ through the new covenant established through his sacrificial death on the cross…

[2] the Jewish people continue to live within the truth of the covenant made through Abraham, and that God continues to be faithful to them.

The USCCB's clarification of the ambiguities in Reflections on Covenant and Mission expresses exactly the same both and position:

The [1] clear acknowledgment of the relationship established by God with Israel prior to Jesus Christ [which] needs to be accompanied by

[2] a clear affirmation of the Church's belief that Jesus Christ in himself fulfills God’s revelation begun with Abraham and that proclaiming this good news to all the world is at the heart of her mission.

That tensions exist in this position is quite obvious. However both aspects of the position are perfectly clear and should not be the cause of any further confusion or anxiety. If there is an appearance that the Church seems to be giving mixed messages to the Jewish community, then this can be understood from the point of view that sometimes the Church speaks from one side of this “both/and” position and sometimes it speaks from the other side.

But is there any justification for the idea that the Church’s “inner discourse…is a call for an annihilation of Judaism”? Again, one must consider the two sides of the “both/and” position. The Catholic Church affirms God’s commitment and faithfulness to the Jewish people which he established in his covenants with them. But (and there is a “but”), he has expressed that commitment and faithfulness through the renewal of the covenant in Jesus Christ. The proclamation of this renewal was not proclaimed last of all but first of all to the Jews, and only then to the Gentiles. Today still, the Gospel is primarily addressed to Jews and only secondarily to the rest of humanity. To exclude the Jewish people from this proclamation today would be a denial of the very roots that Christianity has in the Jewish community. The point is that just as the proclamation of this renewed covenant in Jesus Christ had implications for the Jewish religion when it was first proclaimed, so it continues to have implications for the Jewish religion today.

Does this mean that by proclaiming the Gospel Catholics actively seek “the annihilation of Judaism”? The simple answer is “No”. It would be more true to say that we are seeking “the fulfilment” of Judaism. Christianity is not the fulfillment of Judaism - the Messiah (ie. the Christ) is. The fact is that Christianity proclaims as a present reality the very eschatological fulfillment which Judaism itself (at least historically) has always loked for with eager expectation: namely, the coming of the Messiah. The only argument between us concerns the identity of that Messiah…

With the Liturgy, "the more things change, the more they stay the same"

The History of the Church is a funny old thing (if you want to find out just how funny, come to Ballarat this weekend and do this course with me). Today's conservatives were yesterdays radicals, and today's true radicals are the ones their opponents call "reactionary conservatives".

Cast your mind back to the joint introduction of the Novus Ordo and the vernacular translation of the liturgy. It wasn't accepted without opposition, and the resistance to it never went away entirely - which is why (TBTG) we have Roman Rite in two forms today (the Extraodinary and Ordinary). Of course, for some, it wasn't just a matter of resisting the new liturgy - it was a matter of refusing it to the death if need be. (Cf. for eg. "The Banished Heart" by Sydney Traddy, Geoffrey Hull)

Now it appears like we are going to see the whole thing over again, but this time with the other mob - the 60's radicals who have morphed into the cultural conservatives of our day - represented by the one whom the Cooees Mob have dubbed "Priest-forever", Paul Collins. His pamphlet "And Also with You" can be downloaded from his "Catholics for Ministry" website. It is a thorough-going rejection of the new translations of the liturgy, calling them an outright "betrayal of Vatican Council II". Which is exceeding odd, since the liturgy of which the new vernacular is a translation is none other than the liturgy that we received after the 2nd Vatican Council, the Bugnini liturgy, the Ordinary Form. The way Mr Collins goes on about it, you would think we are forcing every one back into using Latin (God forbid!).

Every cliche imaginable, from Xavier Rynne's potted history of Vatican II to the usual bewailing of the fate of the poor old Old ICEL, can be found in this tract. The thing is, that one cannot really see what the Ex-Rev. Mr Collins might be imagining he can achieve with this sort of thing. It cannot work for the building up of the People of God, for it is designed to unsettle them and turn them against all due order and right conduct. It is encouraging the faithful to nothing less than disobedience and to active dissension in the ranks around the very Source and Summit of the Church's life.

I cannot see how Paul Collins and his mob can differentiate themselves and their rhetoric from that of Marcel Lefebvre and his society. They might appear to be arguing in different directions, but fundamentally their argument is the same. It is what happens when conservatives dig their heels in so deeply against legitimate development, that they end up becoming heretics.

Another Catholic Reappraisal of Luther

The Catholic Church would "today deal with such a provocation in a different and a better way", according to Bishop Franz-Joseph Bode of Osnabrück.

According to this story run by Ecumenical News International, he was speaking in regard to the 16th Century challenge presented by Martin Luther,

Unfortunately, however, you don't get to replay history. Both the Lutherans and the Catholic Church have moved on since 1546, the year of Luther's death. In some ways they have grown closer together, in other ways they are further apart than ever before. Certainly the issues have changed. The doctrine of Justification, on which the Lutherans based their initial objections to the Church of Rome, is perhaps not such a hot issue any more (except at a level that only very well trained theologians would be able to argue). On the other hand, issues such as those surrouding the priesthood, piety, sacraments, ethics and governance separate the two groups more than ever.

The good Bishop Bode does suggest one point, however, where the two Confessions can say - or should say - a joint "Amen" with an added "Alleluia!":

The focus on Christ, the Bible and the authentic Word - are things that we as the Catholic Church today can only underline," said Bode. He noted that especially with the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has been able to understand and address in a new way Luther's thought and his esteem for the Word of God.

Certainly we have seen this strongly in this current pontificate, an Augustinian like the Reformer, the first German pope since the reformation, and certainly the first pope to have ever seriously read and studied Luther's writings (in the original language, no less).

When the Cure is worse than the Disease

You have to feel for this bloke. He's about my age, and I can say that my worst nightmare would be to know that Alzheimers is breathing down your neck and there's nothing you can do about it. It is a fear that I sometimes experience in those moments when my memory is particularly vague, or when I find myself wandering around the home looking for where I placed my keys... but that is probably just the early onset of old age.

I must also say that when I read about his decision that this genetic disease "'stops with me, that's it", I thought: You poor brave bastard. I grieve for you in your decision not to have children because of your concern that they might have to endure such suffering (or rather their families - dementia is a disease in which the person who has it does not suffer as much as the people who care for them) - even if such suffering might come after at least half a life-time of normality. I respected his decision. I understood his statement that "I would feel so guilty if I passed this thing on."

I was grieved for his wife too. I don't know how young she is, but surely she too thought when she married him that they would be able to look forward to raising a family. Instead she now has to plan for looking after her husband.

But then I read this:

They are trying, so far unsuccessfully, to have children through IVF. A technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, can be used to screen out embryos carrying the bad gene.

Oh dear.

My eight year old daughter, on hearing me explain this story to my wife, quoted Dr Suess: "A person's a person no matter how small."

So, we now live in a society where it is seen as ethically unacceptable to bear a child who might (even almost certainly might) have a genetic disease which leads to dementia in the second half of their life, but it is perfectly okay to destroy (ie. end the life of) an embryonic human being who is found to have the genes that will lead to this condition.

I will mention here a fact that came to my attention recently. A student of a local Catholic Secondary College brought home an exercise from her science class in which the class was learning about the genetic causes of Down's Syndrome. The class was asked to read a newspaper article which bemoaned the fact that despite the availability of pre-natal screening, few expectant mothers were availing themselves of this technology, and hence there were many children being born with the disease who could have been eliminated before birth (that wasn't, of course, how the article put it, but that is what it said).

The exercise ended, after asking a number of questions about chromozones and what not: "Why is it a good idea that all expectant women have pre-natal testing?

When did we cross this line, folks, when the unthinkable became thinkable?

Joshua is in his element...

You may be surprised to find our most regular Traditional Catholic commentator, Joshua, is currently on his maiden tour of the Eternal City, and, it seems, finding all sorts of interesting places to recite the endless latin psalms in his 1962 Breviary. We got to catch up at the Airport on Monday on his way through Melbourne. He seemed very excited...

He is staying at St Gregory's monastery where I stayed with Cathy and the Interfaith Pilgrimage a few months back.

Check out his travel diary on his blog here.

Why Aid to the Church in Need supports the Russian Orthodox Church

Cardinal Pole has come out all guns blazing against what he sees as a terrible scandal: the Catholic charitable organisation "Aid to the Church in Need/Kirche in Not" financially supports the theological resourcing of the Russian Orthodox Church.

He writes on his blog:

I seem to recall a recent controversy over funds from a Canadian Catholic charity going towards a Latin American organisation which supported abortion, which would and should have generated outrage. But how much more outraged should we be at Church sponsorship (by an “international Catholic charity dependent on the Holy See”, no less) of schism—abortion kills the body, but schism kills the soul.

Comparing the support of the Aid to the Church in need for the rebuilding of the ecclesial life of the Russian Orthodox Church to funding an organisation that supports abortion is quite beyond the pale.

I applaud the work that Kirche in Not does, and I support them financially. They are doing good work with the full support of the Catholic Church.

We need to step back and understand what is happening here.

You all know the facts:

1. The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest non-Roman Christian communion in the world.

2. The ROC is a true Church in the proper sense, despite its lack of communion with the Catholic Church.

These two facts alone mean that if we are serious about the unity of the Church, we must be at least as serious about the ROC as we are about the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. St Paul exhorts us (Gal 6:10) "as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." According to Catholic ecclesiology, the Russian Orthodox belong to "the household of faith". They are not only true Christians, but they are a true Church even and especially "in the proper sense" despite the lack of full communion with us. They have true bishops, true priests, and true sacraments. They are arguably more truly a "Church" than (for eg.) the Society of St Pius X is - and look how we are bending over backward in charity to bring them back into the fold with us!

Now add a few more facts:

3. The ROC has recently emerged from the most turbulent period in its history, in which the Communists almost succeeded in eradicating not only parish life, but the life and spiritual tradition of the monasteries as well. (I spoke to Bishop Hilarion about this once - they had to rebuild their monastic tradition by consulting BOOKS because there were no monks left to speak of who could pass on their living tradition!)

4. The ROC is desparately in need of theological resources to enable it to carry out the mission of the Gospel in Russia. Christian Charity (Christian love, not "charity" in the secular sense) demands that we give the Russian Orthodox aid in their greatest need.

There has been a period of acrimonious relationship between the Vatican and Moscow. There are signs of this relationship entering a more healthy phase - and part of this improvement in relations will be the demonstration of our good faith that we are not in competition with them, but that we share with them the burden of the promotion of the Gospel and ecclesial life in Russia.

So the Russians may be "schismatics", as Cardinal Pole calls them (although more accurately, they were never in communion with us to enter into schism with us), but they are - more importantly in the eyes of God - our brothers and sisters in the faith, and by showing love to the members of "the household of God", we work towards the restoration of that communion which our Lord prayed would exist between all his disciples.

On my other blog: Analysis of National Liturgical Music Board's List of Approved Hymns and Songs

I have begun my analysis of "Hymns Titles from Australian Resource Books - Rated 'Yes" by the NLC Music Board" on my hymnody blog "Sing Lustily and With Good Courage".

The discussion includes:

Hymn titles rated "Yes" by the National Liturgical Commission Music Board

Hymn titles from "As One Voice" rated "NO" by the National Liturgical Commission Music Board

Songs in Word of Life's "Top 100" Not approved by NLCMB review of "As One Voice"

Glorificamus Blog back in action

I understand that for the moment there are no Latin Novus Ordo masses happening at St Brigid's, but it is good to see that the Glorificamus blog is back in action!

Religious Education in Schools

Unless you are the President of a National Bishops Conference (anyone?), you probably didn't get a copy of this letter in the post. Coveniently, the Congregation for Catholic Education was kind enough to include a summary of the letter in the text itself (they must have had bloggers in mind!):

- Education today is a complex, vast, and urgent task. This complexity today risks making us lose what is essential, that is, the formation of the human person in its totality, particularly as regards the religious and spiritual dimension.

- Although the work of educating is accomplished by different agents, it is parents who are primarily responsible for education.

- This responsibility is exercised also in the right to choose the school that guarantees an education in accordance with one’s own religious and moral principles.

- The Catholic school is truly an ecclesial subject because of its teaching activity, in which faith, culture, and life unite in harmony.

- It is open to all who want to share its educational goal inspired by Christian principles.

- The Catholic school is an expression of the ecclesial community, and its Catholicity is guaranteed by the competent authorities (Ordinary of the place).

- It ensures Catholic parents’ freedom of choice and it is an expression of school pluralism.

- The principle of subsidiarity regulates collaboration between the family and the various institutions deputised to educate.

Religious nature is the foundation and guarantee of the presence of religious education in the scholastic public sphere.

- Its cultural condition is a vision of the human person being open to the transcendent.

- Religious education in Catholic schools is an inalienable characteristic of their educational goal.

- Religious education is different from, and complementary to, catechesis, as it is school education that does not require the assent of faith, but conveys knowledge on the identity of Christianity and Christian life. Moreover, it enriches the Church and humanity with areas for growth, of both culture and humanity.

Given usual complaints about the quality of religious education in schools, that last point is interesting. Here is the full paragraph on that point:

Catholic religious education from the point of view of culture, and its relationship with catechesis

17. Religious education in schools fits into the evangelising mission of the Church. It is different from, and complementary to, parish catechesis and other activities such as family Christian education or initiatives of ongoing formation of the faithful. Apart from the different settings in which these are imparted, the aims that they pursue are also different: catechesis aims at fostering personal adherence to Christ and the development of Christian life in its different aspects (cf. Congregation for the Clergy, General Directory for Catechesis [DGC], 15 August 1997, nn. 80-87), whereas religious education in schools gives the pupils knowledge about Christianity’s identity and Christian life. Moreover, Pope Benedict XVI, speaking to religion teachers, pointed out the need “to enlarge the area of our rationality, to reopen it to the larger questions of the truth and the good, to link theology, philosophy and science between them in full respect for the methods proper to them and for their reciprocal autonomy, but also in the awareness of the intrinsic unity that holds them together. The religious dimension is in fact intrinsic to culture. It contributes to the overall formation of the person and makes it possible to transform knowledge into wisdom of life.” Catholic religious education contributes to that goal, in which “school and society are enriched with true laboratories of culture and humanity in which, by deciphering the significant contribution of Christianity, the person is equipped to discover goodness and to grow in responsibility, to seek comparisons and to refine his or her critical sense, to draw from the gifts of the past to understand the present better and to be able to plan wisely for the future” (Address to the Catholic religion teachers, 25 April 2009).

18. The specific nature of this education does not cause it to fall short of its proper nature as a school discipline. On the contrary, maintaining this status is a condition of its effectiveness: “It is necessary, therefore, that religious instruction in schools appear as a scholastic discipline with the same systematic demands and the same rigour as other disciplines. It must present the Christian message and the Christian event with the same seriousness and the same depth with which other disciplines present their knowledge. It should not be an accessory alongside of these disciplines, but rather it should engage in a necessary inter-disciplinary dialogue” (DGC 73).

It seems to me, however, that we do often expect RE in schools to do the work of catechesis. Afterall, are not most sacramental programs conducted in schools rather than in the parish? What the letter seems to be saying is that we cannt expect that the schools will or should do the job of formation in the Christian faith which is properly the job of the Christian family and the Parish community. However, this doesn't let the schools off the hook: in fulfilling their responsibility to convey the knowledge of the Catholic faith, they should be as rigourous as they are in other disciplines. This seems to me like a challenge in itself. Would they give the teaching of mathematics or physics or history to someone who had no idea of the discipline, no belief in its importance and scant regard for the facts of the discipline? Then why do they do this with religious education?

The Church's Mission

Just in case we have forgotten what we are supposed to be about, here is a reminder:

I encourage in each one of you a deeper awareness of Christ's missionary mandate to "make disciples of all peoples" (Matt 28:19)

We should have a longing and a passion to illumine all peoples with the light of Christ that shines on the face of the Church

The Church works not to extend her power or assert her dominion, but to lead all people to Christ, the salvation of the world.

Dispersion, multipicity, conflict and enmity will be healed and reconciled through the blood of the Cross and led back to unity.

This new beginning can already be seen in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ

Christ calls, justifies, sanctifies and sends his disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God, so that all nations may become the People of God.

The universal mission should become a fundamental constant in the life of the Church

Proclamation of the Gospel must be for us, as it was for the Apostle Paul, a primary and unavoidable duty

The universal Church, which knows neither borders nor frontiers, is aware of her responsibility to procalim the Gospel to entire peoples

The mission of the Church, therefore, is to call all peoples to the salvation accomplished by God through his incarnate Son

the task of evangelising all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church

At stake is the eternal salvation of persons, the goal and the fulfillment of human history and the universe

The whole Church must be committed to the missio ad gentes, until the salvific sovereignty of Christ is fully accomplished

Missionary zeal has always been a sign of the vitality of our Churches

I therefore ask all Catholics to pray to the Holy Spirit for an increase in the Church's passion for her mission to spread the Kingdom of God

It is my fervant plea before the throne of God, Holy Father.

Of Faith and "Symbol Systems"

A recent speaker was asked about the difference between faith and belief.

Drawing on Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich, he defined "faith" as "one's positive sense of life, the way one manages this universe of ours, the positive way we are able to see the world or make sense out of it or find purpose in it". He defined "belief" on the other hand as "a symbol system that makes sense to you, a symbol system that you accept, like the Christian faith or the Catholic heritage".

To make clear what was meant by this, he related a conversation he had with Rahner. He asked Rahner: ""Why, Karl, are you a Catholic Christian?" According to the speaker, the answer Rahner gave was this: "Because I was born one, and I haven't found anything better."

And there were two criteria for what would be "better": "One, it would help me to understand the deep questions of life better, questions of love, and freedom and actualisation, identity, purpose, etc. and secondly something that would help me to live more nobly and repsonsibly and effectively in the world. And I haven't found anything better." Summing up, the speaker said, "So the system either works for you or it doesn't".

In the field in which I work, there is a recurring discussion about the right use of the words "religion" and "faith". For eg., should we talk about the Muslim "faith" or the Muslim "religion"?

The fact is, that I do not think there is really any practical or etymylogical difference between the words "faith" and "belief". Is there really a difference between "credo" and "fido"? Greek just has the one word "pisteuo" which serves both purposes. So in reality, the verbs don't tell us much. What is important is the object to which the verbs are attached and the preposition that is used to join them.

Here's what I mean. When I first began to study theology, I was taught the difference between "fides quae" and "fides qua", that is, "Faith THAT" and the "Faith IN WHICH". As St James wrote (James 2:19), even the demons "believe" THAT "God is one". But in the Catholic creed, we do not say "I believe/credo/pisteou THAT there is one God", but "I believe/credo/pisteuo IN one God". When we confess the creed, we are not saying that we believe THAT God created the heavens and the earth, nor are we even saying we believe THAT Jesus Christ rose again on the third day. We are professing our faith IN (ie. our trust IN) God who created the heavens and the earth, and our faith IN his Son who rose from the dead.

Now both kinds of faith - fides qua and fides quae are important. It is possible to have a fides qua which is misplaced - such as in "I believe in fairies". That is as silly as a fides quae whose object is fairies (ie. I believe THAT there are fairies). The point here is that we cannot ascribe a separate value judgement to someone's fides qua - what Rahner seems to have regarded as "faith" as opposed to "belief" - apart from their fides quae. For unless one's "faith" is grounded in reality, unless it is built upon the solid foundation of things as they really are, unless it is based upon "belief" which, ultimately speaking and not to put too fine a point on it, is TRUE, then our faith is simply an illusory fantasy.

St Paul was trying to say something like this when he wrote to the Corinthians "If Christ is NOT raised from the dead, then your faith is in vain." Now, Rudolf Bultmann may have been able to have some kind of existentialist faith regardless of whether Jesus of Nazareth really rose from the dead or not, but St Paul couldn't. And neither, I would hold, can we as Catholic Christians.

Because ultimately, as I think I have said somewhere before, there is only one reason to be a Catholic Christian: because the Catholic Faith is TRUE. And if it is indeed TRUE as we claim, then it doesn't matter two hoots if it does or does not "work for you".

Practically speaking, a 24 hour day doesn't really work for me. I have so often wished it could be just that little bit longer, especially at night. The fact that the sun comes up every day at around 6am in the morning really doesn't work for me. But it isn't going to help me explain why I arrive late for work if I decide to ignore this rather essential fact.

One of the things in our Catholic "symbolic system" is a belief in the Last Judgement. On this day, everyone's faith (or lack of it) will be tested. The object of that faith and the kind of faith you had in that object will be crucial on that Day. Eventually, reality and truth will catch up with us. That is why it is so urgent that we proclaim the Gospel to all people.

I was not "born Catholic" (strictly speaking, none one ever has been, not even Karl Rahner). I found myself forced to become Catholic by simple fact that the TRUTH of the Catholic faith was impressed upon me. Honestly, Lutheranism "worked better for me". I find being Catholic so much harder. I like to think it makes me a better person, but the jury may still be out on that. But at the end of the day, I couldn't keep teaching and believing a "symbol system" that wasn't true.

I am very happy for someone to call my Catholic Faith my personal "symbol system". But as far as I am concerned, the ultimate value of it as a belief system by which I live my life, on which I hang my "faith" as it were, is the fact that it is true.

Retirement

It might sound silly, but I actually am looking forward to retirement. It is still a good twenty years away for me, the standard retirement age for men currently being 65 in Australia - although it might be later by the time I get around to it. Few people regard retirement as the end of their active life - most retirees would see it as finally the opportunity they have always been waiting for: the chance to do the work they really want to do, rather than the work they have to do.

Priests - and bishops for that matter (see the side bar in Cooees) have their retirement age set at 75. Cardinals cannot vote in a conclave beyond 80. The pope is the only one whose office lasts until he dies. All this seems fair to me. The longer working life of priests has nothing to do with the priest shortage. There is simply something about celibacy seems to preserve the priestly caste, so that their working life extends longer than with us mere mortals. But even they need a rest finally, and it would be unjust of the Church to demand they continue full pastoral responsibilities beyond that. Of course, the character of priesthood lasts to the grave (and beyond!), and so a priest can and should still certainly spend his retirement doing priestly things.

Which reminds me of a good joke (best told with the right voice, but you will have to make do with the print version):

It's Sunday, and Father gets up into the pulpit: "My dear people. The Holy Father has just raised the retirement age of priests to 105. And so, you see, I shall be with you another three years..."

Fr Bacik files to download

Click here to download the recordings of Age Journalist Martin Flanagan's recent dialogue with visiting US priest Fr Jim Bacik. The topic was "Is there really a God? Searching for mystery in a culture of doubt".

It is worth listening to all three files. There is a really interesting bit right at the very end of the third file (the last question asked) where Fr Bacik talks about the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar as a necessary corrective to the theology of Karl Rahner, a contrast which he characterises as the kataphatic as opposed to the apophatic. I will post some more sometime on the relative merits of these two approaches to theology for the life of the Church today.

Confraternity of Catholic Clergy Conference Rome 2010

Fr John Speekman asked me to put up some advertising for next year's Year of the Priest Conference for the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Details in the side bar or click on the picture below:

Next Anima Education Course: "The Last Things"

My final Anima Education Course for 2009 will look at

• Death


• “The end of the World”


• Judgement


• Resurrection


• Heaven


• Hell


• Purgatory


• Eternal Life

Why do we Catholics believe what we do? What is the source of our great HOPE?

“SPE SALVI facti sumus—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24)” Benedict XVI Spe Salvi

16 hours of interactive lecture/discussion

Mondays Oct 5—Nov 30 (excl. November 2) 6.30-8.30 pm
Mary Glowrey House, 132 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy (opposite Carlton Gardens)
Total cost : $120, payable in advance

A joint project of Anima Education and the Catholic Women’s League

For more information or to register, contact Joan on 9926 5733 or email
jclements@melbourne.catholic.org.au

PS. I should add that it was Joan, and not I myself, who wrote the description of me on the flyer!

The Unnecessary Divorce: Dr Bill Doherty

I knew that our local Centacare's Marriage and Relationship Education Unit was involved in a big conference last week, but I didn't know what it was or who was their guest speaker. Although I am not a "marriage educator", I would have loved to have heard the presentation by Dr Bill Doherty of the University of Minnesota at the Marriage and Relationship Educators National Conference held here in Melbourne.

Their press-release says that:

Dr William Doherty, of the University of Minnesota, challenged 202 participants to get involved with the marriage movement. “We need to dispel the myths about marriage in society today,” he said. Dr Doherty specifically identified five common myths about marriage:
1. It’s foolish to get married without cohabiting.
2. It’s best to wait to get married when you are financially secure.
3. If a marriage gets rotten it never gets ripe again.
4. If your marriage fails your children really want you to find another romantic relationship because they want you to be happy.
5. Men aren’t interested in relationships.

I would have loved to have heard him flesh out his rejection of those five myths.

I looked up his website here, and it looks like good stuff. My eye was especially caught by the chapter from his book on "the unnecessary divorce". That really spoke to me in my experience. Although Holy Mother Church has found that my first attempt to contract marriage was "null and void", and although I have since found the love of my life and rejoice in my family, I am able to look back at my own divorce and say "It wasn't necessary". It could, with the will to overcome the difficulties, have been prevented, and - who knows? - perhaps even a "null and void" attempt at marriage could have become a valid and fulfilling marriage. I will never know. Life took a different turn. But one thing that I have learned is that divorce is a "cure" that is in some senses worse than the "disease".

According to this website, Dr Doherty "grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family in Philadelphia, where, he says, “marriage was forever.” Cathy and I have both been through divorce, and we both know (and assure our children repeatedly) that our marriage "is forever". Any troubles we face, we know that the cure is to be found IN our marriage, not apart from it. Our marriage text was "Let love and faithfulness never leave you" (Prov 3:3).

Just what we need: another "new" song book...

In today's Cathnews comes the annoucement that there will be a new third volume of the "As One Voice" song books.

I wish someone would tell publishers of new "liturgical songs": ENOUGH ALREADY! We have have more than we can cope with at the moment. The constant bombardment of new material for use in the liturgy means that there is never enough time for us to assess the quality of the new material. For that matter, there is hardly enough time to reflect on the music we already have.

Not that that important task has gone unattended. In response to the request in Liturgiam Authenticam, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has commissioned the National Liturgical Music Board to compile a list of "approved hymns" for use in the liturgy. The task that this group was faced with was so immense that they simply had to put some limits on it. In the end, they decided to go through five readily available collections, "As One Voice", "Gather Australia", "Catholic Worship Book", "New Living Parish Hymnal", and "Together in Song". The result was quite a long list (well over a thousand titles) of titles that got a "yes" vote. Of course, the point of such a document is not so much those items that got a tick, as those that failed to meet the (rather wide) criteria.

Although the resulting list has been sent to Rome for approval (as LA required), it is, I understand, now a public document. Unfortunately, it is not yet available on the ACBC website (I understand this is due to external factors beyond the control of the ACBC office). If you want a copy, I suggest you email Bernard at bfk at ozemail dot com dot au .

I have gone through the whole list and intend to post a review on it in the near future, but (as one of the compilers told me this afternoon) it is unlikely that in its current form this list will make much impact on what we sing on Sunday mornings. And this for several reasons:

1) It is not complete. It doesn't include ritual music (for the reason that the new mass translations etc are not yet available) and they did not look at the much wider pile of "resources" used by our parishes and schools beyond the five collections named above (they are currently working on that, but it is, as you understand, a huge undertaking)
2) What is really required is a list of those songs that DID NOT get a tick. Such a list can be inferred from the positive list that the Board has produced, and it is my intention to publish this list when I get a Round Tuit (if you have one in the cupboard, please send it to me).

The practical usefulness of such a list is really as a basis for a future resource to be published. As of this moment in time, there are no more available copies of three of the hymnbooks surveyed: New Living Parish, Catholic Worship Book, and Gather Australia (I understand that the remaining copies of the latter two went up in smoke when the Feb 7 bushfires burnt down the publisher's storehouse).

But the last thing we need in this climate of rapid change is a new volume of music that has not been through this exhaustive process of evaluation.

A funny thing happened on the way home last night...

Well - not funny - an averted tragedy followed by a very embarrasing experience.

I was driving at about 5pm (just on the start of peak hour) along Ferntree Gully Road, when saw up ahead on the left hand side of the road a little-tacker who could not have been more than two years old, walking along playing with a stick. That's odd, I thought, there's no-one with him. To my horror, I saw that he was heading directly for the road, not at all aware of the danger he was heading into.

I slowed right down and sounded the horn - he looked up but kept coming. There was a stream of traffic - but most of it was now slowing down as I was. My main concern now was to get to the boy before he stepped out into the traffic. The cars in front of me went past him without stopping, but I came to a halt just as he was stepping onto the road. I jumped from my car, and stepped out into the inside lane of traffic (it was a dual lane road) to stop the traffic coming behind me. By this time the little lad was on the road in front of my car. I ran around, scooped him up, and carried him back to safety. Several other drivers stopped and jumped out, and we started looking for the boy's parents. A neighbour came rushing up - he had seen the boy wandering down his street - and helped us locate the child's home. Needless to say, his mother was greatly relieved - she had noticed him missing only moments earlier.

So! Tragedy averted. Now the embarrassment began.

My car was still parked in the middle of the road on Ferntree Gully in peak hour traffic. When I went to get back in to move it, I found that I had (automatically, and quite by instinct) LOCKED it when I jumped out! (God knows how I did that - I didn't stop to do it, that's for sure). My keys were locked inside, still in the ignition. You can guess how silly I felt. One of the other drivers who had stopped loaned me their mobile phone so I could call Cathy to bring the spare key, but then was the long wait while all the traffic banked up behind me.

The neighbour stayed with me for moral support, but after the motorists who had witnessed the incident had passed, I was then left to endure the irrate reactions of drivers who were caught in the resulting traffic jam. Some motorists did stop to ask if they could help. But most swore or sounded their horns at me as they went past. It was very hard to feel good about what I had just done after enduring all that.

Which just leads me to think once again how important context and information is to interpreting anything that we encounter around us in our lives. We like to think that we are impartial and rational judges, that our judgement and opinion is actually worth something. But how often are we simply woefully short of viatl information that would make sense of what it is that we are trying to interpret? This is, it seems to me, the only explanation of why we (you and me and all the rest of the human race) rational human beings so often violently disagree on this matter or the other: we each come at reality from different angles resulting from different experiences and the acquisition of different sets of information.

This is not to say there is not a true reality "out there". The situation I described really happened and is the only real explanation of why a car came to be parked in the middle of the road during peak hour traffic. . But the motorists who got angry at the dill who parked his car in the middle of the road were not privy to these vital interpretive facts. As the wise Terry Pratchett once wrote, "The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head."