God's sense of humour

I was fortunate enough today to attend holy Mass at the Birmingham Oratory - as I usually do of a Wednesday. But this day was very different.

There were more cars in the car park. A few bustling characters in the cloister. The Church itself was busier than normal. There were Oratorians here, there and everywhere.

A man with a camera darted to the front row, another one with the television camera ascended to the pulpit, directly over my head.

I knew what was up.

There was a special guest, one with the name 'Deacon Jack'.

Jack Sullivan, was of course, healed "by the power of almighty God, by the intercession of Cardinal Newman." He was here to assist holy Mass, which was being celebrated by the provost.

On his UK tour this week, Mr Sullivan has visited many places already; his trip to Westminster has already been widely advertised.

After the Gospel, he gave an account of his healing in 2001, from a serious and painful back problem, which he described in great detail. He was visibly moved by his presence in the Oratory, and though the present Church was largely unknown to Newman, the house is his own, and the community is the same. In fact, he lovingly remarked that he felt he had come 'home'.

What I did find most entertaining, however, is that God would work through Cardinal Newman, to force a permanent deacon upon the Oratory. It's an interesting mix!

Arabic execution record

The following post is a bit gruesome in parts, so please do not read on if you are affected by this subject.

I'm constantly terrified of many places in the world, and I'm thankful I live where I do. We often complain in the west, but I have been horrified today as a result of some rather heavy going Sunday afternoon reading.

There is a case in Saudi Arabia of a man convicted of rape (who could be mentally disabled), who is about to be beheaded and crucified. The last such execution was 6 months ago, of a man executed for homosexuality. Similar fates can be inflicted upon those found guilty of witchcraft and apostasy. Like mediaeval Europe, their heads are placed on spikes, alongside the crucified body in public squares to act as a deterrent.

Sometimes, like trying to imagine to horror of the battlefield, I totally miss the mark, and I am constantly shocked that these things happen on the same earth I am now stood upon. As we remember those this week who have died 'fighting for our freedom', let us remember those who have nobody to fight for them, except of course God, who suffered a similar fate as these poor men.

How many more?

Not once a year, but every day in Ieper (Ypres), at 8pm, there is a memorial in the town's Menin Gate. A short service is often well attended, as the town's firemen sign the last post, and tributes are paid to the hundreds of thousands, millions of names inscribed in the walls of this colossal building. Once, a few years ago now, I placed a red and white wreath representing my school inside the memorial, in the sort of chapel section, cut into one of the inside walls.

In Allied cemeteries in Europe and further afield, all the stones are brilliant white, graves marked by a simple stone, often a cross, and the name of the dead - if they knew it. But how many people have been to an enemy cemetery. Their graves are hidden under trees, in dark corners of fields. Their mass-graves are marked with giant black slabs, sometimes with the names of some of those below are written on it.

War is never black and white. It is never simple, it is never really necessary and it is never glorious, nor justifiable, nor legal, nor right. We don't have to spend every day remembering these tragic deaths - and each one is a tragedy. Every name was somebody's baby once, and some of them were still children. But once every so often, in the month of the dead, turn our minds and pray for their souls, for none of them had a happy death. Let us hope to God none of us have to go through what they did... and do.

Remember Remember

Good evening peeps.

Is it really bonfire night again...?

I always hated this event. When I was younger, I never understood why we would celebrate the martyrdom of Christians drawn to extreme measures in such a manner (by burning one of them on a pyre).

Then someone suggested that it was to celebrate the deliverance from certain death of our royal King, James I. OK, that appeals to my sense of monarchy.

Then I remember James's rather unpleasant life and policies (e.g. killing his mother to ensure his inheritance of St Edward's crown, his dreadful treatment of his poor wife, and then running off to his footmen for 'comforting'). It's rather callous, but if I put Guy Fawkes (or any of the others) and King James I next to each other, I know which one I'd pick as my sovereign lord.

God bless you, Mr Fawkes

Well, there is some sort of bonfire/firework party going outside my window at the moment. I'll get good views for free certainly, but I'm participating on a purely artistic level you know.

Work is on the horizon, and with essays due in, expect a lot more posting, peeps!

Talking of peeps (and you know what I'm talking about), I simply must know where I can get hold of these sweeties. I took a fancy for them as a child when packets were delivered to me but now my supply has dried up!

An epistemological problem...

Last night, I watched a snippet of Question Time on the internet, but I found I couldn't watch it all, because it was irritating me.

We all have solutions to our broken society - most of which are either useless or implausible - but the solutions put forward by the panel, I was not interested in.

I was quite ashamed of the people on the show, and the reaction of most of the people in the audience (by the clap and boo ratio, I reckon about two thirds of those in the room were hardcore lefties). I got as far as the point when an audience member put his hand up and said, 'a question for Dick Griffin', followed by rapturous applause and laughter. At what point did British people go onto television and call people four letter words for a laugh and a petty insult to an individual?

At some point, people in the west fused a person's ideas with the person themselves. Therefore, if you attack a person's ideas, then one also attacks the individual. This goes back to the Sophist movement in ancient Greece, whereby a new breed of philosophers believed that one's truth is truth for one, i.e. truth is subjective. In spite of all the lessons of history - among other things - our society has taken up this Sophist idea. Ergo, an individual opinion is true for that individual, so if someone holds to an opinion (which society views as 'true' for that person), both the truth and the individual is flawed. However, there is such a thing as objective truth, but our western society rejects this notion as ludicrous.

As truth is focussed on the object and not the subject, one has no need to attack the individual person for holding to a flawed truth. One attacks the false opinion, not the person.

Similarly, if one attacks someone's opinion (which I do), they take offense because they think one is attacking their individuality, but in fact, one is not.

Therefore, the problem with society is an epistemological one.

Nightmare situation

Imagine if you have areas in the Church with some disaffected Catholics who felt abandoned by genuine interpretation of Vatican II. Suddenly, some other hardcore Christians who barely got as far as Vatican II come and join your Church, open their own, have their own Masses like the Oriental Ordinariates. The nightmare situation is Latin Rite Roman Catholics flock to these 'Anglican Use' communities, and the Church who welcomed these newbies starts to crumble at the edges.

Rome goes fishing?

An article from our friend Robert Pigot at the BBC about yesterday's news.

The announcement from the Vatican, made simultaneously in Rome and at a news conference in London was dramatic, even historic.

The Roman Catholic Church was going to extraordinary lengths to make it easy for disenchanted Anglicans to convert to Catholicism.

They could join the Roman Catholic Church as full members, [I never know why people make it sound like some sort of club] but hang on to many of their Anglican traditions and practices - and indeed preserve much of their "Anglican identity". [I'm not keen on this phrase; as far as I'm concerned, they cease to be Anglicans - a protestant movement - and jump into the barque of Peter]

In the past Anglicans have converted (although many have and are moving in the opposite direction), [just to let our still protestant society know that the papists aren't really winning, it's just an illusion] but it's been on a case-by-case basis. [I know very many Anglican converts who, I'm sure, don't like to be referred to as a 'case']

The creation of a special section [?] of the Roman Catholic Church - backed up by church law [?] - especially for Anglicans all around the world is unprecedented.

At the somewhat bizarre press conference secretively arranged at the offices of the Catholic Church in London [it's all very Dan Brown], the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols acknowledged converts had never before been provided with this structure.

"I can't remember quite a response that gives a juridical structure. And in that sense I think I would describe this as a courageous and a generous response by Pope Benedict."

'Progressive' trends

It wasn't just that Rome is paving the way for traditionalists on the Catholic wing [?] of the Church of England to jump ship - it is doing so at a critical moment.

But first a word of explanation [judging by the performance so far, I wouldn't bother] - about why this move has such huge implications for the Anglican Church [Communion].

It's the huge achievement of the Church that it has kept these two wings together through numerous crises - that over homosexuality being only one of the more recent. Since the Protestant Reformation, when the Church of England broke away from Rome, it has been a sometimes uneasy coalition between its Catholic and Protestant members. [The courageous Anglican 'Church', keeping the world together for five hundred years, versus the secretive and bizarre papist horde]

But traditionalists on the Catholic wing have become increasingly disenchanted by "progressive" trends, not so much with respect to liberal moves on homosexuality, but about the ordination of women as priests, and, in the next few years, as bishops. [Well, it goes a lot deeper than these peripheral issues, which are in face, symptoms of something else. You don't just change from protestantism to Catholicism over one matter like this; the theology is increasing different between various groups in the Anglican communion; broad Church simply does not work]

This development - utterly rejected by the Vatican [another Dan Brown comment - what Pigot means here is that the Catholic Church doesn't believe the Church can have different theologies - there is one theology. This isn't a Vatican rejection; it simply is] for the Catholic Church - has been agreed by the Church of England Synod, and the only question is how far traditionalist parishes and clergy will be "sheltered" from having to serve under a woman bishop. [O dear, these sexist anglicans!!]

That debate is in the balance, and the Vatican's initiative is bound to have a profound effect - not just on the numbers who leave, but on the sort of church they leave behind.

Many traditionalist "Anglo-Catholics" have threatened [boo traditionalists] to leave the Church and convert to Catholicism, and leaders of their cause say having a home already prepared for them [?] will greatly increase the exodus.

'Immediate exodus'

Fr David Houlding, the leader of the Catholic Group on the Church's synod, said "several hundred" clergy would leave immediately, and something like 1,500 altogether.

Fr Houlding might have his own reasons for thinking big, but it does stand to reason that many wavering Anglicans, including married priests, will go and others will watch to see how they fare.

The departure of the most vociferous opponents of women bishops would surely reduce the pressure on the Synod to make concessions. If they do leave in such numbers, the ground will be cut away from those left in the Church of England trying to preserve the Anglo-Catholic wing of this "broad church".

Some liberal Anglo-Catholics [?], who have no problem with women bishops but are desperate to preserve "catholic" traditions, [i.e. dressing up] fear they would leave behind a more Protestant church.

Other groups are also deeply unhappy about the way the Vatican sprang its idea. [live with it peeps, this is Peter speaking]

Bear in mind that the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams knew nothing [indeed, not being in the CDF and all] about this far-reaching move until two weeks ago, and made no contribution to it.

(Could it be a coincidence that at roughly that time news emerged that a special committee was suggesting more generous concessions to traditionalist opponents of women bishops?)

'Unnecessary move'

Some evangelicals - traditionalists but on the Protestant wing of the Church [or, those upholding moral truths, but have themselves a 'lower' theology and don't like dressing up on the whole] - have joined forces with Anglo-Catholics in an alliance resisting a number of "liberal trends".

Their targets have included the Church's approach to homosexuality, but also their joint opposition to the ordination of women as bishops.

Traditionalist evangelicals now stand to see an important ally massively weakened.

Their powerful lobby, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, set up in Jerusalem last year, criticised the Pope's move as unnecessary, insisting that Anglo-Catholics had a home in their alliance.

Considering the audacity [ah, old BBC impartiality again] of the Vatican's initiative, it was muted criticism. But, off the record, evangelicals were briefing that Rome was capitalising on Anglican divisions to poach clergy. [hmm: well, taking on former Anglican clergy is a great burden: they need to be re-trained, paid for - their wages are reduced on the other side of the Tiber - families to support, homes to provide, the problem of the concept of non-celibate priests]

"We are not fishing in the Anglican pond," he insisted.Only last week the Vatican's senior spokesman on relations with other churches, Cardinal Walter Kasper, said "full visible unity" with Anglicans was Rome's long-term goal.

But by removing a potentially significant portion of the most "catholic" element from the Church of England, surely that sort of "reunion" has been set back. [this means by taking away those who really do believe in union with Rome will leave and the church they leave will fall ever deeper into the pit of liberalism]

Dr Williams stressed the Pope had only been responding to pleas for help from Anglo-Catholics, and insisted that this was not a hostile takeover.

"It has no negative impact on the relations of the (Anglican) Communion as a whole to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole."

However, the archbishop's representative in Rome, Bishop David Richardson, described the Vatican's move as surprising, asking "why this, and why now?"

The initiative, and the extraordinary way it emerged, also indicated the distance between the churches and the public they serve. [?]

Journalists were called to a news conference, but officials refused to say what it was about.

Then the language in which the mysterious developments were explained would have struck most people as complete gobbledygook. [what...? I suppose if a Parisian it girl went to a bird watching conference, she would also regard the content as gobbledygook]

We learned that an "Apostolic Constitution" had been prepared, introducing a "canonical structure" which would establish "Personal Ordinariates".

These would allow former Anglicans to "enter full communion with the Catholic Church" while preserving their "spiritual and liturgical patrimony".

It gave the misleading impression of institutions that were out of touch and irrelevant to the lives of the many unattached but spiritually hungry people whom the churches need to attract.