Month: June 2008

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The Whole Christ

God could have granted no greater gift to human beings than to cause his Word, through whom he created all things, to be their head, and to fit them to him as his members. He was thus to be both Son of God and Son of Man, one God with the Father, one human with us. The consequence is that when we speak to God in prayer we do not separate the Son from God, and when the body of the Son prays it does not separate its head from itself. The one sole saviour of his body is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, and is prayed to by us as our God. Accordingly we must recognise our voices in him, and his accents in ourselves.

Augustine Exposition of the Psalms – Psalm 85.1

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A matter of moral and spiritual obedience, not of structure

The question is how we understand the purity of the Church for which we are bound to strive in prayer, in self-criticism and self-examination, first, before we venture onto critique of actions and structures. I understand the purity of the Church to be a prophetic notion, first of all concerned with the purity of the Church’s speech. It has to do with the Church’s willingness to be a vehicle of the speech of God to all men and women. And the issue of obedience in the realm of pure speech comes down to our willingness to muffle, to compromise, to evade what God may be saying to us because it’s too uncomfortable for ourselves, too uncomfortable for our society, or to speak it would threaten our cause or whatever.

The notion of prophetic purity is explored, it seems to me, in the Scriptures in very classic ways through the great narratives of the prophets that associated with the figures Elisha and Elijah, 1 Kings and 2 Kings, in which the task of the prophet is not in any sense to withdraw. These prophets are deeply interwoven with their society both in its economic day by day aspects and also in political aspects. They have ongoing relations with the kings of Israel, and indeed other kings, the kings of Judah, the kings of Aram, the kings of Syria.

But they exercise the sovereignty of God’s word and will not be compromised, and the nature of prophetic compromise itself is explored in one or two of these stories, for example, the incredibly beautiful story about the prophet who confronted Jeroboam and having carried off his mighty confrontation with wonderful aplomb is then seduced by the urgent desire for fellowship with other prophets into betraying his mission.

Now the question, are we betraying our mission? – how may we avoid betraying our mission – is surely the starting point, and there’s one answer that can be given that seems to me to be essentially a false turn. And that is that we betray our mission because something in our circumstances isn’t right. Something needs adjusting in the set of presuppositions from which we come to it, the social setting from which we come to it and that if we can doctor that, then we can turn from being cowardly, compromised and ineffective, into being effective, brave and spirited. And it seems to me that that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of purity.

The nature of purity is not having no connections, ties, obligations. It doesn’t consist in not having relationships with the world and the Church. It consists in that purity of heart which is to will one thing. Everyone who has dealt with the way the Church interacts with government in this country has at some stage come away grinding their teeth over what look like cowardly, evasive, altogether unsatisfactory postures that the Church is inclined to strike. And it’s very easy in England if we don’t lift our eyes from the local scene, simply to attribute all these to the set of relationships we have with government and law. But as soon as one lives and works in the Church in other countries, one finds one is facing a universal problem. This is a matter of moral and spiritual obedience, not of structure.

Oliver O’Donovan to the Evangelical Alliance Faith and Nation enquiry 2003

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The freedom of the Yes

The Bible gives one consequential answer to these two queries: the human being is created in the image of God, and God himself is love. It is therefore the vocation to love that makes the human person an authentic image of God: man and woman come to resemble God to the extent that they become loving people.

This fundamental connection between God and the person gives rise to another: the indissoluble connection between spirit and body: in fact, the human being is a soul that finds expression in a body and a body that is enlivened by an immortal spirit.

The body, therefore, both male and female, also has, as it were, a theological character: it is not merely a body; and what is biological in the human being is not merely biological but is the expression and the fulfilment of our humanity.

Likewise, human sexuality is not juxtaposed to our being as person but part of it. Only when sexuality is integrated within the person does it successfully acquire meaning.

Thus, these two links, between the human being with God and in the human being, of the body with the spirit, give rise to a third: the connection between the person and the institution.

Indeed, the totality of the person includes the dimension of time, and the person’s “yes” is a step beyond the present moment: in its wholeness, the “yes” means “always”, it creates the space for faithfulness. Only in this space can faith develop, which provides a future and enables children, the fruit of love, to believe in human beings and in their future in difficult times.

The freedom of the “yes”, therefore, reveals itself to be freedom capable of assuming what is definitive: the greatest expression of freedom is not the search for pleasure without ever coming to a real decision; this apparent, permanent openness seems to be the realization of freedom, but it is not true. The true expression of freedom is the capacity to choose a definitive gift in which freedom, in being given, is fully rediscovered.

In practice, the personal and reciprocal “yes” of the man and the woman makes room for the future, for the authentic humanity of each of them. At the same time, it is an assent to the gift of a new life.

Therefore, this personal “yes” must also be a publicly responsible “yes”, with which the spouses take on the public responsibility of fidelity, also guaranteeing the future of the community. None of us, in fact, belongs exclusively to himself or herself: one and all are therefore called to take on in their inmost depths their own public responsibility.

Marriage as an institution is thus not an undue interference of society or of authority. The external imposition of form on the most private reality of life is instead an intrinsic requirement of the covenant of conjugal love and of the depths of the human person.

His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Ecclesial Convention of Rome 2005

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Preserved in a state of death

The desacralization of man, who no longer knows himself made in the image and likeness of God, advances in tandem with inflated reverence for culture. But we were warned. Half a century ago, Romano Guardini reflected on modernityâ??s faith in culture, which â??took its stance opposite God and His Revelationâ?? and recognized no measure beyond itself. Louis Bouyer, writing in 1982, looked on the dilation of culture and recognized it as a symptom of deep degeneration, the herald of a â??monstrous civilizationâ?? emptied of meaning. He referred to museums as little more than â??cultural refrigeratorsâ?? where â??apparent life is actually preserved in a state of death.â?? More recently, Louis Dupré expanded on Guardiniâ??s theme: â??Culture itself has become the real religion of our time, absorbing traditional religion as a subordinate part of itself.â??

When UNESCO declared Vatican City a World Heritage Site in 1984, it blessed St. Peterâ??s Basilica as â??the fruit of the combined genius of Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Maderna.â?? The witness of Peter did not apply. If it is true, as the historian David Lowenthal asserts, that society restores and preserves what it has ceased to resent, then the Williamsburging of Christianity is no compliment. Worse, it flatters Christians into believing that the blame for a de-Christianized West lies outside themselves. The Museum of Biblical Art is premised on the assumption that our predicament results from a failure of education; continuing ed, buttressed by museum stature, is the cure.
Père Bouyer was not so readily seduced. He understood the Westâ??s descent into post-Christian culture in terms of the adage corruptio optima pessima: â??It is not ignorance of Christianity among those who were never evangelized, nor its negation by those who were never able to accept it, but rather by the betrayal of Christianity by those who received the Gospel and were brought up as Christians.â?? It is not necessary to document the corruption of the best in our own decade and close to home. It is enough to stay mindful that every genuflection by the Church to secular idolsâ??under the pretext of promoting the gospelâ??ends as Vigo Demant foresaw: a proclamation of secularism â??in a Christian idiom.â?? The Paraclete does not need our museums.

Maureen Mullarkey Faith behind Glass

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Overreaching

Our current Government is in danger of sacrificing Liberty in favour of an abused form of equality – not a meaningful equality that enables the excluded to be brought into society, but rather an equality based on dictat and bureaucracy, which overreaches into the realm of personal conscience.

Human rights without the safeguarding of a God-reference tends to set up rights which trump others’ rights when the mood music changes.

John Sentamu Archbishop of York to the Institute of Jewish Policy Research

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From tribes to unified people – and back again

The rapid fragmentation of society, the emergence of isolated communities with only tenuous links to their wider context, and the impact of home-grown terrorism have all led even hard-bitten, pragmatist politicians to ask questions about â??Britishnessâ??: what is at the core of British identity; how can it be reclaimed, passed on and owned by more and more people?

The answers to these questions cannot be only in terms of the â??thinâ?? values, such as respect, tolerance and good behaviour, which are usually served up by those scratching around for something to say. In fact, the answer can only be given after rigorous investigation into the history of nationhood and of the institutions, laws, customs and values which have arisen to sustain and to enhance it. In this connection, as with the rest of Europe, it cannot be gainsaid that the very idea of a unified people under God living in a â??golden chainâ?? of social harmony has everything to do with the arrival and flourishing of Christianity in these parts. It is impossible to imagine how else a rabble of mutually hostile tribes, fiefdoms and kingdoms could have become a nation conscious of its identity and able to make an impact on the world.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester Breaking Faith with Britain

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California Same-Sex ‘Marriage’

On May 15 the California Supreme Court â??overturned the gay marriage ban,â?? according to news media reports. What the court really did was command a radical redefinition of marriage, the most basic institution of any society. It brought same-sex â??marriageâ?? to the largest state in the union and front and center into the presidential campaign.

The arrogance of this judicial fiat cannot be overstated.

The 4-3 decision directly overrules the will of the people of California expressed in a 2000 referendum, when 61.4 percent voted that â??[o]nly a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.â?? The justices seem to have forgotten that they are merely interpreters of the law. Instead they styled themselves as Platoâ??s philosopher kings stooping to undo the will of those they deem less enlightened than they are.

As Heritage Foundation scholars Jennifer Marshall, Daniel Patrick Moloney, and Matthew Spalding wrote, the decision â??is long on public policy preferences, and extremely short on law.â??

According to E.J. Dionne writing in the Washington Post, Carol Corrigan, one of the dissenting justices, is a supporter of same-sex marriage. Nonetheless, she sees such judicial overreach as the breaking of the courtsâ?? â??covenantâ?? with the people of California. According to Dionne, Corrigan:

â?¦argued that in a democracy, â??the people should be given a fair chance to set the pace of change without judicial interference.â?? She added: â??If there is to be a new understanding of the meaning of marriage in California, it should develop among the people of our state and find its expression at the ballot box.â??

God bless her!

Alan Wisdom & Jim Tonkowich California Same-Sex â??Marriageâ??: The Arrogance of the Judges, and the Silence of the Churches

and see James D. Berkley High Priests of Secularity

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People and knowledge flow

With the restructuring of government departments, higher education is now under the control of the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (â??DIUSâ??). We no longer have a Department for Education in this country. The idea of a university as â??a place of teaching universal knowledgeâ?? â?? Cardinal Newmanâ??s phrase â?? has, it seems, no relevance in Brownâ??s Britain. Higher education must now justify itself in terms of the â??innovation and skills agendaâ??. Crudely put, academic research must pay its way by generating real returns in the wider economy. The Research Councilsâ?? big new idea, driven by DIUS, is â??knowledge transferâ??. This is defined as â??improving exploitation of the research base to meet national economic and public service objectivesâ?? to be achieved by means of â??people and knowledge flowâ?? together with â??commercialisation, including Intellectual Property exploitation and entrepreneurial activitiesâ??.

Jonathan Bate The Wrong Idea of a University