Author: Douglas Knight

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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

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Culture of Denial

Far from just a cult of silence about the true nature of radicalism, there’s now a culture of institutionalized denial. West Midlands police with no less a body than the Crown Prosecution Service have had to apologise to Hardcash Productions, the makers of the Dispatches film ‘Undercover Mosque’, for libeling them with accusations of ‘fakery’ and inciting religious hatred. Their exposure of hate preachers at Green Lane Mosque and other Birmingham Islamic centres, rather than being praised as a service to the community, was reported to the broadcast watchdog Ofcom by the police.

* * *

When someone does something bad in the name of religion, they are usually deemed mad or criminal. How do you criminalise a worldview? You can’t. You just pretend it doesn’t exist. You lie to yourself about what is there in front of your face. Finally, if you can’t stand the message you shoot the messenger. The police and more worryingly still the CPS haven’t a clue about how to tackle cultural crime on this scale. It goes to the heart of our own most sacred cow – a secularism that says all religions are equal – and equally irrelevant.

What we are witnessing is the national sickness of the soul. It is a sickness that leads first to moral and actual blindness – and then to social collapse. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

The bloodthirsty rhetoric of the radicals reveals an ugly – and very real – determination to force their religion on the country by fair means or foul, and it is good citizenship for the sake of all our faiths – not racist or islamophobic or an incitement to religious hatred – to recognize it.

Jenny Taylor Undercover mosque: How did police get it so wrong?

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The ascension is progressive

We can only wonder at, and try to recapture for ourselves, the insight shown by the early Christians and by Christians down to the beginning of the second millennium, who placed the Christ of the ascension in the dome of their churches. When the faithful gathered to manifest and become the body of Christ, they saw their Lord both as present and as coming. He is the head and draws his body toward the Father while giving it life through his Spirit. The iconography of the churches of both East and West during that period was as it were an extension of the mystery, of the ascension throughout the entire visible church. Christ, the Lord of all” (Pantocrator), is “the cornerstone which the builders had rejected”; (5) when he is raised up on the cross, he is in fact being raised to the Father’s side and, in his life-giving humanity, becomes with the Father the wellspring of the river of life. (6)

The ascension of the Lord was thus really the new space for the liturgy of the last times, and the iconography of the church built of stone was its transparent symbol. (8) In his ascension, then, Christ did not at all disappear; on the contrary, he began to appear and to come. For this reason, the hymns we use in our churches sing of him as “the Sun of justice” that rises in the East. He who is the splendor of the Father and who once descended into the depths of our darkness is now exalted and fills all things with his light.

Our last times are located between that first ascension and the ascension that will carry him to the zenith of his glorious parousia. The Lord has not gone away to rest from his redemptive toil; his “work” (Jn 5:17) continues, but now at the Father’s side, and because he is there he is now much closer to us, “very near to us,” (9) in the work that is the liturgy of the last times. “He leads captives,” namely, us, to the new world of his resurrection, and bestows his “gifts,” his Spirit, on human beings (see Eph 4:7-10). His ascension is a progressive movement, “from beginning to beginning.” (10)

Jesus is, of course, at his Father’s side. If, however, we reduce this “ascent” to a particular moment in our mortal history, we simply forget that beginning with the hour of his cross and resurrection Jesus and the human race are henceforth one. He became a son of man in order that we might become children of God. The ascension is progressive “until we all … form the perfect Man fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself” (Eph 4:13). The movement of the ascension will be complete only when all the members of his body have been drawn to the Father and brought to life by his Spirit. Is that not the meaning of the answer the angels gave to the disciples: “Why are you Galileans standing here looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in the same way as you have seen him go to heaven” (Acts 1:11). The ascension does not show us in advance the setting of the final parousia; it is rather the activation of the paschal energy of Christ who “fills all things” (Eph 4: 1 0). It is the ever-new “moment” of his coming.

Jean Corbon The Wellspring of Worship

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John Owen conference

A conference on the theology of John Owen

Westminster College
Cambridge, UK
19–22 August 2008

Willem van Asselt
Utrecht University, Holland

Stephen R Holmes
St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews, UK

Michael S Horton
Westminster Seminary, California, USA

George Hunsinger
Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, USA

Kelly M Kapic
Covenant College, Georgia, USA

Suzanne MacDonald
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, USA

Sebastian Rehnman
Johannelunds Theological Seminary, Sweden

Alan Spence
United Reformed Church, London, UK

Carl R Trueman
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, USA

Further details at John Owen Today and a booking forms from johnowentoday@aol.com

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Fit for Mission III

The Role of Parents in God’s Plan of Salvation

It is a fundamental principle of Catholic education that parents, as co-creators with God of the life of their child, are the primary educators of their children (CCC 2223). Parents have an ‘irreplaceable and inalienable’ role in education because of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children.

The family is the school of love, where each person learns to love and be loved. It is only through knowing that we are loved, and that we are lovable, that we can fully become the person God intends us to be. Love is the necessary requirement for the true fulfilment of all our fundamental needs as human beings – intellectual, physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and eschatological.

Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue of Lancaster Fit for Mission?