Author: Douglas Knight

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Truth and goodness

The heart of the problem lies with the prominence given to what are seen to be the supreme values of today, liberty and equality. These are not the supreme values. Truth and goodness are the supreme values. Liberty is seen as the absence of restraint, rather than the freedom to do what is right, with equality being transformed into a justification of the sameness of social institutions. That is why I went to war with the Labour Governments in Westminster and Holyrood last year, due to what is called political correctness, as they made liberty and equality the supreme moral values for the agenda that they wanted to introduce.

In effect, what they were doing was introducing a new kind of morality, a kind of morality that was bou nd to result in moral mayhem, as it was not based on truth and goodness. That is what happened. We now have a kind of state sponsored morality that is at war with our Christian tradition. Mark me well when I tell you why this is so. It is because liberty and equality have replaced truth and goodness. This is the heart of the problem. When liberty and equality are made the supreme values, not truth and goodness, then we have an agenda that is no longer answerable to what is true and what is good. This is by far the most important thing that I am going to say tonight. So write it down. I will repeat if for all of you. When liberty and equality are made the supreme values, not truth and goodness, we have an agenda that is no longer answerable to what is true and good.

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I remind you that the greatest obstacle to halting the advance of the secularist culture has been our failure to recognise the ambition of the protagonists of that agenda. In seven years there has been a massive transformation in our understanding of family life. The plan for that transformation taking place at the time were not widely known and were so ambitious that, even for those in the know, they were not taken seriously.

Bishop Joseph Devine (Motherwell, Scotland) Saying No to Secularism – Gonzaga Lecture, Glasgow

So write it down. I will repeat it for all of you


This is how a bishop speaks

Thanks to the Hermeneutic of Continuity

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Saint Paul

Saint Paul’s Journeys into Philosophy:An International Conference

Vancouver School of Theology at the University of British Columbia Vancouver June 4-6, 2008

Join us for a conference which explores the critical appropriations of Saint Paul by recent and contemporary Continental philosophers, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin, Jacob Taubes, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek, and others. An
international group of philosophers, theologians, biblical scholars and literary theorists will present papers on a wide range of themes arising from this recent philosophical appropriation of Saint Paul. Plenary speakers include Stephen Fowl, Paul Griffiths, Travis Kroeker and J. Louis Martyn. There will also be presentations by Creston Davis, Neil Elliott, Paul Gooch, Douglas Harink, Chris Huebner, Mark Reasoner, Jeffrey Robbins, Gordon Zerbe, Jens Zimmerman and others.

Paul Griffiths and Lou Martyn are certainly worth going to hear.

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Candour

Candour is of the greatest importance for the public realm itself. Candour is a simple public duty, often unperformed, or performed badly, out of simple reluctance to take responsibility for the truth on which the community depends. Behind many a story of tyranny lies collusion between oppressor and oppressed, a community that prefers to accept a shrunken public realm rather than pay the price of discerning and articulating complex truths in public.

Oliver O’Donovan The Ways of Judgment

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SST

Off to the Society for the Study of Theology conference, at Durham, with my half-finished short paper ‘The Whole Christ and the High Priest’ which, as usual, attempts to summarise what I have learned from everyone in the last 12 months. I’ll post it when I get back, and those Holy Week pieces too.

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Family at Notre Dame

The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture Fall conference 2008 is on

The Family: Searching for Fairest Love

Only the truth will prepare you for a love which can be called â??fairest love.â?? Pope John Paul II Letter to Families

We are mindful of the fundamental role played by the family in civil society, in the political order, and in the life of the Church. The conference will celebrate the anniversaries of two papal documents, Mulieris Dignitatem and Humanae Vitae.

Curious that theology, that is, the Christian doctrine of God, does not appear in the list of possible topics for papers. I presume there is room for some actual theology of the body, and not all by Angelo Scola ?

On the same subject, have you seen Robert George’s remarkable Law and Moral Purpose?

Bodily union is thus personal union, and comprehensive personal unionâ??marital unionâ??is founded on bodily union. What is unique about marriage is that it truly is a comprehensive sharing of life, a sharing founded on the bodily union made uniquely possible by the sexual complementarity of man and womanâ??a complementarity that makes it possible for two human beings to become, in the language of the Bible, â??one flesh,â?? and for this one-flesh union to be the foundation of a relationship in which it is intelligible for two persons to bind themselves to each other in pledges of permanence, monogamy, and fidelity.

So, then, how should we understand what marriage is? Marriage, considered not as a mere legal convention or cultural artifact, is a one-flesh communion of persons that is consummated and actualized by acts that are procreative in type, whether or not they are procreative in effect. It is an intrinsic human good, and, precisely as such, it provides a more than merely instrumental reason for choice and action.

The bodily union of spouses in marital acts is the biological matrix of their marriage as a comprehensive, multilevel sharing of life: a relationship that unites the spouses at all levels of their being. Marriage is naturally ordered to the good of procreation (and is, indeed, uniquely apt for the nurturing and education of children) as well as to the good of spousal unity. At the same time, it is not a mere instrumental good whose purpose is the generating and rearing of children. ­Marriage, considered as a one-flesh union, is intrinsically valuable.

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Fit for Mission II

The Goal of a Catholic School is the Promotion of the Fully Human Person

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10)

The Church’s recent teaching on the purpose of Catholic education states clearly that its goal is the promotion of the human person. What does thismean for the schools and colleges of our diocese? I think it means the following:

The fundamental needs of the human person are the focus of Catholic education – intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual, and eschatological (Our eternal destiny).

These fundamental needs can only be truly fulfilled through a rich and living encounter with the deepest truths about God and the human person.

This is why Christ and His Gospel must be the foundation of the educational project of each school and college, because He is the ‘the perfect Man in whom all human values find their fullest perfection’ (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School).

Therefore, the Catholic school or college is called to keep the Gospel whole and alive amongst pupils, families, and staff.

Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue of Lancaster Fit for Mission?

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Robert Spaemann

One clue about the significance of Robert Spaemann is that Oliver O’Donovan translated his Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’.

Now have you seen

Das unsterbliche Gerücht. Die Frage nach Gott und die Täuschung der Moderne and at Amazon.de ?

Das unsterbliche Gerücht
Gottesbeweise nach Nietzsche
Deszendenz und Intelligent Design
Christentum und Philosophie der Neuzeit
Funktionale Religionsbegründung und Religion
Religiöse Identität
Sollten universalistische Religionen auf Mission verzichten?
Religion und ›Tatsachenwahrheit‹
Über einige Schwierigkeiten mit der Erbsündenlehre
Die christliche Sicht des Leidens
Über die gegenwärtige Lage des Christentums

And there is also Grenzen: Zur ethischen Dimension des Handelns (Klett-Cotta 2001) and Der letzte Gottesbeweis (Pattlock 2007)

And his Begotten nor Made? (PDF). There are more articles by Spaemann at Das Portal zur katholischen Geisteswelt. You can see a video of the man himself. The interviewer asks Spaemann to comment on his own father’s (Heinrich Spaemann) saying that ‘We drift towards what we see and become what we look at’. Robert Spaemann responds by quoting from the Eucharist, ‘Looking up, Jesus gave thanks’.

Learn more about him at de.wikipedia.org

(For something between the gist and gibberish, paste the words “Robert Spaemanns Vater, Heinrich Spaemann” into Google and click on ‘Translate this page’) Spaemann is not hard to read either. Other great Germans for PhD purposes? Try Oswald Bayer, Ingolf Dalferth or Hans Ulrich

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The Grandeur of Reason

The Centre of Theology and Philosophy

presents

The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism
1-4 September 2008 Rome

The Popeâ??s argument for an enlarged sense of reason is an argument for a re-hellenization of reason. In this context the universalism of Christianity has a concrete role to play as that particular cultural exemplar of the symphonic synthesis of the spirit of rational human inquiry with faith in divine revelation. Therein Christianityâ??s universalism is a universalism grounded in a cultural tradition that cherishes at once the â??grandeurâ?? of human reason and the personal revelation of the One God.

Oliver O’Donovan
Robert Spaemann
David Schindler
Bentley Hart
van Inwagen
Fergus Kerr
Hauerwas
Agamben
Zizek

A mix of saints and rascals, and a bit short on talent from the Catholic hierarchy. Still, â??guests of honourâ?? – I wonder who they can have in mind?

We are interested in papers that cover any topic relevant to the conference theme, but are especially interested in questions of religion and empire, Christianity and Islam, humanism and universalism, the reunification of the Apostolic Churches, and Scripture and Metaphysics.

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Cardinal O'Brien – the government has no mandate for these changes

At this time as well as thinking of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we are asked to consider again what I have described as the â??essential aspect of a Christian vocation â?? namely to be a missionary peopleâ??. I think that there is a greater need than ever before for each and every Christian to be aware of that call at this present time.

I think that a fundamental concern of all of our people at this present time and one which we ourselves as Christians must take very seriously is that concerning the future of human life itself. The beliefs which we have previously held, and the standards by which we have lived throughout our lives and by which Christians have lived for the last 2000 years are being challenged at this present time in ways in which they have never been challenged before!

The norm has always been that children have been born as the result of the love of man and woman in the unity of a marriage. That belief has of course long been challenged. However I believe that a greater challenge than that even faces us â?? the possibility now facing our country is that animal â?? human embryos be produced with the excuse that perhaps certain diseases might find a cure from these resulting embryos.

What I am speaking of is the process whereby scientists create an embryo containing a mixture of animal and human genetic material. If I were preaching this homily in France, Germany, Italy, Canada or Australia I would be commending the government for rightly banning such grotesque procedures. However here in Great Britain I am forced to condemn our government for not only permitting but encouraging such hideous practices.

Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has given the Governmentâ??s support to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular Bill.

With full might of government endorsement, Gordon Brown is promoting a Bill that will allow the creation of animal â?? human hybrid embryos. He is promoting a Bill which will add to the 2.2 million human embryos already destroyed or experimented upon. He is promoting a Bill allowing scientists to create babies whose sole purpose will be to provide, without consent of anyone, parts of their organs or tissues. He is promoting a Bill which will sanction the raiding of dead peoples tissue to manufacture yet more embryos for experimentation. He is promoting a Bill which denies that a child has a biological father, allows tampering with birth certificates, removing biological parents, and inserting someone altogether different. And this Bill will indeed be used to further extend the abortion laws.

This Bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life. In some other European countries one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal. I can say that the government has no mandate for these changes: they were not in any election manifesto, nor do they enjoy widespread public support. The opposite has indeed taken place â?? the time allowed for debate in Parliament and indeed in the country at large has been shockingly short. One might say that in our country we are about to have a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion â?? without many people really being aware of what is going on.

Today as we celebrate in the resurrection the triumph of life over death I urge you to ensure that life continues to triumph over these deathly proposals. Being a Christian and acting as a Christian must be one and the same thing. Gathered here on this Easter Day we realise that we are indeed followers of Jesus Christ and with that comes responsibilities. May God indeed help us all to be missionary at this present time and to hand on the saving message of Jesus Christ in a world which does not seem prepared to receive it


Cardinal Keith O’Brien bishop of Edinburgh and St Andrew’s

Another bishop without his own website, who has only the Daily Record by which to communicate with his flock. But, this time, in Scotland, the whole sermon is faithfully reproduced.

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Finally – a website. Marvellous.

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Species-bending

In his Easter Sunday message, given at Durham Cathedral, Rt Rev Tom Wright issued a rallying call to all faiths to object to the “1984-style” proposals.

As pressure from religious leaders mounted on prime minister Gordon Brown to allow a free vote on the issue of embryo research in the Commons, Bishop Wright warned that society was in danger of learning nothing from the “dark tyrannies” of the last century.

He told his congregation: “Our present government has been pushing through, hard and fast, legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby. “In this 1984-style world, we create our own utopia by our own efforts, particularly our science and technology.

“The irony is that this secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people, and to play games with the humanity of those in between.

“Gender-bending was so last century; we now do species-bending.

“It shouldn’t just be Roman Catholics who are objecting. It ought to be Anglicans and Presbyterians and Baptists and Russian Orthodox and Pentecostals and all other Christians, and Jews and Muslims as well.”

BBC report of Bishop Tom Wright’s Easter Day sermon

Dear bishops, get your sermons out on your own diocesan websites.

How do we know that this is an accurate report of what you said? A bishop who relies on the BBC to communicate with his people cannot wonder at the hurt and confusion that flock experiences when the BBC’s interpretation introduces distortions. We want to read the whole sermon in order to see how all this ethics fits within the theology, that is, how the resurrection frees us from the fears of which this legislation is the expression. Sermons of this sort should be simultaneously pastoral letters read from every pulpit at each mass on the Sunday they are issued.