Category: Blog

The Americans have met the enemy, and it is them. America has coasted on a quarter-century wave of power and prosperity since president Reagan won the Cold War and restarted the economy. America in the 1980s was the only model to be emulated, and a magnet for global capital flows. So compelling were American capital markets that by the late 1990s, almost all the free savings of the world sought an American home. In 2007 a trillion dollars of overseas capital poured into American markets.

Americans no longer had to save; the rest of the world saved for them and lent them money at the lowest interest rates in half a century. Americans no longer had to study; engineers from India to Argentina programmed their computers. And Americans no longer had to face a strategic challenge; after the death of the Soviet Union, so Washington believed, America need only export its self-image. Of all the great illusions of the post-Cold War era, this has turned out to be the most pernicious.

Like emerging Asia in the mid-1990s, Americans used cheap foreign capital to make real-estate speculation into a national pastime. And like Asia in 1997, there is no remedy but to let the sickening slide of asset prices take its course, until the grasshoppers learn to work and save like ants.

Scores of millions who were wealthy on paper a year ago will be penniless by the end of 2008. In the American states where home prices rose the fastest – California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada – prices fell by almost a third during the year to September 30. American equity prices already have fallen by 10% since last October. Both residential and equity values are likely to fall much further before the bloodletting is over.

Americans engaged in a collective delusion according to which infinite wealth would be created on the Internet through shopping and salacious entertainment. Perhaps if someone had perfected virtual-reality sex, the stock price bubble might have continued, but the disappointment attendant on the end of the illusion cut the value of American equities by half.

The world learned that it was dangerous to buy risky American assets and chose instead to buy safe ones. The trouble was that as a whole, the American public was engaged in extremely risky behavior, that is, bidding up home prices with cheap credit. The banks and credit rating agencies declared that a basket of very risky assets could be turned into a very safe asset, by selling off the part of the risk to speculators. This exercise turned out to fall somewhere between the delusional and the fraudulent.

Spengler Putin for President…of the United States
All this was equally true of the UK of course.

Scripture and Liturgy in the Theology of Benedict XVI
at the Catholic Chaplaincy, Oxford, Saturday 1 November 2008

Scott Hahn
Aidan Nichols
Michael Waldstein
Adrian Walker
and our very own Stratford Caldecott – details are here

And Scott Hahn is in London on Friday 31 October.

Now wait a minute, I had a little paper on Benedict on the liturgy somewhere, oh yes, here it is.

Two pieces of sturdy and intelligent common sense from two contemporary apostles:

Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life

Oliver O’Donovan Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion – first published as Fulcrum web sermons. My review of them is here.

The welcome candor of Cardinal Kasper’s remarks at Lambeth can easily be captured in a series of quotations.

* “In our dialogue we have jointly affirmed that the decisions of a local or regional church must not only foster communion in the present context, but must also be in agreement with the church of the past, and in a particular way with the apostolic church as witnessed in the Scriptures, the early councils and the patristic tradition.”

* “It also seems to us [the Catholic Church] that the Anglican commitment to being ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’ has not always functioned in such a way as to maintain the apostolicity of the faith and that synodical government misunderstood as a kind of parliamentary process has at times blocked the sort of episcopal leadership envisaged by Cyprian [St. Cyprian, cited earlier]….”

* “He [Pope John Paul II in settling the question of the ordination of women] concluded, ‘I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church’s faithful.’ This formulation clearly shows that this is not only a disciplinary position but an expression of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church finds herself bound by the will of Jesus Christ and does not feel free to establish a new tradition alien to the tradition of the church of all ages.”

Catholic Culture

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI is a pastor. He preaches and teaches around the Church year, his homily at every feast telling us something about Christ and something about us. Through his Easter and Corpus Christi homilies in particular he teaches us how to relate the passion, crucifixion, resurrection, the eucharist and body of Christ.

His very impressive little book on Jesus of Nazareth takes us through the ministry up to the transfiguration. We come to it in the knowledge that there is second book dealing with the passion and resurrection to follow. But a work of Christian teaching theology would not put incarnation and ministry in one book, which would then look very like a work of biblical studies, and the resurrection in another, and the Church and eucharist in a third. That would attempt to divide the indivisible, Jesus in one book, Christ in a second, and so divide Christ from his people, take away his anointing, until ‘Christ’ becomes the corpse over which the dogs of biblical studies have fought these many years. So it is a joy to find that the passion, resurrection and worship and eucharist are everywhere in this volume.

Pope Benedict on Jesus and Sacrifice

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

In order to mark this Second Reading of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the House of Commons on Monday 12th May we will be holding a prayer vigil together with other groups.

PLEASE COME to our prayer vigil outside Parliament, invite members of your church, Christian groups, family and friends. We will gather at 2pm on 12th May in Old Palace Yard, opposite St Stephen’s Entrance to the House of Lords, Westminster.

At Second Reading, MPs vote on the ‘principle’ of the whole Bill. This is usually a formality and then the Bill goes through to its Committee Stages, Report and Third Reading where MPs can vote on specific amendments.

With faith and humility we must come together to pray for a great miracle. Monday, 12th May is the day after Pentecost and exactly 2 years since the miraculous defeat at Second Reading of the Joffe Bill which would have legalised euthanasia in this country. We would like Christians everywhere to come in their hundreds and stand outside Parliament and pray for this miracle; pray that MPs will vote against the principle of the Bill.

Christian Concern for our Nation

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros â?? named Islamâ??s â??Public Enemy #1â?? by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid â?? has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries â?? mostly Muslim converts â?? he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., â??Life TVâ??). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance â?? free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botrosâ??s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egyptâ??s Copts â?? members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East â?? have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of â??dhimmitudeâ?? (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam â??ten demandsâ?? whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islamâ??s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

Typically, Botrosâ??s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open â?? and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on â??al-dalil we al-burhan,â?? â?? â??evidence and proof,â?? one of his frequent refrains â?? not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence â?? which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers.

Raymond Ibrahim on Father Zakaria Botros

Der Gottesbeweis: Warum wir, wenn es Gott nicht gibt, überhaupt nichts denken können

Solange Vergangenes erinnert wird, ist es nicht schwer, die Frage nach seiner Seinsart zu beantworten. Es hat seine Wirklichkeit eben im Erinnertwerden. Aber die Erinnerung hört irgendwann auf, und irgendwann wird es keine Menschen mehr auf der Erde geben. Schließlich wird die Erde selbst verschwinden. Da zur Vergangenheit immer eine Gegenwart gehört, deren Vergangenheit sie ist, müßten wir also sagen: mit der bewußten Gegenwart – und Gegenwart ist immer nur als bewußte – verschwindet auch die Vergangenheit, und das Futurum exactum verliert seinen Sinn. Aber genau dies können wir nicht denken. Der Satz: “In ferner Zukunft wird es nicht mehr wahr sein, daß wir heute abend hier zusammen waren” ist Unsinn. Er läßt sich nicht denken. Wenn wir einmal nicht mehr hier gewesen sein werden, dann sind wir tatsächlich auch jetzt nicht wirklich hier, wie es der Buddhismus denn auch konsequenterweise behauptet. Wenn gegenwärtige Wirklichkeit einmal nicht mehr gewesen sein wird, dann ist sie gar nicht wirklich. Wer das Futurum exactum beseitigt, beseitigt das Präsens.

Aber noch einmal: Von welcher Art ist diese Wirklichkeit des Vergangenen, das ewige Wahrsein jeder Wahrheit? Die einzige Antwort kann lauten: Wir müssen ein Bewußtsein denken, in dem alles, was geschieht, aufgehoben ist, ein absolutes Bewußtsein. Kein Wort wird einmal ungesprochen sein, kein Schmerz unerlitten, keine Freude unerlebt. Geschehenes kann verziehen, es kann nicht ungeschehen gemacht werden. Wenn es Wirklichkeit gibt, dann ist das Futurum exactum unausweichlich, und mit ihm das Postulat des wirklichen Gottes.

And that, my friends, is an eschatological ontology.

Der letzte Gottesbeweis