"This, then is our desert:
to live facing despair,
but not to consent.
To trample it down under hope in the Cross.
To wage war against despair unceasingly.
That war is our wilderness.
If we wage it courageously,
we will find Christ at our side.
If we cannot face it,
we will never find him."
Quentin Massys-The Virgin and Child (1529) Musée du Louvre
What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this day
That sees December turned to May.
Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly shorn
Thus on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis he is born. whose quickening birth
Gives life and lustre, public mirth,
To heaven and the under-earth.
We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him, to welcome him.
The nobler part of all the house here, is the heart.
Which we will give him: and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath.
To do him honour. who's our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.
Robert Herrick
"This day that sees December turned to May" - an appropriate sentiment perhaps for the end of the Christmas Octave; May is, after all, Mary's month.
Meteorologically, rather than metaphorically or theologically, it may not seem like May, but the weather outside is doing a fair impersonation of early spring; in the garden daffodil bulbs are shooting, we have roses still in bloom, feverfew and snapdragons in flower and even, in a sheltered spot, a tobacco plant (nicotiana) producing highly scented flowers. It's very strange, if not unwelcome, weather for New Year's Eve, but tomorrow we will enjoy its upside down nature even more as in our liturgies we honour the Holy Mother of God, whose role in the mystery of our salvation turns the world on its head.
Another new year, who knows what it will bring?
I know I'm probably in a minority of one, but I've always been more than a little disappointed with Peter Glenville's film, 'Becket,' for various reasons, Anouilh's invention of the saint's Saxon origins being among them. Great actors though O'Toole and Burton undoubtedly were, neither seems really to get under the skin of the character he is portraying, the result being that the film seems too stagey, with something indefinable missing. As I say - I'm probably in a very small minority....
Nevertheless, I'll stick to T.S. Eliot and Murder in the Cathedral.
This is the incomparable Paul Schofield delivering Becket's Christmas sermon from the play:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God,
even to them that believe on his name:
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth.
A modern setting of the traditional English carol, The Holly & the Ivy, by Matthew Owens: sung by the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge: [Or is it? See comment]
'Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free from charge, so is He come to free us all. Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to pardon. Let the gentile take courage in that he is called to life.' Pope St Leo the Great
In contrast to all the strange and ill-thought-through theories of pagan influence on the early Church's celebrations, there's a good article here on the origins and date of Christmas - from Standing on My Head
The BBC has taken great delight in reporting on its Radio 4 midnight news bulletin (Christmas Eve - thanks for that!) that a latest social trends report says that fewer people in England & Wales are prepared to describe themselves as Christians, and that those who do don't necessarily equate that with a definite religious belief.
Well, surprise, surprise! After decades of being force fed with this by the educational system, the media and even sections of the Church, it's hardly surprising that some people have swallowed it whole. The advertising industry (not to mention the greatest exponents of black propaganda) works on precisely this principle.
As Noel Coward said, in another context, in his play Private Lives, " Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."
[Link when it becomes available - now here ]
In total contrast to the last few years, we are having a remarkably warm spell of weather in the run up to Christmas; the thermometer registered 14 degrees (Celsius) here yesterday - on the 'shortest' day of the year.
This is the time when in the great Austin Farrer's words, "Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy." The mass readings and the offices over the next days fully reflect this. The Lord is at hand.
Here is a pre-Christmas photo of a group of donkeys on one of the farms in the parish. We stopped this morning as we were passing to wish them a Merry Christmas!
I can't see donkeys without calling to mind that poem of Chesterton, which, if read at this time of year, cuts across the ever present danger of sentimentality and reminds us of the aim and purpose of the Lord's Incarnation. The stable and the cross cannot be separated:
Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.
"Neither in literature nor in history has the donkey figured as other than an ambassador of peace and healing. It was on a swift donkey that the Shunamite woman rode in search of Elisha for the healing of her son; a donkey carried the Mother of the Saviour in the time of her need, bore the child to safety in the days of his infancy, and carried him in triumph on His entry into Jerusalem."
So, the British supermarket giant, Tesco, who many of us have suspected for a while of seeking world domination of the retail trade, has (through the words of one of its senior executives) seen fit to pontificate on moral theology and the 'evil' of those who uphold traditional Christian teaching on sexuality and the definition of 'marriage.' Whatever our views may be on the latter, surely this is a step too far.... one might have thought.....
Whatever happened to the customer is always right? They must be very confident of their market share at a time of economic recession. I look forward to the Tesco view on the relationship between God and mammon. Although, from a store which puts up its Christmas trees on 31st October......
It will have to be Waitrose after all, despite the extra miles in the car.
See Fr Ray Blake's blog [here] for the full story
While the Prime Minister calls (selectively) for a return to the Christian values which are the foundation of our society, the Inspectorate of Constabulary in a report published today states that police officers could 'lawfully' have shot arsonists in some cases during the summer rioting in England, [See here]
Mob violence, riots, and now advocacy of the use of live weapons in response - another nail in the coffin of the civilised Britain we used to know and love? This recommendation itself is symptomatic enough.
Welcome to the modern world. Thus we have made it.
Two contrasting recent deaths:
The appalling and forgettable North Korean dynastic communist dictator, Kim Jong- il, and the impressive and courageous Czech playwright, anti-communist dissident and democratic politician, Vaclav Havel.
A post here at Mercator.net contrasting the reaction to the deaths of Vaclav Havel and Christopher Hitchens.
Liberal historical revisionism, Dickens & M.R. James:
It was interesting to hear on 'Start the Week,' BBC Radio's Monday morning Andrew Marr programme, Canon Giles Fraser, giving his best impersonation of the uber-modern jolly, flippant Anglican Vicar, complete with Blair-like estuary English, being given a little bit of a lesson on the significance of evil and the complications of an alienated human nature by writers Susan Hill and Clare Tomalin in a discussion on the greatest of ghost story writers, M.R. James.
But it serves Giles Fraser right for his all-too-predictable theologically liberal stuff earlier in the programme about the Emperor Constantine having hijacked the Faith and corrupted its early purity (a plug for an upcoming demolition job on the origins of Christmas, to be broadcast - of course - by the BBC on Christmas Day) - not to mention his positively uncomprehending and outrageously 'Spartist' comments on the Nicene Creed. What is the ecclesial purpose of a Creed again - please? Contrast this with the long-standing Anglican (Catholic) tradition that true social concern and doctrinal orthodox must go hand in hand.
Yet more very Establishment anti-establishment views. Interesting? Not so very much.
Although I do agree with him that Christianity has to be about Salvation (although we do need to define that: whether we like it or not, we're back to creeds again) and not just mere moralism.
Listen here
For those of us who have grown up in Britain, there's no escaping Christmas nostalgia. It's part of us, whether we like it or not. Our French friends think Christmas in Britain is massively over hyped, and I find myself largely in agreement with them - it's too commercial, it goes on for ever and we celebrate it too early. Of course, this may be because Christmas is now all we have in terms of a truly common, national celebration, largely due to the consequences of Tudor monarchical greed, and distinctly damp weather (although, having said that, Orthodox Russia manages its yearly celebrations fairly well, with a far more inhospitable climate.) As we sink further into secularist banality, Easter has lost its hold on the popular imagination, being for most people simply a marking of the change of seasons and the opportunity to eat masses of guilt-free chocolate.
This is Peter Hitchens waxing lyrical (for the most part) on the traditional English Christmas:
"Of course, like most children in countries where Christmas is celebrated, I was from my earliest childhood thrilled by the promise of presents, the exhilarating, intoxicating smell of the pine tree in the house, the rich foods and the feeling that this was above all others a special time of year... In fact I much preferred the weeks before Christmas, the strange light in the sky (the melodramatic, suspenseful nature of late December English weather is perfectly described in John Masefield’s enchanting book ‘The Box of Delights’) , the carol singing, the stirring of the pudding (the Church of England has now abolished ‘Stir-Up Sunday, in its incessant effort to get rid of everything about the Church that anybody actually likes. The prayer for that day contains an exhortation to ‘Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people’ and refers to ‘plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works’, and that Sunday, a month before Christmas, was also in many homes the traditional date for stirring of puddings. I have never been sure if this is an accident, or a light-hearted insertion by a jolly Bishop centuries ago) ... So for me the season is one of darkness illuminated with carols sung by lamplight, the sun low in the sky, and a promise, never entirely fulfilled on the day itself, of something wonderful to come. That sticks, when all else falls away..."
That resonates.
For those of us who grew up in rather more robustly ecclesiastically observant families, we would have to add to our childhood memories the Advent season's hymns, collects, and propers, a building sense of anticipation culminating in the decoration of the Christmas tree (while in the background the radio broadcast the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's Cambridge), followed by early stints serving at the altar at Midnight Mass and Christmas Day, not to mention the feasts of the Christmas Octave. Not for us the contemporary and lazy anticipation of Christmas from the beginning of December.
But above all, what remains in my mind is the stability of it all. As children (yes, we were fortunate) we felt safe, loved and secure; it's one of the reasons Nick Clegg, the British deputy prime minister, gets the 1950s and 60s * so completely wrong - not that he is old enough to remember them. [See here]
[*My own recollection, as a young child, of the 'sixties' in provincial Britain, is that nothing much had changed; the disastrous political and social legacy of that decade only really began to be felt by most people in the 1970s, which, for those of us at school then and beginning to be aware of the wider world, was a dark, depressing and dangerous decade, with the constant threat of economic collapse, political instability and a descent into chaos.]
"When we consider our situation like that, when we lift our eyes from the crowded by-pass to the eternal hills; then, how much the personal and practical things we have to deal with are enriched. What meaning and coherence come into our scattered lives. We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even on the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life. But now, with this widening of the horizon, our personal ups and downs, desires, cravings, efforts, are seen in scale; as small and transitory spiritual facts, within a vast, abiding spiritual world, and lit by a steady spiritual light. And at once a new coherence comes into our existence, a new tranquillity and release. Like a chalet in the Alps, that homely existence gains atmosphere, dignity, significance from the greatness of the sky above it and the background of the everlasting hills.
The people of our time are helpless, distracted and rebellious, unable to interpret that which is happening, and full of apprehension about that which is to come, largely because they have lost this sure hold on the eternal; which gives to each life meaning and direction, and with meaning and direction gives steadiness. I do not mean by this a mere escape from our problems and dangers, a slinking away from the actual to enjoy the eternal. I mean an acceptance and living out of the actual, in its homeliest details and its utmost demands, in the light of the eternal; and with that peculiar sense of ultimate security which only a hold on the eternal brings. When the vivid reality which is meant by these rather abstract words is truly possessed by us, when that which is unchanging in ourselves is given its chance, and emerges from the stream of succession to recognise its true home and goal, which is God—then, though much suffering may, indeed will, remain; apprehension, confusion, instability, despair, will cease."
THE Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Christopher Hill, who chairs the House of Bishops’ Europe Panel, said on Wednesday that it would be “disastrous” for Britain to become “isolated from the rest of Europe”. He was speaking after the Prime Minister blocked changes to the Lisbon Treaty at a summit in Brussels last week.
As someone has commented to me, this is presumably why over the past 20 years Bishop Hill and his Anglican episcopal colleagues have pursued policies which have caused the Church of England to become isolated from the major Christian body on the Continent? I can't say fairer than that - except perhaps to add, isolated from the second largest Christian body in Europe, too. (See here).
Yet another example of establishment myopia; let's not be too cruel and call it hypocrisy - it is nearly Christmas, after all.
The Prime Minister's address at Christ Church, Oxford [here] is broadly very welcome indeed. The squeals of the ideological secularists (fundamentalists by another name) can be heard throughout the land.
Yet...... how does he reconcile his words with the 'equality agenda' his government (actually, H.M. the Queen's Government, but never mind) seems to be actively pursuing - another price to be paid for coalition politics?
The tenor of the address has too much of 'Christianity as the social cement of the nation' about it for my liking, but it's better than nothing. And better by far than any utterance made by his two immediate predecessors.
Update: perhaps we can't blame the Coalition: see [here]
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
and reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other,
ordering all things well:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.
O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter, suaviter disponensque omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.
A booklet of significant texts in the [ongoing? downgraded?] dialogue between Anglicans and Roman Catholics can be ordered or downloaded [link here] from the Anglican Centre in Rome.
"The ecumenical pilgrimage is one of discoveries. Some are painful discoveries of how we are viewed by others or how we have hurt and harmed others: this requires of all of us the healing of memories. Our joyful discoveries are what we have in common and what others can offer us.”
Thus writes Bishop Stephen Platten, the Chairman of the Anglican Centre in Rome, in his introduction to a booklet of texts significant in Anglican – Roman Catholic Relations, ranging from King James I, via Lambeth Conferences and Vatican II, up to the present day. The booklet is part of the Anglican Centre’s work of building friendly and informed relations, and helps to put the new ARCIC III conversations into context..."
Whether or not we think, in the wake of unilateral innovations by Anglican provinces, we can place any hope whatsoever in the future of 'official' ecumenical dialogue between the Anglican Communion and Rome, this is well worth reading - even if only as a matter of historical interest or what might have been had things turned out differently. Some have said that agreements and past achievements are always 'in the bank' to be dusted down and withdrawn to be used in the future. Sadly, as things are, it seems unlikely that this particular bank will have many customers - always with the ultimate proviso that "with God all things are possible."
No, not the glorious spoof from the 1980s, which used to be online somewhere, but which I can't now find ... but Jezebel's Trumpet itself, as John Hunwicke's blog always called it.
A few years ago I gave up reading it - for the same reason I've stopped listening to the BBC's Sunday programme (which has a similar slant) - because it ruined the weekend, and going to the altar for the parish mass in either a fury or a state of depression wasn't doing me - or anyone else - any good whatsoever.
Anyway, it's the courageous mouthpiece now, not of the Anglo-Catholics who founded it, but of the very liberal C of E establishment. Peter Mullen [here] prefers the Beano; I can't disagree.
After one of the warmest autumns on record (the first real frost here was in early December), winter has arrived. This morning we awoke to see the fields on the hills above the village and the cliffs of the Wyndcliffe covered with the first snowfall of the season. The still-flowering geraniums in the hanging baskets and the roses in the border look distinctly sorry for themselves now.
As winter closes in, and Advent is about to gather pace, news today of more friends joining (or about to join) the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. As ever, our prayers go with them, as theirs continue to be said for us who still remain. Slightly disturbingly, the web is full of reports and comment this morning about the direction and the future of the Ordinariate itself. I will resolutely make no comment; those who are involved directly can best speak about the accuracy, or otherwise, of the reports, and be able to separate information from disinformation. Of course, as we know, not everyone, neither Anglican nor Roman Catholic, wishes Pope Benedict's project well, and some - on this side of the Tiber ( I can't comment on the other bank), and certainly on this side of the Severn - would be very glad to be rid of traditional Anglo-Catholicism; frankly they would prefer it to die out altogether than have any future, either where it now is, or transplanted into an at least potentially friendlier climate...
On that subject, it's usually unremarked upon these days (I wonder why?) how the 'Catholic' legacy of Anglicanism, particularly that of its early to mid- twentieth century heyday, has penetrated so deeply into its liturgies. I was in the congregation at my daughter's school's end-of-term carol service yesterday, and the words of Eric Milner-White's beautiful and remarkable bidding prayer resounded around the ancient building with, I suspect, very few picking up on its theological or ecclesial implications. Unfortunately, perhaps because in happier times the church housed a religious community, most of my fellow parents seemed to have taken a vow of silence: the singing - of the 'modernised' carols - was barely audible, despite the abbey being pretty full. In partial compensation, the playing of the organ was glorious, the carol service ending with the Widor Toccata So, is this the future of the Church of England - desperately trying to minister to the embarrassedly indifferent and the completely uninterested, having stripped its message of anything that might have the power to convert? It seems more and more that many in our rapidly changing western culture have simply lost the capacity for belief and worship. It's winter in more ways than one. Yet I refuse to end on a pessimistic note; as any residual Christian influence fades away from society in this long-drawn-out twilight of the ages of faith, the opportunity will present itself, perhaps to a smaller and reinvigorated Church, to proclaim again the message of the Word made Flesh. To put it another way, "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
In her book 'Mysticism' Evelyn Underhill famously described St John of the Cross, whose feast day falls today, as "at once the sanest of saints and the most penetrating of psychologists." This is from another work, 'The Spiritual Life' published in 1936, containing some encouraging words this Advent, when, for some of us, many things seem so fragile and impermanent:
"St. John of the Cross, in a famous and beautiful poem, described the beginning of the journey of his soul to God:
“In an obscure night Fevered by Love’s anxiety O hapless, happy plight I went, none seeing me, Forth from my house, where all things quiet be”
Not many of us could say that. Yet there is no real occasion for tumult, strain, conflict, anxiety, once we have reached the living conviction that God is All. All takes place within Him. He alone matters, He alone is. Our spiritual life is His affair; because, whatever we may think to the contrary, it is really produced by His steady attraction, and our humble and self forgetful response to it. It consists in being drawn, at His pace and in His way, to the place where He wants us to be; not the place we fancied for ourselves.
Some people may seem to us to go to God by a moving staircase; where they can assist matters a bit by their own efforts, but much gets done for them and progress does not cease. Some appear to be whisked past us in a lift; whilst we find ourselves on a steep flight of stairs with a bend at the top, so that we cannot see how much farther we have to go. But none of this really matters; what matters is the conviction that all are moving towards God, and, in that journey, accompanied, supported, checked and fed by God. Since our dependence on Him is absolute, and our desire is that His Will shall be done, this great desire can gradually swallow up, neutralise all our small self-centred desires. When that happens life, inner and outer, becomes one single, various act of adoration and self-giving; one undivided response of the creature to the demand and pressure of Creative Love."
For those from all traditions who do their best to keep up with Anglican developments (and haven't yet completely despaired of the point of all that), another news service has been launched to compete with the 'official' sources such as ACNS and ENS (TEC's mouthpiece in the United States)
Named 'Anglican Ink.' it will feature longer articles from an 'orthodox' perspective than currently appear on other sites. The link [here] can also be found in the blog list to the right of this blog. We wish them well.
Angelus ad Virginem subintrans in conclave
Virginis formidinem demulcens inquit: 'Ave!'
Ave, Regina virginum, caeli terraeque Dominum
concipies et paries intacta salutem hominum,
tu porta caeli facta medela criminum.
Quomodo conciperem quae virum non cognovi?
Qualiter infringerem quod firma mente vovi?
Spiritus Sancti gratia perficiet haec omnia;
ne timeas, sed gaudeas, secura quod castimonia
manebit in te pura Dei potentia.
Ad haec virgo nobilis respondens inquit ei:
Ancilla sum humilis omnipotentis Dei.
Tibi caelesti nuntio, tanti secreti conscio
consentiens et cupiens videre factum quod audio;
parata sum parere Dei consilio.
[Angelus disparuit, et statim puellaris
uterus intumuit vi partus virginalis.
quo circumdatus utero novum mensium numero;
post exiit, et iniit conflictum, affligens humero;
Crucem qua dedit ictum hosti mortifero.]
Eia Mater Domini, quae pacem reddidisti
Angelis et homini, cum Christum genuisti:
tuum exora Filium ut se nobis propitium
exhibeat et deleat peccata: praestans auxilium
vita frui beata post hoc exsilium.
"The importance of the doctrine will be more clearly seen when we consider what the presence of original sin in the soul implies. It implies the absence of that holiness 'without which no man shall see the Lord,' a state of separation from God, the loss of supernatural grace with the consequent incapacity to know, love, and serve God and to attain to union with Him. It does not imply the total corruption of human nauture, but only a loss or privation of what human nature needs for its perfection. Now it is clear from the words of the Archangel at the Annunciation, 'Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women,' that our Lady was not then in a state either of original or actual sin. For fullness of grace and sin cannot exist at once in the soul, neither does God dwell in the soul which is in a state of sin. There has never been any real question in the Church of the sinlessness of Mary from her birth..."
Bede Frost (Anglican Benedictine monk of Nashdom): 'The Mystery of Mary' (Mowbray, 1938)
Ave Maria: the setting by the sixteenth century English composer Robert Parsons,
sung by The Sixteen
No one (I hope) would seek to defend tasteless and insensitive remarks about those who commit suicide, particularly if they refer to specific cases and individuals. Yet the outcry over the recent attention seeking remarks by Jeremy Clarkson (yes, him again) about those who throw themselves in front of trains, and the twittered comments of a professional footballer in the wake of the tragic death of the manager Gary Speed, gives rise to very serious concerns. It would seem that one is now required not only to feel acutely sorry for the mental state of the person who feels driven to suicide, but in some way to respect the choice itself.
The Church does not for the most part fall into this trap; while our attitude to those who commit suicide is that that we withhold premature judgements about the eternal destiny of individuals with often overwhelming pressures upon them, the act itself is always morally and societally wrong and,theologically, a rejection of the love and mercy of God.
Anyone who has ever known or ministered to families of those who have committed suicide, all of whom remain life-long victims, knows their utter desperation, despair, horror and guilt, the consequences of which can last for generations. To say that suicide is an act of selfishness is simply a description of the familial and social destruction left in its wake. It is not for us to condemn but to have compassion and pray for the souls of those who have resorted to suicide, but neither is it ours as a society or a Church to excuse.
I worry greatly that this essential lack of clarity in refusing to distinguish between the censure which should be accorded to the act and the compassion due to the actor, is tied up with the very mixed signals our society is sending out with regard to assisted suicide and the growing culture of death which we seem to be encouraging more and more by this reluctance to condemn anyone's choices, whatever they may be - providing, that is, they fit contemporary philosophical fashions.
The traditional and sensitive (but much ridiculed) coroner's verdict "while the balance of his mind was disturbed" has far more to recommed it than many people today seem to think. It's when we begin to believe it is perfectly possible and desirable for someone to take his or her own life as a clear, conscious and logical action that our culture is in desperate trouble.
Bach's Cantata BWV 62 for the beginning of Advent, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, set to the German of Martin Luther, in turn derived from the Latin hymn of the great St Ambrose of Milan: Veni Redemptor Gentium (which follows at the end of the post - below)
St Ambrose on the intimate connection between the Incarnation and the Eucharist
"But why make use of arguments? Let us use the examples He gives, and by the example of the Incarnation prove the truth of the mystery. Did the course of nature proceed as usual when the Lord Jesus was born of Mary? If we look to the usual course, a woman ordinarily conceives after connection with a man. And this body which we make is that which was born of the Virgin. Why do you seek the order of nature in the Body of Christ, seeing that the Lord Jesus Himself was born of a Virgin, not according to nature? It is the true Flesh of Christ which crucified and buried, this is then truly the Sacrament of His Body.
The Lord Jesus Himself proclaims: This is My Body (Matt 26:26). Before the blessing of the heavenly words another nature is spoken of, after the consecration the Body is signified. He Himself speaks of His Blood. Before the consecration it has another name, after it is called Blood. And you say, Amen, that is, It is true. Let the heart within confess what the mouth utters, let the soul feel what the voice speaks."
St Ambrose: On the Mysteries
And in English, translated by the Anglo-Catholic priest, John Mason Neale, 'Come thou Redeemer of the earth,' traditionally sung at the very end of Advent and the beginning of the Christmas season
Dr Peter Mullen is right here when he speaks of the usual suspects giving us their rather dubious interpretations of the Christmas story - the "single homeless teenage mother" thing.
"Homeless?" Well, hardly: "because there was no room for them at the inn" is a far more profundly disturbing verse than can be explained by a temporary lack of accommodation in Bethlehem. And the presence of St Joseph, the exemplary man of faith and honour, makes the other seasonal stereotype somewhat redundant too.
No, The Church's legitimate - necessary - concern for all those in need comes not from the misinterpreted incidentals of the Christmas narrative, but from the far greater reality of the Incarnation, God's assumption of our flesh in Jesus Christ.
But, for many of our contemporary clergy and theologians, that's just the problem isn't it.......?
Jeremy Clarkson, British motoring journalist, middle-aged jeans-wearer, and self-confessed 'petrolhead,' has got himself into trouble with broadcast comments that public sector strikers should be taken outside and shot - in front of their families. Funny? Not very - but, of course, he has a Christmas book to sell.
But the predictable outrage from the left-leaning, selectively puritanical, commentariate (it must have been rather like this under the Commonwealth in the 1650s - the irreligious left being the new sanctimonious Roundheads) conveniently overlooks that worse things than this are said over the airwaves about Christians - of all traditions - almost on a daily basis under the guise of 'comedy.' Let's at least be consistent, or better still, just grow up.
No prayers please, we're British:
Another attempt by organised irreligion to drive the faith from the public square - this time the National Secular Society's complaint against Devon County Council prayers. From the Daily Telegraph [here]
Lawrence Charges dropped
A little belatedly, the news that The Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. has dropped its charges against Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina. An exhaustive series of links from Titusonenine here
I can't be the only only who finds the following comment from the president of TEC's disciplinary board deeply sinister and breathtakingly hypocritical in equal measure:
"Bishop Lawrence had “repeatedly stated” that he was not leaving the Episcopal Church, nor did he want South Carolina to quit the Church. He sought only a “safe place within the Church to live the Christian faith as that diocese perceives it.”In his view, Bishop Henderson stated that: “I presently take [Bishop Lawrence] at his word,” and added that he hoped the bishop would grant dissenters in his diocese the degree of latitude Bishop Lawrence hoped to receive from the national Church.' [George Conger CEN]
Carols
And, on a more positive note, a celebration of the Anglican Patrimony of Christmas carols (but we don't sing them yet - please?) From Timotheos Prologizes [here]
The only addition I would make is that the revival of the Christmas carol was an almost entirely Tractarian / Anglo-Catholic development in the nineteenth century - part of the Catholic revival's re-enchantment of English religion, like so much of what we consider these days to be mainstream Anglican, or even just Catholic. Their uncompromising and popular restatement of orthodox faith in the Incarnation speaks for itself.
Swearing as pain relief
According to this report from the University of Keele, swearing can help relieve pain but not, apparently, if you have to resort to it on a daily basis - yet another reason these days to avoid 'official' ecclesiastical meetings.
There's an interesting post here from the Revd Dr Peter Mullen at the Daily Telegraph on the synodical process in England and the lies (his word) told about the protections for the traditional minority when, in all likelihood, the Act of Synod will shortly be repealed.
In Wales of course, there was no Act of Synod, and the 'moral guarantees' given to traditionalists which, we were assured, counted for far more than constitutional provisions, were removed for the same reason as they were orginally granted, that of political expediency. A Provincial Assistant Bishop was granted by episcopal fiat when the revisionists needed synodical votes to pass their legislation. When the votes became irrelevant, the favour could be withdrawn. Not exactly a principled stance, some might argue, but it's a good example of the stark exercise of realpolitik which, under the surface, now holds sway among us. And for the most part, life goes on; it's business as usual.
I can't think what prompted this observation, but today everything looks and sounds much the same - the vestments are as beautiful, the music as mellifluous, the incense smells as sweet as it ever did, the mitres in procession catch the declining rays of the winter afternoon sun. Everything is the same - except in apostolic essentials, and who is now left to speak about those?
"When we consider the evil, injustice, and misery existing in the world, how can we claim that the ultimate Reality at the heart of the universe is a Spirit of peace, harmony, and infinite love? What evidence can we bring to Support such a belief? and how can we adore a God whose creation is marred by cruelty, suffering and sin?
This is, of course, the problem of evil; the crucial problem for all realistic religion. It is no use to dodge this issue, and still less use to pretend that the Church has a solution of the problem up her sleeve. I would rather say with Baron von Hügel. that Christian spirituality does not explain evil and suffering, which remain a mystery beyond the reach of the human mind, but does show us how to deal with them. It insists that something has gone wrong, and badly wrong, with the world. That world as we know it does not look like the work of the loving Father whom the Gospels call us to worship; but rather, like the work of selfish and undisciplined children who have been given wonderful material and a measure of freedom, and not used that freedom well. Yet we see in this muddled world a constant struggle for Truth, Goodness, Perfection; and all those who give themselves to that struggle—the struggle for the redemption of the world from greed, cruelty, injustice, selfish desire and their results—find themselves supported and reinforced by a spiritual power which enhances life, strengthens will, and purifies character. And they come to recognise more and more in that power the action of God. These facts are as real as the other facts, which distress and puzzle us; the apparent cruelty, injustice and futility of life. We have to account somehow for the existence of gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice, holiness, love; and how can we account for them, unless they are attributes of Reality?
Christianity shows us in the most august of all examples the violence of the clash between evil and the Holiness of God. It insists that the redemption of the world, defeating the evil that has infected it by the health-giving power of love—bringing in the Kingdom of God—is a spiritual task, in which we are all required to play a part. Once we realise this, we can accept—even though we cannot understand—the paradox that the world as we know it contains much that is evil; and yet, that its Creator is the one supreme Source and Object of the love that will triumph in the end."
The Spiritual Life (1936)
This should have been posted on Monday - my computer had other ideas!
Today was a day of great sadness for many of us, although one suffused with the light and hope of the resurrection.
Fr (Dean) Jeremy Winston's funeral mass was held at St Woolos' Cathedral, Newport at 1 p.m. today. Full report here]
The numbers present, taking part in the offering of the holy sacrifice of the altar for the repose of his soul, spoke more eloquently than any words...
May he rest in peace.
Apologies for a distinct lack of posts in recent days, due to computer crashes...
Bargain hunters go mad in a shopping mall. An American video clip, but we have no cause to feel superior...
Consumer culture and the free market is only as moral as those who operate it and live in it.
Meanwhile....
The Palestria Mattin Responsory sung by the choir of St Paul's Cathedral - that little word irony again.
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
'What passion cannot Music raise and quell' from Handel's Ode for St Cecilia's Day, a setting of words by John Dryden
Today we ask Blessed Cecilia to pray for all musicians, living and departed.
Monday, 21 November 2011
One - and only one - further comment on Anglo-Catholics continuing to use Roman liturgies.
I still think the traditional justification for using the Roman Rite (just) holds good
(see a previous post), given this is merely a 'corrected' translation of the same Latin original.*
But if those who are using it have definitively rejected any vision of reunion with Peter, then we have a new situation altogether. I suppose, liturgically, those who fall into that category should immediately start to grapple with the verbose but doctrinally minimalist ambiguities of Common Worship.
But, theologically, it really is coming to a choice between the urgent reunion of the once undivided Catholic Church and the liberal synagogue, although the latter may well be theistically too conservative for many of our fellow Anglicans.
*Merely? Given the changes, of course, much more significant in terms of liturgical culture than 'merely,' and much more significant for those used to a more dignified and reverent liturgical language.
We were all profoundly shocked this morning to hear of the tragically early death of
Fr Jeremy Winston SSC, the newly-installed Dean of Monmouth. He will be mourned by all who knew him and whose lives were touched by him, and by the Church he loved and loyally served as a priest with so much dedication and ability.
Please pray for the repose of his soul, and for all those who mourn him. May he rest in peace and may light perpetual shine upon him
Herbert Howells' setting of Prudentius' great poem, in the English translation by Helen Waddell
There's an excellent post here by Fr Dwight Longenecker on Advent and the commercial nastiness that dominates society at this time of year. Many issues are dividing Christians today, surely this is something we can all agree upon.
Womans Hour ('Celebrating, informing and entertaining women') the BBC this morning gave us a predictably tame but nevertheless fascinating interview on the subject of women bishops in the Church of England. [here] What was so interesting was that the spokesperson from WATCH (there was, of course, no representative of those opposed) appeared far less strident than the programme's presenter, who gave us the usual condescending secular incredulity that people (some even women!) could be so backward as to resist the inevitable advent of women's ordination . 'This is the 21st Century' - thanks for the forensic interviewing technique, Jane!
The fact that Rachel Weir, chair of WATCH, was able to present her case so calmly and reasonably is not a good sign. The writing on the wall is now positively bellowing at us.
"...for we must know in advance, if we are prepared for that conflict, that the combat may have truces but never a peace. If we take the widest and widest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph..."
T.S. Eliot: from 'Francis Herbert Bradley' (1927)
After a foggy night, a wet November morning by the banks of the Wye -
the first part of Leoš Janáček's 'In the Mists' played by Rudolf Firkušný
Sunday, 20 November 2011
For the last week of the Church's year, some Anglo-Catholic patrimony from a vanished world...
Extracts from the recent comments of the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres [here] concerning the new translation of the Roman Missal are all over the web at the moment. [Full text here]
Many Anglo-Catholics, Anglo-Papalists particularly, of course, have used the English translation of the Roman Missal since the 1970s after it was first introduced - many parishes abandoning the English Missal in order to come into line with the current practice of the Western Church. Due to the particular nature of the English Reformation, and the liturgical changes, they would argue, which were forced upon an unwilling Church in the sixteenth century, there have always been those Anglicans, Dom Gregory Dix included, who have laid claim to the Latin Rite liturgy as part of their legitimate heritage. It wouldn't seem a wholly unreasonable step for those who have not yet joined the Ordinariate (an open-ended process, as everyone agrees) to use the new, corrected translation, rather than continue to use a version not now authorised by anyone.
Having said that, coming from the Church in Wales, I don't have an axe to grind either geographically or liturgically in this, but, as regards Bishop Chartres' specific comments, it would seem a curious time pastorally, when many clergy and their families are suffering from the extreme stress of facing a highly uncertain future while they wait for the synodical process to play out , to take the opportunity to, shall we say, stick the episcopal boot in.
He won't persecute, but he disapproves. I'm afraid, for the Catholic Movement, episcopal disapproval has long gone with the territory. We have learned to live with it.
Here's something to cheer us up: it's not, of course, to be regarded in any way as a comment on the above:
Roger Scruton on the enduring cultural significance of T. S. Eliot:
"...For Eliot, words had begun to lose their precision—not in spite of science, but because of it; not in spite of the loss of true religious belief, but because of it; not in spite of the proliferation of technical terms, but because of it. Our modern ways of speaking no longer enable us to "take a word and derive the world from it": on the contrary, they veil the world, since they convey no lived response to it. They are mere counters in a game of cliché, designed to fill up the silence, to conceal the void which has come upon us as the old gods have departed from their haunts among us.
That is why modern ways of thinking are not, as a rule, orthodoxies, but heresies—a heresy being a truth that has been exaggerated into falsehood, a truth in which we have taken refuge, so to speak, investing in it all our unexamined anxieties and expecting from it answers to questions which we have not troubled ourselves to understand. In the philosophies that prevail in modern life—utilitarianism, pragmatism, behaviorism—we find that "words have a habit of changing their meaning. . .or else they are made, in a most ruthless and piratical manner, to walk the plank." The same is true, Eliot implies, whenever the humanist heresy takes over: whenever we treat man as God, and so believe that our thoughts and our words need be measured by no other standard but themselves..."
This is from an article on the Catholic Herald website. Read it in full here:
"...Because over the last few decades, the Corporation has become a mouthpiece for the sort of people it employs: young, trendy Lefties, disproportionately gay and from ethic minorities, who see nothing to be learned from institutions, from history, and from religion in particular. (Unless it’s Islam, of course. I’ve lost count of the number of gushing documentaries about the Prophet Mohammed churned out over the last few years, replete with “authentic” pronunciation of Arabic terms and the occasional “peace be upon him” thrown in for good measure.)..."
Personally I don't think the BBC has a specific anti-religious agenda - I've always found their religious broadcasting personnel a joy to work with. The problem is one of corporate ethos - a matter of clear institutional bias. The kind of people the Corporation tends to employ, nationally if not always in the regions, as presenters, production staff and managers, if not part of a well heeled, well-connected metropolitan elite sharing a common set of unquestioned liberal values, tend to be heavily weighted in favour of ethnic minorities or those with minority sexual preferences. There are very clear taboos as to who or what may be subject to criticism, leaving the Christian faith, those whose political views are right of centre, and those who are unfashionable enough not to share the prevailing social liberalism as among the only acceptable targets. There seems to be a complete lack of concern (not, I think, awareness) that there may be people out there who share neither the Corporation's views nor it's values. It approaches the level of contempt.
I don't watch much television, but the radio 'comedy' output these days, to take a random example, seems to consist almost exclusively of distinctively unfunny and angry left-wing rants masquerading as humour, some so 'right on' as to be acutely embarrassing. It was a surprise to discover the other night a programme whose ruling conceit (this was Stephen Fry, after all) was a cringe-makingly-written love affair between two 'gay' horses - not any old horses, of course, but those of the Duke of Wellington and the Emperor Napoleon. A real find.
None of this constant churning out of one-sided propaganda would matter very much, of course, if we, the listeners and viewers, had a choice. But the fact is that the BBC has a virtual monopoly of our 'serious' nationwide radio broadcasting and, to a lesser but still significant extent, on what remains of 'serious' television output. Not only that, but we are all paying for it through the licence fee. It's one thing to have our opinions and beliefs constantly mocked and pilloried, it's another when they are doing it with our money.
The irony is, of course, that the BBC is a superlative broadcaster; but it could be much better at fulfilling its public commission without the bias, without sacrificing anything other than its tendency to self-indulgence.
It's a curiously over-prescriptive society which in one week both attempts to authorise CCTV in taxis to record passengers' conversations (see the post below) and to call for the banning of cigarette smoking in private vehicles on some fairly flimsy 'scientific evidence' (see here)
I'm not a smoker and I don't very often travel in a taxi, but I am afraid that the noose tightening around the throat of other people's liberties may one day soon be extended to mine.
How long will it be, on this kind of reasoning, before it is suggested that children be removed from traditionally believing Christian families because of the possible damage to their psychological health by being exposed to dangerously counter-cultural values?
I admit it's an extreme example (although there is already significant legal confusion between a robust proclamation of the moral theology of the Pauline epistles and criminal hate-speech), but given the almost complete reversal of our social mores over the last decade or so, and the wholesale rejection and constant (and tax-payer funded) ridiculing of the Christian Church's teaching on so many matters, it's not entirely inconceivable.
The current obsession with the enforcement of 'equality' is, of course, no such thing. Equal treatment and tolerance don't form part of the present agenda which simply involves the replacement by legal sanction of one set of values with another.
We are in grave danger of confusing the merely currently unfashionable with the criminally reprehensible, whether it is our views on sexuality, our right to smoke cigarettes or, if we wish, even to eat deep-fried Mars bars. Whatever the liberal myths concerning the so-called claustrophobic atmosphere of the 1950s, we have never been so socially conformist as we are now.
The question for Christians is how to proclaim the Gospel of the love of God in Christ in a pluralistic society which seems to be now turning from pluralism to the strict conformism of the new equality. But the issues which divide us from the surrounding culture also divide us from many of our fellow Christians. We believe them to be wrong, we may believe them to be heading along a path which will lead to the abandonment of the Gospel altogether; we can't doubt their sincerity, even if we increasingly find it impossible to go along with them.
For those traditional sacramental Christians, conservative but tolerant and with a view of human nature which stresses both the results of the Fall and our original righteousness, the imperative as we've said before, in the face of those forces in our world which are inimical to the Faith, is unity and how best we can co-operate with God in order to achieve it.
Oxford City Council (of all places) plans to install CCTV cameras in the city's licensed taxi cabs in order to record all conversations. [report here from the BBC] A spokesman when questioned in a radio interview merely stated that the council had consulted the relevant human rights legislation and the current CCTV guidelines and found that its proposal contravened neither. It's strange how for the modern British bureaucrat simply checking the letter of the 'appropriate' regulations has replaced the need for all other conscious thought.
Another example of the need to make the study of our history a compulsory part of the school curriculum.
"I 'ad that George Orwell in the back of the cab the other day"
Several blogs today [ here and here ] feature the comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury following the consecration of the new bishops of Ebbsfleet and Richborough in June. His words are very encouraging to those who are able to envisage a continuing future for Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England.
As yet, highly welcome as Archbishop Williams' sentiments are, they are only at present warm words and should be treated with a degree of caution; in a synodically governed and episcopally led body they will remain just warm words until the General Synod votes. There are various views in circulation as to the outcome of that [see here and the comments on Peter Ould's post]
From this vantage point it's difficult to have any great confidence that a synodical majority in favour of women bishops will at the same time allow the setting up of the Society model on which so many are now basing their hopes for survival.
Meanwhile, those of us in Wales can only observe the contrast between these very warm episcopal words and no words at all, and ponder how the province of the Church in Wales, from which Archbishop Rowan was translated to Canterbury, is already "less than itself....." and likely to remain so.
"The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day by day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's a part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in our mouth. It can't be for ever violated with impunity." Boris Pasternak: 'Doctor Zhivago'
It wasn't all that long ago, when I was growing up in the 1970s (a rather grim era in Britain, when, in Private Eye'sterminology, the 'Dave Spart' tendency seemed to hold sway in the State rather than, as today, just in parts of the Church) that we were assured that Remembrance Day would soon be a thing of the past, it had nothing to say to the coming generation and merely encouraged a wallowing in our imperial past. It glorified war, they said, forgetting that it has something vital to say about the preservation of our ancient freedoms. Some people were still saying that sort of thing in the mid-1980s when I was ordained. How times have changed!
In our country parish at the Mass offered today for the fallen in war, we were joined by the last surviving parishioner who fought (with the Parachute Regiment) in the Second World War. Three miles away the civic Remembrance Service included a parade by soldiers of 1st Rifles, some of whose comrades are currently deployed in Afghanistan. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our involvement in the wars waged by and on behalf of 'liberal democracy,' it now appears to be beyond doubt that any scepticism about the observance of Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day has disappeared. It’s now part of our experience, too. The victims of war are not people from a rapidly receding past: they are among us, they are our neighbours and friends, they are members of the regiment stationed down the road.
At the altar all our memories, all our sufferings, all our gratitude, all our hopes for the future come together in the offering of the sacrifice of Calvary. This is the greatest act of remembrance and of Christian charity that we can perform both for those who have died, and for ourselves, here only because they were prepared to lay down their lives for the people most dear to them.
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them
The English Hymnal & New English Hymnal: neither insanely inclusive nor full of dreadful ditties
One of undisputed gifts of the Anglican patrimony to the wider Church is its hymnody, drawing on on a wide variety of sources and traditions and often expressing in a few short lines an remarkable richness of doctrinal teaching, particularly perhaps in terms of eucharistic theology.
Yet, visiting other parishes from time to time, it would seem that this tradition is, if not actually threatened with extinction, then subject to the same kind of revisionism which casts such a blight on our ecclesial life.
Many modern hymnals try at least to include a selection of 'traditional' hymnody alongside the regrettable, trite and subjective, doctrine-free choruses or 'worship songs'. For the most part they are fairly unexceptional selections, although it’s very clear that most (with very few exceptions) of the more modern compositions will happily fade as quickly as a polyester chasuble exposed to direct sunlight.
Of course, to a certain extent, that was also true of many of the hymns selected for nineteenth and early twentieth century hymnals, included but rapidly forgotten. But for someone brought up in the English Hymnal tradition, it’s hard to be anything other than critical of hymn books which are put together in alphabetical order rather than in the familiar and more liturgically user- friendly arrangement of times and seasons.
But the very worst aspect of many of these recent productions is their attempt to ‘improve’ and update traditional, well-loved hymns. I’m not only thinking about such obvious monstrosities as ‘Onward Christian Pilgrims’ or the alternative version of ‘For all the saints,’ which have been altered to exclude all references to warfare. A note to those similarly tempted: please look up the meaning of the word ‘metaphor.’ We can be grateful that St Paul didn’t have a similar confusion about the nature of verbal imagery with regard to spiritual warfare. Too complex an idea for our modern minds to cope with? Some obviously have thought so.
Above all, what surely should be unacceptable to everyone whose ideology hasn't driven them insane is the attempt to rewrite the language of hymns, some of which can be regarded as poetry in its own right, in order to make it gender inclusive and acceptable to the prevailing culture. One of the worst culprits in this regard seems to be Kevin Mayhew's 'Hymns Old and New, Complete Anglican edition'. I’m thinking here about two recent examples I've come across, Robert Bridges' 'All my hope on God is founded’ and John Keble's ‘Blest are the pure in heart.’ There is absolutely no ambiguity as to their authors’ meaning; the changes which have been made represent an alarmingly totalitarian literary dishonesty (if you don't like the past, airbrush out the bits you object to) and have been made purely on ideological grounds; * moreover, the ‘improvements’ subtly, and not so subtly, alter meanings, and are in many cases unutterably banal, the proud work of the heirs of Dr Bowdler.
In some instances this approach has even been extended to the words of familiar Christmas carols, with predictable results, almost always ending up causing total chaos as people, particularly the occasional seasonal worshippers, mercifully unattuned to ecclesiastical fashion, simply stop singing in bemusement, if not in outright exasperation.
The solution? When I have had to sing hymns in the newspeak versions, I simply sing the original words very loudly; I know it’s not very edifying behaviour, and it does nothing to dispel a growing reputation – at least to those standing next to me - for being difficult and eccentric. Oh well... as they say, that ship has already sailed.
* a little like that over-used expression in some quarters, ‘sisters and brothers.’ There’s nothing inherently wrong with it at all, even if it does jar somewhat on the ears of native English speakers; but we know only too well the theological agenda which underlies the words.
This is 'All my hope on God is founded' - the words are not the inclusive 'dynamic equivalents'
We could be in the days of Queen Victoria. Journalistic religio-racial stereotyping here from The Daily Telegraph: the myth of hard-working northern Protestants versus shiftless, lazy Catholics / Orthodox from the South, the sort of people who are always going to confession (as if) and who know how to have a good time.
Sorry, no.
"The Protestant north" hardly describes the reality of modern Germany and quite fails to take into account the fact that much of western Germany, the old Federal Republic, the powerhouse of European economic recovery after World War Two, is traditionally Catholic, not Protestant at all. (It also doesn't quite explain the economic success of northern Italy either) We have to look elsewhere than our historical prejudices for the real causes of the present crisis in the Euro-zone.
"Accordingly, at a certain period, when he had nothing except his arms and his simple military dress, in the middle of winter, a winter which had shown itself more severe than ordinary, so that the extreme cold was proving fatal to many, he happened to meet at the gate of the city of Amiens a poor man destitute of clothing. He was entreating those that passed by to have compassion upon him, but all passed the wretched man without notice, when Martin, that man full of God, recognized that a being to whom others showed no pity, was, in that respect, left to him. Yet, what should he do? He had nothing except the cloak in which he was clad, for he had already parted with the rest of his garments for similar purposes. Taking, therefore, his sword with which he was girt, he divided his cloak into two equal parts, and gave one part to the poor man, while he again clothed himself with the remainder. Upon this, some of the by-standers laughed, because he was now an unsightly object, and stood out as but partly dressed. Many, however, who were of sounder understanding, groaned deeply because they themselves had done nothing similar. They especially felt this, because, being possessed of more than Martin, they could have clothed the poor man without reducing themselves to nakedness. In the following night, when Martin had resigned himself to sleep, he had a vision of Christ arrayed in that part of his cloak with which he had clothed the poor man. He contemplated the Lord with the greatest attention, and was told to own as his the robe which he had given. Ere long, he heard Jesus saying with a clear voice to the multitude of angels standing round -- "Martin, who is still but a catechumen, clothed me with this robe." The Lord, truly mindful of his own words (who had said when on earth -- "Inasmuch as ye have done these things to one of the least of these, ye have done them unto me"), declared that he himself had been clothed in that poor man; and to confirm the testimony he bore to so good a deed, he condescended to show him himself in that very dress which the poor man had received. After this vision the sainted man was not puffed up with human glory, but, acknowledging the goodness of God in what had been done, and being now of the age of twenty years, he hastened to receive baptism. He did not, however, all at once, retire from military service, yielding to the entreaties of his tribune, whom he admitted to be his familiar tent-companion. For the tribune promised that, after the period of his office had expired, he too would retire from the world. Martin, kept back by the expectation of this event, continued, although but in name, to act the part of a soldier, for nearly two years after he had received baptism."
from the Life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus (c. 360 - 420-25)
"....By this means Eutyches, who seemed to be deserving of honour under the title of Presbyter, is now shown to be exceedingly thoughtless and sadly inexperienced, so that to him also we may apply the prophet’s words, “He refused to understand in order to act well: he meditated unrighteousness on his bed.” What, indeed, is more unrighteous than to entertain ungodly thoughts, and not to yield to persons wiser and more learned? But into this folly do they fall who, when hindered by some obscurity from apprehending the truth, have recourse, not to the words of the Prophets, not to the letters of the Apostles, nor to the authority of the Gospels, but to themselves; and become teachers of error, just because they have not been disciples of the truth. For what learning has he received from the sacred pages of the New and the Old Testament, who does not so much as understand the very beginning of the Creed? And that which, all the world over, is uttered by the voices of all applicants for regeneration, is still not grasped by the mind of this aged man. If, then, he knew not what he ought to think about the Incarnation of the Word of God, and was not willing, for the sake of obtaining the light of intelligence, to make laborious search through the whole extent of the Holy Scriptures, he should at least have received with heedful attention that general Confession common to all, whereby the whole body of the faithful profess that they “believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” By which three clauses the engines of almost all heretics are shattered. For when God is believed to be both “Almighty” and “Father,” it is proved that the Son is everlasting together with himself, differing in nothing from the Father, because he was born as “God from God,” Almighty from Almighty, Coeternal from Eternal; not later in time, not inferior in power, not unlike him in glory, not divided from him in essence, but the same Only-begotten and Everlasting Son of an Everlasting Parent was “born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” This birth in time in no way detracted from, in no way added to, that divine and everlasting birth; but expended itself wholly in the work of restoring man, who had been deceived; so that it might both overcome death, and by its power “destroy the devil who had the power of death.” For we could not have overcome the author of sin and of death, unless he who could neither be contaminated by sin, nor detained by death, had taken upon himself our nature, and made it his own. For, in fact, he was “conceived of the Holy Ghost” within the womb of a Virgin Mother, who bore him as she had conceived him, without loss of virginity..."
from the 'Tome' * of Pope St Leo the Great, translated by William Bright.
("Select Sermons of S. Leo the Great on the Incarnation with his XXVIIIth Epistle called the “Tome.” London, 1886)
* The letter sent by Pope Leo I in the year 449 to the beleaguered Patriarch of Constantinople, Flavianus, concerning the Church's teaching about the person of Christ. The letter affirms that Christ has two natures, human and divine, united in the one divine Person of the Son of God. At the Council of Chalcedon, two years later, the Tome was acclaimed as expressing the settled mind of the Church concerning the doctrine of the Incarnation with the declaration, "Peter has spoken through Leo."
for the days of leisurely railway journeys - and for when one didn't have to take out a mortgage in order to travel on them. And for the very small boy who, leaning out of the signal box window at Cwmffrwd Halt, took the token from the driver of the last (steam) train to travel on the Eastern Valley line of Monmouthshire before it was closed.
Almighty God, who dost call thine elect from every nation, and dost show forth thy glory in their lives:
grant that, following the example of the Saints of Wales and strengthened by their fellowship,
we may be fruitful in good works to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[The Collect for the Saints of Wales from the Church in Wales Prayer Book of 1984]
"Near Devauden, in Gwent, there stands on an isolated hump the tiny church of the Holy Cross at Kilgwrrwg, where the hermit Gwrrwg established his cell........ It is the most tranquil place in the world. A circular churchyard surrounds the building, there is an ancient crooked cross among the trees, a wooden boot-remover stands in the porch, for it can be a muddy clamber up there, and through the roof the ivy creeps. The Church is lit only by candles, from a candelabra in the chancel, and it stands in absolute silence, far from all traffic in a bowl of the low Gwent hills, looking westward to the distant outlines of the Black Mountains, Pen-y-Fal and Holy Skirrid..."
from The Matter of Wales by Jan Morris (O.U.P. 1984)
The conspiracy of silence in today's Britain surrounding the Christian faith of those in the public eye, the late Sir Jimmy Savile's devout Catholicism being the most recent example. Charitable work is fine, but there's to be no mention of the religious motivation behind it - from William Oddie [here]
In case you missed it, this is Mark Shea on the subject of heresy:
"...Don’t get me wrong. Heresy is stupefyingly boring. Just off the top of your head, which would you call the more interesting story even if you didn’t believe it: that the Creator of the entire universe became a human being on an out of the way planet in the spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, performed miraculous deeds, changed lives and hearts, encountered opposition from the Powers that Be, was betrayed, arrested, subjected to a kangaroo court and murdered in the most heinous way imaginable, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and now offers eternal ecstasy to the miserable species that killed him, or,
Jesus was a dead rabbi with a girlfriend. Jesus said that niceness was nice. Jesus was pretty much indistinguishable from a commentator on TV who urges bromides about gender equality and tariff reform..."
Read it all here - particularly if you're a fan of G.K. Chesterton
