tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29110682369393436132024-03-05T07:41:10.130+00:00Let nothing you dismay"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."Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.comBlogger1655125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-86479198557163938372017-06-15T11:11:00.001+01:002017-06-15T13:45:08.980+01:00Tim Farron's political liberalism was broad enough and true enough to its philosophy not to try to force his beliefs on others, as not only his rhetoric but also his voting record shows very clearly. It's sad - and worrying in a free society - that the same thing can't be said for his opponents on the left and the right and even from within his own party.<br />
However, the media has had a crucial role to play in seeking to direct questions during the general election campaign to the former Liberal Democrat leader which would not have been (and were not) asked of a devout Muslim or, for that matter, of a Roman Catholic, or an Anglican from a non- conservative evangelical tradition.<br />
I don't share Mr Farron's fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian faith or of the Scriptures, but I can't help thinking both that he has been shamefully and irresponsibly treated, and that there has perhaps been another agenda at work in seeking to distract at all costs from his and his party's essential message about our future in Europe and the continuing need for internationalist values in the face of a destructive and isolationist populism...<br />
<br />
A few links to the story from a wide spectrum of sources:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/06/15/tim-farron-was-given-a-hard-time-for-being-christian-says-cardinal/">http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/06/15/tim-farron-was-given-a-hard-time-for-being-christian-says-cardinal/</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/06/15/the-illiberal-persecution-of-tim-farron">http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/06/15/the-illiberal-persecution-of-tim-farron</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://capx.co/tim-farron-was-true-to-his-faith-is-that-such-a-bad-thing/">https://capx.co/tim-farron-was-true-to-his-faith-is-that-such-a-bad-thing/</a><br />
<br />
And this from <i>Cranmer </i>who, of course, as a committed Conservative supporter, has little love for the LibDems or political liberalism generally, but nevertheless manages to raise some vital questions for all political parties:<br />
<a href="http://archbishopcranmer.com/christians-lead-political-parties-evangelical-christians-lead-liberal-democrats/">http://archbishopcranmer.com/christians-lead-political-parties-evangelical-christians-lead-liberal-democrats/</a>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-65270913293552105022017-06-12T20:21:00.001+01:002017-06-12T20:21:46.457+01:00A sprat to catch a mackerelAs we know, the motivation behind a powerful and ruthless section of laissez-faire global capital's support for Brexit was to destabilise the whole European project for its own advantage. Now Europe is uniting against it, Brexit has become merely an afterthought, an exercise in arbitrary self-harm on the part of an increasingly unimportant and backward looking medium sized country on the eastern fringes of the Atlantic. In a globalised, interdependent world the sovereignty argument was only ever a ploy to engage romantic adolescents and insular nationalists deliberately blind to the increasing powerlessness of the traditional nation state in the face of the new economic realities.<br />
When the June 2016 referendum became the most effective means of protest on the part of those left behind and impoverished by the neo-liberal consensus, the purveyors of deregulatory snake oil were astonished at their own good fortune. Yet the struggling, the 'left behind' - shut out from the prosperity of the south-east and starved - by an extraordinary conspiracy of silence about the benefits to poorer regions of EU membership - of the information necessary to make an informed decision, were always meant to pay the price...Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-78828431730489303162017-06-09T17:04:00.000+01:002017-06-09T17:36:25.895+01:00Be careful what you wish for ...An astonishing end to the unnecessary 'Brexit election' in which the major parties conspired to ignore the issue of Brexit as much as possible.<br />
It seems that Mrs May's government will - for now- attempt to struggle on with the help of the traditionally ultra-protestant Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.<br />
The political complexion and chequered history of the DUP (these are not the more moderate 'Official Unionists,' but a party which has been seen in the past to flirt with so-called 'loyalist' paramilitary groups) also gives many people - on the centre right, as well as the centre and the left - profound cause for concern if it is now in a position to exercise leverage over the policies of the Westminster government.<br />
<br />
This is Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, and someone instrumental in helping to negotiate the peace process culminating in the Good Friday agreement and tge power sharing executive in Northern Ireland, speaking of his very serious concerns about Theresa May's 'deal' with the DUP and its implications for the life of the province:<br />
<br />
"I do think it’s a mistake to go into government with the “support of our friends” in the DUP. Even John Major avoided doing that and the reason he avoided that is the peace process is based on a balance that the British government has made it clear it is neutral in Northern Ireland, it doesn’t take sides. Once you have their support you are no longer neutral.<br />
<br />
It matters for two big reasons. First, we haven’t managed to get the executive back up and running in Northern Ireland because of divisions between the two sides. The British government were trying to mediate between the two sides to get an administration up and running again and of course now it can’t possibly have that role of mediating.<br />
<br />
And secondly I think it’s a mistake because one of the big issues in the Brexit negotiations is the border between north and south. Now the DUP is a minority in its view about Brexit, it’s in favour of Brexit. This is going to be a very real problem.<br />
<br />
Whatever you put on a piece of paper, you’re living there with a minority government, that’s dependant on the DUP, you get to a crucial issue and then they say, ‘Remember what we want in terms of talks in Northern Ireland’, and the government has a choice: do they say, ‘We’re not giving you that, we’ll let the government collapse’, or do they just bend a little on that issue, it’s just one small issue it doesn’t matter. But beyond that the government can’t possibly be seen as neutral on Northern Ireland now if it puts itself at the mercy of the DUP"<br />
<br />
[Source: <i>The Guardian]</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>We leave it to the reader to judge the ethics of an administration attempting to hold on to office regardless of the likely damage to the country's peace and security ...</i>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-85245555382996941632017-06-07T10:47:00.000+01:002017-06-07T10:47:11.393+01:00As the election campaign comes to an end, it seems to me that the major failure of the last six weeks has been on the part of the media for not trying - in anything like a serious way - to address the issues which will determine our future for generations. It's in the DNA of modern politicians to seek to avoid difficult questions, but journalists in a free society - and particularly perhaps, in are society such as ours which has prided itself on being a mature, representative democracy - are not meant to collude with them ...<br />
<br />Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-79468249618310107532017-05-06T20:00:00.002+01:002017-05-06T20:27:20.124+01:00Bach for a Saturday eveningDance music for the organ - the great Marie-Claire Alain plays Bach: <i>Ach Bleib 'bei Uns, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 649 </i>on<i> </i>the Great Marcussen organ of the Church of Varde in Denmark.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-zBQiZzgzz0" width="560"></iframe>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-14506497967861560692017-05-02T13:07:00.000+01:002017-05-02T13:21:05.943+01:00La Peregrina<br />
<span id="goog_226886747"></span>
Again, for the month of May, one of my favourite places: the chapel of 'La Peregrina' in Pontevedra, Galicia - Mary, the Mother of the Church, as a humble pilgrim walking the Camino to Santiago de Compostela ...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4XQDOwtpA0x45SmukbBV9njggl0fFeHOGlYhET4Fr3bVQjlN3MzXnYyOEedO66YP2scApDAM1GT65o6vAt1tdz9SYmrumUhz1raLZ3yqBpBe778aStAKxy6GHS0hZE-yoHpWDWVz55hw/s1600/20160916_201335.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4XQDOwtpA0x45SmukbBV9njggl0fFeHOGlYhET4Fr3bVQjlN3MzXnYyOEedO66YP2scApDAM1GT65o6vAt1tdz9SYmrumUhz1raLZ3yqBpBe778aStAKxy6GHS0hZE-yoHpWDWVz55hw/s320/20160916_201335.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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"With the divinest Word, the Virgin</div>
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Made pregnant, down the road</div>
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Comes walking, if you'll grant her</div>
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A room in your abode."</div>
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St John of the Cross (<i>trans. Roy Campbell</i>)<span id="goog_1126748290"></span><span id="goog_1126748291"></span></div>
Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-84141196722013177632017-05-01T12:07:00.004+01:002017-05-01T12:11:29.887+01:00May is Mary's month<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">"</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12px;">The artist studies his unfinished work; he contemplates this stainless lily that must be extricated from the thorns and the mud, this sacred mouth that is capable of pronouncing the supreme </span><i style="background-color: white; font-size: 12px;">Fiat</i><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12px;"> in an attitude of patience, piety, compassion, understanding, supplication, and counsel. There must be nothing pure in human nature that does not share in this fruition and nothing impure that does not share in this purification. "</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12px;"><i>Paul Claudel</i></span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-60244191012151829222017-04-27T21:04:00.000+01:002017-04-27T22:19:21.818+01:00Cui bono?Having backed themselves into a corner, with only UKIP for ideological company, the Prime Minister and the Government are increasingly - perhaps in desperation, as it's all they have - directing empty nationalist rhetoric against our friends and allies in the European Union.<br />
Of course, it's a situation largely of Mrs May's own making, it seems because of an fixed obsession with immigration as being the only significant cause of Brexit (yet something she oddly failed to reduce as Home Secretary, despite already having many of the tools to do so), but it's a growing tragedy for which we will all pay dearly - in terms of economic decline, social division and cultural isolation.<br />
I am now becoming deeply ashamed and saddened beyond words at the self-destructive direction in which our country appears to be heading. It's not enough to repeat the foolish and self-serving mantra that it is the 'will of the people: the necessary question is always 'cui bono?' We can be sure that it won't be those in the regions alienated by Westminster's long and studied indifference, it won't be those struggling to keep their heads above water, it won't be those queuing at the food banks... it won't even be the majority of those who voted (<i>for whatever reason)</i> for this strange, almost somnambulistic march towards national humiliation and the diminution of our influence in the world.<br />
To adapt those possibly apocryphal words of Marie-Antoinette, "<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: 14px;">Qu'ils mangent de la </span><span style="font-size: 14.8558px;">souveraineté</span><span style="font-size: 14px;">"...</span></i></span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-89175016266958300102017-02-11T18:40:00.004+00:002017-02-11T18:40:43.766+00:00CredoThe opening of the 'Credo' from Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor<br />
John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Monteverdi Choir with the English Baroque Soloists.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QAlo-NZMDJ4" width="560"></iframe>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-53628890169489966092017-02-02T10:03:00.001+00:002017-02-02T10:04:31.972+00:00"... Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion..."<br />
Edmund Burke: Speech <i>to the electors of Bristol (1774)</i>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-37772718405195878082017-01-27T21:00:00.000+00:002017-01-27T21:04:31.768+00:00<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: , "helveticaneue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Only he who speaks out for the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: , "helveticaneue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; max-height: 999999px;">Jews</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: , "helveticaneue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> can sing </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: , "helveticaneue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; max-height: 999999px;">Gregorian chant"</span></i><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: , "helveticaneue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; max-height: 999999px;"><i>Dietrich Bonhoeffer</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: , "helveticaneue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; max-height: 999999px;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 18.5697px; max-height: 999999px;"><i><a href="https://youtu.be/pSOB4Oqe-bs">ttps://youtu.be/pSOB4Oqe-bs</a></i></span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-21325079648862430332017-01-26T12:21:00.000+00:002017-01-26T12:21:33.200+00:00"The use of torture is dishonourable. It corrupts and degrades the state which uses it and the legal system which accepts it. When judicial torture was routine all over Europe, its rejection by the common law was a source of national pride and the admiration of enlightened foreign writers such as Voltaire and Beccaria. In our own century, many in the United States have felt their country dishonoured by its use of torture outside the jurisdiction and its practice of extra-legal 'rendition' of suspects to countries where they would be tortured. The rejection of torture ... has a special iconic importance as the touchstone of a humane and civilised legal system."<br />
<br />
Lord Hoffman, British House of Lords (now the Supreme Court) judgement (2005)<br />
<i>A (FC) and others (FC) (Appellants) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) (2004)A and others (Appellants) (FC) and others v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) (Conjoined Appeals)</i>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-39290953394259213372017-01-25T20:07:00.001+00:002017-01-25T20:07:36.761+00:00<div class="detail-bd" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px 20px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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Something there is that doesn't love a wall,</div>
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That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,</div>
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And spills the upper boulders in the sun;</div>
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And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.</div>
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The work of hunters is another thing:</div>
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I have come after them and made repair</div>
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Where they have left not one stone on a stone,</div>
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But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,</div>
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To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,</div>
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No one has seen them made or heard them made,</div>
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But at spring mending-time we find them there.</div>
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I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;</div>
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And on a day we meet to walk the line</div>
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And set the wall between us once again.</div>
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We keep the wall between us as we go.</div>
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To each the boulders that have fallen to each.</div>
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And some are loaves and some so nearly balls</div>
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We have to use a spell to make them balance:</div>
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"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"</div>
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We wear our fingers rough with handling them.</div>
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Oh, just another kind of out-door game,</div>
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One on a side. It comes to little more:</div>
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There where it is we do not need the wall:</div>
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He is all pine and I am apple orchard.</div>
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My apple trees will never get across</div>
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And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.</div>
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He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."</div>
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Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder</div>
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If I could put a notion in his head:</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"Why</em> do they make good neighbours? Isn't it</div>
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Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.</div>
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Before I built a wall I'd ask to know</div>
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What I was walling in or walling out,</div>
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And to whom I was like to give offence.</div>
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Something there is that doesn't love a wall,</div>
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That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,</div>
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But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather</div>
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He said it for himself. I see him there</div>
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Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top</div>
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In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.</div>
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He moves in darkness as it seems to me,</div>
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Not of woods only and the shade of trees.</div>
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He will not go behind his father's saying,</div>
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And he likes having thought of it so well</div>
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He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>'Mending Wall' </i></div>
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<span style="font-style: inherit;">Robert Frost from </span><i>North of Boston (1914) </i></div>
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Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-2405743412236997152017-01-24T12:41:00.000+00:002017-01-24T13:35:20.542+00:00For everything there is a season ...<div class="verse font-helvetica" id="v-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; cursor: pointer; display: inline; outline: none;">
<span class="verse-1" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial"; font-size: 1.3em;">"</span><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: </span></i></span><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="verse-3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;</span><span style="background-color: #e0e0e0;"> </span><span class="verse-4" style="box-sizing: border-box;">a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; </span>a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away ..."</span></i></div>
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<span class="verse-6" style="box-sizing: border-box;">For many people, last year, 2016, was a sobering time of discernment, a time of dangerous shocks and upheavals, and also a time of the breaking of already fragile friendships and alliances, both in the body politic and the ecclesial body of which, (for good or ill, who knows?) I am a member. That process seems to be continuing into a new year without any obvious signs of a let up.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial";"><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">Contributing to a blog has to be the most ephemeral means of communicating known to humankind (with the obvious and notoriously topical exception of <i>'Twitter'</i>) and it is never easy to achieve anything like a satisfactory balance between the easily manufactured outrage of the moment, and a more balanced, saner, view of what is really important in the often hysterical movement of the world's (and the Church's) 24 hour news cycle. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial";"><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">My gut feeling is that it's high time to call it a day, but<i> if, as some people are encouraging me to do, </i>this blog is to continue in some way, inevitably it will be different, as the times themselves are different, and as the defence of a particular tradition of freedom of thought and belief calls for a more considered approach to discerning the signs of the times.</span></span></div>
Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-69955527799512364092016-08-10T20:20:00.001+01:002016-08-10T21:25:31.693+01:00Progress in Wales?<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.credocymru.com/">Credo Cymru</a> (Forward in Faith Wales) is to be congratulated on its forthcoming conference, <i>'That Nothing be Lost' (September 21st - 22nd), </i>being<i> </i>held in order to explore how much common ground exists between those who support and those opposed to the admission of women to all three orders of the sacred ministry of the Church.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As we all know, of late, the atmosphere in Wales has differed radically from that now prevailing in the Church of England, where there is considerable evidence of a commitment on all sides to the 'mutual flourishing' of both integrities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The timing of the conference is especially brave, given the fact that the retirement of that most politically adroit and astute opponent of traditionalists, the Archbishop of Wales himself, will not take place until January 2017.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There will be invited lay and clerical representatives at the conference from the Church in Wales and the Church of England, including the Archbishop of Wales and the Bishop of St Asaph.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Your prayers are asked for the Conference and its participants, that it will be a means of progress towards unity and greater understanding among those of differing views on the future of Anglicanism in the Welsh Province.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This particular foot soldier of the faith will, </span><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">before and during the time of the Conference,</span><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"> be once again </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07m4gc4" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">walking as a pilgrim</a><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"> to Santiago de Compostela. Prayers will be offered for the unity of all Christians at the shrine of the first Apostolic Martyr of the faith and along one of the pilgrim routes to Galicia which did much to forge the unity of Christian Europe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-88900139854398187742016-06-26T16:39:00.001+01:002017-05-06T20:41:06.872+01:00Postscript 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Walking through the village, wearing my cassock this morning, I was approached by a woman I know who was walking her dog. Born in France, but half-British, she told me she has never felt so displaced and disoriented, not recognising the current atmosphere of the country of her adoption, which, she says, seems to have changed beyond recognition. She now feels a stranger here, and intends to re-apply for a French passport.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I commiserated, not recognising the mood in my country either, and realising that the future seems to belong to those of a very different viewpoint. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We shook hands, she went in one direction and I continued on my way to church in the morning sunshine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The weather forecast was for rain later.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I should explain: Europe is the great fault-line which now runs across British politics and society. Many of the commentators I read and respect have taken another view altogether on this issue. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But, as a convinced 'European' since the days of the first referendum in 1975, when although too young to vote, I helped campaign for our membership of the EEC <i>(as it then was),</i> I am in a very small minority in terms of bloggers who post on 'religious' matters, and sometimes the stridency of others' anti-EU stances has appalled me. Because of that I have felt increasingly ill at ease over the last months with the company that, even in a very minor way indeed, I have been keeping.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The founding ideal of the European project was good and noble, bringing together nations riven by warfare and the unspeakable horrors of the twentieth century. We all know that the EU itself has grown and changed, moving away, as all our societies have, from the Christian Democracy of its founding fathers to a more secularised entity which is reluctant even to acknowledge its Christian roots.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But it is nothing short of a delusion and a mirage to think that Britain outside the European Union will return to a more Christian vision of society and culture. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The indications are that the reverse could well be the case. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some of the rhetoric directed at the EU by the 'Leave' campaign has been regrettable and, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36295208">in one case</a>, unforgivable, even in the context of the journalistic hyperbole which is its author's stock-in-trade. Undoubtedly these kind of statements have helped poison the wells of national life, and fuel the incidents now <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html">being reported</a> on our streets.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And it's ironic that a campaign to restore the sovereignty of Parliament should adopt the referendum as the means for achieving its goal. </span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">'Direct democracy,'</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> popular decisions made by referendum and plebiscite, as we are seeing, is - to a far greater degree than the normal workings of representative democracy - something by its nature heavily dependent upon the integrity and truthfulness of those who seek to direct its debates, and the reliability of the information available to those who participate in its processes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Moreover, it is capable of unleashing a reckless, misdirected and incoherent rage which is destructive of the civility of political discourse and inimical to calm and reasonable deliberation. Such an anger has been unleashed. We have not been so divided for generations, nor has our future looked so uncertain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps it's time here on this blog to recognise that ....</span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-47105615950780789302015-11-25T17:05:00.000+00:002015-11-25T21:33:22.350+00:00'Sing for the morning's joy, Cecilia, sing"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">November - from Enid Chadwick's 'My Book of the Church's Year' </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- now reprinted in paperback [welcome news from the NLM </span><a href="http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/11/my-book-of-churchs-year-childrens.html#.VlXpkdLNxko" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No masses for St Cecilia this year, as her feast day fell on a Sunday. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here, instead, is a belated musical offering - Herbert Howells' miniature masterpiece of a carol to the saint, setting words (below) by Ursula Vaughan-Williams, the poet and second wife of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams - s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ung here by the Choir of New College Oxford directed by Edward Higginbottom with David Burchell, organ</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sing for the morning's joy, Cecilia, sing,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in words of youth and praises of the Spring,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">walk the bright colonnades by fountains' spray,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and sing as sunlight fills the waking day;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">till angels, voyaging in upper air,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">pause on a wing and gather the clear sound</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">into celestial joy, wound and unwound,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a silver chain, or golden as your hair.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sing for your loves of heaven and of earth,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in words of music, and each word a truth;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">marriage of heart and longings that aspire,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a bond of roses, and a ring of fire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Your summertime grows short and fades away,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">terror must gather to a martyr's death;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">but never tremble, the last indrawn breath</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">remembers music as an echo may.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Through the cold aftermath of centuries,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Cecilia's music dances in the skies;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lend us a fragment of the immortal air,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">that with your choiring angels we may share,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a word to light us thro' time-fettered night,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">water of life, or rose of paradise,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">so from the earth another song shall rise</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">to meet your own in heaven's long delight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911-2007)</span><br />
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<br />Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-7699218378156498332015-11-23T17:58:00.000+00:002015-11-23T20:15:13.848+00:00The place of 'honest' doubt ....<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Archbishop Justin Welby has attracted quite a bit of flak on social media and in the blogosphere for admitting in the wake of the Islamist terror attacks in Paris, that he wondered where God was amongst all the violence and murder [<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34893039">here</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My first thought was to think, 'there's nothing to see here, move along' - after all, this is the reaction we should expect from our religious leaders, who are only trying to get alongside the reaction of the ordinary, not-particularly-religious person in the street when confronted with events which rightly shock us all to the core.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But, on reflection, although I wouldn't wish to go along with some of the more intemperate <a href="http://www.revpetermullen.com/oh-gosh-yes/">criticisms</a> of his comments, I'm not sure the Archbishop really meant to say what he said at all - his remarks show very clearly that his 'doubts' were hardly significant, and that his faith had survived intact, even if it had experienced a very momentary blip. So why say what he did?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> I refuse - even given the recent catastrophic decline in theological education - to believe an Archbishop of Canterbury (even if only ordained deacon in 1992) could lack a sufficiently adequate theological grounding to make at least some sense of the problem of evil. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">William Temple, who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury in a more serious age, wrote in a letter to (later Msgr) Ronald Knox; "I am not a spiritual doctor trying to see how much Jones can swallow and keep down; I am more respectable than that; I am Jones himself asking what there is to eat."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I can't help but wonder about the intellectual honesty of some members of our contemporary hierarchy - aren't they just pretending to be 'Jones,' because that's the acceptable thing to do in a not so respectable age of emotional manipulation? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There's an acknowledged place for honest doubt; I'm not sure there's a place for doubt as ecclesiastical 'spin'...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A rather good short video on prayer, 'Just Pray,' from the Church of England, has been banned from cinemas by the agency Digital Cinema Media who stated "... </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">some advertisements - unintentionally or otherwise - could cause offence to those of differing political persuasions, as well as to those of differing faiths and indeed of no faith."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reactions are coming in thick and fast, including <a href="http://www.sheffield.anglican.org/blog/bishop-of-sheffield/seven-reasons-to-ban-the-lord-s-prayer">this</a> rather good response from the Bishop of Sheffield and a contribution from the Prime Minister [<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/cinema-ban-for-lords-prayer-ad-is-ridiculous-says-cameron">here</a>] who clearly is getting better <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10770340/David-Cameron-is-aPM-who-does-do-God.html">Magic FM reception</a> in the Chilterns than he has of late .... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The 'offending' video: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In an astonishing example of crass mistiming - if that's all it was: I'm not entirely convinced - the BBC decided to broadcast a piece of one-sided polemic against the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday morning's 'A Point of View' [<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34866283?SThisFB">here</a>] </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Somehow the pressing need for radical reform of one of Christianity's traditions isn't exactly at the top of the world's agenda right now .... if you see what I mean <span style="font-size: 14px;">...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps, after a couple of outstanding and gently reasonable contributions from Roger Scruton, the programmers thought it was high time, in the interests of 'balance,' to return to something stridently imbecilic .</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've just taken delivery of our parish copies of the Winter edition of 'Together - The Voice of Catholic Anglicans'' - always a welcome arrival on the doorstep.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the front page (below) is a large photograph of a cork shooting out of a champagne bottle in celebration of the heartening news that the Catholic Group on the Church of England's General Synod has increased its strength in the recent elections.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Were there any comparable source of information available for us traditionalists in the little side show called The Church in Wales (which there now isn't - to our own continuing shame), presumably we would have a picture of a bottle of hemlock with appropriate instructions from the Bench of Bishops ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-20367626364154600132015-11-21T21:26:00.000+00:002015-11-21T21:26:07.762+00:00O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem ...<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Herbert Howells' exquisite and hauntingly beautiful setting of verses from Psalm 122 - the Choir of New College, Oxford, directed by Edward Higginbottom. </span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QqZ_9UHGmfA" width="560"></iframe>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-5968292409689005132015-11-20T20:53:00.000+00:002015-11-20T22:28:45.608+00:00'De profundis clamavi ad te Domine' - our appalling neglect of the Syrian Christian refugees <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss *</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> O Lord, who may abide it?'</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prompted by many things, but most particularly by the plight of the exiled Syrian Christians, for whom, it would seem - even now, even after the atrocities in Paris, no one will lift a finger to help ... <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/vicar-of-baghdad-to-america-receive-persecuted-christians/">[here]</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Forced to avoid refugee camps both in the Middle East and Europe because of a real and justified fear of persecution by their more fundamentalist Muslim fellow refugees [<a href="https://barnabasfund.org/news/Muslim-refugees-persecute-Christian-refugees-in-German-camps">here</a>], ignored by the governments of the West [<a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/syrian-christians-are-greatest-peril-least-likely-be-admitted">here</a>] in order to promote and foster an electorally convenient but socially fragile narrative of stability at home, what will their fate be, and how will history - and a greater tribunal still - judge us for their neglect? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ISIS /ISIL still refers to the countries of the West as 'Crusaders: not so, while we may certainly deplore their later history, particularly with regard to Byzantium, the Crusades were motivated - at least at the very beginning - by a sense of honour and the chivalric obligation to rescue the Christians of the Holy Land who had fallen under the oppressive domination of Islamic invaders from the deserts of Arabia .... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In reality, of course, they flatter us by the comparison because, whereas the crusaders were at least true to their beliefs, the culture of the democratic West, formed over the centuries by its developing Christian humanist and enlightenment heritage of the rule of law and freedom of speech and expression, has been captured by the contemporary intellectually barbarous fashion for relativism and the pathological avoidance of anything which may even hint at the fact that one culture and one way of life may be better and more conducive to human flourishing than another. We fight the conflict of ideas with the Jihadist savages with one hand tied behind our back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b2ptPOKYe8A" width="420"></iframe></span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-50278538085549081732015-11-06T14:40:00.002+00:002015-11-06T20:51:17.158+00:00'The winds that would blow' - some Friday traffic<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A few interesting items from the blog list this week:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Peter Hitchens takes the Church of England to task for its treatment of the memory of Bishop George Bell [<a href="http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/the-church-of-englands-shameful-betrayal-of-bishop-george-bell/">here</a> from 'The Spectator']</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is, of course, difficult, if not impossible, to make an informed comment on this, due to the lack of detail about the allegation, or knowledge of any kind of additional corroborating evidence, being made available by the Church authorities. If an institution really wants to be considered as being beyond reproach, then its processes need to be completely transparent; otherwise the suspicion will remain that this is really about atoning for more recent terrible abuse in the Diocese of Chichester rather than taking responsibility for what may or may not have happened over seventy years ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There's a comment on due process and the rule of law from Robert Bolt's film 'A Man for All Seasons' which needs to be taken to heart, even when we are speaking of the dead and their so easily trashed reputations. In Britain we can point to the recent accusations, some of them demonstrably false, made against Lords MacAlpine and Brittan and Sir Edward Heath, as illustrating the dangers of making public lurid allegations which are based on inadequate evidence or patently false testimony. In an information age, mud sticks, and the reputations of the dead are permanently tarnished. It's hard to see how the well-being of the living can ever be safeguarded by the needless traducing of the memory of those no longer alive. 'The balance of probability' cited in the statement made about Bishop Bell falls far short of the required evidentiary test for the living that guilt should be 'beyond reasonable doubt.' If there are more allegations against Bishop Bell, that fact should be made public.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some cases, as we know from the monstrous Jimmy Savile scandal, are very much easier to determine due to the huge number of well-attested and consistent allegations that have been made over a long period of time, but in </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> a c</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ulture now so dominated by a demand for 'instant' justice, driven by emotional reactions and subjective feelings, we may be in danger now of inverting the principle Bolt's Thomas More voices so eloquently:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"More: What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast– man's laws, not God's– and if you cut them down—and you're just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake."</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">..........</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet more illiberal 'no -platform' nonsense from Britain's increasingly sensitive undergraduates - this time, intended or not - in defence of 'Islamic State' [</span><a href="http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/why-are-student-union-officials-censoring-criticism-of-islamic-state/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">] </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I used to think that the greatest contemporary danger to the values of civilisation came from militant Islamists themselves; now I'm not so sure: others seem to be doing the work for them ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">..........</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We've written before about the 'Benedict Option' <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.worldmag.com/2015/06/rod_dreher_explains_the_benedict_option" style="font-weight: bold;">[here]</a> </span>as a response to illiberal secularism's attempt to exclude faith - Christian faith in particular, it seems - from the public square. <a href="http://anglicanpastor.com/anglicanism-and-the-benedict-option/">Here</a> is a post which discusses its application to the Anglican context:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"... The hope of Alasdair MacIntyre at the end of After Virtue is that new Benedictines would construct “local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages.” The Benedictine Rule is certainly a starting point for chartering these kinds of communities. Benedict sought to teach those first brothers how to live in community, to cling to their brethren, in a sense, as the means to their own sanctification. As Anglicans, we believe that this can be translated beyond the monastery, particularly to the parish church. But, what happens when Christian community is forced to subsist outside the congregational forms of Christendom? What happens when Christians meet, spontaneously or out of necessity, as naturally in a living room as in a parish church? What happens, when, as is becoming normal today, Christians demand a common life beyond what the parish church can provide?</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What is needed is a charter for extra-parochial communities of prayer, life-giving fellowship, and solidarity in the midst of marginalization, a charter for a new rule of life – not for the individual, but for whole multi-generational groupings of Benedictine Option Christians. We need communities oriented towards the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful, communities in which virtue can flourish. Let me put all my cards on the table. I believe that Anglicanism offers just such a charter. We have forms for daily prayer and common intercession, forms for confession, and litanies for ourselves and for the world. We have an emphasis upon the domestic church and family catechesis. We have in our DNA a way for families to join together in their neighborhoods for evening prayer and cookouts, for students to come together for morning prayer and intercession for one another, for baptismal promises to become enfleshed in sacrifice for the sake of our brothers and sisters. In one of the great ironies of Anglicanism, what was intended for the chapel works best in the home! What was intended for the parish church comes to life outside her four walls! Thanks be to God, for we have a goodly heritage... "</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We can agree that Anglicanism (and, of course, that itself needs far greater definition) - in common with the Catholic traditions of Latin and Orthodox Christianity - certainly has the means by which to embrace the Benedict option. Whether in its mainstream forms, rather than in 'leavening' communities within them, it will ever recognise the necessity is open to more doubt ...</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">News just in, from the legally established, State (Lutheran) Church of Iceland which may give us some cause for reflection [from Anglican Ink </span><a href="http://www.anglicanink.com/article/freedom-conscience-clause-eliminated-church-iceland" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When does a national church designed to proclaim the faith and values of the Gospel to the State, become without question an institution compelled to proclaim the State's values to the nation...? In Iceland's case the answer seems to be 2015.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">..........</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And on the wearing of Remembrance poppies... </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the view of this blog, wearing a poppy is a wholly good, noble and a-political thing to do, and moreover, done in support of a valuable charitable cause. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But should we all be shamed or coerced into it? Dissenting views from the current herd mentality, of varying credibility, from <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-intolerance-of-poppymania/17606#.VjzYntLNxko">left</a> and <a href="http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/11/do-we-have-to-wear-poppies-.html">right</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the whole, it's hard to quarrel with this comment: </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"...As I read these words I see a lighted doorway in a small terraced house on an autumn evening, and a slight man in his twenties, in army uniform, embracing his wife and small children as he sets out on a journey from which he will not return. It does not seem to me to be an occasion for telling other people what they should feel, think or wear."</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Like so much else in these narcissistic days, this essentially manufactured argument is ego- driven and more about signalling one's own virtue than honouring the fallen, or the freedoms for which they fought and died ....</span><br />
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Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-36901507835289496322015-10-31T17:12:00.001+00:002015-10-31T17:12:28.310+00:00O What Their Joy and Their Glory Must Be<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the Eve of All Saints - the anthem by William Harris with words, of course, by Peter Abelard (O quanta qualia) translated by John Mason Neale.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DSnrXpeH9io" width="560"></iframe>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-81835506290673103972015-10-30T20:14:00.003+00:002015-10-30T20:27:47.071+00:00"Ah, see the fair chivalry come"<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">White horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They, for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed all</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Save the sweetness of treading where He first trod!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These, thro' the darkness of death, the dominions of night,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They saw with their eyes and sang for joy at the sight,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">White horsemen, who ride on white horses, Oh, fair to see!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They ride where the rivers of paradise flash and flow,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">White horsemen, with Christ their Captain, for ever He!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Te Martyrum Candidatus,' Lionel Johnson (1867-1902) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Worcester Cathedral Choir · Donald Hunt · Adrian Partington</span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-39613241801142284142015-10-27T14:08:00.002+00:002015-10-27T14:08:45.205+00:00If you're at a loose end in Bristol tonight ...<div class="vevent post-7066 tribe_events type-tribe_events status-publish hentry tag-classical" id="post-7066" style="background-color: white;">
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<span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-size: large;">St George's, Bristol</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #71625c; font-family: Whitney SSm A, Whitney SSm B;"><span style="line-height: 22px;"><b>BOX OFFICE </b></span></span><b style="color: #71625c; font-family: 'Whitney SSm A', 'Whitney SSm B'; line-height: 22px;">0845 40 24 001</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; font-weight: 700;">Kathryn Price</span><span style="font-size: large;"> cello</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Charles Matthews</span> pianoforte</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">Debussy</span> Sonate pour Violoncelle et Pianoforte<br /><span style="font-weight: 700;">Chopin</span> Nocturne in C# minor, Op Post<br /><span style="font-weight: 700;">Schubert</span> Sonata ‘Arpeggione’<br /><span style="font-weight: 700;">Rachmaninov</span> Sonata in G minor, Op 19</div>
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Kathryn Price and Charles Matthews have received widespread international critical acclaim for their long established cello and piano duo, and their double-memorised recital work together.</div>
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They return to St. George’s, Bristol, for another memorised programme, including sonatas by Debussy, Schubert and Rachmaninov.</div>
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Kathryn Price & Charles Matthews: Cello & Piano Recital</h2>
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Tuesday 27 October<br />7.30pm</h3>
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Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-17517172739240249522015-10-26T21:18:00.001+00:002015-10-26T21:35:11.845+00:00Forward in Faith defends the seal of the Confessional<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This ought not to be newsworthy, but in a Church which increasingly fails to understand a sacramental view of the world, it is a highly significant and well- argued response. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Forward in Faith has published its submission to the Working Party on the Seal of the Confessional, which is charged with assisting the Archbishops’ Council and the House of Bishops in considering whether to recommend amendment of the Canon that says that priests should not reveal what has been disclosed in Confession by a penitent.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Forward in Faith's submission points out that the sacraments belong to the whole Church, of which the Church of England is only part, and that the General Synod therefore does not have the authority to alter them. The obligation of non-disclosure is part of the nature of the Sacrament: it was not created by the Canon. Amending or repealing the Canon would therefore not remove it. We are confident that priests will continue to regard themselves as bound by the Seal of the Confessional, even if this canonical provision is amended or repealed.</b></span><br /><br />We question whether, in any case, the necessity for such a change has been or can be made out.<br /><br />Such a change would be undesirable and counterproductive. It would discourage people who have committed criminal offences from making their confession, reducing the likelihood of a priest being in a position to counsel them to report themselves to the Police. The time and energy expended in promoting such a controversial piece of legislation could be deployed more profitably in other ways.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Forward in Faith is concerned that many priests receive little or no training for the important ministry of reconciliation, which both the 1662 and Common Worship Ordinals identify as a fundamental aspect of priestly ministry. Such training should emphasize that, where a serious crime is confessed, absolution should be withheld until the penitent has reported him- or herself to the Police.<br /><br />Forward in Faith understands the defence of the sacraments as part of its purpose, and we shall resist as strongly as we can any attack on the integrity of sacramental Confession.</b></span><br /><br />The submission may be read <a href="http://forwardinfaith.com/Confession.php">here</a>." </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> [gives a further link to a pdf document] </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before going on to address the desirability of a change to the Church of England's canons, the response states: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I<b>s Change Necessary? </b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">13. Even if it were possible for the General Synod to alter the sacrament by removing the Seal, we do not believe that the necessity for such a change has been or can be made out. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">14. We share the general abhorrence of the crimes against children and vulnerable adults that have given rise to consideration of this issue, and agree that it is essential to ensure that the Church is as safe a place as possible for them and for the Church to do all that it can to promote safeguarding in wider society. But we are not aware of any evidence that amending the proviso to Canon 113 of the Canons of 1603 would have any positive effect on this. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">15. We hope that the Working Group will report on the question of whether there is any evidence that in any specific case breach of the Seal of the Confessional by a priest would have made any difference to the safety of any specific child or vulnerable adult. We are not aware of any. Without such evidence, we suggest, there is no justification for even considering a change that would purport to remove the duty of non-disclosure or seek to impose a duty of disclosure. It would simply be an emotional gesture. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">16. Those of us who have significant experience of hearing confessions are doubtful as to the frequency with which offences against children and vulnerable adults are confessed. We believe this to be very rare indeed.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Read it all, and the footnotes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There are already some interesting responses on the 'Thinking Anglicans' website [<a href="http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/007099.html">here</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-</span>Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.com0