The worst thing about being Catholic is…

division amongst Catholics. I hate it. And the worst of the worst is when those who are fostering this division are priests or religious or even bishops.

Not that we have to agree on everything. Or even to tolerate everything – heresy and sin are very real. But when we see uncharitable speech and interpretations between Catholics, we should immediately recognise that the devil is at work.

If someone says or does something that might be interpreted badly, try to find the most charitable interpretation, until you can clarify with them. If you can’t find a good interpretation, assume good intentions, and try to correct your brother or sister. If you can’t do this, pray for their conversion.

If someone is accused of a sin or crime, consider them innocent until proven guilty (unless you are a prosecutor, in which case you must play devil’s advocate). Do not pass rash judgment.

The Catholic media is terrible for this. Whenever they do this, they are just following the pattern of the world’s journalism. I have largely abandoned Catholic news media as a result. It is bad for the soul.

The fact is, these people are attacking the Church – attacking Christ Himself. It is a grave sin.

Catholics & Orthodox fighting at the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

I have probably done this more than I am aware. It is very easy to judge and accuse and divide. Thinking about it, I have probably done this more to non-Catholics, and it is wrong no matter who is the target. Especially when talking politics, I often use very harsh words. I think I’ll have to mention this in my next confession…

I expect most people don’t fully realise what they are doing when they foster divisions in this way. It isn’t natural, being a Christian. I recommend we follow the rule, to always pray for a person twice as much as we criticise them, in time and in effort.

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all…
Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds.

-Ephesians 4:1-6, 17

God bless you!

Woman as antithesis of man

Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’
Genesis 2:18

This passage got me thinking.

It cannot be that it means each woman is merely an assistant to her man, even if she is a partner. That is just obviously not the true destiny of a woman. Women are not merely there for men’s needs, on any level.

It is more true that women help men in their joint destiny. But men clearly help women also. Yet Genesis 2 has a clear asymmetry that still needs to be accounted for.

I would like to suggest that, borrowing Hegel’s dialectic, woman is the antithesis of man. That is, woman presents a contrary, and in ways contradictory, force to the thesis that is man, and yet the two are destined to come together to form a synthesis. Is the antithesis necessarily another thesis? I don’t believe so. It seems to me that in the history of thought it is more of a contrary reality.

We can consider this in procreation; how man provides a first living principle, and woman provides a second living principle that receives and transforms the first, to create a third.

We might also consider the Church, the bride of Christ. The Holy one meets the unholy, and forms the synthesis of salvation, the mystery of the Holyunholy. We must receive the mystery of Christ dynamically, with all that we are, in order to bring to birth the New Man.

Let me know what you think in the comments. God bless!

Nuclear disarmament is a pro-life issue

Nagasaki Cathedral

Recently, thanks to Pope Francis hosting a Vatican summit on nuclear disarmament, I learned that previous Popes hadn’t completely condemned Nuclear Weapons being kept as a deterrent. Honestly, this has shocked and angered me.

The Church has thoroughly condemned any use of nuclear weapons:

‘Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.’ (Gaudium et Spes n. 80)

But for some reason, it has stopped short of condemning nations from keeping them, “just in case”, or as they prefer to say, as a deterrent. What kind of moral theology allows us to keep ourselves ready to commit a grave sin, in certain circumstances? Or to keep ourselves ready to murder millions of innocent men, women and children, and in fact, perpetually threatening to murder them? What could allow us to justly threaten, what would every single time be a grave sin, and a “crime against God and man himself”?

I believe unilateral Nuclear disarmament should be a “pro-life” issue, taken at least as seriously as matters like abortion. We should demand it from our politicians, and not call anyone pro-life who doesn’t.

Actually… That last paragraph would make the Catholic Church no longer pro-life, since in Gaudium et Spes n. 81, speaking about the need for disarmament, it says, “not unilaterally indeed”. I should note, that this is not in the context of a moral pronouncement, but an exhortation to disarm and achieve peace, and is therefore not to be considered infallible. Still, I shouldn’t say the Council Fathers were not pro-life.

But I do think they were wrong to include those three words. It cannot be moral to keep yourself ready for a grave sin, nor to threaten innocent lives, for any ends– even peace. As foolish as unilateral disarmament may be, is it not the only moral option?

Pope Francis seems to agree with me :)

 

God bless you

 

P.S. Here’s a link to pictures of a Pontifical High Mass being celebrated in the ruined Cathedral of Nagasaki in June 1949, less than four years after the bomb hit Nagasaki

Revolt, Renew, Reform

I just read an article on habits, which basically noted that as we gain expertise and more advanced skills and practices, we will often end up actually regressing, because we’ve lost the “fundamentals”. The advanced stuff becomes easy, but the basic (and far more important) stuff is quietly withering.

This is something I have noticed in my prayer life. I tend to develop a set of relatively fixed prayers for regular activities, such as exercising, eating meals, reading the Bible, and going to bed. I like it this way, because I want to make sure that I always say everything that needs saying. As it goes on, these prayers naturally develop, being expanded and refined, and reworked again and again, aiming for a sense of completeness and symmetry, so that my prayer may be “perfect”. I also develop rules for what prayers to say each day, and when, and these too grow nuanced over time, including various technicalities. [I’m the kind of person who actually sort of loves rules, routines, and waking up early, and though Past-Me might have disdained that, I don’t care. The difficult thing is marrying this to my love for chaos and late nights… I oscillate in life.]

But after a while, these prayers grow old. I can say them easily, even in my head, while I’m actually thinking about God-knows-what. My prescribed and required prayers can become a duty and a burden, and get in the way of practices that might do me more good. I grow “pious”.

For this reason, every so often, I revolt against my system, seriously simplifying my prayer life. I return to the basics –just me and my God– and let everything reform from there. Many elements of the previous system are gradually reintroduced, and new ones too, and the complexity, beauty, and rigidity return, step by step, but with their centre restored to them.

 

I think this may be a near perfect analogy for what the Church was doing at Vatican II. The Church wanted to rediscover Herself, and return to Her first love. Her practices had grown elaborate and majestic and beautiful, but perhaps also comfortable and stifling. On the one hand, the religion was thoroughly encapsulated, but on the other, it was somewhat captured and contained. At least that’s the impression I’ve been given…

The Council set in motion a process of renewal, rediscovery, and reformation that’s ongoing. As Pope Francis stresses, ‘Time is greater than space.’ I think we can see this process at work both in the emergence of new practices and the re-emergence of old. The new wave of traditionalism should be seen as a fruit of the Council, to be celebrated with all the others.

On that note, I feel the need to briefly defend V2 against those who would claim it has borne bad fruit. There are those who have misinterpreted it, as being essentially a liberalising or dilution of the faith. But that would be as shallow as interpreting my personal cycles of reform and simplification, to my faith weakening, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Externally, many things were temporarily shed, but only so that we could reconnect with what is truly essential.

 

But these are just my thoughts. What do you think? God bless!

How do we save the Church?

How do we save the Roman Catholic Church? It doesn’t take much to see it’s having a crisis, at least in the West. Everyone seems to have an answer to this question. It was only a matter of time before I had to weigh in, so, here it is:

We don’t

We don’t save the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t have it in me to give life to the Church. Nor does any idea, any form of music or liturgy, or any programme. Jesus Christ is the life of the Church, and He alone is her saviour.

So… how do we save the Church? We don’t save the Church, the Church saves us. And this is our problem today: we don’t let the Church save us- we don’t let it give us Jesus. We’re the problem!

It’s not this silly priest, that senile Bishop, those clueless cardinals, or even our wonderful Pope Francis. It’s us–me and you–not accepting Jesus and chasing after Him with all our strength that is the problem. We’re not taking advantage of all the ways Jesus comes to us through His body, the Church, to recreate us in Him. We’re not chasing after sainthood.

‘How do we save the Church?’ Every answer is correct (well… nearly), and every answer is wrong, because in every answer we can find Jesus, and because every answer is not Jesus. It’s not what we need to do, it’s who we do it with and for.

There’s no hope in any of our reforms or programmes, or the chariots of Egypt! The people of God cannot hope in the strength of men. Not one of our clever schemes will save us. We can’t idolise the works of God.

‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing… As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love…  This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’

[John 15:5,9-10,12]

“Francis, go rebuild my Church, which you see is falling into ruins.”

What I’m saying is, we need to become saints! At the risk of sounding fanatical, saints are the solution to every real problem in the Church and the world, because Jesus alone is the solution. Jesus alone is the life of the world!

How can we receive God? How do we become saints? We have to encounter Jesus, and as we encounter Him, we become an encounter with Him. We need to rediscover, over and over and over, God’s love for us and our hearts response of love for Him, and we need to submit to this love of God. And submitting to the love of God, we must seek the love of God everywhere.

We have to let go of everything that is not Jesus, even the holy things which brought us Jesus in the past. When we become attached to anything, it destroys our poverty of spirit, and we become complacent, self-righteous, and closed to the Kingdom of God. We can trust our good deeds over the one who gives the grace to do them. We can trust our praying rather than Him we pray to. We can even fall by trusting in our receiving communion, rather than trusting Jesus-Host Himself.

I’m saying we must chase after the love of God with all our might, knowing that we can never pin Him down and capture Him. With all our hearts, all our souls, all our strength and all our minds, we must receive and submit to the uncontrollable love of God. We must let go of every attachment, every possession, every illusion of control we hold so dearly, so that we can give Him control.

When we do this, as individuals and as communities, then we will see the Kingdom of God coming, within and amongst us.

Pray for me, and God bless you!

 

WYD 2016: The Time of My Life (so far)

(The Opening Mass)

I really don’t know what to tell you about WYD 2016 in Krakow, except that it was the best time of my life. Please bear with me as I ramble a bit, about just part of what it meant to me.

Welcome

Before going to Poland, me and my friends from uni joined with a group of about 300 pilgrims from around the World for a “pre-encounter” in Hungary, organised by Verbum Dei. We listened, we talked, we prayed, we had mass, we joked and sang and danced. But in the most incredible atmosphere of love and friendship I’ve encountered. Everyone was a friend. Everyone smiled and said hello to everyone. And I felt embraced by an inexplicable love. I really experienced the joy of the gospel, and the Kingdom of Heaven.

A good example, is when in the evening, we all learned Hungarian folk dance, and had three hundred of us dancing around the hall in these great circles and lines, soaked in sweat, jumping about, and smiling like madmen. It’s an image of Heaven.

Adoration

My highlight of the pre-encounter came at adoration. Even amongst such love, I was somehow able to start feeling alone and unlovable again. It wasn’t too strong a feeling, but I did feel cut off…

Then, some of my friends began a beautiful piece of theatre/prayer, centred around mercy and removing masks to be loved. At the end of this, the Eucharist was brought out for a time of adoration. A screen blocked me from seeing Jesus as He began proceeding from the tabernacle, and as I tried to prepare myself to see and adore Him, I didn’t feel any closeness to Him. I didn’t feel like He was really present at all, and I worried what this meant.

Then He came past the screen, I saw Him, and I knew it was Him, right there, in love for me. I felt His loving gaze, and it broke me apart. I cried a lot, and didn’t wipe away the tears, because I didn’t want to lose a thing. I kept repeating ‘Jesus, you love me` and ‘Jesus, I love you`. I desired nothing but to belong entirely to Jesus, to love Him and be loved by Him, at any and all cost.

God loved Rudolf Höss

The first thing we did in Poland was to visit Auschwitz. The above sign really struck me. The idea that there was any more blood spilled at Auschwitz after the war, filled me with sadness. The thought of any more hatred, and killing, and saying that people aren’t worthy of life; or of the blood of the innocent and the wicked being mingled, horrified me. The war was won, but where was the peace?

I remembered that God loved Rudolf Höss, and even went to the cross for him. He was incredibly inhuman to his prisoners, because he didn’t believe they were truly human. But the response to this was to see his evil deeds, and say that he wasn’t truly human, that he didn’t deserve life. But God loved and created Rudolf Höss, not for the monster he made himself, but for the human being, capable of love, that he simply was.

It was humans that perpetrated the holocaust. It was humans like you and me. It was us.

As I continued around Auschwitz II- Birkenau, the horror kept growing within me. I felt the need for us all to repent for what the Nazis, and many others, have done throughout history. I felt terrible anger, followed by sorrow and pity, for the perpetrators of all our atrocities.

The more I saw of Auschwitz and human evil, the more clearly I saw that the world desperately needs mercy. There is no other solution.

Welcome pt 2

The People of Krakow (and Wadowice, where we were staying) gave us an incredible welcome. Our host families made us feel truly at home, despite every barrier of language and culture. And our fellow pilgrims too, were all incredibly friendly and welcoming.

I didn’t understand before this trip, just how crucial being welcoming is to being merciful. But how can we ever be merciful if we don’t welcome others? And how could we welcome those who most need it, if not for mercy?

On our long march (about 14km in the heat) to Campus Misericordiae, families who lived along the way came out of the their homes, and out of the sheer kindness of their hearts, gave us cold water. And on the long way back, in the pouring rain, one family came out offering us hot coffee. It was pure grace.

Friendships

So many friends, old and new! And the new, are so close, that they really feel like old friends already. I feel incredibly close to them, because we shared our lives, and our deepest life (Jesus) for this two weeks. In each of them, I discovered incredible depths and beauty I couldn’t have imagined, and each of them showed me Jesus that much more.

I really can’t express my gratitude enough. They’re in the depths of my heart forever now.

Papa Francesco!

Seeing and hearing Papa Francesco was amazing. I think he exudes the love and mercy of God in a very special way.

His speeches and homily were very powerful, and made clear to me how greatly God loves us, and how God wants to use us. How God wants you and me to go out and change the whole world, to build a world of love, mercy, and fraternity. How God dreams of our true happiness, which is not “a good couch”, but a life of love and action!

Holy Communion

As I queued for Holy Communion at the final mass, I was overcome with God’s love for me again, and I began crying once more, desiring for every part of me, from the biggest to the very smallest, to be given to Jesus in love. I didn’t want anything held back. I wanted his light in every last crevice in the depths of my heart. I realised I’d rather God’s love and nothing, than everything except God’s love. And then I realised, that since everything is each moment created out of God’s love, apart from God’s love there is nothing, and within God’s love there is everything, and so I found myself surrounded by God’s love on every side.

The entire World Youth Day was one big Holy Communion, in which I found Jesus over and over and over again. We were all there together, being made one, by the one body, the one love, of our one Lord.

The Church is the unity of humanity :)

Now, the real challenge begins: to take God’s mercy home with us and out to the world…

 

God bless you and pray for us!

The Church must unite Britain

[As a postscript to my last post, ‘Britain is split in two, and we must make it one’, I wrote the below about the Church’s role in bringing unity and justice to Britain and the world. Because I expect some readers are interested in the Church more than mere politics, I’m posting this separately. Hope you enjoy.]

In this work of bringing true unity to the country and to the world, the Church should be at the forefront. The Church’s rich tradition embraces all of humanity, and listens to the voice of the poor as much as the expert. The individualist ideology of the modern world could never unite a people, and when people turn to national, ethnic, or religious identity for meaning and community, they only get the unity of a common separation; but true religion offers true meaning and true unity, that reaches out to all in love and service.

We might think Britain is too rich to hear the gospel. The truth is, Britain and the modern world suffer from extreme poverty. As Bl. Mother Teresa said,

‘There is much suffering in the world — very much. And this material suffering is suffering from hunger, suffering from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases, but I still think the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, just having no one.’

Britain is desperate for the gospel. We are desperate to be a people, each turned towards God in our neighbour.

Catholics need to realise, above all others, it is our duty to work for love, justice, and the common good. Jesus, the light of the world (Jn 8:12), told us we are the light of the world (Mt 5:14), and we must realise this.

The sad thing is, to many people, the Church is part of the establishment. We must lower ourselves, identify with all those in need and on the margins of society, and become in practice Pope Francis’ “poor Church for the poor”.

 

God bless you!

Pope Francis washing the feet of migrants

‘I prefer a church that is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out in the streets rather that a church that is unhealthy from being confined and clinging to its own security.’
Pope Francis

‘Mercy is the prophecy of a new world, in which the goods of the earth and of work are equally distributed and no one lacks the necessary, because solidarity and sharing are the concrete result of fraternity.’
Pope Francis

The EU and Paradise

Tonight, the above EU poster made me finally realise just what the EU really is. By using the image of the tower of Babel (on the left is the 16th century painting it’s based upon), the EU declares its design to bring all of humanity together (which is great, by the way) and reach/create heaven by our own strength (which is very, very bad). This is shown also by the Remain camps appeal to the EU for bringing peace.

What’s so wrong with this? Every attempt to create paradise by our own power always has and always will bring nothing but slavery. The Nazis believed in, and sacrificed to, a glorious Arian future. The Soviets believed in, and sacrificed to, a glorious communist future. Revolutionaries always believe in the post-revolution world, and commit atrocities for it. Whatever we make our ultimate end, will always demand sacrifices of everything else.

What about Christianity, with its promised “Kingdom of Heaven”? The Kingdom of Heaven demands a far greater sacrifice than any other revolution: it demands our very selves. This is the meaning of the cross: the Kingdom of Heaven is giving yourself away in love of others. Do we do this by our own strength? Not at all! How could self abolish self? The Christian’s self sacrifice is not how they win the Kingdom for themselves- it is the Kingdom! Because the Kingdom of Heaven is not our creation, but a gift to receive in us, we have no work in which to sacrifice for a greater, “sacred”, good, but have only to live Heaven now.

‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’ -Jesus

The EU believes in itself, and for that reason will oppress people. It trusts in strength to achieve its goals, but strength and power can never bring true harmony, love and joy. The Church on the other hand, believes in God’s gift of Himself to us, and in this gift the whole Church is called to give itself away. It is by lowliness, humility, and love, and these alone, that Heaven is brought to Earth.

“You know that among the pagans their so-called rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you. No; anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be slave to all. For the Son of Man himself did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)

So what’s the problem with the EU? That it believes it can, through mere collective intelligence and power, force the world into unity. The Body of Christ (the Church) on the other hand, calls the world to true unity in its own self-giving sacrifice of love, in which your life is mine and mine is yours.

We are, as always, having to choose between using/forcing others, and loving/helping them, and this time, because the aim is as high as it gets (heaven), so are the stakes.

Peace and love, and God bless you!