Weekly messages

The Pope’s visit may help rediscover that both Christians and secularists share a common language

Posted on September 5th 2010 in Weekly messages

The visit of Pope Benedict XVI has crept up on me, coming as it does straight after the summer holidays. The lazy days of summer make anything happening in September seems to belong to a different age. However, it is now less than two weeks before the Holy Father arrives in this country. What will he find and how will he be received? The intimations of mass demonstrations to be undertaken by secularists, Darwinists and others in parallel with the Pope’s visit looks to be widely off the mark. ‘Protest the Pope’, an amalgam of the discontented, will probably claim some moral victory but, as a group, will fizzle out in a few weeks once it lacks the oxygen of publicity.

My hopes are rather more positive. Pope Benedict will not gather the crowds that Pope John Paul II did when he came twenty-five years ago but, as a guest of the Queen in his capacity as a Head of State, he has the opportunity to speak to the nation in a formal manner which was denied to his predecessor whose visit was pastoral.

This different opportunity comes at a time when it is perceived by Christians that ‘religion’, and in this sense ‘organised religion’, is being marginalised in contemporary society. There have been instances in recent years of governmental opposition to Catholic schools, the work of catholic adoption agencies, and the nationalisation of the ethos of many Catholic charities through the weight of government grants. This view is true, but is not the full picture. What has been lost in contemporary debate is any comprehension of what used to be called ‘the preambles of faith’, the acceptance of those precious human qualities that could be discovered through the use of reason. Such qualities would be the immortality of the soul, the exercise of freedom, the role of conscience, the need for beauty, and the foundations of good and evil. None of these topics are necessarily religious in the narrow sense but part of the patrimony of humanity. This was the thrust of the Regensburg University Address given by Pope Benedict a few years ago. Unfortunately the arguments over one paragraph concerning Islam has blotted out in the minds of many people his insights on the role of reason, and the contribution of Greek philosophy to the world.

The loss of this middle ground is sorely felt because it makes dialogue so difficult. The secular minded might well treat the discussion of such subjects as a subterfuge for speaking about God, whilst the religiously minded so often seeks comfort in either Biblical fundamentalism or talk about attacks on the Church. So it is just here that Pope Benedict might make us all take notice, secular and religious alike. Two areas in particular might be on the Holy Father’s mind, judging from his previous publications, the care of the environment, and the cause of human development in the Third World and elsewhere. These two topics concern our common humanity and our common future and, even if secularist government and the Church come to them from different angles, both accept their importance. It is these areas that under his guidance might become new ‘preambles of faith’.

At heart the Christian faith is a relationship of love between God who comes close and, on our part, a loving response to just this. This dialogue is formalised in the Sacrament of Baptism, which involves entry into the community of like-minded believers, the Church. This dialogue continues sacramentally in the Eucharist and Reconciliation. To us, as Catholics, this all seems so obvious, but it does not look like that from the outside. Too often the secularist is expected to run, long before even he or she can walk. The preambles of faith, in traditional terms described as ‘philosophical anthropology’, and the reasoned dialogue that such thinking requires, is the place to begin. My hope is that on this state visit the Holy Father may stimulate just such a dialogue in every level of our society.

The Church’s Marian dogmas are founded on the tradition of the Church as interpreter of God’s word

Posted on August 15th 2010 in Weekly messages

Last Sunday the Church was plunged into darkness as the electricity board renewed cables in the street. The fire-alarms were ringing away in the background, but at least one parishioner could see the bright side, when he said that this was the first time he could study the stained-glass window behind the tabernacle. This is from the original pro-Cathedral and dates from the mid-19th century, itself a copy of Titian’s famous painting of the Assumption in the Friari Church in Venice of the 16th century. The Dogma of the Assumption of Our Lady was only decreed by Pope Pius XII in 1950, but far from it being a late addition to the Catholic faith it has been held as a doctrine from the earliest centuries of the Church.

The Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption are the two teachings that cause most non-Catholic Christians serious difficulties. If these teachings are not in the Bible, they must be un-necessary accretions. This argument is founded on a mistaken understanding of the role of the Bible in the Church. During the week a rather aggressive young man came in to St Mary’s one evening to ask where is the Rosary mentioned in the Bible, and try as I might I could not convince him to say anything other than ‘it is not in the Bible’. For this young man the Bible has replaced the living person Jesus Christ as the centre of his faith. However Jesus Christ is the principle of coherence through which the Old and New Testaments are interpreted. This mandate of interpretation has been handed onto the Church as a whole, and to the Pope and Bishops in particular to continue.

The principle of coherence is different to that of content. The content of the Bible is inerrant, all the biblical writers wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Pope and Bishops cannot make the Bible say something it does not in terms of content, nor can they separate the coherence of the whole from Jesus Christ. The same Holy Spirit that animates the Church is the one that inspired the original writers. For the Catholic, content, coherence and interpretation are bound together within a living faith.

This approach is needed to understand the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Their foundations are found in the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’. The Church as a spiritual living body, has meditated on the meaning of ‘full of grace’, within the universal saving mission of Jesus Christ. All people are saved through Christ, but being ‘full of grace’ the Virgin Mary must have been saved in a manner different to sinners. She was preserved from sin rather than saved from original sin and all its consequences. The Virgin Mary still required the saving act of her Son, but in a different way to ourselves. This is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which has nothing to do with the manner of her physical birth.  The dogma of the Assumption logically follows this preservation from sin. Mary did not die in the manner witnessed by common humanity with all its trauma and grief. All this is the consequence of the sin of the world, and personal sins of each of us. However even without sin the life of the Virgin Mary is of a finite duration, otherwise she would not be human. At the end of her physical life, she passed through death into heaven, body and soul, since her whole life was without any stain of sin. This Assumption, through the power of her Son was made possible by His death and Resurrection.

In these ways therefore the dogmas are an integral part of the Catholic faith, founded on the biblical encounter between the Archangel Gabriel and Mary, and cohere with the so-called ‘rule of faith’ handed to the living Church.

The Feast of the Transfiguration gives a foundation of hope to a life of faith.

Posted on August 8th 2010 in Weekly messages

A recent analysis of the nature of happiness has drawn the very obvious conclusion that these feelings are most acutely felt either as anticipation for, or remembrance of, some special event whether it be a holiday, a visit to a favourite relative, or a return to a particular place. It often seems that the experience of what is subsequently described as happy is not explicitly felt that way at the time.  It’s only afterwards that one can reflect on what an enjoyable and happy day it has been. These moments of pleasure whether anticipated or remembered play an essential role in our lives. They keep us going though the mundane duties of daily life. They help us to put up with aggravation in the workplace, the demands of daily life, an ungrateful family or difficult relatives.

The same sense of remembrance and anticipation may be said of our own lives of faith. The Feast of the Transfiguration which took place last Friday may assist in helping to understand the relationship between happiness and faith, which is normally described as a beatitude. Attending Mass Sunday on Sundays, attempting to say our prayers during the week, or of examining our conscience in the light of our conduct and the teachings of the Church, can easily seem a heavy burden, an unrewarding task, or a futile expending of effort. However, every temptation to think in this way is to place a far greater emphasis on the experience of the present moment rather than on the truth to which one is committed, namely the person of Jesus Christ. The temptation to give up, to set aside the practices of the faith, fails to take to heart the command of God, spoken through the cloud, to Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration, ‘This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him’. The content of what Jesus says can always take us out of the misery or black hole into which we might have descended. The words of Jesus are both a comfort and a challenge to every temptation to maintain a spiritual or psychological status quo.

This deliberate journey that Jesus undertook with His three closest disciples was one of hope. Jesus recognises that they needed, just as all those of us who came afterwards, encouragement to fulfil their lives of faithful discipleship. He purposefully took Peter, James and John up the mountain in order for them to catch a glimpse of His divinity. This diversion on the road towards Jerusalem, came between the first and second Passion predictions of His impending death and subsequent Resurrection. Each prediction was met with incomprehension on the part of the disciples. There is an inchoate sense of foreboding amongst the disciples which makes them ask the most inappropriate of questions as to who is the greatest. St Mark explains that the disciples did speak about this event amongst themselves, so presuming it was a source of hope in the last months of Jesus’ public life.

The truth of the Gospel does not depend on personal religious experience, but it would be a strange life of faith if a believer had never once felt the presence of Christ’s Holy Spirit, even if only for a tantalisingly brief moment. The fire of the Holy Spirit may be experienced as the warmth of security, similar to those feelings experienced as a young child in relation to his or her mother or father. So whatever way we have, or do experience the presence of God, they are precious moments to carry with us through our daily life.