Theological Kung Fu

There is a big hoo-ha about gay marriage at the moment.  Personally I couldn’t really give a fig for what this country’s civil law says about marriage just so long as the state doesn’t try to over reach and force priests to perform marriage ceremonies for gay couples. It leaves the Church of England up the creek without a paddle though because of its symbiotic relationship with the state, good incentive to swim the Tiber if ever there was one.

We are in the world but not of the world, we should remember that. Whilst it is sad that this country is becoming secular, we can’t force the world to obey Catholic teaching. The secular idea of marriage is that it is merely a legal arrangement to be forged and dissolved at a whim as and when the Hollywoodised version of love waxes and wanes.

How sad, and we see the disastrous consequences of such an empty idea of marriage in our society, disjointed families, children raised in emotionally damaging situations, single parents struggling to cope. Thus we have a broken Britain that nobody will dare fix because it will mean valuing the family and what holds it together, marriage.

Most people are understandably jaded about the hollow idea of marriage espoused by modern society, but they are without faith so they cannot embrace the Catholic ideal either.  I’ve met people who don’t believe in God, yet who are totally committed to their partner and have children, yet still won’t marry…

A bit of a bizarre analogy I’ve thought of is this.  There is a kung-fu game called Jade Empire, the protagonist is taught by a master, who turns out to be evil, when the protagonist confronts his master he is easily defeated because throughout all his lessons his master gave him a fatal flaw in his fighting style.   The modern world has this fatal flaw. They have been dealt a cruel blow and they will never know what has hit them, the fatal flaw is modernism.

Whilst the rate at which the number of Church going Catholics contracts has slowed (probably more due to the wonders of modern medicine and immigration than anything else) unless we embark on a course of more vigorous evangelism the Catholic Church in England and Wales will continue to have an ever aging demographic. We need to address what is holding us back from effective evangelisation.

I’d say what is holding us back is the schmaltzification of  the Catholic faith. Frequently a woolly, gooey version of Catholicism is given to children and  converts, this gooey version, whilst not necessarily totally modernist in and of itself, is weak when it comes into conflict with modernism, i.e. every day. Our kung-fu is weak and we need to spice it up if we are going to swim against the current of modernism which is sucking all meaning and objective moral truth from our society.

How can we combat modernism more effectively? We need to know our faith, not just as it is now, but its history, its theological development of thought, we need to look back to times when our faith was more robustly clarified in order to go forward because today theological truths are often espoused in terms of feelings and opinions, schmaltzy platitudes that pull the rug from under our feet rather than objective truths that can be relied upon when times get tough.

I had a conversation with my mum (who is an evangelical Anglican) who was singing the praises of an ecumenical talk she went to about the history of the Church… it greatly amused me, I have no idea how you can know anything about the history of Christianity and not become Catholic, perhaps especially in this country where the reformation was ruthlessly imposed from above by the government. If you want to go back to a more authentic Christianity you have to turn to Catholicism.

Another gripe I have at the moment  is all the gender inclusive language we get during mass, last Sunday the responsorial psalm was completely mangled in an attempt to exorcise all mention of masculinity from it.  It had long since ceased to be a translation and become an exercise in political correctness. When we no longer deal in truth but ideology we are diminished.  The psalm sounded completely ridiculous, like it was attempting hopscotch standing on its head in order to avoid mentioning men. Messing around with scripture to reflect the social mores of today (or the 1970′s as the case might be) puts us in dicey theological territory if you ask me, never mind its aesthetic poverty.

To end on a positive note the new translation of the Mass with its increased fidelity to the Latin offers hope that things can and will improve, maybe one day the hierarchy in this country will realise that fidelity to the gospel message will mean offending the focus groups responsible for the schmaltzy version of the faith that has been doled out with disastrous effect for the past 30 years or so. Meanwhile keep your kung-fu strong, dig around for robust Catholic teaching and grab every opportunity to share it with fellow Catholics.

Was the virgin Mary as young as the girl in the photo when she gave birth?

Ok, I’ve been wondering, terms like wrong, illegal, immoral and sin are very different. Is it possible that something could be illegal and a not a sin? almost certainly. Is it possible that something could be illegal and wrong, but not immoral? maybe. As for something that can be legal and a sin, need we even ask.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/jennymccartney/9075822/The-double-standards-of-teenage-sex.htm

That’s a pretty interesting read really.  So yes it would be illegal, and wrong for an underage couple to have sex.  It would be a sin too since they aren’t married.  But since most people who fall into the trap of underage sex (which has been so perfectly set for them by the modern media) have received little to none in the way of correct moral formation are they necessarily culpable? the answer is no.

I think I’ve made the point before that one thing we have to do is not throw the baby out with the bathwater, in this case in quite a literal sense.  I might be really tempting controversy when I say that isn’t it quite strange that the picture of mother and child at the top of that blog is actually disquietingly beautiful.  I’m pretty sure that girl isn’t the baby’s mother but that doesn’t matter, because the alternative to that metaphor is abortion.

I was in Tesco desperately trying (and failing) not to spend money the other day and I saw what I’m sure was a teenage mother, with a child that was at least four years old. And you know what, the sky did not fall, the earth didn’t split apart with lava spewing forth, dragons didn’t appear from a parallel dimension to turn humanity into charcoal briquettes.  In fact, the girl, who probably did drop out of school, probably does live off benefits and the generosity of her parents (like me I suppose on those latter two counts) looked pretty serene, and the kid looked pretty happy.

Life is beautiful, we are forgetting that in the UK, we are probably one of the most depressed nations on earth at the moment.  We need to realise that life has such incredible value and that a baby’s gurgles and giggles are such a better outcome than the highroad to abortion that seems to be part of most policy in regard to teenage pregnancy.

This is where the Catholic Church will always trump other religions, because it meets people in whatever situation they are in, and it doesn’t condemn sinners only calls us to repentance. Even those espousing the cake or death gospel of niceness that is Anglicanism can also be the Church of propriety. Yes the scandalous truth is that a young girl who keeps her baby no matter the cost needs to be praised! It reminds me of another young girl who conceived out of wedlock and gave birth in a cattle shed. I wish there was a way to say that to the girl in Tesco without seeming like a mental case.

Aaaah Blog

Its been a while, I’d love to say I’ve been very constructive with all my free time, but alas not.  You start getting bored and very quickly you become boring, you don’t want to see the great wall of China because you’ve seen a picture of it, and its just a wall after all.

So then its been a very strange week in the news at least.
Argentina is as ever ramping up its sabre rattling.
There has been a death threat against the Pope attributed, most likely malisciously, to a Cardinal whilst he was in China… mental.  Smells like devious commie misinformation to me.
There is also a rumour that Kim Jong-Un has been assassinated…

The UN security council has shown how totally morally bankrupt the Russian and Chinese governments are, oh but we already knew that didn’t we.

The winning touchdown of the Super bowl was scored unintentionally…

The Eurozone is as ever circling the plughole.

Jeremy Clarkson somehow keeps getting into the papers for saying something ever so slightly un-PC.  For which he should get a medal, along with Prince Philip. Don’t people who rant about anything said by Clarkson, Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr know that they just make them more popular?

American politics has been interesting to watch.  The Republican nominees are looking increasingly lame (oh why Herman Cain why???).  Barack Obama has decided he doesn’t need Catholic votes, but his assault on religious freedom might not go down too well with Bible belt America either…  yet I still have the horrible feeling he’ll get re-elected to the detriment of the US and the world mainly because the Republicans are too busy savaging each other.

UK politics are looking even worse. Chris Huhne resigned, because he’s probably a criminal (how many of these Lib dems can resign for breaking the law???)  only to be replaced by another global warming wind farm endorsing lunatic. Nick Clegg looks more Spanish by the minute, Cameron looks less principled and more like a clueless Etonian by the second.

Also since I have become unemployed I have to give up my right wing priviledges and become a Marxist (only without the anti-religion bent) so that makes commenting on UK politics far less fun and I have to start saying things like, benefits are too low. People should be paid to lounge about because there are no jobs and if the people who do lounge about don’t spend money then the people with jobs will soon be people without jobs too. It doesn’t make sense but I’m standing by it!!! (until the second I get a job and all these pathetic layabouts can get their hands off my taxes!)

Actually one thing that has annoyed me is that for some unknown reason you lose 3 days at the start of any benefits claim, nobody could tell me why, its like the 3 days disappear down a black hole for some reason.  So I was expecting my JSA to be backdated to the day I opened it, alas not. It seems every time I think I’m poor something comes along and makes me poorer.

So then, on religion, a little bird told me that the bishop of Middlesbrough will be presiding at the York pilgrimage in honour of St Margret Clitherow. This is big news really. Finally an English successor of the apostles is engaging with the latin mass movement in the UK. Bishop Terence Drainy will have to get used to people kissing his apostolic ring and kneeling to receive communion! And perhaps certain odd bods within the Latin Mass movement will have to get used to having a English Bishop in their midst.   Very interesting times, put this in your diaries everyone.

Right, since I’m sure nobody is reading this blog, I’ll be happy to continue this stream of consciousness style and end this post just as clumsily as I started it. Adieu!