Acts of Faith

 Having spent my whole life as a Catholic discussing things, chattering, especially the Vatican Council, I think it should be time to act, fine to talk about the Church and the world but let's start to think about bringing Christ into the world. I like this video about a street artist, I would love the employ him for a week or two, to paint shrines around Brighton,
but there are other things we can do.

• One things I must do is to put a crucifix or a statue in a window.

I really have an aversion to the Blessed Sacrament flash mob thing, it seems demeaning to take the Lord out of a suitcase but there are proper Corpus Christi Processions. However I have no problem with

• Marian flash mobs, 
• Crucifix flash mobs, 
• Gregorian chant flash mobs,

Our religion is rich in signs a symbols we should use them

• Does anyone know where I can get some cheap Rosaries and Rosary cards? In the Year of Faith it would be great distribute a few thousand.
• The same with miraculous medals, does anyone have a source? I love the idea of blessing tons of them and getting people to pass them on.
• I remember in Athens seeing a huge bowl of sweets outside of a church with a sign saying something like "Today is the feast of St Xxxx, share in her sweetness". We could put up statue of Our Lady and do the same thing.
• Then there are mass distributions of prayer cards

Getting people to pray together is a bit difficult, 

• I must get a supply of little bottles for Lourdes water and encourage people to pray with the sick. 
• We have the November blessing of graves here in Brighton, I'll try and get more people go
• We must also get people to pray there at Easter especially with lapsed friends and encourage people to take Paschal Water and Easter candles for the graves.

We can't keep our church open all the time, things get stolen, drug addicts use it to shoot up in and leave syringes around

• We could get people to open up the church and advertise the times the previous week
• I would like to celebrate the Office, preferably sing it but the books are so expensive, does anyone know of any online resources?

One of the things we will start doing is go and say the Rosary outside the local abortion clinic, I do it myself occasionally but during the Year of Faith it would be good to get others to come with me.

If anyone has anymore ideas for Acts of Faith leave them in the Combox.

Suggestions for the Year of Faith

I like Bishop Egan's first Pastoral Letter, in it he makes suggestions for the Year of Faith, good sensible things, well worth reading if you haven't done so yet.
In comparison I have been reading this Sunday's Gospel, it is the rich young man asking, "What must I do  inherit eternal life?" The answer Jesus gives is to tell him to keep the commandments. He does, so he asks Jesus what more must he do, "Go sell everything, give the money to the poor, then come follow me," Jesus tells him.

Whenever I read that passage I feel a certain terror, it is not simply that I keep the commandments personally in a minimalist way but I like most priests of my generation, I encourage others to do the minimum too, we are all nervous of excess.

It is probably why we have so little to say to young people today. In the past excess was encouraged, there was a sense that were the body went the soul would follow, it was SAS, Special Forces, Commando spirituality
When it is healthy Christianity is a young people's movement.
So here are few suggestions for the Year of Faith that have appealed to the young in the past:-

• Seek to be more at home with the Cherubim and Seraphim than with men
• Go, find a spiritual Master abandon your life and live with him in the desert as his disciple
• Go and live in solitude in a cave or the cleft of the rock or find a pillar
• Find a deserted island preferably in sea lane with marauding Vikings around
• Wear sackcloth, go barefooted winter and summer
• Fast continuously - mitigate it only on feasts
• Spend your nights in prayer preferably, for the mortified and Celtic up to your neck in water
• Recite the whole of the Psalter every day
• First memorise the whole Bible, then most of the Fathers, sell the books wherein it says "sell everything"
• Use penitential instruments continually: the hairshirt, the salice, the heavy spike chain girdle, always wear a course rope noose around your neck, use the disciple frequently (warning: stop using any of these if you find you no longer disgusted by them)
• Go on long pilgrimages without any money or shelter and beg, preferably where your life will be at risk
• Preach the Gospel anywhere where you will be jeered at, abused and pelted with filth
• Preach the Gospel in places you are likely to be killed for it
• Give your life to care for the sick, especially lepers and plague victims
• Go and live where Christians are persecuted and carry a full sized Cross about with you always
• Make a habit of kneeling outside churches at night, preferably in the snow

Possible other alternatives are become a faithful monk or nun, if you haven't the stamina for that what about becoming a religious or priest, or be a good faithful husband or wife and parent but don't be a spiritual wuzz!
Avoid minimalism at all costs!

Trying Corpses

trial of the cadaver of Pope Formosus

I have always disliked Jimmy Savile and felt there was something creepy about him. Now he is
dead accusations and revelations seem to abound but there is something creepy about putting a corpse on trial, though of course media are trying the BBC and other institutions that gave him access to the vulnerable. There are obviously parallels as Fr Tim has drawn out with the situation of the Church.

A few commentators have suggested values and attitudes have changed, that sexual assault in the work place were common up until a couple of decades ago. Even violent rape against women was often not reported, if it happened against children, at a time when violent physical assault against them was part of official school discipline, it was not believed. Juries sought to excuse sexual crimes, the judiciary was far from sympathetic and the police ..., well I remember a women who had been raped saying to me her interrogation by the police was like being raped yet again.

Savile rose to fame against a culture which extolled sexual promiscuity and deliberately pushed the bounds of sexual taboo. Women and girls were expected to be sexually available. Pop culture tended to dehumanise and demean women: baby, doll, bird come to mind from the libretti and popular culture of the time, the time when we "let it all hang out". Conversation in the workplace was peppered with sexual innuendo, as much the walls of the workplace, at least where men worked, were plastered with semi-erotic imagery.

At the moment we are trying individuals and certain institutions but some groups claim that as many as 1 in 4 people have been sexual abused as children. In some environments, such as where there is stepfather or a succession of "uncles" it seems, possibly, to be even higher. It is significant that allegations are bought into the open only after Savile's death. There is an unstable silence amongst victims when they feel isolated, when society in a sense conspires to silence and isolate them, so much so that it is only after two or three dare to speak out that there appears to be a feeding frenzy.

The Catholic Church in New York paid out huge reparations for abuse victims, the New York City Council refused to accept allegations concerning its public schools service claiming it would bankrupt the city. Some people when allegations are made about priests suggest the police tend to go on a "trawling" expedition to find other allegations. personally I see no problem with this, I just wish it could be applied to the rest of society as easily as can be applied to a Catholic parish.

Indeed what the Savile allegations suggest is that sexual abuse is indeed deep seated in society but so too is a culture of cover-up. We need to replace that culture with one of disclosure, but what our society will look like if we did, and whether it would be pleasant to live in or riddled with whispers and suspicion is another matter.

Maybe, too we need to put on trial the cadaver of 1960s/70s then in 40 or 50 years our generation can be dragged to the dock too.

Ecclesia Loquens:The Chattering Church

be warned this is a rant!
ICN reports on a meeting of "around" 400 people belonging to "Call to Action" who were supposed to meet at the Jesuit run Heythrop College. They seem to have come out with the same old stuff Heythrop has been pushing for the past 40 years, they were doing it when I was a seminarian and will continue until the place crumbles into dust.
There are interesting little snippets in the article such as:-

The first open meeting they organised on 18 July attracted 70 Catholic priests and deacons who shared concerns and discussed the future of the Church. In advance of the second meeting, some organisers had met with Archbishop Vincent Nichols at what was described as a “very good meeting”. Fr Joe Ryan of Westminster Diocese reported that “he agreed that something needs to be done” and “will observe our movement”. 

....young people see hypocrisy in the Church, where, for example, former Anglicans can be married priests but not cradle Catholics. He asked: “How do we make our Church the Church of our children?”

It was the "young people" bit that got me, it is all these old men and women who claim to speak for young people. The truth is young people don't really give a damn, in fact I suspect that young people are bored stiff with "the church endlessly talking about the Church", about the only thing I do agree with Hans Kung on is "when the church speaks about the church it ceases to be the Church". What they seem to be asking for is a Church that has its head up its own fundament forever examining its inner workings, it is the very opposite of the  baseline teaching of Vatican II.

I must say I am already getting bored with discussions about and on VII: yes, I agree with the Pope we must get back to the texts, but so what? I've read and studied Dei Verbum, Sacrosanctum Concillium, Lumen Gentium, they form the basis of my own faith and preaching, as does half of Gaudium et Spes. The other half where there are serious ambiguities I would like clarification on, but truthfully, I can live with that, the more incomprehensible it is the less people really take notice of it. It is scratching the itch of our indisposition, that is just so tedious.

Evangelisation can't be about endless talk and involving people in discussion after discussion after discussion. The real problem I see with VII is that it transformed the "teaching Church" into a "chattering Church", fine for the lower middle classes of suburbia but it has driven anyone else out. Pope John XXIII expected it to last a few weeks, it opened in October, it should have finished by Christmas but it went on for four years. Four years of interminable committee meetings, that transformed the Church, they got used to it, thought that was the nature of the Modern Church, and the Modern Bishop!

The chattering Church is BORING! Jesus taught with authority! He commends the faith of the Centurion who says to his slave, "Come here, do this, and he does it". There are no discussion groups in the Gospels except amongst those who want to destroy Jesus.

This Saturday will see hundreds, I hope thousands, of ordinary Catholics assemble outside Westminster Cathedral at 1.45pm and walk through the streets of London carrying the image of the Blessed Mother to Brompton Oratory; going oneself, inviting friends, this is evangelising, this is "being Church". Bringing people to meet or to obey the Lord, to live by Faith, this I hope is what will happen in the Year of Faith but, good God preserve us from chatter.

Return to the "letter" of the Council

Here is an extract from the Popes homily today at the opening of the Year of Faith, read it all here.

I believe that the most important thing, especially on such a significant occasion as this, is to revive in the whole Church that positive tension, that yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man. But, so that this interior thrust towards the new evangelization neither remain just an idea nor be lost in confusion, it needs to be built on a concrete and precise basis, and this basis is the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the place where it found expression. This is why I have often insisted on the need to return, as it were, to the “letter” of the Council – that is to its texts – also to draw from them its authentic spirit, and why I have repeated that the true legacy of Vatican II is to be found in them. Reference to the documents saves us from extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and running too far ahead, and allows what is new to be welcomed in a context of continuity. The Council did not formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient. Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change.

Ann Widdecombe's Speech

This is a video of Ann Widdecmbe at her feisty in her best speech at the C4M meeting during the Birmingham Conservative Party Conference, speaking about the intolerance Cameron's "Gay Marriage" legislation will bring in.
She examines the implications the legislation will have, I think this is well worth passing on and giving maximum publicity to, pass it on by email if you don't have blog.

Try and get Conservative Party members and voters to answer her charges.

I believe in the Resurrection because I believe in the Father

A Harvard neuro-surgeon went into a coma for seven days and came out believing in life after death. I am not convinced.
One of my parishioners almost died and had that "light at the end of the tunnel" experience. She had that experience but she didn't die, so again I am not convinced. Someone else had an experience of seeing herself  lying in a hospital cardiac unit and watching the medics resuscitating her.
I am not sure what these experiences are but they tell us nothing except these experiences seem common to people who are in extremis, they are interesting but not much more than that. I have never taken hallucinogenic drugs but I am told that they can have a similar effect. Whatever their cause they certainly not a foretaste of the life to come, and the prove nothing whatsoever.

For me, I believe in the Resurrection because I believe in a Father who loves me so intensely that he doesn't want to me to be separated from him for any reason -except by my deliberate own choice. For me human grief, the sense of loss, or mourning gives us an insight to the intensity God's own desire for us. It is desire that transcends the gulf between Creator and creature, between God and Man, that overcomes time and space, and even my deadness to Grace and even my own death, and the coldness of the grave.

I believe in the triumph of the Resurrection because I believe that God is my Father, that Jesus Christ has bridged the huge gulf between him and me and that the Holy Spirit despite my continual refusal of his Sanctification has been poured out upon me making me by adoption, what Jesus is by nature, a son.

From Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP

From Fr Armand de Malleray

Altar servers’ weekend (residential): at St John Fisher House in Reading on 26-27-28 October 2012:
For single Catholic men between 18 and 35 years of age (under 18 please contact us). Starts on Friday 26 October at 6pm – ends on Sunday 28 October mid-afternoon.
Led by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP, with Fr Matthew Goddard, FSSP. In a convivial atmosphere, come and learn (or improve) how to set the vestments and sacred items before Mass and to serve EF Masses and Benediction.
EF Mass on the Friday evening, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. Limited overnight accommodation: please book now. Non residential participants welcome. Cost [for the whole weekend, 2 days + 2 nights, including full board accommodation at St John Fisher House]: no set price for students or unwaged – any donation welcome; others: £50 suggested. Contact: Tel: 0118 966 5284; Email: malleray@fssp.org; website: www.fssp.co.uk/england.

There is also a Vocation discernment weekend:

14-15-16 December 2012 at St John Fisher House in Reading: For any English-speaking Catholic men between 18 and 35 years of age (under 18 please contact us). 

Starts on Friday 14th December 2012 at 6pm (arrivals from 5pm) – ends on Sunday 16th December 2012 at 3pm. 

Led by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP, assisted by Fr Matthew Goddard, FSSP. Location: St John Fisher House.

Hunwicke is Back

Returning to a computer near you: Fr Hunwicke!
His blog is now called Mutual Enrichment and in his first post he writes about a visit to Birmingham Oratory where he was present at the clothing of Andrew Wagstaff, who until July was our MC and Rubricist.
We have a new MC but I am searching for someone who will have the skill to be able to ensure everything we do is done in conformity with the mind of the Church.

Abp Müller to act on Soho Masses?

KatholischesMagazin für Kirche und Kultur says that Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller intends to do something about the Soho Masses, quite what, isn't apparent but apparently so many complaints have been made and so little action has been taken that the CDF feels it should act.

Of course the confusion comes from the CDF turning a Nelsonian eye to the whole matter under Cardinal Levada when Bishop Longley, acting on behalf of Cardinal Murphy O'Connor, negotiated the community's move from an Anglican Church. To be fair the impression given at the time was that these Masses would be carefully overseen and regulated, subsequently of course Bishop Longley was moved to Birmingham and following Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's retirement, Archbishop Nichols took over at Westminster and things have been left drift.
These Masses were designed to give pastoral care to particular group who sort help from the Church instead people who attended, vulnerable people, some of my parishioners have been there, they found a lobby group for dissent against the Church's teaching "and rather spiritual than help, a gay dating agency", as one said.

The real problem has been a very serious lack of leadership and pastoral oversight. This, and the grave dissent is presumably what Archbishop Müller will want to deal with.
thanks to EpFl

Tories Against Cameron's Redefinition of Marriage

71% of local Tory Party chairman expressing serious concern over David Cameron's proposal for "gay marriage" saying it is likely to loose them votes rather than win them. I am told even in Brighton and Hove where our own gay MP Mike Weatherley, in all practical senses of the word refuses to discuss the matter, there is serious concern. My parishioners say he just sends them dismissive and contemptuous letters.

At their Birmingham conference any discussion of "gay marriage" has been banned however Ann Widdecombe spoke to a capacity audience of 1,1000 at a fringe meeting in Birmingham City Hall, many others were unable to get in. She ridiculed the idea of getting rid of terms like "husband" and "wife" and replacing them with "partners to the marriage", she also hit out at Cameron's view of freedom:

"No society can be free without the freedom to dissent and no democracy real without the recognition of a plurality of views... David Cameron: Tell me how a party devoted to freedom, a party that has always opposed oppression and the power of the state over the individual, can even contemplate creating such a Britain?"

Speaking a few days ago to a couple of people who have strong contacts with Conservative Central Office, I am told that most MPs just wish this issue will go away. Like Mike Weatherley many have slim or shaky majorities and though personally they might be ambivalent to the either for religious or social reasons, or like Ann Widdecombe because of the freedom issues it raises, they are loathe to put their heads above the parapet, fearing charges of homophobia but on the other-hand so many Tory activists; the door knockers and envelope stuffers are social (small "c") conservatives and are even threatening to withdraw their support, if Cameron goes ahead with this.
Being cynical, I suspect various Tory ministers suggesting recently a lowering of the age at which abortion can take place is sop to those Christians against "gay marriage", an attempt to keep them on board.

The Eternal Sound

What was heard before creation came into being, what is the harmonic that underlies, the sound of the cosmos?

Today in Rome begins the Synod on Evangelisation and on Thursday the Year of Faith begins to mark the opening of the 2nd Vatican Council. Today Sts Hildegard of Bingen and John of Avila will be declared Doctors of the Church. Today is also Rosary Sunday and today the Gospel speaks about marriage, Jesus saying Moses allowed divorce but I teach its permanence, I teach that remarriage after divorce is the same as adultery.
For our forefathers adultery was one of the great sins, on the level with apostasy or murder. Every culture seems to have allowed divorce and subsequent remarriage except the followers of Jesus. St Paul tells us the reason is because marriage is based on Christ's relationship with his Church, a relationship based on mutual giving, on the irrevocable exchange  of a promise that binds for life, of a word given that is irrevocable.

Our relationship with God is one that we see in terms of family, feminist baulk at the idea of God as "Father" but it is this that Jesus came reveal. I asked recently at a funeral what will God say to the deceased when she comes into his presence, I suggested the answer is he will say "Daughter" and she will say "Father" and this is what will occupy eternity. This filial relationship in which God calls us "Son" or "Daughter" and we respond "Father" is ultimately what Jesus the only begotten Son came to reveal, and through adoption is something we are called to share in. "Belonging" is something all human beings yearn for, we understand it as belonging to our heavenly Father, as Christians we will use the word "Communion". Communion with Jesus, most especially in sharing in his Body and Blood is about entering into this filial relationship with the Father. Our marriage to him by becoming one in his Body and Blood, in His Eternal self giving, the Sacrifice of the Cross, is about God calling us Son/Daughter here and now. It is a pledge of the eternal relationship with the Father.

It is this Mystical Marriage with the Lamb that is what Catholic Evangelisation is about, bringing the world, man by man, woman by woman into Communion, a marriage, with Christ, in our union with the Only Begotten, we hear the full force of his Father and Our Father calling us by name "Son", "Daughter".

In the Our Lady we see Christianity perfectly lived out, here is the beauty of the Father/Daughter relationship. In the Mysteries of the Rosary Mary participates fully in the the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ her Son and the Son of God. Here the Father constantly calls out "Daughter".
And when we pray the Rosary uniting our hearts to the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ we hear and participate in the echo of God calling the Mother of his Son, "Daughter".

Its Never about Faith

There is post in Googlese translation on Eponymous Flower reporting that the loyal German Network of Catholics Priests has severely criticised the German bishops over "Church tax" asking what the public perception of the Church should be, "[t]wo years ago it was the abuse [theme], then the "Affaire Williamson", and now it's money -- it's never the Faith. ... It is tasteless, to give so much attention to money".

It would good in the Year of Faith, if every hierarchy in the world tried to put Faith front and centre.

A friend of mine says what marks Liberalism is an obsession with talking about Church, rather than about Christ, this he says has been the main problem of the Church over the last 50 years. It is not the Vatican Council itself but the direct result of it. The Church has become obsessed with itself rather than with Christ.

There is truth in this the Church has become somewhat masturbatory, impotently looking ad intra rather ad extra, moving dekchairs about on the Titanic whilst she crashes into icebergs.

Spirit of the Council stuff

Many people assume the "Spirit of Council" stuff is just arbitrary, a bit mindless, without any foundation but is very much the fruit of Bologna School, it works on the almost Manichaean premise that there were good and bad Council Fathers; in order to get good, liberal, modern doctrines through the Council it was necessary for the  good, liberal, modern Fathers to get on board the bad, conservative, out of date Fathers, therefore to discover the true "Spirit of the Council" one must subtract the doctrines that were imposed by the bad, conservative, out of date Fathers. Thus in documents like Gaudium et Spes which attempt to give a "both and" theology, the Spirit of the Council followers would take only the good, liberal, modern strand.
Thus ideas that have been part of normal parish life in many places for a generation but have no mandate from the Council, or are directly contrary to it, such as Communion in the hand, the use or misuse of Extraordinary Ministers, the extinction in most places of Chant, of Latin, even of Confession, of Marian devotion, of worship of the Blessed Sacrament, of the admission to Holy Communion of those in serious sin or non-Catholics, the preferring of the Local Church over the Universal,, the stressing of human authorship of scripture over the divine, a sociological rather than a pneumatic interpretation of Revelation or even such ideas as the abandonment of clerical celibacy, the admission of women to Holy Orders, denial of Sacramental Grace, all these are the fruit of the "Spirit of the Council".

I do not believe those conspiracy theories that see the pre- and immediately post-Concilliar period as being a time of direct Communist infiltration of the Church but I do believe that Marxist-Leninism dominated western thought throughout the 20th century and in the school of theology that had its home Bologna la Rossa one must see a clear theological expression of basic Communist principles: seeing the Church in Marxist terms of the masses at war with the institution, and perpetual revolution: Ecclesia Semper Reformanda. When such principles are applied to the Church ultimately there is no Church.