Taking urgency

16th December was the anniversary of my baptism in 1951. I can't say that I remember it well, but I do recall looking up at the wooden roof and seeing the sunlight slanting through the windows. This was in St Matthew's Church on the corner of Hope Street (most appropriate!) and the officiating priest was Archdeacon Hamblett, the father-in-law of the painter Colin McCahon. At the time even members of my family would have wanted other people to think that they believed in God - even though most of them didn't, some of them with good reason. The latter included my father and his siblings. The reason for their somewhat determined unbelief was not scientific or philosophical, but much closer to home than that - it was their own dear mother.

Grandma was quite a character, and had had quite a life, not much of it very pleasant or enjoyable. Both her father and his father before him had fallen into debt and had chosen (at different times) to remove themselves from this world as a result, leaving their respective daughter and granddaughter to fend for herself and her children. As a result they all spent at least one winter on the west coast in nothing more than a tent before my great-grandmother was imprisoned for debt (of course!) and her children were sent to the workhouse. Not a very good beginning, I think you will agree, and it didn't improve very much after that either. Grandma grew up to be a beautiful and charming young woman, but not one with the best judgement it would seem, as she went on to marry a well-bred but not entirely useful Englishman who fathered her children but appeared to be largely incapable of supporting them. So Grandma turned to religion, and not just to any religion - she became a Seventh Day Adventist. She also became an absolutely determined advocate for her faith, whether her family or anyone else liked it or not. Hence her children's militant unbelief.

Naturally the failure of her offspring to follow her on the path of righteousness was a considerable disappointment, but Grandma nevertheless remained ever-vigilant against ungodliness. When I was six years old, and my parents were out of the house, she got me to sign the pledge. On their return they insisted on tearing it up and gave Grandma a stern lecture on the evils of manipulating impressionable young minds. I, meanwhile, burst into tears, crying that I would become a gin-soaked alcoholic because Grandma had told me so - as indeed I did, although I had to work at it for some years thereafter. Grandma was not always wrong.

There was also something of a kerfuffle when she gave her eldest son a book about the South Seas. As he already had a copy, his wife took it back to the shop, where the saleswoman examined it to make sure it was resaleable. It wasn't. One of the photographs in the book showed a most attractive Polynesian girl wearing nothing but a grass skirt - and a large piece of black tape which Grandma had placed strategically just below her neck in case my uncle (then in his fifties) was led astray. My aunt, who had no time for religion of any sort - let alone Grandma's - took the book and drove home in something of a rage. On the way a little idea popped into her head. She turned up at Grandma's and announced that at last she had Seen The Light. Grandma was thrilled - until my aunt informed her that she was going to became a Roman Catholic. (She didn't, of course.)

My other grandmother was also religious. She was a Christian Scientist and would tell me when I was sick that my illness was in my head, something which was particularly true whenever I had a cold. On the rare occasions that she and Grandma met you could see that they didn't exactly have a lot in common, but as they were the only members of my family to have some sort of religion, I think I did rather well to remain a mere Anglican, which is rather more than I can say for most of my cousins who (most understandably) remain resolutely indifferent.

And I think I know why. Some years ago, when another of my father's brothers arrived in England for a holiday with his wife, I accompanied them to various historic monuments, including a few churches. In one of the latter my uncle put some money into the offertory box, and when I asked him why he had done so, he replied in two words, "Fire insurance." Naturally I enquired as to whether or not he actually believed that. He didn't. And just to make his reasons clear he said in a quietly mocking voice, "Ah yes - little children dying of cancer, and all to please the God of Love." Merely theological explanations at this point didn't quite seem appropriate. My uncle had caught God out, at least in his own mind, and even now, almost forty years later I'm not at all sure what would have been an adequate reply, or even if such a thing were possible.

So my uncle had found that God was fundamentally heartless, perhaps not so much immoral as amoral, and thus not worthy of his attention, let alone his allegiance. He could simply dismiss him from consideration, backed up, of course, by what he understood of modern science. And how could I have found just the right words in those circumstances to effect the necessary change of mind and heart? He had, after all, heard it many times before.

So why didn't it convince him? That's the sort of question I don't think we ask ourselves often enough. Insofar as I have any kind of answer, I think it has a lot to do with context in which the Gospel is preached. Something must already be part of the experience of your listeners for them to build on. Where the first Christians were concerned their understanding of things already included a belief in what we would (rather loosely) call the supernatural, so more of the same not only made sense, it helped to make sure that the supernatural was on your side and not otherwise. Becoming God's friend (and staying that way) was thus a very good idea.

But nowadays God can seem too unreal (and too unreliable) to bother about. Darwin, Marx and Freud have seen to that. Not to mention celebrated scientists like Richard Dawkins and famous philosophers like Antony Flew. Or at least that's what we thought. But recently, Professor Flew has let the side down badly by becoming a theist (a deist in fact). And why do you suppose that is? Because science (if you please) has convinced him that there must be what he describes as an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient Spirit which is both eternal and completely good. Otherwise the universe could never have happened, it could not show the extraordinary order that it does, our genome could never have evolved by chance no matter how many billions of years it had at its disposal, and self-reproducing life just could not arise spontaneously from inanimate matter.

My uncle was able to be an unbeliever without too much trouble. He didn't really have to think about it. God's shaky morality and scientific implausibility gave him the right to dismiss the deity without looking too closely at his opinions and the reasons for them. But it is my belief that those who share those opinions are in for something of a shock in the coming years. Despite, or even because of, the Darwinian fundamentalists, science is beginning to reveal a reality which I am sure is a necessary part of the Gospel - and we should loudly and ostentatiously proclaim it as such.

As the title of Professor Flew's latest book says, There is a God. If we want to make faith in God much more widely possible for our generation we need to investigate closely this new development in the sciences. For if people come to believe that 'an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient Spirit which is both eternal and completely good' and which created and sustains everything including themselves, is not just scientifically plausible but perhaps even scientifically necessary, then the question of their relationship with this reality (or the lack of it) might well become rather more urgent.

Sign of the Times

Well, Christmas Day has been and gone, and Archdeacon Cardy's sign has been and gone with it. Just as well, too. The latter was of course tasteless, ridiculous, objectionable, unbecoming, lewd, suggestive, indecent, and likely to cause offence. It was also not unexpected. We all love Christmas - most of us anyway. We like carols, and fake snow and Santa and jinglebells and all the other seasonal manifestations of Christianity which have endeared themselves to us from our playpens until now.

But we are not too sure about the real thing. You know what I mean, incarnations, resurrections, ascensions - stuff like that. In fact, we have grown beyond such charmingly mythological stuff. And it's not always that charming either, is it? Think of the wars, the inquisition, the intolerance, the oppression of women. Religion clearly turns good people bad - especially when they actually believe in it.

But fortunately we don't. And now we don't have to. We can have our christmas cake and eat it. And we have Sir Lloyd, Bishops Spong and Randerson, Ian Harris (he of the ODT column Honest to God - if you please) and the good archdeacon to give us permission to bypass the real thing in favour of Christianity-Lite, dogma-free and non-saving. It's just the thing for a guilt-free sacred snack. But shame on the clerical cooks for promoting spiritual anorexia.

Unheavenly Music

I am a born-again curmudgeon. Like my late father, I take exception to things which a more balanced and mature person would simply take in his stride. It was always a little dangerous to appear in public with my parent in his latter years. Embarrassment was too often an integral part of the experience. Like the occasion when we went into a shop in which muzak was playing. I don't much care for muzak myself, but I was not a little alarmed when my father started shouting at the rather bewildered salesman, "Do you have to play that bloody rubbish in here?" With my hand firmly on his arm, we made a rapid (but I hope not undignified) exit before he got into his stride.

These days I feel more and more like doing something similar - usually when I'm in Church. We seem to have developed a particular kind of Christian muzak, sometimes sung, sometimes said, and of great repellent power (as Queen Victoria said of Tsar Alexander the Third). Here is an example of the spoken variety, through which I gritted my teeth a few years ago: "Our Father who is in us here on earth. Holy is your name. In the hungry who share their bread and their song your kingdom come, a generous land where confidence and truth reign. Let us do your will. Bring a cool breeze for those who sweat. You are giving us our daily bread when we manage to get back our lands or get a fairer wage. Forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice and for burying our dreams, etc., etc." Perhaps you recognise it, or then again, perhaps not.

Here's another example from the same service sheet: "O God, we have come to the hills, where heaven and earth meet. Whisper to us sweet things as the breeze stirs through blades of grass. Shout to us marvellous things as the river roars down its bed of stones. And in this centre where the stillness of your whisper answers the thunder of your shout, etc., etc." It has an emetic quality worthy of the vapourings of Patience Strong.

It's not just the fact that such efforts are examples of the sentimental drivel which sometimes seems to engulf us that worries me. It's the fact that this is theological sentimental drivel. It has a message, and it's not one which is compatible with the Christian religion. Why? Because it is centred on us, not on God. All too many hymns and prayers - indeed whole services - seem to be about us, about making us good and useful, ready to usher in the kingdom, save the whales, defeat racism and sexism, and bring about heaven on earth. We have made the good the enemy of the best because it's so much easier to get on in society if you can adopt a cause everyone can applaud you for promoting. As for a transcendent God, that's perhaps just a little too difficult. But if we have lost our nerve (not to mention our faith) then we have no business concealing the fact with sentimental drivel. Christ said to Pilate, "For truth I came into the world." And the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that only God will do.

Neither here nor there

Allow me to come out of the closet. I am a member of Forward in Faith, an Anglican society the founding purpose of which was to ensure the continuance of the apostolic ministry of bishops, priests and deacons in the Anglican Communion. To this end, FiF has opposed the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate. Now, as it happens, I am not at all sure that women can't or shouldn't be ordained priests and bishops, but I am sure that the convictions of those opposed to such an innovation must be respected and allowed for.

This means (at the very least) that it must be possible for such Anglicans to have - by absolute right - a male bishop consecrated in a direct line from the apostles by an unbroken succession of male bishops. This was solemnly promised by the General Synod of the Church of England some years ago, and thus, to my mind, the abrupt termination in that Church of the so-called Period of Reception in favour of the innovators has been both dishonest and unjust - and much, much too soon. Hence my decision to join those who are now probably just tilting at windmills - at least where Anglicanism in the western world is concerned. But lost causes often have a fine air of tragic inevitability about them.

However, as my copies of New Directions have arrived regularly from FiF headquarters in London, I have begun to suspect that the business of ensuring the apostolic succession against an unacceptable degree of uncertainty is perhaps a stalking horse for another set of aims as well. And so it has proved with the response of the leadership of FiF to Pope Benedict's generous offer of water-wings to those Anglo-Catholics who are now dipping their disaffected toes in the dangerous waters of the Tiber.

This response has been little short of ecstatic. From the Bishop of Fulham (the chairman) on down, editorialists, writers of articles and contributors to the letters column have been falling over themselves to express their gratitude to the Holy Father for his wonderful, gracious, timely, generous (etc.) invitation to bend their knees in the House of Rimmon. (I know, I know, that's just a little extreme, and on mature deliberation I may delete it. Or not.)

For some years now FiF has been straying into areas whose connections with the ordination (or otherwise) of women are not immediately apparent. This is particularly so where the little matter of homosexuality is concerned. Astonishingly enough, they claim they are not for it. Indeed, like the Holy Father himself they are determinedly, almost hysterically opposed to it. On the face of it, their vehemence is somewhat surprising. FiF is almost entirely Anglo-Catholic rather than evangelical. And Anglo-Catholicism - particularly Anglo-Papalism - is somewhat gay. In fact it is very gay indeed. I was trained at St Stephen's House in the mid 1970's and a curate at All Saints' Margaret Street in the early 1980's and I know whereof I speak. And I doubt if things have changed very much since then.

In order to displease almost everyone I have wilfully adopted views on this subject with which few others agree. I have thought that same-sex relationships can be pleasing to God if the intention is that they be lifelong and faithful. Like heterosexual unions, I believe they should be publicly formalised, and hope that one day this will be possible in Church. But although for gay people such a relationship would be the equivalent of marriage, I wouldn't rush to institutionalise such a conclusion just yet. And I would certainly not try to compel the consciences of the faithful by imposing on them priests (let alone bishops) who are in such relationships. And finally, I would not agree that even those in a totally committed relationship have the right to adopt children - but then I don't think anybody has such a right, gay or straight, although its one they can obviously be given.

(At a later date, I will give you a little tour of adelphopoiia, which I believe has a considerable bearing on these matters. It will be something for you to look forward to in an increasingly bleak and desperate time.)

In my years in England I had a good many discussions with gay Anglo-Papalists about homosexuality and found (all too often) that they would not attempt anything like a truly personal same-sex union simply because the Holy Father forbade it. As a consequence they were often quite remarkably (and very impersonally) promiscuous instead. I found it a bewildering combination, but I have learnt since that such is often the case in these matters. Perhaps the present moral crisis of Roman Catholic clergy and religious is of the same order. Be that as it may, I believe Anglo-Papalism to be essentially untruthful, and I'm sorry to say that the members of this faction seem to be calling the shots in the Catholic movement at the present time - at least in the Church of England. But if you accept the papal claims as they were set out in the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, and if you consider the pages of The Catechism of the Catholic Church to contain the very truth of the Faith, then - in my opinion - it's time to recite the Creed of Pius IV (as amended) and put on those water-wings.

Odi et amo

I must have been all of thirteen when I discovered the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church. Quite without any inkling of what it would lead to, I clambered up a steep flight of steps and into St Joseph's Cathedral and began what I can only describe as a kind of love-hate relationship which has lasted for the best part of half a century. My parents were horrified. "What is it that attracts you to those people?" my mother asked in some distress. When I enquired of my father why she should have reacted as she did, he pointed out that Roman Catholics were disloyal, clannish, bred like rabbits, and (worst of all) Irish.

But I didn't care. I appreciated St Joseph's very much. It was so much more alive and interesting than the Anglican cathedral in the Octagon where I sang in the choir. However, according to the prejudices of the time, it was essentially off-limits to a well-bred protestant boy like myself. I went to Otago Boys' High School after all, not to Christian Brothers, so in subsequent visits I had to turn the tops of my school socks down in the hope that my origins would remain undetected, and my treason unreported to family and friends.

Soon I was sneaking off on Saturday evenings to St Patrick's Basilica in South Dunedin for the Novena of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament celebrated in God's own native Latin, just the way it should be. It was there that I first sang such classics of the hymn-writer's art as Mary from thy Sacred Image with those eyes so sadly sweet, Mother of Perpetual Succour see us kneeling at thy feet. Who wouldn't warm to that?

I was determined to join up. The Roman Catholic Church seemed to be truly religious. People were always in St Joseph's praying, morn, noon and night. All sorts of people: male and female, old and young, rich and poor, black and brown, yellow and pink - you name it, they were there - and they loved it. They were proud to belong to The One True Church. Everything about it, the saints, the rosary, the Redemptorists, the Mater Hospital, the ancient and beautiful liturgy and much more, all testified to the fact that this was something very special which had come down from a glorious and sacred past, and in which many of the ordinary citizens of twentieth century New Zealand could feel right at home.

Then came little Paul VI, a nice, well-meaning little man who was unfortunate enough to succeed John XXIII. The latter was a man both great and good, who valued the sacred past while being able to relate to the present. Little Paul VI could do neither - at least not with any great comprehension of what was involved. He was a would-be egghead [see the Satan's Cuckoo post] who allowed himself to be led astray by liturgical eggheads such as Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, the Robespierre of modern Roman Catholicism, who (with his mates) gutted the Roman Rite and consequently decimated the Latin Church from Cork to Christchurch.

I was not pleased. Like millions of others, I liked the old Roman Rite very much. I greatly valued its timeless quality, its serenity, its transcendence, and its remarkable beauty. Let us not forget that it was for the celebration of this liturgy that Westminster Abbey and the great cathedrals of Europe were built. For this liturgy Rubens, Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo (among many others) painted great masterpieces. For this Liturgy Palestrina, Byrd, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky wrote some of their finest music. In its essentials, the Mass of the Tridentine Rite is the service which was known and loved by Benedict, Bede, Patrick, Hilda, Alfred the Great, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Thomas More, Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales, Simone Weil, Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein and Thomas Merton. Not bad is it? But not good enough, it seems, for little Paul VI, who to all intents and purposes simply threw it away without so much as a by your leave, while at the same time maintaining (against all expectation and advice) the ban on birth control just because his predecessors had.

Of course, little Paul VI didn't leave his devoted (if diminishing) flock without a form of worship. No indeed: he thrust the Rite of the Ruined Remains down the unwilling throats of the faithful, whether they liked it or not. And by and large they most certainly didn't. Hence the increasingly empty pews from that day to this.

Little Paul VI's liturgical bolshevism gave me something of a shock. I was confirmed in my view that Christianity was not at all the same thing as mere ideology - even fashionable theological ideology. I saw the point of Archbishop William Temple's dictum Mankind can be saved by only one thing - worship. Likewise Oscar Wilde's remark We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars, seemed to be remarkably relevant. It appeared, however, that at the new Roman Supper of the Lord Stars are off, Luv.

A few years previously I had received a different kind of shock in St Joseph's Cathedral when I was idly thumbing through a missal which someone else had left behind. In its pages I found a little pamphlet about the Sabbatine Privilege, according to which, Our Blessed Lady will descend to purgatory on the Saturday following the death of a member of the Carmelite Order (or its Confraternity) and will personally liberate him from the flames and conduct him to heaven. I found some difficulty in believing this. Clearly it meant that if you were drowning in your bath, you would be well advised to do so on Friday night, and as you went down for the third and final time, you should make sure that the two little strings joining the front and back of your scapular were to found lying neatly on either side of your neck - just in case. An off-the-shoulder number might not do the trick.

Now of course, we don't believe that sort of thing anymore, do we? O but we did. Despite strenuous scholarly protests, various popes endorsed this splendid heresy, until finally even they started to back off, and reinterpret the matter in a rather more Sea of Faith sort of way. But I was still somewhat shaken to find that they had ever entertained such an idea at all, even just a little. So by the time I entered St Stephen's House in Oxford to train for the priesthood, I had already developed that peculiar kind of semi-detached and highly ambiguous relationship with the Holy Roman Church which has been such a feature of English Anglo-Catholicism ever since the late John Henry Newman and his deplorable friend Richard Hurrell Froude muddied the waters in the nineteenth century.

But more of that in the next post.

Stepping Out

Further to my last post, you can see the Seises for yourself on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYEaeGjMp3A&feature=related. The music isn't up to much (there seems to be dearth of theorbos and an excess of little girls) but the feathered hats and the footwork make a quite remarkable sight before the High Altar of Seville Cathedral during High Mass. To get the full flavour you will have to go on to Part Two for the sound of the castanets (with long coloured ribbons) which the choirboys cum pirouettists hold in their hands. Perhaps we Anglicans could follow the example of the Spanish and introduce Morris Dancing into the Sacred Mysteries. It would probably be a lot more appropriate than the somewhat unliturgical St Vitus Dance which seems popular in a number of our Churches at the present time.

Backward, Christian Soldiers

In the last week or so I have been rereading one of my favourite books, A Stranger in Spain by H.V. Morton - he of the In Search of England/Scotland/Ireland/Wales et cetera books. I first came across the account of his Spanish travels (published in 1955) in the school library when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I was quite enchanted by it (and what normal teen-aged boy wouldn't be?) since it was full of wonderful descriptions of black-faced images of Our Blessed Lady wearing bejewelled crowns, and fascinating accounts of things such as the Mozarabic Mass or the dancing of the Seises (complete with castanets) before the altar of Seville Cathedral during high mass on the feast of Corpus Christi. As I say, what normal kiwi boy could resist such delights?

My enthusiasm knew no bounds. Quite soon I was sneaking copies of the Roman Missal and the Book of Common Prayer into the classroom to look at furtively while the masters droned on about such unimportant matters as geography and mathematics. Then one day a certain Mr Skelly (if I remember rightly) wanted to know what I was peering at under my desk. This invasion of my privacy was bad enough, but what followed was as unfortunate as it was extraordinary. When the other boys discovered what I had been looking at, they laughed, not at the teacher, as you might expect, but at me. From that moment on I was a stranger on this earth.

Truthfully however, my enthusiasm was as much to do with history as with religion. I have always been fascinated by the European past, largely because it has been so beautiful. I do not include (of course) the Black Death or the Holy Inquisition as examples of historical loveliness, indeed I am not talking about disasters, man-made or otherwise, at all. I am talking about (to use the most obvious examples I can think of) Chartres Cathedral, Dante's Divina Commedia, Handel's Messiah, Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son, and so on ad infinitum. And note, please, that all of these have overtly (indeed essentially) Christian significance.

I loved it all. I remember the day when the music master (one Johannes Giesen) no doubt despairing of knocking an appreciation of sonata form into the heads of a class of resolute philistines, decided to show us a film about Florence under the Medici instead. Almost half a century later I can vividly remember my amazement as I saw the cathedral's belltower and Brunelleschi's dome for the first time. And when school was over for the day I rushed off to the public library to get hold of books on the subject. Illustrated books of course, nothing too taxing. And anyway, who cares what various learned aesthetes have to say about it all? Just look at the pictures, for heaven's sake, look at the pictures.

All this has great importance, not just for me, but for many others as well. We live in a society largely disenchanted with its past. Thus "old" music, "old" prayers, "old" buildings and so on, are often seen as obstacles to faith, rather than (as they have been for so many) the very opposite. Furthermore, our society likes to think of itself as egalitarian. No elitism for us. No organs when we could have guitars, no antiquated vestments when we could have smart and fashionable contemporary dress. And worst of all perhaps, no beautiful liturgical texts drenched in the sanctity of centuries when we could have mere committeespeak instead.

Perhaps in a democratic and egalitarian society we should be content with our much vaunted modernity, but I certainly hope not. Why does our inclusiveness and respect for the rights of the individual leave so many individuals feeling very excluded? Why do I get the impression that we have the liturgical equivalent of two legs good, four legs bad? In the Roman Church at the present time there is a movement sometimes called the Reform of the Reform. Perhaps we Anglicans could do with something similar.