Today's Scientific Age Goes Unscientific...Why?

I suspect this reflection on today's society will not be well received but it is, perhaps, a reflection worthy of at least some consideration. 

Despite promoting science as the only way to know truth, today’s politicians and mainstream media seem hell-bent on ignoring biological science in their social engineering of society while pretending that God, heaven and hell don’t exist.

We know full well that HIV and AIDS fell dramatically in Uganda where abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage were promoted, but continued to rise in those countries where condoms were promoted, yet governments and mainstream media portray condoms as the way to prevent the spread of HIV. We know that children from families where father and mother are both present are more likely to do well in education and less likely to fall into criminal behaviour, yet governments and mainstream media fail to promote natural marriage. We know the only means of propagating the human race is the sexual union of a man and a woman, yet governments and mainstream media present homosexual acts as normal and acceptable. We even have governments and media facilitating the idea that if sex successfully achieves its natural biological end (the conception of a child) we may sink to the level killing the child, even if this only for career advancement or the stability of our bank balance.

It seems that Governments are simply procuring votes rather than doing what is right for humanity, since they are supporting and promoting a view of society that is sexually chaotic and family-dismantling; one in which children all too frequently suffer the emotional and social wounds of family breakdown. Second, our sexually chaotic society seems to want the vice with which we must all struggle –lust- approved of and facilitated so that sex may be had whenever, with whoever, and however we want, without a healthy sense of shame that such sexual ‘freedom’ makes the act of procreation into a selfish act rather than love (i.e., care and commitment); an act in which sexual partners become disposable means of self-satisfaction. Can we not honestly say that lust breaks up marriages and families; that contraception eschews responsibility, and that abortion kills children? it seems we tolerate or support these things only so as to engage in sex when, how and with whoever we want. Sexual freedom, as promoted by today’s society, does not make us free to enjoy a fully human life but is a total inversion of reality: people are not being freed to live fully human lives; they are being chained to their animal instincts, free only from the human capacity to engage in rational thinking and self-mastery –two of the very things which distinguish us from the animals.

No wonder the Gospel is rejected and the Catholic Church is hated: we want a stable society of committed parents, with adults controlling their animal passions so as to live in true human love and as stable, committed spouses and parents.

Forest Hall Royals -Thanking God for memories of my youth..!

I have lots of things in my life for which to thank God, beginning with my Faith, my family and my friends. I thank Him for time in my previous professions, and for whatever good I have been able to do as a priest -especially the privilege of offering the Holy Sacrifice, of Anointing those about to leave this world, of Reconciling sinners to the Lord in Confession, and the times I have been able to support folk in life’s crisis events.  In speaking of thanking God for things in life, I was recently shown photographs of days from my youth...

Bear in mind that the area in which I grew up was not an affluent area. Most of our dads were miners or labourers, and mothers picked up a few bob (shillings) cleaning here and there. Few of us were from families with cars or telephones, and few of us took holidays in the UK, never mind abroad. Money was short; times were tough. For the most part we played in the old field at the bottom of the lane, or ‘Canon’ with tin cans and a ball in the street -or “Knocking on Doors”. (I think children today miss out by playing with computer games instead of playing with other children). The photographs I was recently shown depicted a time when a good number of us from the area found a happy and useful focus: taking part in a Juvenile marching band. We were the Forest Hall Royals. We practiced two nights a week and competed every Saturday during the summer.

Before we began competing  -notice the absence of medal sashes

We ‘Royals’ won a good number of our competitions. For this we have to thank our manager Jacky Rowe, and our successive trainers: Mr Moody, Mr Hunter and Mr Mowett. Not to forget our ‘Committee Women’ and our loyal supporters, from siblings to mums and Granddads.

There was a healthy sense of competition among the many bands of North East England, and when we didn’t win first place we simply said “we’ll get them next time!” –though without any real animosity. There were many bands to compete against, and I remember well those with whom our competition was most evident: North Shields Grenadiers; Byker Imperials; Walker Majestics; Longbenton Vikings; Newbiggin Harlequins; Meadowell Dragoons; Willington Revellers, Felling Fusiliers et al. Competition was tough; all of these bands and more besides, worked hard to achieve whatever wins were gained in competitions, which might take place in glorious sunshine, bleak drizzle or even rain. Whatever the weather, picnic lunches were eaten with enthusiasm.

North Shields Grenadiers -Local Rivals, well respected

We, as the Forest Hall Royals, truly felt like royalty as we marched ‘On Parade’ through the streets in our bright red uniforms, and proudly executed our intricate display routine in the Arena. Our Drum Majors and Band Majors were skilled with the mace (I know Marie never dropped her mace once!); our Drum Section was spectacular and noted among the other bands; and military men brought in to judge competitions would comment on how well our kazoo section marched –though one or two never seemed to get their arm to shoulder height! Who remembers these:

We had to join! We had to join! 

We had to join the Forest Hall Royals!

Fifty pence a week! Hardly owt to eat!

Carnivals ev'ry Satu'day 

with blisters on wa' feet! We had to join!

and

We were out one day

Against the Grenadiers

we won 'Overall'!

We kicked them over the wall!

And when they shouted 'Jip!'

We miffed them angrily, in

Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer

Katsenellenbogen-by-the-sea.

My Retirement Day: Me, Gail and May Retired together

Though we might laugh at ourselves now, we learned a lot during that time: team work, a sense of responsibility for turning up at practices and events; finding and losing friendships, taking care to keep a clean, well-pressed uniform and spotless white plimsolls. All of this played a part in the life of the Jazz Band member in any band. They were great days; and in fact, though few people know it, I still own a double-snare drum and a mace! A man of many talents...not!

Me filling in the for Band Major (winning First Place on Parade!)

and my drum, my usual role

On my Retirement Day with a very dear friend

Some of Our Loyal Royal Supporters: Mam, Florrie, Maude and Anne!

Why am I posting this on a blog with a religious theme? Because it was a truly happy time that was God-given, and the five years of my life I spent in ‘The Forest Hall Royals’ during my teens are some of the happiest in my life; something I thank God for every day -as I do for my family, friends, former careers and priesthood.

Here are some of the Forest Hall Royals at a recent reunion (alas, I could not make it so you will not see me here) now parading as Forest Hall Debonaires...Oh the memories!

Too Proud, Too Afraid or Too Person-focused to admit we went wrong...?

It used to be said when I was in seminary and newly ordained (1993) that we should not worry too much about baptising the children of lapsed Catholics since they would generally return to the Church at the time of their child’s First Holy Communion. While I have seen a few come back at First Communion, but not all of them continued to come, while the vast majority of parents never bothered at all. Am I alone in finding it disturbing that when children are presented for the Sacraments the parents have no intention of having their child continue in the Faith? On enquiry it is easy to discover that many are not even ‘culturally catholic’: they don’t have religious pictures or statues in the home; they don’t practice family prayer, they say no grace before meals etc. The Church simply plays no role in their life other than providing a local school with a good Ofsted report.

One of the reasons for the lapsation of the parents (and now, the grandparents) was the undeniably bad catechesis given over the last forty years, with its hidden implication that God is subject to change: “Who is Jesus Christ for you?”. Without meaning to, we were/are telling people it is OK to create God in their own image, so that now we come up against such statements as “my understanding of God is that He doesn’t hold A, B or C against us; we can still get to heaven if we are a good person”. We place souls in grave spiritual danger when we allow them to formulate God according to their own design.

The errors of past formation wreaked havoc in the Church, and still have their influence today. How can they not? It was the foundation we gave to those under 60; to those educated with deficient school texts and in progressive seminaries from the 1960’s onward. Thus we still hear people say Confession is only for mortal sins and “rarely needed”, and the Eucharist “was given to be received, not worshipped”. There are still those whose ecclesiology sees the Catholic Church and the ecclesial communities of Protestantism as being essentially the same, and those whose moral theology is tainted by the mistaken theory of the Fundamental Option. Sadly, much on-going formation is just more of the same, which is perhaps why some priests take responsibility for their own on-going formation by having recourse to orthodox conferences and reading materials.

I truly believe that unless we return to the very basics in our preaching, in our school texts and in our public statements, and unless we return to a liturgy that is God-focused rather than people-centred, we will continue to see the Church dwindle by lapsation and lose influence in society. We need to be formed again, theologically and catachetically. in key issues: the Primacy of the Pope in Doctrine and Discipline; the unique nature of the Catholic Church as the One True Church from which all salvation flows; the necessity of regular Confession for regular Communion; the Mass as the Sacrifice of Calvary and not simply a fraternal banquet; the inherent evil of contraception; of fornication, abortion and euthanasia. We also need to rediscover the essential vocation and responsibility of the laity as the salt of the earth wherein they set out to evangelisation of the world in its media, health care, politics, education etc. We in the clergy need to remember that we serve by taking responsibility (not power) before God for the teaching, sanctifying and governing of the Church. Collaboration does not mean shirking this responsibility.

Finally, helping the youth to re-engage with the Church is a priority if we are to gain good, Catholic families in the future. It is not that our teachers and youth workers are not genuinely concerned for the youth; it is not as though they are not generous with their time and fervent in their efforts, but no matter how many youth events they have put on over the years and no matter how many youth retreats they have led, the thousands of youth that have passed through their hands are not coming to Mass and receiving the Sacraments. Having attended these events they simply go back to their everyday lives. In that it is the Truth which sets us free, I believe we have to return –and return soon- to forming them in doctrinal accuracy and in the understanding that Holy Mass is the worship of God in adoration, propitiation and supplication, rather than a community jamboree, which it becomes when we seek jolly songs and use skits and dramas.

From Father's Homilies

I thought I would share Father’s homilies from yesterday and today since we haven’t actually blogged for a couple of weeks.

Yesterday at our Extraordinary Form Mass, taking the scriptures we heard (James 1v22-27), Father noted that many of us are “hearers of the word” who do not practice it; that while most of us are surely like St Paul, not doing what we desire to do but doing what we would rather not do, that some folk deliberately refuse to live by God’s word, choosing the ways of the world instead. The justification for such a conscious choice is that “the world has moved from biblical times and anyway, it can’t be wrong if everyone is doing it”. Father made the point that though many folk are great at social justice issues and do indeed care for the poor, the widow and the orphan, they do not keep themselves unspotted from the world but align themselves with it; they take on board that it is Ok to self-abuse, co-habit,  fornicate and enter homosexual activity. None of this is consistent with the Gospel and the teaching of Christ’s Church.  We are then, at a time when we have to choose between the world and the Church; God or the devil, and not everyone is making the right choice.

At this morning’s Ordinary Form Mass Father noted that many Christians are being killed for their Faith; that there are bombings of Churches and Christian homes in many places around the world, done, as our Lord foretold in today’s Gospel passage, as “a holy thing for God” (John 16v2). We don’t, as yet, have to come to Mass at the risk of our lives; we don’t suffer that kind of persecution. Our persecution is more subtle, and it’s dangerous: it’s the persecution of truth by the dictatorship of relativism by which today’s so-called ‘tolerant’ society will not tolerate our free speech on issues such as contraception, abortion and homosexual activity. As we noted yesterday, many of these things are justified not only by an appeal to oneself, but to the fact that “the world has moved on and everyone thinks it’s OK these days”. We have to pray that the Spirit of Truth will touch the hearts of those who perpetrate violence and of those who promote relativism, and not only for our good, but for their salvation.

I thought these words were worth sharing.

A Parishioner's Reflection on Life, Death & Faith

A member of my home parish wrote a this simple poem for the memorial Booklet after my mother’s death in January of this year. Having had a birthday this week I looked over the poem over again and asked if I could share it on the blog.

~ Life, Faith, and Grace ~

Saints and angels watch o’er thee to keep thee in God’s peace;

that He, who loves both thee and me, will heal our souls with grace.

Thank Him for the times we had, the happiness we knew,

praise Him for the joys we shared, and love that’s ever true.

Know while in the pain of loss that death is not the end;

our souls live on in God above, Our Saviour, Lord and friend.

Have hope I rest within the hand of Him who made the world;

who came to die and rise again that souls may rise above.

For God said “Let there be” and then, in one great sudden “Bang”,

the cosmos and the world we know,  suddenly began.

The planets follow charted ways and ‘round the sun revolve,

while birds and fish and animals may by His will evolve.

God, the mind behind the math that underpins the world,

is the living force of life on earth and heaven above.

The ever-living God on high, our life, our hope, our love,

is Himself our final end and calls us home above.

For when in Adam mankind fell to sorrow, death and pain

God came as man at Christmastime to break hell’s binding chain.

Good Friday He destroyed our death, at Easter re-stored life;

that those who follow in His ways may see eternal light.

He gave us Holy Mother Church to hold us in His grace,

to fill us with His life Divine, and keep us on His Way:

At birth He doth Baptise the soul; Confirms with Holy Ghost;

and day by day He feeds us with His Body and His Blood.

And should we sin He will Absolve by hand of His own Priest;

and then with holy oil Anoint when death doth show its face.

Beloved one, when life is through, have trust that God will say

Come home to heav’n O child of mine, and see Me face to face.

Fruits of the Council and the Reform of the Reform

I am not exactly one of those who would like to excise Vatican II from the history books, but I long to see it properly implemented. Since the vast majority of the Bishops at Vatican II signed the Council documents we can take it for granted that they saw them as faithful to and continuous with the Deposit of Faith guarded over the centuries. As such, dissent from traditional doctrines such as ‘no’ to artificial contraception and ‘yes’ to the male-only priesthood and to the Catholic Church as the one means of salvation etc, is nothing to do with Vatican II. The only alternatives to the Bishops signing the documents if they saw them as discontinuous with the received Faith are that the Fathers were either too afraid to challenge them, too wicked to correct them, or too dim to understand them. We surely cannot hold to such alternatives.

Yet something has gone badly wrong since the Council. Its true fruits have not yet surfaced. Rather, dissent (which divides) is widespread, and dissenters include Bishops and priests as well as laity. Lapsation has gone from around 20% prior to the Council to around 75% since the Council; convents are closing and seminaries shutting down by the handful while Catholic marriages and families are becoming fewer. Only a fool or a renegade could see this erosion of Mass attendance, vocations and family life as good and healthy.

I thus wonder...In our necessary concern for those in need, have we clergy become more like social workers than doctors of souls? Have we become entertainers in the sacred liturgy by eradicating Latin and Gregorian Chant (in direct disobedience to Vatican II) while allowing the adoption of dances, dramas, puppets and comedic homilies in order to keep the people engaged? Have our laity come to see their mission to the world (wonderfully undertaken by the Legion of Mary, SVP, SPUC and ACN.) as inferior to being on committees and standing on the sanctuary, so that only work in the office, the lecture room or standing in the sanctuary are seen as ‘empowerment’? Have bishops and priests, by holding the same idea of empowerment, thus allowed the authentic lay vocation of being leaven in the world seem like disempowerment -or worse, as subservience? Perhaps. At any rate, the remedy is to recover the true reform; to bring ourselves back onto the road proposed by Vatican II. This is not about turning back, but about recovering our right direction. Surely only a fool, a stubborn man or a proud man would be unwilling to admit that a wrong turn has been made somewhere? And no one of sound mind or good heart could look at the condition of the Church today and see it as good and healthy, so it seems highly likely that we have taken a wrong road after the Council. Without doubt the Church has its healthy attributes: people are dedicated to charity and do want to take some responsibility for the life of the Church and her worship, but if a physician focuses on how wonderfully well one’s digestive tract is operating while allowing a failing heart to saturate the lungs with fluid, he is positively unhelpful to the person as a whole. Similarly, ignoring the wounds within certain aspects of the Church’s life is unhelpful to the Church as a whole. I pray that the reform of the reform to keep us in continuity with our past continues...

"Well, its not against the law Father"

“It’s not against the law” is one of the responses frequently given when challenging people to recognise that sex before marriage, contraception, abortion, self-abuse and homosexual acts, are contrary to the Gospel and endanger a person’s salvation when he or she knowingly, deliberately and freely engages in such acts. While folk readily accept that political oppression, unfair distribution of wealth, violence etc., are sins, they are not so ready to accept that the above are sins “because they’re part of a loving, committed relationship” and “not against the law”. These responses are common among not only among the younger generation (whose Catholic formation is thereby shown to be woefully -even dangerously- inadequate) but also among some older Catholics who are unable to accept that their adult children are living spiritually dangerous lives.

The underlying reality is that people have moved from allegiance to God to allegiance to the world by exchanging God’s Law for man’s law, though man’s law is simply legislating to make the deadly sin of lust acceptable. Indeed, it appears to legislates against those who hold to God’s law, for example, those who refuse to register same-sex marriages or to supervise junior midwives taking part in abortion. A major cause of this change of allegiance is adherence to the person-centred approach of “whatever is right for you”, even though this is a dressing up of the essence of original sin: “I will not serve”. Sadly, the person-centred approach has influenced many preachers too, who thereby turn the people from the worship of God to the idolisation of the self. Such preachers, whether of diaconal, presbyteral or episcopal rank may see themselves as enlightened, but in reality they are walking in the dark, hoodwinked by the father of lies, and they are leading others into the dark with them. They may well believe they are making the Church ‘welcoming’ so that a person does not feel judged in their lifestyle choice, but they are a danger to souls; unwitting wolves rather than good shepherds. God forbid that a Doctor should fail to judge smoking and alcohol abuse as dangerous so that the patient does not feel judged in their lifestyle choice...

We who preach and teach must correct the work of the deceiver; we must speak what is true and pastorally hold out hope in the mercy of God to folk when they fail, without making that failure into an acceptable option. We should, as Saint Alphonsus said, be like lions in the pulpit and lambs in the confessional. Unfortunately we have become lambs in the pulpit; the proverbial dumb sheep who does not open its mouth (Isaiah 53v7). What can we do to fight back against the deceiver?

Clear preaching and teaching is, I think, essential. It is the light of Truth that sets us free, not the subjectivism of “whatever is right for you”. Also essential is God-centred worship. Too often our liturgy also falls prey to person-centred ideologies by seeking to make it entertaining, emotionally moving or ‘relevant’. I suspect that the preachers and teachers who are person-centred in their pastoral care are also those who provide emotive, affective liturgy. After all, we pray as we believe.

I know preaching against contraception, homosexual acts etc, can be offensive to those who have chosen such lifestyles and to their families, but are we not to bring the light of Christ into the darkness of such lives? I know too that celebrating the liturgy without ‘originality’ is regarded as rule-bound and ‘dead’ by some, but I am acutely aware that the purpose of the liturgy is to adore, propitiate and thank God, not to ‘move’ the people. If we aim for the latter we place self and the people front and centre, not God.

As society continues to follow the person-centred ideology and legislate for the deadly sin of lust, only the people of God can bring the light of the Risen Lord into society and save His beloved children from the hands of the enemy. This is true whether we are preachers and teachers, or at work in factory, field, hospital or media.