Fides et Ratio

Do the English really prefer animals to children?

2007-01-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

Just recently, in the midst of a heated – though respectful, useful and good natured – debate about embryo research with a class of bright sixth-formers, one of them asked me to back up my assertion that there was something special and unique about human beings. It had me well and truly stumped for a few moments.

The fact that humans are infinitely more morally valuable than animals is one of those fundamental truths that I had assumed was so widely shared as to barely need stating at all. Surely such an axiom is part of the philosophical framework of any truly civilized society? But I had forgotten that we do not live in a genuinely civilized society, and indeed one where any claim to an objective truth – such as the assertion that human life is more important than animal life – is met with incomprehension and even contempt. It is extremely difficult to construct a principled argument for the special status of humans based on a secular worldview. Ultimately, if there is no absolute moral standard, any opinion on ethical matters becomes just that – an opinion, based on subjective factors, which people can take or leave. Everyone can construct their own little bubble of virtual reality in a way that suits their own feelings; they do not have to engage with any kind of objective reality; they do not have to critically examine their convictions in the cold light of reason.

Confusion about the value of human life is rampant and widespread. I am sure that many pro-lifers will have wondered how a person can be a vegetarian, and opposed to fox-hunting, animal testing, whaling, fur coats and all the rest of it, and yet be pro-abortion. It is truly incomprehensible to me how anyone can believe that it is wrong to kill animals for food or engage in medical experiments on animals, but that it can be right to kill actual living humans for social convenience. Yet thousands – even millions – of people appear to hold such views.

Just recently I was visiting Oxford. Every few weeks, that lovely city is forced to endure loud and intimidating protests by a small but dedicated band of animal rights “activists” who take issue with the University’s new animal experimentation laboratory. These kind and caring individuals have declared that any staff or students of the University or any property connected with the University are fair game for “direct action” i.e. thuggery and vandalism. Last year, one of the college boathouses was burned to the ground; in the past, “activists” have attempted to wreak havoc inside individual colleges, with the result that on protest days nearly every college in the city centre is on “lockdown”.

I have a hunch that very few of those “activists” are opposed to abortion or embryo research.

Imagine if extreme pro-life activists caused such costly chaos. Imagine if pro-life activists intimidated lab technicians, sprayed graffiti, slashed tyres, firebombed cars and buildings and displayed graphic placards of unborn children in the street. Imagine if pro-lifers made such a public nuisance of themselves that police had to be drafted in from other cities to help, and shopping centres had to be defended by mounted police. There would be a national outcry. Questions would be asked in Parliament. The media would take the opportunity to give the pro-life movement as a whole a good kicking, based on the excesses of a few. It would be yet another excuse for the usual suspects to avoid any rational, fact-based discussion of abortion.

But animal rights activists – even those who refuse to condemn violence – are treated with indulgence by the media. A curious double standard applies (after all, very few people take the RSPCA less seriously because of the terrorist activities of the Animal Liberation Front). Animal rights are fashionable and unthreatening. They offer easy “caring” points for people in the public eye. The usual suspects – singers, models, actors – flock to the cause, queuing up to pose with a baby seal, or some other cuddly but endangered critter, just to show us how wonderfully kind and empathetic they are. It sometimes feels like one can barely open a newspaper or magazine without coming across a celebrity worrying about the imminent extinction of the Lesser Spotted Mongolian Ground Weasel. Yet the very same “celebrities” are often ardent defenders of abortion. It is really quite grotesque.

What is human dignity?

2007-01-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

Dignity is an interesting word. In my work i.e. in a necessarily secular environment where I cannot appeal to theistic concepts, I spend a great deal of time talking about human dignity. What do I mean? There is a tremendous amount that could be said; it is very difficult, for example, to provide a watertight philosophical explanation of why all humans have special dignity. But fundamentally, what we mean when we talk about human dignity is that humans, because of the kind of beings they are, ought to be treated in a certain way and have certain protections, because that is what will lead them towards flourishing as distinct individuals.

In discussing issues such as embryo research and abortion, I personally prefer to talk about human dignity rather than human rights because radical individualism has, as it were, poisoned the well of human rights discourse. There are so many competing claims of rights – both real and imagined – that reasoned debate loses out in the cacophony of individual demands. So many arguments come to a stalemate because there is really no agreed definition of what a human right is, or where it comes from, or where we draw the line between different people’s rights. Many people now associate the idea of human rights entirely, or predominantly, with tabloid scare stories about prisoners being given pornography in their cells, or guilty criminals getting off on technicalities, or children defying their teachers, rather than very important issues such as upholding freedom of religion or supporting prisoners of conscience.

Rights are often viewed as an extension of individual whims or selfish anti-social desires. Dignity, however, is not yet tainted by association with forceful individualism or radical autonomy. Talking about human dignity, I hope, makes people think not of 1960s-style “I’ll do as I please” radical autonomy, but of an older and more venerable tradition that lays a huge stress on the value of individual lives.

Furthermore, when it comes to working out how to structure and construct a just and ethical society, we can use the basic principles of human dignity, such as absolute respect for life and freedom of thought and conscience, to give us a solid objective foundation – whereas relying on individual rights plunges us into a baffling relativist labyrinth of claim and counter-claim. We can see this happening around us now; those who proclaim their rights most insistently, those who “shout the loudest”, get their way, while those who cannot shout are marginalised or destroyed, declared “non-persons” by those for whom their humanity is inconvenient.

Dignity is also a more useful concept than rights because it is an inherent human quality which applies to all human beings at every stage of development. By contrast, when people talk about human rights, it is often implicitly suggested that only someone who is fully self-aware – i.e. not an unborn or newborn child, or an embryo or a badly disabled or senile adult – can enjoy full human rights. This notion that human rights must in some sense be “earned” – through the acquisition or development by an individual of particular capabilities and functions – is dangerous yet pervasive. One of the best ways to counter it is to insist, gently but firmly, that we must take into account not the prerogatives and demands of the strong, but the dignity of the weak.

Liturgy is not the problem

2007-01-17T06:32:00.000-08:00

There are a large number of commentators, from every Christian denomination and every shade of churchmanship, who nurture an obsessive interest in the liturgy and its supposedly deleterious effect on church membership in the last 40 years.

Those at the non-conformist end of the spectrum tend to see formal liturgy as a Bad Thing in and of itself. Formal liturgies with complicated words “put people off” because they are not “relevant”. They are “intimidating”. They contain “archaic language” which “no-one” understands.

For liberals it is the “non-inclusive” language and – gasp – “moralising” that allegedly drives people away, while among the conservatives we hear complaints that theology-lite “Mickey Mouse” liturgies with no sense of mystery are emptying the churches. There are even those who blame the sign of the Peace for a fall in church attendance (to which I am tempted to say: if your Christian commitment is so fragile that having to shake hands with a few strangers once a week is enough to make you stop going to church, then you need to ask yourself some pretty searching questions).

But here’s the thing. Liturgy is, to a large degree, a red herring. The reason why most people do not attend church and do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ is simple:

They do not believe in the Christian faith.

They do not think that it is credible or rational to believe in a creator God. They do no understand why they need God; they do not believe that the Church – or indeed the Bible – has anything to say to them in 2007. They have a faulty understanding of what it means to be a human being. They are blinded by the material and enslaved by the sexual. They are ignorant of the divine and scornful of the devout. They are trapped by autolatry and consumerism and lust. They have never heard of the Book of Common Prayer, Common Worship, the Tridentine Mass or “spirit-filled” worship. They do not care how churches worship because they do not care what the churches say or what the churches do! When liberals accuse trads of being “exclusive” and trads say that modern liturgy is “banal” we are talking to ourselves, not to the culture that desperately needs the truth!

The execution of Saddam

2007-01-09T03:11:00.000-08:00

Did we really need to see the pictures?

That was the question that kept coming into my mind after the execution of Saddam Hussein last month. Most newspaper editors seemed to think so, as did the BBC and all the other TV news channels. It seems likely that those rather grisly images of the dictator’s last minutes will become some of the most iconic images of the early 21st century. I have no doubt that for many people, especially the families of his many unfortunate victims, there was a certain satisfaction to be had in seeing Saddam pay the ultimate penalty for his crimes.

I hope it does not sound too high-minded to say that I found the entire spectacle rather uncivilized. I have no doubt of Saddam’s guilt; he was clearly responsible for the crimes of which he was convicted. He apparently showed little or no remorse and conducted a belligerent and deluded defence at his trial. But whatever his crimes, the spectacle of a 69-year-old man being hurriedly strung up – and taunted – by a group of balaclava-clad, leather jacket-wearing executioners resembling IRA terrorists, was not an edifying one.

Mark Steyn on the suicidal madness of modern cultural relativism

2006-12-18T08:23:00.000-08:00

"This isn't about religion. Jesus is doing just fine in the United States. Forty years of ACLU efforts to eliminate God from the public square have led to a resurgent, evangelical and politicized American Christianity unique in the Western world. What the rabbi in Seattle and the cops in Riverside are doing is colluding in an assault on something more basic: They're denying the possibility of any common culture. America is not a stamp collection with one of each. It's an overwhelmingly Christian country with freedom of religion for those who aren't. But it's quite an expansion of "freedom of religion" to argue that "those who aren't" are entitled to forbid any public expression of America's Christian inheritance except as part of an all-U-can-eat interfaith salad bar. In their initial reaction, Seattle Airport got it right: To be forced to have one of everything is, ultimately, the same as having nothing. So you might as well cut to the chase."

My current favourite phrase...

2006-12-18T07:30:00.000-08:00

...is "begging the question". I have only recently discovered exactly what this is and it is damned useful. Now that I can identify it I see just how often people "beg the question".

"Begging the question" is a kind of logical fallacy akin to a circular argument, in which the supposed conclusion reached is actually a basis for the original argument.

According to Wikipedia:

The following argument is a standard example of begging the question: "The Bible says God exists, and the Bible must be right since it is the revealed word of God, so God exists." Obviously enough, no one who doubts the conclusion has any reason to accept the second premise, which presupposes it. This is, of course, a blatant example meant solely to illustrate the fallacy; less contrived instances may be much more subtle.

In the interests of balance, I would add that many so-called rationalist critiques of religion fall prey to begging the question - that is, that the premises on which arguments rest are actually contingent on acceptance of the conclusion that those arguments supposedly uphold.

Consider "Miracles go against the laws of the material universe. These laws cannot be broken. Therefore miracles cannot happen."

But this is not an argument against miraculous occurences. Christians who believe in miracles could reasonably point out that they explain miracles by reference to a God who exists outside and above the physical universe, who is the author of the material world, and therefore can and does interfere in His creation.

That is not a proof for miracles, of course; the point is rather that this particular argument against miracles is not a very good one.

We also hear people "begging the question" in more mundane debates.

Take for example the comment that "the Tories are nasty because they want to abolish the NHS".

Deconstructed, this argument goes as follows: "The NHS is a good thing which only a wicked person would want to destroy. The Tories want to destroy the NHS. Therefore the Tories are wicked."

Put like this, we see a gaping logical hole; to accept the conclusion, that the Tories are wicked for wanting to destroy the NHS, one has to accept the premise that only a wicked person would want to destroy the NHS.

And so on and so forth. You get the picture. I could give more examples but this is already a long and complicated post so I won't.

Festival of hypocrisy

2006-11-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

Saddam Hussein is to be taken from here to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until dead, as they say. Right-on liberals have been falling over themselves to say how wicked it is. The death penalty is awful and uncivilised, they say, and any country that has it should be condemned. Odd how the anti-war people, who made so much of the importance of national sovereignty before March 2003. are suddenly very keen to tell the Iraqis how to run their lives.

More interesting to me is the awful hypocritical inconsistency of those odd, and numerous, individuals who manage to be both anti-death penalty and pro-abortion. How does that work? We often hear Guardian types sneering at Bush for being pro-life on abortion but pro-death penalty - yet it is infinitely more illogical to be anti-death penalty and pro-abortion than the reverse.

Britain has not abolished the death penalty. We have stopped executing murderers; but in 1967, just a year after the supposed "abolition" of the death penalty, we legalised the execution of the unborn.

Can atheists be good people?

2006-11-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

One of the most hotly contested questions in the ongoing debate between believers and non-believers is about morality - namely whether being good is the preserve of the religious.

Ignore for a moment the fact that Christianity is not fundamentally about individuals being good. If we consider the question on its own terms, it demonstrates a glaring logical problem at the heart of atheistic philosophy.

The authentic Christian challenge to atheism is not "you are inherently bad people because you do not believe in a higher power" (although many inept and non-thinking Christians do make this inane suggestion) but rather "you cannot convincingly say that the way you live is good because - ultimately - you have no objective standard against which to measure your behaviour."

So an atheist might say "I pay my taxes, I look after my family, I never cheat or steal, I'm kind to strangers and give money to charity. I'm a good person - better than many Christians I know." The problem remains that he has no way of explaining why any of those things are admirable or good or just, as part of an atheistic - and therefore intrinsically relativistic - worldview.

Misunderstanding Jesus

2006-10-04T05:01:00.000-07:00

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?...first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from you brother's eye."

Matt 7vv3-5

This passage is often misinterpreted - sometimes wilfully. Many take it to mean that we ought never to rebuke or "judge" our fellow men. This fits in especially well with the sopping wet, non-judgmental, "tolerant" approach favoured by so many these days.

However, nowhere here does Jesus say that it is wrong to remove the speck from your brother's eye, or to notice the speck. All he is saying is that you should acknowledge and confess your own sinfulness before you rebuke others. There is nothing wrong with members of a church community pointing out each other's sins. In fact, we are urged to rebuke one another - and accept rebukes humbly with a good spirit - by Paul and other voices of the early church.

A break

2006-09-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

This blog will be on a break for a while.

Awesome heroism

2006-08-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

Genuine heroes are in short supply nowadays; but check out this passage from "Defeat Into Victory", the memoirs of General William ("Uncle Bill") Slim about the war in Burma. He is discussing the 20th Division's defence of Imphal in April 1944, in particular the conspicuous valour of the officers:

"These officers, many of them in their early twenties, made me proud to belong to the same army. One young lieutenant-colonel, commanding a battalion that had already lost three-quarters of its officers and who had himself been severely wounded in the stomach by grenade fragments, was again hit leading his men. When asked why at this second wound he had not gone back at least as far as the Field Ambulance to have his wounds properly dressed, he admitted that the grenade in the stomach was a nuisance as it made getting about rather difficult, but he could still keep up with his men so there was no need to go back. As to the second wound, 'The bullet', he said, 'has passed straight through my shoulder so it causes me no inconvenience!' No wonder the Japanese never broke through. When, a little time afterwards, I wished to promote this very gallant officer to command of a brigade, I found to my grief that he had been killed later in the battle."

You don't say.

2006-08-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

"The Guardian" discover some shocking news. It seems that, contrary to all expectations, neither the Quakers, nor the Pope, nor the Chief Rabbi, were involved in the latest terrorist actions.

"A fundamentalist Islamic movement is emerging as a common link between several of the men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners."

Well, who'd have thought it?

Good news about WWI deserters

2006-08-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

As an extremely bloody-minded and contrarian 14 year old, I once defended the British Army's policy of shooting deserters on the Western Front during the First World War. This was partly because I genuinely thought that it was a reasonable option to prevent mass disobedience (which would have been disastrous for the war effort), but mainly because the rest of the class were all tutting and shaking their heads and it gave me great pleasure to challenge their smug conventional wisdom.

This, however, is good news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4796579.stm

I usually object to altering history in accordance with modern whims. But the shooting of 300 deserters, many of whom were probably mentally ill, does seem to have been a genuine injustice.

Key quote of the day # 2

2006-08-16T04:18:00.000-07:00

"...people invoke their rights and entitlements mainly when they know that what they are demanding is morally wrong."

Dr Dalrymple again.

Key quote

2006-08-16T03:46:00.000-07:00

"In a regime of complete personal autonomy, whim is law."

Dr Theodore Dalrymple

The contraceptive mentality

2006-08-16T03:35:00.000-07:00

Ann Furedi makes a surprising admission in her essay in the book "Abortion: Whose Choice?":

"...arguments for increased access to contraception...are built on the assumption that these developments will bring down the abortion rate. The anti-choice movement counter that this does not seem to be the case in practice. Arguably they are right. Access to effective contraception creates an expectation that women can control their fertility...Given that expectation, women may be less willing to compromise their plans for the future...In days when sex was expected to carry the risk of pregnancy, an unwanted child was a chance a woman took. Today, we expect sex to be free from that risk and unplanned maternity is not a price we are prepared to pay."

Tragic. It's all about the self - me, me, wonderful me!

Smoking in the cellar

2006-08-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

You can hardly move nowadays for churchmen emoting fiercely about poverty, global warming, inequality, social exclusion etc. These causes are extremely fashionable just now, more so since Live 8 and Bob Geldof and Make Poverty History (an incoherent, woolly and economically illiterate slogan if ever there was one).

What's the problem, I hear you say?

Well, two big problems immediately spring to mind. The first is that - with the best will in the world - many clergy, even bishops, are hopelessly unoriginal thinkers, in hoc to woolly and indeed outdated quasi-socialist economic theory. Inner city poverty and social breakdown? Pour in more government money. Global warming? Revert to the same standard of living of c. 1750 and criticise George Bush. Oh yes, and increase taxes. Inequality? More QUANGOs, more committees, more emoting. And pour in more money. Crime? Down to bad housing and unemployment. Islamic terror? Appeasement, retreat and a craven refusal to stand up for Christian truth.

The church has given in to an utterly secular and materialist worldview - we no longer fix our eyes on the Kingdom of God, encouraging one another with the hope that we have in Christ, but look desperately around for human (and therefore inadequate) fixes to all our problems. If you doubt this, look at the recent C of E report "Faithful Cities" - barely a mention of Christian faith, or the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, or the necessity of obeying Christ even in difficult circumstances; just endless sub-Marxist platitudes about deprivation and government money and intervention, which anyway accords with the prevailing opinion in the opinion-forming classes, rendering the report a complete waste of time (like most of the offerings from C of E bishops)!

Which brings me rather neatly to the second problem: the churches - all of them - are not speaking out on the difficult issues. It is all very well marching through Edinburgh with Blessed Bob Geldof and St Bono of Perpetual Tax Avoidance demanding an end to poverty and violence and so on - but praying for world peace and an end to poverty is not exactly risky. Who doesn't want peace and prosperity for all?

What Christ calls us to do is speak out prophetically on the issues where the whole world is blind, confused, rebellious and hostile - and in the modern world this means challenging three things: (i) the deification of the individual, (ii) the worship of the erotic and (iii) the denial of objective truth. To return to an analogy I used on this blog a few months back - imagine the Christian church as a great and mighty fortress with many large towers, surrouned by an indifferent and even hostile world. Two of these towers - Sexual Morality and Objective Truth - have been under attack ever since the castle was built, and are becoming increasingly weak. But instead of rushing to their defence, a lot of the castle's inhabitants are rushing to other towers which aren't under attack, so that they don't get hurt in the battle for Objective Truth and Sexual Morality. Some of them are even filling the cellars of those towers with gunpowder and then sitting around smoking.

Of course, if those towers fall down, the rest of the castle will be opened up to invasion and will be captured, along with its inhabitants.

It seems that the "smokers", and those who are fleeing, either don't understand that or don't care.

And that's a tragedy.

"The only moral question when it comes to sex is consent" - really?

2006-08-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Johann Hari is a young "Independent" columnist, who for some mysterious reason has been showered with awards and praise despite - or possibly, I suppose, because of - his massive over-reliance on rhetoric, distortion of the facts and ignorant ad hominem attacks on his opponents. I occasionally email him to point out that he has got his facts wrong or has unfairly maligned someone, but he never deigns to reply, so I can only assume that accuracy and fairness are secondary concerns to him.

Anyway, my latest beef with him is not a point of factual correctness, but a question of moral philosophy. On Friday, he wrote about the arrest of George Michael and stated that "the only moral question when it comes to sex is consent".

I suspect that many people would subscribe to this notion without really thinking about it. But how many actually believe it?

How many people, if they found their partner in bed with a lover, would accept that because both had consented to the act, it had no moral implications?

How many people would think that it was appropriate for a 16-year-old girl to sleep with her male teacher, because both had consented?

Consent is a vital moral question when it comes to sex. But it is surely absurd to suggest that it is the only one. Context is equally important. Take, for example, a married man who is being sexually unfaithful to his wife. Can we plausibly say that his mistress' consent to sexual activity is enough to render the act morally neutral?

Of course not. One does not have to subscribe to a particularly rigorous sexual ethic to see that sex in certain circumstances is just plain wrong, regardless of consent. Folk may differ on what exactly those circumstances are, but nearly everyone accepts that they do exist.

The Man

2006-07-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

"These boys and girls [adopted as frozen embryos] are not spare parts. They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals."

President Bush on his decision to veto H.R.810, 19/07/06

Awesome courage.

Is patriotism really irrational?

2006-07-24T02:41:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a Radio 4 comedy programme the other night. Some of them are quite funny, even when they lapse into dreary default left-wing mode - George Bush bad, Americans stupid, Israel evil (for the last time guys, George W Bush is no fool. The man has an MBA from Yale and got better marks than John "thinking Catholic" Kerry). What really got me thinking was when one of the contributors scorned the idea of patriotism and pride in one's country, on the grounds that where you were born was a mere fluke of nature and that it was therefore irrational to be proud of your country. Then of course there is the crushing weight of post-imperial guilt about how Britain's inflated sense of its own inherent virtue led to the excesses of the Empire, and our worries about our racist past.

This line of thought is rather fashionable nowadays. Unfortunately, it is also a crock of shit.

I did not choose to be born British. That much is true. But it does not follow that it is irrational to love my country and be proud of its unique virtues. After all, I did not choose to be born into my family. But I love them and I recognise their unique virtues and strengths, and the fact that they stand up for the same values that I believe in.

Britain, more than perhaps any other nation in the world, has tended to be on the right side of history. We have an unparalleled record of peaceful constitutional evolution. We built a largely benevolent Empire that bought peace, prosperity, good government and the rule of law to places that had never known such things. We have resisted - and defeated - every tyranny to have arisen on Continental Europe in the last 300 years, from Louis XIV and Bonaparte to Hitler and the Soviet Union. The English principles of ordered liberty and a mixed constitution are integral to the Constitution of what is perhaps the greatest nation on Earth today; the United States of America. We developed legal conventions - such as habeas corpus - which are seen as the benchmark for civilized legal systems everywhere. And of course we invented cricket.

So yes, I am proud of what my country has achieved. I love my country. And if a couple of unoriginal, muddle-minded Guardian-worshipping "comedians" can't understand that, then that's their problem.

A joke

2006-07-17T04:12:00.000-07:00

After a wedding, our local priest was pulled over for drunk driving. "Have you been drinking, sir?" asked the policeman.
"Only water, officer," said the priest.
"Then why do I smell wine?" asked the policeman.
"My goodness!" said the vicar, peering into the empty bottle in the car. "He's done it again!"

A thought

2006-07-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

Most people will acknowledge half a dozen absurdities rather than one uncomfortable truth.

Mumbai bombings

2006-07-13T02:12:00.000-07:00

Looks like the religion of peace has struck again, delivering a heroic blow against...er...ordinary men and women trying to make a living. Funny how the greatest threat to the purity of Islam is people on their way to work - in New York, Madrid, Baghdad, London or Mumbai - or having fun; Bali, Tel Aviv and the Jordanian wedding.

No doubt this latest attack is a result of the invasion of Iraq and the oppression of Muslims, and neocon economic imperialism by .... er .... hang on. Didn't India actually oppose the invasion of Iraq?

For the last time, all you clot-brained appeasers and guilt-ridden bleeding hearts out there: they kill us because they hate us. Wherever they can, whenever they can, the Islamists want to destroy infidels (and apostate Muslims, or Muslims who subscribe to the wrong sect, or Muslims who get in the way). Pandering to the rampant victim mentality among Western Muslims is no way to solve the problem.

An often missed aspect of the debate on priestly celibacy

2006-07-11T02:15:00.000-07:00

Ruth Gledhill has a fascinating discussion about the massive - and often ignored - problems that the Anglican church is having with clergy housing:

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2006/07

Those calling for the rules on priestly celibacy to be relaxed in the Catholic Church would do well to ponder on the practical and financial problems that this would pose for an already cash-strapped organisation.

A woefully inept understanding of Christian faith

2006-07-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

This letter appeared in "The Times" on Thursday:

"Sir,
We are being bombarded by hand-wringing over Catholic Church attendance figures (July 2) or deep schisms in the Church of England. Let me bring some balance. Of 42 million Christians in the UK (National Statistics) some 2 million (4.7 per cent) are churchgoing Catholic or CoE. 95 per cent of UK Christians are thus completely unaffected by such navel-gazing. To them, Christ’s message is simple: love one another. They feel no need to attend church — and no need to debate the theological arguments as to the relevance of the Bible.

If I may speak for them — and no one else does — they see the churches as a side-show; full of pomp and self- importance but ultimately irrelevant. Of course, they do a great deal of good — in much the same way as the Womens Institute is a praiseworthy organisation. But the “voice-less 95 per cent” can only look on in pity — and some bemusement — as these extreme fringes of Christianity continue to tear themselves to pieces.

JONATHAN WALSH
Dorchester"

I replied with the following letter:

Sir,
Jonathan Walsh (“No church crisis”, 07/07) is mistaken. Being a Christian is not the same as holding a British passport, or attending the occasional Evensong when a particularly good choir is singing, or baking cakes for the fete and giving the Vicar a bottle of sherry at Christmas. Nor – thank goodness – is it about what an individual “feels” is right. His apologia for the "I'm a Christian, but not a churchgoer" crowd ignores the fact that to be a Christian is to be a lover of Christ. How can you love that of which you know nothing?

Imagine that a new acquaintance describes himself as a “keen cricketer”, but admits that he has never played or watched cricket, or listened to Test Match Special, nor does he ever intend to do so. He has never heard of Wisden, Trueman, Bradman or Warne. Instead of watching his local team on a Saturday afternoon, he goes shopping. When others discuss the game, he declares himself bored and tries to change the subject.

Not much of a cricketer.
----------------

The idea that attending church services makes one an "extremist" is ridiculous in itself. This man shows a frightening degree of complacency and a complete failure to understand the demands of Jesus Christ.

Mr. Walsh reminds me of those extremely dreary individuals who say things like "I'm a very spiritual person, but I don't like organised religion". Translated from Gibberish (which is most English people's second language nowadays), this means something along the lines of -

"I like the idea that there's someone up there looking after me and I like to think of myself as a good person, and I just love the warm fuzzy glow that comes with self-centred New Age crap, but actually subscribing to a set of concrete beliefs and humbly submitting to a Truth beyond my own ego might mean that I have to change my behaviour or give up things that I enjoy doing, and I'm just not willing to do that."

The churches - and here the Catholic Church is as guilty as any - do not help matters by constantly stressing the importance of individual feeling, both in evangelization and moral decision-making.

We do not worship at the altar of the self. We worship at the altar of the One True God. Sometimes obeying Him is hard. It goes against our own desires, our own wishes, our own feelings.

But obeying Him is still the right thing to do.

What is wrong with people?

2006-06-23T03:54:00.000-07:00

Most people - even many who would appear to be well-educated - are irrational, bigoted, prejudiced and ill-informed. They are unable, or perhaps unwilling, to think and reason, and have no understanding of logic or the difference between fact and opinion. The construction of a reasoned argument with a clear progression of thought is a skill which even many graduates from top universities do not possess, or bother to exercise. The extent to which people will deny reality and truth in order to avoid uncomfortable conclusions never ceases to astound me.

What has provoked this torrent of misanthropy, I hear you cry.

Simple. The state of debate on bioethics in this country. Brought up in an atmosphere where they are constantly encouraged to worship themselves and reassured that they "have a right to their own opinion", most people charge into public debate on abortion, euthanasia, IVF etc., convinced that their opinion must be heard "because my brother-in-law's second cousin's wife's mother had an abortion".

Unfortunately, the majority of all contributions to the national debate on bioethics are worthless. Inept, idiotic, subjective, badly thought out, worthless drivel. If you disagree, read this BBC "Have Your Say" on the subject of abortion: (http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=2230&&&edition=1&ttl=20060623121033). It terrifies me that these people are allowed to vote.

The irony of people who are themselves incapable of any useful contribution to a civilized debate because they are as thick as two short planks saying that religious contributors are "irrational" is especially hilarious - or would be if it wasn't so serious.

I will post more specifically on this again soon.

A joke

2006-06-23T02:05:00.000-07:00

Q: How do we know Jesus was black?

A: He called everyone "brother", loved Gospel and couldn't get a fair trial.

Does the Holy Spirit have a Multiple Personality Disorder?

2006-06-21T02:46:00.000-07:00

Supporters of the new Presiding Bishop of ECUSA - that is, the ultra-liberal American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion - are deliriously happy that a woman has just become the Presiding Bishop. Now I am vaguely agnostic about women priests (as far as such an attitude is possible for a faithful Catholic), just as I am open to persuasion on the matter of married priests (I am currently opposed on pragmatic grounds, there being many practical challenges e.g. to whom would a priest's wife in an isolated parish make her confession? How would the Church support large priestly families in seminaries and parishes? Does a family - particularly a large "good Catholic family" - distract a priest from his core vocation? c.f. 1 Corinthians 7v33 "...a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world".)

However, I do not see the issue as a priority for the Church. I certainly do not see it as a "human rights" issue. I also cannot abide the "baggage" that nearly always accompanies the women priests movement - democratization of the Church, banal liturgical innovation, lame theological liberalism on divorce, contraception and sexuality, and a creeping paganistic syncretism.

Anyway, my point is this: the welcome for Katharine Jefferts Schori - who, somewhat tragically, crossed the Tiber in the wrong direction in her youth - has stressed that her election was the work of the Holy Spirit.

This is slightly confusing. On April 19th 2005, the very same Holy Spirit chose Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to be Pope Benedict XVI. He could not be more different from Bishop Jefferts Schori and is taking the Catholic Church in a very different direction from ECUSA.

So is the Holy Spirit schizophrenic? Or have the enthusiastic "modernisers" at ECUSA mistaken the spirit of the age for the Spirit of God?

Modern "progressive" liberalism in all its glory

2006-06-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

"Whaling, by its very nature, is cruel. It also serves no useful purpose. So it should stop."

Leading article, The Independent, 18.06.06

"...the right of women to rid their bodies of unnecessary and insentient clumps of flesh."

Johann Hari, The Independent, 30.06.04

The Lord have mercy on us all.

A society scared to face up to Truth and right

2006-06-19T05:13:00.000-07:00

I noted in a previous entry that "one of the marks of a decadent and degraded society is that it is obsessed with the trivial, while trivialising the truly important."

Nowhere is this more true than in the area of ethics.

Every week in the "Guardian" there appears a column entitled "Ethical Living". Needless to say, this somewhat misnamed column does not deal with ethics in any real sense. The last 3 columns have tackled such weighty topics as "is it OK to drink cow's milk?", "is it OK to have a lawn?" and "is it OK to buy glossy magazines?"

For a newspaper that routinely argues for abortion on demand, supported the Assisted Dying Bill and appears to have no problem with destructive embryo research, I find this greener-than-thou posturing truly grotesque and sickening. I quite honestly do not give a flying f**k whether some trendy Islington pseudo-liberal with a wind-powered tofu maker and bio-degradable slippers made by a Bolivian farmers' collective chooses to drink cow's milk or not. It's his life, after all.

What does bother me is the fact that a person who has no moral qualms about abortion can spend hours agonising over whether it's ethically acceptable to have a barbecue or own shares.

That is the mark of a truly perverse and degraded moral sense.

In the same way, I simply do not comprehend how a person who is a vegeterian because they believe it is morally wrong to kill animals for food, can be pro-abortion. It is a horrendous moral error. If you are vegeterian for health or other reasons, it is more understandable. But if your vegeterianism stems from a conviction that animals have moral significance, it is bizarre to condone the murder of the unborn.

Um...didn't this use to be a free country?

2006-05-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

I supported the war in Iraq. I disagree with Brian Haw on almost everything. I find his "peace camp" in Parliament Square absurd, inconsistent, dishonest, hysterical, unbalanced and infantile.

But this is a disgrace:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5007214.stm

Class warfare and economic illiteracy - a deadly combination

2006-05-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

George Monbiot, the most devout watermelon* in public life today, thinks my parents are selfish. Why is this? Have they bought up young thugs who terrorise their neighbourhoods? Have they cheated on their tax returns? Have they smoked and drunk heavily all their lives, requiring expensive medical treatment? Have they sponged off the state?

No. Their terrible, terrible crime - which I suspect is almost unprecedented in the whole grim history of the human race - is to have bought a small second home in rural Ireland. I witnessed this heinous act, which took place when I was 16, not knowing at the time that such a thing was so depraved and "selfish". Maybe I should get some therapy. Or maybe not.

I suspect Mr Monbiot does not know my parents. My father has been a teacher, then a headteacher, then a Church of England priest. He left teaching training college in 1966 and has never been unemployed. My mother has been a nurse for forty years, with long gaps to stay at home and raise her children. They have never been wealthy - they brought up five sons (!) - but they were careful and thrifty and they made an effort to save, which means that, as they approach retirement, they are quite comfortable, and will be able to enjoy their richly-deserved years of leisure.

They are the kind of people without whom this country could not function. They certainly contribute rather a lot more to this country than the average "Guardian" journalist, yet that paper constantly sneers at and criticises their values and their ideals.

Like so many ordinary working people, they have paid their taxes; they've done the right thing; they've contributed to the community; they have spent a lifetime in the service of others. They have seen their taxes being pissed away by incompetent governments on useless reforms, pointless public sector workers (just what is a Diversity Co-ordinator?) and bone-idle people who can't be bothered to pull their finger out and get a job, but they don't complain. They get on with it, because they have to, and because it's the right thing to do.

So I think that as they come to their retirement, they are quite entitled to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of hard work, modest living and sacrifices, regardless of the holier-than-thou posturing of socialist idiots, with their inept economics and their irrational hatred of the so-called bourgeoisie.

See the whole story here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1780789,00.html

*i.e. green on the outside, red on the inside: that is, a control freak socialist who hides his authoritarian leanings under a media-friendly cloak of concerned environmentalism.

An excellent quote

2006-05-23T05:50:00.000-07:00

I like freedom; I distrust government; I am wary of special interest groups, and I have a particular suspicion of trade unions and business cartels, so this quote from Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" seems very apt:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

True in 1776; true in 2006.

British values?

2006-05-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there is a government plan afoot to teach "core British values" in schools:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4771443.stm

Oh, the sheer glorious inept irony of this proposition. Anyone who actually understood what British values meant would know that:

(a) teaching a banal litany of nebulous 'values' in school is in itself profoundly unBritish,

and - more importantly - that

(b) British values are not a discrete, quantifiable list of specific attributes. If there is something distinctive about British people - and I believe there is - it consists of certain attitudes; certain casts of mind; certain habits. It is unconscious, instinctive, latent. It must be "caught". It cannot be "taught".

Thought for the day

2006-05-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

One of the marks of a decadent and degraded society is that it is obsessed with the trivial, while trivialising the truly important.

Religion and the public square

2006-05-16T01:40:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in the House of Lords, a delighted spectator at that rarest of political happenings: a pro-life victory. On Lord Joffe's birthday, 12th May, his Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill was soundly defeated, by 148 to 100 votes. He'll be back, of course, with another Bill - a few token concessions to his opponents, but the same sinister intent: to make death a way of life in modern Britain.

People who are much cleverer and more articulate than me have said more than enough about why legalising euthanasia would be a moral, legal and social disaster, so I will not go into the case against just now.
But I will just comment on one particularly stupid and annoying aspect of the pro-euthanasia argument i.e. the mindset that discounts religious arguments against euthanasia simply because the person making them is religious. There are 2 more or less idiotic assumptions behind this minset. One is that religious folk "shouldn't force their beliefs on anyone else". The other - which I personally find most offensive and ridiculous - is that religious belief somehow precludes rational and empirical thought.

I have pointed out elsewhere that this latter suggestion is especially muddle-headed. Some of the greatest thinkers of all time have been religious - that is, they believe in some kind of higher power beyond the material universe. Think of Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Descartes. I am not suggesting that atheism is a sign of stupidity; simply that it is possible to be both a great thinker or artist and to believe in God. It is the purest post-Enlightenment arrogance to assume that we are somehow more philosophically advanced, more truly wise, than our ancestors. It is this arrogance that leads modern "liberal" philosophers to jettison the wisdom of the centuries when it comes to issues of life and death, family and religion.

I would personally suggest that it is in fact difficult for an atheist to produce truly profound and enlightened philosophical thought, because he denies a fundamental reality of the universe. Just as a physicist could not make great discoveries if he denied the existence of gravity, or Newton's Laws, a materialistic philosopher can never penetrate the great mysteries of metaphysics.

As for the notion that religious folk shouldn't force their beliefs on others; what does this actually mean? Does it mean that religious people are uniquely unqualified to speak in the "public square"? If so, why? They have a worldview, just like everybody else.

And anyway, the same "liberal" [i.e. socialist and/or secularist] people who make this argument have no problem forcing their beliefs on me when it suits their cause:

---People who argue for higher taxation for socialist reasons are forcing their worldview on me.

---People who want my children to be indoctrinated with pro-sexual revolution propaganda in school are forcing their worldview on me.

---People who say that fox hunting should be banned and that I shouldn't be allowed to own a gun are forcing their worldview on me.

---People who say that my children should be given abortions and contraception without my knowledge are forcing their worldview on me.

I am constantly having a secularist, anti-Christian worldview shoved down my throat. So, as far as I'm concerned, these whining atheists can take a long walk off a short pier!

If they are really worried about worldviews being forced on people, perhaps they could have a look at our brutal and eugenic laws on embryo screening and abortion.

Will they never learn?

2006-05-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

Once again, assorted bone-headed Leftists (Ken Livingstone, Tariq Ali et al) are wetting themselves with excitement over the newest populist demagogue on the block, despite his rather cavalier attitude to such Western fripperies as the rule of law, individual liberty, free and fair ballots and a free press.

Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, is a fierce critic of the USA (and so must be a good guy in the perverse mindview of the anti-free market authoritarian left of which Messrs. Livingstone and Ali are members) and is - apparently - "standing up for the poor" against the wicked Western capitalists who want to steal all Venezuela's resources and crush her people into the ground.

This is hardly new. From Stalin to Mugabe, via Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Che Guevara and Saddam, there has been no shortage of Western socialists - or "useful idiots" as Lenin is supposed to have called them - queuing up to make excuses for brutal, murderous tyrants, often continuing to do so long after everyone else has realised beyond any doubt that the leader in question is a vicious and inhuman bastard. Consider the fact that the Communist Party of Great Britain still prides itself on its "basic position of solidarity with People's Korea" [i.e. the almost unbelievably brutal dictatorship of North Korea]

Here's what will happen: in a few years' time Chavez, like most of his unpleasant ilk, will become deeply unpopular in Venezuela. His honeymoon period will come to an end; his reforms will fail; his authoritarian instincts will become more pronounced and he will start to wreck Venezuelan society. There will be a heightening of civil conflict. He will refuse to leave office, and will cling to power, rigging elections, imprisoning political opponents and generally turning Venezuela into Cuba (that other socialist paradise, so beloved of lobotomised Western Leftists, where homosexuals and Christians are viciously persecuted).

And no doubt the posturing fools on the British Left will still insist that he is a hero, rather like the people (Mr T Ali and friends again) who wrote a letter to the Guardian last year, claiming that, in Cuba, "there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959".

Anyone who says that is either stupid, or an evil liar.

Religious people offended: prepare for riots, destruction and death. Oh no, wait, it's not Muslims.

2006-04-28T04:50:00.000-07:00

A student journalist in Oregon has drawn some naughty pictures of Jesus, in an attempt to get Americans to "empathise" with the peace-loving Muslims who rioted murderously for weeks over a few so-so cartoons that had been deemed offensive:

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49925

No doubt this is an attempt to create some kind of moral equivalency between evil "religious fundamentalists" on all sides, painting Christians in as bad a light as Muslims. Look, religious people are all equally opposed to freedom of speech yadda yadda yadda.

Well, if so, it has backfired spectacuarly. Christians are annoyed, certainly (these cartoons are as offensive to me as a Christian as the Danish cartoons were to Muslims), but I very much doubt that Christians are going to kill, maim, intimidate and burn because of this perceived slight. No-one will call for beheadings, bombings, wars and terrorism. I suspect that anyone awaiting a fatwa against the University of Oregon from the Vatican will have a long wait. We tend to leave all that stuff to "the religion of peace".

If anyone even sustains a slight graze as a result of this "controversy" I will change my name to Mohammed.

And if the "liberal" media in the UK criticise the publication of these anti-Christian cartoons as vociferously as they did the publication of the last lot, I will go and live as a Christian in Saudi Arabia and try out some of that Islamic "tolerance" that we hear so much about.

Adultery? It's no big deal...

2006-04-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

Another day, another politician caught with his trousers down, and another example of how quite blind society has become regarding sexual morality. Everyone witters on about how it's a private matter and we shouldn't judge blah blah blah. Even some churchmen seem to take this tack. But just a minute. Am I the only person left in the world who sees adultery - by which I mean not a drunken snog under the mistletoe at the Christmas party (although that was Jesus' definition of the word...), but a sustained affair involving persistent and systematic deception of one's spouse - as just about one of the worst possible sins? How is Pauline Prescott feeling today? Humiliated probably doesn't begin to describe it. Yet the whole thing is being treated as a joke. IMHO, embarking on and continuing with an affair suggests serious character flaws: arrogance, heartlessness, selfishness, egotism and downright dishonesty. If a man's wife cannot trust him, how can he expect me to trust him? But then I suppose we don't have sins any more; the only way you can really go wrong is be "intolerant", "prejudiced" or - horror of horrors - "judgmental". Cheating on your wife is fine: what's really wrong is being so morally degraded as to actually criticise someone for doing so.

It may be old-fashioned, but I maintain that the way in which a person treats those closest to him, and the way he acts when he thinks he will not be found out, is the soundest guide to his real character.

As someone once said: "By his works shall ye know a man."

Tony Blair's indulgence of immorality and deception in his government have been extraordinary. For a long time, I have entertained doubts about the suggestion that Tony Blair has "a deep Christian faith", on the grounds that in all his long years at the top (and they have been long, haven't they? You now have to almost in your teens to be able to remember a time when the Revd. Blair was not PM), I have not once heard him talk about it or explain how it motivates him, except under duress. Surely anyone to whom their faith really meant something, when told that "we don't do God" by some uppity spin doctor, would have responded with a hearty "Yes, we bloody well do!"?

Besides which personal failings, the Blair government has given us such cornerstones of a Christian society as the reduction of the homosexual age of consent, gay adoption, the downgrading of marriage and the disgraceful promotion of "value free" sex ed, while refusing to do anything about our soaring rates of abortion and the constant drip-drip of soft persecution of Christianity.

I am reminded of one of the most terrifying of all Jesus' prophecies, of which I think many Christians (including myself, probably more than most!) need to take more account:

"If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

St. Mark, ch.9 ,v.38

Rees-Mogg goes wobbly on contraception

2006-04-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

William Rees-Mogg, the thoughtful and admirably old-fashioned columnist in “The Times”, appeared (in his quiet, scholarly way) to argue yesterday for a rethink of Catholic teaching on artificial contraception.

Leaving aside the “African question” (although I would note that there tends to be an inverse relationship between the number of Catholics in a country and its rates of HIV/AIDS infection), the substance of his argument is based on the attitude of “the majority of the faithful”. No doubt many, perhaps even most, married Catholics do use contraception. However, this does not automatically invalidate the teaching. Many Christians lie from time to time. Should we therefore change the eighth commandment? The attitudes of the laity have not always been a reliable guide to doctrinal correctness. Consider the Church’s decided ambivalence towards the popular but controversial Marian apparitions at Medjugorje. Final authority has always rested in the Magisterium.

As Pope Benedict has pointed out: “The truth is not determined by majority vote.”

So what is the actual authentic Catholic teaching? Well, it is really quite simple: the sexual act was designed by God to have two fundamental purposes. The creation of new life, and the mystical union of the spouses, in which (as the Spice Girls said, in one of their more philosophical moments) “two become one”. In theological jargon these are called the procreative and the unitive aspects; the Church says that they cannot be artificially separated, or else the act is impaired. What the Church does not say is that sex is only for babies and that it is not supposed to be about love and having fun. However, intentionally making sterile a sexual act that might otherwise be fertile is disordered, because it does not represent a fully self-giving act. So sex is not just for procreation – but neither is it just for fun. The “just for fun” approach to sex is a part of what JPII called the contraceptive mentality, in which people buy into the myth of “casual sex”. This myth tells them that sex can be “safe” (i.e. consequence-free) and that babies do not come into the equation. So when babies do come into the equation, they must be destroyed! It is abhorrent and frankly quite odd, when you think about it, that anyone who has sex can feel that a baby “was not part of the deal”; but it is the logical consequence of the acceptance of contraceptive sex.

Reluctance to follow the Church’s teaching in this area is often the result of ignorance and misunderstanding, not deliberate disloyalty. If not explained fully and clearly, then the prohibition of artificial contraception does seem strange and unnecessary. In fact, it is integral to a truly Catholic understanding of marriage and sex, and those who have denigrated the brilliant and prophetic Humanae Vitae would do well to ponder that fact.

As a young, soon-to-be Catholic, I know that a new generation of young Catholics are rediscovering the beauty and true humanity of traditional orthodoxy. The “ban” on artificial contraception is not just fusty legalism, designed to prevent us from having any fun in bed. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, like Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est, celebrates and exalts the joys of erotic love. Insisting that the sexual act be cherished and respected is undoubtedly a great service to the modern world, where sexual "liberation" (i.e. slavery to the passions) has caused chaos, despair and heartbreak.

A joke to brighten up Monday

2006-04-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

I doubt there's anyone in the English-speaking world who hasn't heard this, but....

Q. What's the definition of a bigot?

A. A conservative winning an argument with a socialist.

Thank you folks, I'm here for the rest of the week!

God Save The Queen.

2006-04-21T01:17:00.000-07:00

She is awesome, and the monarchy is the best guardian of our freedom and traditions.

That is all.

Article written by me for "Birmingham Post"

2006-04-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

Unborn children may be incapable of feeling pain until after 26 weeks of pregnancy, or possibly even until after birth. There, in a nutshell, are the conclusions of the latest research into the matter, carried out by one Dr Stuart Derbyshire of the University of Birmingham. The essence of Dr Derbyshire’s suggestion is as follows: humans can only be said to truly feel pain if our mind is sufficiently developed to understand such a sensation, and this development of the mind can only occur through interaction with other human beings i.e. once a child is born. No doubt this will be seized upon as evidence that we can continue to ignore the rights of the unborn child.
But before we leap to conclusions, we need to bear some things in mind.

Firstly, Dr Derbyshire, though undoubtedly an experienced researcher, is not a practising gynaecologist or paediatrician, but an experimental neurologist. He is also deeply involved with pro-abortion organisations; he has co-authored articles with British pro-abortion campaigners, and while working in the US, he testified to the Senate of the State of Virginia on behalf of the American pro-abortion organisation Planned Parenthood. Now you may say that, as a representative of a pro-life charity, I am equally biased against abortion, and that is a fair point – but you are well aware of my “conflict of interest”, while Dr Derbyshire’s own background has received rather less publicity.

Secondly, I would stress that this study does not represent the final word on whether or not very young children can feel pain. Not by a long chalk. Dr Derbyshire’s conclusions are not widely accepted. Just two weeks ago, in a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, doctors at University College London found that babies born extremely premature – some aged just 25 weeks – probably could feel pain. Bliss, the premature baby charity, commented that "these findings show that premature babies experience 'true' pain”.

So if a 25-week-old premature baby can experience pain, why not an unborn child of 25 weeks old, who resembles that premature baby in almost every respect but, under our current law, is still vulnerable to late abortion right up until birth if he is found to have a disability?

We know for certain that by the age of twenty weeks unborn children can respond to external stimuli such as music and conversation, while the 4-D ultrasound techniques used by Professor Stuart Campbell have shown that a child in the womb reacts to a variety of physical stimuli. The plain truth – as most clinicians and researchers will tell you, if they are honest – is that there is still a great deal of mystery concerning the interaction of unborn children with their surroundings. Perhaps individual children react differently, just as adults’ responses and perceptions vary. What we cannot say is that unborn children definitely have no awareness of their surroundings, or that they definitely do not feel pain. Dr Derbyshire’s contribution to the debate is just that – one contribution to an ongoing, and extremely complex, debate.

Thirdly, we need to ask whether the issue of pain is actually relevant. Of course, if babies aged between 20 and 40 weeks old can feel pain, then late abortions – by which I mean those carried out after 20 weeks of pregnancy, of which there were about 3,000 in 2004 – are all the more horrifying. However, the case against abortion does not stand or fall on the unborn child’s sensory abilities. Even if it were to be conclusively proved that an unborn child could not feel pain, we at LIFE would still oppose abortion. Our fundamental principle is that abortion is wrong because it undermines human dignity by denying the most basic human right of all; the right to life. Our right to life as human beings does not in any way depend on the extent of our ability to feel pain. If it does, as some commentators seem to be suggesting, then logically we should be allowed to kill adults as long as we kill them in their sleep or give them painkillers first!

No, the ethics of abortion are entirely separate from the issue of whether unborn children feel pain. So what are the real issues? There is no space here for a full exploration of the subject, but I have a couple of suggestions for how to think clearly about abortion.

Think beyond slogans! Most pro-abortion slogans have little or no intellectual merit. They are designed to replace intelligent thought rather than encourage it, to give the illusion of pithy coherence while concealing a total absence of logic and reason. Knowing a bland slogan is no substitute for being well-informed and really thinking through the implications of your view. Take, for example, the notion that “every child should be a wanted child!” Philosophically speaking, how does being wanted equate with your worth as an individual? Should we institute a cull of friendless people? A person does not lose the right to live just because nobody cares about them, or wants them. Do you extend that to homeless or seriously mentally ill people, who are often “unwanted”?

There is a specific group of people who are particularly “unwanted” nowadays: the disabled. Abortion on grounds of disability is now disturbingly common: 96% of all unborn children diagnosed with Down’s syndrome are aborted, and in 2004, almost 2000 abortions were carried out on disabled children. Consider the cruel paradox that as our supposedly “civilized” society attempts to make life better for people with every kind of disability, more and more disabled children are becoming the victims of eugenic abortion; denied life simply because they are different and sometimes difficult for the rest of us to deal with. What kind of bizarre mixed messages are we sending out to disabled members of society? No-one is suggesting that it is easy to bring up a child with a serious disability. However, the solution to this is not the elimination of the disabled, but more and better support structures for parents and carers. At LIFE, for example, we run specialist “Zoë’s Place” baby hospices for disabled children.
Beware stereotypes about pro-lifers.

You may hear that we are only interested in judging and preaching, that we have nothing to offer women. Nothing could be further from the truth. My own organisation, LIFE, does much more than simply oppose abortion. We are a national educational and caring charity, and we have been looking after women, men and children for more than thirty-five years. We work in schools (without using gruesome images), while our free professional counselling services attract thousands of men and women every year. We provide long-term accommodation and practical and emotional support (e.g. baby clothes and life skills) for women with unplanned pregnancies who want to keep their baby. These women make excellent mothers, with the right kind of help. In our experience, very few women ever want an abortion, but many feel that they have no choice.

Forget too the idea that the abortion debate is necessarily to do with God and the soul and religious ideas. It is not. Many of our staff and supporters do have a faith – many others do not. We believe that, whatever your background and beliefs, the case against abortion can be firmly grounded in humanist principles and ideas of justice and human rights. For religious and non-religious people alike, it is about respect for life and the unique dignity of every human being from conception until natural death.

Save the whales, kill the humans

2006-04-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

"The Independent", the UK's leading purveyor of tree-hugging, Gaia-worshipping, anti-human environmentalist scare-mongering, has been at it again. This time it's the whales who are doomed, because Japan have been subverting the International Whaling Commission, or whatever it's called, and now have the means to start whaling again. Or something.

Now I am not well-informed about whales. Most of what I do know was gleaned from early-90s "Newsround", which I seem to remember was fairly obsessive about the subject, and the film "Free Willy". And then of course there was "Monstro", the giant whale from Disney's "Pinocchio". But I digress.

Apparently, the Japanese and various other foreign types - notably assorted Vikings from the frozen north - are quite keen on stabbing whales and eating them. Or using their teeth to cure impotence. Or is that rhino horn? Anyway, All Right Thinking People Everywhere now know that killing whales is extremely naughty and that anyone who does it should go outside and think about what they've done, and only come back in when they're ready to apologise. As a result, the news that Japan may have done enough underhand deals to start whaling again has come as a bit of a shock.

Now I am sympathetic to wildlife preservation. I am very keen on the countryside and love walking in the mountains. And I realise that humans have made a bit of a pig's ear out of looking after the planet. But I find my blood boiling at the contradictions in the fashionable Leftist posturing on the environment.

We Christians, for example, are constantly being told off and made to wear the dunce's hat for expressing heretical views about the theory of evolution (even though many of us actually accept large parts of it!) But the minute that the environment or climate starts doing the Darwinian thing and changing and adapting, the very same self-righteous greenies blow a gasket and hold it up as evidence that we're all doomed!

Worse still is the way in which those posturing buffoons from People for the Ethical Treatment of Nice Fluffy Bunnies and Talking Cartoon Badgers get so confused about the relative value of human and animal life. It baffles me how anyone can possibly oppose vivisection but support abortion. It is completely indefensible for any logical, thinking person. And how can "The Independent" get so worked up about a few whales ending up as sushi or aphrodisiacs, when it is a staunch defender of the "right" to kill unborn children in their millions? Utter moral degradation and a disastrously faulty anthropology.

Where is the famed "rationalism" of modern secular materialists like Richard Dawkins? I thought he liked nothing better than to get his teeth into a few irrational contradictions. Or maybe he's too busy whining about George W Bush. Most people are nowadays.

Lisa Kudrow slams the contraceptive mentality

2006-04-10T05:16:00.000-07:00

I am not usually one to applaud public pronouncements by "celebrities" (for reasons which I will not go into now, lest I appear to be a curmudgeonly young fogey), but Lisa Kudrow - of "Friends" fame - has actually said something profoundly counter-cultural and intelligent:

"We treat sex so casually and use it for everything but what it is - which is ultimately making another human being with thoughts and feelings and rights who will grow up to be an adult."

This is more or less the teaching of the Catholic Church (i.e. the truth), and suggests that Ms Kudrow may have recognised that what John Paul II called the "contraceptive mentality" is causing havoc in our society.

In 1968 Pope Paul VI predicted in Humanae Vitae that the widespread use of contraception would have cataclysmic social consequences, because its artificial separation of the procreative and unitive aspects of sex drives a coach and four through the authentic meaning of the marital act. He argued that it would therefore undermine marriage, the family and the entire Christian view of the human person, and predicted an explosion in abortion, divorce and human misery. He was ignored, derided and scorned - not least by "progressive" Catholics who felt that he was out of touch with the mood of the times.

But Paul VI was 11o% right. The "contraceptive mentality" has caused chaos.

When it comes to sex, children are now the enemy.

"Catholic" Democrats undermine their own faith

2006-04-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

Last month, 55 Catholic members of the US House of Representatives issued a "Statement of Principles", partly in response to the continuing controversy over whether it is licit for Catholic politicians to publicly support abortion. The debate has been rumbling on ever since 2004, when John Kerry was censured by some in the Church for his pro-abortion voting record in the Senate. Now this is not meant to be personal criticism, or to say that they are bad people. I make no great claim to be a good Christian, or to be "holier than thou". But what they say just does not make any sense!

It seems to me that the issue is not in doubt. The Church holds that abortion is a grave moral evil, and that it is the responsibility of all Catholics in public life to oppose abortion. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have said as much in no uncertain terms. The Catechism is similarly adamant.

But these 55 Democrats - apparently Kerry Catholics to a man - apparently know better than a mere Pope. Like our own Tony Blair, who is "personally" opposed to abortion but lacks the moral courage to do anything about it, they believe that it is possible to "advance respect for life and the dignity of every human being" while voting for the liberalisation of abortion law. They do not explain how, say, opposing a ban on partial birth abortion upholds respect for life.

The reason for this is simple: it doesn't. I'd have thought that this would be obvious to any averagely intelligent person.

Much of what they say is quite simply muddle-headed and evasive. They are constantly trying to have it both ways. They claim to "agree with the Catholic Church about the value of human life" - but the whole document is devoted to explaining why they disobey the Church on that very point! Similarly, they say that "the separation of church and state allows for our faith to inform our public duties", but refuse to actually let their Church inform their thinking on one of the most critical issues of our time.

There is a quite staggering amount of pompous, meaningless drivel in this short document. Sneaky evasions and disingenuous cliches abound. So we have the old "thinking Catholic" line of "we seek the Church's guidance...but believe also in the primacy of conscience."

This is a classic example of woolly thinking. The Church does indeed uphold the primacy of conscience - but each individual has the responsibility - the duty, even - to form their own conscience in the correct fashion under the influence of Mother Church. The Church is not some tabloid agony aunt, whose advice you may or may not take, depending on how you feel. It is the receptacle, and guardian, of divinely revealed truth.

And when the Holy Father himself has made it clear on numerous occasions that Catholic politicians must stand up for authentic Catholic values, it leaves very little wriggle room. Contrary to this singularly ill-named "Statement of Principles", for a faithful Catholic, the actual objective morality of abortion is not really an issue of "depth and complexity" at all. The Church teaches that it is wrong and that Catholic politicians must do all they can to oppose it. The circumstances around each individual abortion are indeed deep and complex, and an individuals' culpability is ultimately between them and God - but that does not alter for one moment the objective immorality of the act.

Then we have all the tired old liberal dross about how the Constitution obliges them to uphold "religious freedom". In what sense, dear friends, does opposing abortion impinge on someone's religious freedom?

Later on, we have the hoariest cliche of all: the reflexive liberal paean to a "rich diversity" of faiths. We often hear this nice-soundi ng phrase. But I would like to know: In what sense does ignorance and rejection of the one true faith - i.e. Christianity - constitute a "rich diversity"? Did St Paul praise the "rich diversity" of first century Athens? If he did, I must have missed that bit. The use of this painfully right-on buzz phrase tells us a lot about where the Catholic Democrats are coming from, about their attitude to objective truth.

This is a woefully inept document, riddled with non sequiturs, contradictions (and not the good kind) and cowardly self-justification. It is all very well talking about reducing poverty and opening up access to education and health care. But, admirable and worthy as these issues are, they are motherhood and apple pie issues. Everyone is in favour of them. It is not politically or personally costly for a politician to support poverty reduction or health care. It is easy to support such causes. There are hundreds of charities working in the field.

By contrast, Christians are called to be unpopular; to take a stand on difficult issues, to speak up for those who have no voice - like the unborn.

Pro-environment? Anti-human, more like.

2006-04-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

Perusing the responses to the “great” (sic) global warming debate in the Independent newspaper last week, I noted with interest that the cult of environmentalism is now demanding human sacrifices. I am profoundly disturbed by the emerging consensus that “humans are the problem”. As someone who is far from convinced that this is actually the case, I would love to put a few questions to the fanatical greens who write to the press demanding that we stabilise or reduce the population. Very few of them actually explain just how they would kill off the allegedly surplus population. Will it be genocide? And if so, what method will be used? Mass shootings or poisoning? Or perhaps we could go for compulsory sterilisation or compulsory abortions for women with “too many” children?

Who will be first for the chop? Some “useless mouths” perhaps – the disabled, the elderly, the infirm, the mentally ill, or maybe criminals and the unemployed? As a law-abiding, gainfully employed young white male with all his faculties, who pays taxes but makes few demands on the state, I think I’m safe for the moment, but I’m worried about my mother, who is about to retire, and the mentally disturbed homeless people whom I see on my way to work each day, who are – in the crude utilitarian calculus that is so prevalent in public policy nowadays – a terrible drain on society’s resources.

Disappointing as it may be to “Indie” readers who are regular worshippers at the shrine of Gaia and value glaciers, polar bears and rare birds over human beings, I believe that children are a delight and a pleasure, and I fully intend to have as many as I can support. Human beings are not just one species among many. They are uniquely valuable, and any solution to climate change that fails to respect human life, or undermines the integrity of the family by forcible restrictions on fertility, is a grotesque assault on our common humanity.

Abdul Rahman freed

2006-03-28T03:00:00.000-08:00

The good news is that the Christian Abdul Rahman has been freed from prison in Afghanistan (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4851666.stm).

The bad news is that this has been "the right thing for the wrong reason"; Islam still seems to have severe problems with freedom of conscience: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4850080.stm

"Tolerance" in practice

2006-03-23T02:24:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4832872.stm

A convert to Christianity faces the death penalty in Afghanistan.

The silence from British Muslim groups - champions of the rights of religious minorities (sic) - has been deafening.

I don't remember much of a fuss over the fate of these poor lads either:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4725959.stm

But then the media themselves aren't much better: the BBC ran a discussion forum entitled "Should Religious Converts Be Punished?" As if it's a matter for debate!

The Church and the World: Thoughts on Sex and Morality

2006-03-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

In today’s moral system, any kind of consensual sex is fine, as it doesn’t seem to harm anyone. Pornography, sex toys, semi-legalised prostitution, the search for personal sexual satisfaction at the expense of others – all becoming more and more acceptable. But – what are the effects of a sex-obsessed society on those who are not sexually active? What are the psychological effects of living in a society where you are more than ever judged on your sexual desirability and the sexually inexperienced are ridiculed and belittled? What about those girls who, because of “value-neutral” sex-ed find themselves exploited by teenage boys or predatory men? Sex in Britain today is almost a competitive sport, leading to insecurity, worry and unstable relationships, not to mention an increasing objectification of the individual.

Just a propos of nothing, an interesting little dilemma for those who argue that something is only wrong if it hurts somebody else. Does that mean it’s OK to be unfaithful as long as the wronged partner doesn’t know? If you think not, as most people do, then why do you think that? It follows therefore that there must be something intrinsically bad in having an illicit sexual relationship, and therefore that certain uses of sex are intrinsically bad.

As for masturbation – a harmless, indeed beneficial, exercise in many eyes – it doesn’t harm anyone, runs the argument. But what is the effect of masturbation on the individual’s perception of others? It is an essentially selfish act, rejecting the divine plan for sexuality by using others for your own enjoyment only. As so often with sexuality, many attempts by Christians to teach against masturbation have missed the point. Masturbation is not bad because it makes you infertile, hairy-handed, insane or gay (it doesn’t) or because “every sperm is sacred” (it isn’t) – the harm done is internal, in your understanding of sexuality, in your view of others, in your relationship with God. The whole thrust of Jesus’ teachings is that attitudes are as important as behaviour – and masturbation suggests a bad attitude. What else, apart from illicit sexual fantasies, can Jesus have been referring to when he warned against committing adultery in the heart?

Christians must be very careful when offering any critique of modern sexual mores. It is imperative that we do not appear prudish. The starting point in any discussion of sexuality and related issues must always be the God-given beauty of the marital sexual relationship. All authentic Christian doctrine on sexuality flows from this understanding.

Many Christians who seek to discuss sexual morality with non-Christians will encounter hostility. This is because sexual behaviour is such a personal and difficult issue, and because sexuality is perceived as integral to one’s very identity, to the extent that criticism of a person’s sexual behaviour appears tantamount to criticism of their very being. This should not put us off. Indeed, we must challenge the idea that a life without sexual intimacy is bound to be frustrating and empty. Jesus was a perfect man; yet had no sexual relationships of any kind. The (ultimately Freudian) idea that sexuality defines a person’s identity and character is really little more than a modern conceit. The idea of “the homosexual” as a widespread socio-political identity did not even exist until the nineteenth century. Before then, there were, as there always have been, people whose primary sexual attraction was to their own gender, but not a group in society that defined itself by what it liked to do in bed. The argument that we should not be defined by our sexual preferences is sometimes used by liberals to try and undermine the traditional teaching on sexuality. They typically argue that the orthodox are trying to define people in this way. But we are not.

The message is really very simple:

All sexual acts outside lifelong heterosexual marriage are sinful.

That means pre-marital and extra-marital heterosexual sex and masturbation as well as homosexual intercourse. Not uniquely sinful (except in so far as sexual sin tends to have serious personal and spiritual repercussions), but definitely sinful, and for all the talk of healing, tolerance and reconciliation we must recognise and challenge sinful behaviour when we see it.
Christians must be frank and truthful about all aspects of sexuality. The prudish approach, based on the idea that sex was somehow grubby and undesirable (“lie back and think of England!”), a necessary evil not to be talked about, not only failed to convince people and gave them an utterly false idea of Christian teaching on sex, but left the way open for Kinsey and others to begin the disastrous demolition of Christian sexual morality by painting themselves as liberators and daring experimentalists challenging stuffy prejudices (when in truth many of them were self-indulgent libertines and philanderers who encouraged others to imitate their own debased and destructive lifestyles).

“But Christians are always going on about sex…”

Those who seek to defend Christian sexual morality often face the charge that they are obsessed with sex. This is an allegation that one hears from liberal Christians almost as much as secularists.

To which I say this: if we are obsessed with sex, then so was Jesus. If we focus on sexual behaviour as a key component of individual morality and an indicator of Christian integrity, then it is because Jesus did, and because Paul did, and because the Apostles did. And “obsession”, of course, is a two-way street: we would not need to keep “going on” about sex if orthodox teachings on sexuality were not being constantly attacked, questioned and undermined by liberals. The same people, I am sure, would never accuse Mother Theresa of being “obsessed” with poverty, or Wilberforce of being “obsessed” with slavery. On this issue of “obsession”, I am also reminded of a comment attributed to Martin Luther. He is supposed to have said that you were not defending the truth unless you were defending it at the point at which it is currently being attacked. At the risk of sounding like a poor man’s John Bunyan, if the forces of sin and error are attacking the City of God at the powerful but neglected and crumbling bastions of Sexual Morality and Objective Truth, it makes no sense for a large portion of the defenders to rush to the other side of the city and not only devote all their energies to fighting a non-existent attack against the tower of Social Justice, but also to mock and ridicule those who stay behind to defend the towers of Sexual Morality and Objective Truth.

Sex and sexuality are important. Anyone who argues that “God doesn’t really care what we do with our genitals” is not talking about the Christian God. The New Testament is full of references to sexual morality. Whatever you think Jesus and Paul mean when they talk about sexual morality, they do mention it an awful lot. It is clearly an issue of concern to the early church.

More to the point, this ignores the issue of right and wrong. Homosexual genital acts and sex outside marriage are either morally acceptable or they are not. If they are morally acceptable, then rigorously protesting that they are immoral is indeed an offensive waste of time. However, if they are not morally acceptable, then we must speak out. In fact, given the current ubiquity of sexual liberalism both within and without the church, it would be a sin not to speak out.
Calls for compromise, tolerance, acceptance, dialogue and so on are really just so much hot air. Concerning homosexuality, it has been said that Rowan Williams would like to use Hegelian dialectic to reconcile the two factions in the Anglican Church. This sounds very clever, but like many highfalutin explanations serves only to overcomplicate the issue. The Lambeth ’98 doctrine – that homosexual acts are in a sort of moral grey area, fine for the laity but verboten for the clergy – is utterly bizarre. Admittedly certain Christian traditions do demand sexual abstinence from some or all of their clergy. But the Lambeth Declaration would begin to make logical sense only in a denomination that permitted physical homosexual relationships but demanded total celibacy from clerics; an unlikely combination.

On a practical level there is a discussion to be had concerning pastoral care for those of a homosexual orientation. But this must always be in a framework of authentic sexual morality. If a compulsive masturbator comes to a priest for help, should the priest reassure him that it doesn’t really matter whether he stops masturbating? Of course not. This would be “non-judgmental” but far from compassionate, because his behaviour is destructive and wrong. This is not to say that the priest should stop helping him if he does slip back into bad habits – but the discussion and counselling must always centre on the fact that the masturbation is a bad thing and something from which the man can and should free himself with the help of God.
Christian traditionalists also face the charge of hypocrisy. “How dare you condemn Gene Robinson?” says the liberal, “when you are a sinner yourself?” Self-righteousness is always a danger for Christians. But I strongly doubt that any of Rev. Robinson’s critics would claim to be without sin. And they are not, of course, condemning Gene Robinson, but condemning his sins. There is a qualitative difference between the two, and anyone who does not understand this distinction should read up on their Christian theology. At the heart of Christian redemption is the notion that God loves us but hates the sins that separate us from Him. Hence the oft-heard argument that the Catholic Church encourages hatred of practising homosexuals is an absurd and offensive nonsense. The Church does not encourage hatred of practising homosexuals, nor does it claim that God hates them. Some Christians do say this, but they are utterly wrong. God hates every sin that has ever been committed; but he loves every single human being who has ever lived, from Mahatma Gandhi to Adolf Hitler. Such magnanimity and depth of love may be hard for humans, but God’s love is greater than we can possibly imagine.

This also explains the distinction that the Church makes between orientation and behaviour. Impulses and temptations are not in themselves sinful. How could they be, when Our Lord Himself was tempted in the desert? It is often said that God created homosexuals, so how can he disapprove of their behaviour? But there is a faulty anthropology at work here. God creates human beings, and one of the integral aspects of our humanity is our sexual drive, designed for a certain purpose, to communicate a certain meaning and reflect in some small way the divine love of the Trinity. Unfortunately, because we live in a fallen world (and one in which even parts of the Christian community give confusing and dangerous moral guidance) all our sexual drives are, to a greater or lesser extent, disordered in some way. This is why we have illicit fantasies, sexual abuse of children, extra-marital affairs, pornography and sexual violence. Part of the human condition is dealing with this disorder and overcoming it so that we can live according to the divine plan for human sexuality. In fact, one of the weaknesses of many Christian pronouncements on the issue of sexuality has been the failure to stress that homosexual tendencies are just one aspect of a continuum of sexual disorder that affects each and every human being, rather than being a uniquely awful aberration. There is nothing wrong with loving and affectionate same-sex relationships in and of themselves. It is the actual homosexual act that is debatable.

We also hear frequently that God loves people just as they are and so we should not criticise immoral lifestyles. This betrays a serious misunderstanding of what it actually means to love someone “just as they are” (and is a good example of liberals defining someone by their sexuality). We are not obliged to act on our temptations, drives and orientations. We are not just the sum of our sins and weaknesses. We are God’s creation, which at the end of the day is so much more important than indulging our sexual appetites. The problem with practising gay people is not what they are – human beings whose sexual drives are disordered in a certain way – but with what they do. God loves them because they are made in His image and reflect His glory. He does not love their sins, any more than he loves any of our sins. This is reflected in our own experience. My girlfriend might love me deeply and unconditionally, but there will always be certain facets of my personality and behaviour that she finds frustrating and hurtful. If we reject “hate the sin, love the sinner” – as some would have us do – we risk defining a person by their sins. Yet in Christianity, a person cannot be defined by their sins alone or else no-one could ever be saved.

A further important point is that Bishop Robinson’s opponents are willing to recognise and confess their sins and do not seek to excuse themselves. There is no inconsistency at all when a Christian leader prayerfully confesses his sins, yet still humbly speaks out against immorality in the church. Gene Robinson is publicly flouting God’s law and refusing to remove himself from a situation which not only gives many occasions for sin but causes scandal to thousands of faithful Christians. He glories in his sin; others humbly confess. He mocks his opponents because they cannot give him a definitive answer to the question “how far can I go with my partner?” – but in his desire to score cheap debating points, he fails to see that if someone is genuinely interested in chaste living, that is actually the wrong question to ask.

Bishop Robinson likes to suggest that he and other gay activists are at the vanguard of a new movement of the Holy Spirit. It seems curious that the Holy Spirit should only have spoken to a small number of liberal clergy, and completely forgotten to get in touch with Pope Benedict, but there we go.

Particularly worrying is the militant attitude taken by certain gay rights campaigners within the church. This passage was in the Church Times of 9th December 2005 –

‘The Revd Stephen Coles, Vicar of St Thomas’s, Finsbury Park, who was re-elected to General Synod for London diocese as an openly gay man, said that the Bishops’ statement on partnerships was "forced upon them" because of the new legislation…Mr Coles said that he was on record as stating that if a bishop asked him about whether he was celibate, he would go straight to the European Court of Human Rights.’

Hang on. An ordained Christian minister is threatening to take his bishop before a secular court that consistently legislates against Christian values because that bishop asks a legitimate question about his obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Ignore for a moment the arrogance, the presumption, the self-indulgence, the lack of humility, and consider the biblical perspective. In 1 Corinthians 6 vv1-8 Paul urges his audience not to take their internal disputes before unbelievers. Evidently Mr Coles’ slavery to his passions is so strong that he would sooner drag Christ’s church through the courts than change his own behaviour. Whatever happened to being a “living sacrifice”?

The idea of the “inclusive” church seems to be taking a stranglehold on a good many Christians. Like many liberal buzz-words (one thinks perhaps of “tolerance” and “dialogue”), “inclusiveness” is a decent and true idea that is being cruelly abused, the meaning twisted and diluted. Christ does indeed call all people to Himself; the Christian message is universal and salvation is available to all. People with a homosexual orientation are not excluded from the kingdom any more than black people or disabled people are excluded.

However, what modern “inclusivists” argue for is not simply a church in which all find forgiveness and reconciliation with God through sincere repentance (though that is how they dress it up); they want to see a church that tolerates – and indeed celebrates – behaviour that most Christians at most times and places have found unacceptable. The worst trick they pull, consciously or unconsciously, is to confound ethnic and social diversity with tolerance of immorality in one great “inclusive” morass, so that you cannot criticise their endorsement of gay lifestyles without also appearing to criticise perfectly natural and legitimate diversity in worship styles, race and gender. This demonstrates the extent to which they have bought in to modern secular liberalism; the kind that brings together anti-racism (which is certainly a Christian cause) and homosexual activism (which is less certainly Christian) under one great big rainbow umbrella, without discerning between moral and immoral behaviour.

In certain quarters, it would seem that Guardian leader columns are now seen as more theologically reliable than the Pauline epistles.

Charles, Islam and "tolerance"

2006-03-21T06:19:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time I was a hard left Marxist and republican. Nowadays I am more of old-fashioned Gladstonian liberal and a dyed-in-the-wool, dedicated monarchist (although confusingly I still sometimes dress like a student revolutionary).

However, my extreme pro-monarchy views notwithstanding, Prince Charles really tests my patience. Much as I agree with him on many things - the corrosive cult of human rights and the onward march of inhuman technologies spring to mind - his statements on the matter of inter faith relations seldom rise above the banal and occasionally plumb the depths of stupidity and ineptitude. It is grimly ironic that a man with so much to say about the idiocies of political correctness is so in thrall to PC platitudes when it comes to the matter of faith.

In Egypt this week, he has been banging on about "tolerance" between faiths, and about how we have to listen to the Islamic world more carefully. However, like Rowan Williams in the Sudan, he has utterly failed to mention the elephant in the room; the fact that most Muslim-dominated countries have a truly lamentable record on religious freedom. Inayat Bungawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, commenting on the Prince's remarks, said that Charles -

"rightly draws attention to the worrying and increasingly anti-Muslim atmosphere in parts of Europe and the USA and compares that with the "harsh and degrading" conditions faced by some Christians in Muslim countries."

This is unbelievable.

No serious person can honestly compare the situation of European and North American Muslims to the predicament of Christians in Muslim countries. A British Muslim has all the rights under the sun; he can worship in peace, pray in peace, and follow his religious traditions. He can proselytize until he is blue in the face. Only two days ago I saw a Shia Muslim procession in Hyde Park! A British person can convert to Islam without let or hindrance. There are Muslims at every level of public life - not many, but they are there.

There are precious few Muslim countries where the same can be said for Christians. In Afganistan a man faces execution for "apostasy" i.e. converting to Christianity. In northern Nigeria Christians are being driven out so that sharia law can be imposed. In Saudi Arabia Christian prosleytisation is forbidden. In Indonesia churches are burnt as a matter of routine.

If Charles is serious about his Christian faith, he must understand that Islam is a false religion - a man made artifice. Yes, it contains glimpses of the truth and many of its adherents live godly and devout lives. But at the end of the day, it is fundamentally mistaken about the big questions of life. It denies the divinity of Jesus Christ. It denies the Trinity.

And in its modern forms, it is all too often totalitarian, violent, insular and hostile to the freedom of minorities.

The deluded statements of Mr Bungawala are part of a pattern, whereby Muslim leaders tend to blame anyone but themselves for their problems. Israel, the USA, the UN - anyone will do, as long as the blame can be focused outwards. But sooner or later, Muslims will have to take a long hard look at the inadequacies and brutality of their own societies.

Pro-abortionists are scared of an honest debate

2006-03-17T09:26:00.000-08:00

Since starting my new job in September, I have read a large number of pro-abortion articles. Of these, I can count on the fingers of one hand those that have actually taken a serious and rigorous approach to the subject. Most regurgitate lame stereotypes about extreme, ignorant and violent pro-lifers who want to persecute women (yawn), or harp endlessly on the same tired old themes, such as criticism of the Bush administration and the “global gag rule”.

I know what you’re thinking: The notion that the media tend to be ignorant and hostile towards pro-lifers is about as stunning as the revelation that the Pope makes time for Mass occasionally.
But just the other day Lionel Shriver was writing on abortion in the Guardian(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1726727,00.html), and it struck me that her article was a perfect microcosm of the intellectual bankruptcy of the abortion rights movement. She began by grandly declaring that “neither you nor I have the appetite for debating the abortion issue once again”. Speak for yourself, Lionel. I suspect most pro-lifers would love to see an honest debate on abortion in The Guardian. But in a way she is right: the “open minded” pro-abortionists seem reluctant to re-examine their decrepit prejudices.

Having niftily side-stepped the moral question, she produced the usual drivel about how concern for unborn children was mere “lofty rhetoric” – helpfully this meant that she didn’t have to actually discuss right and wrong – and insisted that “I have studied the eyes of the fanatics who regularly picket abortion clinics in the US and I do not see love of tiny unborn babies. I see hatred.” Now maybe I’m being over-practical, but this melodramatic posturing raises a few questions – like how many of these “fanatics” have you actually met? How exactly do you distinguish a love-filled eye from a hate-filled one? Do you study their eyes every time they turn up to picket abortion clinics or just every now and then? And how can you possibly make such absurd generalisations? (My personal view is that the only reason the “fanatics” appeared to be consumed with hatred was because an arrogant stranger was staring into their eyes about to make a snap judgement on their whole personality.)

Pro-abortionists sense that they can never win a serious philosophical debate about abortion. So instead of reasoned argument we have overblown rhetoric based on Ms Shriver’s own clapped-out clichés.

“Enjoy the irony,” says she, “that many a ‘pro-lifer’ also supports capital punishment.”
Hang on.

One’s view on the death penalty has precisely nothing to do with the actual objective morality of abortion (and in any case, many pro-lifers are opposed to the death penalty). Moreover, the position of a pro-abortion but anti-death penalty person is arguably much more unjust and illogical than a pro-lifer who supports the death penalty. He will fight tooth and nail to save the life of a convicted serial killer, but ignore the plight of the innocent unborn child. Is it really so much more rational to oppose the death penalty for murderers but support it for disabled or inconvenient unborn children?

We also hear that the abortion debate “is not about babies”; that babies are “emotionally irrelevant”.

Wrong.

Maybe Lionel would prefer for the whole debate to be about feminism and patriarchy and all the rest of it. But it’s not – or at least it shouldn’t be. The abortion debate is about the value we place on unborn life. By all means say that you don’t think that the unborn child is morally significant, or that you don’t believe human life is to be protected at all costs. Those are defensible positions. But don’t come out with all this nonsense about the abortion debate just being part of “the same stand-off between the strait-laced, self-righteous toe-the-line types…and the grubby, licentious long-hairs brandishing peace signs”. Abortion is not simply an issue for the so-called “Religious Right”; a brief Google search throws up not only the Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League, but also Feminists For Life, Libertarians For Life – and of course PLAGAL, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays And Lesbians.

It would seem too that abortionists are notably reluctant to fight their corner as far as the “woman’s right to choose” is concerned. Ms Shriver’s notes that, under the new South Dakota law, “even a 13-year-old knocked up by her own father would be obliged to take her baby to term”.

This immediate focus on the hard cases – such as rape and incest – is revealing. The core of the doctrinaire pro-abortion case is that all women have the right to choose to end their pregnancy, for whatever reason they see fit. This is, of course, a rather uncomfortable position for any intelligent person to defend. So they take the intellectually dishonest route of focusing on the hard cases, or discussing issues that appear relevant, but are in fact peripheral at best.
In the past, pro-abortionists have ruthlessly suppressed and ridiculed research that undermines their position. Their refusal to debate the facts in an honest and serious way is all part of the same mindset.

It amounts to nothing less than a travesty of truth and justice.

Letter to Independent, 16/03/06

2006-03-17T02:06:00.000-08:00

It wasn't printed. Evidently the truth hurts.

Sir, Deborah Orr’s otherwise excellent survey of the neglect and mistreatment of the disabled in our society (“If we really want to help the disabled…”, 15/03) contained one glaring omission. In common with nearly all debates about our attitudes to the disabled, one huge elephant lurks in the room.

That elephant is of course Section 1 (1)(d) of the Abortion Act 1967, which allows for the abortion of disabled unborn children right up to birth.

Quite rightly, we go to enormous lengths to make life better for the disabled; wheelchair ramps, hearing induction loops, public documents in Braille and so on. Medical support for the seriously disabled is more sophisticated than ever before, and disability rights are now enshrined in law. Yet in the 40 weeks before birth, the disabled are as vulnerable as ever. In 2004, almost 2000 abortions were carried out because of disability, and 96% of all unborn children diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome are aborted. What kind of bizarre mixed messages are we sending out to disabled members of society? Many of those disabled children could have been cared for in specialist baby units and hospices, like those operated by LIFE.

The Disability Rights Commission has suggested on its website that Section 1 (1)(d) “is offensive to many people…it reinforces negative stereotypes of disability; and there is substantial support for the view that to permit terminations at any point during a pregnancy on the ground of risk of disability…is incompatible with valuing disability and non-disability equally.”

The right to life is quite literally fundamental to all other human rights. If we really care about the disabled, then surely protecting their right to life should be our first priority.

Ridiculous quotes from a muddle-headed feminist

2006-03-15T08:14:00.000-08:00

Last week Lionel Shriver wrote this in the Guardian:

"The term "pro-life" could not be less apt. (Enjoy the irony that many a "pro-lifer" also supports capital punishment.) Only the abortion rights movement has a genuinely positive agenda, the protection of a woman's right to make her own decision about an admittedly thorny moral issue whose implications are intimate."

Forget the tosh about the "genuinely positive" agenda of pro-abortionists and the weasel words "admittedly thorny moral issue". I was struck by the illogicality of what Ms Shriver says about abortion and the death penalty.

There are 4 possible positions to take vis a vis abortion and capital punishment.

(1) Against both (this is my own position)
(2) Against abortion but in favour of capital punishment (e.g. George W Bush)
(3) Against capital punishment but in favour of abortion (like Lionel Shriver)
(4) In favour of both

Now it could be argued that both (2) and (3) are contradictory. Pro-abortionists are very fond of telling pro-lifers that they aren't really pro-life because they favour the death penalty. But hang on a moment: many pro-abortionists are also anti-death penalty. So surely their position is equally illogical - arguably more so, since they will fight tooth and nail to save the life of a convicted serial killer and rapist, but fight equally hard for the "right" to kill the unborn child, who is as innocent as can be.

Positions (1), (2) and (4) are intellectually defensible. I venture to suggest, however, that most intelligent people would struggle to defend position (3). Those who agree with (3) are often relying on a sub-Marxist view of "rights" and the injustices of power structures i.e. women and murderers are powerless and so their rights must be upheld at all costs, regardless of truth, or indeed right and wrong (see my earlier post on "Muslims, minorities and the politics of power").

So the next time some Guardian type sneers at people who oppose abortion and support the death penalty, turn the tables on them - is it really so much more rational to oppose the death penalty but support abortion rights?

And yes, Ms Shriver, I do enjoy irony. I particularly "enjoy" the irony that many who oppose the death penalty for convicted murderers are in favour of the death penalty for inconvenient or disabled unborn children.

Some awesome quotes by a clear-thinking feminist

2006-03-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

In an article entitled "Pro-Abortionists Poison Feminism," Rosemary Bottcher, currently President of Feminists for Life of America, also describes abortion as a form of discrimination:

“Pro-abortion feminists resent the discrimination against a whole class of humans because they happen to be female, yet they themselves discriminate against a whole class of humans because they happen to be very young.”

“They resent that the value of a woman is determined by whether some man wants her, yet they declare that the value of an unborn child is determined by whether some woman wants him. They resent that women have been "owned" by their husbands, yet insist that the unborn are "owned" by their mothers.”

“They believe that a man's right to do what he pleases with his own body cannot include the right to sexually exploit women, yet proclaim that a woman's similar right means that she can kill her unborn child.”

Rosemary Bottcher similarly criticized the Left for its failure to take a stand against abortion, In an article appearing in the Tallahassee Democrat, she wrote:

“The same people who wax hysterical at the thought of executing, after countless appeals, a criminal convicted of some revolting crime would have insisted on his mother's unconditional right to have him killed while he was still innocent. The same people who organized a boycott of the Nestle Company for its marketing of infant formula in underdeveloped lands would have approved of the killing of those exploited infants only a few months before. The same people who talk incessantly of human rights are willing to deny the most helpless and vulnerable of all human beings the most important right of all. Apparently these people do not understand the difference between contraception and abortion. Their arguments defending abortion would be perfectly reasonable if they were talking about contraception. When they insist upon "reproductive freedom" and "motherhood by choice" they forget that "pregnant" means "being with child." A pregnant woman has already reproduced; she is already a mother.”

The abuse of language

2006-03-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

There are certain words and phrases that, when used by certain people and in certain contexts, always set off alarm bells in my head. So when a student politician (the Lord preserve us) starts talking about "human rights", one can be fairly sure that he is not about to give us a stirling defence of fox hunting, gun ownership or smacking children.

Another of these weasel phrases is "self-evident", as in...

"The concept of faith schools is self-evidently divisive". This whine came from Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society.

In my experience, anything that we have to be told is self-evident is probably not so.

What Mr Porteous Wood really means is "I disagree with faith schools for rigid ideological reasons which have little or nothing to do with the actual facts on the ground. There is no real evidence that faith schools cause division in British society, but I would like everyone to believe that they do, so I will say that this conclusion is self-evident. That way, people who agree with me will feel a warm self-righteous glow and those who don't will worry that they are stupid and bigoted."

It is a fundamentally dishonest and evasive method of debate, and is demonstrative of a closed and unoriginal mind.

More wise words from the Chair of St Peter

2006-03-13T04:01:00.000-08:00

“But when we think of scientific projects that set no real value on man…or if we think of the way science is made use of to produce ever more frightful means for the destruction of men…then it is obvious that there is such a thing as science that has taken a pathological form: science becomes pathological and a threat to life when it takes leave of the moral order of human life, becomes autonomous, and no longer recognises any standard but its own capabilities.”

Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) in "Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions"

Counter-cultural wisdom of the week

2006-03-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

"Without an objective moral grounding, not even democracy is capable of ensuring a stable peace."

Pope Benedict XVI

Damn right. What a hombre.

Surely some mistake?

2006-03-08T04:15:00.000-08:00

On "Newsnight" last night, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and Professor Alan Dershowitz werre debating torture.

Alan Dershowitz was making the argument that as "coercive interrogation" (now there's a euphemism to conjure with) was always going to occur, democracies should allow and regulate a limited amount of torture. Anything else, he said, was hypocrisy.

I disagree with this argument. Torture is an objective moral evil and no civilized country should either use it, or attempt to justify its use.

Baroness Kennedy agrees with me. However, I cannot help but notice that there is a contradiction in her reasoning. Alan Dershowitz's basic argument is "torture is unpleasant, but we will never stamp it out, so let's regulate it". The good Baroness objected very strongly to this.

But this is the exact reasoning applied to the abortion debate by pro-abortion liberals like, er, Helena Kennedy! "Yes," they say, "abortion isn't nice, but if it's banned, abortion will still go on, so we shouldn't ban it."

Do we apply this reasoning to murder? Theft? Fraud? Rape?

No, we do not. When we make law, we make a moral judgment about things that are desirable and things that are not. We know that they will always exist, because that's human nature; but by making them illegal we are signalling society's disapproval and deterring potential offenders, while protecting the vulnerable by making it as hard to carry out illegal acts as possible.

That moral judgment exists independently of whether or not the act in question will continue to happen if it is made illegal. So the whole "back to the backstreets" argument is really little more than a distraction from the real debate about whether abortion is morally acceptable.

Laughable and ignorant pro-death bias

2006-03-08T03:03:00.000-08:00

Last night I was watching an episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation". Central to the plot was a clinic run by pro-lifers that specialised in finding surrogate mothers for frozen embryos that were no longer wanted.

At one point, one of the police officers interviewed the head of this clinic. And - surprisingly enough - she was portrayed as a creepy, ignorant religious fanatic, whose main argument was to do with the ensoulment of the embryo. At which point the police officer (who later proudly declared herself "pro-choice and pro stem cell research") asked her, in an extremely condescending tone, if she knew that a sixteenth century Pope had said that the soul was not infused until the fortieth day, whereupon the pro-lifer asked the policewoman - in a hostile and judgmental tone - whether she'd ever had an abortion.

Later in the programme, the central character Gil Grissom appeared to offer the view that since Leviticus says that life is in the blood, life began at 3 weeks' gestation. This is an interesting view, since it allows embryonic research and the "morning after pill", but not abortion. But when another character pressed him for a definite view, he gave an enigmatic reply, leaving the question wide open.

Now I don't mind the crude pro-abortion bias - it's a free country, after all. What really gets my goat is the fact that this programme, in its desperation to prove how ignorant and inconsistent pro-lifers were, actually got its facts wrong. It is a classic example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

Great play is made - often by "Kerry Catholics" and media "liberals" - of the fact that the historical teaching of Christianity has not been unanimous on the moral status of the unborn child. It is true that there have been differences of opinion on certain points.

However –

These differences about the status of the unborn child have never been used to justify abortion, which has always been considered a grave sin, even if it was sometimes not considered as serious as homicide. Cf. the early Christian source called the Didache (2nd century AD): “You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.”

In the sixteenth century, Popes Sixtus V (who was, incidently, the Pope who laid out the teaching on ensoulment mentioned in CSI) and Gregory XIV both reiterated that the penalty for procuring or performing any abortion, was excommunication. The Church has always been unequivocal that human life may not be destroyed even if it is not animated. And the current mind of the Church is unwavering – being involved in an abortion at any stage of pregnancy is a serious sin. The encyclicals Humanae Vitae (Paul VI, 1968) and Evangelium Vitae (John Paul II, 1995) both state this clearly.

The question of Aquinas' views is also worth considering briefly. Aquinas, following Aristotle, did indeed believe in the idea of “delayed animation”, whereby a human being is animated - i.e. given a rational soul - after forty days for a boy and eighty for a girl. But it should be remembered that Aquinas lived in the 12th century; his view was based on the best scientific knowledge then available, which was mostly guesswork and supposition and was wildly inaccurate. And most importantly of all, Aquinas never argued with the teaching of the Church: that it was a sin to deliberately kill the unborn child.

If Aquinas - and, for that matter, Aristotle - were alive today, he would certainly follow the best science – i.e. he would take the view that life begins at fertilisation.

Truly awful article in "The Times"

2006-03-07T05:46:00.000-08:00

Woefully inept article in today's "Times" by Matthew Syed; a badly argued, vituperative screed suggesting - ludicrously - that opponents of embryo research were somehow anti-science and that the sooner our ethical objections were brushed aside, the sooner we could all march arm in arm to a glorious future of universal health, wealth and happiness. I wrote the following letter in reply:

Re: Matthew Syed’s long and confused rant against the “enemies of progress” (“The crazy coalition holding back science”, 07/03). As a “backward-looking” pro-lifer myself, I have become accustomed to people like Mr Syed relying on abuse, ridicule and assertion rather than rational, civilized argument.

On this occasion, however, Mr Syed has intentionally muddied the ethical waters by implying that pro-lifers object to all new scientific developments. This is emphatically not true. What we do object to are new technologies that treat human life merely as a commodity and undermine human dignity, and are also explicitly eugenic in purpose, like pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). For those who are confused by Mr Syed’s disingenuous circumlocutions, let me clarify: PGD is a scientific technique that disposes of “inadequate” embryos. It is not a cure for genetic disease any more than killing cancer patients is a cure for cancer.

Mr Syed argues for a crass utilitarianism as the basis of civilization. But utilitarianism has been the basis for inhuman tyrannies of every kind, from Stalin to Mao, and has led to a cruel disregard for those who are seen as obstructions to “maximising aggregate welfare”, such as the seriously disabled. There is another, older, more venerable tradition in Western philosophy: one that holds each and every human life to be inviolable. I see not one iota of evidence to support Mr Syed’s absurd contention that this ethic will “impose lasting damage on humanity”. Embracing humanity means accepting the whole of the human condition, and that will always include frailty and weakness.

In a world that will not tolerate weakness and disability, what becomes of the weak and disabled?

I hope it may act as a small corrective to the alarming socially liberal drift of "The Times".

Vocations and the church

2006-03-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

The Catholic Church in Europe and North America is running out of secular (i.e. diocesan) priests. Not enough young men are presenting themselves for ordination. This is clearly a problem for the church. On that just about everyone agrees.

Where everyone does quite emphatically not agree is on

(a) what the cause of this problem is, and
(b) what should be done about it.

There is a certain kind of Catholic - let us call him a "Kerry Catholic" - who sees the vocations crisis in the same way as he sees the decline in Mass attendance, the widespread ignorance and flouting of Catholic doctrine and morals among even Mass-going Catholics, and the fierce contempt in which the Church is held by opinion formers in the media. That is to say, he takes it as a sign that there is something wrong with the Church, rather than with society. In the eyes of this "thinking Catholic", just as the widespread use of artificial contraceptives by Catholics is a sign that the Magisterium has got it wrong, so the lack of priests is a sign that the Church's understanding of priesthood is faulty.

So, he will say, something must be done. And what is this something? Well, usually, it is two somethings: women priests and married priests. The reason for the vocations crisis is that we are ignoring half of the "pool of talent", as it were; and that we are forcing men to live in the deeply unnatural state of celibacy - a most unattractive one in our sexually enlightened (sic) times.

And yet, and yet. I cannot help but notice that the vocations crisis - like the "decline" of Christianity generally - is almost entirely a North American and European phenomenon. By all accounts, seminaries in South America and Africa are bursting at the seams. It seems too that the decline in vocations in Europe and America is beginning to slow and is in many areas reversing.

I see no reason to believe that God has stopped calling young men to the priesthood. So why have vocations appeared to be in decline in Europe and America?

To paraphrase Bill Clinton: It's the culture, stupid.

The only answer that makes any sense to me is this: young Catholic men have been unable to hear, understand or act on their vocation because they have not been taught the fullness of the faith, and because the Catholic Church (along with other Christian denominations) has, through a well-meaning but utterly misplaced sense of compassion and tolerance in the face of a self-indulgent and hedonistic culture, often failed to stand up for truth and morality. As a result, young men whom God would have loved to call to his service have either fallen away from the faith, or have stayed within the Church but missed their vocation.

Like the Church of England, the Catholic Church in Europe and North America was hit for six by the social upheavals of the 1960s and never fully recovered, losing confidence in the power and rightness of its message. Hence the catechetical crisis of the 70s and 80s, which extended even into the seminaries, and from which the Church is still recovering.

If a young Catholic has never been taught properly what a priest is, why he is so important in the Church, and what he is doing at the front during Mass, then of course his ability to respond to God's call is going to be impaired. If he has never been taught the full Catholic understanding of human sexuality and the person, then the requirement of a completely celibate and chaste life will seem not only terrifying, frustrating and impossible, but also utterly pointless! If a well-meaning trendy priest has given him to understand that certain objectively sinful actions are not really sinful, so do not need to be dealt with and confessed, then there will be a lot of unresolved tensions in his heart that will prevent him from being fully open to God's call.

If anyone doubts this analysis, look at where the new vocations in "the West" are tending to come from: the new movements on the one hand, and from young people involved in strongly faith-based youth settings, such as Catholic chaplaincies. What do these things have in common?
Doctrinal orthodoxy.

Vocations do not come from watering down the faith and the requirements of the priesthood. Quite the reverse. Solid and coherent teaching about the content of the faith is the basis of a strong and enduring Church. This is seen in the growth and vibrancy of the Church in Latin America, Africa and, to a lesser extent, in south east Asia. Similarly, what is the fastest growing wing of the Anglican Church? The Evangelicals, of course - who have adapted to modernity in some ways, but have refused to water down their faith.

The New Inquisition

2006-02-23T04:09:00.000-08:00

Talk to any dogmatic anti-Catholic secularist about the Catholic Church and you will soon get to the subject of the ruthless suppression of heretical or subversive views. You will probably hear about the Inquisition or the persecution of men like Galileo. Never mind that most people’s ideas about the Holy Office owe more to lurid anti-Catholic propaganda and Monty Python than to actual historical study; in the popular imagination the Inquisition is a cross between the KGB, the SS and the Taliban, with fewer redeeming features.
If you are feeling mischievous, and would like to prick the smug, self-indulgent, anti-Christian complacency of this person, ask him how he justifies the new Inquisition. He will gasp, but ask him to bear with you. Then explain your comment.
The reason why Galileo’s case became a cause celebre is that he is perceived as having stood up for empiricism and rationality against close-mindedness and prejudice. He looked at the facts alone and drew sensible conclusions based on those facts.
This was highly admirable. But today’s secularist liberals – the standard bearers of the Enlightenment who lionise the likes of Galileo and pour opprobrium on the Church’s “outdated” and “dogmatic views” – have their own dogmas, do in fact have their own lines in the sand which cannot be crossed, however compelling the evidence.
Ironically enough, those who do question these dogmas are castigated and ridiculed by the forces of “progressive liberalism” – anathematised, if you will, even if they are, like Galileo, simply considering the facts and drawing what seem to be the sensible conclusions. In the first of an occasional series on this blog, I would like to consider these dogmas.

Dogma No. 1: All relationships and lifestyles based on mutual consent are of equal worth, and it is therefore deeply wrong for the government to seek to promote any particular form of relationship or discriminate in any way between types of relationship. Among most liberals, this idea has the status of an ex cathedra teaching.
Take the issue of marriage. It is a fact that the married family is by far and away the best arena for bringing up children. Children in married families are far less likely to be abused or live in poverty, or to become involved in crime, drugs and premature sexual behaviour. Married women are considerably less likely to be the victims of domestic violence. Marriage improves educational achievement and social mobility.
Marriage is provably a social and public good, while cohabitation has been empirically proven to be a social problem. You might imagine then that the government, part of whose job is to do what it can to keep us healthy, wealthy, happy and safe, would provide incentives to people to get married and stay married, if only on utilitarian grounds. This is just the application of logic and rationality, surely (not unlike Galileo’s astronomical calculations)?
Well, no. Enter the New Inquisition. Despite the reams and reams of evidence that marriage and strong families are of huge benefit to society and children, any suggestion of providing better incentives for marriage and the family is written off as a lurch to the right/highly reactionary/religious zealotry/old-fashioned/an attempt to enslave women. Advocates of marriage are ridiculed, belittled and excluded from the debate, despite the impeccable empirical grounding of their arguments.
The Church of Galileo’s time could not accept his findings because his findings appeared to contradict its teachings and undermined its authority as the guardian of true scientific knowledge. Exactly the same phenomenon is visible in the persistent denial of the facts about marriage. Modern liberals cannot accept these findings because it contradicts their own dogmas and undermines their authority.

Is one man's terrorist another man's freedom fighter?

2006-02-22T09:23:00.000-08:00

This tired old cliche really does need to be put out to grass. It is easy to define a terrorist objectively, if you ignore the whole quasi-Marxist relativist morality where the supposedly powerless, persecuted or downtrodden have a special dispensation to commit horrendous acts.

Peter Ustinov, a woolly liberal luvvie if ever there was one, said that “terrorism is the war of the powerless against the rich. War is the terrorism of the powerful against the poor.”

What complete, unmitigated generalising nonsense. For all those who are mired in moral confusion:

A person, state or organisation can be described as terrorist…

...If they, as a matter of consistent policy, (a) deliberately use or threaten violence against exclusively non-combatant targets in pursuit of a political or strategic objective, or knowingly give financial, logistical and political support to those who do so, or (b) recklessly and needlessly endanger non-combatant life in pursuit of a political of strategic objective, or knowingly give financial, logistical and political support to those who do so.

Just because the actions of a person, state or institution result in civilian casualties, this does not automatically make them a terrorist.

Thus the war on Iraq was not terrorism because every effort was made to avoid civilian casualties and at no stage did the Coalition as a whole intentionally target civilians. Actions that result in civilian deaths are not necessarily terrorist actions.

By contrast, the Iraqi insurgents are terrorists because they plant bombs in civilians areas far from military targets, and their sole intent is to cause chaos and resentment against the Coalition.

More theology: this time, a "personal relationship with Jesus"

2006-02-22T09:12:00.000-08:00

Jesus undoubtedly calls his followers into a personal relationship with Himself. But what form should this relationship take? As usual, there are denominational difficulties.

On the one hand, it is a commonplace of Evangelical anti-popery to claim that Catholicism prevents the individual Catholic worshipper – the averagely-educated “man in the pew” – from having this authentic relationship. The usual argument runs thus: in the confessional and at the altar, the idea of the priest as mediator inhibits Catholics from approaching God directly, as does the practice of praying to saints. Catholicism is inextricably bound up with ritual, legalism and formality. Evangelicals, by contrast, pray to God directly, freely and, importantly, ex tempore, with no need or desire for “intermediaries” or formal frameworks. They tend to be suspicious of liturgy – it is seen as dry and repetitive, likely to sap individual zeal through boredom and over-familiarity. That is a perfectly tenable position (though I would dispute it strongly) but it is crucial that Evangelicals realise that it is not the only way to have a fulfilling and holy spiritual life.

They are quite right to say that Catholics do not have a relationship with Jesus in the way that Evangelicals do. But they are wrong to see this as an inferior relationship. It is not – it is merely a very different one; a physical, sensual, real one. And it is nothing to do with feelings, or personal preferences, or great worship sessions. It rests on their assurance of the simple fact of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ under the form of bread and wine in the Blessed Sacrament.

The Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament causes puzzlement for some, but for those who participate in the knowledge of the Real Presence of God, it is a deeply intimate encounter, leading to the kind of feelings akin to those that an Evangelical might experience during a Spring Harvest altar call or a worship session (it is, to be fair, true that without a belief in the Real Presence it makes no sense.)

It is sometimes argued, concerning Adoration, that God is everywhere, so why must he be adored specifically in the Host?

My answer is this: God is all around us: we can and should worship him “at all times and in all places” with our lives, our attitudes and our words. But we can also come to him at a specific time and a specific place i.e. Mass or Adoration, for an especially deep experience. It can be likened to friends at a party who use physical affection to demonstrate and reinforce their love. When God has left us a tangible Sacrament of His presence, it seems strange to ignore it. If we are at a party with friends, we don’t satisfy ourselves with being vaguely aware of their presence – we talk to them, laugh with them and embrace them. This analogy can be extended to married life. A man and wife live in the same house and share nearly everything in life – but sometimes they come together in a very special way to make love. This doesn’t mean that they don’t love each other the rest of the time, or that they don’t share life together. Quite the opposite; love-making is the sign and seal of their commitment and a chance to cement and celebrate their relationship.

"That's unbiblical!"...or is it?

2006-02-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the most common charge made against the Catholic Church by Evangelicals is that many of her doctrines are unbiblical. Most Evangelical polemics that depend on the biblical argument make at least two fundamental errors:

----In some cases, the authors have patently failed to understand the doctrines in question. So for example, they will say that Catholics worship Mary or the saints in the same way that one worships God, or that the idea of Mass as sacrifice cheapens Calvary by undermining its historical singularity. (It doesn’t, of course: the Mass is not a re-enactment of Calvary, but a continuing participation in the timeless aspect of that sacrifice).
----By using the meaningless catch-all “unbiblical”, they overlook the crucial distinction between doctrines that are anti-biblical – that is, actually contrary to biblical principles – and those that are merely extra-biblical i.e. those doctrines that are not explicit in the bible but are ultimately compatible with biblical principles and have a long heritage in the tradition of the Church. The great irony, of course, is that the Real Presence – a bete noire for some Evangelicals – is one of the most straightforwardly biblical doctrines of all (cf John 6); indeed many of the reformers believed in it, yet few modern Protestants do so.

Thus it is anti-biblical to deny that Jesus is God, as it conflicts directly with John chapter one. It is anti-biblical to deny the Virgin Birth or the Crucifixion or the bodily resurrection, as these events are recorded in the Gospels. Doctrines like those of the Immaculate Conception, Purgatory or the Assumption, on the other hand, are extra-biblical; they do not appear in the Bible, but there is nothing in the Bible that rules out the possibility of any of them, and not one is in direct conflict with any biblical principle (although it might - wrongly - be argued that the Immaculate Conception undermines the uniqueness of Jesus). Properly understood, not one single Catholic doctrine can be described as anti-biblical, even though many are extra-biblical.

To say that the Catholic Church does not value the Bible is frankly absurd. That may have been true once, but nowadays? In a Sunday Mass there are always three Bible readings and a Psalm or Canticle. The Bible is shown great respect and is treated with reverence and care. The Daily Office has a strong Biblical basis.
The refusal of the Church to allow vernacular Bibles until relatively recent times, rather than being a sign of its disdain for the Word of God, was in fact a means of protecting the Bible. By its very nature, it is a complex and powerful book, vulnerable to both mistranslation and misinterpretation.

Nick Cohen. Nail. Head.

2006-02-19T03:16:00.000-08:00

Nick Cohen is one of the best columnists writing in the British media at the moment. In his latest piece in Sunday's "Observer", he brilliantly skewers the utter cowardice of supposedly "daring" arts types:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1713084,00.html

Muslims, minorities and the politics of power - a few changes made

2006-02-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

Something very strange happened recently.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain said on Radio 4 that civil partnerships were "harmful...[a civil partnership] does not augur well in building the very foundations of society - stability, family relationships. And it is something we would certainly not, in any form, encourage the community to be involved in."

Now this was a very interesting incident - and not just because in the light of recent events it was fascinating to see Sir Iqbal exercising his right to free speech in a manner which offended many other members of society (not unlike the Danish cartoonists....). Oh, the exquisite irony of Sir Iqbal, who called for Salman Rushdie's "The Midnight Verses" to be burnt, insisting on his right to say things that might be offensive! (So let's get this straight, Sir Iqbal: it's OK for you to use your freedom of speech to offend homosexual people but not for a cartoonist to use his freedom of speech to offend Muslims? Riiiight.)

No, the very enlightening part of this whole controversy was Peter Tatchell's response to Sir Iqbal's comments.

"It is tragic for one minority to attack another minority."

Now, regardless of your opinion on Islam or homosexuality (I happen to agree with the introduction of civil partnerships), this unintentionally hilarious comment is a demonstration par excellence of the utter idiocy of modern identity-based politics.

Apparently, many different kinds of "minorities" in the Western world - religious, sexual, racial, social - are being, or have been, oppressed by straight, white, middle-class, university educated, Christian men. This group represent all that is wrong. They never receive the benefit of the doubt, despite their individual virtues; they are assumed to be in the wrong.

Inequality and unfair power relationships are held to be the key determinant of social and political questions. Therefore it is assumed that all progressive-minded people must unite to fight this discrimination and overturn everything that the evil elites stand for, and all minorities must club together to "fight the power". Now call me biased (I am, sadly, straight, white, middle class, university educated, Christian and male, for which apologies), but to base all your political positions on such an extraordinarily crude generalisation is nonsensical. As Mr Tatchell may have noticed, minorities often come into conflict with one another as well as with "The Man". Take the example of a family of Catholic West African immigrants in London. They are poor and black and socially marginalized. However, like many members of ethnic minorities, they have extremely strict religious views on social issues, from abortion to gay rights, and are hostile to liberal sex education in schools. So in that sense they really have much more in common with the average "Daily Mail" reader than the average "Guardian" columnist.

Other uneasy bedfellows can be found in the coalition of "oppressed minorities": take feminists and certain ultra-conservative Muslims. Is mutual hostility to some semi-mythical evil white male Christian oppressor really more important to feminists than the fight against female genital mutilation, honour killings and domestic violence? I doubt it.

(Peter Tatchell, to his credit, sees some of these contradictions and has refused to allow accusations of racism or cultural imperialism to deter him from his pursuit of the brutal dictator Mugabe or homophobic Jamaican rappers.)

More and more public policy is being based not on the common good, or any kind of objective morality, but on highly questionable assumptions about identity, rights and group politics. Rights are in many ways a bad guide to public policy, because there is often an irresolvable conflict between two sets of rights. Abortion is a brilliant example, where a loudly asserted "right to choose" has triumphed over the unborn child's right to life. Or consider the law on discrimination: should a Christian charity be forced to employ an atheist? The discourse of rights has nothing to say in this situation. If individualism and identity politics are your only point of reference, then you quickly reach a philosophical dead end.

The ideology of group identity is inadequate because it often fails to adapt to reality. Christianity is still fair game for abuse, ridicule and contempt, because it once had a privileged and powerful place in British society, despite the fact that only 7% of Britons are practising Christians. Yet Islam is still given an easy ride and treated with indulgence on the left because of its supposed status as a powerless minority group, notwithstanding over 1 million adherents in the UK and its considerable global power (and the fact that in many places Islam itself is itself the all-powerful oppressive bogeyman and engages in fierce persecution of minorities!)

Seeing issues in terms of historical abuses and the rights of supposedly "oppressed" groups also introduces new injustices; so the reluctance of British liberals to stand up for vulnerable women in the Islamic community - because to "lecture" Muslims about morality is moral imperialism - completely undermines those women's attempts to improve their situation. Ditto the acceptance of abortion. Because lack of access to abortion is equated with restrictions on women's freedom, and all right-thinking people must want more freedom for women, the destruction of the unborn child - a member of an oppressed minority if ever there was one - has become commonplace and accepted.

The constant emphasis on identity politics and the prerogatives of the group has its roots in Marxism - and by extension from moral relativism. Flowing from Marxism is the pervasive and dangerous notion that the rightness of your actions is judged not by an absolute moral imperative, but can only truly be assessed in terms of your supposed place in the structures of power - in other words it encourages an individualistic and relativistic morality based on entitlements, grievances and rights. Hence the sympathy of many leftish types for murderous scum like Che Guevara, the IRA and the Iraqi "resistance" and their instinctive hostility to George W Bush. Almost anything can be justified if it is perceived to be part of a struggle against a higher power.

The New Tories

2006-02-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

In today's Evening Standard, David Cameron (in open-necked shirt, natch - ties are for squares, man) has been pictured laughing and joking with Peter Stringfellow.

Peter bloody Stringfellow.

Nothing better demonstrates the utter moral and intellectual vacuity of the new, cuddly, "hey let's just all be nice to each other and everything will be OK" Tories. Peter Stringfellow - the owner of a seedy strip club where women are leered at by pathetic, misogynistic losers in the name of "fun" and "liberation" - is one of the leading lights of the nihilistic, amoral modern sexual culture. Any serious politician should be fighting this culture tooth and nail, and if they absolutely must meet Stringfellow they should refuse to shake his hand and treat the sleazy serial woman-user with the contempt he deserves.

If Cameron does not even have the moral courage to refuse to meet with a man like Peter Stringfellow - who is, in effect, a pimp - then what hope is there that he understands the horrendous consequences that sexual "liberation", rampant individualism and a pornographic culture are having on our society? The new Tory party has been trumpeting its commitment to disadvantaged children and single mums. But what no-one ever points out is that both these groups are victims of our screwed up sexual culture. If the Tories really wanted to help reduce the number of broken families and abandoned, confused children, shutting down Stringfellow's would be a good place to start.

Oh happy day!

2006-02-01T04:30:00.000-08:00

Not only has the House of Commons finally shown some cojones and stood up to the over-mighty executive, but they have done it on a vital issue of national importance: freedom of speech. The Religious Hatred Bill was a flagrant attempt to pander to the intolerant and illiberal views of certain sections of Muslim opinion in this country.

It seems clear that a large number of Muslims are fundamentally hostile to liberal democratic values. If anyone doubts this, check out the terrifying and disproportionate response of the Islamic world to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Or talk to Christians in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Indonesia, Pakistan....oh, you get the picture.

Anyway...if the Commons are finally finding their courage, roll on the vote on ID cards!

Iraq

2006-01-31T07:35:00.000-08:00

Once again, the family of a British soldier killed in Iraq have come out against the war and criticised Tony Blair: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4665620.stm. And once again their understandable sentiments are going to be treated as incisive strategic analysis and spread all over the anti-war press.

Why is this? Their judgments are hardly likely to be considered or objective 24 hours after the death of their son. Like Cindy Sheehan, whose politicised posturing thankfully had only a limited shelf life when she camped outside George Bush's ranch last summer, they should be comforted and offered sympathy, but not treated as military or political experts.

Their grief has no objective bearing on the rightness or legality of the war in Iraq (just by the by, it really needs saying that the legal status of the Iraq war is not a matter of fact, but a matter of opinion and interpretation).

The fact that 100 British soldiers have now died is neither here nor there. Tragic for their families, but irrelevant to the overall debate. If the war was the right thing to do, then 1000 British deaths would not have made it wrong. If it was the wrong thing to do, then a completely casualty-free operation would not have made it right.

Think of the Second World War: how many men would have had to died to make standing up to genocidal fascism the wrong option?

The Douglas family have said of their dead son that "it wasn't his war". Well, I'm sorry but it was. He was a British soldier, a member of a professional volunteer army, and the British government sent that army into action. If you're a soldier, getting sent to war is quite literally an occupational hazard. The British Army is not a travel agency or a technical apprenticeship.

Give Nick Park a knighthood.

2006-01-31T07:06:00.000-08:00

The campaign starts here.

Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit, is a hero and an embodiment of all that is truly great about the English. The man is a genuine eccentric; pathologically modest and gently self-deprecating. Forget the New Labour tosh about "tolerance", "inclusiveness" and "fairness" (corrupted and empty buzz words). Reticence, magnanimity, quiet good humour and an ever-so-slightly quirky worldview that appreciates the simple pleasures of life, like tea and cricket.

That is what Englishness is about.

"Right-wing" religion.

2006-01-30T01:53:00.000-08:00

Ruth Gledhill, the sporadically interesting religious affairs correspondent for the "Times", in her commentary on the new papal encyclical, repeats the absurd notion that Joseph Ratzinger is a "right wing" pope. Among certain sectors of liberal Christian opinion (stand up the Rev Giles Fraser of the "Church Times"), this is quite a common way of referring to orthodox Christians. It is basically a term of abuse, just as it is among leftish political commentators.

Ignore for a moment the fact that Joseph Ratzinger's politics (and the entire Catholic Catechism) are in fact probably well to the left of most "Times" readers - on redistribution of wealth, on asylum seekers, on immigration, on war and terrorism (like JPII Ratzinger is more or less a pacifist) - and think about the sheer stupidity of describing Christian faith in terms of left and right.

Adherence to traditional Catholic Christianity means that you cling to a set of eternal revealed truths, revealed primarily in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, who lived 2000 years ago. Some of these truths - notably the teachings on personal morality and sexuality - are thought of as "right wing" in modern terms. Others, such as the teachings on justice, poverty and peace, are usually thought of as "left wing" issues. In political terms, faithful Catholics are therefore a hodge podge of left and right; but our faith is completely coherent on its own terms (which are much more important than any transient and nonsensical political labels).

Here's the thing: the artificial division of politics into left and right dates from the late eighteenth century, and is based on the seating arrangements of deputies in a French political assembly. No-one can really agree what these terms mean, except in the very broadest economic terms. Was Adolf Hitler right-wing? He ran a strict command economy and adopted Keynesian economics. Was Stalin left-wing? He was a nationalist and an imperialist. As for applying politico-economic norms to personal morality, does this make any sense at all?

Traditionalist, catholic, evangelical, orthodox, liberal; these terms are also ultimately unsatisfactory, but at least they give us some useful information about where a person might be coming from.

Anyone who applies modern secular political vocabulary to Christian thought is not a serious thinker.

Who should I vote for?

2006-01-20T08:10:00.000-08:00

With the election of Mr. Cameron and the emergence of the New Tories, I am faced with something of a dilemma: should I vote for the governing party - statist, socially liberal quasi-socialists committed to state monopolies and dismissive of family values? Or should I vote for the opposition - a statist, socially liberal quasi-socialist party committed to state monopolies and dismissive of family values?

I suppose if I really can't decide, I could vote for the third party - a statist, socially liberal quasi-socialist party committed to state monopolies and dismissive of family values.

Don't you just love choice?

More theological meandering

2006-01-20T07:57:00.000-08:00

I have claimed elsewhere that it is rational to be a Christian. Here is a progression of thought that might explain my thinking.

BTW, concerning the evidence for Christianity, some people seem to assume that because they do not believe the evidence, the evidence is unbelievable. Wrong.

For example, I believe that, on the balance of probabilities, Lee Harvey Oswald probably did shoot JFK and was acting alone. However, it is perfectly possible and reasonable for a rational, thinking person to think th exact opposite: that Lee Harvey Oswald was a 'patsy' for a conspiracy. Now one of us is wrong - but that does not mean that either of our beliefs is irrational.

Anyway:

1. I believe in a Creator, based on reason and experience
2. I believe that a Nazarene Jew named Jesus was executed in Jerusalem by the Roman state c.30AD. This is a provable historical fact, in so far as any fact in ancient history is provable.
3. I believe that, following this man’s death, his followers founded a new religion which spread quickly throughout the Roman world. This is attested by many sources.
4. These followers formed a Church. Again, this view has near unimpeachable historical integrity.
5. This Church held certain teachings to be true. In 325 they compiled a library (Latin “biblia”) of texts relating to their faith which they held to be apostolic and therefore divinely inspired and to be in accordance with the faith of their Church. Again, this is actual empirical fact.
6. I accept the teachings of this Church, because they seem to me to be the most convincing explanation of the world as I observe and experience it. They “fit”, if you like, with other facts, notably the Old Testament prophecies and the history of the Jewish people. They challenge me and constantly call me to re-examine my life.
7. I accept that Jesus Christ founded this church – again, because that appears to fit the facts as I know them.
8. Therefore I have another reason for believing that all of its teachings are true.
9. My experiences as a Christian lead me to believe that I am in the true faith.

A big question for some, which is linked to point no. 7 here, is: Can the Gospels be believed?

First, it is interesting how quickly Christian faith spread within the Roman Empire during c.30AD – c.300AD, without forced – or even mass – conversions and military conquest (unlike Islam).

Roman sources (Josephus, Julian the Apostate) cite Jesus as the founder of this religion.

Moreover, many of the Apostles are known to have suffered horrible deaths, which could have been avoided by the simple expedient of recanting their beliefs. But this they refused to do. They were in a position to know whether or not Jesus had claimed to be God and had told them to go out into the world; would they have died for something they knew to be a lie?

The Gospels do not read like a concerted attempt to invent a new religion. They are incomplete and sometimes appear contradictory. Bear in mind that they were partly intended to try and convince contemporaries. The idea that the Gospels are a big con designed to trick people is wide of the mark.

Think…

Would Luke have alluded to the many people who have tried to write things down about Jesus’ life if these people had not existed?

Would John have talked about great numbers of witnesses if these witnesses did not exist?

Would they have talked about public miracles and Jesus’ resurrection if these were easily disprovable and there were not many people who had witnessed such things?

Why would someone who was fabricating a new religion have appealed to the testimony of women for one of the key events? Or said that hundreds of people saw the risen Christ if he could not produce anyone?

The gospels give names of real people in real places, who might still be around in the mid to late first century to confirm or deny the stories.

In the gospels, the disciples are often buffoonish, slow-witted and cowardly, bickering and unreliable. Is this the best way to convince people that your fictional religion is real? Portraying its early adherents as simpletons? (A Machiavellian could say that you might – if you wanted to write another book about how they were transformed by faith, as Luke did with Acts! But that does not explain Matthew, Mark and John.)

There were a considerable number of men who claimed to be the Messiah or similar active in Palestine in this era. Why did only the story of Jesus stand the test of time so well? Because it had the best propagandists? This is hardly convincing.

In one important way, Jesus did not conform to most Jews’ expectations. He was not a military or revolutionary leader. If you were designing a religion to appeal to the oppressed and occupied Jews of the first century AD, expecting a strong leader who would throw off the Roman yoke, then surely you would have included some stirring anti-Roman sentiment – implied, if not explicit. But Jesus does not even offer token or hidden criticism of the Romans as an occupying force. Indeed, he endorses paying taxes to Caesar.

The Bible and authority

2006-01-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

If you're uninterested in Christian theology, this post is likely to be quite dull. Apologies. But I'm interested in it, and it's my blog, after all: -

“Sola scriptura”, in its strict theological sense, is the idea that the Bible contains all that is necessary for salvation. If this were true, it would be great. But there are one or two holes in the “Scripture alone” thesis. For example…

(i) The early Christians managed without the canonical Bible for almost three hundred years

(ii) The NT is full of references to authoritative orally transmitted Christian tradition, and - importantly - there is no scriptural basis for "sola scriptura"! The oft-quoted passage from 2 Timothy 3:16 is about the importance of inspired scripture; it does not say that Scripture is the only source of right doctrine, nor does it support the idea of sola scriptura. Indeed, if we look at the preceding verses we find this: "...stand by the truths you have learned and are assured of. Remember from whom you learned them..." (v14) - a clear reference to oral tradition. Remember too that when Timothy was written, the Bible as we know it did not exist. None of the Gospels had been written. What writings is Paul referring to here? The Jewish Old Testament? His own letters? Now lost writings from the early church?

(iii) Whose scripture? I have never heard any Protestant churchman explain the removal of the Apocrypha at the time of the Reformation.

(iv) There is a logical contradiction at the heart of the idea of “sola scriptura”. The main arguments advanced for the primacy of the Bible in matters of faith and doctrine are themselves based on Biblical texts. So what we are left with is a circular argument: For the Bible to be the final word for Christians, it must be infallible. How do we know it is infallible? Because the Bible itself says so. But surely any external validation of the Bible’s authority in matters of faith and morals (rather than regarding its historical authenticity, which is another topic entirely), undermines the entire premise of “sola scriptura”.
But how do we know that the Bible is infallible when it claims to be infallible? Imagine if I said “I am the cleverest man in the world”. The question immediately arises: “How do you know?” If I was to say “I know I am the cleverest man in the world, because I am cleverer than everyone else” I would be justly ridiculed.
We might say we trust in the Bible because we trust God. But for Evangelicals, the basis for that trust is God’s actions as portrayed in the Bible. And how do we explain our belief in the Bible’s superiority to, say, the Qu’ran, if we accept a holy book on its own terms with no external reference points?
As it happens, I do believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is therefore infallible in all matters of faith and morals. But I believe this for different reasons to many biblical fundamentalists. I believe in the Bible because I believe in the Christian church: the church that first propagated the canonical Bible in 325AD. And I believe in the church because extra-biblical sources (a considerable number of which are from a non-Christian perspective) convince me that she is the Christian church founded by Jesus Christ in Palestine c.30AD. The Bible’s authority does not – can not – stand alone. Instead, such authority flows from the fact that when the Bible was propagated at Nicaea, it was an accurate reflection of the Church’s existing teachings and traditions, and of what was then known and believed about the earthly life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the life of the early Church.

(v) Another serious issue: The Bible is not self-explanatory. Far from it, in fact. The Bible is stuffed with metaphor, allegory, and hidden truth. It does not stand alone as a complete guide to life and belief. It needs interpretation and explanation.

A man reading the Bible on his own could certainly discover the basics. These include:

In the Old Testament –

Creation and the Fall (whether or not one takes the Adam & Eve story literally); the consequent deterioration of God’s relationship with His chosen people Israel and the disintegration of the country under foreign assault. The lonely voices of the Prophets, calling Israel to repentance; the promise of the Messiah.

In the New Testament –

The arrival of the Messiah, Jesus Christ; his miracles and ministry; his passion, death and resurrection; the growth of the early church.

But some parts of the Bible are extremely difficult to understand. Take, for example, the prophecies of Isaiah, or indeed a number of the OT prophets. The letters of St. Paul are often obscure and deal with some complex themes that are near impenetrable for even the educated layman. The epistles of SS. Paul, Peter, James and John discuss the early church and make vague allusions to its problems, personalities and history, but without actually giving us much solid factual information about their belief and practice.

Just a few themes on which the Bible is wide open to interpretation:-

i. Eschatology. What will happen in the “end-times”? What is heaven like? What is hell like?
ii. Salvation and the afterlife. Who will be saved? Who will be damned? Is damnation eternal or will everyone eventually be saved? Can we have assurance of salvation? What is the relationship between grace and works? What happens after we die? Should we pray for/to the dead?
iii. Who exactly was Jesus? How did his divine and human natures interact?
iv. The Trinity – the NT contains relatively few direct references to the Trinity and much of our current doctrine is inferred from various Biblical sources and the traditions of the early church.

Different people will look at the Bible and take away different conclusions. This is fine up to a point.

BUT – Not everyone’s interpretation can be correct, by definition. On each of these issues there is an absolute truth. An authority is needed to teach. The key question is:

· By whose authority?

Two equally intelligent, careful, godly and hard-working men might easily come to diametrically opposed conclusions about a certain Biblical passage. Indeed, they often have. So to which authority should we look for guidance in our interpretation of the Bible?
In the CofE, as has been observed on numerous occasions, every vicar is the Pope. The CofE has seemingly given up trying to assert any kind of universal authority in matters of faith and morals, and is now institutionally relativistic. Thus the day to day teaching of doctrine and behaviour at parish level is now largely dependent on the individual views of the priest and the traditions of the parish. This will of course happen in any large religious organisation – but the CofE’s reluctance to lay down firm doctrine in many matters of faith and morals makes it a more serious problem.
Some Evangelical churches look to Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Wesley etc., or to pastors from certain “sound” backgrounds and colleges – but still I would contend that the whole Evangelical tradition is based on certain readings of the Bible, and that Evangelical theology often comes to the Bible with an agenda. This seems a controversial point, given that the Evangelicals’ USP is absolute adherence to the whole of Scripture as the infallible word of God. However, there are parts of the Bible which seem to support explicitly ideas that Evangelicals deny fervently. Cf. John 6 when Jesus explains the Eucharist in such a way as to make any doctrine of that Sacrament that excludes the possibility of the Real Presence seem absurd, or the woman in Revelation ch.12 “clothed with the sun” (while this woman can not certainly be identified as Mary, it is surely impossible to deny that it could be Mary). When faced with such passages, the previously prosaic and straightforward Evangelical exegesis becomes almost Catholic in its recourse to poetic, metaphorical and allegorical explanations, rather than question the reflexive anti-Marian and anti-Real Presence shibboleths of Evangelicalism.
Liberals operate a “pick your own doctrine” approach to Christian tradition and occasionally subject the Bible to acts of brutal exegetical violence to accommodate contemporary fashions in philosophy and morality (hence the explosion in hyphenated theology). So despite their supposed reluctance to acknowledge authorities, they have their own canon of liberal theologians who help to explain away unpalatable teachings about hell, sexuality etc.
The Free Churches rely on the individual authority of local pastors and preachers. Like Evangelicals and liberals, they are traditionally suspicious of claims to authority, but whether they like it or not, whether they admit it or not, they do have structures of authority within their own congregations or traditions.
Thus everyone, whether they admit it or not, ultimately recognises the need for an interpretative authority independent of the Bible – pastors, theologians of various shades, historical heroes, “sound” colleges etc. There can be very few Christians who genuinely believe in sola scriptura i.e. that every individual Christian should decide all questions of faith and morals for himself based purely on individual study and reading of the Bible. Such an individualistic doctrine would lead to religious anarchy, similar to today’s moral anarchy, which ultimately results from the social earthquakes of the 1960s. The endless divisions of Protestantism are an obvious example of this “authority problem”.So who is best placed to act as this independent interpretative authority? Who has the last word on Christian doctrine and practice? In the maze of today’s conflicting and competing philosophies and moral systems, to whom can we look for guidance?

Pornography and rape

2006-01-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

I have long believed and argued that pornography - in all its forms, including the disgraceful and dangerous misogyny peddled by FHM, Nuts and other so called lads' mags - is a prime cause of sexual violence towards women.

I was therefore particularly interested to read on BBC Online (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4593746.stm) that the two Thai fishermen who have confessed to raping and murdering poor Katherine Horton were allegedly watching pornography before the attack.

A coincidence?

Trilby hats, political correctness and discrimination

2006-01-11T07:19:00.000-08:00

Mr Colin Osbourne, a 64 year old journalist from Hereford, was recently asked to remove his trilby hat in the pub as it was hiding his face from CCTV cameras. Pub chain Greene King apparently have a policy which applies to all hats and hooded tops. The marketing director of Greene King said that "in order to remain consistent and fair we ask all customers to observe this policy."

This set me thinking: is it really "fair" to ask all customers to observe this rule? Let's be brutally honest here: the "no hats" rule is clearly targeted at young men aged 16-35 who come in wearing Burberry baseball caps, get drunk and cause trouble at closing time by being loud, violent and lecherous. But God forbid that you have one rule for one group and one rule for another, even if that is the most sensible course of action. That would be discrimination, and is therefore evil! A few months ago, when there was a proposal to ban drinking on trains, I wondered whether you couldn't just ban certain people from drinking on trains - those who are clearly likely to become violent or abusive - and allow others to drink in peace. But again, this would probably be called discrimination, and would therefore be the wickedest thing in the world.

Once upon a time, before the 1960s, when communal morality meant something more than a bad joke and there were expected standards of behaviour and civility, society was largely self-regulating. Bad behaviour by a drunken ruffian on a train would be met not with a blanket ban on drinking, but some sharp words by the guard, and if that failed, some sharp handling by the guard and the other men in the carriage. The threat of extreme casual violence which deters so many law-abiding people from upholding decent standards was almost non-existent in those repressed and "unliberated" times, when insistence on one's own "rights" and the encouragement of self-indulgence were quite rightly viewed with suspicion.

I have long felt that the word discrimination - like the words "prejudice" and "liberal" - needs reclaiming. I was fascinated to read what Anthony Browne said on the subject of discrimination in his pamphlet on political correctness which caused such a hullaballoo for a few days last week. He made the absolutely correct, and much neglected, distinction between "rational" discrimination i.e. the kind of perfectly reasonable, factually based, logical discrimination without which nothing could function, and "irrational" discrimination, based on dislike or unfair prejudice. He used the example of employing firefighters. You cannot be a firefighter unless you are physically strong; most women are not physically strong enough to be a firefighter.

It is rational discrimination to reject someone from firefighting because they are not strong enough; it is irrational discrimination to reject them simply becasue they are a woman. However, more women are unsuited to be firefighters than men, so women will probably always be under-represented in firefighting. This does not mean that the fire service is institutionally sexist, just that there are relatively few women who can actually do the job.

Browne also applied similar principles to a much more controversial topic: racial profiling in police work. In certain areas of London, the overwhelming majority of street crime is committed by young black men. In counter-terrorism, the suspects are almost certainly going to be young Muslim men, from south Asia, the Middle East, the Maghreb or the Horn of Africa. For the police to focus on these groups in their crime-fighting - especially in stop and search on public transport - is therefore a prime example of "rational" discrimination. If Jews or little old ladies were carrying out suicide bombings on the Tube and plotting to undermine the British state, then I would support targeting little old ladies and Jews. But they are not. That is the reality, and Muslims must accept that, for the foreseeable future, an effective anti-terrorism strategy will inevitably involve increased inconvenience for some innocent members of their community. This is regrettable, but unavoidable.

Yet to say this is met with derision and cries of "racism". Why is this? Surely it is just good sense? As Browne points out, we accept gender and psychological profiling as a routine part of police work. Why not racial profiling? The problem lies in history, of course, with Europe's grim legacy of slavery and racism. But objectively and rationally, racial profiling is a perfectly logical practice.

After all, I am a young male Londoner with red hair and Irish ancestry; thirty years ago, at the height of the IRA attacks on London, it is quite possible that I would have been adversely affected by anti-terrorism policing.

Faith, reason and Professor Dawkins

2006-01-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

Following Richard Dawkins' hysterical polemic against "religion" on Monday night on C4 - which largely consisted of him knocking down straw men, parading his ignorance and being deliberately offensive - Johann Hari of the Independent wrote an article explaining his admiration for the great man. My response is below (the article also contained a couple of annoying and ignorant sideswipes at the Catholic Church for its stance on condoms/AIDS, hence the last two paragraphs):

I have written the following letter to the Indie about your article of 10 January, and I would love to know what you think. Excuse some of the more robust turns of phrase; no personal offence is intended but the article elicited a strong reaction. While I accept that the world would be a much less interesting place if we only discussed the issues that we knew about, I feel that your piece contained several serious misunderstandings and distortions. For example, the "God of the gaps" theory is not a mainstream Christian idea and does not accord with most Christians' understanding of creation and the universe. Most Christians, particularly Catholics, have a much more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the divine role in creation. Read what the Catholic Church says on the issue of science, philosophy and God, particularly in "Faith and Reason", John Paul II's 1998 encyclical. You may be surprised. Like almost all the Christians of my acquaintance (and that includes a number of clergy), I am quite happy to accept that the Earth is 4 billion years old (or whatever the latest estimate is), and that evolution is part of human history, and do not feel that this compromises my (extremely orthodox) Christian faith in any way.

Christian faith is, at the very least, a theory of the world based on an assessment of available evidence. In that respect, is it not similar to the theory of say, the Big Bang? Why is it considered more rational to believe in the Big Bang than in Christianity?

-------------------

Sir, Johann Hari’s contempt for religion clearly knows no bounds (Why Richard Dawkins is heroic, 10/01). If only the same could be said for his understanding. Quite apart from his ridiculous broad-brush treatment of “religion” and his ready resort to caricature and misrepresentation, his use of Bertrand Russell’s Martian teapot analogy is bizarre. I have never heard any rational basis for belief in a teapot orbiting Mars. There are, however, rational, historical and philosophical grounds for belief in Christianity, and the Catholic Church has a long and distinguished tradition of rigorous philosophical inquiry cf. the 1998 papal encyclical ‘Faith and Reason’. One of the reasons for which the Catholic Church is reviled by some Protestant extremists is that it has “embraced evolution”!

Concerning AIDS: The Catholic Church teaches sexual abstinence before marriage, and fidelity during marriage. It hardly needs stating that the rejection of this teaching is the main cause of the spread of sexual disease (please note: I am not saying that AIDS is a “punishment” for this rejection – merely a consequence). And before we hear the cry that the Church is heartless: 25% of all medical care given to AIDS sufferers worldwide is provided by the Catholic Church and Catholic NGOs.

One final point: Swaziland, which is 5% Catholic, has an AIDS incidence of 42.6%. For Botswana, the figures are 4% and 37%, and for South Africa 6% and 22%. In Uganda, by contrast, 43% of the population is Catholic and AIDS incidence is around 4%. Uganda has also made extensive use of abstinence education as a vital part of its anti-AIDS strategy, and is one of the few countries to have significantly reduced AIDS prevalence since the early 1990s (www.avert.org).

Thinking carefully about interfaith dialogue

2006-01-05T05:08:00.000-08:00

Holding your religion to be the one true faith does not, as some would argue, mean that you believe that adherents of other religions, or those of no religion, will be cut off from God for eternity. I believe that salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone – but I also believe (an important point) that this does not automatically limit salvation to Christians. Those who have never had the Word preached to them or those who have lived godly lives (what one might identify as Rahner's "anonymous Christians") can perhaps be saved if, at the moment of their death when Jesus and all his works are made known to them, they accept him. I cannot know this for sure, or how it works on a metaphysical level, but I do believe in a God of compassion and mercy.

Nor does it follow that because I believe that other faiths are ultimately misguided, I deny that God can work through other faiths. He can and does, for His own reasons and purposes. It is not my place to limit Him.

As for that hackneyed old cliché about God being a diamond and everyone seeing different aspects of him – perhaps. But the Christian revelation in and through Christ is distinctive.

Taken in their entirety, the Bible and the Tradition of the Christian churches contain all the truth about God that we need. Although….

a) other religions can inspire us to rediscover hidden gems within our faith
b) other religions can give us fresh perspectives on over-familiar and/or neglected issues within Christianity
c) there is intrinsic and practical value in knowledge of other belief systems

I am yet to be convinced that Christians need to adopt any new doctrines or ideas from any other religion.

Thus the oft-made statement that “Christians have a lot to learn from other religions” is not strictly true. If other religions compel us to re-examine Christian teaching, all well and good, but we must ensure that we hold to Christian teachings, not the banal platitudes so beloved of New Agers and some, though not all, of those involved in the interfaith movement.

There might be a case to be made that it is necessary for the Church to be reminded of things that have been neglected consistently throughout Christian history – Jesus’ teachings on wealth, say – by a deeply ascetic faith such as Buddhism. Yet Christians ought not to be saying “aren’t Buddhist teachings on this issue great?” but rather “how does Buddhist asceticism provoke me, as a Christian, into looking at what exactly Jesus says about the undesirability of great wealth?” There is a subtle difference. It is rediscovery of hidden gems of our own faith, inspired by the example of others, rather than mere acceptance of the dictums of other faiths that sound nice.

People go on about learning from one another, but we rarely hear about specifics rather than generalisations. For example, one of the central tenets of Christian faith is that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ - the Incarnation. Islam says that Jesus was simply a prophet, an ordinary man like Moses or Abraham, and that the Incarnation is a scandalous blasphemy.

One of those claims must be false. They cannot both be true. Even the most dogged "all faiths are pretty much the same, really" theological liberal must see this.

What can Christians find out about God, or Jesus, or rules for living, from other faiths that is not articulated somewhere in the Bible or Christian tradition? Nothing. That is not to say that individuals cannot have deep and rich exchange of ideas – Muslims can help Christians rediscover the value of fasting, for example; but then there are many exhortations to fasting and prayer throughout the Bible and in the lives of the saints. In such cases, it is not the content of the Christian religion that is lacking, but the individual Christian’s awareness of and dedication to the specifics of their faith. They might equally have learnt about the importance of fasting from a nun, or by reading their Bible more carefully.

Ultimately, what is the point of interfaith dialogue? There are, I think, two possible justifications:

i. First, and most important, interfaith dialogue can be a vital tool where there is religious conflict, in e.g. the Holy Land or Northern Ireland
ii. Second, in the academic sphere, where it is useful for understanding history, philosophy and interfaith relations.

Guantanamo Bay

2006-01-05T04:12:00.000-08:00

It has been suggested to me that my last post showed a certain ambiguity about Guantanamo Bay. To clear this up: I think that keeping people in the legal black hole that is Gitmo is morally and politically indefensible, as well as being a PR disaster. It is a stain on America's conscience.

Understanding the terrorist threat

2006-01-05T02:57:00.000-08:00

Islamist terrorism is frequently blamed on the poverty, oppression and disenfranchisement of large parts of the world’s Muslim population, and the way in which the big powers have been instrumental in creating and perpetuating this state of affairs. The argument runs something like this: Islam is a religion of peace, but corrupt and brutal local regimes supported by cynical and exploitative Western ones radicalise oppressed, poor Muslims, and drive them into the hands of ideologues and zealots. This is in many ways a fallacious argument, and not just because of the relatively affluent backgrounds of many suicide bombers. It also makes a fundamental analytical mistake often made by quasi-Marxists, in that it fails to see that pure politico-religious ideology, rather than economics, can explain people's actions.

It erroneously projects the preoccupations of western liberals – non-sustainable tourism in Bali, the occasional excesses of our police and armed forces, guilt about imperialism and our co-operation with brutal regimes – on to an international totalitarian terrorist movement whose objection is not to the failures and deficiencies of our free societies, but to our successes, the things of which we should be most proud: the rule of law, women’s rights, universal suffrage and political and religious freedom. Remember the UN-backed liberation of East Timor from tyranny in 1999? Some Islamist extremists found this so objectionable that it was cited in the justification for subsequent bombings, notably the first Bali attack.

Don’t be fooled. Even if we were to withdraw troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and free every last prisoner in Gitmo, even if we apologise for the Crusades a thousand times, even if we negotiate a two-state solution in Palestine, al-Qaeda and its associated groups will still hate and attack us. The only way to truly satisfy Osama Bin Laden would be to betray every value that civilised people everywhere hold dear, thereby entering a dark era of theocratic fascism.

This line of argument also perpetuates the myth of Muslims as perpetual victims. The unpalatable truth is that in many countries with a Muslim majority or a Muslim-dominated government there is severe and sustained persecution of other religious groups – church-burning, murders, rapes and forced conversions on a large scale. In Nigeria, for example Christians are being systematically persecuted in the Northern provinces, so that sharia law can be imposed. Thousands have died with barely a mention in the western media.

The British Muslim community is always quick to complain about real or imagined infringements on their religious rights. It would be somewhat easier to sympathise with them if they openly and persistently campaigned for Christians in Islamic countries to be granted the freedoms of assembly, expression and worship that Muslims in the western democracies (including Israel) take for granted.

Why give a blog such a pretentious name?

2006-01-04T09:49:00.000-08:00

"Fides et Ratio" (Faith and Reason) was the name of a papal encyclical issued by John Paul II in 1998, concerning the integration of Catholic belief with philosophy. JPII, a talented philosopher in his own right, debunks the notion that rationality and Christianity are opposites.

His intervention was timely. It infuriates me to hear it implied and stated so often that Christianity is somehow unreasonable and superstitious; that science and Christian faith are in opposition; that no intelligent person should believe in God.

This is balderdash of the first order. Properly understood, Christian faith and human reason are two sides of the same coin. Time demands that this post be a short one, but I will return to this subject shortly.