A test of faith

I do not pretend to posses a heroic or saintly Faith but what little I do have has sustained me in my darkest hours. Despite my sinful inclinations, I have tried to make it the basis for my growth as a human being and it has been all things to me: an inspiration, a crutch, a source of strength and of weakness, a friend, a guide, something quite profound, something beautiful. Though I have often experienced a spiritual dryness, rather less dramatic dark nights of the soul, I have never suffered a sustained test of Faith. When I felt furthest away from God, I still knew He was there despite not being able to understand the reason for His distance. The papacy of Pope Francis however has presented me with something new - it has provoked the greatest crisis of Faith I have known.

Mary, Exterminatrix of Heresies

I have written about my misgivings regarding Pope Francis (after an initial period of great hope) in a previous post. [1] Over the last year, those misgivings become serious doubts which have sadly been confirmed by the great debacle of the Synod on "vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world". When the synod was first announced, I believed it would be a great opportunity to re-present the beautiful teaching of the Church on marriage and family life. Catechises in this area is sorely lacking and the consequences are self evident - society is built upon the bedrock of marriage and the family and it is beginning to crumble. I knew that some liberal minded priests, bishops and cardinals together with their lay supporters would attempt to use the synod to vocalise their dissent from Church teaching but nothing could have prepared me for the reality: they have centre stage and an ability to control proceedings. The pearls of church teaching are being substituted for swine fodder.

The synod has been a shambolic farce from the attempt to doctor the Relatio Synodi of the 2014 sessions to the gerrymandering of the committee which will produce the final report of 2015. There has been a complete lack of discipline amongst the attendees who have used the opportunity vent every kind of liberal spleen and hair brained scheme imaginable. It has shown the Church to be divided, disorganised and woefully lacking in understanding with regards to the modus operandi of modern media.

Why has all of this been a challenge to my Faith? One of the most beautiful things to me about Catholic teaching is its paradoxical simplicity and complexity. Each teaching is part of a wider web which gives it structure, meaning and purpose. If you destroy one thread, the whole is compromised. The threads put at risk by the outcome of this synod are the Church's teaching on the Eucharist and Marriage. The marriage union is a mystical symbol of the unity of the Trinity and the Eucharist is body of Christ; as such our very understanding of God is at stake. Even if no changes are promulgated by the synod, it has been made known that Pope Francis intends to commit to the Church to a process of synodisation which will give greater scope to local bishops' conference to determine their own practice. Faith is as Faith does - changing practice changes doctrine. What we are facing is a profoundly un-catholic and un-Catholic Church, no longer One, no longer Holy, no longer Apostolic.

Catholic teaching is presented as universal - it applies to all equally across time and space because its source is God who made the human heart to be restless until it rests in Him. The thought of being part of a Church which changes its teaching to match the prevailing social wind or allows for local variation in its application is anathema to me. Such Faith is pointless as it will necessarily pander to human weakness - its ultimate destination is idolatrous self-worship.

In previous years, safe in the pontificates of Saint Pope John II and Pope Benedict XVI, I always believed that the institution of the Church was a mighty bullwark against those within the the fold who would seek to harm the bride of Christ with misguided teaching. To see them now, emboldened at the centre of the Church, to recognise the head of one's own bishops' conference among them and to believe that the Pope favours a course which will bring ruin to something I have come to love is a terribly sobering experience.

In all this, I can perhaps perceive that I am being taught a lesson. Maybe, I have placed too much trust in the personality of the Pope rather than the promise of Christ. It is after all Christ that I follow, not man. It was Jesus who promised that "the gates of hell should not prevail" against his Church, not Peter. In feeling a little helpless amidst the events at the Vatican, I have turned to prayer and that is no bad thing. For man, a positive outcome may be impossible but not to God. For God, all things are possible.

Please pray for all the fathers of the synod, especially for Pope Francis. Pray also for the Church that it may be truly One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.

St Michael: Pray for us.

Holy Mary, Exterminatrix of Heresies. Pray for us.

[1] http://lucascambrensis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-francis-effect.html
 

 

In support of our priests, our families, and our Church

You may have seen the recent letter from more than 450 priests in support of the Church’s teaching on marriage.

I would like to invite you to sign the letter below, to be sent to the press in support of them, and to encourage others to sign it.

To sign, please email your name and diocese to one of the coordinators:

Mark Lambert (mark@landbtechnical.com)
Andrew Plasom-Scott (andrewplasom_scott@me.com)

The Letter:

Dear Sir, We, the undersigned, wish to endorse and support the letter signed by over 450 priests in the recent edition of the Catholic Herald, http://bit.ly/19kuBkl. As laity, we all know from our own family experiences, or those of our friends and neighbours, the harrowing trauma of divorce and separation, and we sympathise with all those in such situations.

It is precisely for that reason that we believe that the Church must continue to proclaim the truth about marriage, given us by Christ in the Gospels, with clarity and charity in a world that struggles to understand it.

For the sake of those in irregular unions, for the sake of those abandoned and living in accordance with the teachings of the Church, and above all for the sake of the next generation, it is essential that the Church continues to make it quite clear that sacramental marriage is indissoluble until death.

We pray, and expect, that our hierarchy will represent us, and the Church’s unwavering teaching, at the Synod this autumn.

Yours faithfully,

On Graduality and the Synod

Today is the fourth day of the extraordinary general session of the Synod of Bishops on pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelisation and the buzz word doing the rounds in the liberal press is "graduality".

Graduality is, according to the Catholic Herald, "a way of thinking about morality that allows for human imperfection without compromising ideals" [1], recognising that individuals are unlikely to make the immediate jump from antipathy or agnosticism to acceptance of a moral truth. On the outset, this makes sense; given the acceptance, prevalence and promotion of contraception in western society, it is unlikely that an individual confronted by Catholic teaching on the subject is going to immediately put it into practice. A number of other related concepts are usually explored (e.g the effects of contraception on health) before the plunge is taken into the waters of the Tiber.

The prevalence of graduality in our moral development has been recogised by many a thinker, including Pope Benedict XVI. In his oft misquoted comments on male prostitutes, he stated that using a condom to reduce the risk of HIV infection "can be a first step in the direction of moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility". [2]

Here's the thing however: graduality may make a lot of sense in academic learning (a student can't possibly go from knowing nothing about the basic laws of physics to understanding the theory of relativity) but if it is taken as a starting point for teaching a moral truth, it will eventually undermine it because it gravitates towards relativism. No-one is hurt by only being taught complex scientific laws a step at a time, even if for the sake of simplification at a particular period, appropriate to one's age or comprehension, one is taught something which isn't entirely accurate (I remember being told that the shell particle theory we were taught at GCSE was factually incorrect by smug A-level students for example). By contrast however, one can be hurt if one is taught incomplete or false moral principles because the consequence of that is sin. Furthermore, if the behaviour becomes entrenched or habitual as we call it, the ultimate moral endpoint may be lost forever. Incomplete moral principles are also apt to be misunderstood or wantonly abused - this can be seen in the Guardian's report on Pope Benedict's comments regarding a male prostitute's use of a condom which held the headline "Pope Benedict says that condoms can be used to stop the spread of HIV"; he said nothing of the sort! Graduality also appeals to our wounded nature - why strive for moral perfection when one can appeal to a more relativistic measure of our moral progress?

So, graduality is useful to explain how a moral sense might awaken and can be used as a guide for compassion but as a starting point for teaching with authority, it is bankrupt.

[1] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2014/10/08/family-synod-participants-emphasise-importance-of-graduality-in-discussion-of-moral-issues/

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/21/pope-benedict-condoms-hiv-infection