Not Something in Conscience I Recognise as Marriage

I watched some of the debate yesterday, I was quite impressed by a few of the Christian MPs contributions, I was a little shocked by most of the Catholics who seemed to side with the Redefiners. I felt quite sympathetic towards all those homosexual MPs who wanted to get married, the Redefiners seemed to argue for the most part from touchy feeliness.
I have no problem with the Cranmerian Book of Common Prayer definition of Marriage, with its presumption that it was between a man and woman, which until yesterday was what formed the basis of Marriage in English Law

• First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.
• Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body. 
• Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

Yesterday that was swept aside and has been replaced by something vague and ill defined, described as "loving committment" between two people.
Whatever most of the MPs in yesterday's debate were speaking about and what won the debate is something quite contrary to what the Catholic Church and the Christian tradition understands by "Marriage".

I am with Fr Tim, lets get out of that thing which the State now defines as "Marriage", the State can do whatever it likes but it is not something I in conscience recognise as Marriage and I want nothing to do with this thing that is now touted as "Marriage". It is contrary to God, to the Naural Law and my conscience, I want a divorce!

Congratulations to Fr Richard Duncan Cong. Orat.

Haha! is that who I think it is serving Fr Richard Duncan's Mass at the London Oratory?
My congratulations to Fr Richard on his ordination on Friday which seems to have been a truly splendid affair at Birmingham Oratory.
I have a soft spot for Birmingham Oratory, though I haven't yet got myself on a train to go there, my daily prayer is for an increase in vocations there.

Virgin and Martyr

On the feast of St Agatha Holy Church celebrates the triumph of Christ centred chastity. In the heat of the current battle it is easy to forget the Church is blind to people sexual orientation, it sees all humanity, and human action, including especially our sexuality, as flawed and damaged and yet, in Christ, all is redeemable.

These youthful martyrs like Agatha remind us that there was a time when the Church to exhort chastity in a world as sexualised as our own. The various accounts of these early virgin martyrs torture and sufferings are sexual, Agatha had her breasts cut off, Agnes was exposed in a brothel, their martyrdoms were focused on their sexuality. Even if we attempt to strip away later exaggeration of their various passion narratives behind everything seems to be an attack on their virginity, and the early Church exalted their chastity and virginity.

20th Century Catholicism seems deeply uncomfortable with speaking about sex ans sexuality, in England and Wales, though the Church is often caricatured as being sex obsessed, the truth is that in many parishes it is something that is never ever mentioned. It is significant that many priests, and not a few bishops, have been silent on the gay "marriage" issue.

We can expect no action to be taken against politicians who publicly proclaim their Catholicism and yet  break communion with the Magisterium. Even after making a very public stance against Catholic teaching it seems very unlikely prominent Catholics will be moved to the Archbishop of Westminster's "garden parties only" list. Indeed the legendary Tina Beattie, professor of Catholic Studies at Roehampton University, theological advisor to Cafod, trustee of The Tablet, the international Catholic weekly, the welcomed speaker at the Westmiinster diocesan justice and Peace events, is in the Guardian today offering her own Magisterial views.

There is a serious danger of us as Catholics, not simply being seen but seeing ourselves, in opposition to what has become the status quo. Our faith is not merely about condemning but offering a new vision of a Kingdom of God. Condemnation of what is bad is only the first step, it is the message of John the Baptist. Jesus not merely invites us to turn away from something but to turn to something.

The Christian vision of sex and sexuality, of marriage and the family, of chastity, of brotherly (and sisterly) love, we have more to say than just a negation of the current world view. Even so our condemnation of the view of what is being put forward in today's debate is just the tip of something that should be much deeper, something which goes to the very heart of the Gospel and our view of mankind.

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind", is at the very heart of all that we are. Its implications are that our very beings are consumed by God, this is surely why masturbation and pornography are highly problematic and why in our Catholic tradition we have exalted consecrated chastity.

The sacrifice of Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia and countless others, not just women, comes from a radical attachment to Jesus Christ and world view in contradistinction to "the world".

St Agnes pray for us
Holy Virgin Martyrs pray fir us

Redefinition and Equality

It is worth reading Liam Fox's letter about the redefinition of marriage over on Cranmer's blog. What Fox seems to be saying is that for the sake of a small minority a serious lack of equality is being introduced into British law.
I wonder if we should in the interest of equality introduce quotas to ensure that such organs as the BBC, Parliament etc are indeed "equal".

Cameron after being forced to confront the prospect of rebellion may be tempted to a U-turn but that appears impossible. What he has already done is redefine the meaning of "homophobia", which now is applied to anyone who is against Cameron's redefinition. I am sure that very few MPs will, despite their personal convictions, want such a vote losing accolade.

The word "homophobic" until recently was rightly applied to instances of violence or at least active discrimination, what is new is it is now applied to passive opposition and not simply to homosexual people but to homosexual sexual activity. I don't what kind of detail Parliament is going to go into, I suspect most MPs would rather not go into the details of people's sexual activities, though doing so might bring with it a degree of legal clarity. Sexual taboos probably mean the 90-95% of citizens who are heterosexual never actually think about what happens in private with less than 5-10% of a sexual minority. Redefining "homophobia" means that those who have a revulsion of homosexual activity are actually judged "homophobes".

What seems to be part of LGBT (though other letters are often now added to be more inclusive and equal) agenda seems to be to normalise, remove the taboos, about such activity. There is a rather shocking piece of Terrence Higgins Trust material here, be warned, it is about anal sex, it revolts me and therefore presumably just by that fact makes me and anyone with a similar reaction a homophobe. The worrying thing is that many, if not most people's reaction to this will be "homophobic", so Fox is right this is indeed socially divisive. If a child comes home with a copy this THT booklet, I suspect many parents, who previously saw themselves as liberal and fair minded, will identify themselves as "homophobes" and begin to ask their own questions about whether they are treated "equally".

Defining oneself by what used to happen in the privacy of ones home, or bedroom, is indeed worrying and deeply damaging, perhaps we are are safer ground just simply accepting people as people each with their own set of quirks and idiosyncrasies rather than defining them by their quirks and idiosyncrasie.

A need for Jesus

Save us, O Lord our God

These are words that should begin this weekend's Masses, we Catholics are not that good at speaking about the Lord as Saviour.  Being English probably makes us more reticent.

It demands not only admitting we were lost but also that we have a need for the Lord, a continuing need. Without him we are nothing. "What good would life have been to us had Christ not come as great Redeemer".

I am pretty useless at bringing back the lapsed, it probably isn't
my fault, to give up the faith has as its bottom of the line saying Jesus and his Church have nothing to offer me and I do not need him. It is probably easier to convert an atheist than to restore to full communion someone who has known God and rejected him, thankfully God himself doesn't want to lose anyone and so some do return.

Reading bits and pieces about Cardinal Mahoney and his successor distancing of himself from him after revelations of a massive cover-up of sexual abuse, though I feel sorry for Mahoney, I am rather glad that the age of men like him is passing. Apart from the cover-up, Mahoney created a Church following his own lights and insights. As an outside observer it seems  as if in Los Angeles one was called, in some sense, to believe in Mahoney rather than Christ. He was nicknamed, "the Pharoah", and the notorious annual Religious Education Conferences he fronted seemed to celebrate him and his vision rather than Christ. For me, he summed up the worst 'Americanism' and Modernism, ultimately it seemed to be about pride.

Pride pushes out our need for Christ, effective evangelism must have something to do with humility and speaking about our own personal need for Christ. In the same way growth in faith only comes through understanding our deep need for Christ. In today's gospel his fellow citizens wanted to destroy Jesus because they saw no need for him.

As Christians we need to ask if we ourselves actually do we need him. Regular Confession teaches us humility and to recognise our need for him.

Cameron has a mandate NOT to redefine marriage

Cameron has a mandate NOT to redefine marriage, well that is why I voted for him. He also promised to strengthen marriage by tax concessions.


Thanks to C4M for reminding us

As the big vote in the House of Commons approaches (Tue. 5 Feb), it’s easy to forget that on 3 May 2010 – just three days before the last general election – David Cameron said on TV that he was “not planning” to change the definition of marriage. He was being interviewed by Adam Boulton on Sky News, and was asked a direct question about whether he would introduce gay marriage. He said: “I am not planning that.” Gay marriage campaigners were furious, as this article shows. It is outrageous that Mr Cameron went on TV just three days before a general election and told voters one thing, but did the exact opposite once inside Downing Street. His manifesto at the election was silent, so he has no mandate to redefine marriage. His only mandate is to defend traditional marriage. Please read our latest briefing on the issue, and please share it with all your family and friends.

Mengele was a scientist

Reading about the Cambridge Union debate last night, "Dawkins has no place in the 21st Century", I was amused by the thought that the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has taken the title Lord Williams of Oystermouth, I don't know if it it is a glancing comparison to St John Chrysostom, meaning Golden mouthed, so Rowan Ostreostom, has wormed its way into my brain.

But enough frivolity; Dawkins appeared defending himself in the debate and lost.

For Dawkins it is is either science or religion, he can't deal with both, this is not the position any religious person ever adopts. It is worth considering what the great scientists of the past would have been like without faith, is it conceivable to think of Copernicas or Galileo without the Catholic faith, even Newton with his odd breed of Anglicanism and what about Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaître, wasn't their faith behind their science?

The more I read about Dawkins, the more I feel he is not a very nice man, it is because hatred of religion seems to fuel him and most religions seem to teach hatred diminishes a man and is an indulgence to be overcome.

Sciences in the hands of a man who hates is very dangerous. I am sure who ever first dis covered how to make fire would, if he was approaching it scientifically, have used it to burn out his neighbour, the man who discovered flint knapping would have used a nice sharp spear to kill an enemy. As a Jewish friend says, "Dr Josef Mengele was a scientist". "

Science in the hands of scientists is truly dangerous, it has given us the Atom Bomb, better armaments, better torture methods. Scientific theories have justified slavery, racism, lobotomies, chemical castration of homosexuals, selective abortion of female foetuses. Weird scientific theories have moved in out of fashion, Mussolini's fascism was supported by scientists in the futurist movement. Hitler's racism, like apartheid South Africa was backed up by claims of scientific theory. The devilish Communist regimes claimed to be "scientific" and ripped the soul out of their people.

Dawkins arguments against religion seem essentially to be that religion claims to be right; the lived experience of most religious people is that it causes them to wonder and to ask about the ethics of an action. For someone with a religious sense, "God" is the unknown, the factor "X". In Aquinas' "Five Ways", he ends up by saying at the end of each  by saying this is what we call God. It is not God but what we call God, God is the great unknown. In fact to say there is no God, seems to demand as much faith as to to say there is God. For believers religion acts as the grit in the oyster.

Expecting science to be able to give all the answers is so, err..., unscientific.

A few months ago, when Dawkins had said we "Catholics are vile" one of my parishioners suggested a campaign, of sending sweets to Dawkins, with a tag "from a vile Catholic", I don't think it will take off, would it?
If you want to try his address is New College, Holywell Street, Oxford OX1 3BN