False spring

I’m reading at the moment Herbert McCabe’s The New Creation, a new edition of a book first published in 1964. It triggered memories of that time of heady excitement during and after the Second Vatican Council, when new possibilities seemed to be opening up. It was good to be an undergraduate and a young lecturer in those years and to breathe the fresh air blowing through the dusty corridors of the Roman Catholic Church. When V and I were teaching in Trinity College, Dublin, we were part of a theology discussion group, and Herbert, provocative and larger than life, was a frequent guest speaker, and seemed to embody the new spirit of adventure and fearlessness.

Of course, some Anglicans felt rather superior to all this. Renewed interest in scripture and the Fathers, liturgy in the vernacular, greater lay participation, episcopal collegiality – had Anglicans not had these for centuries? I remember that after a lecture by Hans Küng in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in the mid-1970s, a senior Church of Ireland cleric said that the content was ‘pure Anglicanism’.

If the said cleric were still alive, I imagine he would be strongly the tempted to indulge in Schadenfreude at the spectacle of what has been happening in the Roman Church since the end of Vatican II, especially under the present pontificate. To the considerable distress of many faithful members of that Church, episcopal collegiality has proved stillborn, liturgy which is not at all ‘understanded of the people’ has been rehabilitated, liberal theologians have been silenced (including Herbert himself once) and the reactionaries of the Society of St Pius X, who repudiate everything that Vatican II stood for, have been welcomed back into the fold.

Anglicans, however, should pause before succumbing to any feelings of superiority, for there has been, albeit in a less dramatic way, a comparable process of retrenchment in recent years. In 1992 I happened to be at home enjoying a rare sabbatical and was deeply moved when I heard on the radio the announcement that the C of E General Synod had decided to allow the ordination of women. Despite this, there is still, in some quarters, deeply ingrained prejudice against women in ministry. The leadership of the C of E criticises homophobic attitudes in the developing world, but the churches in the British Isles, to look no further, are still failing to take a decisive stand in favour of real inclusiveness in the area of human sexuality. Add to this the attempted move towards greater centralisation of church authority, with the implication that Anglican provinces which adopt a generous approach towards inclusivity can have penal sanctions applied to them.

A false spring is one which is followed, not by summer, but by a return to winter. I fear we may be contemplating that now.

Happy New Year to all readers, bloggers, lurkers, commenters and general moral supporters. May 2012 be a year of blessing, growth and peace.

Weep for Canada

A large part of my heart is in Canada, which we have been visiting regularly for several years. More than half our living relatives now reside there, including our two beloved grandchildren. Independently of that, I have long respected it as the intelligent, humane and liberal part of North America, characterised by sensible gun control, a high level of social care, and effective action to protect a natural environment of exceptional value.

Not any more. Not only is Canada the only country to have opted out of the agreement on reducing global CO2 emissions reached in Durban (even the biggest polluters have signed up), but the current Conservative government under Stephen Harper seems hell-bent on dismantling everything that Canada stood for, and for what? To assimilate it to the country with which most Canadians have resisted being identified, the US. Gun control is in danger of being weakened, and one of the worst environmental disasters on the globe, the extraction of oil from the tar sands of Alberta, is being ruthlessly pursued. Not only does this project entail the despoliation of nature, but there is an even more heinous aspect: the seemingly total indifference to the effect on the health of those living within the areas being polluted by the extraction activity. The river-systems are being poisoned with heavy metals, producing an epidemic of cancers among the First Nations communities within the area. A recent documentary on Al-Jazeera made me weep tears of impotent rage when I saw the quiet dignity and stoicism with which interviewees told of losing up to eight members of their family to cancer since the oil extraction started.

Such things go on in many different parts of the world, but it is tragic that a country which identifies itself as an advanced liberal democracy should be engaged in what could turn out to be a western version of Bhopal.

Need it have ended like this?

The relief round the globe at the death of Gaddafi is understandable, as is the vindictiveness of those who caught and executed him. But it’s hard to feel much satisfaction at the way things ended, if the reports of his killers kicking and stamping on the corpse are true (BBC Radio 4, ‘The World Tonight’, 20/10/11). Evil tyrant he certainly was, but the bloodied corpose was that of a human being and a child of God/Allah. One would feel more hopeful about the future of Libya if those who overthrew Gaddafi had shown an awareness of this, or had considered putting him on trial.

‘The evil that men do lives after them’. Gaddafi’s legacy is a country with no tradition of the rule of law, and with a tribal political culture. But the governments of the West have been complicit in creating this situation, supporting or at least condoning Gaddafi’s repressive regime when it suited their interests. It’s hard to be confident that they will now offer disinterested support to the creation of a new political order, free from manipulation by international financial institutions.

Seeing the real person

I’ve recentlybeen involved in two funerals of very elderly women members of our congregation. I’ve followed what has been our long-standing practice of putting a photograph of the deceased person on the front of the order of service. But what picture to choose? One showing them as they were in later life, or one taken when they were much younger? In the event, in both cases the respective families provided me with a photo taken when the person concerned was about to be married, in the 1940s.

There’s a tradition in Christian theology (a bad one, in my view) of emphasising the transience of human beauty, achievement and happiness, as if these things were worthless in the face of inevitable death. But is the real person the one we remember at a time of declining health and mental powers, loss of physical attractiveness, tetchiness and dependency? Why am I invariably moved when I see what someone looked like seventy years ago? The whole of life lies before them. The eyes are bright with hope and expectancy. Whatever slings and arrows will afflict them over the decades, at that moment they are poised on the threshold of fulfilment.

I guess I’m moved by sadness at the fading of all things, but also by the thought that what I’m seeing as I look at the picture of vibrant youth, is,  in a miniscule way, an approximation to the way God sees us, an anticipation of the transformed life which is the gift of him who makes all things new.

The global reach of neo-McCarthyism

Those of us old enough to know about the deadly effects on American culture of Senator Joe McCarthy’s paranoia about Reds-under-the-bed will feel a horrid frisson of recognition if they read through this rather long but brilliant piece. Why are liberals so afraid to defend liberal values?

Garret Fitzgerald, 1926-2011

It was strangely fitting in a way that Garret Fitzgerald departed this life during the Queen’s visit to Ireland this week. For this emblematic occasion, characterised as it was by reconciliation, mutual respect and serious reflection on the history of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, was, in a sense, the culmination of a process which he was instrumental in initiating and promoting. From the preparatory work which led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, through the subsequent years of frustration, setbacks and crass errors by governments and security agencies, he held firm to the vision of a pluralist, tolerant Ireland, looking outwards towards Europe, and seeking creative solutions to the conflicts within Northern Ireland.

Some of his enterprises were attended by little success, or none. But his main achievement was to bear witness to a politics which did not need to be a matter of competing negativities, but could be a civilised and intelligent dialogue among thinking people.
Rest in peace, just man. You’ve earned it.

A Lenten Epiphany

A moment of stillness
in a sunlit street.
Houses sculptured in repose,
bright as marble.
A solitary cat
and my steps echoing.
The world reborn
in spring light,
charged with the splendour of God.

Legacy

I have been known to produce some non-sacerdotal utterances every time my car bangs over a crater pothole in the roads in and around Glasgow. But something I read recently suggests that we shouldn’t call them craters potholes. They are ‘legacy infrastructure’. Am I crazy or are the people who invent such euphemisms?

St Patrick

Yesterday I had the privilege of presiding at the Eucharist in the interfaith room of Glasgow University Chaplaincy. I hadn’t prepared a homily, as I wasn’t sure whether they were going to use the Sunday readings or those of the feast. It was St Patrick, so I improvised. Not that there was much to go on, for we know so little about him, and a great deal of  nonsense is written and spoken about him. Leaving aside the non-existent snakes, I have heard sober clergymen of the Church of Ireland claim, without a blush and without being struck dead on the spot, that the C of I was founded by St Patrick!

In any event, something occurred to me which I hadn’t thought before: he went back. He had escaped from the island where he had been enslaved, but went back in answer to the call of God. Surely a model for ministry and mission: especially when, even as I write, I know that Christian ministers are on their way to countries where to be a Christian is a danger to life. Would we go back, if we had escaped from such a situation?