Catholic Voices Training Day

On Saturday the Oxford community were joined by the Novices from Cambridge for a "Catholic Voices" media training day. The event was a great success! Valuable skills of effective communication were enhanced through the insights and practical exercises offered to us by the founders of Catholic Voices, Austen Ivereigh and Jack Valero. 

Catholic Voices started in the UK to improve the Church's representation in the media through having informed, articulate, mainly young, lay Catholics who are "media-friendly, studio-ready and ego-free". Since its inception, Catholic Voices have made over 550 media appearances in the UK, and the model has taken root in a dozen other countries in Europe, the Americas and Australia.

Through presentations, discussions, and role-plays, we tackled hot-button issues by using a technique of identifying the "frame" (or angle of the story), recognising and affirming the positive value behind the frame, and then reframing the debate in a positive and persuasive manner to shed light on the Church's perspective. The training was very well-received, and we are most grateful to Isabel Errington, Jack, and Austen (who also kindly gave each of us a copy of his invaluable book) for sharing their expertise! Please join us in keeping the excellent work of Catholic Voices in your prayers.

Oxford Brothers and Novices at the Catholic Voices Media Training day with Austen Ivereigh and Jack Valero

Dominican Study Week: 7th-11th July 2014, Buckfast Abbey

Credo exhibition in Paderborn

Credo: The Christianisation of Medieval Europe

Although he rejected worldly power (Jn 18:36), Christ is the true King over all the nations (cf. Rom 15:12), the King of Kings (Rev. 17:14). On this great feast of Christ the King, it seems relevant to reflect on the way in which Christianity has spread to incorporate the different cultures of the nations. Here is one part of the story, the evangelisation of Europe, as told in a remarkable exhibition earlier this year: Credo - The Christianisation of Medieval Europe.

Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe. This famous statement by Hilaire Belloc is wrong in many ways – if the Faith is Catholic, how can it be purely European? – but it touches upon a fundamental historical fact. The Catholic faith is built upon a series of extraordinary events on the edges of Europe that subsequently, and apparently against all odds, dominated the Roman Empire and built an entire civilisation, what we call 'Christendom', on European soil. How this remarkable story unfolded was the subject of a major exhibition in Paderborn earlier this year, entitled Credo: The Christianisation of Medieval Europe.

Paderborn was an apposite location. This has long been a strongly Catholic city in North Rhine-Westphalia; it was an Imperial city under Charlemagne, and refuge for Pope Leo III; and in recent years has mounted two other great medieval exhibitions ('Charlemagne 799', and 'Canossa 1077'). I travelled from Oxford to see this Credo exhibition (and visit family in the area), having been alerted by an article in the Tablet. The exhibition was impressive for its impressive variety of treasures and artefacts, from the Mediterranean to Greenland, over more than a millennium of fascinating history. The depth of coverage was superb. But, above all, the exhibition told a compelling story.

That story began with the inculturation of Christianity from its very beginnings. In Part 1: Lux Mundi, visitors were treated to objects, both ordinary and precious, that revealed a two-way process of adaptation. Christianity had to adopt and appropriate pagan symbols and practices, but in turn transformed them in radical ways and left a new mark on the wider culture. Pagan notions of the vita felix (happy life), pastoral scenes of good shepherding, and so on, were quickly seen in a newly Christian light. And yet Christianity was unusual, almost unique, in rejecting the polytheistic cults of the  Roman Empire. A beautiful papyrus of Romans 8:27-35, dating from the 2nd century(!), was one of the first marvels to greet us, testifying to the great faith of the early Christians in the face of persecution: If God is for us, who can be against us?

2nd-century papyrus of Romans 8

Three centuries later, however, Christianity had become tolerated and promoted after Constantine's conversion in 312. After his vision of the Christian symbol 'Chi-Rho' (short for 'Christ') and subsequent victory at the Milvian bridge, Christianity came fully out of the shadows. But only with the edict Cunctos Populos, issued by the Three Emperors in 380, did it become the official state religion. The great Ecumenical Councils (on which, see our Godzdogz series Councils of Faith) hammered out the doctrinal structure of Trinitarian faith and a great outpouring of theological and spiritual works came from the mouths and quills of the ancient Church Fathers. The exhibition included the oldest Latin manuscript of the Bible (5th century) and early copies of St Jerome and St Augustine. These classical scholars and saints witnessed the terrible decline of the Roman Empire and looked instead to the Catholic Church to preserve all that was best in it. Rome was 'the brightest light in the world'; and 'if Rome perishes', asked Jerome, 'what is safe?'

This much is incontrovertible, that the Church preserved much of the ancient learning in its monasteries from the barbarian onslaught. Through the Church, this civilisation of ideas permeated to the farthest corners of the Empire: I saw one copy of Pliny's Natural History from Northumbria. After Augustine's mission to England, familiar to a man of Kent like me, there followed the less well-known story of Canterbury's blossoming into a major centre of manuscript illumination. One magnificent specimen on show was the Codex Aureus ('golden book') with its alternately purple-dyed pages.

The Codex Aureus of Canterbury

Britain, indeed, saw a marked inculturation that showed great ingenuity in the adaptation of pagan customs to Christian belief. Triangular plaques typical of pagan votive offerings would be inscribed with Christian emblems, as found among the Water Newton treasure. Among the priceless objects of this hoard, I saw what are believed to be the oldest liturgical silver vessels in the Christian world. And in the royal tomb at Prittlewell, discovered only in 2003, gold crosses had been placed over the dead man's eyes, where pagans would have put coins. As far as I could see, the exhibition did not mention the Green Man motif, which is so typical of Christian inculturation in pagan Britain. But it did have an intriguing gold medallion in Animal Style II, from 7th century France, showing the Cross and the Alpha/Omega signs embedded in an obviously pagan aesthetic.

The gold medallion of Limons

After the collapse of Rome, a most remarkable thing happened. The faith that had spread to the edges of civilised Europe now began to trickle back, through the missions of zealous Irish and British monks. The Northumbrian St. Willibrord became the 'apostle to the Frisians' (i.e. the Netherlands) and founded Echternach Abbey (Luxembourg) in the 8th century. This roaming archbishop got much use out of his exquisitely carved portable altar, which was on display. A similar relic, the 'Cadmug Gospel' in Irish minuscule lettering, belonged to St Boniface on his missions to the German peoples. St Columbanus the Younger took twelve companions from Ireland and converted the Frankish nobility, founding many monasteries along the way, including Bobbio as far south as Italy. St Ansgar, born in northern France, became the 'apostle to the North' after being sent by the Emperor Louis the Pious to evangelise Scandinavia; he baptised the Danish king Harald Klak in 826, two centuries before the saint-king, Olaf Haraldsson, would abandon his career as a Viking raider and enlist English clergy to bring Christianity to the remote reaches of Norway.

King Gunnar in the snake-pit

Throughout this period, Christianity learned to adopt the semiotic references of the pagan world. In Scandinavia, the old runes were very common in Christian art. But it was also the symbolic content that penetrated the culture. These pagan appropriations are not entirely coherent and harmonious. To take one example, a rectangular baptismal font (Sweden, c.1100 AD) portrays the semi-mythical king Gunnar in the snake pit as a sort of holy protomartyr; but in Norway, Sigurd the Dragon-slayer is shown on a 12th-century church portal as a prefiguration of Christ. Unfortunately, this juxtaposition is a little awkward if the Nibelungenlied is anything to go by, in which Gunnar (Gunther) conspires in Sigurd's (Siegfried's) murder!

The evangelisation of Europe was not always an easy or happy process. Part 2 of Credo, entitled In Hoc Signo, besides describing the Eastern missions of Saints Cyril and Methodius and showcasing the riches of Byzantium, also focused on the more political aspects of Christianisation. Emperor Charlemagne forced the Saxons to the font, offering them 'baptism or death'. The missions to Scandinavia coincided with the formation of its kingdoms and the Church's fortunes often oscillated according to the whims of kings. Prophetic voices abounded, of course, and I was impressed with Alcuin of York's bold objection to Charlemagne that Christians should be 'preachers, not plunderers'.

Europe did adopt the Faith, and the Faith owes much to its European cradle. But the story does not end there. Sadly, more plundering was to follow with the colonisations of the New World; and again there were protests from prophetic preachers, such as Bartolomeo de las Casas OP. In the present day, the Church has reached the ends of the earth and continues to incorporate and enrich the cultures of the nations. The kingdom of God may not be of this world, but the gospel of Christ is certainly for this world. In our confused and conflict-ridden situations, it may be hard to believe in the kingship of Christ. But the faith of the missionaries that was made so tangible by this Credo exhibition is still alive and flourishing, and it calls us to be new bearers of light to the dark and barbarous corners of the world – including Oxford.

Christ the King

Aquinas Lecture, 2013: Matthew Levering - 'Aquinas & the Gospel'

On 30th January Blackfriars held its annual Aquinas Lecture. This year the speaker was Matthew Levering, Professor of Religious Studies at Dayton University, USA. He spoke to a packed hall on the subject of ‘Aquinas and the Gospel’, specifically ‘The Pauline Gospel According to Aquinas’. His major source was the commentary by St Thomas on the letter to the Romans, and he focused on the detailed commentary made by Aquinas on the first three verses of the letter.

Professor Levering set out to explore what was Aquinas’s understanding of the Gospel. He explained that for Aquinas it was good news because it announced the fundamental human good, which is our union with God. More specifically the theme of unity is three-fold: (1) the union of God and man in Jesus; (2) our union with God now; (3) the fulfilment of this union in Heaven and at the end of time. The content of the gospel is Jesus Christ, the union of his full divinity and full humanity being stressed by both Aquinas and Levering. The Gospel comes from God and is first preached by God, in the person of Jesus. While there is a certain newness in the New Testament the gospel also draws its credibility from it fulfilling the Old Testament Scriptures and promises, seen as given through the prophets. As such the prophets had the quality of antiquity (since they spoke long before Jesus came), of reliability (as God inspired them to speak the truth) and of dignity (as God chose and raised them up as holy mediators of grace).

Professor Levering drew out the rich use that Aquinas made of other scriptural texts in his commentary, using the Gospel of John to cast light on Paul’s ideas, and using a variety of Old Testament texts, especially Isaiah, to bring out the depth of the meaning in both the thought of Paul and to express his own ideas.

Discussion followed including a discussion of the extent to which Aquinas’s appeal to antiquity had similarities with modern concerns of historical consciousness, and the extent to which proclaiming the Gospel brings about faith in a way akin to, or different form the way in which celebration of the sacraments brings about sanctification. The Gospel is powerful and listening to it and pondering it can be a huge grace, if done with faith.

After drinks for all our guests, and Evening Prayer, Professor Levering joined the community for supper. He stayed on to give the Aquinas Seminar the next day ‘Milbank and Aquinas on Nature and Grace’. It was all a very enriching experience.

What I did in the summer - Visit to Cairo

From the 15^th of July to the 17^th of August I visited the IDEO (the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies: www.ideo-cairo.org) in Cairo. Apart from holidays in the place of the birth of History, the other reason for my visit was to understand the life of Christian missions in majority Muslim countries. In the beginning I wanted to go to Iraq (I love the unequaled poetry and wisdom of Iraq) but the situation there and the fact that our Dominican houses have been living under constant threats dampened my enthusiasm a little bit.

From right to left: Frs René-Vincent, Jean, Adrien and Gustave

For the whole month, during a heat wave (38°C to 42°C), I managed to visit many Christian and Muslim quarters of Cairo, and I also visited some areas outside Cairo. I visited the Islamic Cairo (a couple of kilometres from the IDEO), entered beautiful mosques that reflect the genius of the Egyptian building skills in the Middle Ages, saw the remarkable and vast Coptic churches of Moqattamcarved in the rock (some beneath others), went to the pyramids, the Sphinx and the Solar Boat at Giza, visited some of the world’s most renowned museums (The Egyptian Museum, the Museum of Islamic Art and the Coptic Museum), entered overwhelming mausoleums and madrassas of the Fatimid period and went to the four monasteries of Wadi El-Natrun in the desert.

Gustave near Bab El-Nasr in the Islamic Cairo

Posing with a guide with his camel

One of the four monastries of Wadi El-Natrun

One of the churches of Moqattam

After spending days visiting highly different suburbs of Cairo, I came to realise that life there is more complex than I imagined, and so are people’s mindsets. I got different ideas of Cairo, moving from the postmodern houses of Smart Village to the City of the Dead (where families actually live in tombs), from the quiet and hyper clean streets of Az-zamalek to the noisy Sharia Ramsi’s or Sharia El Ghaysh, from the Sushi restaurants of El Ma’adi to the world’s largest recycling hub Moqattam (the ‘garbage city’), from the enormous futuristic shopping mall of Sun City to the more traditional (and more attractive) market of Khan Al Khalilli.

Aerial view of Moqattam, the 'garbage city'

Sun City from above

Children playing in the City of the Dead

Smart Village in Cairo

After ten formal interviews and countless long chats with people, Muslims and Christians, I came to understand that religious tensions in Egypt usually arise when an Imam speaks negatively of Christians or a Christian priest tries to undermine Islam. The killings generally start after a small incident: when I was there, an entire community started a fight in Dahshur because a Christian tailor had burnt a shirt belonging to a Muslim client while trying to iron it. As I visited Cairo during the month of Ramadan, I witnessed the highest level of Islamic spirituality, devotion and charitable works. Many times I was invited to the Iftar (the meal taken every evening by Muslims at sunset during the fasting of the month of Ramadan), sometimes by Muslims and many times by Christian friends who grew up in that tradition. I also spent hours reading books from the IDEO’s rich library, especially on the origins of the Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Inside the IDEO's library

Iftar with Christian friends and an Egyptian Dominican friar in Cairo

Inside the Dominican Chapel in Cairo

As I cannot yet make public the findings of my research, that being part of an academic work in progress, I only can say that I learnt that our ways to relate to our neighbours from a different religious tradition, depend much on how and where we grew up, but also on how we choose to live with them. I am currently learning Arabic, hoping to re-visit Cairo sometime in the near future and one day to see the mythical Baghdad.

Sacramentals

In our series so far, we have seen how the Sacraments give shape to our Christian lives, both as individuals and as the Church, the Body of Christ, by bestowing upon us God's grace, which enables us to live that life.

Is it only in the Sacraments, though, that we ritually express that Christian life? If that were the case, where, for example, would the religious life fit in? There are many other sacred signs and actions which witness in various aspects of our lives and of our environment to a Christian dimension, from grace before meals to solemn religious vows, and all these the Church calls 'sacramentals'.

What is it that distinguishes these sacramentals from Sacraments, though? Most significantly, from a theological point of view, Sacraments confer the grace they signify in a way sacramentals do not. The celebration of the Sacraments, instituted by Christ, is itself the means by which God bestows his gift of grace upon those who receive them; the celebration of the sacramentals, instituted by the Church, is a sign not of God's gift directly, but of the Church's prayer for it.

Another obvious difference is that sacramentals are conferred on things and places as well as people: though the Sacraments make use of material signs, the bread and wine do not receive the Eucharistic Sacrament in the way that, say, a bell receives a blessing.

What is the purpose of sacramentals, then, if not to be effective signs of God's grace like the Sacraments? I suppose we could say the sacramentals 'flesh out' the symbolic expression of our Christian lives, built on the framework of the Sacraments. They dispose us to receive the sacraments and help us to co-operate with the grace we have received, by reminding us that our life is a sacrifice of praise: thus, we bless our meals by saying grace, and we may ask a priest to bless our house or our car. We sign ourselves with the sign of the Cross as a reminder of Christ's death, and with holy water as a reminder of our Baptism. We bless the vestments and vessels we use in church, dedicating them to God as a sign of the reverence we have the worship in which we use them. In some cases these sacramentals are conferred on people, and give them a particular role in the life of the Church, from abbots and abbesses to readers and catechists.

In all of these cases, though, the sacramentals serve as means offered to us by the Church to draw us closer to God in different ways, and thus to live more fully and more closely the life begun in Baptism.

Aquinas Institute/Templeton Lectures – Nicholas Lombardo OP

Last week the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars, supported by the Templeton Foundation, was privileged to host two open lectures by Dr Nicholas Lombardo OP, professor at the Catholic University of America.

Ransom, Redemption, and the Sign of Jonah: The Crucifixion in Patristic Theology (1 May) was a nuanced exposition of the idea of the 'Devil's Ransom'. Although the dominant account of the Crucifixion for the first millennium of Christian theology, this view has been out of favour since St Anselm's critique in Cur Deus Homo? Fr Lombardo, however, contends that the Patristic theory of the Devil's Ransom had been misinterpreted, often through a failure to see the Crucifixion in the light of the Resurrection. Relating it to the earlier image of the Sign of Jonah (who is a type of Christ), he argued that the theory can be adequately rescued, contrary to Anselm and later theologians, in a way that safeguards and even amplifies the sense of God's goodness and unity.

This inadequate précis does not do justice to the richness of detail or clarity of argument in the lecture; hopefully the following account of the Fr Lombardo's first lecture will bring a little more satisfaction to our Godzdogz readers' desire for truth.

Boredom and its Discontents: Making Sense of a Modern Phenomenon with Aquinas' Theory of the Emotions (30 April)

Beginning with the emergence of 'boredom' as a theme in modern literature, notably in Huysmans' À rebours (1884), the seminal text for the Decadent movement, Fr Lombardo observed that we often talk about boredom without knowing either its root causes or its proper cure. Boredom afflicts only humans (other animals just go to sleep), but not as a positive emotional distress: rather, as an "experience without qualities" (Elizabeth Goodstein) or "the desire for desires" (Tolstoy). We are bored when our desire cannot find anything on which to rest. Our will restlessly strives after God-knows-what – and fails to desire anything at all. No wonder many people rush to seek escapist pleasures, such as high-risk gambling, violence, casual sex, and even pain. Was Schopenhauer right to think that, since nothing can ever totally fulfil our desires, we are doomed to swing between boredom and dissatisfaction? Is perpetual entertainment our only hope?

Aquinas makes a similar diagnosis, explained Fr Lombardo, but comes to a radically different solution. Aquinas states that the will is inexhaustibly oriented towards the good, bringing joy if satisfied or desire if not. Boredom is when unsatisfied desire becomes restless. In his 'Treatise on the Passions' (ST I-II, qq. 22-48), completed in 1271, St Thomas distinguishes passions (which we share with other animals) from intellectual affections (our deepest joys and sorrows, which are mental but flow over into the body). Among the latter, acedia (sloth, accidie) is a kind of sadness, about God or spiritual goods; it is a vice opposed to charity and the joy that flows from it. It is a cognitive, not just affective, failure to appreciate God and spiritual goods. And this is what causes boredom (though Aquinas does not have an exact term for this).

Now we can see that there is a possible remedy, which Fr Lombardo called Aquinas' "counterintuitive cure": boredom (or acedia) is best overcome if we spend time thinking about spiritual goods. Don't rush about, but learn to concentrate. When we do so, we can't help but find those spiritual goods attractive. Whereas the disenchanting project of the Enlightenment tries to sever us from the Infinite, in reality our will restlessly strives after God. So we need a stand-point from which to see the world properly. But, if the Infinite seems a little too far above us, where then shall we look?

We must seek out the least bored – that is, the saints! The saints did seemingly boring things without getting bored. In Fr Lombardo's phrase, "they are heroically not-bored"; and the fifth-century St Simeon the Stylite serves as a classic example. While living atop his pillar for 37 years, he gave homilies twice a day, prayed constantly, and oversaw ministries to the poor. Yet he wasn't bored; instead, he conquered boredom. The saints could overcome boredom only by a "proactive love of God and neighbour, saturated with the infinite". This was a continual activity of perceiving the lovability of the world. When desire is enflamed this way, boredom is infallibly banished. If our deepest (i.e. intellectual) desires are satisfied, the rest will follow; echoing perhaps St Augustine's maxim, "Love, then do what you will!"

We are not disembodied minds, however, but weak flesh and blood. So the solution must be cultural as well as cognitive. Fr Lombardo therefore proposes a recovery of the Sabbath. Though especially relevant to Jews and Christians, the Sabbath is a way for all people to reorient their spirit, to rest and relax in order to "see the world with fresh eyes". This is an end in itself, not a utilitarian means to enjoy greater productivity the other six days of the week (though that is a concomitant benefit). It is also the way to create space for community, in the "streams of living water" flowing from the Temple.

The lecture did not explicitly characterise the Sabbath rest as essentially for worship (as Josef Pieper does), perhaps to encourage a common cultural space with the non-religious. But it ended unambiguously on that prophetic note. In his review of Huysmans' novel, Barbey d'Aurevilly had challenged the author to choose between his present atheism and the Cross; and eight years later, as a result, Huysmans became a Catholic. In the end, Fr Lombardo repeated that challenge: our contemporary Western culture must take that same choice.

Dominican Theology Summer School at Buckfast Abbey: June 25th-29th

What would St Thomas make of Pleasantville?

I recently saw the film Pleasantville for the first time. It's about two 1990's teenagers, David and Jennifer, who are magically transported into a 1950's sitcom called Pleasantville where they are forced to play the characters Bud and Mary Sue. In Pleasantville, everyone is pleasant to each other, it never rains, and the school basketball team never lose a game. But there's a catch. Pleasantville is very dull. It's literally in black and white. There's no art, no books, no sex, no creativity. That is, until David (Bud) and Jennifer (Mary Sue) are transported into this world.

Now the film has some very positive aspects. The film is beautifully made; as colour, joy and passion comes into this world, it really draws our attention to the beauty of creation, and to how we so often fail to recognise this beauty. Surely St Thomas would appreciate this aspect of the film. But what I think St Thomas would strongly object to is the attempt to retell the Adam and Eve story. Before David (Bud) and Jennifer (Mary Sue) were transported into Pleasantville, it was an ordered world of innocence, dull but nice. There are enough hints to suggest that this is how we are to think of the Garden of Eden.


At one point, a beautiful girl offers Bud (David) a nice red apple, and it is at this moment he realises that all this beauty and colour that is beginning to come into this world cannot coexist without evil. What is happening is a kind of felix culpa, a happy fault. Now for St Thomas, this retelling of the Genesis story just wouldn't hang together. St Thomas believed that before the Fall, the garden would have been very beautiful, Adam and Eve would have had passions, they would have had sex, and in fact, their joy and appreciation of creation would have been much more intense than it is now:

sensible delight would have been the greater in proportion to the greater purity of nature and the greater sensibility of the body (ST 1a,q98 a.2)

When this foreign element of sin came into their world, it dulled their senses, they became repressed and the world became a less delightful place. The Fall of Man wasn't a happy fault because it brought colour into our world, but because it merited such and so great a Redeemer.

Scripture Study Day in Leeds

Earlier this month Fr. Richard Ounsworth OP and I were invited by the Leeds Cathedral Young Adults Group to lead them in a study day on scripture. I enjoyed the day immensely, it was a pleasure to get to know this lively group of young Catholics and good to see such enthusiasm for the faith. Over the course of quite a full programme, which included an exploration of some of the various 'types' of Christ found in the Old Testament and an introduction to the theology of St.Paul, one of the particpants expressed his surprise and delight to discover that 'the Bible is Catholic.'

I thought this was an interesting and revealing comment. Perhaps in the past there has been a tendency to separate scripture and tradition. Perhaps there has even been a slight suspicion of the scriptures, an anxiety that they are a bit 'Protestant' and opposed to Catholic sacraments and liturgy. One of the objectives of the Second Vatican Council was to allay such fears and draw Catholics attention back to the scriptural foundations of the Church's teaching and life. This, it was hoped, would facilitate a spiritual and evangelical renewal of the Body of Christ.

Fr Richard speaking in Leeds

For the Council, neglect of our scriptures means the neglect of our own Tradition (in the fullest sense) and the neglect of our mission. This scriptural outlook of Vatican II was interestingly anticipated by Bede Jarrett OP, the founder of Blackfriars Oxford and Provincial of the English Province between 1916-1932. In 1908 Fr. Bede wrote to congratulate a Brother who was to be assigned to the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem for higher studies declaring: 'Scripture is the study above all others that appeals to the religious side of the English character.'

This, it seems to me, is as true now as it was then, and perhaps the English fascination with the Bible is not as distinctive or unusual as Bede Jarrett implies. If we are to preach effectively to societies that have lost touch with their Christian roots then we must preach with words that 'seem to come from God' (1 Peter 4: 11). Studying and meditating upon the word of God would seem to be an excellent preperation for such preaching. The increased interest of young Catholics in scripture must therefore be a tremendous sign of hope for the future.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity - Christian Unity in the First Millennium

When we talk about divisions among Christians, it’s all too easy to suggest that everything was just great until 1054, when there was the schism with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and then there was a further split in the West at the Reformation, and all our problems stem from those two events. Leaving aside the question of whether 1054 is really the date when East and West definitively split, this schema overlooks the struggles to maintain the unity of the Church, some more successful than others, that went on throughout the first millennium.

From the time of the New Testament itself, the Church has been struggling with the imperative of unity: in St John’s Gospel, Jesus prays ‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (Jn 17: 21), and the importance of this unity which derives from our baptism into a common faith in Christ is emphasised several times in the letters of St Paul (e.g. Rom 12: 4-5; I Cor 12: 13) in response to quarrels and self-promotion within the Churches to which he was writing. In the quotation from St John’s Gospel, our attention is also drawn to the practical significance of unity – that we might better witness to the truth of the Gospel – and this continued to motivate the Church in the centuries that followed.

Persecution became another source of division, though with a doctrinal element, as some Christians, holding a more rigorist line, refused to be in communion with those bishops who reconciled people who had abandoned the faith under persecution: this lay at the root of the Donatist schism which St Augustine did so much to try and reconcile by all the means he had available, over 100 years after the original persecution which had caused the schism in around 250 AD.

The great Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries also led to extensive divisions in the Church, which it was the purpose of the various Ecumenical Councils to resolve by adopting a doctrinal formula which would be acceptable to all. The decisions of the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325) did eventually win universal acceptance, though it took a long time for the Arianism it condemned to be completely eradicated: the decisions of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), however, though they united most Christians of the time around common formulae still held by Catholics, Orthodox and most Protestants today, also had dissenters whose Churches continue to exist today (the Assyrian Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Churches respectively).

These Councils also remind us of the place of considerations other than the strictly religious in questions of Christian unity: the Council of Nicaea was called by the Byzantine Emperor, as were subsequent Councils, and some of those Churches that ended up rejecting Chalcedon, for example, did so, at least in part, because they were from outside the Empire and not subject to the Emperor’s authority to impose the decision of the Council.

From the history of the Church’s struggle for unity during the first few hundred years of her existence, we come to see that this difficulty derives ultimately from the conflict of the Church being ‘in the world but not of the world’: she is at the same time the One Body of Christ yet also made up of sinners, failing to live up to the unity to which they are called, acting for personal and political ends rather than the love of God. This truth is a challenge, of course, for all aspects of Christian behaviour in every age, but in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, it asks us to look in particular at our motivations and prejudices in our approach to the pursuit of that unity for which Our Lord prayed.

Fruits of Study 2: Why Do We Have a Clergy?

The presence of clerics within the Catholic Church is, to many critics, inside and outside the Church, a problem and stumbling block. From the outside the Roman Catholic Church can seem like a “notoriously clerical affair”. It is often perceived that having a ‘clerical class’ amongst the people of God, acting as “rulers of God’s people”, is in direct opposition to Christ’s call for his followers to be characterized by profound humility. However to understand the need for bishops, priests and deacons within the Church, one must start by showing that the clergy was divinely established by Christ and present within the Apostolic Church.

The obvious starting point for any investigation into Orders is Jesus’ appointment of the twelve. All three synoptic Gospels describe Christ commissioning the twelve and John refers to Thomas as “one of the twelve”. The synoptic gospels portray the calling of the twelve as a major point within Jesus’ ministry. Jesus set aside a group amongst his followers, as an inner circle. In doing so Christ commissions the twelve as his heralds within the new Kingdom. In appearing to the twelve after His Resurrection, Christ establishes them as office-holders within his court and their special role is evident from the embryonic beginnings of the Church.

In St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, special mention is made of the relationship between the Risen Lord and the twelve. St Paul reminds his readers that the Lord appeared first to “Cephas, then to the twelve”. He stresses that the Good News he received and now passes on is received through a direct line from Christ through the Apostles. It is obvious that from the beginnings of the Church the apostles had a “special authority” in the preaching and teaching of the Faith, as the “accredited recipients of the message”. However they are also entrusted with a special authority in the field of “the worship or cultus of the New Covenant”. The Risen Lord, states that: “All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me. Go, therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptising in my name”. The phrasing of the great commission displays a link between Christ’s ultimate authority and the authority of the disciples to baptise in his name. Baptism is of course a liturgical act. More importantly at the last supper, Christ passes the obligation to celebrate the Eucharist, in His remembrance, to the twelve. The New Testament shows that Christ gave his closest disciples the authority to baptise in his name and celebrate the Eucharist. Finally Christ institutes the twelve in matters of power and governance of the New Kingdom.

In choosing twelve men, Jesus establishes the twelve ‘new tribes’ of the new Israel. They however will govern and rule in a new way; a way based on humility and service. This is most clear in the Gospel of John, where Christ’s washing of the disciples’ feet could be considered a consecration of disciples in Christ’s life of service. Jesus makes it clear to Peter that if he does not accept this washing then he has no part in Christ. He then commands them to do as he has done. These structures of leadership or ordines have been and continue to be “perpetuated in unbroken succession through the sacrament” of Holy Orders and the laying on of hands in the manner of the Apostles.

Fruits of Study 1: Christology

We teach …  that the one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, is to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not split or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ ...

So teaches the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) about Jesus Christ. At first glance, it could seem rather obscure, an argument about the philosophical terms of nature and person which surely, we might think, can’t have too many implications for most Christians and their practice of the faith. And yet, on closer consideration, we realise that this teaching on the person of Jesus Christ lies at the very heart of our faith. Now, as Pope Benedict has frequently reminded us, ‘Christian faith is not only a matter of believing that certain things are true, but above all a personal relationship with Jesus Christ’:* this doctrine, then, is central because it tells us something about who that person Jesus is, namely that he is fully man but also fully God.

The Christological doctrine of the Church leads us deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation; the heretical opinions on either side of the orthodox doctrine detract from the fullness of that mystery, by denying either that the Word made Flesh could be fully human (i.e. denial of two natures in Christ), or that God and Man could truly be united in one person (i.e. assertion of two persons). In both cases, the mind-blowing truth of the extent of God’s love for us shown by his truly taking on our nature is watered down.

As Our Lord himself teaches us, ‘the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32). As he also tells us, he is himself ‘the Truth’ (John 14:6), and it is the only in the truth of the fullness of the Incarnation that we see Christ’s power to save us. In the words of St Leo the Great, ‘If he were not true God, he would not be able to bring us healing; if he were not true man, he would not be able to give us an example’.

* Message for the XXVI World Youth Day, n. 2

Fruits of Study: Introduction

Study plays a central part in Dominican life, and informs all our writing and preaching, so that it could all be called the fruit of our study.

In this series, however, the Godzdogz team hopes to share more directly with our readers the fruits of our study by presenting particularly useful or striking insights gained in the course of our studies at Blackfriars.

We hope you will find the new series interesting!

Thinking Faith and the Grand Design

Last week Brother Robert Verrill attended the Thinking Faith week at Boarbank Hall and he gave a talk about Stephen Hawking’s latest book ‘the Grand Design.’ Here is a summary of his talk.

Stephen Hawking’s latest book ‘The Grand Design’ has the subtitle ‘New answers to the ultimate questions of life,’ and Hawking clearly has in his sights those of us who find meaning in life by turning to God. Whilst being a physicist doesn’t guarantee that Hawking has anything particularly insightful to say about theology, it is still worthwhile listening to the theological concerns of someone like Hawking because it can give us an opportunity to think more deeply about our own beliefs.

Hawking devotes a considerable amount of effort to debunking a concept of God traditionally known as the God of the Gaps, which is just as well, because this is not the traditional Christian concept of God anyway. It shouldn’t be of any great concern to Christians if physicists can give a scientific account of why the physical constants of the universe appear to be so finely tuned for life to evolve. Invoking God to explain this fine tuning is bad theology and such explanations are liable to lead to the idea that once God set everything in motion, he no longer had anything to do with the universe. So we have some common ground here – neither Stephen Hawking nor I believe in the God of the Gaps.

But the big problem for Stephen Hawking is that his basic philosophical outlook means that the God the Gaps is the only concept of God that he can comprehend. He is unable to consider God as the ever-present cause of being. He refers to his own philosophical outlook as model dependent realism. This is how he explains it:

[Model-dependent realism] is based on the idea that our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth.

Earlier on in the book Hawking claims that philosophy is dead and so he sees no alternative to his concept of reality which is only concerned with those ideas which can explain particular physical phenomena. Hawking is clearly heavily influenced by the philosophical tradition of Descartes who called into question everything conceivable – the only thing Descartes was sure of was that he thought, hence the famous saying ‘I think, therefore I am'. And so like Descartes, Hawking struggles to come to terms with a reality that doesn’t depend on the way he thinks about it.

But Descartes' is not the only philosophical tradition one can choose from. Aristotle doesn’t start his philosophical endeavour from a position of extreme scepticism, but takes the more common sense approach that we live in a real world of real causes and effects and all our knowledge comes to us through our senses. This is the philosophical starting point many Christians have followed. Hawking does have a go at challenging this common sense view. He uses the example of a fish in a goldfish bowl: what appears to be a straight line to us outside the goldfish bowl would appear curved to the fish. Hawking’s claim is that we are like that fish – our senses are so distorted that they don’t give us any reliable information about reality. However, this is not a particularly good example because although the world is distorted to the fish, it is not so distorted that causes and effects in the world can no longer be correctly apprehended.

Hawking tries to prove the inadequacy of our senses by using examples from modern physics, but these arguments are unconvincing because one needs first to accept his idea of model dependent realism beforehand. Despite the great value of mathematical models in their ability to make predictions, making such predictability the only measure of reality is not the kind of philosophical outlook that many people can honestly embrace. It certainly isn’t a philosophy that provides new answers to the ultimate questions of life.

Aquinas Colloquium, Blackfriars, Oxford

Artefacts from the Provincial Archives

The Province's website now has a new page with a digital exhibition of some interesting items from the Provincial Archives. A commentary on the items has been provided by fr. Neil Ferguson OP, the Provincial Archivist. Among the artefacts on display is a 14th-century English book of collected works by St Thomas Aquinas including his disputed questions On Evil (De Malo). To visit the page, click on this link.

If Love it is ... Aquinas Lecture 2011

You can listen here to Fr Michael Sherwin's Aquinas Lecture, delivered in the Aula at Blackfriars on 26th January 2011.

St Thomas Tweets

Well not exactly ... the Twitter user @summatheologiae has decided to tweet an article of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae on Twitter everyday. There are 2669 articles in the Summa so this is going to be a long term project but it is a worthy one. It helps to bring the thought of St. Thomas to as many people as possible in an easy and accessible way. There is also of course the wonderful 1920 English translation of the Summa available at New Advent.

Follow the Summa Theologiae on twitter here and whilst you are there why not follow the Godzdogz twitter feed here.

H/T to the always excellent Hermeneutic of Continuity

A-Z of the Mass: Doxology

Through Him, with Him, in Him,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

all glory and honour is yours Almighty Father,

forever and ever.

Amen.

At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer the priest takes the paten with the host and the chalice and elevates them both, whilst singing or saying the doxology, ‘Per ipsum et cum ipso et in ipso ...’, 'through him, with him, in him ...' The congregation respond ‘Amen’. The term doxology is a constructed from the Greek words δόξα (glory or praise) and λόγος (word). Short hymns of praise to God were used in Synagogue worship, usually following psalms and canticles, and the Church has continued and expanded this tradition in her liturgies and devotions.

The Eucharistic prayer concludes with a stirring expression of praise that permeates through the entire Eucharistic Prayer. We offer praise to the Father, through Christ and in the Holy Spirit. This Doxology points to our salvation through Christ the High Priest, now present in the Blessed Sacrament. Through Christ’s sacrifice, humanity’s relationship with God is reconciled. He is our mediator, our petitioner and our intercessor. He is now present in the living memorial of the paschal sacrifice, “the living bread from heaven “. It seems highly apt that before we make communion that the Church offers these words of praise and glory to God but we must not forget the importance of the response: The Great Amen.

In responding to the Doxology we demonstrate that the prayers offered by the priest are offered on behalf of the whole Church. We also affirm and acclaim the great salvific work of Christ. As Pope Benedict says this great act of love is God’s ‘Yes!’ to humanity. In responding positively we say ‘Yes!’ to the great gift of grace and salvation that God has offered us embodied in the Holy Eucharist.