Child abuse

I suggest we need to think rather carefully about some of the issues raised by the case of the latest choirmaster to be found guilty of abusing choirboys. Much of what I have read and heard on this subject so far today betrays an above average level of muddled thinking.

We can all, I hope, agree that the abuse of children is wrong. It would also seem that procedures now in place to safeguard children in this country are pretty stringent and, for the most part, effective. However these procedures and the attitudes that both feed and result from such procedures have changed markedly over the past ten or fifteen years.

What happened before then was different in that although most people thought the 'abuse' of children (I continue to use the catch-all pc term) was wrong, methods for dealing with such matters had not then been codified as they are now and therefore practice varied considerably. While by today's standards many aspects of the way responsible, competent individuals and organizations dealt with instances of paedophilic abuse were not at all satisfactory, we must, I think, be careful to avoid one of the besetting modern hypocrisies of judging the events and attitudes of the past through the narrow prism of current thinking. As a society we simply have to be able to accept that over time collective pre-occupations, to say nothing of notions of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behaviour, change and it serves no useful purpose to exercise our other obsession with apportioning blame for current mishaps, retrospectively.

I write as a former chorister at a very well-known English cathedral. I was never abused in any meaningful sense nor am I aware that any of my contemporaries experienced such abuse. What I do recall is behaviour by certain adults which, if it were to occur today, would result in these individuals’ instant dismissal but probably not their prosecution. We were taught how to handle such situations and in doing so learned one of the many lessons children in every generation have to learn about a world and human environment beset by risk and danger.

I prayed

A good short piece from Ruth Gledhill of The (London) Times about the shootings at Virginia Tech may be read here.

Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam

The current trials and tribulations within the Anglican Communion have understandably attracted a good deal of interest in and comment from the Catholic blogosphere and from those Anglicans on its fringes seen by the Romans as ripe conversion fruit. There's been a good deal of discussion on the Roman claims that it and it alone is 'the one holy catholic and apostolic Church' and I attempted to pull together some of the threads in one such discussion in my posting of 28 March entitled Roman Claims.

Now another rather different take on this with which I fully concur emerges in Fr Anthony Chadwick's always thought provoking site, In medio stat virtus. The piece in question is entitled Divided yet but one in Christ draws on an equally thoughtful piece in Daniel Mitsui's fascinatingly eclectric blog site which he calls The Lion and the Cardinal and which is well worth visiting. However in the context of the present posting, please follow the link Divided but yet one in Christ and thence to Daniel Mitsui's piece entitled Permanent Scars.

Sobrino: two Catholic perspectives

The frequently maligned (London) Times religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill is to be thanked for juxtaposing two opposing perspectives on a current Catholic cause célèbre. Jesuit liberation theologian Fr Jon Sobrino has recently been criticised (but not barred from teaching) by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith less for his liberation theology than for his Christology. He holds that the doctrine of Christ's divinity was a relatively late development in first century Christian thinking and that Jesus did not therefore think of himself as the second person of the Trinity.

First John Wilkins, formerly editor of The Tablet, speaks out in support of Fr Sobrino and then Chris Gillibrand sets out an opposing position.

Roman claims

In a post entitled Newman Hits the Bulls Eye, Fr Dwight Longenecker quotes from and then expounds on John Henry Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine which deals with, among other things, the unity of form versus unity of doctrine dichotomy so relevant to the current goings on in the Anglican Communion. (What follows is a digest of that post and resulting comments.)

Fr Dwight paraphrases Newman as follows:

If the faith is to be applied now and in all ages, then it needs to be adaptable, and for it to be adaptable you have to have someone (or some institution) who decides when and how far the adaptions can be made. This interpreter needs to be infallible. If you don't have this infallible authority you will argue and disagree and eventually fall into one of two errors. Latitudinarian error preserves unity of form, but sacrifices unity of doctrine. The Anglicans and other mainstream Protestant Churches are an example of this. You can believe anything as long as you don't break down into schism.

The other error is sectarian. Those who move into a sect maintain unity of doctrine, but lose unity of form. The multitude of Evangelical, independent denominations are an example of this error.

These are the only choices for non-Catholic Christians, and every individual or group falls into one camp of the other. The non-Catholic individual or group is either sectarian (and there are more and more sects as more and more divisions take place) or they are latitudinarian, and these groups (in their attempts to include everyone and allow everything) are now so far from historic Christianity that they will soon need to take a new name.

The only other option is the Catholic Church . . .

To which Brian Britton of Mandeville, Louisiana very reasonably asks, 'where do the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox fall in Newman's scheme?' Fr Longenecker replies, 'following Newman's logic, the Eastern churches not in full communion with the Holy See must fall into the sectarian error--they have maintained unity of doctrine, but sacrificed unity of form.'

Not, I would argue, if you look at the picture from the Orthodox perspective which holds (not without some merit, I think) that the Church of Rome was in error in the events leading up to 1054. And this surely illustrates the moral and intellectual absurdity of holding on to the defensive 'I'm right, you're wrong' school of argument. Sooner or later, if matters are to be resolved, people have to get off their high horses and engage in discourse withone another in a spirit of Christian humility.

And interestingly this is indeed what seems to be happening between (some) Catholics and (some) Orthodox, the starting point of whose dialogue is that both wings of 'the Church' made mistakes before the schism occurred and, among many errors, both were transparently guilty of the collective sin of pride.

Our Lord established 'the Church' on earth and left it in the hands of the all too fallible apostles (and by implication their successors.) From the outset theysquabbled about jusidiction and doctrine and have gone on doing so ever since. Of course that's not the complete picture and there's no doubt the Holy Spirit has guided 'the Church' but all too often such guidance has been in the face of the abject stupidity of His human instruments. (One can't help feeling sorry for the Holy Spirit: so often invoked, so rarely listened to.)

One has to look no further than the Holy Land to see this happening on an hourly basis. For a start one can see in action in one place the amazing and rich diversity of Christian practice. In Jerusalem alone there are eight, nine, ten (possibly more)institutionally-established ecclesial groupings which can reasonably claim apostolic origins going back to the first or second centuries AD. Their relations with one another cover the complete spectrum of full communion to mutual (even sometimes physical) antagonism. All claim that they either constitute or are at least part of 'the Church' established by Our Lord.

In a recent posting, Fr Dwight, wrote a piece entitled Size Matters in which likens the Roman Church to an ocean liner and the Anglican Communion to a sailing dinghy. I beg to differ not to defend the Anglican Communion but because I would contend that size of itself truly is not important. Again, I refer to the Holy Land which is nothing if not a great leveller. Alongside numerous examples of behaviour that I can only describe as fully justifying the contempt in which the Christian Church is held by much of the non-Christian world, there were little beacons of hope which amply fulfill Our Lord's promise 'that where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.'

If you want to be impressed by size, I commend standing almost anywhere in the Old City of Jerusalem at about 1pm on Friday - any Friday, I suspect - to see wave upon wave of Muslim Palestinian men and women returning to their homes and to their work after Friday prayers. (I am grateful to Michael Freilich for the photograph.) That was impressive.

Not a good day

Thinking Anglicans are cock-a-hoop. And while on depressing stories, did anyone hear this on the Today programme (BBC Radio 4 breakfast show) this morning? Future generations will surely shake their heads in disbelief.

The Great Firewall

With due acknowledgement to a certain Strong Woman (also for the illustration) and to Dominican Idaho, by clicking here you can test whether your blog or website is blocked in China. Clearly Crux Sacra isn't considered a threat to the status quo there! I wonder.

East African deliberations

As a Johnny-come-lately to the blogosphere, I must be careful about sounding too critical. However, there’s no doubt in my mind that, sitting at our computers as many of us have been for the past five days, waiting for the next event in the unfolding drama of the Anglican primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam, there is a danger of being pressurised to produce a knee-jerk reaction to events when what is needed is time for reflection on a complex situation which, one way or the other, will in time have a profound influence on all of us.

That said, I have been impressed by the generally sober tone of the reactions from people of all shades of opinion that have emerged since the release of the communiqué late yesterday evening. It’s as if, finally, there is a broad (if not universal) consensus of opinion that the matters under consideration are too important for glib and simplistic ‘party’ reactions. The past week’s experience in Dar es Salaam has indeed been a salutary one.

I had hoped to pitch in my own penny worth – for what it’s worth – before the end of the day but, on reflection have little doubt that a day or two’s further reflection will do no harm. On the contrary, the conclusions reached thereafter can only benefit from the passage of a few more hours.

Anglican crisis

The Independent has a clearly expressed update in Independent Online Edition > This Britain .

Anglican leaders meet in Dar es Salaam

Jonathan Petrie sets the scene in this morning's Daily Telegraph (Archbishop's peace talks threatened Uk News News Telegraph) for the meeting this week of Anglican primates in Dar es Salaam. It is difficult to be sanguine about the outcome of any meeting at which people will not talk to one another. Veni Sancte Spiritus . . .

Getting In The Habit

Having had my knuckles rapped by Mulier Fortis for not referring to the whole of a previous post, here is a follow up story: Mulier Fortis: Getting In The Habit . Clergy reluctant to dress the part, please note.

The questions science cannot answer

Alister McGrath provides a readable antidote to the ubiquitous Dawkins in The questions science cannot answer-Comment-Faith-TimesOnline in today's Times.

Anglican tragedy

The inexorable march of the Anglican Communion towards self destruction seems unstoppable. Jonathan Petrie, writing in this morning's Daily Telegraph, reports on the latest developments under the headline Drive to bar liberal from Church’s crisis summit .

It is difficult to fault the logic of the same paper's leader writer who advises the Archbishop of Canterbury in a piece entitled Challenge for the Church to abandon the Communion and concentrate on holding together the Church of England which is itself riven by dissent on many of the same issues.