Roma locuta est

Gladiator

2010-01-14T02:04:00.000-08:00

This is not really a religious post, but nobody really reads this blog so it is kind of an online diary in some ways of my journey through life. One of the scenes in the film Gladiator (with Russell Crowe) was early in his career at an outpost where various men have been conscripted to fight as gladiators. The one guy is a scribe - so obviously out of his depth and so scared out of his wits before combat that he literally wets himself. And yet put those same guys in an intellectual environment and the strapping Russell Crowe would have looked inept. It is the case of the square peg and round hole. Like my life. I was working tonite on my novel and I find myself wrestling with despair at the thought of going into my own Colosseum tomorrow to do duty and waste another day of my quickly diminishing life. I don't feel scared like the scribe, I feel nauseous at the utter waste of so many years of my own life. I have nothing but contempt for my own hitherto inability to break free from what Thoreau's described as this incessant prison of business. I must feed and nurture this hatred so that it spurs me into action to finish my degree and get on with the business of living and not just existing.

Christmas in Aus

2009-12-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

I feel like an evangelical writing this, but here goes anyway. The evangelical Christians often use a verse from Proverbs 18:21 'There is life and death in the power of the tongue' and I am beginning to think they are on to something. Christmas is huge over here - everybody wishes everybody else Merry Christmas! Unbelievable? No it's true - I am serious. It is not like SA or the USA where there is a conscious attempt to sanitise Christmas of Christ and you get wished Happy Holidays - or the talking heads on radio or TV nod sagely about remembering the real meaning of Christmas - you know that meaning: friends and family and helping the poor? I mean hello? The true meaning is that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. That is the real meaning. The name Jesus Christ almost jars today when spoken aloud as Christians are shamed into silence. One of the only ways nowadays, to identify the Christian greeting is when Christians make a point of wishing each other a Blessed Christmas to distinguish their greeting from the drunken spectacle that often accompanies slurred Merry Chrishmasses! at office parties or corporate marketing blurbs indistinguishable really from any other annual sale except in its sheer scale. That's why I like Aus. People here, by and large, have kept and honour it as a Christian Feast. It is refreshing and whatever their other faults, demonstrative of the respect that they have for their own heritage and faith history and not driven by the PC madness that only respects faiths other than Christianity - a habit that has been driven by an atheistic media and is actually getting a little bit old.

May you and those you love, have a very Blessed and Holy Christmas as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.

Wasting life

2009-11-06T03:27:00.000-08:00

I travelled to and from Canberra today (about 7 hours of driving all in all) and had time to think. I was wondering about how much of my life I have wasted - I am 39 and have almost nothing to show for it. I kind of wondered aloud to God, if he really wanted us to worship him and spend time with him now because as long as we stayed on the straight and narrow mostly, wouldn't we have time enough when we are dead to do that? So why waste all this time in prayer instead of living life? I guess it struck me that would be the same as saying to my wife, I will see you tonite when we can spend time together so don't miss me and I won't miss you, but I do and she does. And so with God, I know it sounds odd to say so, but when I neglect prayer or Him, I miss Him and in whatever theological way it is possible, I believe He misses me. And much as I share my life and what is happening with Carmen so I want Him to share and be part of my life here. Even if there is no heaven, I am the richer for having known and loved Him and being loved by Him. I am scared of dying because as I have said before I battle in my faith with believing in heaven on an emotional level. But even so, my life has been full of love because I have and am loved by Him and I received that faith and the ability to know His love, in the first instance from the first humans that loved me, my mom and dad and it is the first and greatest gift that a child can receive. I once told my dad that Kirstin also knew that love from them and that she knows it still. But in large part, I was talking about my own experience of their love for me and my siblings that is in its own way an extension of the sacramental Divine love with which Christian marriage is infused. My wife was blessed with similar parents and we know the responsibility that we now share to honour that gift if and when we are gifted with children of our own:
So, fall asleep love, loved by me....for I know love, I am loved by thee. (Robert Browning)

Sacred and Profane

2009-10-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

One of my hobby horses is the otherness of God and how important I believe it is to 'bump' into Him sometimes. Because I work in such a meaningless job, where the only reward is money and I consequently get to eat, I have always mentally kept the rest of my life quite separately compartmentalised in my mind from it. I realise that this is of course, not the way it is supposed to be.

Yesterday, I was at a client and as I was ratcheting the straps to secure a machine to the trailer in the deserted loading area with all the industrial plant equipment around me, I glanced across into the big warehouse a little distance away from me with its large roller doors. I could see the inside of the roof, and it was one of those industrial corrugated steel roofs that is interspersed with clear polycarbonate strips like skylights to let in natural light. I then raised my gaze and right above the roof was the clear, blue, wide open morning sky. What a contrast! The warehouse was not badly lit, but looked positively dingy compared to the sky above. For the first time in my life, I really felt that there may be some sort of connection between my normal drudgery and the happiness and peace I feel when I am away from work and contemplating God. This is an obvious and most basic Christian principle - that we are not supposed to live dualistic lives, but for so long, I really have known no other way. I have always rationalised that it was the only way I could cope with the meaningless futility of my daily work without going insane.

I believe that this simple experience was a nudge from God for me to open the skylights of my life - or rip the roof off and let God's grace not only help me to cope, but transform my work, or my understanding of it, as a way to serve Him. I realised in retrospect, that He prepared me for this moment a few weeks ago, when I came across some statistics, where I discovered that the second highest cause of accidental death after motor vehicle accidents was from slip and fall accidents -a problem which our machinery directly addresses. I suppose if nothing else, perhaps if a father gets to return safely home to his family or a young single mother working in a factory returns safely to her waiting baby and isn't paralysed from an accident because of my job, it has, if not given me a sense of meaning, at least helped someone. As the Caterpillar equipment slogan goes: Safely home. Every one. Every day.

It is as if God needs me to learn this lesson and He was determined that I learn it, because if I ever end up in some sort of full time ministry one day, it is something I will need to know, so that my spirituality is centred on and rooted in God, but grounded in reality and not a separate attachment or escape. It is not only beneficial and even imperative that in the 'ugliest' or most tedious parts of my life as well as the happiest and most joyful are integrated into my spirituality so that in Him I can truly 'live and move and have my being' (Acts 17:28), but nothing less than a call to authentic holiness.

I know this is no new great profound idea here - just me finally hearing what I should have a long time ago.

Organic untidiness

2009-09-18T05:59:00.002-07:00

Today's date had no particular significance, but Kirstin's memory was so strong and I felt the grief so acutely that I wondered briefly if I would be overwhelmed by it. I don't know if it is ironic or a contradiction or whatever, but although I have never seriously doubted the existence of God, I have often battled with faith in the afterlife for myself. You could argue I suppose that the possibility of doubt is a necesssary element for the existence of faith... I don't know?

When I was down in Canberra, I wondered what my uneasiness at the city was and perhaps on one level, the city was too perfect, too ordered and thereby not beautiful. Canberra is a planned city. Planned by human beings and ordered to a tee, but it somehow lacks the beauty of a Cape Town or a Sydney. Man's constructs are always somehow poor imitations of God's. So a neat patio shade is cooler than the direct sun, but not as cool as the shade of the 'messy' tree with its random leaves that allow for a breeze. While we try in our vanity to construct a perfect social world that tolerates and promotes all evils in the name of human freedom, we end up with a legal system that teaches tolerance of and independance from each other. It is a system that seperates us by destroying our accountability to each other and thereby undermines the morality that connects us. It promotes indifference to the actions of the other and contradicts the very foundation of love which is care for the other. Legislation is a poor substitute for morality. When our spirit / soul, however you choose to define it, recognises a pattern that underlies a seemingly unrelated conflagaration, it is that, that suddenly resonates within us. Art, like creation, may be deliberate and ordered when it is being created, but the order is intrinsic not extrinsic and its very nature that defies intellectual / quantification or description, somehow communicates meaningfully and deeply with our humanity. Even though our life experience and backgrounds may be completely different, this is testament to our shared human nature. The randomness and spontanaiety within which beauty is most often found, is an unexpected that delights the soul. It is the difference between contrived intellectual constructs and Creation. The one reveals nothing about either the builder or the observer. The second reveals both the Creator and the one who encounters Him.

Indifference or hate vs love?

2009-09-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

Amidst our search for a parish to settle down for the next year, Carmen and I are trying to balance our need for spiritual care and nourishment with the desire to minister in some way and join the parish that we could most be of benefit to. Apart from that little 'admin'task, I am struck by how Godless this place seems to be. Not evil as I would view some parts of Europe. But Godless in their indifference. That theory to which I have always subscribed on an intellectual level: that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, will be tested for me here in reality. My gut reaction and this is only a knee jerk reaction, is that perhaps I was wrong. When people are indifferent, at least they can be won over by an event / example of a person's life that shows them or puts into relief the emptiness of their lives. Whereaas hatred on the other hand, creates a wall or more accurately blinds people to truth and hardens the heart. I don't know? It seems such a huge effort is needed to first break down that wall before inner conversion can begin. I don't know if I can choose yet which is the lesser of 2 evils? I only know that God's presence seems to burn more starkly in relief against evil than negelectful indifference. Indifference somehow seems more hopeless in its 'passionlessness.' Not sure?

Preaching

2009-07-10T00:46:00.000-07:00

Society today really does not like been reminded of when they are doing evil, like shipping off jobs to third world countries so that they can exploit them unseen to maximise profits, killing babies or old people. They say Christians, or the Church when they criticise these evil deeds and the evil people that do them are being judgemental. But it is the duty of the leadership of our Church to do so and our task as well in the exercise of our ministry even as laity and we share in the work entrusted to the ministerial priesthood and those entrusted to their care. Perhaps one of the the best models of this ministry that I have seen is in Psalm 50. I runs around 10 paragraphs and 8 of those lays out the necessary ongoing conversion and correct order of the Christian sinner's ministry and then in 2 paragraphs demonstrates that although this process is always ongoing, our own sinfulness as ministers should not paralyse us to confront the evil and evil doers in the world. This is because we are not presenting ourselves as the model for the way our world should be, but God. This imago Dei is fundamental to both the Old and New Testaments: We are called to love because we have been loved first. I think it is a beautiful and rich model for the priesthood, diaconate and even lay ministries. I have not included the whole psalm here, but the core verses to give the gist:

Have mercy on me, God in your kindness.
In your compassion blot out my offence.
O wash me more and more from my guilt
and cleanse me from my sin.

My offences truly I know them;
my sin is always before me.
Against you, you alone have I sinned;
what is evil in your sight I have done.

Indeed you love truth in the heart;
then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom.
O purify me then I shall be clean;
O wash me I shall be whiter then snow.

A pure heart create for me, O God,
put a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
nor deprive me of your holy spirit.

Give me again the joy of your help;
with a spirit of fervour sustain me,
that I may teach transgressors your ways
and sinners may return to you.

O rescue me, God my helper,
and my tongue shall ring out your goodness.
O lord, open my lips
and my mouth shall declare your praise.

The Christian paradox

2009-07-10T00:21:00.000-07:00

In my other blog, I wrote about how on the loss of Kirstin, we stood in raw grief before the God who had given her life and then claimed her back and it occurred to me that to an unbeliever, that must really come across as odd. It is a paradox, no getting away from it, but it is not a contradiction. Many writers have spoken about pride been at the source of all sin and our response, as human as it is, in the face of death is no different. We ask why? Assuming for a minute that there was an answer we could fully understand, what does that do? Does it comfort us? Does it undo the tragedy? Does it restore anything at all? No. But it gives us a sense of control. Most human events of significance prompt the questions: How did this happen? and then: Why did this happen? And often a host of people saying: We will get to the bottom of this! We will ensure it will not happen again! And this is a good thing - safety measures are put into place and prevent unnecessary future tragedies. But at its most basic, it is an attempt to control the future. So when death comes and we, as humans are faced with an event we cannot control or prevent, we flounder around and get angry. Perhaps we even think: 'if I was God, I would've done this or that.' We almost cannot stand knowing our own impotency. And yet it is not only useful, it is a necessary element of our Christian humility that we know this part of ourselves - our utter dependency. Yes we are Spirit-filled, etc. but all of this power comes from God within, not from within our own selves. And so surrender becomes a prayer of letting God be God. The prophet Habakkuk in that well known canticle really put it starkly and challenges us by his example:

For even though the fig does not blossom,
nor fruit grow on the vine,
even though the olive crop fail,
and fields produce no harvest,
even though flocks vanish from the folds
and stalls stand empty of cattle,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord
and exult in God my Saviour.
The Lord my God is my strength.
(Habakkuk 3)

Background

2009-05-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

Perhaps before I reflect on some ethical issues, I should give a few indicators of sentiments that have informed my position with regards to the post modernist world that rather simplistically abdicates responsibility for ethical deliberation. The Princeton sociologist, Robert Wuthnow has said of his fellow Americans, though it could have been said of any other first world society: that they piece together their faith like a patch work quilt. In his book, Choosing the Good, Dennis Hollinger also makes the telling comment that Church members increasingly focus on experience, as opposed to coherent systems of meaning, and borrow from traditions that are frequently at odds with their own community's tradition. He quotes Alasdair MacIntyre from After Virtue who accurately referred to the current cultural state of moral discourse as emotivism. Hollinger goes on to deal with 2 of the most thorny irritants: the Great Virtue of Tolerance and what he terms the Triumph of the Therapeutic. The reason I mention this is that I have found it almost impossible to discuss any contemporary moral issue within society without first addressing these two insiduous and bankrupt notions that are the fallback for the great mass of the unthinking. Their usefulness extends only as a response to the equally imbecilic cover-all, antithetical little gem so favoured by - though not exclusive to - those with a fundamentalist bent: 'What would Jesus do?'
And so it has been my experience that those most viciously critical of the fundamentalist Christians and their 'ilk' are themsleves the most fundamentalist examples of walking, talking post modernist cliches.
I will deal with the first issue of Tolerance in my next blog.

The Art of Loving

2009-04-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

Recent reports on CNN suggest that the wholesale abandonment of Christian values in the US by those in public life, continues apace. Those in positions of political power, ala the New York governor, are scrambling to find the most politically expedient way to survive and are now flip flopping on the issue of homosexual ‘marriage’. They plan to accord homosexual civil unions the full status that is accorded to normal marriages. They have typically tried to dodge the issue with the ‘let’s move beyond this debate’, which of course, attempts to divert attention and / or mute any rational analyses of the moral turpitude of their position. This debate has proved divisive, most strangely amongst Christians and even Catholics for some reason. The intolerance of the liberal media to opposing views has, frankly, approached something akin to the most fascist totalitarian regimes of the last century, but guilt must also be apportioned to those who have used the issue to direct a cruel bigotry towards those who find themselves afflicted with this disorder. The Church’s position is crystal clear and I will outline it in some detail in my next blog, but I have always found the commentary by Erich Fromm , a Jewish secular humanist to be eerily close to the Catholic position, so before I lay dogma before the issue, I thought I would open discussion on this disorder with the views as expressed in his book, The Art of Loving:
The male-female polarity is also the basis for interpersonal creativity. This is obvious biologically in the fact that the union of sperm and ovum is the basis for the birth of a child. But in the purely psychic realm it is not different; in the love between man and woman, each of them is reborn. (The homosexual deviation is a failure to attain this polarised union, and thus the homosexual suffers from the pain of never-resolved separateness, a failure, however, which he shares with the average heterosexual who cannot love.)

Universality

2009-04-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

One of the most awesome things about being a Catholic, is that wherever you go in the world and whatever the language, when you attend Mass, you can follow it. The liturgical seasons are the same, etc. When you travel, you really get a sense of the universality of the Church as a diverse and incredibly rich Body of Christ. When I visited Notre Dame Cathedral a couple of years ago, I, as a South African, went to confession in the French capital to a Ugandan priest! On this weekend past, I went with my wife to another Christian faith community for a baptism which was done in the context of their regular Sunday service. It was Palm Sunday and yet the pastor never mentioned it; he had his own message and focus. That of course is his perogative, but more and more, I am noticing that non-Catholic and even evangelical communities are adopting some of the liturgies and seasonal celebrations of the Catholic church - like Lent, to name one example. It speaks to a unity of worship which effects the unity it symbolises - much as the shared rituals / traditions / memories of a family bind that family. It is a different and more sustainable approach than that of communities built around the cult of a particular pastor. This catholicity / universality is a profound treasure of the Church and is expressed so eloquently in the hymn: 'The day thou gavest..'

We thank thee that thy Church unsleeping,
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.

As over continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.

The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren 'neath the western sky,
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.

Do not pass begin

2009-03-24T02:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish I had married a less intelligent wife. As Michael Novak puts it: 'Seeing myself through the unblinking eyes of an intelligent, honest spouse is humiliating.' Years ago she told me that I should go into ministry and apply to become a deacon and off and on I have vacillated between agreeing and being unsure. The thing is, I guess I am under no illusions about the implications of my taking such a step. My goal of becoming an academic specialising in Ethics means that I dedicate myself to the search of truth, but it does not necessarily mean that I have to change. You can believe in the right things and still be in bondage, you can believe all the right things and still be miserable, you can believe all the right things and still be unchanged” (Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity). Diaconate, on the other hand means that because one enters public ministry, I would have to make very real changes to the way I live my life. And so if I am to be whole, both are necessary. I suppose this is true - regardless of whether one enters public ministry or not. I just feel so often that the old saying by TS Elliot seems to have been written specifically for me:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

If I had simply listened to my wife, I could have shortcircuited all my meaningless meanderings only to get back to the same place. My writing this novel has revealed it to me even more starkly. I really thought that this was what I was called to do, but it seems everytime I think I have the answer, it moves along. I am going to finish the novel as it is something I have really wanted to write and I enjoy, but I think it will probably be my last one. I have hit the same wall as I did in business, in my dreams when I wanted to become a tennis pro and then journalist. They are ultimately meaningless and leave nothing behind. Sure a writer, if he /she is good, leaves a deposit to be enjoyed even after his life, but a deposit of what? Entertainment? How is that more meaningful than merely living a hedonistic life? I want more. The fire that Jeremiah speaks of burns so strongly within me needs to purify me first and then I need to stop messing around, second guessing God and get on with doing His will. Leaving a legacy that for better or worse, contributes to the deposit of truth.
"I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it" (Jeremiah 20:9).

Compline

2009-03-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

I will quit writing on and on about the Breviary, but permit me one last post.
There is no question that my favourite prayer of the day is Compline (aka Night Prayer). I think people may say it is because I am lazy and it is the shortest of the hours! But there has always been something about it: that feeling at the end of a frantic day of activity just before you go to sleep of been able to just surrender into God as opposed to the day when I tend to keep wrestling with Him for control. The short responsory we pray from Scripture every night even says it: Into your hands Lord, I commend my spirit. And then the Antiphon before the canticle: Save us Lord while we are awake; protect us while we sleep; that we may keep watch with Christ and rest with him in peace. I often feel that it is enough to make me want to die in my sleep just to have those as the last words on my lips. The words of the Canticle of Simeon in Luke are the cherry on the top, but I would like to throw out a somewhat dodgy theological opinion on this. Simeon was an old devout man who was promised by God that he would see the Christ before he died and after seeing Jesus, he prayed this prayer (Lk2:29-32) which we pray at Night Prayer:
At last all-powerful Master,
you give leave to your servant
to go in peace, according to your promise.

For my eyes have seen your salvation
which you have prepared for all nations,
the light to enlighten the Gentiles
and give glory to Israel, your people.

There is an element of surrender to this prayer, especially for Simeon. But for us as Christians, is this not also a commission? That we are able to not only die in peace but go out in peace according to God's promise specifically because our eyes have seen our salvation. That this is not a nebulous 'peace' like a tepid pool of water but a simmering pool of lava burning at our core with God's love for the world and consuming all that is impure within us and the world . A peace that is not a passive state of the soul, but an active way of being - of Loving. (with a Christian 'L')

And then finally: The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
Amen.

The Benedictus

2009-03-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

One of the most poignant passages in the Bible is in the middle of the Canticle of Zechariah where he interrupts his prayer to God to speak tenderly to his newborn baby, John the Baptist. I find that passage a very personal commission and challenge and appropriate that it is included in Lauds (Morning Prayer) to send us out into the day:
As for you little child
you shall be called a prophet of God, the Most High.
You shall go ahead of the Lord
to prepare his ways before him,

To make known to his people their salvation
through forgiveness of all their sins,
the loving-kindess of the heart of our God
who visits us like the dawn from on high.

He will give light to those in darkness,
those who dwell in the shadow of death,
and guide us into the way of peace.

It encapsulates the essential and awesome responsibility that we have as Christians to not only proclaim the Gospel, but the manner in which we are to do so. I find this 'sensitivity' or 'character' of how we are to be and communicate the Gospel, inadvertently but accurately described by a non-Christian, Thoreaux, in Walden: The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Welcome

2009-03-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

'Roma locuta est. Causa finita est.' This saying, attributed to St Augustine, translated means: Rome has spoken. The matter is settled.
This blog is in honour of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and is really an outlet for me to express my view of the world as a Roman Catholic and one struggling to live a life worthy of my calling as a Catholic. I will explore and hope to be engaged, corrected and encouraged by any others that are also on this journey. I do not believe in blind obedience, but I am not a dissenter. I submit myself to the authority of the Magisterium of the Church, Sacred Scripture and Tradition. I am not only spiritual. I am religious. In order to live a mature faith, one must seek to define, however imperfectly, the nature and content of one's belief. Dogma and doctrine are therefore useful, and I would argue, a necessary and even constitutive component of a mature believer's journey.