Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
To be a vibrant Catholic Community
unified in its commitment
to growing disciples for Christ
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
Mob: 0417 279 437
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
Mob: 0437 521 257
ssm77097@bigpond.com
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm – 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is sick or in need of assistance in the Parish please visit them. Then, if they are willing and give permission, could you please pass on their names to the Parish Office. We have a group of parishioners who are part of the Care and Concern Group who are willing and able to provide some backup and support to them. Unfortunately, because of privacy issues, the Parish Office is not able to give out details unless prior permission has been given.
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Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Weekday Masses 15th – 18th August, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin … The
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Next Weekend 19th & 20th August 2017
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport (Confirmation)
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone (Confirmation)
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 19th & 20th August, 2017
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Port Sorell:
PREGO REFLECTION:
Readings next week – Twentieth
Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Vern Cazaly, Joy Hanrahan, Victoria Webb, Dawn
Stevens, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Lorna Jones, Nancy Bynon, Reg (Mick) Poole, Garry Westerway, Leslie Slater, Mikhail
Yastrebov, Olga
Delaney, Irene
Aitken, Bill Glassel, Jimmy Powell, Joan Davidson, Margaret Charlesworth, Peter
Sulzberger, Fr John Reilly, Ashton Shirley and Michael Byrne.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 9th – 15th
August
Mersey Leven Parish Community welcome and congratulate….
Violet Peters daughter of Daman and Felicity on her baptism this weekend at Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport.
Weekly
Ramblings
Please take care on the roads and in your homes
CONFIRMATION:
ST VINCENT DE PAUL COLLECTION:
KNIGHTS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS:
The AGM of the Knights of the Southern Cross will be held on Sunday 20th August at OLOL Parish Hall commencing at 4pm. This will be followed by a light tea and then the August monthly meeting. Any men how are interested on joining the group are invited to attend.
The Annual Change-Over Mass of the North West District of the Knights of the Southern Cross will be held at Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone on Thursday 24th August at 11am. All members and their wives/partners are invited to attend the Mass and the luncheon.
MT ST.
VINCENT AUXILIARY: The Auxiliary will be holding a Cake and Craft stall at Mt.
St Vincent Home on Wednesday 30th August 9.00am start.
FOOTY
TICKETS: Round 20 (4th August)
footy margin 46 – Winners: Jan Horton; Pat Anderson 
BINGO - Thursday Nights
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
MARYKNOLL RETREAT & SPIRITUALITY CENTRE: Retreat & Reflection Days to be held October/November
2017 – please see Church Noticeboard for Flyer.
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Weekday Masses 15th – 18th August, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin … The
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
12noon Devonport
7:00pm Ulverstone
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Karingal
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent
12noon Penguin … St Mary’s Feast Day
Next Weekend 19th & 20th August 2017
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport (Confirmation)
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone (Confirmation)
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 19th & 20th August, 2017
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: P Douglas, T Douglas, B Paul
10:30am: E
Petts, K Douglas, B Suckling
Ministers of Communion: Vigil:
T Muir, M Davies, M
Gerrand, M Kenney, D Peters, J Heatley
10.30am: B & N Mulcahy, L Hollister, K Hull, S
Samarakkody, R Batepola
Cleaners 18th August: M & R Youd 25th August: M & L Tippett, A Berryman
Piety Shop 19th August:
R Baker 20th August: K Hull Mower Roster (Aug) at Parish House: M.
Tippett
Ulverstone:
Reader: E Cox Ministers of
Communion: P Steyn, E Cox, C Singline, C McGrath
Cleaners: K.S.C. Flowers: E Beard Hospitality:
M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters: A Landers, P Ravaillion Commentator: J Barker Readers: M & D Hiscutt
Ministers of
Communion: S Ewing,
J Garnsey Liturgy: Sulphur Creek J Setting Up: S Ewing Care of Church: J & T Kiely
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Duff, T Jeffries Ministers of Communion: L Post Cleaners/Flowers/Prep: G Bellchambers, M Gillard
Readings next week – Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: 1 Kings 19: 9, 11-13
Second Reading: Romans 9:1-5
Gospel: Matthew 14:22-33
PREGO REFLECTION:
I settle quietly to pray, taking the time to become slowly
more aware of being in God’s loving presence. I ask him to open my heart as I
read the text a couple of times.
Perhaps I can unite myself with Jesus as he
seeks silence and space to be with his Heavenly Father.
I stay with him as long
as it seems comfortable.
I might enter the story with my imagination, placing
myself in the boat with the disciples.
I imagine their fear as I see the waves,
feel the wind and the pitching and rolling of the boat.
What particular fears
are present for me?
Then I see Jesus walking towards me on the water.
Am I
reassured or even more fearful?
When he says “Come”, asking me to step out of
the boat towards him, how do I respond?
Do I look at him, or at my feet?
I note
my feelings and reactions and speak to the Lord of this.
Can I pray with an act
of faith, like the disciples?
I bring my prayer to a close with gratitude,
aware that the Lord is always interceding for me.
Readings next week – Twentieth
Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 56: 1. 6-7
Second Reading: Romans 11: 13-15. 29-32
Gospel: Matthew 15:21-28
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Vern Cazaly, Joy Hanrahan, Victoria Webb, Dawn
Stevens, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Lorna Jones, Nancy Bynon, Reg (Mick) Poole, Garry Westerway, Leslie Slater, Mikhail
Yastrebov, Olga
Delaney, Irene
Aitken, Bill Glassel, Jimmy Powell, Joan Davidson, Margaret Charlesworth, Peter
Sulzberger, Fr John Reilly, Ashton Shirley and Michael Byrne.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 9th – 15th
August
Kenneth
Bowles, Stephen French, Mark Gatt, Athol Wright, Kenneth Rowe, David Covington,
Patrick Tunchun, Anthony Hyde, Tom Hyland, Trevor Hudson, Rita & Cyril
Speers, Darlene Haigh, Evelyn Rosendorf and Jenny Wright.
May they rest in peace
Mersey Leven Parish Community welcome and congratulate….
Violet Peters daughter of Daman and Felicity on her baptism this weekend at Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport.
Weekly
Ramblings
On Wednesday evening the Parish Pastoral Team met and
endorsed the work that has been happening in the background to prepare for the
Parish Forum/Gathering to be held on Sunday 27th August in the
Community Room at Ulverstone commencing at 2pm. This gathering will be an
opportunity for all the Parish to be part of the next stage of ‘giving flesh’
to our Parish Vision - please come and be part of this gathering.
This week we will celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin Mary (15th) with our normal weekday Mass at
Penguin (9.30am) and extra Masses at Devonport at 12noon and at Ulverstone at
7.00pm. This is a Holy Day of Obligation and all parishioners are encouraged to
attend Mass on this day.
On Friday (18th) we will be celebrating the
Feast Day for the Penguin Community with Mass at midday followed by a bite to
eat somewhere to be determined! Any and all parishioners are invited to be part
of this celebration. Please remember the Penguin community in your prayers on
Friday.
Next weekend we will be celebrating the Sacrament of
Confirmation at the Vigil Mass at Devonport and the 9am Mass at Ulverstone.
Please keep these children and their families in your prayers.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes
CONFIRMATION:
Could all families please bring a plate of food for the
Vigil Mass at Devonport and the 9am Mass at Ulverstone.
ST VINCENT DE PAUL COLLECTION:
This weekend the St Vincent de Paul collection will be in
Devonport, Ulverstone, Port Sorell, Latrobe and Penguin to assist the work of
the St Vincent de Paul Society.
KNIGHTS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS:
The AGM of the Knights of the Southern Cross will be held on Sunday 20th August at OLOL Parish Hall commencing at 4pm. This will be followed by a light tea and then the August monthly meeting. Any men how are interested on joining the group are invited to attend.
The Annual Change-Over Mass of the North West District of the Knights of the Southern Cross will be held at Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone on Thursday 24th August at 11am. All members and their wives/partners are invited to attend the Mass and the luncheon.
MT ST.
VINCENT AUXILIARY: The Auxiliary will be holding a Cake and Craft stall at Mt.
St Vincent Home on Wednesday 30th August 9.00am start.
A clear plastic bowl
with blue writing on the bottom was left at the Parish Hall on Pentecost
Sunday. Anyone knowing its whereabouts
please contact the Parish Office.
FOOTY
TICKETS: Round 20 (4th August)
footy margin 46 – Winners: Jan Horton; Pat Anderson
BINGO - Thursday Nights
OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm! Callers for Thursday 17th
August – Rod Clark and Graeme Rigney.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
SACRED HEART CATHOLIC SCHOOL ULVERSTONE –
KINDERGARTEN ENROLMENTS 2018
Sacred Heart Catholic School are seeking expressions of
interest for Kindergarten enrolments for 2018 in order to help finalise
numbers. Children born in 2013 and turning five in 2018 are eligible for
enrolment. Parents/Carers wishing to enrol their child/children for
Kindergarten in 2018 will need to do this as soon as possible. For families
interested in finding out more information about Sacred Heart Catholic School,
please feel free to make an appointment by phone 6425:2680 or email: debbie.butcher@catholic.tas.edu.au
MARYKNOLL RETREAT & SPIRITUALITY CENTRE: Retreat & Reflection Days to be held October/November
2017 – please see Church Noticeboard for Flyer.
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 20 August
2017
GRIEF TO GRACE – HEALING THE
WOUNDS OF ABUSE – is
a spiritual retreat for anyone who has suffered degradation or violation
through physical, emotional, sexual or spiritual abuse. The retreat will be
held April 8th – 13th 2018. To request an application contact Anne by emailing info@grieftograceaus.org.au
or phone 0407704539. For more information visit www.grieftograce.org 
We are often tempted to deny, fix, or run away from
suffering and imperfection. The Franciscan way, in imitation of Jesus, is to
stand in solidarity and intimacy with the world’s hurt. Brian Mogren, an alum
of CAC’s Living School and the director in residence of St. Jane House, a
retreat and hospitality center in Minneapolis, reflects on what it’s like to
live in an “alternative” way, being present and loving in the midst of
brokenness.
[1] Adapted from Brian Mogren, The Mendicant, vol. 7, no. 2
(Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), 5.
OUR UTMOST IN DEALING WITH OUR FAITH
The complexity of adulthood inevitably puts to death the naiveté of childhood. And this is true too of our faith. Not that faith is a naiveté. It isn’t. But our faith needs to be constantly reintegrated into our persons and matched up anew against our life’s experience; otherwise we will find it at odds with our life. But genuine faith can stand up to every kind of experience, no matter its complexity.
Sadly, that doesn’t always happen and many people seemingly leave their faith behind, like belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny, as the complexity of their adult lives seemingly belies or even shames their childhood faith.
With this in mind, I recommend a recent book, My Utmost, A Devotional Memoir, by Macy Halford. She is a young, thirty-something, writer working out of both Paris and New York and this is an autobiographical account of her struggle as a conservative Evangelical Christian to retain her faith amidst the very liberal, sophisticated, highly secularized, and often agnostic circles within which she now lives and works.
The book chronicles her struggles to maintain a strong childhood faith which was virtually embedded in her DNA, thanks to a very faith-filled mother and grandmother. Faith and church were a staple and an anchor in her life as she was growing up. But her DNA also held something else, namely, the restlessness and creative tension of a writer, and that irrepressible energy naturally drove her beyond the safety and shelter of the churches circles of her youth, in her case, to literary circles in New York and Paris.
She soon found out that living the faith while surrounded by a strong supportive faith group is one thing, trying to live it while breathing an air that is almost exclusively secular and agnostic is something else. The book chronicles that struggle and chronicles too how eventually she was able to integrate both the passion and the vision of her childhood faith into her new life. Among many good insights, she shares how each time she was tempted to cross the line and abandon her childhood faith as a naiveté, she realized that her fear of doing that was “not a fear of destroying God or a belief; [but] a fear of destroying self.” That insight testifies to the genuine character of her faith. God and faith don’t need us; it’s us that need them.
The title of her book, My Utmost, is significant to her story. On her 13th birthday, her grandmother gave her a copy of a book which is well-known and much-used within Evangelical and Baptist circles, My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. The book is a collection of spiritual aphorisms, thoughts for every day of the year, by this prominent missionary and mystic. Halford shares how, while young and still solidly anchored in the church and faith of her childhood, she did not read the book daily and Chamber’s spiritual counsels meant little to her. But her reading of this book eventually became a daily ritual in her life and its daily counsel began, more and more, to become a prism through which she was able to reintegrate her childhood faith with her adult experience.
At one point in her life she gives herself over to a serious theological study of both the book and its author. Those parts of her memoir will intimidate some of her readers, but, even without a clear theological grasp of how eventually she brings it all into harmony, the fruit of her struggle comes through clearly.
This is a valuable memoir because today many people are undergoing this kind of struggle, that is, to have their childhood faith stand up to their present experience. Halford simply shows us how she did it and her struggle offers us a valuable paradigm to follow.
A generation ago, Karl Rahner, famously remarked that in the next generation we will either be mystics or unbelievers. Among other things, what Rahner meant was that, unlike previous generations where our communities (family, neighborhood, and church) very much helped carry the faith for us, in this next generation we will very much have to find our own, deeper, personal grounding for our faith. Macy Halford bears this out. Inside a generation within which many are unbelievers, her memoir lays out a path for a humble but effective mysticism.
The late Irish writer, John Moriarty, in his memoirs, shares how as a young man he drifted from the faith of his youth, Roman Catholicism, seeing it as a naiveté that could not stand up to his adult experiences. He walked along in that way until one day, as he puts it, “I realized that Roman Catholicism, the faith of my childhood, was my mother tongue.”
Macy Halford eventually re-grounded herself in her mother tongue, the faith of her youth, and it continues now to guide her through all the sophistications of adulthood. The chronicle of her search can help us all, irrespective of our particular religious affiliation.
3 STEPS ON HOW TO TRANSITION GUESTS INTO PARISHIONERS
Taken from the weekly blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. You can find the original blog here
This is the time of year when attendance in many churches is down, due to vacations. But as the vacation season comes to an end, (for us in Baltimore County, that would be this week and next) and especially as the school year gets started, you can be sure of one thing: more guests and first time visitors. They are church shoppers and this is their shopping season (along with the New Year). Sure they’re consumers, but they can be transitioned into regular contributors. Here are three simple steps you can take in terms of their guest experience.
1. It must be welcoming.
This is trickier than it sounds. Everybody likes to feel welcomed, but unchurched people coming back to church for the first time do NOT want to be singled out. If your church is big, that’s not necessarily a problem, if you have a small church, it definitely is: visitors stand out. Large or small, don’t, under any circumstances ask guests to stand up, identify themselves, wear a name tag, sit in a special seat, fill out a form. In fact, don’t ask them to do anything.
Greeters should treat everyone with equal graciousness. When a visitor identifies themselves as visiting, then, and only then, should an invitation be extended for information on what’s going on and available services and programs. A brief tour might even be in order. Same in the parking lot: by all means have designated parking for guests, but don’t expect them to make use of it on a first time visit. Its more about creating an environment that communicates warmth and welcome and, at the same time, allows guests to remain anonymous as long as they like.
The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. Many churches try too hard and scare off guests after their first experience.
2. It must be about the weekend.
The best way to get visitors to come back next weekend is to make sure they had a great experience last weekend. And that comes down to the music and message (which is what we call the homily). And if they have kids, and their kids have a great experience that can be an even bigger motivator for a return visit. Oftentimes, in fact, it is the children who lobby for a return visit.
3. It must be easy and accessible.
Do you make visitors jump through hoops to become connected? When someone wants to get involved or sign up for a small group, do they have to make a special trip to the parish office Monday morning? In our parish office we have very little foot traffic during the week because we make it easy for visitors and parishioners alike to do everything they need before or after weekend Masses. We have a Guest Services Kiosk for guest and visitors and a “Next Steps” Kiosk for parishioners. Getting involved, going deeper, or just learning more is entirely easy and accessible. Long before they ever take their next steps to becoming parishioners, they learn that those steps are easy and accessible.
What does faithfulness involve?
This article explores the meaning of faithfulness through the ideas of Blessed John Henry Newman. Newman considered that the two aspects of faithfulness, our moral decisions and our religious beliefs, are formed in very similar ways. In a lecture delivered earlier this year at St Aloysius’ College in Glasgow as part of the 2013 Gonzaga Lecture Series, philosopher Gerard J. Hughes SJ asked how Newman’s Aristotelian approach might speak to our concept and practice of faith. Gerard J. Hughes SJ is a tutor in philosophy at Campion Hall, Oxford. He is the author of Aristotle on Ethics, Is God to Blame? and Fidelity without Fundamentalism (DLT, 2010). The original article can be found here
I suppose that the simplest, and yet in the end the most important, answer to the question. ‘What does faithfulness involve?’ is that faithfulness must be faithfulness to God. All earthly expressions of fidelity, such as acceptance of the Creed or loyalty to the pope, are no more than attempts to respond to the call of God in our lives and to ask what it might involve in practice. It also seems to me that faithfulness is not something that can be defined statically; it is something more akin to a pilgrimage.
To explain what I mean by this I am going to draw on the ideas of Cardinal John Henry Newman. His personal pilgrimage was long and complex, from the theological disputes in the University of Oxford in the 1830s to his conversion to Catholicism in 1846; his subsequent attempts to help his fellow Catholics to respond appropriately to the First Vatican Council; and finally his presence at the time of the Modernist crisis which broke upon the Church just before his death. The world was changing quickly, and many of the teachings of traditional Christianity came suddenly under threat. Perhaps our times are not so very different, and for that reason I think his pilgrimage provides a model which might be an inspiration to us all.
Two aspects of fidelity
Our fidelity to God, in Newman’s view, was to be displayed in two ways: the first, perhaps the more obvious, is in our actions. We must try to live as God asks us to live. The second is, as it were, in our thoughts – we must accept in faith the truths which God has revealed to us, and which, of course, underpin our conscientious behaviour as well as our thoughts.
We might be inclined to think of the two kinds of fidelity – in thought and in action – as being very different. Newman would not separate them so distinctly, because of the way in which he understands ‘conscience’. He takes our human conscience to be the voice of God, and he means this seriously, not just as a pious phrase. Perhaps this idea seems more familiar to us when we think of God guiding our action. But, more surprisingly, Newman also holds that God speaks to us also by guiding our beliefs, our theology as it were, and not just our ethics.
Newman was a true student of Oxford, and that meant having a fair acquaintance with the views of Aristotle. Newman derives his notion of the ‘parallelism’ between conscience and theology from Aristotle’s account of how we decide – how we decide about anything, what we should believe as well as about how we should behave. Aristotle holds that in forming our theological beliefs and in making our moral decisions in the light of those beliefs we are living the life of God as far as it is possible for us mortals.
Conscience as the voice of God
Newman is very scathing about what he takes to be the vulgar, though prominent, idea that, ‘my conscience is just whatever I happen to think about what I should do, and nobody else can tell me what to do’. In response to this, and to the fashionable academic claim that we live in a world of blind processes and inevitable outcomes, he writes:
We are told that conscience is but a twist in primitive and untutored man; that its dictate is an imagination; that the very notion of guiltiness, which that dictate enforces, is simply irrational, for how can there possibly be freedom of will, how can there be consequent responsibility, in that infinite eternal network of cause and effect, in which we helplessly lie? And what retribution have we to fear, when we have had no real choice to do good or evil?[1]
Newman follows Aristotle in taking a much richer and more nuanced view. If our emotional responses to situations have been properly trained since childhood, they will provide us with a spontaneous ‘take’ on the moral demands of any situation – that it calls for kindness, or sympathy, or firmness, or anger, for example. These responses will settle what we should aim at; and our experience of life will give us the know-how to achieve those ends.
Newman emphasises the importance of conscience as an authoritative voice which seems independent of us:
… the voice of God in the nature and heart of man, as distinct from the voice of Revelation [is]… a principle planted within us before we have had any training, although training and experience are necessary for its strength, growth, and due formation … a constituent element of the mind, as our perception of other ideas may be, as our powers of reasoning, as our sense of order and the beautiful, and our other intellectual endowments.[2]
Given these dispositions, Newman says,
What it is to be virtuous, how we are to gain the just and right idea and standard of virtue, how we are to approximate in practice to our own standard, what is right and wrong in a particular case, for the answers in fullness and accuracy to these and similar questions, the philosopher refers us to no code of laws, to no moral treatise, because no science of life, applicable to the case of an individual, has been or can be written. Such is Aristotle’s doctrine, and it is undoubtedly true ... The authoritative oracle, which is to decide our path, is something more searching and manifold than such jejune generalisations as treatises can give, which are most distinct and clear when we least need them.[3]
We might well sympathise with that last remark. We all know that we should be loving, should not kill or steal or tell untruths; but does this primary school clarity suffice for the making of moral decisions in adult life? The Commandments themselves do not tell me whether switching off this machine amounts to killing someone, or whether this particular piece of smart accountancy amounts to stealing, or whether a couple in a canonically invalid marriage are committing adultery. Think about how you actually consider complex moral issues where the pros and cons are not so obvious. Newman gives a thumbnail sketch of how this often works in practice:
I should decide according to the particular case, which is beyond all rule, and must be decided on its own merits.I should look to see what theologians could do for me, what the Bishops and clergy around me, what my confessor; what friends whom I revered: and if, after all, I could not take their view of the matter, then I must rule myself by my own judgement and my own conscience.[4]
His final conclusion is:
You may tell me that this dictate is a mere law of my nature, as is to joy or to grieve. I cannot understand this. No, it is the echo of a person speaking to me. Nothing shall persuade me that it does not ultimately proceed from a person external to me. It carries with it the proof of its divine origin. My nature feels towards it as towards a person. When I obey it, I feel a satisfaction; when I disobey, a soreness – just like that I feel in pleasing or offending some revered friend... The echo implies a voice, the voice a speaker. That speaker I love and fear.[5]
St Ignatius said much the same thing when speaking of what he terms ‘confirmation’ and the discernment of Spirits. Ideally, the person making an important decision will consider all the pros and cons, presenting each possible course of action to God in prayer; and they will experience God as more present and supportive when they think of acting in one particular way rather than in some other.[6] Such is fidelity to the voice of God in our daily practice.
The parallels between fidelity in our ethical practice and fidelity in forming our religious beliefs
Surprisingly Newman holds that there are many parallels between being faithful to God in making our moral decisions and being faithful to God in deciding what we should believe.
In his Grammar of Assent, Newman develops a very general theory about all our beliefs, and how we come to believe things. According to his account, formal logic plays only a small part in forming our beliefs about the ordinary world, as distinct from the realm of pure mathematics. Newman takes the realm of formal logic and mathematics to be neat and conclusive in a way in which our attempts to handle the real world seldom, if ever, can be. But pure logic does not help very much in dealing with a complex world.
At the root of all our beliefs is the fact that we have all developed a very general and wide-ranging pattern of thinking and talking. Wittgenstein describes this as ‘a form of life’ – a whole pattern of beliefs which form the framework against which we test particular claims, and which experience teaches us is usually reliable. So, according to Newman’s suggestion, we never in fact try to prove that Britain is an island. Firstly because anything we might adduce as proof – satellite photos, or a voyage – is itself open to challenge, for how do we know the satellite photos were not computer-generated, or our circumnavigation misdirected? But more importantly we have learned how to settle such questions just by having learned from our multiform experiences. Newman would have approved of Wittgenstein’s observation that we do not need to test whether the table exists even when we are not experiencing it. We have all developed a framework of beliefs about the world which would not in any normal circumstances be challenged, and which guide our thought in complex situations.
Such a situation may be that of a juror who has to make up her mind about the guilt or innocence of the person charged with an offence. She does not in any strict sense ‘deduce’ her verdict from the evidence. She has learned to ‘read’ the evidence. The reliable juror will rely on her experience of life, and she will be emotionally well-balanced in her attitude to the evidence and the persons who provided it. These pre-requisites for having reliable beliefs are just the ones we need in order to make good moral decisions. They are not at all like proofs in pure logic. Newman insists that pure logic is useless when we come to deal with the real world.
So in the end, deciding what to believe is not so much the outcome of a deduction (pace Sherlock Holmes); it is not in any strict sense a logical conclusion, though it is a rational conclusion. It is a perception, a ‘seeing’ how the facts are to be read. If we are well-informed, open minded and intellectually honest, we can trust our judgements. This is not to say that we can never be mistaken, but rather that there is nothing more reliable to which we can turn.
That is just what Newman believes holds true of our religious beliefs: we try to find out what we can, try to be open-minded and honest, and leave time and space for God to speak to us as we consider all these things, looking at them ‘in the round’, so to speak.
‘Reading’ tradition
Ideally, then, just as our moral beliefs become more refined and better informed as we go along, the same is true of our theological beliefs.
We need to see the history of the early Church as a pilgrimage. The very earliest Christians were Jews, strictly monotheist Jews. But in the light of Jesus’s resurrection, the early Christians had to do several things: to re-learn the role of the Messiah; and to understand more deeply the sense in which Jesus was ‘more than a prophet’, claiming a quite astonishing level of authority. They had to embark on a radical re-evaluation of Jesus and his ministry in the light of their experience of the risen Christ. So what did they do?
They looked for texts in their tradition to find ways of formulating their belief; and they tried, difficult though it was, to reach a ‘verdict’ which respected all they now knew. Paul in a famous passage in Philippians says that Jesus, ‘though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself’ (Phil 2:6-8). And the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that, ‘Having been made perfect, he became the source of salvation for all who obey him.’ The writer promptly goes on to admit that more has to be said, but it is hard to explain (Heb 5:7-14).
Indeed so, but it took more than two centuries before the Christians were able to reconcile – after a fashion – that Jesus had to be seen as divine, indeed as God; and yet that there was only one God. To use the term ‘consubstantial’ merely expresses the difficulty rather than resolves it. The difficulty was even worse because if there was one thing the early Christians were sure of, it was that Jesus had been a man, a human being like anyone else. How on earth can a human being be God? Can God be truly a man?
Another example of how we have to refine our faithfulness when it comes to religious belief is the way in which we have responded to the developments in the secular sciences. Take the doctrine of original sin, and the reading of Genesis upon which it was originally founded. We now know two things which our forefathers did not. We know that we humans did not start off in a paradise garden; we have evolved. We also know that at the time Genesis was written, there were many other religions that tried to explain the origins of the world and the mixture of good and evil which it contains. The beginning of Genesis fits into that culture perfectly, attacking the view that there must be two divinities, one good the other bad. There is but one God, and God saw that everything he had made was good. If there is evil in the world, it is because of the ambitions and shortcomings of human beings.
Our knowledge of the origins of the universe and of the religious traditions of our forefathers enables us now to inherit their beliefs as part of our own pilgrimage towards God. We may have to go yet further on our pilgrimage, by trying to integrate our Christian beliefs into the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. As our sense of wonder at the universe grows, so also does our understanding of the magnificence of God.
As Newman saw very clearly, ‘tradition’ or ‘what the Church teaches’ or ‘has taught’ is not fixed in detail, and there is no reason to suppose it will ever be. Just as the application of moral principles to individual cases is ‘beyond all rule’, so too is our understanding of doctrines. What we might expect is a gradual adaptation – to cultures, to the sciences, to our improved knowledge of biblical texts. Mistakes will have been made, from which we have to learn, and new challenges will have be faced, in the light of our discoveries in psychology, genetics, ecology and medicine. Our previous Christian moral experience does not automatically solve all such problems.
As Gaudium et Spes says, we must learn from the modern world in order to be able to teach the modern world. Ignatian discernment can help us to do just that. It requires us first of all to do our best to understand our desires – where they can lead us astray, but more importantly, how (if we are as honest with ourselves as we can manage to be) they will give us a ‘feel’ for what God is calling us to believe, or to do. We use our minds to try to formulate what God might be asking of us in our world – both in terms of how to make sense of God’s creation, and how to find God in trying to respond to him in our world. As Newman would have put it, just as conscience at its best can be a listening to the voice of God, so our understanding of God and of the truth he reveals to us is a response to the best of our God-given minds. Ideally, both in morals and in faith, we will be able to say, ‘So far so good’; in practice that is an ideal which, with understanding and prayer, we might try to achieve. It is to be hoped that we have developed such an intimacy with God that we are able to learn what fidelity means in our God-created world, whose complexities we are far from totally grasping.
[1] Newman, John Henry, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, [hereafter Diff.] vol II (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1900), p. 249.
[2] Diff., pp. 247– 248.
[3] Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), p. 354.
[4] Diff., vol II, pp. 243–244.
[5] Newman, John Henry, Callista (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), pp. 314-315
[6] Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, §175-7, 183.
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 20 August
2017
This week on the Journey, we are blessed to have God Spots
from such inspiring people. We hear from Sr Hilda with her wisdom from the
Abbey and Presence Left Behind, Sam Clear reminds us about Unity while Walking
the Walk and Fr Dave Callaghan encourages us about Putting our Trust in the
Lord. This is carefully woven together with amazing Christian music artists to
help create a show that is all about faith, hope, love and life. Go to www.jcr.org.au or www.itunes.jcr.org.au where you can
listen anytime and subscribe to weekly shows by email.
GRIEF TO GRACE – HEALING THE
WOUNDS OF ABUSE – is
a spiritual retreat for anyone who has suffered degradation or violation
through physical, emotional, sexual or spiritual abuse. The retreat will be
held April 8th – 13th 2018. To request an application contact Anne by emailing info@grieftograceaus.org.au
or phone 0407704539. For more information visit www.grieftograce.org
Being Love in a Broken World
This is taken from the Daily email produced by Fr Richard Rohr OFM and the Centre for Contemplation. You can subscribe here
We are often tempted to deny, fix, or run away from
suffering and imperfection. The Franciscan way, in imitation of Jesus, is to
stand in solidarity and intimacy with the world’s hurt. Brian Mogren, an alum
of CAC’s Living School and the director in residence of St. Jane House, a
retreat and hospitality center in Minneapolis, reflects on what it’s like to
live in an “alternative” way, being present and loving in the midst of
brokenness.
Ring the bells that
still can ring
Forget your perfect
offering
There is a crack in
everything
That’s how the light
gets in.
—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
These inspired words from poet and prophet Leonard Cohen
were shared at the closing liturgy of the January 2017 Living School intensive.
Our group had been together at a retreat center alongside the Rio Grande for a
week, learning from Father Richard and each other about our rich, mystical,
contemplative heritage.
We were also given spiritual practices and plenty of quiet
time and space, opening ourselves to grace-filled moments of the Holy
Spirit—alive in the world, manifested through each other and the natural world
that surrounded us. We noticed that when we moved beyond our dualistic minds,
the birds, the plants, and even the stones came alive to tell their stories,
reminding us who we are and how we too fit into God’s “family of things.”
For me, it was an awakening to the power of Being—simply
being who I am, in all my humanity, in Christ. I came to see that my striving
so hard to keep the world from cracking actually kept me from being present and
loving as it necessarily cracks.
We are living in times when many of the institutions in
which we’ve found our identities and placed our trust are revealing their
unworkability and brokenness. Unless we are grounded in a Bigger Story and
Truth, the falling apart of the system could also be our own undoing. The
Center for Action and Contemplation is a beautiful example of what an
institution can look like in this new era—midwifing us to give birth to God’s
Light within, allowing us to become more fully who we are. In so doing, we are
liberated to move out into this broken and blessed world of ours to do the
same. [1]
Reference:
[1] Adapted from Brian Mogren, The Mendicant, vol. 7, no. 2
(Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), 5.
OUR UTMOST IN DEALING WITH OUR FAITH
The complexity of adulthood inevitably puts to death the naiveté of childhood. And this is true too of our faith. Not that faith is a naiveté. It isn’t. But our faith needs to be constantly reintegrated into our persons and matched up anew against our life’s experience; otherwise we will find it at odds with our life. But genuine faith can stand up to every kind of experience, no matter its complexity.
Sadly, that doesn’t always happen and many people seemingly leave their faith behind, like belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny, as the complexity of their adult lives seemingly belies or even shames their childhood faith.
With this in mind, I recommend a recent book, My Utmost, A Devotional Memoir, by Macy Halford. She is a young, thirty-something, writer working out of both Paris and New York and this is an autobiographical account of her struggle as a conservative Evangelical Christian to retain her faith amidst the very liberal, sophisticated, highly secularized, and often agnostic circles within which she now lives and works.
The book chronicles her struggles to maintain a strong childhood faith which was virtually embedded in her DNA, thanks to a very faith-filled mother and grandmother. Faith and church were a staple and an anchor in her life as she was growing up. But her DNA also held something else, namely, the restlessness and creative tension of a writer, and that irrepressible energy naturally drove her beyond the safety and shelter of the churches circles of her youth, in her case, to literary circles in New York and Paris.
She soon found out that living the faith while surrounded by a strong supportive faith group is one thing, trying to live it while breathing an air that is almost exclusively secular and agnostic is something else. The book chronicles that struggle and chronicles too how eventually she was able to integrate both the passion and the vision of her childhood faith into her new life. Among many good insights, she shares how each time she was tempted to cross the line and abandon her childhood faith as a naiveté, she realized that her fear of doing that was “not a fear of destroying God or a belief; [but] a fear of destroying self.” That insight testifies to the genuine character of her faith. God and faith don’t need us; it’s us that need them.
The title of her book, My Utmost, is significant to her story. On her 13th birthday, her grandmother gave her a copy of a book which is well-known and much-used within Evangelical and Baptist circles, My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. The book is a collection of spiritual aphorisms, thoughts for every day of the year, by this prominent missionary and mystic. Halford shares how, while young and still solidly anchored in the church and faith of her childhood, she did not read the book daily and Chamber’s spiritual counsels meant little to her. But her reading of this book eventually became a daily ritual in her life and its daily counsel began, more and more, to become a prism through which she was able to reintegrate her childhood faith with her adult experience.
At one point in her life she gives herself over to a serious theological study of both the book and its author. Those parts of her memoir will intimidate some of her readers, but, even without a clear theological grasp of how eventually she brings it all into harmony, the fruit of her struggle comes through clearly.
This is a valuable memoir because today many people are undergoing this kind of struggle, that is, to have their childhood faith stand up to their present experience. Halford simply shows us how she did it and her struggle offers us a valuable paradigm to follow.
A generation ago, Karl Rahner, famously remarked that in the next generation we will either be mystics or unbelievers. Among other things, what Rahner meant was that, unlike previous generations where our communities (family, neighborhood, and church) very much helped carry the faith for us, in this next generation we will very much have to find our own, deeper, personal grounding for our faith. Macy Halford bears this out. Inside a generation within which many are unbelievers, her memoir lays out a path for a humble but effective mysticism.
The late Irish writer, John Moriarty, in his memoirs, shares how as a young man he drifted from the faith of his youth, Roman Catholicism, seeing it as a naiveté that could not stand up to his adult experiences. He walked along in that way until one day, as he puts it, “I realized that Roman Catholicism, the faith of my childhood, was my mother tongue.”
Macy Halford eventually re-grounded herself in her mother tongue, the faith of her youth, and it continues now to guide her through all the sophistications of adulthood. The chronicle of her search can help us all, irrespective of our particular religious affiliation.
3 STEPS ON HOW TO TRANSITION GUESTS INTO PARISHIONERS
Taken from the weekly blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. You can find the original blog here
This is the time of year when attendance in many churches is down, due to vacations. But as the vacation season comes to an end, (for us in Baltimore County, that would be this week and next) and especially as the school year gets started, you can be sure of one thing: more guests and first time visitors. They are church shoppers and this is their shopping season (along with the New Year). Sure they’re consumers, but they can be transitioned into regular contributors. Here are three simple steps you can take in terms of their guest experience.
1. It must be welcoming.
This is trickier than it sounds. Everybody likes to feel welcomed, but unchurched people coming back to church for the first time do NOT want to be singled out. If your church is big, that’s not necessarily a problem, if you have a small church, it definitely is: visitors stand out. Large or small, don’t, under any circumstances ask guests to stand up, identify themselves, wear a name tag, sit in a special seat, fill out a form. In fact, don’t ask them to do anything.
Greeters should treat everyone with equal graciousness. When a visitor identifies themselves as visiting, then, and only then, should an invitation be extended for information on what’s going on and available services and programs. A brief tour might even be in order. Same in the parking lot: by all means have designated parking for guests, but don’t expect them to make use of it on a first time visit. Its more about creating an environment that communicates warmth and welcome and, at the same time, allows guests to remain anonymous as long as they like.
The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. Many churches try too hard and scare off guests after their first experience.
2. It must be about the weekend.
The best way to get visitors to come back next weekend is to make sure they had a great experience last weekend. And that comes down to the music and message (which is what we call the homily). And if they have kids, and their kids have a great experience that can be an even bigger motivator for a return visit. Oftentimes, in fact, it is the children who lobby for a return visit.
3. It must be easy and accessible.
Do you make visitors jump through hoops to become connected? When someone wants to get involved or sign up for a small group, do they have to make a special trip to the parish office Monday morning? In our parish office we have very little foot traffic during the week because we make it easy for visitors and parishioners alike to do everything they need before or after weekend Masses. We have a Guest Services Kiosk for guest and visitors and a “Next Steps” Kiosk for parishioners. Getting involved, going deeper, or just learning more is entirely easy and accessible. Long before they ever take their next steps to becoming parishioners, they learn that those steps are easy and accessible.
What does faithfulness involve?
This article explores the meaning of faithfulness through the ideas of Blessed John Henry Newman. Newman considered that the two aspects of faithfulness, our moral decisions and our religious beliefs, are formed in very similar ways. In a lecture delivered earlier this year at St Aloysius’ College in Glasgow as part of the 2013 Gonzaga Lecture Series, philosopher Gerard J. Hughes SJ asked how Newman’s Aristotelian approach might speak to our concept and practice of faith. Gerard J. Hughes SJ is a tutor in philosophy at Campion Hall, Oxford. He is the author of Aristotle on Ethics, Is God to Blame? and Fidelity without Fundamentalism (DLT, 2010). The original article can be found here
I suppose that the simplest, and yet in the end the most important, answer to the question. ‘What does faithfulness involve?’ is that faithfulness must be faithfulness to God. All earthly expressions of fidelity, such as acceptance of the Creed or loyalty to the pope, are no more than attempts to respond to the call of God in our lives and to ask what it might involve in practice. It also seems to me that faithfulness is not something that can be defined statically; it is something more akin to a pilgrimage.
To explain what I mean by this I am going to draw on the ideas of Cardinal John Henry Newman. His personal pilgrimage was long and complex, from the theological disputes in the University of Oxford in the 1830s to his conversion to Catholicism in 1846; his subsequent attempts to help his fellow Catholics to respond appropriately to the First Vatican Council; and finally his presence at the time of the Modernist crisis which broke upon the Church just before his death. The world was changing quickly, and many of the teachings of traditional Christianity came suddenly under threat. Perhaps our times are not so very different, and for that reason I think his pilgrimage provides a model which might be an inspiration to us all.
Two aspects of fidelity
Our fidelity to God, in Newman’s view, was to be displayed in two ways: the first, perhaps the more obvious, is in our actions. We must try to live as God asks us to live. The second is, as it were, in our thoughts – we must accept in faith the truths which God has revealed to us, and which, of course, underpin our conscientious behaviour as well as our thoughts.
We might be inclined to think of the two kinds of fidelity – in thought and in action – as being very different. Newman would not separate them so distinctly, because of the way in which he understands ‘conscience’. He takes our human conscience to be the voice of God, and he means this seriously, not just as a pious phrase. Perhaps this idea seems more familiar to us when we think of God guiding our action. But, more surprisingly, Newman also holds that God speaks to us also by guiding our beliefs, our theology as it were, and not just our ethics.
Newman was a true student of Oxford, and that meant having a fair acquaintance with the views of Aristotle. Newman derives his notion of the ‘parallelism’ between conscience and theology from Aristotle’s account of how we decide – how we decide about anything, what we should believe as well as about how we should behave. Aristotle holds that in forming our theological beliefs and in making our moral decisions in the light of those beliefs we are living the life of God as far as it is possible for us mortals.
Conscience as the voice of God
Newman is very scathing about what he takes to be the vulgar, though prominent, idea that, ‘my conscience is just whatever I happen to think about what I should do, and nobody else can tell me what to do’. In response to this, and to the fashionable academic claim that we live in a world of blind processes and inevitable outcomes, he writes:
We are told that conscience is but a twist in primitive and untutored man; that its dictate is an imagination; that the very notion of guiltiness, which that dictate enforces, is simply irrational, for how can there possibly be freedom of will, how can there be consequent responsibility, in that infinite eternal network of cause and effect, in which we helplessly lie? And what retribution have we to fear, when we have had no real choice to do good or evil?[1]
Newman follows Aristotle in taking a much richer and more nuanced view. If our emotional responses to situations have been properly trained since childhood, they will provide us with a spontaneous ‘take’ on the moral demands of any situation – that it calls for kindness, or sympathy, or firmness, or anger, for example. These responses will settle what we should aim at; and our experience of life will give us the know-how to achieve those ends.
Newman emphasises the importance of conscience as an authoritative voice which seems independent of us:
… the voice of God in the nature and heart of man, as distinct from the voice of Revelation [is]… a principle planted within us before we have had any training, although training and experience are necessary for its strength, growth, and due formation … a constituent element of the mind, as our perception of other ideas may be, as our powers of reasoning, as our sense of order and the beautiful, and our other intellectual endowments.[2]
Given these dispositions, Newman says,
What it is to be virtuous, how we are to gain the just and right idea and standard of virtue, how we are to approximate in practice to our own standard, what is right and wrong in a particular case, for the answers in fullness and accuracy to these and similar questions, the philosopher refers us to no code of laws, to no moral treatise, because no science of life, applicable to the case of an individual, has been or can be written. Such is Aristotle’s doctrine, and it is undoubtedly true ... The authoritative oracle, which is to decide our path, is something more searching and manifold than such jejune generalisations as treatises can give, which are most distinct and clear when we least need them.[3]
We might well sympathise with that last remark. We all know that we should be loving, should not kill or steal or tell untruths; but does this primary school clarity suffice for the making of moral decisions in adult life? The Commandments themselves do not tell me whether switching off this machine amounts to killing someone, or whether this particular piece of smart accountancy amounts to stealing, or whether a couple in a canonically invalid marriage are committing adultery. Think about how you actually consider complex moral issues where the pros and cons are not so obvious. Newman gives a thumbnail sketch of how this often works in practice:
I should decide according to the particular case, which is beyond all rule, and must be decided on its own merits.I should look to see what theologians could do for me, what the Bishops and clergy around me, what my confessor; what friends whom I revered: and if, after all, I could not take their view of the matter, then I must rule myself by my own judgement and my own conscience.[4]
His final conclusion is:
You may tell me that this dictate is a mere law of my nature, as is to joy or to grieve. I cannot understand this. No, it is the echo of a person speaking to me. Nothing shall persuade me that it does not ultimately proceed from a person external to me. It carries with it the proof of its divine origin. My nature feels towards it as towards a person. When I obey it, I feel a satisfaction; when I disobey, a soreness – just like that I feel in pleasing or offending some revered friend... The echo implies a voice, the voice a speaker. That speaker I love and fear.[5]
St Ignatius said much the same thing when speaking of what he terms ‘confirmation’ and the discernment of Spirits. Ideally, the person making an important decision will consider all the pros and cons, presenting each possible course of action to God in prayer; and they will experience God as more present and supportive when they think of acting in one particular way rather than in some other.[6] Such is fidelity to the voice of God in our daily practice.
The parallels between fidelity in our ethical practice and fidelity in forming our religious beliefs
Surprisingly Newman holds that there are many parallels between being faithful to God in making our moral decisions and being faithful to God in deciding what we should believe.
In his Grammar of Assent, Newman develops a very general theory about all our beliefs, and how we come to believe things. According to his account, formal logic plays only a small part in forming our beliefs about the ordinary world, as distinct from the realm of pure mathematics. Newman takes the realm of formal logic and mathematics to be neat and conclusive in a way in which our attempts to handle the real world seldom, if ever, can be. But pure logic does not help very much in dealing with a complex world.
At the root of all our beliefs is the fact that we have all developed a very general and wide-ranging pattern of thinking and talking. Wittgenstein describes this as ‘a form of life’ – a whole pattern of beliefs which form the framework against which we test particular claims, and which experience teaches us is usually reliable. So, according to Newman’s suggestion, we never in fact try to prove that Britain is an island. Firstly because anything we might adduce as proof – satellite photos, or a voyage – is itself open to challenge, for how do we know the satellite photos were not computer-generated, or our circumnavigation misdirected? But more importantly we have learned how to settle such questions just by having learned from our multiform experiences. Newman would have approved of Wittgenstein’s observation that we do not need to test whether the table exists even when we are not experiencing it. We have all developed a framework of beliefs about the world which would not in any normal circumstances be challenged, and which guide our thought in complex situations.
Such a situation may be that of a juror who has to make up her mind about the guilt or innocence of the person charged with an offence. She does not in any strict sense ‘deduce’ her verdict from the evidence. She has learned to ‘read’ the evidence. The reliable juror will rely on her experience of life, and she will be emotionally well-balanced in her attitude to the evidence and the persons who provided it. These pre-requisites for having reliable beliefs are just the ones we need in order to make good moral decisions. They are not at all like proofs in pure logic. Newman insists that pure logic is useless when we come to deal with the real world.
So in the end, deciding what to believe is not so much the outcome of a deduction (pace Sherlock Holmes); it is not in any strict sense a logical conclusion, though it is a rational conclusion. It is a perception, a ‘seeing’ how the facts are to be read. If we are well-informed, open minded and intellectually honest, we can trust our judgements. This is not to say that we can never be mistaken, but rather that there is nothing more reliable to which we can turn.
That is just what Newman believes holds true of our religious beliefs: we try to find out what we can, try to be open-minded and honest, and leave time and space for God to speak to us as we consider all these things, looking at them ‘in the round’, so to speak.
‘Reading’ tradition
Ideally, then, just as our moral beliefs become more refined and better informed as we go along, the same is true of our theological beliefs.
We need to see the history of the early Church as a pilgrimage. The very earliest Christians were Jews, strictly monotheist Jews. But in the light of Jesus’s resurrection, the early Christians had to do several things: to re-learn the role of the Messiah; and to understand more deeply the sense in which Jesus was ‘more than a prophet’, claiming a quite astonishing level of authority. They had to embark on a radical re-evaluation of Jesus and his ministry in the light of their experience of the risen Christ. So what did they do?
They looked for texts in their tradition to find ways of formulating their belief; and they tried, difficult though it was, to reach a ‘verdict’ which respected all they now knew. Paul in a famous passage in Philippians says that Jesus, ‘though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself’ (Phil 2:6-8). And the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that, ‘Having been made perfect, he became the source of salvation for all who obey him.’ The writer promptly goes on to admit that more has to be said, but it is hard to explain (Heb 5:7-14).
Indeed so, but it took more than two centuries before the Christians were able to reconcile – after a fashion – that Jesus had to be seen as divine, indeed as God; and yet that there was only one God. To use the term ‘consubstantial’ merely expresses the difficulty rather than resolves it. The difficulty was even worse because if there was one thing the early Christians were sure of, it was that Jesus had been a man, a human being like anyone else. How on earth can a human being be God? Can God be truly a man?
Another example of how we have to refine our faithfulness when it comes to religious belief is the way in which we have responded to the developments in the secular sciences. Take the doctrine of original sin, and the reading of Genesis upon which it was originally founded. We now know two things which our forefathers did not. We know that we humans did not start off in a paradise garden; we have evolved. We also know that at the time Genesis was written, there were many other religions that tried to explain the origins of the world and the mixture of good and evil which it contains. The beginning of Genesis fits into that culture perfectly, attacking the view that there must be two divinities, one good the other bad. There is but one God, and God saw that everything he had made was good. If there is evil in the world, it is because of the ambitions and shortcomings of human beings.
Our knowledge of the origins of the universe and of the religious traditions of our forefathers enables us now to inherit their beliefs as part of our own pilgrimage towards God. We may have to go yet further on our pilgrimage, by trying to integrate our Christian beliefs into the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. As our sense of wonder at the universe grows, so also does our understanding of the magnificence of God.
As Newman saw very clearly, ‘tradition’ or ‘what the Church teaches’ or ‘has taught’ is not fixed in detail, and there is no reason to suppose it will ever be. Just as the application of moral principles to individual cases is ‘beyond all rule’, so too is our understanding of doctrines. What we might expect is a gradual adaptation – to cultures, to the sciences, to our improved knowledge of biblical texts. Mistakes will have been made, from which we have to learn, and new challenges will have be faced, in the light of our discoveries in psychology, genetics, ecology and medicine. Our previous Christian moral experience does not automatically solve all such problems.
As Gaudium et Spes says, we must learn from the modern world in order to be able to teach the modern world. Ignatian discernment can help us to do just that. It requires us first of all to do our best to understand our desires – where they can lead us astray, but more importantly, how (if we are as honest with ourselves as we can manage to be) they will give us a ‘feel’ for what God is calling us to believe, or to do. We use our minds to try to formulate what God might be asking of us in our world – both in terms of how to make sense of God’s creation, and how to find God in trying to respond to him in our world. As Newman would have put it, just as conscience at its best can be a listening to the voice of God, so our understanding of God and of the truth he reveals to us is a response to the best of our God-given minds. Ideally, both in morals and in faith, we will be able to say, ‘So far so good’; in practice that is an ideal which, with understanding and prayer, we might try to achieve. It is to be hoped that we have developed such an intimacy with God that we are able to learn what fidelity means in our God-created world, whose complexities we are far from totally grasping.
[1] Newman, John Henry, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, [hereafter Diff.] vol II (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1900), p. 249.
[2] Diff., pp. 247– 248.
[3] Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), p. 354.
[4] Diff., vol II, pp. 243–244.
[5] Newman, John Henry, Callista (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), pp. 314-315
[6] Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, §175-7, 183.
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