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Category: Religion (Page 11 of 11)

Jesus Was A Community Organisor, Pilate Was A Governor

April 17, 2009 / / 0 Comments

So (blinding flash of religious insight) Barack Obama must be wonderful, and Sarah Palin is really, really bad.

Just overlook the fact that Bill Clinton was also a governor. Because he was like, you know, cool and stuff. And so supportive of women. Lots of them.

But just ask yourself: ‘Who of Obama or Pailn is more likely to ask himself (there’s a hint right there) “What is truth?” and then to wash his hands of it?’

I think when it comes to washing your hands because of condemning innocent blood surely this is the modern Democratic party. When it comes to abortion, cloning, ESCR, Euthanasia, and even some cases infanticide then surely you hear the sounds of washing hands from the likes of Obama and company. State Senator Obama determined that it was more politically expedient to let children die that were born alive after a failed abortion to protect abortion. Pilate would have understood Obama’s politically expediency since he did the same thing.

Mary MacKillop’s Second Miracle?

April 14, 2009 / / 3 Comments

David Keohane, 29, was on his way home from a party in Coogee in Sydney when he was beaten beyond recognition in August last year. He had been in a coma in a hospital in his home town of Cork in Ireland, but awoke on St Patrick’s Day and is now talking.

Doctors had been unsure he would ever recover consciousness. His family are attributing his dramatic recovery to the intercessions of Australian Josephite nun Mary MacKillop, whose prayers for him they had constantly asked.

Catholics don’t pray to the saints (although they may sometimes loosely use that expression). Instead, they ask the saints, their friends in heaven, to pray for them in the same way as other Chrisians ask their friends on earth to pray for them. Catholics (and some other Christians) believe that if we are united in Christ, even death cannot separate us from those who have gone before, and that the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ continue to care for us.

Mary MacKillop was beatified by John Paul II in 1995. The process leading to the Church recognising her as saint began in 1925, so it has certainly not been rushed. The final stage is canonisation, which really means ‘being added to the list.’

The Pope doesn’t make anyone a saint – only God can do that. Every Christian is a saint, in the sense of being sanctified, set apart for God’s purposes. But the Church acknowledges certain people through whom the light of Christ has shone so clearly that their heroic dedication to the will of God is an inspiration to others. One of the requirements is two confirmed miracles attributed to the intervention of the person. Mary MacKillop needs a second miracle.

During his visit to Australia in 2008, Pope Benedict said: ‘She will be canonised, we’re waiting for the miracle.’ The recovery of David Keohane may be that miracle. But it will be a long process, and any medical testimony will be thoroughly tested.

Still, this might be it – Australia’s first saint.

This is the Mary MacKillop Prayer, as prayed by her own order, the Josephites:

Most loving God,
We thank you for the example of Blessed Mary MacKillop,
who in her living of the Gospel witnessed to the human dignity of each person.
She faced life’s challenges with faith and courage.
We pray through her intercession for our needs……..

May her holiness soon be acknowledged by the universal Church.
We make this prayer through Jesus the Lord.
Amen.

Safran Crucifixion Offends Villagers

April 13, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I have enjoyed some of Safrans’ work. He can be genuinely funny. But when people are kind and harm no one, mocking their values and beliefs is not funny. It’s just try-hard.

I can sort of understand the practice in some parts of the Philippines of being crucified on Good Friday. It’s a symbolic identification with Christ in his sufferings, an expression of a desire to share the burden he carried.

I think it’s the wrong thing to do. But I still respect the sincerity and faith of the people who do it.

John Safran dressing up in ‘Life of Brian’ type wig and pleading to share in this ritual just so he can belittle the people involved is not something which is fair or amusing.

Devout Christian followers of Good Friday’s crucifixion rituals in the rural Philippines village of Kapitangan were devastated to learn that John Safran’s nailing to the cross alongside local penitents was a TV comedy show stunt. In this isolated part of Bulacan province north of Manila the arrival of a faithful foreigner in a jeepney who pleaded to take part in the gory Easter ceremony and didn’t chicken out was at first applauded. Villagers were bewildered to learn on Saturday that Safran was not even a Christian. Student Jhoan Caparas, 18, who saw Safran’s crucifixion, said his actions had been disrespectful and immoral. “Why does he want to come here and laugh at us? We don’t laugh at his culture and his beliefs. So he should respect ours.”

Yes he should.

Were You There When he Rose From Out The Tomb?

April 12, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Now that’s a question.

We were all there when he was crucified. Every person who has ever lived and ever will live. Our cruel words are lashes on his back, our contempt for others the spit in his face, our self-righteousness the nails in his hands.

Rolling Stone Tomb in Israel

But were you there when he rose? Because if you were, you have a choice. You can go back to fishing, or whatever your daily life was. But that is a kind of death, slow coming though it may be.

Or you can be a witness to what you have seen, what you know. You can be part of something bigger. You can share in the purpose for which all things were made. You can have real life, everlasting life.

You can be a new creation, healed, sins forgiven. You can be part of the same family as Mary Magdalene, Peter and Paul and all the faithful men and women through the ages.

You can say in your life and words: Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?

April 10, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Kathy and Amanda and I just finished watching Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.

I remember Mel being asked who he thought was responsible for the death of Jesus. He answered: ‘All of us.’

Mel Gibson (and all of us) Holds the Nails

Mel Gibson did not appear in the film, except for a brief moment when his hand held the nails as they were driven into Jesus’ hands.

It is my hands that hold the nails too. My hands that strike with the hammer, my hands that craft the crown of thorns. Every time I decide to speak unkindly or untruthfully, every time I act selfishly, I spit in Jesus’ face, and shout with the crowd ‘Crucify him!’ Every time I choose my own comfort or pleasure over what is right, I swing the whip that scourged Him.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?   I know I was.

Collects for Good Friday

April 10, 2009 / / 0 Comments

In Anglican usage, the ‘Collect’ is a prayer that collects together the themes of the liturgy and readings for the day into a single short prayer.

Good Friday is unique in having not one but three collects, each of which expresses a different aspect of the celebration of that day.

It is a celebration, even though Good Friday worship is moving, solemn and even sombre.

Jesus, the Son of God, suffered all the pains of human existence – betrayal, false accusations, desertion, loneliness, poverty, humiliation, extreme physical pain, and death. It is a celebration because Christians know, even as they contemplate these things, that Jesus has won a great and ultimately final victory over them, over sin, the devil, death.

We know this victory means that while our sufferings are real, horrible, grievous, we can have hope. Even though we may scared, tempted, confused, abandoned or in pain, we can say with Julian of Norwich ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ So in this darkest moment, the central moment of all creation, the moment of Jesus’ passion and death, and in any dark moment, we can still rejoice and say “Thanks be to God!”

ALMIGHTY God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

Just look at us God – we who love you and are called by the name of your Son. Bless what is good. Heal what is not. Remember how much Jesus loved us – that He gave His life for us. For He who suffered as we do, and had reason to despair as we do, now lives and reigns with you in heaven forever.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified; Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before thee for all estates of men in thy holy Church, that every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, may truly and godly serve thee; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

God, no matter how things seem, you are in charge, and your world and your Church are holy. You make us holy, you give us our purpose and direction. Hear us as we pray for everyone in your family. Let all of them, whoever and wherever they are, serve you faithfully, courageously, and according to your will.

Why pray this prayer today? Because Good Friday reminds us of the cost of our salvation, and of the deepest nature of all Christian service – the self-sacrificial giving of our lives for others in imitation of Christ.

O MERCIFUL God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor desirest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live; Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics; and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

Not surprisingly, this is no longer permitted to be used in some parts of the Anglican communion. More’s the pity.

Muslims know Christians do not believe the same things as them. Why should it be offensive to say so? Jews know we do not believe the same things as them. Why should it be offensive to say so?

It would be far more offensive if, thinking that I knew the truth, the path to salvation, I kept it to myself, and did not pray and work so that others could come to know that truth and find life in it.

I am sure that, thinking they know the truth, members of other religions pray that I and other infidels (from their point of view) will have the scales taken from our eyes and come to be part of their family. I would be disappointed if they did not.

So believing that Jesus is the truth, and the way to finding peace and purpose in this life, and to finding everlasting life, I will pray constantly that other people of all sorts of races and beliefs are freed from their ignorance and hardness of heart, so that they may be fetched home and be made part of the one fold under one shepherd.

One of the extraordinary things about this prayer is that it was written when the armies of Islam had ravaged the Middle East and North Africa – the heartland of Christianity – were still occupying Spain, and were at the gates of Venice. Yet this is not a prayer for retribution, or even for protection, but simply that their hearts would be turned so we might all be one family.

OK to Pick on Christians

April 6, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I read the latest Adelaide Church Guardian this morning. It’s dismal, of course. More breast-beating about no-one going to church. The yawn-inspiring PC nonsense the Guardian constantly parrots might give church leaders some clues about declining attendances if they were really interested.

But there is an article about ‘Jesus Week’ at the University of Adelaide and Uni SA. It’s a pretty harmless event. A BBQ here, a prayer meeting there, Christians wearing t-shirts or jumpers that advertise the week and their faith, invitations to church, or to studies that will give students a better understanding of Christianity and who Jesus is. In that one week they were asked to take down a banner (because of OH&S concerns), declined permission to hold a free BBQ (no problem for other groups) and a lecturer told a student to take off her Jesus Week jumper on the grounds that it was offensive.

So I was already thinking about this when I saw Andrew Bolt’s post about ‘Finger-pointing at the faith.’ An English (government sponsored) charity has produced a magazine for children in care, which encourages them to ‘Stand up for what they believe in.’  As long as they are not Christians.

The magazine shows a boy wearing a cross verbally attacking a young muslim woman. He is portrayed as a racist thug. She, of course, is all sweetness and light.

Who Cares? Trust chief executive Natasha Finlayson said she had no intention of withdrawing it, describing the cross as ‘bling’ rather than a religious symbol. That’s insulting enough – start describing the central symbols of other religions as ‘bling’ and see what sort of reaction you get. But it is also untrue. The cross the boy is wearing is meant to be a symbol of his religious faith. The magazine itself says so – when the bully wearing the bling asks the girl about her hijab, she replies that it is ‘part of her religion, like the cross you are wearing.’ 

If the roles were reversed, and a Muslim boy was shown picking on a Christian girl, humans rights groups would be pouncing. And they would be right to do so. Publishing that kind of sneering portrayal of any religious group under the heading ‘Stand up for what you believe’ is sheer hypocrisy.

The Shroud of Turin and the Knights Templar

April 6, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Whatever one thinks about its authenticity, the Shroud is a fascinating object.

Carbon dating tests conducted in 1988 indicated the Shroud could not be dated any earlier than 1260. That figure was immediately disputed (and not just by Shroud believers) because it was claimed that the very small parts of the Shroud removed for dating had been taken from a place where repairs had been carried out in the Middle Ages.

Last year John Jackson, a Colorado physicist working with Oxford University, said that because of high Carbon Monoxide levels, those dating results could have been skewed by as much as 1300 years. Christopher Ramsey, head of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (the group that tested the Shroud in 1988) said ‘There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow and so further research is certainly needed.’

The other evidence includes matches with the Sudarium of Oviedo, and pollens, cloth and weave types that are a perfect fit to 1st Century Israel.

One of the problems has been a gap in the Shroud’s history.

The Shroud, or something like it, had been known in the Eastern Church until the sack of Constantinople in 1204. But there was no record of its existence between then and the appearance of the Shroud we have now in France in 1353. The Shroud was in the possession of a family descended from a Knight Templar who had been in the Middle East. This led historian Ian Wilson to propose that it had either been in that family’s possession, or in the possession of the order of Knights Templar between 1204 and 1353 – and therefore that this was the same cloth and image that had been known in the East.

Now Dr Barbara Frale, an historian researching the Templars in the Vatican Archives, reports finding a Templar document which confirms Wilson’s theory.

Even now, no one understands how the image came to be made on the cloth. The negative image, wounds in the wrists rather than the hands, realistic blood flow patterns and a multitude of other factors make it unlikely in the extreme that it is a medieval forgery. So what is it?

Probably the two best books on the Shroud are Ian Wilson’s The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence That the World’s Most Sacred Relic Is Real and John Iannone’s The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence.

Bishop Backs Rudd on Bushfire Climate Lessons

April 2, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I know George Browning slightly. He is a a personable and apparently intelligent man. He has also been pushing the global warming agenda pretty relentlessly for the last ten years. Understandably, since he is convenor of the ‘Anglican Communion Environment Network.’ I assume the right (that is, the wrong) views are required, before anyone is invited to occupy this position. I make that assumption having looked through their website for any sign of even the remotest awareness of scientific issues which should inform the global warming debate, or indeed any sign of being aware of anything that could not be found in the Sunday Sun.

Before the last Australian Federal general election George Browning wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Howard saying he could never encourage people to vote for any party which did not have clear policies in place to deal with climate change. In other words, unless the liberal party immediately implemented the pointless and harmful policies he had in mind, Bishop Drowning would tell people to vote Labor (which, of course, it would never have occurred to him to do otherwise).

I was then Dean of The Murray, and wrote in our diocesan newsletter that there was no evidence of any unusual changes in climate over the last 100 years, that there had been no increases in the rate of sea level rise, that minor fluctuations of less than 1 degree Celsius were well within the bounds of natural change, that periods of change in global temperature over the last century did not correlate with levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that if the Church was going to encourage governments to spend billions of dollars solving problems, we had jolly well better have done our homework first, and made sure there really was a problem, and that the solutions we were asking for really would solve it.

But alas. I got no response from Bishop Drowning, and only one from another bishop telling me I was undermining the credibility of the Anglican Church.

I did not reply. There is such a thing as invincible ignorance. Mind you, once the media changes its mind about global warming, and we move on the next big scare, those same bishops will all be denying they were ever worried about global warming. ‘That was just a passing fad,’ they’ll say. ‘I always had my doubts about it.’ Yeah right.

It is that kind of desperate bouncing from one popular issue to another, trying to find something relevant to say, that undermines the credibility of the Church. The Church has something relevant to say. It’s called the Gospel.

Sadly, busy bouncing bishops will always have their uses, especially to politicians and to the media. But as Cardinal Pell said in reponse to an attack on him by Bishop Drowning,  ‘Church leaders should be allergic to nonsense.’

“My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people’s minds and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes,” he said. “Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don’t need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness,” he said.

Amen.

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