Catholic and Loving it!

I stumbled across this photo of a young girl recently receiving her first communion in Rome...

This photo makes me feel sad because when my little girls receive their first holy communion it won't look like this.

My preference is for receiving communion in this way, receiving on the tongue while kneeling. The Church allows people to receive on the hand while standing and if people want to do so, I have no objections. I simply think it is better to receive on the tongue while kneeling, it is a beautiful expression of what is going on, a clearer symbol and a more reverent gesture.

Officially, the Church has no objection to those who wish to receive kneeling, but in reality there is absolutely no way to do it. I you choose to receive kneeling then you are apparently "drawing attention to oneself rather than allowing all the attention and reverence be focused on the presence of our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist" but if you choose not to kneel then your action is taken as a vote in favour of standing...

I sincerely believe that what would be best for my children would be to receive kneeling, as I did when I was a child, not so very long ago. Not just the first time they receive but every time. I would very much like to do it without drawing undue attention to my actions ot to theirs, it's not mean't to be a statement, it's receiving Holy Communion.

It doesn't seem fair. They are both Catholics, the little girl in the photo and my little girls. They both go to Catholic Churches.

So whats the problem?

[h/t Catholic Rights]

Warwick Castle dungeons seem to have been taken over by modernist liberals...

Warwick Castle has witnessed some of the darkest, bloodiest and most frightening times in history.

This new experience is set to echo part of the Castle's past, taking you back to 1345, when the town was gripped by the plague.

In true Dungeon style, gore seekers will be greeted by decaying bodies, chanting monks, torture implements, execution and ‘the labyrinth of lost souls’ - a fantastic scary mirror maze. Warwick Castle truly brings history to life!

[link]

Decaying bodies, torture implements, execution, the 'labyrinth of lost souls'. I can take all that but please! No! The Horror! Stop! Don't make me endure the chanting monks!

What the?

I stumbled across this on an American website for man people...

To be the man, father, husband or leader you want to be, you must develop and maintain a firm grasp of your N.U.T.s

N.U.T.s - non-negotiable, unalterable terms—are the things that define you as a man. They’re what a man is committed to. And when these N.U.T.s are compromised, men become angry, unhappy, frustrated, depressed. They would rather blame others than take responsibility for their own actions. They’ll play the victim as they take out their negative feelings on those they love. They’re also the guys who will try to drown their sorrows in alcohol, drugs, porn, and a slew of other equally destructive behaviors.

To develop your N.U.T.s, first look at the areas in your life where you’re not being the man you want to be. Maybe it’s as a father, an employee or business owner, as a boyfriend or husband. If you were to be the man you wanted to be, what would you do differently?

Men who have participated in our BetterMen Retreats have come up with N.U.T.s like these:

• I am faithful to my wife.
• Compassion for my family trumps my need to be right.
• I am a risk taker.
• I do what I believe is n the best interest of my children, even if they disagree.
• [etc...]

[link]

So come on guys, I want you to show me your N.U.T.s!

What are your N.U.T.s?

Ladies, you can join in as well...

When you have a six week old baby it's a bit difficult to dissapear for a week, mum tends to notice and I can't imagine she would be very happy about it. So when Fr Massie started hassling me to drop everything for a week long silent ignatian retreat in Hornsea I was pretty certain that I wouldn't be going. At the last minute he told me that it would be okay to go for a day, so I did. Mums notice days, but you can get away with it.

The retreat was based on the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius, these are a month long series of prayers, meditations and contemplative practices. The retreat was only a week long so Fr John Edwards who was running the retreat somehow condensed them down to only a week. I was there for a day... I wasn't sure if I would be trying to do the full week in a day or just a day, I wasn't sure if just a day would make sense, I wasn't sure of anything. I know very little about Ignatian retreats.

I drove to Hornsea last Friday under beautiful blue skies, listening to the local radio station discussing the "news about Michael Jackson", I wasn't entirely sure what the news was and they were not about to tell me and instead said things like "this morning we're discussing the news about Michael Jackson" and then they said things like "it all happened last night our time". I wondered if he had been arrested but the back to back Michael Jackson songs were a strong clue of what had really happened, but they were too polite to mention death on a Friday morning while people are driving to work.

I arrived in time for silent breakfast which was surreal - I wandered across the kitchen looking for the fridge only to discover it was at the other end of the room so I wandered all the way back to open the fridge door only to discover that there were jugs of milk on the table. Then Fr Massie gestured to my mug which I took as an offer of tea and gave him a thumbs up, but is communication of that kind allowed? I don't know the rules! A few minutes later Fr Massie gestured to my cup again - I thought he was offering a top-up so I gave a thumbs up but then went to take my mug away for washing and gave me a strong look of contempt when he realised I hadn't quite finished my tea. Can you give people "looks" on silent retreat?

It turned out that the plan was not for me to cram in a full month of ignatian spirituality in to a day but instead to join them for the days that they did while I was there. Each day Fr John Edwards gave a conference on the theme of the day and told us the grace we would be asking for, in the morning that I was there we were meditating on the passion and the grace we were praying for was "Sorrow, affliction, confusion. Because of my sins, Our Lord is going to his Passion; Anguish with Christ in anguish. Tears; intense pain for his great pain, Suffered for me.

Happy stuff - in the evening we moved on to the ressurection where we asked for the grace to share in Christs joy, so while I was there I meditated on the sorrows of the Passion followed by the joys of the Ressurection which worked quite well. It was a heavy day for me because I wanted to make the most of my one day, so where the programme had an hour and a half gap during which we were supposed to do half an hours meditation, I spent the rest of the time praying or reading my bible. Twelve hours of God-time is a lot in one go when you're not used to it. When I left, I was absolutely shattered.

As Fr John said, the purpose of the retreat is to set up "laboratory conditions" in which to pray and listen to God and I think it worked really well, I'm very glad I went. I don't know if I could cope with a week of what I did, but if I was there for a week I think I would have done things differently and spent more of the non-prayer time on, well, non-prayer. Richard Marsden spent some of his time going for walks and runs on the beach, perhaps I might have spent some time drawing.

All in all, a great thing to have done and someday I would like to do a longer version. My advice to anybody in a position to get along to something like this is to do it, especially if you're young with long holidays, because once you have a family it's very difficult to arrange.

Oh, and do read Richard's account of the retreat. He was there all week.

Remember my project to get 1000 people to sign a promise to LiveChastely during the 40th anniversary year of Humanae Vitae?

Well it's finished, because the people at Progressio have decided to pull the promises system without notice and replace it with something new... Community Challenges.

So would we have got 750 people to sign up in the next month? Probably not.

But now we'll never know...

When I blogged recently about The Seven Most Holiest Places I didn't realise that there are also holy places that burn with holy fire...

The hole is the outcome not of nature but of an industrial accident. In 1971 a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Having punctured a pocket of gas, poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole at an alarming rate. To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight. The crater hasn't stopped burning since.

See Boing Boing for more...

If you watched The Big Questions either live or on iPlayer you probably saw a bit of my shoulder and possibly a bit more of me on wide angle crowd panning shots...

I'm glad I went, it was a good experience and I enjoyed it. It was good to meet with Fr John Flynn (who I am sure I have seen somewhere before, did he do a Faith talk once?) and Fr Stephen Maughan who we haven't really seen since he left Hull. I also have a feeling I've met Tom Cahill somewhere before as well. The Catholic world is very small...

It was a bit frustrating to drive all the way to York and get all nervous and worked up just to sit looking at Nicky Campbell's back for twenty minutes but that's just the way it goes. Last time I was on TV it was two Catholics vs everybody and I got loads of screen time, this time it was four Catholics vs one guy so to be honest I wasn't "needed" at all. They had it covered.

Thanks to everybody who prayed that I wouldn't say something stupid - it worked!

Well done to Tom Cahill and the two priests who were on the show.

You did a great jeeoorrrbb.

One of the lessons I learned last time I was on the television is how difficult it is to get a reasoned argument across in a televised debate. These debates are not about making good arguments that stand up to rigorous inspection but rather about trying not to come across like some sort of nutter. Anyhow, given that I probably won't have time to say half the things I would like on TV, I figure I might as well write most of them here so that people can find them if they google me while watching (quite a lot of people did last time).

It all depends what you mean by Love?

The first thing most people think of when it comes to love is the strength of feeling. When you like someone, you like them. When you love someone, you really, really, really like them. That's what "love" has come to mean these days. In fact, if we look at what we expect from love we will see that this definition is rather lacking.

What if I told you that I had fallen in love with a stunningly beautiful girl, but that recently she was involved in an accident which left her disfigured and ugly. After the accident I just didn't love he anymore. I think you would be justified in saying that maybe I didn't really love the girl, I just loved her body. Or what if I told you I had fallen in love with a really rich girl but that now her money has ran out I just don't love her anymore. I think you would be justified in saying that maybe I didn't love the girl, I just loved her money.

It seems like a paradox. Any practical reason you can give for falling in love - be it beautiful eyes, kind personality, sense of humour or whatever. Any practical reason you can give for falling in love seems to undermine the love itself. We say that we love the person but really we just love something about the person, some attribute or characteristic. For love to have a reason at all seems utilitarian and wrong, as if we love the other person only for what they can do for us.

Real love means wanting the best for the other person no matter what. As Chesterton puts it: "Love means loving the unlovable" and as our Lord put it: "If you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?"

The Purpose of Marriage

We know then that eartly human love is in some way fundamentally flawed. We fall in love with a person for a reason, because we like their jokes or their personality or (let's be honest) their breasts. Yet at the same time we know that real love ought not to require a reason and at the very least, it ought to continue long after the reason has ceased to exist.

Marriage is an attempt to take our flawed human attempt at love, the one that thrives on good times, health, wealth, happiness and beauty. To take our flawed attempt at love and turn it in to that perfect, divine love that continues to love long after the reasons for loving have passed. In the well known marriage vows we promise to love "for better for worse" and "for richer for poorer" and "in sickness or in health". We make a promise to love that perfect love that loves no matter what.

Divine love is very hard to do, impossible in fact, which is why many marriages end in divorce. It is impossible to be perfect without the grace of God which is why in Christian marriage we like to get God involved from the beginning.

Real Love Means Sacrifice

When Christians talk about love and sacrifice, many people think it's a nice platitude but it's actually a very practical fact. Real love means wanting what is best for the other person, wanting what is best for the other person means always putting that person first above ourselves. That means denying ourselves for that person. If we love a person fully, that means denying ourselves fully which means giving up our life for that person.

This is the final goal of marriage: To give our life to the other person. This is why St Paul writes: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" St Paul does not use Christ merely as example of great love.. e.g Christ loves the Church a lot so Husbands should love their wives a lot. No, St Paul uses he example of the way Christ loves, by giving himself up.

Once a man has given himself to his wife, once he has vowed to love her and to put her first in all things, once he has denied his very life and given it to her. What has he left? It's really very simple: He has absolutely nothing left. His life is not his own, he has promised it to another.

So Should Catholic Priests be Allowed to Marry?

Bear in mind that actually, there are married priests. The rules about married clergy are just that, rules - they are not unquestionable infallible teachings of the Church. In fact, Priests from other rites are allowed to marry. The Church here in the latin rite could change her rules and allow priests to marry but I don't think she should.

My reasons is very simple: The priesthood is an entirely different kind of giving up of the self for God. How can a man give himself up to two different persons at the same time?

But it isn't in the Bible!

No, it isn't. Nowhere does it say "priests cannot be married". But also nowhere does it say "a man cannot marry two women at the same time".

Polygamy is not expressly forbidden in the scriptures, the Christian view that a man should only have one wife is a development based upon our understanding of marriage as the gift of oneself to another person, a gift that by it's very nature excludes the possibility of giving that gift to another.

In my view, priestly celibacy falls in the same area. As our understanding of what it means to enter in to marriage has developed, as our understanding of what it means to be a priest has developed, it has become more and more apparent that the two are not easily combined.

But what about the shortage of priests?

What about it? Men are not willing to dedicate their lives to God, so if we let them become priests without fully dedicating their lives to God then maybe they will?

Fixing a shortage of priests by allowing marriage has been tried by the Anglican Communion - it hasn't worked spectacularly well. Perhaps because whether priests can marry is not at the heart of the problem at all.

The crisis, if there is one, is one of spiritual deafness

But what about sex abuse?

There is simply no evidence whatsoever that priestly celibacy in any way "causes" sex abuse. There is however plenty of evidence that people from all kinds can end up sexual abusers - school teachers, police officers, step fathers etc. See here and here.

Incidentally, I take the problem of priestly abuse very seriously and have written more about it here.