Catholic and Loving it!

A Serious Religious Question

It cannot have escaped the notice of our regular readers that blogging on this blog has been sparse to say the least. It's partly because we've been busy moving house but also because it has become hard to blog without upsetting people. Fr Massie has convinced me that I might do more good by giving the "proper channels" a fair chance. That means disagreeing with people in private instead of publicly on a blog. I wrote one email... one... before Fr Massie I had caused upset and that he wanted me to talk things through with him before sending any more. I foolishly gave my word that I would talk with him before sending any more emails. That was weeks ago. The "proper channels" are slow...

Anyway, it occurs to me that many readers of this blog are probably wondering why on earth I even give a toss. You people out there in the real world already know that church is crap. That's why most of you don't go. This is not news. Here is a more interesting question:

Why does a chap like James waste his time with these losers?

It seems about time I take a stab at answering that question. I will certainly benefit from the exercise. Thinking about what I think and why I think it is a very good way to spot problems with what I think and a good first step towards thinking something better. I hope you will maybe benefit, perhaps I will think something you have never thought of before. That doesn't make me cleverer, though perhaps I am luckier than you. Finally, I hope it will benefit the losers. Perhaps if the losers who run the Diocese of Middlesbrough can understand why somebody like me would choose to go against his entire generation and actually think the losers were important, maybe they could be winners after all. I certainly hope they can be winners, for we are on the same team: As long as they are losers, I am a loser myself.

A Self-evident truth...

There is a question about Science and Religion and the question is simply this... can they get along? I will not try to answer that question now, but I will borrow something from Science that I could just as easily have borrowed from Religion. Both agree on this: The need to start all explanations with a fact. Once we have a fact (e.g. It is a long way to France) we can, through reason, agree on other facts (e.g. It will take a long time to walk there).

If I am going to be a Catholic then I am going to have to have reasons and those reasons are going to have to be based on facts. Not dodgy facts either but rock solid, no-nonsense, everybody agrees, in your face facts. A famous phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence reads "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal". Self-evident means they are their own evidence. You don't have to defend it because it speaks for itself.

The early Christians began with the fact of sin: "Everybody can see" they would say "that the world is screwed up" (or something like that). These days not everybody believes in sin. "Sure, bad things happen - but the world is generally a good place" they say... "get out of my face you gloomy Christians". Some people begins with the Natural Law. "Everybody can see" he says "that there is a natural law of right and wrong in the world". The sceptics disagree. "Right and wrong is just whatever your parents tell you it is" they say.

So what self-evident truth shall I start with? What truth can I present to you that we can all agree on?

The truth of Awesomeness

Humour me a while, and watch this youtube video...

"Hew Kenndy is an interesting sort of chap..."

"We didn't really make any great effort to follow medieval construction we just cut trees down and strapped them together"

"It's difficult to get hold of dead horses, people are very sentimental about horses in England"

"We didn't have a lot of problems with the design really because we must have been just lucky because as I say we didn't use any science did we we just guessed it."

"I want to get rid of this machine and, um, build a bigger one."

I hold this truth to be self-evident: Trebuchets are awesome. I do not understand how anybody could think otherwise. A trebuchet hurling a piano is pretty awesome in itself but a trebuchet hurling a piano that is on fire. Fire is awesome.

I am going to do a little logic now. If trebuchets and fire are awesome, then it must be true that there are awesome things. However, it may shock some of you to hear that there are things in the world that are not trebuchets. There are things that are not on fire. There are things that are not awesome. There are things in the world that are the very opposite of awesome. What do we call a thing that is the opposite of awesome? I call it crap, though if you wanted to be polite you could call it rubbish.

This is where I will begin. With the property of awesomeness. Whatever you think is awesome, be it trebuchets or fire or sunsets or elephants or fast cars. We can surely all agree that there are awesome things. Even if you are so negative that you think everything is rubbish, we can at least agree that some things are less rubbish than others.

In fact, let's make our opening fact as broad as possible:

Some things are better than others.

If anybody disagrees, kindly say so in the comments so we can laugh at you.

Update: Part two is now online here.

Whew. I am tired out but very happy indeed. This week has been fantastic.

The people from SPES (St. Patrick's Evangelisation School) have been here in Hull. Evangelisation is something Ella and I have been wondering about for a long time so we were very excited when we heard the people from SPES were coming. They are a group of 20-30 year old Catholics who have taken a year out to live in community in Soho, London and learn about Evangelisation and how to talk to people about God.

I'm not going to attempt a blow by blow account of the week because too much happened and we haven't got all day, the long and the short of it is that we spent time in prayer (especially adoration and the office) and some time working with youth, parents and complete strangers. We did some street evangelisation...

We even made it on to BBC Radio Humberside...

I have learned loads and as is always the case when you learn loads it takes a while to digest it all. I will try and do some kind of write up later on in the week.

In the meantime, many thanks to the SPES people for coming. You are very much welcome to come again any time! God bless you all and all you do!

The Story So Far...

In my part one on the subject of why I reckon this Christianity business is worth wasting my time on I explained the need to start reasoned arguments with self-evident truths. If the starting point is wrong, logic and reason can only produce wrong answers. For this reason I have begun with a fact as clear as daylight...

Some things are better than others.

If this self-evident truth is not obvious to you then something has gone seriously wrong in your head. Go away and saw your own leg off (or do you think it is better not to?)

In search of better things...

My starting point with this is something even a baby can understand. Leona knows that chocolate and toys are better than bedtime and sore teeth. But we don't remain babies forever. We grow older and in the knowledge that some things are better than others, we start to look for more of the better things and we try to make them better. Learning to walk and talk helps, as does learning to read. This leads me on to a very well known fact. Knowledge is power:

The more you know about things, the better you can make things.

If you doubt this fact, compare the Ancient Roman knowledge of aeroplane construction with that of modern times. Get the idea? Roman aeroplanes were rubbish. Harrier Jump Jets are better.

In my last blog entry I wrote about Trebuchets. Let's say you wanted to build a trebuchet, you can find loads of instructions for building a trebuchet on the Internet. You can even build a paper one. Old fashioned non-internet folks can probably pick up a book on the subject from a library. Anyway, you build your trebuchet and you want it to fire huge rocks as far as possible. This leads to a question... how to acheive a better range? Maybe try a longer throwing arm or a heavier counterweight? These lead to other questions... what happens if I change the weight of my throwing arm? what happens if I use a bigger rock?

Your book about trebuchets or the internet might have the answers. But what if it doesnt? How will you ever find out what difference it makes whether you throw a dead horse or a flaming piano?

You have to try it of course...

There are some things you have to find out for yourself.

You can find a lot from books and the web but sooner or later there is going to be a piece of information that you need but nobody can tell you. Maybe you are working on the cutting edge of modern technology or maybe you want to know if pouring Raspberry Jam on your roses will make them grow better. Sometimes it might be just quicker to find out for yourself than to read several books on the more unusual methods of rose cultivation.

This might not happen to your personally very often but it happens to the Human Race all the time. How can we get to the moon? How can we cure cancer? What will happen if I fire electrons at a really thin sheet of gold foil?

Holy Electrons Batman! It look's like we're going to be needing...

The Scientific Method

It may surprise some of you to find science mentioned in a blog entry about why I bother with religious people, I know that many people have read in the newspapers and seen on the TV that because of science nobody needs to go to Church anymore. I find the whole 'science vs religion' debate incredible because it was thinking too much about science that lead me in to religion. Anyway, I digress. What is the Scientific Method?

The scientific method is a way of finding things out that nobody knows and it works really really well. Every modern invention from pocket calculators and nuclear submarines to games consoles and ipods stands as evidence that the scientifc method works. How does it work?

The scientific method works like this:

First we ask a question. Here's one: If I drop a bouncy ball it will bounce. Now... If I drop the ball from a greater height, will it bounce higher? What do you think? The ball will be travelling faster when it hits the ground so it will have more energy but if it is travelling faster then more energy will be required to slow the ball down and get it heading in the opposite direction. Hmm?

Next we construct a hypothesis. That's a posh word for "an educated guess"... we remember bouncing balls in our childhood and we definitely remember them going higher when you dropped them from higher. That's our hypothesis: "a bouncy ball dropped from higher will bounce higher".

Then we conduct an experiment. We choose a height (1 metre) and drop a bouncy ball from that height, measuring the height it bounced to. Then we choose a different height (2 metres) and drop the same ball from this other height, again measuring the height it reached when it bounced. You should now have a piece of paper with some numbers scribbled on it. This is called data. If you put it in to a computer you can make it look more impressive...

Drop Height	Bounce Height
100cm	46cm
200cm	84cm

(okay, not very impressive)

Now we analyse our data. Your data might be different from mine (because mine is completely made up) but in my experiment the ball that was dropped from higher bounced higher. There is not much analysis required here in order to come to a conclusion: My hypothesis was proved correct. If I had actually done the experiment in real life I might have got a different answer but you can only prove me wrong if you actually do the experiment and you have better things to do, right? Good.

You can now come up with new questions like "If I use a heavier ball, will it bounce higher than a lighter one?" and "If I use balls made from different materials will they bounce to different heights?" or "If I change the temperature of the ball will it bounce to the same height?". You can ask all these questions and you can do experiments to answer them... you just need to have the balls.

The Scientific Method is a good way of finding things out.

This is how science works. It's not really very complicated is it, but if you do this enough times you can find out everything about the physical world and build a helicopter or a computer or something. With this Science thing you can do anything!

Or can you?

Tune in next time when we go: Beyond Science...

Update: Part three is now online here.

I have played a lot of computer games and over the years computer games have changed a lot. There are two ways to improve computer games... one is to improve the graphics. Then you can play the same computer game with better graphics. Yawn. If that's your idea of fun then you probably won't be reading this anyway.

Another way to make computer games better is to forget all about the graphics and make totally new ones with totally different ideas.

If you like the sound of that. I reckon you'll like this.

(Which yes, I'm sure, Mark will have played ten years ago on his Amiga)

When Terrence Drainey became Bishop Terence Drainey many of us were quite concerned and there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth across the blogs. This is the man, remember, who famously said "Some foreign priests working in Britain tend to be too dogmatic about the church's moral rightness on just about everything", "That's not how we do things here".

Well, I have to say a big well done to the man at the top because his letter this Vocations Sunday was excellent...

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It is time for us to turn our minds to the topic of "Vocations". This year the Holy Father has chosen as his theme for Good Shepherd Sunday: Vocations at the service of the Church on mission. Each one of us is called to bear witness and to announce the Gospel, but this missionary dimension is associated in a special way with the priestly vocation. In his letter on vocations Pope Benedict says: Among those totally dedicated to the service of the Gospel, are priests, called to preach the word of God, administer the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, committed to helping the lowly, the sick, the suffering, the poor, and those who experience hardship in areas of the world where there are, at times, many who still have not had a real encounter with Jesus Christ.

We often think of "mission" and "missionaries" in terms of other countries and other people. A Church without a missionary dimension is no Church at all. If our Church in the Diocese of Middlesbrough is to be genuinely the Church of Jesus Christ, then it has to have missionary outreach both at home and further afield.

Every priest, just as every Christian, has to be a missionary, whether he is working in Middlesbrough, Hull, York or even Africa, the Far East or South America. However, these vocations do not appear out of thin air. We have been told that we must 'pray to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest' ((Mt. 9:38). We must also do all we can to create favourable conditions for vocations to grow and develop. 'Vocations to the ministerial priesthood and to the consecrated life can only flourish in a spiritual soil that is well cultivated. Christian communities that live the missionary dimension of the mystery of the Church in a profound way will never be inward looking.' (The Pope's Letter for Vocation Sunday)

Since the last letter on vocations we have celebrated the funeral of Bishop Augustine Harris, emeritus bishop of our diocese. Also Mgr Pat Lannen and Fr Tony Storey have gone to God. May the Lord grant them eternal rest.

At the moment we have four students studying for the priesthood, two in Rome and two at Ushaw. Please keep them in your prayers. Remember all those who are trying to discern their vocation and those who help them.

Like everything in our world, the cost of training men for the priesthood continues to rise. Please be as generous as you can in contributing to the priests' training fund, and perhaps there are some who might consider this particular cause when making a will.

Yours in joyful hope

+Terence Patrick

Bishop of Middlesbrough

He quotes the Pope. He uses the phrase "Each one of us is called to bear witness and to announce the Gospel", but this is the part that gives me real joy and hope for our diocese (emphasis mine):

A Church without a missionary dimension is no Church at all. If our Church in the Diocese of Middlesbrough is to be genuinely the Church of Jesus Christ, then it has to have missionary outreach both at home and further afield.

On first glance it might not seem like a big deal, but these are seriously strong words. Bishop Drainey speaks the unspeakable: The very serious possiblity that we, as a diocese, could actually fail to be genuinely the Church of Jesus Christ. Bishop Drainey doesn't say "Our Church in the Diocese of Middlesbrough is genuinely the Church of Jesus Christ". He says "If". If we are to be genuinely the Church of Jesus Christ, then.... This is a very serious if.

These words remind me in no small way of the "Fit For Mission" review in the Lancaster diocese. Bishop Donohoue started by writing "Our parishes, too, must look to what encourages or impedes mission "How can we make ourselves fit for mission?". In the Fit For Mission guide it says: "It is vital to the life of the diocese that we all realise that mission is essential to the nature of the Church.".

Vital to the life of the diocese

Essential to the nature of the Church

A Church without a missionary dimension is no Church at all

Go go English Bishops. You've got it! It's not married women priests and general absolutions we need. It's Evangelisation.

Thanks to Bishop Drainey for a great letter, I look forward to the next...

Professor Edward Lorenz died April 16th (last Wednesday). Many readers of this blog will have no idea who he was, but you will have heard of the "butterfly effect", a phrase he may or may not have coined (depending on who you ask).

From his Obituary in the Telegraph

Professor Edward Lorenz, who died on Wednesday aged 90, was a mathematician and meteorologist who was one of the early exponents of chaos theory and in particular of the "butterfly effect": the notion that a tiny event, such as the movement of a butterfly's wings in Brazil, can have enormous effects, such as a tornado in Texas.

Chaos theory became enormously influential in a host of fields besides weather forecasting. But despite its name, chaos theory does not imply randomness: chaotic systems are both deterministic and nonlinear, but show evidence of what mathematicians call sensitive dependence.

Indeed, as Lorenz was at pains to point out, chaos theory enables us to improve our knowledge of apparently unstable systems such as the weather, and thus describe and analyse them, and improve our forecasts.

[Link to full text...]

The long and the short of it, is that Lorenz showed that complex apparently random behaviour such as weather systems were actually not random at all but rather extremely sensitive to initial conditions. He very cleverly came up with three equations and plotted the Lorenz Attractor.

As his Obituary says...

The effects can be shown by a simple waterwheel, in which each bucket has an identical hole in the bottom. With a trickle of water, the wheel does not revolve at all; with a steady stream a direction to revolve is set and continues ad infinitum; but with an increased flow the wheel will spin, then slow, then change direction.

The last experiment I conducted at university was the construction of a Lorenz Waterwheel. We hooked up a bicycle dynamo and used the voltage to measure the angular velocity (speed) of the wheel. Plot velocity against position and for a pendulum you get a circle, our waterwheel drew all kinds of shapes. If we had more time (and something more accurate than a bicycle dynamo) we should have been able to get it to draw a Lorenz Attractor.

The video is five minutes long, as you watch the first couple of minutes you will think how repetitive it is. Then, just as you think you know what is going to happen next it surprises you. It surprised us again and again and again.

So a big thanks to Edward Lorenz for a wonderful experiment I would never have thought of myself. We had hours of enjoyment thanks to your genius. May he rest in peace. Amen.

If anybody walked in late, this is part three of my ongoing series on why I bother going to Church at all when it's full of women and I find the music and architecture so dreadful and several things the Church says shouldn't happen when you go to Church happen with alarming regularity.

The last couple of blog entries on this subject (part one and part two) took a bit longer than strictly necessary to say the following:

Some things are better than others.
The more you know about things, the better you can make things.
There are some things you have to find out for yourself.
The Scientific Method is a good way of finding things out.

So far, I've basically explained why I bother with Science. This is a fairly brief summary of my philosophical views from childhood to my teenage years. I practiced what I preached as well, choosing A-Levels (exams you take at 18) in Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics. You have to really like science to do that kind of thing.

But science has it's limits.

Constants and Variables

In a scientific experiment, a constant is something you keep the same (is is constant). A variable is something you change (it varies). One of the limits in a scientific experiment is that you can only change one variable at a time.

For example, in my last blog entry I mentioned an experiment with a bouncy ball. I dropped the ball from a different height to see how high the ball bounced. Because the only variable I changed was the height, It was possible for me to say that the change in bounce height was due to the change in drop height. What if I had dropped the first ball from one metre and then dropped a heavier ball from two metres. Could I say that the change in bounce was due to a change in height? No. I now have two variables, the change in height and the change in weight. It is impossible for me to know how the height or weight affected the bounce.

If I want to know how the drop height affects the bounce height then I must keep the weight constant. If I want to know how the ball weight affects the bounce height then I must keep the drop height constant. If I want to definitely know that the reason my ball bounces higher is because I dropped it from higher then I need to definitely know that the height is the only thing I changed. Everything else must be exactly the same. Everything else must be constant.

Making Assumptions

The practical problem when you come to do an exeriment is that you cannot keep everything the same. You can use the same ball both times (to avoid the weight changing), you can make sure to do the experiment indoors (to avoid wind conditions) but you can't do everything.

For instance, as we conduct our experiment we know the moon is circling the earth overhead causing the eb and fow of the tides. The ever changing gravitational force of the moon that pulls huge quantities of salt water up and down the beach twice a day surely has some small effect on our ball. Our bouncy ball is made of rubber, which degrades over time. When we bounce the ball the second time, it will have just bounced the first time. Does bouncing a ball change the ball? We can avoid the effects of time by dropping two balls at the same time but then we can't use the same ball. We can't drop the same ball in the same place at the same time.

So what to do? Make assumptions of course!

We know the moon is having an effect, but we can assume that the effect of the moon is negligible. Negligible means "too small to make any difference". Our rubber ball degrades over time, but we don't plan to leave it in the attic for twenty years between drops. We assume the effects of rubber degradation will be negligible. Our bouncy balls will probably not bounce on the exact same spot on the floor but we do our best and assume the floor is exactly the same all over the room. You get the idea...

The important point is this. We don't just hope these assumptions are true, we need these assumptions to be true. They are required. If the moon does significantly affect our ball, then we can't ignore it. If the floor is covered in spikes, we can't assume that it makes no difference where the ball lands.

Science requires certain assumptions to be true.

Making Ridiculous Assumptions

I call the following three assumptions ridiculous because if I had written them on a lab report during my physics degree I would probably have been subjected to ridicule. Yet these fundamental assumptions are at the root of every scientific experiment. Science doesn't just assume these things, science requires them to be true. If they were not true, then science wouldn't work.

- Things don't just happen for no reason.

Everything has a cause. When we let go of our ball it doesn't just fall for no reason, it falls because of the force of gravity acting upon it. If our bouncy ball suddenly shoots off to one side we assume something must have collided with it mid air, perhaps we stood on a chair to drop our ball and the ball struck the chair. Whatever. We assume that bouncy balls don't just shoot off for no reason.

Remember. To be able to say that the change in height is what caused our ball to bounce to a different height we need to keep everything constant. Then we can say the height caused the change. If things happened for no reason then we could never say that. We would always have to wonder "maybe it bounced higher for no reason". That would not just be stupid, it would make science impossible.

- Things have no choice.

We must also assume that nothing has any free will. In every experiment we assume that the protons, neutrons, electrons that make up our bouncy ball always follow the laws of physics. They have no choice. Our bouncy ball doesn't fall half way and then decide whether it feels like bouncing, it just bounces. That's how the physical world works. We might occasionally say things like "my computer seems to have a mind of it's own" but we know that it does not. It is just protons, neutrons and electrons bouncing around according to the rules.

If our bouncy ball had a choice, we would need to keep that choice constant. We would need to make sure the ball chose both times to bounce as hard as it can. The electrons in my PC would organise a union and ask for better working conditions. Science would be impossible.

- Things are not right or wrong, they just are.

There is no morality in physics. It is not wrong to drop a ball from a height of one metre. It is not any righter or wronger to drop a ball from a height of two metres. We do not have to worry about how evil our act is. Plunging a knife in to a mans chest might be wrong if you are a murderer and right if you are a surgeon but the physics of plunging a knife in to a mans chest remain unchanged. If it's the same knife at the same angle in the same chest... this is getting a bit disturbing.

This is lucky for science, because we can't measure right and wrong with a ruler. We can't see it under a microscope. We have to assume that it makes no difference. Otherwise the scientists trying to cure cancer might get different results from the ones trying to develop bombs. Science would be impossible.

Let's recap that..

Science requires certain assumptions to be true.
- Things don't just happen for no reason.
- Things have no choice.
- Things are not right or wrong, they just are.

As long as those things are true. Science should be okay.

(I wonder if anybody is reading these things...)

This lovely fresco is in Pickering Parish Church.

Have I drank fifteen pints of real ale today? No.

Does that make me less of an Englishman?

And why don't we have a 10ft high painting of St. George in our parish Church? Huh? Huh?

This is a public service announcement...

It's not a question of if your hard drive will fail. It's a question of when. All hard drives fail in the end.

Pretty much everybody I know bought a digital camera in the last year or so. Pretty much everybody I know has only one copy of their photos on their PC at home. In a few years time, people are going to start phoning me up in tears asking if I know how to fix their poor old computer because all the photos are on it.

I probably won't be able to help. Photos of babies and children and holidays and loved ones will be gone.

What to do?

Between us, Ella and I have 40,000 digital photos. That's a lot, but our photos only take up 60GB of hard drive space. Yours probably take less than 20GB.

Go to your computer store of choice. ebuyer or Amazon (or PC World if you must) and look for a thing called a "Portable Hard Drive" or an "External Hard Drive". Anything over 100GB will do the job. If you really want to plan for the future then go for a 250GB one.

I got one of these because it has a 5 year warranty instead of the usual two but at 500GB it's bigger than you need. £65 may seem steep, but I paid £78 last summer and when you lose all your photos you'll be telling me how you'd give anything to get them back.

You plug it in to your computer and it appears under 'My Computer' just like an extra floppy disk drive. Then you copy your photos over to it. I said COPY. Not CUT. Not MOVE. COPY! You want to have TWO copies. Why not put your important work on there as well and your music and anything else you'll be gutted about losing.

I bought two drives. We have three copies. One on my computer, one on the external hard drive and a third copy on another external hard drive at work. If our house burns down, copies our photos are safe at work.

Nobody is paying me to say this. I'm trying to avoid tears. Because I'm a very nice man.

Priests for Life are "an officially approved association of Catholic Clergy who give special emphasis to the pro-life teachings of the Church". They sent me the following email...

Notice: The YouTube links in this do NOT show actual abortions being performed. They show a priest talking to the camera describing what happens during an abortion. However, Fr Pavone doesn't pull any punches in his descriptions and they are not for the feint of heart.

Blessings!! He is Risen!!

I blog to you on behalf of Fr. Frank Pavone and Priests for Life. Fr. Pavone recently posted two videos on You Tube in which he describes and demonstrates the two most common abortion techniques, using the actual instruments of abortion and the words found in medical textbooks and court testimony.

You can view these videos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us_y9GP_-DA (Dismemberment abortion) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBOAPleF1t0 (Suction abortion).

These videos are part of a new project called, "Is This What You Mean?" It aims to educate the public about the nature of abortion and to challenge public officials and candidates who support the legality of abortion to admit what it is. A full description of the project is at www.priestsforlife.org/action/abortion-procedure-revealed.htm.

We are asking blog moderators to post a link or set-up an area on their blog for easy access to view our two You Tube videos.

As Fr. Pavone has quoted in endless homilies and talks about public servants who are pro-choice, there is a difference between serving the public and killing the public. Abortion has lost its meaning and is just a word to some politicians. In fact, as long as it has been since Jan.22 1973, the public is still not aware of what an abortion is and what it looks like. Again, we urge you to view Fr. Pavone's demonstrations and forward this to anybody unaware such as parents, pastors, teachers, government officials etc….

In Christ,

David--MEV

The following blog entry consists of notes I have hammered out as I thought of them. It isn't in any particular order and it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. If any of the following is totally stupid, kindly let me know so I can kick myself and correct it.

What is Evangelisation

What is the difference between evangelism and evangelisation? I have no idea, except that when you say "Evangelism" Roman Catholic priests exhibit a sharp intake of breath and when you say "Evangelisation" they say "Well, it depends what you mean by Evangelisation..."

Fortunately, the most important part of either word is the Evangel- part. Eve meaning first. Angel meaning messenger. First-messenger. Evangelisation is giving a message, "the" message, to those who have never heard it before.

Not so very long ago, a group of students from the St. Patrick's Evangelisation School came up from Soho in London to help us with Evangelisation in Hull. It was a wonderful week and I learned a lot. This blog entry is an attempt to throw all my thoughts together before I forget about them.

The Importance of Prayer

It is easy to fall in to the trap of thinking too scientifically about Christianity. Despite popular opinion Christianity is a very rational faith and I personally find it very easy to think about it in almost mathematical terms. If A is true therefore B is true add this to C means that D is true. But... Christianity is not just about facts and knowledge, knowing everything gets you nowhere if you don't know Him. Christianity is about a person. Jesus Christ. Evangelisation is about introducing people to the person of Jesus Christ and if we do not know him intimately ourselves then how can we introduce him?

The St. Patrick's Evangelisation School start and end every day with the divine office. I thought that praying the divine office took only ten to fifteen minutes and even I should be able to find that on a morning. Ella and I have been trying to pray the office together each morning this week and it has never been more than ten minutes (more like six). It is an excellent way to start the day, especially when you follow it up with four Weetabix.

They also spend (what seems to me like) immense quantities of time in adoration, in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. An hour here, an hour there... I am not used to spending more than twenty minutes and this full hour business seems pretty hardcore to me. It is however really really important and I feel I have gained a great deal from those hours this week. One of the really good things the St. Patrick's people did was this, while they were out doing street evangelisation there were always two people back in the Church praying in adoration. Two people praying intently before the blessed sacrament while others went out in to the world. Going out in the streets is scary and it is a great comfort to know you have those people praying back in the Church.

Another thing is this, just as Jesus instructed the disciples to go out in twos, so also the St. Patrick's people go out in twos. While one person is talking the other is praying.

The Sign of the Cross

On the first day we walked from Saint Charles and Canon Loughlin lead us on a route around the busier parts of the city. Through Victoria Square, past the St. Stephens centre and on to the area in front of BHS. We quietly prayed the rosary and at the front Marcus held high a beautiful golden cross from St Charles. The mere presence of the cross had a huge effect on many people. The first person we passed was a Chinese lady who stopped and made the sign of the cross. Other's stared at it, unsure what to think, while a very small minority made derogatory comments suggesting. Those who stopped and stared were soon approached by some of the Spes Students (esp Mirela) who explained that we were praying for the people of Hull and offered a leaflet inviting them to an event that we were to hold on Saturday.

It was only in the afternoon when we went out without the cross that I realised what a difference it had made. It was hard for us to walk in procession without a clear point of focus, when one of us stopped to hand out a leaflet and chat they very quickly lost sight of where we had gone. The other problem was that nobody saw us coming... with the cross, people stopped and stared which gave an excellent opportunity to approach them and explain what we were doing. Without the cross nobody noticed us at all.

From the point of view of the people in the street, the difference is stark. Imagine seeing a group of young people walking behind a golden cross praying. Your pace slows as you stop to look at this bizzare sight and one of the young people notices and comes over saying "Hi, we are praying for the people of Hull. Can I offer you this leaflet and invite you to...". It's a smooth transition that makes a lot of sense and we end up talking mostly to the people who are at least curious. Now imagine wandering along minding your own business when a strange youth steps up and starts talking to you. Most people were saying no before before we had even said a word (though I am told Sister Brenda had far more luck).

Talking to People

For me, this week was about learning as much as I possibly could. Walking through town behind a cross was an experience in itself, but I knew that an element of street evangelisation is talking to people in the streets. How does that work? What do you say? Over the week I shadowed a couple of the students from St. Patrick's and saw very different way of doing things. I think it was Anthony who said something like, there's no perfect method that fits all people and you don't get to find out unless you try and you don't always get it right.

The first person I shadowed was Mirela. I think Mirela is absolutely wonderful but she frightens me. Her Christian faith is incredible and she fearlessly approaches people and talks to them about anything. I think she is able to get away with a lot because she is clearly from a foreign country and she is so smily and nice. People are happy to talk to her.

She points somebody out in the distance and says "let's talk to that lady" and then she practically runs over. I found some of her 'targets' a bit awkward because they were sat reading a book or eating lunch and I felt I was intruding. She says "Hi, We are a group of Catholic's and we are in the city today praying for the people of Hull" and they look at her funny and she says "Are you praying?" and they say "Er?" and she says "Are you praying to God, in your home, before you go to bed?" and then "Why not?" She asks all manner of questions.. "Are you baptised?", "Is there anything you would like us to pray for?", "Shall we pray together now?". She was persistent too, if people kept walking, she walked alongside them and continued talking.

The most awkward moments were when she said "We are holding a meeting in the St Charles Centre, do you know where that is?" and people said "No" and she said "James? Can you tell them...". Explaining the location of the St Charles Centre is hard enough when somebody is interested and as soon as I speak I betray my englishness. Quite a few peoples faces change instantly. The loud and clearly for a foreigner voice stops and I get a kind of impatient "when will you finish talking" look that has me almost apologising for Mirela's direct questioning.

She was, if I am honest, what I would consider quite pushy, bordering on rude. I kept wanting to cringe. I think if I approached a stranger and said "Do you pray to God? - Why not?" I people might feel I was being a bit rude. But time and time again she got away with it. Mirela told me that she knows that when she has pushed people in the past they have opened up and talked with her about God. So she always wonders, if she doesn't push them, has she let them down? What might they have said.

Mirela is so friendly and nice that people do acually respond. People tell her about their cousin with cancer or their nephew in hospital. She prays with them and gives them leaflets and miraculous medals. Many of them walk away smiling. She's a wonderful girl doing wonderful work and I wouldn't change her for the world, but I don't think I could ever do what she does.

I found the main difference between the foreign students and the english ones was the method of targetting. The foreign students tended to pick somebody and approach them, the English ones tended to look for people who were already looking at the cross with an interested expression on their face. I didn't see many English people approach anybody who didn't look like they were already thinking "who are these people with the cross? what's going on?"

Telling people we are praying for Hull and asking them if they would like anything praying for people was a common theme with many of the students from St. Patricks. I don't know what non-Christians think of it, I worry they think "who the hell are you to pray for me? ...are you saying you are better than me?" but if people were thinking that none of them said so. The nuns from St. Wilfrid's seemed to have a great talent in this regard... "I am a Roman Catholic nun and we are praying for people in Hull" sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Nuns pray, it's what they do.

I think the most important lesson I learned about talking to people is that you don't have to do it. I spent quite a lot of the time watching the others and standing praying.

Something I thought was badly missing in the conversations I heard was apologetics. Maybe I like apologetics too much, but there was basically none of it. If a person said "I don't believe in God" the response from us was generally "Oh right, well, um, we do... can we pray for you?". I would have liked to have been able to do more in the way of "Have you thought about X, Y and Z?

Giving out Leaflets

Over the week we gave out a lot of leaflets inviting people to our meeitng on the Saturday. I think this was a bit of a faliure on our part. A leaflet inviting somebody to an event tells them about the event, this is not evangelisation unless they come to the event which, let's face it, many people will not. Out of some 300+ leaflets we gave out, barely anybody came to our event. Lets be generous and call it 1%. Quite a few people, however, took the leaflet and looked at it. They read the text and got the message. Unfortunately, the message was not "the" message.

There is a bit of a trade off here. As one of the students rightly pointed out, if you give somebody a leaflet it is impersonal. If you talk to them then you give them your time and they get a far more attention. Talking to people seems more effective, however... on the day I went around with Mirela we probably spoke to about twenty-five people in two hours. On the last day I stood with Michelle and gave out leaflets for one hour and reached well over fifty. It's a numbers game, you can reach a few people well or a lot of people less well.

On that last day when I stood with Michelle we gave out not just the original invite but prayer cards from CASE with a "God, I don't know if you exist but if you do..." type prayer. We challenged some of the youth (of the below 18-35 variety) and they gave out leaflets also. The great thing about giving out leaflets is that anybody can do it, you don't have to be confident and the people you talk too don't need to feel interrupted or preassured to talk to you.

Events

Over the week we ran a few events, we varying levels of success. The first event was for the parents of first communion children, these are adults who are right on the edge of the Church. Some of them are at the "I resent having to do this to get my kid in to Catholic school" variety but many of them are far closer to the "I keep meaning to start going to Church and this is really interesting" end of the scale.

The event for parents of first communion parents was excellent. The students from SPES lead an hour of guided prayer in front of the blessed sacrament. If this is not evangelisation then I don't know what is... come in, this is Jesus, let's talk to him. I have no idea what the parents made of it, I was in the wrong place to overhear their remarks as they left the Church, but it was a beautiful time of prayer and I expect for many of them a new experience of Gods presence.

The next event was for the youth. I this was a success by many measures (loads of kids, happy kids, pizza etc) but I think we need to recognise some faliures as well. I think the video we showed was a bit old for the kids. Also, I didn't feel the video we showed really explained anything. Maybe something from That Catholic Show would have been more age appropriate?

It's always difficult with youth, because we want it to be fun. We don't want to be miserable boring serious people but I think we failed to have a clear goal. We didn't really tell give them anything but fun. There was a "grill a priest" session planned with the kids questioning Fr Massie but it fell through.

Our final event was the big event on the Saturday. This event was for people we had met in town during the week and so as you might guess it was poorly attended. Pretty much nobody took a leaflet and thought "yeah, alright, I'll find the St. Charles Centre and check this out". We played the video again, and again I wasn't sure it really worked very well. Then the students from St. Patrick's each gave a short talk about an area of Catholicism. Ella and I agreed to talk about marriage.

It's not exactly surprising that our talks were a bit scatty, we had about 30 minutes to research and write them and everybody did really well. However, I think one thing the talks did was to highlight what I was saying earlier about example of what I was saying earlier about the lack of apologetics. The students at Spes are a wonderful witness of Christian life, but I was surpised at how unsure many of them were about why they believe these things. I'm not being mean. I'm being realistic.

The apologetics thing was, I confess, a bit of a dissapointment for me. I am a huge fan of apologetics (always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you) and one of the challenges in street evangelisation is the huge constraint on time and complexity. I have read books and books of apologetics, but when somebody asks in the street, "how do you know God exists?" You have a few sentences to reply. You have to keep it simple. What do you say?

Conclusions

I had a wonderful, fulfilling, educational week with some great people. I made, I hope, some friends for life. I learned a lot.

I sent Fr Massie an email asking if there would be a meeting to discuss how the week went and how we move forward. There was. It happened during the day so I couldn't go. Perhaps people with jobs are not called to evangelisation, I must re-read Lumen Gentium 35 and double check.

Prayer...

For me, Evangelisation has always been about introducing people to Christ. Christ must be at the centre which means prayer must be at the centre. I think as a matter of urgency we need regular prayer for Evangelisation in Hull. I don't think it's enough to just say "we will be praying", I think there needs to be regular timetabled prayer. Perhaps the priests could say a mass a week for the evangelisation of Hull? Perhaps we could have a regular hour of adoration for evangelisation?

Getting out more...

Regardless of whether our methods are optimal, we need to keep at it. I have know idea whether it's better to praying with people, talk with people, argue with people, give people leaflets or just wander around with a cross. I know this though, we need to get out and about in Hull again ASAP before lose our momentum and forget all about it. Surely Fr Massie or Canon Michael and the Sisters can agree a saturday when they are free for two hours.

The Message...

I think it would be really helpful to figure out exactly what it is we are trying to tell people. Our core message when the SPES people were here was "We are Catholics who are praying for people in Hull and we would like to invite you to our event on Saturday...". That might not have been the intended message, but it's what I heard people say to people over and over. We then handed over an invite to the event on the Saturday.

I think it's nice to tell people we are praying for them, but I wonder if there are not other important messages that we missed. For instance, did we tell anybody why we pray? did we tell them that they can pray themselves? what did we tell them about the God we are praying to? did we tell them why we think this God exists?

Here's something that might surprise you... I don't think apologetics is a good basis for evangelisation. I don't think you can "talk people in to it". But... I do think apologetics is an important tool for evangelisation. On not a few occasions somebody said "You don't know God exists though do you" and our response was generally to stutter a bit and move on. Our response to those sorts of questions needs to be better.

The Response...

What exactly are we asking people to do? I felt like when people were interested we left them with no way to respond. They could come to our meeting on Saturday but even then, the best we did for anybody was have them give their address to Fr Massie so he can send them details of Faith Forum meetings.

If the response we wanted was contact details, we could have done that better. We could have said "if you're interested we can take your email/address and send you information on what's going on", I reckon a couple of (as in maybe two) people might have been up for that.

We need to give people ways of responding. Case have a great prayer card with a "God, I don't know if you exist but if you do I wan't to know you..." prayer. That sort of thing allows people to respond on their own in their own time. We should give people details of how they can find out more. Websites, groups, books, churches. People are going to want a way to hover on the edge for a while looking in. Do we provide that? Do we make it easy for someone who knows nothing about religion to find out more?

Preparation and Resources...

Personally, I think I would have felt far more confident with some kind of cheat sheet on my person. A kind of "say this, this and this" list to keep conversation going. One of the things the CU in Exeter used to do was give people a clipboard with a survey and they went around saying "I'm from a Christian group and we're doing a survey...", it gives a reason to talk to somebody, something to say and probably makes it easier to college contact details (if we want to) so we can send out leaflets about faith talks later.

It would have been good to have had more pertinent leaflets, a "who are we and what are we doing" one or a "basic explanation of the gospel" one. Ick. "explanation of the gospel"... That sounds so evangelical protestant. I'm not talking about 2 ways 2 live but while that may be too simple, a piece of paper with the creed on it would be too hard. There has to be something in between... maybe we need to invent it.

Getting out more...

It's worth saying again: Regardless of whether our methods are optimal, we need to keep at it.