GENE ... a voice in the wilderness. House rules

GENE ... A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS


HOUSE RULES


(In wake of the moderation measures that have been initiated on this blog)






1. Personal attacks: Gene will not allow  personal attack on readers of this blog.


 Vulgar, blasphemous, offensive, lewd or threatening language will not be countenanced. No attacks  based on race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age will be tolerated.




2. Anonymity: Posters will   not attempt to identify other readers or posters
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3. It will still be perfectly legitimate to lampoon, hold up to ridicule or take the Michael out of posters, readers or public figures if done within the context of the above.


Have a nice day.


GENE

Mother Angelica, foundress of EWTN, dies on Easter Sunday... A truly courageous woman. God rest her soul.

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Mother Angelica. Credit: EWTN.

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Irondale, Ala., Mar 27, 2016 / 06:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church in the United States has lost the Poor Clare nun who changed the face of Catholicism in the United States and around the world. Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, foundress of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), passed away on March 27 after a lengthy struggle with the aftereffects of a stroke. She was 92 years old.
“Mother has always and will always personify EWTN, the network that God asked her to found,” said EWTN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Warsaw. “Her accomplishments and legacies in evangelization throughout the world are nothing short of miraculous and can only be attributed to divine Providence and her unwavering faithfulness to Our Lord.”
In 1981, Mother Angelica launched Eternal Word Television Network, which today transmits 24-hour-a-day programming to more than 264 million homes in 144 countries. What began with approximately 20 employees has now grown to nearly 400. The religious network broadcasts terrestrial and shortwave radio around the world, operates a religious goods catalog and publishes the National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency, among other publishing ventures.
“Mother Angelica succeeded at a task the nation’s bishops themselves couldn’t achieve,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who has served on EWTN’s board of governors since 1995. “She founded and grew a network that appealed to everyday Catholics, understood their needs and fed their spirits. She had a lot of help, obviously, but that was part of her genius.”
“In passing to eternal life, Mother Angelica leaves behind a legacy of holiness and commitment to the New Evangelization that should inspire us all,” said Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. “I was honored to know and be able to assist Mother Angelica during the early days of EWTN. Over the years, that relationship grew, and today the Knights of Columbus and EWTN partner regularly on important projects.”
“Mother Angelica was fearless because she had God on her side,” Anderson added. “She saw what he needed her to do, and she did it! She transformed the world of Catholic broadcasting and brought the Gospel to far corners of our world. That witness of faith was unmistakable to anyone who met and worked with her, and generations of Catholics have and will continue to be formed by her vision and her ‘Yes’ to God’s will.”
Early Life
Born Rita Rizzo on April 20, 1923, few would have predicted that the girl from a troubled family in Canton, Ohio, would go on to found not only two thriving religious orders, but also the world’s largest religious media network. Her life was one marked by many trials, but also by a profound “Yes” to whatever she felt God was asking of her.
“My parents divorced when I was 6 years old. That’s when hell began,” Mother Angelica said in a Register interview published in 2001. “My mother and I were desperate — moving from place to place, poor, hungry and barely surviving.”
The seeds of Mother’s vocation were in a healing she received when she was a teenager. She suffered from severe stomach pain when she and her mother went to visit Rhoda Wise, a Canton local to whom people had attributed miraculous healings. Wise gave Rita a novena to St. Thérèse of Lisieux. After nine days of prayer, Rita’s pain disappeared: She had been healed.
“That was the day I became aware of God’s love for me and began to thirst for him,” said Mother Angelica. “All I wanted to do after my healing was give myself to Jesus.” And give herself to Jesus, she did.
On Aug. 15, 1944, at the age of 21, Rita entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Cleveland and took the name by which the world would come to know her — Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation.
A Promise to God
A life-changing incident then set in motion her abiding trust in Providence.

“In 1946, I was chosen as one of the founding sisters of a new monastery [Sancta Clara] in my hometown of Canton, Ohio,” Mother Angelica said in her 2001 interview with the Register. “One day in the 1950s, my work assignment was to scrub the floors in the monastery.”
“Unlike St. Thérèse, I used an electric scrubbing machine. In an instant, the machine went out of control. I lost my footing on the soapy floor and was thrown against the wall, back first.”
Two years later, the injury had worsened to the point Sister Mary Angelica could barely perform her duties. Hospitalized and awaiting surgery, she was told there was a 50/50 chance she’d never walk again.
“I was panic-stricken and made a bargain with God,” Mother recounted. “I promised if he would allow me to walk again that I would build him a monastery in the South. God kept his end, and through divine Providence, so did I.”
Soon after, she presented her desire to her superior. Confronted with two requests by two different nuns to start separate foundations, the abbess, Mother Veronica, who was Sister Mary Angelica’s novice mistress at the monastery in Cleveland, came up with a novel response.
Mother Veronica mailed two letters on the same day. One, on behalf of Sister Mary of the Cross, was mailed to the bishop of Saint Cloud, Minn.; the other, on behalf of Sister Mary Angelica, was mailed to Mobile-Birmingham, Ala., Archbishop Thomas Toolen. The first nun to receive a positive response from the bishop could proceed with her foundation; the other would abandon her idea. By Providence, Archbishop Toolen responded first, forever wedding Sister Angelica with Alabama.
On Feb. 3, 1961, after various medical problems and potential roadblocks, Rome granted Sister Mary Angelica permission for the Alabama foundation, Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Ala. At the time, the Catholic population of the region was only 2 percent.
Media Apostolate
Mother Angelica was always a charismatic speaker. Her persuasive talks on the faith reached the ears of those in charge of radio and eventually television. In 1969, she began recording spiritual talks on audio for mass distribution. She recorded her first radio program in 1971, 10-minute programs for WBRC, according to her biography, Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve and a Network of Miracles by Raymond Arroyo, host of EWTN’s The World Over.
Encouraged by her new friend and patron Nashville lawyer Bill Steltemeier, she recorded her first television programs seven years later — half-hour programs called Our Hermitage. It didn’t take long for her to warm to the idea of a faithful Catholic media apostolate.
While utilizing a secular studio to produce programs for a Christian cable television network one day in 1978, Mother Angelica heard that the station owned by the studio planned to air a program she felt was blasphemous.
“When I found out that the station was going to broadcast a blasphemous movie, I confronted the station manager and objected,” said Mother Angelica. “He ignored my complaint, so I told him I would go elsewhere to make my tapes. He told me, ‘You leave this station and you’re off television.’”
“I’ll build my own!” responded Mother Angelica.
“That decision was the catalyst for EWTN,” said Arroyo. “It led to the sisters’ suggestion to turn the garage into a television studio.”
Eternal Word Television Network was launched, fittingly, on the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, Aug. 15, 1981. That garage became the first television studio and eventually became the control room — the nerve center — for EWTN’s global television programming.
Spiritual Legacy
Mother’s order, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, which began in Irondale with five nuns, moved and expanded in 1999 to a monastery at The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Ala. The Poor Clares also expanded to new houses in Texas and Arizona.
In November 2015, the Hanceville community was augmented with the arrival of nuns from St. Joseph Adoration Monastery of Charlotte, N.C., which was merged with Our Lady of the Angels, under the leadership of Mother Dolores Marie.
Mother Dolores, who, before becoming a nun, worked for EWTN, described Mother Angelica’s spiritual legacy as a constant striving to respond daily to God’s will.
“When Mother first had her stroke [in 2001], a lot of people said what a shame because she was a voice of the Catholic faith and for the truth,” said Mother Dolores. “But faith tells us that all these 14 years were not wasted at all. Probably her most profound work has gone on in this time, in her silence and suffering. I believe that to be true. Our Lord gave her this time to be truly cloistered in her bed and have that time of deep prayer and intercession and suffering as an offering for the Church and for the world, for our order, for the network, for many things. And ultimately for souls. We won’t know until eternity the value of these past years.”
Mother Marie Andre, one of five nuns who started the Phoenix house and is now the abbess of the Poor Clares’ Our Lady of Solitude Monastery, also recognized Mother’s total commitment to God’s plan.
“She was never fearful of failure, but only fearful of not following God’s will” she added.“Mother described it as a train with several cars. The ‘Yes’ was the engine, with everything else attached to that. If she hadn’t said ‘Yes,’ neither the foundations nor the network would have been founded.”
The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, like EWTN, continues to draw thousands of visitors annually.

“The first thing you detected with Mother was her spousal love of Jesus. She was always telling people, ‘Jesus loves you,’” said Father Joseph Mary Wolfe, one of the original members of the men’s religious community founded by Mother Angelica, the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word. Currently, there are 15 friars in the community. The friars are largely involved in EWTN’s apostolate.
Father Joseph summed up Mother’s spiritual legacy as marked by her love of Jesus, centered on the Eucharist, a great trust in divine Providence and a strong family spirit.
Mother Angelica’s remarkable trust in divine Providence is evidenced by founding the network without counting the cost, as well as by how she prepared for her live television shows.
“She never prepared for live shows,” said Father Joseph, who used to work for the network as an engineer. “She would just pray with the crew and then go on television and trust that God would give her the words to say.”
On an EWTN television special for her 90th birthday, Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa talked about Mother’s authenticity. “To me,” highlighted Father Pacwa, “one of the most important things about Mother Angelica is that what you saw on TV is what you knew off of the stage as well. There was no difference.”
Bishop Robert Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham offered yet another insight into Mother’s rare abilities over the phone on the TV special. “In a special way, I think George Weigel’s book Evangelical Catholicism summarizes what Mother Angelica was about,” Bishop Baker said. “She not only invented that term, many years ago, but put it into practice concretely — working so beautifully off the Scriptures and bringing the truth and the love and the life of the Gospel of Jesus to so many people, not only to our Catholic household of faith, but to many thousands of people who are not Catholic, in that beautiful way she had of touching lives, bringing so many people into the Catholic household of faith.”
Safeguarding the Church
Commentators say that aside from the foundation of the women’s and men’s religious orders, Mother Angelica also played a larger role. Some have asserted that she helped to safeguard the Church in the United States.
“Mother Angelica has been compared to a powerful medieval abbess. But the mass-media instrument she created has extended her influence for the Gospel far beyond that of any medieval abbess, and even beyond that of many of the last century’s most prominent American bishops,” said Mark Brumley, president of Ignatius Press. “Her long-term contribution is hard to assess, of course, but there is no doubt that Mother Angelica has helped root the Church in America more deeply in the Catholic Tradition; and at the same time, she has helped make the Church more innovative in how she communicates that tradition. All Catholics in America should thank God for Mother Angelica.”
“Mother Angelica has two important legacies,” said Arroyo. “To the wider world, she’s the first woman in the history of broadcast to found and lead a network for over 20 years. No one else has ever done that.”
“She was such a great support to Pope John Paul II and his successor,” added Arroyo. “Her active ministry ran parallel to Pope John Paul II’s, and she backed him up at a time when so many people were undermining Church authority, distorting the history and nature of the liturgy and popular devotion and confusing Catholic teaching. She showed that the commonsense approach of Catholics was right. She normalized the truth of the faith at a time when it was up for grabs.”
On Feb. 12, Pope Francis sent his greetings to Mother Angelica from aboard his papal plane to Cuba. “To Mother Angelica with my blessing, and I ask you to pray for me; I need it,” the Holy Father said. “God bless you, Mother Angelica.”
Retirement From Leadership
Mother Angelica retired from her leadership of EWTN in 2000. She suffered a stroke the following Christmas Eve. As a consequence, she spent the last years of her life mostly without the capacity for speech. Arroyo said that didn’t weaken her effectiveness.
“While she was unable to speak at length and sound off on the controversies and confusions of the day, what she did through prayer in her suffering was remarkable,” said Arroyo. “It’s certainly not our efforts that have kept EWTN on the air and allowed it to reach people in amazing ways. I attribute it all to the suffering of that one woman in Hanceville.”
Warsaw praised Mother Angelica as an inspiring model of Christian faith.
“The important thing, as Mother Angelica’s life and the lives so many of the saints have shown us, is to be faithful and to persevere,” he noted. “She once said, ‘You have been created by God and know Jesus for one reason: to witness to faith, hope and love before an unbelieving world.’”
“Mother Angelica’s life has been a life of faith; her prayer life and obedience to God are worthy of our imitation,” Warsaw continued. “Everything she did was an act of faith,” Archbishop Chaput agreed.
“She inspired other gifted people to join her in the work without compromising her own leadership and vision,” he said. “I admired her very much, not just as a talented leader and communicator, but as a friend and great woman religious of generosity, intellect and Catholic faith.”

Foot-washing is too important to be dragged into a feminist debate

by Mary O'Regan

posted Thursday, 24 Mar 2016

Cardinal Angelo Scola washes feet as a Mass in Milan (PA)

   

Some try to turn women against Our Lord, by arguing that He was in the wrong when He did not wash the feet of women

The debate over foot-washing is often seen in terms of simply excluding or including women. But it would seem very different if we were informed by our Christian consciences and not by feminism.
In our ‘post-feminist’ society, we women are told that Christianity is informed by misogyny. That women will now have their feet washed on Maundy Thursday is seen by some as one means of correcting a male-dominated system. Of course, the Pope did not reform the rite for feminist reasons. However, the issue can get caught up in political debates, which is a pity.
I won’t have my marble-white, blue veiny feet washed today. But I won’t object when I hear of a female friend or acquaintance who will have their feet washed; they are doing so in line with the Church’s teachings and they may be trying to reach greater holiness. I’d just invite them to think twice if they are merely having their feet washed in response to feminist propaganda which seeks to turn women against Our Lord, by arguing that He was in the wrong when He did not wash the feet of women.
At Easter, we pledge our gratitude to Our Lord for His Ultimate Sacrifice on the Cross, and if we trust that He shed His Blood to wash away the sins for both men and women, why not trust that he had only our good in mind when He did not wash the feet of women?
At this time of year, more so than any other time, we are contemplating that Christ so loved the world that he gave His life on the cross in atonement for our sins. It’s all very well to go through the motions at Easter, but if we accept the reality of Our Lord’s sacrificial love then it instructs us that Our Lord always, always wants the best for humanity, and to my fellow women, I’d like to say that includes us.

Pope Francis washes feet of refugees on Holy Thursday

by Junno Arocho Esteves

posted Thursday, 24 Mar 2016

Pope Francis washes the foot of a woman during the foot-washing ritual at the

Castelnuovo di Porto refugees centre (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)   

 

The Pontiff washed the feet of several refugees, including Muslims, Hindus and Copts

In a gesture of brotherhood and peace earlier today, Pope Francis washed the feet of several refugees, including Muslims, Hindus and Copts.
Gestures, like Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, “speak louder than words,” he said during the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper on March 24.
Coming together, he added, is another gesture meant to show a desire to live in peace as brothers and sisters despite people’s different cultural and religious backgrounds.
Hundreds of refugees were outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope as he made his way into the courtyard of the Centre for Asylum Seekers at Castelnuovo di Porto, about 15 miles north of Rome.
Prior to his arrival, the Pope sent some Easter presents for the centre’s guests: 200 chocolate Easter eggs, a wooden chess board, and several autographed footballs and baseballs.
After getting out of a blue four-door vehicle, the Pope was greeted by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the main organiser of the Vatican’s Year of Mercy initiatives, as well as the directors of the refugee centre.

He was also introduced to three residents who would serve as his interpreters: Ibrahim from Afghanistan, Boro from Mali and Segen from Eritrea. One of the refugees handed the Pope a marker, which the pontiff used to sign a banner depicting the flags of 26 nations, representing the countries of origin of the centre’s guests.

Pope Francis poses for a selfie during his visit at the Castelnuovo di Porto refugees centre (AP)

In his brief, off-the-cuff homily, the Pope said there were two distinct gestures in the day’s Gospel: Jesus serving and washing the feet of his disciples and Judas receiving money by Jesus’ enemies to betray him.
“Today as well, there are two gestures. All of us here, (coming) together — Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Copts, Evangelicals — but (being) brothers, sons of the same God who want to live in peace,” he said.
However, recalling the recent terrorist attack in Brussels, the Pope said there was a second gesture made by those who want war. Like Judas, he said, behind those who committed the attacks there are “arms traffickers who want blood, not peace.”
“In this moment, when I do Jesus’s same gesture — to wash the feet of you 12 — all of us are making this gesture of brotherhood. And all of us can say: We are diverse, we are different, we have different religions and cultures, but we are brothers and we want to live in peace,” he said.
Acknowledging the suffering endured by the refugees, Pope Francis asked them to pray in “their own religious language” so that there may “always be brotherhood and goodness.”
After his homily, the Pope removed his vestments and put on a large white garment tied over his alb. He kneeled before each of the 12 people, washed each person’s foot slowly and dried it.
The refugees barely contained their emotions, tears streaming down their faces as the pope bent low and kissed their feet. A young mother wiped her tears as the Pope gazed at her and reached out to touch her baby.
The evening Mass was the second of two Holy Thursday liturgies for Pope Francis; the first was a morning chrism Mass in St Peter’s Basilica.
Before going around and greeting each of the centre’s residents individually, Pope Francis asked them to remember the beauty of living together as brothers and sisters despite their different cultures, religions and traditions.

Beginning Triduum, Francis tells priests: God is mercy, not 'complicated theology'

Beginning Triduum, Francis tells priests: God is mercy, not 'complicated theology'

This morning the Pope presided over a solemn Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica for the celebration of Holy Thursday

Pope Francis during the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass.

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24/03/2016

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Pope Francis began the global Catholic church’s celebration of the days leading to Easter with a call Thursday for people to “break out of our set ways” to be more merciful towards others and telling priests they have sometimes become blind to God’s will “because of an excess of complicated theology.”

 In a solemn Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica for the celebration of Holy Thursday, the Pontiff said Jesus had fought not for his own glory but to break down walls “to open the flood gates of mercy … that he wants to pour out upon our world.”

 “The mercy of our God is infinite and indescribable,” said the Pope. “The Lord prefers something to be wasted rather than one drop of mercy be held back.”

 God, said Francis, “would rather have many seeds be carried off by the birds of the air than have one seed be missing, since each of those seeds has the capacity to bear abundant fruit -- thirtyfold, sixtyfold, even a hundredfold.”

 Speaking directly to thousands of priests in attendance for the liturgy, the Pontiff later said that Jesus had called for ministers “who are poor, hungry, prisoners of war, without a future, cast to one side and rejected.”

“As priests, we identify with people who are excluded, people the Lord saves,” said the Pope. “We remind ourselves that there are countless masses of people who are poor, uneducated, prisoners, who find themselves in such situations because others oppress them.”

 Francis then encouraged priests to remember “the extent to which we too are often blind, lacking the radiant light of faith, not because we do not have the Gospel close at hand, but because of an excess of complicated theology.”

 “We feel that our soul thirsts for spirituality -- not for a lack of Living Water which we only sip from -- but because of an excess of ‘bubbly’ spirituality, a ‘light’ spirituality,” he said.

 The Pontiff was speaking Thursday in a homily for the Vatican’s Chrism Mass, an annual celebration held on Holy Thursday during which the pope blesses the sacramental oils to be used throughout the following liturgical year.

 The celebration is usually attended by many priests, as during the Mass the Pope also leads the ministers present in making a renewal of their priestly promises.

 Holy Thursday is the day celebrated by Christians around the world to mark when Jesus had his last supper. It begins the three days leading to Easter Sunday, known as the Paschal Triduum.

 Francis will continue the celebration of the day later in the afternoon by heading to a center for refugees outside Rome, where he will symbolically wash the feet of male and female refugees in the example of Jesus, who is said to have washed the feet of his disciples.

 In one of the only liturgical changes made so far during his three year pontificate, the Pope last January changed Catholic church law to allow priests to wash the feet of both women and men during such ceremonies, held in churches around the world on Holy Thursday.

 During his homily Thursday morning, the pope again stressed his frequent emphasis on the nature of God’s mercy. He said that people should look to God’s example and “should not hesitate in showing excess” mercy towards others.

 The Pontiff said that after God grants someone forgiveness through God’s mercy they are immediately restored to their full dignity.

 “God does not only forgive incalculable debts … he also enables us to move directly from the most shameful disgrace to the highest dignity without any intermediary stages,” said Francis.

 In his words directly to priests, the Pontiff said they sometimes also feel trapped “by a digital, virtual worldliness that is opened and closed by a simple click.”

 “We are oppressed not by threats and pressures like so many poor people, but by the allure of a thousand commercial advertisements which we cannot shrug off to walk ahead, freely, along paths that lead us to love of our brothers and sisters, to the Lord’s flock, to the sheep who wait for the voice of their shepherds,” he said.

 Francis ended the homily by mentioning his ongoing Jubilee year of mercy, asking that God will “let us commit ourselves anew to bringing God’s mercy to all men and women, and performing those works which the Spirit inspires in each of us for the common good of the entire faithful People of God.”

 Later on Thursday afternoon, the Pontiff will head to the refugee center about 16 miles north of Rome to celebrate the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper with some 892 migrants who have requested asylum in Europe.

 Once there, the Pope will wash the feet of eight men and four women, the Vatican said. Five of the people are expected to be Catholic; three Orthodox Christian; three Muslim; and one a Hindu.

 The refugee center, which has been in operation since 2007 and helps refugees from 25 different countries, said that Francis’ visit “calls us to a renewed commitment to help migrants.”

[Joshua J. McElwee is Vatican Correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.]  

Washing of Feet and a "Last Supper" Meal

Washing of Feet and a "Last Supper" Meal

In imitation of Christ's last supper, many Christians prepare a meal reminiscent of how Christ celebrated the Last Supper. We see the lamb, cooked whole, with no bones broken, foreshadowing the death of Christ, the Lamb of God. We eat the unleavened bread and recall to mind the Eucharist. We eat the whole meal in prayerful reminder of that Last Supper that Jesus spent with His apostles, His friends, instituting Holy Orders and leaving His greatest gift, the Holy Eucharist.

A representative paschal meal can include roast lamb, bitter herbs, green herbs, haroset, matzoh and wine and perhaps include readings from the Mass of the Lord's Supper. Our Passover Feast is the Mass, in particular the whole Triduum. The US Bishops have discouraged Catholics to "baptizing" a Jewish Seder meal, and the Vatican has issued recent documents on Catholic relations with Jews.

Taking a short break

Taking a short break


In my present state of health I think it best to take a break for a while from posting or commenting on here.


But, I shall return.


Thanks for all your good wishes and messages of support everyone.


GENE

A PLEA FOR HELP... please help me to leave the past in the past

A PLEA FOR HELP...  please help me to leave the past in the past

Munch's THE SCREAM  ... just sums up my despair

Okay, I'm a proud guy. But sometimes the macho image must be put aside. I know I have a big problem and I must deal with it before it ruins me.

Readers of this blog will know that I have often referred to my first marriage and how I just can't forget and move on. My 'marriage' lasted a brief six months and I went through hell almost every day. But that is so long in the past  ... the early Eighties. My marriage was annulled and I have remarried - to the most wonderful woman in the world and I have three wonderful children whom I adore.

I've had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy about fifteen years ago and it did help but it didn't mean I was free of all the baggage.

Why can't I forget the evil bitch and all the hurt she inflicted on me? Things resurface with an intensity now and again and right now is a bad period. One day last week I locked myself in the Sixth Form office and ended up punching a cushion around the room.

If anyone can point me in the right direction I will be eternally grateful. Detters in the past you did proffer some advice - not that you were sympathetic to me - and your advice was along the lines that if I did not free myself from this it would destroy me. You have a background in counselling Detters and if you can offer anything further I would be appreciative - although we are not exactly buddies at the moment. Truth is I would appreciate anything from anyone.

Things are so bad at the moment I don't think I can face the Good Yarn tomorrow night. And for me that's a measure of how serious things are.

Marianne has been a rock but even she can do no more.

London’s religious awakening

by Ben Judah

posted Thursday, 10 Mar 2016

London's Catholic population is now growing thanks to Eastern European arrivals (Photo: PA)

   

I went looking for the soul of the metropolis. What I found was an extraordinary spiritual ferment

This is the new London, an immigrant mega-city where nearly 40 per cent were born abroad. The old London of Pearly Queens and Cockney barrow boys is history. The new London is a city of Russian oligarchs, African night-cleaners and Polish builders – where only 45 per cent are white British.
This is the city I’ve chronicled in my new book This Is London. For two years I’ve been in search of the stories that make up the immigrant city’s soul: sleeping rough with Roma beggars, living in Romanian doss houses, working on Polish building sites and touting for work with Baltic labourers on the kerb.
As I listened, one thing that tumbled out was a hidden religiosity. Polish scaffolders talked of the Virgin Mary, carers spoke of Islamic angels and beggars formed Romanian prayer circles. Even in Russian Mayfair, I found myself taken to its kabbalist. The old London of empty churches and ambling suburban vicars who don’t believe in God is fading into history. The new London is a city of Somali basement mosques, overflowing Polish chapels and teeming African Pentecostal services in converted bingo halls.
What I found with my notebook on the street is backed up by official statistics: between 2005 and 2012, church attendance in London grew from 620,000 to 720,000. The number of churches grew at roughly the same rate.
London is experiencing a modest awakening, and it has a lot to do with immigration. This is mostly a Pentecostal story: 700 places of worship sprang up in London between 2005 and 2012, of which more than half have black majorities. This now means black people are far likelier to attend weekly services than whites – 19 per cent to 8 per cent. I find it quite moving just to write down the names of the churches without spires. A name like “Family Life Christian Centre: Raising Breakthrough Generations” says so much about the immigrant struggle.
Seen from the ground up, these Pentecostal church groups are increasingly important to MPs and councillors trying get an electoral edge. Many see them as keys to the city’s black vote. This is why they are fast becoming a fixture for the mayoral and even the national electoral calendar. David Cameron chose to appear at the Redeemed Church’s annual Festival of Light event in London in April 2015, speaking to 45,000 worshippers. Many Conservative politicians, hoping to draw black voters away from the more stoutly secular Labour, seek alliances with leaders of a religious culture full of super-pastors and celebrity faith healers.
Why are black churches so popular? Standing outside them interviewing attendees, I found African women keen to say they clung close to the church out of fear of family breakdown and gang violence. Many African men, meanwhile, said they enjoyed “being all black, and all together, not being watched”. But much of this boom in London reflects a boom in Africa itself, where pastors are national celebrities.
In any case, it is having a big impact. Black and immigrant churches now make up nearly a third of all churches in London. In inner London almost half of worshippers are black. There has been a boom in black majority churches – in the dilapidated offices of grungier parts of London they are now as regular a sight as the chicken shops.
How does Catholic London compare? It is increasingly a Polish story, but not one filled with the same revival as the African one. Nationally, some one in ten Catholics are now Polish, with a third believed to be regular church attendees when they arrive. However, Catholic Poles tend to become a little less religious in London, unlike their African counterparts.
Why? The story I heard in Polish London was one of limited capacity: there aren’t enough churches offering Mass in Polish, as the Catholic Church is a slower-moving creature, unlikely to establish places of worship in old carpentry yards and converted garages. There are only 120 Polish priests in Britain, simply because they are much more difficult to recruit and train than Pentecostal lay preachers. Another side of this is that most Polish migrants come from conservative small towns and villages. They find their views liberalised by life in the big city, but encounter a Church hierarchy felt to be deeply conservative. Thanks to Eastern European immigration, the Catholic population in London is now growing – but not quite booming.
Most of the Polish builders, labourers and cleaners I worked and lived with in London were new immigrants – from working-class rural families – and many expressed a frustration with the bourgeois “old Poles” who had arrived in the 1940s and 80s and dominated the Polish churches. Many felt that a certain snobbery towards the “rabble” had made these places much less welcoming than they could have been. Others told me that they have drifted away from the Church, reflecting what is happening in Poland itself – where regular church attendance has fallen below 40 per cent of the population for the first time in decades.

St George’s Cathedral, Southwark: church attendance is rising in the capital (Photo: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk)

What about Islam? London is now a city of more than 400 mosques (compared with nearly 5,000 churches). The biggest are the size of small cathedrals and can hold 5,000 worshippers. But most are invisible, cramped, draughty, and without minarets, found in converted shop fronts and even old garages. With so many streams of South Asian, Arab, Somali and even Eastern European Islam, it is tough to characterise the average Muslim Londoner. Except for one thing: he or she probably prays in an overcrowded room. Researching This Is London I came to feel that this experience plays its part in radicalising youth. One interviewee told me it felt like “we are part of the underground religion, of the unwanted races”.
The different sides of Muslim London are keen to draw caricatures of each other’s mosques. Faithful London Muslims keep a mental map in mind of the city’s places of worship: which ones are so-called “revert [ie convert] mosques”, which ones are “old people’s homes”. The most common caricature I heard on the streets was that South Asian mosques, where the prayers are said in English and in a South Asian language, were increasingly day-care centres for the community’s elderly. The youth-dominated Salafist mosques are the more fun places to be, apparently.
London’s transformation into an immigrant mega-city is only just beginning. At current rates of influx, which experts agree are unlikely to diminish as long as Britain does not leave the European Union and its common market, the majority of Londoners will be foreign-born by 2031. I expect London’s new spirituality to become more visible in the years to come as communities grow richer and more confident.
So it’s high time to ditch a few myths. ‘‘London values’’ are not what many people assume. According to the 2011 census, only one in five Londoners are atheist or agnostic – compared with one in four in the country as a whole. The new London is the region where the fewest births are out of wedlock – just 36 per cent compared with, say, 59 per cent in the secular North East. The villages and the small towns in the provinces, not inner London, are where the godless are.
Anyone who walks around London will notice one sign of the change: the growth in “street preachers”, whether Evangelicals or Muslims. Little heard-of a decade ago, apart from the odd prophet of impending doom at Oxford Circus, they are now a regular sight on most of London’s high streets. They are here to stay.
Ben Judah is a contributing writer at Politico Europe. This Is London: Life and Death in the World City is published by Picador
This article first appeared in the March 11 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald.

How I got through to an atheist

by Mary O'Regan

posted Wednesday, 9 Mar 2016

We can pray for atheists without telling them about it (PA)

   

We must always have compassion for atheists because they do not know God

“The abortion is booked and I’m definitely having it,” said an old friend who is a life-long atheist who thinks that people who talk about God are liars.

“Having an abortion is not a sin – there is no such thing as sin – there is no God who will punish me for it,” my friend instructed me.

Listening to her, I felt trapped. I knew if I spoke about the Catholic teaching that abortion is a mortal sin, I would actually make my friend more determined to ‘prove’ that it was not, and she was adamant that, “Mary – you will see nothing bad will happen to my soul – I don’t have one.”

I only had one option; to listen intently to her – and I discovered that she was of the opinion that she would not suffer after the abortion. I decided to rectify this by getting as much information on Post Abortion Syndrome as I could and showed her a secular testimony from a woman who wanted to commit suicide after her abortion.

Even though she was tempted to brush this off as “not enough evidence” (the same argument she has against faith), she was stunned to learn of studies showing post abortion depression, such as the large scale Finnish study which unearthed that the suicide rate following abortion was nearly six times greater than the suicide rate following childbirth.

My friend swung from the opinion that abortion was “harmless to the woman” to cancelling her abortion and having a baby. She’s become softer on the Catholic Church now because in her view if it’s anti-abortion, it can’t be all bad.

Helping her decide against abortion was horrifically hard, there were sleepless nights spent talking to her, I felt slighted when I was told that people who believe in God are “loons.”

But the experience taught me a lot about how “loons” or people like me can reach out to atheists. We may feel hatred towards atheists because they deride Who we love: God.

Listening to atheists explain why they don’t have faith is crucial; if we don’t know their problems with Christianity, then we can’t help them. My worst fault is that I am a dreadful listener and can’t stop talking about myself, so if I can listen, then that does prove miracles happen.

There is the frustrating task of sidelining our egos, (I have a gigantic, fragile ego, so if I can suffer insults to prevent an atheist from having an abortion, then anyone can).

Most essentially, there is a need for prayer and sacrifice for those who have no belief in God. We don’t need to use a loud-speaker to announce that we are praying for them, praying privately is still praying and God sees our hearts and knows that we have a good intention when we chose not to tell an atheist we are praying for them.

In tandem with prayer, there has to be steadfast example of Christian witness, which is why I think my hero, Fr Hugh Simon-Thwaites was so successful in bringing atheists into the Church. People were attracted to his goodness.

On the subject of Fr Hugh, in January I wrote that I keep photos of him in my wallet, looking at his serene smile is like red bull for my soul and has given me great strength to talk to atheists.

In his article in the Universe, I think that Bishop Declan Lang had a point when he spoke out on the need for people of faith to stand up for persecuted atheists. We are fooling ourselves if we think this is something that only happens in places like Bangladesh where the blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was slain for merely articulating his atheism.

Thankfully, atheists are not violently punished here in the UK, and to be fair, atheists often have the upper hand over Catholics because it is their ideology that informs most of Britain’s societal trends: which is precisely why atheists are subjected to a form of persecution here that is deadlier, because they are encouraged in their belief that there is no God.

Compassion is needed on our part because atheists are in an unrequited love affair, God loves them, but they refuse to let the love in.

Thomas Eakins, The Crucifixion

Akela Reason

Thomas Eakins, The Crucifixion, 1880, Philadelphia Museum of Art

During the summer of 1880, the Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins began work on The Crucifixion, the only Biblical subject that he ever undertook. An ardent realist, who had trained at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, Eakins built his reputation on carefully studied portraits and genre scenes of life in and around Philadelphia. For The Crucifixion, Eakins’s methods were no less scrupulous. He took his sixteen-year-old student J. Laurie Wallace across the Delaware River to the marshes in New Jersey, where the artist made sketches of his model posing on a large wooden cross. In the finished painting Eakins, a reputed agnostic, crafted a realist interpretation of one of the central devotional subjects in Christian art. Although large in scale, the work was not done on commission or with a religious patron in mind; instead Eakins sent the painting to major international exhibitions. In later life, he came to regard the painting as his “best work” and hoped that a museum might acquire it.

For this painting, Eakins challenged the traditional iconography of the crucifixion by eliminating all signs of divine presence. Eakins accomplished this through several means that suggest his careful consideration of the subject for a modern audience. Most obviously, he treated the subject as a daytime scene, eliminating the miraculously darkened noonday sky described in three of the gospel texts. In doing so, he broke with a centuries-old iconographic tradition meant to convey Christ's divinity. The daylight helps to highlight the human presence of Jesus, whose thin body bears evidence of prolonged physical suffering, with blood pooling at his feet and his hands contracted in a claw-like response to the pain. In addition, Eakins did not add a halo to Jesus’ downcast head. According to the artist’s friend, the critic William J. Clark, Eakins intended, through his intensely realistic approach to the subject, “to conceive of the crucifixion as an event which actually occurred under certain understood conditions.”¹Eakins’s decision to paint Jesus in this way coheres with the work of the French academic painters with whom he trained. Like his teachers, Eakins was probably influenced by the work of nineteenth-century Biblical scholars, such as Ernst Renan, who attempted to recover the “historical Jesus” by using archaeological evidence to reconstruct his life and works.² Through such interventions, Renan and others attempted to present Jesus as an historical figure, supporting his religious role with evidence of his life and work.

The painting also accords with what we know of Eakins’s personal religious beliefs. Although raised as a Protestant, Eakins was not especially religious. In fact, in letters written during his student days in Paris he expressed deep skepticism of religious dogma and was particularly critical of the Catholic clergy. He felt that church hierarchy should not mediate between God and the faithful; for him, belief lay in the heart and not in ritual. In later years, Dennis Cardinal Dougherty, a friend of the artist, described him as an agnostic who did not believe in the divinity of Christ.³

Eakins’s decision to paint Jesus as a man and not a God had consequences for the way that critics received the painting. Some critics considered the subject, and Eakins’s realistic treatment of it, inappropriate for a public art exhibition. Protestant critics, who drafted the most scathing critiques of the painting, negatively identified the subject with Catholicism since the cross actually bore the corpus or body, approximating, more closely, a crucifix rather than a cross. This being said, the same critics were also quick to note that Eakins’s human Jesus lacked divinity and thus would not appeal to Catholic viewers. Indeed, according to art historian Elizabeth Milroy, Eakins lent the painting to the Catholic Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania, but the seminarians hid the painting behind a door, instead of placing the work on view in the sacred spaces of the seminary.⁴ Many critics simply found Eakins’s graphic representation of Christ’s body “revolting.”⁵ Mariana van Rensselear was one of the few critics to appreciate the image; she found the picture deeply moving, viewing it as a modern pathos-filled depiction of the subject.⁶

Eakins crafted a distinctly modern crucifixion that challenged contemporary religious beliefs. In both religious and secular realms, Eakins’s crucifixion disquieted viewers with its emphasis on Christ’s material presence. So who did he paint it for? It seems unlikely that a church or even a private patron would have purchased such a large and polemical work. In spite of the controversy generated by the painting, Eakins continued to send it to major international exhibitions and actively approached museums, hoping that they might buy the picture. In the end, he found no takers, but his wife later included The Crucifixion in a gift of her husband’s paintings to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Eakins's desire to reinvent the subject of the crucifixion for a modern audience engages in a dialogue with the Old Master tradition and, in doing so, demonstrates his artistic ambitions. Eakins’s modern crucifixion challenged both religious belief and artistic conventions, helping to define it for the artist as his “best work.”

Pope Francis Excommunicates Priest Who Backed Women’s Ordination and Gays

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Pope Francis drives through the crowds

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Father Greg Reynolds of Melbourne, Australia found out last week that Pope Francis had excommunicated him, and he was shocked. Granted, Reynolds holds less than traditional views in the Catholic Church—he supports women’s ordination and gay marriage—but Pope Francis has more than hinted lately that the Church needs to adopt a new tone towards those social issues. “I am very surprised that this order has come under his watch; it seems so inconsistent with everything else he has said and done,” Reynolds told the National Catholic Reporter, a widely read source for Catholic news.

Excommunication is a severe penalty in the Catholic Church. Today it is the church’s harshest punishment, and it means an individual can no longer participate in the sacraments or worship ceremonies, much less ever officiate a mass again. Reynolds’ letter of excommunication itself contained no official explanation for his excommunication. It accused Reynolds of heresy and claimed he had violated the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Reynolds told the National Catholic Reporter that he also believes he was excommunicated because of his support for the gay community. He has officiated mass weddings for gay couples, even though he claimed they were unofficial, and he justified his actions as a call for reform. “I still love the church and am committed to it,” he told the Standard newspaper, arguing he was trying “to help highlight some of the failing and limitations.”

Pope Francis has made waves lately for advocating for necessary reforms in the Catholic Church, especially when it comes to gays and women. While the Supreme Pontiff does have to sign off on excommunications, Francis may not be as directly responsible for Reynolds’ dismissal as it might initially appear. Excommunication processes tend to take a long time, even years, and Reynolds was likely already tagged for removal before Francis took office in March. His non-traditional views stem back years. He preached in support of women’s ordination in 2010, resigned as a priest in the Melbourne Archdiocese in 2011, and yet continued to practice as a priest without the authority and backing of the church. He then founded a group called “Inclusive Catholics” for people who also support women’s ordination and gay marriage.

However, the announcement serves as a reminder that despite the recent excitement over Pope Francis’ reforming attitudes and calls for increased compassion for women and gays, he has not changed any actual Catholic doctrine, nor is he likely to do so. Women’s ordination and gay marriage are still closed doors. The Pope, as they say, is still Catholic

John Lennon Letters Reveal Bitterness Toward George Martin As Well as McCartney

John Lennon Letters Reveal Bitterness Toward George Martin As Well as McCartney

It's no surprise that John Lennon harbored some ill will toward Paul McCartney in the aftermath of the Beatles' breakup. In the new book The John Lennon Letters, a previously seen handwritten 1971 note from John and Yoko On0 to Paul and his wife Linda (whom Lennon sarcastically addressed as "you noble people") confirms what everyone already knows about that enmity, as Lennon chides McCartney to "get off your gold disc and fly!"

What's not so well known: the tiff between Lennon and producer George Martin, a beloved figure not usually known for his participation in Beatle beefs.

In one of the angrier missives included in The John Lennon Letters, the then-bitter ex-Beatle lays into Martin for supposedly taking too much credit for the group's sound. He also smacks the producer down for giving McCartney too much credit for some of the songwriting.

"When people ask me questions about 'What did George Martin really do for you?,' I have only one answer, 'What does he do now?' I noticed you had no answer for that! It's not a putdown, it's the truth," wrote Lennon, who had brought in Phil Spector to redo Martin's work on  Let It Be and then continued to work with Spector as a solo artist.

"I think Paul and I are the best judges of our partners," Lennon wrote, less than politely. "Just look at the world charts and, by the way, I hope Seatrain is a good substitute for the Beatles."

Can you say "snap, squared"? Seatrain, as very few people will recall, was the unremarkable California roots-rock band Martin was assigned to produce by Capitol Records immediately after the Beatles' breakup.

What angered Lennon so? In the larger sense, armchair psychologists might suppose that a would-be "working class hero" like Lennon possibly harbored some resentment over having his musical revolution seen as reliant on a stiff-upper-lip establishmentarian like Martin. But in the immediate sense, Lennon was reacting to a Melody Maker interview in which Martin made some seemingly innocent remarks that got the rocker's considerable gander up.

"Now on to 'Revolution No. 9,' which I recorded with Yoko plus the help of Ringo, George and George Martin. It was my concept, fully," Lennon wrote in a letter co-addressed to the Melody Maker interviewer. "For Martin to state that he was 'painting a sound picture' is pure hallucination. Ask any of the other people involved. The final editing Yoko and I did alone (which took four hours)...

"Of course, George Martin was a great help in translating our music technically when we needed it, but for the cameraman to take credit from the director is a bit too much. I'd like to hear what the producer of John Cage's 'Fontana Mix' would say about that... Don't be so paranoid, George, we still love you," ended the main part of the note, signed by " John (and Yoko who was there)."

Looking back at Martin's 1971 Melody Maker, it's not hard to pick out some other passages that might have set Lennon off. "John's become more obvious in a way," Martin told the British music weekly, then a bit less circumspect than he later became. "'Power To The People' is a rehash of "Give Peace A Chance," and it isn't really very good. It doesn't have the intensity that John's capable of. Paul, similarly with his first album ... it was nice enough, but very much a home-made affair, and very much a little family affair. I don't think he ever really rated it as being as important as the stuff he'd done before. I don't think Linda is a substitute for John Lennon, any more than Yoko is a substitute for Paul McCartney."