The Divine Wedgie

Saving Souls Through the Flesh?

2012-03-16T14:58:00.001+11:00

The political philosopher Eric Voegelin long argued that Modernity was marked by an undercurrent of Gnosticism. Put simply, Gnosticism in most of its manifestations is marked by a deep unhappiness with the present life, and finds wisdom and enlightenment only to the extent that the self is stricken from its tainted body. We find exemplars of this Gnosticism even in postmodernity, particularly in cyber-enthusiasts such as Carnegie Mellon University's Hans Moravec, who once talked about the promise of progressing to a new stage of evolution and leaving behind one's carbon based shell with the help of robotics.

Gnostic currents persist even within the Christian fold. There are those who equate all bodily interactions with "the flesh", and as a result prioritise the care of the soul as the primary, if not the only, task of Christian discipleship, and forgetting about the resurrection of the dead they confess at the end of the Nicene creed - a resurrection that implicates both the soul and the body, as prefigured in the rising of the dead from the tombs at the moment of the Crucifixion. Thus marriage, the care for the poor, socioeconomic concern and hospitality are all regarded as falling within the domain of "the flesh" which, drawing on St. Paul's phraseology for scriptural succour, "has nothing to offer" for our salvation.

By contrast St. Cyril of Alexandria (376-444), one of the champions of the ancient theological school of Alexandria (which many argue was responsible for nurturing the Gnostic movement) and one of the leading figures in the Council of Ephesus, had this to say

Only if it is one and the same Christ who is consubstantial with the Father and with men can He save us, for the meeting ground between God and man is Flesh and Christ.

The flesh, far from being hopelessly under the reign of Satan, has been redeemed by Christ through his Passion, death and resurrection. And because the flesh is redeemed by Christ, it also becomes the site of our salvation. It is the redemption of the flesh by Christ and thus by extension, one's redemption via the flesh in Christ, that makes virtue possible. It is what makes Blessed John Paul II's Theology of the Body possible. Most importantly, it is what makes the sacraments possible.

This then reveals consumer culture to be but a parody of the divinised Flesh of Christ. At one level, consumer culture always makes deliberate attempts to rebel against and cut itself from Christ, in its reversal of the economy of giving of oneself to one of the taking of others for oneself. In so doing, it shifts the locus of divinity in the material product as a self-sufficient, enclosed entity (the "religious fog" that Karl Marx identified in his critiques on Capitalism's drive to create commodities for sale). In post-modernity, as the French entrepreneur Herve Juvin remarked, this locating of divinity in the self-contained flesh of the human body is encapsulated in locating the soul on the surface of the skin. Thus it is not the flesh per se, but the flesh cut off from the divinised Body of Christ that leads to futility.

While the flesh may have nothing to offer on its own, our bodies nonetheless can participate in the divinised Flesh of Christ, for is only through this divinised Flesh that our souls get saved.We cleave to this divinised Flesh at the reception of the Eucharistic host. We then bring this glorified Flesh to others through our own flesh, as implied by the Mass' concluding call by the Presbyter to "glorify God by our lives". The encounter of human flesh cleaved to the Flesh of Christ then, as Cyril reminds us, becomes the site whereby we can experience our salvation, rather than the perdition that many uber-spiritual grim reapers presume.

A Response to Newt Gingrich from the Front Porch: A Biography of Saul Alinsky

2012-03-13T10:38:00.001+11:00

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich made a remark as part of his campaign that "the centerpiece of this campaign...is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky". Gingrich's branding of Alinsky as a "radical" was an attempt to starkly differentiate himself from the perceived Socialism of the Obama administration.

But is the association justified? Russell Arben Fox has written in direct response to Gingrich's remark a brief biography of Alinsky in the conservative blog Front Porch Republic. One could wonder if the post is comprehensive enough to dispel the mislabelling of Alinsky by Gingrich, but it nonetheless makes for interesting reading, and is a good follow up to an old post quoting Alinsky.

Play, Liturgy and the Salvation of the World

2012-03-09T11:30:00.000+11:00

At a recent conference organised by the Australian Society for Continental Philosophy, delegates would have been introduced to strands of Play Theory, elements of which would have been interesting and theologically nurturing.

One such theorist, the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, wrote in 1981 that play is more than just the generation of self-centred pleasure for those engaged in play. Whether it would be in the context of a game, dance or theatrical performance, play can be responsible for extending reality beyond the horizons within which that act of play is taking place. Writing in another context, Richard Schechner wrote in 1990 of "performance" as being responsible for enlargening a culture. A more thorough overview of Play Theory's relation to culture can be found in Patricia Masters' article in Sociology Compass entitled "Play Theory, Playing and Culture". In a post that similarly suggests the cultural valence of play, the Social Learning Blog has put up a post looking at the role of gaming in social transformation.

While the above post might at first glance attribute a crass frivolity to the liturgy (and indeed to play), these strands of Play Theory are interesting for they can give us new insight into what is taking place in our liturgies. It may seem at first glance somewhat banal to call something so solemn and sacramental a game. However, one cannot ignore the valence of Play Theory in articulating the task of Liturgy, particularly in the Eucharist. In the Liturgy, God enters history, and in so doing "advances the peace and salvation of all the world". Our world of pride, emnity and violence becomes the dining hall for a party that quite literally ends all parties - namely the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. What is that if it is not, as Luke Bretherton describes it, envisioning a different future, if only for a moment, "and having reality re-framed"? In other words, what the Eucharist is is not only the entry of the Body of Christ in our broken world, but extending and envisioning an alternative to that broken world, to borrow Csikszentmihalyi's words.

At another level, because the Eucharist is supposed to bring us ever closer to the beatific vision, which is characterised by an eternal reveling in the presence of God, it is thus proper to consider the Liturgy's relationship to Play Theory. One is not so much reducing the Liturgy to a form of entertainment, but is providing the blueprint of true play (and thus calling into question whether entertainment can be true play), by which all other forms of play in contemporary culture can be judged. It can also be the means by which the Christian can critique society's relationship to play, in particular in entertainment societies where a narrow vision of play is now seen to be the highest good, but producing instead only counterfeit forms of enjoyment.

Why It's Good that Priests are Like Pokemon

2012-03-06T11:18:00.000+11:00

Bad Catholic recently published a delightful post entitled "Priests and Pokemon". The post draws a nexus linking happiness with hierarchy and structure, and argues that the structure that comes with children's games like Pokemon follows an intuition that should come naturally in other parts of our culture as adults, but are often shunned by as obstacles to happiness. Bad Catholic also comes tantalisingly close to drawing parallels between play and connecting with God, a theme that shall be developed in later posts here. In the meantime, "Priests and Pokemon" comes highly recommended.

Communication, Form, and Place

2012-03-02T11:41:00.001+11:00

Steve Martin once said that you cannot play a sad song on a banjo, indicating that the material form more often than not dictates the content of any particular communication.

Long before Martin, the poet W. H. Auden once intimated that to fully appreciate the richness and complexity of the world we live in, communication had to take place in a variety of material forms.

What is happening in this age of consumption, however, is that the range of acceptable channels of communication are becoming narrower with time, particularly with the standardisation of mediums of communication, through devices like the iPhone, social networks like Twitter, and information databases like Wikipedia and search engines like Google. This standardisation can be paralleled with the narrowing of the ability to communicate a range of otherwise sophisticated concepts. In tertiary education, one is beginning to see exemplars of the fruits of this standardisation in instances where undergraduate essays written in "text speak" - the manifold abbreviations used in mobile phone text messaging - are submitted to assessors as final form.

If the two previous observations are correct, and if Neil Postman's Entertaining Ourselves to Death is also right in claiming that the medium of communication determines not only the content of a communication but also the way a public thinks of and reads the culture, then the narrowing range of ideas that seems strangely coupled in our day with the proliferation of actual words, does not seem so curious. Nonetheless, the hemming in of our cultural horizons by the standardisation of mediums of communication remains a highly pertinent issue for those wishing to extend the Body of Christ. For Christianity is an Incarnational faith, and as such the Gospel must be communicated in temporal forms, and the fullness of that Gospel cannot be communicated if the means of communication continue to narrow. As an illustration, try explaining the hypostatic union in text speak.

The issue Christians face is not so much the actual means of communications, but rather the number of social, cultural and political spaces we think we inhabit, which in turn determine the range of communications channels available. When we realise that the narrowing of the range of acceptable channels of communication is coupled with the colonisation of all social space by one particular form of space - which in this day and age is one that is circumscribed by the market - then we should not merely base our hopes on widening of cultural horizons on finding new ways to communicate while leaving the dominance of the market intact. Indeed, in the search for finding new ways, we stand the chance of actually making the communication conform to the media of the status quo (think of the number of times church discipleship has to be framed as a "program", packaged in such a way to make it "advertisable" and whose facilitation must often be couched in terms of what it can do for the consumer).

For Christians, the proliferation of alternative spaces has to be grounded in another public: the Church as the Body of Christ. It is a body that sits alongside, but is not necessarily separate from, the predominant public of the market. This conceptualisation can only be facilitated by a thoroughgoing allegiance to the Body of Christ, beginning from a liturgical enactment of that Body at the Eucharist, and extending the borders of that Body far beyond the confines of the worship space. If Christians want to save communications, Christians must not be afraid of the inconvenience of prioritising one's citizenship to the Body of Christ over and above their civic belonging.

Are We Too Human?

2012-02-28T16:11:00.000+11:00

Philosophers in the tradition of Nietzsche will echo his lament that "we are human, all too human" (made in his 1878 work Human, All Too Human: A book for Free Spirits), which is often used at one level to lament the brokenness of the human race, or at another level to reject the authority of those that might make truth claims from the standpoint of divine revelation (this is indicated by Nietzsche's attack in that book on Christianity as something that, as a human product, "wants to destroy, shatter, stun, intoxicate".

A counter to Nietzsche can be found in a statement by Steven Guthrie of Belmont University, made in an interview in volume 109 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal about his book Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human. The counter, says Guthrie, comes in the form of a tension within the Bible. On the one hand, the Biblical texts repeat the all too familiar notion of the fallenness of humanity. On the other hand, Guthrie reminds us that this fallenness is not the original state of things, and that the incarnate God in Jesus Christ can lead us back to that pre-lapsarian state of things through his becoming the New Adam, that is, the new standard of what it means to be human.

Thus, for Guthrie, the problems we see in the world is not due to the fact that we are all too human. Contra Nietzsche, and from the standpoint of Christ, the problem is due to the fact that we are not human enough.

Christian and Cybernetic Time: The Case of Facebook's Timeline

2012-02-24T09:50:00.000+11:00

Kirk Bozeman has provided a thought-provoking piece in Christ and Pop Culture concerning the latest installment in the now all-too-common process of updating Facebook formats. The tweak in question, called the "Timeline", keeps a record of every input made by the user on Facebook. Going further, however, Bozeman notes that Facebook places additional, not-too-subtle hints to have every stage of life that occurred before life on Facebook to become incorporated into its purview into a literal timeline of the user's entire life. In constitutes, according to Bozeman, a shift in the way Facebook would have us represent ourselves online, from a patchwork of seemingly discordant textual bursts to a complete, semi-public narrative.

There are a number of themes that can be explored from Bozeman's post. There is the theme of how Facebook's new tweak constitutes what Foucault calls a "technology of the self", wherein the immersion into Facebook's timeline can be seen as a cybernetic version of the ancient Christian practice of "writing one's self". The task of writing, or in the case of Facebook, the task of uploading images, becomes the means whereby the self becomes affectively built up and transformed.

This may indicate a cultural opening within cyberspace that potentially overlaps with the Church's salvific mission. What should give us pause, on the other hand, is the fact that Bozeman's otherwise insightful post does not touch on something that is inherent in the DNA of cyberculture itself. This "something" is a Modern notion of time as a scientific unit of measure, a notion that is so deeply ingrained into our cultural background that we hardly take notice of it. With Facebook slowly institutionalising "Timeline", it is also externalising what is built into the platform from which it operates, namely the Modern notion of clock-time. Indeed, there is no other notion of time that cyberspace can externalise.

At first glance, this may seem too mundane to be considered a cultural threat. But recall from an earlier post on St. Evagrius of Pontus, that modern clock time institutionalises in contemporary form what Evagrius calls the "Noonday Demon", wherein the stringing out of a series of identical moments mimics the sense of time standing still. As Evagrius wrote in the Praktikos, this freezing of time becomes the seedbed that breeds first a restlessness, builds up into a hatred of one's life, and culminates in despair. If the observation this post is correct, and cyberspace can only be constituted by clock-time, then its cultural emissions can only follow the trajectory outlined by Evagrius.

As also mentioned in that previous post, the Christian operating in cyberspace must be aware of its notion of time, and must also be aware that the Church operates by a different time marked by radical individuation, where each moment is not the same as what came before - a Kairotic time. The Christian operating in Facebook must be aware that the differences of the two schemata of time, demarcate two different foundations for two different cultural formations. In Augustine's terms, we see in Timeline a clear demarcation between two cities.

If the observations of the link between modern time and the "Noonday Demon" made in a previous post is correct, then the Christian cannot be neutral to Facebook's reduction of life to merely a chain of unconnected events set against the backdrop of modern "clock time". In other words, the Christian on Facebook must resist the urge to frame his real life in accordance to Facebook's "Timeline", but resist also cyberspace's pressure to confine all of life within the strictures of clock-time.

However, if cyberspace is an extension of the Augustinian city of man, such a resistance cannot be undertaken exclusively within the confines of cyberspace alone. The rebellion against clock-time must have a cultural headquarters, and this headquarters can be found outside cyberspace within the Church, and the rubrics of the Eucharistic liturgy that make the Church. Because the Eucharist makes the Lord of time present to us, it also makes present the Kairotic time in real terrain. The Eucharist makes present He for whom each step and each act is, as the prophet Isaiah and the Book of the Apocalypse remind us, is a new creation, a new thing, a new moment. More work thus needs to be undertaken to tease out the linkages between Liturgy and the engagement with cyberspace.

Benedict XVI on the Indispensability of Monasteries

2012-02-21T14:37:00.000+11:00

A Romanian-influenced Monastery

The Vatican Information Service reported that, at a 9th October 2011 visit to the Carthusian Monastery of Ss Stephen and Bruno, Pope Bendict XVI spoke of the indispensability of Monasteries in our contemporary context. Monasteries are indispensable, Benedict said, because

Their purpose...is to 'improve' the environment...because it is dominated by economic interests, concerned only with worldly things and lacking a spiritual dimension...In such a climate not only God but also our fellow man is pushed to the margin, and we do not commit ourselves to the common good. Monasteries, however, are models of societies which have God and fraternal relations at their core.

We do not all have to live in monasteries in order to play our part in the redemption of creation, but the monastery constantly calls us to play our part in that redemption by forming our lives against a monastic template, in which work and play are framed within the discipline of the liturgy of the hours, rather than having work or play become their own liturgies, which accounts for the cultural malaise in which we currently find ourselves.

The Ecclesiology of the HHS Mandate

2012-02-17T17:23:00.002+11:00

Readers may have been following with varying degrees of concern the recent ruckus concerning the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States, requiring all employers, including Catholic institutions, to make provisions to make available contraceptives and possible abortifacient drugs as part of their health insurance plans. One of the most prominent themes that is featuring in the predominantly Catholic response to this measure is a condemnation of the Obama administration's failure to respect the freedom of conscience as protected by the American Constitution.

Much ink has already been spilled on the issue of whether the Obama administration can properly force the Church to contradict itself on life issues. This would not be revisited in this post. What this post will focus on is the question of whether the strategy of appealing to the freedom of conscience and religion is a sound line of defense for the Church. In other words, does the basis on which the Church in America is deploying its criticism properly to the Christian Church, and can the Church successfully defend itself using this strategy? Such a line of questioning has implications not only for the American situation, but also for the Church in any country espousing secular liberal values.

Patrick Deneen of the Front Porch Republic has this week written a post on this very question. In it, Deneen argues two points quite compellingly. The first is that the use of the tropes of freedom of religion or conscience are not ones that inherently come from the Christian tradition. Rather, they are tropes that emerge from modern liberalism, to which the Church as grafted onto itself and taken on as its own. The second is that such a strategy will fail the Church. These two points, and the possible motivations for the Church's adopting this strategy is summarised in the paragraph below

The response of American Catholics to the HHS mandate has (perhaps necessarily) been framed in dominantly liberal terms that give it a chance of receiving a hearing in today’s public sphere and within its Courts. But it should be acknowledged (as the response to the “Compromise” reveals) that the Church will ultimately lose the argument simply due to the fact that the way it is framed already represents a capitulation to liberal premises.

Although this is not mentioned in the post, the key premise to which the Church has capitulated is that the protection of the supposed freedom of religion and conscience it enjoys is completely dependent on the goodwill of the secular sovereign. Political liberalism as it has evolved to this day is not designed to protect anything that is inherent or universally recognisable (as many critical and postmodern analysts have maintained). The protection of any right or freedom that is inherent would in turn depend on a particular vision of the human person, to which is also enjoined the acceptance of a particular philosophical or theological tradition. The problem here, as John Rawls has made quite clear in his work, is that political liberalism gets its legitimacy precisely because it posits itself as not upholding any tradition. With no set telos, what the State upholds or repeals very much depends on, as John Locke would have it, "whatever the greater force compels it". Indeed, as Slavoj Zizek once noted, in many liberal democracies freedom itself can paradoxically be repealed by the ruler if the ruler deems that freedom can be protected in this way (witness the imprisonment of citizens of Japanese decent during the Second World War, or the extra-judicial detainment of its own and other citizens in Guantanamo Bay in the execution of the "War on Terror").

Are there any other ways to conceive of a defense of the Church's current employment plan? A possible starting point is a paragraph in Benedict XVI's first encyclical Deus Caritas Est. In paragraph 25, Benedict makes a profound ecclesiological statement, by positing three interlocking pillars that together constitute the Church: kerygma-martyria (the proclamation of the word), leitourgia (worship, although it should be more broadly defined to its original meaning of "public work") and diakonia (service to the poor). For Benedict, the Church ceases to be discernible if anyone of these components becomes obscured, even if it is done for the sake of better facilitating the other two. Indeed, the interconnectedness of each of these pillars suggests that if one gets compromised, the performance of both the others get similarly curbed.

In light of this reflection, it can be argued that the current HHS Mandate is more than a mere administrative measure, but an ecclesiological attempt by the secular sovereign to redefine the Church itself, in a way that suits the ends of the secular sovereign. If the Church's health insurance plan is an act of either, diakonia to assist its employees in the face of an unfavourable healthcare situation (as a viewing of Michael Moore's Sicko would amply demonstrate) or leitourgia to create the space for a conception of a public in keeping with the vision of the Kingdom of God, then the HHS mandate constitutes an attempt to redefine the competences of the Church in both these areas. It redefines diakonia by claiming that it is the State, and only the State, that has authority in providing for the poor. It redefines leitourgia because the State is disengaging the Church's public vision from its worship by confining leitourgia to mere worship within the four walls of a church hall. To paraphrase William Cavanaugh, the HHS Mandate can be conceived as an attempt for the State to set itself up as an alternative ecclesia by usurping functions that are properly within the ambit of the Christian Church. And Deneen's article suggests that the Christian Church is allowing for such an ecclesiological usurpation by using the strategem of defending "religious freedom".

The upside of deploying an ecclesiological line of defense is that this forms a much more robust foundation for the Church's response to the HHS Mandate: the current administration is not merely violating some "freedom" that it can remould at a whim at any rate. The Mandate is also trying to usurp the means that redefine what constitutes the Church itself. The downside is that such a basis sets the Church on a collision course with the secular liberal status quo, since there would be competing claims to particular competences, and this would very much undermine the Church's comfortable compromise with that status quo. The question that can be asked at this point is whether, in light of the unbounded capacity afforded to the secular sovereign within the framework of political liberalism, such an arrangement has so compromised the basis for the Church's activity as to be worth maintaining as far as the Church is concerned.

Postscript: The folk at Vox Nova have provided another very useful analysis on this issue, in a more Augustinian vein, in their post "HHS Mandate: A Tale of Two Cities".

What is a Conservative? A View from the Front Porch

2012-02-14T13:36:00.000+11:00

Susannah Black, who blogs at Radio Free Thulcandra, recently wrote an interesting piece in the conservative blog Front Porch Republic, entitled "Debating Conservatism".

There are highly informative Chesterton quotes peppered throughout the piece, but the heart of the article is the assertion that what is often currently passed off as conservatism is really a rehashed nineteenth-century liberalism. The conceptual hinge is the notion of merit in social organisation. While many commentators say this is the special reserve of conservatives, Black compellingly argues that the genealogy locates meritocracy in the liberal family tree, not the conservative.

This article comes highly recommended if one wants to give greater precision to intuitions that something is not quite right about contemporary political life, especially those living in de-facto 2-party parliamentary systems. It also comes at a time when Republicans fielding candidates for the next American Presidential election jostle to prove what may appear to be conservative credentials.

The Epistemology of the Mass

2012-02-10T15:57:00.000+11:00

In a culture dominated by the consumer mindset, many tend to treat the Mass as an opportunity to bring their shopping lists to the Lord, often without their being aware of it. The methodology of shopping lists rest on an epistemology in which, whether it is for things or people, we deign ourselves to be so self-certain that we can be sure that we need these things or persons for our lives to function. This may seem a natural thing to assume, for if we are not sure of ourselves, what can we be sure of?

A partial response to this can be found in Augustine of Hippo. In Book IV of his Confessions, Augustine suggested that this attitude of self-certainty is an exaggerated notion of our own abilities. Our being tainted by original sin, Augustine writes, means that we cannot be certain even of ourselves. Only when we are in the gaze of God can we hope to find the certainty we need to properly ground knowledge. This is why, as Benedict XVI intimated in his 2011 Christmas Eve homily, human reason must rest on a foundation of faith in He that transcends reason. As mentioned in a previous post, in a world cut off from God, even knowledge as a foundation for any human action will be destroyed.

This is important because it is arguable that the Mass presumes this Augustinian epistemology, which runs contrary to that presumed in consumer culture. In immersing oneself into the ritual structure of the Mass, we are not primarily bringing our demands to God. We are admitting that, before the perfection of God, we are not sure enough even of ourselves, and thus cannot be sure that our demands are really what we want. This is why Psalm 55 and 1 Peter 5 exonerate us to bring to God, not a specific itemised list, but instead a more ineffible "care" or "anxiety", more akin to an affective "gut feeling" than a precise cognitive category. Our participation in the Mass then is premised on our admission that we are not the self-aware, Cartesian agents we believe ourselves to be, and that like Augustine, we need the gaze of God to provide us with the illumination necessary to discern the specific content of our cares and anxieties.

This sheds an interesting light on the English translation of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which describes the Eucharist as a "rational" sacrifice. For in the face of a culture that presumes all human agents to be fully self-aware, and thus inherently rational in Enlightenment terms, the Mass provides an alternative mode of rationality that hinges upon illumination by God in the form of the Eucharist.

This also raises culturally uncomfortable questions for the Mass-goer, for if the Mass really presumes our need for God for sound knowledge on anything, how can we, after the Mass, continue to slot ourselves comfortably back into the institutions that presume our complete certainty of everything?

Like Your Latin: Campion College Roman Summer School in Latin and History

2012-02-07T17:36:00.000+11:00

Readers may be aware of Campion College's hosting of a Latin Language and History Summer School in Rome from 1-25 July 2012, entitled The Christianisation of Pagan Culture.

The course is not just in linguistics, but also an immersion in the culture and history of ancient Rome, through guided readings in classical pagan and Christian sources, as well as classes in Latin paleography and epigraphy. Excursions are also planned for major Roman sites like the Vatican, the Catacombs and Hardian's Villa at Tivoli.

The course fee has now been reduced to A$5350, which includes airfares, tuition fees, accommodation for the whole period, travel insurance and excursion fees. The fee is not inclusive of meals and participants are advised to budget about 30 euros a day for food, though the availability of good and cheap eateries in Rome means that one could manage for less if s/he so desired.

To secure your place, please be advised that a deposit of A$500 is required before 29th Feb 2012, with the balance to be paid by 31 May 2012. For further information, please contact the facilitators of this course:

Dr. David Daintree
Campion College President
d[dot]daintree[at]campion[dot]edu[dot]au

Dr. Susanna Rizzo
Polding Lecturer in Classics
s[dot]rizzo[at]campion[dot]edu[dot]au

An updated flyer for this program can be found by clicking here.

What is a Christian Revolution?

2012-02-03T16:57:00.000+11:00

In the Old Testament, the prophecies in the Book of Daniel speak of a time when, with the arrival of God's Kingdom, the Kingdoms of this world become not adjusted or even reformed, but comprehensively overthrown. This very unsettling theme continues on in the New Testament, where we see numerous references in the Gospels to the arrival of this Kingdom. The undoing of the status quo is continued on in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians (1:22-8) which, like Daniel, spoke of how, through Christ, God "has chosen things low and contemptible...to overthrow the existing order" (emphasis added). Christians are even reminded of this passage in Paul, thanks to the evening Liturgy of the Hours.

Though this is not the most prominent feature in the book, it is striking that the coming of the Kingdom of God spells the full and comprehensive undoing of the structures that underpin the status quo - in other words, a revolution - remains a thematic constant, that continues in popular (Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution), academic (John Howard Yoder's The Original Revolution) and ecclesiastical (Pope Benedict's 2007 call for a "Christian Revolution") discourse. More strikingly, and much to the chagrin of many politically correct exegetes, the biblical text itself never spiritualises this undoing of the status quo, as if all that is being referred to is an internal conversion in the heart of the believer. The call for an overturn of externals, including the structures of the "Kingdoms of this world", is nowhere precluded in the biblical text. Equally unsatisfying is the tendency by many to reduce the revolution to a vague mushiness by calling it a revolution of love, as the enclosed picture puts it. For love must assume a specific external form, and from that affect the structures within the status quo, or it is no revolution at all.

The word revolution will understandably be a source of discomfort to many, even to those who firmly believe in the revolutionary potential imprinted in the Christian tradition. The word "revolution" is has been in modern times made synonymous with violent insurgency and the perpetration of unspeakable atrocities (both the French and Bolshevik revolutions will doubtless spring to mind at this point). The infusing into the revolutionary mix of a theological element makes the idea of revolution even more unsettling (the Talibanisation of Afghanistan should come to mind at this juncture), and so, unsurprisingly, the growing political prominence of religious actors has been the object of many a critique by political scientists, journalists and other social commentators.

But if this theme of revolution is unavoidable in order to maintain the integrity of the Christian tradition, the faithful Christian might be forced ask a series of questions: if the theme of revolution is truly a biblical theme, and if the Church is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God which "overthrows the existing order", should the Church not be the vehicle of a Christian revolution? And if so, what does a Christian revolution look like? Most importantly, should the contours of the revolution spoken of in the bible necessarily parallel those of the more secular variety?

More posts will need to follow in order to explore this theme, more comprehensively but a helpful starting point might come from Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, the Basque priest who in the 1950s began a program of economic renewal in a Basque region left devastated by the Franco regime, a program that has now evolved to become as one of the biggest and most successful cooperatives in the world. Touching on the issue of what a revolution is not, Arizmendiarrieta wrote that violence cannot prevail, for

...power will pass from one party to another, but when the smoke has cleared and the bodies of the dead are buried, the situation will be the same as before; there will be a minority of the strong in power, exploiting the others for their own benefit...the same greed, the same cruelty, the same lust, the same ambition, and the same hypocrisy and avarice will rule... (cited in Race Matthews' Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stakeholder Society, Alternatives to the Market and the State)

Nor is a Christian revolution simply reduced to, as John Howard Yoder calls it in his For the Nations, "a call to upset society" or "an illusory vision of ending all suffering by a simple shift in the social order".

A Christian revolution, therefore, without shying away from the goal of "overthrowing the existing order", must at the same time avoid the mimicking of secular revolutions, which presume a social landscape grounded by relations of violence, and thus necessitate a violent solution. At the same time, one acute problem to keep at the forefront of one's mind is that the Christian revolution, in order to be effected, must still speak to and negotiate this secular landscape.

The Christian revolution begins from the standpoint of Augustine's City of God, which travels on pilgrimage in the City of Man towards the beatific vision. In this pilgrimage, the Church as the Body of Christ overturns the exiting order, but does so by first embodying what Yoder's The Politics of Jesus calls "a nonconformed quality of involvement in the life of the world", which "thereby constitutes an unavoidable challenge to the powers that be and the beginning of a new set of social alternatives...".

Prayer and Blogging with Benjamin Myer

2012-01-31T10:17:00.000+11:00

Benjamin Myer, a theologian from the United Theological College in Parramatta and author at large of the Faith and Theology blog, has compiled an impressive mini-anthology on prayer, consisting of the thoughts of writers both ancient and modern (examples include Isaac the Syrian, Evagrius of Pontus, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Kallistos Ware and William Stringfellow). This post provides some useful material for beginning any reflection on prayer and comes highly recommended.

Myer has also given us valuable food for thought on the impact of blogging on academic theology in an article published by the American evangelical journal Cultural Encounters. Borrowing some elements of Foucault's terminology, Myer reminds us in his article that writing has been an indispensable formator of identity, yet has been taken to new trajectories with the consolidation of the blog format. The effects are far from neutral, but not necessarily adverse.

Some may legitimately differ with Myers on whether the online form can be as nurturing for theological thought as he argues it to be, but his article nonetheless makes for compelling reading.

Melinda Tankard Reist: Right-Wing Fundamentalist Feminist or Just Plain Feminist?

2012-01-27T12:09:00.001+11:00

Readers in Australia (and no doubt a few overseas) may be aware of an ongoing story concerning anti-sexploitation campaigner Melinda Tankard Reist, known also as MTR. Tankard Reist has engaged in a public awareness campaign, through her community group Collective Shout, about the encroachments of the sex industry into various elements of popular culture, with a special focus on its impact on the formation of the thought and behavioural patterns of adolescents. Whilst receiving a lot of grassroots support, Tankard Reist has recently been subject to two types of responses (another post is needed on the significance of the fact that these responses were delivered in an online format), neither of which have any bearing whatsoever on the arguments she puts forward on the issue of sexploitation.

The first was a series of personal attacks via social media, which included threats against her own person (including sexual assault), or a series of slurs of a sexual nature. As an example of this, a post on an Australian Broadcasting Corporation website mentions a children's scriptwriter who requested naked pictures of Tankard Reist as she was "rootable in that religious feminist way". The nature of this comment segues into the second type of response, refuting her claim as a feminist because she is pro-life, christian and is therefore only a conservative and fundamentalist (Tankard Reist has claimed that at least 10 online articles on her have deployed this line of argument).

Interestingly, in recent days, a number of feminist writers have publicly come out in defense of Tankard Reist, none of whom are christian and some of whom even reject her pro-life stance. Exemplars include Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne of the feminist publishing house, Spinifex Press, and legal academic Cathy Sherry. A small but significant rift appears to be emerging within contemporary feminism with Tankard Reist being the point of departure. The question to ask is: what can account for this convergence between some elements of feminism and Tankard Reist? Two preliminary answers would be put forward in this post.

One answer is that many of the feminists who reject the "pro-life feminist" label are, with varying degrees of acknowledgement, First-Wave Feminists. These are usually feminists who apply the principles of political Liberalism, emphasising the absolute primacy of individual autonomy and independence of women from any institutional restraint. In contrast to this, feminists who would be sympathetic to Tankard Reist, such as Klein and Hawthorne, evince tendencies of Second-Wave Feminists. Appearing in the 20th century, Second-Wave Feminists argue, as do Klein and Hawthorne, that the winning by women of individual autonomy masks other collective and structural concerns that further entrench the subordination of women. Primarily, as the implicit legitimacy given to the attacks-via-sexual-innuendo against Tankard Reist suggests, Second Wave Feminists are concerned that winning individual autonomy ignores the fact that the social structures within which an individual woman operates are shaped and determined by men (or a brutalised version of them) and that emancipation of women thus requires having a role in reshaping these structures. Secondarily, Second-Wave Feminists also operate on an epistemology that critiques the atomism of Liberal thought. For such feminists everyone, and woman in particular come to the knowledge of things by their relations with one another, and not merely by isolated, hermetically sealed cognitive calculation.

Another possible reason stems from the assertions of a minority position within feminism known as Standpoint Feminism. For the purposes of this post, this mode of Feminism presumes experience, rather than all-encompassing political programs, to be the primary source of knowledge. Because of the inevitable plurality of experiences, it is possible to conceive of multiple, equally valid forms of knowledge that may otherwise be obscured by what is mainstream. This would include multiple forms of feminism. Authors like Sherry evince tendencies of this mode of feminism when she criticises the club mentality of supposed feminist commentators, who demand submission to a fixed set of principles, deviation from which leads to arbitrary expulsion from the feminist club.

As part of their discipleship, Christians arguably need to discern the overlaps that can exist within these threads of Feminism, rather than resort to the same kind of blanket-lambasting to which Tankard Reist is subject. For even in circumstances where fundamental positions are at odds, it is possible at a philosophical and strategic level to form alliances with such feminists in a manner that still extends Christ's reign. Admittedly, such feminists are hard to find, but as the episode over Melinda Tankard Reist evinces, such alliances are not impossible.

Secular Cathedrals, Darth Vader and Other Guest Posts

2012-01-24T15:57:00.003+11:00

Below are a set of links to a number of guest posts written in the blog of the Australian Catholic news service CathNews.

The most recent of these touches on the issue of ecclesiastical architecture, with a particular focus on the original cathedral of the diocese of Parramatta vis a vis the new cathedrals of secular culture, skyscrapers, which are becoming more prominent as the city of Parramatta develops into a western satellite of Sydney.

The second begins from a class in scripture given at Campion College on the Book of Revelation, and focuses on what should be the main theme of the book, the victory of the Lamb, as opposed to the popular attention to the the episodes of disaster and violence.

The third, coinciding with the feast of the Triumph of the Cross, looks at how the cross stands as a challenge to consumer culture and its cult of the surface.

The fourth post was written soon after the tragic massacre in Norway perpetrated by Anders Breivik, and suggested how looking at St. Augustine's theme of the libido dominandi - the lust for domination - can give an insight not only into this tragedy specifically, but to our culture more generally. With a reference to the motif of Darth Vader, the post asks the question if we, being infected by sin as much as Breivik, can be justified in our confidence in differentiating ourselves from Breivik, when our daily encounters with others evince the same lust for domination.

Does Big Business Oppose the State?

2012-01-21T00:39:00.000+11:00

The most recent corporate internet protests (which implicated or was supported by the likes of Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, and Facebook) against the Stop Online Piracy Act (known colloquially as SOPA), and the sweeping powers it would allegedly grant to the US, may strike some observers as another piece of empirical evidence for the argument that business by its very nature is opposed to big government.

A contrasting viewpoint to this has been given by G.K. Chesterton in The Outline of Sanity. There, Chesterton remarked that there will be an imminent fusion of Big Government on the one hand and Big Business on the other. In the book Chesterton said that both Big State and Big Business:

...are already one spirit [and] they will soon be one body. For, disbelieving in division, they cannot remain divided; believing only in combination, they will themselves combine...there will be no doubt about the character of the world which they will have made between them. It will be a world of organisation, of syndication, of standardisation.

In other words, the centralisation of business activity is often accompanied by a centralisation in State administration. This is paralleled somewhat in William Cavanaugh's Torture and Eucharist. While neoliberals are often found professing their faith in the link between a corporate-saturated social landscape with the minimisation of State, Cavanaugh argues that, as was in the case in Augusto Pinochet's Chile which was the case study in the book, the position of Big Business is often dependent on a high degree of state intervention in social life.

We experience in the process what Adrian Pabst calls in his article in The Immanent Frame, an inversion of the medieval guild system. Whilst the former sought to prioritise social goods over commercial interests, the state strengthens itself but with a view to ensure commerce subordinates any social good, brought about by the privatisation of gain, the "democratisation of risk", and the disengagement of finance from any social or cultural end.

The key to resistance against this merger of State and Business, as George Weigel argued in an address at Campion College, is the embedding of the economy within a form of cultural regulation, which is diffused in the varying and more organic institutions of family, church and civil society, and less dependent on the highly mechanistic and coercive enforcement arms of State, as opposed to a highly centralised regime of legislative regulation, where enforcement powers become ceded over to the more estranged organs of central governance.

Reverence is Rebellion

2012-01-17T17:19:00.002+11:00

Bad Catholic recently put up a post regarding the posture of prayer, or more specifically, providing a response to the notion that the reverent Christian attentive to one's posturing or gesticulations in prayer is one that either cowers before an authoritarian God or underestimates God's love for his creature.

Admittedly, there are many Christians who deign to use attention to gesture or posture in prayer as a substitute to the practice of virtue. That is not the focus of this post. Rather, very insightfully, Bad Catholic identifies the posture of prayer as an act of rebellion against the status quo, where Death reigns supreme and has the last say. Whilst the status quo deigns to forces us into a saggy submission, in prayer every bow, every folding of hands, every prostration, articulates a joining in God's defiance against, and eventual destruction of, the authority of Death in this world.

The blog comes highly recommended and can be found by clicking here.

"How to be Oppressed by a Thermostat" and Other Future Events

2012-01-13T17:19:00.001+11:00

Today marks the last day that the city of Las Vegas hosts the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show, probably the most significant display of gadgetry under one roof anywhere in the world. Among the starts of the show was the Nest Learning Thermostat, which records the times and temperatures set by the user over time to generate an automatic schedule of adjustments to the temperature of one's heaters or air conditioners, ostensibly to save energy.

In Christ and Pop Culture, Erin Straza wrote about Nest prior to its showing at the CES. According to Straza, Nest is a celebration of human ingenuity, conceptually combining the Ipod and humble thermostat. Straza finds in Nest an occasion to praise God who endowed upon humanity the gift of creativity.

Straza makes a valid point, and the makers of Nest may very well be right in claiming that a self-governing thermostat could cut household energy costs. Both of these are justifiably commendable observations. Be that as it may, one theme that often needs reiterating is that, to echo Marshall McLuhan (who coined the phrase "the medium is the message"), the increasing ceding of human actions to a whole array of gadgets and software creates a situation that decreases human agency. In other words, humans cede so much of their lives to machinery as to become not only dependent on them, but even conform their organic lives to the requirements set by the machinery.

If this does not demonstrate Friedrich Nietzsche's (d. 1900) comment of an impending age where humans "refrain from all organic functions", James KA Smith of Fors Clavigera has alerted readers to the arrival of a means to forestall the doomsday scenario of complete and utter dependence on computers and software, thanks to a new piece of computer software called "Freedom" which locks users out of their computers for up to 8 hours at a stretch. Such developments raise the question of whether Martin Heidegger was right in calling humanity a "standing-reserve" for technology.

As a related footnote, readers from Sydney may be interested to know that on Saturday (14th January 2011), Campion College will field Matthew Tan to present on youth identity and cyberculture at an upcoming conference on Youth and Culture, as well as Campion's President David Daintree, who will present on the crisis of education. Other speakers include Bernard Toutounji, who writes in Foolish Wisdom, and Andrew Mullins of Wollemi College.

Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of Capitalism

2012-01-11T09:20:00.000+11:00

Adrian Pabst, Lecturer in Politics at the University of Kent has edited a book in response in Benedict XVI's addition to the corpus of Catholic Social Teaching, Caritas in Veritate.

The book is entitled The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Pope Benedict XVI's Social Encyclical and the Future of Political Economy, and features essays from a number of eminent writers, including Adrian Pabst himself (a very astute observer in political affairs as evinced by some of his articles in The Guardian and The Drum), John Milbank, David L. Schindler, Australia's own Tracey Rowland and the Zwicks of the Catholic Worker Movement in Texas.

The book has come with endorsements by the likes of Charles Taylor, as well as the Archbishop of Granada, Javier Martinez Fernandez, a long-time supporter and friend to the theological movement, Radical Orthodoxy. It promises to be a most informative read, and the Centre for Theology and Philosophy have provided the table of contents, which is reproduced below:

PART I: Christianity and Capitalism

1 A Real Third Way, John Milbank
2 A Tale of a Duck-Billed Platypus Called Benedict and His Gold and Red Crayons, Tracey Rowland

PART II: Christianity and Socialism

3 “We Communists of the Old School”, Eugene McCarraher
4 Beyond the Culture of Cutthroat Competition, Mark and Louise Zwick

PART III: Civil and Political Economy

5 Fraternity, Gift, and Reciprocity in Caritas in Veritate, Stefano Zamagni
6 The Paradoxical Nature of the Good, Adrian Pabst

PART IV: Caritas in Veritate and Traditions of Christian Social Teaching

7 The Anthropological Unity of Caritas in Veritate, David L. Schindler
8 Integralism and Gift Exchange in the Anglican Social Tradition, or Avoiding Niebuhr in Ecclesiastical Drag, John Hughes

PART V: Distributism and Alternative Economies

9 Common Life, Jon Cruddas MP and Jonathan Rutherford
10 Equity and Equilibrium, John Médaille

Beyond 12 Days of Christmas: Feasts of the Epiphany and Mary the Mother of God

2012-01-07T13:47:00.001+11:00

The combination of a well entrenched secularism and the intensification of consumer culture has led many to forget that the 12 days of Christmas, made famous by the old carol, originally denoted the period in the Christian liturgical calendar between Christmas and the Epiphany, the manifestation of Jesus to the Magi. Many might even forget about the festive cheer of Christmas altogether with the arrival of the New Year and the subsequent collective moan as party-goers return to their workstations.

Yet, the Christian liturgical calendar reminds us that the feasting continues well into January with two important feast days - Mary the Mother of God (1st Jan) and the Epiphany (6th Jan). Why the insistence of feasting? Because in contrast to the wider culture who would have us think that everything returns the same routine after tinsel and mistletoe are down, the Christian liturgical calendar reminds us that things are not the same anymore.

The Incarnation of God, around which these two feasts revolve, draws our attention to the fact that the God who keeps doing "a new thing" as the Scriptures constantly attest, now becomes part of the material structure of the world. Under these conditions, things cannot remain the same. The repetition of old patterns that secular culture institutionalises under a thin veneer of novelty cannot be allowed to persist.

To help better understand the history and significance of these two feasts, the University of Nottingham's Department of Theology and Religious Studies has provided short interview-format explanations by Dr. Mary Cunningham. These videos are highly enlightening resources and provide some insight not only into how these two feasts link Eastern and Western Christianity, or highlight a growing convergence between Churches with a traditionally strong Marian devotion and those that previously did not. These videos are useful for they also articulate certain differences in emphases that has led to seeming divisions within the Church in relation to some of these feasts, betwen East and West, Catholic and Protestant and also traditional and contemporary.

The first video focuses on the Feast of Mary the Mother of God.

The second focuses on the feast of the Epiphany and the link with the Eastern Feast of the Baptism of Jesus.

Sayings of the Saints: Basil of Caesarea

2012-01-03T15:05:00.001+11:00

New Year's Day in the Eastern Liturgical Calendar is the Feast of Ss. Basil of Caesarea and Gregory Nazianzen, two of the great 4th century Cappadocian Fathers, who sowed the seeds of early Monasticism and drove some of the great developments of ancient Christian theology, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. Touching on the extent to which Christian virtue must be exercised, Basil is noted to have said:

The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry
the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked
the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot

the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor
the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.

The Problematique of "Relevant" Liturgical Music (And Happy New Year)

2011-12-31T15:44:00.000+11:00

Liturgists are often keen to make liturgical music "relevant" for the people, and this attitude has led to the jettisoning of many aspects of traditional hymnody, be it wordcraft, music or instrumentalisation. This jettisoning is often paralleled by an uncritical adoption of many aspects of popular culture. The blessings this new-found relevance was alleged to bring to the Church are far from obvious.

At one level, just how the Church acts as a witness to the world when it, to paraphrase St. Paul, conforms to the patterns of this world (in this case, the pattern of entertainment) remains an open question. If this problem does not concern the Christian, he or she is still faced with another open question as to whether the Church is always successful in adopting popular culture into its liturgical structures. A good number of the results can be cringe-worthy, as the videos below attest.

First, one from the 1970s, entitled "Jesus is a Friend of Mine" (complete with unintended double entendre between 1:45-1:49).

One would think we would have learned our lesson...but we were wrong...as this 2007 video, entitled "The Renewed Mind is the Key" hopefully proves (behold the slick/creepy solo dance moves)...

After Christmas, Small is STILL Beautiful: An Interview with Fritz Schumacher

2011-12-27T17:55:00.001+11:00

As we consumers begin the annual scramble to get the latest instalment of the post-Christmas bargain, which more often than not will take place in the massive centralised shopping temples that we are slowly being funnelled into, readers of a distributist bend might be interested to watch an interview with one of the major thinkers in this area, Fritz Schumacher, whose Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered remains a staple in post-war distributist thought. It is an enlightening interview and can be accessed by clicking here.

Christmas Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

2011-12-24T17:59:00.001+11:00

I behold a new and wondrous mystery! My ears resound to the Shepherd's song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn. The Angels sing! The Archangels blend their voices in harmony! The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise! The Seraphim exalt His glory!

All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised.

Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side the Sun of Justice.

And ask not how: for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed, he had the power, He descended, He redeemed; all things move in obedience to God.

This day He Who Is, is Born; and He Who Is becomes what He was not. For when He was God, He became man; yet not departing from the Godhead that is His. Nor yet by any loss of divinity became He man, nor through increase became he God from man; but being the Word He became flesh, His nature, because of impassibility, remaining unchanged.

And so the kings have come, and they have seen the heavenly King that has come upon the earth, not bringing with Him Angels, nor Archangels, nor Thrones, nor Dominations, nor Powers, nor Principalities, but, treading a new and solitary path, He has come forth from a spotless womb.Yet He has not forsaken His angels, nor left them deprived of His care, nor because of His Incarnation has he departed from the Godhead.

And behold, Kings have come, that they might adore the heavenly King of glory;
Soldiers, that they might serve the Leader of the Hosts of Heaven;
Women, that they might adore Him Who was born of a woman so that He might change the pains of child-birth into joy;
Virgins, to the Son of the Virgin, beholding with joy, that He Who is the Giver of milk, Who has decreed that the fountains of the breast pour forth in ready streams, receives from a Virgin Mother the food of infancy;
Infants, that they may adore Him Who became a little child, so that out of the mouth of infants and sucklings, He might perfect praise;
Children, to the Child Who raised up martyrs through the rage of Herod;
Men, to Him Who became man, that He might heal the miseries of His servants;
Shepherds, to the Good Shepherd Who has laid down His life for His sheep;
Priests, to Him Who has become a High Priest according to the order of Melchisedech;
Servants, to Him Who took upon Himself the form of a servant that He might bless our servitude with the reward of freedom;
Fishermen, to Him Who from amongst fishermen chose catchers of men;
Publicans, to Him Who from amongst them named a chosen Evangelist;
Sinful women, to Him Who exposed His feet to the tears of the repentant;

And that I may embrace them all together, all sinners have come, that they may look upon the Lamb of God Who taketh away the sins of the world.

Since therefore all rejoice, I too desire to rejoice. I too wish to share the choral dance, to celebrate the festival. But I take my part, not plucking the harp, not shaking the Thyrsian staff, not with the music of pipes, nor holding a torch, but holding in my arms the cradle of Christ. For this is all my hope, this my life, this my salvation, this my pipe, my harp. And bearing it I come, and having from its power received the gift of speech, I too, with the angels, sing:

Glory to God in the Highest and with the shepherds and on earth, peace to men of good will.

A Happy and Holy Christmas to all readers of the Divine Wedgie, and may the Incarnate Lord continue to bless you in New Year

Sayings of the Saints: Teresa of Avila

2011-12-20T18:30:00.000+11:00

In the face of those who equate a dourness with holiness, and the obsession with devotional practice with the practice of Christian virtue, St. Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Doctor of the Church who led the reform of the Carmelite Order into a more ascetic form, is noted to have prayed: From silly devotions and from sour-faced saints, O Lord, deliver us!

Why a Liberated Economy Must be Exclusive and Hierarchical

2011-12-17T11:24:00.000+11:00

Readers who may have had some interest in Campion College's Conference on "Faith in the Marketplace" held in September may want to cast their attention to an Iconocast interview conducted by the folks at Jesus Radicals. The subject of the interview, Jonathan Moyer, is a co-founder with a group of Mennonites in Denver Colorado of a small, non-capitalist, economy that melds together with dominant modes of economic practice.

The organisation, called "the Groupee", sought to provide an economic shelter to the often brutal and dehumanising affects of subordinating all activity to the dictates of finance. What is interesting about this attempt at providing this shelter, however, is that its pillars seem rather counter-intuitive to one accustomed to the Capitalist mindset.

The system works through the circulation of tokens that are distributed via a central committee for an agreed schedule of labour. The system only works for a predetermined group of individuals and it is not possible for a stranger to simply sign up for the program.

Hierarchy and exclusivity sound like anathema to the Capitalist ear, but the reason why this makes sense is because Groupee also seeks to foster a community of Mennonites. It is because one seeks to maintain a faithful community, says Moyer, that one submits to hierarchy (indeed, he goes as far as to say that there is a need for legitimate hierarchy, particularly the headship of Christ, so as to help in one's resistance against distorted hierarchies). And it is the need to intentionally foster a community geared towards faithfulness to Christ (even if that faith is not often explicit) that enjoins exclusivity. As Moyer argued, the more inclusive that community became to those who may not share that community's values or telos, the more difficult it becomes to foster that intentionally Mennonite community.

One can debate Moyer's point as to whether community is the holiest thing, though it must be taken seriously as a holy thing, for such communities are but instantiations of the Body of Christ in real space and time. Any disagreement with Moyer on this point should not detract from the value of this podcast as a seedbed for thought on how to negotiate as members of the Body of Christ through a financialised Imperium whose inclusivity belies a more sinister call to conformity.

It is a practical first step towards the proliferation of distributist economics without that radical break from the status quo, which is a legitimate concern seeing the need for formation as part of the negotiation from the Imperium of the market to the distributed, personalist economy, which could parallel the long journey of conversion of Israel through the desert as part of its liberation from Egypt.

You may listen to this podcast by clicking here.

This post cannot be comprehensive without being ridiculously long, and is bound to stir up controversy. Further elaborations on points that may have been neglected in this post would be made available as is opportune. In the meantime, it would be most beneficial to have a look at The Distributist Review, which is an excellent resource that would elaborate many strands of distributist thought.

Sayings of the Saints: Ambrose of Milan

2011-12-13T17:29:00.000+11:00

In the 4th century, the Arians proved to be not only a highly influential heresy, but a considerable political force within the Roman empire. The rivalry between orthodox Christians and Arians ostensibly threatened the empire's stability. As an attempt to bring peace to the polis, the pro-Arian emperor, Valentinian II, commanded that the Church in Milan, then under Ambrose's watch, hand over the Portian Basilica as a base of operations for the Arians.

When Ambrose, with the support of the local populace in Milan, refused the order, Valentinian, assuming the Church to be the arm of the Roman public service, one day had his troops surrounded the Church, in which Ambrose and the Christians of Milan had barricaded, in an attempt to force the Church's being handed over to the Arians. The attempt was unsuccessful.

It is said that Ambrose was responsible for penning a line that should have as much relevance now as it did back then: The Emperor is in the Church, never above it!

The Biopolitics of Chest Hair

2011-12-10T10:13:00.000+11:00

The centrefold of the 24 November 2011 edition of Sydney's mX tabloid featured an assortment of celebrities that insured their body parts. Some statistics included Mariah Carey insuring her legs for $1 billion as an accompaniment to an ad campaign by the shaving corporation Gillette. Another included Ugly Betty actress America Ferrera, who insured her teeth for $10 million as part of an ad campaign for a tooth whitening brand. One humorous example included Tom Jones, who insured his chest hair for $7 million.

mX readers might find this report amusing, but this piece is an apt demonstration of the culture of postmodernity at several levels. At one level, it bespeaks of what Foucauldians would call an "insurational imaginary", where the culture's obsession with security in a commercialised culture translates into the proliferation of objects that can be insured. This proliferation means that the body can now become the subject of insurance. What this allows however, is a cultural ceding of the body over to the whims and fancies of business to ascribe value to the body, rather than assume the body to have its own inherent worth. This is ironic, seeing that the culture of postmodernity that produced this "insurational imaginary" started out by celebrating the body as having its own inherent worth, and its limitless potential for self-actualisation.

However, according to Graham Ward in his Politics of Discipleship, the body celebrated in postmodernity is highly reductionistic. The more the body "as mere flesh" (to borrow Ward's words) becomes celebrated, as it is in consumer culture, the more the body becomes reduced to a blank slate. It becomes stripped of meaning and is rendered a mere commodity, whose value can only be discerned by its being adorned with other commodities, such as jewellery, clothes or on this case, insurance products. The body under such circumstances then becomes highly vulnerable to commercial manipulation.

What adds to this tragedy is that these commodities that the body requires to attain value themselves have no inherent value. As recent financial crises have demonstrated, monetised products are highly unstable categories, subject only to the whims of the most powerful commercial interests. The body, therefore, in attaching value to itself only insofar as it attaches itself to these commodities, become mere extensions of international business. This calls to mind a reading from the Epistle of James, a sentence of which reads

Your gold and silver are corroding, and that same corrosion will testify against you, and it will devour your flesh like fire (5:3)

The Christian must also be vigilant against allowing the flesh to be devoured, as if the body were so tainted by sin as to be worthy only to be jettisoned to save the soul. This neo-Gnosticism has no place in the Church. What is needed is for the flesh to be redeemed. For Ward, the starting point is not to endow more value on the body itself, but find the body's value from its coabiding in the glorified Body of Christ, who rose from physical death and ascended into glory both spiritually and corporeally, and who asks us constantly to remain in him as He in us (John 15:4).

Campion College Latin Course in Rome: Update

2011-12-07T07:44:00.000+11:00

An earlier post advised readers that Campion College is organising a Latin Intensive to be held in Rome from 1st to 24th July 2012, entitled "The Christianisation of Pagan Culture", to be facilitated by Campion College's Polding Lecturer in Classics, Susannah Rizzo and Campion College President, David Daintree.

Campion has provided an update to this initial announcement and preliminary program. The final cost of the program over 24 days is AUS $5850, which is inclusive of return airfares (flying Singapore Airlines), twinshare accommodation at the Rome campus of St. John's University, travel insurance, transport within Rome and 2 meals a day. One or more weekend excursions may be organised as an optional extra at extra cost.

To register your interest, there is a requirement to pay a $500 deposit as soon as possible, with the balance to be paid 70 days before the departure date (1st July 2012). For further inquires, contact Susannah Rizzo at s.rizzo[at]campion[dot]edu[dot]au or by calling +61 2 9896 9300.

Programs will be provided in due course, but an initial outline of what the program involves can be found by clicking here.

Celebrity: What Kylie and Universities Have in Common?

2011-12-03T09:17:00.004+11:00

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation recently reported on Anglia Ruskin University's decision to grant an honorary doctorate to the singer Kylie Minogue, in recognition for her raising of cancer awareness. The trouble is...she did not actually do anything.

The logic of the ARU, located in Essex in England, seemed to go something like this:

1) Kylie suffered from breast cancer;

2) Kylie is a celebrity;

3) Her celebrity status combined with her suffering from cancer caused the general public to be more aware of cancer and get cancer screening therefore;

4) Kylie raised breast cancer awareness.

The oddity of the granting of the honorary doctorate was not lost on Kylie herself, who was quoted in the report as saying that the award was "...an awkward one because it is being praised for something that I didn't intentionally do". Nonetheless, the singer bravely surged through the adversity of awkwardness, accepted the award, and provided an oddly incisive insight into the nature of University's actions by declaring the award a "gorgeous honour".

An interesting topic of discussion can emerge from a discussion thread on Facebook in response to the report, where those who questioned the wisdom of the decision by ARU were accused of a callous insensitivity to those who suffer breast cancer. A more interesting point that emerges from this, however, is the observation that the University has now changed from a shaper of culture to merely an extension of popular culture.

As universities see dwindling public funding and becoming more dependent on private sources of finance, they start to take on the logic of the consumer market. More specifically, as more and more economic players start to regard the cult of celebrity as a cultural good, institutions of higher learning also begin to sense a "need" to increase their public profile not by advertising their programs, but by associating themselves with celebrity.

The Christian engaged in intellectual work must take note of stories like this, for if the contemporary university is recognised to be deeply immersed in and an extension of culture, then a new "university culture" has to be developed around the formal institutions of the university itself. To paraphrase James KA Smith's observation in Desiring the Kingdom, one cannot be solely reliant on the head-knowledge transmitted in the classroom as a way to change the institutions powerful and crassly consumerist cultural surroundings.

A new cultural imaginary, one that Smith identifies to be fundamentally liturgical, needs to be formed, since it is liturgy and not merely ideas that shape visions of another world, another alternative to the status quo, alternatives that reach for the body and heart as well as the head. These imaginaries, in leaving their mark on our bodies and hearts, form the sociological backdrop that in turn chart the course our heads will take.

The Vatican and Famine: an Interview with Athanasius McVay

2011-11-29T18:37:00.000+11:00

Ukrainians are currently commemorating the anniversary of what is known as the Holodomor, a famine which struck Ukraine between 1932-3. Estimates of the deaths caused by the famine range from 1.8-7.5 million, unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.

What makes the disaster more horrendous was the fact that it was man made, targeted at the Ukrainian population and used as a form of administrative control by Soviet authorities. This explains the reference to the famine by Ukrainians as a "killing by hunger" - Holodomor.

The Holodomor has been referred to by Ukrainians as an act of genocide by the Soviet Union, as a response to stirrings of Ukrainian nationalism. The targeted nature of the famine can be evinced by a number of factors identified by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. According to Snyder, certain administrative measures were put in place in the lead up to and during the famine that only applied to the Ukraine. This included confiscations of livestock from and cutting of rations to peasants unable to meet quotas, as well as the closing of borders to the same peasants who tried to seek asylum in other countries such as Rumania. Many were forced to resort to cannibalism in order to survive, with Soviet-era court documents showing up to 2500 convictions for cannibalism during the period of the Holodomor. A constant source of tension during this anniversary period is that for political reasons, many are denying the existence of the Holodomor.

What is little known about the Holodomor is the response to it by the Vatican. This is largely due to the lack of sources translated into English. It is a notable gap in the literature, considering that documents in the Vatican archives covering this period have been declassified under the pontificate of Benedict XVI.

Athansius McVay, however, has provided the anglosphere readers with a highly valuable resource on the subject with the release of Holodomor and the Holy See: Documents from the Vatican Secret Archives on the Great Famine in 1932-3 in Soviet Ukraine, co-authored with Lubomyr Lociuk. The documents, according to McVay, highlight the grave concern as well as the actions taken by the Holy See in response to the Holodomor, and illustrate the Vatican's mastery of indirect diplomatic action, as well as the internal machinations of the Vatican City State.

McVay was responsible for transcribing these recently declassified documents at the Vatican archives and is able to give a unique insight into this not very well known aspect of diplomatic history. The book will be of interest to archival historians, enthusiasts of European or political history, and those interested in the machinations of Vatican diplomacy. Interviews of McVay about the book can be found by clicking here (for a Vatican Radio interview) and here (for an interview with the blog Eastern Christian Books).

Getting Used to Owning Again

2011-11-27T08:04:00.000+11:00

Distributism, about which Campion College recently hosted a day conference, is based on the notion of nurturing as wide a network of property owners as possible, as a corrective to the centralisation of property ownership that marks many contemporary economies.

Whilst we are talking about private property, one is not talking about property in the Liberal sense, that is, as a means for the autonomous individual to close oneself off from dependence on or connections with others. Rather, one is talking about a situation where property, to paraphrase Emmanuel Mounier, the means by which one is able to open up and become a gift to another.

This plank of the distributist program is a necessary structural change, having witnessed countless times the ill effects of the combination of centralised property ownership combined with the exigencies of centralised markets. Certainly, there will be many structural challenges to bringing about a widespread ownership of property. What many seem to neglect, however, is a more fundamental, cultural problem, where a whole generation has been brought up on a life for rent, to paraphrase the song by Dido. Such a generation rents everything from real estate to chattels, and is no longer used to owning property of its own.

Hilare Belloc, (pictured above, between Goerge Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton) who wrote extensively on the restoration of property in the early twentieth century, spoke of a cultural attitude to property that can be just as applicable to the present context. He wrote in The Servile State that

The present instinct, use and meaning of property is lost to [this generation]. Property is no longer what they seek, no longer what they think is obtainable for themselves...they regard the possessors of property as a class apart whom they always must ultimately obey, often envy and sometimes hate; whose moral right to so singular a position most of them would hesitate to concede, and many of whom now strongly deny, but whose position they...accept as a known and permanent social fact, the origins of which they have forgotten and the foundations of which they believe to be immemorial.

There will be little point in bringing about the structural changes if these new property owners, so conditioned by the rental mindset, are just going to sell their share of the property for short term monetary gain. Before such structural change can come about, a lasting change will have to be dependent on nurturing a culture that is used to owning property again.

Agnostic Meets Opus Dei: Australian Screenings of "There Be Dragons"

2011-11-25T19:42:00.002+11:00

Readers may not be familiar with the name Roland Joffe, but may be familiar with a number of his films, which include The Mission and The Killing Fields. Joffe has come out with another directorial effort, There Be Dragons, a semi-historical film set in the context of the Spanish Civil War, and has protagonists that include a younger version of the founder of Opus Dei, St. Josemaria Escriva. The choice of Escriva is an unusual one for Joffe, given his self-identification as a "wobbly agnostic".

The film has had a peculiar reception thus far. While the professional commentarati panned the film, 3 out of every 4 rank-and-file reviewers responded positively to it.

Australian readers might be interested to know that the Upper Zone Media, in association with Fleur-de-Lis Productions, will be hosting limited screenings of There Be Dragons in December in Brisbane (4th December), Melbourne (10th December) and Sydney (15th-17th December).

Further details, including booking details for Sydney, can be found by clicking here or by emailing ami[at]upperzonemedia[dot]com[dot]au. Brisbane-based readers can get tickets, including tickets to a weekend festival of sacred music and art, by visiting the Fleur-de-Lis website, or by emailing catholicfestival[at]gmail[dot]com.

Online Symposium on the Future of Seminaries

2011-11-22T10:34:00.000+11:00

The religious blog portal Patheos is running an online symposium entitled "The Future of Seminary Education". Thankfully, this symposium is not so much on the viability of seminaries per se, but that of particular modes of formation and the possible directions that such training might take.

The symposium can be accessed by clicking here. Interestingly, Patheos has compiled Catholic blog reflections into a discrete section from non-Catholic ones, and these can be accessed by clicking here. This can be read in one of two ways: either Patheos is engaging in anti-Catholic discrimination or, more encouragingly, that the Catholic Church is rightfully embodying a radically distinct mode of living to the point that its observers can detect that it is not like other modes of Christian discipleship, and that it has so peculiar a relationship vis a vis the wider secular culture which, as Patheos remarks, makes Catholic seminaries "occupy a different landscape".

Does Facebook Cause Divorce?

2011-11-19T00:20:00.001+11:00

Patrick Deneen of the Front Porch Republic has written a highly instructive piece in response to an article blaming social networking sites like Facebook for higher rates of divorce among Baby Boomers.

While there exists strong statistical evidence for a correlation between the breakdown of marriages and social networking, Deneen opined rather compellingly that the article gives too determinative a role for social networking technology, saying that the breakdown of the institution of marriage was already entrenched with centuries of conceiving marriage as exclusively a Lockean contract between two individuals. Social networking sites, therefore, are but intensifications of a long existent atomising culture of Liberalism.

Deneen's post comes highly recommended, and should give Christians pause to too easily blame the manifestation without addressing the underlying cause. That being said, Deneen may be too easily discounting Neil Postman's main argument in his Entertaining Ourselves to Death, that the technology used in communications is not neutral, but comes with certain presumptions about what people are and how they think. The mere presence of a particular technological form steers the users attention not to data in general, but particular forms of data, and prescribes particular responses to that data. And this comes regardless of the intentions of the user of that particular technological form.

This means that there needs to be a more nuanced account about the interaction between the user as agent and the user as immersed in a culturally loaded structure. James KA Smith's Desiring the Kingdom provides some very helpful material in looking at the centrality of desire, and the role of structure in tweaking that desire, in steering the agent towards particular modes of behaviour.

Sayings of the Saints: Syncletica of Alexandria

2011-11-15T20:30:00.001+11:00

Amma Syncletica said: There is a grief that is useful, and there is a grief that is destructive. The first sort consists in weeping over one's own faults and weeping over the weakness of one's neighbours, in order not to lose one's purpose, and attach oneself to the perfect good. But there is also a grief that comes from the enemy, full of mockery, which some call accidie. This spirit must be cast out, mainly by prayer and psalmody

Protestant Monasticism: An Interview with Shane Claiborne

2011-11-12T09:57:00.007+11:00

Many protestants of the Evangelical persuasion, especially those in the Emergent Church movement, are rediscovering the Catholic monastic tradition and are providing interesting case studies of adapting the monastic way of life in an urban setting, with a matrix of practices that are geared towards the maintenance and revitalisation of local communities and economies. They must be congratulated in their innovativeness in making an ancient and yet still relevant mode of being fit into the dark and oft-ignored crevices of the postmodern city, and in so doing, make a radical yet orthodox challenge to a mainstreamed, bourgeois Christianity.

However one may, and in the spirit of fraternal concern should, question if the movement, in their enthusiasm to make the monastic model fit the contemporary city, either recklessly jettison many of the disciplines in the established monastic rules that give them their distinct character and endurance, or even make themselves extensions of the problem they are trying to combat. One wonders if, for instance, limiting its liturgical life to morning prayer is enough of a liturgical anchor for such communities (compared to as many as 8 times daily under the Rule of St. Benedict), or if the asceticism demanded of the Trappists, for instance, has lost its radical edge to the extent that it has to be rendered prophetically irrelevant to the city. More fundamentally, there is a question of ecclesiology: how would they conceive their community in relation to the rest of the Church (assuming such communities have a conception of a wider "Church"beyond the local community)?

However, their witness remains an important one. Below are clips from the founder of one of these protestant monastic communities, Shane Claiborne of the Little Way community in Philadelphia. Do not be fooled. Underneath the Southern drawl, tacky wannabe habit and dreadlocks is a highly eloquent and sometimes justifiably challenging articulation of the movement as well as a challenge to middle-class Christendom towards a more communal, mundane, yet more radical mode of discipleship.

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How to Learn Your Latin and Like It: Study in Rome in July 2012 (Plus Upcoming Events)

2011-11-08T16:39:00.002+11:00

Australian readers might be interested to know that Campion College will be hosting a 24 day study trip to Rome in July 2012, around the theme The Christianisation of Pagan Culture.

This is a three week intensive course of lectures, seminars and guided excursions to major sites in the historic centre of Rome, such as the Forum, the Catacombs of Via Appia, Pompeii and Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. In between visits, delegates will also learn to read pagan and Christian inscriptions, study classical art up close, as well as learn Latin paleography and epigraphy.

To be eligible for this trip, one would need at least a year of tertiary level-Latin or equivalent prior to the trip. The cost of the trip is approximately AUS $6000, which will include airfares, tuition, accommodation and meals.

Those interested are advised to get in touch with Campion's Polding Lecturer in Classics, Dr. Susanna Rizzo. She can be contacted at s.rizzo[at]campion.edu.au or by calling +61 2 9896 9300. Readers will be updated on further developments.

On the issue of events organised by Campion, George Weigel will be speaking at Campion's Centre for the Study of the Western Tradition at 4:30pm on Thursday (10th November). The seminar is entitled "The Free and Virtuous Society in the Teaching of Blessed John Paul II". Also a reminder of Campion's upcoming symposium on post-secularity "Shifting Paradigms: The Twilight of the Secular and the Return of the Idols", which will be held on 7th December

Whose Green? Which Man?

2011-11-05T19:33:00.003+11:00

Courses in political ideologies will almost inevitably cover the green movement or ecologism in some way, shape or form. At the heart of the coverage on ecologism is a critique on anthropocentrism: the giving of humans prime consideration as a political subject. The theories of ecologism posit a series of alternatives, and while their contents vary, what ties them together is they almost always displace the political centrality of humans in favour of the earth, flora or fauna. At its heart, such political programs are redefining what constitutes the polis by incorporating other categories of beings as citizens.

To the secular ear, this may all sound well and good, but then any political program that begins from the premise of the removal of the primacy of human beings must provide an account for occurrences such as the one reported here, in which a program to give priority parking for cars using electricity, at the expense of the handicapped who now have to be parked further away from businesses.

Environmental naysayers might jump at reports like this to argue the evils of any program to topple the political kingship of man. To the Christian ear, this might sound well and good, until one considers one key question: what exactly is the man we are talking about? Is there only one type of anthropos in anthropocentrism?

It would seem that the issue lies not so much with anthropocentrism per se, but a secular definition of anthropocentrism in which a secular anthropos - the autonomous, self-seeking, materialistic individual - is given pride of place in the social ladder. This secular anthropocentrism is one in which limitless consumption is regarded as a built-in good for the anthropos, and thus one in which environmental degradation is the inevitable result.

The conservative reactionary may decide that this secular anthropos is the kind of anthropos to defend in the rejection of the extremities of the green agenda, and there would be cases where the Christian may similarly and sometimes rightly resist that agenda. But in that rejection, the Christian CANNOT countenance the defense of the secular anthropos, for the simple reason that the secular anthropos is one that rejects the primacy of God in the social order. The Christian must be aware that there are other anthropologies out there, and that there is a theological anthropology, one in which a person is made in the Imago Dei, in the image of a trinitarian God.

This anthropology still posits man as the pinnacle of creation, but unlike the secular anthropos, this theological anthropos' centrality within creation is still qualified by its subordination to a Creator. In contrast to the self-loving secular anthropos, the theological anthropos, modeled on the relationship of love in the Trinity, will not indulge in the distorted love of self and engage in mindless consumption on the premise that such consumption constitutes a need. And in contrast to the secular anthropos' kingship of domination, the theological anthropos' recognises the ultimate kingship of God, who as a sign of that kingship gave authority to man over the earth as a steward, a stewardship that must be accounted for one day.

It is this theological anthropocentrism that posits in turn a new mode of being green, one that is necessary if the Christian were to avoid a real risk of environmental catastrophe on the one hand without being beholden on the other to the extreme anthropophobic tendencies of the green movement in its current form.

Sayings of the Saints: GK Chesterton

2011-11-01T18:01:00.003+11:00

Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Combine a Room, a Pope and a Feminist and...

2011-10-28T10:01:00.001+11:00

Amidst the storm of concern voiced by population alarmists at the imminent arrival of the seven-billionth person, there went unnoticed the 2011 Assisi Interfaith encounter, which was initiated by Blessed John Paul II and continued by his successor, Benedict XVI.

While many expect the delegates to speak about how religious communities might better live amidst our differences, the Catholic News Service reported on one unusual guest on the papal list that was indicative of Benedict's primary concerns, and points to an oft-overlooked dimension of the issue of interfaith relations, was the secular humanist literary critic, novelist, feminist and philosopher, Julia Kristeva.

The Bulgarian-French Kristeva is not your ordinary secular humanist, having included in her work themes that are drawn from or are relevant to the discipline of Christian theology (An example being her very short In the Beginning was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith). Her address at Assisi was no different.

In her address, Kristeva spoke of the revival of humanism being dependent on its ability to "take up again the moral codes constructed through the course of history". The feminist Kristeva also spoke of the need for secular culture to come to a better appreciation of the unique relationship between mother and child. Much of her presentation was set against a backdrop for a call to greater cooperation between the projects of Christian humanism on the one hand, and post-Enlightenment humanism on the other.

It was clear that, in stark contrast to Benedict's insistence that only God can renew the face of the earth, Kristeva's presentation emphasised the centrality of human effort. Nevertheless, the Pontiff was quoted in the CNS story:

It is a case of being together on a journey toward truth, a case for taking a decisive stand for human dignity and a case of common engagement for peace against every form of destructive force.

Cambridge Conference on Music and Transcendence

2011-10-25T23:35:00.003+11:00

British readers might be interested to know that a day conference on Music and Transcendence will be held on 29th November 2011. According to the Centre for Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, the conference will be interdisciplinary and feature the following keynote talks:

Effing the Ineffable by Prof Roger Scruton
In the Beginning, There Was Improvisation: Responding to the Call by Prof Bruce Ellis Benson
Music and the Beyond: A Millennium of Witness by Prof Christopher Page

The program also includes an evening concert. Further details of the conference can be found here.

Should We Save Wikipedia?

2011-10-22T14:59:00.002+11:00

PC World published an article concerning the outrage expressed by Wikipedia at the passing of an Italian law that will require the site, and all other online publications, to effect all requests for corrections to its entries or risk hefty fines. Wikipedia has responded by "hiding" its Italian site.

At first glance, the outrage by Wikipedia and campaigns such as "Salviamo Wikipedia" seems justified. It would appear that freedom of expression would be curtailed if corrections are accompanied by the strong arm of the law. The revolutionary potential of the internet (advocated by figures like Clay Shirky) would now be rendered impotent by a government, the head of which in Italy makes his fortune through the control of media channels, including online ones. The balance would seem to favour players with a massive online presence, deep pockets and access to the avenues of governmental power. The dangers that this poses are real indeed.

Nevertheless, such reports should give one pause to consider a number of structural considerations that are not necessarily designed to shoot down the merits of Wikipedia's complaint, but nonetheless qualify the extent of the damage that any pro-Wikipedia faction might insinuate will be inflicted.

First, one must consider how the structures of society, and the associated costs that accrue to remain in the real world, are slowly forcing citizens, students, activists and many others to adopt online platforms in the first place. Associated with this is the almost universal obsession towards economic efficiency within our culture that would make this shift desirable to many people. Are we, in our drive to bring more of our social structures online, not already caving into some form of economic totalitarianism?

Second, there is the associated growth in our reliance on the internet for communication on anything instead of embodied forms of communications. Are there real cultural benefits to be gained by pushing for an intensifying of non-corporeal communities (this is explored by Terry Shurkle and her book Alone Together)?

Third, there is a question as to whether the dominance of corporate interests already operating in the internet really makes the internet the proper platform for revolutionary change, and not some outlet for ravenous consumption that would make any user more prone to keeping the status quo intact? Would any push towards greater internet freedoms not actually lead to the solidification of some kind of Foucauldian surveillance society, as is already taking place with the changes in formats of some forms of social networking?

Ultimately, though there is a real risk that proliferating the kinds of laws the Italian government is passing will lead to subtle forms of oppression, one may be forgiven for asking if the trajectory of a society that favours greater liberties with the internet - a society that is becoming more and more virtual - might lead to even subtler, though no less real, forms of cultural oppression.

Campion College Symposium on Postsecularity (7th Dec): An Update

2011-10-19T21:36:00.002+11:00

Australian readers have been making requests for a follow up to an earlier post concerning upcoming conferences in postsecularity, in particular Campion College's own symposium entitled "Shifting Paradigms: The Twilight of the Secular and the Return of the Idols?", to be held on the college grounds on 7th December 2011.

Campion College now has in circulation a leaflet listing the speakers and respondents, together with a registration form.

The registration fee is inclusive of the day symposium, lunch and dinner, and additional accommodation options are available for registrants from outside Sydney.

How to Bless Beer: the Rituale Romanum

2011-10-18T17:38:00.002+11:00

As a follow up to two previous posts featuring quotes on drinking by GK Chesterton and then by St John Chrysostom. The Catholic Beer Review has an old post that draws the reader's attention to a Rite of blessing Beer in the Catholic Church's Old Latin Rituale Romanum.

Below is the blessing followed by its English translation

Original Latin Blessing of Beer

V. Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.

R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.V. Dominus vobiscum.

R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

Oremus.

Benedic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi, et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti; ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corpus et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

English Translation

V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.

R. Who made heaven and earth.

V. The Lord be with you.

R. And with thy spirit.

Let us pray.

Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, which thou hast deigned to produce from the fat of grain: that it may be a salutary remedy to the human race, and grant through the invocation of thy holy name; that, whoever shall drink it, may gain health in body and peace in soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen

The Mall as Monastary

2011-10-15T17:24:00.004+11:00

A recent news report touched on upcoming designs of new shopping centers. According to some architects, people will be able to do more than just shop in the mall of the future. In order to lure customers back into the shops, malls may also increasingly become redesigned into hubs for dining, exercising and even living, with some suggestions that apartments could be integrated into the overall Mall design. The shopping mall, in other words, becomes a world unto itself.

It is interesting how the mall of the future is starting to take the form of the monastery of many contemplative orders like the Carthusians, where the monastery is treated like a world unto itself, with the monks or nuns rarely, if ever, go beyond the monastery walls. At the same time however, such an enclosure is often coupled with an openness to the world outside, as characterised by the ministry of hospitality that is exercised by many in the Benedictine family.

Understood this way, the modern Mall could be regarded as an inversion of the logic of the Monastery. While modernity is often hailed as a celebration of openness to the world, we see more of the world becoming incorporated into a hermetically sealed architectural bubble, to the point where contact with the outside world is rendered unnecessary or even discouraged, in order to continuously fuel the processes of consumption.

Walmart: The Logical End of Marriage as Contract

2011-10-11T21:56:00.002+11:00

Marriage is now often seen, not as a sacrament instituted by God that incorporates Man and Woman as well as future progeny, but merely as a contract between two autonomous individuals.

If that's the case, should one be surprised that one day, the chosen temple in which such contractual unions are blessed would the epitome of the ultimate contract, that between the vendor and consumer?

Video Games, Reality and the Lifeworld of the Church

2011-10-08T15:48:00.002+11:00

An article in the Herald Sun reported on the preliminary findings from research on a group of frequent gamers who, having been so immersed in the world of video games, have reached a stage where they see the world around them through the prism of the games they play, demonstrating what the researchers are calling "Game Transfer Phenomena".

Signs of this phenomena, according to this article, include seeing "life bars" over people's heads, an instinctual reaching for invisible game controller buttons and thinking in terms of cognitive dialogue menus similar to those found in many adventure role playing games.

The research used a very small sample of 42 individuals and need to be corroborated with further study, but the preliminary findings are a sobering indication of the symptoms of contemporary culture's immersion in cyberspace. According to Nishant Shah, who directs the Centre for the Internet and Society in Bangalore, such a culture is bound to experience what he calls "reverse translation", where concrete realities are made to conform to the synthetic realities of the internet.

This should not come as a surprise since, according to the University of Chester's Elaine Graham, any media-generated life world does not merely represent temporal realities, but bears the capacities to generate new worlds of its own.

Research on the internet and society in the area of experiences of lifeworlds are challenging the post-Enlightenment notion of being able to perceive "the world as it really is". Though reports like the one above paint a bleak picture, the overall trend of research into cybernetics does indicate that there is a proper place of alternative bodies - like the Church - in building alternative life worlds in contrast to the liberal lifeworld of the state and market. The Church is thus not "cut off from reality" as some secular banshees would have it, but in the process of building alternative horizons to the stultifying strictures of the secular status quo.

This other lifeworld is the "new thing" that the prophet Isaiah says God is doing, and the prophet to this day keeps asking us as it is being built "can you not see it already"?

Educational Excellence for Christians: A Podcast

2011-10-05T16:56:00.003+11:00

Nathan Kerr, Assistant Professor in Religion at the Trevecca Nazarene University in the United States, gave an acceptance speech for an award for teaching excellence on what constitutes educational excellence for the Christian.

At the heart of his speech is that "excellence" for the Christian should not parallel secular counterparts, which focus on success and material wealth. In a Christian institution of higher learning, "excellence" should be a revolutionary stance over and against the powers of this world, even as we try to live with them. "Excellence" for the Christian should assist the student and teacher in resisting the seduction by the secular world to buy into its game of material success.

The speech is invaluable food for thought and can be found here.

Further reflection is also necessary on just how to instantiate this Christian mode of excellence. Ideas, important as they are, may face an uphill battle in becoming sedimented when physical space has been colonised by secular cultural forms such as the shopping mall and fast food outlet, and with them their institutionalisation of the logic of excellence as material success. This would make sense if one considers an old post on the need to redeem micropractice.

We Know Because We Care: An Epistemology of Love

2011-10-01T16:23:00.001+10:00

We have heard it all before, the rendering of 1 Corinthians 13 that is often used to mushy effect at weddings to talk about how one's feelings for another is a reflection on how one's feelings should be about God. Sometimes the hook on the demands for endurance is brought to mind in the sermon, but only sometimes.

Read in its entirety, however, this passage can gives us an insight, more specifically a critique on our contemporary culture's obsession with knowing everything before putting one's life and heart on the line (what are the odds that sometimes, the wedding service where such a passage is read would be preceded by a signing of a 100% guarantee of post-nuptial safety in the form of a pre-nuptial agreement?).

This critique of the obsession with knowledge can be gleaned from the passage that immediately follows the famous "ending" to this passage: Love never fails. We sigh with emotional gooiness when it is read, without noting that the passage does not end with a fullstop, but with a semi colon. This means that while love never fails, by contrast, to quote the passage:

if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be destroyed. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away (1 Cor 13: 8-10)

For a modern consumer of tweaked emotions, gooiness gives way to alarm. Knowledge, that foundation of all Modern institutions and great bastion against uncertainty, will be destroyed. For the Christian, Paul's epistle reminds us that only a firm foundation in love can lead to sound knowledge.

This is why Augustine of Hippo, in his City of God, looked to love as the basis of political organisation. To be able to discern what counts as political knowledge within any political association, says Augustine, look at what they love.

Upcoming Conferences on Post-Secularity

2011-09-28T17:02:00.002+10:00

UK-based readers of The Divine Wedgie may be interested to know that the University of Sussex will be hosting a conference on post-secularity in International Relations from the 27th to the 28th of October. It features a range of disciplines, including political theory and theology, and includes among its speakers Australia's Dr. Erin Wilson from the Globalism Research Centre at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, who will soon release her book After Secularism: Rethinking Religion in Global Politics. The link to this conference can be found here.

Closer to home in Australia, on 7th December, Campion College will host a day symposium on post-secularity entitled "Shifting Paradigms: the Twilight of the Secular and the Return of the Idols?". Click on the link for registration and other details.

Sayings of the Saints: Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

2011-09-27T08:25:00.001+10:00

It is very fashionable to talk about the poor, but it's not as fashionable to talk to the poor.

On being Progressive or Conservative - and Why it Sucks

2011-09-23T01:14:00.001+10:00

GK Chesterton once noted in 1924 on the growing convergence of all political opinion into merely 2 camps (namely Progressive and Conservative) thus:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types - the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.

St. John Chrysostom on Drinking

2011-09-18T23:33:00.002+10:00

Long before Chesterton sung the praises of drinking, St. John Chrysostom, a Father of the early Church, had this to say about drinking in his Homilies on the Statues:

Paul is not ashamed, and does not blush, after the many and great signs which he had displayed even by a simple word; yet, in writing to Timothy, to bid him take refuge in the healing virtue of wine drinking. Not that to drink wine is shameful. God forbid! For such precepts belong to heretics...

Still on the topic of drinking, Chrysostom regarded as blasphemy the association of drink with sin, and admonished the faithful thus in their relations to those who argue that drinking is sinful:

And should you hear any one in the public thoroughfare, or in the midst of the forum, blaspheming God; go up to him and rebuke him; and should it be necessary to inflict blows, spare not to do so. Smite him on the face; strike his mouth; sanctify your hand with the blow, and if any should accuse you, and drag you to the place of justice, follow them thither; and when the judge on the bench calls you to account, say boldly that the man blasphemed the King of angels! For if it be necessary to punish those who blaspheme an earthly king, much more so those who insult God.

GK Chesterton on Drinking

2011-09-14T19:54:00.002+10:00

At a recent conference on GK Chesterton's distributism as a response to the Global Financial Crisis, held at Campion College Australia, a quote from a dramatised Chesterton was used from his book Heretics relating to drinking.

In response to many Christian prudes who equate holiness with the avoidance of drink, as if drink was made by the devil, Chesterton writes:

Dionysus made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. Jesus Christ also made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts because life is not joyful; he revels because he is not glad.

"Drink,” he says, “for you know not whence you come nor why. Drink, for you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars are cruel and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for. Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and an evil peace.” So he stands offering us the cup in his hand.

And at the high altar of Christianity stands another figure, in whose hand also is the cup of the vine. “Drink” he says “for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know of whence you come and why. Drink, for I know of when you go and where."

Sayings of the Saints: Desert Father Arsenius

2011-09-09T09:35:00.001+10:00

One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his own thoughts. Someone noticed this and said to him, 'Abba Arsenius, how is it that you with such a good Latin and Greek education ask this peasant about your thoughts?' He replied, 'I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant.'

Consumerism and Refugees

2011-08-31T22:59:00.001+10:00

Today, the High Court of Australia ruled as illegal a proposed "refugee swap" program between the governments of Australia and Malaysia, where new arrivals to the former would automatically be sent to the latter, and processed refugees from the latter be shipped over to the former.

Many have been capitalising on the little media storm this decision has created. For the government, this is a disappointment that a great policy has to be scrapped, for the opposition, this is another indicator of the government's general incompetence in the offshore handling of asylum seekers (which by implication, the Coalition could do better once it is in government). For refugee advocates, it is a triumph in stopping the plight of asylum seekers from getting any worse. For legal scholars, this is a triumph of parliamentary law acting as a check on wonton executive power. And the list goes on...

In this flurry, many seem to have neglected to ask: why is it that we now have a situation where both major parties seem eager to send asylum seekers offshore when the capacities for processing them already exist on the mainland?

Strangely enough, a possible answer may lie in the deeply entrenched consumer culture in Australia, which has created a political dividend that politicians in general are tapping into as part of their strategy for gaining or remaining in power (and that goes for the minor parties too). Consumer culture, which celebrates the kingship of commodities, is a culture that engages in a cult of the surface and glorifies visibility.

This cult of surface and visibility has become so ingrained in the public consciousness that it even bears political implications. Those political matters that matter now are those that are given greater visibility. Conversely, those that lack such visibility are rendered powerless in shaping political discourses and policy. By shipping off asylum seekers offshore, both sides of politics are at one level removing the seeming inconvenience they seemingly pose to the smooth operation of our consumerist lifestyles, but at another level they are also attempting to remove the capacity of asylum seekers to lay claim on our consciousness.

If this analysis is correct, then this would explain not only the strategy of making asylum seekers invisible by shipping them out of public sight, but also other strategies that try to deprive vulnerable groups by rendering them invisible, such as the unborn, families, the unemployed, the elderly, the mentally ill, religious minorities and a raft of others. This is something that implicates all sides of politics, media players, interest groups and those heaving under the burden of so many shopping bags.

Text, Beauty and Community

2011-08-27T09:02:00.001+10:00

Neil Postman, an American media theorist associated with New York University, wrote a passage that should be of significance to theologians of culture who live in hypertextuated cultures (we forget sometimes that in a digitised world saturated with images, the underpinning strata is always what the sociologist Manuel Castells calls a "hypertext").

In his key work Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness, Postman remarked that

To be confronted by...printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community.

Though he was commenting on the arrival of print culture from the late 1600s onwards, Postman's remark is indicative of an at-least-400-year-old cultural shift, in which physical bareness (whether in terms of buildings or even bodies) and atomisation are built into the logic of societies organised around textual forms such as email, sms, and even digitised images.

This does not mean that texts have to be jettisoned in order to save a culture. What is needed however is the recognition that texts are insufficient cultural forms on their own, and have to culminate in some embodied act. This raises the need for some kind of social organisation in which embodied practice as the culmination of the text must be a critical hinge of any cultural resistance to the atomisation or uglification that comes with either modernity or postmodernity.

If this is true, then only a liturgical outlook - for in the liturgy every action is but an enacting of a line of a biblical text - can sustain any revival of a truly organic, communal, and beautiful culture.

World Youth Day Protests and the Universality of Economics

2011-08-20T10:37:00.002+10:00

One should find interesting that, in the face of a slew of possible arguments protesters could use against the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, the one that seemed to be most publicised in the media is the use of 50 million Euros of public money to fund the Catholic event.

The fact that the economic argument seemed to be gaining traction even among Catholics should give one pause to consider the dominance of homo economicus even in the postmodern cultural milieu, as well as arguments about the private nature of the Christian tradition. The former, seen as fundamentally characterising ALL people regardless of "personal" persuasions - like Catholicism - is given pride of place as an unshakable truth at the expense of the latter in the discursive mediascape.

Never mind the fact that the giving priority to the economic man entails a matrix of unverifiable presumptions and practices that seem disturbingly like the "religion" the protesters are really trying to attack. Without subjecting these presumptions to the scrutiny of their own methods of inquiry, many who give pride of place to homo economicus merely assert, rather than demonstrate, the universality of man's need for money and the blinkered nature of man's need for "religion".

One must indeed sympathise and stand in solidarity with the Spanish unemployed that the protesters implicitly say they are trying to represent, because chances are that the protesters are really not all that interested in the unemployed. What we must also be aware of here is that we are not seeing not an attempt to trump private religion with the universal truth of economics, but the attempt to trump one form of religion with another.

Religious Education in Secular Society: A View from Dr. Joel Hodge

2011-08-19T23:05:00.001+10:00

Dr Joel Hodge, a Systematic Theologian at the Australian Catholic University, recently wrote on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's The Drum, explicating some unexplained catch cries being circulated by the secular press - namely "secularism" and "tolerance" - in the debate over the role of religious education in Australia.

As the secular media become more militant in its criticisms over the role of religious communities in school formation, Dr Hodge's latest post is highly incisive and a valuable aid for the Christian in negotiating the myriad often emotionally driven arguments. The heart of the debate, Dr. Hodge implies, is not the promotion of openness to others, but the subjugation of religious communities to the ends of the secular political program.

The full text of Dr. Hodge's article can be found here.

The City and the Monastery According to a Protestant Poet

2011-08-10T16:41:00.001+10:00

A recent study was released that looked at the ill effects of city life that can be accessed here here. In light of such a study, the intensification of urban living ought to be a subject of theological reflection, and books such as Graham Ward's Cities of God and TJ Gorringe's A Theology of the Built Environment have provided some fruitful entry points for such a project.

The American poet Kathleen Norris has made her contributions to this issue with a number of important reflections linking the Monastery and the city in The Cloister Walk. Below are quotes from that chapter:

"The monastery is a city in the ancient meaning of the word, as 'civitas', a place which stands for human culture in its highest sense, and serves the common good."

"I have often had the odd feeling that the monastery is the real world, while the dog-eat-dog world that most people call "real" is in fact an artifice, an illusion that we cling to because it seems to be in our best interest to do so."

"The Christian vision of heaven is of a city, the New Jerusalem, and...the Godhead itself is a kind of city, a community of three persons, or..."a collective being, with unity".

[Aidan] Kavanagh laments that..."[Our] iceon is not a city...'whether of man or God, but the lone jogger running through suburbia, in order, we are told, to feel good about himself"

"Images of the city are impossible to avoid in the monastic choir, as scripture is full of them. You're reminded, over and over, that in fact you have come here to be a part of the city of the living God, and you're challenged to make something of it"

"Do you work, as Jeremiah reminds us to do, for the welfare of the city to which God has sent you? Can you say, with Isaiah, 'About Zion I will not be silent, about Jerusalem I will not rest, until her integrity shines out like the dawn, and her salvation flames like a torch'?"

Evaluation on a Comedian's Spiritual Journey on the ABC: Implications for Evangelisation

2011-08-03T17:07:00.001+10:00

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation recently began a series on the exploration of faith, spearheaded by comedienne Judith Lucy, who is also a lapsed Catholic. The first episode of the series explored what were ostensibly 3 Catholic figures: A priest who is an academic, an excommunicated priest and a Sister of Mercy.

The blog Seeing Swans at Night gave a valuable insight into the pilot episode. The deciding factor in this series, says the post, is not the arguments that are put forward, but what John Henry Newman calls the "state of mind to listen to arguments of any kind". Lucy the lapsed Catholic speaks of aspects of the Catholic faith she found attractive, but in the end her disposition is such that regardless of the arguments put forward, the outcome of the coverage she gives on the Church is already pre-determined. The full text of the Swans blog post can be accessed here.

This post is valuable for the Christian negotiating secular culture too, for it suggests that there are valid modes of evangelisation beyond what we commonly refer to as apologetics. Whilst apologetics must remain an important task for the Christian, the above blog post suggests also a mode of evangelisation that aims at what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann call "plausibility structures" in their book The Social Construction of Reality. Whilst apologetics aims at the head, evangelisation must also aim at the heart, which is often moved by these plausibility structures way before the head begins any kind of critical evaluation. As such, it should not surprise that Lucy would take semi-resistant stance that she does, because the plausibility structures of the wider culture of which she is a part has already drawn her heart in that direction. The Church must there reflect on the role of beauty, art and music (which usually culminate in liturgy and worship) in the task of evangelisation. For to paraphrase Dostoyevsky, disposition, like beauty, is becoming the ground on which God and Satan fight for the souls of man.

The State of Undergraduate Education: A view from the Front Porch

2011-07-28T11:00:00.002+10:00

Wilson Carey McWilliams from the Front Porch Republic has written extensively and very insightfully on university education in America and recently reposted a 2000 lecture entitled "The Undergraduate Learner: Challenges for a New Century".

This lecture focuses on a number of important themes, including the impact of cultural diversity in American education, educating undergraduates in a manner that ties in with Capitalism's version of detachment, (which parodies the Christian), and the importance of inculcating a telos even as technical skills are imparted in a university context.

This is a highly valuable reflection given the almost merciless push within universities towards technicalisation, including the humanities. Witness, for instance, the Queensland University of Technology's closing of an entire campus and attached humanities faculty and redeploying what was not eliminated into industrially oriented disciplines, to help its repackaging of itself as "the University for the Real World". The discipline of political science is also not immune, with more courses and faculty being oriented towards technical policy-making.

As more secular universities fall prey to the worship of technology, efficiency and money, Christian institutes of higher learning will gradually become pressured to resist this trend via an explicit commitment of resources towards theology, the humanities and the arts. The Christian community might be also be forced to reflect on not only on the status of education, but also of their place in an increasingly technocratic society.

Rene Girard, Religion and Violence

2011-07-23T08:54:00.001+10:00

The French literary theorist/philosopher/theologian Rene Girard made a great contribution in our understanding of the alleged link between religion and violence. The story is far from simple, but Girard acknowledges a link exists. By the same token, there is much within secular culture that would also fit this "religious" pattern. What is also interesting is that, in spite of this link, the Judeo-Christian tradition stands apart from the smorgasboard of religions.

His theory is hard to follow, but a useful summary is provided by the Austrian theologian Wolfgang Palaver in a Eureka Street interview. The interview comes highly recommended, and you can see it by clicking here.

Monty Python and Philosophy: Need One Say More...?

2011-07-17T21:16:00.001+10:00

The Popular Culture and Philosophy series of books look at the philosophical undercurrents in many manifestations of popular media such as The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Matrix, as well as other popular cultural icons like baseball, the iPod and the video game Halo. One edition features the British comedy classic Monty Python entitled Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge Nudge, Think Think.

A series of sample podcasts of Monty Python and Philosophy and other titles are available. Looking at this makes one wish a similar series could be made available with a more theological bent.

Sayings of the Saints: Charles de Foucauld

2011-07-11T17:57:00.001+10:00

Brother Charles of Jesus (1858-1916, more commonly known as Charles de Foucauld) underwent a process of conversion following his military deployment in Algeria. He lived for a time as a Trappist before becoming a hermit in Nazareth and subsequently among the Algerian Tuareg people. In formulating his mode of evangelisation to the predominantly Muslim Tuaregs, emphasised the importance of embodiment and friendship in his ministry. Furthermore, Charles said

I want to be so good that people will say "if this is what the servant is like, what must the master be?"

In December 1916, Brother Charles was eventually killed by a group of rebels during the heat of World War I. Moussa Ag Amastane, the chief of the Tuaregs that had also become Charles' friend, wrote to his sister saying

Charles...has not died only for you. He has also died for us all. May God grant him mercy, and may we all be together with him in Paradise

A Brief Intermission

2011-06-30T20:10:00.000+10:00

Due to an intercontinental shift in base of operations, the Divine Wedgie would like to advise readers that there will be a brief pause in blog posts. Regular posting will resume as soon as possible. Apologies for the inconvenience.

The Definition of a Liberal Nowadays

2011-06-26T08:28:00.001+10:00

The American radical social activist Saul Alinsky has been dubbed as one of the "great American leaders of the non-socialist left". He once said that a Liberal was someone that left the room before an argument began.

That was the 20th century, now that Liberalism has established itself as the dominant institutional paradigm in the 21st century (even when articulated through some ostensibly postmodern voices), we find the Liberal being the only one in the room and who bars entry into it before an argument begins.

One should not be surprised, since Liberalism, in its attempt to provide a space for all to behave however they want regardless of communal telos, paradoxically enjoins a particular pattern of behaviour that seeks to undercut and displace any pattern of virtue it claims it wants to include. To the extent it seeks to do this, Liberalism becomes not the opposite to but equates to a form of totalitarianism.

Betrayed by Technology: An interview with Jacques Ellul

2011-06-22T16:08:00.001+10:00

The 24th of June begins a week-long conference in Krakow organised by the Centre for Theology and Philosophy in the University of Nottingham. The conference theme is What is Life? Theology, Science and Philosophy and promises to be quite exciting.

Preparations for a paper for a conference such as this make acquainting oneself with the work of the Sociologist-turned-anarchist-turned-theologian Jacques Ellul obligatory.

Ellul has made extensive contributions in the area of the sociology of technology with his book, The Technological Society. Below is an extensive video-interview with Ellul on the betrayal of mankind by technology. Though somewhat dated, it contains much useful theological and sociological information for reflection on our current technologically-saturated milieu. Points to note include:

1. The imperative for efficiency to become the supreme organising principle over other organising principles like religion;

2. The sacred character attributed to technology;

3. The need for reflection on experience giving way for reflex-reactions to them

To see the video, click here.

Consumerism and Christianity: An Interview with William Cavanaugh

2011-06-19T16:50:00.002+10:00

The protestant website 100Huntley.com recently did a a short but highly informative interview with the Catholic theologian, William T. Cavanaugh of dePaul University.

Cavanaugh's use of both postmodern authors (such as Foucault and de Certeau) and patristic sources (in particular Augustine of Hippo) has resulted in a number of uniquely insightful, orthodox and challenging works in political theology, ecclesiology and sacramental theology. His little book of about 100 pages, Theopolitical Imagination, touches on why our participation in the Eucharist is a political act in a consumer age and is a must read for all Catholics, for they will learn to love the Eucharist all the more. His follow up in the little books department on Christian desire and consumer culture, Being Consumed, is the subject of this interview, which is divided into 2 parts:

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

Advertising Implanting Memories: Neuroscientific Insights and Cultural Implications

2011-06-16T02:33:00.001+10:00

In a recent Wired.com article, Jonah Lehrer referred to a neuroscientific experiment concerning marketing images which had very disturbing results. The test subjects, it must be added, constituted 100 university undergraduates, who are supposed to be our future leaders in areas of life as diverse as industry, politics, education, and culture.

According to this article, our memories may not be function as independent categories that passively sit in our brains, but are highly malleable things that cannot help but borrow from its surroundings, and we can even be made to believe (however subtly) that we have memories of actually experiencing what was being advertised, even when no such experiences actually existed.

This study has massive cultural implications for both good and ill. At one level, it provides a highly cautionary note about our cultural milieu in which every available space has been captured by advertisers to be made to foist the latest product onto our lives, or the latest "social service" ads (as indicated by a recent furore in Australia concerning advertising the use of condoms for gay sex, where its defenders spoke of the advertisement as merely a reflection of reality, and ignored the capacities for advertisement to create and normalise realities). This study provides further material to the insight the Anglican theologian Graham Ward made in Cities of God. In a city without God, Ward says, everything becomes a simulation.

At another level, it should sound a clarion call to the church in the importance of its art, iconography and music in our contemporary "politics of belief", not in terms of implanting memories that should not exist, but in terms of bolstering the Communion of Saints that transgresses time and space as a concrete social reality, and not merely a stale cognitive category. Sacred art assists in the Church's evangelical task because they form that space of social possibles outlined by Pierre Bourdieu (mentioned in a previous post), which in turn nurture the inclination towards belief in the claims of the Gospel, for those within the church walls as well as for those without.

The Unseen Hazards of Technologically Enhanced Liturgy

2011-06-12T16:49:00.002+10:00

We talk a lot about the hidden dangers in our food brought about by the technologisation of the food chain. But how much attention do we give to similarly hidden dangers in our consuming of the Real Food in the Divine Liturgy?

In a post on the Patheos religious blogging hub, Deacon Greg Kandra spoke of the increasingly popular phenomenon of replacing hymnals with projected slides on a wall. While this could be seen to be a cost-saving measure (and indeed there are hymnals with songs so vomitous they are not worth the paper on which they are printed), Kandra alerts us to a number of sociological side effects of this micropractice in the liturgy.

At one level, the use of projectors flattens out social space, such that all congregants, regardless of stature or ability or disposition, are made to sing (sometimes with accompanying organ-nazi barking orders at you). This is juxtaposed by Kandra against the use of hymnals, which allow for the complexities within the Body of Christ. It is more amenable to accommodating, for instance, the person who for reasons only he would know does not want to sing but reflect silently. It would also be more accommodating to the short or stiff necked.

At another level, the physical conformity that the use of projectors calls for paradoxically splinters the social body. The Church is made to resemble a sociological bicycle wheel with a central hub (the screen) and spokes (the congregants), with little interaction within the latter. This is juxtaposed to the use of hymnals that allows for such interaction within the social body of the congregation via the sharing of books in situations of scarcity.

Kandra's article, in its identification of the effects of social flattening and splintering brought about by the technologisation of our culture, fleshes out a brief reflection in an earlier post concerning technology and its capacity to parody the sacramental economy.

Icons for the Temple/Mall: A Documentary on Mannequins

2011-06-09T22:35:00.001+10:00

An earlier post spoke of secular culture embodying liturgies that parody the liturgy of the Church. And now for some evidence...

Fors Clavigera, the blog of Calvin College professor of philosophy, James K.A Smith, recently alerted his readers to a short film made by a former student of his, concerning the manufacture of mannequins for the fashion industry. The film interviews the owners of one mannequin factory, and their comments are as horrifying as they are revelatory.

To summarise a 7 minutes film would be to give the whole thing away, but here's a clue: the notion that mannequins are meant to reflect reality, in the eyes of these entrepreneurs, is to approach mannequins the wrong way. Mannequins hyperextend, rather than portray, the real To see the extent of this hyperextension, watch on...

Both the left and right argue that the secular is autonomous, and to have the Church interfering in its operations spells disaster, so here's what happens when the Church leaves the secular alone, free from religion...

Sayings of the Saints: Pope Benedict XVI

2011-06-06T17:17:00.001+10:00

This post is a continuation of a series of short posts labelled "Sayings of the Saints", and follows a previous quote from Desert Father Anthony. To see that post click here.

On 1 April 2005, the day before Blessed John Paul II died Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, spoke about the real societal danger, and it is not the impending "clash of civilisations", as Samuel Huntington and his closet disciples in the shrieking commentarati would have it. Ratzinger said that:

The real opposition that characterizes today's world is not that between various religious cultures, but that between the radical emancipation of man from God, from the roots of life, on one hand, and from the great religious cultures on the other. If there were to be a clash of cultures, it would not be because of a clash of the great religions which have always struggled against one another, but which, in the end, have also always known how to live with one another but it will be because of the clash between this radical emancipation of man and the great historical cultures.

Nietzsche & Our Cyborgified Age

2011-06-03T20:46:00.001+10:00

His woeful views on Christianity notwithstanding, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche made many accurate insights about the nascent version of the secular modernity in which we are now living.

One of these includes a startling remark Nietzsche made about a coming epoch that, swept up in the thrall of scientistic efficiency, will become dominated by machinistic mindset.

The institutionalisation of this mindset will herald an age where, in Nietzsche's words, “promise[s] to invent a way of life which refrains from all organic functions.”

This 19th century statement is reflected in a remark made today by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. As Humans become more dependent on technology to increase ease of life, Wozniak exclaimed, they will also increasingly "become the pets, the dogs of the house". This is because in our rush to improve the efficiency of machines in areas like medicine, education, transport, leisure, music and art, "We're already creating the superior beings". The battle between man and machines, he concluded, was lost long ago.

This raises an interesting question as to how the Church should respond to recent calls to engage cyberculture in fulfilling its evangelical mandate. Further posts will elaborate on this reflection. The difficulties, nuances seem to be demonstrated by the video clip below.

Whilst the technological savvy is evident, one may be forgiven for feeling some unease with the seeming ease by which many Christians have embraced technological innovation as part of the unfolding of God's grace.

What the Entertainment Society Really Wants to Tell You

2011-05-29T07:02:00.002+10:00

We live in a cultural milieu in which "fun" has become the highest good. This is the condition known as the "entertainment society", a condition that was hinted at by the Frankfurt School, particularly the "Culture Industry" of Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno.

Rather than a situation of us consuming passive commodities, extracting the pleasure, and going on unchanged, James KA Smith reminds us that the saturation within our culture of alleged opportunities for such consumption actually envelops us, forming us into particular kinds of people with particular ends that may run counter to our waiting for the coming of the Lord.

At one level, the consumption of entertainment as the centre of existence, which then envelops us and moulds us into consumers, bears disturbing parallels to the Patristic notion of our Eucharistic coabiding with Christ, in which our consumption of the Eucharist turns us into whom that is consumed (namely Christ). This again points to secular culture acting as an alternative sacramental economy, as hinted at in a previous post

At another level, the positing of "fun" as the centre of existence also serves to domesticate any opposition to the status quo, as Herbert Marcuse reminds us in his One Dimensional Man. In maximising consumer choice of material goods, Marcuse opines, such societies become trained into thinking that all goods, material or otherwise, have been provided for. We see evidence of this in the tacit or active promotion of entertainment in places such as Berlusconi's Italy or Lee Hsien Loong's Singapore. One renders democracy impotent through the constant saturation of the airwaves of sitcoms, talk shows and soap operas through the Prime Minister's own communications channels, while another tries to make those question the need for democracy through the active proliferation of the consumerist lifestyle, via telecommunications, shopping malls, bars and clubs.

The Church thus must be wary in making entertainment a criterion of spreading the Gospel, for in doing so, it could very well extend something other than the Body of Christ.

Fundamentalist My Fanny

2011-05-25T19:43:00.001+10:00

In the lead up to yet another Rapture, a placard was once spotted that read:

For God so hated the world that he gave it his best ass-whooping on May 21, 2011

This was by the kind of Christian that is branded by the secular commentarati as that which takes a literalist approach to biblical hermeutics. It would appear someone was not reading their bible before bed. But it would appear that the Almighty has given the person that waved such a placard yet another chance to mend his/her ways, like the father of the prodigal son. One may be forgiven for wondering who the fundamentalist really is at this point.

Practice, Identity and Amazonians

2011-05-21T02:24:00.002+10:00

Friday's online edition of the BBC had a report about a fascinating, if somewhat controversial, finding regarding an Amazonian tribe, the Amondawa. According to researchers, the Amondawa's linguistic repertoire is such that they have no abstract concept of time, such as a day, month or year. Whilst the Amondawa can speak about events or sequence of events, they are unable to speak of time outside those events. For instance, they can relate to an event that happened, but are unable to articulate if that happened a year ago.

This lack of conception of time has also yielded another fascinating dividend when it comes to their identity. According to the report, the Amondawa are unable to state their ages. However, at different stages of their life, they are called by different names, and thus do not have a stable sense of identity that is transtemporal. Interestingly, once Amondawa start to learn Portuguese, where abstract concepts of time are present, only then are they able to articulate notions of time, and their sense of how life is lived, and even concepts of who they are, change with it.

More research needs to be undertaken as to how widespread the linguistic link to the conception of time is, but this report is an interesting follow up to a previous post concerning the natural status of what we Moderns regard as “clock” time. Rather than a natural category, this is one piece of evidence that points to the constructed nature of time, which as Scott Bader-Saye reminds us, emerges from different networks of practice.

As an ancillary to that, this report also touches on a point of great theological significance: that of the relationship between ideas and practice. Many in the secular media, and indeed many Christians, seem content on confining their faith to merely a set of propositions. Important as propositions are, Christianity is not a Modern set of "beliefs", but is the incarnate Body of Christ. As such, Christianity does not not emerge out of a vacuum. It is intimately bound to networks of bodily practices that implicate our hands, feet and mouths. Thus, in the same way that the Amondawa know of themselves by their linguistic and relational practice, so does the transmission of our faith emerge from what Graham Ward calls a transcorporeal knowledge. We do not know the set of ideas called Christianity, but encounter the person of Christ through our relations with the Christian who is Christ's body. Even in our speaking, we implicate our bodies in a transcorporeal network. Moreover, we encounter Christ in the Sacraments, which also implicate the material practices of its participants, even as it is initiated by the agency of the Triune God.

Conversely, our participation in the sacramental and liturgical economy ought to be a cultural shock in the most profound sense of the term. If our practice of prayer were genuine, it should knock us out of what Modern secular culture would have us believe are natural or inevitable. What is taken for granted in our everyday lives (such as the necessity to live our lives to the dictates of efficiency, maximise financial control, and the inevitability of warfare with others) should become strange before the word of God.

Moreover, when we encounter God in the practice of prayer, it should change the way that secular culture should make us see our very selves. Before God, we should not consider ourselves part of the assertive race of the sure. Augustine reminds us in his Confessions that our lack of certainty as to our very inner self is a constant variable in this life. In the same way that the Amondawa have no stable identity as indicated by their multiplicity of names, those in the Body of Christ cannot boast of being sure who they really are and what they really believe on this side of death.

Thus our participation in the liturgical economy of the Church must be constant, for it is a constant process of discernment if our temporal lives, and the presumptions by which those lives are lived out, are truly changed by having encountered Christ. If nothing has changed, something is wrong. On the flipside, our constant practice of prayer is also needed as an acknowledgement of our dependence of God who is the one that begets us, and is the only one who can call us by our name. Our identity thus comes from the inbreaking of God's generosity, and our constancy comes from his hold us in the palm of His hand. Thus, any attempts to freeze our identity (often by asserting it against another) merely become pretensions at divinity. We become like the Prodigal son who, thinking he knew who he was, demanded from the Father what is rightfully his.

The Clock, Secular Culture and the Noontime Demon

2011-05-16T08:23:00.001+10:00

An earlier post spoke of the importance of the constructed nature of how we in the Body of Christ look at time. We are, as Stephen Kepnes once mentioned, victims of “Scientific” clock time, where time is seen as a string of repeatable units of measure, completely devoid of meaning. The net effect of this conception of time is that is becomes possible to conceive of an endless string of clocked moments, which is crucial to assist a culture obsessed with control to maintain supervision of historical events.

Modern culture, and the cultural condition of postmodernity, thus becomes the institutionalisation of what Evagrius of Pontus called the “noontime demon” in The Praktikos, in which it “seems that the sun barely moves...and the day is fifty hours long”. Because each Modern clock moment is a freezing of the dynamism of history, the stringing out of these moments only becomes a repetitious stream of frozen and empty units of measure. The experienced reality of this is best articulated by the reflections of the American poet Kathleen Norris, who describes the “noontime demon” as something that “suggests that...my entire life of 'doings' is not only meaningless but utterly useless”.

This secular phenomenon of clock time thus also institutionalises the robbing of one's willingness to experience true joy, which is something that only a God that transcends clock time can give. It should not be surprising then that secular culture is thus marked by what Michael Hanby calls “an ontology of boredom”. It is this refusal to experience joy, more than sheer laziness, which is the what Evenlyn Waugh calls the malice of the sin of sloth. As he writes in The Seven Deadly Sins, laziness is only a symptom of Sloth, whilst its true nature lies in its “alli[ance] to despair”.

The response to this is a new conception of time, which for Kathleen Norris, was found in the Benedictine liturgy of the hours. This observation is important for the Christian, for the string of liturgies is not a freezing of time in a single moment, and the commodification of time by evacuating it of meaning. The string of liturgies rather institutionalises a renewal of the historical inbreaking of God, who is the true engine of the liturgical prayers. Instead of the secular freezing and repetition of time, a kind of secular Kairos, the Christian Kairos is one where the moment is renewed and infused with God's interruption of the despair of history. To paraphrase the prayers at the foot of the altar during the Tridentine Mass, Godturns to us and brings us back to life so that we may rejoice. It fills the moment with meaning, and instead of being merely repeated, as in secular time, each renewal in the Christian Kairos is a unique episode of God making all things new.

Saying of the Saints: Desert Father Anthony

2011-05-11T23:52:00.001+10:00

Abba Anthony said, 'A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, "You are mad, you are not like us.'

St. Therese, Ecclesial Politics and the Redemption of Micropractice

2011-05-09T01:51:00.001+10:00

St. Therese of Liseux was a Carmelite nun who died in 1897 at the young age 24. She was posthumously given the title "Doctor of the Church" for her articulation of Carmelite Spirituality known as "the Little Way", which has become a mainstay in much popular Catholic spirituality because Therese did not regard grand acts of heroism as necessary for holiness. Therese once remarked:

"Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."

Therese touches on a theme that is often overlooked in the implementation of an ecclesial politics: in one's attention to the master framework, one often ignores the little practices that fill up the gaps within that framework, in particular the works of mercy. These little practices, as Therese reminds us, are not merely incidental to the pursuit of holiness. Rather they are the means by which such holiness can be pursued.

At the same time, micropractices are also important to ecclesial politics because they are also important sociological categories. They are not just things we do, but are also things that can affectively prime us to do or think particular things in turn. In The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann noted that actions are less the result of rational choice than being affectively nudged via a series of “plausibility structures” that often act without the knowledge of the agent. These “plausibility structures” emerge not from some grand cognitive scheme. According to Pierre Bourdieu, these structures emerge out of a “social universe” that in turn borne out of an array of “social positions”, that is a whole set of bodily practices. This would mean that the forms of a whole array of practices that we find ourselves engaged in without thinking often carry with them a logic that primes us into sets of habits and mindsets that can in turn implicate us in extending something other than the Kingdom of God, however much we like to think to the contrary.

This would mean that for those in the Body of Christ, every element of contemporary culture should be of concern, simply because these seemingly insignificant elements can combine to create a whole “social universe” that can either nurture or hinder the Body of Christ. This is why the Church ought to resist the calls of the cultural powers that be – politicians, commenterati banshees and even some within the Church – that certain things are beyond its competence. It should also pay attention to things that may seem incidental or unconnected to the pursuit of holiness – the shape of agriculture, the configuration of supply chains, the positioning of families to local economies and with that the decentralisation of administrative power, just to name a few.

These things are not so profane as to be unconnected to the spiritual life, but can constitute one of the flowers within creation to which Therese draws our attention.

Benedictine and Commercial Liturgies: A View from Norcia

2011-05-05T07:04:00.001+10:00

Norcia, a tiny town in the Italian region of Umbria, is noted for two things. It is famous for its boar sausages, and it is the birthplace of St. Benedict. Benedict's statue overlooks Norcia's main piazza, which is the convergence point of a number of rather commercialised streets, lined with sausage shops, cafes and restaurants. At the heart of the town is the Benedictine monastery, which was revived in 1998, almost 200 years after it was shut down by Napoleon.

The monastery performs the liturgy of the hours in the Extraordinary Form, and does so 8 times a day (not counting its public masses). This means that roughly every 1.5 hours of the monastery's waking hours has at its heart a liturgical core. Through the abbey's ministry of hospitality, the monks have also established supply links with the town's other commercial providers, so as to provide for the needs of the abbey's constant stream of visitors. By doing so, the monastery acts as a kind of discursive magnet that slowly brings the town's commercial activity into a monastic orbit. In doing so, it brings the town's activity towards a monastic liturgical pattern. This recalls an observation of Catherine Pickstock, who saw the Eucharist as a chain of commercial events that lead up to the production of bread and wine, and then culminate in a moment of Eucharistic offering to the God in which all live, move and have their being.

At the same time however, a guest staying at the monastery would become aware that not all visitors to Norcia come for the monastery, but for the town itself, In doing so, such visitors bypass the monastic liturgical centre. This does not mean a lack of a liturgical centre. Jacques Derrida reminds us that trying to bypass religion will always lead to another kind of religion being put in its place. Similarly, bypassing the monastery's liturgical centre is bound to lead to the gravitation towards an alternative liturgical core, one that is marked by the pursuit of mammon as the highest good. Instead of a submission of all activity to the generosity of God, the secular activity of the town ends up becoming a liturgy that submits all activity towards the perceived magnanimity and security of the Euro, the stability of which has become so central to the European project that obscene amounts of resources end up being sacrificed to prop it up at the expense of truly local needs.

The Benedictines in Norcia thus become a microcosm of what the Church should be to secular culture, not a holy afterthought to what we habitually call "the real world", but a crossroads of two competing liturgies, one with a Christic centre and another with a monetary one. At the same time, the Church should present itself as a sign of hope of redemption of the seemingly natural (and destructive) liturgy that demands human sacrifice at the alter of a god that is, as the psalmist says, literally made of metal.

The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom

2011-04-25T09:37:00.001+10:00

This is an excerpt of a homily that was read at Vespers on Easter Sunday. One of the most moving pieces of a great Church Father:

Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness. let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior's death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.

Good Friday, the Cross and the Prevailing Order

2011-04-23T07:19:00.001+10:00

A line in Tuesday evening's reading for the Liturgy of the Hours reminds us of an often overlooked aspect of the effect of what is taking place on this day, Good Friday:

He has chosen things low and contemptible, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order (1 Cor 1:28)

Much has been said of the redemption of Christ from sin as if the order that was overthrown was only confined to some bodiless, spiritual realm. But if God really became flesh and truly suffered and died, the redemptive effect of his work would also implicate what John Paul II called the "structures of sin", the institutions that concretise sin, and the logic they distribute into the very fibre of our bodily existence and make us walking and breathing fragments of those institutions, to paraphrase Pierre Bourdieu.

God has chosen the logic of "mere nothings" to combat, and indeed overthrow, the logic of the status quo, framed by atomism, the lust for power, and the obsession with limitless knowledge and with that the obsession with security.

The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ would have meant that, to recall Isaiah's prophecies of the Suffering Servant, empire, trampling boots and bloodied garments will be burned and consumed by fire. The passion of this hinge of human history should give us pause to consider if we still cling to these old logics even while we, living the new life in Christ, claim to reject the institutions they crystallise.

Do we continue to let the threads of this prevailing order weave through our lives as members of the body of Christ? So while we, for example, reject statism, do we continue to grasp after the kind of security from others in such a way that would make us clamour for greater state oversight? While we reject the selfishness of abortion, do we continue to bask in the consumer culture that fuels it?

The silence of the night of his death, and of Holy Saturday, may be an opportune time to reflect not only on whether we truly have allowed God to overthrow the existing order in all facets of our lives, our souls, our bodies, and our modes of thinking. Which have we chosen as the prevailing order to frame each of our thoughts, words and actions?

Tuesday evening's reading ends thus: In Him we are consecrated and set free (1 Cor 1:30)

The passion, death and impending resurrection of the Lord of history has freed us from the presumptions that we have taken as historical truth, but he does not force us to be part of the new thing he is making.

Adatto, Technology and Confession

2011-04-15T06:07:00.001+10:00

A recent Mars Hill Audio Journal interview with Kiku Adatto touched on the link between photographic images and the inner soul. Put simply, images capture in varying degrees of intimacy, the inner life of the person. As such, some images are often shielded from public scrutiny, from the gaze of those that are not so intimate. Yet in an age where any and every image is made available for public scrutiny, and often without consent, she argues that one is forced to prise open one's inner life to all and sundry, and crystallises what Michel Foucault calls the "surveillance society".

The interview is fascinating in and of itself. A more fascinating theme that was not explicitly mentioned, however, is that the exposure of one's inner self is often associated with the sacrament of confession, where things that were otherwise hidden are brought to light as a step towards reconciliation with God and one another. Like confession, the "surveillance society" forces things we would rather keep private to be brought to light, as the "private sphere" is slowly obliterated into one seamless "public space". Unlike confession however, the exposure of this inner self creates no reconciliation whatsoever, but rather further atomises the social fabric as that inner self becomes the subject of individual consumption.

It raises interesting questions on the ability of this technologically saturated age to create parodies of a sacramental economy. Where introduction agencies short circuit the social processes that often lead to the sacrament of marriage, Adatto's insights lead one to consider if the sacrament of reconciliation is similarly being mass produced and commodified.

Ecclesial Politics and the Redemption of Time

2009-10-29T04:57:00.001+11:00

...to a time when truth exists, to a time when thought is free...from the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – greetings! Winston Smith, 1984

It is strange how once familiar things become charged with theological currents in a manner so obvious when they are looked upon once again after a period of theological training, that you wonder why you did not notice it before. A case in point is this scene where the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984 scribbles the above note on an illegally obtained diary in a quiet act of rebellion against the authorities of the totalitarian megastate, Oceania.

What is noteworthy is the addressing of this diary entry, not to a who, but rather a when. Winston’s rebellion by addressing his diary entries to a time rather than a person seems odd, given the post-Enlightenment capture of the public imagination of a solely temporal and chronological notion of time. In this “scientific time” according to Stephen Kepnes and Catherine Pickstock, empty units of measure are seen to follow one after in a meaningless procession. Indeed, underneath all of the yearnings for truth, even Winston’s references to a different time are symptomatic of this post-Enlightenment flattening of time.

Still, this reference to 1984 remains an important point of reflection for Christians, virtually all of whom have from time to time fallen victim to this Modern conception of time when reflecting on what Christians are called to do at any particular situation. In summarising the work of Graham Ward, James KA Smith draws attention to what may be the central question that drives works like Cities of God and The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Post-Material Citizens. The question that drives Graham Ward specifically and ought to drive Christian reflection generally is not to ask the question of the now popularised wristband, “What would Jesus do?”. The key question rather, ought to be “What time is it”? How does/should the moment we are situated in right now relate to the eschaton, where time ceases to exist?

Attention to time, rather than modes or objects of action, become pivotal moments for determining the shape, nature and efficacy of all types of action, religious, cultural, social and political. This is so because, according to Scott Bader-Saye, “the ways we experience, name and interpret time contribute to the kinds of communities we imagine and inhabit”. A central axis of Christian witness then is not primarily one of principles, issues or people, but of one form of time to another, where the chronological timeframe of the world is witnessed to by the Kairos of God. Christians do well to remain aware of the allure of Modern time in their public witness, for in remaining unaware of it, the Christian mandate to spread the Kingdom of God may take forms that mimic the social status quo, an eventuality that either discredits the Gospel or diminishes its vitality.

To revitalise apostolic witness, one must recover the centrality of what James Alison calls an “eschatological imagination”, where the temporal witness of the Church is laid against a backdrop of its participation in the inbreaking into chronological time, by the end of time altogether. In such a participation, the Church’s primary critique becomes not one centred on the world’s approach to an issue. Rather, it is a critique of the world’s obsession with the Chronos. It is this obsession that leads to a politics driven by what Chesterton calls the “small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about”. When the present is overemphasised, survival becomes the central cultural logic. When survival becomes central, hope is extinguished, however much theorists protest to the contrary. Thus, it is a rule that that produces political projects where attempts to perfectly include all in this time, paradoxically becomes defined by very narrow imminent criteria and an ever growing schema of exclusion of fellow human beings. This is an arrangement that leads to the marginalisation of whole sections of humanity, which in turn fosters relations of reciprocal violence both domestically and internationally. Simultaneously the Church reminds the world that in such a poor management of time, the world will ultimately be called to account by the Lord of time.

As a participation in the Body Christ, who is one in being with the Lord of time, judgement becomes a necessary part of the Church’s witness. It must not shy away from that. But at the same time, the Church’s participation in the collapse of past, present and future brings about not solely a dull politics of condemnation, but its coupling with the presentation to the world of an alternative of generosity, of a participation in the Son’s invitation to “share in [his] Father’s happiness” in the time of accountability, and becoming (imperfect) sites of that invitation to God’s eternal bounty whilst still in chronological time.

The Christian whilst inhabiting this time, also inhabits a realm where time is not. We are reminded of this in our repetition of a Nicene Creed that is almost neatly bookended by references to time. We recall that the Jesus we worship is “eternally begotten by the Father”, and we remind ourselves at the very conclusion of the Creed that our life in the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” involves looking for “the life of the world to come”. In our discipleship, how often do we overlook this traversing of time?

The Postmodern Lent: Ever Ancient, Ever New

2008-02-18T09:57:00.002+11:00

The concluding prayers of the Divine Office for the second Monday of Lent read that the Lord teaches us "to discipline the body for the good of the soul". Very often this is framed in terms of mortification: depriving the body for spiritual nourishment.

After reading William Cavanaugh's "Torture and Eucharist", it is possible to give this prayer a postmodern twist, giving this ancient wisdom a new vitality.

The Old Testament demonstrates that the Jews have long realised the importance of providing mere "advice" for the mind, as if the soul were detached from the body. Indeed, because God made man in both spirit and flesh, great moments of conversion or other spiritual turning points were marked by rituals that acted on the body.

It is possible to apply this ancient wisdom to the current consumerist culture, a culture that not only trains minds to accept the quasi-eschatological mythology of retail salvation. Through the ritualistic actions of the 9-5, sunday shopping mall trips and credit card swiping, the body is taken up into the whole process of formation, so that consumerism is not just seared into the minds of the shopper, but the body as well. And when the body is habituated into rituals antithetical to a faith that hopes in a world yet to come, the soul is placed in turn placed into jeopardy. It is possible to to say that modern culture, dominated by the market, doesn't just want your hippocket. It not only wants your body, it wants your soul as well.

Viewed this way, the point of convergence apparent in Jesus' phrase "the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" can be made clear. The body belongs to God's as much as the soul does, and thus it too must be taken up into the process of salvation. The body is not ancilliary to this process. The doctrine of the Incarnation, and more recently, the late Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body have demonstrated quite clearly that the body is central to the process of salvation.

Viewed this way, lenten bodily mortifications are not just a sideshow preparing of the soul for the main event of heaven. Lent can also be a time to incarnate salvation within culture. In disciplining the body, the soul can be protected from the modern mythologies of market supremacy and atomistic self-hood that have created this all pervasive culture of death.

If both Cavanaugh and Daniel Bell are correct, Lent is given even greater significance given the ever growing series of intersection between the State and the Market. Lent, like Easter, is not just an excercise of spiritual conversion. Conversion must bring about a political dividend as well, for in the disciplining of the body, it proclaims in history another community apart from the market - the Kingdom of Heaven. It proclaims that the shopping mall and the fast food chain, the office, and ultimately the State, do not have a monopoly over our bodily lives, and thus our souls. Lenten disciplines create the space whereby the words "on earth as it is in heaven" can be made true.

Lent then cannot be just viewed as a six week anomaly, a long preparation for a short weekend festival, but the bedrock for a new political, and thus spiritual paradigm, that reaches far beyond the season, and far beyond our individual souls.

Practices and the Conversion of the Social Imaginary: On Marriage

2007-12-15T17:51:00.002+11:00

Below is an excerpt from the brilliant American Deacon Keith Fournier of Catholic Online. The article, quoted in full, provides a response to the announcement by Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Church to participate in a civil same-sex union with his partner. The Bishop's decision raises many key concerns, such as the acceptance of state authority over the ecclesial (explored in the previous post). But what the reader should pay attention to in Fournier's response is the undercurrent that provides a key to how the Church must respond in the face of such cultural onslaughts like these.

If Graham Ward's analysis in Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice is correct, the Church must provide more than a platform for the dispensing of reactionary rhetoric. The Church must also be a site of relational practices that give flesh to that rhetoric. For the Church's ability to resist lies not in the disciplining of its members' minds, at least not at first. Conversion of the culture (what Ward calls a "social imaginary") surrounding the Church must stem from its own practices which constitute an ecclesial counter-culture, which are constituted in, among other things, the sacraments and especially the Eucharistic Liturgy. Flowing from that, a true sociality, an ecclesial imaginary, can be generated to provide a site of resistance to the prevailing culture, if not the site for the transformation of that culture, which is more effective than any orator or tract. Whilst Fournier's commentary below would bear out the applicability of this strategy on the issue of marriage, it can also apply to a whole host of issues plaguing contemporary society. This is why Francis of Assisi said "Spread the Gospel, and if necessary, use words".
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COMMENTARY: Male Episcopal Bishop Wants to be a ‘June Bride’
By Deacon Keith Fournier 12/11/2007
Catholic Online

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Bishop Gene Robinson, the Nation’s openly practicing homosexual Episcopal Bishop, spoke to a crowd of over 200 people on November 27, 2007 at Nova Southeastern University’s Shephard Law Center. He told them of his upcoming planned ‘marriage’ to his paramour saying with pride, "I always wanted to be a June bride."

The activist Bishop continued:

"It may take many years for religious institutions to add their blessing for same-sex marriages and no church, mosque or synagogue should be forced to do so. But that should not slow down progress for the full civil right to marry," Robinson said. "Because New Hampshire will have legal unions beginning in January, my partner of 20 years and I will enter into such a legal union next June."

Dressed in his clerical collar and wearing his pectoral cross, the symbol of his ecclesial office in the Episcopal church, he castigated the “religious right”, a term by which he refers to all orthodox Christians who support the unbroken teaching of Christianity on the sanctity of authentic marriage:

"The greatest single hindrance to achievement of full rights for gays and lesbians can be laid at the doorstep of the three Abrahamic faiths-- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It’s going to take people of faith to end discrimination," said Robinson, who was invested as the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire in 2004.... [emphasis added]

The Bishop is on the forefront of the ongoing schism within the Anglican Communion. He is also a part of a cultural revolution being led by activist, practicing homosexuals who not only want to live their lifestyle but force the State and the Church to give them equal status to marriage.

I remember the day that Gene Robinson was consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal Church in Durham, New Hampshire. With the eyes of the whole world watching, a married Episcopal priest, he divorced his wife and abandoned his children. Later, he chose to engage in an active homosexual relationship and was consecrated as a Bishop of the Episcopal Church. So many Christians grieved, for him, his wife and children and, for the Church.

It was clear then, and it is even clearer now, that this man thinks he is a revolutionary, somehow bringing about a new day when Christianity will be re-fashioned in his perceived new version. He claimed that his “consecration” was a sign that, in his own words, “God is doing something new.” In short, he claims that God has changed his mind. He is wrong. Robinson simply rejects the unbroken teaching of the Christian Church for two thousand years. He seeks to substitute a new interpretation of the plan of God in “creating them male and female” and calling human persons, created for love as the gift of self to another for life, to the communion of marriage.

It was the ancient Prophet Isaiah who warned: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who change darkness into light and light into darkness, who change bitter into sweet, and sweet into bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own sight, and prudent in their own esteem” (Isaiah 5: 20 and 21). Robinsons’ message does just that. He calls “evil good, and good evil”. However, the facts and the unbroken witness of revelation, tradition and history still remain. Christianity has always proclaimed that marriage is a special state, reserved only for a man and a woman, ordered toward both the communion of persons and the gift of new life in children.

Robinson proclaims to the world not only that God has changed His mind, but further, that so should the Christian Church. By his open and active homosexual lifestyle he rejects the clear Christian teaching concerning human sexuality and its purposes. For two thousand years the Christian Church has taught with uniformity that conjugal love is to be sexually expressed only within a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman, open to new life.

Robinson wants to substitute his “new thing” for the classical, orthodox Christian claim that sexual expression is a gift reserved only for spouses within authentic marriage. He wants to do so by redefining words in some kind of misguided new effort at alchemy. He will not succeed. There is an ‘ontology’ to marriage, it simply is what it is. He rejects the unbroken teaching of two millennia, confirmed by all social science, human reason and experience, that the two parent heterosexual family is the safest place for children to be raised and where they can best flourish as human persons. He wants to replace it all now with a new revolutionary ideology.

He presents his claims in pseudo-theological sounding language, contexts them in errant appeals to revisionist history and frames them in pop psychology. He then projects them with a countenance that is apparently kind and even endearing. That is what makes it all even more disturbing and dangerous. However, let’s be clear, Robinson broke his marriage vows and rejected a substantial foundation upon which the whole Christian faith is built. Worse yet, he is attempting to persuade other Christians to do the same as he participates in a cultural revolution.

This sadly deluded Christian, who in another age would have been called to repentance for apostasy, immorality and heresy, is now being held out as some new champion to the public. In this new Cultural Revolution, non-conjugal sexual acts between men are now to be viewed as equal to the marriage bed if they occur for a protracted period of time. Quite simply, this is not Christianity. It is not a “new thing”, it is actually quite old. Yet, faithful Christians who opposed his “consecration”, and who will now oppose his purported ‘marriage’ are presented as the ones who are narrow and not liberated.

The fact is that the Christian way concerning faithful, monogamous marriage as the only proper place for sexual intimacy, within the communion of authentic married love and for the begetting and rearing of healthy, happy children was and still IS the authentically “new” way.

The new revolutionaries who claim that “God is doing a new thing”, like Robinson, maintain that the witness of the early Christians and the clear biblical texts cannot now be used to oppose homosexual practice as sin. They also argue that living an actively homosexual lifestyle should not disqualify anyone from elevation to the Office of Bishop. They maintain that insistence on fidelity and chastity within ones’ state in life is antiquated. So, how do they deal with the clear witness of Christian history? The same way so many deluded revolutionaries do, they insist that Christians in the past did not know what we know now and that they were somehow unenlightened.

This claim is utter nonsense.

Much of the world into which the early Church was sent was engaged in sexual licentiousness and was often homo-sexualized. All early Christian sources are uniform in the rejection of homosexual practices. All Church Councils are as well.

Many of the early missionary journeys of the nascent Christian Church brought the gospel to what were called “pagan” cultures. In the process, many of the sexual practices of these cultures were strongly opposed by the Christian Church. However, these practices sometimes seduced even Christian priests and leaders. When that did happen, these priests and leaders were considered to be apostate and called to serious repentance.

When they actually taught that their errors were “new ways” and held them out for others to emulate, they were called heretics and they were put outside of communion with the Church. This was done to both bring these leaders to repentance and to protect the members of the Church from the dangers they practiced and proclaimed.

The word “pagan” was not used as a disparaging term in referring to these pre-Christian practices. It actually referred to a pseudo-“religious” world view which often accompanied the practices. I use it the same way in referring to our contemporary age as increasingly “pagan”. Many of the “gods” and goddesses” of this old world view promoted these lives of selfish excess, including homosexual practice and hedonism masquerading as freedom. In fact, the myths concerning them had them acting in much the same way. These “pagan” practices have been reintroduced today, only the myths and statues are different.

Robinson is not proclaiming something new. Rather, he is proclaiming something old. He has given himself over to the “old way” and wants to call it new.

The early Christians did not simply point the finger and rail against the “pagans” of their age. They did not present a “negative” message. They proclaimed the freedom found in Jesus Christ to all who would listen and demonstrated it in their compelling witness of life. They lived in monogamous marriages, raised their children to be faithful Christians and good citizens, and went into the world of their age, offering a new way to live.

This new “way” (which is what they first called the early Church) presented a very different world view than the one that the pagans embraced. Their clergy (deacons, priests and Bishops) lived and proclaimed the truth regarding human sexuality and God’s plan for monogamous, chaste marriage and family. Those who broke from that clear witness, or preached anything different, were not allowed to exercise their office of leadership.

With joy and integrity, these early Christians spoke and lived this new way in the midst of the pagan culture. As a result, they sometimes stirred up hostility. Some of them were martyred in the red martyrdom of shed blood. Countless more joined the train of what use to be called “white martyrdom”, by living lives of sacrificial witness and service in the culture, working hard and staying faithful to the end of a long life spent in missionary toil.

Slowly, not only were small numbers of “pagans” converted and baptized, but eventually their leaders and entire Nations followed suit. Resultantly, the Christian worldview began to influence the social order. The “clash of freedoms” continued, but the climate changed significantly. It was the Christian faith and the sexual practices of the Christians that began to win the hearts of men and women. The cultures once enshrined to pagan practices, such as plural marriage, homosexuality, exposure and abortion, began to change dramatically and this continued for centuries.

In the face of pagan societies of the past, it was Christianity that taught such novel concepts as the dignity of every person and their equality before the One God. The Christians proclaimed the dignity of women and the goodness of chaste marriage between a man and a woman and the sanctity of the family. It was Christianity that introduced the understanding of freedom not simply as a freedom from, but as a freedom for living responsibly and with moral integrity; a freedom to choose to live chastely both in Marriage and in the consecrated celibate life.

The Christians insisted that freedom must be exercised with reference to a moral code, a law higher than the emperor, or the sifting sands of public opinion or wandering sexual appetites. It was the Christians who understood that choice, rightly exercised, meant always choosing what was right and that the freedom to exercise that choice brought with it an obligation and a concern for the other. It was the Christians who proclaimed the virtue of self control, asceticism as a tool to curb wayward sexual appetites and fidelity to marriage and clerical vows.

Their faith presented a coherent and compelling answer to the existential questions that plagued the ancient pagans; such as why we existed and how we got here? What was the purpose of life? What is God’s design for our sexual identity and for procreation? How evil entered into the world and why we could not easily always make right choices? What force seemed to move us toward evil and how we could be set free from its power?

Christian philosophy and the arts began to flourish this new way and under the Christian worldview. Philosophies of government and economic theory began to be influenced by these principles derived from a Christian worldview. The institutions of the civil order protected such institutions as monogamous marriage between one man and one woman because they promoted the common good.

Throughout the history of the Christian Church, when deacons, priests, Bishops or other leaders succumbed to sin (wrong choices) and fell, they were rightly corrected and removed from leadership by Church authorities. When they insisted and taught that their error was “a new way”, they were put outside of the communion of the Church in order to secure their return to fidelity and to protect the faithful from their error.

What happened in Durham, New Hampshire years ago was not “new” at all. It was quite old. A member of the Clergy of a Christian Church broke his vows, divorced his wife, abandoned his family, took up with a male paramour and, then rejected the historic, clear teaching of Christianity. He also propelled a growing schism in the Episcopal Church forward.

Sadly, rather than being called to repentance, he was presented for consecration as a Bishop. That is what was new. Now Gene Robinson wants to be a “June Bride.”

How will what is left of the Episcopal Church in America deal with this turn of events?

Stay tuned.

Proposal for Australian 2 Child Policy

2007-12-11T22:13:00.002+11:00

A 10th December edition of the Herald Sun reported on a proposal by Perth Associate Professor Barry Walters to tackle climate change: A baby tax.

Walters is a clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the department of women's and infants' health at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth. In an article to be published in the Medical Journal of Australia, Walter's has been noted to say:

Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing, but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society...Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a baby levy in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the polluter pays principle

According to Walters' scheme, families with more than 2 children should be penalised with an initial $5000 levy for every extra child, followed by an annual carbon tax of $800. Such a levy, he said, would pay for the planting of trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over the child's lifespan. To supplement the financial penalties, Walters recommended an auxilliary arsenal of "greenhouse friendly services", which include contraceptives and sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits. Finally, Walters has commended the population programs of China and India to the Australian context

An emotive response that can be generated by such economic and environtmental fundamentalism would be inevitable. But what should be pointed out that such a radical proposal is symptomatic of the fear of death. According to Catherine Pickstock, the accumulation of security via the consumption that Walters is so critical of is driven by this very fear. Such acts of "stockpiling", in Pickstock's parlance, is undertaken in defiance of death. What this engenders, according to Elizabeth Strakosch, is intergenerational warfare, where the present wages war against the future. Paradoxically, however, what this does is feed back on itself to undermine the present. This proposal, which targets those that are not responsible for the problem (namely the pollution caused by excessive consumption), and punishes those least likely to contribute to the problem (namely the parents who need the resources for the upkeep of their children) is symptomatic of such a mode of thinking.

The corrective, according to Pickstock, is not a curb on "stockpiling", but a turning away from its necro-centric logic. This is where the spiritual dimensions of the problem and solution become apparent, for to counter the necro-centrism of consumerism is must go beyond the formulation of political community that includes merely the living, but the dead and soon to be born. These need to be included in what Pickstock calls a common narrative, where death is but a stage of life and not its end. Needless to say, the imminantist logic of Modern life cannot allow for such a conception of community or such a narrative (or any narrative for that matter). Only worship embodied in the practices of Liturgy can embody such radical political horizons, and only a liturgical perspective can provide the counter to such the imminant fundamentalism espoused by the likes of Walters.

Why Altars and States Don't Mix

2007-12-07T17:31:00.002+11:00

A November 2007 edition of Catholic News had Bishop Kevin Manning of the Diocese of Paramatta reminding couples marrying in the Church of the Instruction of the Roman Missal forbidding the signing of marriage documents on the Eucharistic Altar.

"At the Altar", Bishop Manning said, "the Memorial of the Lord is celebrated and his Body and Blood given to the people. Therefore, the Church's writers have seen in the altar a sign of Christ Himself". As such, Bishop Manning regards the signing of marriage documents, a requirement of the Federal Marriage Act (and thus bearing no relevance to the Liturgical Rites) as inappropriate.

The good Bishop has made a valid point and should be supported unequivocally on this. The author also thinks that a more radical point needs to be made here, for the practice of signing marriage documents is symbolic of the age long tussle between Church and State for authority over the lives of peoples. Practice of document signature is symbolic of the tension over the question regarding who grants validity to a marriage. The Sacramental view embraced by the Church suggests only God grants such legitimacy, whereas the contractual standpoint suggests only the State's imprimatur can validate the joining between a man and a woman.

One could extend this to indicate that the choice over the more persuasive standpoint can also indicate an expression of where one's ultimate political loyalties lie. The State, as Cavanaugh repeatedly says in his works, is not a neutral arena for the furtherance of a person's agenda. Like the machines in The Matrix, the State has its own agenda and instrumentalises the person. Constitutive of its agenda is the marginalisation of any religious culture, or making such a culture subservient to the logic of the State, which many from Cavanaugh to Giddens to Zizek agree is one of violence and domination. In short, expressing one's loyalty to the state, is to subject himself to a way of life contrary to the example laid down by Jesus, the founder of the Church.

However, if one really lives out the hymn and "Stand[s] for God", then ultimate loyalty must lie in the Church that Christ founded, the locus of which lies in the Altar on which the Eucharistic Liturgy brings Christ, and his Body (ie the Church) into being. And if that is true, then the practice of signing marriage on the altar constitutes an act of recognition of the Church's subservience to the State. For the Christian, such an act must be more than an act of disrespect, as the Liturgy Lines seem to want to reduce it to. Recognising the ultimate validity of an instrument of the State on the very site on which one expresses loyalty to Christ can be nothing less than an act of treason.

James K A Smith, Postmodernism and Radical Orthodoxy

2007-10-26T09:21:00.001+10:00

A October 24 2007 post of the the Church and Postmodern Culture blog featured an entry by James K A Smith, entitled Postmodern Liturgy? A Conversation About Christian Worship and Postmodernism. Smith is among the Evangelical members of the Radical Orthodoxy movement, and his Introduction to Radical Orthodoxy and Speech and Theology come highly recommended, especially for those those interested in postmodern theology and the philosophy of language in relation to the transcendent.

The post featured a brief reflection of his discussions at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship about his latest contribution Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church. In that post you would also find an short but nonetheless interesting audio segment of the conversation, concerning his engagement with postmodernism and Christian theology, which results in his affirming some quintessential Catholic treasures, in particular tradition, aesthetics and liturgy. Indeed, it is interesting that Smith calls for evangelicals to be more "catholic" in the audio segment. It is not quite the affirmation of Catholicism, but it does get pretty close.

The author has had trouble transferring the link and thus recommends clicking on the link to the blog, and then clicking on the link marked "mp3 file" in the post. It is well worth the effort.

Hail the New Caesar!

2007-10-22T09:23:00.001+10:00

On the 9th September 2007, a member of the episcopacy of the Underground Church, Bishop Han Dingxiang (韓鼎詳) of of the Diocese of Yong Nian in Hebei Province, died in the custody of the Chinese authorities, after 8 year's inprisonment. Within 6 hours after his death, authorities cremated his body without ceremony. Only a few close relatives, summoned to his bedside before his death, witnessed his cremation. Because of this, no investigation can be carried out to as to the cause of his death.

The life of Bishop Han is one case of a systematic persecution of the Catholic Church by the government of China, who insist on subjecting the authority of the Church to the Authority of the Communist Party. According to the Cardinal Kung Foundation, Bishop Han had spent 35 of his 71 years in either in a labour camp or in some form of detention by the the government. His last arrest on November 20, 1999, was conducted while he was leading a religious retreat for some of nuns. During his detention, he was moved to various unknown locations for 4 years, after which he was moved to a police family unit where he stayed for another two years. On September 23, 2005, Bishop Han was secretly moved to an unknown location and disappeared ever since until his death.

Bishop Han is not the only subject of persecution by the Chinese government. Numerous Protestant, Falun Gong and other sects are victims of arbitrary detention and torture by the Chinese authorities. This is but part of the regime of terror that the Chinese government has become infamous for.

What response does the international community take? It trades with it, following the age old myth that market liberalisation eventually would lead to the flourishing of freedoms enjoyed in the West. However, it is meet to consider Cavanaugh's point in Torture and Eucharist about the link between the free market and totalitarian regimes. Markets don't bring down dictatorships, they buttress them by first undermining the intermediary social structures that mediate between the individual and the State, leaving the former with no shelter against the latter's brute coercive power.

Sadly developments in China also hint towards the aggrandisement of the central narrative of modern societies, which in turn indicts the international community as a whole. In the end, what counts is not the dignity of the human person, but the progress of the logic of capitalist production. The fact that the international community, instead of exposing China to the tide of righteous anger that was meted out on Burma, grants her what can be considered a symbol of a country's civilisational achievement - the 2008 Olympics - not only demeans the stature of the event, but also undermines the so called free-societies that would partake in the event and in doing so, tacitly legitimise the regime that will never stop at persecuting the Bishop Hans of this world.

The Family First Party

2007-10-13T20:39:00.001+10:00

The Author recently participated in a State By-election in the seat of Brisbane Central. This has prompted a consideration of the behaviour of one of the contending parties for this seat, the Family First Party. Many accuse the party of being a ragtag bunch of fundamentalists, only concerned with who sleeps with whom, and who would unreservedly support whatever the "conservative" Liberal-National Coalition would vote on. The recent opposition by the party to first the inhumane legislation on off-shore asylum seeker processing (more on that in a later wonderpost), and aspects of the market fundamentalist "WorkChoices" legislation, have demonstrated that there is more to the party than these caricatures.

A 24th July post of a blog called The Baliset Palimpsest engaged in a series of statistical analysis and came up with a picture that, to the mind of the Author, would make the party qualify for the status of "Very Complex". The results are worth extensive quoting and are found below.

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Voting Patterns:
It must be remembered that there are many Senate divisions that are of a purely procedural nature and both the major parties vote the same way. This was true a surprising 59% of the time from 2001-2005, but dropped sharply to 32% of the time after 2005.

However, if one excludes these times and only counts the times that Family First voted with one major party and against the other (that is, on votes of substance where the major parties disagreed) then Family First favoured the Opposition 175 times (30% of all votes) as opposed to the Coalition 119 times (20% of all votes).

Even more extraordinarily, Family First voted with the Greens on no fewer than 198 occasions, when both were voting in concert to oppose the Government, a significant 34% of the time. The natural antipathy between Family First and the Greens makes this revelation of more than passing interest.

Family First saw fit to oppose both major parties on 87 occasions, or 15% of the time.

Conclusion:
One could look at the above results in a number of ways.
Firstly, Steve Fielding's attendance in the Senate chamber reflects well on his diligence as a parliamentarian, equalling that of ex-Democrat Meg Lees, and greatly exceeding that of other independent Senators of recent time.

Secondly, Family First have distinguished themselves by not slavishly following the voting pattern of either major party. However, this should cause the Coalition to totally re-assess whether Family First deserve their preferences in the unqualified way they have been dispensed previously. Family First voted with Labour 50% more often than the Coalition when real differences of opinion (not just procedural matters) were at stake. The Coalition should be very cautious about giving Family First any endorsement when they now have a track record like this.

Catholic Presidential Candidates: a View from George Weigel

2007-09-27T15:05:00.001+10:00

George Weigel, Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington DC, in his weekly column provided an interesting critique of Christian, especially Catholic, politicians in light of the upcoming American Presidential election. The point of critique centres on the compartmentalisation of one's faith when performing one's functions as a public servant, despite the fundamental change to one's ontology that entry into the Church brings about. It is worth quoting his Sept 21 column, Please Pass the Ontology, in full

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Please pass the ontology

A philosophically-minded young friend recently sent me a fine rant, after having watched a presidential candidates' cattle call on CNN. The discussion had focused on religion.
Several candidates, who identified themselves as Catholics, had indicated that their Christianity was rather easily bracketed when they put on their hats as public servants. "Does ontology mean nothing to these people?" my friend asked. "Do they even know what it is?"
Well, no. They don't. And that's a problem.
By "ontology," my correspondent was using the technical vocabulary of philosophy to re-capture an image once familiar to generations of Catholics from the Baltimore Catechism, the image of an "indelible mark" imprinted on the soul by certain sacraments. This image of the "indelible mark" was intended to convey a basic truth of Catholic faith: that the reception of certain sacraments changed the recipient forever, by conferring on him or her a new identity --- not in the psychological sense of that overused term, but substantively. Or, if you'll pardon the term, ontologically.
Baptism is a sacrament with what we might call ontological heft. To become a Christian through baptism is qualitatively different from becoming a citizen, a member of the Supreme Court bar, a Detroit Tigers fan, a collector of vintage Volvos, a bourbon drinker, a member of the Democratic or Republican parties, a lifelong student of Dante, or a trout fisherman.
When one becomes a Christian through baptism and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, one is changed in a fundamental way. As St. Paul taught those rowdy Corinthians, one becomes a "new creation" (2 Cor 5: 17).
That ontological change in baptism (and I swear that's the last time I'll use the o-word) incorporates a Catholic into the Church. The Church is not incidental to our identity as new creations in Christ; we don't "join" the Church the way we join the Rotary, the Kiwanis, the American Association of University Women, the A.M.A., the American Legion or my beloved Society for the Restoration of Lost Positives ("ept," "ert," etc.).
Being a Catholic Christian engages who-I-am in a substantively different way than any other aspect of my "identity" --- not because I think that's the case, or because I feel that's the case, but because that is the case: objectively, not subjectively. Baptism has real effects; it changes us forever.
So when a candidate for public office avers, on the one hand, that his or her "membership in the faith community" is deeply personal, or a matter of "my relationship with Jesus," and then suggests that being a Catholic Christian is a compartment of life that can be hermetically sealed off from first principles of justice (i.e., the principles involved in abortion, euthanasia and embryo-destructive stem-cell research), we're dealing with a confused camper --- one might even say, a camper with a severe identity-crisis.
That most Catholic politicians don't understand this is obvious: that's why, were the entire Catholic contingent in Congress to be replaced by Mormons, Capitol Hill would certainly lose some good people --- but the social doctrine of the Church and the Church's teaching on the life issues (both of which involve publicly accessible moral truths, not sectarian "positions") would have a better chance of implementation.
The politicos aren't alone, however. How many Catholics in the United States understand that their baptism made them a "new creation"? Decades of faux-catechesis, in which the only "indelible marks" to be found in religious education classrooms were made by magic markers on felt banners, have left us severely weakened in our self-understanding, such that too many Catholics imagine their Christianity to be the religious variant of their membership in other voluntary organizations. Thus the challenge posed to the official teachers of the Church --- especially bishops and pastors --- is a massive one.
Given the campaign calendar, we'll soon be embroiled in another round of the religion-and-politics wars. Reminding all Catholics about what baptism really does to us would be a good place to begin calling the office-seekers to account.

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