GETTING ON WITH THINGS...
Tomorrow Mac (Mulier Fortis) will be coming over to take some pictures of me on my bike, preparing for my Sponsored Cycle Ride - and we'll post them on this blog and elsewhere...this will be extremely satisfactory to Fr Tim (Hermeneutic ConTimuity) and others who have been in despair because my Blog is so technically under-developed ("But, Joanna, it's all so easy..."look, there's no need to be afraid of it..."etc...etc...etc...). I have promised her supper and we'll talk and munch chocolates...Jamie is away (sailing in the English Channel - don't know if the poor chap is getting our weather or France's...)
While the Bogles have been holidaying, the dear Holy Father has been, too - on various websites there are some sweet pictures of him on country walks and meeting children who run up to give him bunches of flowers and get hugged and blessed...and he gave a a v. interesting talk to local clergy when he met them at gathering at a local church...What he says about Vatican 11 is really illuminating and inspiring.
Spent most of the day on the computer, features for various publications for Sept and Oct. You can read me in the current Crisis magazine, and also in the Catholic Times and I've got a feature about the Pope in New Directions magazine which is run by an Anglican team linked to Forward in Faith.
Cycled out to arrange printing of 5,000 handbills for this November's Towards Advent Festival at Westminster Cathedral. It's on Nov 3rd - mark the date now. Speakers include convert from Islam Aghi Clovis, also Fr Richard Whinder talking about the life of Bishop Richard Challoner, and author Christopher Martin with an illustrated talk on "Our Heritage of English Catholic Churches". There's music from the choir of More House School, and tours of some of the Cathedral treasures, not normally on display to the public...
3 comments:
Here's the Holy Father,
"And then came the second upheaval in 1989, the fall of the communist regimes. But the response was not a return to the faith, as one perhaps might have expected; it was not the rediscovery that the Church, with the authentic Council, had provided the response. The response was, instead, total skepticism, so-called post-modernity. Nothing is true; everyone must decide on his own how to live. There was the affirmation of materialism, of a blind pseudo-rationalistic skepticism that ends in drugs, that ends in all these problems that we know, and the pathways to faith are again closed, because the faith is so simple, so evident: no, nothing is true; truth is intolerant, we cannot take that road."
I think he is being way too pessimistic here. What we are seeing is that, after a very long period in which the Church has been increasingly marginalised, the religious stories are coming off the "faith" sections in the back of the papers, and onto the front pages. I don't know if Joanna has noticed that her TV appearances are getting more numerous and high-powered, but careerwise it's a good thing for her.
I'd like to know exactly what the Pope means by "blind pseudo- rationalistic scepticism that ends in drugs". Is he talking about scientism, consumerism, or environmentalism, or does he mean all three? They've got the interesting characteristic that they are both opposed and blend into each other. "vitamins are good for you" sums it up. Superfically it is a scientific claim, actually it appeals to a magical sense of what it means to be a "healthy person", and it is extremely convenient to those who want to distract consumers from price.
'Blind, pseudo-rationalistic scepticism that ends in drugs' refers to nihilistic atheism from which drugs provide a false escape in terms of personal comfort. I am not, however, sure whether many drugs addicts see it in this way as I doubt if scepticism enters the equation when experimentation starts. But part of the problem he identifies is that many have ceased to believe in God as his existence cannot any longer be proved by rational argument and, without faith, the core Christian beliefs - the Trinity, Virgin Birth, Resurrection - amount to fairy tales. The Thomist proofs of the existance of God, based on Aristotelian premises, have been proved scientificslly flawed. The naive assumption of Evangelicals that the majority have an interior 'God-shaped hole' that longs to be filled is, I believe, nonsense. In the post-modern world objective truth is generally disqualified and pseudo-rationalistic scepticism has taken its place. Without the gift of faith most Christian claims no longer make much sense but drugs often fill a vacuum left by the absence of religious belief. That, I believe, is the problem the Holy Father is identifying and has nothing to do with consumerism. The difficulties are much deeper even though consumerism is also a powerful compensation.
The Holy Father doesn't do pessimism. (But then, he doesn't do secular optimism, either - he fully understands, and explains very well, the difference between that and Christian hope.) What he is articulating here is not his own point of view, but the one against which he wishes to argue: that reason and faith are mutually exclusive.
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