Christian Ecology: Blink (and I'll miss it)

Christian Ecology Link is, as regular readers of this blog may have spotted, a cause close to my heart. I was in at its inception, as the Christian Ecology Group. It happened during a conference of the Ecology Party in the Winter Gardens at Malvern: a handful of us met up for prayer, sharing the feeling that Christians needed to be involved in politics, but equally that charity was at times lacking during the conference proceedings. We sought accordingly to bring Christian insights into our party membership, and - upon returning home - Ecology Party insights into our church membership. And so it has gone on for thirty something years.

But what's this? The Tablet today reports a name change to "Green Christian" (ugh!) and that "we felt that the name Christian Ecology Link was a little bit too 1980s for communications purposes."

"Green Christian"? What's that, another denomination? It certainly doesn't encapsulate so well the important "linkage" between Christianity and the Creation, still neglected by many within their church communities, still a matter of raised eyebrows on the part of secularists in the environmental movement.

No, this seems to me change for change's sake, a distraction and an expense. I fear the above "we" does not include "I".

The Tablet's new prescription

The familiar layout of my weekly Tablet newspaper has suddenly changed this week. I'm not sure I like it much. From a comparison with last week's issue, you can see how the Contents page has been transformed. I find it now a whole lot more fussy, with the pictures dominating the text.

On Your... Eminence!

"Marx" is not a name to associate immediately with a Prince of the Catholic Church, yet Cardinal Reinhard Marx it is seen here with Catherine Pepinster, editor of The Tablet: he was talking in Oxford this evening.

The Archbishop of Munich, one of Pope Francis' "C8", and a heavy hitter in every sense, was giving the 2014 Newman Lecture, his theme “A Certain Idea of Europe”: I was glad to have been there. Not just for the substance, but for the reassurance of seeing that there's at least one very human presence besides Pope Francis in the top echelons of the Church - someone with an internationalist outlook, able to communicate 99% effectively in a foreign language (if not more than one), sporting not a vestige of scarlet but what looked like designer stubble, and referencing - his only mention of an American - Philip Roth, for goodness' sake.

Europe, the Cardinal said, was in pole position to dominate the year's headlines, not just being in the news, but making the news. The commemoration of the centenary of the beginning of World War 1 was as important as the elections to the European Parliament this May. "All the soldiers who fought in the terrible civil war of Europe were baptised and had learned the 10 Commandments. This history is not over, but very present... Europe is still in the making."

Peace and security are two sides of the same coin, he stressed, paying tribute to the EEC/EU for providing us with a secure peace for longer than his own lifetime.

I buy the Cardinal's idea that only the Church can bring the Gospel to society, and what indeed is the future of mankind without the Gospel? As he stressed, he isn't a politician, but I'm glad there are such as he intent to "inspire the European project with the voice of the Gospel" (another Marx-ism), and to urge all of us in the rich West to learn a culture of restraint.

Christmas walk

Like last year, but along a slightly different trajectory, we looked over the curve of Coldwell Bottom during the course of our Christmas walk. The six of us parked at Pinkham on a beautiful morning, three walking all the way home.

This was after a lateish breakfast: we had been to Midnight Mass - the two of us, plus all four of our (normally non-church-going) children, two with appendages. The experience gave rise to much discussion.

Unlike the Queen's Speech at 3 p.m. We all listened, but some with less than the fullest attention. A pity, as it was good.

PS Lawrence Freeman OSB wrote as follows in The Tablet later:

The Queen knows where she belongs. When she spoke her Christmas message, it resonated from more than a geographical place. It touched the soul of a people she had served for 60 years. She had seen great changes – “many of them for the better”, as she said. She was looking backwards… but… she also looked forwards, not predicting what would come but with a hope born of a personal vision not of statistics or planning. Not many monarchs or other leaders have spoken recently from such a place of faith, rooted in such a defined cultural and geographical identity... It was not a sermon. Perhaps she has heard enough of those. It was more like a teaching, carrying an authority that rested on its ability to clarify and advise without any feeling of imposition. 

His disciples once asked a desert father on his deathbed how they should live. He replied that he had always made up his mind, whenever he had asked any of them to do something, not to be angry if they did not do it. “And so we have always lived in peace.” The Queen’s rather similarly toned message to the people she has served was wrapped in the reflections of a grandmother, the head of the Commonwealth and of the armed forces. We saw a baby being photographed, sportsmen running and soldiers in action. But between these images was the real message – to take time to pause and regain the “balance between action and reflection” that the intense distractedness of our culture has lost us. Temporary retreat from the world allows us to understand the world better, and the essential values of family, friendships and good neighbourliness come back into focus. 

The generic, safely non-religious, word for this in a secular society is the rather neutral “reflection”. The Queen used this, but drew from an older and richer vocabulary too when she spoke of “contemplation, prayer and meditation”. Reflection, she said, did not mean only looking back. Whoever takes time to pause in the midst of activity, to be still in these moments of contemplation, may discover “surprising results”. 

In the light of the Christian mystical tradition, this is, of course, a very English understatement. But who is better able to deliver a powerful message with such a throwaway, inoffensive line? What lay behind it, however, was wrapped in the talk of the new baby who had been inducted into a “joyful faith of duty and service”. The teaching ended in an explicit link between the need for this space for prayer in modern life and the love of God, which we find there and in which we grow. And without blinking, she reminded us of the staggering truth that nothing is beyond the reach of this love. 

It is rare in our culture for a sincere statement of such clarity and depth to be made at all, and especially rare for it to be made so convincingly.

Art eclectic

Chris James teaches at Cirencester College. Somehow, he also finds time to paint and sculpt: I met him at the Gardens Gallery yesterday, where he has an exhibition. I liked this colourful take on the Ruskin Mill lake, inspiration for a number of the works in what is a cheerful show. It is more three-dimensional than it looks - a virtual collage.

Chris moaned a little about the scaffolding surrounding the Gallery, which - he surmised - accounted for the small number of visits. Not the problem experienced by The Wilson, so we read in the paper: crowds have flooded in to see round since the reopening three weeks ago. I sat next to the Friends' Chair, Gina Wilson (no relation) last night, who enthused about the transformation.

On my other side was Barbara McNaught, whose art is non-visual: she has just published her second collection of poems, Strings of Pearls.

The art of comedy has also been on public display of late, though Jeremy Paxman's Newsnight interview (viral on YouTube) with Russell Brand was not entirely humorous. Indeed there was a deadly seriousness about Brand's sermon on revolution.

Far indeed from Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII's encyclical, published 50 years ago this year. "His is not a message of revolution," writes Bruce Kent in this week's Tablet. "We exhort our sons to take an active part in public life," wrote that good Pope. Brand, on the other hand, says he has never voted, and has no intention of doing so.

What credit will it reflect on the New Statesman for allowing him in as guest editor I wonder? It's paradoxical that someone so intelligent should wish to be so destructive - of our society. After all, "you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them." I thought Paxman was excellent.

Thomas (b. 1979, so four years Brand's junior) says that he "does seem to be able to articulate a lot of what the youth feel about modern Britain - in that there’s no point being involved in the process. The problem is that he doesn’t present an alternative. There is no alternative. So what next?"

As I see it, the RBs of this world wield immense power through their super ability to articulate. So, when their message is a despairing one, it tends to remove hope from you and me. We can only do right what we can, in the relationships we have. No? Some of the most right will be works of art.

Fatball slim

In June, I republished in this blog the article I had written for The Tablet on an alternative approach to pilgrimage. Clearly the author of the Parish Practice article in last week's Tablet hadn't taken it to heart, because there he encouraged every parish to consider a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a means of spiritual enrichment. This spurred me into writing a Letter to the Editor:

In our diocese there are in excess of 150 parishes, and England and Wales is made up of 24 dioceses. If each were to galvanise 20 parishioners into making tracks for Israel - inevitably it would be by air - this would release more than 50,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. When Jesus offered to come to the Centurian's house, to minister to his paralysed servant, he was told this was unnecessary: "Just give the word and my servant will be cured." (Matthew 8) Is it really beyond us to learn how to acquire spiritual enrichment today at a lower carbon cost?

I was optimistic about publication, but on opening this week's number... disappointed. Not a sign of my Letter, even in the online Letters Extra. Instead, there's one urging Holy Land pilgrims to make a 20kms. detour from Jerusalem - to visit a village that hosts the country's only brewery, "open to visitors". Jesus wept.

Optimistically again, I hung a bird feeder outside our kitchen window, and filled it with fat balls a month or more ago. Nothing happened... till the other day, when I noticed the fat balls had shrunk quite a bit. And at lunchtime today, we discovered why. This tiny mouse had crawled inside the feeder.

It's the last Summer Bank Holiday weekend, and this evening the culmination of the last Ashes Test has been clashing with Acts 1 and 2 of the last of seven Wagner operas at the Proms: the cricket went out with a frustrating (but hardly mouse-like) whimper, Mark Elder's Parsifal with a satisfying bang.

"Boldly not to go"

This is the title The Tablet has given to an article I wrote for them earlier this year about pilgrimage. After some delay, it is - I see from their website - included in this week's issue, dated in fact 15th June. I reproduce it here with permission of the Publisher: note the weblink I have included.

The photograph of Caroline's and my shadows I took walking early one morning on the Via de la Plata in Spain in April 2010: originally, The Tablet asked me for an illustration, so I sent this, which they seemed to like ("A good generic pilgrimage shot, and applicable to a pilgrimage almost anywhere"). But I see that instead they have now included with the printed article a cartoon which seems to me to miss the point I was making.

_____________

"What is the essence of ‘pilgrimage’? Martin Davis explores the question using the hypothetical meeting of a fictional Justice and Peace group of a notional Catholic parish, St Bilbo’s … but the issues raised are very real indeed.

Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate had been the subject of discussion in the St Bilbo’s parish Justice and Peace group the previous year. “We must recognise our grave duty,” members noted (in paragraph 50), “to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it, and continue to cultivate it.” Inspired by Cafod’s LiveSimply campaign, members began to ask themselves how, as witnesses to their faith, they could each live more sustainably. “We are used to fasting during Lent,” one said. “But then resume normal life. So what is the impact of the choices we make daily, upon other people and the future of the planet?”  

This led on to a study of how members used energy, both as individuals and within their families. Roughly 15 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent represents our UK average annual “footprint”. For those living near the breadline and in inner cities, it can be less: for others, more. They read a suggestion made by the ecumenical charity, Christian Ecology Link (CEL): a sustainable allowance for Christians seeking to walk the talk, CEL proposed, should be 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year (2.5 tonnes is a sixth of the current average: CEL concedes this is a target it will take most of us many years to reach).

The problem is this, the group realised: much of our “allowance” would be absorbed by things it’s possible to reduce, but not dramatically – food and drink, home heating. Then there’s commuting to and from work. But what about other travel? Finding the tonnage attributable to particular journeys was not difficult. London to Glasgow and back by plane: half a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent; a flight to Hong Kong: 3.5 tonnes. Clearly, flying distorts our carbon footprint considerably. “But surely, doesn’t it all depend on the reasons for our trip?” one member argued. “Last year, my mother went to Chicago to visit her dying brother: wasn’t that better than my friend flying to Vilnius for a stag weekend?” The group decided a discussion along these lines, while interesting, could only end up as negative: “We need some positive response within the parish to the challenge of carbon reduction.”

A quiet voice spoke up: “Didn’t I read somewhere that the Stations of the Cross were invented at a particular point in time, a time when it became impossible to follow Christ’s last steps in Jerusalem, on the ground, because of hostilities? As pilgrimages have never been more popular than they are today, perhaps we could find a new way of doing pilgrimage closer to home.”

But what was “pilgrimage”? First and foremost there had to be a journey. It may be enlightening, to browse through the four million links that a search for “virtual pilgrimage” gives on Google. Ultimately, though, pilgrimage is not for couch potatoes. A journey is needed, then, and one with a point in view. A pilgrim is not a wanderer.

Nor does pilgrimage equate with tourism, often though tourists chart their way to pilgrim destinations. One group member had walked to Santiago de Compostela: “Many on the route”, she said, “admitted they were there just there for an active holiday. They saw stamps in their pilgrim passports as mere souvenirs, unconcerned as they were about the historic link between pilgrimage and that unfashionable word penitence.” What defines a pilgrim is the spirit of penitence in its widest sense: it’s as necessary as a hat and a staff. Parallel to an examination of conscience, a pilgrim prepares for departure. Inessential things are left behind. Attaining the necessary fitness is a penance. Leaving home on an uncertain journey implies vulnerability and trust. Pilgrims rely on the kindness of strangers – other pilgrims and those living along the way. They put aside their usual comforts, but for what? So that they can renew their faith, and become better examples to others.

Keeping these core values in mind, the group prepared St Bilbo’s for its first alternative pilgrimage day. It was carefully planned not to be just another parish outing. Rogation Sunday was chosen, as there’s a long tradition (now largely unobserved) for Rogation-tide processions. After Mass, a quorum of parishioners of all ages set out in the rain. With them were a number of residents of the local Cheshire Home using wheelchairs, and a handful from the neighbouring St Frodo’s Anglican parish. The route lay along part of the parish boundary and then into the adjoining parish. A halt was made outside one group member’s home, where the parish sister led penitential prayers.  

“Every place on God’s earth can be a holy one,” she said. “We don’t have to travel afar to find him. We don’t need a celebrity destination. Each day, he’s there, where we are, in our midst. Didn’t Moses find himself on holy ground without even knowing it (Exodus 3:5)? So let us now walk on in silence, reflecting together on what it means to walk humbly in God’s world, to walk lightly on his earth.”  

In time for a late lunch, the party, a little wet, reached the hall of the adjoining parish’s primary school, where everybody pooled what they had brought, and some nursed others’ blisters. “How does it happen”, asked the parish priest, “that when we bring food to share, there is always some left over?” He then spoke about the Sacrament of the Sick, and administered it to those who wanted it. Many came forward. A member of the organising group reminded everyone how, in former days, your pilgrimage didn’t end at the destination: you had to walk home again. “However,” he said, “for those who would like a lift, I’ve arranged a minibus.”

At the St Bilbo’s AGM, there was the chance for feedback. One parishioner said: “We are a large parish. I always sit in the same pew, and used to exchange the sign of peace with someone I didn’t know. Through the pilgrimage walk, I’ve made a new friendship. How can we love our neighbour, if we don’t know them?” Another benefited from meeting the Cheshire Home residents, and had now become a regular visitor there. For a number, the pilgrimage route had taken them to parts of their neighbourhood they had never before visited: resolutions were made to explore their local area more, and to consider its needs. Nobody opposed the suggestion: “Let’s do it again next year – and invite others!”

■ Martin Davis is a parishioner of St Gregory’s, Cheltenham, and convenes Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link.“

Angry atheists

"Why, O Lord, does your existence make atheists so angry?" asks Clifford Longley in his column in this week's edition of The Tablet. The article was of particular interest to me, as its author - a leading Catholic journalist - talks about his atheist father. "I was brought up a thoroughgoing atheist myself, which makes me a victim of what [Richard] Dawkins has labelled child abuse - the raising of children with the same religious beliefs as their parents."

Caroline and I, by contrast, brought up our four children as Christians, but at least one, probably more, are now non-believers, though whether or not they would describe themselves as atheist I know not.

We loved having our granddaughter Ida to stay for four nights (she is today back at school in Bristol), but I forbore to take her to church with me on Sunday.

Some passion from Teague

Catholic writer and journalist Ellen Teague last night came from London to meet a couple of dozen of us at our final Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link gathering for 2012: her theme, on which she spoke with some passion, was “Christian ecology?” An imperative for our times!

Ellen laid out her credentials with the aid of slides she had taken whilst teaching in Nigeria, working for CAFOD during the period of the Ethiopian famine and in more recent times advocating on the climate change front with the Columban Missionaries.

During her 30 or so years’ involvement in campaigns on behalf of church organisations, Ellen said she had witnessed a growing awareness that development and the environment were connected. But it was not just those living now on the margin, with whom Christians should be showing solidarity: the problem was that so many are only getting through today by compromising tomorrow. What happens to those dependent on firewood when all the trees have been cut down?

And yet how little do we hear in our media about modern Rainforest martyrs, Chico Mendez and Sister Dorothy Stang, murdered in Brazil! Or the priests and picketing people of Mindanao in the Philippines, risking their lives to celebrate mass together on the route heavy vehicles were using to open up new mines.

Father Sean McDonagh has described the eucharist as the sacrament of ecology: how can Christians preach the good news of life in abundance, without being concerned for the disappearance of the glaciers in the Andes, the melting water of which is vital for the citizens of Lima?

As a Catholic, Ellen had long wondered why her church was so slow to embrace initiatives which were fully in accord with Catholic Social Teaching, such as Creation Time – in recent years celebrated by other Christians throughout Europe each Autumn. One reason was the church’s anthropocentric vision. Humans are effectively edging others off the planet. When considering the plight of the unborn, well, the church clearly sees abortion as a sin. But how do we describe a tragedy such as Bhopal? Someone’s sin? No, our reaction is more like, “A pity!” We seem to lack any moral code to cope with biocide: it’s as if there’s a failure of communication between religion and science.

And in a clergy-centred church, what matters greatly is the lead priests give within their parishes and dioceses: an enquiry was made to one of our leading seminaries, “How much time do you give to teaching creation theology to your candidates for the priesthood?” “Half a day,” came the reply. Not half a day a week, not half a day a month – half a day in the whole six-year course! But maybe the biggest obstacle we face is that priests don’t have children and grandchildren through whose eyes we (who do have them) can so easily see the future.

“The environment is not something you can dip into,” Ellen told us. What we have to develop is a sustained focus upon the meaning of God’s covenant with creation, outlined in the Book of Genesis. Quoting theologian Mary Grey, she urged us to become “a prophetic community working for our own transformation.” As people of faith, we need to step up.

Her words were, the audience agreed during the plenary session that followed Ellen’s talk, some challenge. We were able to reflect upon this at Compline, with which the evening ended. Deacon Robin had helpfully selected as our reading a passage from the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, concluding: “God has called you and he will not fail you.”

Winter water - 2

I was struck - as I often find myself - by something in the Jesuit, Guy Consolmagno's Tablet column this week: "As the nuns used to tell us about occasions of sin, we are in a situation we should have avoided. Two centuries of dumping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to trouble; as surely as sitting at the bar of a strip club, pretending nothing will happen."

And linked to that, Kumi Naido of Greenpeace International made a strong impression on the World Service's "Hard Talk" recently: towards the end of his interview (at the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha), he said, "Our religious leaders have been deafening in their silence, by not standing up strongly to speak for God's creation." Amen to that.

Finally, this photograph - not unconnected (perhaps): I paused illegally on the hard shoulder of the M5 this morning near Bredon, to take it just where the road crosses the River Avon. (I was on my way to visit Charlotte, having discovered that Upton High Street at least was not flooded.)

Half full or half empty?

Francesco Piemontese was performing in our Pittville Pump Room last night, and I now regret my absence. Instead, I went to Charlton Kings, to hear John Wilkins, former editor of The Tablet, discussing the relative successes and failures of Vatican II, 50 years on from its inception: not a particularly illuminating talk, I'm bound to say, and rather too full of anecdote. He started by asking the question, "Was the Council a glass half full or a glass half-empty?" And I suppose the answer he effectively gave was "both" - which we all of course knew. What I am more interested in is, where do we go from here? As Wilkins said, Vatican II saw the Catholic Church opening its arms to the modern world at a time when the modern world was becoming the post-modern world. "When the post-modern world comes to a close," he went on to say rather lamely, "is when we shall really need the Council's teaching." But meanwhile?

Bishop Kalilombe RIP

Those were the days when I was busy organising events for the Cheltenham RC Deanery: one such took place on Whit weekend 1984 at what was then Charlton Park Convent. We had a beautiful day for it, and a cake to match, in celebration of the Church's birthday.

Our special guest was Bishop Patrick Kalilombe, living here in exile from his native Malawi. The first Malawian White Father and first Malawian-born Bishop of Lilongwe, he proposed the idea of a self-ministering, self-reliant, self-propagating church in the spirit of Vatican II. All of which President Hastings Banda saw as sufficient threat for him to expel Bishop Pat from Malawi. Only in 1996 was he able to return.

Meanwhile, amongst other posts, he worked in the Mission Department at Selly Oak Colleges, and for one lovely afternoon in Cheltenham we had the benefit of his extremely fresh-sounding teaching.

Much of the above background information comes from an item in this week's Tablet, which reports the sad news of Bishop Pat's death on 24th September aged 79.

Powerless

Sara Maitland's column in this week's Tablet is headed, "Electricity is a pivotal example of and a rich metaphor for the Holy Spirit." Sara is always worth reading, based as she is in a remote corner of Scotland, and often reflecting upon the elements, in this instance causing power cuts. Both electricity and the Holy Spirit, she reflects, bring us light, warmth, joy and love.

Edmund (who lives in a world of computers) was for once powerless too this weekend: leaving his telephone (unintentionally) in the train, he went on a green woodwork course in the woods at Prinknash. No power tools, just a foot-operated lathe; but by the end of two days he'd made two beautiful stools, one for each of the boys. Excellent!

Bevan Boys

This week's Tablet carries an article about the late Roger Bevan, musician, and his amazing family. His granddaughters Sophie and Mary are both ENO solists, Sophie recently receiving acclaim for her part ("an eager little minx") in Der Rosenkavalier.

I came under "Mr. Bevan's" influence in the mid-50s, shortly after he had arrived to teach music at Downside. I was in my last year at the nearby prep school, All Hallows, and the school choir was co-opted to supplement the treble line for Messiah in Downside Abbey. (From the photograph, you can judge that it wasn't a minimalist performance. Incidentally, I spy Canon Thomas Atthill standing just behind Roger Bevan.)

It was the first time I had sung in a proper choir, and I still recall the buzz it gave and my huge debt owed to the unassumingly great Mr. Bevan - much the same sort of debt (albeit in a minor way) that his children and now grandchildren owe him: for a lifetime's love of music.

Old pals, Old Palace

When Fr. Felix Stephens and I were in the same house at school, we scrambled to get the county cricket scores, he supporting Gloucestershire and I Warwickshire. Bumping into him in Oxford on Sunday morning after a long gap, neither of us had anything to say about the dismal performance by England's batsmen in Abu Dhabi.

It was chance that took Caroline and me to the Catholic Chaplaincy for Mass, and chance also that Felix happened to be preaching: the desert and the marketplace was his theme - expounded at rather greater length than I'm currently used to sitting through, but probably not so fully as in the discourses we were subjected to when I was an undergraduate (and Fr. Michael Hollings the Chaplain).

Felix, evidently not at present able to live up to his name, hinted that, not just he but all of Oxford was seething at the decision to withdraw him from his post as Master of St Benet's at the end of the current academic year.

A rather cosy club

On Saturday, driving through Winchcombe at teatime, we saw guests streaming out of St Peter's after a wedding (not this one), all the men wearing dinner jackets and the women slinky evening dresses. Yesterday, I went to a party given by friends whose daughter's wedding (again, not the one in this picture) had also taken place the day before: a mother of another bride-to-be was bemoaning how the village churches around her home only seated "about 60 at a squash", and were therefore far too small for the wedding they had in mind. Two others I spoke to at this same party were discussing the probability that their parish church would be declared redundant: "there were only three of us at Morning Service today."

Clearly, there is still a strong wish amongst many for a church wedding, albeit attenders dress for them with the subsequent dancing in mind. Yet there is insufficient commitment to keep the parish church going week in, week out.

The Jesuit theologian Fr. Gerald O'Collins, giving the Tablet lecture earlier this month, set out seven dreams for the future of the church. One dream is of a church reaching out to others - to those who have lost touch with the church, as well as to other Christians and to members of other faiths. "At times they feel that they have intruded on a rather cosy club, made up of the regular parishioners."

And another of Fr. O'Collins' dreams is prompted by the human race seeming bent on destroying the earth and itself. "The cry of the poor earth must be heeded." He dreams of a church serving those in distress - linking the altar and the soup kitchen. "Young people... sense the difference between what we say and what we do. They respond when there is no gap between our words in church and our actions in the world."

Welcome?

Some while ago, I appointed myself as Welcomer at the mass I usually go to: what this means is that I arrive a bit early to hand out mass books. (Having to get to church on time has always been a strain for me: my grandfather's description of our family's churchgoing was "Once a week and late at that!")

Most people seem pleased to be Welcomed, I find, though some defiantly look away. And I remain a little diffident, as I know that there are even priests who are not in favour of Welcoming.

Anyway, my diffidence is mitigated by an article I have just read, which - kind permission of both author, The Rev. David Deboys, and publisher - I set out here:

Why do we do what we do? Why do we believe what we believe? What is the inter relationship between experience and belief? These are not small questions, but I want to focus them on one particular issue: how we welcome people into church. My answer, simply and starkly, is that welcoming people into church is a gospel imperative. Not to welcome people is a denial of the Gospel. I want to engage with these assertions from family experience and from theology.

Our perceptions are coloured by our experiences. I moved to my present parish in west London on the Feast of Christ the King, 2008. A family member moved to another part of London at around the same time. For six Sundays she worshipped in a well-known parish church. No one spoke to her. No one said hello. No one made the slightest attempt to make her welcome. She was very upset by her experience. She was seeking a place to worship and become part of a community. That wasn’t on offer. Her experience has reinforced my theological commitment to making.

It seems to me that the New Testament bears the scars of the rejection of Jesus. Carol services will often climax in the reading of the first chapter of St John’s gospel. Verse 11 reads: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” There it is, no welcome. Indeed the lack of welcome leads to the Calvary of rejection and Crucifixion. And the first Christians, in deliberate counterpoint to that, stressed welcome. The note of welcome permeates the New Testament. The two on the road to Emmaus find that the stranger in their midst is none other than the risen Christ – but they would not have discovered this if they had not welcomed him into their home. The Epistle to the Hebrews stresses the need to welcome strangers (13: 2): “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

But welcome in a twenty-first-century parish needs some subtlety. I have no truck with buttonholing those who cross the threshold. Our welcome must be genuine, but allow people to melt away quietly at the end of the service if that is their wish.

At my church of St Barnabas in Ealing we have introduced a team of badged welcomers to befriend any newcomer who is loitering after the service, or who actually stays behind to share coffee. However, this takes us back to the question that needs to be asked: what undergirds our welcome of other people?

(First published in The Tablet)

Pinter RIP

I've just caught up with an interesting article by Peter Stanford in last week's Tablet. He interviewed Harold Pinter in 1992 for a proposed Radio 4 series on those on the outer fringes of faith.

Pinter died an agnostic, but he had much admired the Sandinista Government, which contained (at least initially) three Catholic priests.

Stanford reports Pinter as saying: "The synthesis of politics and religion in this case was that these priests and these people in Nicaragua were seeing the two things as one – that there was no distinction between the fate of people on earth, and their fate in the universal context – the longer view, if you like." He adds, He seemed, at this moment, to be reaching for the phrase “eternal life” or “heaven”, but was holding back from saying it. Or perhaps I just imagined it.

Here in England, Pinter went on to say, "to put it mildly, such a synthesis is out of the question. All we have here is a very bleak separation of one life from another. Your life from my life. We are two totally separate individuals. There is no sense of coherent unity, of a shared world. The only thing that is shared is total misery by millions of people, being rejected by the status quo or taking their place in the status quo as rejects. What I think happened in Nicaragua, and what is expressed in the best minds of the Catholic priesthood, is a respect for life. Whereas we are faced with this very dark wall of contempt for life, which is expressed through so many of our leading politicians."

more apples

The then Fr. Patrick Barry, our RI (= religious instruction, sic) teacher, came into class one bright January day just less than 50 years ago and asked us whether we knew what an Ecumenical Council was. Of course, aged 15, none of us had a clue. "Well," he said, "the Pope has just called one." And so began my acquaintance with Vatican II.

There are two schools of thought: did it represent a rupture with the past? Or should it just be seen as an act in the continuing tradition of the Church? I think it's worth copying to a wider (?) public the larger part of a letter to the Editor of this week's Tablet by an Dublin-based Jesuit, Fr. Brendan Staunton.

"May I suggest," he asks, "a small parable as a possible way out of this dualistic impasse? Consider Cézanne, “the father of modern art”, who, having been converted to Impressionism, became dissatisfied with its immediacy and asked himself the question: “How can I create depth without resorting to the traditional means?” By traditional means he meant perspective, a method grounded in projective geometry, the discovery of which had transformed the history of European painting. Now there is depth in a Cézanne, but it is not the same as in a Raphael. Something new has emerged, and Picasso would see the latent Cubism in Cézanne, and push the new out further. Yet Picasso and Matisse are often referred to as “traditional modernists”.

Matisse said he wanted to be a “modern Giotto”, the bridge between the two being light, albeit two different kinds of light. So, could the story of art illuminate the intellectual debates around the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council? Discontinuity or continuity, rupture or reform of tradition. Event or text?

Modern art embodies these notions and this debate and suggests a way out. This could become even more likely to provoke good arguments as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the announcing of the Council, which Pope John XXIII insisted be called Vatican II, implying that he was not interested in continuing the work begun but halted by the Franco-Prussian war at Vatican I. He wanted Vatican II to be new. Which view is more in tune with this, Alberigo or Pope Benedict XVI? Can both be true?

The novelist John Updike wrote:

“Cézanne, grave man,
pondered the scene,
and saw it with passion
as orange and green,
and weighted his strokes
with days of decision,
and founded on apples,
theologies of vision.”

The apples in today's photograph are from the smallest tree we inherited - an orange-flavoured variety, but we don't know exactly which.

"The cross and the wheel"

"The cross and the wheel" is the heading of an article in this week's edition of The Tablet reporting on the Dalai Lama's recent meeting with Catholics at Blackfriars, Oxford. Several observers noted," the article ran, his "cheerful demeanour" - conversations "punctuated with laughter, something that at first sight seemed odd given the suffering of the exiled Tibetan leader has endured."

One of the Dominican theologians present pointed out that laughter was part of the life of the Trinity, something which tied in with what I recalled Frank Regan had said at Woodchester last month. It corresponds with the cheerfulness of the Dalai Lama, springing from his life-long dedication to the practice of meditation.

He would certainly have enjoyed the photograph and headline - above - which appeared in our local paper, the Gloucestershire Echo, at the time of the visit: Cheltenham's MP, Martin Horwood, might have been amused at his star billing too.