After the last few days of bouncing ideas around the ether of the blogosphere, I cannot avoid certain more interior reflections.

On one side, if I am not prepared to go back to Rome “for more” in the name of some infallible truth <yawn>, it must be because I am a relativist or some kind of bogey wanting a cafeteria church. I turn around and look at the TAC, and find that much of it is of a harrowing bleakness, and perhaps it was so long before the Ordinariates. The crisis over the last few years brought the weaknesses out into the open. We must face them and either run away looking for perfection elsewhere, or find strength in that fragility.

Should we be looking beyond Christianity? I am constantly brought back to the same thought, asking myself whether Christianity is bankrupt or whether we should be growing out of it in the quest for higher experience and knowledge. Until now, I have always been able to contain and integrate the Christian faith and ideal as a bedrock of a higher ideal. Churches usually prefer immature and fragile people who can be easily manipulated according to the political agendas of clerics who feather their own nests.

The Enlightenment brought critical reasoning and scientific criteria, but also drove out the spiritual dimension of human life. Liberal Christianity was originally about reconciling faith and reason, something one reads about a lot in the contemporary Papal documents of a Church struggling for relevance and credibility in the modern world. The notion of being an adult is a valid one, and can protect us from committing many errors. At the same time, there are other aspects that can prevent us from going to the excesses of cynicism and scepticism. We need to be able to experience and be enchanted by what is over and above ourselves.

Perhaps there are a few simple rules by which we can avoid the seductions of the cults and of the zealots of the “true churches”. At one time, religious people relied on their tradition and followed it with devotion and loyalty. Now, most people have no tradition to refer to and can only rely on the words of the most persuasive people – in commercial advertising as much as in religious affiliations.

We need direct and personal experience in spiritual and paranormal phenomena. It is not enough to hear it from other people. Most of us would not recognise a spiritual experience. For me, the furthest anything has been is a sense of awe in the midst of natural beauty, the sea in particular. That is a spiritual experience just as much as being a medium and able to communicate with souls on the “other side”.

Something essential is to be critical about the experiences we have. Was the dream we had last night based on a film we watched just before going to bed, a book we read, a conversation? Could the experience be explained by physical phenomena in the world of natural science? Auto-suggestion is a very powerful thing, as is wishful thinking.

Another guide for rational thinking is considering a number of different points of view. If we always listen to cynical people, we will find everything bad and become cynical ourselves. But one bell of the peal sounding cynicism is not a bad thing, as long as the other bells are sounding other notes. The mind needs to be kept open so that new information can be assimilated and ideas can be revised as realism dictates. We need to conduct scientific experiments (not chemicals and physical objects necessarily) but on our experience and self-knowledge.

The idea that Christianity could lose its validity for each of us is frightening. There is also a big distinction between Christ and the caricature that grew like a parasitic growth since the early centuries of the Church’s history. I am sure that what many mature people reject is the caricature, the cancer and accretion that has hidden what it must have been all about when Christ walked this earth and when the Apostles still had personal memories of their Master and his teaching.

As a priest, I have never felt less secure in the quicksands of what feels like an illusory ecclesial existence. At the same time, I refer to my explorations of the “independent sacramental movement” that seeks to rethink Christianity in a world that has rejected churches, dogmas and rites. I pray that the weaker parts of the TAC may find strength in the stabler and more robust elements in other countries. That is the challenge of ecclesial communion and human solidarity. We either care about each other or we don’t.

Christianity is a religion of κένωσις and weakness, of self-emptying and anticipation of our death to this world. Our worst and most cynical enemies will be those calling themselves and actually believing themselves to be Christians. This is the mystery of human freedom and redemption. Strength comes out of weakness as good from evil. That is the miracle of God.

This is why I am highly critical not only of sales pitches of those who think they have the truth and want to make it the universal rule for all, but also those who would reject all that is weak and bordering on the illusory.

We need to take time, and allow our inmost intuitions speak to us – away from the hubbub and noise of the curmudgeons and armchair inquisitors – in the waters of Siloe that flow in silence. We need the fruit of our own experience and discernment.