Jonathan Munn of the Anglican Catholic Church in England, with whom I often correspond, was ordained a deacon yesterday by Bishop Damian Mead. The prelate in Latin choir dress and a Spanish biretta is Archbishop Jerome Lloyd of the Old Roman Catholic Church Latin Rite, a friend of Deacon Munn.
I send him my warmest congratulations on this day and my wishes for a fruitful ministry in the south of England.
I really recommend this article. I see no need to reproduce it here. I am impressed by Dr Milbank’s analysis of “Whig” latitudinarianism and Erastianism, and how modern “liberalism” is modelled on it. He rightly complains about the predominantly “liberal” and managerialist ecclesial culture that encourages bureaucratisation and over-specialisation.
The clergy need better and more thorough education, at least equivalent to the Roman Catholic seminary system, preferably coupled with a theology course in a university. That is fine by me, but I think Milbank might be neglecting the dimension of hands-on experience, though he happily does not forget the spiritual aspect which is primordial. I am quite flabbergasted to find The Church of England needs some sort of equivalent of the Catholic cardinalate. But Milbank qualifies this idea by having global primates fulfilling this role and not a “super-elite” as in the Roman Catholic Church. He also comes out with the idea that the Anglican Church needs to have a teaching voice, not an infallible authority, but simply a return from the current tendency of leaving the faithful with no guidance at all.
These three notions would not be intended to create a kind of parallel or rival Roman Catholic Church, but to be seen as only steps towards an eventual reunification under Roman primacy.
Milbank’s strongest wish is for there to be new blood to warm the frigidity of the “Whig” Church – what matters for Anglicans in the near future is finally to expunge from its midst the more heterodox and worldly-compromising notions of surviving whiggery, in order that Anglicanism can at last stand forth in its hidden coherence: radically biblical yet hyper-Catholic; sturdily incarnated in land, parish and work, yet sublimely aspiring in its verbal, musical and visual performances. If that seems a little wordy, read it phrase by phrase, and you’ll get it!
He also impresses me by correctly identifying the hallmark and scourge of any established and institutional Church – bureaucracy and inertia. The organisation exists for its own sake and not for the Christian mission. Of course, I would not point a finger only at the Church of England – – – but also Ultra Montes!
Go and read the article, and I would like to know what you think.
I promised to stop saying anything about the “old problem”, but have been following the threads of comments on Fr Smuts’ blog. When a step or two is taken back from the insult-hurling and black-and-white thinking, you get from time to time something that strikes home.
I have myself been hurt by Rome (or priests of that Church) to such an extent that I would never return to that communion. Perhaps that makes me an apostate, a schismatic, whatever. Most people in such a position would give up the Faith and cease to believe or pray. I cannot go that far, and can only seek to follow my little way as best I can as a “redundant” priest.
Now this is the last I will say on the subject: on one hand I cannot blame everything on Archbishop Hepworth and uphold the total innocence of the TAC bishops, and on the other hand I cannot avoid being aware of the ruthless manipulation from the part of some clerics in Rome. The KGB or Machiavelli couldn’t have done it better! I may be able to see that reasonably clearly, but am unable to take either side. I am exhausted by it all.
As you suggest yourself, taken to its extreme, your [Mourad’s] argument would be that any bishop signing the CCC could not in conscience wait for a reply, let alone for an ordinariate to be set up. Whatever the bishops thought they were doing–and I venture to suggest that even bishops can be carried along on the wave of the moment by a persuasive orator and a herd mentality–some of them I am sure did it without much thought for (or perhaps even knowledge of) what they were signing as a symbol of the hope of corporate reunion, no matter how vain that hope now seems to be. Corporate reunion wasn’t offered, and when the TAC bishops declined the invitation, they in fact declined an invitation that was not issued to the TAC as a body. And Hepworth himself hasn’t returned. Some folk out there blame Hepworth for daring to approach Rome at all. I certainly don’t. Others blame him for using the TAC for the purpose of legitimising his return to Rome–that’s another matter, and not without a few cigarette cards discarded and trampled underfoot on the way. For myself, I might yet wind up in the Ordinariate, and was headed that way until I stood at the edge and looked into the heart of the Roman bureaucratic machine and saw the corruption and cover-up ‘appearances are everything’ mentality and the flagrant disregard for the truth. Perhaps one day I’ll recognise that all communions have their sinners as well as their saints, but right at the moment I’m reeling from the horror I’ve experienced. We might’ve had our Hepworth, but what I see in Rome seems all the more hideous for being institutionalised. A lot of it is cultural, of course. I expect I’ll get over it, but persistent attacks on TAC bishops who appear to have done one misguided thing without really thinking and are now held to it by those who seek to defend the man who put them up to it and hasn’t himself submitted to what has been offered in his case don’t help me to warm to it.
In a fascinating posting by Deborah Gyapong, From a comment threat over at Fr. Smuts’ blog, a suggestion is made:
And I wonder, too, if the TAC bishops will stop wearing Roman Catholic ecclesial attire? Maybe Fr. Anthony can do a post on his blog about what Anglican priestly and episcopal attire should look like.
Nothing is simpler, since the clergy of the Church of England for the most part continue to wear traditional English attire for Mattins, Evensong and assisting in choir at services of other Churches. I have occasionally been invited to assist in choir at baptism and wedding services of my family-in-law here in France, so I dress in this fashion.
And here is the bishop’s choir habit:
Here is the so-called Sarum cassock:
Of course, for Mass, a priest would wear an amice, alb, girdle, maniple, stole and chasuble. I prefer plain albs with no lace and a sober gothic or fiddleback chasuble depending on what the church has in its vestry.
Update: This posting and the posting by Deborah Gyapong that inspired it have been commented upon by Fr Smuts, Will ‘the TAC bishops will stop wearing Roman Catholic ecclesial attire?’. Is the real issue knowing whether I “support” Deborah Gyapong or the TAC bishops in their intent to inculpate Archbishop Hepworth and exonerate themselves? It may be a surprise to some, but I am not interested in the way TAC bishops dress.
In the end of the day, I don’t care what bishops and priests of any church wear. Someone is always copying someone, whatever you do. Each to his own…
Another form of clerical dress, to crew in a regatta for Aid to the Church in Need (I’m standing on the weather beam of the boat holding a shroud). By the way, I’m not in a woman’s skirt but in a pair of bermuda shorts! 🙂
The Traditional Anglican Church in Britain (TAC) has a new website. This is a happy development, and I look forward to seeing this site completed and refined, as it surely will be. My congratulations to the web designer and to Canon Ian Gray, our Vicar General.
Just a raised eyebrow when reading the “contact” page. Other pages of the site are lifted verbatim from the old site.
The Presiding Bishop was until Easter Archbishop John Hepworth of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia. There is now no Presiding Bishop; opinions vary on whether there is an Acting Presiding Bishop.
These are the words from Fr Michael Gray (not Canon Ian Gray the present Vicar General) who ran the old web site (I have a copy of it on my hard disk) and who has now left the TTAC. According to a letter I received from Archbishop Prakash informing me of my own canonical situation, the TTAC is under the jurisdiction of Bishop Craig Botterill of Canada, so the TTAC would recognise Archbishop Prakash to be the Acting Primate.
It seems that the former TAC site, the “Messenger” is not being updated. Opinions vary as to the authority of a new site.
Fr Owen Buckton was running the Messenger and was until a few days ago the Vicar General in Australia. He is believed still to be a priest in the ACCA. There is no word of a new Australian web site.
In Great Britain (Ireland has a separate church), the Episcopal Visitor was Bishop David Moyer. He has ceased to act. Opinions vary as to whether he has been replaced.
This is very definitely from the old site, and no mention is made of Bishop Botterill. I have documentary evidence (pdf’s of letters from Archbishop Prakash and e-mails from Bishop Botterill and Canon Gray) that the TTAC recognises itself as being under Bishop Botterill’s jurisdiction as Episcopal Visitor.
As I said, the site needs to be completed and refined, and not merely be a cosmetic remake of the old site. There is still work to be done, supposedly after a good meeting of the Vicar General, the new area Deans and the person doing the web site. Over to them…
* * *
There is, however, another possible conjecture, that the TTAC does not recognise itself as part of the TAC as led by Archbishop Prakash, and would be waiting for the possibility of membership in another Church body. In that case, the new web site might seem to be the prelude to such a move. That is only a guess on my part and I may be completely wrong even to think of such a possibility.
I remember as a seminarian of the Society of St. Pius X reading a polemical article against Teilhard’s theology in a reactionary Catholic magazine. Like the proverbial boy who learns how to sin from the vademecum manual of confessors, I came away thinking that, even if Teilhard’s thought was wrong, at least it was pretty. In my days of a more mystical bent, I suppose I was tempted often by pantheism, which is perhaps the reason I became enamored with Eastern Christian spirituality. Nevertheless, at least then, I was always of the opinion that Teilhard was wrong, that it was safer to stick with “official Church teaching”, and that one must keep an absolute wall between science and religion, and so on.
(…)
In the 1950 papal encyclical, Humani Generis, which condemned the “New Theology”, and the writings of Henri de Lubac in particular (though not by name), the long suffering Teilhard proved to be a secondary target, and it is thought that this official document definitively put him on the papal “persona non grata” list. What was seen as being at stake in the absolute division of nature and grace? Theologically, the answer is everything. Christian orthodox theology is predicated on the idea of the absolute gratuity of God’s working in the world. That is, God must be completely separate from the world, and if he does anything for it, even the act of creation, it is posited that he very well could not have done it. If this is not the case, then pantheism is sort of a logical conclusion: the world and God are one, our actions and very selves are deified, and lofty divine ideals mean nothing as they are the same as cosmic laws such as gravity and the speed of light. In other words, there is no freedom in the universe, and our actions don’t mean anything.
(…)
Just from reading about Teilhard, I find that the major issue at stake is the reality and relevance of truth. If something is true, it must be incarnate in everyday life and inform every corner of human knowledge. Many Catholic conservatives will assert that Teilhard’s crime, like Galileo’s, was that of not respecting the absolute wall between science and theology. That is basically the same problem as that of nature and grace as explained above.
The issue is dualism, and I found that one characteristic of the Celtic tradition and Pelagianism is the refusal of dualism. Like the author of this article, I have not read any Teilhard, but I have to admit I’m curious, especially since finding that Tyrrell’s books had no smell of sulphur! To the contrary!
I have just discovered a medievalist blog – Modern Medievalism – that needs to be encouraged and better known. The most recent posts are about Pugin, and show images of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
My Christian life over the past few years, perhaps longer, has resembled a cracked record. Before the days of CDs, we had gramophone records consisting of a precisely carved spiral groove that made a stylus or needle vibrate and reproduce music or other forms of sound. If the record was damaged or the groove blocked, the needle would not continue into the next revolution but would return to the previous one. The result would be a tiny fragment of the music played over and over again, punctuated by a violent click about every two seconds in the case of a 33 rpm LP.
I may be an extraordinarily stubborn person, since my experience of churches and claims to the one true Catholic Christian is little different from that of so many other people. I have searched to find what was wrong in my own personality and vocation? Just why is it I cannot fit in? I must surely be diabolical or evil, to be hated and chased away from the “paradise” of the “true” Christians. Let us face it, most people just reject what they find to be nonsense, what defies reason and common sense. Churches are going the same way as the Soviet Empire in 1989. There was no violence or bloodshed. People just wanted a change.
As one who has identified with traditionalist Catholicism, because it upheld traditional liturgical rites and culture, I have come to see the limits of the kind of mentality and political ideology that led to the tragedy of the twentieth century through two world wars. It is the ideology of the world belonging to the strong and there being no compassion for the weak.
Yesterday, I brought out the theme of Celtic Christianity, and the temptation is to try to found some fantasy of an independent church. Many people have an idea, get themselves ordained in some presumably valid episcopal lineage and “go into business”. The problem is that unless you are exceptionally charismatic and have the kind of influence over people a cult guru has, there is little or no market for independent churches – even in the USA! What is the alternative to knuckling down with the mainstream Church, living with disappointment, rejection and manipulation by the strong and powerful, setting up a sect or giving up and dying spiritually? Historically, it is the monastic or solitary life.
Most of us, myself included, have commitments to a spouse, family, paying for our material goods and sharing the condition of most of humanity. All the same, we spend time alone as well as in company. As I write this article, I am alone. My wife is at work and I spend my days alone. I work, write, go sailing when my work load is light and the weather is right, I say Mass and at least some of the Benedictine Office. My deepest contemplative moments are invariably at sea on those days when it is safe to take more distance from the coast.
In ecclesial terms, I arrive at a watershed. I am still a member of the TAC, being in possession of a pdf file of a letter of Archbishop Prakash and a few private e-mails. Like other priests in the TAC diaspora, this ecclesial affiliation is very little else than something on paper. We are far from the heady days of the Portsmouth bishops’ meeting of October 2007 or even the last English synod I attended in the same church, St Agatha’s, Portsmouth. I celebrated the Sarum Mass on the Lady altar of that beautiful church with gracious permission from its priest. That wouldn’t be possible now. Everything has changed. We have all to live with loss and bereavement, and life must go on.
The last poisonous taste in my mouth owed itself to a posting and thread of comments about Archbishop Hepworth. The hatred is overwhelming, and if the TAC is in the state it is in, it is because it has to bear and assume the responsibility of having allowed itself to be led by Archbishop Hepworth for nearly nine years. This point has been made. Those who have joined ordinariates have moved on, and so must those who whom the prospect of returning to Roman Catholicism would be something like having all one’s teeth pulled out without an anaesthetic. If that is true religion, then for some, it is better to live without it as the new atheists would encourage us to do, in order to embrace materialism. Or find a new way to God and inner peace.
One thing I notice is that there isn’t a single marginal church I would want to join for one reason or another, but Celtic spirituality is something very attractive as long as it doesn’t become littered with patriarchs, metropolitans and all kinds of more or less fictitious ecclesiastical offices and institutions. What is really important is the one-to-one with God and intimacy with a few other human beings of like mind. Many people of my generation (baby boomer) have sought light in the eastern non-Christian traditions, but we are of another culture. Then we find that Christianity itself is historically a middle-eastern splinter from Judaism with themes seemingly plagiarised from the Greek and Egyptian mystery religions of antiquity. Yet, Christianity is its spiritual form has done so much good and largely formed our own culture and experience.
The first thing we notice about modern attempts to revive Celtic spirituality is the absence of dominance and submission. There is instead a notion of gentleness, love, freedom and beauty, but yet the challenge of self-denial and penance. Rather than forsake Christianity, we need to seek to renew it, rediscover out relationship with God, creation, other humans, animals and everything we know. Celtic spirituality is ideal for those of us who saw through abuse of authority and the ways of the powerful. There are “new age” themes that can be illusory when accepted uncritically, but which can open our minds to things of heaven and earth that are not dreamt of in our philosophies, to paraphrase Shakespeare.
Even though I have been a conservative Christian in many respects, I am fascinated with the idea of stewardship not only in respect of human beings suffering adversity, but also the earth and creation for which we are responsible. As a sailor, I am a convinced adept of ecology and the cause for stopping this world being more polluted than it is. I am also a supporter of moderate and sensible feminism. I find women difficult to understand, as all men do, but I see no reason to tread them down and make them objects or slaves! To the contrary, marriage is all about complementarily!
One thing I have been concerned about is the concentration of Christianity in cities. The country parishes are dying and only city parishes thrive. The Celtic and monastic ways took Christianity into the remote places and built new civilisations. One of my deepest experiences was spending a week on an island of the Glénans archipelago off Brittany, where I had my sailing course in 2009. I would rise before the others and go and say Mass on a granite rock. The cross of my travelling Mass kit is Coptic, given to me many years ago in England.
Church life has become bureaucratised and is characterised by activism. For the clergy and leading laity, it is all meetings, discussions and reorganising the world. My own time as a TAC priest blogger has repeatedly burned me out, and I certainly need a deeper way. This is why I resolutely cast off from any discussion of my former Archbishop.
I’m married and could not become a monk, but being a monk with a habit and tonsure is really only a form so that the institutional Church can keep control. Anyone can be a contemplative, which is what enlightened spiritual masters over the centuries have tried to teach us.
As the Arts and Crafts movement reacted from the triumphalism of the industrial nineteenth century, many of us react away from the triumphalist and “industrial” Church. The Modernist Movement was its parallel in theology and biblical interpretation. The monuments and dinosaurs in Rome have nothing to offer the modern world, because they are part of that “world” that hated and rejected Christ. They are just consuming money and resources – and that alone is a scandal. We are reacting against styles of church that abuse, manipulate and hurt people. As in the eighteenth century, people turn to spirituality, which is often expressed in New Age and the charismatic movement. We need to be God-centred and community-centred, and we need to be post-modern like our contemporaries. The Modernists were right by emphasising the immanence of God. Sure, God is transcendent and unknowable – and we can only say what he is not. But, the divine presence has an effect as in St Paul’s dark looking glass, and the Kingdom is within.
The Church needs to be above all small communities and families, so that it can flourish in the remote places and not be forced into the cities. I am convinced that it is by friendships and human connectedness that the Church can have any relevance for us. If we want to rediscover the secret of medieval Christianity, we need to bring God into our work and homes – not by provoking the secular world, but by being an invisible leaven. People might ask us why we are good to people without expecting a packet of money in return! That would be a start.
For too long, I have believed in stability – immobilism and stillness being the signs of God’s presence unlike the dialectics and movement of Heraclitus. Life is a pilgrimage and growth is movement and change. Churches say of those who move that they are “unstable”. In the Celtic way, as in the medieval mendicant orders like the Franciscans, holiness is found in movement, change and availability to the changing world, the very reason for holy poverty. The pilgrimage is the heart of Christian mission, and wandering makes us creative, vulnerable and available. Pilgrimage is not merely visiting holy places, but above all seeking the will of God by being ready to be in the right place. St Brendan went to sea!
If we are not to be frustrated and defeated in our relating to the modern, secular and atheistic world, we have to engage with the modern world and live in it. The visibility of the Church through buildings, political influence and clerical dress will have to be things of the past, and we go to the Catacombs to be a living and contemplative leaven.
In practical terms, many of those with whom I dialogue belong to the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church, and pursue their spirituality independently and with initiative and wisdom. I commend them for sticking it out, but I am sufficiently aware not to think where they are is a paradise where all problems cease! Others are disconnected from the institutions, and we need to offer the hand of friendship and respect – without expecting their money or “humiliating” conversion and defeat.
I intend by this blog and my New Goliards to map my way to a new vision of Christianity and spirituality to attain that complete availability to the workings of grace and the needs of the most alienated from the Church.
The subject is really sickening me, and I have decided to delete the last two postings, published as a result of having my attention drawn to Australian newspaper articles on two matters concerning Archbishop Hepworth: his accusing an Australian priest of having buggered him in the 1970’s or thereabouts and allegations of financial irregularities whilst exercising his former functions as Primate of the TAC. The blog articles in question are Deborah Gyapong’s A few thoughts and an apology and Fr Smuts’ Monsignor Ian Dempsey Cleared to Return to Parish Duties. A more recent article is Fr Smuts’ Archbishop John Hepworth Quizzed on Funds.
What really bothers me is not that I might be too proud to admit the error of ever having had anything to do with Archbishop Hepworth in the first place or not having resigned from the TAC to reconcile with Rome as a layman. It is the notion that many people, even of ideologically opposing viewpoints, have ganged up on Hepworth and scapegoated him over the past few years. He has been trashed, “virtually” stoned by those who thought they had no sin themselves. One can have the impression, reading certain personal opinions, that the TAC has begun to rebuild itself on the basis of hatred against the former Primate, the man they followed as their hierarchical leader. That is what I am really angry about.
It is possible that Hepworth’s accusations against Monsignor Dempsey are without foundation as the Adelaide Archdiocese clergy claim. Hepworth was lying purely and simply, capitalising on his real experiences as a victim of clerical sex abuse to optimise his claims to mitigating circumstances to get reinstated into the RC clergy as a priest. Was he sexually abused by physical force or psychological manipulation? We will probably never know, because I imagine that the Australian police would stretch this thing out for so long that there will be no winners or losers. Both men will be damaged beyond repair, and of course the Church is only interested in the strong and powerful – at least the ruling class in the Church.
Then there are allegations of “financial irregularities” and “misappropriation of Church funds”. These are serious accusations, and should be the subject of a complaint to the police and proper legal action to establish guilt and recover the stolen or embezzled money. I express doubts on the basis of Deborah Gyapong having said in her article Fr. Smuts trashes Archbishop Hepworth:
As for the charges of financial irregularities and the tribunal now setting out to get answers, I am satisfied the financial matters were duly audited by professional accountants.
So what bothers me is that he is being trashed for the sake of an ecclesial communion that wants to extricate itself from a corporate commitment to whatever plan Rome would come up with to cater for groups of Anglicans wanting to become Roman Catholics with some cultural concessions and exceptions.
I am angry about this whole thing, and I sincerely ask myself the question of whether I should remain in the TAC, if its entire justification for existence is the trashing of a human being. Is this whole thing about settling scores and getting revenge like France in 1944, or in quietly re-establishing justice in regard to a corrupt archbishop? I am not satisfied as to the purity of this blood vendetta, or what seems to be one. There are still too many loose ends for condemnations to be pronounced. One reaps what one sows, the law of karma, cause and effect.
I am beyond trying to defend Archbishop Hepworth. I owed him a debt of gratitude for having made it possible for me to join the TAC in 2005. He appeared to have a considerable amount of credibility within the TAC and with people who matter in Rome – and that in spite of his matrimonial situation and being a Roman priest being known. He has never done me any harm personally, but I have on occasions “winced” about things he said about others. I cannot bring myself to diabolise him and say that he is all bad, but I can no longer defend him.
The two contentious questions – whether Hepworth’s accusations against Dempsey are founded and whether Hepworth has been fiddling money – need to be properly resolved by way of legal action. That is what the law is for, so that people don’t get lynched and hanged from a tree like in the old American West. Accusations in justice have the onus of producing proof, because the accused has the right to presumption of innocence: Mgr Dempsey for the alleged buggery and Archbishop Hepworth for allegedly being caught with his hand in the till.
And so, apart from keeping a record of newspaper articles on The TAC Archive, I am not going to allow myself to write any further on this subject. The subject is closed whatever Fr Smuts or others write or say, at least until a proper legal judgement is rendered public.
For the record, I acknowledge the existence of a letter from Archbishop Prakash to Archbishop Hepworth in which contentious issues are made clear. Subject to Archbishop Prakash having been correctly informed, I cannot object to his position. I would then be of the opinion that my former Ordinary should petition the Holy See for a rescript of laicisation and live out his days as a private person attending Mass and Office in a monastic church, and never be heard of again.
For the rest of us, may God have mercy upon us…
It was about eight months ago that I wrote the posting Celtic Christianity. I gave a brief historical sketch about this branch of Christianity which is largely lost in the mists of time. Like Eastern Orthodoxy, the Celtic Church was more monastic-based and less established than the Roman Church.
As last time I discussed this topic, most of the comments centred on criticism of efforts to restore Celtic Christianity more or less along archaeological or “new age” lines. There are some churches and communities of Christians calling themselves Celtic, and there are Anglican communities that also strive to live to this ideal.
Quite apart from the notion of some kind of “authentic” historical reconstruction or a euphemism for baby-boomer religion, there seem to be some spiritual themes. These themes would be completely distinct from any kind of “ecclesiastical entrepreneurism” or the work of less scrupulous individuals. I would even be tempted to discuss the case of a certain blogger who has had his arms tattooed with representations from the Book of Kells!!! We can all do what we like: live in our houses, drive our cars, do our jobs and listen to the kind of music we like. That doesn’t concern me – it’s a free world. But, my discussion of today is something that concerns us all in the depths of our being, not externals or red herrings.
What I would like to do in this posting is to wrest some spiritual themes away from the stereotypes and terminology, and perhaps to enable some of the more wholesome aspects to influence and inspire us in our present ecclesial affiliations or absence of them. Many mistakes have been committed by romanticising Celtic Christianity and trying to recreate it from historical fragments. As an institution, it is gone and a thing of the past, rather like any kind of Christianity that the Roman Church colonised out of existence.
So all that is left are ideas and themes.
One aspect I have seen about reading about Celtic Christianity is the ability of the community to adapt to local culture rather than impose a centralised ideology and cultural expression. Celtic Christianity seems to have been characteristic of remote people, island dwellers, in short those who were off the beaten track – and nowadays, out of the box. This is an element I find highly appealing. One way to discover this aspect is to spend time in remote places, on islands, at sea or in other wild places. It is not a way for city dwellers. The old Celtic monks appear to have lived lives of extreme austerity, but brought their faith and charisma to the world through illuminated books and their ability to move around. The vocation of St Francis of Assisi, though he was not a Celt, picks up this theme.
The Roman Church took on the form of Constantine’s Empire, and has modelled itself on the ruling class of every society where it flourished. The Celts were small groups of monks, priests and lay folk. I read in one site something that particularly struck home – availability and vulnerability. Christian mission isn’t marketing and beating people over the head with a big stick, but simply being there like Blessed Charles de Foucault who spent years in the Algerian desert and didn’t win over a single Muslim. Celtic Christianity probably foundered because it didn’t seek to be rich or use political power – so it got absorbed into the Empire and got forgotten.
The Celts had a notion of soul friendship, which rather reminds me of St Aelred of Rievaulx’s De spirituali amicitia – a book based on Cicero’s ideas that describes human friendship in a Cistercian monastic setting. This notion of friendship is extremely important to me, as it applies just as much to living in marriage as with brethren in a community or those we count as our friends. Roman Catholicism has emphasised the notion of spiritual direction, usually entrusted to priests and coupled with the role of confessor. We will find this emphasised in the Counter-Reformation tradition, especially among the Jesuits and Oratorians. Spiritual direction to me implies a notion of master and disciple, where spiritual friendship emphasises equality and sharing. In my experience as a Roman Catholic seminarian, spiritual direction was the element I most dreaded – submitting my intimate life to a system of criteria by which I am typified and compared with others. We open ourselves better to friends and spouses than with strangers whose faces are hidden by a piece of metal mesh and wooden panels! You get nowhere with someone who doesn’t know you!
But, such a degree of spiritual friendship and symbosis are difficult to find and maintain. That is the drama of assuming our human freedom! Another element is contemplative prayer, not asking God for this and that, but just being there. That is the quality of prayer one will find at least a league from the coast with the sloop in a good broad reach and after at least several hours at sea. This prayer in solitude gives us strength and ability to withstand adversity.
I return to the remoteness theme. If we live close to nature, the notion of liturgy and rites of passage begin to make sense. When you live in a city, this relevance of the liturgy is lost, and can be of appeal only when it is assimilated to entertainment. We need to rediscover the natural rhythms of everything in life, between prayer and work, rest and play.
Another theme I have always emphasised is my disgust at the “marketing” type of evangelism and proselytism. Some try to sell a product to a customer who doesn’t want it. I often get telephone calls from a firm saying that they are officially approved by the French electricity producer EDF and want to do a survey of houses in my village to see whether they are well insulated and have modern energy-efficient heating devices, the type of product they are seeking to sell at twice the price of what is offered at the local hardware shop. The first time, I will thank them and inform them that my house is properly insulated and has a number of heating devices running on different energy sources. Then they call again. “Have I not told you before that I am not interested?” “Have you still not taken me off your prospects list?” Finally, the only thing to do is to cut off the call, or put the phone near my stereo loudspeakers and play them nice music. And so it is with the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Catholic “one true church” apologists on the blog comment boxes.
Of course, if we are Christians, we find that God has given us a treasure we find it good to share with others. In the Gospel, Jesus would find out what people were looking for, symbolised by physical illnesses like blindness or inability to walk. Jesus encouraged people to Come and see. We are invited to set sail and make discoveries. There seem to be a number of rules. The first would be to have a fundamentally optimistic attitude about people and a respect for their freedom and beliefs. Another would be to eschew the temptation to use politics and coercion to get people in, but rather to rely on prayer and the intrinsic truth of Christ. Friendship, getting to know people and letting others get to know you are paramount. I am personally repelled by churches who are unconcerned with my person, but yet would like my money!
It seems that women had a better life in Celtic culture than any other part of Christianity. Women were not the possessions of men but had equal civil rights. Their prophetic instinct was respected. Obviously, women were not ordained in the Celtic Church, otherwise we would know about it, but they had positions of honour. Women could be soul friends to men without coming under suspicion of impropriety. In Orthodoxy to this day, the practice of going to a woman for ghostly counsel is accepted – of course one goes to a priest for confession.
We have no way of knowing whether these “themes” were really a part of historical Celtic Christianity, but they are certainly appealing as an out-of-the-box alternative to intégriste Roman Catholicism and Protestant fundamentalism in their disdain of the human person.
Celtic monasticism seems to have much in common with the common-or-garden Benedictine way, Byzantine or Coptic asceticism or the Franciscans in their heyday in the thirteenth century. You live in community to a written rule and obey the Abbot. An option is the life of a hermit for those who are really made for that kind of life. But, to what extent are ordinary parish priests and lay folk influenced by these ideals? That is a question we need to ask. Is there a contemplative church and a political church? Or are the two strands part of one Church of Christ?
As a guide to commenting, I would not appreciate scoffing at people or groups using the word Celtic to describe themselves. What I am interested in is developing ideas to contribute to a new and fresh way of living the Gospel, setting sail from a rotten and hopeless ecclesial world to new horizons and discoveries. Without hope, then it would seem that the atheists have won.
I will not give up. Will you?
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The Blue Flower 