Hope and Blindness, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Mk 10:46-52; Ps 125:3; Jer 31:7-9
Today I’d like to draw your attention to the title the blind man used to call out to the Lord.
He didn't just say, “Jesus”, or “Lord”, or even use the description St Mark’s Gospel gave Him, “Jesus of Nazareth”.
Instead, he called out to Him saying, “Son of David”(Mk 10:47;48). In fact, he used this title twice in close succession when he was addressing the Lord.

To a blind Jew this would have been very significant:
The “Son of David” was a title referring to the expected Messiah.
Of course, ALL the Jews we waiting for the Messiah,
BUT, He was to have a special significance for the BLIND. As we heard in our first reading, which was one of many such prophecies of the Messiah, when the Messiah would come He would be distinguished by His capacity to give sight back to the blind. Other prophets had worked other miracles, but this miracle was to be one of THE signs of the Messiah.

Now, let us pause a moment and think what this tells us about this blind man.
This blind man suffered.
He was a beggar.
And, to be a blind beggar in a poor country is a harsh thing.
But, THE point I wish to draw your attention to today is that this blind man somehow kept his FAITH and kept his HOPE.
He didn't curse his darkness, he didn't inwardly close in on himself in bitterness and anger –the way we all know it is very easy to do. Instead, he kept faith and hope, and the SIGN of this is that he was still WAITING and HOPING for the Messiah, and called to Him by His title, “Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me”.

The Scripture readings that the Church has given us today point us to two pivotal things that this blind man must have held on to:
First, the PROMISE from the Lord God that He would send His Messiah, send Him with healing.
This enabled the blind man to look FORWARD with hope.
Our first reading from Jeremiah records one of many such Old Testament promises that remind us of this.
Second, the MEMORY of what God had done the PAST.
If we remember the wonders the Lord has done in the past, then the past is able to anchor our faith. Our being rooted in the past thus enables us to fix our eyes on the future, it enables our faith to give us hope.
Our responsorial psalm reminded us of this with the antiphon, “What marvels the Lord worked for us! Indeed we were glad.”(Ps 125:3).

To summarise: the title “Son of David” that the blind man used for Jesus showed he remembered that a promise had been made that a Messiah, the “Son of David” would come.
The blind man thus serves as a role model for all of us:
We all have difficulties, the way that blind man had difficulties.
But, if we kept our memories secure in recalling the Lord’s past deeds then we will have hope.
We do this by recalling our personal histories, the good things the Lord has done for us.
We do this also, more fundamentally, by recalling the good things the Lord has done in the pages of Sacred Scripture.
He has shown He is a good God.
He has shown He keeps His promises.
And a great many of those He promises still hold for you and me. The promise of heaven if we are faithful. The promise of grace to sustain us on the way. The promise that He is by our side, “I am with you always”(Mt 28:20). And much more.

Riches and Sadness, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Mk 10:17-30
Today in the Gospel we heard of a man who had no name. At least, no name that history records. Why not? Why do the Gospel writers not know who he is? Presumably, because he went away and never came back. A tragedy.
If we think about why he left, as we heard, he left “sad”.
If we think about why he was sad, it was because the Lord Jesus said he had to choose between his riches, and, following the Lord. And to not follow Jesus leaves the soul sad –this is point that Pope Francis makes repeatedly to us.
He was a “rich young man”, he had his whole life ahead of him. And that life, it seems, was a life of sadness because he chose riches over the Lord.

Let me remind of you of another rich man in the Gospels: Levi.
The Gospels record that he was sitting at his office, and the Lord passed, said, “follow me”(Lk 5:27), and Levi “left everything, and rose and followed him”(Lk 5:28).
This immediacy surely implies a joy and eagerness.
He had riches. The Lord called him. And he eagerly left them in order to follow.

Let me give a third and final example of a rich man called by the Lord: Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-8).
Zacchaeus, if you remember, was the short tax collector who climbed a tree to get a look at the Lord Jesus as He passed by. The Lord called him, Zacchaeus welcomed the Lord into his home, and declared he would give half of his goods to the poor and restore fourfold from all those he had defrauded (Lk 19:8).
All this he did “joyfully”(Lk 19:5), not like the young man who went away “sad”.
And, let us note, he was one of those who weren’t called to give up all their money, but rather, to have money but in a NEW spirit.

Back to the rich young man. He was rich, but he as sad. Which is notable, because we all think that riches will make us happy.
I saw a 55” TV this week. I want it. There is a voice inside me telling me that my lack of a 55” TV is what is holding me back from happiness. And yet, human experience, and the example of the rich young man, shows us that money doesn't give you happiness.
Real joy comes from love, it is a fruit of love. But love of the right thing: of people, of God, not of money, and of people for THEIR sake, not in a possessive clinging-ness.
Joyful people are noteworthy for their freedom, their LIGHTNESS. This is the very opposite of being held down by possessions.
What is needed is spirit of DETACHMENT from the riches of this world. An inward detachment that means I am free to let them go, and free to have them, but I am not held down by them.

And the rich young man, What was his problem? His lack of detachment.
He is not presented to us as selfish, or as uncaring, or neglecting the poor (as some figures condemned in the Gospels are, e.g. Lk 16:19-31).
Rather, the problem is that he is more ATTACHED to his possessions than to his willingness to follow where the Lord called him. And this leaves him sad, sad without the Lord, sad without love.

What of us?
If we are attached like the rich young man, then we will feel sad when we are prompted to anything that disrupts our attachments.
If we are de-tached like Levi, we will be prompt and eager to leave what must be left to follow.
If we are detached like Zacchaeus, then even though we possess things, we will only hold them lightly, because our joy in the Lord, in finding more joy in possessing Him than we do in possessing things, will leave us free to give, free to love, and free to give in a way that causes us to have joy, not sadness, in our heart

Alone in the Garden, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Yr B

Gen 2:18-24; Mk 10:2-16
Today I’d like us to consider the symbolism of Adam, alone and lonely, in the Garden of Eden.
This image is one of the most profound in the Scriptures, and, as many of you will be aware, it was the starting point for Pope St John Paul II’s famous Theology of the Body catechesis.

Before saying anything else, less the modern skeptical mind get distracted, let me note that we don’t need to take everything in the Genesis account as science.
I am a scientist. I believe in evolution. I could add that the Big Bang theory was invented by a Catholic priest, Father George Lemaître.
Evolution can trace the mechanism of how God made us, not in seven 24-hour days, but nonetheless in the progression of stages.
Genesis similarly describes a progression: the heavens, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals.
At the end of this progression, and on this science CONFIRMS what Genesis teaches, man emerges, and emerges DIFFERENT from the rest of creation. Science cannot explain the MIND, because there is something in the mind that is beyond science. The Bible DOES explain it: the spiritual soul, symbolically directly “breathed” into man by God (Gen 2:7), making man different from the rest of creation:
Only we have a spiritual soul; only we are made in the image and likeness of God.

And so Adam was alone in the Garden.
Gloriously in the image and likeness of God, but alone, and lonely.

This image is hugely important in our modern content, because in our modern world the INDIVIDUAL reigns supreme. Me. I. “I’ve got to look after number One”.
But our modern world has formed a culture of isolated, privatised, LONELY people.

Adam, was alone in the Garden, but he wasn’t meant to be alone.
We are made for community.
We only find completion in another, as Adam found it in Eve, and Eve found it in Adam.

A hugely important part of this is the truth about our bodies, as male and female.
Contrary to the currently fashionable viewpoint, we do not CHOOSE our gender, rather, it is a gift given to us at our conception -male or female.
Even for those who are sadly born with imperfect organs, their gender is not a matter of choice, rather, its a matter of biology. Our gender and our sexuality are received, not chosen (see here and here).
We, similarly, if we are to follow God’s plan, not our own, our bodies are designed to find union in another in a very specific manner. Everything to do with sex is part of God’s plan.
Man only finds bodily completion in a woman, and a woman only finds bodily completion in a man.
And that completion is so significant, that, as we heard the Lord Jesus teach, that it involves a lifelong commitment, and thus He forbids remarriage after divorce.

But even outside of marriage, this image of Adam alone in the Garden is vital:
We are made for community. We are not made for loneliness.
Thus communities like the parish community are so important, with our parish supper tonight, our SVP events for the elderly, our Christmas Fayre, and so forth.
Community is often hard work, as the family is often hard work, but it’s what we are made for.

A final aspect to this, concerning celibacy.
The celibate, as Pope St John Paul II noted, stands as a very different image of Adam in the Garden.
The celibate is a sign that our DEEPEST yearning for union can only be satisfied in GOD.
The celibate is a sign, as the Lord Jesus teaches elsewhere (Mt 22:30), that we will not be married in heaven. The celibate, on earth, is a sign of what we will all be like in heaven.

Or, to think of that differently:
The loneliness of the priest is sign of the loneliness within all of of us.
You can be lonely in a happy marriage.
You can be lonely in an unhappy marriage.
When I was a seminarian I was afraid I'd be lonely as a priest, but I've not found it so. Somehow the time I've been freed to have with the Lord has given me more.
The loneliness within us is a sign of our yearning for God.
Adam was yearning, at his deepest level, for God.

To sum up:
The image of Adam alone in the garden is powerfully symbolic:
We are different from the rest of creation;
We are made for community;
We find our fullest unity in God Himself.

Moral Theology Lectures to Ordinariate 2019

Below are links for text and audio of my Moral Theology lecture series for the Ordinariate clergy.
The text links below are for the 2019 lecture series, at Allen hall in London.
The audio below is a mix from the 2014-15 and 2016-17 lecture series (based on the same text).
The same lectures were previously given to the Buckfast gatherings of the Ordinariate clergy and the 2014-15 and 2016-17 London Ordinariate clergy.

A googledrive folder of the files for the 2019 year is available here


Lecture 1: Introduction to Moral Theology
text available here







Lecture 2: What is Virtue?
text available here







Lecture 3: Mortal Sin
text available here



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Lecture 4: The End and the Means
text available here








Lecture 5: Natural Law
text available here


Audio from 2015 is:







Lecture 6: Contraception and the Natural Law
text available here

Audio from 2015 is:





Lecture 7: Various Specific Issues
text available here
Divorce and Remarriage & Holy Communion
Homosexuality
IVF
Abortion (not in verbal lecture)
Sex Change and Transgender articles (not in verbal lecture)

Audio from 2015 is:









Lecture 8: Hearing Confessions
text available here

Audio from 2015 is:











Bibliography, text available here

Sex Abuse

Below are comments I made in the parish 28th September 2018 (updated 18th Oct 2018)

In August 2018 Pope Francis issued a letter to all Catholics in the wake of various revelations. 

The months previous to this saw two different types of sexual abuse exposed:  

• The first concerned the abuse of adults, and brought a new evil to light   It manifested certain bishops sexually forcing themselves on clergy and seminarians under their care.  In the English-speaking world, this has led to ex-Cardinal McCarrick being defrocked.  The manifestation of the networks of deviancy involved in this is sickening. 
• The second saw a public commission in Pennsylvania document hundreds of allegations of clerical abuse of minors with many truly perverse and disturbing accounts.  The Pennsylvania report is monumental in the time span and number of cases it covers.  Since the Pope's letter he has removed two Chilean bishops for abuse of minors.
  
  

The above revelations raise many concerns, but among the most immediate might be the question of how much of this is also true locally.  I would make three observations:

(1) The Local Situation

The revelations reported above, and the analysis below in Eberstadt's article, describe sections of the Church in the USA and some other places.  However, these horrific descriptions of networks of deviancy do not hold in every diocese and do not hold in every country.  While it seems, tragically, that every diocese has had some individual cases, only a few seem to have signs of networks of perverts.  Similarly, while some bishops have failed grievously, other bishops have responded effectively to abuse and acted to prevent it.  The statistics are much better in some dioceses than in others.  I would note, personally, that I've not seen signs of such networks in our own Diocese.  This might seem small consolation, but I think it gives us hope that the situation can be remedied: Promote the effective bishops and retire the failing ones.  

(2) Frequency/Infrequency of Abusers

How likely is it that a local priest is an abuser?  Media reports create the impression that abuse by priests is common.  However, while abuse by a priest is a great evil, coming from someone in a position of great trust, we should note:

Catholic priests are not more likely to abuse than other people (see here) 

In fact, a thorough study indicates that:

Catholic priests are half as likely to abuse as the general population (see here)

That's very different from the impression created by the media.  That said, most of us would have hoped for priests to be more than twice as safe as the general public, which makes the next point relevant (namely, that recent decades are an anomaly, not the norm, and that we can reasonably hope the future will be different from the recent past).

(3) The Past, and hope for a better Future

There are two, rather different, reasons to think that the future will not be a continuation of the recent past, one is generational and the other is a change of policies.  

In terms of policies, we might note that almost all of the reports of abuse concern events from past decades.  A major reason for this is that the safeguarding procedures that have been in place since the turn of the century would make it difficult for events such as those described in the Pennsylvania report to happen in the same way on the same scale still today.

But there is also the effect of a significant generational shift occurring within the clergy.  It might be noted that Cardinal McCarrick is an old man and the Pennsylvania reports almost entirely concern events some decades ago.  These horrors were largely a phenomenon within an older morally-confused generation influenced by the after-effects of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

This generation is dying out and the younger generation of priests coming forward manifest a very different dynamic: they are becoming priests because they want to be different from the society around us, because they are committing themselves to a chaste counter-cultural lifestyle -they don't want to belong to the secular sexually promiscuous culture.  There is, with this, a generation of young committed laity emerging too.

I have put together analyses from a few perceptive commentators below, along with the Pope’s recent letter.  A statement has also been made by our Bishops' Conference of England and Wales (which can be read here) and a letter from our Bishop (+Mark O'Toole, Plymouth, which can be read here).

You can read comments I have previously made on the topic of abuse here and here

I list below some noteworthy articles, most of them written in recent months:

The Elephant in the Sacristy, by Mary Eberstadt 

"this crisis involving minors --this ongoing institutionalized horror-- is almost entirely about man-boy sex"

Cardinal McCarrick's abuse of young men serves as a horrific example of the analysis that Eberstadt offered in 2002.  Her analysis remains definitive and is very different from the narrative fed to us by the secular media.

What makes the abuse crisis within the Catholic Church different from abuse in other organisations is the large number of homosexual predators involved, meaning homosexual-predator-priests living a deviant double life.  The key statistic in this regard is this: 80-90% of victims were teenage boys, rather than girls or young children.  This indicates that there is a specific issue within the Church that needs addressing: somehow a large number of actively homosexual men were ordained priests in the second half of the 20th century (Church law, since the time of Pope Benedict, now says that men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should not be ordained, see here).

This crisis is unique to our moment in history, though sadly we are living through it.

Letter to troubled Catholics from Ralph Martin (2018)

A Priest Responds to the Catholic Church’s ‘Summer of Shame’

"three related issues: abuse of power, homosexual abuse and the failure to observe celibacy, and the failure of the bishops to police themselves… the crisis of 2018 is exactly the same crisis as the 'long Lent' of 2002. The elephant in the sacristy, then and now, is the conflation of those three issues."

With [now ex-cardinal] McCarrick, timing is everything 

"The Church has been uncomfortably silent on matters of sexuality, family, and marriage because some in her leadership do not live these teachings themselves. ...In my experience, the priests and bishops who are comfortable talking about, defending, and promoting the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage are confident in their vocations."

“Corruption of doctrine always brings with it the corruption of morals”(Cardinal Muller)

The Catholic Church's Teachings Are Not to Blame for Sex Abuse

Bishop Morlino breaks ranks

“It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord”.

Bishops who hid abuse should resign, says Pennsylvania prelate (Bishop Persico)

Sexual misconduct: Pruning and purification continues within the church

Pope calls entire Church to pray and fast after clerical sex abuse revelations

Full text of letter from Pope Francis 

Bill Donahue

Donahue offers some noteworthy clarifications questioning the accuracy of many parts of the recent media coverage

The question no one is asking

Anyone who blames abuse crisis on ‘clericalism’ is part of the abuse crisis cover-up: Psychiatrist

Childlike, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Mk 9:30-37
Today I’d like us to reflect on what it is that the Lord Jesus meant by placing children before us as role models.
There are, in fact, multiple occasions when the Lord placed children before us:
The Lord “blessed” the little children that came to Him (Mk 10:16);
He said we must “change” and become like little children (Mt 18:3) saying we must “humble [ourselves] like little children”(ibid);
But it is probably here in this passage that the REASON to be like a child is clearest:
the question of greatness.

Greatness came a question in the Gospel text because the 12 apostles were arguing about which of them was the greatest.
Was it John -the Beloved, or Andrew -who brought the loaves and fishes to Jesus, or Philip who was trusted to calculate that it would take 100 denarii to feed the 5000, or James -who was related to Jesus, or Judas -who was in charge of the money?
We can imagine how the conversation might have gone.

It seems to me that there are two ways that we can think of ourselves as great, and children show us the opposite in each case.

The first is we can think of ourselves as great in terms of telling other people what to do.
Children, though they might frequently complain about it, children are used to being told what to do:
tidy your room, do your homework, eat your greens.
This, the Lord is saying, is an attitude WE need to have:
we need to expect others to tell us what to do, we need to be OK with being, as He put it, “last of all and SERVANT of all”(Mk 9:35)
-the servant is one who is told what to do.
In contrast, the “great’ man thinks he can tell everyone else what to do.

A second way we can think of ourselves as great:
having everything I need,
being self-sufficient and strong,
not needing anyone’s help.
Children, in contrast, know they are in need:
I want ice cream, I want that toy car, and want to be taken to the beach
-children know they are in need,
and they look to adults to fulfil their needs.
We, the Lord, the Lord is saying, we need something of this same attitude:
We need the humility to place ourselves before God and call on His help.

I need the Lord:
I need His strength, because often my weakness becomes apparent to me.
I need His guidance, because often my ignorance and stupidity are brutally put before me.
I need His forgiveness, for my sins, my many sins.

A child knows that he is in need;
A child knows he’s not in charge;
A child knows he is little.
We need to know the same.

Ephphatha, 23rd Sun Ord Time, Yr B

Mk 7:31-37; Isa 35:1-7
Today I want to explain why the passage we just heard “sums up Christ’s entire mission”, as Pope Benedict put in a 2012 Angelus address.

We just heard an obscure Aramaic word, “ephphatha” (Mk 7:34). Earlier this year you might recall I spoke about how there are less than a handful of words in the Gospels that the Early Church considered so precious that it kept not a Greek translation of the Lord’s words, but the actual words used by the Lord Jesus, in the original language He spoke in, namely, Aramaic
The Early Church treasured and kept this word, “ephphatha”, because she sensed that this word, “be opened”(Mk 7:34), applied not just to this individual deaf and dumb man, but actually applies to all of us.
In fact, we can see it as summing up the whole of Christ’s mission on earth.

One of the most basic human experiences concerns the difficulty of relating to God.
We all have an inner desire for something more, something transcendent and beyond, a desire for God -this desire gets smothered in many people, but it remains our most basic human experience:
We were created for God, and we yearn for Him.
The problem, however, is this:
We also experience the difficulty in communicating with Him.
Sometimes I feel unable to come to Him. Maybe I feel unworthy, or too feeble -something seems wrong at my end.
Sometimes, however, it can seem that something is CLOSED at God’s end. Scripturally, this is described in the book of Genesis in the account of the Fall: the Original Sin has left humanity sinful, stained, and shut out from heaven.
I am closed to God; and He is closed to me.
YET I need Him, and I yearn for Him.

But who can open earth to heaven and heaven to earth?
Only one who is both of heaven and of earth.
Only Jesus Christ who is both God and man.
Only the One of whom they said, as we heard at the end of that text, “He has done ALL things well”
Have YOU ever met someone who “did ALL things well”?

Thus the mission of Jesus Christ.
The Lord came among us to open us to God; and to open God to us.
My sins mean that the gates of heaven have been closed to me.
And so Jesus comes and dies for my sins, dies for me.
The symbolism in this regard concerns how, before healing the deaf and blind man, the Lord Jesus “looked up to heaven”(Mk 7: 34).
He looked up to heaven and said, “be opened”.
But, even though His death has satisfied justice,
even though the gates of heaven are opened to me,
even so, there is something IN ME that still closes me from God.
My laziness won’t look to Him,
My selfishness won’t give myself to Him,
My sensual desires close me on myself and my pleasures.
What I NEED is someone BEYOND me to OPEN me.

And the Lord Jesus said to the man who was deaf to hearing Him and blind to seeing Him,
“ ‘ephphatha’, that is, ‘be opened”.
And He says the same to you and to me.
Let us each, today, ask ourselves what is closing us to God.
Let us each, today, recognise that this can only be opened by a power, by someONE beyond me,
Let us each, today, bring that to the Lord, and hear Him say, “ ‘ephphatha’, ‘be opened”.