Earth Hurrah Smearth Hurrah

More on the so-called “Earth Hour“. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald (sponsors of Earth Hour) are patting themselves on the back for a “job well done”. Pity that Mediawatch doesn’t get onto them, or at least someone report on this non-event in an objective way.

In a front-page article in today’s edition of The Age, the following claim was made:

According to estimates by AGL Energy, the energy saved slashed almost 30 tonnes of carbon emissions — equal to taking 61,320 cars off the road for the hour.

However, the exact reduction in emissions is still unknown.

No. It is known. The exact reduction in emissions was ZERO. Because, as pointed out before, it did not reduce the amount of electricity GENERATED in that hour. Using electricity does not create emissions (well, negligible any way). Generating it does. And the generators kept on going regardless of how many people turned the lights off.

In fact, far from energy being SAVED, energy was actually WASTED during this hour. Dear, O dear, O dear…

Earth Hour Smearth Hour

Did your household do “Earth Hour”? Ours did. But not after your correspondent was chastised for being cynical by pointing out that turning of the lights for one hour would do nothing at all to the level of Greenhouse gas emissions generated at the powerplants, since it takes at least a day to change the generating level of these machines, and any unused electricity on the grid would simply be “dumped”.

It was nice to get my antique oil lamps out and to spend a quite hour reading in their gentle glow instead of doing the dishes, the ironing, the vacuum cleaning, the clothes washing and the one hundred and one other little jobs that had to be done about the house. I commented to my wife about the way artificial lighting has actually extended our working life by about six hours a day…

It was, at least, one way of impressing upon the kids the consequences of leaving lights on all over the house although–as this cynic also pointed out to them–they would do much more to save the world (and our electricity bill) if they simply put out the lights in the room when they left it.

Then again, we probably produced even more greenhouse gases by using our lamps and candles.

Ah, the trials of being a cynic.

Two new posts on Year of Grace

For those following my “conversion blog” at Year of Grace, I have added two new posts.

Bishoy on the Ordination of Women

Dr William Tighe asked in the combox to the last post:

Is this the same Bishop Bishoy that delivered that wonderful, and wonderfully explicit, denunciation of women’s “ordination” (WO) and the “blessing” of homosexual “partnerships” to the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia a few years ago?

Answer: Yes.

The Metropolitan has his own website here and the article to which you refer is here.

I especially like the way Bishoy explains the use of Scripture and Tradition in ascertaining the Truth on this issue (and on any other):

The Holy Bible is the chief source of reference in our research. Within it we can locate the expression of Divine thought on this issue. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16, 17).

In searching for the truth, we could never depend upon our own wisdom. We must refer to the scriptures, remembering the Lord’s words in the Book of Proverbs, “My son, do not forget my law, [etc.]” (Prov. 3:1,5,7,13,17,18).

It is not our right to form teachings, legislations or orders in the church, that do not conform to the Holy Bible. Thus Saint Paul the Apostle recommended the Thessalonians saying, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.” (2 Thes. 2:15).

Then he emphasizes the same concept and exhorted them saying, “But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us.” (2 Thes. 3:6).

(Which goes a long way toward explaining Coptic history in relation to the rest of the Church over the last 1500 years…)

The second source of reference for our research is the ecclesiastic tradition. Especially the traditions of the early church, considering that it is received directly from its proper sources, (i.e. Jesus Christ and His disciples).

I like the language of Church doctrine “conforming with” the scriptures and using the Scriptures as our “chief source of reference”, while also acknowledging that there is a “second source of reference”, namely, “ecclesiastic tradition” which is received “directly from its proper sources”, namely, “Jesus Christ and his disciples”. Sums up the Catholic and Orthodox approach to Scripture and Tradition as well. I would suggest it is precisely failure to read the Holy Scriptures (the “chief reference”) in the light of this “second source of reference” that has enabled so many protestant communions to wander up (and away from) the garden path on this and many other issues.

Coptic Metropolitan Bishoy explains how Church Unity got Lost in Translation at Chalcedon

Coptic Metropolitan Bishoy (pictured above) has been visiting Melbourne. Not the most convenient time for Westerners, in the middle of our Holy Week and Easter, but of course, they are on a different calendar.

Having arranged baby-sitting, I was able to get to his public lecture tonight at Trinity College (arranged by a loyal Sentire Cum Ecclesia reader, Selina – OK, class, say ‘hullo’ to Selina: ‘Hullo Selina!’ – who is working in an admin role at Trinity), which was entitled: “The Christological Controversy and the Council of Chalcedon: An Orthodox Perspective & recent positive developments”. Yes, I know, a daunting title, but your intrepid correspondent does not cringe in fear before such challenges (after all, the opening lecture at Luther Seminary in 1983–the very first theological lecture I ever heard–was entitled “St Athanasius and the Trinitarian Controversy”…)

He gave a non-Chalcedonian view of the events surrounding the Council of Chalcedon and its outcomes, and also pointed to the way in which the controversies are being overcome today, 1500 years later–largely through avoiding terminology in which the real meaning gets lost in translation.

The terminolgy is indeed difficult, and reminds me of the mess I got myself into when we were discussing on these pages whether Christ was a “human person”.

Usually, we Chalcedonians say that when the “Word became flesh”, the two natures, divine and human, were united in “one person”–or “one hypostasis” (there are problems here when that greek word is transferred literally into Latin, because you end up with two natures in “one substance”). The Copts, from what I could gather, emphasise that in Christ the two natures are united so as to become “one nature” (mia physis)–although Metropolitan Bishoy strongly asserted (in St Cyril’s terminology) that in this union the two natures continue to exist distinctly. He even used the Chalcedonian phrase “without separation, without division, without change, and without confusion”, although, again in St Cyril’s words, “it is not possible to distinguish between the natures except in thought alone”. I’m not personally comfortalbe with that last phrase. To a modern ear, it seems to suggest that it isn’t objectively so, it is just so in our thinking. But that is surely not what either St Cyril or Metropolitan Bishoy mean.

And so we can’t call these guys “Mono-physites”. As the Metropolitan writes, ‘monophysite’ comes from ‘moni physis’ which means ‘only nature’, whereas the Copts teach ‘one nature’, that is ‘mia physis’, without denying the two natures.

Still, I find this difficult. To use the Trinitarian analogy, we cannot say that the three Persons are united in One Divine Person, or that three Gods are united in One God. It is Three Persons in One God. So with Jesus, it isn’t two persons in one person, or two natures in one nature. It is two natures in one person. It just seems to run better using that terminology.

Nevertheless, if you avoid all the “lost in translation” stuff, you can see that we are really talking about the same thing. So the Catholic-Coptic dialogue was wise to drop all allusions to the Greek terminology and simply confess together the following statement:

“We believe that our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, the incarnate-Logos is perfect in his Divinity and perfect in his Humanity. He made his Humanity One with his Divinity without Mixture, nor Mingling, nor Change, nor Confusion. His Divinity was not separated from his Humanity even for a moment or a twinkling of an eye.

At the same time, we Anathematize [the teachings of] both Nestorius and Eutyches and their Doctrines.”

"Ideas that Changed the World"? Disappointing Anti-Catholicism from Australian Evangelical group "Christians in the Media"

My wife alerted me to this website, “Ideas that changed the world”. She has been a teacher in her parish of the earlier course produced by the same people “Introducing God”.

Unfortunately, the producers of this material, otherwise quite a respectable mob, have chosen to use the approach of World Youth Day as a time to step up with some revived push to proselytise Catholics (I begin to know how the Jews must feel…!).

The website says:

With the Roman Catholic church waking up for World Youth Day in July 2008 and the Pope stating that Protestant churches are not valid churches we need to educate our people on the great truths of the reformation all over again.

To help we have produced a teaching series on the four great alones of the Protestant Reformation: Grace, Faith, Bible and Christ.

And gives this little blurb at the top of the page:

“Today a Catholic friend and I watched Grace Alone. With tears of joy she talked about how the burden of guilt she carried had been lifted, as God had done it all for her, and she gave her life to the Lord. Your DVD presents the Truth clearly, strongly and yet very lovingly. What an awesome tool to have!” -Ellen

And here’s some excerpts from a page long “testimony” on the same page:

Dominic Steele writes…

…I had been Christened and I participated in Confession, Communion and Confirmation in the Catholic Church, I attended a Catholic School for eight years and served as an altar boy at mass for five years. Now I was on the church council. However, in the months that followed I became increasingly disillusioned with [my parish] priest and church.

…Either I’d rejected church or church had rejected me. But I still knew that God existed and somehow things needed to be fixed with God. When my friend Russell Powell invited me to church and I eventually nervously accepted his invitation to his Protestant church I was astonished at the differences.

There wasn’t the same ceremony. But there was an authenticity that I hadn’t seen before. Instead of walking straight out to the car park after receiving Communion people stayed for hours talking about the things they had been taught from the Bible.

Having been in church for years and then out of church for a while, I (shockingly) would say I became a Christian (began a personal relationship with God through Jesus) on 26 January 1986. After this I spent a long time working out how my new faith differed from the faith of my childhood.

Growing up I wouldn’t have said that I was saved by God’s grace alone. I trusted in my own works to make me right with God rather than having faith alone in what Christ alone had done. And my authority came from the church institution rather than from the Bible alone. I have come to see that these differences are enormously significant.

In these talks and studies we introduce you to people who grew up Catholic and see how they have wrestled with the four major ideas of the 16th century Protestant Reformation: Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Bible Alone and Christ Alone…

Whether you see yourself as Catholic, Protestant or neither our aim in these studies is to have a better understanding of what it is to be saved by Grace Alone (God’s gracious initiative in Jesus), made available to us through Faith Alone (not by us being good enough). Further we will aim to know God through the Bible Alone (and not through any church authority) and to see that we can pray to the Father through Christ Alone (and not through the saints).

And here’s the email I sent to their office (you can send an email from this page):

Dear Marnie,

My wife has been teaching Introducing God at her local Lutheran Church for some time. She is excited about your new course “Ideas that changed the world”, but, as she said to me, “from my brief look it seems fairly negative towards the Catholic church- quite disappointing!”

She’s not wrong.

It might surprise you to learn that the Catholic Church does teach that we are saved by grace alone, and through faith in Jesus Christ alone. It might also surprise you to learn that the Catholic Church is the only world-wide communion of Christians that teaches that the Scriptures are the Word of God, inpired and inerrant.

I have been an Evangelical Christian all my life, and a Catholic Christian for eight years. Together with the Evangelical Alliance here in Melbourne, the Commission I work for has been fostering a successful Evangelical-Catholic dialogue for the last three years. Catholics and Evangelicals throughout the world are realising that what they have in common is greater than what separates them, and in the culture wars we are partners, not enemies.

It is therefore, as my wife says, disappointing that you have chosen to produce and market a resource specifically designed to draw Catholics away from their Church and faith into a different way of believing. It is all the more disappointing that you have seen the World Youth Day as something to be opposed instead of embraced. The last 25 years of experience of WYD have shown that it has been a prime opportunity for thousands of young people to come alive in their faith in Jesus–precisely through faithfulness to his Church.

We do not live in the 16th Century any more. We live in a time when Catholics and Lutherans and Methodists throughout the world have reached agreement on the doctrine of Justification, and have signed together a statement to this effect with the highest Vatican approval.

It is true that there are many Catholics who do not know the teachings of the Church as well as they should. The Catholic Church is a large Church, embracing more than 25% of the Australian population. It is no secret that not all of these have been evangelised thoroughly. Pope John Paul II himself called more than twenty years ago for a “new evangelisation”–precisely referring to the need for an intense effort at the evangelisation of those already baptised. But this is to be done by strengthening them in their adherance to the Catholic faith, not drawing them away from it.

By all means, produce and promote a resource that speaks of the centrality of Christ, grace and the scriptures. Amen to that. But before you start using it to proselytise Catholics, please take the time to discover exactly what it is that we teach.

If you wish to contact me further on this, I would be more than happy to correspond via email, or to talk with you on the phone. I can be contacted at my office [etc.]

William Golding and Original Sin

In connection with the Barney Zwartz article in The Age noted below, there is a list of “seven classic books in which sin is a central theme”. They are:

The book of Genesis
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
The Golden Bowl, by Henry James
The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene
and
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.

As you know, I have been listening to Golding read the last book on this list. Here are his off the cuff closing remarks about the “picture” he had in his mind when he wrote “Lord of the Flies”:

This picture was of a little boy who actually found that he was on a coral island and was so delighted that he stood on his head. this is one of the ways small boys show their delight… And that was one picture, and the other picture was of this same little boy crying, crying his heart out more or less, because he had discovered what actually went on, what people were like in society when you don’t have law.

I think really you could say the most important thing said in the book is when Jack says “Bollocks to the rules. Why should we obey the rules? and why should we bother about the rules?” and Ralph says “because the rules are the only thing we’ve got.” That really is, I suppose you could say, what the book is about. If you don’t have rules, that is to say, if you don’t have law, then you are lost, you are finished, you’re gone.

Plenty of "Theological" reflection in the twin "Easter" edition of The Age

(Source: Michael Leunig, The Age)

Well, I’m confused. I have two copies of The Age, one delivered yesterday and one delivered today, both proclaiming themselves to be the “Easter Edition, March 21-22, 2008”. The only thing to give them a firm distinguishing date is the weather report. Even the TV programmes are provided for Friday to Sunday in both editions.

Nevertheless, the result is twice the usual amount of secular and semi-religious reflection on the place of the Paschal Mystery in today’s society. You might find some of the following a good read.

Top of the list is Barney Zwartz’s “The Resurrection of Sin”. Yes, I know, shocking title, but I will put that down to Barney’s editors, because the article is actually worth reading–about the importance of at least some sort of understanding of “sin” in today’s society if we want to preserve any notion of personal moral responsibility. My favourite quotation from this article is:

Sin, after all, is the only doctrine of the ancient church that is empirically verifiable. And its passing has left another vital concept languishing, that of moral responsibility.

In a similar vein, John Armstrong argues for the rehabilitation of the idea of the soul in his article “Beyond the Sacred – Reinventing a vision of the Soul”.

The idea of the soul as something inalienable, as persisting and continuing even when completely ignored or denied, was important in Christianity because it allowed for the possibility of the forgiveness of sins and for death-bed repentance. But this is a crucial secular thought as well. It invites us to think of each person as always capable of a return to sane kindness, and as always in need of such a return.

Then there is the lengthy essay by Michael Leunig, Melbourne’s favourite cartoonist and resident prophet, “Away in a Chook Shed”. Unfortunately, this is not available on-line. It appears in the A2 Section of one of the twin editions of The Age. It is a whimsical (as always) but interesting reflection on the only only scripture verse his father knew by heart (actually, he used it as a sort of swear word): “Jesus Wept” John 11:35. Favourite quotation:

All this was made somehow bearable and simple by my father’s enchanging utterance, “Jesus wept”. I think my dad was unconsciously telling me this: “Son, ther’s a whole lot of things you’re going to hear about Jesus in your life that are supposed to bring you salvation, and go into all that if you want: that’s your affair; but at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, then there’s just one thing you need to know about him and it’s this: Jesus wept.”

He could be right in that.

And of course, there is always Catherine Deveny. Her column “Easter? Wake me when its over” (in the edition with yesterday’s weather report) is, as usual, calculated to offend. (She even admits as much in the first line of her column). However, I found it rather amusing. Her main point is that Easter hasn’t caught on culturally as well as Christmas, and for that we can all be grateful. Leaves us real Christians to get on with the business that really matters while the rest go camping over the long weekend (see Leunig’s cartoon above). Favourite quotation:

Despite Easter being the Big Kahuna of the Christian holy days, we’re all a bit lukewarm about it. No cards, no customs, no songs. Where’s Deck the Halls with Eggs from Kmart? How about We Wish You a Happy Easter? Or, “On the fourth day of Easter my true love gave to me: four chocolate bilbies, three elegant rabbits, two panatones and a Humpty full of Smarties?”

Yes, well. I think we can be thankful for that. (Foreign readers may wonder what chocalate bilbies are. You can go here to find out how some have attempted to “Australianise” Easter in the same way Rolf Harris attempted to inculturate Christmas with “Six White Boomers”…)

Other bits:

Editorial: “Faith may be less strong, but hope remains”

ANNOUNCEMENTS of the death of Christianity, and of religious belief generally, have become familiar enough in Western, pluralist societies. From time to time, some of them are reported in this newspaper. But each year at Easter, as at Christmas, attendances at church services usually rise just enough to remind those to whom evidence still matters that such announcements are greatly exaggerated.

And, for the sake of completeness, I will just mention Warwick McFadyen’s rambling piece that never quite comes to the point, although he seems to say it in the title of his article: “The Story still has the power to transfix”.

The upshot of all this journalistic reflection is that Easter continues to confront today’s society as a mystery requiring some sort of response, if for no other reason than the fact that we get a long weekend out of it.

Bruce Marshall on the Jewish People and their relation to the Church

Have a squiz at this, because it states the problem very well. I’m buying a copy of the book for our Commission office.

Fr John Dear SJ: Getting the Paschal Mystery Fundamentally Skew-wiff

“Skew-wiff” (for you foreigners who don’t speak the Queen’s English) means: askew, out of kilter, off line.

As in “Fr John Dear S.J.’s understanding of Christianity is skew-wiff”.

I was thinking this just this morning as I was listening to him on an old pod-cast of the Religion Report. He could be talking about any political ideology, I thought. What’s specifically Christian about his message? Where’s the paschal mystery in his message?

Well, now we know. Thanks to an article in the National Catholic Reporter, Sentire Cum Ecclesia can now confidently announce that Fr Dear’s Christianity is skew-wiff because his understanding of the Paschal Mystery is skew-wiff.

I mean, what do you make of this:

The Paschal Mystery. Who speaks of the cross today as a way to change the world? And yet isn’t that precisely the methodology of the Gospel, the road to salvation, global transformation and peace? Jesus confronts the empire, enacts truth and love, saves humanity from our slavery and addiction to violence, and teaches us how to live and die — by way of the cross, that is, through active nonviolent resistance to institutionalized evil. He healed, fed, taught, befriended, touched, fasted, prayed and campaigned for peace, yet the empire continued to oppress and kill, so he took the long road of nonviolence into committed truth-telling, tough love, civil disobedience and gave his life to set off a nonviolent explosion that would disarm and transform the world. That explosive nonviolence in his Paschal Mystery continues every time we join his nonviolent struggle against empire and the culture of death, and welcome his truth and love, his reign of nonviolence.

It does rather call to mind the disciple’s question at Jesus’ ascension: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). One would have said that even at that point they had a rather “skew-wiff” understanding of Jesus’ mission and of what had just been going on in the last 40 days or so.

“Jesus confronts the empire”? Well, yes, but which empire? Whose empire? As Jesus said to Pilate–about as face to face with “The Empire” as he came–“My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world” (John 18:36). For the life of me, I can’t think of one instance of “civil disobedience” in Jesus’ life. (I think the Temple episode was more an act addressed towards religious rather than civil authority).

Maybe Fr Dear should meditate a little on St Paul’s statement that “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). I might humbly suggest that these were the powers and the empires against which Christ won the victory in the Paschal Mystery.