Fires burn while we try and solve the problem with band aids

There has been much comment on the course of the London riots. We look at the rioting population looting and destroying property because they can. We see people with no sense of responsibility for themselves, for there family, and lest of all their communities. Welfare has been the band aid for discontent and supposed class struggle for far too long.

Life doesn’t make sense without responsibility according to Victor Frankl a survivor of one of the worst human experiments known to man. Victor saw that when humanity is faced with great challenges, the one factor which sustains quality of life is a sense of responsibility. There is much which needs to be done and much which has been destroyed. Without a sense of responsibility humans are far more likely to dis-ingrate into a dog eat dog state. Much has been said of the discontent being worse then that of the 1930s and why is that? The poverty we face today isn’t as bad. We have welfare providing these people food and shelter. They riot not for what the need but for what they want. They aren’t taking bread and milk. They are taking big screen TV’s and I pads. The way welfare has been handled has lead to this lack of responsibly bred in these London youths. A question that can be asked is this the case in New Zealand?

We need to change our thinking on welfare we need to move past just supporting people because we can. People need more then just money they need a sense of responsibility. The National Government needs to change it's stance on welfare. It has been slow to response to the changes supported by the welfare working group. We need a new voice and perspective on this issue to hold National to account. If this new Conservative party can offer a fresh perspective and challenge the National government to pick up on this issue. I think it will be a good contribution to New Zealand politics.

Welfare needs to change it’s focus to help people with a hand up not a hand out

Polls apart, but still drawn together

This last couple of weeks in politics has bought out some very interesting new development in New Zealand politics. Two partys have formed at both end of the specturm. What does that tell us?

My first thought is that both parties are driven by the names not by policies. This is so common in the way we do politics these days. We talk about the John Key lead governement or the Helen Clark years. We have the founding of two new partys one being not Labour lite and the other being not National lite. This cult of personality that drives these parties with very little discussion of policy reflects the media driven message. We get what the opinions of those who write for our media suggest we focus on. The major parties often slowly release policy before an election and that is about the only time we have any clue as to how they will act or decide.

There is very little geniue new policy coming the floor or indeed new perpesctive. It seems that being well informed on politics means knowing the personal details of the members with very little focus on the decisions that they make on our behalf. Brash has been around since the time of muldoon. Sue Bradford and Hone Harawira are no spring chickens. My questions is after the advent of two new parties are we going to have any more political choice then we had before? Are we going to be offered the same idealogues with no new solutions?

I would suggest that maybe all MMP has given us is more brands of the same product

In this Sunday's readings, the love of wisdom, and the happiness which it can bring to us seems to be one of the unifying themes. Paul tells the Corinthians: "Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away." (1 Cor 2:6)

I was caused to reflect on the differences between what the world considers wise and the heavenly wisdom which Christians are called to come to know. When I was younger (in fact I should admit, perhaps still today), my pursuit of knowledge was for other purposes; money, power, prestige, authority, glory, satisfaction. It isn't hard to see similar motivations among many of my colleagues working in scientific fields. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to find a field of knowledge that doesn't have a majority of participants involved for reasons other than the pursuit of truth and love of wisdom.

Even in the field of philosophy, which should literally be "love of wisdom", the vast majority of academic institutions have been ravaged by the misdirection of the field. For a number of students, (poor) philosophy becomes a tool for the cessation of inquiry into the world, and as a result there certainly seems to be a glut of students who are nihilists, relativists and "woah-like-woah"ists. For the lecturers, researchers and other academics, philosophy is a field where the pressure for career progression can appear to trump the investigation of wisdom for its own sake.

And yet for others, philosophy has become "politics by another name". Sadly, I find that many scientists, with little or no understanding of the metaphysical and epistemological framework they should be working from are also headed to this outcome, where "science is merely politics by another name".

The reflections shouldn't stop there but for me, the most important resolution to come from this, is to emulate the great Doctor of the Church, St Thomas, who constantly sought the help of the "LORD of Hosts: he is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom.", especially before study. (Isaiah 28:29)

St Thomas Aquinas: Prayer before study

Ineffable Creator,

You are proclaimed the true font of light and wisdom,

and the primal origin raised high beyond all things.

Pour forth a ray of your brightness into the darkened places of my mind;

disperse from my soul the twofold darkness into which I was born:

sin and ignorance.

You make eloquent the tongues of infants.

Refine my speech and pour forth upon my lips

the goodness of your blessing.

Grant to me keenness of mind,

capacity to remember,

skill in learning,

subtlety to interpret,

and eloquence in speech.

May you guide the beginning of my work,

direct its progress,

and bring it to completion.

You who are true God and true Man,

who live and reign, world without end.

Amen.

Mary, Mary, necessary?

As a Catholic, one of the things that Christians of other denominations and people of other faiths (or none at all) see as a defining aspect of my faith, is the honour I give to Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

While there is much I could say on the matter, today I will attempt to address a question that even many of the Catholics in the Church today would hesitate to affirm: "Is the presence of Mary important, even essential, for Christian life?"

I do not think I could in a blog post, fully outline all of the reasons why I think the answer is yes, but here I explore some mystical reasons for that conclusion

Yes, if we look at the actions of Jesus on the Cross, when he entrusts Mary to the Church represented (but not symbolically) by John, as well as entrusting the Church to Mary. It is His very precise intention that, in order that the fullness of salvation that Christ has mediated on the Cross is obtained, Mary play a role in the co-mediation of the redemption of the world. At the Incarnation, could not have God simply incarnated a fully grown thirty-three year old Jesus Christ? Yet, he has this woman Mary. It is not only at the the life of Jesus and Mary that this is apparent, God talks about Mary all through Scripture.

St Paul recognises Christ as the Second Adam, and it is clear that Eve is a prefiguration of Mary. God desires the co-operation of man and woman. And while it is through the co-operative disobedience of the First Adam and Eve that human nature falls, it is through the co-operative obedience of the Second Adam and Eve that human nature is not only merely restored and redeemed, but also able to bear the fruit that raise human nature beyond its initial level, even potentially above that of rest of the created order. Christ, in the Incarnation takes human nature into his own divine nature. And Mary, in sharing in Christ's sufferings, shares in his glory, and is crowned Queen of Heaven.

Satan cannot stand to see that this weak and lowly peasant woman should in fact, be the most loved creature, to such an extent that God wills to have His only Son born of her. The Devil in his pride, is scandalised that this is should be so. We are told that he is enraged at the woman and tries to attack her fruitfulness. Satan focuses his power on preventing the fruit of the redemption. This fruit is salvation. Mary co-redeems and co-mediates these by choosing to bear Jesus, by suffering along side him at the Cross

The more we choose Mary, the more we choose the fruitfulness that she co-mediates, that is part of the fullness of redemption on that the choice of the Cross brings, which is the fruits of salvation. The more we choose Mary, the more Satan hates us. Many people choose Mary for consolation, but the Christian who chooses Mary maturely and freely is choosing to be attracted towards the Cross, to be lead to the heart of a most dramatic moment in history, the frontline of the battle for salvation, the foot of the Cross. Here, abandoned by all of the Apostles but John, despair and defeat seem certain. And yet in choosing to love, to hope and to maintain faith in her Son, Mary opens her heart to be deeply wounded, to suffer with Him.

When we choose Mary, we choose to live what Mary lived in her heart at the foot of the Cross. We can see a prefiguration of this drama in the book of Maccabees, when at the encouragement of their mother, each of her seven sons bravely and eloquently speaks out and is horrifically martyred for their faith. And it is only too apparent in modern history that the Catholic Church and its Popes are undergoing crucifixions of a sort in entering the heart of the battlefield by submitting themselves to the care of Mary.

Mary however, can only give to us what is hers to give. She does not give Divine Life, that is Christ's to give. What she was given in the greatest abundance was Divine Mercy. This might seem an odd thing to say; after all, we think of mercy being given to the fallen, not to Mary whom we say was free from Original Sin by preemption of the Cross through her Immaculate Conception. But is it more merciful for a father to pick up his daughter after she has tripped on rocks in the road? Or is it more merciful for a father to remove every stone in the road before she runs down the road? For which father bends lower and more often? To pick stones out from the ground is to get lower than to pick up a fallen child. Those closest to the heart of Mary should be merciful.

The most precious thing that Mary has to give to us is her proximity to the Holy Spirit. She constantly offers us to, and disposes us to, the love of Christ, and that fruitfulness of the love between the Father and the Son which is the Spirit. Mary alone can offer the Christian the fullness of this presence of the Spirit. There is something unique about Mary in the mystical life. Why else would Christ manifest His ministry only after the mediation of Mary at the wedding at Cana? We bring her our requests ("we have no wine..."), each and every day, sometimes it will be a pot filled to the brim, and others we will only have two small drops of water, perhaps our tears to offer. At the request of Mary, and in our obedience to her ("do exactly as He tells you"), Christ transforms the water into the new wine of happiness, which we will share with great joy in the eternal wedding feast in Heaven.

It is by her proximity to the Holy Spirit that the Rosary can be made fruitful, not merely by vocalising prayer, but by reflecting on the events in Christ's life and where Mary is at each point of this. We aim to live in our heart what Mary lived in her heart of what Christ lived in His heart.

Catholics should marry Catholics

Over at Creative Minority Report there is a conversation on whether one could marry an atheist that has sparked much debate. The question is not over whether it is possible to marry an atheist but whether one could bring oneself to do so. My answer to this is a resounding "no!" My answer is not out of prejudice as I acknowledge atheists can be good and attractive people. It is not out of fundamentalism as I understand that unbelievers can be saved. Instead it is out of a profound desire for complete and mutually conscious Sacramental marriage.

My Catholic faith is so important to me that any relationship which did not hold it centrally would be woefully superficial. My faith is the foundation of my world-view, it informs everything I am, do and say, so much so that in order to understand me you must understand it. Without a deep insight into the faith, without a shared experience of it I will be a frustrating mystery. I need to be able to share my joyful expectation at Christmas, my sorrow during lent and the glorious joy of Easter. I need a wife who is attentive to my spiritual as well as material needs, who is also receptive to my attentiveness to hers. I need a wife who can help me get to heaven!

Additionally I want my children to at least have as good a start in the spiritual life as I did. This means two loving and faithful Catholic parents. What a terrible disadvantage it is to be raised in the faith by only one parent and have the other steely silent (assuming they take seriously their oath to raise the children Catholic). What a terrible temptation it is to fear once they are taught the necessity of Church membership for salvation, or a temptation to indifferentism once they are taught that unbelievers can be saved. Marrying an unbeliever also denies the couple the supernatural grace afforded in the Sacrament of marriage to raise the children well. Even if I thought I could bare the disadvantages in my relationship with her I could not do all this to my children!

Finally I need to marry a woman to whom contraception, sterilisation, abortion and divorce are all NOT options! I need a wife who believes that life and sex and sacred and marriage is indissoluble. I need a wife who is eminently wise and generous with her gift of fertility, and confident in her authentic femininity. Women such as these only exist in the Church!

My conclusion is that although I am open to God directing some to marry non-Catholics (who knows what greater good He has in mind), we need to restore the expectation, the norm, that Catholics should marry within the Church. In order to support this we need to establish closer knit social networks for young people in the Church to find each other and ubiquitous theology of the body training by those living it out.

The TSA, The Troops and Moral Blindspots

There has been much furor as of late about the gross violations being perpetrated by TSA officers on travelers going through American airports. A traveler has to consent to a humiliating full body scan revealing their naked body to TSA officers, or consent to a sexually violating pat down which includes groping of the genitals, breasts and other sensitive areas, or they can't fly. To add insult to injury there are major medical concerns regarding the level of radiation exposure caused by the full body scanners. This article however isn't specifically about the TSA, nor their new mandatory sexual abuse procedures because much has already been said about them lately. This article is about a conversation I recently had on facebook and how it put a certain common moral blind-spot into stark relief.

The conversation centred around an article in which TSA officers were complaining that they were receiving verbal abuse for just doing their job. That "Our concern is that the public not confuse the people implementing the policies with the people who developed the policies..." A couple of people raised the objection that when ordered to do an immoral act, such as sexually violating someone when there is no just cause to put them under suspicion, the officer is obliged to refuse and hiding behind orders is no defense at all. The example given was the Nuremberg trials in the aftermath of World War II where "following orders" was not accepted as a defense for Nazi war crimes. The principle of this is that as long as you are capable of volition you are responsible for every action, even if you are acting out of obedience to a higher authority.

Then one of the contributors gave a curious example where there is a commonly held exception to this principle. She said that we say oppose the war but support the troops, but I'm wondering why we say this? Taking the principle from Nuremberg and assuming that the war is immoral then the free acts of the troops to execute the war is immoral also so why must we support them? Supporting soldiers executing such a war is immoral itself, so it should be clear that we have an obligation to remove our support! If you oppose a war you must believe it is wrong and if so then the acts of the soldiers in support of it is wrong too and should also be opposed.

It's repeated again and again in the media, "support the troops," "support the troops" so I don't blame people for believing it. It's like all soldiers of the west hold the same gravitas and moral high ground as the allies in World War II when this just isn't so. The truth is that supporting the troops when they're doing something wrong is just encouraging them in their folly, so it doesn't help them, it certainly doesn't help their victims, the cause for peace finds no aid, in fact the only people that it helps are the powers that set the immoral war in motion. This is of course why it comes up so often in the media, it's the oil to the state war machine. The mantra fires up the pro-war lobby and turns pro-peace activists into flaccid back-tracking wimps. Well I'm sick of it, and it's got to stop. Support the troops? Sure, when they're doing what is right, otherwise certainly not!

What Media Firestorms Say about the Church and State

Once again, here in America at least, we are exposed to a media which is bent on destroying the Church. The firestorm over condoms is the latest attempt to question the authority of a Pontiff who sits in a foreign country. Many of us know this already, but for those who don't know, this is just an attempt to establish a democracy of sorts in order to eliminate the need for a Church hierarchy. The question is, is such a move actually wise or practical?

Let's apply some common sense. What secular society looks for in the Church is a pure democracy, and some have even broke away from the Church for that reason. A pure democracy even Thomas Jefferson describes as despotism:

All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. 173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on the republic of Venice.

-"Notes on the State of Virginia"

This purely democractic or even semi-democratic form of Catholicism is to be rejected wholeheartedly by good faithful Catholics as well as those who purport to be rational human beings. The reason for this is simple: who among any of us would doubt that a choir director knows better than those in his choir how everything should be sung? I'm sure that many reporters would recognize that their supervisors serve some sort of purpose in helping to keep everything in line, as well as actors recognize a certain authority in their producers and directors. So why should it be different with a Church who has control over billions of souls? With my spiritual life at stake, I don't think that I would even want to be in the position of making decisions that would lead to my salvation or damnation, nor am I qualified to do so.

Yes, I recognize that the New York Times is probably not thinking about this when they break new stories destroying the image of the Church in the minds of their readers who sometimes take their erroneous opinion as truth itself. But I also think that the media should be unbiased in that regard... Sure, they can do that with Muslim imams but when it comes to a German Pontiff, he is to be scrutinized rigorously. In fact, they don't even bother to report on the remarks preceding the reported ones!!! A media organization that doesn't bother to read an entire statement in order to dismantle a person is outright slander. A responsible media doesn't report that such and such a director is too oppressive, and he should allow the actors to do whatever they want; they understand why this man is in charge because they can see it from the other side.

Jesus Christ came as the Good Shepherd. He meant that the Church be handed down to Peter, his successor, whom he told to "Feed my sheep." And in order that the gates of Hell not "prevail against" the Church, Peter's successor is supposed to "Feed the Sheep" as well, down to the current Holy Father. To slander such a person in order to promote a "mob" morality that is clearly contrary to the Church's traditional position, contrary to even Scripture itself, is a grave crime against the Church. May the Lord have mercy on your soul.