News on the Archbishop of Canterbury

On March 15, 2012, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was formally elected to the post of Master of Magdalene (pron. ‘Maudlin’) College, Cambridge.  (Magdalene is one of the colleges which comprise the University of Cambridge.)

The Telegraph reported:

Michael Carpenter, Magdalene’s president, said: “It is a wonderful thing for the college. We always want to get a distinguished academic and we consider ourselves very, very fortunate to get him in the role.”

In his new role, Dr Williams will lead a four-strong leadership team comprising: the president – who is responsible for the fellows of the college; the bursar; the senior tutor; and the development director.

Professor Carpenter said the Master would also engage with undergraduates “looking after them, being involved in their lives, entertaining them and so on” as well as “developing the college in various ways – raising funds, dealing with alumni”.

Dr Williams will remain Archbishop of Canterbury until the end of the year, after which point his successor is expected to begin his tenure soon thereafter. More on the selection process and possible candidates in a separate post.

Dr Williams had these words of advice for his successor:

“I think that it is a job of immense demands and I would hope that my successor has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros, really.

“But he will, I think, have to look with positive, hopeful eyes on a Church which, for all its problems, is still for so many people, a place to which they resort in times of need and crisis, a place to which they look for inspiration.”

Weddings, christenings, funerals, crises and Christmas, then, it would seem.

He speaks of it as an institution, not the body of believers in Christ and not the place for the corporate worship of Christ, whereby we receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion. This is part of the problem.

I might say the same of my bank (need) or my family (crisis). However, the Church — the Bride of Christ — deserves more profundity.

In this interview, also conducted this month, he said (emphases mine):

“There is also a lot of ignorance and rather dim-witted prejudice about the visible manifestations of Christianity, which sometimes clouds the discussion, he said.

“What I think slightly shadows the whole thing is this sense that there are an awful lot of people now of a certain generation who don’t really know how religion works, let alone Christianity in particular, and that leads to confusions, sensitivities in the wrong areas – ‘does wearing a cross offend people who have no faith or non-Christians?’ well I don’t think it does.”

Adding:

“We have to earn our right to speak more than perhaps was once the case but that is probably good for us.”

Yet, when the Government said earlier this month that Christians had no right to wear a cross to work, the Archbishop said:

it had become something “which religious people make and hang on to” as a substitute for true faith.

“I believe that during Lent one of the things we all have to face is to look at ourselves and ask how far we are involved in the religion factory,” he said.

“And the cross itself has become a religious decoration.”

Wow. Try telling that to the faithful who have been at employment tribunals for wearing discreet crosses or who were defending the faith by refusing to engage in unbiblical activities in their jobs: Nadia Eweida, Shirley Chaplin, Colin Atkinson, Lillian Ladele or Gary McFarlane.

Meanwhile, we have men and women from other world faiths insisting on headcoverings of various descriptions at work in the UK. They are not necessary for religious practice, either. However, the Police Service even has special uniforms for them, which the taxpayer is financing. The taxpayer also funds downscaled hygiene in the NHS, which has made special allowances for a certain religious group.

The Revd Dr Peter Mullen, the recently retired Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London, commented:

He sees the cross as part of that “religion factory”. It is an infelicitous phrase, for a factory is where objects are merely churned out, as from a production line. Is that what the cross, the supreme Christian symbol, has become? …

It is important to understand what is implied by this: it removes rights from a practitioner of the Christian faith which has shaped European civilisation for 2000 years and redistributes these rights to its aggressive secular opponents whose stated aim is to obliterate Christianity from the public realm.

I am reminded of T E Hulme’s saying: “An institution is only finally overthrown when it has taken into itself the ideas of its opponents.” This seems to me to be a good description of the response of the Church of England to the pernicious assaults of militant secularism. The Church has been thoroughly penetrated by the mindset of its enemies.

Returning to Dr Williams’s aforementioned lament that no one understands Christianity anymore, what did he do to contribute to this situation one way or another?

I do not recall that he really explained the purpose of the Church, evangelised in an inviting way or spoke much about the role of faith, hope and charity in his life and those of other Christians.

This has created the following confusion, which came to light on March 19:

Dr Rowan Williams said Christians are being viewed with growing suspicion and treated as “surrogates” for some extremist branches of Islam in the minds of “anxious secularists”.

He also accused the Government of assuming all vicars were “imams in dog collars” while imams were “vicars in turbans”.

His outspoken comments came during his first public service since the announcement of his decision to stand down as Archbishop at the end of this year.

They come amid signals that intends to use his final months in office to speak out forcefully on issues which on which he feels passionate …

He made his comments during a Sunday service at Springfield Church, an alternative Anglican congregation which meets in a school hall rather than a traditional church building, in Wallington, Surrey.

Revd [Will] Cookson asked him about the recent debate over secularism adding: “Do you think that the real issue for them isn’t necessarily Christianity but actually radical Islam, that it is more of a reaction to radical Islam and we are the surrogate for that.”

Dr Williams said: “I think there is a lot of truth in [that]. It is the last decade that has seen the great rise in anxious secularism, a real suspicion of religion in public.”

Well, really, only Christianity. The more secularised the UK becomes, the more other faiths are placed on a pedestal whilst the cross is increasingly feared — and denormalised.

Many conservative and traditional Anglicans believe that the Archbishop has played a role in this.

Now, if he had said more often over the past decade what he did at Springfield Church several days ago, we would not have had this problem:

“[They assume] that there is one way of being religious – either you are a sort of committed fanatic who wants to subvert the whole to your agenda or you are a sort of woolly liberal who can be persuaded to go along with whatever is happening in society.

“The Church isn’t either of those things, it is the assembly of Christ’s friends with good news to share.”

Okay, that’s a simplistic explanation, however, the unchurched may find it helpful.

In closing, let’s not forget the kerfuffle over his comments about sharia law in February 2008:

In a statement on his website, the Archbishop said he made no proposals for sharia but was simply “exploring ways in which reasonable accommodation might be made within existing arrangements for religious conscience” …

Friends of the Archbishop have said he was “completely overwhelmed” by the hostility of the response and in a “state of shock” at the barrage of criticism …

Lord Carey, Dr William’s predecessor, and the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, were among those to challenge the Archbishop’s comments.

Lord Carey said Dr Williams was wrong to believe that sharia could be accommodated into the English system because there were so many conflicting versions of it, many of which discriminated against women. Bishop Nazir-Ali said sharia would be “in tension” with fundamental aspects of our current legal system, such as the rights of women.

Even the Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Rev Tom Butler, said that he would need to be convinced by Dr Williams’ arguments.

One of those calling for the Archbishop’s resignation, Colonel Edward Armitstead, a Synod member from the diocese of Bath and Wells, said: “I don’t think he is the man for the job. One wants to be charitable, but I sense that he would be far happier in a university where he can kick around these sorts of ideas.”

And, lo, nearly five years later — in January 2013 — this is where he will be.

It should have come much sooner.

I know I will have disappointed those who wanted to see a mention of gay marriage in church but, for me, it’s the future of the Church of England’s leadership and the UK’s relationship with adherents of other world faiths which seem more pressing at this time. Once that is taken care of, the alternative marriage issue will resolve itself.

More to come on the selection process after Easter.

Semi-Pelagianism in the Anglican Church and Frank Weston

Friday’s late-night post concerned St Paul’s, an Episcopal parish in St Paul, Minnesota, hosting a meeting of the Episcopal Church Socialist League and being active in initiatives designed to ‘transform’ their city.

They cite as inspiration the Right Revd Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, who died in 1924.  Bishop Weston was an Anglo-Catholic and a Christian Socialist. Not content with purely spreading the Gospel — although he did this with tremendous success — he also exhorted a type of socio-religious legalism, believing that it would solve the inequalities of the day.

These are further excerpts from the address St Paul’s cited (emphases mine):

Brethren, if you ask me, your Chairman, what is your present duty I tell you that first. Get back into your parish, get back into your rural deanery, get back into your own diocese, and work out what Christian fellowship means. Make for yourselves such fellowship as shall not make you ashamed in the sight of Jesus. Do not ask me how it is to be done,—if I knew I would tell you. It is a problem; but it is a problem that Christ can solve if we will be true to him-a difficult and a ticklish problem. You cannot simply sweep away the social customs in which we have been born and bred, and God forbid that we should try. You cannot pretend to an equality of culture and an equality of taste and temperament which does not actually exist. But, if God leapt a gulf for you, I suppose that you can leap gulfs for God first. We are recalled to the Christ of Bethlehem, then, into fellowship …

I remind you that the hope of your salvation and the justification of your claim to attention from the world is just the naked Christ of Nazareth, and to him I recall you …

Fix your eyes upon him who goes before you: Jesus, the naked Christ.

Brethren, consider. We meet and we count our thousands now; and had we an Altar that we might offer our Mass here, how glorious we should think it. But when you have followed the naked Christ, now glorified, and in the sacramental presence pleaded his cause before the Father, where is the sternness, where is the strictness, where is the self-sacrifice in us, the ministers, the acolytes and worshippers at the altar? Naked, yet glorified: that is the picture of him in his sacramental presence; and we well we know what we are.

But I say to you, and I say it to you with all the earnestness that I have, that if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.

You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.

I investigated Bishop Weston on the Canterbury Project and found two biographies as well as some of his sermons and letters, all of which made interesting reading.

Spouse Mouse, although far from being a Socialist, was schooled in the Anglo-Catholic tradition and often says that this branch of the Anglican Communion did more than their Evangelical / Low Church counterparts in terms of charity work, particularly among the poor in the East End of London.

HFB Mackay’s short biography of Weston says that he joined the Christian Socialists when he went up to Oxford.  After earning a First in Theology, he moved to London where he attended the College Mission at Stratford:

The knight-errant in him was taking shape, and he went down to the East End in the spirit of joyous adventure. Here his powers of leadership began to appear. He had a strong, quiet manner which won the confidence of the bigger boys who called him the Cardinal and made him their confidant. It was glorious time of Christian Socialism and growing Anglo-Catholicism until the Protestant Conservative element at Oxford intervened, and Frank Weston resigned the college mission and went to St. Matthew’s, Westminster. Two saying had always stuck in his mind. When he was a boy at Dulwich, the Headmaster, who had a curious power of divination, one day said to him, à propos of nothing, “Weston, if Jesus Christ asked you to give Him your overcoat would you go and fetch Him your shabbiest?” Weston said, “No, sir,” and he proved as good as his word. And when he was at Stratford and was talking one night in Oxford the socialistic doctrine which was to “build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land,” a Don said to him, “Weston, do you believe in the heavenly Jerusalem?”

“Yes,” said Weston.

“I wish I did,” said the Don; “and if I did I don’t think I should talk about anything else.”

The saying shook Weston’s mind into a new perspective. After sorting his ideas, praying and meditating and developing his work as a priest in the orderly devotional atmosphere of St. Matthew’s, he volunteered again for Central Africa, was accepted and went out to Zanzibar.

Mackay explains the atmosphere in Africa at the time:

If you go back from the twentieth century to the first you find yourself in a society where none of the Christian traditions of conduct, conventions and repressions exist. It was not difficult to make these children religious, it was very difficult to keep them at all decent in conduct, and it was immensely difficult to make them see that the one had anything to do with the other …

He found, like St. Francis de Sales, that he must make the Blessed Sacrament the centre of their lives.

Weston became so proficient in Swahili that he dreamt in it. He did not attempt to Europeanise his young students but rather wished to build up an African church.

His next post was as Canon and Chancellor of the Cathedral in Zanzibar, where some of his duties involved preaching to a more European congregation. For those who are unaware, Zanzibar was part of the enormous British Empire, denoted by pink on maps of the world until the 1960s.

In 1907, Weston was consecrated Bishop of Zanzibar. He appears to have been a complex character — believing in Socialism yet actively campaigning against Modernism in the Church. He was diligent about preaching the Gospel in Africa and did not hesitate to mete church discipline to members of his diocese when warranted:

As Bishop he became disciplinarian of his people. he sat as judge, heard cases, and imposed public penance, but all the time with such a love of souls that he became the father and consoler of all his black children. There is a story of a rebellious sinner and his excommunication from the altars of the Church. The awful ceremony proceeded, the lighted candles were hurled down on the ground and extinguished, and the Bishop came to the final sentence, “We do hereby cut you off-” and then burst into a torrent of tears, and amid the sobs of the Bishop, priests and people, the church bell tolled out the news that the doom had been pronounced.

He participated in Protestant ecumenical conferences, one of which was at Kikuyu in Uganda.  Weston was concerned that with each denomination — including his own — teaching a varying degree of doctrine and heresy, the Christian clergy were allowing the Muslims an advantage.  This is worth noting, because it could help to explain why our churches in Europe are losing ground. Mackay explains:

The Church and the Sacraments were at stake in the Kikuyu controversy, and the Person of our Lord in the controversy with Modernism. The Bishop’s contention in the Kikuyu case we know. He won his chief points, and we like to think of his departure from the second Kikuyu Conference to the sound of his opponents’ cheers. Weston’s presence, speech and charm were irresistible.

With regard to Modernism, Bishop Weston was in a painfully favourable position to see what it might lead to.

The Arabs of Cairo were deluging Zanzibar with proselytising Mohammedan tracts in which they pointed out that the Modernist teachers in England were teaching a doctrine of our Lord’s Person indistinguishable from Mohammed’s account of it, and that our learned men were now making it perfectly clear that Mohammed had been right all the time and the Church wrong. We may regret the methods with which the Bishop fought the Modernists, we may perhaps think them extravagant and out of date. But this is clear, they made it plain to the slow English mind that modern Christian teaching must be watched.

This is an excerpt of a letter Weston wrote to the Bishop of St Albans in England in 1914 on the subject:

My purpose is to submit to you, as a representative Prelate of the Ecclesia Anglicana, and as a most zealous supporter of her foreign missions, the thesis that at the present time, having regard to her exceedingly chaotic system of Truth, she is entirely unfit to send missionaries to heathen or Muhammadan lands.

Your Lordship will guess at once that I have not always taken this view. I am now in my sixteenth year of missionary work; to it I have given my best years; and for it I have gladly sacrificed tastes and aspirations that fail of satisfaction in the isolation of our tropical life. Why then do I now begin to doubt? Simply because the Ecclesia Anglicana is content to have lost her power of self-expression, so that we out here can no longer appeal to her Voice or rest upon her Witness. She has no Voice: she offers no single Witness …

The long series of modernist publications with which we have grown familiar was crowned towards the end of last year by Seven Oxford Men, who published a book called “Foundations” as a contribution towards the reconciliation of religious belief with modern thought … Now so used are we to heretical speculations and teachings by Cathedral Dignitaries and Academic Teachers, that one book more or less would not be seriously felt. The significance of this particular work lies in the official relations in which the authors stand, or stood, to Bishops of the Church. For it is evident that what an Examining Chaplain, or the Principal of a Theological College, can tolerate in a book of which he is a joint author, he is bound to accept as within the limits of orthodoxy from his ordination candidates. So that the chief value of the book is not in its theology nor its philosophy; but rather in the revelation it affords of the official attitude of the Bishops implicated towards heresy and unorthodox speculation.

Mr. Streeter, who does not regard belief in Our Lord’s bodily resurrection as necessary for himself or for others, quietly ceased to be your Lordship’s Chaplain, but the other priests, who allowed his view as permissible in a brother priest, remain at their posts. Some of them, we are told, do not accept Mr. Streeter’s teaching; but that it is not wrong in a priest to accept it, they are pledged to maintain.

The book, briefly speaking, permits priests to believe and teach, among other things equally heretical,

(a) that the Old Testament is the record of the religious experiences of holy men who lived roughly from 800 B.C. onwards; some of whom wrote the so-called historical books in order to shew how, in their view, God acted in circumstances that quite possibly, and in many cases probably, never existed;

(b) that the Christ’s historic life opens with His baptism, at which He suddenly realized a vocation to be the last of the Jewish Prophets;

(c) that Christ did not come into the world to die for us; but having come, He died because of the circumstances of the case;

(d) that Christ was mistaken in what He taught about His Second Advent, thinking that the world would not outlast St. John;

(e) that therefore He did not found a Church, nor ordain Sacraments;

(f) that His body has gone to corruption;

(g) that there is no Authority in the Church beyond the corporate witness of the Saints, many of whom are now unknown, to the spiritual and moral value of the Christian religion.

Thus it is allowed by the Seven to any priest to deny the Trustworthiness of the Bible, the Authority of the Church, and the Infallibility of Christ.

… I say one pauses: for if Episcopacy, Sacraments, the Bible, and the Lord Christ Himself are on the official list of Open Questions, what is there left in the Deposit that we are here to hand on to Africans?

The answers that are offered for my consolation in this matter vary. Roughly speaking they may be stated thus:

(a) “The Ecclesia Anglicana is by her nature and claim within the Catholic Church, but in order to save confusion and schism, she allows men to remain within her communion who on the Continent would have been driven out. Thus she has a character of inclusiveness that may be said to give her a duty of mediating between various opinions and temperamental views,”

For myself I gain no comfort from such an answer. A mediating Church, it seems to me, would not include within its borders two men of directly contradictory beliefs: rather it would so modify and adjust the two beliefs until they were seen to be complementary, and then it would help one man to hold them both. For example, while Sacramentalism and Personal Religion can be held by any one man as complementary truths, I do not see how a mere Sacramentalist, if such a man exists, could remain in communion with one who believes only in a Personal Religion; and a Church that would seek to retain both men would in no sense be a mediator: it would not be in any true sense an organism: it would be merely a Society for shirking vital issues. Or again, what is it that the Church is mediating when she includes within her borders a man who believes that Christ is Virgin-born, and a man who calls Him the son of Joseph? Or a man who believes that Christ is his Infallible Guide, and a man who holds that Christ was seriously mistaken about the need of a Church and Ministry? Or a man who believes that Our Lord’s Glorious Manhood is the fountain of grace, the Temple of the Holy Ghost, and a man who teaches that the Manhood has ceased to be whole and complete, the Body having gone to corruption? Personally I do not see exactly what it is that is here “mediated” by the Church.

(b) “The Will of God is to purify the Church by permitting these heresies to abound within her borders. If we are patient, all will be well.”

As I listen to this I try to work it out for myself. Here, in this diocese of mine, heresy may burst forth. If it does so, shall I be able to say that it is God’s Will? First, I must think over the indications of God’s Will that are most evident. And at once I remember that in His Will and Providence, just five years ago to-day, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his co-consecrators exacted from me, as a condition of my reception of the rank and grace of Episcopacy, a most solemn vow that I would always be ready to banish from my diocese any erroneous and strange doctrine that I might meet.

As to the Kikuyu Conference, Desmond Morse-Boycott explains:

The Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda, without reference to the diocese of Zanzibar, had joined in conclave with the various Free Church denominations that were working in Africa, to find a solution of the problem of how best to meet the spiritual needs of Africans who moved from one territory into another. The dual menace of Islam and the white man who exploited blacks, together with the tug of tribal customs, seemed to them (and the average Englishman was quick to agree) to constitute a difficulty that made domestic ecclesiastical differences relatively absurd. They felt that at all costs a way must be found for the African trained by the Anglican Church in Uganda to have Communion in another territory where the Free Church was the sole representative of Christianity.

We are accustomed, in England, to adapt ourselves to denominational difficulties. In Africa they are highly embarrassing. Essential Christianity appears sharply outlined there against a background of ignorance and false religion and sin. What appear at first sight to be accidentals of Christianity tend to be regarded as immaterial. That such a view is very natural we should be the first to admit if our parish, with its sundered Christian units—Church, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Salvation Army, Congregational, Baptist—were taken into the heart of Africa and left to preach the Gospel. In the teeth of opposition, and in the face of primitive passions, we should speedily become vexed over apparently artificial divisions.

He was training his Africans to believe, for instance, in the Apostolic Succession. How, then, could he send them forth to receive the ministrations of those who disbelieved in his conception of the Church? “He did not believe that ‘a Church’ with an indefinite faith, with no determined rule of life and a haphazard form of government, would be strong enough to weld Africans together, to uplift them as a race, or to defend them against being exploited by Indians and Europeans.”

He wrote, accordingly, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, denouncing the Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda for the part they had played in “Kikuyu,” and charging them, formally, “with propagating heresy and committing schism.” If he failed to do justice to the fact that their scheme was tentative, and not in operation, they, for their part, cannot be excused for having ignored the existence of the Diocese of Zanzibar. The upshot of it was that the Bishop of Zanzibar’s position was upheld, but, as the War had broken out, Kikuyu meant little to any but anxious Churchmen. The Anglican Communion once again steered clear of the rocks, although her break-up had been prophesied, but Frank Weston, who dared to turn her from danger, was in disgrace.

Bishop Weston died in 1924.  The people of Zanzibar flocked from miles around to pay their final respects. Even the Muslim onlookers could see by the outpouring of emotion that he was a revered, ‘holy’ man, indeed.

To which I would add — ‘holy’, except for the Socialism.

Mackay notes:

… one of the little black schoolboys of the Kiungani, writing of him after his death …

“You will know that he is a loving man, for his mouth is always opened ready for laughter, for he is still laughing, and he will laugh for ever.”

Well, maybe, but there does seem to be a volatile vacillation here between works-based salvation, true Christianity and giving to ‘the naked Jesus’ — a parlous image. The only time Jesus was mostly unclothed was in His suffering on the Cross. Is it meet and just to equate those who make a series of wrong choices — dead in sin — as being a ‘naked Jesus’? It seems a step too far, indeed.

‘Oh, yes, people, give all you can.’  Sure, I could say that, too — anyone could. And there are a number of young American preachers today who do — David Platt, the Baptist, for example. However, unless one gives of one’s own capital, it’s meaningless.

And that’s the magic of Socialism. As Baroness Thatcher once said, ‘They [Socialists] always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic …’

J C Ryle: an Anglican bishop of the old school

As an antidote to the recent Church of England debacle involving St Paul’s Cathedral and Occupy, it seems apposite to examine a bishop who did much for the Church: J C Ryle.

John Charles Ryle was born in 1816 to a wealthy banker.  Having attended Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, his family expected him to pursue a career in politics.  However, Ryle felt called to the priesthood and was ordained in 1842.

He was very much an evangelical preacher, firmly opposed to the Ritualism in the Church as characterised by the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement of the time. Although he had firm religious convictions which he expressed in no uncertain terms, in private, he was known for his kindness and warmth.  He also preached to the working class, bringing many to the knowledge and love of Christ Jesus.

One of Benjamin Disraeli’s last acts as Prime Minister was to appoint Ryle to the post of Bishop of Liverpool, a brand new diocese.  There, Ryle presided over the construction of 40 new churches, raised clergy salaries and instituted pension funds for them. He was also responsible for the building of the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool.

Ryle retired only three months before he died at age 83 in 1900. Today, he appears to have more of a following in the United States among orthodox Protestants than he does here in England.  He published several works on the four Gospels as well as on the Christian life.

(Incidentally, Ryle’s second son, Herbert Edward Ryle, served as Bishop of Exeter, then Bishop of Winchester before being appointed Dean of Westminster in 1911.)

Below are several quotations from J C Ryle’s works, still as relevant today as they were in Victorian times. (Thanks to Grace Gems and Bible Bulletin Board [here and here]).

Would that we had priests and bishops like this today.

My chief desire in all my writings, is to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and make Him beautiful and glorious in the eyes of men; and to promote the increase of repentance, faith, and holiness upon earth.

——————–

Every professing Christian is the soldier of Christ. He is bound by his baptism to fight Christ’s battle against sin, the world, and the devil. The man that does not do this, breaks his vow: he is a spiritual defaulter; he does not fulfil the engagement made for him. The man that does not do this, is practically renouncing his Christianity. The very fact that he belongs to a Church, attends a Christian place of worship, and calls himself a Christian, is a public declaration that he desires to be reckoned a soldier of Jesus Christ.

——————-

“What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)   A subject stands out on the face of this text which is one of the most solemn and heart searching in the Bible. That subject is eternity.  The subject is one of which the wisest man can only take in a little at a time. We have no eyes to see it fully, and no mind to grasp it; and yet we must not refuse to consider it. There is a depth of stars in the heavens above us, which the most powerful telescope cannot pierce; yet it is well worth it to look into them and learn something, even if we cannot learn everything. There are heights and depths about the subject of eternity which mortal man can never comprehend; but God has spoken of it, and we have no right to turn away from it completely.

——————-

There is no doctrine in Christianity so important as the doctrine of Christ crucified. There is none which the devil tries so hard to destroy. There is none which it is so needful for our own peace to understand. By “Christ crucified,” I mean the doctrine that Christ suffered death on the cross to make atonement for our sins,-that by His death He made a full, perfect, and complete satisfaction to God for the ungodly,-and that through the merits of that death all who believe in Him are forgiven all their sins, however many and great, entirely, and forever.

——————-

If you are a thoughtless, careless man about your soul … Faith and assurance are mere names and words to you: they are neither land, nor money, nor horses, nor dress, nor meat, nor drink: … you care not for them. Alas, poor soul! I mourn over you. The day will come when you will think differently.

——————

My simple object is to point out the unreasonableness, not to say dishonesty, of ignoring the enormous results and effects which Christianity has produced in the world. I ask the skeptic and the agnostic to try Christianity by its fruits. I defy them to deny the existence of those fruits. I say that mankind owes a huge debt to Christianity, whether mankind knows it or not, of which the amount can never be calculated. In short, the fruits of Christianity are an unanswerable proof to my own mind of its Divine origin, and a stupendous difficulty in the way of infidelity, which has never been fairly grappled with or explained away. 

Ryle’s sermons are available in full at the Bible Bulletin Board links above.  They are beautifully written and ever edifying.

Why the Church of England is losing the plot

Recently, English Churchman featured an analysis (p. 7 of the PDF) of the late John Stott‘s ministry and today’s Church of England.  (H/T: Reformation Anglicanism)

John Stott was a bit too evangelical for my tastes.  I attended a service at his church in London, All Souls, Langham Place — admittedly, long after he had retired, and couldn’t really relate to the style of the service.

However, what this article says about the Church of England today is particularly pertinent (emphases mine below):

With its heady mix of liberal, ritual, ecstatic and evangelical the Church of England gives such an uncertain sound. Consequently, while some congregations have grown, the Church of England attendance has fallen by more than 50% in the 30 years since 1980.

Churches today are desperately trying to attract the young by including as many childfriendly activities as possible. Some of these methods, such as the use of pop music, are frankly puerile. The replacement of reverence with informality is rooted in heresy if not outright blasphemy. One regrettable change is evident in prayers which drop any reference to the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, simply fizzling out at the end, perhaps with a muffled Amen as an afterthought. Such prayers may even be eloquent but they are more acceptable to unbelievers than to Christians. Surely it cannot be that ministers are ashamed that prayer can only be offered in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and not by the world at large? …

One friend recently expressed it simply like this, things started going wrong when church leaders stopped believing the truth, the Bible. Bishops and clergymen at their ordination have solemnly vowed to hold to a biblical understanding of Christianity, the 39 Articles of Religion, and to do so vigorously, “to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s word”. Some may have done so ignorantly but many must have deliberately and wickedly broken these vows and embraced false teaching. No doubt they were never converted in the proper evangelical sense … Others entered the ministry to spread their own unbiblical ideas of love by trying to be nice and to make the world a better place without understanding the need for themselves and their followers to first receive the grace of God through faith in Christ. While some swore falsely or ignorantly when they made their vows, others were once sincere but have since backslidden and fallen from the faith. They should have become social workers or politicians, but never clergymen. They should certainly now resign. Yet the Church of England refuses to administer proper discipline …

When the things preached by the church are seen by onlookers to be uncertain, the moral high ground is taken away from the church and it has lost its authority and the power to preach. Without preaching it has no Gospel to offer and is, more or less, irrelevant.

A nation that used to believe that there was a God to whom we must give an account is now not even sure about that. It is all the more tragic because while all peoples of the world have some concept of having to please God, Britain also had a good grasp of the Gospel, the means of securing the love of that God without which it is impossible to please Him. Now, through the unbelief of its leading clergymen, it does not know where to turn. It certainly will not turn to an uncertain church.

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8).

Too right. When the Internet provides better resources — outside of receiving Holy Communion — we C of E members are in big trouble.  But don’t hold your breath expecting things to change.

A fish rots from the head, but this has been in progress for decades, as the article states.

Last December I shared what Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, says about the Gospel (video and more at the link):

First, he explains the Gospel in a highly intellectualised way.  Although he mentions the Crucifixion, he does it — unconsciously, I hope — from a perspective of Christ’s ‘weakness’ instead of perfect obedience to God the Father. Think about Christ’s one, perfect sacrifice for our sins and you can’t help but feel humbled.  However, the Archbishop also neglects to mention our redemption and the promise of eternal life.

… what he thinks about the Church — also quite abstract and watery.  Is it any wonder that people turn to greater orthodoxy?  What is church to many of them?  A place to worship God in assembly and to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion.  Yet, the Archbishop says ‘it’s a happening’ brought about by the impact of the Gospel …  He wants people to answer a call to church and the ‘gift, the surprise element’.  Hmm.

As far as the egregious Emergent Church is concerned, Williams is a supporter:

The emergents, he says, ignore the ‘tribalism’ of Christian denominations.  He also likes its ‘structure-lite’ qualities and its ‘flexibility’.  Weaknesses?  Well, he does briefly acknowledge that we like to feel comfortable in a Christian setting and the consumerist aspect of the postmodern Church.  He also mentions the fact that those involved with programmes like Fresh Expressions lack the safety net and support that is there for those involved in a more structured parish church environment.

With perspectives such as these, what hope is there, then, for the Church of England?

Fortunately, rumour has it that the Archbishop of Canterbury will be standing down next year after the Queen’s Jubilee. Read the comments following the article.  Many have found his performance singularly and sinisterly lacklustre.  Ditto the contributors at Stand Firm.

And who will emerge as a suitable successor to Rowan Williams? I can think of no one at present.  We need a J C Ryle, the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool, someone who will encourage orthodox belief and practice.  However, with the ABC appointment resting on the Government, that is unlikely to happen.  Prime Minister David Cameron is a lukewarm Anglican at best, more intent on pleasing the world than our Lord.

We Anglicans must pray that our clergy’s way of thinking and believing starts reversing itself soon.  We would also do well to pray that Williams’s successor is a man of God rather than the world.

Leftists then and now

In 2009, I featured a few revealing posts about Soviet propagandist and defector Yuri Bezmenov.  I am certain that a few readers will say, ‘Well, yes, but how exaggerated is all this?’  That is something only you can decide, but based on what he, Bella Dodd and Richard Wurmbrand say, it seems to be pretty true, especially in today’s climate.  Are we so in thrall to the Left that we’ve blinded ourselves to reality?

At any rate, it’s always good to see Bezmenov’s writings on other sites.  His message bears repeating again and again.  In May 2010, James Higham of Nourishing Obscurity (see blogroll) featured this truth-teller.  In the second part of his series, Higham gives us Bezmenov’s observations on defecting, ultimately to the West (emphases mine below):

No one wanted to know, I would use all kinds of tricks. I would leak letters or lost documents to get people to understand what we were doing and still the message was not published, even in the conservative mass media of India.

The immediate impulse to defect was Bangladesh, which was described by American correspondent as Islamic grassroots revolution, which is absolute baloney – there was nothing to do with Islam and there was no grassroots revolution.

Actually, there are no grassroots revolutions, period. Any revolution is a byproduct of a highly organized group of conscientious and professional organizers but there’s nothing to do with grassroots.

In part 3 of his series ‘Obstacles to perception’, Higham reveals names behind a notional resolution or, perhaps a diabolical perpetration, of Europe’s financial crisis.

Have you heard of Peter Dittus, Stephen Cecchetti or Günter Pleines?  Yet these are three people orchestrating what is happening in Europe.  These are three men having a great say in what happens to the Euro or to Greece.  You see, we’re operating in a vacuum, believing that national politics still matter, which they do in our hearts but not in the daily machinations of these people who are not subject to any sovereign government and yet these three men are pulling the strings.

Even if you nail them, there are all the others with key influence as well.  It’s a hydra and I gave up after the 1000th or so name came up.  I was meant to give up.  It can’t be penetrated because, like an EU committee which forms, advises legislation then disbands, none of these can be nailed.

Sounds similar to the management consulting firm where I worked for 11 years. Lots of smaller sub-departments, if you will, operating internationally, some for a few months, others for a year or two.  No one minded when they were dissolved.  Everyone was on the lookout for the next assignment and most had other irons in the fire lined up, anyway.  So for anyone interested in a long-lasting positive outcome on a project-by-project basis, this line of business would not be suitable for them, as I eventually found out.  But I digress.

Back on topic. In the 1990s, Higham reveals that an EU plan for education was at the top of the agenda.  The EU stated that their motives in this regard were ‘a social responsibility’.  Higham explains:

If that was the process, then the formal organization was in Erasmus Mundus programmes and the Mundus should make you shudder for a start. Naturally, these are now being expanded into the greater Mediterranean area under the Union for the Mediterranean banner [H/T IPJ].  The goal is the harmonization of political thought within the area of EU influence and the movement of “sound” academics within its programmes to any part of the empire.

And he explores, if not answers, the same question I have about the West, which is ‘Why do we all have the same problems?‘  He directs us back to Bezmenov:

These were my instructions – try to get into large circulation established conservative media – reach filthy rich moviemakers, intellectuals, so-called academic circles, cynical, ego-centric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie.

These are the most recruitable people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy or suffer from self-importance – they feel that they matter a lot – these are the people KGB wanted very much to recruit.

So, over a period of years, conditioning takes root and no one much cares if this emanates from the cynical ancient Roman concept of ‘bread and circuses’.  Higham reasons:

It explains why a large section of the community is shown all these things, yet still comes out and says it prefers to live in such a system.  It explains how, once it is laid out in detail, that part of the community still comes out and said “that’s as maybe but you still haven’t given me any good reason to change my mind” …

When you are drawn into certain beliefs, certain ways of thinking, as Yuri Bezmenov pointed out, from cradle to grave, it is impossible to break out of them until a very great shock occurs to you.

It’s the aim of the politicians to keep us from those shocks until the very last moment.  Right up till that point, those of a more sanguine temperament will smile benignly and move on …

That’s the current state of play and most of us are so far behind in perception that we’re only starting to understand the nature of the EU but the EU is only a manifestation of the real game, the financial reorganization on a massive scale which will dwarf the hedge fund scams, the sub-prime crises and so on …

We can rush onto the street in anger but whom do we target?

Over a year later and those of us who find the changed goalposts of the EU project mystifying still have no answers.  But, like the proverbial, leftists will always be with us. In a post for Orphans of Liberty, ‘Leftists and falsehood’, Higham unpacks how they work today, which isn’t much different than before, it’s just that we’re beginning to encounter more of them, upfront and personal.

Where’s the best starting place, as I’ve mentioned before?  School and university. Higham writes:

I grew up neither left nor right but once in university, I became a Fabian because, as a politically unquestioning kid, I bought the whole “professor must be correct” guff and as the only material we were steered towards was leftist – Ayn Rand was never mentioned beyond negative stereotyping and sound thinkers such as Adam Smith were never even mentioned …

This is how it’s done – the leftist argues that the banksters are capitalist, they’re ripping off the public, therefore they are fascists and need to be overthrown in a revolution “along with all the other rightwingers” who don’t care about “the people”. He knows no different, the leftist, because he’s been brainwashed into thinking that because he himself is kind and compassionate towards little creatures, towards the earth and towards fairness and equality, then the people championing his causes are also kind and compassionate …

All these groups we’ve grown up to believe are fighting for us are actually something completely different.  The leftist cannot see it.

He cites the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) as an example:

Indeed, few leftist organizations in existence today can compete with the ACLU in terms of demonstrated hostility toward what the Declaration of Independence describes as “certain unalienable rights” with which Americans are “endowed by their Creator.”

Consider the doublespeak inherent throughout the “progressive” Goliath’s flowery self-representation:

“The ACLU is our nation’s guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.”

Now contrast that depiction with ACLU founder Roger Baldwin’s candid vision:

“I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself… I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”

Note how the ACLU only takes on certain cases, among them the removal of Ten Commandments displays in courthouses (completed work) and nativity scenes in public parks (ongoing). All it takes is one complaint.

It’s easy to be taken in by the ACLU’s perversion of language, which is common to all leftist front organisations and spokespersons around the world.  This is why the Left has so many followers and useful idiots to serve as mouthpieces.

Higham concludes:

The leftist is not a bad person … The problem is the disconnect in their thinking – it stops at a certain point and doesn’t look at the wider issues, except through a narrow focus.

And unfortunately, the leftist, by his voting, by his beliefs, is inadvertently in most cases, supporting oppression and restriction of the ordinary freedoms of people, not to mention facilitating the very people in parliament who are hellbound on doing this to us.

You can’t reason with a leftist and that’s why the country is in the state it is today.

This is why it is essential for libertarians and true conservatives to explain this to their children before they get into secondary school.  Yes, before, because the drip-drip feeding will have started at primary school.

If I may, I would like to close with a few observations made in the comments to Higham’s Orphans of Liberty post.  These come from Robert Edwards:

I think a chief characteristic of ‘Leftism’ is a need to agitate in order to provoke. And, as Gen. Fuller points out, this characteristic can often be camouflaged by calling hard line Bolshevism Social Democracy, for example, as happened in Russia before the second revolution.

Another characteristic is ‘Internationalism’ which is nothing to do with Global Fraternity, but rather to do with eliminating threats, because a global lefty world is unsustainable, or if it is, it starts – quickly – to look very much like the worst type of Feudal Society, so the whole thing kicks off again.

A third characteristic is a dumb acceptance of Marxism as being in some sense ‘true’ as opposed to a selective and derivative rip-off of other third-raters like Hegel.

A fourth characteristic is the preparedness to use terrorism, before, during and after any revolution. The suppression of dissidence by acts of deliberate murder, to cleanse society of the intelligent, the educated, the courageous, the awkward and the cynical. This will take place constantly.

A complete refusal to undertake any debate on the demerits of what is essentially a system designed to crush the human spirit. This, finally, is accomplished by education.

Many of these characteristics can be seen in Western Europe at present. The EU is rapidly becoming essentially Feudal in its outlook and will be ‘Imperial’ soon. The suppression of the Kulaks in the USSR has a direct correlation with NuLabour’s dismissive attitude to the countryside. The preparedness to use terrorism can be seen in the coercive nature of state surveillance under which we now live. The dumb acceptance of ‘Fabianism’ by so-called moderates is another case in point – a tabloid Marxism.

I’m always careful to point out … the extent to which organisations like the Peace Pledge Union, The Left Book Club, Mass Observation and many, many more, were penetrated, Gramsci-like, by the Comintern. Obviously, the influence is still there at the BBC, (even particularly, perhaps, in Comedy) and the CofE. My late Mother was a member of the Peace Pledge Union and when I reported this, she was horrified …

None of this … has gone away; I used to come across ‘plants’ everywhere and in the most surprising places. It was only when I learned – really learned – the Language Of The Left that I became able to spot ‘em a mile off…

There you have it.  I shall start a separate page of all these resources as a convenient reference point.  And, yes, look — the C of E is under the influence.  So, for anyone whingeing about doctrine and services being watered down, look no further for the reason why.  England could be taking in Egyptian Copts or other North African converts to Christianity — some of today’s martyrs for the Faith.  Do we?  No.  Instead, Rowan Williams sets a narrative for the future: ‘Sharia law is inevitable’.

Change is afoot: Ireland and the Catholic Church

In July 2011, the Irish Government released the Cloyne Report, which details laxity on the part of the Catholic Church in investigating claims of paedophilia in the rural diocese of Cloyne between 1996 and 2009.

Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister — pronounced ‘teashock’) Enda Kenny, a practising Catholic, said:

Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago …

And in doing so, the Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism, that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.

The rape and torture of children were downplayed or “managed” to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and “reputation”.’

At the centre of the controversy is retired bishop

John Magee, who had been private secretary to three successive popes – Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II.

Bishop Magee retired last year.  The Cloyne Report states that he had:

to a certain extent detached himself from the day to day management of child abuse cases.

The report and the prime minister’s reaction to it has created a real buzz in Ireland.  Many Catholics, like Kenny, want to see this dark chapter in the Church resolved.  However, a number of secularists are  also airing their views.  The Vatican expressed the desire for an ‘objective’ debate on the subject, but as the Telegraph reported on July 25, 2011, recalled the Ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, the Papal Nuncio. Emphases mine below.

‘The recalling of the Nuncio, a measure rarely used by the Holy See, denotes the seriousness of the situation, and the desire of the Holy See to deal with it (with) objectivity and with determination, as well as a certain note of surprise and regret regarding some excessive reactions,’ spokesman, Fr Ciro Benedettini said.

Mr Kenny threw off generations of official Irish obsequiousness to the Vatican in a speech to parliament on the publication of the report.

The Vatican became embroiled in the latest Irish church scandal after revelations about a 1997 letter, from the then Papal Nuncio to Irish bishops, a year after reporting guidelines were enforced to enhance child protection.

The correspondence stated that the bishops policy was “merely a discussion document” and that the Vatican had serious moral and canon reservations about mandatory reporting of clerical abuse.

A number of priests have sent Kenny messages of support after he made his remarks.  Since then, Kenny has said no more publicly, except that he awaits a response from the Vatican.

As one would expect, the aforementioned secularists have grasped the nettle.  Mary Kenny, writing for the Telegraph, tells us that they are

recommending every anti-church measure from the dissolution of the monasteries to the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio and the severing of all links with the Holy See. (The recall of the Papal Nuncio … marks the lowest point of relations between Ireland and Rome.)

One correspondent wrote that it was his ardent hope that the Catholic Church would follow the example of the News of the World, and hold a “last Mass” before shutting down.

Furthermore, the Irish Minister for Justice and Equality, Alan Shatter, is

introducing a highly controversial Bill which will compel Irish priests to disclose the secrets of the confessional where paedophilia is mentioned: failure to do so could result in a five-year prison sentence.

Hmm.  It will be interesting to see how that plays, as the priest is required by Canon law to keep what he hears in Confession a secret.  Shatter is the only Jewish member of Parliament. How Catholic the other members are, I have no idea.

Once again, the question of church versus state arises.  This separation already exists in the United States, France — and Ireland.  The concept is the freedom to practice one’s faith — whatever it is — not, as the secularists wish in each of those countries, to keep it permanently under wraps except in the home and one’s chosen house of worship.

Mary Kenny — no relation to the Taoiseach — explains:

Contrary to supposition … state and Church in Ireland are already separate: the constitution, although it mentions God, makes no mention of the Catholic Church, specifically affirms that there may be no religious discrimination, and rules that no religion may be endowed by the state.

However, there is a difference between state and culture: the state construes laws, but the culture draws on history, memory, family, folklore. Despite constitutional separation of Church and state, there remain religious traditions, such as the broadcast of the Angelus on national radio, the prayers that open Dail sittings, and the existence – even dominance – of faith-based schools, which secularists seek to abolish.

She concludes:

Such sweeping changes could occur in what was once Catholic Ireland: the state could become as secularist as France, with all allusion to the Almighty officially excised. Yet even in France, the holy days continue, with Pentecost and Ascension and All Saints, and Lourdes attracting millions.

In the end, as she says, the Church will prevail:

offering age-old comforts, not of the Vatican, but of the faith.

In my experience, and maybe this is because most of the Irish I know are from Dublin, they left their faith behind a long time ago, probably at university.  It will be interesting to watch developments as they unfold.

More on the Communist infiltration of the Catholic Church

In 2003, Toby Westerman wrote an article for International News Analysis (INA) Today – ‘Infiltration of the Catholic Church?’ — which traced Communist activities within it.

Non-Catholics will also be edified by reading the excerpts which follow, emphases mine.

An affidavit recently obtained by INA Today attributes the Catholic Church’s present state of collapse to a calculated attack beginning decades ago, with initial successes appearing in the 1960s.

The affidavit affirms that Communist Party organizer and high Party official, Bella Dodd, made public statements during the decade of the 1960s declaring that the Catholic priesthood was infiltrated by numerous Communist agents, whose mission was “to destroy the Catholic Church from within.”

As Westerman notes, Dodd published a book called School of Darkness, now available online, which will appear in my next few posts so that you can see from the inside exactly how Communists work in American institutions, primarily state schools.

The Communists drummed Dodd out of the Party.  She eventually rediscovered her Catholic faith, which she embraced for the remainder of her life.  She died in 1969.  This is what she testified, much like what Agent AA-1025 wrote:

“In the late 1920′s and 1930′s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations,” Dodd stated according to the affidavit.

“I, myself, put some 1,200 men in Catholic seminaries,” Dodd publicly declared.

Dodd did not include these remarks concerning her activities directed against the Catholic Church in her book, which was first published in 1954, leading some to question whether the remarks were actually made.

However, as we saw yesterday, the Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand corroborated Dodd’s testimony through this affadavit, which Paul and Johnine Leininger provided.

When contacted by INA Today, Mrs. Johnine Leininger stated that there were others who could also verify that Dodd made the statements regarding infiltration into Catholic seminaries.

Dr. von Hildebrand told INA Today that Dodd had earlier refrained from detailing Communist efforts to undermine the Catholic priesthood at the request of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the individual responsible for bringing Dodd back into the Church.

Why Archbishop Sheen would have requested such a suppression of information is unclear.  However, Vatican II talks were no doubt either underway or about to begin, therefore, he might not have wished to jeopardise his position.  It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if he had encouraged Dodd to make all her knowledge about the Church public earlier.  The Catholic Church might never have seen Vatican II and could have been in a stronger, purer state today.  Who knows?

The process of Communist infiltration into Catholic seminaries, which Dodd described in her public talks, would have been part of a larger plan called “Outstretched Hand.”

Communist Party archives in Moscow confirm the existence of operation “Outstretched Hand,” and define its goals, according to Herbert Romerstein, author of the seminal work on Soviet espionage in the United States before, during, and after WWII, “The Venona Secrets” …

One document in Moscow’s Soviet archives reveals that the Communist Party had infiltrated several influential Catholic organizations, including the Holy Name Society, the largest parish-oriented Catholic men’s group, which is devoted to increasing reverence for the name of God and to good works in the Church and in society in general. A Holy Name Society chapter exists in almost every Catholic parish in the U.S.

The “Party comrade” operated in a key parish which provided “leadership” and shaped “the policies of most of the reactionary and anti-Communist campaigns that are now developing in the Catholic world,” according to the Soviet file.

Romerstein also recounts in The Venona Secrets that the staff of the Catholic anti-Communist publication entitled Wisdom, produced by a priest of the Paulist order, was infiltrated, and unknowingly employed two Communist agents in influential positions.

The Party boasted that one of their agents was “widely known to be a conservative in Irish circles,” and was a staff correspondent for Wisdom. Romerstein identified the Party member and Soviet agent as Jeremiah F. O’Carroll, who, in 1930, was the president of the Irish Emergency Relief organization.

Although O’Carroll was identified as a spy in 1938, he remained listed as a staff correspondent for Wisdom at least until March 1939.

The second Soviet agent who worked for Wisdom remains unknown to this day.

In many ways, the struggle traditionalists have against Modernism in the Church is no different from that which conservatives have politically against leftists (e.g. Democratic Party, Socialist Party).

When it happens in one’s own ranks, however, many understandably greet news with disbelief or rationalisation: ‘He must have a reason for saying that.  Maybe he’s right.’  This reaction is what subversive instigators wish to elicit.  The conservative then starts to doubt what he has been brought up to believe.  Alternatively, he believes the words of a sleeper agent.  In either case, his beliefs become discredited and compromised.

At the end of Westerman’s article, we find out more about how sleeper agents amongst our clergy work:

Leininger described these priests as “sleepers,” a term designating individuals or groups who carry out their espionage function only at a selected time. Before becoming active, the “sleeper” will refrain from any espionage or subversive functions.

Dodd’s infiltrators — those who lost or never actually held the Catholic faith — would have been the mentors of the present generation of Catholic priests and bishops …

Tomorrow: Excerpts from Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness

The curious Vatican omerta on Communist infiltration

Why is the Vatican so quiet on the infiltration of the Catholic Church, which has been going on for at least 80 years?

I remember the shock of reading of the death of Pope John Paul I in 1979 and the P2 involvement in the Vatican which then emerged.  I was still a Catholic then and wondered, when the Church specifically forbade Catholics to become Freemasons, how a lodge could be so close to the papacy.  My mother and my friends were equally stunned.

Meanwhile, my grandfather could never figure out why Paul VI had ostracised and, it seems, lied to Cardinal Mindszenty, a saintly man who had suffered greatly yet had done so much for the faith behind the Iron Curtain.

At the turn of this century, the Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand had written a book about her late husband, Dietrich.  When Soul of a Lion appeared, Latin Mass Magazine interviewed her and asked her more about what she and her husband, whom Pope Pius XII called (informally) ‘the 20th century Doctor of the Church’.  Below you will be able to read for yourself what reaction her husband received when he tried to present his evidence to Pope Paul VI.

Sancte Pater has reproduced the interview, excerpts of which follow (emphases mine).  Even non-Catholics will find what Dr von Hildebrand has to say of interest.   On the general remarks she makes about the supernatural, the Cross and redemption, the orthodox Presbyterian John Gresham Machen (born around the time her husband was) would have wholeheartedly agreed.  The late Lutheran pastor Richard Wurmbrand would have also agreed, particularly with her call to holiness and prayer as a faithful Christian against Satan and his earthly agents.

TLM: In terms of the present crisis, when did you first perceive something was terribly wrong?

AVH: It was in February 1965. I was taking a sabbatical year in Florence. My husband was reading a theological journal, and suddenly I heard him burst into tears. I ran to him, fearful that his heart condition had suddenly caused him pain. I asked him if he was all right. He told me that the article that he had been reading had provided him with the certain insight that the devil had entered the Church. Remember, my husband was the first prominent German to speak out publicly against Hitler and the Nazis. His insights were always prescient.

TLM: Did your husband think that the decline in a sense of the supernatural began around that time [1920s -- from an earlier question], and if so, how did he explain it?

AVH: No, he believed that after Pius X’s condemnation of the heresy of Modernism [1907], its proponents merely went underground. He would say that they then took a much more subtle and practical approach. They spread doubt simply by raising questions about the great supernatural interventions throughout salvation history, such as the Virgin Birth and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity, as well as the Resurrection, and the Holy Eucharist. They knew that once faith – the foundation – totters, the liturgy and the moral teachings of the Church would follow suit. My husband entitled one of his books The Devastated Vineyard. After Vatican II, a tornado seemed to have hit the Church …

Even the pagan Plato was open to a sense of the supernatural. He spoke of the weakness, frailty and cowardice often evidenced in human nature. He was asked by a critic to explain why he had such a low opinion of humanity. He replied that he was not denigrating man, only comparing him to God.

With the loss of a sense of the supernatural, there is a loss of the sense of a need for sacrifice today. The closer one comes to God, the greater should be one’s sense of sinfulness. The further one gets from God, as today, the more we hear the philosophy of the new age: “I’m OK, You’re OK.” This loss of the inclination to sacrifice has led to the obscuring of the Church’s redemptive mission. Where the Cross is downplayed, our need for redemption is given hardly a thought.

The aversion to sacrifice and redemption has assisted the secularization of the Church from within. We have been hearing for many years from priests and bishops about the need for the Church to adapt herself to the world. Great popes like St. Pius X said just the opposite: the world must adapt itself to the Church.

TLM: From our conversation throughout this afternoon, I must conclude that you don’t believe that the accelerating loss of the sense of the supernatural is an accident of history.

AVH: No, I do not. There have been two books published in Italy in recent years that confirm what my husband had been suspecting for some time; namely, that there has been a systematic infiltration of the Church by diabolical enemies for much of this century. My husband was a very sanguine man and optimistic by nature. During the last ten years of his life, however, I witnessed him many times in moments of great sorrow, and frequently repeating, “They have desecrated the Holy Bride of Christ.” He was referring to the “abomination of desolation” of which the prophet Daniel speaks.

TLM: This is a critical admission, Dr. von Hildebrand. Your husband had been called a twentieth-century Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII. If he felt so strongly, didn’t he have access to the Vatican to tell Pope Paul VI of his fears?

AVH: But he did! I shall never forget the private audience we had with Paul VI just before the end of the [Second Vatican] Council. It was on June 21, 1965. As soon as my husband started pleading with him to condemn the heresies that were rampant, the Pope interrupted him with the words, “Lo scriva, lo scriva.” (“Write it down.”) A few moments later, for the second time, my husband drew the gravity of the situation to the Pope’s attention. Same answer. His Holiness received us standing. It was clear that the Pope was feeling very uncomfortable. The audience lasted only a few minutes. Paul VI immediately gave a sign to his secretary, Fr. Capovilla, to bring us rosaries and medals. We then went back to Florence where my husband wrote a long document (unpublished today) that was delivered to Paul VI just the day before the last session of the Council. It was September of 1965. After reading my husband’s document, he said to my husband’s nephew, Dieter Sattler, who had become the German ambassador to the Holy See, that he had read the document carefully, but that “it was a bit harsh.” The reason was obvious: my husband had humbly requested a clear condemnation of heretical statements.

TLM: You realize, of course, Doctor, that as soon as you mention this idea of infiltration, there will be those who roll their eyes in exasperation and remark, “Not another conspiracy theory!”

AVH: I can only tell you what I know. It is a matter of public record, for instance, that Bella Dodd, the ex-Communist who reconverted to the Church, openly spoke of the Communist Party’s deliberate infiltration of agents into the seminaries. She told my husband and me that when she was an active party member, she had dealt with no fewer than four cardinals within the Vatican “who were working for us.”

Many a time I have heard Americans say that Europeans “smell conspiracy wherever they go.” But from the beginning, the Evil One has “conspired” against the Church – and has always aimed in particular at destroying the Mass and sapping belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. That some people are tempted to blow this undeniable fact out of proportion is no reason for denying its reality. On the other hand, I, European born, am tempted to say that many Americans are naïve; living in a country that has been blessed by peace, and knowing little about history, they are more likely than Europeans (whose history is a tumultuous one) to fall prey to illusions … Judas had played his hand so artfully that no one suspected him, for a cunning conspirator knows how to cover his tracks with a show of orthodoxy.

TLM: Do the two books by the Italian priest you mentioned before the interview contain documentation that would provide evidence of this infiltration?

AVH: The two books I mentioned were published in 1998 and 2000 by an Italian priest, Don Luigi Villa of the diocese of Brescia, who at the request of Padre Pio has devoted many years of his life to the investigation of the possible infiltration of both Freemasons and Communists into the Church. My husband and I met Don Villa in the sixties. He claims that he does not make any statement that he cannot substantiate. When Paulo Sesto Beato? (1998) was published the book was sent to every single Italian bishop. None of them acknowledged receipt; none challenged any of Don Villa’s claims.

In this book, he relates something that no ecclesiastical authority has refuted or asked to be retracted – even though he names particular personalities in regard to the incident. It pertains to the rift between Pope Pius XII and the then Bishop Montini (the future Paul VI) who was his Undersecretary of State. Pius XII, conscious of the threat of Communism, which in the aftermath of World War II was dominating nearly half of Europe, had prohibited the Vatican staff from dealing with Moscow. To his dismay, he was informed one day through the Bishop of Up[p]sala (Sweden) that his strict order had been contravened. The Pope resisted giving credence to this rumor until he was given incontrovertible evidence that Montini had been corresponding with various Soviet agencies. Meanwhile, Pope Pius XII (as had Pius XI) had been sending priests clandestinely into Russia to give comfort to Catholics behind the Iron Curtain. Every one of them had been systematically arrested, tortured, and either executed or sent to the gulag. Eventually a Vatican mole was discovered: Alighiero Tondi, S.J., who was a close advisor to Montini. Tondi was an agent working for Stalin whose mission was to keep Moscow informed about initiatives such as the sending of priests into the Soviet Union.

Add to this Pope Paul’s treatment of Cardinal Mindszenty. Against his will, Mindszenty was ordered by the Vatican to leave Budapest. As most everyone knows, he had escaped the Communists and sought refuge in the American embassy compound. The Pope had given him his solemn promise that he would remain primate of Hungary as long as he lived. When the Cardinal (who had been tortured by the Communists) arrived in Rome, Paul VI embraced him warmly, but then sent him into exile in Vienna. Shortly afterwards, this holy prelate was informed that he had been demoted, and had been replaced by someone more acceptable to the Hungarian Communist government. More puzzling, and tragically sad, is the fact that when Mindszenty died, no Church representative was present at his burial.

Another of Don Villa’s illustrations of infiltration is one related to him by Cardinal Gagnon. Paul VI had asked Gagnon to head an investigation concerning the infiltration of the Church by powerful enemies. Cardinal Gagnon (at that time an Archbishop) accepted this unpleasant task, and compiled a long dossier, rich in worrisome facts. When the work was completed, he requested an audience with Pope Paul in order to deliver personally the manuscript to the Pontiff. This request for a meeting was denied. The Pope sent word that the document should be placed in the offices of the Congregation for the Clergy, specifically in a safe with a double lock. This was done, but the very next day the safe deposit box was broken and the manuscript mysteriously disappeared. The usual policy of the Vatican is to make sure that news of such incidents never sees the light of day. Nevertheless, this theft was reported even in L’Osservatore Romano (perhaps under pressure because it had been reported in the secular press). Cardinal Gagnon, of course, had a copy, and once again asked the Pope for a private audience. Once again his request was denied. He then decided to leave Rome and return to his homeland in Canada. Later, he was called back to Rome by Pope John Paul II and made a cardinal.

TLM: Why did Don Villa write these works singling out Paul VI for criticism?

AVH: Don Villa reluctantly decided to publish the books to which I have alluded. But when several bishops pushed for the beatification of Paul VI, this priest perceived it as a clarion call to print the information he had gathered through the years. In so doing, he was following the guidelines of a Roman Congregation, informing the faithful that it was their duty as members of the Church to relay to the Congregation any information that might militate against the candidate’s qualifications for beatification.

Considering the tumultuous pontificate of Paul VI, and the confusing signals he was giving, e.g.: speaking about the “smoke of Satan that had entered the Church,” yet refusing to condemn heresies officially; his promulgation of Humanae Vitae (the glory of his pontificate), yet his careful avoidance of proclaiming it ex cathedra [infallible doctrine]; delivering his Credo of the People of God in Piazza San Pietro in 1968, and once again failing to declare it binding on all Catholics; disobeying the strict orders of Pius XII to have no contact with Moscow, and appeasing the Hungarian Communist government by reneging on the solemn promise he had made to Cardinal Mindszenty; his treatment of holy Cardinal Slipyj, who had spent seventeen years in a Gulag, only to be made a virtual prisoner in the Vatican by Paul VI; and finally asking Archbishop Gagnon to investigate possible infiltration in the Vatican, only to refuse him an audience when his work was completed – all these speak strongly against the beatification of Paolo VI, dubbed in Rome, “Paolo Sesto, Mesto” (Paul VI, the sad one) …

God alone is the judge of Paul VI. But it cannot be denied that his pontificate was a very complex and tragic one. It was under him that, in the course of fifteen years, more changes were introduced in the Church than in all preceding centuries combined. What is worrisome is that when we read the testimony of ex-Communists like Bella Dodd, and study Freemasonic documents (dating from the nineteenth century, and usually penned by fallen-away priests like Paul Roca), we can see that, to a large extent, their agenda has been carried out: the exodus of priests and nuns after Vatican II, dissenting theologians not censured, feminism, the pressure put on Rome to abolish priestly celibacy, immorality in the clergy, blasphemous liturgies (see the article by David Hart in First Things, April 2001, “The Future of the Papacy”), the radical changes that have been introduced into the sacred liturgy (see Cardinal Ratzinger’s book Milestones, pp. 126 and 148, Ignatius Press), and a misleading ecumenism. Only a blind person could deny that many of the Enemy’s plans have been perfectly carried out.

One should not forget that the world was shocked at what Hitler did. People like my husband, however, actually read what he had said in Mein Kampf. The plan was there. The world simply chose not to believe it.

But grave as the situation is, no committed Catholic can forget that Christ has promised that He will remain with His Church to the very end of the world. We should meditate on the scene related in the Gospel when the apostles’ boat was battered by a fierce storm. Christ was sleeping! His terrified followers woke Him up: He said one word, and there was a great calm. “O ye of little faith!” …

TLM: So you see the only scenario for a solution to the present crisis as the renewal of a striving for sanctity?

AVH: We should not forget that we are fighting not only against flesh and blood, but against “powers and principalities.” This should elicit sufficient dread in us to make us strive more than ever for holiness, and to pray fervently that the Holy Bride of Christ, who is right now at Calvary, comes out of this fearful crisis more radiant than ever.

Tomorrow: More on Communists in the Church, Bella Dodd and the ‘Outstretched Hand’

British Christians take their cases to European Court

And, once again, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan (‘Sharia law is inevitable’) Williams, is silent.

To my Anglican readers I apologise for the lack of will to write much on our denomination’s issues and clergy.  Right now, Anglicanism in practice today (not as it was founded) is nearly lost to me.

On June 5, the Telegraph reported:

European judges have ordered ministers [that's politicians, not clergy] to make a formal statement on whether it believes Christians’ rights have been infringed by previous decisions in the British courts, which have repeatedly dismissed their right to dress and act according to their beliefs …

The move by the European Court in Strasbourg is because Christians who believe they have suffered discrimination for their beliefs are taking a landmark legal fight the court.

The four cases from the UK include:

Nadia Eweida, the British Airways worker who mounted a legal action after being barred from wearing a cross around her neck.

Lillian Ladele, a former registrar who objected to conducting homosexual civil partnership ceremonies because of her faith.

It led to disciplinary action by Islington council in north London, where she had worked for 17 years.

Gary McFarlane, a Christian relationship counsellor, has also applied to Strasbourg after he was sacked by a Relate, the counselling service, for refusing to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.

The final applicant is Shirley Chaplin, a former nurse from Exeter, who was barred from her job in a hospital for wearing a cross.

Andrea Minichiello Williams, the founder and director of the Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting two of the applicants, said: “These cases are massively significant on every front.

“There seems to be a disproportionate animosity towards the Christian faith and the workings of the courts in the UK has led to deep injustice …

Mrs Minichiello Williams added: “People with orthodox views on sexual ethics are excluded from employment because they don’t fit in with the equalities and diversity agenda. It is this which we want to see addressed. Such injustice cannot be allowed to continue.”

I wish these fine people all the best in getting Strasbourg to decide that we are being actively discriminated against.

The change in mood towards Christianity in Britain has been going on for the better part of 20 years.  Why doesn’t the Church of England do more to defend and support believers?

Lenten Prayers: for the Church in Tunisia

The Church in Tunisia is small — 25,000 people, or 1% of the population — yet it comprises Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches.

The blog on John Piper’s Desiring God site had what seemed to me to be an overly optimistic post-uprising entry:

Through our international outreach initiatives the Lord has brought into our network many good friends, including a family and ministry working to spread the gospel in this North African country. We were relieved to receive this report from them and continue to be amazed at how the Lord is building his church around the world even in the midst of great turmoil.

God is doing great things in Tunisia! The Tunisian people are celebrating the end of years of political repression and lack of freedoms. Amid all the turmoil of police violence and looting from criminal elements, we are trusting that the Lord is opening doors in this country for true freedom; internet sites created to share the Good News to Tunisians, that had been blocked almost as soon as their inception, are now opened …

We are hoping to inspire [our congregation] to think biblically about how eternal freedom in Christ relates to earthly, temporal freedom in society. These are huge challenges for our little flock! They have no background for it, no culture of real democracy from where to begin. Pray that the church stands for truth and justice and is a light against oppression.

We are praying that all believers here may be salt and light in this society and we may build a positive future. Pray for the struggles of the coalition government as they work together to put true democracy in place. This is a key and historic moment.

Whilst we should pray for a freer society in Tunisia, it seems unlikely that Christians will be given instantaneous liberty for the Church to increase.  Mission Network News reports (emphases mine):

Todd Nettleton with Voice of the Martyrs says it’s hard to say what will result from the hurried changes, however, “I don’t think we can anticipate a positive change, at least in the short term. This is a country with less than half a percent of the population as Christian. It’s pretty unlikely that suddenly those believers are going to be celebrated by their government or by their countrymen.”

While it seems that the community of believers is a little larger than thought previously, the attitude of the authorities has changed. Foreign Christian residents experience more inspections and suspect their phones are tapped.

“They have said, ‘We’re not going have a law that is in opposition to Islam.’ It’s unlikely that the new government, whenever that gets situated, is going to change that policy. So I think that we need to pray for the believers.”

According to Open Doors’ World Watch List–a compilation of the top 50 countries where persecution occurs, pastors of expat churches are watched and the materials they use are monitored closely. Nettleton says, “Voice of the Martyrs is involved, but I can’t say much more than that. Because there are so few Christians in Tunisia, anything we say publicly about what we’re doing there can end up in them being targeted.”

The Barnabas Fund provides us with background on the Church in Tunisia:

Until the 7th century AD Christianity was widespread throughout the region of today’s Tunisia. It produced famous Christian thinkers and leaders such as Tertullian and Cyprian. But five centuries later, after Arab tribes had conquered the land and established themselves as rulers, Christianity was extinguished.

Even today the number of Christians in this majority-Muslim state is tiny, and most are foreign residents. There are believed to be a few hundred indigenous Tunisian Christians, all of them converts from Islam. Within this small number are a wide range of theological beliefs, making unity difficult to achieve. Furthermore, many of the Christians are isolated and fearful of persecution by a society in which leaving Islam is generally considered equivalent to treason.

An Episcopal bishop, the Rt Revd Bill Musk, is currently in Tunisia.  In February 2011, he gave an interview to the Church Mission Society (CMS) in which he said:

In the new, emerging polity, can there be a place for Tunisians who are Christian by choice? The assumption is that all Christians are foreigners. Very few here I guess even know that there are Tunisians who are believers. A few Tunisian Christians took to clearing up rubbish from the main streets in centre of Tunis after the revolution. They were met with curiosity and were filmed/interviewed by some TV crews; they also met with some hostility …

We cancelled one Sunday’s worth of services, all homegroups (in fact the homegroups meetings are still not back to functioning because people here need to be off the streets by 9pm still – out of choice). In some localities that were not affected by the worst of the looting and shooting, and where people lived in proximity of one another, people got together to eat and pray. We tried to give moral support to those who decided that for them, getting out of the country was the response they wanted to make. We phoned others who were in “hairy” areas and very frightened. We prayed …

As I said, the scariest for us personally was the immediate nights of breakdown in law and order. My wife and I were for several nights alone in the house next to the church …

The indigenous church is too tiny to register as part of the makeup of a new Tunisia I suspect. One of its few significant leaders is currently out of the country. Tunisian Jews are recognised as forming part of the population here – at the moment there has been a demonstration by about 40 Islamists outside the one synagogue in Tunis chanting offensive stuff. On the other hand, when the RC Silesian missionary was found murdered … As it turned out, the investigators and, after them, the RC authorities here, believe the Father was murdered by a contractor/employee whom the Father had challenged about taking money and not completing a job at the school where he worked ...

Certainly Tunisians look for (in the majority it would seem) a society in which abuse of people for whatever cause is not to be accepted. Whether the new Tunisian Constitution identify the nation as “Muslim” or “Islamic” remains to be seen. There is a strong, though probably no more than 33 per cent maximum, minority Islamist perspective here. The leaders of that perspective are at the moment presenting themselves as enlightened, generous and willing to work with others of different views in forming a new polity for Tunisia.

So, it remains to be seen what happens.  Although the Christian population there is small, let us pray that their future is free of suspicion and surveillance from the authorities.  May they be able to share a peaceful Easter in worship together.