De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

"My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of robbers.” Matthew 21:12-13 Or, in this case, ravers. In February 2024, a silent disco will take place over two nights in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral. It is a strictly 18+ event, featuring plenty of alcohol and the music of the 90’s: Britney, Spice Girls, Eminem and the Vengaboys. Everyone likes a Silent Disco, but its place is in a nightclub, not in Canterbury Cathedral. Some people think that opposing this latest embarrassment is pointless, what with all the other mistakes of the C of E of late. They also say, "who cares, it hasn't been a sacred space since the reformation really, since true Eucharistic worship ceased". They would be wrong on both counts. While opposing the deeper theological descent into madness of the Anglicans may indeed be fruitless, the sheer hubris of this desecration is clear for all withinamd without the church to see. Everyone, religious or not, has a sense of ...

Thank goodness someone else has noticed the dishonesty & hypocrisy in the comments of Atheists like Sandi Toksvig – who believes neither in God nor in sin ( see here ) - and yet has the audacity to complain that a recent meeting of Anglican “bishops” has (yet again) fudged the issue of the sinfulness of homosexual genital acts. She also claims that because she has received hate mail from some lunatics that this is all Welby’s fault. So she will never go into a church again. (Not that she did before.)  ,,, And she will scream & scream until she is sick! Gareth Roberts in The Spectator writes : Has Justin Welby met his match in Sandi Toksvig? The entertainer has sent an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, complaining about his attempts to compromise with African bishops and avoid a showdown at the Lambeth Conference on the issue of same-sex marriage. The gist of it is: ‘Even though I don’t believe in God, I’m rarely going to attend my local church again’. This...

Following on from yesterday , I was wondering what is missing from Justin Welby's theology that made him doubt, or question God in the way he articulated. I was thinking about redemptive suffering and its unique place in Catholic theology- and its absence from Protestant theology. Of course this is something Jesus Himself told us: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Mt 16:24 The saints would also often say that their greatest desire can be summed up in one phrase; to love and to suffer. Saint Catherine of Sienna: "...every suffering they bear from any source at all, in spirit or in body, is of infinite worth, and so satisfies for the offense that deserved an infinite penalty...[even though]...these are finite deeds in finite time." Servant of God, Fr. John Hardon S.J.: "Love wants to suffer for the Beloved... Love wants to expiate the sins that have so deeply penetrated mankind. Love wants to...

Last week, I posted this blog about Justin Welby's comments regarding the Paris attacks. Rather than a personal attack on Welby, the reason I felt I wanted to write something on this was that I felt disappointed and frustrated with his response as a faith leader. As I was writing it seems, Welby was also, and posted this blog on his own website which claims that he got it wrong and his comments were taken out of context: The essence of my answer was that everyone has moments when they question things, and one sees that in the Psalms. The psalmist in Psalm 44 asks God if he is asleep, and challenges him in the most direct terms about his failure to deliver Israel. It is a psalm of protest. When there are tragedies like Paris, when friends suffer, when evil seems to cover the face of the Earth, then we should be like the psalmist. This is perfectly reasonable and I am prepared to accept this explanation from Welby. The very theme of my blog is questioning in faith, like a...

I was shocked and more than a bit disappointed to hear about Justin Welby's admission to BBC's Songs of Praise that the Paris attacks made him doubt the presence of God ( see here ), whatever that means. I must be naive to think that 'belief in God' might be a bare minimum for anyone thinking of applying for the job of leader of the C of E? This sort of reaction presses all the wrong buttons for me. I don't think it is a good thing for a religious leader to express that he has doubts, even in a misguided attempt to show solidarity with an increasingly secular population. Asking "where was God in all this" is one of the oldest questions in theology and the answer is always "with the people who are suffering". If he has doubts, how can he lead others away from doubt? Surely the job he is in is to encourage and give confidence, confidence built on his personal relationship with God in prayer, his intellectual understanding of the realit...