Keep the Faith

On 1 July 2009, The Australian published an article by Giles Auty, called ‘The Left is Killing Religion’. The original article can be found HERE. In this article, Auty discussed a talk he gave for the annual St Edmund Campion lecture, which was titled ‘Are we truly evolving? Reflections of the life of an Elizabethan saint’.

He starts off by saying that in Elizabeth England, Catholic priests struggled to keep the faith alive. And then makes this comparison:

“Now, instead of finding itself persecuted by Elizabethan spies, informers and hangmen, Catholicism finds itself under severe assault from the self-righteous, politically correct social engineers of Britain's political Left.”

Although he says this has not happened yet in Australia, he worries that it may not be far away. He also makes the point that Christianity is being ‘treated with increasing contempt’.

It is an interesting comparison. We like to think of ourselves as progressing. Well, some of us do. I personally have a problem with the word ‘progress’, but I’ll leave that for another day. We are getting better and better all the time – supposedly. We are getting smarter and learning more and throwing away the superstitions of the past.

But this has all been done before. Some people may find it hard to see the similarities between Elizabethan England and today’s postmodern world. I mean, Elizabethan England was completely different, wasn’t it? They were still holding onto old religious superstitions. Today’s world wants to get rid of them.

But see, the Protestants in Elizabethan England also thought they were getting rid of old superstitions. They might still have believed in God. But they thought they were doing something new, something that go rid of the useless traditional religion, something that was more progressive. And Catholicism, so they thought, was just a religion that had passed its used by date.

And now we have the postmodernists who are trying to make a secular society. They say this is in the name of progress. They’re not progressive. They’re in fact, regressive. They’ve gone back to a time when people tried to remove all traces of a religion they disagreed with. It failed then. And it will fail again. Because people of faith aren’t that progressive either. They’ll go back to doing what they have done many times before.

Because just as the world continues to bring forth people who want to suppress religion (in either one or all forms), so too does the world continue to bring forth people who are willing to fight and even to die for it. People are not just going to sit back and let faith quietly slip away from the world. Even if all traces of religion were removed from public life, people will still be there, behind the scenes, hiding if they must, risking their life if they must, fighting to keep the faith alive.

Saints and Prime Ministers

Mary MacKillop


(This article was originally published at http://www.fringefaith.com/)

Prime Ministers and saints are not usually coupled together. Which is why I was quite surprised to find that Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had told some nuns that he would speak to Pope Benedict XVI about the canonisation of Mary MacKillop.

Actually, I was more than surprised. I was annoyed.

Now I am definitely not the kind of person that thinks politicians should never speak on issues related to faith. In fact, the last time I was this annoyed with Kevin Rudd was when he said that he was just a garden variety type of Christian, and his faith would not be influencing his politics in anyway. If you’re a committed Christian, your faith should influence every aspect of your life. Politics included. That’s not to say you rule the country as a theocracy. But you can’t just set aside faith when you go to work for the day.

Anyway, back to Mary MacKillop.

The reason I was so annoyed was because I don’t see why the Prime Minister should have anything to do with Mary MacKillop’s canonisation. Yes, it would be nice to have an Australian saint. And I can understand him hoping that she is made a saint. But hoping that something happens is different to speaking to the Pope about it.

He’s a lapsed Catholic who now attends an Anglican church. He’s definitely not what you would call an expert on saints. He is the prime minister of the country where Mary MacKillop happened to live. That’s all. And Mary MacKillop’s canonisation should have nothing to do with him.

Now Pope Benedict XVI did tell Sister Anne Derwin that Mary MacKillop would be canonised, they were just waiting for the miracle. At least he didn’t say that all they were waiting on was Kevin Rudd to tell them what to do.

And I do think that Kevin Rudd saying he would raise the matter shows either a complete lack of knowledge of the actual canonisation process or a simple desire to win political points. It wouldn’t matter who spoke to the Pope about making Mary MacKillop a saint. Pope Benedict XVI is not waiting for people to tell him what to do. He is, as he said, waiting for the miracle. It has already been accepted that Mary MacKillop performed one miracle. And a second miracle has been put forward. The Catholic Church now needs to confirm that this second miracle has taken place. There is an investigation process underway and it must be completed before Mary MacKillop is canonised.

In other words, canonising someone is not just a matter of saying ‘Hey, I think this person should be a saint? What do you reckon?’ There is a formal process that must be gone through first.

I presume that Kevin Rudd knew that. So why say he would speak to the Pope? Just to show he cares about religion? To try and act more important than what he is? Or maybe just because the nuns asked him to and he didn’t want to say no?

But whatever his reasons, the fact remains that prime ministers should not be involved in the making of saints. And I honestly believe they’d be better off staying out of the process altogether. Especially when they’re not even Catholic. Nothing Kevin Rudd says to the Pope about Mary MacKillop’s canonisation is going to make one scrap of difference. And that’s the way it should be.

Pope Speaks Out Against Greed

Pope Benedict XVI has put out a new paper, ‘Caritas in Veritate’ or ‘charity in truth’. In this paper he has called for a new financial order, one that is centred more around ethics and the common good. It was released just before the G8 conference.

In this paper, the Pope spoke out against greed and the focus on profits. He also said there should be a world authority that manages the global economy, helps work towards food security and protects the environment. Plus, he asked be a new way of understanding business, where workers are respected and ethics and social responsibility and prioritised over profits.

I don’t know how much good any of this will do. But I am glad he is speaking up about it. There is a problem with the current global economy. Power belongs to the wealthy. When the focus is on profits, ethics and social responsibility suffers. We seem to care more for money than we do for people. And that’s not good.

Whatever is seen as most important in a world is the thing that will take priority over all other things. At the moment, profits is seen as more important than people. The duty corporations have to their shareholders is greater than the duty that they have to the common good. And in an environment like that, people will suffer. Alleviating the poverty of others is not as important as increasing the dividends for a company.

It is a selfish world. A world where, by their very nature, corporations must seek what benefits them, rather than what benefits mankind. If a corporation finds a cure for some disease, they need to explore the best way of making money out of that cure, instead of seeing how it can best help others. And that’s just one example. Individuals can be selfless. Corporations can’t. And more and more, the world is impacted by corporations in this market driven economy.

As a Christian, I believe that caring for people is way more important than accumulating wealth. There are a lot of verses in the bible where God asks us to care for the poor. And we should also speak out against situations where the poor and the marginalised suffer because of man’s greed. Globalisation has brought benefits to people. But it has also disadvantaged people. We should do what we can to ensure that globalisation works for the common good, rather than the profits of a few.

We need to move the focus back onto ethics and the social responsibility. We need to start treat people more important than profits. We need to recognise the dignity and worth of everyone.

Whether this actually should take the form of a world authority as Pope Benedict XVI suggests, I don’t know. But something has to be done. If it’s not, then people will continue to suffer, poverty will continue to grow and the push for profits will continue to ensure that everyone is only working for their own selfish gain.

For more information, please see these articles:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hteObZ2EbCSxIsnQUdJOw5HxFPwA - Pope speaks out against poor, Press Association,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/08/pope-encyclical-caritas-capitalism - The Pope’s antidote to hypercapitalism
By Austen Ivereigh
(8 July 2009, guardian.co.uk)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/beware-of-false-profits/article1210058/"> - Beware of False Profits

By Eric Reguly
(8 July 2009, The Globe and Mail)