eChurch Blog

Oh great, another bloody war.

This one made me smile.

According to MSN Lifestyle John Calvin is the 52nd – of 75 – best dressed man of all time. They note of his dress sense:

Because the most famous minimalist in world history knew a man didn’t need expensive clothes or bright colors to convey authority. Black and white, worn with the requisite gravity, can be powerful and intimidating. Just look at the Secret Service. Or the Reservoir Dogs.

Classic.

Hat-tip: Twisted Crown of Thorns

I’m currently traversing a period of particularly intense self-loathing. This is not all that unusual for me and the most disturbing aspect is the salvific wobbles. No matter how much I reason out in my brain, it persists, but I know from experience it will soon remedy.

Interestingly, I was recently inroduced to a psychological phenomena called Scrupulosity. This is a psychological disorder characterized by pathological guilt about moral or religious issues.

Now, I’m not saying that I suffer from this…..well….not much anyway.

This from Wiki:

In scrupulosity, a person’s obsessions focus on moral or religious fears, such as the fear of being an evil person or the fear of divine retribution for sin.

The Wiki article goes on to cite potential sufferers as including such great names as: Luther, Thérèse of Lisieux and Bunyan.

Fascinating. I’ll have to investigate this further.

On a different note, I recently posted about my Rite of Election in which I noted:

All of this is leading up to the Easter Vigil, in which I will be formally received into the Catholic Church, confirmed, and take first communion – God willing.

Due to canonical reasons that are a little personal and far too boring to detail here, it is increasingly looking as though I will not be ready to be received into the Church by Easter.

Strangely, instead of feeling down about this, I feel rather relieved, as the pressure is now off.

I was given the potentiality of by-passing said canonical inhibitors, however, I have declined.

One of the primary reasons for being attracted to Catholicism, is the very fact that the Church has fixed rules and regulations for governance that are not prone to be blown around by every wind of zeitgeist.

To then opt for a canonical “fudge” in my own particular case, would be to undermine the very reasoning underpinning joining the Church.

I have opted for impropriety in the distant past and am determined to ensure this particular journey be free from such.

I’ve written previously on the thawing relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, most recently here and here.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, met on March 16 with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.

Neither the Vatican nor the Russian Orthodox Church released a detailed report on the meeting, which was held in Moscow. But the Orthodox patriarchate indicated that Kirill had stressed his support for Pope Benedict in the effort to combat secularization, particularly in Europe. The Russian prelate also commented on the positive trend in relations between Rome and Moscow.

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A report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide on Iran being….erm….Iran:

Mohabat News, the only active news agency inside Iran reporting on the recent mass arrests of Christians in the country, was suddenly suspended today.  It is unclear why the website has been disabled, however in the past the authorities have been known to shut down websites run by human rights groups and critics of the regime under the guise of defending the nation against “cyber warfare”.

In recent months a staff member of Mohabat News was allegedly threatened via an email from the Revolutionary Guard, which stated that he and his family would be targeted, and “bad things” would happen to them as a result of Mohabat’s output.

The suspension of Mohabat News came the day after it reported the seizure and burning of 600 New Testaments by authorities in western Iran on 7 February 2011.  In a routine border inspection of a bus in Salmas in Western Azerbaijan, the Office of Contraband Search and Seizure along with the Revolutionary Guards reportedly discovered two boxes, each containing 300 New Testaments that had allegedly been smuggled across the border.  No passengers claimed ownership of the confiscated boxes, and the official website of the Revolutionary Guards accused the United States of playing a major role in this incident.

These developments have occurred within the context of escalating fears for religious minorities in Iran.  The Baha’i International Community recently reported that so far this month, the Iranian authorities have arrested at least nine Baha’is who provided schooling to children in a region of Iran devastated by an earthquake seven years ago.  The authorities allege the Baha’is “took advantage” of the desperate need for teachers following the earthquake.

Furthermore, at least 282 Christians have been arrested in around 34 cities in Iran since June 2010.  All have faced many hours of intense interrogation and most have faced long periods in solitary confinement.  At least fifteen of these Christians remain in prison, including Khalil Yarali, who was held in solitary confinement for 28 days in an unknown place and under intense interrogations before being transferred to Karoon prison in Ahwaz.

CSW Advocacy Director Andrew Johnston said, “The sudden suspension of Mohabat News is a disturbing development, and we await clarification on the reasons behind it.  However, CSW is deeply concerned both by the restrictions placed on the publication, importation and reprinting of Christian literature, which have caused the rise in smuggling, and by the continuing cycle of arrests and detentions of Baha’is and Christians on the basis of their religious beliefs.  We once again call on the Iranian government to respect its international obligations to uphold all aspects of the right to religious freedom, and to also release those who are still held without charge.”

Source

There’s more here at BosNewsLife on the recent arrest of five Iranian house church Christians who are now behind bars, after being sentenced to one year imprisonment on charges of “crimes against the Islamic order”.

An interesting and humorous piece in the National Catholic Register, with some thoughtful pointers.

One of the most common question I get through my blog is: “How can I talk to my atheist friend / family member / coworker about the Faith?” First of all, you must remember that atheists are just like you and me, except that they eat small children for breakfast. (Kidding, kidding. They prefer them for lunch.) It also helps if you understand the average atheist’s mentality.

Below are the five most common misconceptions I encounter when I talk to cradle Catholics about this issue. Obviously, these are generalizations, so each one may not apply to every person who describes himself as an atheist. But as someone who grew up atheist and hung out in atheistic social circles for much of my life, I can say with confidence that they are widely true.

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Every now and again you read a snippet of sanity in the mainstream media, which breaks through the madness and gives you a sense of relief.

There’s nothing more satisfying than when someone of import publicly takes the bull by the horns, and articulates what many of us have been thinking for a long time.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien has achieved this today, with his comments on UK foreign aid being directly tied to – and dependent on – the treatment of religious minorities.

I have said more times than I care to remember, that UK – and EU – foreign aid should be conditional on the receiving country’s treatment of religious and ethnic minority groups.

Well done Cardinal Keith O’Brien:

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has accused the UK Government of pursuing an “anti-Christian” foreign policy by increasing its overseas aid to Pakistan.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien said Government plans to double aid to the country to more than £445 million did not require any commitment to religious freedom for Christians.

The Cardinal said that conditions should be attached to any aid payments, requiring a definite commitment to protection for Christians and other religious minorities – including Shia Muslims.

Speaking at the launch of a new report into the persecution of Christians worldwide, Cardinal O’Brien said: “I urge (Foreign Secretary) William Hague to obtain guarantees from foreign governments before they are given aid.

“To increase aid to the Pakistan government when religious freedom is not upheld and those who speak up for religious freedom are gunned down is tantamount to an anti-Christian foreign policy.

“Pressure should now be put on the Government of Pakistan – and the governments of the Arab world as well – to ensure that religious freedom is upheld, the provision of aid must require a commitment to human rights.”

He said the report highlights the “huge surge” in Christians fleeing persecution worldwide, with 75% of all religious persecution taking place against Christians.

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The following is a cross-post by Charles Reed – of the Ethics and Foreign Policy blog – an adviser to the Church of England on foreign policy issues:

Those pressing for the EU to pay greater attention to the issue of Christian persecution overseas often cite the US as a model of best practice. Reference is usually made to the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act which created, amongst other things, an Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom based at the State Department.

The following article from Christianity Today, a US online magazine for American evangelicals, explores the ongoing nomination of Revd Johnson Cook to this office and suggests a more complicated situation. Critics complain that the post seems to be under-resourced and under-valued by the State Department.

Whatever the credibility of these concerns, the State Department’s Annual Report to Congress on Religious Persecution and Discrimination World-Wide is a valuable resource for all those involved in this area of work. The report only makes sense, however, if it is read alongside the State Department’s Annual Human Rights Report.

Seen from this perspective, the EU appears to be following America’s lead by seeing religious freedom as a fundamental human right and human rights as core component of foreign policy. Whether the EU’s External Action Service develops the same elaborate machinery as the US State Department looks far from certain, but philosophically and methodologically at least there are striking similarities between the two approaches. This should give encouragement to many here in Europe.

For background information on this, please see my previous post.

The Charity Commission has defended its decision not to allow the charity Catholic Care to prevent gay people from using its adoption service, at a charity tribunal hearing.

During the hearing, which finished on Friday, the commission argued it would be a “serious and demeaning act of discrimination” for the charity to restrict its adoption services to heterosexual, married couples.

The charity appealed to the tribunal to quash the commission’s ruling, made in August last year, that it could not change its objects to prevent same-sex couples from using its adoption service. Catholic Care argued that failing to change its objects would force it to close its adoption service because it would lose its funding from the Catholic church.

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Christopher McCall QC, the barrister acting on behalf of the charity, argued that section 193 of the Equalities Act 2010 allowed organisations to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality if this was “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.

He said the charity accepted that discrimination was “detrimental in itself”, but that its only alternative was to close its adoption service, which would be a bigger loss to the community.

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I thought the following excerpt fascinating.

It’s taken from the book I’m currently reading entitled: Addiction & Grace – Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addiction by Gerald G. May.

Pages: 86 – 89

The phenomenon of being attached to stress itself is of particular spiritual significance, and it is a good example of multiple system involvement. Only recently described, stress addiction has received considerable attention in the popular press. Therefore I will discuss it only briefly in the context of neurology.

The body naturally creates adrenaline, noradrenaline, and other chemicals that are important in responding to stressful situations. In addition, some of the body’s natural opiates, such as endorphins and enkephalins, are often released in times of stress. All these stress chemicals act as neurotransmitters. They may be generated by nerve cells and act as message carriers across synapses, or they may be released elsewhere in the body and travel through the bloodstream as hormones. Adrenaline, for example, is manufactured by the adrenal gland and acts as a hormone. Whether stress chemicals come across synapses or through the bloodstream, they exert powerful effects when they arrive at neuroreceptors of nerve cells.

Normally, the body is accustomed to a low level of stress chemicals in the circulation, with intermittent bursts of higher amounts during times of crises. Most normal stresses are of relatively short duration, and the brain’s natural responses cope with them quickly. In our hectic modern society, however, many individuals find themselves in prolonged stressful situations. Many jobs today are geared to continually high stress levels, and some professionals even pride themselves on the amount of stress they habitually live with. The effects of such protracted stress have been well documented in terms of heart disease, ulcers, and the like. Jogging and other exercise programs, by stressing the body physically, help accustom the body to coping with high stress levels so it more readily handles them as normal. With all of this, stress becomes a habit.

What happens is not difficult to understand. In responding naturally to a stressful situation, the body increases its production of stress chemicals. The chemicals have their expected effects on the cells that receive them, and things turn to normal when the stress passes. But if the stress continues, the receiving cells must cope. They try their feedback mechanisms to achieve a lower level of stress chemicals, and, if this doesn’t work, they habituate and adapt. Their adaptations establish a new normality that includes an excessive quantity of stress chemicals.

The body suffers in a variety of ways. The circulatory system, for example, must adjust to a normality that includes much more work. Of special significance to our discussion, however, is what happens when the stress-addicted person tries to relax and slow down. If the person takes a vacation, goes on a retreat, or even tries to settle down to pray for a while, the removal of external stress causes less stress chemicals to be generated. This is precisely what the person wants and expects – a time of relaxation – but she does not expect the response of her brain cells to this reduction of stress chemicals. The neurons, having adapted to high levels of stress chemicals, now react as if something were wrong. They send signals, ironically, of stress to the rest of the body, trying to get things going again. Thus the person who is trying to settle down may find herself becoming increasingly anxious, looking around for something to do, and not at all experiencing the rest and relaxation she had hoped for.

Further, other cells that have become habituated to stress chemicals may go through a backlash withdrawal and “crash”; they become lethargic in what now seems to them a virtual absence of stimulation. Thus in addition to agitation, the person may also feel great fatigue and sleepiness. “I never knew how tired I really was until I settled down.” Again, both phenomena tend to encourage the person not to relax. The choice is limited: either a crash-like sleep (which is often impossible because of agitation) or just getting back to doing something demanding and stressful. A severely stress-addicted person can thus be in a completely no win situation, becoming increasingly fatigued but at the same time increasingly uncomfortable with any situation that might offer rest.

In most average cases of stress addiction, people simply find they need extra time to wind down before they can begin to relax. Some individuals know this pattern so well that they plan their vacations around it. “I have to take at least a two-week vacation because it takes me almost a week to relax, then a few days just to sleep, and then I can have a couple of really enjoyable days.” With more severe stress addiction, people may be totally unable to relax unless they do something that gives them their fix of stress chemicals. Many people choose jogging or some other physically stressing activity. Such activities have become immensely popular among the stress-addicted because they provide enough chemicals to keep withdrawal symptoms at bay, while at the same time freeing the mind from normal worries and work tasks.

It is in the realm of spiritual practice, however, that attachment to stress becomes most obvious. Spending time in quiet, receptive openness is an essential part of prayer, meditation, and most other spiritual practices. In such settings, even mild addiction to stress becomes rapidly and painfully evident. For many modern spiritual pilgrims, the simple matter of taking time for daily prayer can become a battle of will excruciatingly reminiscent of that encountered in chemical addiction. The mind can generate wondrous excuses to do something instead of just being open and present. The struggles that go on between being and doing can be awesome. Issues of control and willpower, surrender and defeat rage with all the drama of true spiritual warfare.

There are many things all of us might rather avoid in prayer: we might rather not relinquish our sense of self-mastery; we might rather not hear what God might ask of us; we might rather avoid the self-knowledge that comes to us in the quiet. Now, in addition, increasing numbers of us are discovering that we would rather not experience the discomfort of being peaceful.