Change & decay?

Tags

choices, Christianity, controversy

Irony is one of the few pleasures available for free. After decades of post-colonial guilt and political-correctness, there is one subject on which what in other contexts would be called racist discourse is still allowed – that issue is, of course, traditional Christian attitudes to homosexuality. While all opinions are relative and equal, the views expressed by African Christians on the subject of homosexuality are not – they are bigotry and evidence of backwardness, or a legacy of colonialism. I wish those holding such views joy in getting them across to the Africans – perhaps they will produce a latter-day Dr Livingstone for the purpose?

The assumption, deeply embedded, is that in not holding to the views normative to Western liberals. the Africans are wrong and will, in time, catch up. What never occurs to our society and its intellectuals, is that it and they may have taken a wrong turning and need to rethink.

This isn’t about the subject of homosexuality, with which I suspect we are all bored, but it is about orthodox Christian teaching. What was taken for granted not just when I was a lad (which was a heck of a time ago), but also as recently as a few decades ago now seems almost radical: marriage is between a man and a woman; you should try to save yourself sexually for your spouse; you should try to be modest and respectful; a firm knowledge that there were things such as right and wrong, as well as a common consensus on which fell in which category; that churches preached against sin and in favour of virtue and knew which was which; all these seem to have been lost.

Paul told us:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,

7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

But before we get carried away, we might recall that in many ages as much could have been said. Those French Catholics who suffered at the hands of the Revolutionaries, or those Russian Christians who were persecuted by the Godless Soviets must have felt much as the Jews who suffered in 70AD when Jerusalem fell as Christ had foretold it would.

There are, in short, many minor last days for us all before the end times that will come as we are told it will. The scoffers can mock and say where is He and when is He coming, but a judgement comes to us all twice – once at the end, but also here and now. For as we live, so shall we be judged. The coward dies many times, the brave man but once.

What shall we do?

Tags

Christianity, End times prophecy, history

‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’, is how Burke’s actual words:  “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle” have come down in the historical memory. Yeats expressed something of this in his great poem The Second Coming:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity

But Burke also reminded us that if we despair, we should carry on all the same. That is especially so for Christians.

This is not to take the line simply that we are citizens of another country and that we should not be ensnared to the lusts of this world; that I take for granted. But it is to say that the world is redeemed through Christ, and that being so, it is worth our defending the right and standing for truth.

‘The good must associate’, Burke said, well there’s the rallying call for Christians. We can ignore it, as we are tending to do, and we can wonder why, on every front, we are in headlong retreat; or we can express with passionate intensity our own point of view.

I’m not interested in fighting Catholics over the detail of where we disagree. We can see how well that worked for the defenders of Christianity in Constantinople in 1453. Those idiots who argued that it was better to have the turban of the Sultan than the mitre of the Pope effectively condemned thousands of their fellows to death and slavery. But Sir Stephen Runciman’s description of the final day of Christian Constantinople preserves a noble example all the same:

“The Emperor himself came to join in the procession; and when it was ended he summoned his notables and commanders, Greek and Italian, and spoke to them. (…)

“Constantine told his hearers that the great assault was about to begin. To his Greek subjects he said that a man should always be ready to die either for his faith or for his country or for his family or for his sovereign. Now his people must be prepared to die for all four causes.

“He spoke of the glories and high traditions of the great Imperial city. He spoke of the perfidy of the infidel Sultan who had provoked the war in order to destroy the True Faith and to put his false prophet in the seat of Christ. He urged them to remember that they were the descendents of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome and to be worthy of their ancestors. 

“For his part, he said, he was ready to die for his faith, his city and his people. (…)

[Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, pp. 129-131]

Are we so prepared?

If we aren’t (and I doubt we are) then why are we not prepared to do the other – that is to combine when the enemy is in plain view. At the beginning of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy, the hero, Guy Crouchback, reacts to the news of the Moltov-Ribbentrop pact between the Soviets and the Nazis thus:

‘The enemy at last was in plain view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle.’

Well, waiting that long before resisting made the war when it came longer and harder than it needed to be. But at least, finally, there was an alliance against evil. Does it really take the appearance of a Hitler to produce unity? We could do (and are doing) worse than learn from Africa. The Word we once took there may yet return.

The hour is getting late, and perhaps every generation feels thus as it gets older. I shall not live to see the outcome of this, but I prophesy that unless there is some real resistance, the sapping and mining of all that Christians have held dear will mean that at least in this land, the cross of the redeemer will be replaced by the shopping mall.

Needing a Guide

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Christianity

Both my daughters were Girl Guides and promised, as girls have since the organization was formed, to love God and the Queen. Now this has changed:

Well, that’s God and country gone for a burton.  If there was a prize of warm-fuzzy nonsense, then the first clause of the new promise would win it; there certainly should be a prize for offering the best explanation of what the thing means.  The last thing the younger generation need is any more encouragement to gaze at their navels, and what ‘beliefs’ are to be developed?

Perhaps the fact that its relatively new Chief Executive used to be head of the Family Planning Association gives us an insight into the ‘beliefs’ and how to ‘help others’?  Put them on the pill, and if that fails, be prepared to offer an abortion? Or is this attitude now considered so normative for young women that it no longer counts as a ‘belief’?

Of course even going this far in abandoning the fine traditions of an honourable movement isn’t enough for the lunatic fringe, which objects to keeping the Queen in. So it is still not ‘inclusive’. That’s true, what about the ‘transgendered’ community, or those who ‘self-identify’ as female?  Why shouldn’t they be in the communal changing room withy the rest of the girls?  If I were a lawyer, I’d feel a case coming on, and one which should pay the school fees for a few years.

We are told that the ‘religious reference’ discouraged some girls from joining. Do we know how many? Do we know how many girls were encouraged to join because it was connected to their church? The working assumption here is so plain: religion is stuffy, old-fashioned and should have no place in the life of a Girl Guide.

This is yet another example of how we empty traditional organisations of their meaning and destroy their ethos. What will distinguish being a Guide from being a member of any other organization for young people?

I wonder what ‘country’ did to get ditched though?  I can understand the misguided secularist nonsense which drove God out, but is the implication that to be loyal to one’s country is somehow wrong too?  Do the people in charge think that communities exist in separation from the Country? Have they looked at the budgets for local government recently?

This seems to atomise the young girls and isolate them into focussing on themselves and their locale – as though the young need any encouragement to do that? What of the wider horizons? Perhaps there are none here? The important thing is to be ‘modern and relevant’, and clearly the way to prove that is to ditch God and the Country – but keep the Queen, because obviously monarch are where ‘it is at’.  The next change will, of course, be to ditch that too.

When my girls were in the Guides, the promise was to do their ‘duty to God and the Queen’ – clearly no one has understood the concept of duty since 1994 when that word was dropped. And so it goes on, the hollowing out and the homogenization. The hope is that it will ‘allow all girls – of all faiths and none – to understand and feel proud of their commitment.” Understand what and commit to what? Me/Myself and I, the modern Trinity?

Resurrection of the Body

Tags

Christianity, heresy, orthodoxy

Recent exchanges with Bosco (here) have (if the pun be pardoned) raised the question of the resurrection.

Paul tells us that if the dead are not resurrected then Christ is not risen and our faith is in vain. We shall be raised at the last, and our corrupt, earthly bodies will be transformed into ‘spiritual bodies’: It is sown in corruption; ‘it is raised in incorruption’. The Apostle John tells us: ‘but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.’  We, like the Risen Christ, will have a resurrected body. Paul tells us: ‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’There were early heretics who, believing that spirit was pure and flesh corrupt, denied this teaching and claimed that we would have no resurrection bodies. That was why the Nicene Creed stated that we believe in the resurrection of the dead.  The idea, one commonly hears, that someone’s soul is in Heaven is, in fact, heretical.  As the great Spurgeon put it: ‘There are very few Christians who believe the resurrection of the dead.’

The Biblical scholar and former bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who is always challenging, and with whom I do not always agree, talks a good deal of sense on this issue here and here:

But it’s still a body. And generations of readers have been misled-particularly by the RSV and the NRSV-into thinking that the distinction Paul is making is between a physical body, in the sense of something you can actually get a grip on, and a spiritual body, in the platonic sense of something you couldn’t get a grip on.

In Judaism there was no concept of the Messiah being resurrected, because there was no idea of the Messiah dying. This concept was there with Christians from the start, and it was there because they had experienced the Risen Jesus.

So, we shall be resurrected. Theologians and scholars have speculated on the nature of the resurrected body. Origen is said to have written that the resurrected body would be spherical in shape = a sphere being the perfect shape – but this was rejected as heresy. We know only that our bodies will be glorious and incorruptible. In Heaven there will be no marrying, no sorrowing and an end to evil. These are the promises made to us. We would, as ever, like to know more, but God alone knows these things, and, as ever, he has given us the knowledge we need.

To argue that the resurrection will produce a spiritual body not of matter if to argue against the clear meaning of Paul’s writing and the teaching of the Church from the earliest time. It is also to flirt with, if not to embrace, that form of Gnosticism which despises flesh.

For those who wonder why I imitate the Bereans and search the Scripture to understand them aright, it is because to understand them wrongly, as, for example, to say that Christ did not rise bodily from the dead, if to believe not in jesus Christ, but in a construct of the Father of Lies.

Vatican II?

Tags

Catholic Church, Christianity, controversy

One of the more bewildering phenomena in the Catholic Church is the on-going furore over matters of custom and practice; the ability of Catholics to become attached to new practices may even explain the otherwise inexplicable attachment of Catholics of my age and older to the ghastliness of the way the Novus Ordo Mass is carried out in most places. Like so much of the result of Vatican II, this is not what the Church Fathers there wanted – they did not say that the Mass had to be in the vernacular, nor did they insist on communion in the hand, nor did they insist that high altars were destroyed, or that cathedrals were built which looked like power stations in the USSR. No, that was done by a generation of ‘modernisers’ who still utterly refuse to see that they have added huge damage to that which modern times would, in any case, have inflicted upon the Bride of Christ. But, so the soixante huitards claim, this is now the ‘norm’, and when Pope Benedict insisted on proper provision for the Latin Mass, in the true spirit of Vatican II, there were splenetic outburst all the way from Ecclestone Square to the Tablet. Men and women who had been happy to defy Catholic teaching on almost everything, suddenly became deeply conservative and did everything but insist that guitars were crucial because Jesus had played one.

I am sure there must be a point to the Catholic hierarchy in this country, but am tempted to wonder whether it is not time to reverse the decision taken in 1851 to restore it. There appears to be no abuse to which Ecclestone Square will not turn a Nelsonian eye, and no instruction from the Vatican to which it will not respond with the only bit of Latin it appears to know, which is festine lente. Suggest a Latin Mass in every diocese and there will be resistance; suggest doing something about the scandal of the Soho Masses and nothing will happen.

Are Bishops essential?  The Church says so, and yet it leaves English diocese without bishops for a year or so. Why? Alan Hopes is in Westminster, did it really take nearly two years to find him?   What would it take for us to have an Archbishop who stood boldly for Church teaching? Not just those bits, like social justice, which he likes, but those bits like teaching on homosexuals, which the current incumbent clearly dislikes.  Those outside the Church criticise her for over-centralisation and a dictatorial Vatican; those of us inside it fall about laughing at any such idea.  Yes, we have a Magisterium; but some parts of it aren’t terribly keen on its teaching. One often hears ‘Vatican II’, but in fact it has nothing really to do with it.

As I stand in the queue, which resembles, in truth, a disorderly line, waiting to receive communion, I cannot think this a reverent way to come before my maker. But nor can I blame it on some nebulous ‘Vatican II’. I blame it on a generation which was so lacking in confidence that it adopted any innovation someone thought was good for it. But its confidence in its own wisdom seems endless, as this very fine piece of analysis shows. This is the same generation which wreaked havoc on decent and sober Anglican worship. It is a generation which is passing, and the whimpers of the last dinosaurs produce, from me at least, a grim satisfaction. As these people go to meet their maker, the generation which follows, the John Paul II generation, will show as little respect for the new customs and practices as the generation which passes showed for the practice from time beyond memory. A grim satisfaction – but time moves on, and as the huitards lament, the Church renews itself and sloughs them off.

Private revelation?

Tags

Christianity, controversy, heresy

Reviewing recent discussions, it rather seems as those the poor old Apostles got it wrong, as did those who wrote the Bible. Instead of going on about fale teachers and the importance of the tradition passed on from those who had known Jesus, they should just have said that when the Holy Spirit enlightened you, it would be fine, and you’d know all you needed. Since, however, that isn’t what the Apostles and the first Evangelists did, we have to assume that was not what they thought.

Instead of writing to the recently converted in Corinth about the divisions among them, should Paul simply have congratulated them on the vibrance of their community? And who was Paul to tell the poor old Galatians that they were following ‘another Gospel’? Should the leader of the Galatians have responded by telling Paul that his revelation was as valid as Paul’s and that diversity of practice and belief was natural? Well, if he did, you can be sure Paul wasn’t impressed. Paul was even willing to challenge Peter when he stopped sharing table-fellowship with the Gentiles, not because he was puffing himself up as some kind of leader, but because he knew what Peter knew, that Christ had decreed otherwise. No use Peter trying to waffle about being all things to all men, he was going along the wrong line and Paul called him on it.

One of the problems, from the start, was that folk claiming to be converted also tried to claim revelations which were not part of the general revelation. That was the whole point of what we call Gnosticism, but which was not a single movement, but rather a host of claims to special revelation. Valentinus, a second century Christian leader claimed a special knowledge denied to others.  As Irenaeus put it “Certainly they confess with their tongues the one Jesus Christ, but in their minds they divide him.” In one passage in the account of Irenaeus, it is directly stated that the redeemer assumed a psychical body to redeem the psychical, for the spiritual already belong by nature to the celestial world and no longer require any historical redemption, while the material is incapable of redemption, as “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption”. Well, you can read the New Testament that way, as you can any way you like, but it is plain that nothing in this system went alongside that taught by those who had followed Jesus.

To state, as Pagels does, that most Christians could not see any differences between what Valentinus taught and what the Apostles had taught stretches our credulity and her credibility. No one reading the Gospel of Truth and the actual Gospels could think they came from the same place or are discussing the same thing.

However little some folk may like it, there is nothing in Scripture or the early church which points to the idea that an individual who claims to personal revelation is the model of the ‘saint’. The Saints congregated in churches, and in each church there were those with different gifts, and those churches were presided over by elders. All this was designed for two things – to provide mutual aid and support so we could grow in the Christian life, but also to prevent heresy.

Well, either that, or the NT writers wasted a lot of energy worrying over false teachers.

The Devil can quote Scripture

Tags

Christianity, heresy, history

Someone said to me, the last time we were out with the Pastor on Saturday morning handing out tracts, ‘I’m saved, so I don’t need your church.’ As there’s not a lot you can say to that except ‘good’, I didn’t bother saying even that. There’s no reason at all it shouldn’t be so, and even given the well-known human capacity for self-deception, he was probably no worse than the rest of us when atheists wonder why we worship a God whose existence we can’t prove.

If he has emulated the Bereans and Paul and tested his revelation against Scripture and the teaching of the early church then fine. But what are we to make if what he says cuts right across the usual readings of Scripture? You don’t have to go very far to find folk whose teaching does just that. Well, maybe they are saved, but if they are deceived, and if they deceive others, what then?

In the old days, Christians sometimes took a short-cut and burnt such folk, and some of those they deceived. In the Islamic world they still take drastic action against such folk; they’d not, however, be keen if Christians treated them in such a fashion, but since we’ve largely given up on that sort of thing, we shan’t find out.

The Catholic Church can excommunicate those in its ranks who preach heresy, although I think it rarely does nowadays; it can also deprive those who are Catholic teachers of their licence to teach as Catholics. Protestant churches tend to throw folk out, and they still have quite spectacular rows with each other.  Anglicans, well, at the risk of teasing Struans, is there any opinion an Anglican Christian can express and  be deprived of the name of Anglican?

The fact is that for all we worry about false teaching, there’s really nothing one can do about it – except to try to use good arguments to drive out bad. Out here in the Wild West of the Internet, everyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s, and if you don’t like someone else’s facts, you can make your own up. But men have done that always – we simply have wider and more instant access to it than any generation in history.

Patience, a thick skin and knowledge of your Bible is a great help in this endeavour, but as someone once commented, there never was a heretic who could not quote Scripture; indeed we know from Scripture that the Devil himself is dab hand at it, as we see in Matthew 4.

It is this search for certainty, as I commented earlier, which leads folk into one of the bigger churches, and if that settles them, fine.  Those of us in smaller churches need to be very Berean like though. I don’t know what you do if you’ve been told personally you’re saved. How you know it is not a demon, I’ve no idea, it isn’t as thought demons come to you in their true image and tempt you; not even fallen mankind is daft enough to fall for that one.

Anglican attitudes

Tags

Catholic Church, Christianity, controversy, Obedience

To continue with the dialogue with Struans. He writes:

There are two issues at the bottom of all of the differences between Anglicans and RCs (for those Anglicans that are catholic, so excusing the ‘Bible-believers’ which is another issue): the claims of the bishop of Rome that his authority is one of power, not respect, 

I can understand that, but let us pause a moment.  The claims of the bishop of Rome were, in the 1530s, what they had been for many centuries, so what changed then? Not Rome or its claims. What changed was Henry VIII could not get the annulment to which he felt himself entitled.  Is anyone really claiming he would have split from Rome otherwise, or that he argued that Rome had changed? No. The argument is ex post facto. The English king objected to Rome’s power only when it conflicted with his own. King John had taken a similar view in the early 1200s, but not even that bold, bad man had decided to take his ball away. Like it or not (and Anglicans don’t) their church owes its origins to Henry VIII wanting a divorce and not being able to get it.

So a further question might be: why if the bishop of Rome changes his role and his church is that OK when it comes to catholicity – after all, he’s not gone outside of the boundaries, has he, of the church in ecumenical council* – yet when Anglicanism changes it’s understanding as regards gender from what would appear to be a pattern established by the church, then that’s ‘a rejection of catholicity’ ?

Thea argument that the bishop of Rome had changed his role is a contested one. From early times churches elsewhere had appealed to Rome in cases of perplexity, even so notable and redoubtable a figure a St Athanasius, took refuge there, and St Cyril of Alexandria looked there for support – and unlike Canterbury, Alexandria was recognised by an ecumenical council as the second see of Christendom.  It was not a change by Rome which produced the Anglican schism, it was a change by Henry VIII. The gender argument is simply special pleading. It is not just the Roman Catholic Church which has taken the view that God made them man and woman and ordained that marriage should be between a man and a woman, or which has taken the view that active homosexuality is sinful. Indeed, the Anglican Church still takes that view. The rejection of catholicity is again, a unilateral action by Anglicans, who persist in thinking, in grand old English fashion, that everyone is out of step with them.The Anglican Church has gone beyond the understanding of any part of Tradition in ordaining women. That is why, in the eyes of catholics inside and outside its ranks) it has rejected catholicity.

It is here where the Anglican attitude fails to comprehend the Catholic mind-set:

Quoting bits of the Bible or allegorising them in particular ways doesn’t mean very much because we can all do that. A more fruitful way forward would be to discern the way of Christ in all of this. Many Anglicans and RCs do just that. Yet, the issues that Anglicans have in terms of noisy elements wanting to pull the church hither and thither are the same with Rome.

No, the situations are not the same. No one in the Anglican communion can say that the voice of Christ is definitively x or y. In the Catholic Church that is precisely what those who accept the authority of the See of Rome accept. Those who dissent from Rome are wrong; if anyone knows what Canterbury or the Synod thinks, they are free to dissent from it as there is no centre of authority in Anglicanism. There never is after a schism.  Once you defy authority in the name of your conscience, as sure as night follows day, someone will turn that weapon on you.

They have their elements of ‘no change’ (blind to the changes that Rome has made). I rather like the approach set out in this video by a former editor of the Catholic Herald: he enjoins Anglicans and RCs to ‘storm the altar rails together’ – i.e. make it so on the ground whatever the bishops (mainly RC ones) seem to be dragging their feet over.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/1302-and-all-that-papal-bulldozers-through-seven-centuries

There, again, we see a false equivalence. Gerard Noel speaks for himself only, and not for the Magisterium.  I do not think Anglicans understand authority, though they major on the issue of power.  Authority lies with the Magisterium. If you do not accept it, then you are wrong. You can argue that the Magisterium is wrong, but that further compounds your error.  Obedience is a virtue which seems, perhaps, lost on some Anglicans, who have, in truth, no one but their own conceptions of authority to obey; for Catholics, and for Orthodox, it is essential. That is why what remains of the Church of England is many things – but catholic?  As the old joke has it, “To your mother you are a Catholic, to your friends you are a Catholic, but to a Catholic, are you a Catholic?’  Outside C of E circles, the answer is a definitive no.

False Prophets and teachers

Tags

Baptists, Catholic Church, Christianity, controversy

I am tempted by Bosco’s line – as long as we have Christ, what else matters, but wonder if that is not too simple in one sense?  That was not how the first evangelists saw things. Paul, Jude, Peter and John did not simply say that as long as someone claimed to be a Christian, that was fine by them; it clearly was not, hence the many warnings. It would be hard to explain 1 Timothy 4 on the argument that all that mattered was to confess Christ.; we are admonished to be like the Bereans and to be sure that what is taught is true. Peter warned of ‘false teachers’ and damnable heresies’, whilst the Lord Himself warned about ‘false prophets’ who were wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Paul warned Timothy of this danger, and even outlined a couple of the false teachings already in play – abstaining from marriage and from the eating of meat. Extreme asceticism has always attracted those who hate the body whilst professing to love the Spirit. But this was not what Christ taught.  There is a danger in those Christians who incline to think that extreme mortification of the flesh is what God wants – nowhere is this what Christ says. Jude warns that the false prophets can be known by their pride (the sin of Cain) and their greed (Balaam prophesied for money) and their rebellion against authority (Core rebelled against Moses).

In short, there is nothing clearer from Scripture that there will be false teaching and that, if it were possible, even the very elect might be deceived by it. It is for that reason, for example, that Catholics or Orthodox Christians place such emphasis on the lineages of their churches. This is not about pride, it is about being certain that you are in God’s Church and not some other.

Of course, the difficulty there is that the two churches cannot, in their own eyes, both be right, and within both churches there are, despite the ecumenical language of the hierarchies, those who fiercely accuse the other church of being a haven of false teaching. It seems to me perfectly possible to suppose that both these churches are indeed of Christ, and that the follies and unwisdom of prideful men have divided what should never have been split asunder. And, if that is possible, well, why should it not be the case that other churches which have orthodox teaching should not also be repositories of the Truth?

I doubt anyone (much, there’s always one of course) would care to defend some of the practices which had grown up in the medieval church in the West by the end of the Middle Ages; indeed, those practices are no longer part of Catholic teaching, so, as long as we never ask them to say it was wrong, the Catholic Church itself would concur with that line.

To strike to the heart of one of the dividing lines – the Eucharist.  I do not hold that it has some sort of magic power, I hold to Christ’s words that it is a memorial of His saving passion; I also hold that in a way I cannot hope to understand, it is His body and His blood.  I don’t know quite what that means. I don’t believe that the wine turns into real blood or the bread into real flesh, but nor am I wish those followers who turned away because they found this saying too hard. Do I need to take it literally to be saved?  Well, if so, I guess my faith in Christ and Him crucified is in vain.

Authority?

I had thought, before I began on the subject of orthodoxy, that I might find myself out-flanked by Chaldecon 451, but until I read his two pieces yesterday, I’d not realised I might find myself cut-off and surrounded. He’s presented his arguments in ways which, to a large extent, I find acceptable: no one but someone whose mind was already made up, would deny that Rome mattered in the early Church, and I was particularly pleased with the presentation of the view of Irenaeus, which quoted fully enough to make the meaning clear.  So, why not become a Catholic?

The argument of Irenaeus was that the Apostolic tradition was particularly pure and clear with regard to Rome, but he never claimed it was the only source of authority, nor did the early Church. Rome’s primacy was one of honour, not power. When Canon 6 of Nicaea mentions Rome, it is to grant Alexandria the same rights as Rome as a Metropolitan authority. At Constantinople 381 the third canon granted Constantinople second place in primacy of honour after Rome – something which did not please Alexandria, and which Rome did not accept at Chalcedon.

The point does not need labouring. There is every sign that the early church treated Rome’s word on disputed matters with huge respect; there is none that it regarded Rome as having the final say in everything, including appointments to Sees. It is understandable that, faced with the attempts of the Byzantine emperors and the Western monarchs to dictate to the Church, successive Popes should have fought back, but in the process, authority became power, and that power was no better for the Popes than power is for any mortal man.

The reaction of Rome in 1054 to the church in Constantinople was a major contributor to the split becoming permanent, and before one sheds too many tears for Constantinople, one might recall it had been happy enough to coerce the non-Chalcedonians after 451; indeed, one might add that those who protested against Rome’s brutality were quite happy to be brutal themselves.

What has all this to do with Christ and His teaching – save that it looks in sharp contradiction of it? That’s my point – that none of it got mankind any nearer to Jesus – indeed, in the longer term it may even have hindered that attempt. In so far (and that seems quite far) as we can establish Nicaea as a common standard of orthodoxy, there’s no reason to suppose we need a single, or even multiple Sees to attest to the Apostolic tradition. There are other, and perhaps better ways now.