I haven’t exactly been blogging alot in the last few weeks. I haven’t lost my nerve (or my interest), but there hasn’t been time to give attention to it. Loads of meetings, some wonderful visits to wonderful places to meet wonderful people and just a bit of problem stuff. A six-week series of Lent Addresses, a lecture last week on Christianity & the Media, loads of sermons and a Quiet Day tomorrow (Telling Tales: Recovering our Scriptural Nerve): very creative.
But the world isn’t boring, is it?
- Today the USA and Russia have agreed a massive reduction in nuclear missiles/warheads.
- The Pope is under fire, as is his Church, because of historical sexual abuse and a flood of apologies.
- There is about to be regime change in Iraq (again)
- The General Election has all but begun.
- And the future of Rafa Benitez remains uncertain (despite the protestations) – look at the face and behaviour of Gerrard and Torres.
What’s interesting about these matters is that they all have something to do with power.
Mutually Assured Destruction was as mad as it sounds – and now belongs in the 1980s. Post Cold War generations can’t believe that this was ever seriously considered a reasonable approach to global security. So, Obama adds a foreign policy victory to his domestic (health care) achievement of last week and thus puts another question mark over what many Americans understand by ‘freedom’. And about time, too.
The Pope is in a mess, but so is much of the criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. The particular criticism I refer to has to do with the knee-jerk stuff about celibacy, homosexuality and priesthood. I don’t believe in celibacy as a dogma (I think my wife is relieved), but it is ludicrous to say that celibacy itself turns priests into paedophiles or abusers. What does that say about single priests whose celibacy is a definite (and often costly) vocation?
Surely the problem is with people who abuse their privileged access (to people), trust and authority to exercise power over vulnerable people. Removing the insistence on celibacy might make some priests happier, but it won’t address the essential problem of those who abuse the power they have – and rightly attract the opprobrium of those who are betrayed. (Bishops asking for ‘forgiveness’ sounds a bit too easy…)
Like everyone else, I feel horror at the abuse exercised by priests over a long period of time. But, seeing Rome squirm is not a reason for vicarious mocking (as is being heard in some quarters); it is a tragedy and a crime and the focus should be on restoring those whose lives have been wrecked by abuse. Both they and the abusers need our prayers, but our prayers should be realistic.
I was reflecting on all this while visiting the excellent Cross Purposes exhibition at Mascalls Gallery in Paddock Wood, Kent. We went there after visiting All Saints’ Church, Tudeley, the only church in the world to have all the windows decorated by Marc Chagall. The windows are beautiful, powerful, moving and challenging. Go from there to the exhibition at Mascalls and you are confronted by representations of crucifixion that make you stop and stare.
Chagall’s drafts for his Tudeley windows are also there, but it is his Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio (1945) that speaks most arrestingly – even today as we think about power (and its abuse) in all its guises, and especially as we face increasingly confident right-wing parties gaining ground in the forthcoming election. Here’s the picture:
The Jewish Chagall has the crucified Jesus blocking access to the blackened Nazi as ruin lies around. Here we see the confrontation of two contrasting concepts of ‘power’.
One far-right party in England asks (in its attempt to attract naive Christians to its causes): ‘what would Jesus do?’ I think Chagall offers an answer.
March 26, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I was taken to Tudeley at the age of 13 by a vehemently atheist friend of my parents – and it turned out to be one of the most significant events in my faith journey. Wonderful wonderful place. Thank you for taking me back there, and, as always, for making me think.
March 27, 2010 at 5:25 am
“Mutually Assured Destruction was as mad as it sounds – and now belongs in the 1980s.”
MAD was a doctrine of the 1950s and 60s, not the 80s. That was the era of Ronald Reagan’s SDI, which pushed the Soviet Union into collapse. Reagan himself was keen to get rid of nuclear weapons.
“Post Cold War generations [how many have there been?] can’t believe that this was ever seriously considered a reasonable approach to global security.”
A lot of them have scarcely heard of the Soviet Union and know nothing of the Berlin blockage, Korea, Hungary, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, Soviet adventurism in Afghanistan etc etc.
“So, Obama adds a foreign policy victory to his domestic (health care) achievement of last week and thus puts another question mark over what many Americans understand by ‘freedom’. And about time, too.”
A gratuitous slap at Americans who, more than any other nation, freed western Europe at the cost of their blood (Omaha, Arnhem, Bulge etc), rebuilt Europe after WWII at the cost of their own money (Marshall Plan) and kept West Germany under its nuclear umbrella when it could easily have fallen to Stalin.
Getting rid of an over-large nuclear arsenal when warfare has changed is hardly a “foreign policy victory”. Preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons for attacking Israel would be a “victory” – but that is wholly beyond Obama, who has slighted America’s allies (including Britain) and cozied up to dictators.
His highly partisan ‘domestic achievement’ is condemned by large majorities of Americans. Not exactly the work of a ‘healer’, is it?
He gave up church pretty quick too. A bit of faux religiosity served its purpose for this essentially secular man.
March 28, 2010 at 8:08 am
It’s obviously been a good week for Mascall’s & Tudeley – our clergy team went on Tuesday for some Passiontide reflection together (hot on the heels of another Southwark clergy group!).
As someone who generally loves Chagall’s work (the Hadassah windows in Jerusalem remain with me 20 years on…), I was curiously unmoved by Tudeley – particularly the smaller windows which were difficult to ‘read’ (even with good biblical knowledge). However, I found Mascall’s exhibition quite illuminating and refreshing, and it was interesting to look at the Chagall and the Bov paintings in the light of having seen “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” on film a few days earlier. The vastly different media complemented one another significantly.
Noting Kathryn’s comment, I’m reminded of how art’s power to speak is not universal as our reactions to the same work are quite different.
March 28, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Bill, perhaps you need to question your own perspective. Things look different on thsi side of the Atlantic where at last Americans no longer have to pretend to be Canadian in order to avoid embarrassment. Your reading of history reminds me of the Hollywood reading of history that has the Americans capturing the Germans’ Enigma machine and keys. Millions may be cross with Obama, but millions are very pleased.
For a country to be proud of allowing 48 million of its citizens no health provision is shameful – Obama has done what looked to be impossible in getting his bill through against opposition framed in language that would chill the heart in Europe. Yes, we have other problems; but that doesn’t excuse the USA.
MAD was still a dominant dogma in the 1980s when I was working as a Russian linguist for the British Government. Sorry to be inconvenient.
Why do you cite the convenient ‘ignorances’ regarding Korea, Hungary, etc and omit American involvement in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, and other interventions? The inability of America to see what it looks like through the lens of other countries remains a serious problem. Bush never ‘got it’ – Obama shows more signs of obvious intelligence in this respect.
You won’t agree with any of this, but you ought to hear it.
March 28, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Nick where did you get that interpretation of the drawing? Is that something Chagall himself said? I haven’t read any background to the work but, just looking at it, it doesn’t seem that Christ is obviously blocking anything. He does look a mite censorious though. I notice the swastika is drawn the opposite way to how the nazis used it. Sort of. The upright leg of it is ambiguous. I can’t believe Chagall would have been unaware of the orientation of the nazi swastika. I know what the drawing says to me and it’s not as comforting as your interpretation.
March 29, 2010 at 6:08 am
“For a country to be proud of allowing 48 million of its citizens no health provision is shameful – Obama has done what looked to be impossible in getting his bill through against opposition framed in language that would chill the heart in Europe. Yes, we have other problems; but that doesn’t excuse the USA.”
Nick, you handle figures like a politician and I wager you know very little about American health care (or interstate commerce laws, or tort laws). Have you ever even been to America? 48 million? Where did you get that figure from? The Guardian? “31 million” is the usual figure cited, but no one is “without health care”; the figure relates to whose without comprehensive insurance (including a lot of young who opt not to buy it but have phones, FSTs, cars etc) and 11 million Mexicans who remit $50 billions annually. Obama got his bill through basically by buying Stupak and the pro-life Dems with a worthless promise on abortion and hundreds of millions of pork to Ben Nelson and the like – mind boggling speical deals that will haunt the Dems in November – essentially bribing the taxpayer with their own money. Deeply corrupt.
As for Obama himself, whom you lauded as a “prophet” (!) in one of your columns …. wel, you have a very strange reading of Christian theology, unless you were thinking of “prophets” like Balaam. There is little evidence that he has any personal Christian faith, though he once paraded his relationship with the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright – until he threw him under the bus. He is basically a secular left-liberal politician who got himself elected as a centrist in an aura of nauseating messianism. The healthcare bill that extends government control over 14% of the US eceonomy (something a socialist like you probably approves of) was as hyper-partisan as could be imagined, because the real goal is not “health care” (which could be done in all kinds of ways) but changing the structure of the country to ensure permanent left majority. Do you not understand that point? You are weak on analysis of the big picture.
He is now digging America even deeper into debt, while demonizing his opponents.
My knowledge of history is not based on Hollywood crap (Hollywood is a large part of America’s problems) but from years of serious reading. Obama care nothing for Britain, even though his father was a British subject.
March 29, 2010 at 6:27 am
… and let me add that the way the Obama administration is currently trashing Britain over the Falklands is deeply shameful. He is betraying America’s true allies.
March 29, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Bill,
’31 million’is still shameful. In British terms that’s 50% of the UK population! Is that OK with you just because its only around 10% of the US population.
And since when in a ‘1st world’ country should those in a lower income bracket have to choose between a phone or car and health care. The latest model of phone and a new car together wouldn’t cover even the briefest stay in hospital if you were knocked down. Perhaps poorer people shouldn’t eat either?
Your arguments are illogical as well as offensive.
March 29, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Erica, you obviously didn’t read me carefully. Nobody said the pre-existing system was desirable or optimal. But there were MANY ways to improve it without the US government nationalizing 14% of the economy with coercive laws that actually compel people to buy a product or face fines. This is what all economists say. Read ‘Spengler’ in the Asia Times website – he nails it exactly. The medium to long term implications of this are horrible. Western governments of the Left are essentially now hitting the source of wealth in their nations – private corporations and middle class tax payers – to fund “entitlement” to the “poorer” people who elect them.
The fact is – and your emotional and illogical response doesn’t change this – the majority of the US people are against this law. There was no attempt at bipartisanship because the law is not fundamentally about health care; it’s about changing the political game in the US by hugely expanding the power of the Federal Government into an area the US Constitution says nothing at all about. immigration law is next in the sights. The goal in the US is to build a permanent Democratic majority, just as Labour in the UK use immigration to build up its voting base.
March 29, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Bill, I think you seriously misunderstand Labour and immigration! Why do you think they are changing their tune now?
March 29, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Bill,
Let me see if I get this correct. As a Christian you are complaining that your government takes money from rich people to help poorer people?
As a Christian you are expressing doubt about someone else’s (Obama) profession of Christian faith, simply because of the minister who led them to the Lord, when you have no knowledge of his personal faith?
As they say on your side of the Atlantic…shame on you.
March 29, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Nick: Labour’s own advisors let slip that they loosened immigration rules to build up their base from about 2000 on. Of course they are changing their tune right now – because a lot of their base are turning to the British National Party.
Simon: if you think it’s the task of government to redistribute wealth, then say so. That may be good or bad. It could relieve suffering and create opportunity (my family grew up on welfare). Or it could support parasitism and dependency and a sense of entitlement. Where do oyu draw the line? In any case, don’t pretend that wealth redistribution is the Gospel. Every secular leftist believes in that. As for Obama’s religious faith, he doesn’t go to church, sounds awkward and ill-informed when he talks about Christianity and is zealously pro-abortion and pro-embryo experimentation and pro-gay marriage. Make of that what you will.
Erica tells me I’m “offensive” and you say “shame on you”. Such love you liberals have! But I’m fairly immune to moral blackmail.🙂
March 29, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Nick: what Labour adviser Andrew Neather said about the relaxation of immigration controls: to build up Labour’s base:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html
March 30, 2010 at 7:40 am
I wrote my comment on March 29 before reading this entry, and now I see that it could be appropriate for either post.
Kindest Regards
HP
March 30, 2010 at 8:54 am
Bill,
‘…don’t pretend that wealth redistribution is the Gospel…’?
Hmmm. Well, there’s the feeding of the five thousand in all four gospels in my copy of the NRSV. But if you prefer something more literal, how about
Matt. 19. 16-24
Mark. 10. 17-24
Luke 18. 18-25
Take your pick.
March 30, 2010 at 9:26 am
Bill,
I think that a certain amount of wealth distribution is necessary. Perhaps I’m just cynical, but history hasn’t shown that the rich do much other than keep getting richer at the expense of the poor.
March 30, 2010 at 10:59 am
Excellent column in todays Radio Times Nick, thanks for not shunning the area above the parapet.
March 30, 2010 at 11:28 am
David, thanks. Sometimes I think I just haven’t noticed where the parapet is…
March 30, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Mr McCarthy,
You’ve done it again…so shame on you a third time for making the (mistaken) assumption that I am a liberal.
Redistribution of wealth – biblical concept.
Not judging others – biblical concept (I was in church with the Obamas not many weeks go…)
March 30, 2010 at 9:06 pm
A degree of care is required before taking a moral position on the question of nuclear deterrence. ‘Mutual Assured Destruction’ may indeed seem MAD, both at the time and with hindsight, but what were the alternatives? Although Reagan claimed that defensive forces are “morally preferable” to offensive forces and that there is a “moral obligation” to pursue them, James Schlesinger, (US Secretary of Defense, 1973-75) described such a view as ‘pernicious’.
But was MAD ever, as Nick implies, a policy? Robert McNamara, recently deceased, and Secretary of Defense under both Kennedy and Johnson, thought not. In his book “Blundering into Disaster” (Bloomsbury, 1987), McNamara says: “Thus ‘mutual assured destruction’ is not, as some have alleged, an immoral policy. Mutual assured destruction – the vulnerability of each superpower to the awesome destructive power of nuclear weapons – is not a policy at all. It is a grim fact of life”. Incidentally, McNamara is sometimes credited with the coining of the term, or at least its publicisation, thus dating it to the 1960s.
Are the views of someone such as McNamara of any validity in the ‘normal’ world, trained as he was in the firestorms of Japan at the end of WWII and the sharp edge of the Cuban Missile Crisis? I strongly recommend a viewing of the film “Fog of War” to anyone wishing to inform themselves on these timeless matters.
March 30, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Noel, thank you for a superbly clear and concise comment. You are right to siggest that MAD describes a phenomenon (or potential) rather than a policy. The McNamara stuff is very interesting.
March 31, 2010 at 6:04 am
Conventional MAD talk was based on ICBM hitting Soviet or US cities, but technology and tactics changed the picture significantly. There was a lot of leftist hysteria about the coming of cruise missiles and a lot of nonsense about SDI leading to war, and of course the British left was anti-American and unilateralist: it was unable to imagine a world without the Warsaw Pact, and in large measure pro-Soviet in its sympathies: ‘all those wheat fields and opera’, as a famous Peter Sellers film put it. The troika of Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope steadied Europe’s weak hand, until Europe could get back to doing what it prefers…
March 31, 2010 at 8:25 am
Bill, that is such a right-wing American reading. You should cross the Atlantic sometime and see how it looks here. Have you ever asked why Europe has been so sceptical about America in recent years? It has something to do with American assumptions about the world and America.
What the world needs now is an America that understands its imperial role (hitherto) and prepares for a different (less dominant and self-consciously ‘righteous’ role) as it is succeeded by China, India, etc.
March 31, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Nick asks:
“Have you ever asked why Europe has been so sceptical about America in recent years? It has something to do with American assumptions about the world and America.”
Actually, I think it has a lot to do with (a) the presence of a lot of antisemitic Muslims (and other antisemites) in France and elsewhere; (b) the historical strength of communism and socialism in Europe and reflexive anti-Americanism; (c) the fact that the American taxpayer and military heavily subsidized European defense for 40+ years, while Europe developed social programs; (d) the decay of Christianity in Europe as a living reality in most people’s lives and its replacement by sun, sex and sangria for ‘l’homme moyen sensuel’, or environmentalism.
“What the world needs now is an America that understands its imperial role (hitherto) and prepares for a different (less dominant and self-consciously ‘righteous’ role) as it is succeeded by China, India, etc.”
Now THAT is a truly frightening propspect – a world in which China and India set the moral and political agenda – talk about trahison des clercs! You socialists-statists sit very lightly to the freedoms that made England shine so brightly in 1215 and 1689.
But China isn’t going to succeed America, any more than Japan could.
March 31, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Bill, I think your generalised racism is such that I will leave this comment up for people to contemplate your mindset. But, no more.
March 31, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Will add All Saints’ Church, Tudeley to list of ‘must see places’…the Chagall museum in Nice, France is amazing…a profound experience, highly recommend it, especially on a day like today, cold, windy, rainy, i’m sure Nice is beautiful right now.
April 1, 2010 at 4:49 am
“generalised racism”! Now that is bizarre, silly or wilfull distortion. Why does the left always resort to name calling and demonizing? Is it because its arguments are threadbare and its grasp of macroeconomics and geopolitics so weak?
I thought any informed reader would understand that I was referring to the capitalist-communist oligarchy that rules China and is now having a dreadful effect upon Africa, particularly in Sudan where it is shoring up the Islamists in its thirst for oil; and on resurgent Hindu nationalism of the BJP type which will also make life bad for Indian Christians?
Nick, I can’t believe you know nothing of western constitutional freedoms like freedom of speech, assembly, religion, association – which are now under attack in the west itself in the name of “political correctness” and “community cohesion”.
April 1, 2010 at 8:24 am
Bill, I am fed up with your lazy categorising of anyone who disagrees or questions you as ‘left’ or ‘liberal’. You are entitled to your views, but I don’t think they add much here. Your generalisations about Muslims, anti-semites, etc. are ridiculous and undermine your arguments. Your last paragraph might reflect American hysterical views of Europe in general and Britain in particular, but they sound like they have been informed by Fox News – which is held in utter contempt over here for having little to do with reality.
April 1, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Hi fellow bloggers:
I have only recently entered the blogosphere, and I have chosen Bishop Nick’s site because it offers a civilised, informed and challenging forum for debate on just about anything under the sun, by people who will frequently disagree with each other.
That is until I encountered Bill McCarthy.
I have always understood, perhaps wrongly, that there are rules for removing undesirables from blogs, so could I please now ask that Nick now does whatever it is necessary to get this guy off his blog. Failing that, please Nick use the power of your faith to prevent you from making further direct responses to Bill – he is dragging us all deeper into his mire and we can never win. And, failing that, would other bloggers please support me in getting rid of this guy. And, Bill, I sha’n’t be responding to all the insults you will throw at me, so go ahead. But just remember before doing so that you know absolutely nothing about me.
April 1, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Bill, I think it is sad that you appear to think so little of open discussion or ‘freedom of speech’ as your Constitution puts it and so can only fling insults here. I for one will debate no furtehr with you.
Instead send you best wishes and prayers for a peaceful Triduum and a glorious Easter when it comes. I hope you will accept them from a leftie and a liberal.
April 1, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Noel, I won’t be approving any more of Bill McCarthy’s comments. I don’t like closing people down (and have only done it once before now), but I think he has run far enough on here.
April 2, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Calumog, sorry for the long delay in responding. Chagall had seen pictures coming out of the concentration camps – hence the naked, skeletal figures by barbed wire fences. There are hanged and crucified figures amongst burning buildings. The grandfather clock – lacking minute and hour hands – is falling from the sky, marking the end of time.The Nazi has had his hand cut off (but retains his serpent tail) and the Jewish Jesus is blocking him from removing the ladder from the cross. The reversed swastika is probably denoting the perversity of Nazi symbolism, but others might have a better idea.
I think the reproduction doesn’t do justice to the original – which can still be seen at the Cross Purposes exhibition.