Will it work? or Is it right?
In spite of all the furor about the expenses claims of some of our MPs
the reality seems to be that virtuous living is not much of a priority
among us. Many if not most of us would behave in just the same way as
those greedy MPs if we felt sure we would get away with it. Bad
behaviour is now often described as a mistake and the obvious mistake is
to be found out. If I’m right about this much of the fuss is clearly
hypocritical. The very journalists who are loudest in their condemnation
of others have certainly not been above fiddling their own expense
accounts, as some of them have freely admitted. The question that was
asked was: “Can this way of getting out of the tax-payer something for
nothing be squared with the rules?” (Will it work?). That is very
different from the question: “Is the claim I’m making morally
justified?” (Is it right?)
When you chuck God and religious faith out of the window it is a simple
next step to chuck out morality as well. Of course it doesn’t have to be
like that. There are many atheists among the virtuous and many
evil-doers among the religious. All the same it is easier to abandon the
path of virtue if you have ceased to believe that God is your judge. Of
course Christianity is not all about being virtuous but one of the marks
of a Christian is certainly meant to be that he or she leads a “good” life.
-Peter Graham
e-mail peter.graham[at]bucklandnewton.com
well – I would say this wouldn’t I…
but to me the very predictability of all religious opinion on these issues of morality falls into a trap of sounding simultaneously “holier than thou” despite all the qualifying statements, and equally hypocritical.
I have been finding it very odd that the press can viciously attack our UK MPs for expenses for almost a month, in the Daily Telegraph particularly, but only one done day covering the long awaited and massively hard hitting report on the large scale and persistent abuse of thousands of children by the institutions of the Catholic Church.
Could this be because the Telegraph is owned by Catholics? Are all journalists scared more of attacking child abusing priests than expense fiddling MPs?
Its not just Catholicism, horrendous corruption of Christ’s message runs through all established churches with hierarchical structures.
The nub of the problem is not genuine spiritual experience based morality versus atheism, but the fact that most Churches behave in a way whereby they are visibly more removed from Christ’s teachings than many atheists are.
This completely sabotages any noble attempts by Christians to claim that morality springs from these teachings. Individual conscience and an understanding of what Christ actually taught seems to be sadly lacking in so many areas but the messages from the established churches should surely be far more emphatically “sorry we screwed up” and the reforms they need are more dramatic than those of the UK parliament
- This needs to be done long before they try and tell everyone, “this is the true way”
Your grandfather is soooo wrong on so many different levels… it’s not even funny.
I find his words to be the exact opposite of truth. More so-called faith believers do more wrong and immoral acts in the name of God than non-believers do in the name of nobody.
That was me, if you couldn’t tell by my elementary writing skills.
My father and I have pushed this a tad further if anyone is interested –
his reply to my piece above he emailed direct because he still finds it tricky to negotiate blogs for some reason. (being 86 doesn’t help)
peter g. “Your Church critique is too slippery for me to grasp. I don’t know what you mean by “most Churches”. The R.C. Church for instance. Do you refer to the Vatican, the Pope, the Cardinals and Bishops, the clergy or the whole R.C. population? Attitudes vary enormously. I may have told you already that I reviewed a book which was to be called “Lies, Damned Lies and the Vatican”. The author is a devout Roman Catholic, who would probably agree with most of what you say. She thinks most bishops are as bad as the top lot but her view is very clearly that THEY are not the Catholic Church.
The Eastern Orthodox – the second largest Christian Communion – consists of many self governing Churches, which do share a common theology and very similar organisation. Their record is infinitely better than that of the Romans and I think it’s because they have such excellent rules to govern their hierarchy, namely 1. All parish priests must be married; 2. No parish priest can ever become a bishop. 3. Only members of religious communities can be consecrated bishops. That’s still a hierarchical system and it totally excludes women from ordained ministry.
The Methodists are much less hierarchical but that doesn’t apply all over the world. There are for instance many Episcopal Methodists in America..
You probably know enough about Anglicanism to be aware that we certainly are hierarchical; but as far as the C.of E. is concerned we are governed by General Synod, which consists of the Diocesan Bishops and two elected chambers, one for clergy and one for laity.. I think there’s plenty to be said on both sides of the argument about the evils and benefits of hierarchy but doubt very much whether either side has monopoly of Christ-like members.
All the mainstream Churches would agree in owning they are a bunch of sinners who often do things that are wrong but that cannot be a reason for not trying to point people to a better way as well as following it themselves.
I’m intrigued to know how you work out what exactly the message of Christ is. If, as I think most likely, you derive it from your understanding of the New Testament, you have to note that we only have that collection of documents because it was selected from a host of other possibilities by the hierarchical Church.
My experience tells me that the Church (any Church) is always a favourite choice for the media looking for scandal.. This of course re-enforces the stereotype which, as you rightly say, undermines any Christian attempt to preach morality.”
to which I respond…
you did ask some questions of clarification so…
Re churches – My wrath is mainly at the Catholics for obvious reasons. The Eastern orthodox may seem silly and irrelevant to me but I don’t see it as a perverse monstrosity that needs to be broken up in quite the same way…
The church I think of as THE Catholic church =
the majority within it, those who label themselves as such, priests with (often well disguised) ambition to lead others, led by a pope figure with huge failings along with a desire to retain that power.
And incidentally anyone who describes their children as “good Catholic children” rather than children raised by Catholic parents, has already blown it by some way for me – they must surely be already indoctrinating the vulnerably naive in the worst way…I agree with Dawkins that this constitutes child abuse in its own right.
As for those, like this woman you mention, who criticise from the inside, but define their church as excluding the bad bits – sure there are dilutions and schisms on the sides of all churches of scale, but the Pope and excommunication history still feels a dominant cultural influence in that world dominant ancient order – and those Catholics who choose to place themselves as “Catholics on the sidelines” pretending that the decades and decades of systematic abuse of thousands of children was nothing to do with them, are NOT OK in my book.
They are like all those MPs who voted to keep allowances from the freedom of information act – if they had all rebelled and walked out there would have been action years ago instead of cover-up.
Christ coming upon these institutions today would, I suspect, have been a little bit more angry than he was with the money lenders in the temple…
and the God of the old testament would surely have simply “smitten” them all!
You say the media tend to attack churches first – on my blog I point out that the politicians have had a 22+ day roasting from the Telegraph for some financial shenanigans – whilst the Catholics, as they installed their new English super-shiny-big hat, received the long awaited Ryan report and the news covered it for – ?
one day…
also mentioning that Cardinal Nichols said that the catholics “must be courageous” – ?!
errrr no… abjectly apologetic, resignations on a much larger scale than in Westminster and supporting prosecutions of all involved, would be closer to the mark…
Could the fact that the Telegraph has been/is owned by a Catholic have anything to do with this 22 – 1 proportion?
My understanding of Christ’s teaching is largely New testament based, but includes the Gospel according to “Thomas” – I am sure you know of it and how it was strongly rumoured to be written as first person by Christ himself (though this matters not to me) the strong bits for me are “pick up a stone and I am there, split a piece of wood and I am there” – basically decrying the whole need for churches as literal buildings and hierarchical structures I felt.
I also feel that where he overthrows the money lender tables in the temple is a part that many choose to conveniently cover over with more comfortable nonsense – along with camels and eyes of needles, becoming as little children and blessed are the peacemakers…
I could go on – as I think he did, mostly being quite revolutionary in his suggestions to start all over again where things have gone bad, for example if the “salt has become tasteless…”, I think Catholic salt has gone past tasteless to poisonous…
But I don’t want to go back to a book to place my own views in a somehow more valid context – that is a part of the problem with over-bookishness.
A lot of the time I feel I don’t want to attack the individuals within the church – any church, no matter how corrupt, but in the end the churches are made up of the people within them, so its inevitable that my attacks will feel personal to those who identify themselves with that church.
The popes that have changed things are, to me, just putting deck chairs upright on the Titanic. The model exists, has existed for centuries, of how to reach God without priests -its the only real way, so your discussions of the merits of one church that allows married priests and another that consecrates female priests as bishops are worse than an irrelevance to me.
The sort of reform we need in our parliamentary system involves taking power away from the top honcho – we hear them on and on about “Strong government” by which I know they mean they want to lay down laws without having to work with others and compromise to meet the greater public’s needs – power tends to corrupt etc, and it does so in all hierarchical systems in my opinion. proportional representation for me – and no need to bother with any churches.