MetaCatholic

Today’s chattering class news from the Westminster politico-media village was that Tony Blair thought Gordon Brown would lose the next election. A spokesperson for Blair has denied this. I wonder though, how many people will believe the denial. Either they will want Blair to have said this, or believe that it sounds all too plausible, or simply follow the basic political rule: “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.”

Thinking about this I recalled a recent post on Windows Vista. Responding to this comment: “Microsoft, of course, has fumbled the launch of Windows Vista” Paul Thurrott points out:

I do not agree that Microsoft has “fumbled” the launch of Windows Vista, however. That is all perception that was driven by the media. Windows Vista has sold at a rate higher than its predecessor, and it has done so without any mathematical gymnastics: After one year on the market, 10 percent of the installed base was running Vista. That’s higher than was the case with XP. So much for perception.

There is the same issue of perception trumping reality, and it is one that crops up everywhere. Consider the ways in which the debate over recent days about Expelled has fuelled the (already common) perception that religion and science are enemies. Those of us who feel compelled to make the opposite case sometimes feel as if we are pissing into the wind.

No doubt the modern media world has intensified this phenomenon. Once something becomes the established story, it is hard to shift perception, whether by denial, argument or the production of facts. I suspect this is similar to what military strategists mean by “the initiative”. When you feel things are running your way they start running your way even more strongly. Somehow your own mistakes cease to mater as much, and your enemies mistakes are magnified. You are running the show and they are reacting.

Historically, I find myself wondering if this wasn’t also the case with the rise of Christianity. The really big persecutions, the Decian and Valerian in the mid third century, and the Great Persecution at the start of the fourth, are perhaps reactions to the growing sense that pagan Rome is on its way down, and the initiative is with the Great Church.

If this is so, then I suspect that the challenges to the Church today are far deeper and more devastating than we are generally prepared to think. Remember this is not about truth and reality, this is about perception. Where is “the initiative” in today’s world, and who has it? I suggest it is with those who trumpet the free untrammelled individual, and see State and Church alike as potential enemies of that freedom to live an unconstrained and fulfilled life.

written by doug

Duane Smith has a provocative post on belief and lack of belief, which is, I think, in danger of comparing apples to elephants. It’s worth reading, and, unlike his posts on Ugaritic vets, who always seem to be taking the piss out of their horses, very comprehensible. He lumps together what I see as three separate groupings, linking them by the mismatch between external speech about faith and actual interior experience of it.

• The first group is instanced by the story of a retired minister he knows, who ceased to believe what he was paid to preach, but felt compelled to continue acting as though he believed inn order to support his family. It’s not clear to me from what Duane says whether this entailed an complete or partial loss of belief, or indeed whether the conceptual framework within which this minister thought was able to make room for doubt and absence. I am sure (as I think Duane is) that this minister is far from unique. A clergy chapter of Agnostics Anonymous might help create the kind of safe space for people in situations like this to find support in dealing more constructively with such hard situations.
• The second group is instanced by Mother Teresa. The story of her spiritual life as evidenced by her letters to her confessors led to quite a stir. Unlike Duane’s clergy acquaintance, she had both a context and a tradition which, rightly or wrongly, could allow her to conceive of her experience spiritually, and more importantly, in frank discussion of it with her confessors. Effectively she conceives of her faith as one held in the teeth of God’s absence, not his non-existence. Duane of course would see this as a delusion, similar to the third category of person. (I’ll come back to that at the end.)
• The third category is an extraordinary story of an Indian “tantrik” who seems seriously deluded about his own power, never mind his conception of the universe. Evidence simply has no effect on the delusion, although it seems remarkably obvious to everyone else. (I’m assuming the story is fairly reported, but I’m unsure how representative of the Hindu tradition — that did after all give the world Gandhi — this man is.)

Now, it is entirely possible that people of faith are all as deluded as this Indian tantrik. But I would (obviously — being deluded myself) suggest not. The delusions portrayed here are about controlling the world, and trying to make it be, or appear to be, another kind of thing than it is. Faith and theology, however, are about trying to make sense of the world as it is, and discerning how to live in it wisely. That is the difference between Mother Teresa’s dealing with her depressive sense of a lack of God in the world, and the other cases. In her case there is a searing honesty that discards illusions about how God is meant to behave, and what the world is meant to be like. Her language about God’s absence becomes tied up in the motivations that drive her to care for the most abandoned people in the world, not as a superior, but as a servant who also knows abandonment, and faces squarely some of the worst the world has on offer. As some bloke said “by their fruits you shall know them”.

written by doug