Matthew's Journal

Over the last couple of tuesday lunchtimes, we've been dealing with the word catholic[1]. Joe used something he'd used for a previous parish quiet day as the basis for discussion. He'd found 5 definitions of "catholic", and we looked in them in turn.

1. "Catholic Christianity believes that God is at work in the whole Church. For this reason, it is a restless and generous form of Christianity always eager to learn from other Christians". This was quite attractive to us woolly-minded liberals - it's a suitable humble approach, and acknowledges the lesson of ecumenism that we have much to learn from Christians from other traditions.


2. "Catholics are those who are in possession of the true religion, of which all others fall short". It was, I think, intentional that this follows after number 1. It's all very well to say we have things to learn from other Christians, but don't we in the end have to assert that we believe our church to be better than the others in some way (otherwise, why aren't you a methodist rather than an anglican?). Also, an excess in point 1) can lead on to relativism, and the failure to assert any truth at all, and surely Christianity is about truth in the end? We talked about these first two quite a lot, and I think it's fair to say our conclusion, such as it was, was that we have a core set of beliefs, that we assert are central to being a Christian. Outwith those, we are willing to engage with and learn from other Christians. Whilst anglicanism might be the most right church overall, there are expected to be points on which other churches can teach us. Arrogance is clearly bad, too.


3. "Catholic Christianity believes that God is at work int he whole world. For this reason, it displays radical openness to all truth and to every value." This is like 1) but with even more relativism, so didn't attract much support. Christianity has a distinctive truth to share with a fallen world.


4. "For Catholics, the sacraments are the place where God is present to us and changes us.". This is how the World Council of Churches uses "Catholic", as distinct from "Protestant" (rather than "Catholic" in the sense the creed uses it); Protestants say the Bible is important instead. I argued quite strongly that this is a false dichotomy[2], and that authentic Christianity emphasis both Scripture and the Sacraments. Someone suggested that you could view the Bible as a sacramental thing. We talked about the Salvation Army in this context, too.


5. "Catholics are those who maintain communion with their bishop." In some sense, this was the original use of the word - heterodox people wouldn't keep communion with their bishop. By this definition, parishes who have a flying bishop are no longer Catholic, which is something to think about.

The last point brought us onto a discussion of what counted as a communion-breaking issue - clearly there are issues which we as a church have to say are important enough that if you don't agree with us on them, then you aren't a Christian (e.g. the divinity of Christ); in tension with this is the fact that we all disagree on some points, and that's part of being authentic Christians. Perhaps inevitably, we started talking about homosexuality. Part of the problem is that many people holding forth on the subject are less hung up about who is shagging who, but more see this as a rallying point for a bigger issue - how we interpret scripture, and the authority of scripture. Maybe *that* is a communion-breaking issue, and non-Christians would probably respect us much more for debating *that*, rather than seeming obsessed with the bedroom.

The St Lukes anecdote (which I'm sure I've related here before) was also brought up, as a reminder that other Christians aren't necessarily what we think of them as.

There was a StAG person along this week, which was interesting, particularly the brief discussion at the end about transubstantiation.

[1]not as an abbreviation for Roman Catholic.
[2]In case you don't know (and some present on tuesday didn't), this is a rhetorical device similar to saying "well, do you like chocolate, or do you like cheese?": people might like either, but many like both, and a few none, so trying to split people into two on these grounds is bogus.

Our passage this evening was John 4:1-42, which is the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

Joe started with a rather straw-man "typical" exegesis of this passage, talking about Jesus' radical inclusion of the Samaritan woman. There's an element of that, but it rather misses the point. The story starts with Jesus demanding water from the woman (actually, it doesn't, I interjected, it starts with Jesus resting by Jacob's well, thus linking the story with the Jewish heritage; that aspect we rather neglected, as Jim pointed out), which would have been a pretty shocking thing for the woman - here is a man, speaking to her openly. Worse, he was a Jew. The initial conversation must have been very confusing for her - he was offering to give her living water (~=running clean water)??? Was he greater than Jacob?. Then the abrupt change of conversation, and he shows that he knows about her previous five men. That must have been pretty shocking; indeed, she changes the subject hastily.

We side-tracked hugely at about this point. We will all eventually worship in Spirit and in Truth - yes, the Jews have it right for now, but that's relative to True Worship which will happen when the Kingdom comes. Jim took this theme and ran with it - he thinks that we as a church should put worship far more centrally to our life - if we put worship at the heart of our deliberations about issues that affect the church, then we'd be much more likely to have the Spirit involved in our deliberations. The woman goes and takes up an apostolic ministry; we aren't told anything about whether she improves her life or not. Worship should be coming first, not discipline. Christ doesn't say to her "You must marry your partner", nor "you should ditch this man and go back to one of your previous husbands". We shouldn't be saying to people "you're an evil sinner. Oh, by the way, God loves you", but more "God loves you. Come, worship Him, and repent of your sins". There's tension here, though - Christ is radically including the Samaritan woman, but is also saying "actually, you need to sort your life out; 6 husbands isn't acceptable behaviour". Similarly, there are some things that really are not acceptable for people to do (and, slightly differently, for priests to do), but we as a church lack a mechanism for drawing lines in the sand; in some senses, this is a virtue. [Discussion of heresy here, which I'll update later, once I have the facts to hand].

It's also interesting, in that here again Christ is using a woman to proclaim his good news; also that the men can't quite accept it - they start back-tracking towards the end of the passage.

There was more we covered, but these seem to be the things that stuck in my mind.