Buckfast Abbey

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A meeting recently took me to Buckfast Abbey, a first visit. This is a Benedictine Abbey in the heart of rural Devon. It was a midwinter day of strong sunshine and stronger showers, which allowed for some dramatic photography.

Dating back to late Saxon times, Buckfast Abbey was suppressed by Henry VIII in 1539 (frankly, it was already quite decayed and the remaining monks accepted generous payments to repudiate their sacred vows and go quietly). In the early 1800s, almost all the buildings were demolished by a local landowner to make way for a large house. In 1882, some French Benedictines returned to re-establish a community there, which survives to this day.

They immediately built a temporary chapel (the grey buildings on the right) before the current main Abbey church was built, to a design by Frank Walters, from 1906-32, with the tower completed in 1938.Buckfast Abbey, South West Elevation

For me, the crowning glory is Dom Charles Norris’ stunning 1968 east window of Christ at the Last Supper in the 1965 Blessed Sacrament Chapel at Buckfast Abbey. Modernist and depicting a definitely post-Vatican II vision of Catholicism. Thick tiles of glass, chipped to shape and set in concrete or epoxy resin.

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On The Twelfth Day of Christmas

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I’m still wishing people a Merry Christmas, because it’s still Christmastide: today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, and traditionalists will take their decorations down tonight. In fact, this year, most churches will have an unusual thirteenth day of Christmas. Rare indeed will be the place of worship that keeps the Feast of the Epiphany … Read more

Tides Also Come In

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TIDES ALSO COME IN (A response to Arnold. And to Cupitt.) A stormy sea today. Grey rock pools catch a leaden sky In Lowry hues; not very far away Bangor’s a shade; the hills of Ireland peer, Like dragons’ silhouettes through wind-whipped spray. Come, take the salt air, walk while the wind’s high! Only, the … Read more

Dark clouds over the rainbow nation

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This article appeared in The Tablet on 13 April 2017. The crisis long bubbling inside the African National Congress now threatens to boil over into widespread violence throughout the country. Faith leaders have a vital part to play in finding a peaceful solution to the growing political problems. A rainbow over a slagheap resultant from … Read more

God in the West: the New Atheism and Its Discontents

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My Address to the Bournemouth William Temple Association, 5th December 2016     

Thank you for inviting me to speak at a meeting of the William Temple Association. Temple has long been a man I have admired. Indeed, he is a man whose prayers I often ask for, particularly when I confront some problem of presenting the Christian faith publicly. His Christianity and the Social Order, about to have its 75th anniversary, posed questions once seemingly answered by the welfare state, but has become extraordinarily fresh and relevant again over the past generation as a result of the changes in work and welfare.

That’s a reminder, at the start of my talk, that history does not move in straight lines nor proceed to any inevitable destinations.

Just ten years ago New Atheism stood at the zenith of its influence. A lot has happened since, and indeed the talk I will give tonight is considerably different than that I might have written this time last year.

It is often said that there is no period in history more difficult to understand than the very recent past. With that in mind, let us strain our imaginations to take ourselves back to the distant days of the mid-2000s, when the world was a very different place.

The God Delusion

Few books have been launched at such a perfectly apposite moment as was Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in 2006.

Two scenes dominated the public conception of God in the 2000s: the collapsing twin towers of the World Trade Centre after Al-Qa’eda attacked them; and Bush and Blair praying together before launching a badly planned war against the wrong target. By 2006, that war had gone awry, and Iraq was in the midst of sectarian bloodletting that was killing tens of thousands.

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You’re hired!: Can the Catholic Church learn about choosing parish clergy from the Church of England?

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This article was printed in The Tablet on 10 November 2016 Ecumenical Catholic leaders have been considering whether they could learn from the Church of England about lay involvement in choosing parish clergy One of the most distinctive differences between parochial life in the Catholic Church and the Church of England is in the choice … Read more

First Past the Post is now harming unionism because it is concentrated around Belfast

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This article appeared in the News Letter of 9 September 2016 With Northern Ireland’s healthy population growth in recent years, the province is set to lose only one of its existing 18 seats. Additionally, some large differences in electorate size have developed, and the Boundary Commissioners are required to keep these variances below 5%. No … Read more

The Pope is Still a Catholic

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Cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole…

Lefty atheists from North London to Northern California are in outrage today at the latest shock revelations that Pope Francis is, in fact, a Catholic. “The pope played us for fools, trying to have it both ways”, thundered Michaelangelo Signorile in the Huffington Post, outraged that the Pope had (briefly) met Kim Davis. Ms Davis, you’ll remember, is the rather silly Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on ‘biblical’ grounds while herself being on a rather unbiblical fourth marriage. (Giving her the martyrdom she so transparently sought by jailing her, however briefly, was both stupid and morally wrong.)

Trevor Martin in the Guardian felt his meeting with Ms Davis left “LGBT people with no illusions about the Pope’s stance on equal rights for us, despite his call for inclusiveness”. There has never been any doubt of the Pope’s stance on equal rights for LGBT communities – he doesn’t believe in them. He doesn’t agree with marriage equality; he used some pretty salty language in Argentina when it came into force there, several years before he hit the world stage. At the same time, he seems determined to avoid wasting energy fighting a battle that has already been lost psychologically everywhere in ‘the West’ and Latin America, even where the laws are yet to change.

As it turned out, this storm in a teacup involved a certain amount of shooting first before all the facts were available (it’s always fun to see the rational and evidence-based cyberlegions of New Atheism in action). The Pope seems to have been bounced into meeting Davis as one of dozens of attendees of a Washington reception, and her attorney’s version of events many not have involved a full exposition of facts. “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects” said a tersely worded press statement from Vatican Press Office.

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To A Young Fisherman

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TO A YOUNG FISHERMAN
Fairer still than a rose, your cheeks aglowing,
Your feet more graceful than a tulip’s stem
And in your eyes there sparkled like a gem,
For friendship, such an infinite deep longing.

Behind us was the endlessness of the sea,
Above us greyly gazed the endless light,
We two stood on the strand, so solit’ry,
With just the sea’s smell. No-one was in sight.

Last day together, townwards I remove.
Contentedly he fishes, while I brood
And find no peace in fields nor city streets.

I am exhausted, so many loves I’ve had.
Forgive me much, ask not what I withstood
And pray your beauty ne’er my will defeats.

By Jacob Israël de Haan, 1917, translated from the Dutch by Gerry Lynch.

Jacob_Israel_de_HaanThis poem is famous as the last line of the first stanza adorns Amsterdam’s Homomonument. Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-1924), its author, was a human rights activist avant la lettre and a very out gay man indeed by the standards of his time. He was also a devoutly religious Jew who emigrated to Israel after the end of World War One, ended up the political spokesman of the Haredi community in Jerusalem and was assassinated by a member of the Haganah. His Wikipedia entry is worth a read! As well as his famous gay poems, he travelled extensively by train in England in the early 1910s, and wrote some charming poems in Dutch on his English experiences.

I have started and failed to finish translating this poem for close to a decade. Rupert Moreton is translating many Russian and Finnish poems at the moment and inspired me to finally get it done.

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The Strange Death of Catholic Ireland

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This piece was published in the print edition of Prospect magazine in July 2015. In the referendum held in Ireland on 22nd May, voters chose overwhelmingly—by 62 per cent to 38 per cent—to endorse a proposal to amend the country’s constitution in order that “marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons … Read more