ANGLICANS AND CHURCH'S SOCIAL TEACHING

A mission to all the community

THE TABLET., London

03 July 2014

Shortly after his appointment last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby described Catholic Social Teaching as “one of the greatest treasures that the Churches globally have to offer”, sentiments he has since repeated. Nearly 20 years ago, under Archbishop George Carey, the Church of England gave a warm reception to the statement by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales on “The Common Good and the Catholic Church’s Social Teaching”, and this interest has continued to build. It is not altogether surprising that the General Synod is to hold a full-scale debate on the common good at its meeting in York later this month. Anglicans are finding the principle, which derives from classical Greek philosophy and from the Bible, to be a valuable concept in understanding what is happening in society today. And they have discovered in Catholic Social Teaching a toolkit to show how certain negative tendencies can be exposed to the redeeming influence of the Gospel.

  The common good principle does not stand alone. It leads naturally to the virtue of solidarity, which needs balancing by the concept of subsidiarity and hence of a civil society that is controlled neither by the market nor the state. This underlines the key importance of human dignity, especially the preferential option for the poor by which the Church extends its particular concern to what Jesus called “the least of these my brethren”. Catholic Social Teaching is thus a web of interlocking ideas with the common good at its heart. 

  By virtue of its status as the national Church established by law, the common good is natural Anglican territory. This is more so even than the Catholic Church in England and Wales, which has a tradition of looking after its own rather than putting the concerns of society as a whole at the heart of its mission. But both Churches can see the way individualism has taken hold in Britain to the detriment of civil society, and are alarmed by the extent to which belief in “rational self-interest” as the guiding principle of modern economic theory has spread in society to justify selfish or greedy behaviour.

Anglicans will want to put their own gloss on the teaching so it becomes common property. In return, the Catholic Church can learn from Anglicanism the habit of mind that sees its mission as being to the whole community and not just the Catholic part of it.

STAY BALANCED AND PEACEFUL

There sure is a lot of anger and fear flying around at the moment, almost literally with airplanes being shot down and missiles shooting through the sky. It may seem like it’s all happening a long way away but anger and fear are insidious: they creep into our unconscious and begin eating away at our sensibility, sanity, love and compassion, making us all victims no matter where the cause may lie.

So how do we stay balanced in the face of destruction, hatred and even war? Violence invariably arises due to repressed anger and fear, and we all have some measure of both these within us. Unacknowledged, they can wreck havoc in our own lives and in the world around us, as we see in gang fighting, rape, or forceful and abusive behavior.

We don’t have to have bitter battles in our own life; rather, we can make communication, respect and peaceful means our modus operandi. But to do this we first have to recognize and take responsibility for the violence within ourselves.

We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence in ourselves. We must work on ourselves as well as with those we condemn if we wish to move towards peace. — Thich Nhat Hanh, nominated for the Noble Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr.

As long as we repress, deny, or ignore fear and anger then we will be held captive and emotionally frozen, unable to move forward. In that place we become untrusting of love or spontaneity. So those people we have a difficult time with are really our teachers because without an adversary — or those who trigger strong reactions such as fear and anger — we aren’t motivated to develop loving kindness and compassion.

Making love our priority doesn’t mean we’re always in spaced-out hippie bliss while ignoring the conflicts around us, but it does mean we have shifted our focus. Love is the main emotional job of the heart and it rarely flows smoothly. We all experience difficulties, such as childhood conflicts, abuse, hurt or loss, and if the pain is too big to deal with we close our hearts and throw away the key. By remaining locked out of our feeling center we become mistrustful, defensive, fearful, and even paranoid.

Learning to open our hearts, to listen to, respect and trust what we feel, is one of life’s most powerful teachings. For the heart is more than just the center of love, it’s also the core of our being, the place we point to when we refer to ourselves. When we say, “you have touched my heart” we are really saying “you have touched the deepest part of my being.”

We don’t have to go in search of love, or fear giving away so much that we have none left. We can never lose love; we can only lose sight of it. Love could not happen if it was not already an integral part of who we are. How can we lose what is our nature? How can we be left with nothing when love is the source?

So staying balanced in the midst of fear and anger is about staying mindful of what we are feeling while keeping our heart open and loving. To help, practice the meditation below.

Meditation: The Way It Is

Sit comfortably with an upright spine, take a deep breath and let it go.

Focus your attention on your breathing, just watching the natural flow of your breath.

Staying aware and open, allow whatever feelings are present to arise.

Have no judgment, rejection or aversion. Accept whatever you are experiencing as simply a part of what is.

You do not need to change anything.

Just be with whatever the feeling may bring up in you.

Be kind and caring to yourself.

Keep breathing and accepting, breathing and being with what is.

And lastly, in the words of Reba McEntire’s latest song: Pray for Peace.

*

MODERN IDOLATRY

Question: "What are some modern forms of idolatry?"

Answer: All the various forms of modern idolatry have one thing at their core: self. We no longer bow down to idols and images. Instead we worship at the altar of the god of self. This brand of modern idolatry takes various forms. 

First, we worship at the altar of materialism which feeds our need to build our egos through the acquisition of more “stuff.” Our homes are filled with all manner of possessions. We build bigger and bigger houses with more closets and storage space in order to house all the things we buy, much of which we haven’t even paid for yet. Most of our stuff has “planned obsolescence” built into it, making it useless in no time, and so we consign it to the garage or other storage space. Then we rush out to buy the newest item, garment or gadget and the whole process starts over. This insatiable desire for more, better, and newer stuff is nothing more than covetousness. The tenth commandment tells us not to fall victim to coveting: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor" (Exodus 20:17). God doesn’t just want to rain on our buying sprees. He knows we will never be happy indulging our materialistic desires because it is Satan’s trap to keep our focus on ourselves and not on Him. 

Second, we worship at the altar of our own pride and ego. This often takes the form of obsession with careers and jobs. Millions of men—and increasingly more women—spend 60-80 hours a week working. Even on the weekends and during vacations, our laptops are humming and our minds are whirling with thoughts of how to make our businesses more successful, how to get that promotion, how to get the next raise, how to close the next deal. In the meantime, our children are starving for attention and love. We fool ourselves into thinking we are doing it for them, to give them a better life. But the truth is we are doing it for ourselves, to increase our self-esteem by appearing more successful in the eyes of the world. This is folly. All our labors and accomplishments will be of no use to us after we die, nor will the admiration of the world, because these things have no eternal value. As King Solomon put it, “For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 2:21-23). 

Third, we idolize mankind—and by extension ourselves—through naturalism and the power of science. This gives us the illusion that we are lords of our world and builds our self-esteem to godlike proportions. We reject God’s Word and His description of how He created the heavens and the earth, and we accept the nonsense of evolution and naturalism. We embrace the goddess of environmentalism and fool ourselves into thinking we can preserve the earth indefinitely when God has declared the earth has a limited lifespan and will last only until the end of the age. At that time, He will destroy all that He has made and create a new heaven and new earth. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:10-13). As this passage so clearly states, our focus should not be on worshipping the environment, but on living holy lives as we wait eagerly for the return of our Lord and Savior, who alone deserves worship. 

Finally, and perhaps most destructively, we worship at the altar of self-aggrandizement or the fulfillment of the self to the exclusion of all others and their needs and desires. This manifests itself in self-indulgence through alcohol, drugs, and food. Those in affluent countries have unlimited access to alcohol, drugs (prescription drug use is at an all-time high, even among children), and food. Obesity rates in the U.S. have skyrocketed, and childhood diabetes brought on by overeating is epidemic. The self-control we so desperately need is spurned in our insatiable desire to eat, drink, and medicate more and more. We resist any effort to get us to curb our appetites, and we are determined to make ourselves the god of our lives. This has its origin in the Garden of Eden where Satan tempted Eve to eat of the tree with the words “you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). This has been man’s desire ever since—to be god and, as we have seen, the worship of self is the basis of all modern idolatry.

All idolatry of self has at its core the three lusts found in 1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” If we are to escape modern idolatry, we have to admit that it is rampant and reject it in all its forms. It is not of God, but of Satan, and in it we will never find fulfillment. This is the great lie and the same one Satan has been telling since he first lied to Adam and Eve. Sadly, we are still falling for it. Even more sadly, many churches are propagating it in the preaching of the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel built on the idol of self-esteem. But we will never find happiness focusing on ourselves. Our hearts and minds must be centered on God and on others. This is why when asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). When we love the Lord and others with everything that is in us, there will be no room in our hearts for idolatry.

FAITH, WITHOUT WORKS, IS DEAD

Mindfulness, like faith,

without good works is

a spiritually dead thing

I was waiting on the side

of a busy street. Traffic

flowed by like thoughts in

neural pathways,

sometimes speeding,

sometimes congested. I saw occasional

acts of kindness and many missed

opportunities to make people feel better.

Across the street the automatic doors of

a large supermarket were opening and

shutting continuously.

A woman emerged carrying several

paper bags filled with groceries. A box

fell off the top of one and her careful

balancing act was in jeopardy. She was in

a dilemma that I was sadly unable to

help her with; and no one else around

even seemed to notice. At such moments

a universal empathy switches on. I knew

what it was like, the feeling of

awkwardness, foolishness, irritation with

self and the universe.

It was not hard to imagine her

instinctive thoughts. Should she try to

bend down, still holding her parcels, to

pick up the box from the ground? A risky

and potentially very inelegant operation.

Should she place all her bags on the

ground and recover the dropped item

and then try to pick them all up again?

This would not be easy to do from a

bending position. These and other

options raced through her – or at least

my mind – in a few moments of rapid

response. What would happen?

If this were an episode of House of

Cards it would end here, leaving us in

suspense. But the dramas, small and

great, of life are not interrupted by

commercials or credits. And the

unexpected happens even more

unexpectedly than on screen.

From nowhere an angel appeared.

Perhaps, like me, it had been watching

the traffic and noticed a flashpoint of

human need. It looked like a man and, in

a very human way, retrieved the dropped

item and placed it safely on top of one of

the bags she was holding. It was a

curiously intimate gesture.When we are

in need the barriers of fear and greed

come down and a relationship of trust

emerges at the level of a common

humanity. Such moments are sadly

fleeting but glorious. She thanked him

with a heartfelt look. He disappeared

into the angelic realm of altruistic

benevolence.

Meanwhile I was merely an observer.

Aware but unengaged. Of course often

people are not even aware of the needs of

others around them. Someone in a

caring profession told me recently that

he was reluctant to meditate because it

would expose him to too much feeling

for those he was caring for. Better to be a

detached, professional caregiver.

Such an attitude drives many of our

bureaucratic systems today and, even as

they fail through a lack of humanity and

common sense, we still prefer this

objective mechanical model to the

presumed sloppiness of the emotional

and the “subjective”.

So, awareness is better than the

complete lack of caring perception of

others that results from self-absorption.

But awareness is not enough. When

necessary we have to cross the street to

develop our awareness into attention.

This attentive level of consciousness is

truly human. Awareness is barely levelone

humanity. Attention is the fruit of a

personal connection, developing the

potential for relationship. Sympathy is

raised to empathy and empathy to

compassion and compassion to love in

an action that respects the other and

expresses one’s true and deepest self.

Awareness, attention, action in love. We

cannot interrupt the sequence without

freezing our humanity or falsifying the

integrity of others. This is why the

current interest in “mindfulness” is a

great opportunity for those who can

connect the dots. Many Buddhist

commentators point out that secularised

“mindfulness” (samma sati in Pali)

should not be isolated from the full

meaning of the Buddha’s teaching

surrounding it. If it is, the danger is that

we become merely privately mindful,

aware only of ourselves as observers.

Mindfulness, like faith, without good

works is a spiritually dead thing. It

stimulates perception “in the flesh” but

leaves the spirit dormant. I would love to

hear reports of priests talking of this

from pulpits, or of episcopal letters

pointing out what is happening in

worldly spirituality away from the pulpit

and the kind of language most people are

talking around these things. What an

opportunity to explore the meaning of

the “mind of Christ” that is in us. Maybe

there’s an angel waiting in the wings.

FABULOUS THOUGHTS

FABULOUS THOUGHTS   Life is similar to Boxing game.. Defeat is NOT declared when you fall down; It is declared when you refuse to ‘Get Up’!   Everything is valuable only at 2 times: 1.    Before getting it; and 2.    After losing it !!   Two things bring happiness & success in life: 1.    The way you MANAGE when you have nothing, and 2.    The way you BEHAVE when you have everything !   Two places are MOST VALUABLE in the world: 1.    The NICEST place is to be in someone’s Thoughts, and 2.    The SAFEST place is to be in someone’s Prayers.   One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.   Faith is taking the 1st step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.   Keep your face to the Sun, And you will not see the shadow!   A Deaf child says: “For all of you, I am deaf; But for me, all of you are dumb…” Moral: Life differs in each perspective.  Live the way you want to.   It is always good to check once in a while, And make sure that You haven’t lost the things that money cannot buy..!!   Attitude at its best: My BACK is not a VOICE MAIL.. Kindly say on my FACE.   Ego is the only requirement to destroy any relationship. Be a bigger person; skip the “E”, and let it “go”..!!   One good thing about Egoists: They don’t talk about other people!   What is SUCCESS? It is when your photos are uploaded on GOOGLE, Instead of FACEBOOK..!!   Do you know why God didn’t give us the gift to read others’ minds? So that, We could have the chance to “TRUST”, And privilege to be “TRUSTED”!   As long as we don’t forgive people who have hurt us, They occupy a RENT-FREE SPACE IN OUR MIND!   Always keep hoping for good. Keep a green tree in your heart. The singing birds will automatically come..!   God always likes to know again and again what you want… It is not that He forgets your Dreams & Prayers; But He loves to check your passion towards your desire..!   I asked God: “If everything is already written in Destiny, then WHY should I pray?” God smiled and said: “I have also written- CONDITIONS APPLY…”!!!   Empty pockets teach millions of things in life… But full pockets spoil us in million ways !!!   No one in the world is afraid to speak the truth. Everybody is afraid to face the consequences after the truth is told!   Getting angry is punishing yourself for the mistakes of others!   Trust is like a STICKER. Once it is removed, it may stick again, But NOT as strong as it holds when you first applied it..! Always take care of relations.   Everything about the future is uncertain, But one thing is sure: God has already arranged all our tomorrows… We just have to TRUST HIM TODAY !!   NEVER win people with Arguments, rather defeat with your Smile! Because people who always wish to Argue with you, cannot bear your Silence !!!   The search for happiness is one of the main source of unhappiness.   Diplomacy is an art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they tend to ask you for directions..!!   If a drop of water falls on a Lake, its identity is lost; If it falls on Lotus leaf, it shines like a Pearl. Drop is the same; but the company matters.   Our HOPES should be like Hair & Nails. No matter how many times they get cut, But they never stop growing.   “F-E-A-R” has two meanings: 1. Forget Everything And Run… 2. Face Everything And Rejoice..! Choice is ours..!!   If you walk the way guided by humans, you will find hopeless end; & if you walk the way guided by God, you will find endless hope.   Memories are always special… Sometimes we laugh by remembering the days we cried; And we cry by remembering the days we laughed…!!! That’s Life!   Sea is common for all… Some take pearls, Some take fishes, Some come out just with just wet legs! World is common to all; what we get, is what we try for!   To smile without condition, To walk without intention, To give without reason, & To care without expectation, Are the beauties of any Relation!   Life is very complicated… When you have standards, people call it ATTITUDE; When you are simple, people try to CHEAT you; & When you cheat others, people call you SMART!   All communication problems are because We don’t listen to understand; We listen to reply…!!!