Russia has been in the news rather a lot lately, and not just for hosting the Winter Olympics in Sochi, nor even for its role in the present Ukrainian Crisis. Flanked by senior clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, President Putin on has accused the West and its leaders President Barack Obama and our own Prime Minister David Cameron of promoting immorality. By immorality, he means promoting homosexual practice to minors and late term abortion on demand, which of course as Catholics faithful both to natural law and divine revelation, we must also agree are immoral.
In fact, President Putin within the past several months signed into law bans on both. Reports also say that
“some members of the Duma (the Russian state assembly), are talking about going even further and banning the procedure itself. The Russian Orthodox Church, whose numbers are swelling with converts and ‘reverts,’ is weighing in as well. One Orthodox prelate called abortion a ‘mutiny against God.’”i
The irony of President Putin’s accusation could not be more poignant. I can certainly recall President Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union a Godless Empire. President Reagan was the first president for whom I was able and happy to vote at age eighteen in Texas. Being a moral conservative for as long as I can remember, based on what once was common sense as well as biblical teaching, I’ve voted Republican ever since. Another irony there as well: now, as a British citizen, I am anything but a Republican by sentiment here in the UK! But I must also say I agree with our own Bishop Philip Egan, writing in his scathing open letter to David Cameron last year, that the word Conservative is best rendered with inverted commas when referring to the political party of that name. How ironic that President Putin and Bishop Egan are in agreement on what once was basic, moral common sense.
I am not suggesting that ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin is a Russian Orthodox saint in the making, though I hope he will one day be in Paradise. Like the rest of you, I can only judge the righteousness of principles and practices, not of persons. Only God, magistrates, and justices can judge persons, and only God can acquit or condemn persons eternally. But it does seem the people of Russia are doing a lot of repenting of their atheistic past. Unlike Roman Catholicism in Britain and elsewhere in the north Atlantic, Russian Orthodoxy is swelling in numbers these days, both in terms of new members and reverts. And that is occurring whilst the established Protestant Church of England is trying to reverse its own numerical decline by making the presumably old-fashioned and offensive renunciation of Satan optional in its baptismal liturgy.
One wonders if the champions of relevance and meeting people where they are would also prefer to omit from the Bible those passages which mention the devil, such as today’s Gospel, which always comes for the first Sunday of Lent, when Jesus resisted temptation and rebuked Satan. Indeed one wonders in a world with Satan if there is such a thing as sin of which we must repent, and therefore whether we have any need of a Saviour? Perhaps all we need from gentle Jesus meek and mild is that he be a teacher of ‘values’, and a liberator from oppression. Well, unless by that we mean an intolerant teacher who claims some values don’t change, or a judgmental liberator who frees us from oppressive desires and deeds of the flesh. Lots of so-called religious people seem to want that sort of domesticated deity these days, a God who says we are free to do with own bodies whatever we like, provided we do so in good conscience, by which they seem to mean a conscience without any inconvenient first principles, like the sanctity of the natural family, and of human life from conception to natural death.
But beloved, I sincerely hope and pray that’s not any of you. Nor is it President Putin, apparently. Again, I am not a judge of his motives, just his statements about morals, and on that he is spot on and demonstrates, at least on the surface, an attitude of repentance. He at least appears rather like yet another pompous, worldly Byzantine emperor of old, who championed the Church and promoted its Orthodox faith, despite his own shortcomings and therefore, his own hypocrisy. But of course, the only way to get rid of all hypocrisy is to get rid of all the rules. I’m sure we’ll be seeing quite a lot more of Putin in the coming months as the Ukrainian Crisis unfolds.
Though sometimes, provided we don’t violate our inviolable principles and practices, we may indeed be permitted to meet people where they are, we don’t necessarily want them to remain where they are. God is in the raising up, not the dumbing down, business. And if there is one thing I have learned about the young people of St Thomas More: they’re not so stupid that they want to stay where they are; they want to grow in faith and virtue, and you parents and catechists can thank yourselves for that. Our catechumens made their first Penance and Reconciliation [today/yesterday]. And of course, they’ll get the chance themselves personally to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, who is a very real being who must be resisted and rebuked, though I can reassure you it’s quite acceptable to doubt whether he is red, or has a pair of horns on his head!
http://www.universalis.com/20140309/mass.htm
Readings at Mass
First reading |
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Genesis 2:7-9,3:1-7 © |
Psalm |
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Psalm 50:3-6,12-14,17 © |
Second reading | Romans 5:12-19 © |
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Alternative Second reading |
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Romans 5:12,17-19 © |
Gospel Acclamation | Mt4:4 |
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Gospel | Matthew 4:1-11 © |
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