"Sharing Your faith without losing your friends."
From my recent visit to Canberra

Some time ago I posted on Australia's rapid movement towards a two child policy. The latest budget is just another manifestation of this trend. A two tier scale has been established for one of the family benefits. Families with one child, and families with two (or more) children. No recognition, no money, no help and no approval for anyone who has more than two children.

Newsflash for anti-family politicians: the number one factor influencing voters is still the views of their family of origin. Your supporters are having 1.8 children. I have 7. Your days are numbered!

Prayer at the foot of the Cross

Remember me?
The one who knelt here years ago
And promised you everything?

Remember me?
The one who forgot his promise
So many times
And fell

Remember me?
Who brought you to tears
With proud eyes could shed no tears
For the lonely and the lost?

Remember me?
Who drove nails into your hands and feet
With every careless sin
And then justified myself?

Remember me?
Whose hardened heart
And angry knees
Could no longer kneel here at the cross
When I needed you most?

My dear crucified Lord
Who still holds out peace to this warring soul
When you come into your kingdom
Please,

Remember me.

Hymns for Holy Week

Reading a post on NCR about Lenten Hymns I remembered a haunting hymn from my Protestant childhood that went like this:

Behold, behold the Lamb of God,
On the cross
For us He shed his precious blood
On the cross
O hear his all important cry
‘Eli Lama Sabathani’
Draw near and see the Saviour die
On the cross

Behold, His arms extended wide
On the cross
Behold his bleeding hands and side
On the cross
The sun withholds it’s rays of light
The heavens are clothed in shades of night
While Jesus wins the glorious fight
On the cross

By faith we see him lifted up
On the cross
He drinks for us the bitter cup
On the cross
The rocks do rend, the mountains quake
as Jesus doth atonement make
While Jesus suffers for our sake
On the cross

And now the mighty deed is done
On the cross
The battle fought the victory won
On the cross
To heaven he turns his languid eyes
‘tis finished now the conquer cries
Then bows his sacred head and dies
On the cross

I'm sorry - Anna Nicole

This, Gentlemen, is how a real man does sets things right.
(Words of the poem below the vid.)



I’m sorry Anna Nicole
- Jonathon Walton

Poetry, it’s my release
My shield from my own grief
The refuge to which I retreat
When this world is too much for me
Phrases on pages
Language my mind speaks
Metaphors and similes
Poetic elements
I just breath.

This poem is entitled I’m sorry
Anna Nicole

I step up to a magazine stand
And it’s like stepping up to an auction block
Because sex is for sale
As I see the bodies of females
On display
For my ‘trying not to look like I’m viewing pleasure’
And I think to myself
“Which one is worse?
The burqa or Bulimia?"

“Ladies, free yourself so we can buy you
Don’t worry about your value
We will define you
Because happenings minus the fact
Equals news for us
And news equals the truth for us
So Anna Nicole must have died from an overdose”

But I know there is a thin line
Between tight and too small
So pornography is just prostitution with taxes
And the fact is
Anna Nicole lost her power of self definition
And it killed her
She become a commodity
A novelty
It really starts to bother me
How brothers under covers
Went to the gutter and had her
For 2.99
Or less

So this is my apology
Because I am one of them
A letter asking for forgiveness from the hearts
Of all women
See dear Anna Nicole, Jenna Jamison
And those Vivid Video Vixens
Those Playmates and Penthouse
And those pictures on the Internet that have no names
Just descriptions

I wish that I could write you a cheque
And give you back what I took
Give you a DVD or a magazine
To upload your self worth
Download your dignity
Or just see what you are really worth
Because I witness images I didn’t have a right to
And I can’t erase my memory
So I have to write you and apologise
For taking something that I paid for a price
But no matter how high
Should have never been mine

I realised something
Standing on the corner of Broadway and 116th
As I saw 57 magazines
And women covered the covers
Of 53
These weren’t just bodies
They were sisters, daughters and mothers
And it was my call to be the best
Husband, son and brother

See now, with a changed heart
I am trying to change
My mind
And my desire
See Anna Nicole makes me worry
But the unnamed make me cry
Because how many girls have died
Or been hospitalised from not eating
Trying to be the ‘right size’
How many pills have been popped
How many drips of blood have been dropped
Onto bathroom floors
Behind dorm room doors
Or those other doors that lock on the opposite sides
Of cell blocks

See, when will we wake up?
And realise we are raising a generation of ‘prosti-tots’
Kids that know how to suck
Before they know how to love
Know multiple positions
Before they know long division
And the minority becomes those
Who are not sexual assault victims

See this is for Denise
Laying down in front of a web cam
And following directions
The wife
Who just found her husband’s private pleasure collection
The girl at the bus stop
Who has just been molested
The Lady
Walking the street followed by cat-calls and craned necks

I’m sorry

And that’s all that I can say

But when I have a son
I will raise him to respect you
And if my poems are bricks
I’ll build word walls to protect you
From males not worthy to hold the title
Of “man”

Sisters and Mothers
I’m sorry

Husbands, Sons and Brothers please
Pick up your bats
Because the women of this world
Are waiting for us
To step up.

Temptation for women?

The damage pornography does to a relationship and to an individual are well documented. I want to consider here just one of the effects of pornography on a couple and consider a possible problem not identified in most discussions of marriage.

One of the problems of porn is that it presents one partner (usually the man) with an unrealistic view of what to expect in and of a sexual partner. That is, it presents an airbrushed reality with a model who is begging to do things any sane woman would find beneath her dignity. As Simcha Fisher puts it,

If you can summon up a panting beauty just by touching your iPod screen, then why go to the trouble of getting to know an actual woman—learning who she really is, winning her love, and dedicating your life to serving her?

One of the problems of porn is that it presents this unrealistic, unachievable idea of lovemaking that is impossible for the real women in our lives to match. Not would they want to, even if they could. In other words, by covetting something in a woman which my wife cannot give me, I am saying she isn't good enough for me. I have spoken to not a few wives about their feelings on finding their husbands accessing pornography. Among other things, one lasting effect is that the wife will feel inadequate for years afterwards, and deeply hurt that the most intimate gift of herself was not good enough to satisfy her husband.

This aspect of the problem is not restricted to men. I often joke with my wife that some glossy real-estate/gardening/furniture brochures are a form of 'porn' for women. How so? Almost every magazine my wife picks up which portrays an airbrushed furniture setting, perfect IKEA world or a perfectly situated 17 bedroom mansion. All of these things have one thing in common. They are beyond my reach as a provider. They are specifically designed to make people long for and covet things beyond the reach of mere mortals.

Think about it this way ladies. Imagine a man comes home to find their spouse completely enraptured by air-brushed images of a beautiful mansion with perfect furniture and then they look up at him.  He is freshly returned from working his butt off to pay the rent in the small home you share, which desperately needs the attention of a plumber, electrician and several layers of pain just to look moderately presentable before the next time your friends come over. Where does this place him? He looks down at the glossy un-reality you have been feeding your mind with while he was away and he dies a little inside. What hope has he got?

In other words, this form of advertising has a similar effect to at least one of the effects of pornography. It encourages you to covet something unrealistic and it says to your spouse that they are not goo enough to make you happy. Even if you never meant it that way.

I am aware that there are some people who might say "you just need to get over your old fashioned, outdated idea that the man is the provider and work on your goals together." Some similar 'modern' thinkers might also urge my wife to work on being more like a porn star. No dice. Be grateful for what God has given you and do the best you can with that. This is reality, and the only path to real happiness.

Those big bad Catholics - Part II

The gentleman running the evangelical blog I was responding to in my post below offered a courteous and thoughtful reply to my comment, which included the following:

"As an evangelical, I agree that we can TRY to justify all manner of foolishness, but we have an enduring authority outside of ourselves, the Scriptures, which continually critique our theology. I agree that many evangelicals have not paid attention to church history and for that reason have fallen into errors. Others have tried to be Lone Ranger interpreters, but our interpretation should come within the context of a relationship with our local church, and pastors should be in contact with the work of biblical scholars, church historians, etc. to arrive at a better understanding of the Word of God. The point is that churches can fall away from faithful obedience to God’s Word, but since we believe in the sufficiency and authority of Scripture we can always be convicted and corrected by it."

My reply:

Thank you for your thoughtful answer Jonathon. As is often the case in ecumenical dialogue the problem is more about confusion in translation than actual willful misrepresentation. I was raised an active evangelical, served as an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church and have now been a Catholic for a decade so I have the benefit of ‘speaking the lingo’ of a wide range of Christian traditions. The trouble is that, when Catholics use certain key words and phrases, Evangelicals understand them to mean something different. We are using the same words but working with different dictionaries.

An example is the quote you picked from the Catechism (there are a number of other quotes that would better explain the Catholic position). You insist that it places human or institutional authority over Christs. Let us look at the quote again.

“Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.”

Firstly, in ALL ancient theology, beginning a millenia and a half before the Protestants were a twinkle in Martin Luther's eye, and even to this day in mainstream theology, to exercise authority “in the name of” Christ is a specific theological phrase which encapsulates the entire idea that Christ’s authority has been given (in some small part) to His apostles, who passed on this grave responsibility (with the grace of God that goes with it) on to selected others by laying on of hands. In other words, this is Christ’s authority, exercised through a human agent. Not the human agent presuming to act as God.

The second sentence claims that this authority “has been entrusted” in Peter and his successors. You seem to assume that the use of the passive voice here refers to the Church or some other human authority entrusting Christ’s authority to another human agent. This makes absolutely no sense within the context of that passage. The Catholic writers here are clearly using a divine passive (after the manner of Sacred Scripture) to indicate that it was Christ Himself who entrusted this authority to Peter and the apostles.

Now, we can debate whether Christ did, in fact, entrust any part of his authority to men. It will be a short debate since Christ states it explicitly in the Gospels, and was upheld by all the surviving writings of the early Christians. We might have a longer discussion about how Christ’s authority is manifest among his people in the modern world and THIS, I believe, is a fruitful discussion which both Catholics and Protestants will benefit from.

It is one thing to debate this assumption, yet quite another to assume that it is false and critique the Catholic Church’s position AS IF they believe what you do but consciously continue to assert human authority over Christ.

Catholics are completely open to genuine theological discussion on the matter of Catholic and evangelical assertions. My beef here is with a lack of charity (perhaps by oversight) in the interpretation of Catholic positions which breaks the command not to bear false witness, and undermines the debate.