A Sunday Sermon - The Fatherhood of God

 

Mountebanks, frauds and imposters such as the current Archbishop of York don't like the word Father applied to God. It's "problematic" for them because of peoples' negative experiences of fatherhood and "patriarchal oppression."

Alas, the all-prevailing, systemic scourge of patriarchal oppression. Quite the blight on our age, such as it is. But leaving aside the inherent apostasy involved in denying Dominical revelation, imagine if you can that the Yorkine prelate has a point, that people do have bad fathers and live in an oppressive, criminal patriarchy.

Think of Hunter Biden's disowned son, not even allowed the family name, while the Big Guy, the Patriarch rakes in millions while sucking down ice cream on vacation in Delaware, wherever that is, and directing the fate of the world. There you have it, bad dad, oppressive patriarch. So can we refer to God as Father or was Jesus wrong?

I'll spare you my homily but here, at the risk of length, is Benedict XVI, addressing the issue:

It is not always easy today to talk about fatherhood, especially in the Western world. Families are broken, the workplace is ever more absorbing, families worry and often struggle to make ends meet and the distracting invasion of the media invades our daily life: these are some of the many factors that can stand in the way of a calm and constructive relationship between father and child. At times communication becomes difficult, trust is lacking and the relationship with the father figure can become problematic; moreover, in this way even imagining God as a father becomes problematic without credible models of reference. It is not easy for those who have experienced an excessively authoritarian and inflexible father or one who was indifferent and lacking in affection, or even absent, to think serenely of God and to entrust themselves to him with confidence.

Yet the revelation in the Bible helps us to overcome these difficulties by speaking to us of a God who shows us what it really means to be “father”; and it is the Gospel, especially, which reveals to us this face of God as a Father who loves, even to the point of giving his own Son for humanity’s salvation. The reference to the father figure thus helps us to understand something of the love of God, which is nevertheless infinitely greater, more faithful, and more total than the love of any man.

“What man of you”, Jesus asks in order to show the disciples the Father’s face, “will give his son a stone if he asks for bread? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Mt 7:9-11; cf. Lk 11:11-13). God is our Father because he blessed us and chose us before the creation of the world (cf. Eph 1:3-6), he has really made us his children in Jesus (cf. 1 Jn 3:1). And as Father, God accompanies our lives with love, giving us his Word, his teaching, his grace and his Spirit.

As Jesus revealed — he is the Father who feeds the birds of the air that neither sow nor reap, and arrays the flowers of the field in marvellous colours, in robes more beautiful than those of Solomon himself (cf. Mt 6:26-32; Lk 12:24-28); and we, Jesus added, are worth far more than the flowers and the birds of the air! And if he is so good that he “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” Mt 5:45), we shall always be able, without fear and with total confidence, to entrust ourselves to his forgiveness as Father whenever we err. God is a good Father who welcomes and embraces his lost but repentant son (cf. Lk 15:11ff.), who gives freely to those who ask him (cf. Mt 18:19; Mk 11:24; Jn 16:23), and offers the bread of heaven and the living water that wells up to eternal life (cf. Jn 6:32, 51, 58).

Thus, although the person praying in Psalm 27 [26] is surrounded by enemies and assailed by evildoers and slanderers, while seeking the Lord’s help he invokes him. The witness he bears is full of faith, as he states: “My father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up” (v. 10).

God is a Father who never abandons his children, a loving Father who supports, helps, welcomes, pardons and saves with a faithfulness that surpasses by far that of men and women, opening onto dimensions of eternity. “For his steadfast love endures for ever”, as Psalm 136 [135] repeats in every verse, as in a litany, retracing the history of salvation. The love of God the Father never fails, he does not tire of us; it is a love that gives to the end, even to the sacrifice of his Son. Faith gives us this certainty which becomes a firm rock in the construction of our life: we can face all the moments of difficulty and danger, the experience of the darkness of despair in times of crisis and suffering, sustained by our trust that God does not forsake us and is always close in order to save us and lead us to eternal life.

It is in the Lord Jesus that the benevolent face of the Father, who is in heaven, is fully revealed. It is in knowing him that we may also know the Father (cf. Jn 8:19; 14:7). It is in seeing him that we can see the Father, because he is in the Father and the Father is in him (cf. Jn 14:9,11). He is “the image of the invisible God” and as the hymn of the Letter to the Colossians describes him, he is: “the first-born of all creation... the first-born from the dead”, “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” and the reconciliation of all things, “whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:13-20).

I can't add to such excellence. In Christ we see the true face of the Father and of fatherhood itself, infinitely powerful and sovereign, and infinitely compassionate and loving. The apostates ironically defraud themselves by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

You'll notice that "these things," the mighty works of God and the nature of our heavenly Father, have been "hidden from the wise and understanding." (Mtt 11:25-30) Yes indeed, and revealed to "babes," to the little children who turn to Christ in purity of heart and humility of spirit.

Take note, imposters, wimmyxn and everyone else, he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, * and hath exalted the humble and meek. (LK 1. 51-52)

In the meanwhile, we'll continue to pray as Jesus taught us.

Pater Noster,

LSP

The Lord's Prayer

It was bound to happen and now it has. The venerable if shrinking Church of England's second in command, Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell told General Synod that the Lord's Prayer was "problematic." 

Why would that be? According to Cottrell, it's because some people have had difficult relationships with their fathers and others again "have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life."

Space Aliens

There you have it. Jesus got it wrong, he condoned abusive, oppressive patriarchal imagery and, per Cottrell, it's about time we changed all that. But if Christ got it wrong, what kind of God is he? Not much of one if at all and that's just it, these people don't believe in the God they pretend to worship.

You old frauds

Same thing, come to think of it, on wimmyn priests. Not ordaining them was unjust and evil. Jesus didn't ordain them... I leave you, the reader, to complete the unholy syllogism.

Ave Atque Vale,

LSP

Our Church and Our Elites

 

What's with the Church and our elite rulers? Here's Anthony Esolen at the Catholic Thing, via Dad of Six:

A few years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates, winner of a MacArthur genius award, and a popular writer on race in America, admitted he had never heard of Saint Augustine. Many people rushed to point out the irony, that an African American who makes much of Africa – he has named one of his sons for an African fighter against French colonialism – should be unaware of the greatest writer ever to come from the continent.

But that was not the real trouble, the real cause for disappointment. Coates, I am sure, is but one among the millions of our American elites whose education violates the law of flowing water, and manages to be narrow and shallow at once. He hadn’t heard of Saint Augustine – but who has?

Can we be sure that the professors hanging about in the faculty lounge at State College have heard of him, let alone have read or at least opened the Confessions?

Go to Silicon Valley, and visit a cafeteria at Google. Which is more likely, that the people sitting at a table can have a boisterous conversation about the latest Marvel Comics movie featuring Spider-Man, or that they can even drop one or two sensible comments on Cervantes and the Knight of the Woeful Countenance?

Go to the House of Representatives, and drop the name of Tocqueville. It falls like a pebble into a deep well, with hardly a ripple or a sound.

I don’t think I am exaggerating. We suppose our schools serve at least the rich and powerful, but in crucially important regards it is not so. Their graduates can scramble up a half-literate essay, they can learn science and medicine and mathematics and what passes for law, but they are hardly less ignorant of the great heritage of western arts and letters than are the children of the slums.

And they have this additional disadvantage. They are unlikely to have darkened a church door, so that the spiritual heritage of Christendom is for them at best an uncharted territory, an unknown continent, and at worst, a monster of the post-Christian imagination, a bugbear to frighten secular toddlers.

They need not go to Marvel or MIT for a message from another universe. Opening the Imitation of Christ will do.

Elites tend to be arrogant and to spin roulette with the moral law. But at least the ordinary man might expect from them good manners, polished taste, a certain noble reserve, a willingness to be first to bear the burden of war, and education fit for ladies and gentlemen. Our elites are as arrogant as any French courtier in the last days of Louis XVI, and they lead in spreading diseases of moral corruption; but we get from them nothing compensatory – they are ill-mannered, slovenly, loud, timorous, and ignorant.

Well, what do we do about it? I know what we at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts do about it. We teach students who read and discuss, not just for a section of one special class, Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Shakespeare and Cervantes, Michelangelo and Rodin. And not because we want to show off, but because we love them, because they have searched for the truth, and they have strained their muscles and nerves to bring beauty into the world.

When the young Augustine was at Carthage studying rhetoric among other young men who strove for power and influence in the world of law, he happened upon a book we have since lost, the Hortensius, by Cicero. That book changed his life, because it kindled in him a hunger for wisdom, what the Greeks called philosophy. I guess that in a bad world, we need a Hortensius now and again.

The good news is that we have them, thousands and thousands, more easily available to the hungering mind than ever been before. Many of these are rightly in the keeping of the Church: Augustine’s Confessions, for one, and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, two works without which I would not have become a professor of Renaissance literature, and, more dreadful to consider, without which my Catholic faith might not have made it across the secular desert called Princeton, but starved along the way.

Many other works belong, so to speak, to all the world, but the world has cast them aside, or slandered them, or mangled them beyond recognition. The world will have to turn to the Church not only for Christ, then, but for Cicero too, not only for wisdom regarding the things of Heaven, but for human wisdom about human things, not only for Paul, but for Plato. And more.

The elites have been in the vanguard of cultural evisceration, in all kinds of ways. Only the Church can recover the abandoned land, and till it with love. By comparison with what people still within living memory once took for granted, there are now no dances, no socials, no local ball leagues, no community singing, few parades – and those but exercises in garishness and obscenity. And no genuine common life.

The Church can still do for man what man once did for himself. She must do so, too, or we must be condemned to preaching not to bad men but to half-men.

Which brings me back to Mr. Coates. He is a man of great inborn talent. He ought to be evangelized. Before he can be – I am speaking of the general case – the subsoil of humanity must be enriched.

Let those who have heard of Christ only as a curse, and who, not coincidentally, can no longer conceive of the beauty of those human things, glance our way and see merriment, marriage, good manners, lively conversation about great and good artists, composers, and poets, and children everywhere.

Let the elites learn from us, the foolish and the deplorable, and almost the only people left in the world who can tell what it was like to be that lost soul in Carthage, long ago.

I love all of this but you may not. There's no rule. But here's the thing, the Church is led, massively, by a miserable, apostate satrapy of secularist quislings. Fear, pontiffs, the wrath to come. And yes, I'm speaking about you "Welby," if that's your real name, which we doubt.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

High Mass - Low Mass

 

You see, readers, there's High Mass and there's Low Mass. The High can be very high indeed, and the Low can scrape the depths.

It's a thing. The Western world had a liturgy, a rite, a way of worshiping God which stood for at least 1000 years, maybe more. This was disrupted at the end of the Middle Ages, "smash it up" shouted the reformers and so they did.

Fast forward to today. We've had, what, 50 years of liturgical reform in which the "experts" dismantled, defaced and deformed the worship of the Western Church. And all in the name of making it more popular. But guess what, nobody came, and who can blame them.

It's a bit like wymmyn priest figures in the Anglican church, "If you don't ordain wymmyn no one will go to your churches!" shrieked the deformers and lo and behold, no one has even though the deformers did it anyway.

At the heart of this wickedness, whether Roman, Anglican or anywhere else, lies two-faced apostasy, disbelief masquerading as Christianity. Atheism in vestments, if you like. And I tell you this. The purpose of the Church, it's primary mission and objective is to worship God.

Let's reclaim that.

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP

Listen Up

Imagine you were a church or denomination which says it believed in the divinely ordered givenness of human sexuality, male and female he created them.

Likewise, you hold marriage as something which takes place between a man and woman. More than this, you think babies shouldn't be killed in the womb, not least at the point of birth, and that Jesus is God, the Christ, and his commandments, his Word should be obeyed.

I know, it may be hard, but try to imagine it. Then picture a group of people violently, enthusiastically in favor of abortion. People who believe gender's a construct, gay marriage a right and Christ, at best, one guru amongst many. And in his Western expression, a racist oppressor.

That in mind, you'd expect the churches concerned to stand together and denounce a movement which is antithetical to their belief, Christianity, and to do so clearly, unanimously and loudly. But no.

The Roman Catholic church? Silent or busy making deals with Communist China. The Anglican Church in North America? All about investigating "systemic racism." The venerable Church of England? Very upset about racism and statues. Baptists? Crickets.

Granted, there's notable exceptions, like Cardinal Vigano and priests like Fr. Altman and Fr. Goring in Canada. But this is rare and in ACNA, the Anglican Church in North America, the silence is deafening or even complicit.

Churches, listen up. Cowardice in the face of the enemy won't win you any favors. Stand and be counted while you still have that option in the public square. 

The fight is on, and don't kid yourselves that people who hate, scorn and despise you aren't coming to shut you down.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

PS. Whether the Jesuits should be suppressed, again, is an entirely valid question.

Lawyers Guns And Money

All I've been doing since Sunday is talking to lawyers and bankers. Why? Because a couple of local libs figured they could take a lot of cash out of one of our frozen bank accounts. You know, just take it, and then what, hole up on the Brazos, like no one would notice?

Their malfeasance, literal skulduggery and mutiny is back under control and calm, and cash, is back where it should be.

Libs, don't even think of trying it on again. 

Your Buddy,

LSP

What Dhimwits

Here's Blue Martel relaxing on an attractive Moslem rug, he's obviously not Islamophobic. Neither is Ss. Matthew & Luke Darlington, which offered to veil its crosses and a picture of Christ so that local Muslims could pray in the church without being offended. 

Offended by what? Christianity, of course, which this church used to represent. Christianity is the world's most persecuted religion. Too bad that places like Ss. Matthew & Luke are part of the problem.

Here at the Compound we call them dhimwhits.

Kizmet,

LSP

Outrage!

It's rare that this small "kabob stand on the information superhighway" (thanks for that MCP) has anything good to say about the outgoing Archdruid of Canterbury. But that's changed, now. Rowan's apparently introduced several amendments into the Church of England's (COE) plan to turn women into bishops. The amendments would allow parishes to refuse the ministration of women priests and bishops as well as anyone "ordained" by a woman bishop. 

Rowan

Leaving aside the ecclesiology of the thing, it seems as though Williams is trying to respect the consciences of Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical trads. He's doing his best, you see, to keep the Big Tent together. Fair play, Rowan, even if the effort's doomed to failure. But whatever, the Druid's moves have got the Libs spluttering with rage:

dentist, dentist, dentist

One member of Women and the Church, who lobby for feminism in the COE, stated that she was "barely able to speak" for anger and disapointment. But that's nothing, another "senior figure" stated:

"I cannot tell you what I think now about Rowan Williams doing this. I cannot imagine what he thinks he is doing. Either the bishops do not understand what they have done, or they don't care. It is quite unbelievable. I am just so seething. I look at the Church and think, 'why do I still belong?' "

Yes, why do you still belong? And were you ever a part of it anyway? 

All that and more to say nothing of your outrage over two middle of the road concessions to traditionalists when the COE is in a mild-mannered death-slide, Europe's economy and by extension the world's, is about to go Deathstar, the Mid-East could blow up at any moment, Japan's about to irradiate the Pacific Ocean and California, maybe no loss but hey, and there won't be any people for your priestesses to attack because we're aborting all our children. 

"bishops"

So go ahead, apostates, wail and gnash your teeth. Just don't be too surprised if, in the end, anyone's paying too much attention.

That is all,

LSP