Is it me.....?

Am I the only non-Jew who finds the uttering of the Hebrew Holy Name of God (YHWH) objectionable?

It started about 50 years ago, was taken up in translations of the Bible, and is used in Bidding Prayers by the kind of people who refer to the Holy Spirit as 'the Spirit'.

I find it irreverent and offensive to our spiritual ancestors, the Jews.

Am I alone in this?

IN DEFENCE OF LYING or I THINK I MAY BE A HERETIC

I have read several blogs this last week which state, unequivocally, that it is always sinful to lie, even to save someone's life, and a fascinating entry in the New Advent Catholic encyclopoedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10195b.htm) on mental reservation, seems to support this view.

Hard cases, as lawyers say - or used to say, make bad law, but here are some hard cases:

In the last war, Polish Catholic Priests at risk of their own lives, forged baptismal documents, and the Home Army provided false non-Jewish birth certificates, for Jewish children who were taken into Catholic homes to avoid murder by the Germans. Lying? Certainly. Sin? Not in my opinion, just heroism.

Soldiers use camouflage and disinformation to deceive the enemy, as was done before the D Day landings in Normandy. Lying? Yup. Sin? Nope.

Captured Allied agents in Germany or Axis-occupied territory lied, even under torture, to save fellow agents, allies, or help their own country. A mortal sin? If so, one I may owe my life to.

Deceiving the enemy whether a foreign force, an occupying power, or in a civil war, in order to save the lives of others or your own: sin? No. Duty? Yes.

The police ask a Priest if Mr Badman has confessed to murdering his wife. The Priest, bound by the seal of the Confessional lies and says that he has not. A damned liar? I would not say so.

I would go further, and propose that a military or armed enemy or an evil civil power has no right to the truth, compared with the right people have to their lives.

I would propose even further that such an enemy should be routinely lied to and deceived directly and indirectly in any way which will make his purposes less realisable.

Satan is commonly referred to as the father of lies. Sometimes we lie, because the evil created by Satan gives us little choice.

So I guess I'm a heretic.

Huh!

9 MORE STUPID QUESTIONS

There's nowt so funny as folk.

The Holy Father has put forward a hypothetical situation in which a person engaging in a sinful act takes a precaution to limit a possible evil outcome of that act: a horrible disease.

Journalists, Catholics, Priests and laity, and anyone with an axe, or none, to grind, have applauded, condemned, sneered, panicked, run round squawking like headless chickens, describe it as you will.

So:

1. Was the Pope speaking ex cathedra? No.

2. If he was, has he changed Church teaching on the use of condoms? See 1.

3. If he wasn't speaking ex cathedra, or in a teaching capacity, has Church teaching changed? No.

3. If he wasn't (and we know he wasn't) why are people so excited?

4. Was he saying that using condoms in certain sexual situations may be good? I think not.

5. Or was he saying that the use of a condom in a certain sexual situation, while not good, may signify that the user is trying to mitigate evil, and that his intentions may not be exclusively evil? I think so.

6. And was he therefore simply saying that this putative person in this putative situation is showing a welcome sign of some sort of awakening moral awareness? I think so.

7. If you're at work, and a noise from the street draws you to the window, and you see a group of people belabouring each other with inflated condoms, do you go down to the street and join in?

8. Or do you watch in fascination?

9. Or do you just shrug and get on with your work?

I only asked.

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!

We're quite formal here in Poland. You say good day to everyone except priests and other Catholic clergy, where the usual greeting is, "May God make you happy". When you say goodbye to the priest etc, you say, "z Bogem - with God."

My first lesson in Poland, for me as well as my students, was at a large business where I was to teach the chairman, some of his senior staff, and some of the junior staff too. The first class was middle management, and a man about 40 years old, let's call him Waldek, asked me if I spoke any Polish. When I told him I knew only Dzień dobry - good day - his face lit up.

"Ah," he said, "That's fine for ordinary people, but when you are speaking to someone important, you must say, "O Kurwa! For example, if it's a policeman, or a priest, or a bishop, or especially if it's Mr Nowak, the chairman, you must say, 'O kurwa, Mr Nowak."

There was somethng in his eyes, and the others had it too, that said - 'Be careful!' After the lesson, I checked in the dictionary.

'Kurwa' means prostitute, but the Poles use it as English speakers use 'f***'.

Next lesson with Waldek, I told him I had greeted Mr Nowak with, "O kurwa!"

Waldek's face dropped. "You didn't! What did he say?"

"He asked me why I, a mere guest in Poland, chose to insult him at our first meeting, and so I told him I was only doing what you told me to."

Waldek looked sick. He has a wife and children to support, so I couldn't watch him suffer any longer.

Beware!

NOT BORING ONLY IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN LANGUAGES

Polish 'tak' = English 'yes'
Polish 'nie' = English 'no'
Ok, easy so far.

Polish 'no' = something else.

First week in Poland and a neighbour dropped in to say hello. I asked him if he would like a beer (he spoke English) and he replied, "No."

We talked for 10 minutes or so, and then he said, "Where is my beer?"

"Sorry, I offered you a beer, and you said you didn't want one."

"No I didn't, I said, "'No.' That means 'yes' in Polish."

Shortly afterwards I nearly caused a fatal accident when the mechanic who was driving my UK left-hand drive car asked me if it was safe to overtake, and I replied, "No." Should have said, "Nie."

Said with a slightly rising intonation, 'no' can mean:

Ok,
Really?
Go on - tell me more!
Just as I thought,
and many more..

In a recent episode of a Polish soap opera, in which a gunman has barricaded himself into a flat, a huge policeman gently pushes aside two smaller colleagues who are ineffectually trying to break down the door, bursts it in with one deft movement of his shoulder, turns his head to the camera, and says...."No?"

Here the meaning is clearly, 'What did you think of that, then?'

Respect Your Local Commissar/Gauleiter

Brian's excellent post on why Catholics and the Church should not be over-concerned with popularity amongst secular society (http://catholiccitizenamerica.blogspot.com/) has sent me back to my last but one post - Where are You Coming From?

Some more thoughts:

Saint Paul in Romans 13: 1-7 enjoins respect for and obedience to the magistrates, their authority being derived from God. Considering what went on under the Roman Empire, I find his view startling, even though his missionary journeys were no doubt, made much easlier by the Roman provision of good roads.

An attitude possibly acceptable to Catholics might be:

1. Not to shrink from obeying a wise and just law, just because it was made by someone or some people of whom one disapproves. (Eeyore: "A thing Rabbit made!" Jumps on sticks.) After all, a good law should prescribe or forbid something we would willingly do or not do from conscience. We should be our own magistrate and police.

2. Not to shrink from disobeying an unjust, wrong-headed, evil law. Such action, performed circumspectly and with due regard for the possible penalties for infraction, is not merely a duty but a pleasure.

3. Where the institution or government which made the law is intrinsically evil (Nazism, Soviet Communism), frustration of the law, subversion, sabotage directed at the authorities and their supporters (not at the innocent public) can be morally justified, so that even if the law in question is not in itself unjust or unacceptable, but its infraction may weaken, destabilise, or frustrate such a governemnt, then such law-breaking is justified.

WHEN WE PRAY FOR THE DEAD......

we should remember the countless Africans, known only to God, who were thrown overboard on their terrible voyage to the Americas and slavery, in order to lighten cargo during storms.

Imagine their lonely terror and despair, drowning with God only knows what gods to pray to.

WHERE ARE YOU COMING FROM?

Before the last war Peter Drucker heard in Germany a nazi party official explaining to a crowd in the street, "We don't want high bread prices. We don't want low bread prices. We don't want the same bread prices. We want national socialist bread prices."

Mad? Certainly, but for me understandably mad.

A wise African is said to have remarked to a Christian missionary, "How can I hear what you say, when what you are is deafening me?"

Not mad, but perfectly understandable.

St Paul exhorted the early Christians to be submissive to the magistrates, because their authority is ultimately derived from God. (Somebody please give me the reference, because I'm temporarily without a New Testament in English.)

Maybe I'm a leetle bit heretical, but I have never been able to accept what St Paul said here. After all, Jesus described Satan as the prince of this world. I will obey wise and just laws, made by a wise, just, and good government (in a sense acceptable to my Catholic conscience). Laws made by moral aliens are facts, like gravity, to be circumvented, frustrated, subverted, overcome.

If I were to live in a future Caliphate of Europe, I would regard it as a duty to eat pork, drink alcohol, and do anything else I safely could to undermine the government.

As I have already said, I admire devout Muslims, but not their religion.

I have a great affection for Jews I have known, but if I were forced (yes, highly unlikely) to live in a future Hassidic state, I would spend much of my time drinking pork and lobster milk-shakes. And being outrageously Catholic.

Prim parliamentary killjoys in the UK make normal people (like me) want to be drunk as owls and smoke like chimneys.

The UK is not just a secular state - it countenances religions only insofar as it may be a useful tool of control, viz Blair's 'Faith Foundation'. It is in effect anti-religious. Those of a religious persuasion who live under it should, like Hotspur, "cavil at the ninth part of a hair".

His Holiness has called for us Catholics to be a creative minority, and I hope many of us are.

I would add to that, we should be a disruptive minority, and endeavour to make sure that anti-Catholic, anti-life, evil government cannot work.

We should not be following the example of the English Hierarchy in cosying up to those powerful and prestigious interests which are seeking the destruction of the family, childhood innocence, authentic religion (by describing it as culture), and all inconvenient morality.

Thank God I have the good fortune to live in Poland, where abortion is almost non-existent, and both Church and family are strong and resilient. Here I can be that bizarre creature - a patriotic non-Pole. I can comfortably respect the law, police, and judges.

Ultimately, however, I am a citizen of my own skin, owing allegiance only to God, to the Church, to those I love, and to the Truth.

11.11.2010 SPARE A THOUGHT AND A PRAYER

We should spare a thought and a prayer today for all those who gave up their lives to buy our freedom.

If they could ask us what we have done with what they bought so dearly, how would we answer?

MUSLIMS - IF ONLY THEY WERE CATHOLIC

H. G. Wells pointed out a curious inconsistency amongst Catholics when he said that if he believed that the Sacred Species were indeed the Body and Blood of God, he would spend his time in church.

Do Catholic really believe this, or do they believe and not really care too much?

Before Poland, I worked in London in the old Bow Town Hall, where there was an excellent Morrocan restaurant run by a Morrocan, a 'liberal' Muslim, who drank whisky and was a lover of European and Arab history in which he was something of a scholar, and a poet. He became very devout during Ramadan.

His chef was an Egyptian, and a devout 'fundamentalist' Muslim. Every Friday, knowing I was a Catholic, he would invite me to join him after work at the Regent's Park Mosque.

"The Imam is excellent," he would say, "and after prayers, he will answer all your questions, and you will simply say a few words, and you too will be a Muslim"

"And the, er, operation?"

"You are a man. It is nothing."

God bless him for his zeal and charity!

An Iraqui minicab driver, during a short trip, also tried, telling me that God would forgive me if I murdered my mother, but not if I persisted in saying that He had a Son. "It's so easy - just a few words, three times..."

And bless him too.

I am still a Catholic. I do not accept Islam, but I very much like the more devout Muslims I have met and known, for their whole-hearted enthusiasm for and faith in their religion. They would make brilliant Catholics.

For what is our Faith if it does not permeate every fibre of our being, making life sometimes difficult and uncomfortable, even dangerous? A religion to live fight and die for.

If I get to Heaven, I expect to meet more 'fundamentalist' Muslims, Protestants, mistaken though they were, than 'liberal' time-serving Catholics.

SELECTIVE COMPASSION

At school 50 years ago we were taught woodwork - really cabinet making - from age 11 to 16. So good was the teaching that 15 years later when I bought an old house in London, I was able to make Georgian wooden sash windows, cupboards, and even doors with proper joints and panels - and sell the house.

The teacher was capabable, clever, and popular. When he saw any boy do something dangerous, careless, or silly with a chisel or saw, he would hand him a piece of rough timber, with instructions on the size of the finished article, and leave the boy to prepare it.

"Put down that bradall and come here Wright (me), you clot! What did I tell you about chiselling or bradalling towards your hand or body? (slap!) What shall I say to your mother when the doctor tells her to stop your violin lesson because you've no tendons in you left hand? (slap!) OK, take this piece of wood...."

Only when the wood was of the right length, breadth, and thickness, right-angled and planed, would it be used to whack the boy on the backside. Terrible! Child abuser!! Pervert!!!

15 years later, when I was teaching at a school in Watford, the equally capable and clever woodwork master had to get rid of all sharp tools, because the pupils might stab each other. Wood had to be shaped using a safe grinding wheel. The pupils could make nothing of interest.

Dom Philip Jebb, Headmaster of Downside told me 20 years ago that he had had either to discontinue beating at the school, or declare in the prospectus, "We will beat your son." I gathered he thought corporal punishment to be at times an efficient behavioural modifier, though with a negative public image.

In these more compassionate times, such practices reek of the Dark Ages/the Marquis de Sade/the Spanish Inquisition/an expensive brothel - you may choose your own horrors.

I think of busy, kindly men, doing their best for the kids they had to teach, and doing it well.

Smacking a child can send you to gaol, with a lifelong legal requirement to register as a child-abuser at you local police station.

The same legal system allows the excruciatingly painful killing of unborn childrem; it sends 16 year-olds to juvenile prisons like Feltham, where they may be raped or otherwise maltreated or stabbed (or so ex-inmates have told me). It knows of no compassion beyond the sentimental.

It's all about feeling and seeming good. The slapped child, the executed murderer make us feel bad.

The aborted child and the violated young offender make us feel nothing, because we don't have to see them.

Stupid and wicked.

Is it Possible to Insult a Pro-Abortionist?

There seems to be criticism from pro-lifers of other pro-lifers, relating to comparisons made between pro-aborters and nazis.

This is apparently 'unacceptable' firstly because it diminishes, in some way, the horror of the Shoah, and secondly because there is no parity between the well-intentioned efforts of those who support 'a woman's right to choose', and the barbaric scourge of Europe 65 years ago, and such comparison is therefore insulting.

As to the first, the numbers speak for themselves.

As for the second, pro-aborters argue that the foetus is not a person, and is therefore less than human, an 'untermensch' to use the nazis' more robust language.

The nazis, after all, introduced abortion into Poland in 1940.

Perhaps I need re-educating, but for me it is hard to imagine an adequate insult for those who demean others in order to justify murder, whether 70 years ago or now.