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Convert England to Catholicism!

Leading Catholic theologian and papal ally, Fr Aidan Nichols, is calling for England to be remade as a Catholic country.

Interesting. I suppose as Anglicanism implodes and becomes irrelevant, this will become more and more possible.

Related Link: Fr Aidan Nichols Convert England ~ What does the prayer really say?

Comments

  1. I'm confused - I've been led to believe that the UK was supposed to be a muslim country by now?

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  2. Almost, Danyl--they're working on it.

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  3. getting closer everyday to sharia over there.
    Personally I see little difference between Islam and catholicism. One had the advantage of being based in the first world, but if you go back a few hundred years they would be fairly indistinguishable.
    If it had been somebody other than a senior catholic spruiking this theory it might actually have some value.

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  4. Its about the only sensible answer in a culture which is slowly but steadily commiting suicide (which is itself a sin).

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  5. One of the great historical bastions of liberalism stands ready to be re-conquered by superstition?

    Leaving aside the obvious question "Oh, really?", I'm much more interested in the answer to the question "How exactly does this differ from Muslim fundamentalists' wishes for Britain?"

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  6. How does it differ?
    Well, I'd guess for starters that Catholics would be rather unlikely to go in for stonings and "honour killings" and clitorectomies.

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  7. I wasn't really looking for an answer to "Which superstition is worse?", KG. For instance, bubonic plague might be worse than the flu, but when it comes down to it we'd really rather not catch either of them.

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  8. I guess the point really is that one religion is entirely optional--the other is an ideology that, if it's adherents have their way, won't be.

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  9. "I'm the church and I've come,
    To claim you with my iron drum,
    La la la la"


    This idea seems a little silly. The article is even more mad.
    "And since England is, I believe, a lapsed Catholic country, England should come back to the Catholic Church, as should everyone else. "
    The author casually blustering through over 450 years of Anglicanism and Protestantism as if it didn't matter.

    Good to see a realistic bunch of thinkers are behind this.

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  10. Beware of the Anglo-Catholics – they're all sodomites with unpleasant accents

    Jasper, in Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited'.

    If any form of Christianity suddenly surges back into vogue in the UK it will be US style evangelical mega-church protestantism - there's simply too much history under the bridge for Catholicism to make a come-back.

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  11. Well, Danyl I guess if you were looking for an example of unpleasant, bigoted snobbery you found it.
    So what?
    "..there's simply too much history under the bridge for Catholicism to make a come-back."
    oh, I dunno--it seems to be doing very well in Africa and China, for example.
    And the "history under the bridge" doesn't seem to have hampered militant islam any...

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  12. Milt, I understand the point you're making, but KG's technically correct.

    One religion demands total obedience/acceptance from its adherents (and everybody else if the hardliners had their way). Woe betide the Moslem female who steps out of line. Real medieval stuff alive & kicking in the 21st century.

    Whereas these days the others simply do not have that control, thank goodness. You can be a pick-and-choose Catholic if you wish (& too bad what the Vatican thinks), or a pick-and-choose Jew, etc.

    Ain't too many pick-and-choose Moslems, baby!

    Having said that, I believe it essential to separate religion & state.

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  13. Hi everyone, thanks for all your comments.

    I wrote a post a while back on the major differences between Islam and Catholicism : The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammad.

    Islam is a Catholic heresy. A simplified version of the Catholic faith. So there is a seeming similarity, but as with many heresies, you change the Catholic faith here and there and before you know it you've created something not quite right.

    Take the concept of martyrdom. Catholic martyrdom is where you are killed for your faith. Islamic martyrdom is where you kill yourself and take as many people as you can with you. In the Catholic faith, suicide is a grevious sin.

    Then there's marriage. Catholics are only allowed one marriage between a man and a women, till death do them part. Divorce is not allowed. Muslims, however, are able to have multiple wives, concubines and can divorce. So, there's a major difference in how women are treated in both religions.

    Go back a few centuries, you will still see the same major differences. You only have to study history to see that.

    I know there is this modern concept floating around over the last 100 years that all religions are the same. CK Chesterton has a good quote dismantling that thought, which I've also included in another post of mine on The Name of God. All religions are the same, or in this case Islam and Catholicism are the same only in the same way that a square and a circle drawn on a piece of paper are the same. Both drawn, both on paper, but completely different shapes!

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  14. OK, fine - but the UK doesn't need anyone writing on its paper, thanks. In the long run they'll send both the square- and the circle-drawers packing.

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  15. Oh but Psycho, someone always has control over the pen. The question is who. There is never a void.

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  16. I agree with Lucyna, the liberal state while it claims to be a neutral framework is by and large a political vision in itself. She and I probably disagree with many of its supposed points of neutrality though from diametrically opposed standpoints.

    However liberalism in itself manages to be quite benign, internally manipulable and fairly protective of things such as religion in the private sphere. The question then is does one support liberalism despite its inherent bias simply because other models have a greater potential though by no means greater certainty because of weaker constitutional emphasis on privacy, rule of law and rights and therefore ay be more easily captured by one's political opposition.

    In Lucyna's case, would she be better off supporting liberalism because it guarantees her being able to practice her faith privately (though the liberal public private sphere is an amorphous beastie) rather than supporting a republic that is theocratic and open to the possibility that it will be captured (even democratically) by a religious group with preferences different to her own that may suppress her religion.

    The same thoughts bother me but on more political questions.

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  17. Henry VIII would turn in his grave!!

    No, seriously, if this thread is meant to be at all, whoever thought that lapsed Anglicans (like myself) are in need of replacing it with some old time religion like Catholicism has some serious reality issues. The same people probably think that shari'a law will take over the UK.

    As soon as a group of people become identifiably 'something', as the Christian nations did during the crusades, then the 'something' begins to fade, as it did following the Reformation and the Renaissance. Western society is now unidentifiably 'something' which is not Christianity anymore, but is equally virtuous but more powerful and relevant. As soon as that 'something' is widely identified then our society will move on again to 'something' else.

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  18. Western society is lots of things but 'virtuous', I would suggest, is not one of them.

    Its collapsing from within or commiting suicide, whichever you prefer.

    Drunken teenagers kill a father of three on his doorstep because he wanted them to stop disturbing the neighbourhood. The political class is now largely without any principle other than winning and retaining power (whatever happened to the idea of leadership). Rampant materialism and commercialism. A legal system which puts the rights of criminals before the rights of their victims and the public.

    And an approaching demographic faultine - due in part to the factors cited above plus abortion on demand and state-sponsored contraception - as Moslems consciously set out 'out-breed' the Europeans.

    Need I go on?

    A return to Catholicism would address many, if not all, of these problems.

    (Sorry about the anonymous name. I can't get the username thingie to work. The problem may be with my computer).

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  19. Oh, yeah, let's return to some good ol' Catholicism. How about a bit of Spanish Inquisition to help you stay awake at night?

    One of the comforts of conservatism is the rose coloured-ness with which history and one's own very noble traditions can be viewed. To even briefly imagine that none of the very human depravities that you describe occured or occur in Roman Catholic nation states would put you seriously in another reality dimension.

    But then this thread isn't serious is it?

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  20. Kent

    Thanks.

    Nobody is suggesting that the Spanish Inquisition was a good thing or that anything like it should be re-established. That's a rather mischevious and simplistic (and commonly used)counter-argument.

    What I am talking about is re-establishing some kind of focus or core to our private and public lives. We seem to have lost an agreed set of values.

    I think TS Eliot said something like 'the middle won't hold'. We are losing touch with each other as we drift into individualism with the greed and insecurity which it encourages.

    Catholicism teaches, amongst other things,love of one's neighbour, recognition of the spiritual and eternal dimensions of life, and the protection of life from conception. It provides - when taken as a whole - a coherent and, yes, rational response to the dilemmas we face in contemporary western society.

    That's not to say a Catholic state would be perfect. We know it wouldn't. But it would be one based on values which protect us all from the problems of secular materialsm.

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  21. We seem to have lost an agreed set of values.

    Totally disagree. We have the UN Charter of Human Rights. We have laws which are similar from one democratic nation to the next. We have many many international groups which work together to standardize stuff, including values, which are always changing. eg consumerism is being countered by the Greenhouse effect. The internet ENSURES that values can be shared universally.

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  22. Kent

    Its hard to know where to begin to respond to your points but here goes...

    I think it is the UN Declaration, rather than Charter, of Human Rights (not sure?) and its a laudable document. All the best articles - probably most if not all of them - are those which are in accord with Catholic values and teachings.

    The problem is that the document is neither observed in most countries (even our beloved NZ is accused at times of breaching it) or enforced.

    The UN as a whole has a very mixed record. I wouldn't like to rely on it to protect me. It didn't do much for the people of Rwanda, East Timor, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and, even as we speak, Darfur.

    Its been said before (I think by Mark Steyn) that the UN's problem is that when you combine a quart of vanilla ice cream with a quart of excrement, the mixture tends to resemble more of the latter.

    The UN is struggling for the same reason that UK society and NZ society are struggling: there's no common, agreed set of values which are recognised and enforced by all.

    There used to be. People used to respect the Police, teachers, ambulance drivers etc. But less and less as each day passes.

    As far as the Greenhouse effect countering consumerism is concerned, all I can say is we are in even more trouble than I thought if that's the way its going to be solved. And Heaven help us humans in the process. I'd like to think we could come up with a solution which reflects the divine nature of our environment.

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  23. Kent

    Sorry, one other thing.

    The internet, as far as I can tell, ensures nothing. It seems to be mostly taken up by advertising, celebrity piffle and pornography.

    Like television before it, the internet has become almost a wasteland.

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  24. Anon,

    The UN Charter is a blueprint for the creation of ethical guidelines for everything from psychological associations to corrections department staff training. The concepts within it have been thoroughly integrated into every aspect of our society through the social sciences taught at our universities.

    These concepts are what every second right wing reactionary rails against, because they think that they lack conviction. The reality is that the new 'faith' (secularism) is more complex than the old but no less powerful and binding, capable of swallowing up whole other religions (such as Islam) and coughing them out in a different form (eg Turkey). This faith has more to do with humans than with God, it is more based in the here and now than the afterlife. It will be around long after Catholicism will be just another historical memory like the Roman Empire (which is essentially all it is a shadow of).

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  25. Kent

    Where do our ethics - and the whole idea of ethics - come from?

    I suspect the Social Sciences won't get us very far. They strike me as a glorified form of navel gazing and prone to the political fashion of the day.

    Sociologists, for one, when they can agree on anything, tell us things we already know in words we can't understand.

    Your announcement of the end of Catholicism is premature to say the least.

    I don't intend to say much more.

    I'll leave you with the view of Jurgen Habermas, the noted German philosopher and social scientist, whom nobody would call a right wing reactionary and who recently came to this conclusion:

    "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [to Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

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