Saturday, February 10, 2007

"And thou, even thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage"

Readings at Mass this evening were from that most cheerful of prophets, Jeremiah.

O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures to the spoil, and thy high places for sin (i.e. because of sin - LT), throughout all thy borders.

And thou, even thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not: for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.

Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.

For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.


Jeremiah's themes - the loss of homeland, the unrecognisable country inhabited by those barren ones 'like the heath in the desert' who depart from the Lord - contrasted with the fruitful ones who fear God - fitted in nicely with this BBC story.

Heavy Christmas drinking and partying, leading to unprotected sex, could be to blame for a record number of abortions last month, says a UK charity.

A total of 5,992 abortions were carried out at Marie Stopes International's nine UK clinics in January - a rise of 13% on the 5,304 in January 2005.

This is more in a month than at any time in the charity's 32-year history.

Liz Davies, MSI director of UK operations, said: "Despite our efforts we have still seen the biggest rise ever in abortion figures in the month after Christmas.

"We may be seeing the consequences of the festive season, when partying excess and alcohol consumption combine to increase libido and lower inhibition, with the inevitable consequences of unprotected sex resulting in unplanned pregnancies."

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), also saw a higher than usual number of women for abortion treatment this January.



I'll pass on a culture that doesn't bat an eyelid at celebrating Jesus' birthday by getting smashed, barebacking with a one-night partner then 'terminating' the resultant infant. But even looked at purely from a material point of view, those who worry about the replacement of the native Brits by fecund incomers should perhaps regret the six or seven million little Brits that have been scraped out of their mother's wombs since 1967.

Some cultures, of course, use the services of Marie Stopes, BPAS and the sex-education/contraception/sexually transmitted disease treatment complex much less than others. It's generally seen as a Bad Thing when the users of any service are hideously white. I wonder why MSI and BPAS aren't "reaching out" to make their services more available to the Muslim community ?

Probably for the same reason that they're not very good customers of the clap clinics either.

He also points out the role of cultural norms regarding issues such as multiple partners and the age of losing one's virginity, with the substantially older age of first intercourse and lower number of partners among Indians and Pakistanis coinciding with low STI rates.

When men were asked about whether they had ever been diagnosed with a STI, 10.9 per cent of whites, 19.7 cent of black Caribbeans and 16.2 per cent of black Africans said they had. The figures for Indian and Pakistani males were 3.4 and 3.2 per cent.

Despite claiming to have had fewer partners, black women report more STIs, with 22.7 per cent of those of Caribbean descent and 14.1 per cent of those of African descent admitting to at least one. The proportions among whites, Indians and Pakistanis are 12.4, 7.8 and 3.6 per cent respectively.


Strange. Where are the 'inevitable consequences' for Indians and Pakistanis ?


In the end, the Great British Cultural Disaster is down to the decline of Christianity in the UK. We had mass unemployment in the 1920s and 30s, but without the social collapse that we saw in the 80s. One has to take away the moral as well as the material underpinnings before the building falls down.

I don't think secularists are capable of reversing this. Secular liberalism have produced a class (I'm one of them - I never said I was a good Christian) for whom life is the most precious possession of all. Nothing outside that, nothing above that - except maybe our children (bar those 6-7 million of course). We've seen in the cartoon and van Gogh incidents how the fear of death shuts up the trangressive, boundary-pushing types who inhabit BBC arts programmes, or causes a carriageful of nice people to sit frozen while someone's battered in front of them. We've seen it in Northern Ireland, where a constitutional settlement designed to "put human rights at the centre" of the Criminal Justice system can do little about someone having their throat cut in front of seventy-odd blind and deaf people in a Belfast bar.

The implications ? Christians are going to have to get used to the inside of prisons, to start with - as their distant forebears did. Otherwise ? As I keep saying, Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum. There are plenty of God-fearing people about who 'neither shall cease from yielding fruit'.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a chilling post, Laban. And I grieve for those embryos who will never become humans.

Something wicked is afoot.

I don't think it's islam, because islam is easily defeated. They're nothing, and would never have got in without the collusion of the left.

It is always the vicious, roiling, snake-hissing, destructive left.

Why they hate our Christian society so much, who knows? But the answer is the clue.

Personally, I think something happened to them all in childhood, and these people came together and congealed over the last 90 years. Perhaps British public schools have a lot to answer for. Most spies during the cold war didn't come from comprehensives.

I ask this as a genuine question: who fuelled the Students' Unions? Yes, we know who the fodder was, but who fuelled them?

Was the rise of the (untenable in a sane society) left caused by the break-up of families? Not on council estates, but in the abandoning of children in public schools while their parents furthered the cause of our empire?

I present this, without prejudice, as a thought.

Anonymous said...

Pub Philosopher basically takes the opposite view to you Laban. He appears to suggest to defeat Islam we must defeat all religion.
Challenge teachings

Harry J said...

I went to Sunday school and was confirmed when I was 12. It didn't take me long to start having doubts. Something didn't quite add up. I'm sure many others had a similar experience. The left would have associated the Church with the Conservative right and would have seen it as part of what they considered needing destroying (or at least in some way fundamentally changing). In my early twenties I started to explore other religions, belief systems and philosophies including some of the obvious ones like Buddhism, Zen, Gurdjieff and other 'mystical' stuff. I'm still loooking and I've sort of come full circle. A book called 'The Jesus Mysteries: Was The Original Jesus A Pagan God?' by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy greaty intigued me. Very well researched it's central thrust is that the 'Jesus story' is pure allegory (for example Jesus dying on the cross then resurrecting 3 days later is symbolic of one's lower, animal self, dying and then one's higher self being born) and the exoteric (outer mystery) of the early gnostic Christians. Those considered ready were later 'initiated' into the esoteric or inner mysteries which essentially resulted in gnosis (knowledge of God). Priests weren't considered necessary and women were just as likely as men to take their turn and 'lead' a meeting. Numerous parallels are drawn between the Jesus story and those of similar 'stories" of nearby dying and resurrecting Godmen such as Dionysus, Mithras, Attis and Osiris. Later books explore the beliefs of the early gnostic Christians before they were quite viciously suppressed by the later, literalist, Roman church. The follow up book 'Jesus and the Goddess' is also highly recommended. It all makes far more sense than the Jesus and Mary Magdalene found French royalty theory seemingly suggested by other writers. What attracted me was the idea that the Jesus story is our story, or at least it was. Maybe it could be again? Of course my curiosity eventually bought me to Islam and the contrast between Jesus' story (as opposed to the whole Bible) and that of Mohammed couldn't be more marked. There's so much wrong with Islam and Mohammed it's hard to see where any reform could come. We badly need some sort of spiritual revival but I can't see it coming from the established Church. What we also need to do is resist Islam in any way we can.

Anonymous said...

guardian apostate - I was interested in your post. islam is toxic and has no place in our civilised countries. No place.

Yet tens of thousands of lefties want to make it a preferred lifestyle, with default school lunches being their repulsive, cruel,un-British "halal". British schoolchildren are being fed "halal" meat without the permission of their parents, because the thought police have deemed appeasing the muslims is more important than maintaining British tradition. One more tiny cat step forward.

This is going to end up in one almighty fight and the winner won't be islam. But it has to take place before they breed too many more of them on the backs of rhe British wage/salary earner.

Anonymous said...

Laban,

I'm a regular poster on your blog under my own name; however, this one is better done anonymously. Fon non RC readers, it might be heavy going.

As a cradle Catholic raised in a atmosphere of great breadth but sometimes little depth of what Catholicism is about, I fell away from the Church at 22 almost immediately following upon the diagnosis of what is now a disabling neurological condition. By 'fell away' I mean stopped using the benefit of the Sacrament of Reconciliation - a classic dose of 'Why Me?' syndrome.

Early last month, a very elderly relative passed away. The old bird, God rest her soul, had amassed the most enormous colection of religious literature one could imagine; yet she also possessed great depth of faith.

I had never lost faith in God; it was just that my silly anger at Him for inflicting this thing on me made me stubbornly opposed to performing my duties - duties whose execution my condition did not excuse.

There are times when one reaches a fork in the road; mine came the evening the old lady's remains were received into church the night before her funeral. I knew that, the pitiful state of my own soul notwithstanding, NOT receiving the Blessed Sacrament at her funeral would not only be failing to honour God but would not be what that marvellous old lady would have wanted - so into the confessional I went.

It was as if life's weight had been taken off one's shoulders. My confessor asked me one question - 'Are you going to come back to your faith?' - the only answer I could give was 'I'll try'. He replied, 'That's all we ask, that you try', and after 14 years, one month and three weeks unshriven walked out the box with what amounted to an unconditional discharge.

As someone interested in politics, culture, economics and civics, trained in a secular profession, I now know now what some Protestants mean when they describe themselves as having been 'born again'; the religious experience was that powerful, and empowering.

Since that date, I've tried to kep my promise - a stranger behind a screen was willing to have faith in me; all one can do is return is return the complement.

If more left-footers/Tims/taigs got back into the confessionals, and experienced the relief of reconciliation followed by the joy od receiving the Blessed Sacrament, then our world might be a better place.

Or at least I think that might have been Our Lord's general idea.

Anonymous said...

Muslims don't do abortions.
True story, I see it with my own eyes.....Muslim family..two children getting on the "special needs" bus every morning, one vacant looking toddler stood watching with the mother and another in her belly.
Not an isolated case by any means, a result of bringing a "simple" cousin from the sticks as a bride, but why does nobody put a stop to this breeding of half wits?

Anonymous said...

I went to Sunday school and was confirmed when I was 12. It didn't take me long to start having doubts.

That's because so much of it is taught at a superficial level. it is when you actually go back to the Judaism and look at the origins that you see so much more detail,and depth.

Martin Luther stopped the slide into idolatry and superstition in the Church of Rome, without him it would most probably have lacked the competition with Protestantism to keep it awake, aware, and alive.

Just because you go to Sunday School and are able to read the label does not mean you shouldn't investigate the contents.

James G. said...

To the first "anonymous",
Thank you for that moving story.

I came back to my own faith only recently (and to CofE rather than the Southern Baptist/Evangelical I grew up in).

I am glad I was "forced" to go when I was younger, because I knew there was a place to turn back to.

With regard to the problems of the world: I am convinced there is no secular solution, other than mass lobotomies, to the ills many of us point out.

That's where I disagree with those who think that all religions are the problem. It is not the religions themselves but what individuals do with their power within those religions. Kind of a lot like governments and political parties.

I see Christianity, historically, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, as being the bedrock of all that is good in modern thinking, including and especially Enlightenment values. That is not to say that Christianity may not need its occasional reformations or new ways of thinking about things.

For instance, I am really intrigued by Brian McLaren's ideas in the New Kind of Christian. I may not agree with some of the politics this implies, but I do think there has to be a new way of looking at the accepted dogma and interpretations of scripture. One of the reasons I fell away from the Church when I was younger was because much of the historical fact I was discovering contradicted the teachings of the churches I attended, but not necessarily the scriptures.

I think this is where many people throw the baby out with the bathwater. The literal interpretation of scripture as literal fact (rather than symbolic) is a relatively new phenomenon.

Anyway, I could go on.

By the way Laban, do they use the KJV at your church? As much as I like my own church, I do miss the KJV...

Anonymous said...

Abortion has always been seen as a woman's right to control her body and reproductive organs, but these loveless saturnalian sexual escapades, resulting in the mass murder of unborn children, prove how much women are not in control of their bodies.

James G. said...

"Abortion has always been seen as a woman's right to control her body and reproductive organs,"

I would argue that it was actually an offshoot of the Eugenics movement, designed to keep the lower orders and mongrels from reproducing. The "right to control her body" was added as a convenient afterthought when Eugenics fell from favour.

It is no coincidence that most Planned Parenthood (an organisation began by noted eugenics proponent Margaret Sanger) clinics are situated in black neighbourhoods in America.

I do agree though, that if it was a question of the right to control what goes into and comes out of her body, that right is abrogated before abortion should even become an alternative. I also believe that there should be a concommitant commitment on the man's side though: don't make the beast with two backs with someone whom you are not willing to raise a family with.

Anonymous said...

Laban, are you suggesting that religious belief makes people more likely to stand up to violent bullies?

Those people who kept quiet in that Blfast bar after Robert McCArtney had his throat cut were from the one part of the UK where religious observcne is still relatively strong. People in Northern Ireland might be more religious than the rest of us but they have been turning a blind eye to intimidation for years.

And what about devoutly catholic Sicily? The people there have been cowed into silence by the Mafia for centuries.

Religious people are no different from non-religious people when it comes to the threat of death or physical harm. Most will back away from confrontation. The people who will stand against powerful bullies are few and far between in any society.

Anonymous said...

This is all very well and good, but how are we to fill the spiritual vacuum for, forgive me, the 'non-believers'? Surely, we can't propose to indoctrinate all British children with Christianity to maintain social order? I believe Napoleon did something similar with the Catholic Church in France.

Anonymous said...

To the first anonymous - I endorse what James wrote. Thank you for a profoundly moving post. I was not brought up a Catholic, and I dropped away from Christianity along the way. Over the last few months, however, I have noticed that not only do I seem to be moving back to Christianity, but I think I am on the road to Rome.

Dave, with regard to Pub Philosopher, I have no time for aggressive fundamentalist atheists. They use any excuse to promote their destructive thinking and they are more irritating than fundamentalist Christians, who are a bit of a bore, but not motivated by a drive to destroy.

We defeated the islamics and the caliphate 1,000 years ago. We're in a new cycle of jihad now, and we'll defeat them again. This time, though, we have to finish the job, and that means outlawing islam in the advanced West. It is a dangerous, fanatical, controlling cult. Allah was the L Ron Hubbard of his day.

Anonymous 8:21- islamics account for 31% of all birth defects in the NHS. Put another way, something around 2% of the population is accountable for 31% of all birth defects. Yes, it is the incestuous habit of marrying first cousins for generations and generations and generations.

Bradford MP Anne Cryer has been fighting a lonely battle to get first-cousin marriages outlawed for several years. But Labour MPs are dependent on the muslims to vote themselves more handouts and favours by voting Labour.

Anonymous said...

Bradford MP Anne Cryer has been fighting a lonely battle to get first-cousin marriages outlawed for several years

Keighley MP

Anonymous said...

I think James is correct about the Eugenics movement. It is strange that the NHS pays for free contraception for women, and free abortions.....but a man has to pay for condoms and pay VAT on them too. A woman can obtain condoms free.

Perhaps it is the behaviour of women - watch them on Friday night in Doncaster with waist-level-hemlines and wonder if they can spell chastity or even paternity.

It is their ability to get pregnant without binding in their inseminator which suggests a complete detachment from the realities of life. Marilyn Monroe supposedly had seven abortions which makes clear just how screwed up she was that not once could she form a stable relationship around the fact

Anonymous said...

This destabilisation of the family is a central part of the socialist agenda.

I would say Dave lost millions of votes for not standing up for vulnerable, damaged children in the gay "rights" of adoption issue. The people pushing this agenda are thinking it is about "equality" for gay pairs, but what about the hostile, damaged child who gets placed with them and has to undergo the taunting and teasing of other children,all of whom have a mother and father, even if they're no longer married, that they have two daddies?

It is one more nail in the coffin of the family, and it is deliberate, as is everything the socialists do.

People who have adopted children say these children have a rough enough time anyway, with other children telling them they're no good because they don't have "real" parents. How can this government propose to put an additional, intolerably heavy, burden on these children? They need the stability of a normal mother/father and preferably a sibling or two, home.

Laban said...

James - no, Catholics don't use the KJV. But it's my preferred version.

Steve - yes, though that wasn't the point I was trying to make at the time. The point I was groping for is the old paradox that what is good short-term for individuals isn't good long term for a society. The peaceful English society that Orwell described, where a liberal secularist could live in peace, was only made possible by other people's willingness to die.

(If you look at most British military history you'll see that religious faith was usually a factor. God above and duty below.)

The bad hats, bad though they be, know there's something bigger than themselves and go to their deaths in the sure and certain hope of rising again. In time of trial, what will motivate 'our boys' ?

Harry J said...

Voyager - that was sort of my point. I have continued to investigate and I still can't buy into the Bible, or at least organised religion. My doubts were confirmed when I discovered the Bible was created by a collection of bishops at the council of Nicea. It seems to me that the gospels they included (the ones less predisposed to the literalist interpretation of the Jesus story) are as, if not more, interesting than the ones they omitted. The Christianity we have today appears to bear little resemblance to the Christianity that emerged from Middle East 2,000 years ago. I again recommend to everyone to read the 'Jesus Mysteries' book. I feel sure you won't regret it.

Laban - your point about what motivates 'our boys' in the future is particularly pertinent. I've often wondered whether I would be prepared to potentially make the ultimate sacrifice, were it necessary, in defence of the vision of the future favoured by Tony and Gordon, Ken Livingstone, the Guardian etc.

Anonymous said...

James,

"Don't make the beast with two backs with someone whom you are not willing to raise a family with." Most men think with their di**ks, and coitus is completely physical for the male of the species.

Traditionally, or at least before the sexual revolution, women were in the driving seat in relationships because of the risk they faced from pregnancy. Once more reliable methods of birth control became available, in the form of the pill and on demand abortion, women were in a position to behave more like men and indulge in risky sexual behaviour. While some women have benefited from such advancements, many women are lonely and miserable (I have to be honest and count myself among their ranks); men are estranged and distrustful of females as no one ever takes their emotional needs into account if their partner has an abortion, and the fallout from this means that men less committed to coupledom - they are reduced to generators of sperm and having no legal rights as a father.

We're an unhappier society as a whole.

Anonymous said...

@Foxy Brown

"Most men think with their di**ks, and coitus is completely physical for the male of the species. "

A common misconception amongst women. 10% of men are promiscuous - they have no respect for women and will happily pressure a woman into sex and then immediately go off with someone else. The other 90% of men are left to pick up the pieces. I think, sadly, you are a victim of the more promiscuous males who are responsible for trashing the reputation of men in general.

The rest of what you have said I totally agree with - the "sexual revolution" together with bull-dyke feminism has presented promiscuous men the winning hand.

Anonymous said...

guardian apostate - I suggest you read some books by Brad Young and Ron Moseley and buy a Tanach from Amazon.com

You might also like to note that The Koran was defined in an official version quite some time ago and all other manuscripts burned though there are certain missing verses known as "The Satanic Verses" which Muslims do not like to discuss


You are ignoring the fact that until the 19th Century reading was not widespread - the words used when the scrolls were written probably expressed ideas clearly to the small groups that understood them - wider dissemination of knowledge always leads to problems of interpretation

Anonymous said...

What is most unique and impressive in Western Civilisation is considerably older than Christianity.

Visit Athens, walk around the Agora (the birthplace of democracy) and the Acropolis and you will feel it in your bones.

Anonymous said...

"Aggressive fundamentalist atheist"?

Have you ever read my blog, Verity?

Anonymous said...

Guardian Apostate

You're making a mistake in your concern about the various gospels and epistles.

Jesus Christ didn't come to write a book: he founded a church, led by Peter with the other apostles under him. Their descendants then decided which of the books should be included in the New Testament. It's called ' Tradition' and is why we are not supposed to make a literalist interpretation of the Gospels but to use the insights and tools given to us by that Tradition.

Anonymous said...

@Guardian Apostate:

An excellent and relatively unbiased place to do some research-

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

I doubt that the open minded will be able to come to any conclusion to the truth of the Jesus story from such research - but then that is the beauty of it. The truth within it only reveals itself as you grow in experience of real life.

Beware of reading too much into the work of aetheists and Jewish scholars - naturally they will do anything they can to trash the Jesus story and closer inspection of their claims always shows them to be deeply flawed. What evidence there might have been of the historical Jesus was definitely destroyed by the Jews and Romans of the time - this much is known.

I myself have come to these conclusions:-

Life without some metaphysical purpose is clearly pointless and morally bankrupt.

If there is a metaphysical purpose to life it would need to be revealed to people.

If any religion is based on the revealed wisdom of a metaphysical "god" then it must be Christianity - since all other religions have shown themselves to produce weaker, dysfunctional societies. It is hard to imagine that God would reveal a wisdom that led to an inferior society.

There is some significant truth within the Jesus story of a psychological nature with regard to the importance of human spirituality that is not at all obvious and yet was known to Jesus 2000 years ago. This lends some credence to the story in my view.

Harry J said...

voyager - thanks for the suggestion, I'll give them a try. That said the central thesis of the 'Jesus Mysteries' book is that Christianity was founded by groups of Jews disaffected by the literalism of Judaism, amongst other things. Christianity was their version of the dying and resurrecting Godman myth, inevitably mixed in with Jewish elements. The arguments in the book are very persuasive.

I'm not quite sure of your point regarding lack of reading skills prior to the 19th century. Many of the scrolls that were left out of the Bible have only recently been discovered, at Nag Hammadi in Egypt I think. The point I was trying to make is that Christianity as we know it today is very different from its beginnings 2,000 years ago. It's trying to discover more about its origins that interests me. Although I have no desire to return to the established church I see rediscovering its roots, perhaps even the true message, as far more appealing. Having said that the older I get the more I appreciate what the church has provided in terms of a solid base for the development of this country. I also appreciate its rich heritage in terms of things such as hymns, prayers and even the buildings themselves. I just feel it's unlikely that Christianity as we presently know it is going to fill the spiritual vacuum that exists at present.

recusant - with respect I'm not sure I am wrong. The evidence for Jesus' earthly existence is nil. The evidence for him being an allegorical figure is overwhelming. At least in my humble opinion. It was the literalists (those who believed that Jesus did indeed have an earthly existence) that viciously suppressed the gnostics (the original Christians, which included Paul, many of whose letters have been proved to be fake). The victors then chose which of the existing gospels should be included. I agree that we are not supposed to make a literalist interpretation of the Gospels. The whole point is that the Gospels and also the one's omitted from the Bible were allegorical and meant to be studied carefully to reveal their hidden meaning. What I've come to realise is that we get a much clearer idea of what the thoughts and beliefs of the early Christians were from those gnostic gospels not included in the Bible.

ryan13 - thanks for the link. I'll certainly take a look. The authors of the 'Jesus Mysteries' book are far from atheists or Jewish scholars. Indeed they are, if anything, more dismissive of much of Judaism and equally so, Islam. Their interest appears to be Christianity in its gnostic form which they, persuasively, argue is its original. I'm sure we could discuss your conclusions for a very long time. As it is I'm running out of it. If you want to know a little more about the book read the review on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jesus-Mysteries-Was-Original-Pagan/dp/0722536771/sr=8-1/qid=1171304437/ref=pd_ka_1/026-8677895-9410855?ie=UTF8&s=books I couldn't possibly do the book (and its follow up's) justice in the comments section of a blog but if you too are open minded then i recommend it highly.

Anonymous said...

Steve - no. I based my comment on what someone else wrote of your opinion.

Guardian Apostate - Islam should not be mentioned in the same context as Judaism and Christianity. It's not really a religion, but a warrior cult. Its purpose is conquest. That's why the men can have four wives. To breed warriors. Women have the status of cattle.

The islamics sneak islam in on the "Ibrahamic faith" coattails, but actually, they have nothing in common with Judaism or Christianity. Islam's the name; conquest's the game.

Anonymous said...

'Jesus didn't come to write a book etc.' - Well said recusant. It's noticable that atheists are often fixated on the bible. My parish priest is fond of saying he 'isn't good on the bible' when he quotes it. People often think they know what they are rejecting of our catholic tradition (I mean that 1000 years when there was one church in this country.) Here's a test question of an atheist's knowledge of what he has rejected -
"According to church dogma who of the dead are now in hell?"

And remember kids, the Gloria says -
"..peace on earth to men BONAE VOLUNTATIS".

They weren't daft.