Edmund Hartley - Roman Catholic Church--Simple Guides

Published in Great Britain by
Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd
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First published 1997 by Global Books Ltd.
This edition published 2009

Copyright 2009 Bravo Ltd.

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eISBN: 978-1-85733-639-9

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A CIP catalogue entry for this book
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Cover image: Detail of the Last Supper. Stained-glass window in St Nicholas Church, Amsterdam. Wim Foto Worx; and
Andrzej Estko
Drawings by Irene Sanderson

v3.1

St Peters Square seen from the Basilica of St Peter, Vatican City, Rome

Pictures of His Holiness the Pope sometimes give the impression of his having all the troubles of the world on his shoulders. Better him than me, you might think. You would be right. As we shall see later there is a sense in which this is the responsibility that the Pope has been chosen to bear. As one wag said: Responsibilities are to be shouldered, not carried under your arm!

Over the centuries, and usually as the result of changes of an economic and often a political nature, popular systems of thought have taken root and effectively altered peoples attitudes about many things. We modify the ways in which we communicate with one another; and as each change is later found to be wanting, there is a further development. It is these developments that begin to be questioned, and, as invariably happens, each development is expected to justify itself.

In our own era, the Greeks reckoned themselves to be pioneers in the thinking process. One might mention Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, etc., to set the scene. As far as they were concerned, they never felt the need to question their positions because they considered their systems to be self-evident! Indeed, much of their thinking continues to form the basis of life in the West. However, it is only when new and unforeseen problems arise, for which these systems provide no answer, that new, or at least fresh, approaches are required.

God as Creator and Designer of the Universe

When a system cannot answer certain questions then it has to be changed, or superseded. A brief glance at the political activity in twentieth-century Europe will make this clear. Sixteenth-century Europe, however, saw the emergence of the New Learning. As part of the Renaissance, a movement that had already begun earlier in the previous century, the justification for Christianity as a system came in for serious questioning. Prior to this, anyone with the temerity to do so was severely dealt with; but popular opinion had grown to such a degree by this time that the Catholic Church could no longer be satisfied with sending a gun-boat to deal with religious unrest.

Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, a Methodist Christian hymn of the nineteenth century, admirably describes the Catholic Churchs self-image during the late Middle Ages. Those trained in the Greek system (then known as Scholastics) set themselves the task of laying out those thought principles that supported Christian theological (doctrinal and moral) issues. Generally speaking, much of their material was partisan; to which modern-day atheists, like the successors of Bertrand Russell, took grave exception. How can you call a philosophy valid he asked, when it argues to a conclusion already held to be absolute? A very good question indeed until you discover yet another principle, also held by the Scholastics, that philosophy is the handmaid of theology. Most people find this statement quite acceptable apart from those, of course, who deny the validity or even the existence of theology!

Philosophy concerns what we know about thinking. Theology concerns what we know about what God has revealed. A healthy mind in a healthy body is an old Latin principle that supports the idea that good medicine also enhances good thinking; like the axiom: Never send a soldier into battle on an empty stomach!

What you are being offered here is not so much a support for Catholic thinking since, generally speaking, Catholics probably do not think like this anyway! Nor is it offered as a defence or justification for Catholic principles. There is no pretence here, I hope, to be overtly philosophical or even theological. It is offered merely as (hopefully) one informative guide to the origins of Catholic Christianity and its practices as they are seen developing over the centuries.

EDMUND HARTLEY

The North Gates on your left as you go out; so turn right, then take the first on the left and go down to the T junction and look for an opening on your right between the shops. Totally enclosed by tall faded walls and a few steps down, a large courtyard emerged from out of the gloom. It was early morning. Looming across in the corner one could see two huge doorways under a Gothic arch. The one on the left was open; the other, closed up in the twelfth century, had not been opened since. At 5.30 a.m. all was dark inside save for three or four 40-watt light bulbs which hung down like glowing tassels. The only sound came from a dim corner where a monk with a white cloth cap on his dark head was chanting from a book on a desk. Oblivious to a stranger standing behind him in the darkness, he continued to read an old Coptic script by the light of the sputtering tallow candle he held in his hand. All around was dusty and unkempt. Behind him nondescript hangings curtained off a small apse which had been waiting probably for months to be refurbished.

At 6.00 a.m. an organ started up somewhere in the shadows and drowned the monks dirge. This music accompanied a Latin rite procession which wandered away in the distance, to a remote altar. It felt like having stepped back in time. Here was altogether another world! Accustomed now to the gloom, I stood for an age where, for generations, other people have stood and wondered. This was a hallowed place which somehow cast its own particular spell a spell that dissolved an hour or two later as I stepped out into the sunlight of the courtyard of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

The past, rather like the future, is in the dark because it is not in the here and now. The sun shining today is much more important than it shining yesterday. We can only see stars when it is dark because they are so small they show up better. In fact, when looking at a star we are looking into the past since the light we now see left that star a thousand years ago. To look into our past we need some light. But the light we need is often insufficient. Hindsight is described as 20/20 vision the clearest way of seeing. The further away from the game the more we can see of the play, when the overall picture becomes clearer. It is also said that distance lends enchantment to the view which is usually, but not always, true!