Over the last two days I have briefly shared a portion of my faith journey. During this retelling I have particularly focussed upon my ecclesiastical wanderings, mentioning some of the things which pushed me away from some congregations and drew me towards others.
As I mentioned in the initial post, this blog series was originally a talk I gave at my parish called “Catholics Come Home”. As part of my preparation I spent quite some time on the Internet reading the stories of those who had left the Catholic Church. It was a heartbreaking experience. A large number of the stories I read echoed my own. Many of the sentiments expressed were also very similar. It became clear that, more often than not, the reason someone leaves the Catholic Church is because of lack of pastoral care, rather than doctrine.
In the accounts I read, there were many complaints about the welcome experienced when attending a Catholic parish (or rather, the distinct absence thereof). Many stories were told of abysmal music and of incoherent, boring preaching. There were laments concerning the lack of community and the lack of ongoing Christian formation. There were also unfortunately quite a few incidents described where people felt poorly treated by priests, catechists and other parish staff. Careless words can cut extremely deep and have serious consequences..
Following on from last week’s episode on the virtue of chastity, today we look at the Christian teaching on marriage with C.S. Lewis. Matt and I got rather carried away on this chapter, recording far more material than normal, so this chapter will be divided into two parts.
One of my friends commented that there’s not a whole lot of “me” on this blog, so today I’m cheating and rehashing something which I posted on Facebook two years ago…
It was a craze that went around Facebook where you wrote twenty-five random facts about yourself in a Note and then tagged a load of friends who then had to do the same. Rinse and repeat.
The content of my Facebook Note was as follows:
Man, this was difficult! It was particularly hard coming up with things that people may not know about me but that I’m also comfortable with putting into the public domain!
I think this “25 Random Facts” thing has been the best thing in Facebook to date – I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone else’s, so here goes…
1. I was a bit of a handful in Primary School – I became very familiar with the Headmaster’s office, having usually been sent there for getting into fights. I wasn’t at all academic then either.
2. I hated school up until the age of 16. After that, it just got better and better…
3. I was a very arty child (drawing, poetry etc) until about the age of twelve when I swapped my soul for an Amiga 600 with 1MB of RAM…
4. I have a scar by my right elbow from a moped accident in France when I was fifteen. I’m really proud of it. Chicks dig scars.
5. I’ve been a Christian all my life, but at the age of twenty I had a major renewal in my faith. I couldn’t imagine life otherwise.
In my previous letter I asked you to make an effort to understand what makes your Patient tick and to probe him for weaknesses which we may exploit. Unfortunately, all you presented me with was several pages of drivel, full of useless information and ridiculous speculation. I expect to see a better effort in your next correspondence.
I see from reading your Patient’s file that his recent renewed allegiance to the Enemy was brought about through the chaplain at the university. That priest is well known to us, my dear Bogwash, well known indeed! He is a formidable warrior in the service of the Enemy. Oh, the problems that man has caused for us over the years! Plans have been underway for some time to limit his effect on the souls at that institution of learning. I hear that an experienced task force of tempters was recently assigned to his case. We have yet to find a way to ruin him, but trust me, we will…
Fortunately for you, your Patient will soon be graduating and his contact with that man will soon be limited. With graduation comes a time of change and flux and this period has great potential for us. There is always the risk that during this time of uncertainty your Patient will come to trust more in the Enemy, but it is also a wonderful opportunity for us, a perfect time to encourage him to cast off childish things…such as his newfound religion. Do your best to remind him of all the ways this new faith will limit his freedom and his enjoyment of the new, exciting world of adult life.
You Patient will soon be leaving the protective womb of the University Chaplaincy and enter the wider world. Once he has left the university, even if he persists in the service of the Enemy for a time, he will soon face many new trials which will almost certainly abort this nascent faith. Outside of the walls of the Chaplaincy he will encounter something truly terrifying – the typical Catholic parish!
Your primary task at this time is to quickly stunt the growth of this renewed faith. This requires a two-pronged approach. Firstly, your must do your best to alienate him from the Christian community, isolating him from his brethren who will support, encourage and guide him. On his own he will not last long. Fortunately, as I said, he will soon be moving into parish life, so this task may be done for you with very little assistance required on your part. Secondly, it must be your priority to cut him off from all the sources of strength given to him by the Enemy, in particular, the Sacraments and that abominable Eucharist. In my next letter, I will begin address the steps to be taken to eradicate, or at the very least diminish, the impact of those Sacraments upon the Patient.
Every now and then I have readers email me directly. Here’s one I received earlier this week:
“Last week my Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion was saying, “THIS IS THE Body of Christ.” It struck me as wrong. Is this ad-libbing, embellishing, inappropriate, or no problem?”
Lewis suddenly sees a vision, “a great assembly of gigantic forms all motionless…standing forever about a little silver table…[where] there were little figures like chessmen who went to and fro doing this and that…[each the] puppet representative of some one of the great presences that stood by. And the silver table is Time. And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of those same men and women”. This vision terrifies Lewis and asks MacDonald if “all that I have been seeing in this country false? These conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?”. His teacher says that alternatively you might say they were “anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things”, but that it would be better to say neither. The point was that on this journey he had seen the choices a bit more clearly than on earth because “the lens was clearer. But it was still seen through the lens. Do not ask of a vision in a dream more than a vision in a dream can give”. It is at this point that Lewis realizes that he is not actually dead and only dreaming. MacDonald warns him that, when he tells others, to emphasize that it was only a dream.
The vision of the chessemen fades and he is back in the wood again. Standing with his back to the sunrise, Lewis seeing the land light up before him as the sun rises. Suddenly the air is filled with “hounds, and horns; …ten thousand tongues of men and woodland angels and the wood itself sang”. Screaming, Lewis buries his face in the folds of MacDonald’s robe, but “The light, like solid blocks, intolerable of edge and weight, came thundering upon my head”. In the next moment, the folds of MacDonald’s garment become the folds of Lewis’ ink-stained cloth which he had pulled down as he fell from his chair. The blocks of light turn out to only be the books which he had pulled from the table. He wakes up “in a cold room, hunched on the floor beside a black and empty grate, the clock striking three, and the siren howling overhead”.
Questions
Q1. How do you understand the vision of the chessmen? How does Lewis now understand this journey? What warning does MacDonald give Lewis?
My dear Bogwash,
