THE
P RTAL
May 2013
Page 9
The Ordinary’s Page
Monsignor Andrew Burnham writes
‘Get with the Program’
Last Autumn, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, urged
the Church of England to ‘get with the program’. It was a good sound-bite:
he was urging people not only to ‘keep up’, rather than fall-behind, but
also to understand how things are changing and developing, and so
to fall into line.
He was speaking of women bishops, which to
everyone who does not take the trouble to look at the
ecumenical, historical, and theological arguments is,
as they say, a ‘no-brainer’, but he might equally have
been talking about same-sex marriage, or children
having more than one mum. Soon enough ‘getting
with the program’ might well include routine abortion
of a baby whose sex is inconvenient to the parents or
a gentle exit by lethal injection for those for whom life
has become burdensome.
‘live and let live’
children - can
look at the
crudest
and
most depraved
pornography
and at the vilest
of violent images.
As a recent radio
broadcast has been
discussing, all this
amounts
to
the largest
experiment
we
have
ever known
in
the
raising of children. What will society be like when
everyone has been raised in this manner?
This is a particularly challenging time for Christians
because some indeed try to ‘get with the program’.
They think that whatever well-meaning Western
governments come up with is progress and that, as
good citizens, they ought to try to accommodate
it. They can cope with the idea that modern society
gives an equal place to those of other religions and
to unbelievers but cannot stomach the idea that what ‘Catholic Program’
society promotes might be hostile to Christianity.
The Year of Faith for Catholics could be called ‘Get
with the Program’, but it is a very different ‘program’
Other Christians are a little more critical of how that we are asked to ‘get with’. It is in some respects
things are going but, as peaceable people, they try to a political ‘program’, the ‘program’ of the Kingdom of
go along with much of what is happening. Same sex God. We have two guides. One is the Bible.
marriage is a matter of ‘live and let live’, and so is the
way, nowadays, unmarried couples raise children and
The other is Tradition, the Teaching of the Church,
families regroup as relationships come and go.
condensed helpfully in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church. We need them both. The Bible describes
the vilest of violent images
complex matters in different societies over thousands
Much of this seems to be about sex – and we know of years, as revealed to us by divine inspiration. Without
how tricky that subject is. It can dominate and distort the Church’s Tradition, interpretations are nearly as
things, make otherwise good people behave badly, many and various as the hundreds of thousands of
temporarily cloud our judgment. The issues are not Protestant denominations and movements and sects
just about sex, however.
would suggest.
Take the area of information technology. Some
The ‘Catholic Program’ includes many unresolved
countries severely limit access to the internet and in issues but, compared with others, it is good and clear. So,
the West we shake our heads and talk about censorship. as this Year of Faith goes on, let us make sure that we ‘get
Meanwhile, on our uncensored PCs, people – even with the program’, the ‘program’ of the Kingdom.