Why? - Sharon Dirckx

Sharon Dirckx is a friend of a friend and because of this I have met her a few times. She is, like me, a scientist and is currently a tutor and lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. So when I heard that she was writing a book about suffering, I was interested to read it. Apparently it is well up on the Christian bestseller lists.

 

The first thing I would say about this book is that it is extremely readable. I read it from cover to cover at one sitting (maybe 2 hours), and I don't remember the last time I did that. I have to say that I was a little disappointed when I got to the end, that the book didn't go into more depth. Upon reflection, I realised that I was probably not the intended audience and that this book is not intended for people will a fairly well-developed spiritual life and a certain level of intellectual formation. If you have read and understood Salvific doloris (or at least attempted to understand it) this book will leave you cold. It is a book written for people who are who find themselves crying out to an unknown God in the midst of personal suffering, for people who won't or can't let God in and for those who have taken a few steps towards God but don't then know where to go.

 

However, this book does look at questions which are commonly asked about suffering as a way of disproving God's existence. Dirckx begins with the time-honoured 'If God exists, then why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?' and moves onto discussing whether this God actually cares. She compares Christianity, Atheism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in their attitudes towards suffering and (not unexpectedly) concludes that only Christianity has anything sensible to say on the subject.

 

I don't think I'd recommend giving this book to someone who was suffering and starting to ask the bigger questions. It is, after all, written from a Protestant perspective and while it is general enough for this not to be an issue there were a few bits which I didn't think were particularly helpful (and one short part which I don't think is handled very well at all). Having said that, if you knew someone who was in this position it might be a good book to read. The question and answer format, as well as the 'human element' in the form of stories, in addition to the way 'popular' answers to difficult questions are dismantled might well be a helpful basis to supportive apostolate.

 

As I said, for a person who already has a relationship with God, practises their faith and has already reflected deeply on their own suffering this book would not be useful on a personal level, except to remind one that not everyone is in the same place as you, and that very small steps are necessary when leading another by the hand.

Cherry-picking sin

Recently my facebook news feed seems to have been filling up with little red equals signs, mostly among my those of my cousins who fall into one of the following two groups: in their 40s or American. (I could do a nice little Venn diagram.) This morning one of them, who descibes herself as 'Catholic....sort of?', shared the Atheist Quote of the Day:

Homosexuality is not a sin. Atheism is not a sin. Belonging to the wrong religion is not a sin. You know why? Because sin is an imaginary disease invented to sell you an imaginary cure.

                                                                                                                  John Allen

A quick google tells me there are rather a lot of people called John Allen. I don't know which one of these he is or how exactly he arrived at his conclusions. Leaving aside the fact that a self-proclaimed Catholic (even if only self-proclaiming as 'sort of') is displaying support for same-sex marriage and showing appreciation for the Atheist Quote of the Day page, leaving aside the rejection of God and the downright relativism in the first half of said quote, the part which interests me particularly is the bit about sin being an imaginary disease and its complementary imaginary cure.

I recently blogged about the loss of the sense of sin, which Pius XII identified as the sin of the century, speaking in the USA in 1946. I and my fellow catechist also recently had a complaint from the parent of one of the members of our confirmation group. The underlying issue was that we had spoken regularly about sin and apparently we were supposed to be 'affirming' the young people and not 'making them feel bad about themselves'. Yes, we have talked about sin. Yes, we have talked about the devil. Yes, we have strongly encouraged them to go to confession. (No, we have not greatly succeeded in this and if anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.) But I think I can put my hand on my heart and say that when we have talked about sin, we have always, invariably, talked about the love and mercy of God who is always waiting for us to come back to him.

John Allen is right about one thing: without the disease there is no need for a cure. Take away sin and God is worse than imaginary: he is irrelevant and unecesssary. Take away sin and the immeasurable gift of reconciliation is tossed aside as meaningless. (Of course it works both ways: take away God, take away the absolute and we immediately begin to drown in a mire of relativism without the compass of right and wrong.) If I do not recognise my own sinfulness and brokenness, I have no need of God, no need of reconciliation. Without recognising this I cannot recognise the immense love which God lavishes on me, God who made me for love and out of an overabundance of love, and who holds me in being at every moment. As the Exsultet proclaims:

Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed.
O wonder of your humble care for us! O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and hour when Christ rose from the underworld!

Sin is not an imaginary disease, it is a reality which each one of us allows into the world because while we may like to count ourselves as 'OK' or 'better' on the basis that we are not murderers, there are no good sins. It is the root of injustice, poverty, famine, persecution, war, suffering... There are many ways of coming to know God, and I do not think that recognising evil can teach us the existence of abosulte good, but the knowledge of sin and our own sinfulness can help us to know how very much God loves us. 

Not in my name

Whilst I try to mainly limit myself to writing about healthcare-related issues, one of the reasons I started blogging was because I was fed up with people telling me that as an [educated] woman there were things I should want (sex, drugs and the ordination of women) and things I shouldn't want (marriage, children, self-respect, and the right not to sing Shine, Jesus, Shine) and I was especially fed up with being told this by nominally Catholic women claiming to speak on behalf of all Catholics. I am therefore delighted to discover that I am not the only person who believes in, strives to live by and supports the teaching of the Church. Catholic Women Rising is 'a place for practicing Catholic women who support the Church’s teaching on sexuality, contraception, abortion, marriage and the ordination of women, to stand up and be counted.'

While I'm on the subject, I should just take this opportunity to plug the vastly improved website of the Women's Section of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. This is definitely a website with something for everyone, from philosophy to book reviews (and probably philosophical book reviews as well), from current affairs to anthropology.

Faith, hope and mental illness

This isn't about the news, although today the Mail apparently carries an article on how brisk walking prevents Alzheimer's. This is about me, my brain, and how it doesn't really work properly.

 

I am suffering from a severe episode of a recurrent depressive disorder. This episode has so far lasted around 18 months; it's difficult to pinpoint the start and the harder I look, the more I can see signs earlier than that. I'm a lot better than I was 18 months ago. I can walk, I don't fall over for no reason and most days I can get up and maybe be vageuly productive. Occasionally I can manage to apply the techniques I learned from CBT. But I still suffer from extremely low energy levels, lack of interest in things I enjoy (it's a bad sign if I don't want to read, I used to read in the bathroom, at school under the table, in bed under the covers) and a level of anxiety which makes me worry about answering the phone or even talking to my closest friends and family members. I can only concentrate on one thing, and if someone talks to me while I'm doing it I'll probably shout at them out of sheer panic. I can't remember what I just did, or whether I just did it. I am short tempered and impatient. Worst of all are the times when the "brain rubbish" floats to the surface and I hate myself, think I am worthless and conclude that the world would be a better place without me in it.

 

The first time this happened I was so terrified that I hyperventilated and collapsed. It doesn't happen very often now, or with such intensity, and I have learned how to deal with it. I am no longer ashamed of these thoughts because I know that they are a fruit of my illness and not of my will. I have discovered that the best way to deal with them is to share them, rather than hide them, (although one has to choose carefully who to share them with!). I struggle with my anger and impatience more and it is impossible to tell to what extent they come under lack of personal conversion, and how far they come under depression. I cannot simply fight, fight, fight because there is an element of chemical imbalance involved. I cannot attribute them entirely to my illness because I know that I was impatient before that. Now when I lose my temper, I see it happening and get so frustrated with myself that I am acting like a small child (yes, I am also lacking in humility) that I get even more stressed out and more grumpy, and so it goes on. All this isn't helped by the fact that I often can't sleep and that when I do I have crazy, but strangely real dreams which are hardly restful.

 

I say I am not ashamed, but I rarely tell anyone I have depression. I don't want to have to deal with their judgements. I don't look ill (except for being a little paler than usual on really bad days, and they are the days on which no-one sees me), and even I often have a hard time accepting or recognising that I am (sometimes I feel like it is a daily lesson!), so why would anyone else believe it? At the same time, as a healthcare professional and a Christian, I feel I have a responsibility to help end the silence and stigma which surrounds mental illness. I read this week that GPs are overprescribing anti-depressants. Similar stories about sleeping tablets have been in the news for weeks. And yes, they probably are overprescribed. People have this expectation that life is happily ever after and when something difficult comes up, or they aren't happy because they are looking for happiness in places where it cannot be found they think they have depression (I speak in terms of the illness, rather than  the emotion). They want a tablet to make them feel better and it isn't going to help. It annoys me: it reduces my illness to a lifestyle issue rather than a disease. But it also makes me really sad for them: they are reducing themselves to a merely biological level, they do not know the happiness that comes from loving God and I want them to: I want to tell them all. 

 

Faith in God, Christian life and frequenting the sacraments will not prevent illness of any kind, including depression. Christian life is not some kind of fluffy, light-hearted dream where everything us 'nice' and goes according to plan. It is a joyous battle, which has already been won. It is falling over and getting up again, over and over. It is a relationship with a real person. But happiness is not a feeling. True happiness is the peace which comes from knowing God and fulfilling his plan, being 'right' with Him, if you will. I may rarely feel happy, but I know I am happy and I can say that with all honesty. I may suffer from severe anxiety but I know that, with God, suffering transcends my daily experience of it, and can have meaning and even purpose. I don't just know that intellectually, I experience it regularly. I have hope that my life won't be like this for ever, but that even if it is, that God is with me in this suffering and that with Him, as a wise friend once said, the best is always ahead of us. And I am slowly learning that I can't be in control of everything (and this is a struggle which extends long before and after this particular episode of depression), that I have to allow God take charge in my life because I know and believe that His plan is the best plan. I have long believed that the difference between the saints and the rest of us is that they recognised suffering and mortification as an opportunity to grow in holiness, grow closer to God, at the moment when it was happening and made the most of it whereas the rest of us either miss them completely, don't realise until afterwards, or stay on the level of "poor me". So this is me, half way between a pity party and the foot of the cross, where my Mother stands with and looks upon her Son. That is the only place where any of this makes sense.

Loneliness is bad for you

Since I started writing this blog, I have been struck by how the Church really is the expert par exellence in humanity. The Church knows that we are made for communion, for relation, and that this is essential for our happiness. Everyone else is only just catching up: the Daily Express reports that there is a link between loneliness and dementia.

I don't agree with their headline, that an active social life is the key, and later in the article they identify that it is feeling alone rather than being or living alone which is the important factor. In university we were taught that "people with fewer social contacts are more likely to commit suicide". That seems to suggest that it is being alone rather than experiencing loneliness which leads to ideation of suicide. But I would imagine that it is experiencing loneliness rather than being alone which contributes to depression. The correlation between depression and suicide is not well defined, but now appears to be less than 10% among all depressed people (although only 2% for the majority of people with depression) compared with 1% in the general population. Given that ideation of suicide is a symptom of depression, as well as the fact that depression interferes with normal rational thought processes, 2% seems fairly low.

There is also a strong link between depression and other illnesses. People with chronic illness are more likely to become depressed, and people with depression are at greater risk from other illnesses. Demonstrating direct causality here is probably nigh on impossible, given the number of interconnected factors involved...diet, medication, employment, relationship... Obviously there is going to be some overlap between being alone and feeling lonely and single households are now the most common type in the UK.

If this is a step up from last week's reduction to the biological it is still a reduction of the human person, only this time to the bio-psychological. Two out of three ain't bad, but there is a hierarchy and the spiritual always gets top billing. The first communion to which we are invited is communion with God. Faith and communion with God can transform and elevate all the other experiences of our lives, even illness and suffering. With God's presence, even loneliness is transformed and dispelled. But people are not going to realise this when five million only have their television for company (especially if they watch Eastenders). It's Advent, God is coming, so go and see one of the five million and tell them about it!

Something this simple shouldn't take two decades

For H: Keep up the good work!

Recently (with my Catholic Link hat on) I have been trying to find short videos or animations which explain the Church’s teaching on contraception. There is a huge want of apostolic resources on this topic and it has been something of a struggle. I was telling my brother (or unsuspecting apostolic guinea pig, as I like to call him) about this lack of videos on the topic and his response was, “Of course not, no-one wants to think about that stuff!” Eventually, I found something and then I sat down and tried to write a post. I ended up with a reflection on my own experience which was completely wrong for that site, but I decided to post it here instead.

In every parish I attended as a child there was always one family with more than four children who were regarded by the rest of the parish as more Catholic than everyone else at mass. Nobody ever explained why this was, but they were generally viewed with a mixture of superiority and guilt-fuelled admiration. Apparently being more Catholic meant that you were usually late for mass and were unable to get your children to sit still for 45 minutes.

At (my non-Catholic) secondary school that I learned that “Catholics believe that contraception is wrong”. There I also learned that contraception was the answer to pretty much all the world’s problems (and this was before the AIDS epidemic!). I had one conversation at home on the subject in which I was informed that “NFP probably works for clever people” and the clever couple cited had about five university degrees between them (and three children). I had a friend at school who was one of nine children. I used to hear people saying that they must be Catholic, which always mystified me as I knew they weren't.

In short, by the time I was 15, what I had learned about family planning was this:

• The Church is against contraception (apparently for no reason).
• Catholics themselves know better (and mostly ignore the Church).
• NFP is very complicated and difficult (and ineffective).
• Having children turns your life into chaos.
• Contraception will allow me, an intelligent woman, to have the life and career I deserve (and should want). Without contraception, this will not be possible. I am capable of making the world a better place and if I have children this will be impossible.

What a devastating combination! The world tells me all the disadvantages of children. The Catholics I know tell me nothing, in word or deed. (This sounds like poor me, I am a sad victim of the big, black formation hole, and that is not the point I am trying to make.) The world has got louder since then. It now assumes I want to have casual sex and assures me that there is no problem with that, in fact I should probably be encouraged in that line.

Now we have to fast forward almost ten years to the time of my personal conversion. Through prayer, formation and endless patience on the part of those who did apostolate to me I discovered that I believed in the Faith and that I wanted to live by the teachings of the Church. But I was still really stuck on the subject of contraception. I ended up feeling that I would have to go along with the Church even though there was no reason for what she said. I would have to suspend my own intelligence out of some sort of blind obedience to the Church and for this I would suffer: I would be unlikely to be able to find a sane man who would marry me under these conditions, and if I did I was going to have fifteen children (and probably die young, worn out from childbirth and never being able to afford a holiday). It took a lot more years of prayer and formation for me to understand and love the wisdom of the Church, a loving Mother who cares for her children and knows what is best for them.

It has taken nearly 20 years to undo the brainwashing I underwent at school. And it still isn’t completely done. (Interestingly, the undoing hasn’t come from having endless conversations about the merits of NFP over contraception but from understanding Catholic anthropology and the dignity of the human person.) I have a fairly constant mental battle with myself every time I read about sexually transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy etc. I know that trying to address these problems with contraceptives is like sticking a plaster on a gaping, infected wound and expecting it to heal all by itself. But the world's roots go deep.

I am not surprised that “no-one wants to talk about that stuff”. There is a wall of silence surrounding the subject that probably stems from a fatal combination of “no sex please: we’re British” and abject ignorance on the part of the majority. I finally begin to understand the weirdos people (see what I mean about brainwashing) I knew at university who wouldn’t shut up about NFP: if people, and especially young people, don’t hear about the Church’s teaching from those faithful to the Church they are going to hear about it from somewhere else. And those other people who tell them about it are not going to have the integral wellbeing of the human person as their motivation and the inate dignity of that same human person has the foundation for all their reasoning. Because of this they will, however well-intentioned they may be, get it completely wrong.

Update: Contraception Can't: We need to talk!

It's not my fault!

I was somewhat bemused to read yesterday morning that there is a gene for binge drinking. Further inspection suggests that this gene predisposes some people to experience a stronger physiological response than others when drinking alcohol.

Personally, I would say that binge drinking has more to do with sin, freedom and the perennial search for happiness than genetics. Obviously binge drinking can't make us happy, any more than sleeping around can (and there does seem to be a strong correlation between the two). But whether they know God or not, everyone has a hunger for him, a longing for the infinite, and without knowledge of God this leads us to look for happiness in many places where it isn't to be found. Furthermore, I would say that not finding this happiness, not being able to satiate this desire we have (because for so many people they haven't chosen to reject God, it's just that faith has never been suggested to them as an option) we end up trying to fill up our lives with <i>anything</i> that might make us feel something, be it sex, drugs or rock n roll. Of course this self-destructive behaviour leads us into a downward spiral of increasing unhappiness: only in God and his loving Plan can we find happiness. He has made us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him, to paraphrase St Augustine.

I am not some sort of neo-luddite who wishes to exclude science and technology from every facet of life. If people have genetic tendencies towards certain behaviours or illnesses then of course identifying that and seeking solutions can be a good thing. But the increasing tendency to identify genes is part of both the "loss of the sense of sin" bemoaned by Pope Pius XII (once we blamed "the system", now we blame our genes) and also constant reduction of the human person to the merely biological. Yes, I have a body, but I am not my body. Neither am I my DNA. And while we continue to place all our hopes on genetics we will never find the answer to those situations which many would agree are a problem.

The poor will always be with us: seriously?

The health inequalities between rich and poor are widening, reports BBC Health.

We've known this since the Black Report was published in 1980, and as not much notice was taken at the time, it's hardly surprising that 30 years on we're faced with the same problem, only bigger.

When I lived in Peru people often asked me if I was shocked by the poverty there. And yes, it is shocking to see shanty towns built up by the sides of motorways, to see shops which sell pre-fab sheds and then see the same sheds in the desert with entire families living in them, to hear children exclaim with excitement over such simple things as grass and trees and then ask with disinterest if they will be eating today, as so far they haven't. I saw children whose teeth were no more than shells and a toddler with a paraistic infection who rarely mentioned that his tummy hurt although it was the size of a football. I met a terrified young girl whose father had beaten her because she had her first period (in her innocence she had no idea why, but apparently her teenage sister had had a baby which possibly explains her father's concern although in now way justifies his action). I heard, from a volunteer doctor, of a patient with appendicitis who went home and died because he didn't have the money to pay for the operation, and read in the paper of a man whose body was thrown off the bus and left in the street when he died on his way to the hospital.

Yes, poverty in the developing world is indeed shocking. But what is more shocking is the divide between rich and poor. I saw a school with no toilets (the children go in the playground) and half an hour away another which had facilities that would put a state primary in this country to shame. The wealthy who live alongside poverty often completely ignore it, and one can grow up in Lima and never realise that there are such things as shanty towns (I'm not sure exactly how, but I'm assured by those who did that it is entirely possible).

In Lima, if you meet a child in a shanty town whose hands and face and clothes are dirty you know that it's because when you live in a desert, everything gets dirty very quickly; there is no running water at home, certainly not hot water or washing machines; there probably isn't any soap, because food is the prioity, and very possibly these are the only clothes she has, especially in winter when the humidity seems to make the cold penetrate one's bones and wearing everything you own is a better alternative than freezing. If a boy doesn't (can't or won't) use a knife and fork, it might be because his family don't own any, but it's equally likely that having not eaten all day he just wants to get it down as fast as he can. When you have nothing, staying alive is the priority, cutlery and soap are luxuries. The only answer to this reality is love. Love until it hurts and then love more, because without love the only answer is frustration and anger that there is injustice in the world, and despair at one's helplessness in the face of it.

If you go into a school in an inner city in the UK and see pupils with dirty clothes and hair, it's not because they don't have hot water or washing machines or soap. It's because they are neglected, whether that is because they have a single parent who works all hours to make ends meet or nobody bothers to wash them or their clothes. Some people have hard choices to make, other just choose to make bad ones. If they don't use a knife and fork it's because their family doesn't sit down together and eat meals at the table, or because they always eat processed food which comes in a handy pick-me-up-and-eat-me format. You do not expect "beans on toast" to be the answer to the question, "What did you have for Christmas dinner?" (and he didn't know it was Christmas anyway because his parents hadn't bothered to mention it). There are children with mobile phones but no crayons. What a difference from a child with nothing who on being given a packet of cocoa <i>in July</i> assures you that his family are going to save it for Christmas day.

The divide between rich and poor in this country is not manifested solely in deaths from heart disease. There is a spiritual and cultural "poor gap" which has nothing to do with economics. Poverty is shocking wherever you see it, but somehow it is more shocking here where everyone has access to  education, healthcare and doesn't need to make a choice between soap and food, between clothes and beds. The lack of God, the lack of Love, in this green and pleasant land makes us poorer by far. This is the poverty that should not be with us. Everyone has the right to know God, and the riches that come from abundant life, and this is why we need the New Evangelisation.

Who takes responsibility for this guesswork?

Over at the Hermeneutic of Continuity, Fr Tim Finigan mentioned (and I believe I am supposed to touch my forelock to him, but am new at this whole blogging thing so I am prepared to stand corrected) the case of Adrian Smith who was demoted from a managerial position for posting comments on facebook about same-sex marriage taken place in churches. I went and found the article in the Manchester Evening News because surely for such measures to be taken against him, citing gross misconduct, he must have written something actually bigoted (rather than just expressing an opinion, which is what is taken for bigotry these days) or incited people to burn down churches where same-sex marriages are performed or something equally extreme.

In fact, no.

Then I thought that maybe this is part of the recent spate of facebook/twitter crimes, by which an individual writes something more or less offensive (often whilst drunk) and gets sent to jail for it. I heard of a newly qualified teacher who didn't get the job he applied for because the governors saw pictures on facebook of him acting stupidly whilst drunk and decided that he didn't have the necessary character for forming young hearts and minds. People need to realise that twitter is public (and should be avoided when drunk) and that there is nothing private on the internet, including facebook. And, I think, the law needs to take account of modern means of communication which are changing much faster than the law ever can. Did Mr Smith, then, say something which he thought he was just saying to his nearest and dearest but turned out to be public?

In fact, no.

Mr Smith's 'crime' (bearing in mind that he is not being prosecuted, just sanctioned) turns out to be breach of his employer's code of conduct which, according to the MEN, states that employees must not "expressing religious or political views which may upset co-workers".

I think that warrants closer inspection...

Firstly, if you express views which may upset co-workers as long as they're not religious or political then that's fine. So if you were to express "Darcey's earrings are way too big but at least she's a better judge than Arlene was", or "I hope that Saddam rots in hell", "I am saddened and disappointed by the content of JK Rowling's new book. She may not agree but I think as a well known children's author she has a certain responsibilitiy" or even "I can't believe anyone thinks (insert name of celebrity) is good looking. He/she looks like they've been hit by a bus, and is also completely devoid of talent" all those are also fine. However, if you say "I don't see how Nick Clegg in conscience can remain head of the Lib Dems seeing as how he did a U-turn on tuition fees which has always been one of their manifesto promises," or "The government don't have a mandate for same-sex marriage and I can't help thinking that the furore is a cover-up to distract us from the failing economy, much like the issue of the Falklands in Argentina" that is not OK. And secondly, I feel there is a problem with the wording "may upset co-workers". It doesn't matter if no-one is actually upset by your religious or political views, just as long as they might be. But in this case, who decides? We're back to people being told that they can't wear a cross because someone "might" be offended. If no-one is offended, what is the basis for thinking they might be. And is there a difference if I say "I think abortion is wrong" and am a Catholic or if I say it and am an atheist. The statement equally "might" offend someone who has had an abortion but only in one case could it be argued to be a religious view.

It would seem that Adrian Smith has made two mistakes. Firstly, signing up to work for a company with such a ridiculous code of conduct and secondly using facebook whilst Christian.

On quick fixes...

The papers are apparently full of sleeping tablets. That is to say, the NHS is spending rather a lot of money on benzodiazepines and the so-called Z drugs (with 15.3 million prescriptions last year), commonly prescribed for insomnia and anxiety. Furthermore, an additional £40million was spent on over the counter sleeping rememdies. Benzos and Z drugs are what health-care professionals would call "dirty drugs". They come at a price...side effects and, in particular, tolerance and withdrawal which add up to addiction.

Physical tolerance means that the body requires more and more of the drug to get the same effect. Withdrawal means that stopping the drug causes side effects, which are relieved by the drug. It may also lead to 'rebound' symptoms of whatever the drug was being taken for in the first place. It is for these reasons that guidelines state that sleeping tablets should only be used on a short term basis.

We have now embarked on the usual cycle of blame. Patients blame doctors for ruining their lives with addiction. Health-care professionals blame patients for self-treating without medical advice. Warnings about what not getting enough sleep can cause (early death) are now balanced by warnings about the long term effects of sleeping tablets (Alzheimer's). I would say that there isn't a clear direction of causality with these effects. Both Alzheimer's and early death could be caused by some underlying factor which also causes sleep deprivation. The brain and the immune system are involved with sleep and neither is fully understood. But all this has no doubt led to increased anxiety over sleep: waking up in the night is now a disaster which makes us so stressed out that we can't get back to sleep.

Working in healthcare I have seen an increase in the use of "lifestyle" drugs. Increasingly we want a quick answer to an annoying problem. I am not denying that depression, anxiety, insomnia and obesity (to name a few) are not real diseases. However, I think we often seek a rapid solution to something that needs addressing in the long term. Stress and anxiety contribute to many illnesses, and once again I would argue that they could well stem from individualism. The need for a quick fix can be traced to the nihilism and hedonism which now underly our culture. Thus both the problem and the equally problematic solution come from the same place. A lack of community, and the difficulty of forming true friendships mean no-one to talk about our problems with. We distract ourselves with alcohol, food, sex, exercise, television, whatever. Of course we lie awake at night worrying about our jobs, our children, our spouses or lack thereof, money, keeping up with the Joneses...because we are unable to rest. We have nowhere to rest. Without God, without heaven and hell, we have nothing to work for in the long term either. We need the solution now. If I cannot manage to renounce biscuits  (and sitting here I have just absent-mindedly eaten an entire packet) for the sake of eternity, how I am going to be able to renounce them for the benefit of my waistline in this life. Of course I want a tablet. If I have no-one in whom I can truly rest then of course I am going to lie awake worrying about my problems. If there is a magic pill to solve my problems, great! And if I have no room or no need for a God who suffered out of love for me and who is with me in my sufferings then I am definitely going to want to eliminate all suffering from my life as fast as possible.

Catholic-Link launched in English!

To celebrate the launch of Catholic Link's English language site, with permission I have published below an interview with Mauricio, a member of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), who blogs at Catholic Link's Spanish site by Fr Joan Carreras del Rincón. Fr Carreras is the founder of Asociación de blogueros con el Papa [Association of Bloggers with the Pope] which will be holding their second meeting in early October. Mauricio talks about how Catholic-Link started, the principles behind it and the lauch of the English language version.

The SCV is a Society of Apostolic Life of Ponitifical Right, founded in Lima, Peru in 1971. They do not have a presence in the UK, but their sisters, the Marian Community of Reconciliation (also known as the Fraternas) have a community in Manchester.

Catholic-Link is a great resource for catechists and really for anyone doing apostolate with young people. The launch of their English version is excellent news.

Fr Carreras: I am lucky enough to be interviewing a young blogger for whom I feel great admiration. He is the author of a very young, dynamic blog: Catholic Link. I feel admiration because he unites various qualities which are not often found in young people: critical maturity, thoughtful statements, wise commentary. To these characteristics found in those hardened by experience he adds those typical of youth: technological mastery, being in tune with young people’s problems, a certain unworried air…

Mauricio, how did the idea to create this blog come about? How long have you had this liking for blogs? Are your interest in blogging and your eagerness to evangelise related in some way?

Mauricio: Catholic-Link arose very quietly. The truth is that at the beginning I never through that it could reach the dimensions it now has. Before launching the blog I used to send different videos, which I thought were useful for apostolate, to various brothers from my community (I am a member of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae); one of them, a priest who is a good friend of mine, advised me to create a blog where I could put all the material, organised by categories, with labels. The idea seemed a good one so I did it and started to publish things there. Initially, and I think it’s stayed that way, the blog had a very informal, familiar style, that of a friend explaining to another friend how to do apostolate. It seems to me that this was one of the elements which sparked the warm welcome which the blog started to receive. Very rapidly, many seminarians, catechists, consecrated men and women, and people generally involved in apostolate (the majority being young people) started to write to us saying that they were using our videos and that the page was helping a lot in their apostolate. VE Multimedios, an association which produces websites for the Church, even offered to upgrade our site for free when they saw our work.

 In considering all these testimonies, I started to realise what a great responsibility we were assuming. This was the point, I think, at which I started to get interested in blogs. I discovered that Catholic-Link was a channel for encountering other people and, through them, thousands more. It’s easy to underestimate the impact which a blog can have. However, in the times in which we live, globalisation and interconnectivity mean that a blog really can become a wonderful source of apostolate. That’s why we bloggers see our role as one of such great importance within the mission of the Church. We need Catholic bloggers, passionate about what they do, keen to form themselves, enterprising, attentive to the signs of the times, available not just to write excellent posts but also to place widgets on their blogs. Beyond all this, the most important thing according to my way of seeing things… we need Catholic bloggers who are in love with Christ and the Church. If Catholic communicators are not the greatest lovers of Christ and his Church, who will believe us? We can have great communication skills – creativity, knowledge, eloquence, etc, - but if I am lack love then “I am a clanging cymbal”.

Catholic Link has a very modern, young style. Sometimes, Catholic evangelisers don’t connect with young people: do you think the language and pictures used on occasion can not only not attract young people but put them off?

I’ve been a religion teacher in a Catholic school in Rome for a year now. For me, it’s been a gift from God; I’ve learned a lot from my pupils. One of the things that I’ve understood is that young people have real difficulty understanding how they can make the contents of the faith become part of their lives. My pupils understand that God was made man, that the Lord Jesus died on the cross for us all, that he rose on the third day and appeared to the disciples, but they don’t understand how this has changed their lives. They don’t understand how these events can alter their relationships and their understanding of their surroundings, how this is the greatest marvel which has occurred not only 2000 years ago but here and now. And I don’t blame them. Our culture, even in Italy, is no longer a Christian culture. A culture which is interwoven with Christianity reconciles the rupture between faith and life; the culture in which we live lamentably widens it. Young people, and the rest of us too, are victims of this. Therefore our language often serves to distance others from faith, because we ourselves don’t really know how Christ illuminates the simplest things in our lives. Our posts, our publications, the pictures we put on facebook and the videos which we edit, sometimes, not always, show little co-naturality with a God who became flesh, who became human life, whose incarnation and sacrifice revolutionised the way of understanding everything, starting with myself from the most superficial to the deepest.

Put another way, reality is Catholic! Reality comes from God. The world is standing on my territory, and not the other way around. Faith is not an aspect of life that we have to get other people to start living. Faith is reality itself, seen from a more realistic angle. I think this is the point. To witness with great valour and joy that God loves and sustains the world. He became incarnate! And he is present in my life and yours, he takes care of the least and the greatest, from the precarious weekly finances of my house to the mystic prayer of the most spiritual Carthusian. God has revealed that he is close to us, that he is not indifferent to human suffering or human joy. Well, I could be wrong, but I think that doing apostolate on the internet doesn’t have so much to do with connecting with young people as with connecting, first of all, with the immense, daily, simple, boundless, practical, theoretical, incarnate riches of our Catholic faith. From this perspective, I think that it would be very difficult for a young person not to find themselves questioned by the apostolate we carry out.

It’s also important to be very respectful in terms of the stages a young person has to pass through in order to know the Lord. Christ himself taught his disciples progressively, a little at a time, until the day he found that they were mature enough for him to reveal that he would have to suffer the cross. Our apostolate must try to imitate Jesus’s reverent love. I know that one can have one’s heart in one’s hand and want to announce to everyone, once and for all, that life is more ‘full’ on this side; however, if we don’t patiently spend some time building a boat, it probably won’t be enough to throw a rope, especially when the river that must be crossed has burst its banks.  

Recently, you offered an English language version of Catholic-link. How do you do this? Do you translate everything?

We translate some content, especially when time is short. But the idea is to produce our own material, being that the English-speaking countries have different ways of thinking and approaching the faith. Thanks be to God, some young people - two Americans and a Philippine - are taking the project forward.

Has the spread of viral videos ever given you any problems in terms of copyright violation?

As I explained, Catholic-Link came about in a very informal, familiar way and has continued to grow, carrying the vices and virtues of this way of doing things. So far we haven’t had any problems with copyright violation but we are aware that the size and spread of the site demands greater care and attention to this important aspect.

What are your expectations for the II meeting of Bloggers with the Pope, in Santander, from the 5^th – 7^th October?

For us, it is very special that we have been invited to the meeting. Among the bloggers who will participate we are definitely the most inexperienced so our main expectation is to learn from very experienced bloggers and evangelisers. We believe that initiatives such as this one help to strengthen links of friendship which can benefit the apostolate of the whole Church. I have to say, as well, that (modesty aside) this meeting is not like any other meeting of Catholic bloggers: the Association which has invited us and of which we form part has among its principal objectives the promotion of fidelity to the teachings of the Holy Father. I think that one expectation shared by all the participants will be that of seeing how to become effective, faithful spokesmen for the Church. Fr Federico Lombardi, who is in charge of the Holy See’s Press Office, considers Catholic bloggers to be the “public opinion” of the Church. What a responsibility! This II Meeting of Bloggers with the Pope could be an excellent occasion to organise ourselves as a concert of voices in tune with the reconciling message of the Pope; something which is so very necessary in these times.

How would you encourage young people to start a blog?

I think that there are many well-intentioned young Catholics who want to start blogging but think that they have to be well formed in theology and humanities, so they end up getting discouraged and giving up. It’s true that one has to be very well formed to be able to communicate the Truth. However, starting a blog doesn’t mean that you’re going to stop being formed, does it? On the contrary, a blog could be the perfect occasion to take your Catholic formation more seriously. On the other hand, a Catholic blog doesn’t necessarily have to deal with theology, philosophy, defence of life or the analysis of reality. One doesn’t have to restrict oneself: the evangelisation of culture, to which the Vatican Council II invites us, directs us towards the evangelisation of all human realities. Do you study law, economics, architecture or medicine? Well, there you have wonderful scope where the Church undoubtedly needs you! Go for it!

One further idea. Go for it, yes. But go for it if you love the Church and understand its place in the world and the Plan of God. Ambiguous speeches by Catholics sometimes do more harm than the strongest onslaughts of those outside the Church. Firstly, be convinced; study, pray and when you are ready, then go for it. If not, well, there are many kinds of blogs you could start whose topics will not be an occasion for you to cause damage.

How are you thinking of contributing to the Year of Faith? Will you do something special on Catholic-Link?

Undoubtedly so. We have some quite ambitious projects which I wouldn’t want to give away due to discretion and healthy mistrust of self. For now, every day on Catholic-Link we are trying to grow in the service that we offer, forming ourselves better, listening to the Holy Father and publishing material which can help many people to nurture their faith and love for the Lord Jesus and his Church. I am sure that the II Meeting of Bloggers with the Pope will be an excellent occasion to find ways of collaborating for this purpose.

Thank you very much for the interview.

Thank you, Mauricio, for the sincerity and passion with which you have spoken. I hope to see you in Santander in less than a week. Until then!

Putting an end to foolishness in all quarters

It is said that when Blessed John Henry Newman was asked by his Bishop what he thought of the laity, he replied that the clergy would look foolish without them.

I wanted to write something on the role of the laity because it seems to me that there is a great deal of confusion about what laypeople are supposed to do in the Church and the world. People spend a lot of time waffling on about the role of women in the Church, but a lot of the time I think that ignorance and confusion about the role of women stem from ignorance and confusion about the role of the laity. Commission of lay funeral ministers and (frequent) liturgical abuses involving Extrarodinary Ministers of the Eucharist don't really help, although sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether they are the symptom or the cause of this widespread ignorance and misunderstanding.

I can give references for the things in this list if required (Conciliar or post-Conciliar documents) but for now, this is my understanding of the role of the laity:

Personal Holiness
In a larger font because it is the most important. The universal vocation of all the baptised is holiness.
Frequent the sacraments, especially make regular, frequent Confession and Holy Communion.
Develop a prayer life (eg. visiting the Blessed Sacrament, praying the rosary - no study or special training required, reading the Bible, praying lectio divina...there are a lot of elements you can include according to the amount of time you have, your state of life etc.).

It might also be helpful to:
-get a spiritual director
-join an ecclesial movement (or another group where you can forge community and friendship with other Catholics)
-Form yourself - read the Catechism, listen to what the Pope says..., do a course of study (a Catholic course, obviously). This won't just help your personal holiness, but will also prepare you for apostolate.

This is not an exhaustive list. Do whatever it takes: only saints will change the world (LFF).

Apostolate
Quite possibly no-one has ever told you this (I was in my late twenties when I found out) but by virtue of your baptism you are also called to be an apostle. Apostolate can take the form of:

-Evangelisation - by witness of life AND by announcing Christ. That means not just being nice to your colleagues but also telling them why.
-Renewal of the temporal order - transforming everything which is in contrast with the gosepl, in your workplace, through your work, in your school, in your neighbourhood, in your home, in the bank queue, at the supermarket, outside your local abortion clinic...
-Charitable works and social aid - probably this is the one most people know about, but look how far down the list it is!

What else?
Well, really everything is covered by the above, but for the sake of clarification, the laity are called to "develop and make effective all those latent Christian and evangelical possibilities which already exist and operate in the world" (EN70) and "co-operate with pastors in the service of the ecclesial community" (EN72) in keeping with our proper state as laypeople, including:

-Catechesis - the first place of catechesis is the family, the domestic Church. Teach your children (and your spouse) Christian values, form them in the faith, take them to mass, teach them to be holy.
-Sacramental preparation
-Serving in your parish - in an administrative capacity, visiting the housebound and elderly, cleaning the church...
-Praying for your priests

If you're still unclear about any of this, there are plenty of beatified and canonised laymen and women. Read about their lives and follow their example.

Do not try to substitute for or replace your priest. You are not a priest, you are a layperson.

We need both our GPs and our parish priests

This morning I read an opinion column from Saturday's Times (I went and got the page in question from my neighbour who reads it and then distributes the various sections to about 15 other people: my brother gets the sports pages, a friend gets the crossword, another friend the answers to the previous day's crossword, money, travel, the magazine etc. to those who are particularly interested in those supplements. Seriously creative recycling in action. But I digress). Matthew Parris's article about GPs was a follow up to a column he wrote in June which in which he criticized them extensively. Since then he's been to shadow two GPs and acknowledges that they work extremely hard; he admits failing to do this first time round. I didn't read the first column so I can't compare them, but on its own merits the article seems fairly balanced to me. (Some doctors might take issue with the statement that they aren't gods. A colleague of mine once overheard a doctor say to his patient, "there are only two people who can save you now...and God isn't a cardiothoracic surgeon." It wasn't a joke.)

"For much of their time," writes Parris, "family doctors are doing what in different times and places has been done by the parish priest...[and others]." For the majority, their problems lie "in the mind, not the body. Loneliness, isolation, anxiety, stress, breakdown and mental illness..." I almost entirely agree, but I would add that these are not just problems of the mind but also the spirit (and the lack of community which I blogged about recently). People need doctors and medicines (mental illness is an illness of the body as well as the mind, for example), and they need someone to talk to but they also need God. Their GP is unlikely to provide an introduction to the latter. They're hardly going to listen to the patient, talk with the patient, prescribe sleeping tablets, recommend they pray the rosary daily and refer them to a spiritual director. "Take one of these in the morning and go to confession by the end of the week." (In fact I would imagine the most public sector workers and healthcare professionals in particular are becoming extremely cautious about mentioning their faith to their colleagues, let alone their patients.) People need their parish priest as well, but with an ageing population, declining congregations and fewer priests, even if he has the time the parish priest might not know where to find them.

This, then, is something the laity could and should assume. There seems to be a lot of confusion around about the role of the laity (don't get me started on Eucharistic ministers giving blessings to those who don't receive communion and giving out communion when there are enough priests present to render them unnecessary), and it certainly isn't to replace or substitute for priests. Chatting to your neighbours and offering to pray for them would be a good start, even if giving them a rosary and inviting them to pray it with you might seem a bit too evangelical the first time you meet them. Praying won't cure mental illness but a personal relationship with God certainly helps you to know that it won't last forever and maybe even to see it as an opportunity to grow in virtue.

I will not hide my faith

I've been thinking about blogging for a while, and the need to do so was finally confirmed after a conversation with my brother in which he told me that I needed to 'ighten up'. Lightening up apparently consists of laughing at a song which is both crude in its objectification of the human person and pro-choice.

I will not lighten up. I refuse to hide my faith in my own home, among my family. Some of them cling to a reduced Christianity, others have abandoned it altogether.

I was going to name this blog along the lines of "refusing recusancy" with the idea that the Recusant Catholics were driven into hiding. Then I looked it up, and I found that recusancy is a "refusal to submit to established authority: originally the refusal of Roman Catholics to attend services of the Church of England". Actually I do, and I do want to, submit to the established authority of the Church. What I don't want to submit to is political correctness, the culture of death in which we live, the dictatorship of relativism and the need to conform to the majority view of our secularist society just becasue it's easier.

This blog may just be an outlet for my own frustration, or it may be something more. I'll see what happens.