✣ Highlights from the week online
The age of bearing false witness At catholicculture.org, Phil Lawler named the “defining sin of our era”. The Commandment “most conspicuously disregarded in our society today”, Lawler suggested, is “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” It isn’t just everyday lies which come under this commandment; it also applies when a society’s leaders “proclaim a falsehood, and then ask – or demand – that ordinary people do the same”. Politicians perpetrate obvious falsehoods. And it happens in the Church too: many bishops, when confronted with allegations about clerical abuse, accused the complainants of calumny. “In doing so, they bore false witness against honest, faithful Catholics who were asking for justice,” Lawler wrote. Lawler cited Solzhenitsyn’s essay “Live Not By Lies”, which “argued that if ordinary Russians simply refused to accept the lies of the communist ideology, the corrupt regime could not survive. We now know that he was right.” Lawler concluded: “Truth is a powerful weapon; light is a strong disinfectant. A culture that bears false witness cannot indefinitely withstand the power of simple honesty.” The UK: still one foot in the Reformation? The Pew Forum reported on their recent survey of Catholics and Protestants. “In both Western Europe and the United States”, the disagreements of the Reformation “have diminished to a degree that might have shocked Christians in past centuries”. Across Europe and the US, both Catholics and Protestants believe their similarities outweigh their differences. The only exception Pew found was UK Catholics, who believe that Catholicism and Protestantism are more different than similar. The researchers found low levels of practice and of traditional belief among both Catholic and Protestant communities. However, “pockets of religiosity” survive amid secularisation. “For instance, the Netherlands has a relatively high level of disaffiliation, with about half of Dutch adults (48 per cent) describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’ religiously. Yet Dutch Protestants also stand out for some of Europe’s highest reported levels of church attendance, with 43 per cent saying they go to church at least once a week.” Religions of karma and of grace At ncregister.com, Bishop Robert Barron reflected on a claim made by the philosopher Stephen Davis that there are “two basic approaches” to religion. One approach is karma: “we are punished or rewarded according to our moral activities”. The other is grace: “all people are sinners and hence deserving of punishment, but ... God, out of sheer generosity, gives them what they don’t deserve.” It’s true that this gift isn’t given to everyone – but as many Christian thinkers have pointed out, “no one deserves anything”. Moreover, “The whole point of receiving the divine life is to give it away in turn.”
