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Christian
leaders moan about their society
Church of England leaders
Dr Williams called for a return to a moral society
in which the state recognises "wider considerations
than those of immediate profit and security...
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: BRITISH SOCIETY BROKEN
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph,
Archbishop Rowan Williams
said that the Church of England intends to take a far more high profile stand
on moral issues than it has in recent years. As part of his moral drive, he • Called for abortion laws to be tightened and for Gordon Brown to impose tough constraints on medical experiments on human embryos. • Attacked the cult of celebrity and accused broadcasters including the BBC and Channel 4 of encouraging a culture of "shamelessness" with shows such as Big Brother. • Insisted that the Prince of Wales must be the "defender of the faith", not of all faiths when he becomes King.
But the archbishop's most outspoken comments centre on children's upbringing, an issue highlighted in The Daily Telegraph in Sep07 after more than 250 experts claimed in a letter that a generation of youngsters was being "contaminated" by addictive computer games, over-testing, increased traffic and a fear of strangers that meant they hardly ever played outside.
Archbishop admitted: 'Yes, our society is broken' [MY NOTE: As usual, Christian leaders will speak in bland generalities; the ruling classes must not be offended. They cannot offer concrete prescriptions or denounce the unchristian and unjust structures put in place by the state that subscribes to the neo-liberal ideology. In fact, the C of E has close ties with the state and is part of the establishment. Read what Anglican cleric Kenneth Leech says on race & class in the C of E.]]
Archbishop Williams admitted at last "Politics is so much about human issues now. We are in a phase of our culture where the fragmentation of society is far more obvious. It's not just families, it is different ethnic communities and economic groups. We talk about access and equality the whole time, but in practice we all seem to live very segregated lives."
"Outside my front door in Lambeth I see a society so dramatically different from across the river or in Canterbury. There is a level of desolation and loneliness and dysfunctionality which many people have very little concept of. If you sense that the world you live in is absolutely closed, that for all sorts of reasons you are unable to move outside, if nothing gives you aspirations, there is an imprisonment in that, there is a kind of resentment that comes with that and a frustration that can boil over in violence and street crime." “Inequality is just a symptom of a wider moral vacuum. I don't think that the huge wealth of some is the cause (of the problems), it is more that society just wants to reward business success and celebrity. If you're a teenager in Peckham neither of those are easily accessible." "We are too celebrity obsessed, we have got into a dangerous cycle where fame is an objective in itself." His children are 11 and 19. "I sometimes sit with them and watch The X Factor and it is heartbreaking to see people who plead with judges to get through because they just want to be famous so intensely," he says. Broadcasters are contributing to the moral decline. "There is a gladiatorial streak in the entertainment business now where increasingly humiliation is the way forward. That worries me, there is a kind of sadism that can't be good for us. It is the building-up and the pulling-down of contestants, it is pushing people into situations where they expose their vulnerability, encouraging a culture of shamelessness." One of the Archbishop's key concerns is how the society we live in is damaging children. "What is lacking in children's lives is space. They are pressed into a testing culture, or even into a gang culture, they are bullied and manipulated until they fit in, they never have any time to develop in their own space. A lot of it is yearning for love, they want to fit in, if their families are as chaotic as some of them are, gangs give them a sense of belonging." "We have got obsessional about pedophiles. A generation ago people would have smiled rather wryly about a scoutmaster or a schoolteacher caught in some improper activity, now we know the damage. I doubt that there are more people with perversions, we are just more aware of it. That is right but unfortunately it also carries the wrong kind of awareness and people have become overprotective towards children, they are stifling them in a different way." Happiness lessons, suggested by the Government, are not the answer, he says. "Happiness happens when you are not thinking about it, when you are inhabiting your body comfortably… when you feel at peace with yourself and the world. When we live overprotective, overstimulated lives we expect more all the time, we find it hard to be unself-conscious and just do what we do, we over-analyse."
Catholic leaders
‘People (in the West) have a lifestyle
directed towards possessing and enjoying.
During his Austrian visit in June 1998, the same Pope spoke of ‘a heartless Europe which only cares for money and careers…’. On World Peace Day (1 Jan 1999), the Pope attacked ‘materialistic consumerism in which the exaltation of the individual and self-satisfaction… have become the ultimate goal of life.’
Note all the ingredients of the cap malaise are suggested: a) cap sys, market forces, consumerism, money, exaltation of the individual; b) selfishness, gratification, possessing, moral poverty (spiritual void).
========================== Above, list (a) enumerates the causes/driving forces and list (b) the effects. The causes are reducible to twin defective economic & philosophical structures eating at western society: capitalism (neo-lib version) and individualism. The first is all about making money by promoting consumption but ignoring social & environmental costs. Workers become merely cogs in the profit-making machine or as Pope JPII put it, ‘a mere function of the production process.’ But note that the Pope does not condemn the capitalist system and propose some kind of high level summit to debate a concrete alternative programme in its place. He could
have alaborated: He could have commented on the monopolistic media that promote private interests and spin away on-going injustices. The mainstream media, corporate owned and market-driven, assault the senses with endless adverts, and distract them with soaps, chat shows, celeb lives, sex scandals – all in an attempt to deflect the attention of the masses from more serious concerns or attempts to question the system. Capitalist pundits will blame human nature which we are told is inherently rotten.
Modern man shorn of family and community support, and estranged from the world of nature and spirit, is alienated and rootless, seeking to escape into fantasy and self-gratification. =========================================
Vatican warns of dangers in yoga D Telegraph, 15Dec89 Christians have been warned about the “dangers and errors” of oriental medication and prayer techniques in a 26-page document issued by the Vat’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. The doc, issued with the full approval of the pope and signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, said the “spiritual restlessness of modern life” was leading people to “seek interior peace and psychic balance in religious movements and techniques outside the Christian tradition.” [The crucial question is why doesn’t Xty satisfy modern man??]
The doc deals mainly with the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism. The doc states: “Getting closer to God is not based on any technique,” and warns Christians who sit cross-legged to meditate against the “pleasing sensations which resemble well-being produced by some exercises… But to take such feelings for the authentic consolations of the Holy Spirit would be a totally erroneous way of conceiving spiritual life.” [But how much of a spiritual life does Rat have? He excels in the intellectual argument & abstract formulations. Underlying the pre-occupation about non-X practices is fear that Xty is declining while the other faiths retain their vigour.]
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