I Tweet Therefore I Am An Indulged

The Catholic Church may refuse to join the 21st century when it comes to gender recognition, have less children and Gays are human beings issues but has embraced social networking, Twitter to be precise, in an act that can only be described as a coup that even touchy-feely Jesus may not have thought of.

The Catholic Church has a system of 'granted indulgences' whereby allocations are given to people who show remorse over their sinful selves to lessen the time they will have to spend in purgatory. Indulgences are mainly 'granted' (a verb that the Church seems to use)to believers who do things like climb the Sacred Steps in Rome. The updated version of 'granted' ( I don't know if this verb can be conjugated as in 'he grants', they grant' so I am going to stick to 'granted') will apply to the Catholic World Youth Day being held in Rio next week. Those who cannot attend in person for whatever reason (e.g a Catholic family with many children to feed that even a trip to the airport for the children to gawp at planes taking off and landing would be too expensive) and who follow the proceedings live on Twitter will be 'granted' (that word again) an indulgence. The only requirement is that people must pray with 'requisite devotion' while following the live stream.

What I want to know is how the Church will police the 'requisite devotion' part and how much time allowance will be granted? Will it work like the Big Society Time Banks (many of which have folded and there is a lesson there) where people exchanged favours for favours? How will this time be recorded and transmitted to hell so Satan knows when to turn the furnace off? Perhaps there are no furnaces in purgatory. I am getting my theology mixed up in an attempt to understand this confused act of the Vatican which embraces modernity in a way that only makes sense to non-questioning followers. 

Food Banks Deserve More Than Tin Cans

Poverty can be a humiliating and extremely distressing experience especially in the current political climate where those on welfare are stigmatised and demonised almost on a daily basis. It cannot be easy as it is and it must be pretty galling when someone who is titled, Lord Freud, stands up in a bastion of class symbolism, House of Lords, and uses the word 'charitable' to describe the provision of food banks.

Lord Freud who is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions has special responsibility for welfare reform but denies the causal link between the cuts in jobs, benefits and the decreased ability to pay for food which is rising in costs. When asked about food banks in the House he said: "Local provision that reflects the requirements of local areas is absolutely right. Charitable provision is to be admired and supported."

Given that the number of people who use food banks is rising every week, latest estimate puts this at 500,000, it can hardly be called a 'local areas' problem. Such a high statistic would suggest that the provision of food banks is targetting a national problem. While charitable provision is to be 'admired and supported' let us remember that we are talking about something more than present giving at Christmas time to those who cannot afford to give presents. Food banks offer basis sustenance - food. The clue is in the title. To suggest that such a service is to be 'admired' implies that it is an optional service. Those who would go hungry otherwise will disagree that food banks are an optional service.

Taking this a step further if food banks are an essential services does it also mean that the food which we donate ought to consist of the most basic of foods? The whole welfare debate always suggests that beneficiaries ought to be entitled to a bare minimum and no more as a form of punishment. I think that recipients of food parcels must be sick of carting home tinned foods. Do the poor deserve better? Yes, they do. I often add chocolates, biscuits and other treats to the usual staple donations. Just because one is poor in this day and age does not mean that one has to live as if in a Dickensian world. 

Being A Christian Mother Is Hard Sometimes

The 'Feast of the Visitation' is a timely reminder of the poignancy of the untold joys and hopes that one has during the pregnancy contrasted with the harsh reminders almost everyday this week about what a cruel world it is that we live in where a stranger with hardly a flicker of conscience can steal your child away for good.

It was heart wrenching this week to watch April Jones's parents make the daily visit to court for the trial of the man who murdered their little girl. Their impact statement to the court in which they spoke about April's loss was heart breaking. When one hears of such grief caused by evil atrocities is it understandable that a loosening of the binds of the Christian faith could happen? This happened to my daughter. She started to question the existence of God and, as a secondary question, to question where God was if he existed when April was being murdered.

I tried my best to answer along the lines of 'people choose evil over God and goodness thus severing their ties with Jesus' and, sadly, it sounded trite even to me especially because the evil involved a little child. The reason it sounded trite to me is because my particular weak Christian spot is over the abuse and mistreatment of children. The 'evil versus good' argument works for me in matters of non-violent conflicts such as financial impropriety but when it comes to the victims being helpless little human beings I must confess that I fall flat on my face of faith.

Coral Jones with April Jones

Anyway, I trundled on with my mini-sermon about how God was looking after April now and pointed out the faith of Rev Kathleen Rogers who is the Anglican vicar in the village of Machynlleth where April Jones lived. Rev Kathleen Rogers, worked tirelessly to keep people going last year (when April went missing) through prayer and faith. She was on TV this week after the guilty verdict was announced and her faith was a consolation to me in my predicament.

The Christian motherhood narrative this week, for me, has been one of making a transition from being able to explain God's supreme being without much difficulty to encountering near-rigid obstacles in doing so as a response to my daughter growing up and questioning her world, including her faith. 

Is the EDL a potent force?

In one word, my answer is 'no'. I attended the demonstration today to protest against the English Defence League (EDL). I stood with those who had come to protest against the hatred and racist behaviour of the EDL. Tears sprang to my eyes when the anti-racists who mainly consisted of white British people shouted anti-racism slogans. Britain has indeed come a long way from when I first came to this country in 1981. Racism was an acceptable part of British life. When I sat down in public transport vehicles people would get up and sit elsewhere. I often chose a seat next to an ethnic person, there was always an empty one. 

Freedom of speech is a fundamental right. Is freedom of speech filled with hatred a right or are the dynamics of war, religion and immigration being interspersed in ways that are eliciting a new response? These days can still be classed as the immediate aftermath of the death of Drummer Lee Rigby and the emotional responses on display seem to convey something from grief for a poor man who was targeted because of his profession to the death being politicized.  

Notable of these are the disgruntled citizens of the far right persuasion who seem only capable of identifying themselves through the concept of patriotism. Roughly speaking, their notion of patriotism seems to mean that no else of any other colour is welcome in Britain because of the perceived social problems that these 'outsiders' bring. The far right conflates all its' prejudices with the intellectual ability of a newt. 

For instance, it was immigrants who brought war to the streets of London and Islam is the cause of this. Following this logic, if all Muslims left Britain it would be a safe place because people of other religions do not commit crimes. Ahem, my home was burgled sometime ago by an Irish man. I know someone who was stabbed by an English man. A non-Muslim Asian GP was convicted last week for sexually assaulting female patients. If I carry on with anymore examples I will sound like I am accusing everyone of some sort of crime but the point is that Britain will no more be safer or dangerous than it is now. Why, though, don't the EDL grasp this? 

Numerous jokes are being made on Twitter about the so-called stupidity of the EDL. The picture right at the bottom of this blog post is doing the rounds for the low standard of literacy that it conveys. Funny as these are I do think that anti-EDL people miss the point. It is not stupidity nor a low standard of education that makes for a radical. If we go down that path then opportunities will be missed to correct the wrongs that lead to radicalism of any sort. 

I dislike the EDL intensely and they will despise me equally, I am sure, for being an Asian living in Britain. But the urgent need to combat radicalism lies in persuading and teaching people that the concept of citizenship can rest on other factors apart from patriorism like inclusion, the greater good of society and a feeling of belonging. 

The powers that make up the inter-faith dialogue in Britain must carry on delivering messages about inclusion and tolerance. 

The Jim Royle Take on Welfare

Below is a fantastic article written by Ricky Tomlinson in the Guardian that debunks the welfare myths. 

I urge you to read the rest on the site.  

"Welfare reform, my arse. Has Jim Royle parked his chair, feet up, telly on, in the corridors between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions? Employing him as adviser can be the only explanation for the utter rubbish that boils forth from this government on welfare.

Who else could have dreamed up the bedroom tax, a policy so stupid it forces people to leave their homes and drag themselves around the country in search of nonexistent one-bedroom flats?

That one has to be the result of too many hours in front of Jeremy Kyle (no offence) with the heating on full and a can of super-strength lager. It seems as if that is how this government views ordinary people: feckless and useless – poor, because they brought it on themselves, deliberately.

Maybe the cabinet is confused. Twenty-three millionaires in the one room can get like that. But do you know what, enough. Let's call this government's welfare policy what it is – wrong, nasty and dishonest.

Off the top of my head, I can list 10 porkies they are spinning to justify the latest stage of their attack on our 70-year-old welfare state."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/02/ten-lies-told-about-welfare

Good Friday Pop Up Church Waterloo Station

I must have had the most amazing of Good Friday experiences when I was part of this pop church at Waterloo Station this morning. It was organised by The Oasis Church, run by Rev Steve Chalke, and supported by the churches in Lambeth, London. We normally gather underneath the clock in Waterloo Station and sing hymns in a sedate manner but this time the service set the station alight with the banging of steel drums. Hundreds gathered to watch. It was a testament to the innovation that lies in the way the Christian message can be spread.

What, no limousine?

Amid the vast coverage on the election of Pope Francis one story seems to stand out most prominently in the way it is being repeated countless times. This story is about limousines. When Pope Francis was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he shunned limousines and, instead, travelled around in buses. This simple fact is being repeated as some piece of stark evidence to demonstrate that the Pope is a man of the poor. Further credence is given to this 'man of the poor' image by more stories about how he lived in a simple apartment and cooked his own meals.

What I want to know is how all this stacks up to the new Pope actually fighting the causes of poverty as well as empathising with the outcomes of poverty? Is he going to advocate the use of contraception so that poor parents will actually be able to feed the children that they already have instead of spreading the gloom of hunger to all their brood? Is he going to get involved with the social policies of those countries where the Catholic religion is heavily interwoven into the government social policy making processes so as to create inequalities?

Eamon Duffy who is Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge University writes in today's Times' newspaper that Pope Francis is 'no liberal' because he 'sternly resisted the social and religious radicalism' that swept through the order of the Argentinian Jesuits in the 1970s.

I wait to see whether Pope Francis will make a difference in an ever increasing world of global inequalities.