SOCIETY, AND TELEVISION NEWS ITEMS

25/11/2004

This is the way

"In an enterprise the workers should be the shareholders. And an area of enterprise should have its own bank. And the different banks should meet and work together for everyone's benefit. A bank should be there to serve the enterprise and not, as at present, to make money."

Dorothy Sayers on Vocations

17/03/2005

Fr Gresham remembered a talk Dorothy Sayers gave in about 1940. "She told us that she was free to pursue her vocation as a writer, but thought that many others weren't free to follow their vocations. As an author she wrote detective stories to earn money, and then could pursue her vocation with poetry and plays."

"The idea that whatever situation you were in in life was the one God called you to has to be questioned. Some people may find themselves doing back-breaking toil or repetitive production line work. The economic system can frustrate God's will for individuals. So we should do all we can to enable people to follow their vocations."

On sexuality and on marriage

14/08/2003

Fr Gresham spoke of a man from his home town who also was at Mirfield. Fr Gresham (his home town was Helston in Cornwall) said the students from the West Country tended to stick together, but this man didn't join their group. But he was in another group, so that was alright. Later in his life, however, this man was jailed three times for recidivist criminal behaviour, namely the sexual abuse of boys. Fr Gresham said it was inexplicable, his reversion to this behaviour following jail-time. Fr Gresham said there were no signs of this behaviour when he and others knew him.

Fr Gresham thought one of the problems with this sort of behaviour was that the person did not have enough friends. An answer was for the person to have friends he can talk to.

Fr Gresham remembers a priest who said that was the trouble with young married couples. They did not have enough friends. This meant that they turned in on each other. Then if they fall out they have no-one to turn to, to talk over the problem.

Fr Gresham had known couples who in their forties went through sticky patches, but came through those to enjoy a "golden evening" together in their later years. He had known couples "who were love birds to the end".

But "modern marriages aren't lasting, even clergy marriages. Why is that? The homosexual lobby try to separate things. Whereas they should all be considered together as a raft of problems. We need increased thought and discussion about sexuality."

"If homosexual activity is alright why insist on stable and loving relationships? Why not have many relationships?" 

I said that if sex was only to be within marriage, but marriage was not open to homosexuals, what were they to do? Fr Gresham replied that if marriage was not open to them, then they must remain celibate. "After all," he said, "there was a 2000 year old tradition in the Christian Church that restricted sexual activity to within marriage, and that was against homosexual activity. Mosaic law did not forbid fornication; neither, explicitly, did Jesus, but by the time of Christ fornication was generally forbidden and taken for granted as so."

"Christ's and Paul's teachings on marriage revert to Genesis, before the teaching of Moses, when men and women were made for one another. The point about marriage was the two becoming one body."

Divorce and Re-marriage

14/08/2003

Fr Gresham took the Eastern Orthodox Church's line on divorce. He believed a marriage can be said to have died. If that is the case then a divorced person can re-marry in church. He married such a couple once. The woman had been living alone for some years, separated from her husband, who had deserted her. Fr Gresham knew from friends and neighbours that she was the wronged party in her original marriage. Subsequently she formed an attachment with a neighbour, a single man who had looked after his mother until her death. They were the couple Fr Gresham married in his church.

Ages and New Ideas

12/01/2006

I asked Fr Gresham about an article by the Pope in which he considers the 'creative minorities' of Spengler & Toynbee. It was about arresting the decline of European/Western civilisation. (I now cannot remember anything about this article.)

Fr Gresham said he preferred E I Watkin's book about civilisations naturally having 1000 year lifespans corresponding to spring, summer, autumn and winter. Watkin says the West is now in the winter of the Christian civilisation, and that we should look for green shoots arising out of this winter.

"Watkin was a devout Roman Catholic. He and Sister Margaret called for the 9 days between Ascension and Pentecost to be used for praying for the Holy Spirit. It used to be for Christian Unity, but Rome moved it to (?) January 18th"

"Fiore (12th century) had three ages. Up to the time of Christ was the Age of the Father, now we are in the Age of the Son, and we look forward to the Age of the Spirit."

"Something new happened in the Enlightenment. Instead of being stupid and superstitious as in mediaeval times, people began to reason. The idea of the individual was born." 

"Every idea produces its opposite, the thesis produces the antithesis. Then they come together to form something new, the synthesis. This new thing then produces its opposite, an antithesis, and again out of these two is born a new synthesis. And so you have these movements of ideas going on all the time."

"So Marx produced his idea of society, and now we have something new, the idea of the individual in society. We have to see how this develops, and what it produces."

As an example of a development in humankind's abilities, the development of the  capabilities of an individual, Fr Gresham said that people used to read aloud carefully enunciating each syllable. So they were astonished when they saw that St Ambrose could read silently to himself. Up until then people had not done that.

The Answer is Anarchism

09/03/2006

The Enlightenment was a reaction against all the religious strife and wars. People were fed up with it. There was a realisation of the importance of the individual. Then Marxism - the importance of the mass of the people - was a reaction to this." 

"Now there needs to be a synthesis of these two." Fr Gresham maintains this is answered by anarchism, "the maximum freedom for the individual within the community". Fr Gresham said he doesn't like to see the Enlightenment done down. "Robbie Lowe used to do this, but Watkin is kinder to it."

Irish & Spanish Laity

26/02/2004

In Ireland the mass was very dull, but the churches were crowded (in the late 1960's). This has changed now. But if you went into the church during the day you would always find lay people silent on their knees. The same in Spain. One evening I saw young couples in town square. They went into the church for a few minutes, then across to the bar or cafe. There was great devotion amongst the lay people.

Christian Socialist Manifesto

03/03/2005

Fr Gresham and Jack Boggis wrote a two page manifesto or catechism for their view of Christian Socialism. For example, the first brick-makers' strike, the Israelis' refusal to make bricks for the Egyptians, began the process of our salvation. And the Shrine would be Thaxted, and the prophets, a number of famous Anglo-catholic priests.

Verdict on the News

23/02/2006

The guests on television were debating some issue to do with supermarkets versus small shops. Fr Gresham commented with disapprobation that the discussion was "nothing but arguing and competition". And after we had watched Channel 4 news items about a £40 million banknote robbery, fighting in Iraq, and other calamities in the world, Fr Gresham quietly gave his view that, "It's all boring, really". I suppose there was some thinking behind him saying this as, at face value at least, the reports had been varied and full of action.

More Death on the News

09/02/2006

The outcome of the Sion Jenkins murder trial was on the television news. The English husband of the murdered American mother and daughter was extradited to the USA. Fr Gresham said, "There seems to be a death wish about. People seem to be in love with death."

Things in a bad way    (13/03/03)

"In Thessalonians it says evil is restrained by being bound for a time."

"During the Roman empire the Mediterranean was fairly safe to sail on, but after its collapse it was by no means as safe."

Fr Gresham's sister used to let her children play out away from home without a worry.  "These days you can't let your children out of your sight. It is to do with our economic system.  Everyone for himself."  

"In Soviet Russia and in Franco's Spain civil life was fairly law-abiding and peaceful.  Miss Campbell (a retired head-teacher friend of Fr Gresham's), who often visited France and Spain, said that things were now happening in Spain which didn't happen in Fascist times, meaning more crime now."

"Now everything is going to the dogs.  Multinationals collapse, thousands thrown out of their jobs."

"Today we are obsessed by sex, we have sex on the brain, which is a very bad place to have it.  At the beginning of the Sixties something happened, and everything changed.  The Lady Chatterley trial.  Now fiction has subject matter routinely described that puts Lady Chatterley's Lover in shade.  It is sordid material."

"There may be more disability around due to the sins of society in general. The sins of the fathers do live on in the children to the 2^nd and 3^rd generations. It is fact."

30/09/2004

"We see it happening. Kids getting pregnant. Increase in various diseases. Not simply the trouble in Iraq and the Middle East. If God's laws are ignored it is not that God punishes you, it is that there are consequences."

"Heaven is the eternal reality underlying everything. It breaks through to us in time and history. God does not force himself upon us."

17/03/2005

Fr Gresham remembers, in his youth in Cornwall, taking the daughter of the family next door to a dance when they were both in their late teens. "The family trusted me to escort their daughter safely and to return her safely."

Fr Gresham thought we were now "at the stage where the last vestiges of Judeo-Christian morals in society were breaking up."

25/11/2004

Naming of a tower block

There is a tower block of flats next to Fr Gresham's church of St Paul's, Bow Common, that he had a hand in naming. 

"When they were building Elmsleigh Point the council came to me about naming it. I told them there used to be a Dr Barnardo's home on the site. They then used Dr Bernardo's wife's maiden name, Elmsleigh, to name the new block."

08/2004

A Homeland for the Jews 

The Jews should have gone back to Palestine and got on with the Palestinians there, mixed with them and shared the land.

The trouble is, when the Jews and Arabs get together, the Jews out-talk them. The Arabs are like the rural folk, the Jews are cosmopolitan. But they are both Semitic peoples.

It needs to be remembered that when news came of Hitler's death camps for the Jews, the Arabs cheered and supported Hitler.

Women as Bosses

26/02/2004

Fr Gresham said, "In the distant past men used to associate in crowds to hunt and fight. Men are used to crowds. Women are used to small groups, with the children and one or two other women. Women, when they get into positions of authority, become bossy."

I suppose this is not an acceptable thing to say in modern society. But Fr Gresham gives a reason for his assertion; that it is the inheritance of different male and female societal roles and experiences from the distant past. He doesn't, for instance, say bossiness is an essential female quality.

1-12-2004

Scandal in a politician’s private life

"You can't have a leader in society in trouble in his private life in this way. A leader has to be above reproach, especially a home secretary with his responsibilities."

This was in response to a news item about trouble in David Blunkett's private life, before he resigned.

What evil is like
04/02/2004
After a news item about the new owner of Chelsea football club (Abramovitch), Fr Gresham said, "What gets my nationalistic feelings aroused is Chelsea being owned by a Russian billionaire. Really! Evil is ridiculous!"

The Cold War

06/04/2006

Fr Gresham said, "The cold war, nuclear deterrence, was based on fear. Russia was afraid of America, with some justification, and the US was afraid of the USSR. It was all based on fear."

I asked if Russia wouldn't push us around, or invade, if we didn't have nuclear weapons? He didn't think they would. "Also, someone has to make the first move." This last statement applied to someone making the first move to give up their nuclear weapons.