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So saith my friend Paul Collits, who's inexplicably left Waipukurau for Sydney. In a piece for the Australian "literary and cultural journal" Quadrant, he writes:
The British novelist, playwright and
non-fiction author Piers Paul Read has written about the great train robbers,
about air crashes in the Andes and about the Knights Templar. It is a book called Hell and Other
Destinations, though, that has immediate relevance in the Age of
Folau. Read’s book is a collection of
his essays which “… presents a selection of Read's most elegant and memorable
writings on subjects ranging from Christians and Jews, liberation theology,
and The Da Vinci Code to sexual desire, saints and Pope
Benedict XVI.”
Those who support Folau, increasingly with
their hard earned, it seems, fall into three distinct camps. There are those who support what he said
about unrepentant sinners going to hell, those who (it seems) loathe what he
said but, following Voltaire (or whoever actually uttered the words first),
will defend to the death, or somewhere approaching death, his right to say it,
and, finally, those who couldn’t give a rat’s but still go with the freedom of
speech defence.
Those who oppose Folau are mostly just one
big blob. They think he is a bigot and
that he should be silenced. Some think
he is a rich bigot. There are others who
are not on his side, though. These don’t
especially think he is a bigot, or don’t much care, but think the dispute is
simply about contract law. They do not
see any bigger freedom of religion picture.
It is worth looking a bit more closely at
Folau’s supporters, for they are an interesting bunch. Those who support his rights to speak on
religious matters but feel the need to express abhorrence at his expressed
views are especially interesting, and their statements tell us much about the
world we now inhabit.
One noteworthy exponent of this position is
Andrew Bolt. According to a Bolt opinion
piece this week, Folau’s views are “vile”.
Bolt referred in passing to his gay relatives and friends being hurt,
and then expressed the view that Folau was especially out of line for
“comparing” homosexuals to liars, thieves, etc.
By now, we all know St Paul’s list.
Others have concurred with Bolt’s
assertion. “Bigot” is a term often used
in this connection.
Another Folau critic, a junior News Corp
reporter (who in his spare time, “likes to eat”), one Sam Clench, thinks Folau
is “clueless”. In a simply awful (perhaps,
at a stretch, vile) piece of which anyone calling him or herself a journalist
should be ashamed, the Clench boy brings out all the big ones – Folau is rich,
he will use his winnings to buy a yacht, he is bigoted, he is hateful, he is a
hypocrite for pretending that Christianity is about love, he is selective in
his use of the Bible, he is judgmental, he says horrible things, and, of course
– he is homophobic! That seals it, then. His legal case is a “tantrum”. He is wallowing in self-pity. Goodness.
Oh, and that wonderful business, GoFund Me,
supports kids with leukemia, just by the way.
Go figure. And lots of Wallabies
also don’t like what Folau said. Well
that proves the case!
What is worst, perhaps, is that Clench
almost – almost – goes so far as to link Folau’s hate speech with youth
homosexual suicide. This was the Ian
Roberts line, of course, which, mercifully, got little traction. Because it is simply absurd.
Then there is Josh Bornstein, a workplace
relations lawyer in the public eye, who has called Folau’s views “ridiculous”,
even “whacky”, while at the same time suggesting the case is very important for
our society and for freedom of religion.
Whacky?
Vile? This is a quite a
backhander to Christians by the freedom of speech brigade. Just letting you know – we think you are
kooks, what with the talk of hell, sin and stuff, even though we will support
your right to be seen to be kooks.
Of course, anyone is free to slag off at
Christian views. They often do, and they
do much, much worse. I heard in a homily
this very morning that around 43 million Christians have been martyred over the
past two millennia. Over half were
slaughtered in the 20th century.
The killings and persecutions continue, indeed they multiply. Insults like vile and whacko, are not even
flesh wounds in comparison to the much harder experiences Christians endure,
often short of death but typically including the loss of wealth, income and
serenity.
Christians also endure the ignominy of
having to live in what Pope John Paul II termed a culture of death – of rampant
abortions and killing of the aged – where crimes are dressed up as individual
rights, of the sight of men being wed to men and prancing up and down Taylor
Square once a year in early March, marching not to protest against the absence
of their rights, but to denounce ours.
Is Bolt correct? Are Folau’s views vile? Well, if they are, then until about eight
minutes ago, the majority of Western populations, then not only believing but
also practising Christians, also subscribed to these vile views. Now, of course, many still believing
Christians would agree with Bolt. The
Church of Nice, as a Kiwi friend has aptly popularised a term borrowed from The
Church Militant group, doesn’t hold much to Folau’s “fundamentalist” views of
Christianity. One American priest (Fr
James Martin), either a champion or notorious depending on one’s perspective,
speaks often and publicly of “building bridges” and of pastoral care rather
than calls to repentance. His ilk feel
they have a friend in the current Pope.
The Gallen mafia in the Catholic Church, often aligned with the
profiteers of the sexual revolution, might even be called a Catholic Gaystapo.
Bolt is, in effect, what might be termed a
post Vatican Two atheist (with apologies to the late Paddy McGuinness AO). Bolt especially doesn’t believe in what
Christians used to believe in, or what he thinks they should believe in now. He has said (in a recent interview with the
American writer Rod Dreher) that he just doesn’t get the Church’s “opposition”
to gays. Bolt’s non-comprehension of the
Christian position on homosexuality is similar to Clench’s charge of Christians
“condemning them to hell for their sexuality”.
(Bolt’s post Vatican Two atheism reminds
one of the American philosopher Robert Nozick’s quip in Anarchy, State and
Utopia about “normative sociology”, the study of what the causes of social
problems should have been. This
is an hilarious take on political correctness, a marvellous vignette in a
delightful, though generally dense and difficult, book).
In other words, if there were a hell, then
it certainly would not be full of the loving gay couples of Bolt’s
acquaintance. Bolt is creating his own
heaven, even though it does not, for him, exist. Imagine!
What about Folau’s “comparing” gays to
“real” sinners? This is a canard, Mr
Bolt. We are not picking on gays, Master
Clench. We are all sinners. We all need to repent, in order to gain the
eternal rewards Christians expect and in which they believe. Folau did not “compare” or “liken” (as
another critic put it) homosexuals to (worse?) sinners. He merely stated that homosexual acts are,
and remain, for Christians, sinful, in the same way, post the Fall, that other
sins are, well, sins. And those who
commit sins are, well, sinners. Good
heavens!
Which of these views are vile, Andrew?
·
"If you love me, you will
keep my commands" (Jesus Christ)?
·
"Go and teach all
nations" (Jesus Christ)?
·
There is sin? It is real?
·
There is a hell (and a heaven,
contra John Lennon)?
·
Unforgiven serious sins merit
hell?
·
God gets to decide which
activities contravene His commands? We do not?
·
God judges what is in men's
hearts?
·
Justice is on the other side of
mercy?
·
The laws of nature, held to be
so since Moses, confirmed by the Lord and by Aquinas (who rated homosexual acts
at very, very high up on the list)?
·
All men are fallen?
·
Sins have been named, and named
clearly, in black and white (St Paul, the Didache, the commandments written
down by the Apostles - "thou shall not commit sodomy")
·
God has revealed to us his
laws?
·
"God created them male and
female" (Genesis)
Seems Andrew thinks it is vile to be a
mainstream, believing Christian.
What is actually going on here is that the
Bolt view is creating a secular definition of sin and of hell. A re-imagining of religion and of Christian
belief – by a non-believer! In Bolt’s
world, there is a new list of sins. A
secular ten commandments, if you will.
For the secular progressives, the things that would condemn one to hell,
if it existed, include hate speech, homophobia, cheating (some sins still
count), supporting George Pell, murder (still), paedophilia (still fashionable
as a sin, but who knows in the future, given the beliefs of some on the fringes
of the sex revolution), climate crimes and Islamophobia.
According to that “right wing refugee”,
Rita Panahi:
If you ask me,
the only people going to hell are clowns who recline their seats on short
flights.
Setting aside Rita’s sinner, there is no
room on the secular sin list for authentic Christian sins, or little room at
any rate. No gays in hell, only serial
killers. Oh, and just about everyone
goes to heaven. In other words, our sin
list trumps yours. We get to pick the
sins now.
Here is how one Christian writer has
contextualised hell. According to Stefanie Nicholas:
The so-called
“merciful” view of salvation-for-basically-everyone-except-Jeffrey-Dahmer that
has come into vogue in recent years has no similar endorsement beyond its
popularity.
Yes, the no-gays-in-hell view resonates
with the times. Here is Stefanie again:
I believe that
viewing Hell as the “baseline” — the default for human beings without Christ,
due to the reality of sin entering the world — makes the most theological sense
within the defined dogmas of our faith. I also believe that the good fruits of
this view of Hell are obvious. Truly working out my salvation with fear and
trembling helps me to have the courage to speak the truth about what our faith
teaches in other areas, even when it means facing severe criticism and even
hatred. It’s worth it. Helping to lead one soul away from the utter horror of
eternal Hell is worth anything this world can dish out.
I just hope that Israel Folau keeps
believing that “it is worth it”.
Yes, there is now precious little overlap
between secular society’s favourite sins and the Christian faith’s rather
Mosaic list, later perfected and simplified by Jesus Christ. The Folau critics, even those who respect
free speech rights, want the new sin list to take precedence over the old, and
even to banish the Christian sin list from the public square. The Christian sin list is so
day-before-yesterday. Now we (the new
ruling class) get to pick the sin list.
Our sin list trumps yours.
This secularist misunderstanding (wilful
perhaps) of the Christian understanding of sin is at the heart of much of the
angst over Folau and his Christian supporters.
It is a failing that must be called out, and loudly.
The distinctions among Folau’s supporters also
provides a neat, current example of the things that divide libertarians (the
free speech obsessives) from social conservatives who, while accounting for
differences of theology and emphasis, pretty much support what Folau actually
said. Indeed, they are glad he said what
he did, both as a corrective to sloppy and indolent preaching by the pastors of
our age who have forgotten sin and hell – “the four last things” – and as a
rebuke of those in society who cherish, indeed champion, the godless,
anything-goes era we inhabit.
Gary Scarrabelotti has written very well on
this.
There is, in fact, a sizable gap in the
things that supporters of Folau believe, and support. Does it matter? In the short term, of course not. As the millions pile up in support of the
legal challenge, no one is much worrying about why those who support religious
freedom do so. We just want to win the
case, and, for a good many of us, to rub Rugby Australia’s and Peter
Fitzsimons’ noses in it.
Longer term, whatever the final resting
places of our twenty-first century brothers and sisters – hell or other
destinations – we would probably do well to drop the right-of-centre virtue
signalling, that urge that is so often apparent in our right-of-centre punditocracy
to tug the forelock to our progressive betters who occupy the cultural
commanding heights among the ruling class of the age.
Rather than calling mainstream Christian
views vile and whacky, Mr Bolt and others, instead ponder the downsides of merely
accepting as a given Gaystapo’s core argument, the consequences of which are
grave here on earth, whatever there might or might not be on the other
side. Those who stop at the freedom of
speech argument and park, ignore or worse, chastise (largely Christian) people
who accept the content, meaning and import of Folau’s position, are merely
fuelling the coming turbo charged age of persecution.
And I do not even need to quote Martin
Niemoller’s gut wrenching poem to finish.
Paul Collits
30 June 2019
Mr Collits writes well and intelligently. So how much more disappointed I am that he advances the homosexualist agenda by using the term "gay" for homosexual.
ReplyDeletePaul Collits says:
ReplyDeleteThere you go. I very seldom use it myself. Must have slipped through.