Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Another Mea Culpea from the Church of England
The Times reports here on a report: "Entitled Responding to Domestic Abuse, the report was written by a group set up by the Archbishops’ Council and contains new guidelines for clergy on how to deal with the problem."
Quite why the archbishops need a council when there are only two of them seems strange of itself, can't they just phone each other up to sort things out?
Now clearly domestic violence is wrong and like with most wrongful acts, I think that punishment should be robust and disproportionate (the offender should get more than they've given). Unsurprisingly the report doesn't call for this, but concentrates on castrating Christianity: "The report ... says that domestic abuse is as “prevalent among Christians” as among other groups". Oh really? What about "honour" killings? I don't seem to remember many Christian ones somehow?
There's more: "It warns clergy that the bride’s traditional marriage vow to “obey” her husband could be used to justify domestic violence as could referring to God as “He” and “Lord”." Well anything can be used to justify domestic violence if you want to twist it so, but no doubt the report is recommending scrapping the traditional vow, (these traditions are all meaningless anyway) and probably that we must stop referring to God as He.
Even the Crucifixion of Christ is criticised: "One serious example, the report notes, is how the theology of self-denial and redemptive suffering in the Crucifixion of Jesus has “undermined people’s recognition of the evils being done to them and implanted masochistic attitudes of acceptance, or even celebration, of their afflictions”." Yes indeed Christ set a bad example, following a "culture of victim hood" really he should have "challenged the behaviour" of the Romans and the Jews. The fact that He ultimately triumphed seems to have escaped the report writers.
There's even more in the article and no doubt the report makes for sad reading, still it's good to see the C of E putting their money to good use, by commissioning reports criticising Christ.
Quite why the archbishops need a council when there are only two of them seems strange of itself, can't they just phone each other up to sort things out?
Now clearly domestic violence is wrong and like with most wrongful acts, I think that punishment should be robust and disproportionate (the offender should get more than they've given). Unsurprisingly the report doesn't call for this, but concentrates on castrating Christianity: "The report ... says that domestic abuse is as “prevalent among Christians” as among other groups". Oh really? What about "honour" killings? I don't seem to remember many Christian ones somehow?
There's more: "It warns clergy that the bride’s traditional marriage vow to “obey” her husband could be used to justify domestic violence as could referring to God as “He” and “Lord”." Well anything can be used to justify domestic violence if you want to twist it so, but no doubt the report is recommending scrapping the traditional vow, (these traditions are all meaningless anyway) and probably that we must stop referring to God as He.
Even the Crucifixion of Christ is criticised: "One serious example, the report notes, is how the theology of self-denial and redemptive suffering in the Crucifixion of Jesus has “undermined people’s recognition of the evils being done to them and implanted masochistic attitudes of acceptance, or even celebration, of their afflictions”." Yes indeed Christ set a bad example, following a "culture of victim hood" really he should have "challenged the behaviour" of the Romans and the Jews. The fact that He ultimately triumphed seems to have escaped the report writers.
There's even more in the article and no doubt the report makes for sad reading, still it's good to see the C of E putting their money to good use, by commissioning reports criticising Christ.
Tags: Church of England, political correctness, domestic violence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
