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Other NewsParish Soccer Match | Anglicans and the Eucharist | Da Vinci Code - What are the facts? | Parish Communications Committee | Balance Your Life | Chinese Proverb Parish Soccer MatchThis was a new venture for the parish – in addition to the Annual Hockey Match; it was decided to hold a Parish Soccer Match. We met at noon on Easter Monday in The King’s Hospital. It wasn’t quite “jumpers for goalposts”, as the soccer pitches hadn’t been set up, but we managed admirably with a selection of flags marking out the pitch. Robert Lawson selected the teams and the match began, refereed by Ada Lawson. It was quite an even match and all ages were playing – the Anders family were out in full force, with John, Thomas, Rory and Ian playing and Lesley touch judging, Robert, Theo and Paul Lawson played while Ada refereed. Semi and Rolus Olusa played and their father Muyiwa rolled on and off (Rom and Mo supported)! Dave and Ben Garrett played and Ros touch judged. David Patton wowed us with his brilliance, as did Karl O’Donoghue, although the latter did so more cautiously – minding himself for his wedding a week later! James and Emily Dobson played – Emily adding a touch of glamour to the match (!) and Valerie and Tip were the gofers – to collect the ball! The match was fairly played – a few diving tackles and Robert Lawson was almost awarded a yellow card for misuse of the English language!! I did witness a player kicking the ball back to his goalie and the goalie picked it up, but I was assured that this was quite legal in 7’s soccer! The final score was 6-5 to David Patton’s team and quite a few of us adjourned to The Deadman’s Inn for refreshments. Thanks are due to The King’s Hospital for allowing us the use of the pitch and well done to all who played. Looking forward to next years match! Ros Garrett
Anglicans and the Eucharist
The controversy over the concelebration of Mass in Drogheda on Easter Sunday has once again ignited a discussion about the Church of Ireland’s view of what happens to the bread and wine at Holy Communion; more heat being generated than light. No official theology has ever laid down: this brief article summarises the wide range of views in the Anglican Communion. Anglican Eucharistic theology is extremely divergent in practice, ranging from transubstantiation to memorialism, with most Anglicans placing themselves somewhere in the middle. Just about every Eucharistic theology imaginable is represented somewhere in the Anglican Communion. Anglicans and Roman Catholics declared that they had "substantial agreement on the doctrine of the Eucharist" in the Windsor Statement on Eucharistic Doctrine from the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Consultation and the Elucidation of the ARCIC Windsor Statement. The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation insists that the material substance of the bread and wine (sometimes called “the accidents”), being part of what is open to the senses, is in no way altered, and that the philosophical-sense substance or inner reality is "converted" into that of the body and blood of Christ. High Church Anglicans tend to believe in The Real (Bodily) Presence. A minority of Anglo-Catholics adhere to transubstantiation (despite its apparent denunciation in Article 28 of the 39 Articles); the majority of High Church Anglicans do not and are content simply to let the mystery remain a mystery. In practice, High Church parishes tend to celebrate the Eucharist weekly (or more frequently) and prefer the term "Eucharist" or even "Mass". Reservation and adoration of the sacrament are common practice among many High Anglicans. Low Church Anglicans, on the other hand, tend to reject belief in the Real (Bodily) Presence as well as reservation and adoration of the sacrament and adopt a Calvinistic or Zwinglian view of the Eucharist, resembling views held by other Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians and Baptists. The Calvinistic view is sometimes called “receptionism”: while all receive the bread and wine, only in those who are worthy recipients, truly faithful, does “Christ's actual presence penetrate to the heart of the believer more nearly than food swallowed with the mouth can enter in." The views of Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli stated that the Lord’s Supper is a memorial of the death of Christ: a simple reminder, but that nothing miraculous occurs. This is sometimes called “memorialism”; and is often mistakenly believed by Roman Catholics and others to be The Anglican Position, whereas in reality it is only a view held by small minority. Low Church parishes tend to celebrate the Eucharist less frequently (e.g. monthly, but this varies from place to place) and prefer the terms "Holy Communion" or "Lord's Supper". Between the High and Low Church positions lies the view that Anglicanism (as a Broad Church) permits a range of theological views, each of which (with the possible exception of the Roman Catholic notion of transubstantiation) is an equally welcome expression of eucharistic theology within the Anglican context. The Eucharist is a mystery and we should wary of attempts to “explain” it. CS Lewis expressed it best: “Christ’s command was: ‘Take, eat’, not ‘Take, understand’”.
Da Vinci Code - What are the facts?As the film version of the Da Vinci Code opens in our cinemas, a frequent question asked by readers of Dan Brown’s book “How much of the novel’s depiction of historical events, people, artwork, and institutions is correct?” The short answer is “Not much.” Of course, the book is fiction; an enjoyable, fast paced novel. However, the author does claim that the background is factual and some of this has been upsetting and disturbing to Christians, with claims that, for example, Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered children. But Christians should welcome the fact that early Christian history, the nature of scripture and the truth of gospels have never been so widely discussed. This is a real chance to show enquirers that Christianity does make sense, and that the gospels contain the truth about Jesus. So here is a brief look at just a few of the claims made in Brown’s novel and on his web site. The Divinity of Jesus Much attention has been given to The Da Vinci Code’s claim that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. But an even more audacious claim of the novel is that the divinity of Jesus was first raised and established at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, and that prior to that time, no one—not even Jesus’ followers—believed Jesus was anything more than a “mortal prophet” and great man. There is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, dating back to Jesus’ time on earth, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was divine. In his seminal study, Early Christian Doctrines, noted scholar J.N.D. Kelly writes that “the all but universal Christian conviction in the [centuries prior to the Council of Nicaea] had been that Jesus Christ was divine as well as human. The most primitive confession had been ‘Jesus is Lord’ [Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11], and its import had been elaborated and deepened in the apostolic age.” The Council of Nicaea did not define that Jesus, the Son of God, was divine (since that was accepted by all Christians) but addressed the issue of the exact relationship between the Son and the Father: Are they equal? One in substance? Two Persons? The Council specifically addressed and condemned the popular heresy of that time, called Arianism, which insisted that the Son was a lesser god, created by the Father at some point in time and not eternally existent. The Gospels Dan Brown gets many of his ideas about Jesus from “gospels” such as The Gospel of Thomas which he claims are more accurate accounts of the life of Christ than the 4 classic canonical gospels. These books come a disparate group of early Christian heretics known as the “Gnostics”. However, it is widely acknowledged by scholars (not necessarily men and women of faith) that the four canonical gospels are close to the time of Jesus, and certainly closer than any other sources. Matthew is generally dated to about AD70 (in Greek; an Aramaic version may be earlier); Mark to about AD60or 70; Luke to about AD80 and John to about AD90 or 100. These datings are relatively uncontroversial. It is possible to arrive at a fairly certain version of the original texts of these Gospels by means of the thousands of early manuscripts and manuscript fragments, in multiple translations, of these Gospels. A fragment of John’s Gospel exists (in the Chester Beatty library) that has been uncontroversially dated to AD125, which is extremely close. These resources mean that we have far greater certainty about the authentic text of the Gospels than about almost any other ancient human document. The content of these Gospels has what has been called the “ring of truth”. Consider some of their striking features: They include occasional outright claims to be eyewitness reports. They are sober, relating the terrible events of Jesus’ passion and death without the smallest editorial comment or reflection, and passing over the nearly thirty years of Jesus’ life prior to his ministry, without comment. They basically corroborate each other; such discrepancies as do exist are minor, and because they are minor they actually confirm the authenticity of the texts and the multitude of sources – after all, it would have been so easy for the Church to tidy up these discrepancies over the centuries, but instead she has reverently conserved even the perplexing and troublesome bits. They relate historical and geographical details that can be corroborated from archaeological and textual evidence outside the New Testament. They are honest, reporting Jesus’ obscure sayings and deeds and describing with painful candour how silly and dull-witted the Apostles sometimes were. Our present-day “canon” or list of New Testament documents was basically settled fairly early on. The documents themselves (27 of them) were in existence by the end of the first century; they were in wide circulation and collated as a canon (with one or two minor exceptions, e.g. II Peter) by the end of the second century. Compare with this the dating and content of the two dozen or so other texts outside the New Testament that purport to be about Jesus. They are late in date (the one that is probably the earliest of these non-canonical ‘gospels’, the Gospel of Thomas, is likely from about AD140; it isn’t a continuous narrative but a collection of 114 sayings). They tend to avoid historical and geographical detail and include often fantastical stories and sayings that bear no resemblance to the Jesus we meet in the canonical gospels. The Jesus of the gnostic writings (like the recently discovered Gospel of Judas) is rarely recognizable as a Jewish carpenter, teacher, and prophet dwelling in first century Palestine; instead, he is often described as a phantom-like creature who lectures at length about the “deficiency of aeons”, “the mother”, “the Arrogant One”, and “the archons”—all terms that only the gnostic elite would comprehend, hence their secretive gnostic character. In reality, the “gnostic gospels” aren’t gospels at all in the sense of the four canonical gospels, which are filled with narrative, concrete details, historical figures, political activity, and details about social and religious life. On this point, as on others, Brown has it completely wrong and backwards. Leonardo da Vinci On a webpage titled “Bizarre True Facts from The Da Vinci Code . . .”, Brown writes that Leonardo was a “prankster and genius” who is “widely believed to have hidden secret messages within much of his artwork.” Widely believed by whom? It’s difficult to find any reputable art scholar or historian who would agree with that remark. But according to Brown, “most scholars agree that even Da Vinci's most famous pieces—works like The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and Madonna of the Rocks—contain startling anomalies that all seem to be whispering the same cryptic message.” First, no scholar would ever refer to the great Italian artist as “Da Vinci” since his given name was “Leonardo”; “da Vinci” indicates the province he was from. Secondly, few, if any, scholars would concur with Brown’s dramatic assertion. Thirdly, there are no “startling anomalies” in any of the paintings Brown mentions. Any such anomalies can only be found in his novel and conspiracy-heavy books such as The Templar Revelation, which happens to be the source of almost all of Brown’s “research” into Leonardo. He insists The Last Supper depicts Mary Magdalene at the right of Jesus (in fact it is clearly the apostle John: Renaissance artists always depict him as young and beardless). Brown’s site states that this cryptic message “hints at a shocking historical secret which allegedly has been guarded since 1099 by a European secret society known as the Priory of Sion.” The Priory of Sion was founded in the 1950s in France by an anti-Semitic political radical, its mysterious history is an admitted fabrication, and it has been proven more than once to be a complete hoax. And yet the Priory of Sion is a central element in the plot and logic (so to speak) of The Da Vinci Code. Another error is found in character Robert Langdon’s explanation of the origin of the tetragrammaton—YHWH (pronounced as Yahweh)— the sacred name of God, which observant Jews believe should not be uttered. Langdon claims that YHWH comes from the name Jehovah, which he insists is an androgynous union between “the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah”. A quick trip to the encyclopaedia shows that Langdon is wildly off the mark. The name “Jehovah” didn’t even exist until the thirteenth century at the earliest (and wasn’t common until the sixteenth century), and is an English word. It was created by artificially combining the consonants of YHWH (or JHVH) and the vowels of Adonai (which means “Lord”), the name substituted for YHWH in the Old Testament by Jews. The Hebrew—not “pre-Hebraic”—word for Eve is hawwâ, (pronounced “havah”), which means “mother of all living”. Sources: The Da Vinci Hoax by Carl Olsen and Sandra Miesel
Parish Communications CommitteeNeed U to volunteer To Proof Read the Parish Magazine each month before it goes to print So if you can dot your ‘I’s’ and cross your ‘T’s’ know where a . should go And the difference between this that these and those THEN U are that person Contact Parish office.
Parish Soccer Match | Anglicans and the Eucharist | Da Vinci Code - What are the facts? | Parish Communications Committee | Balance Your Life | Chinese Proverb |
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Parishes of Castleknock and Mulhuddart with Clonsilla |
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