What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The Best Questions in the World

    We offer a course at St Mary’s every now and then called the God Factor. You may have heard me mention it. It works like lots of church courses in that folk gather around food and have a conversation. In our case we gather around the best pizzas in town which come from just across the road and most of the courses have chosen to meet on a Sunday lunchtime.

    However, the God Factor is different from a lot of courses that churches run because I can’t tell you what will happen exactly from one course to the next. I can’t give you the book. I can’t give you a plan for what those on the God Factor will all learn. Why so? Well, because the participants set the agenda. The first meeting is all about collecting questions from the group. Those questions are then grouped and tackled by the group over about eight weeks. The idea is that they get to use those running the course (clergy and laity) as a resource to try to find answers to the questions that have been logged at the beginning.

    For those who want a bit of pedagogy, this arises out of a situation where the Vice Provost is into Paulo Freire and the Provost is known to read Ivan Illich in the bath, but let us not be too technical and get too distracted by methodoloty right now. Because the exciting thing is that we’ve just got the questions for the course that is beginning at the moment.

    I think these are the best questions in the world to get a group to try to answer. See what you think below. Oh, and if you want to join in with this course and engage in trying to find the answers to these then get in touch with the Vice Provost using this contact form.

    The Questions – God Factor – March 2014

    Bible

    • Is it OK to disagree with some bits of the Bible?
    • Do I have to believe everything in the Bible?
    • What is the best way to read the Bible?
    • If the Bible was written in approximately 400 AD, how accurate is it?
    • Why are only some Gospels used today?

    Church and churches

    • How does the Scottish Episcopal Church choose its clergy?
    • Who are Episcopalians and how do they differ from Catholics and other Protestants?
    • What is the Church for? Couldn’t we do without it?
    • Why are there so many different denominations?
    • So few people go to church these days; will it change or simply die out?

    Doctrine

    • Is God male or female? Black, Chinese, White?
    • How will I know that God has accepted me? Forgiven me?
    • Can you lose your faith, find it and lose it again in your one lifetime?
    • Is there such a thing as condemnation?
    • Is ‘God’ a male?
    • Reincarnation – does it exist?
    • Do you think suicide is a coward’s way out?
    • Spiritual ‘dry spells’ – what to do during them.
    • What ‘sins’ cannot be forgiven?
    • How do we define sin?
    • Is there an afterlife? If so, what does it look like?
    • Is there a hell?

    Ethics

    • Why is the Church obsessed with sex?
    • Why does a message of peace and love end up causing war, suicide bombings and so much hatred?
    • Why so many different rules and regulations, e.g. on birth control and same sex marriage?
    • The Vatican = corruption? Wealth? I struggle with their beliefs – no birth control, third world women dying etc.
    • Was there any truth in the Da Vinci Code book?
    • Why do the different denominations of the Church always seem to be at odds with each other?
    • Is faith just for sad people and those who need a crutch?
    • Why are so many religions intolerant of different people, e.g. gay people, and contraception?
    • Should the Church be involved in politics?

    God and Jesus

    • Is Jesus God or just a way to God?
    • Why did Jesus allow himself to be crucified?
    • Will Jesus return?
    • Was Jesus God or human?
    • Does God exist?
    • Why does God not intervene on issues of poverty/hunger etc?
    • What does God look like/feel like?
    • Was Mary really a virgin when pregnant?

    Other faiths/religions

    • Why is Christianity different to other faiths?
    • Why are there so many different religions?
    • Why has religion caused so many wars?
    • Why is the Jewish religion so feared? Hated?
    • How should we respond to people of different faiths?
    • Relationship between Christianity and other faiths.
    • Is the Christian faith the only way? What about good Buddhists, Muslims and Humanists?
    • Is war and bad weather judgement from God?

    Worship

    • How can I learn to pray?
    • When during services do people ‘cross’ themselves and why?
    • Would Scottish independence be good for the UK?
    • Does God really love everyone? What about those who reject him?
    • How does prayer work? Is there a right and a wrong way to pray?
    • Why does it feel so incredibly peaceful in a church?
    • Why is incense used?
    • Why is the Eucharist important?
    , ,

14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?

    The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.

    The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.

    This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.

    Reply
  2. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”

    That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.

    Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.

    Reply
  4. Ritualist Robert Avatar
    Ritualist Robert

    Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”

    A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.

    It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.

    Reply

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