Death To The World

Someone recently asked me why I don't write columns and articles for magazines and other publications anymore and why I now mostly post banter, junior football, hiking, cycling and music stuff on my socials, rather than serious theology and political content. 

The answer is simple, the climate of online debate within both faith and political circles, is increasingly toxic and I am done with rancour and resentment, it is totally unhealthy and unfruitful. I am done with theological bickering and polemics, it is embarrassing for us Christians to be slagging each other off so much (myself included). 

Especially, while we all sit back and watch an ongoing genocide in Gaza unfold and wait to see how Iran will respond to Israel's recent strikes against Hezbollah. Or how Putin will respond to Ukraine's incursion into Russian territory in the last few days, or how the UK race riots will eventually play out, or what the diabolical Trump-Musk alignment means for the world.

It is also depressing, I've never encountered so many hard-hearted, irritated, angry, legalistic and judgmental Christians than in recent months online (again, myself included, on some occasions). 

As the late Fr Thomas Hopko reminds us 'They (we) think they're zealous in the faith but their zeal is for their own righteousness not God's righteousness.'

How can we possibly continue to behave like this when only today, we learned in the news that the number of deaths from suicide among men is continuing to increase and its even higher in Scotland and even higher again among low income communities.  What the hell are we doing and who really gives a rats ass about all our petty internal Church politics?

So much of what we see and read online at the moment seems to be excessively pharisaical and self-righteous, designed to be read and seen by men, not coming from the heart, not focused on God, in any real sense.   

The final straw for me was a recent well known Catholic media outlet posting a fairly harmless meme which depicts Jesus reminding the Apostles not to hate anyone. This meme resulted in literally hundreds of angry comments from upset Christians complaining about woke and liberal Christians trying to change church teaching. The lack of good catechises alone, was quite terrifying. 

Add to this, the recent overreaction to the Olympics opening ceremony and the growing amount of calumny, hostility and abuse being directed towards my friends and I, following any form of peace work, social action, witness or protest by Glasgow Catholic Worker, coming from the so-called conservative Christian Right, and its not really worth the hassle anymore.   

I am mindful that all of this is quite obvious to very many sane and reasonable Christians who don't choose to pour all their crap out on social media or wear their hearts on their sleeves.

However, more than ever, online religious discourse seems to me, to be at odds with being able to maintain any kind of meaningful rule of prayer or periods of daily silence.  

Sure, we are all damaged in someway and we all unconsciously (sometime consciously) project all our own prejudice and pain from our personal lives, onto the comments section of a particular debate or onto an international issue. 

Yes, much of the anger and bitterness we see online, comes from a place of fear and despair at the fallen state of the world around us. Yet, I cannot see how it is possible to reconcile being mean online, with trying conform yourself to the gospel, let alone anyone else.

If this is the case, then we should stop, discern, pray, reflect and then arrive at the conclusion (as I have) that we need to be nowhere near online debates, until we've repented of our own ego and pride and resolved all that remains unresolved in our own hearts or lives. 

Or in other words, I am not convinced that Henri Nouwen's 'Wounded Healers' become effective helpers, until they process their own pain.

Rather they (we) are potentially dangerous, like so many Christians currently being co-opted into right-wing politics and Christian nationalism, are extremely dangerous.   

I am at the stage where I deeply crave an expression of faith which is far more aesthetical and focused on the internal rather than the external. 

Not a withdrawal to that ivory tower of theological intellectualism or the passive aloofness aloofness of 'by-stander Christianity' or the sterile inactivity of scholarly academic Christianity. 

For example, many years back I recall reading in the brilliant 'Death To The World' fanzine, that  'All extremes are to be avoided - both worldliness and super Spirituality'.

Instead, I look to the example and inspiration of so many elderly parishioners I've known, who have now gone to their reward.

The quiet faithful whose seemingly hidden, simple and unremarkable lives of devotion actually done more to glorify God than any blogger, commentator, boastful online polemicist or vainglorious public intellectual.

I think of the lady in our parish who used to stand and pray the rosary at the nativty crib in town, early every Saturday morning during Advent.

The same lady who used to give out miraculous medals to evey new born baby in the Parish and then take the eucharist to the homes of those too sick to hear Mass. She would go all across town each Sunday afternoon, carrying out the works of mercy in secret, long after the rest of us had returned home to enjoy our Sunday dinner.

Moreso, to watch the way this lady clasped the blessed Sacrament in her hands, like a precious jewel, after being given it by the priest, was to see the face of true devotion and faithfulness. 

As the Russian theologian Alexander Schmemann once said ‘Every personal victory over evil, maybe even unknown to the world, has an impact on the whole situation. A saint leaves the world, lives somewhere else, no one knows about him but he is participating in that great struggle which will be going on until the end of world’.   

Finally, the soldier in the painting at the top of this blog stands in awe, disarmed by the image of the Theotokos, drawing him out of human conflict, into a relationship with Christ. 

I pray that the Mother of God disarms and draws all those engaged in conflict and violence, both physically and emotionally, in our own hearts, our words, deeds and in the world, both online and offline, back home to her son.

For my part, I'm just happy to spend sometime in silence dwelling on this healing prayer which perfectly encapsulates all that we proclaim and affirm 

Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God,

have mercy on me,

 a sinner.




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