Catholic Chaplaincy

Summer Vacation

Fr John SJ — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:22:49 +0000

The Chaplaincy remains open throughout the summer, you are very welcome to join us for Mass or to visit the Chapel.

Feeling Low

Websec — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:21:52 +0000

WE’VE ALL had the feeling of being run- down at times. And a long stretch of grey winter days doesn’t help. But I’m thinking of those who are feeling, not physically run down, but spiritually run down. This kind of depression needs something more than a few days of sunshine to put matter right.
Devotions we once made with fervour seem to have lost their attraction. We feel that Mass and the sacraments have become routine, and the gospels no longer speak to us. God seems remote. We feel that God
can have no interest in our half-hearted efforts. We have a vague feeling of dissatisfaction without being able to put our finger on just where the problem is.
What can we do? Well, the first thing is to accept that we are run down spiritually. It’s nothing to be ashamed of any more than we can help being physically run down at times. Feelings like this are not unusual; and they don’t mean that we have lost touch with God, or that God has lost touch with us. Feelings are tricky things at the best of times. We can’t have the feeling of being in love and being sea-sick at the same time, but it doesn’t mean you’ve stopped loving your fiancée because you’re feeling unwell.
Any form of life means the possibility of sickness as well as health. So it is in the Christian life, the life of faith. And the good news is that being run-down spiritually can be the prelude to growth in the spirit. If our lives are well ordered, if we are faithful to our commitments, then this could be a sign of God calling us to a deeper friendship.
It can be very unsettling, of course at first. It can bring with it a sense of confusion and uncertainty as we try to come to terms with a new phase of our lives. We are familiar with the problems of moving through adolescence to maturity, and in our life of faith, too, growth and change can be expected.

There may well be times when we realise that from now on we will be serving God in a different way. We may have to change our ideas about what God is like and what God wants of us, what it really means to love God and our neighbour – and ourself.
In the gospel we see just such a crisis in the life of St Peter. John 21.1-19 Jesus asks
him only one question; do you love me? And Peter must surely have gone back in his mind to the time when he had boasted ‘I will never lose faith in you. Even if I have to die I will never disown you.’ Peter knew now how empty that boast had been. He had lost faith. He had disowned Jesus. He had failed.
The experience of failure shattered his illusions about himself. It gave him a more realistic idea of what following Christ means. Peter was a changed man now He had grown in understanding of himself in trying to follow Christ – who now invites him to reaffirm his faith, just as he will ask us to reaffirm our faith in saying the Creed together each Sunday.
Peter could have no illusions now about what it costs to be a true follower. His answer is quieter, humbler, less full of himself, more full of Christ. ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you – in spite of my failure.’
Peter’s experience is a lesson for all of us. Our faith is a living thing, a growing thing. Like Peter, we may well experience some form of crisis along the way. When that happens it is vital to remember that God is still at work in us; that trials and temptations and periods of sheer weariness are a normal part of life. Through these difficulties, God is leading us gradually to a more mature faith, to a greater love.
Crisis means danger plus opportunity. The danger is that we choose to give in to upsets. The opportunity is to grow in loving kindness. The first choice is easier, but leads nowhere: the second is harder, but leads to God. There can be only one choice for a Christian – to say with Peter, whatever happens – ‘Lord, you know that I love you.’
Peter Knott SJ

Revelation Takes Time

Websec — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:18:49 +0000

DID God complete revelation in the Bible, or does divine revelation continue today and throughout time? The night before he died Jesus said to his disciples: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” John 16:12-13.
Jesus is saying, “You are not ready to hear everything 1 have to teach you – things you cannot grasp right now. So 1 will send the Holy Spirit to guide you and teach you, over time, those things which you need to understand.”
The changes we’ve seen in our understanding of scripture over the nineteen centuries since it was written have happened through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. God hasn’t changed: it shows that our ability to apprehend and comprehend the mind of God is limited and sometimes faulty.
Things that seemed simply the way of the world – like slavery, polygamy, and the lower status of women – in retrospect seem like examples of humankind’s flawed, limited, and mistaken understanding of God’s will. Our ability to discern God’s will has improved with time, prayer, and reflection.
This is good news. God’s revelation didn’t stop with the completion of the canon of scripture. God is still actively engaged in ongoing revelation over time, even in our own day. God didn’t just inspire the scriptures to be written and then walk away, wishing us well in our attempts to understand those words. God’s Holy Spirit continues to lead us into all the truth, as Jesus promised on the night before he was betrayed. This is how we understand the authority of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and the Magisterium of the Church.
Scripture is the inspired accounts of encounters with the divine, written by people who knew the Yahweh of the Hebrew scriptures and the Christ of the Christian scriptures, and set down, in the best words they could, what they learned about God in these encounters.
Tradition transmits the Word of God as entrusted to the apostles and their successors (bishops) by Christ and the Holy Spirit; so that
enlightened by the Spirit of truth the bishops may preserve, expound and spread the Word by their preaching. The Magisterium is the ultimate authority for any changes in the Church’s teaching.
Reason is the authority that presents itself in our own lives. We experience life in our own day and time, we experience God in the midst of our lives, through the power of the Holy Spirit, who continues to lead us into truth.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit prompts us to change an understanding we may have held for centuries. The good news in all this is that we worship a God who isn’t confined to scripture, but a God who is active in our midst, continuing to lead us forward in our understanding of God’s unchanging truth.
To learn about God, we always begin with scripture, which, after the full and perfect revelation of the Word, Jesus the Christ, is our primary source. We look at how the church has understood those words of scripture over time. Then we use our own experience and reason to ask what all this might mean for us today. Since we are always prone to shaping everything, including God’s will, to our own ends, we must be careful as we apply reason in this triad of authorities.
No one person can decide that our former understandings are faulty; changes that veer from long-held understandings must always be made in community. Many minds and hearts, working prayerfully together, must be employed in this delicate discernment of God’s will. This is a task we must not neglect, for to do so is to reject the leading of the Holy Spirit that has been promised to us. But all ideas ultimately require the authority of the Magisterium if they are to be accepted.
Outside the Catholic Church, the current debate in the Anglican Communion over sexuality is a contemporary example of the Holy Spirit leading us toward a fuller grasp of God’s truth. Where this will lead, only time can tell.
The process of discerning God’s will never ends. It takes all of us – those who seek a change and those who resist it. And it takes courage even to ask if we might have got it wrong in the past. But this is what we’re asked to do by God, who promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, who promised to teach us the things we couldn’t bear at an earlier time.
Peter Knott SJ

Talking of God

Websec — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:16:27 +0000

MOST people think that the concept of God should be easy and that religion ought to be readily accessible to anybody. But in fact, it is hard to think about God. Many find this puzzling. Surely everybody knows what God is: the Supreme Being, a divine Personality, who created the world and everything in it.
They look perplexed if you point out that it is inaccurate to call God the Supreme Being because God is not a ‘being’ at all, and that we really don’t fully know what we mean when we say that he is ‘good’, ‘wise’ or ‘intelligent’. People of faith know in theory that God is utterly transcendent, but they seem to assume that they know exactly who ‘he’ is and what he thinks, loves and expects.
All that we know and experience of God – the God of Israel and Jesus Christ – is that this God desires a unique relationship with us which does not in any way enhance God but fundamentally changes us.
We tend to tame and domesticate God’s ‘otherness’. We regularly ask God to bless our nation, save our Queen, cure our sickness or give us a fine day for the picnic. Politicians quote God to justify their policies, and terrorists commit atrocities in his name. We beg God to support ‘our’ side in an election or a war, even though our opponents are also God’s children and the object of his love and care.
There is also a tendency to assume that, even though we now live in a totally transformed world and have an entirely different world-view, people have always thought about God in exactly the same way as we do today. But despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our religious thinking is sometimes remarkably undeveloped, even primitive.
In some ways the modern God resembles the God of remote antiquity; a theology that was either jettisoned or radically reinterpreted because it was found to be inept. Many people in the pre-modern world knew that it was very difficult indeed to speak about God.
Some of the greatest Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians made it clear that while it was important to put our ideas about the divine into words, these doctrines were man-made and, therefore, were bound to be inadequate.
They devised spiritual exercises that
deliberately subverted normal patterns of thought and speech to help the faithful understand that the words we use to describe mundane things were simply not suitable for God. ‘He’ was not good, divine, powerful or intelligent in any way that we could understand.
We could not even say that God ‘existed’, because our concept of existence was too limited. Some of the sages preferred to say that God was ‘Nothing’ because God was not another being. You certainly could not read your scriptures literally, as if they referred to divine facts.
“No one has seen God: it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” John 1.18 The Good News is that in Christ Jesus we have the incarnation of God. He shows us what God is like and what we can become with his help. Through him, with him and in him, we find the fullness of life we were created to enjoy. 2/4/10

PS We need to be careful when talking of God. We know so little, but what we do know through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is crucial.
Peter Knott SJ

Religion Matters

Websec — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:03:22 +0000

IN MOST pre-modern cultures, there were two recognised ways of thinking, speaking and acquiring knowledge. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was considered superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary.
Each had its own sphere of competence. Logos (science/reason) was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the world. It had to correspond accurately to external reality.
Logos was essential to human survival. But it had its limitations: it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life’s struggles. For that, people turned to mythos or ‘myth’.
Today we live in a society of scientific logos and myth has fallen into disrepute. In popular speech, a ‘myth’ is something that is not true. But myth is not self-indulgent fantasy; rather, like logos, it helps people to live creatively in our confusing world, though in a different way. A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that had in some sense happened once but that also happens all the time.
Yet a myth would not be effective if people simply ‘believed’ in it. It was essentially a programme of action. It could put us in the correct spiritual or psychological posture but it is up to us to take the next step and make the ‘truth’ of the myth a reality in our own life. We find many examples of the use of myth in religion: the depth and richness of our knowledge and experience cannot be explained by reason alone.
Most people today think that religion should provide us with information: is there a God? how did the world come into being? But this is a modern aberration. Religion was never supposed to provide answers to

questions that lay within the reach of human
reason. That was the role of logos.
Religion’s task, closely allied to that of art, was to help us to live creatively, peacefully and even joyously with realities for which there were no easy explanations
and problems that we could not solve: mortality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at the injustice and cruelty of life.
Over the centuries, people in all cultures discovered that by pushing their reasoning powers to the limit, stretching language to the end of its tether, and living as selflessly and compassionately as possible, they experienced a transcendence that enabled them to affirm their suffering with serenity and courage.
Scientific rationality can tell us why we have cancer; it can even cure us of our disease. But it cannot assuage the terror, disappointment and sorrow that come with the diagnosis, nor can it help us to die well. That is not within its remit.
Religion will not work automatically, however; it requires a great deal of effort and cannot succeed if it is facile, false, idolatrous or self-indulgent.
Religion is a practical discipline, and its insights are not derived from abstract speculation but from spiritual exercises and a dedicated lifestyle. Without such practice, it is impossible to understand the truth of its doctrines.
Religion is not an easy matter. Religious insight requires not only a dedicated intellectual endeavour to get beyond the ‘idols of thought’ but also a compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood. Aggressive argument, which seeks to master, control and kill off the opposition, cannot bring this transcendent insight.
Experience proves that this is only possible if people cultivate a receptive, listening attitude, not unlike the way we approach art, music or poetry. It requires ‘wise passiveness’ and a heart that ‘watches and receives’.
Peter Knott SJ

Why We Need Ritual

Websec — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:19:48 +0000

‘WHERE two or three gather in my name, I am there among them.’ Matt 18.20 We come together in prayer, conscious of Christ’s promise that whenever a group of people gather in prayer, he will be there with us.
The early Church took that promise literally. After his Ascension, they followed Christ’s invitation to gather in his name. They would come together around the word and the breaking of the bread, and there let Christ make his presence felt, and effect through them what they could not otherwise do.
As Christians today, we still need to take that same promise literally. Christian life is not sustained only by private acts of prayer, justice, and virtue. It is sustained in a community, by gathering around the word of God and through the breaking of bread. This kind of gathering is not simply a social one, capable only of doing what social gatherings can do.
To gather around the word of God and the breaking of bread is a ritual gathering and ritual brings something that normal social gathering does not: namely, transforming power.
Ritual is something that, for the most part, we find difficult to understand. Former cultures used ritual a lot more than we do. We tend today to be ritually tone-deaf, in that we distrust everything that we cannot rationally explain. For many today, all ritual is suspect and smacks of superstition.
How does ritual work? We do not know; but that’s the point. We cannot give ritual a rational explanation. It just works! Ritual works in the way a kiss, the most primal of rituals, works. Kisses do things that words do not. Something real happens in ritual, that carries a power beyond what we can rationally explain. Rituals can help bring about group unity and healing
Our ordinary church gatherings, and our times of prayer as a couple or within a family are meant to be this type of ritual

gathering,.. When we gather communally in
prayer, we need not look for novelty, excitement, brilliance, or family therapy. The words that we do use (a scriptural text, a psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, formula prayers out of a prayer book, or a hymn) are intended to create between us a kind of silence within which something happens between God and ourselves and among ourselves that novelty, excitement and brilliance are unable to achieve.
When we gather ritually around the word of God and the breaking of bread which Christ left us, we are coming together not to have a community meeting, or to discuss our emotions and problems, or to rally our faltering faith in a pagan world. We gather to worship God communally, and to let God do in us what we cannot do within ourselves, namely, deepen our faith and shape us into a community beyond our conflicting emotional pulls and personal limitations.
Christianity has sustained itself for two millennia through ritual gathering around the word of God and the breaking of bread – like a marriage or a family that keeps itself from falling apart by trying to all be home at regular times, and have at least one meal a day together, even if it is not exciting, even if no real feelings get discussed, even if everyone is bored, and even if half the family thinks it’s not worthwhile.
We do this because if we don’t, we will eventually fall apart as a family. As a human family needs to sustain itself by repetitive, predictable, unexciting rituals, so too does the Christian family.
Without ritual gathering we will, like any family, soon fall apart. To sustain faith, there can be no better advice than that of Christ himself: ‘Gather around the word of God and break bread together.’ Matt 26.26
We do not have to fully understand what we are doing and we do not have to be brilliant, imaginative, or stimulating. We just have to gather in Christ’s name around the simple rituals he gave us. He promised to do the rest.
13/8/10

Religious Diversity in Catholic Schools

Websec — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:43:29 +0000

MANY Catholic schools have only a small proportion of Catholic pupils or teachers. In our Jesuit institutions in Japan for example, only 20% of the professors and 1 % of the students are Christians. There is no contradiction in making our institutions places of interreligious collaboration. Indeed, if young people of different cultures and religions come to know each other from their earliest years in school, they should feel more comfortable with diversity later on. They will have already acquired attitudes of respect, listening, friendship and a spirit of cooperation.
This universal vision of the Christian mission was expressed by Pope Benedict XV1 in his address to the Jesuit Congregation in 2008. He stated that today “the new peoples, who do not know the Lord or whose inadequate knowledge of him is such that they cannot recognise him as the Saviour, are distant today not so much geographically as culturally. It is not oceans or immense distances that challenge the heralds of the gospel but the boundaries resulting from an erroneous or superficial vision of God and the human person that stand between faith and human knowledge, faith and modern science, faith and the commitment to justice.”
There seems to be increasing distance between the modern culture and Christian values. We need to take the risk of going beyond the visible frontiers of the Church. Today, apart from geographical frontiers, there are all sorts
of frontiers to be crossed, not only to
meet strangers, but also to overcome all the natural limitations within which we are always in danger of confining ourselves because of our lack of openness to change in our world or our failure to appreciate its diversity.
In order to act globally, however, it is not enough to cross frontiers; one also needs patience to create different styles of collaboration. Christian humanism aims at improving the welfare of all men and women, most especially the marginalized and weak.
The Church cannot work in isolation. It cannot work effectively to bring about a more just world without collaboration with others and in particular collaboration with former students of our schools. Collaboration amid diversity does not just happen. It calls for openness and commitment,
‘men and women for and with others.’ Peter-Hans Kolvenbach SJ
Contacts are much easier today through the modern means of communication. But the use of these methods must be accompanied by three considerations.
First, the importance of depth in communication: what is often missing in these new means is precisely this depth. Second, we must show some creativity.: we cannot be satisfied with old formulas that no longer express the needs of today. Finally, our use of these methods must express the life of the Spirit. Without this spiritual dimension we lose the heart of what makes our work of real value to the world.‘Without me, you can do nothing’. John 15.5
6/8/10

Letter from Tanzania

Websec — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:50:02 +0000

AMDG

The feast of St Ignatius, 2010.

St Francis Xavier Church, Mwanza, Tanzania.

Dear Everyone,

happy feast day!

As they say here, on meeting anyone: “How are you?” “We are fine”. I hope you are all well and continuing to enjoy the summer.

The five students from the chaplaincy – Bianca, Charlotte, Dominic, Katia and Nick – and I have been here for four days and it seems like “four-ever”, in a good way, of course! We had a lie-in this morning which made a huge difference to us all. Then we spent the morning and early afternoon walking around one of the local markets on the edge of Lake Victoria with a visit to the local ferry port, accompanied, chaperoned, guarded by one of the sisters, Sr Consolata!

In the afternoon myself and Charlotte and Katia gathered together about 40 of the boarders (there are about 240 who live on the compound during term time, either because they live far from home or are orphans) for some singing. I taught them, you’ve guessed it … the Jamaican Alleluia and they taught us a couple of beautiful Kiswahili hymns. Charlotte taught them a great little song about a happy Kukuburra and Katia a Holy Holy in Spanish – so very international. What a joy to be with such open, joyful and generous children.

Then this evening a beautiful Mass on the roof of the Jesuit community (what a sunset!) with about 50 friends of the community. A wonderful celebration led by Fr Raymond, the Tanzanian superior, who also did his tertianship in Australia – it is a small world! No Australian wine, unfortunately, but some very good local beers: Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and Safari!

Tomorrow I’m on the late, English speaking, Mass – 10.15am. The two Swahili Masses are at 6.30am and 8.00am. There are some benefits to speaking English! I will continue to keep you all in my prayers, as I did especially at Mass this evening. Once again, what a blessing it is to be a member of the Society of Jesus. Let’s continue to pray for vocations to the Society throughout the world, but especially in the British Province and regions and let’s pray for one another. Thank you for your prayers and support.

You are all very much in our thoughts. With our love and prayers and African lion hugs! God bless you,

Fr Simon SJ, Nick, Katia, Dominic, Charlotte and Bianca.

PS A memorable phrase someone said to us in the market today. “Welcome to Mwanza! Feel happy and never complain!” They seem to live by their words.

Good Friday, Joyous Sunday

Websec — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:31:30 +0000

ALMOST the first words we learn as children are: “It’s not fair.” There is a connection between what Jesus tasted on Good Friday and what any person who is unfairly treated tastes. We have our own Good Fridays and they are not unconnected to what happened on Calvary two thousand years ago. Indeed, what Jesus underwent on Good Friday is what gives us dignity when we taste the darkness of humiliation, loneliness, helplessness, and death.
What did Jesus undergo on Good Friday? Interestingly, the gospels do not focus on his physical sufferings. What they highlight is his emotional suffering and his humiliation. He is presented as lonely, betrayed, helpless to explain himself, a victim of jealousy, mocked, misunderstood, stripped naked so as to feel embarrassment and shame; and yet inside of all this, as clinging to warmth, goodness, and forgiveness. Good Friday is when darkness has its hour. cf Luke 22.53
There are times when we can all experience Good Fridays, and something of what Christ felt:
as whenever we find ourselves on a sick bed alone, knowing that we face disability and disfigurement through surgery, and maybe death, when we are alone inside of fear:
as whenever we find ourselves alone inside a duty, whenever we are seen as too timid, too frigid, too afraid to pick up our own lives, when innocence and duty are seen as a weakness:
as whenever we experience the pain of being unable to express ourselves, when we feel the pain that comes from knowing that most of what is best inside us will die with us seemingly wasted
as whenever we find ourselves the object

of jealousy, animosity, and threat because of what we believe in, when what is virtue
in us is made to look like selfishness, when we are made to feel shame for what we believe in, when what is precious to us is deemed offensive to others:
as whenever we find ourselves alone and lost, before ageing, before the loss of health, before the loss of attractiveness and our former place in life, and before the loss of life itself.
When we taste that bitterness there is little else to say other than what Jesus said when he was led away from Gethsemane to humiliation and death: “But this is your hour, the triumph of darkness.” Luke 22.53
We know what that means. All of us have moments when our world falls apart and when all we can do is bite the dust and wait.
Wait for what? Wait for darkness and death to have their hour. As Matthew says in his Passion account, wait for the curtain of the temple to be torn from top to bottom, and the earth to shake, and the rocks to split open, and the graves to open and to show themselves to be empty.
It seemed like the end at the time, but the disaster of Friday eventually gives way to the joy of Easter Sunday; the risen Christ remains an abiding reality, ever with us even in our own Good Friday
The liturgy celebrates what looks like failure as Victory, the victory of martyrdom, which opened the way to the fullness of life through the resurrection.
Holy Saturday provides a vital link between Friday and Sunday. Its emptiness makes us look beyond the senses towards God alone. There is nothing we can do, but something God can do silently, imperceptibly in us, helping us to under-stand better the mystery of Divine love, giving new meaning and purpose to life.

/ p.2 Easter Sunday reveals the transformation

EASTER SUNDAY reveals the joyous transformation of the risen Christ. The Resurrection celebrates Christ’s life: it also celebrates that same Life hidden within us. This explains the meaning of our lives, as Christ explained to his disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke 24.13f
Superficially our lives appear to be a jumble of disasters and success, tears and joy. At times we are alive with a huge appetite for life. At times life seems empty with little to live for. What are we to make of the endless contradictions that seem to rule our lives?
The joyous truth of Easter is that Christ embraced the many contradictions that sin has brought into our lives. On the cross he died for all of us and for all that has died within us – our many hidden deaths, brought about by our own weakness and the disappointed hopes of a broken world.
Those hidden deaths, when they remain alone, lead only to despair. When they become one with Christ’s death they become life itself. Christ , lifted up on the cross, raised to new life, has the power to transform the contradictions of our lives.
Good Friday left the disciples desolate. there seemed so little to live for now. Their memories lay buried with Jesus in the tomb. When disaster hits, we too can begin to live life with little expectation of ourselves or the world in which we live. Without realising it we can bury the best of ourselves beneath the routine of daily life.
At first the disciples couldn’t reach beyond the darkness of Good Friday and the weakness it had revealed in them. We also may find ourselves living in the darkness of past failures. When we truly

understand the resurrection, we let go of what might have been, and accept gratefully what Christ is actually doing in our lives.
St Paul describes us as those “who have been brought back to true life in Christ.” We carry within ourselves that same Risen Lord who so transformed the lives of those first disciples.
We must realise for ourselves the power of this Risen Lord dwelling within us, helping us to cope with the disappointments we all experience in different ways – misunderstanding, unfair criticism, a love that faded, a love betrayed, hopes that were lost, times when it was hard to face the truth – about ourselves, about others.
A world struggling to cope with distress and division cries out for a new beginning. The Risen Lord, at work in our hearts offers that new life to all of us, rising above frustrations and heartaches.
We can never say that life has parted us from Christ, that he is lost to us, that we do not know where to find Him. He lives hidden in our hearts. There is everything to live for
Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday each have a distinctive ‘note.’ We have to keep these notes together as one chord. Only when the notes are brought into harmony can we ‘hear’ what the Composer is offering us, the fullness of life. cf John 10.10. We pray that all may share something of this joy each day, forever
This life is a preparation for eternity, and there will be many surprises awaiting us in heaven.! Cor 2.9 But one of the nicer surprises may be to find that all our heartaches were simply growing pains.
30/7/10

A Challenge to Darwin

Websec — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:25:00 +0000

IN his recent book Dr James Le Fanu offers a challenge to Darwin’s theory of the Descent of Man.* The publishers present an outline of the book, WHY US?, as follows (edited).
“The imperative to ‘know thyself’ is both fundamental and profoundly elusive – for how can we ever truly comprehend the drama and complexity of the human experience?
Dr Le Fanu offers an exploration of the power and limits of science to penetrate the mysteries of our existence, challenging the certainty that has persisted since Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species that we are no more than the fortuitous consequence of a materialist evolutionary process.
That challenge arises, unexpectedly, from the two major projects that promised to provide definitive proof for this most influential of scientific theories.
The first is the achievement of the Human Genome Project which, it was anticipated, would identify the genetic basis of those characteristics that distinguish humans from their primate cousins.
The second is the advance in

brain imaging that now permits
neuroscientists to observe the brain
‘in action’ and thus account for the remarkable properties of the human mind.
“ But that is not how it has turned out. It is simply not possible to get from the sequence of genes along the Double Helix to the near infinite diversity of the living world, nor to translate the electrical firing of the brain into the creativity of the human mind.
This is not a matter of not knowing all the facts. Rather, science has inadvertently discovered that its theories are insufficient to conjure the wonder of the human experience from the bare bones of our genes and brains.
Dr Le Fanu claims that we stand on the brink of a fundamental shift in our understanding of ourselves that will witness the eclipse of Darwin’s materialist evolutionary theory and rediscover the central premise of Western philosophy that there is ‘more than we can know’. WHY US? offers a convincing and provocative vision of the new science of being human.” 23/7/10
* ‘Why Us’ HarperCollins, 2009. Apart from numerous other writings, James Le Fanu has published research articles in the British Medical Journal, Lancet and Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine