A future historian (on the generous assumption that there are any) might plausibly contend that the first salvo of the “culture wars” was fired in January 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court released its Roe v. Wade abortion decision. He might also conclude that the same Court’s June 2015 decision declaring gay marriage to be a constitutionally protected right represented a final victory.

How vividly I can still hear them — as though it were recently — the raucous cries resounding across university campuses in the 1960s and early ’70s: “Hey ho, hey ho, Western civ has got to go.” 

Late last year the National Post commissioned a survey on religious attitudes of Canadians. It will surprise no one that church attendance, both Protestant and Catholic, is dropping. What was surprising was how Canadians self-reported their attitude to religion.

Of those answering the survey, 65 per cent consider themselves “spiritual,” 50 per cent consider themselves “religious” yet 66 per cent said they believe in God. What to make of this?

First, contemporary mis-education has prevented many people from thinking clearly. If you believe in God, you are by definition “religious.” The Oxford English Reference Dictionary defines religion as belief in a personal God “…entitled to obedience and worship.” So to say that someone believes in God but is not religious is to utter an oxymoron.

As for the 15 per cent who consider themselves spiritual (“concerned with sacred or religious things”) but not religious, well, they truly are remarkable human beings. They are like a self-described gourmand who never eats, or someone who professes to love travel but does not leave home, or a lover of theatre who has never seen a play that he enjoyed.
Of course, one might be spiritual and not go to church; that is possible. I suppose one might even be a Protestant Christian and never go to church. But one cannot be a Roman Catholic and refrain from attending church.

That’s because the catechism teaches that there is no salvation outside the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (published in 1994) expresses the point this way: “All salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is His body.” Again, none can be saved “who knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse to enter it or to remain in it.”

Catholics have an obligation to attend Mass. One may attend Mass outside the physical structure of a church, but only a priest may consecrate the elements of bread and wine. For a Catholic to say that he is spiritual but not religious is what Dr. Johnson once called “nonsense on stilts.”

The priest who brought me into the Catholic Church never referred to the “obligation” to attend Mass. It was always, he insisted a privilege. And with him presiding, it always was. He prepared carefully for each service. His homilies were strengthening and he threw himself into every activity in the church with gusto. To my chagrin, I have discovered that this is not always the case.

Of course, I understand that one does not attend Mass because of the priest but rather for the opportunity to receive the sacraments. Still, it is difficult to be in a suitably receptive frame of mind to receive the sacraments when one is fuming inwardly at all that has gone on up to that point. Perhaps I am only now discovering the reality of what Flannery O’Connor meant when she wrote that one may suffer more from the Church than for the Church.

If the new statistics accurately portray Canadians’ religious attitude, what hope is there for the Church? Well, Pope Benedict XVI recognizes the problem; indeed he wrote extensively about this even before the year 2005 when he became Pope. He has called repeatedly for a “New Evangelization” with three components: (1) deepened personal faith; (2) renewed Bible study; (3) proclamation of the Gospel.

The Pope has said that it is the duty of every Catholic to proclaim the good news “with the same enthusiasm as the early Church” and he has taught that “the Gospel is not the exclusive property of those who received it, but it is a gift to share, good news to report to all.”

In this respect, buried in the statistics, is one nugget which allows for hope: 15 per cent of Canadian youth report that they are more committed to the faith than were their parents. Here is the potential spearhead of a new evangelization that can rescue the Church from the doldrums.

The new evangelization will not happen in parishes where the message is distorted, or where the priest is only going through the motions, or where the congregation trudge off content at having satisfied their obligation. But the message of hope from Pope Benedict XVI is that it can — and will — happen nevertheless.

Even the most biblically illiterate person knows — or thinks they know! — the story of Jonah and the whale. Unfortunately, what they know is likely dredged up from school memories and is likely to be either trivial or wrong.

In my own upbringing, the story of Jonah and the whale was a kind of litmus test of the authenticity of your faith. If you swallowed Jonah, as it were, you were a true believer; if not, well, we will continue to pray for you.

The Book of Jonah begins starkly: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah: Go to the great city of Ninevah, go now and denounce it for its wickedness…”(v. 1).

Ninevah was an enemy of Israel and it was about the last place on Earth that Jonah wanted to go. Jewish belief at that time was exclusivist. God loved Israel but no others. Jews were the chosen people of God. Ninevah was full of wicked gentiles, infidels; why should Yahweh concern Himself with them?

When the word of the Lord came to many patriarchs, they tried to play deaf: Moses, Amos, Jeremiah. But Jonah’s hearing was acute. So he boarded the first available ship sailing in the exact opposite direction to Ninevah. “It was going to Tarshish.” Tarshish was the land beyond land, the furthest extremity of the universe, the place beyond the reach of God. Jonah made off, we are told, “…to escape from the Lord” (v. 3).

In open seas, the ship was battered by a hurricane. The crew was terrified and began to jettison cargo. Jonah was asleep in the hold, until the captain found him and demanded of Jonah: “Call on your God, perhaps He can save us” (v. 6).

But Jonah could not pray. Perhaps he imagined that his disobedience had rendered prayer impossible. Perhaps he was too stubborn or terrified. Then the sailors cast lots to determine who was to blame for their predicament, and Jonah pulled the short straw. He confessed that he was on board to escape from God, and then Jonah offered himself as a sacrifice for the others, prefiguring a later and greater biblical figure who would offer Himself as a sacrifice for all.

“Take me, throw me overboard,” Jonah said, “and the sea will go down.” The sailors readily agreed. Jonah was pitched overboard, and then swallowed by “a great fish” (v. 17).

In the maw of the great fish Jonah suddenly discovered that prayer came, if not easily, then eloquently.

The great fish then spewed bedraggled Jonah up onto dry land. As American theologian Frederick Buechner wryly observed, Jonah’s relief at being out of the whale was probably exceeded by the whale’s relief at being relieved of the troublesome Jonah.

Now the word of God came to Jonah a second time: unfortunately, same instruction. Go to Ninevah. This time Jonah went. Who wouldn’t?

A miracle occurred. Not a great fish, but a great revival. The Ninevites listened. They repented. And Jonah was furious. God was saving Israel’s enemies. Jonah wanted fire and brimstone to rain down on the heads of the Ninevites. Instead there was nothing but grace, forgiveness and reconciliation.

What a marvelous story! Whimsical, perceptive, funny — full of grace and truth. It tells us that there is no Tarshish, no sanctuary safe from God. It tells us that even cowards sometimes sacrifice themselves for others. It tells us that nothing we do, nothing we are, can put us beyond the reach of God’s salvation.

If Jonah can be heard from the belly of the great fish, our forlorn prayer, whether it originates from a psychiatric ward or a prison cell, can likewise be heard. Best of all, it tells us that God’s boundless love extends to all, even to Ninevites like us.

How sad that some Christians miss the point of the story of Jonah. It is not history; it is something more important — truth.

To reduce the wonderful story of Jonah to the know-nothing question of “do you believe that the whale swallowed Jonah and that he survived three days?” is to stunt human imagination and understanding. It is to make reason a stumbling block, rather than an aid, to faith.

On Oct. 7 Dr. Edward Norman was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Our Lady of Walsingham in England. In itself, this might not seem remarkable, only another former Anglican to take advantage of the door so generously opened by Pope Benedict XVI in his November 2009 invitation Angicanorum Coetibus. But when you learn who Norman is, his late conversion is remarkable indeed.

Born in London in 1938, Norman was educated at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His specialty was church history, which he went on to teach for two decades, much of that time as Dean of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. In 1978 he was chosen to deliver the BBC’s Reith lectures on the theme: “Christianity and the World.” In addition to academic appointments and honours, Norman served as a priest, dean and chancellor of York Minster. It was not uncommon to hear his name discussed as a potential Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the author of more than 20 theological books.

As the title suggests, Norman’s 2004 book Anglican Difficulties: A New Syllabus of Errors was a scathing indictment of modern Anglicanism. It provided clear evidence of how uncomfortable Norman had become in the Church of England. When it was published, he told an interviewer: “There is a big hole at the centre of Anglicanism — authority. I don’t think it’s a Church; it’s more of a religious society.”

As an insider, Norman knew how the Church of England functioned and he pulled no punches. Of General Synod, he wrote: “Every disagreement, in seemingly every board and committee, proceeds by avoidance of principled debate.

Ordinary moral cowardice is represented as wise judgment, equivocation in the construction of compromise formulae is second nature to our leaders.”

Is the situation different or better in the Anglican Church of Canada? Based on my three-plus Anglican decades, I would say no — although my view is that of a parishioner since I never aspired to any ecclesiastical office. This is not to say that there are not fine people and committed Christians within the Anglican Church. There are. But they tend to be in the pews and they are repeatedly let down, in my experience, by the ostensible leadership. In any case, the primary occupation of a Canadian Anglican bishop today is arranging the closing of churches. The rate of decline is such that the lights should go off in the last standing Anglican church in just a few decades.

Despite his criticism of the Church of England, Norman remained in the Church for eight years after the publication of Anglican Difficulties. It can hardly be imagined or overstated how difficult a decision it must be for a minister or priest to abandon the denomination in which he was ordained and to which he has dedicated his life.

What was the final catalyst for Norman? From the outside, who can know? Even the convert often finds it difficult to express all the subtleties, the twists and turns, of his pilgrimage. What he told the Catholic Herald at the time of his conversion was this:

“The Church of England provides a masterclass in equivocation; it also, however, is the residence of very many good and faithful Christian people who deserve respect — for their perseverance in so many incoherent spiritual adventures. To leave their company is a wrench; to adhere to the Catholic faith is to join the encompassing presence of a universal body of believers in whose guardianship are the materials of authentic spiritual understanding . . . I have immense gratitude.”

Norman is the latest in a long, distinguished line of converts: men like G.K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Graham Greene and Malcolm Muggeridge. His conversion is further proof that even amidst the dark seas of postmodernism, St. Peter’s barque still searches out and rescues the drowning.

That doughty old warrior, Hilaire Belloc, wrote to a friend that the Catholic Church was like a landfall, at first glimpsed hazily and only through the mist:

“…but the nearer it is seen, the more it is real … The metaphor is not that men fall in love with it: the metaphor is that they discover home.”

Welcome home, Edward Norman.