Fr. Aidan's sermon - 16th May 2004

Please pick up and complete a copy of the Lancaster Diocesan Commission for Marriage & Family Life leaflet entitled 'Listening 2004 - My Family; My Church', which is part of a major enquiry to find out what life is like now for families trying to live out what we celebrate now in our mass, in our families 2004. The Bishops, all being celibate, single men, need your experience, & that goes for grandparents & great grandparents who've got such a rich experience to offer as much as for parents, who are actually living family life now in a very real way in the midst of the modern world.

So they want to know the answers to three questions:-
Firstly - what do you feel are the positive & encouraging aspects of modern family life.
Secondly - what do you feel are the major problems facing modern parents.
So - the positive & the negative.
Lastly - how do you feel the church can address these. What do you feel the Chuch should be saying about these issues.

So, that's what the survey is about, & then on 25th September at Lancaster University Chaplaincy Centre, there is to be a Diocesan Assembly where the Bishops' are inviting all the diocese to respond in person. We need two representatives from each parish to go to that, so perhaps we should start to think about who should do that.

What are the positive & encouraging aspects of family life? When you think about it there are lots of positive & encouraging things.
I was getting some fish & chips the other night & we were talking about the 'old days' & what it was like- by 'eck you were lucky- you had an outside toilet - & a flush one! You were lucky - you know the sort of thing! When you think it was only 40 years ago. When I moved house we didn't have flush toilets in Clayton - on - Brock. Where I lived we didn't have 'mod cons' there & that's not all that long ago. You all know the war years, we didn't suffer in the sense of starving but you ate what was given you - there wasn't any choice, such as saying I don't want that or I don't like this - the choice was have that or nowt! That was the only choice we had but now we've got health, we've got wealth, we've got clothing, we've got education, we've got travel opportunities, we've got mass communications , we've got the internet - we've got all these things. They've got those boards in schools now, in St. Bede's School, they've all got those interactive white boards, they've all got computers. There's no question about producing that scrawl-y writing I used to produce, you know you can type up your work beautifully on computers so it looks really professional - all that sort of thing. Tremendous opportunities; support for family life, we're not grubbing around to get food enough to survive like so many people in the world still are - so lots of encouraging & positive things about family life.

Strangely enough, these things give us problems as well. You know - choice - the multiple choices we have nowadays- so often it was easier when there weren't those choices. Family life was a lot easier, where you didn't have a choice about what you wanted to do. Taxi drivers - my parents , they were very lucky - they never taxi drove us anywhere 'cos we didn't have a car - till I was 21 yrs - I think - so I was never taxied anywhere. If I wanted to get anywhere I had to go on my bike or on my feet & that was great. The busyness of our world now, so often two parents have to go out to work , in the sense of because society says we have to have this, we have to have that - the children echo those things. The great word "need" - I've a friend who is a psychologist, who won't let his children use the word 'need' because when you examine need there isn't need very often - it's a false need.

Our very advances have their negative side too.

Health - we do have a health service which takes so much of the burden. The Government's now trying to make us take responsibility for our health & in some ways that's good isn't it? - that we take responsibility. Just think what we have at our disposal to prolong life, to recover from various serious injury or illness - amazing the last 50 years how progress has been made in that. And yet - what are the problems now in our children? - consider the whole campaign about obesity because couch potatoes syndrome is everywhere. That's the other side of it.

Education - wonderful opportunities for education. When I went to university it was 6% of the nation going to university, nowadays they're aiming at 50%. Tremendous opportunities for our children in education but what's driving education? The negative side of it - why do we educate people? - so that they can be part of our economy & keep it booming - keep it going up. So it's an individualistic thing because we reward you if you help drive the economy - it's all about productivity & efficiency. That's the philosophy behind it. The English philosophy of pragmatism - how much are you worth, everyone has a price - all that.

Then travel communication - the world's our oyster, we can go anywhere & we can have wonderful holidays - it's common for people to go abroad - we have to get a bit more money to get your holidays in Spain, Cyprus or wherever.

So there are good sides & bad sides & that's what the Bishop wants to hear. Not perhaps from me, as a priest, looking from the outside so often, but from you, who are actually living it, that's what the Bishop wants to hear.

You know all the choices - the internet - what a wonderful magnificent facility it has - so much information on it - but how on earth do we protect our children- how do we protect them? I remember in the 'old days' sneaking a glimpse in a 'Health & Efficiency' magazine seemed to be the only sinfulness you got as a rampant teenager! Availability of garbage on the net - you know that's the dark side - how on earth do we help our children cope with all that?

So much the Bishop wants to hear. What you feel about.

And just to end - the vision of family life given in today's gospel, an amazing vision because we're baptised, because we're here at Mass, because we're inheritors of the risen life of Christ. Then it's not so much of how do we fit religion into our families, it's how we fit our families into religion. We have to live out our Mass for the next seven days 'till we come to Mass again. We have to be the place where the Father & the Son shall come & make their home. The family is the place where the Father & the Son come & dwell. Our homes are homes of the Father & the Son. We hear in today's gospel, the great tradition in the Church of the family as the 'little church', the Church in miniature. There's a description of the church - in today's gospel - "there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty & the Lamb were themselves the temple, & the city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God & the Lamb was a lighted torch for it." That vision of John in the Apocalypse - that's what our homes should be. There is no temple, when we go home the Lord God Almighty & the Lamb are our temple, at the centre of our family life & so everything is centred on the risen Christ. Christ who has suffered, died & rose again is present at the heart of our family life.

How do we live that out? That's the challenge & that's what the Bishop wants to know - how can the Church help in this - in living out family life, because the world has changed so much.

I just found a new god the other day - "CARBOOT". Originally, up to only a year or so ago, the gods worshipped by the average Englishman, on a Sunday morning, were strange Mexican sounding gods - "TESCO", "ASDA", & now a new one has come in - the CAR BOOT. So what chance have we got? - It's not going to be easy to live out the life of the resurrection in our families, & that's what this survey, this enquiry is about.

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