A word about the name of this blog: Once I confided to a friend that I was worried that I had lost my faith. She said, "You don't sound like an unbeliever; you sound like a Christian who's mad." Hopefully that will change over the years; I was also told by a spiritual adviser that I needed "to bliss out." Well, unless I go to Hawaii where everyone is blissed out all the time, I'm not sure how that will happen. For the present, this pilgrim remains petulant. Years ago I read a book called Charles Dickens: The Last of the Great Men by G.K. Chesterton, in which he said that Dickens spent his life fighting for what he believed was right, and in that lay his "cheerfulness." Well, I hope to offer glimpses of Dickensian (Chestertonian?) cheerfulness amid the grouching and groaning -- but you, gentle readers, must help me with this!

Here's a characteristic incident that keeps my pilgrimage petulant. A few weeks ago I passed a church in the Fort Hamilton section of Brooklyn with a plaque informing me that this was "The Church of the Generals." Apparently Robert E' Lee was a vestryman there, Stonewall Jackson was baptised there as an adult (no, his Christian name wasn't Stonewall) General Matthew B. Ridgeway was a parishioner, etc. I made the mistake of walking inside where I found (of course) a priest with a little white moustache who told me that "Jesus never excluded anybody," when I brought up the current controversy in the Episcopal Church over whether or not to observe standards clearly stated in Scripture and maintained by 2000 years of Christian tradition. When I mentioned that Jesus said, "Go and sin no more," I was informed that Jesus did not say, "Go and be heterosexual."

The Church of the Generals. Indeed.

(The Church of the Generals, incidentally, is part of the Diocese of Long Island. A few years ago the Bishop of Long Island was arrested  -- I don't remember what for, but I do remember The Weekly Standard reporting that the cops found him "smoking crack and writing his sermon.")

From whence comes the notion of this touchy-feely all-inclusive Jesus? In Matthew 18, Christ offers a clear guideline for dealing with offenders: First, confront them by yourself. If they don't knock it off, bring a couple of friends with you. If they still persist in the offense, bring it up in front of the Church. Then if they don't shape up, treat them, says Christ, the way you would treat "a heathen or a tax collector"!

What most distresses me about modern society is the loss of any sense of manliness or womanliness. The late Pope John Paul II contributed a wonderful reconfiguration of traditional Christian morality (which of course includes this issue) in Theology of the Body, well worth reading for anyone with the patience to slog through it. When I've asked Catholic friends if the Pope's ideas trickle down into everyday parish life, I'm told that the answer, for the most part, is "no." (One friend told me that it can be found at places like Franciscan University of Steubenville ... but do you want to live in Steubenville?)

The Book of Revelation speaks of Him who sits upon a white horse, whose name is Faithful and True. Who today (on earth) has any conception of what those words mean? One of my images of the Anglican Church at the time in which I naively entered it was that of Queen Victoria in her widow's weeds, waiting to join her husband in Heaven. But it finally seeped into my thick skull that her church no longer dwells in the Victorian Age, but in the age of no-fault divorce. Churches are businesses and they are run like businesses, and the way to sell Christianity in an age of no-fault divorce is to dress it up as no-guilt religion. Look at the way Billy Graham gushed over Bill Clinton last year!

Classic orthodox Christianity gave rise to certain constructs that no longer exist. One of them was community. But what community can there be when faithful priests are forced out of pulpits by disgruntled congregations, in concert with liberal bishops, for expounding the very Bible upon which the faith is ostensibly based? (Go to David Virtue's website for horror stories about this.) So much for "father" figures and "church families."

Ah, families. Half of all marriages end in divorce. Who, and where, is Faithful and True?