|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Mar 22, 2024 11:44:54 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 22, 2024 12:12:31 GMT
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Mar 23, 2024 0:34:51 GMT
Indeed - here are a few questionable elements: I greatly respect Fr Vincent Twomey but I think he overdoes the "English Protestant respectability" element. I suspect the French Catholic version of the same era was rather similar - for example, the orders which ran most Magdalen asyla were based on a model established by the French C17 priest St John Eudes, modified by the C19 French nun St Euphrasia Pelletier. The idea that the C19 Irish Church was anglophone because of a deal done with the British Government over the establishment of Maynooth is quite false. There was a deal but it was about the inculcation of loyalty to the British Crown. Maynooth's C19 attitude to Irish was generally negligent if not worse but this wasn't because of the British Government. (If this were the case it would be hard to explain why the government tolerated the quite extensive attempt by Protestant groups to convert Irish Catholics through the medium of Irish.) Maynooth did have a form of Irish patriotism based on Latinity, especially early Irish and Counter-Reformation texts. The author also completely passes over the tremendous appeal Continental-style devotional Catholicism on the Italian model had when introduced in the mid-C19. The reference to isolated villages ignores the flamboyant Catholicism found in urban centres, even among the very poor. This was also found in the urban centres of the Irish diaspora - the experience of urban Catholic ghetto culture in the US was a lot more like the Irish pattern than the writer thinks; while the Irish Catholic intelligentsia was much weaker and more clerically-dominated than its US equivalent it did exist, and both intelligentsias were haunted by a sense that they were provincial and second-rate compared to their non-Catholic equivalents in Britain/France/the US. Mgr John Tracy Ellis set off a sizable debate among US Catholics in the 1940s and 1950s by claiming that US Catholicism was anti-intellectual. I could say more but this is quite enough to go on with.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 25, 2024 10:32:10 GMT
I have just listened to the piece and I know Hibernicus knows more about modern Irish history, but I can speak about early Irish history. And I am exasperated. It sounded like Bob Quinn from an orthodox Catholic angle. I am not denying the links of early Irish Christianity to the East and Egypt, but they were not near as important as outlined there. To suggest St Patrick was born in 461, which is the traditional date of his death? I find the argument that his mission lasted from the 450s to the 490s more persuasive than the traditional 432 to 461 dates, but that doesn't come in here. Treating Ogham as a pre-Christian script, it is generally believed to be an encodement of the Latin alphabet which came with Christianity (which does pre-date Patrick, but he drove the effort to convert the country). Look, the inaccuracies go through ancient, mediaeval and modern - could Crisis not get someone on the ground? We even speak the same language (almost), so it's not like covering continental Europe. Likewise, I could say a lot more on this. OK, icing on the cake is that the interviewee is the chair of the Saints and Scholars Foundation (or whatever it's title is) which is fundraising the Mater Dei Academy in Cork. So the next question is, what is going on here?
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Apr 4, 2024 20:57:55 GMT
There seem to be some odd views about what happened to Newman's University out there. The author of this piece seems to think it was never set up at all and the money collected for it was diverted to support the Irish brigade which fought for the Pope in 1859; I remember the old IRISH FAMILY claiming that the establishment of UCD to replace the jesuit-run University College was state suppression of a flourishing institution. In fact Newman's university was established but barely got off the ground because it couldn't recruit enough students and its degrees weren't recognised by the state. The old uC did have degrees validated by the exam-only Royal University of Ireland but ran on a shoestring compared to UCD (and its rival TCD). I suspect what lies behind these blunders is a serious unwillingness to face up to the practical difficulties of establishing a Newman-style institution then - or now.
|
|