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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 1, 2008 9:49:35 GMT
Who pays attention to ex-stickie, Fat Rabbit? He led the Labour Party into the last election assuming a win-win situation - if they couldn't form government with FG, Bertie would not be in a position to form government without Labour. It was actually a lose-lose deal: FG did not win enough seats to do business with Labour and the Greens and FF could cobble a deal with the Greens, the PD(s) and a few indos leaving Labour, who lost seats (as many of their own strategists predicted) in the cold.
Then it was time to take out the old grammaphone and play the British wartime favourite: Run, rabbit. Run, rabbit, run, run, run...
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 24, 2010 14:52:14 GMT
Here we see the lefties on the CEDAR LOUNGE REVOLUTION blog giving their views on ALIVE. Our old friend Shane may be found mixing it in the comments, criticising the pope and vatican II in a way that sounds very SSPX. cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/its-alive/
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Aug 25, 2010 11:43:03 GMT
Indeed.
I think that 'Cedar Lounge' is a good title for that forum, as most of the contributors strike me as armchair socialists.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 26, 2010 16:08:44 GMT
Gary O'Sullivan of the IRISH CATHOLIC has started complaining about Archbishop Martin as autocratic and unaccountable. I notice he also complains that Martin "has dismissed the democratic idea of a diocesan synod". This last complaint seems to be part of Gary O'Sullivan's general muddleheadedness. A diocesan synod might have benefits but it would not necessarily be "democratic". Who would be the electorate? How much scope would there be for contests and debate? Would the candidates be made to declare their positions in advance? (I remember when the short-lived diocesan women's forum was set up some women complained that when they asked candidates where they stood on certain doctrinal issues they were told this was irrelevant to the forum, but as soon as it was set up members started to express heterodox views on those very issues and claim they had a mandate to do so).
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 31, 2010 9:46:28 GMT
There seems to be a long history of clashes between the Irish Catholic and Diarmuid Martin and that appears to be coming to a head. The IC is doing no damage to Martin, but Martin can probably do extensive damage to them. Is there a moral in this story?
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 1, 2010 10:12:23 GMT
I think they probably deserve one another. The last editor got fired for making some perfectly reasonable criticism of how the church authorities handled some financial matters (not malfeasance but incompetence); instead the bishops have landed themselves with Garry O'Sullivan who has absorbed a muddled version of theological liberalism which he equates with "modernisation". (This is always a problematic approach because it assumes no other view of things is possible, so you patronise your critics without thinking through your own agenda. The bishops have had their own version of this problem for many years.) Personally, I suspect O'Sullivan would sooner see the IRISH CATHOLIC go bust than change his approach.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 13, 2010 12:16:49 GMT
The current IRISH CATHOLIC has a very good piece exposing the fact that elderly nuns who fall ill are often being sent to nursing homes away from the communities where they have spent their whole adut lives, and that nuns who have left convents to live in the community are refusing to contribute from their salaries to help support older nuns who ploughed back their pay into their communities all their working lives. I have heard rumours about this before. It's good to see this in print though I doubt very much will be done about it. There are too many vested interests in proclaiming that the so-called "reform" of religious life by abandoning the very principle of life in common and of subordinating the ego to the will of God and the good of the community has been a great success. As one anonymous elderly nun quoted in the artice states, "they've forgotten what religious life is about".
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Post by assisi on Sept 15, 2010 21:15:09 GMT
I enjoy the Irish Catholic particularly Mary Kenny and David Quinn who seem to be sensible apologists and observers.
Fr Rolheiser is always a good spiritual read and the letters page is a good mix of the traditional and the odd dissenting voice.
When I first started reading the paper several years ago Garry O'Sullivan's column and the editorials were not paricularly orthodox. Occasionally too, I found the late Fr Tierney's views left of centre. Overall though the Irish Catholic generally balanced out as supportive of the church but emphasising the need to reform alng the lines of greater lay involvement in church decisions.
However I did feel O'Sullivan's frustration as one scandal after another unfolded and he was rolled out to defend the indefensible. There were impassioned pleas from him for the 'grey bishops' (my paraphrasing) to pass on the baton to a younger generation of untainted clergy.
Coming from reading last Saturday's Guardian the Irish Catholic is a breath of fresh air. The Guardian, a week before the Popes visit had a full page interview with Sinead O'Connor and her view on the Pope (with many expletives), a further article under the heading Bad Science criticising the effect in Africa of Catholic Church's view on condom use and then another article on the Faith page criticising the Pope for highlighting John Vianney as an example of good priesthood (he apparently was against dancing and self mortified?)................
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 16, 2010 9:08:40 GMT
The big problem with Garry O'Sullivan is that he is always calling for "modernisation" without ever spelling out what exactly he has in mind. He seems to think in slogans when slogans mean different things in the mouths of different people. For example, someone denouncing "clericalism" may mean the sort of clerical authoritarianism which assumes the priest or the bishop always knows best, that the laity are not entitled to criticise any action of theirs no matter how high-handed or damaging, that a priest should always be favoured in a clash of interests with the laity etc. That is a real problem which has to be addressed, and conservative as well as liberal Catholics have suffered from it. On the other hand the person who is denouncing "clericalism" often means to deny that the clergy have any legitimate teaching authority at all, to suggest that the diminishing number of priestly and religious vocations and the declining influence of the clergy are natural and even positively desirable developments which we should not seek to reverse, that the distinction between laypeople and clerics is simply a mystification created by the clergy to retain power - in short that they have adopted a liberal Protestant view of what the Church is which is simply incompatible with Catholicism. Again, calls for "greater lay involvement and consultation" may mean just that - or they may be code for saying that a particular set of laity (e.g. those who treat the IRISH TIMES as their personal magisterium) should be put in charge and allowed to impose their heterodoxies without any interference from Drumcondra, Armagh, or Rome. It is no good calling for reform if you are not prepared to spell out exactly what you are proposing and acknowledge that it may have disadvantages as well as advantages, and also to acknowledge that this is not just a matter of "balancing" competing views - there are some views which are definitively incompatible with Catholicism. A Church which excluded the possibility of Roman intervention, which denied that there is any fundamental distinction between the ordained and the non-ordained, which was governed by an elected synod which held itself free to rewrite or reverse any article of doctrine, any clause in the Creed, by simple majority whenever it felt like it, simply would not be Catholic. I am NOT saying that Garry O'Sullivan and Co necessarily hold these views, but in some respects they have aligned themselves with people who do and if they want orthodox Catholics to accept legitimate proposals for reform they should clearly and decisively distinguish themselves from such people. Contrasting the IRISH TIMES with the militantly secularist GUARDIAN (or for that matter with the London TIMES, which has been Pope-bashing quite recently) is not comparing like with like. How about comparing it with other Catholic publications such as the CATHOLIC HERALD or CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT? These are not perfect by any means, but I greatly prefer them to the IRISH CATHOLIC as it is now.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 16, 2010 13:39:10 GMT
I agree with Hibernicus. There are good contributers to the Irish Catholic - no doubt about. I have to say that I think the paper's weakest link is the editor.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 11, 2010 17:22:58 GMT
The TV critic in the current issue of the IRISH CATHOLIC (7 October) has a good dissection of the Association of Catholic Priests and their media coverage, as well as a good analysis of Fr Brian D'Arcy's equivocations.
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Post by assisi on Nov 4, 2010 22:00:34 GMT
There's a nice observation or two from John Waters in this weeks IC.
With regard to the current economic woes he talks about the media in Ireland keeping the 'rage' going by promoting 'emotion' rather than news and he concludes:
Of course, it almost goes without saying that the rage now being expressed is not really about the loss of prosperity for itself. It is because, about 20 years ago, having lost our way in every other conceivable context, we started to upload all our hopes and ambitions to the wagon of prosperity.
"Wealth, we decided, could solve all our problems and answer all our questions. Now that it is clear that riches are not, after all, our national destiny, we are beside ourselves with an incoherent rage because we will have to turn again and face the great questions of existence.
But we can be certain that this is not a perspective the media will start to canvass anytime soon."
It is an idea I have seen expressed by others, namely that if people's lives are full of activity, noise and distraction they will not have the time or space to think of the bigger questions - because if they did they just might realise how shallow and controlled their current existence is.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 5, 2010 12:09:20 GMT
I think that as usual John Waters has an ounce of sense to about a pound of blather. Irish nationalism ALWAYS included the belief that one effect of a free Ireland would be to make the people more prosperous. This was a perfectly legitimate aspiration, and anyone who criticises it should read descriptions of the lives of small farmers in the West or the poverty of the Dublin slums as they were up until the 1950s and 1960s. This co-existed with an emphasis on self-sacrifice both political and religious. Its abandonment dates back to the 1960s and reflects amongst other things greater awareness of rising living standards elsewhere and of the failure of nationalist cultural and economic policies to solv the country's economic problems. Catholic social teaching was suspicious of the power of the state because it tends to "crowd out" the church. The growth of the modern state elsewhere was related to the threat of war and the need for national defence against outside dangers; in twentieth-century Ireland it was driven by economic failure and the need to raise the living standards of the population. Those who warned about the dangers of wealth got many things right; their big problem was that they tended to idealise poverty for others while avoiding it themselves.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 11, 2010 15:40:39 GMT
I see there seems to be a major spat between the Irish Catholic and the Dublin Latin Mass Chaplaincy these days.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 16, 2010 14:38:07 GMT
Here we see Garry O'Sullivan praising Fr Brian D'Arcy for his moral courage and hailing him as a prophet. This would be the same Fr Brian D'Arcy who refused to resign from the NUJ over its abortion policy when it might have made a difference? www.irishcatholic.ie/site/content/possessing-moral-courage-very-rare-commoditySEZ GARRY Yet so many Irish Catholics, liberal and conservative, are afraid of discussion, are unable to tolerate any loyal criticism and are intolerant of others who hold equally passionate viewpoints. They try to stifle, censor, vilify. I wonder do they ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, the Holy Spirit is actually speaking in this moment through that other person for all the human failings of that person? END OF EXTRACT Does he really believe that there are NO opinions which are incompatible with Catholicism, or that there are not some opinions which ought to be censored and criticised? Can he tell the difference between the Holy Spirit and a blast of hot air?
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