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Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2017 23:56:45 GMT
I think Spielberg has become more conscious of his Jewish heritage as he gets older and has made films on related themes in the past - SCHINDLER'S LIST most obviously (and it also influences his handling of related themes of oppression, such as slavery in AMISTAD). The way he handles it may emphasise Jewish suffering, or Catholic wickedness - we'll have to see to find out. He is also an American political liberal. The Mortara Case has been publicised a lot in recent years and it is bound to raise the interest of a Jew interested in his own people's experience. Also he has a preoccupation with parent-child relationships and any parent would find the thought of such an abduction horrific - I say this as someone who is not a parent myself.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 15, 2017 20:32:56 GMT
I have recently read GK Chesterton's 1922 book of short stories THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, which I had never read before, and I must say it shocked me. (It should be borne in mind that it was written at a time when GKC was in a particularly hostile mood towards Jews, prompted by the death from a wartime illness of his brother Cecil, whom GKC believed had been penalised for exposing dodgy deals by Jewish businessmen.) The theme of the title group of stories is the difference between the high moral professions of the British political class and their dodgy dealings to keep the show on the road (the prime minister who appears in some of the stories seems modelled on Asquith, and there are references to a campaign resembling Lloyd George's pre-war land campaign which called for the break-up of the big estates). What is really striking is the number of the villains who turn out to be Jews; one is called "Sir Isaac Hook" (although he is a fisherman, the name also insinuates the shape of his nose); another is an oppressive Tory squire called Verner whose real name turns out to be "Franz Werner". In the last story,set in a small East European nation, one of the suspects is a French Jew who has settled in that nation and taken to advocating its interests, possibly from ulterior motives - though he turns out to be innocent of the crime of which he is suspected, and the story gives the impression that he was perfectly sincere and honest. This is how one of the sympathetic characters - admittedly under the stress of circumstances - refers to him: It sounds absurd to say that the like or dislike of a man could depend on his wearing a red smoking-cap. But... bare-headed and just a little bald-headed, he seems only a dark, rather distinguished-looking French man of science, with a pointed beard. When he puts that red fez on he is suddenly something much lower than a Turk; and I see all Asia sneering and leering at me across the Levant" (pp289-290).
This is how the detective responds - and unlike the first quote, there is no doubt that Chesterton means it to be taken for granted that he is speaking the truth: It is perfectly true that the Jews have woven over these [i.e. Eastern European - HIB] nations a net that is not only international but anti-national; and it is quite true that inhuman as is their usury and inhuman as is often their oppression of the poor, some of them are never so inhuman as when they are idealistic, never so inhuman as when they are humane" (p.297) I am not saying that every Jewish trader in 1920s Eastern Europe was a saintly philanthropist - but note how GKC refers not to Jews but to "the JEws" as if they were all in it together - and given his well-known opposition to attempts to pressurise the new Polish state into giving JEws equal rights, and given also what would happen to the Jews of Europe two decades after GKC published this, the book leaves a very nasty taste. I am soon hoping to engage on a major re-read of GKC for the first time in over 30 years. (I recently read MANALIVE, but that is another title I had never read before - an agreeable piece of whimsy with a stirring evocation of trees and all else blowing in the wind, but I suspect you need to experience it with the emotional intoxication of adolescence to get the full effect.) I certainly expect to get a lot of the references which I didn't get when I read him as an intoxicated teenager, and to renew my old admiration for a mind constantly at work and throwing off new ideas like fireworks - but THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH reminds me that one sort of person whose mind is constantly at work is a paranoiac, and makes me wonder what else I may find that I missed first time. I hope to post on my rereading from time to time. Most of it,I expect, will be in the Catholic Literature thread - but some, I fear, will be in this one.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 23, 2017 18:38:15 GMT
You could make a case that the New Testament is anti-semitic, especially Acts.
We really shouldn't feed this kind of thing. There are whole academic departments dedicated to identifying prejudice here, there and everywhere.
I agree Chesterton's attitude towards the Jews was less than ideal but far too much is made of it. Is Kipling's attitude to Ireland constantly brought up against him?
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Post by prayerful on Oct 24, 2017 21:19:09 GMT
Speaking of anti-Semites, Bishop Williamson and his Resistance faction peddle an obsessive sort of antisemitism. A Sweden documentary accusing the SSPX of Jew hatred and hiding sexual abusers conflated the SSPX with the Williamsonite Resistance. A priest who admitted misconduct with children, one Fr Stephen Abraham was not charged, but the SSPX placed him in monastic solitude. When Fr Abraham decided to join the Resistance, the Holocaust denying SSPX expellee Bp Williamson gave his lodging and the right to say public Mass, and as Fr Abraham had no charges against him, despite admissions, there was nothing Bp Fellay could do. The Williamsonite Resistance have a chapel in Kerry and Mass is offered at several venues, mostly hotel halls. Not liking Jews, or Talmudists in their language, seems a core value, despite Bp Williamson having insights on the Crisis. A Jew fixation ruins it.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 26, 2017 23:48:47 GMT
You could make a case that the New Testament is anti-semitic, especially Acts. We really shouldn't feed this kind of thing. There are whole academic departments dedicated to identifying prejudice here, there and everywhere. I agree Chesterton's attitude towards the Jews was less than ideal but far too much is made of it. Is Kipling's attitude to Ireland constantly brought up against him? Chesterton isn't on the same level as the NEw Testament. The question is not whether we are "feeding this sort of thing" - the question is whether it is true and how we should respond. Owen Dudley Edwards has actually written some very interesting essays on Kipling and the Irish. Kipling's attitudes were fairly complex; like many imperialists of the time he tended to claim Irish nationalists weren't really representative and praise Irish soldiers in the British army as representing the "real" Ireland. Kipling's attitude to the Indians is much more problematic - I remember how horrified I was when I realised that the monkeys in THE JUNGLE BOOK who think if they can make fire they will become human is Kipling jeering at the "babus" - westernised Indians who argued that they should be treated as equals of the British because they had the same professional qualifications. Even there, there is quite a long tradition of Indian critical engagement, balancing this sort of thing with Kipling's genuine respect for and knowledge of many aspects of Indian culture. I learned a lot from Chesterton when I was a teenager - though I took him too seriously and missed the whimsy, which is often quite profound. One of the things I learned from him is that ideas matter and they have consequences - as he points out in that remarkable passage at the end of ORTHODOXY about the Church in her chariot riding through the ages and keeping her balance. He was a literary critic and expressed his agreements and disagreements with many writers. To learn from him is to hold him to his own standards, and to distinguish his best self from where he fell short. I'm hoping to re-explore him a bit more over the next few years, as and when I find time. Reading MANALIVE and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH -neither of which I'd read before - was a start.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 27, 2017 9:42:09 GMT
My point was whether, as Irish people, we are as ultra-sensitive about anti-Irishness as we have been taught to be about anti-semitism. It's interesting that, in writing about the Fairy Queen, C.S. Lewis doesn't make any heavy weather at all about Spenser's role in Ireland. He mentions it and then goes on to talking about the poem. Admittedly Chesterton's Jewish references aren't quite the same thing, but they are being made to overshadow his entire opus so often. I believe we have been conditioned with an exaggerated horror when it comes to matters of race and anti-semitism.
I consider Chesterton to be the most universal thinker I've ever encountered. Like Sophocles in Arnold's poem "He saw life steadily, and saw it whole". His knowledge of history especially-- the history of ideas-- saved him from any kind of intellectual parochialism. He could enter sympathetically and generously into every point of view, without being in any way relativistic.
I don't think he's flawless, and the hero-worship of some Chestertonians can get tiresome, but it's surprising how often you THINK you've found a blind spot but you later realize you were wrong.
I much prefer his non-fiction to his fiction; his characterization and dialogue is very poor, except (in the latter case), when it's funny, as in this exchange in The Man Who Was Thursday:
“You are Mr. Syme, I think,” he said. Syme bowed. “And you are the Marquis de Saint Eustache,” he said gracefully. “Permit me to pull your nose.” He leant over to do so, but the Marquis started backwards, upsetting his chair, and the two men in top hats held Syme back by the shoulders. “This man has insulted me!” said Syme, with gestures of explanation. “Insulted you?” cried the gentleman with the red rosette, “when?” “Oh, just now,” said Syme recklessly. “He insulted my mother.” “Insulted your mother!” exclaimed the gentleman incredulously. “Well, anyhow,” said Syme, conceding a point, “my aunt.” “But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?” said the second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. “He has been sitting here all the time.” “Ah, it was what he said!” said Syme darkly. “I said nothing at all,” said the Marquis, “except something about the band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well.” “It was an allusion to my family,” said Syme firmly. “My aunt played Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always being insulted about it.” “This seems most extraordinary,” said the gentleman who was decore, looking doubtfully at the Marquis. “Oh, I assure you,” said Syme earnestly, “the whole of your conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my aunt’s weaknesses.” “This is nonsense!” said the second gentleman. “I for one have said nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of that girl with black hair.” “Well, there you are again!” said Syme indignantly. “My aunt’s was red.” “It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.” “By George!” said Syme, facing round and looking at him, “what a clever chap you are!”
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 12, 2018 20:36:31 GMT
More controversy over the Mortara Case, which shows what we can expect once the Spielberg film comes out. (Spielberg seems to have delayed work on it to get his newly-released film on the Pentagon Papers case into cinemas for Christmas 2017.) Once again,let me make my position absolutely clear. Pius IX was wrong to take Edgardo Mortara away from his parents and raise him as a Catholic against their will. Parents have natural rights over their children and are their natural educators. I appreciate that Pius was motivated by the belief that since the child had been baptised his spiritual welfare would be endangered if he was brought up as a Jew. (This is quite separate from the rigorist view of extra ecclesiam nullum salus, which Pius IX expressly denied. Some of the discussants on Rod Dreher's threads don't seem to recognise this.) Anyone who has any doubts about this should enquire about the many and bitter rows in C19 and early C20 Ireland about Protestant charities inducing impoverished Catholic parents, by bribes or otherwise, to give up their children to be brought up Protestant. Bear in mind that the Protestants involved,like Pius IX, sincerely believed that they were acting in the child's best interests and that their actions did not involve state coercion (though they sometimes involved deception or concealment in cases where parents tried to get the child back.) The Dominican writer in FIRST THINGS is simply defending the indefensible. We should be willing to stand up for what's right even when it's unpopular, but we shouldn't pretend that wrong is right, whatever the consequences may be. The fact that Edgardo Mortara became a priest and was grateful to Pius IX for his action is an example of good coming out of evil, but doesn't justify the original wrong. I will try to get a copy of Edgardo Mortara's memoir when I can, to educate myself more fully on this matter. www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-edgardo-mortara-case/Follow-up here which notes Fr Cessario's asinine views on the clerical abuse scandal, all the worse since he is based in Boston. He does have a point to some extent about the privilegium fori (i.e. the church should have tried the abusers themselves and imprisoned them - though his view would require that the state should help to enforce the sentences, which otherwise would be unenforceable. The idea that the state should enforce the decisions of a tribunal which it could not scrutinise is problematic. The privilegium is also open to certain abuses when there is a dispute between a cleric and a non-cleric. One example of misuse of the privilegium is just after the Irish Civil War, when one of the bishops made false and slanderous statements about a prominent Republican, and when the Republican threatened to sue for libel claimed under the privilegium that such an action would incur excommunication. The Republican, being a pious Catholic, spent several years trying to get permission from Rome to sue the bishop but got nowhere. Nobody appears to have pointed out that the bishop's appeal to the privilegium carried with it the obligation to submit to an ecclesiastical court - in other words he was claiming power without responsibility. If this reminds you of the clerical abuse scandal, it should. I say this even though politically speaking I agree with the bishop and disagree with the republican.) www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/integralism-liberalism-or-what/Joseph Shaw of the British LMS,whom nobody would call a liberal, gives his view on why Pius IX was wrong: www.lmschairman.org/2018/01/thoughts-on-mortari-case.html The editor of FIRST THINGS distances himself from Fr Cessario www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/judaism-christianity-and-first-things
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 13, 2018 0:53:58 GMT
Hibernicus, I agree with everything you say in the above post, and I understand why this would be a natural thread to post this in. But I feel it should be pointed out that it has nothing to do with anti-semitism per se.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 16, 2018 22:58:38 GMT
I take it you mean racial anti-semitism as distinct from religious anti-semitism?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 16, 2018 23:12:36 GMT
The child was taken because he was a baptised Christian. The religion or racial identity of the actual parents seems irrelevant. They may as well have been Muslims or Hindus.
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Post by Young Ireland on Jan 16, 2018 23:22:07 GMT
The child was taken because he was a baptised Christian. The religion or racial identity of the actual parents seems irrelevant. They may as well have been Muslims or Hindus. Except that the parents were not Muslim or Hindu but Jewish, hence why it is on this thread.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 17, 2018 21:39:59 GMT
Reasonable enough point so far as it goes, Maolseachlainn, and I see why you make it, but: (1) Muslims and Hindus would not have been allowed to live openly in the C19 Papal States; Jews were, albeit as second-class citizens. Hence the specific circumstance only affected Jews. (Foreign Protestants could live and worship there under diplomatic protection, but I suspect they could not become Papal citizens. There were certainly drastic restrictions on Protestant worship and conversion was illegal.)
(2) At the time Jews saw it as anti-semitic (just as Catholics in Britain and Ireland at the time, for example, saw certain types of Protestant proselytism as anti-Catholic even though the proselytisers behaved in exactly the same way towards Jews). This is partly because it spilled over into the wider question of the civil restrictions experienced by Jews in the Papal States (e.g. in Rome they were taxed to maintain a church dedicated to converting them and obliged to attend sermons there twice a year). This is how Jews remember it, and therefore it tends to be seen as anti-semitism even if the strict accuracy of this description can be disputed).
(3) Given what I know about nineteenth-century Catholic culture, I would be very surprised if at least some Catholic controversialists did not engage in anti-semitic tropes during the controversy (e.g attempts by Jews to organise diplomatic pressure on the Papal States, for example trying to persuade the Rothschilds to stop underwriting Papal loans, being presented as Jews as part of an international conspiracy against the Papacy). Certainly some present-day controversialists in Rod Dreher's comboxes use language about the Mortara case that feels anti-semitic to me.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 18, 2018 10:26:38 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 18, 2018 23:20:36 GMT
This is fairly classic Zmirak, with a mixture of good and bad. Good: He is absolutely right about the way many trads and integralists equivocate or worse about religious persecution and authoritarian regimes. He is also right about the desecration of the sacraments involved in forced conversions such as Louis XIV's persecution of the Huguenots, or some of the mediaeval forced conversions of Jews which - for example, E Michael Jones has disgracefully defended and praised. He is right to point out that monarchical and state absolutism is a relatively recent doctrine which can be criticised from the Catholic tradition - for example, Aquinas's views on government are decidedly Whiggish. And he is right about the elements of fantasy and of digging one's own grave involved in adapting such attitudes. The bad: Zmirak dismisses out of hand the possibility that there might be features of Anglophone liberalism and of the US constitution which are genuinely inimical to faith, or that this tradition might ever be open to legitimate criticism. He just asserts the spotlessness of the US constitution, he doesn't deign to argue it. (An example of the shortcomings of this approach is seen in his view that the idea that Hobbes is the foundational thinker of liberalism and that Locke is second-rate and derivative by comparison is some sort of trad eccentricity; in fact it is the predominant view among students of political thought and has been for quite a long time.) Zmirak's other writings show (a) that he treats any impingement on the minimal nightwatchman state as illiberal (b) that he regards liberalism as a sort of Anglo-American peculiarity unattainable by those from other backgrounds, so that he opposes immigration from other cultures (and he praised Brexit in terms practically equating the EU with the Third Reich): stream.org/brexit-second-battle-britain/(c) He's a Trump cheerleader who operates on the principle that victory is the only possible justification and will not admit the possibility of adverse longterm consequences (Jonathan van Maren, for instance is much more willing to praise Trump when he goes right and criticise him when he goes wrong) (d) There is a total disconnect between his advocacy of economic nationalism and hostility to immigration and his citation of Bastiat. Bastiat's free trade principles, and those of his English contemporary Cobden, logically require the free movement across national boundaries of every factor of production, and that includes labour. A central feature of Cobdenism (whose anti-militarism Zmirak regularly invokes) is that free trade promotes peace by promoting exactly the sort of cosmopolitanism Zmirak doesn't like. (e) Zmirak has a point about the flaws of Aristoteleanism, but his willingness to discard the whole Aristotelean tradition and the concept of natural law and to claim that a teaching can be discarded on the sole grounds that it was "only" stated in the fourth century is quite simply incompatible with Catholicism - he's taking a shortcut to get where he wants to go and ignoring the consequences of his actions. To a considerable extent he's a sophist; he's saved from the worst consequences of this only because he's not a consistent thinker and so doesn't seem to realise what he's doing.
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Post by Account Deleted on Jan 21, 2018 1:19:30 GMT
Nearly every debate in Catholicism today seems to come down to the extent and nature of infallibility, and to what is and isn't magisterial. I must admit I find it extremely difficult to discern this for myself. It's rather hazy when you really get down to it, outside of exceptional cases such as proclaimed dogma. Stick to the Cathechism - that's why it's there The rest, is just internal doctrinal politicking, and the Holy Spirit at work sorting it out. The increasing difficulty, I find, is in no small part due to the public utterances of Pope Francis. We are hearing more and more said by him in public (not infallibly I might stress) that contradicts not only Church Doctrine, but in some cases, contradicts positions he has previously stated himself. It occurred to me just recently that if his thinking is self-contradictory, this may actually be an early sign of dementia - and a quick search reveals that I'm not the only one thinking along these lines. It raises some very interesting questions.
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