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Post by hibernicus on Dec 2, 2011 22:13:34 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 28, 2011 20:24:40 GMT
An interesting observation by Michael Lind. Two points should be borne in mind - Mr Lind is an atheist himself and an economic populist who believes the American upper classes (especially the Republicans) cynically use religion to distract the populace from the "real" economic issues. For both these reasons he is reluctant to believe that any educated person can be a sincere religious believer, and he is therefore exaggerating a bit - but not much, I suspect. The same IMHO is true of our Irish social and political elites, who take their views from the great metropolises of Europe and North America. www.salon.com/2011/12/20/hitchens_gossip_columnist_of_genius/EXTRACT Hitchens was affirming rather than challenging an elite consensus when, on behalf of atheism, he mocked religious believers as not merely mistaken but contemptible and moronic. The religious are despised and dreaded by upscale Americans, and their British court jester could say what they dare not say themselves — although candidate Barack Obama came close in 2008, when he psychoanalyzed the white working class for the benefit of billionaire donors behind closed doors: “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”... END OF EXTRACT
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 3, 2012 19:04:16 GMT
Personally, if I was voting in the Iowa caucuses, I would support ex-Senator Rick Santorum (even though I suspect he has little chance of securing the nomination or getting to be President). He is one of the few senior Republicans who pays more than lip service to life and family issues (though I don't say he is perfect). Some years ago I remember some feminist slime mould reviewing in the IRISH TIMES a book on feminism which described a speech reproduced in the book, delivered by Santorum in reply to a statement by the Catholic-in-name-only Democrat Senator from Maryland, Barbara Mikulski, during a debate on a proposed partial-birth abortion ban, as a display of angry self-importance which had to be read to be believed. What the slime mould in question did not deign to inform its readers about was the context. The legislation under debate stated that partial-birth abortion (the baby is delivered feet first; while the head remains inside the mother the abortionist inserts a tube to suck out the brains and collapse the skull) is never medically necessary. Santorum's wife had recently given birth to a baby who died after a few hours because of a genetic defect. Mikulski repeated as fact an untrue rumour which she had heard somewhere that the baby had actually undergone a partial-birth abortion because this was necessary to save Mrs Santorum's life. Just think about that for a moment. Not only was Mikulski repeating falsehoods about the death of the Santorum baby for political ends, she was falsely claiming that Santorum was a cold-blooded hypocrite who knew partial-birth abortion was necessary to save women's lives and had been used to save his wife's life, but who was deliberately condemning other women to death for selfish political advantage. Of course Santorum's response was furious - but either the author of the book, or the slime mould reviewer in the IRISH TIMES, or possibly both, did not deign to explain these trivial details to their readers, as it would have interfered with their delightful task of smearing all pro-lifers as wackoes. During the row over Mikolski's smear, it came out that the Santorums had held a funeral for the baby, laid it out at home, and introduced the children to their siblings. This has now been brought up again by liberal commentators to present Santorum as a weirdo -see the links below. As I said, I do not endorse every aspect of Santorum's political career and beliefs, but I would certainly vote for him if I lived in Iowa, and I ask you to say a prayer for him and his family whether you agree with me on this or not. www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/01/santorums-wife-breaks-down-after-voter-asks-about-their-dead-child/#commentswdtprs.com/blog/2012/01/alan-colmes-remarks-about-rick-santorums-child-santorums-remarks-about-marriage/#comments
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 7, 2012 21:38:04 GMT
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Post by shane on Jan 7, 2012 23:17:26 GMT
Shea's piece is itself way over the top, like most of what he writes now. He's really drank the Vox Nova kool-aid.
I have to say I find Taki Magazine in general to be quite a nasty outlet and think its faux-reactionary, pseudo-elitist worldview distasteful. Indeed I've been reading a lot of American paleo-conservative stuff lately and it's really put me off it. There's a really nasty streak to US paleo-conservatism - often including barely concealed racism. Almost makes me sympathetic to the neo-cons.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 8, 2012 0:46:41 GMT
Shea is certainly way over the top and I disagree with his political position. I wouldn't lump him in with the Vox Nova people because they tend to be from what I hear of them major-league heterodox. Shea is an orthodox Catholic on the central issues, and he is quite right on the issue of torture, whatever about the wider conclusions he draws from it. It IS disgusting to see the use of torture being made a litmus test (and it's even worse when people deny it is torture). His central attitude, I think, comes from the sense of having been deliberately fooled (a bit overstated given that EVERYONE and I mean everyone including France and Russia, who opposed the war believed Saddam had WMD) into something which has turned out to have catastrophic conseequences (and as someone who supported the war myself I have to admit that the way the Americans mismanaged the place and the widespread massacres and expulsions which followed raise serious questions over jus in bello) and from this has arisen the view that anyone who defends such a view is so self-evidently corrupt that it is a waste of time to reason with them or treat them as serious moral beings. The frightening thing about Taki Mag is that some of the contributors are clearly intelligent people who nonetheless come up with false and evil beliefs. Steve Sailer, for example, can be quite perceptive as a film critic but underlying his views is racism pure and simple; he really does believe blacks are stupider than whites, and one reason he gives for rejecting Christianity is precisely that it requires that people of all races be treated equally (whether or not Christians have actually done so). We think of racists as stupid, and most of them are, so to meet an intelligent racist is a really shocking experience, as shocking as the knowledge that some Nobel-level scientists were Nazis. (In the same way the madness of E Michael Jones is all the more frightening because he is an intelligent and widely-read man, who has turned his talent for making connections to fanciful ends which have gradually drawn him into poisonous fever swamps of paranoid conspiracy theory). Palaeocons are a very disparate group, but I think what unites them is a sense of being a persecuted elite of secret truth-tellers. There is as you say a nasty undercurrent of racism (there were a lot of segregationists in the 60s and they didn't all vanish overnight) and there seems also to be a sort of deliberate impossibilism - they take the view that they alone are the real conservatives and anyone who settles for anything less - that is, who tries to accomplish anything in the real world, must inevitably be a sell-out and a traitor. It's very like the sedevacantist fringe or a certain type of SSPX ultra-monarchist; they wouldn't want to belong to a Church which was prepared to include them. I am fairly sympathetic to the neo-cons for all their faults (which I admit include large doses of cynicism and power-worship).
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 2, 2012 22:28:42 GMT
An American calling herself "Supertradmum" mentions in one of Fr Zuhlsdorf's comboxes that she recently attended the Latin Mass in Dublin and found in conversation with some of the attendees that they defended the US Democratic Party and Obamacare! I presume she means St Kevin's rather than the SSPX Dublin church, as I suspect the SSPX are (a) more wary of outsiders (b) more right-wing (c) more insular - so I would expect them either to be out-and-out hostile to the Democrats or to take the view that it made no difference since all these American dissenters from the Glories of Absolute Monarchy were equally bad. [Addendum; the reference to coffee would also suggest it as there are several cafes close to St Kevin's while there do not seem to be any near the SSPX church.] I must say that this surprises me. I can understand an indult trad defending the principle of state-provided healthcare (whatever about the specific provisions of Obamacare) to an extent which would shock an American conservative, but praising the Democrats, who are (with some honourable exceptions) clearly much more aggressively secularist and pro-abortion than the Republicans, is quite another kettle of fish. I can understand this from liberal Catholics who believe social justice, defined as state-provided welfare, takes precedence over all else, but I suspect such views are underrepresented among trads - this is not altogether a good thing, trads tend to go to the other extreme on this issue. Are any of the people who talked to her reading this? (I should mention that I was not at St Kevin's that Sunday for reasons beyond my control.) Does her account adequately represent your views, or has she misunderstood you? If you really took the stance she says you took, why did you do so? My own suspicion is that anyone who took this view was simply letting the media do their thinking for them. I remember we used to have occasional posters on this board during the 2008 presidential election who assumed that Obama's goodness was so self-evident that any criticisms of him could be dismissed without answering him and it was not necessary to put forward any positive arguments in his favour as the case was so clear-cut. I would hope that anyone who attends St Kevin's would know how to think for themselves, or at least to think instead of letting RTE think for them on the issue of the pseudo- St Barack Comments on Supertradmum's view of Irish Catholicism in general would also be appreciated. wdtprs.com/blog/2012/02/holy-see-irish-relations/Supertradmum says: 21 February 2012 at 10:39 am I have been living in Ireland for over two months exactly and I have never seen such anti-Catholicism among the people as I have here. It is worse than England. The Irish are like spoiled adolescents in rebellion against Daddy, who has given them everything. How this happened, I am not sure. but the Catholic population of Church-goers is older than that of the States. As in Great Britain and Malta, the John Paul II Generation was never “born here”–those in their 40s and younger, except for a few bright sparks, are totally secularized and worse, anti-Catholic. At the Latin Mass on Sunday, I had a delightful talk over coffee with three university students at Dublin. None are Irish. They told me that there are conservative, Latin Mass movements among the young in France, Italy, and even Singapore, but not here in Ireland. There has not been the conservative movement among the younger generation here at all. Parents have not home schooled and there is a sickening lack of responsibility for the Faith among adults. Most just have done what Father said to do and if Father is liberal, there one goes. The people I have met are also anti-intellectual about the Faith, which is very odd. In England, there are the old, intellectual Catholic groupings which have kept the Faith and are more and more conservative. Also, there are many more conservative and Latin Mass priests in Great Britain. There are way more Tridentine Masses in England and Wales then there are here in Ireland. The Irish Church will fade away completely in another two generations. Supertradmum says: 21 February 2012 at 10:44 am frobuaidhe, your comment has shown me more proof of what I have seen here and that is the lack of the sense of the Universal Church. For too long, the Irish have lived on a dead heritage of the Faith. If there are countries where the Faith is living and strong, and Father Z thinks they could help Ireland, the passionate hatred which still simmers here for the British will not help the Irish to grow out of a parochialism which has chocked the Faith here. While Catholics in other countries in Europe are rousing themselves out of a sleep, the Irish are still talking about being Catholic without really being Catholic. Example, after the Latin Mass, I had Catholics defending the Democratic Party in America and Obamacare. What? Living in the past will not help the Faith grow here. That the Latin Mass is practically invisible here is another proof of this parochialism.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 5, 2012 10:17:02 GMT
I think there are a couple of things going on here.
1st problem is a view among many American trads (with variations) that Trad Catholic = Republican voters = Homeschoolers.
This is need not necessarily the case. I know an American trad as good as any who would not consider homeschooling and when Rick Santorum was defeated for the Senate by Robert Casey, he said that that was no bad thing. Of course Casey was, to some degree, a pro-life Democrat. However, the Republican lean makes the mistake of assuming that Catholic (especially trad Catholic) = conservative. That need not be the case. There are aspects of liberalism that we cannot accomodate, but many conservatives have embraced those obnoxious aspects too. Similarly, there are aspects of American and European conservatism that we ought to have a lot of questions about.
The second thing is home schooling, which is treated as a litmus test by many American trads. It is no such thing and it is not something which takes in other environments. US trads go on a lot about the fact that homeschooling is illegal in Germany. So what? The German constitution, like the Irish, describes the parents as the primary educators of the children (this derives from the same source). But the fact is, despite persuasive articles to the contrary, not every parent can homeschool nor is homeschooling beneficial for every child. I suspect for every homeschooled child that graduates cum laude in Harvard and takes a JD from Yale School of Law, there are many failures.
Anyway, homeschooling isn't the preferred solution everywhere. In continental Europe, for example, Catholic scouting is the usual response to the deficit in education and this has been successful in many countries in Europe, remarkably in France (Guillaume might know something about this). I know Fr Gabriel Burke tried to establish a Scouts et Guides d'Europe troop in Macroom. Likewise, Mrs Peadar Laighéis (to use an incorrect title) has long experience of the German equivalent. So the fact that people aren't homeschooling here doesn't mean they're not trads, anymore than the fact the continental scouting movement has made little or no impact either.
I can only conclude that Supertradmum met the wrong crowd in St Kevin's. The vast majority of the congregation are native Irish and many are young. There is one qualifier - a significant section of the congregation on days the Lassus Scholars/Piccolo Lassus sing are not there for the liturgy, but the music. Could it be that the poster met a few of them?
I would think that most people at St Kevin's would see beyond the RTE/Irish Times cheerleading of the Democrats. However, this does not necessarily mean they would embrace the Republicans either.
Finally, the comparison between Ireland and England & Wales, re the TLM does not hold. The Cardinal Heenan Indult of 1970 gave England & Wales a head start on everybody else and when the 1984 indult arrived here, progress was seriously set back in 1992 by remarks made by Cardinal Innocenti of the PCED to the late Bishop O Suilleabhain of Kerry and went into reverse until about 2005. A better comparison could be made with Scotland which was in the same boat. The TLM has made more progress in Ireland than in Scotland since 2005.
One point I do agree with Supertradmum on, however reluctantly, is the comparison between robust intellectual defence of the faith by laity in England and its dearth here - but there are historical reasons for that. Still, The Thirsty Gargoyle is part of Britain's Catholic Voices and he's an Irishman.
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Post by shane on Mar 5, 2012 10:29:36 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 5, 2012 10:47:21 GMT
Thanks Shane. I looked at that and a couple of other posts on her blog re: Ireland. As she sees socialism everywhere, it probably would be difficult to reason with her.
I wonder how seriously she takes some aspects of Catholic Social Teaching, eg, from Rerum Novarum and similar documents. As socialism?
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Mar 5, 2012 12:08:09 GMT
I know it has been said before, but whenever Fr Z mentions Ireland or Irish Catholicism, all sorts of anti-Irish comments appear. These people should look at themselves in the mirror, but comments like the one on the Holy See Embassy just fan the flames.
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Post by shane on Mar 5, 2012 12:12:25 GMT
Alaisdir, alas such views are widespread on the American Catholic right. The Thirsty Gargoyle told me a number of times that he fears one effect of the Catholic blogosphere is that this kind of stuff is being imported into English and Irish Catholicism. Does anyone agree with him?
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 5, 2012 12:14:34 GMT
The posters on Fr Z have a strong tendency to identify with upper-class English Catholicism because they see it as more classy, and to look down on Irish Catholicism accordingly. You can see the same tendency in Damien Thonpson's sneering at the older membership of the British Latin MAss Society (who would have been more Irish and working-class and less interested in elaborate ritualist liturgy) as "the Low Mass Society". It is more disconcerting to see this from Americans, you expect it from the British. There are parallel trends in American Catholicism as well - the contrast between old-style ghetto Catholicism and the sort of conservatism/traditionalism which involves conscious choice and going to self-consciously orthodox universities. John Zmirak, one of my pet dislikes, is an extreme example of this in his views that Catholics should explicitly take up nativist hostility to the unwashed Hispanic masses sweeping across the border, embrace the view that taxation is theft and that unmarried mothers are heinous sinners who ought to be forced back into the job market as soon as possible, and generally copy the social attitudes of middle-class Evangelicals ("take my word for it, Sammy, the poor in a lump is bad") and abandon the more communitarian attitudes associated with blue-collar Catholicism in the past.
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Post by shane on Mar 5, 2012 12:16:33 GMT
Askel, I think prejudice against ''le catholicisme du type Irlandais'' is pretty much mandatory on the Anglophone Catholic blogosphere. A lot of it is really based on ignorance and myths. One thing I've noticed is that discussions of Irish Catholicism on French and Spanish language Catholic blogs tend in general to be a lot more complimentary, and often better informed.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 5, 2012 12:33:42 GMT
The view that ALL three main parties in Ireland are "socialist" certainly suggests a very expansive view of socialism. It may be true of Labour, but both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are catch-all political chameleons which will call themselves left, right or centre as it suits them - the only ways they could be described as socialist would be (a) quoting such statements as Bertie Ahern's claim to be socialist and Garrett Fitzgerald's self-defintion as social democrat and ignoring the rest (b) treating anything other than laissez-faire minimal-state capitalism as socialism. I suspect the second is the likelier explanation here. This is pretty ironic given that historically European Christian Democrat parties tended to be economic populists rather than minimal-state liberals, and in terms of economic policy FF/FG are in that sense closer to the historic mainstream of Catholic social teaching than the US Republicans.
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