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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Jun 10, 2014 8:00:31 GMT
A bit ironic that one of the greatest defenders of the Catholic Church in 20th Century Ireland is a British Marxist-Athiest (of Irish origin) called Brendan O'Neill. An excellent dissection and whereas one often has to steel oneself to read the comments, the ones in Spiked are thoughtful, even when its clear that the commentator would be on the atheist left. This is a pleasure in comparison to a lot of mainstream media. O'Neill's characterisation of Emer O'Kelly's Sindo article as hysterical was, as our American friends might say, right on the money. A little bit of irony here that we can praise The Irish Times for responsible reportage in regard to this story - one of the guys commenting on the O'Neill piece remarks that the respectable media (he instances the Guardian, but many more can be read in its place) are sinking to sensation to maintain circulation figures.
I don't mean to be smug or priggish about this, but it bodes ill for everyone. There is a cult of a devil-may-care, nihilistic attitude, extreme individualism which very rationally targets Catholicism as its archenemy. As these people gain critical mass in society, we're all in danger. And we will see much worse things than the Tuam home.
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Post by shane on Jun 12, 2014 21:19:08 GMT
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 12, 2014 23:27:37 GMT
I get so frustrated with the 'hit and run' element of these stories. Nobody cares about the eventual clarifications. Who cared about the actual details of the Savita Halappanavar story? Who cared about the verdict of the Magdalene laundries tribunal that The Magdalen Sisters was a piece of pure fiction? Who remembers Nora Wall? Who remembers Kevin Reynolds? The point is that it doesn't matter what the eventual truth is. The damage has already been done with the initial reports, which is all anybody remembers. The people who push these septic tank stories don't give a damn that they will be refuted. They are just aiming for a general impression of a church in crisis and knee-deep in iniquity, always on the defensive.
I don't mean that most of the journalists writing these reports have such an agenda. Most of them are just looking for a sensational story. But the agenda-mongers are surely there.
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Post by shane on Jun 13, 2014 20:18:42 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 13, 2014 20:19:28 GMT
John Waters' point that these stories are fitted into a "narrative" pattern of brave and brilliant progressives facing down evil right-wingers who are always destined to lose is very pertinent.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 14, 2014 19:47:01 GMT
More thoughts on Tuam from Caroline Farrow, including the use of this material to discredit pro-lifers. (BTW I wonder if the person who hung a doll marked "800 Dead Babies" from the Dail railings is one of those who denounces pro-lifers for displaying "emotive" dead baby photos? I certainly hope not.) carolinefarrow.com/2014/06/13/lessons-from-tuam-an-essay/Note that Ms Farrow does NOT suggest everything in the mother and baby home was rosy - neither should we.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 8, 2014 21:46:51 GMT
And indeed one of the demos about the Tuam scandal was organised by "Galway Pro-Choice", who took the opportunity to inform the Irish Times that they wanted complete separation of church and state, and particularly of church and health system. King Herod is shocked, shocked...
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 8, 2014 21:55:17 GMT
In a post on his blog the American columnist Rod Dreher (an ex-Catholic who lost his faith through covering the scandals and is now Eastern ORthodox) discusses an egregious recent attack on the seal of the confessional in Louisiana and notes that this is yet another example of how the bishops' scandalous handling of the crisis has facilitated attacks on religious liberty generally. He cites a recent American piece which discusses Ireland as Exhibit A in the impact of the horrors: www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/culture-war-guerrillas-conservative-liberal/#post-commentsThe extract below applies in spades to Ireland (I think it is even worse here because of our nationalist heritage, the way in which Irish Catholicism and tribal/nationalist solidarity were mutually reinforcing for so long. It is extremely difficult for a lot of orthodox Irish Catholics to grasp that we are not the majority any more and that a large and growing proportion of the population actively disbelieve in Catholicism in the same way that you or I actively disbelieve in Scientology or Islam.) EXTRACT
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 9, 2014 8:42:50 GMT
I think it would be hard to overstate this point. I find it so frustrating when I'm conversing with social conservatives or with Catholics (i.e., my own 'team', as Dreher puts it) who don't seem to acknowledge that their opponents, and even the majority of people in society, disagree with their basic assumptions and they can't appeal to them. The problem with arguing that society has gone to the dogs is how you measure it-- and what social conservatives consider degeneration, many (most?) people consider progress.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2014 20:44:26 GMT
I often think (on the basis of newspaper interviews, TV reviews, reading blurbs in bookshops etc) that a lot of presentday Irish detective fiction which presents 1950s Ireland as a Catholic hellhole is serving the same function as FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS did for late C16 England (and for centuries thereafter) - to make its readers hate and fear Catholicism so much that they will regard it as absolutely beyond the pale. (And of course Foxe's martyrs did exist, and those later Catholic apologists who sneered at them were absolutely shameful - just as certain recent Catholic fringe commentators whose response to the whole Tuam imbroglio was to sneer at Catherine Corless for documenting something that was perfectly true - as distinct from the spin put on it by media commentary - should be ashamed of themselves.)
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 9, 2014 21:07:50 GMT
"Not an inch" Catholic apologetics is so ridiculous. It even, apparently, leads some Catholic apologists to defend geocentrism-- Robert Bellarmine was right after all, who'd have thunk it!
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2014 21:17:51 GMT
You've come across Robert Sungenis, I see - or Redmond O'Hanlon, or maybe both. BTW Robert Bellarmine's position was that if it was clearly proved that the earth did go round the sun, we would have to change our understanding of Scripture. Sungenis quite simply declares that if there is a consensus of the Fathers in support of geocentrism, that settles the matter and no other data is admissible. Part of what underlies this sort of mindset IMHO is a desire not to think, to always be right about everything. The conspiracism that goes with it is part of the same attitude - if different views are simply the product of an evil conspiracy, then we need not think at all since anyone who disagrees with you MUST be either a liar or an idiot. Just because certain sections of the media are industriously spreading the false impression that the nuns were murdering babies en masse, we ought not to forget that nasty things really did happen in those homes. It's painful and disturbing to face up to it, but if we are to keep alive the Gospel light in our island we must distinguish truth from falsehood and come to terms with the truth.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 31, 2014 22:56:34 GMT
Fr Carlos Urrutigoity is removed from his position as Vicar General of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. Anyone who is familiar with the chaos he and his now-defunct Society of St John caused in the diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania will know that it was extremely imprudent to appoint him to such a position. www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140602/catholic-priest-molestation-allegation-paraguaywww.nbcnews.com/news/latino/reports-vatican-fires-paraguay-priest-accused-alleged-abuse-n167331wdtprs.com/blog/2014/07/dust-up-in-paraguay/(Note BTW how some nuts in the combox digress into rants about Pope Francis or about Latino migration to the US, which have nothing to do with the point at issue.) In some quarters the action taken against the bishop is being presented as a malevolent crackdown on a diocese which has flourished as a result of adopting traditionalism. If this were the case, one would have to regret that the bishop gave his enemies a handle against him by appointing such a person as Fr Urritigoity as his Vicar General. I note, however, that even some trads who have been very hostile to Pope Francis have taken the view that the investigation is justified. Whatever else may happen, the removal of Fr Urrutigoity is a change for the better.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 7, 2014 21:55:32 GMT
It has been quite widely suggested that the abuse scandals are all down to patriarchy and that if the Church was more open to/dominated by feminist spirituality nothing of the kind would have happened. The fantasy novelist Marion Zimmer Bradley (d.1999), author of THE MISTS OF AVALON (a "feminist spirituality" take on the Arthurian legends, told from the point of view of Morgan le Fay with St Patrick as principal patriarchal villain) after spending much of her life as an occultist and goddess-worshipper, took in her last years to claiming that what was needed was for Christianity to discard patriarchy and incorporate goddess-elements (i.e. to turn into a form of paganism with residual trimmings). As part of this project, she had herself "ordained" by a minor pseudo-Christian sect, and her writings are very popular with feminist-spirituality types. (I have seen THE MISTS OF AVALON prominently displayed in Irish bookshops on several occasions, though I have always decided life is too short to devote any time to reading it) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradleyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mists_of_AvalonIt was known that the late Ms Bradley's husband was convicted for raping boys, but it was assumed that she herself was not involved. Unfortunately it has now come to light that not only was she complicit in his activities, she was a serial abuser herself: www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/sff-community-marion-zimmer-bradley-daughter-accuses-abuseI only came across this horrible story by chance when I was browsing a news-site the other day, and I offer it not to engage in point-scoring (the number of trads who have naively believed professed orthodoxy was sufficient safeguard against abuse, and the number of apparent heroes who have turned out to be monsters, should remind us not to engage in that activity) but to show that the idea that if we got rid of "patriarchal Christianity" such evils will all go away, is severely flawed to say the least.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 5, 2014 20:46:01 GMT
The British LMS chairman Joseph Shaw has some very profound posts on his blog about the sense in which we can legitimately feel shame over the crimes of fellow-Catholics and church representatives, and how we can make reparation for them. I do not agree with Shaw on every issue (some of his recent posts on religious freedom strike me as positively hair-raising, and I may say more on them elsewhere) but he is right on the mark here. Follow the links to his blog and read his full thoughts on this subject: www.lmschairman.org/2014/09/historic-crimes-repentance-and.htmlwww.lmschairman.org/2014/09/historic-crimes-repentance-and_4.htmlwww.lmschairman.org/2014/09/historic-crimes-repentance-and_5.htmlEXTRACTS Repenting for the sins of others is a bit too easy - or would be, if it were not impossible. St John Paul II didn't repent, he didn't need to, but he apologised. What exactly that meant remains controversial. I would suggest that it implies, for starters, a willingness to undertake two things which we may, in particular cases, need to do. First, as the institutional successors of criminals, we may need to compensate the victims. The English Provincial of the Rosminians, Fr David Myers, once protested that to pay compensation to victims of historic child abuse would take money away from his order's current charitable activities: it would punish the innocent of today. Well that's too bad. If an institution seeks to benefit from its past, the buildings and institutions and endowments and so on, it must accept responsibility for the bad things as well. Second, we must show that we do not endorse the ideological underpinnings of past crimes. Which is to say, whatever arguments were advanced for anti-Semitic attitudes, or, in the case of paedophilia, for the strange combination of sexual antinomianism and clericalism which permitted and covered up the crimes, are not arguments whose criminal conclusions we accept, and are not arguments which are valid in relation to the authentic magisterium. I have in fact written in this vein on both subjects: the errors involved in the attempted justification, from a Catholic perspective, of an attitude of hostility to Jews, and on the theological distortions at the root of the blind eyes which were turned to peadophilia, and also here and here. There is something else we need to do, which is on a more spiritual level, and may also be part of what St John Paul meant by his apologies, and what Fr Lucie-Smith means by 'repentance'. I shall talk about it in the next post: it is spiritual reparation... I don't say: what will compensate the victims, or stop it happening again, or satisfy the courts, or even restore the Church's reputation. All these things are important, where possible, but there is also something deeper. These abominable crimes stick to the whole institution, they stick to us as Catholics, not because we are personally guilty but because they have, as it were, defiled the sanctuary. We hear some of the victims say: I can't bear to go into a church building, I can't abide being near a man dressed as a priest. It is not difficult to understand that. We need to purify the Temple as the Machabees purified it after the Abomination of Desolation. The first thing I want to mention is shame. Shame, unlike guilt, is not necessarily personal; you can have family or national shame, as the converse of family or national pride. When appropriately directed, it is a good thing: any appropriate emotion is good. It is appropriate to feel ashamed of the Church in its human aspect, without losing sight of her divine aspect. The Church as a divine institution cannot be defiled, it is the Body of Christ and ceaselessly offers up to the Father the perfect Sacrifice. But it is human aspect it can be shameful, and the vituperation of a Savoranola or a Dante, directed even towards the holders of her highest offices, is sometimes justified. Whether they would have found the words to address the current crisis I do not know. But we should feel ashamed... When we contemplate this shame, we should not feel sorry for ourselves - poor us, having to feel shame! - but embrace the shame as the correct response to an objective evil. The shame is a gift. It is the beginning, if we take it in the right way, of reparation. And this is the second thing: reparation. We cannot repent on behalf of others, but we can make reparation on behalf of others. We must make reparation for crimes closely associated with the Church, such as those by Catholics, or crimes of sacrilege. We can also make reparation for the crimes of society as a whole. This is something which too many Catholics have forgotten, but it is something which is of the utmost importance. Without the language and the practice of reparation we have nothing to say, and nothing to do, to deal with the horror of systematic crimes by Catholics, of which paedophilia is the most obvious recent example, or the overwhelming crimes of society, such as abortion. We must make reparation. Reparation, voluntary penance or other good works offered in acknowledgement of some sin, is a participation in the expiation of the sins of whole world by Christ. By participating in this way we apply that perfect expiation in the most urgent way to the most urgent matters of our day. Christ's sacrifice is not incomplete in itself, but it is incomplete as it applies to us and to our society, otherwise sin would be no more. It is that completeness of application which we can advance by our actions, just as it is the glory of God on earth, in men's hearts, not His infinite glory in heaven, which can be increased by our actions... END OF EXTRACT
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