|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 24, 2009 10:10:53 GMT
Just carefully re-read the McGarry article. Does he not understand that conception free of original sin has nothing to do with sexuality, but purely divine grace. For the record, Catholics, like I imagine anyone else who accepts Mary mother of Jesus was an historical figure, believe she was conceived in the natural way. What is different is that Catholics believe she was not stained by original sin at conception as everybody else is.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jun 26, 2009 12:16:12 GMT
Parodies and caricatures often contain a certain amount of truth,and I do not deny that there is a certain amount of truth in the McGarry article. The problem is the framework of assumptions within which it is presented. Since sexuality involves relations with other people it always has social consequences and therefore requires a moral framework. In order to be part of a deep and intimate relationship it does require a certain amount of secrecy and of shame at revealing it to others, because this involves trespass on an intimate experience; in the same way that if someone tells you something in confidence and you announce it publicly that is a shameful act. Since procreation is a natural consequence it requires a degree of social obligation on those involved to take responsibility for each other and for their children. I attach a reflection on the consequences of disregarding such obligations as visible in Britain and to a great extent in Ireland as well. I point out once again that the author is an atheist, so he is not simply regurgitating some religious diktat, as you would put it. www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_otbie-british_children.html Hazelireland's view of sexuality may be defined by two properties: (a) It is a means of self-empowerment rather than being directed towards a lasting relationship (2) The only valid criterion, or so he puts it, is mutual consent. How does this attitude on sex relate to my example (taken from the IRISH TIMES) of the extent to which it is increasingly seen as socially acceptable for Irishmen on social occasions to go with prostitutes? Simple. First, the emphasis on self-empowerment and the emancipation of sex from prohibitions encourages the punter to view his own gratification as what matters and to treat the other only as a means to that end - like a blow-up rubber doll. Second, once prohibitions are seen as shameful and sex is trivialised, increased value is placed on transgression for its own sake and those who wish to observe restraint are derided as wimps and fuddy-duddies; in the 1960s it was fairly common for a certain type of sexual revolutionary influenced by DH Lawrence to argue that a truly liberated person would have sex with anyone who asked them, and that rape was an act of sexual liberation. (The second-wave women's movement was in part a reaction against such attitudes; Julie Burchill and Andrea Dworkin have commented on this.) The man in the hotel room is thus encouraged to think it is natural that the woman should consent and what he is doing to her is no big deal. Third, an ethos which says right and wrong are determined purely by consent is profoundly impoverished and damaging for all those who participate in it. One of the big problems of John Stuart Mill's ON LIBERTY is that it assumes everyone naturally wants to be like John Stuart Mill, and does not face up to the possibility that some people may choose to destroy themselves. (I might point out that Mill's writings on political economy move away from laissez-faire precisely by pointing out the limits of the free choice argument in relation to employment contracts; a Herbert Spencer or William Martin Murphy would argue that the employee freely chooses to work at starvation wages, and so in a sense he does, but the pressure of circumstances in fact give him little choice in the matter and hence society and other agencies should step in to modify those circumstances.) The drug addict may freely choose to take drugs (at least at first), but the consequences for him and for society are pretty devastatin nonetheless. Society should to some extent at least be organised on the basis of virtue ethics - to assist as many people as possible to achieve their best self, rather than to pursue immiediate gratification. I am not saying there was no prostitution or sexual exploitation beofer, or that Irish soicety in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was perfect - clearly it wasn't. My central objection to Patsy McGarry is that he attributes to passing circumstances restraints which are to some extent always necessary in order to live a good and happy life, and glosses over the faults of present-day Irish society in this regard by smugly proclaiming that everything is now "normal" - as if we stood outside history. He is not prepared to judge both eras by the same standard
|
|
|
Post by hazelireland on Jun 29, 2009 20:52:34 GMT
Hibernicus,
It seems again that you have to conflate two radically different notions in order to make your point. It is strange to me that you keep doing this.
You open above by conflating secrecy with shame. I honestly do not see the connection. Do you actually live in a world where you think everyone surrounding you who does not share every detail of their life with you is somehow engaging in furtive shame? Come on.
I think, as before when you suggested (and still have not retracted) the notion that the authors position leads to wholesale domination or imported women, the connection is solely in your mind.
There is a world of different between the right to privacy and the expression of shame. People do not refrain from broadcasting their sexual lives to the world because they are ashamed. They do it because it is a private matter and has nothing to do with you.
I am not ashamed of my gas bill or my monthly salary or what I had for dinner either. However I am not about to tell you about any of them because this is my private life and had got zilch to do with you. See the difference? Privacy? Shame?
The rest of your post can be disregarded, as usual, as instead of dealing with what I have actually said you falsely label, categorise and “define” my position out of existence and then attack a straw man that you have whole sale invented. Again it is comical to me that you need to invent a position for people you disagree with rather than comment on what they actually said (which you do to me often and which you did as I described before to the author of the article above).
Suffice to say I never said anything about sex as “self-empowerment” nor have I suggested that consent is the ONLY “valid criterion” nor will any reader find me above saying any such thing and every reader here should be as clear as I am on the fact that you have wholesale lied and put words in my mouth. Nothing unusual or new there.
One of these days your level of intelligence, politeness and honesty will progress to the point where you will actually respond directly to something I have said instead of inventing it. I have to say that I exercise the maximum level of patience in dealing with your level of honesty in this regard. I will add one thing though, I hope I never meet this person you have created out of nothing in your head and given my name. Nor, I hope, will any reader of this board mistake the two.
As a victim of your wholesale invention and lying for many posts now, I have come to the conclusion that where I think your problem lies is in that you have several pre-prepared arguments on standby, which you have packed with as many name drops as you can and you use them when you can, regardless of how relevant they are to what someone has actually said to you. If you need to whole sale invent or lie about what a person has said in order to do so, then in your head its a case of “So be it”. You are no better than saintstephen in this regard.
Suffice to say however you still have offered no connection between the McGarry piece and the concept that “the author’s position therefore somehow logically leads to the conclusion that sexual exploitation of women is “normal”” and I still say this is dishonest and inaccurate in the absolute extreme. Nor do I expect you to mature to the point where you excercise some level of honesty in retracting it. Have you no shame, at all?
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jun 30, 2009 11:56:03 GMT
I am not talking about shame in the sense of something which is inherently shameful, but in the sense of something which is private. We do many things in private which are not shameful in the first sense but which we would not want to see broadcast to the world, and were they to be so broadcast we would be shamed in the second sense. Someone who had no sense of privacy or intimacy and who was prepared to live out their life in public would be a lesser person (cf the public attitude to the BIG BROTHER contestants). My point about the view implicit in McGarry's piece that sexual restraint is unhealthy per se (note that he refers not only to persons coerced into religious celibacy but to bachelors and spinsters as unhealthy, and that he refers to what he assumes to have been the pre-Malthusian prolificity of the pre-Famine Irish, and to the present-day rate of births OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE as a sign of social health) is that such an attitude emphasises the individual's need for sexual release and thereby tends to reduce the sexual partner to an instrument of such release and diminish the link between sex and intimacy. I certainly do not mean to say that pre-sexual revolution sexual attitudes were ideal (a society where one generally has to marry in order to have sex can encourage an instrumentalisation of the spouse of the kind I mention, and this was too often encouraged by a legalistic application of the concept of "marriage debt"), or that there is not a good deal of truth in McGarry's criticism of post-Famine Irish attitudes on such matters, or that prostitution did not exist in pre-1960s Ireland. My point was that McGarry paints the past as all oppression and the present as all liberation, and never admits that the present has its own problems - one of which, as his own newspaper indicates, is trafficking of women and increased social tolerance of their use in this manner. Look up the IRISH TIMES archive's coverage of this issue for the Garda view that this has increased in recent years, though of course this relates to affluence as well as changing attitudes. Hazelireland maintains that I have a few arguments which I trot out whatever the occasion without regard for what he says. In fact the problem is that he can't be bothered to understand my arguments; I recommend to him Karl Popper's point that in order to defeat your opponent you must meet him on his strongest point.
|
|
|
Post by hazelireland on Jun 30, 2009 12:06:49 GMT
So if someone chooses to live a different way to you, or the way you think is correct, they are a “lesser person”? I am glad you made that admission anyway. It is one I was hoping you would make for some time. Not a million miles off certain UK clergy saying atheists are “not quite human”. Seems this is the kind of rhetoric both you and they subscribe to. No, I say again, sexual restraint is not unhealthy per se, as you put it. As I pointed out this is not contained anywhere in the McGarry article. You invented it. The way in which you do this is to conflate restraint with repression. There is a world of difference between the two and if you were to allow for it you would find a lot more in the article than you currently do. If you want to “defeat” me I call you to meet me ON one of my points. Any of them. Instead of this constant unending need to attack positions you have wholesale invented for me and placed in my mouth instead, time and time and time again. I copy and paste again: Suffice to say however you still have offered no connection between the McGarry piece and the concept that “the author’s position therefore somehow logically leads to the conclusion that sexual exploitation of women is “normal”” and I still say this is dishonest and inaccurate in the absolute extreme. Nor do I expect you to mature to the point where you excercise some level of honesty in retracting it. Have you no shame, at all?You seem to be unwilling to either address or retract this. I am agog to hear how you lead the point from the consensual exploration of ones own sexuality to the "logical conclusion" that this leads to the domination and removal of that consent in others. Cant WAIT to hear how you do it, I really cant. (note that he refers not only to persons coerced into religious celibacy but to bachelors and spinsters as unhealthy Where does he do this? All I can find on the subject of Bachelors is "The bachelor had become as integral a part of Irish life as the husband."
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 13, 2010 15:12:05 GMT
Let's start up this thread again; it remains sadly relevant. For those who might be tempted to take seriously Hazel's claim that my comments on prostitution in Ireland are the product of my fevered imagination, I suggest they consult a recent book on the subject by an IRISH EXAMINER journalist. (I will post the title when I remember it; it is in a "true crime" format and available in the Irish section of Waterstone's in Dublin.)
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 13, 2010 15:21:29 GMT
More revelations about Fr. Maciel of the Legion of Christ; it appears he plagiarised his spiritual publications. American Papist states the Legion now admits he was a pedophile and he appears to have had families by three different women. The apostolic visitation of the Legion will conclude by mid-March, meanwhile another senior American priest has left the LC to become a diocesan priest. As I said, I seriously considered joining the Legion when I was a teenager. patrickmadrid.blogspot.com/search?q=legionariescatholicvoteaction.org/blog/amp/index.php?p=438
|
|
|
Post by Michael O'Donovan on Jan 14, 2010 0:19:53 GMT
More revelations about Fr. Maciel of the Legion of Christ; it appears he plagiarised his spiritual publications. American Papist states the Legion now admits he was a pedophile and he appears to have had families by three different women. The apostolic visitation of the Legion will conclude by mid-March, meanwhile another senior american prierst has left the LC to become a diocesan priest. As I said, I seriously considered joining the Legion when I was a teenager. patrickmadrid.blogspot.com/search?q=legionariescatholicvoteaction.org/blog/amp/index.php?p=438Hardly anyone, even those Catholic in name but also those honestly believing they are, would even consider the idea these days, but the work of the Devil is apparent in these scandals, not just with Fr Maciel but with our own pervert priests, and indeed with our foolish bishops as well in they way they dealt or failed to deal with them.
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Jan 14, 2010 15:30:14 GMT
Whatever about a personal devil or demon, certainly the spirit of arrogance and pride seems to have gripped many withing the hierarchy and in responsible positions in religious orders.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 14, 2010 16:41:32 GMT
I entirely agree with Michael G. One point which is often made is that priests are by the nature of their office more exposed to temptations both natural and supernatural and liable to fall further when they do fall. It is terrifying to think of the way in which Maciel fostered a cult of his own sainthood (even to the extent of having his tomb pre-emptively erected in a Roman basilica; I wonder what they will do with it?) knowing what he did about himself. Fr. Sean Fortune (who also pretended to special sanctity and miraculous powers) comes to mind. I don't think the bishops of whom Michael G speaks were in the same boat; they come across more as Pontius Pilates (speaking in terms of what is in the public forum about their actions - I don't presume to judge their souls).
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 14, 2010 16:45:33 GMT
Askel: I agree about the spirit of arrogance and pride, and this is not just a post-Vatican II development. There was indeed such a thing as top-down clericalism based on blind obedience which helped to create this mess. We need to get to terms with how it has contributed to these debacles; neither the liberal view that the answer is to abolish clerical authority, or indeed the priesthood itself, nor the Radtrad view that if we can only unmask the conspirators we can go back to 1958 and live happily ever after, will resolve it.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 27, 2010 11:45:40 GMT
It seems to me that the mods and the radtrads have in common is a belief that some year around VII or John XXIII's pontificate marks a definitive demarcation in Church history. Both essentially accept the same caricature of what went before and came after. There only difference is in which they perceive as good and which is bad. The rest of us with more nuanced positions are probably regarded as the greater enemy in the end.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 27, 2010 12:55:19 GMT
Indeed - one point that struck me recently in relation to something I saw about the belief that the pre-Vatican II Church was Jansenist is that for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was a tendency for commentators to think that the previous generation of priests (or the generation before that) was much more rigorist than the current one.
The hare of Maynooth Jansenism was started running by the future Archbishop William Walsh, who wrote an article (discussed in the official life by his secretary, also called Walsh; I don't think the most recent life by Fr. Morrissey has much to say about it) arguing that the French emigre priests on the early Maynooth staff had Jansenist tendencies towards rigorism and that this had influenced the early teaching at the college to some degree, but that orthodoxy and humanity had reasserted themselves decades before he wrote (he was writing in the 1860s or 1870s).
Canon Sheehan's MY NEW CURATE, published around 1900, has an early chapter in which the elderly priest-narrator recalls the different generations of priests which he has seen and in which the very oldest priests whom he recalls from his youth are recalled as fearsome rigorists of a type not to be met with in his own day.
Francis MacManus' novel THE GREATEST OF THESE (1943), loosely based on the Callan Schism caused by a dispute between Fr. Robert O'Keffe (PP of Callan) and Bishop PF Moran (later Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney) contrasts the rigorist bishop at the time of the schism (based on Moran) with the gentle elderly bishop (a former altar-boy of the O'Keefe character) who eventually reconciles the old priest to the Church - this does implicitly suggest that the Church had softened a bit in the first decades of the C20. [Thomas Kilroy's THE BIG CHAPEL, a later novel based on the schism which is somewhat more historically specific and also more hostile to the concept of clerical authority per se, makes an interesting comment on this; the bishop in his novel is modelled directly on McManus's bishop and his gentleness, physical frailty and expressions of compassion are presented as tools which he uses to manipulate people to obey him - a form of leadership with which those who have encountered certain "compassionate" and "progressive" clerics will be very familiar.]
Sean O Faolain picked up the claim about Maynooth Jansenism and deliberately confused it with the separate issue of Maynooth Gallicanism (some of the early Maynooth French professors were certainly Gallican; Cardinal Cullen was always suspicious of Maynooth for he believed the taint lingered) to suggest that clerical subservience to the powers-that-be and sexual rigorism went together and were both heterodox in contrast to a more tolerant Continental Catholicism. Quite a lot of this concoction has been regurgitated in the newspaper letters columns recently by people looking for a way of bashing the C19-C20 Church, but it is in fact nonsense. (For one thing it would mean that Cardinal Cullen and his ultramontane associates would have been laxists, which they clearly weren't.) The basis of this seems to have been O Faolain's desire to find a way of calling himself a Catholic when it suited him while disregarding such of the Ten Commandments as he chanced to find inconvenient.
Clearly there was a trauma at Vatican II and a much sharper change than in previous generations, but there wasn't a breach in continuity except for those who choose such a breach themselves. Perhaps we might discuss this point further on another thread, as this one is specifically about the Scandals?
|
|
|
Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Feb 2, 2010 12:41:17 GMT
It seems to me one of the solutions put forward by VOTFI is a gallican model, so the clarifications above are necessary.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Feb 2, 2010 15:20:40 GMT
Gallican does not really describe them - they object to episcopal authority as well, they want something like the Anglican Synods or the Presbyterian General assembly. Caesaropapism might be a better description.
|
|