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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 5, 2009 15:06:35 GMT
I suggest we start a thread, as I am doing now, on the topic of Catholic integralism. This is a subset of Catholic traditionalism which presents a non-negotiable package to the believers covered in other threads.
This may include:
1. Anti-semitism;
2. Economic theories like distributism;
3. Reverential awe for the Middle Ages;
4. A Luddite tendency;
5. An attribution of most of the woes of the world to Freemasonry;
6. Fixed ideas on the role of women right down to how she should and should not dress;
7. Excessive attachment to the ideals of monarchy and aristocracy (most proponents seem to number themselves among these rather than among the peasants in whose interest they seems to wish to emulate the Middle Ages);
8. Bitter hatred for the French Revolution; and
9. Bitter hatred of Communism.
This is an unexausted list on t he topic.
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Post by guillaume on Jan 5, 2009 17:34:21 GMT
I suggest we start a thread, as I am doing now, on the topic of Catholic integralism. This is a subset of Catholic traditionalism which presents a non-negotiable package to the believers covered in other threads. This may include: 1. Anti-semitism; 2. Economic theories like distributism; 3. Reverential awe for the Middle Ages; 4. A Luddite tendency; 5. An attribution of most of the woes of the world to Freemasonry; 6. Fixed ideas on the role of women right down to how she should and should not dress; 7. Excessive attachment to the ideals of monarchy and aristocracy (most proponents seem to number themselves among these rather than among the peasants in whose interest they seems to wish to emulate the Middle Ages); 8. Bitter hatred for the French Revolution; and 9. Bitter hatred of Communism. This is an unexausted list on t he topic. Anti Semitism is strong within the Catholic "integrity". indeed. And unfortunately. I know few Catholics Integrists, and most of them have a stong anti-Semitism opinion. Yes, traditional Catholicism is linked to far right extreme politic. Which includes monarchism, fascism and so on.... And racism... Not so Christian though.....
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Jan 6, 2009 22:34:04 GMT
What Guillaume says is, unfortunately, true, to judge by some of what I have read and heard from these sources. It is important for all of us to repudiate it in any contacts we have with non-Traditional Catholics.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 7, 2009 0:11:51 GMT
To play the devil's advocate; some features of the integrist package are reasonable taken in moderation/in isolation (e.g. opposing the view that the Middle Ages represent only darkness and ignorance). the big problems are (a) some items, eg anti-semitism are evil in themselves (b) integristes often present their views as a non-negotiable package and use them as a substitute for thought rather than a starting-point. Integrisme seems to derive from sources which are French (nostalgia for an idealised Catholic ancien regime monarchy) and American (the desire of self-contained subcultures to seal themselves off from the world as they have space to do so in that continent). There is also a mix of weariness with endles debate and wish for space to think WITH Catholicism instead of just thinking ABOUT Catholicism (representing a legitimate reaction against the endless eulogisation of doubt as a virtue in itself we get from liberal Catholics, which has a grain of truth but has been carried to absurd lengths. I think this beleif in debate and the cerebral approach lies behind some of the liturgical monstrosities we have seen in recent decades, just as it lies behind man of the horrors of modern conceptual art) combined with wishful thinking - yes, everyone's gorge must rise who walks into a bookshop and sees Russell Brand's latest monstrosity of pseudo-literature adorned on the cover with a picture of Christ in Majesty in which the features of our Saviour have been replaced with the face of that promiscuous and boastful drug-abuser who gets his kicks out of making abusive calls to old age pensioners - but fantasising about a Great Catholic Monarch who would obliterate that atrocity is not going to make it happen. Here's the question which debate about integrisme often ignores. Would it ever be right for the state to suppress Mr. Brand's blasphemous excretions? Fifty years ago such a thing would have been snatched and burned by Catholic actionists just as,say, animal rights activists now attack fur shops and labs. Were the Catholic actionists of that day wrong, or are we wrong not to be more like them (leaving out the obvious point, which I fully endorse and emphaisise, that they had public opinion behind them and we don't so that to act now as they did then would simply give scandal, give Mr. Brand more publicity and cause the Faith to be ridiculed still further)? Any ideas? More posting in a day or two with some suggestions.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 8, 2009 0:17:35 GMT
The conspiracy theories I think reflect partly a desire to make unwelcome social trends seem manageable by blaming them on identifiable masterminds (who might conceivably be unmasked and defeated) rather than a lot of little trends which are hard/impossible to control or reverse, and partly a desire to assert one's personal utter righteousness and avoid the task of self-improvement. As Solzhenitsyn put it, it would be so much simpler if the line between good and evil ran between some people and others, so that the evil ones could be easily isolated and defeated - but instead the line runs through every human heart. Those who are familiar with his life know that he knew whereof he spoke - just as CS Lewis said those sins he discussed most convincingly were those he knew himself to have committed.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 8, 2009 0:29:59 GMT
A little observation in relation to the danger of idealising the middle ages: I regularly read the TAschen series of short books on great artists. Recently they brought out one on Giotto, whose frescoes at Assisi lie close to the origins of modern Western art and are such a touching meditation on St. Francis and his role. I was dismayed to discover that the Florentine archives show Giotto used his payment for this work to set up as a loan-shark (he charged 125% interest per annum). This does not mean Giotto was utterly insincere in his evocation of St. Francis (perhaps his other masterwork, the frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel, commissioned by a wealthy family of Florentine usurers one of whom features prominently in Dante's Hell, was meant as an expiation for his sins also) but he's a reminder that people's aspirations are not always matched by their deeds. By the way, Fintan O'Toole had an asinine comment on the Scrovegni Chapel in an article he wrote as part of an IRISH TIMES supplement on the artworld. (The IRISH TIMES of course treats Art as a substitute for religion, though in O'Toole's case this is made subservient to the dream of the Great Socialist Future as principal object of worship.) O'Toole notes that the painting of the Last Judgement in the chapel features the head of the Scrovegni presenting the chapel to the Virgin and claims this shows the Scrovegni believed the power of Giotto's art could save them from Hell. No doubt the Scrovegni recognised Giotto's genius and thought their commissioning him was a significant part of building the best chapel money could buy - but O'Toole thinks of the chapel as an artwork (which is how it is seen now) whereas the aspect of it in which the Scrovegni placed their hope would surely have been the Masses to be celebrated in it, for which they provided by an endowment. I'm amazed anyone brought up Catholic could be so tone-deaf on this point.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Jan 13, 2009 22:10:27 GMT
I think this reflects O'Toole's own preoccupations and the way they seem to get into almost everything he writes. The art of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance is full of religious works in which the donor appears (in the earlier paintings, often as a figure much smaller than the saints who are depicted also, indicating the donor's humbler status).
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 16, 2009 12:50:54 GMT
Having begun this thread, I am interested to look at the comments.
Racism is something I do not normally associate with Catholicism or even Integralist Catholicism, though before Hazel or Hemmingway jump in with considerable evidence of the same, I am aware and am unhappy to acknowledge it does exist and some of the comments by people describing themselves as traditional Catholics on the irish-nationalism.net forum have made my hair stand on my head, as has reading Justin Barrett's book 'The National Way Forward!'. Though I am only aware of this through second-hand sources and the wikipedia entry on the Irish Catholic Newspaper (I was not living in Ireland during the infamous Citizenship referendum), I gather that when Hermann Kelly was acting editor of the Irish Catholic, the newspaper opposed the Bishops' pro-integrationist opposition to the referendum. This is worrying, epecially as I am aware that Kelly gave Barrett's book a favourable review in the newspaper. I do acknowledge, however, that most supporters of the Citizenship referendum which was carried, were not racists but that does not reassure me about the then position of the Irish Catholic, which is generally pretty anodyne on controversial issues.
If I think about the group that finds itself around Richard Williamson within the SSPX, we will find racism. Some (such as Derek Holland who appears have influenced Justin Barrett and others in this country via the International Third Position) have a history of activity with groups such as the British National Front. But an analysis of the people around Williamson - Roberto Fiore (Italy - Forza Nuova party), John Sharpe (American naval officer disciplined for breach of regulations on racism/anti-semitism), Michal Semin (Czech pro-family activist who regularly parrots Williamson's views on women, marriage and the family at international conferences), David Allen White (convert and lecturer in the US Naval Academy, apologist for the late Bishop de Castro Meyer and subsequent vocal opponent of the Campos reconciliation with the Church) - they tick most of the boxes I outlined above. Williamson is also cosy with non-traditionalists such E. Michael Jones (who has interesting views on Jews) and non-Catholics such as David Duke (remember the controversy when he aspired to high office in the US).
Anti-semitism spills into corrollaries, such as holocaust denial, which explains why someone like Richard Williamson cannot enter Canada and had his Green Card pulled in the US - reasons altogether different from what fawning supporters attribute to the man's willingness to preach the doctrince of Christ. The man has alleged the US government demolished the twin towers themselves and that we are in an Orwellian type era. He certainly encourages a lot of skepticism. He also believes The Sound of Music has all the elements of a pornographic movie, describing the harmless Julie Andrews as 'one rolling canine female', showing a modesty of speech which somehow correlates to the modesty of dress in women his supporters keep going on about.
Well end of the rant and I'll resume the topic later.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 16, 2009 18:49:35 GMT
Oddly enough, I can think of some earlier c20 parallels to Williamson's views on THE SOUND OF Music. Quite a few old-style Catholic Truth Society types used to denounce women's magazines, Hollywood romantic movies etc on the grounds that they encouraged a romanticised and sentimentalised view of life and marriage which didn't adequately prepare people for the hard grind involved in any real relationship. There was a good deal of snobbery and Jansenism in such approaches, but I doften wonder if there wasn't some grain of truth in them. (Heresy is truth exaggerated.) There is an undertone in some of Williamson's views on THE SOUND OF MUSIC which is really chilling, though. He seems to say not only that parent-child or husband-wife relationships need to be founded on some degree of obedience as well as affection, but that love and affection are undesirable and peole should be taught to obey their rightful superiors simply for the sake of obedience. This is rich coming from a schismatic within a schism like him. Both Barrett and Williamson seem to me to believe that the mere existence of other people as autonomous beings constitutes a threat to their very existence, and that the only world they would accept is one in which everybody obeys them without thought or question.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2009 12:36:21 GMT
This strand is going to be my main focus for the next few days; I have a couple of ideas which I'd like to try out. ONe interesting question is this: How far are the integralists looking back to a world or a mindset that actually existed before Vatican II, or further back, and how far are they living in a fantasy world? What should a traditional Catholic say to an integralist who declares HE is the real "traditional" Catholic, and we don't accept his views simply because we have been got at by the vast liberal conspiracy? Some of these ideas occur to me because I am currently reading John Cooney's biography of John Charles McQuaid, which I have been meaning to do for quite some time. I am about half-way through it (just before the Mother and Child Scheme chapter) and here are my first impressions: (a) Cooney does have a strong research base. If he says McQuaid did or said something, you can be pretty sure he did it. I wonder what he has left out because it doesn't fit his thesis, but I haven't enough knowledge of the subject to be sure. (b) The problem comes when Cooney is discussing WHY McQuaid did/said something. Cooney is not really interested in ideas, and operates more through sneer or insinuation than analysis. The reader is assumed to be a secular liberal or present-day liberal Catholic (insofar as there is a difference) and this worldview is taken as self-evident. All forms of pre-Vatican II "conservative Catholicism" are lumped together as "integralism" and different strands of thought are glossed over (for example Maritain is dismissively described along with Chesterton and Belloc - they get one sentence apiece; McQuaid's support for the Italian Christian Democrats against the Communists in the late 1940s is described as "integralism" in the same manner as Pius XI's dealings with Mussolini, as if there were no difference between the DCs and fascism, or nobody could have any legitimate objection to a communist government. I don't think Cooney is a Communist - he just subscribes to a certain lazy left-liberal assumption that the Cold War was the product of right-wing paranoia and if handled nicely Joe Stalin would have turned into a humane social democrat.) The whole world of pre-Vatican II Catholicism is assumed to be self-evidently wrong and absurd, as alien from the reader as the world of an Aztec or a Scientologist. (In fact, if Cooney were describing an Aztec or Scientologist he would probably go to more trouble to understand how they saw themselves in their own terms than he does with JCM and his ecclesiastical contemporaries.) JCM's attempts to extend his control/influence are seen entirely in terms of personal lust for power rather than the Counter-Reformation ideal that the Bishop should keep himself as closely informed as possible on everything that is going on in his diocese because he will anser to God for it. (Oddly enough this is closer to modern ideas of efficient management than the practise of post-Vatican II bishops). Just about any movement or individual who does anything can have their career presented exclusively in terms of lust for power; for example, it would be possible for a laissez-faire liberal to describe the history of the world's socialist parties and trade union movement purely and simply as the story of how a class of bureaucrats rose to power and influence by trading on the hopes and fears of the ignorant masses. I think we can all agree such an account would be simplistic (though it would also contain a good deal of truth) but this is exactly the mindset which Cooney brings to his account of McQuaid's activities. Cooney is not really interested in changes in McQuaid's attitudes over time. For example, he describes a truly abominable sermon which JCM gave in Cavan c.1932, clearly influenced by Fr. Denis Fahey ascribing the Great Depression to Jewish banking conspiracies. When he discusses JCM's dealings with Maria Duce, the Faheyite organisation of the late 40s/early 50s he quotes correspondence in which JCM speaks slightingly of Fahey's intellectual abilities and ideology but fails to draw the obvious conclusion - that JCM's views had changed since the sermon was given. He does note that JCM showed more patience in negotiating with Maria Duce than he did with some of the Legion of Mary's proto-ecumenical initiatives, which were rapidly squashed, but it does not occur to Cooney that this is because he could be sure the Legion would obey his orders whereas he could not be sure Maria Duce would do so. (Incidentally, he sneers at Frank Duff's attitude to JCM as servile because it apparently does not occur to him that Legion spirituality regarded obedience to superiors as a religious duty, and he calls Duff "self-serving" - a term which on closer inspection means that Duff tried to keep on good terms with JCM because he wished to protect and promote the social and spiritual work of the Legion. This is an odd definition of "self-serving".) Cooney's central assumption is that McQuaid should be seen as insane and all his actions presented in terms of personal insanity.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2009 12:42:57 GMT
Cooney does have some legitimate criticisms of JCM which I would give as follows: He does pretty clearly establish that JCM was at heart anti-semitic, that his hostility to Protestants went beyond what was reasonable (even though Cooney discounts the actual existence of Protestant proselytising groups and the ability of Protestant social networks to influence the attitudes of upwardly mobile Catholics). He does make it clear that JCM tended to identify too much with the Catholic professional/middle-class milieu which his family inhabited and in which he moved in Blackrock College, and that this hindered his understanding of the situation of the poor - he was socially concerned but this too a paternalist/patronising form - and that he was prepared to compromise the physical welfare of the poor rather than have it tended to by groups which he saw as unsound (i.e. lay-run or interdenominational) even if these groups had no ulterior motives and wished only to do good. He does also I think make it clear that JCM tended to assume that because he was the Archbishop whatever he said should go without question and that any criticism of him was wrong per se - the "pay, pray, and obey" model. I'll comment further when I finish reading the book.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2009 12:54:38 GMT
IN reply to Alasdair - I think the racism among some integralists derives from a nostalgia for a shared world in which everyone could be assumed to be "one of us" - the world of the old Catholic urban neighbourhoods in the USA (which someone like E Michael Jones increasingly mourns as a lost Utopia destroyed by JEws and blacks) or the Ireland of the 1950s (or later, if the person concenred is looking bakc to ones youth/childhood). Non-white immigration (the arrival of blacks from the South in the US inner-cities, leading to "white flight" and the abandonment of the old school/church/neighbourhood nexus, or the appearance of large numbers of black/Asian pentecostals, Muslims etc in Ireland over the last 10-15 years) are seen by such people as part of the wider social, economic and cultural changes which destroyed that lost world and hated accordingly. (There is of course a certain amount of truth in it - some liberals and social democrats do celebrate immigration as a means of entrenching "cultural diversity" and displacing the socially conservative white lumpenproletariat - but immigration derives from the same sort of social pressures in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe that drove so many poor Irish to American and Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rather than the conspiracies imagined by integralists.) This hatred is then tapped into the extensive repertoirs of racist and anti-semitic ideology which lies around in certain fever swamps of Western culture waiting to be stirred up, and which can now be accessed by a few clicks of the Internet. (Cf the creeps on Irish-Nationalism, who have been hailing the large families of the SSPX adherents as "the future of the white race". One hopes some SSPX-supporting Filipinos will settle here to see how these creeps would react, but somehow I already know what would be the response...) BTW did anyone see that some neo-fascists have been putting up posters (certainly in Cork and possibly elsewhere) which appeal to Poles to join with them in the glorious task of Keeping Ireland White? Pass the sickbag.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 19, 2009 15:30:56 GMT
I am looking at all Hibernicus' replies which give a good insight into integralism, especially in the Irish experience. The French and American experiences are keys to understanding this. But the correspondence between JCM and Maria Duce sounds fascinating.
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Post by Noelfitz on Jan 19, 2009 16:32:02 GMT
Please look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Duce:Maria Duce ("With Mary as our Leader") was a small ultra-conservative Catholic group in Ireland, founded in 1942 by Fr Denis Fahey, a priest associated with antisemitic opinions. The group's principal aim was to embed Catholic doctrine in the legal structure of the Irish state, including recognition of the Roman Catholic Church as the established church of Ireland. This latter step had been contemplated during the drafting of Eamon de Valera's 1937 Constitution of Ireland, but it was ultimately rejected in recognition of the obstacle posed by Ireland's relatively large Protestant minority. Though Maria Duce's membership probably did not much exceed one hundred, its monthly journal Fiat enjoyed a fairly wide circulation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The movement was not encouraged by the Irish bishops, who viewed its extremism with suspicion and desired not to become associated with Fr. Fahey's writings and statements. It was dissolved by the Church authorities in 1955, a year after Fahey's death, by the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid (a former pupil of Fahey's and a fellow member of the Holy Ghost Fathers).
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 20, 2009 12:56:15 GMT
NOw that have finished Cooney, some further comments: When I said that if Cooney says McQuaid did or said something, you can be sure he said it this only applies to McQuaid's public actions or statements in correspondence. Cooney always puts the worst possible construction on McQuaid's motives. (The most blatant example of this is at one point where he declares McQuaid tried to maintain religious observance among the lower classes as a means of maintaining control; the possibility that it was the other way round - that McQuaid tried to control his flock because he saw this as the way to preserve their faith - is never adverted to). The most striking example of this is his discussion of the claim made by Noel Browne that at Sean MacBride's funeral in January 1988 he was approached by a former school inspector who described how while visiting a publican JCM had groped the publican's son. Cooney outlines this narrative (which Browne wrote down and preserved among his papers) without adverting to the following facts which are recorded in John Horgan's biography of Browne: (a) Some person was seen talking to Browne at the funeral, and Browne's general character makes it unlikely that he would have invented the story out of whole cloth. Unfortunately Browne claimed that while the man did tell him his name Browne forgot it and lost the piece of paper on which it was noted. Since the man has never come forward his credibility cannot be checked. He might have been a genuine victim (Browne seems to imply, though he does not state specifically, that he was the boy who was abused), or retelling a story he had heard from someone else, or a crank and fantasist of the Malachi Martin variety. (I can think of quite a few rumours which are probably or provably unfounded about such people as De Valera, Patrick Hillery, and Browne himself which have circulated in Ireland in the past and which I will not sully this site with.) (b) Unfortunately Browne's general character also makes it extremely likely that he would swallow such a story without due investigation. Anyone who has read his autobiography in conjunction with Horgan's book, or who is familiar with the descriptions of his relations with Labour Party colleagues contained in the memoirs of Ruairi Quinn or Barry Desmond, knows that he was a man eaten up by bitterness and regret (these partly derive from his terrible childhood in which his parents and at least two siblings died of TB, partly from the Mother and Child scheme debacle in which I agree he was hard done by, partly from a general and righteous wrath at the plight of the poor in the Dublin slums and the mentally ill patients whom he encountered in his psychiatric work) and that he was also an intensely self-righteous man who treated disagreement or criticism as proof that the critic was not merely mistaken but immoral, He added to this the habit (common among psychiatrists) of assuming that disagreement with his beliefs reflected psychological disturbance or mental illness. In this he rather resembed E Michael Jones. Browne did not produce a transcript of what his informant had said to him - instead he wrote what he described as a fictionalised account (to be fair to Browne, he may have been used to this technique for therapeutic purposes). The trouble with this is that we do not know how much of the account derives from the informant and how much consists of Browne's imaginative embellishments (or might have been altered by Browne for other purposes such as maintaining confidentiality), so this makes it impossible to try to verify it by checking incidental details. Browne's general mindset may be judged by the fact (which Cooney reports more fully than Horgan) that Browne begins the piece with a diatribe against the erection by dockers of a Marian shrine in Ringsend, in which he declares that reverence for virginity ought to be regarded as a sign of mental illness. I may add that paedophiles, as we have learned from bitter experience, are generally incorrigible serial offenders; given McQuaid's power and impunity, if he had been a paedophile we might expect him to have many victims, and given his subsequent unpopularity and the age of such victims others might have been expected to come forward if there was any substance to such claims. (The numerous claims after the death of Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York - McQuaid's contemporary - that he was an active homosexual provide a good standard for comparison.) I have had this point made to me by scholars whom I know to be no fans of McQuaid or the Church. More follows later.
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