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Post by hibernicus on Jan 28, 2009 23:47:36 GMT
Part of the attraction of the idea of rural self-sufficiency is that it contrasts with the anonymity of modern life. There is a feeling that modern society is too big and complex, that we are dependent on forces beyond our control (cf the vast impact the bankers' little gambles has had on all of us, the way so many people who worked hard all their life are thrown on the scrapheap by technological shifts or by multinationals moving on to the next supply of cheap labour) and the idea of transparency, of a society where you would live surrounded by people who knew you and where your own labour would have a direct impact on how you live has a certain abstract attraction - until you realise how hard a life this is, and how close it hovers to the edge of subsistence. Poverty breeds vices as well as virtues, and peasant societies can be very cruel places - and are epidemic diseases any more merciful than baking crises?
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 29, 2009 0:02:33 GMT
The nastiest feature of all is that such views are often advanced by people who are neither peasants by birth nor living a peasant lifestyle. De Valera, for example, lived in a big house and grounds off Cross Avenue in Blacrock, not a labourers' cottage. His children were educated for the professions, not as smallholders. Maurice Curtis' book on early C20 Irish Catholic Action, THE NOBLE CAUSE, has its flaws, but it is dead on the button in dissecting this sort of hypocrisy. The nastiest feature of this brand of integralist Luddism is that it is often based on a conspiracy mindset in which the people's unwillingness to embrace this sort of lifestyle is dismissed by presenting the mass of mankind as mere "sheeple", easily fooled by conspirators, to be ordered around by elites for the greater good. This arrogance easily develops into a sort of gnosticism which may use the trappings of Catholicism but has abandoned Christianity. The International Third Position fascist organisation like to present themselves to potential recruits as Catholic traditionalists and pro-lifers, but they are really followers of the Italian fascist and neo-pagan Julius Evola, who dreamed of re-creating an agrarian society ruled over by a warrior aristocracy (he exalted Hitler's SS as the sort of thing he had in mind) and presented the mass of mankind as soulless beings doomed to be absorbed into the earth, while by occult practices and cultivated heroism the warrior-elite would become gods on their death. This is a development from the contempt aristocracies traditionally have for their serfs, and should be rejected by all who trust in a God who was born where animals sheltered, followed by fishermen and such-like, and died what in the yes of pagan aristocratic honour-codes was the most shameful death imaginable. No Crown without a Cross.
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Post by Noelfitz on Jan 29, 2009 10:20:51 GMT
Hibernicus,
You wrote: "Noelfitz is muddying the waters as usual - the same Noelfitz who denounced us as lacking in charity when we criticised President Obama for words and actions which are matters of public record."
Do you think I muddy the waters usually? I would prefer to think that I write with honesty. I consider myself an orthodox, traditional Catholic who has some indepedent views, not contrary to the Church. My wife thinks I am a 'devils advocate', so both she and you may be, at least partially, correct.
In a US discussion group I have been accused of writing "new age drivel" since I supported Obama. However I do think the success of discussion groups is for views to be expressed robustly and with charity, hence my motto.
You also wroye " De Valera, for example, lived in a big house and grounds off Cross Avenue in Blacrock, not a labourers' cottage.
The version I heard was that he lived in Cross Avenus and moved to a house on the opposite side of the road. After some time he returned to the former side. Neighbours said he double-crossed his own street.
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Post by monkeyman on Feb 6, 2009 4:28:35 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. 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..... Are we not speaking here of the French in general?
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Post by Noelfitz on Feb 6, 2009 20:44:38 GMT
Everyone,
You wrote: "Yes, traditional Catholicism is linked to far right extreme politic. Which includes monarchism, fascism and so on.... And racism... "
Does this imply that British people who support their constitution (unwritten) are linked to far right extremism.
Is a fascist anyone who disagrees with me?
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Post by monkeyman on Feb 7, 2009 3:37:46 GMT
Everyone, You wrote: "Yes, traditional Catholicism is linked to far right extreme politic. Which includes monarchism, fascism and so on.... And racism... " Does this imply that British people who support their constitution (unwritten) are linked to far right extremism. Is a fascist anyone who disagrees with me? C'mon thats a little silly don't you think? The monarchist attitudes that exist in Traditional circles have an air of subversion to them as the people espousing it are usually anti-republican and think the idea of a republic is atheistic,satanic or both.
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Post by sceilg on Feb 8, 2009 16:14:39 GMT
One last point about Mr. Cooney; in a review of the book when it first appeared (I think in the SUNDAY TRIBUNE) Eamonn McCann, writing as an atheist, pointed out that while in the interviews surrounding the appearance of the book Cooney always identified himself as a Catholic and got very cross if anyone questioned his right to the name, while denouncing JCM for exceeding his authority Cooney never says how far the authority of a Catholic bishop should extend, and when attributing all the characteristics of JCM's rule, spirituality and theology to personal mental illness Cooney never tries to suggest how any other potential successor at the time might have behaved as Archbishop if JCM's superiors had granted his requests to send him as a missionary to Kenya. Éamonn McCann has a detached perspective that often makes him a breath of fresh air, and he is in this case. I think Cooney belonged to an elitist clique of clerical and lay journalists who had an undue influence on the direction taken by the Irish Church since the Second Vatican Council. I would see Fr Romuald Dodd OP, Fr Austin Flannery OP, Fr Joe Dunn, Fr Peter Lemass, Fr Des Forristal, Seán MacRéamonn, Louis McRedmond, (initially) John Horgan, John Cooney and T.P. O'Mahoney as belonging to this, with others obviously too. And they had an effect on the opinions of the Faithful as well as the clergy. Maybe someone should do a study of the Post Vatican II religious media. And which Éamonn McCann would this be? There's an awful lot of pseudo-intellectual claptrap pouring out on this thread, all of it to justify the social and political status quo, which is about as sick as one can get. Some people here must have paid-up subscriptions to the existing political parties. Might anyone own up to this?
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 9, 2009 11:32:14 GMT
The same Eamonn McCann who is a militant atheist and Trotskyite. The point of the posting is that when an atheist and militant anti-Catholic points out that statements by so-called "liberal Catholics" imply that they should logically endorse his position, and implies that they are trying to have it both ways (congratulating themselves on being Catholics while at the same time living and speaking like atheists) this suggests that the idea that these people's Catholic credentials are questionable is not merely the product of fevered traditionalist imaginations. Personally I have a great deal more respect for many self-proclaimed atheists than I do for certain liberal "Catholics". Sceilg's assumption that everyone who disagrees with him must be guilty of conscious bad faith is wearisome. Next he will be denouncing that minor thinker St. Thomas Aquinas for addressing the work of Islamic and (gasp!) Jewish philosophers in his writings.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Feb 13, 2009 14:37:26 GMT
And which Éamonn McCann would this be? There's an awful lot of pseudo-intellectual claptrap pouring out on this thread, all of it to justify the social and political status quo, which is about as sick as one can get. Some people here must have paid-up subscriptions to the existing political parties. Might anyone own up to this? I think it is more a case of members not having subscriptions to groups Sceilg would support. He'll get more claptrap on his own blog.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 14, 2009 1:14:38 GMT
A couple of snippets from FX Carty's book on John Charles McQuaid post-Vatican II: (a) Fr. Denis Fahey was actually JCM's spiritual director in the early 1930s - this may derive from his being Master of Novices for the Irish Spiritans. Carty quotes what is actually a fairly acute lettere in which Fahey advises the young JCM on his excessive desire for certainty. This link may help to explain why JCM uncritically echoed Fahey in the early 1930s and grew more critical of him later. (b) "I prefer the Latin Mass. Once you do away with the awe and mystery, people get careless." Guess who said it? Gay Byrne.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 26, 2009 16:41:30 GMT
To return to the point, there are many 'interesting' political and economic theories advanced by advocates of the traditional Latin Mass. The Bishop Williamson business is a caution to those trad clerics with too much of a political orientation.
I do not believe the current status quo to be perfect, but before overthrowing it consider the commandment of loving our neighbour as ourselves and how social upheaval may affect our neighbour.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 7, 2009 11:10:09 GMT
To try to get this thread going again: The integrists' idea that all would be well if only Catholicism were the state church a la ancien regime France (or, to put it another way, if only Catholicism were raised to the position of privilege which Anglicanism enjoyed here before Disestablishment in 1868 or Catholic emancipation in 1829) is, I hope we all agree, simplistic and flawed. It rests on a blindness to the tendency to corruption within the Church which is always present and which such relations encourage. Integrism Irish-style also takes at face value a self-presentation of nineteenth and twentieth-century Irish Catholicism which might be called "Catholic realism" by analogy with the Soviet Union's "socialist realism" since it rests on the same principle - that the society being described is moving towards an ideal, that to admit that the society in practice falls short of the ideal might lead some people to call into question the practicability or desirability of the ideal, and that therefore writers and social commentators should only be tolerated if they write as if the ideal society was fully present and functioning right here and now.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 7, 2009 11:20:46 GMT
At the same time, the integrists do someimes address a real problem though they don't ahve a real answer. Take for instance this interesting article by the American commentator Rod Dreher: www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/secular_liberalism_as_consensu.html which points out that debate between secular liberals and Christian believers is becoming increasingly difficult because the seculars treat their own mindset (including the view that authority is simply a projection of the will and that anyone who claims to follow an external authority and have a different view of justice is simply misled or evil) as a self-evident "default setting" which is not open to debate. The integrist position that any society must have a default position and that claims to tolerance simply refelect transition moment between the point when one such default position is in place and repressing its opponents, and the point when a new default position has fully displaced it, becomes dominant, and enforces its own views in turn does have a certain plausibility. The problem is that what they offer as a "default position" (a Catholic absolute monarchy, or something on the lines of Salazar or Franco's regimes) is not very attractive either. Some background - Dreher is a maverick political conservative who has increasingly become disenchanted with pro-business conservatism and tends to favour the view that cultural conservative should try to create subcultural enclaves. HE is also a former Catholic convert (from Southern Baptist background, I believe) whose faith in the Church was shaken and eventually destroyed by reporting as a journalist on the sex abuse crisis in the American Church and the ways in which most bishops tolerated (or, in some instances participated in) all sorts of corruption and used every legal device available to avoid taking responsibility or acknowledging the victims. He has now joined the Orthodox church. He is a confused man but I believe an honest one, and what he writes is generally worth reading.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 30, 2009 10:41:13 GMT
A recent book which may be relevant to this thread is THE POPE'S LEGION by Charles Coulombe. This is an eulogistic account of the Zouaves - the volunteers who fought to defend the Papal States in the 1860s, including a large contingent from Ireland (one of whom was a remote cousin of mine). The book is heavily based on the contemporary literature about these men, much of it French and martyrological in tone. (It also tends to be more about the - generally aristocratic - officers, because they were more likely to leave accounts). Some of the individual stories are very touching. There is also a good deal of interesting material about subsequent commemorations of the Zouaves (notably in the Low Countries and French Canada.) Nevertheless, the book is highly problematic. First, it pretty much refuses to admit that the governance of the Papal States left anything to be desired; we do get brief references to the fact that Pius IX's chief minister Cardinal Antonelli was not flawless and might sometimes be described as severe in his measures, but nobody who is not familiar with the history of the period will know what this refers to. (Antonelli made a large fortune through his office, and after his death a young woman sued for a share of his estate, claiming to be his daughter. She was not able to prove this in court, but it was established that Antonelli had been "indiscreet". After c.1850 Pius IX left the temporal governance of the Papal States to Antonelli and focussed on spiritual matters, a decision which Coulombe notes but ascribes to Christian charity on the grounds that Pius knew he could not take the stern measures required to retain the temporal power; but surely as sovereign Pius remained responsible for his minister's actions, and if the temporal power could only be retained by methods spiritually damaging to those who wielded it, what does this say about it?) Second and related to this, it simply assumes that everything contemporary papalini said about the Italian nationalists was true, and everything the nationalists said was false. Surely we ought to take account of subsequent events in assessing whose judgement was better? (This does not entirely tell against the papalini, for example; the sort of bondage which successive Turkish governments have imposed upon the Patriarchate of Constantinople, sometimes justified wih the slogan "No Vatican in Istanbul", which have made its functioning almost impossible, show that there was a good deal of substance to Pius IX's fear that the Papacy might not be able to fulfil its duties adequately if it did not retain a recognised sovereignty.) Thirdly, Coulombe glamourises the Zouaves' ideology as Catholic Legitimist crusaders, celebrating their links to Spanish Carlism and Diehard French royalism; but he simply concludes that losers have a certain glamour because they can't be blamed for the crimes of those who triumphed. This is just not good enough; the choice to be a beautiful loser has real-world consequences which other people have to clean up. (It is very arguable that the link between French Catholicism and monarchism was damaging; one argument sometimes advanced for the view that the loss of the Papal States was a blessing in disguise is that Leo XIII's reconciliation with the French Republic would not have been possible if the papacy continued to see itself in terms of legitimist monarchism. From what I have read of them Pius IX comes across as more sympathetic personally than Leo XIII - Pius was a mystic who saw his whole career in terms of sharing Jesus's sufferings, Leo was a diplomat who could be quite cynical in his handling of Irish nationalists and the German Centre Party in order to advance the interests of the Papacy as he saw it - but though Pius was probably a saint and attracted fierce personal devotion (he would have been beatified much earlier than he has been if the current rules had been in place at the time of his death) and nobody has ever proposed Leo for canonisation, Leo had a much clearer sense of the Church's social, intellectual and political needs). Next post discusses Coulombe's background and mindset.
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Post by hibernicus on May 5, 2009 17:19:04 GMT
Here is a link to an autobiographical essay which he contributed to THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, a palaeocon magazine. www.takimag.com/site/article/learning_to_love_the_french/Basically, he is the descendant of Quebecois immigrants to New England and he sees himself as trying to reconnect with the defenders of the old Quebecois identity which collapsed through the 1960s Quiet Revolution and through US assimilation. Old-style Quebecois Catholicism saw itself as a repository of the Catholic and rural society which it associated with the French old regime and which it believed to have been corrupted and destroyed by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution; this was bound up with preservation of the French language (Hence there was a lot of bad blood between the Quebecois and the Irish Catholic bishops of Ontario who tried to pressurise Quebecois migrants into replacing French with English in their parochial life, just as Irish-American bishops did to non-Anglophone immigrants in the US.) This is clearly linked ot the big problems with Coulombe's worldview, set out in his manifesto EVERYMAN TODAY CALL ROME. Basically, these are that he sees Catholicism as inseparable from monarchy - he takes the standard integrist trope that modernity has been a conspiracy by exploitative financial oligarchies - and that this has led him to revive some very questionable ideas about kingship as being ordained by God. He even maintains that the evils of modernity derive from the Church's preference for Aristoteleanism (which he sees s fatally rationalistic) rather than Neoplatonism (he thinks the Eucharist should be described in terms of theurgy - an evoking of divine power by ritual) rather than transubstantiation. This seems to me to have more in common with Julian the Apostate than Aquinas, which is always a bad sign. I'm not sure how far he realsies what dangerous waters he inhabits, but there is a quasi-gnostic satisfaction in being in a little clique while the rest of the world is in darkness about his work. That sort of mindset is dangerous - it leads straight to gnosticism or Calvinism.
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