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Post by Account Deleted on Oct 11, 2018 22:30:02 GMT
On a walk through UCD recently I was struck how central a presence the new Confucious Institute is, without seeming to have many distinctive facilities within. I don't know if it's because of this, but I was also more aware of students from that part of the world around the campus - more than I'd seen in previous years. Struck me as a consequence of academia's policy here of pursuing investment funds relentlessly these last decades - to ends unclear. I wonder how many Irish students are being educated in their china campus?
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 21, 2018 19:53:12 GMT
I was reading some back issues of the IRISH TIMES Saturday magazine the other day and noticed an interview with a female singer in her late 20s in which she remarks that, like many members of the "creative community" in their 20s and 30s she actively hates the Church because she sees it as imposing meaningless and hypocritical codes of conduct on people. A few thoughts: (1) This is a growing factor, and one which neither trads nor the mainstream church have really come to terms with - trads because we tend to live in a little bubble of our own, the mainstream church because they're unwilling to face the possibility that the "opening to he world" might have been misconceived and that large sections of the "world" actively hate the very possibility of God. (We can discuss the reasons for this separately.) (2) This is the generation that grew up with the clerical abuse scandals and can't remember a time when the church was (even halfheartedly) respected. They also grew up with less contact with believers and clerics than previous generations (e.g. priests and nuns as relatives, clerical teachers) and lousy and half-hearted catechesis has encouraged them in the assumption that church teaching is not merely wrong but incomprehensible. (3) I was reading Fr Fergal mcGrath's NEWMAN'S UNIVERSITY: IDEAL AND REALITY (1952) recently and one thing that came across very strongly was a sense that large numbers of Irish Catholics whom Newman and his friends encountered were ignorant of standard Catholic devotions and practices, and even of basic Catholic doctrines, (partly because of the legacy of oppression, partly because they wanted to be liberal and broadminded and didn't realise how far they could and couldn't go). The difference was that those 1850s Catholics might have experienced flawed catechesis, but they WANTED to be Catholics. Today we are dealing with people who are ignorant of Catholicism and hate it, and we need to address that.
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Post by Young Ireland on Oct 21, 2018 20:12:03 GMT
I was reading some back issues of the IRISH TIMES Saturday magazine the other day and noticed an interview with a female singer in her late 20s in which she remarks that, like many members of the "creative community" in their 20s and 30s she actively hates the Church because she sees it as imposing meaningless and hypocritical codes of conduct on people. A few thoughts: (1) This is a growing factor, and one which neither trads nor the mainstream church have really come to terms with - trads because we tend to live in a little bubble of our own, the mainstream church because they're unwilling to face the possibility that the "opening to he world" might have been misconceived and that large sections of the "world" actively hate the very possibility of God. (We can discuss the reasons for this separately.) (2) This is the generation that grew up with the clerical abuse scandals and can't remember a time when the church was (even halfheartedly) respected. They also grew up with less contact with believers and clerics than previous generations (e.g. priests and nuns as relatives, clerical teachers) and lousy and half-hearted catechesis has encouraged them in the assumption that church teaching is not merely wrong but incomprehensible. (3) I was reading Fr Fergal mcGrath's NEWMAN'S UNIVERSITY: IDEAL AND REALITY (1952) recently and one thing that came across very strongly was a sense that large numbers of Irish Catholics whom Newman and his friends encountered were ignorant of standard Catholic devotions and practices, and even of basic Catholic doctrines, (partly because of the legacy of oppression, partly because they wanted to be liberal and broadminded and didn't realise how far they could and couldn't go). The difference was that those 1850s Catholics might have experienced flawed catechesis, but they WANTED to be Catholics. Today we are dealing with people who are ignorant of Catholicism and hate it, and we need to address that. Ultimately, I think the solution lies in breaking down people's stereotypes and showing how Catholics are not merely mindless zombies and there is an underlying rationale behind much Catholic teaching, even in purely secular terms.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 24, 2018 8:03:32 GMT
I don't think Hibernicus' phenomenon is confined to the creative classes. Among young people,many just don't get the point of the Church at all. The abysmal catechesis now in its second or third generation is a major part of the problem, but this fits in with a cultural collapse in general. The widespread lapsation fuels this. I would present Hozier as "exhibit A" in this case as he built a career out of ranting against something he has little experience or knowledge of. I have to say the bishops still don't get how bad the catechesis has been. Those responsible are still in places of honour, while the mass apostasy only gets worse.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 26, 2018 19:15:51 GMT
Actually Hozier was brought up a Quaker, so we can't blame Catholic catechesis for him. I think both Alasdair and Maolseachlainn are making the same point - catechetic failure both reflects and feeds into a wider cultural collapse. The reason why such lousy catechesis has been adopted (and maintained as beyond criticism) reflects a loss of confidence both in older methods of teaching and in what they are supposed to teach. Frank Duff was making a valid point if he meant that the catechism was meant to be the beginning, not the be-all and end-all. Montfortian spirituality (and the other schools of spirituality) is about taking on board and living the full implications of what you know in the abstract. The view he is criticising would be like the Gaelgeoiri in AN BEAL BOCHT who say that it is not enough to speak Irish, it is not enough to speak only Irish - you must speak about nothing but Irish. Of course, Duff assumes the people he is addressing know the basics, and the trouble with a lot of new catechesis is that it assumes knowledge and motivation are incompatible.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 5, 2018 9:20:44 GMT
This is a problem I've seen with older traditionalists. They praise the penny catechism no end, but when I pointed out that there had to be a follow-up, one woman told me the penny catechism was good enough for her.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 6, 2018 19:18:03 GMT
Part of the point is that they lived in a predominantly Catholic (and fairly static) society with a strong interest in and commitment to Catholicism, so they absorbed "follow-up" without realising it, so they don't realise that what worked for them depended on more than the bare text.. One of the great idiocies of catechetical change was downplaying formal catechesis in favour of osmosis from the "community" just when social changes made the "community" less likely to do this than before.
BTW if you want to see how the "national narrative" is defined in opposition to Catholicism, see how David McWilliams has just got a new book out called RENAISSANCE NATION celebrating Ireland's transformation between the two papal visits, with the cover picture showing the Repeal crowd celebrating the abortion referendum result in Dublin Castle as symbol of said transformation.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 30, 2019 9:33:53 GMT
My main interest in watching "Sing St" was that I attended the Christian Brothers’ Secondary School in Synge St between 1981 and 1986, and this film is set in this school in 1985. The director John Carney was two years behind me. I didn’t know him, but I spoke by him on set in 2014 as I attended a funeral in Harrington St Church and wanted to take an opportunity to show my sons the school. At the time, the filming was in progress, but when John Carney heard I was at the school at that time, he wanted to hear my story. Don Wycherley, who plays Brother Baxter, was on set, in costume and in character, and he began a humorous interjection about remembering me asking smart questions (I’d like to tell my American friends that smart here doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent; it’s an example of Irish sarcasm. Just like “cute” has nothing to do with looks among older Irish people and if it is given as a compliment, it is a very back handed one).
First I need to clarify who the Christian Brothers are. Synge St was run by the Irish Christian Brothers, which is a congregation of teaching non-clerical religious founded by Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice in the early 19th century to give a Catholic education to poor boys in Ireland. The model used was the rule of the Brothers of Christian Schools founded by St Jean Baptiste de la Salle in France in the late 17th century. These brothers are known as Christian Brothers internationally and De La Salle Brothers in Ireland. It is to Brother Rice’s congregation I am referring, known as the Christian Brothers in Ireland, but as the Irish Christian Brothers elsewhere. Right now, the only growth happening in the congregation is outside Ireland. Irish Christian Brothers are called by their title and surname, for example, Brother Murphy or Brother Kelly and we usually never knew what the brothers’ first names were, which may have been either their baptismal or religious names in any event.
In regard to the film itself, it gave me many good laughs and it certainly does recreate what the 1980s was like. The look is authentic, with one key deviation. The garb of the Irish Christian Brothers was a black cassock with a sash around the waist, such as is worn by priests in continental Europe but not in Ireland and a collar which is white on the top half and black on the bottom half, a half-collar to distinguish them from priests. This was worn by the brothers in Synge St as a rule when I began there in 1981. The superior at the time was Brother Cripps and he struck me as strict about this thing. The on-screen brothers wear a clerical cassock and a full white collar and no sash, which is the way I would have expected priest teachers in the diocesan colleges (minor seminaries) to have worn traditionally, but I’m not sure how many of these were still active in the 1980s (the late Father Denis Faul still would have done so in St Patrick’s Academy in Armagh then and later, but I’m not sure how common it was at this was). But in 1983, we got a new superior/principal, Brother Hynes, who generally wore a suit rather than the cassock with the half-collar in a black clerical shirt. This became the rule among the brothers, though I remember the older Brother Campbell continued to wear the cassock (it was a surprise to see him in lay dress ten years later, but by then the brothers seemed to have given up on any distinctive dress). When the brothers changed from the cassock to the black suit, they also expected fifth and sixth year students to wear the uniform which had only been compulsory for junior cycle students before this, some students answered by saying they would wear the school uniform if the brothers wore theirs. This didn’t work, but I did perceive a diminishing of respect for the brothers when they modified their dress regulations. Also, brothers were invariably clean-shaven and I never remember them wearing beards or mustaches. I remember being quite surprised at seeing what I thought was a bearded brother with a group of O’Connell’s Schools pupils at an extracurricular event, but it turned out it was the O’Connell’s chaplain, Father Tony Finn, who was an Augustinian.
In regard to the film itself, Synge St was certainly a tough place and the students could be horrible to one another. I am not sure if there was bullying in the school to the degree it was depicted in the film. It’s a point I am agnostic on. I know Éamonn Farrell, the elder brother of the actor Colin Farrell, has some harsh things to say about the environment for homosexuals in Synge St. Éamonn was in my class and I certainly don’t remember him being especially victimised at the time – the few occasions when I witnessed anyone laying a finger on him took place in different contexts. I would hope that I would have stood up for any victim of bullying who was physically threatened, but I saw little like this going on. Staff were a different matter. Corporal punishment had been abolished in 1981 (under an education minister who had himself attended Synge St, the late John Boland), but that didn’t totally eradicate it. It took place, but in a very limited manner. With the advent of Brother Hynes in 1983, Synge St began going in a liberal direction in terms of how punishment was meted out. Brother Hynes was a gentleman and very far from the brute that Brother Baxter in the film was. There was about three years of a certain laxity in Synge St after which Brother Hynes was sent to Dungarvan and was replaced by Brother Scanlan who was certainly a lot stricter.
The character of Brother Baxter reminds me of Brother Byrne who was a relatively young and driven teacher of Maths and Irish. Brother Byrne was also to the forefront in training the Gaelic football team. He did his best to achieve results both in the class room and on the pitch and he had a degree of success. I never had Brother Byrne as a teacher and I rarely participated in extracurricular games, so my contact with him was limited. I saw the strict side, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t see he could be a decent man too. On the other hand, Brother Campbell could be very nice, but was strict in class. We had Brother Campbell for Latin which was taught to us very erratically in First and Second Year, so he began with the first declension of nouns and did three years in one achieving some impressive results. Oh, Synge St had both Latin and French. French superseded Spanish when Ireland joined the EU in 1973 and in the late 1980s, Latin was replaced by German and Spanish, but that was in the future. In the film, a near senile brother is shown as teaching Latin in a French class which never happened and also showed the boys as being ignorant of where French was spoken, which is,funny but is also a case of poetic licence. Sticking on the Synge St curriculum and the film, the premise of the film is interesting as it involves the pupils forming a band because the protagonist wants to impress a girl and some time is spent on getting the band together by looking for boys who could play instruments. In the real 1980s Synge St, this wouldn’t have been a problem as music was studied, mainly due to the interests of Brother Cripps and there was an orchestra in the school. In addition, Brother Cripps at one stage had a recorder ensemble and I remember seeing his appreciation of music when he walked into our class during lunchtime one day while Robert Elliott, who had a record of trouble, who had his back to the superior, was experimenting with playing Bach’s “Jesu Joy in Man’s Desiring” on the recorder. The brother stopped, listened carefully, praised Elliott for his effort, giving him some advice and then gently reminded us all we actually should have been in the yard at this time. I know you have to suspend your scepticism in film, but I really had to do this in this film.
In regard to the behaviour of Brother Baxter, there is no way that a superior in Synge St at the time would have insisted a boy walk around the school without shoes. The superior of the time, Brother Hynes, tolerated some of the senior students with bleached hair and wearing make-up went with following certain bands. Neither Brother Cripps or Brother Hynes would have thought of putting a pupil’s head under the tap and washing eye-liner out. The idea might have occurred to Brother Scanlan, but the man was too clever to leave himself open to any action as a result. The rules of Synge St were very simple and were pinned in every classroom, so there was never a need to reference pages in a handbook. It is stretching the imagination, though, to see a strict disciplinarian micro-managing shoe colour and hair style, while allowing a dog eat dog atmosphere pervade in the school yard.
I won’t say my experience of the brothers in Synge St was all rosy. It was far from it. My attitude was very ambivalent, and I suspect now that both my likes and dislikes of the staff, religious and lay, could have been for the wrong reasons on both counts. Adolescence is never easy, and adolescents don’t make things easy for everyone else – and I was no exception. But the idea of both the school and the order that managed it is distorted. The majority of pupils were Dublin working class, but there was a significant middle class minority even without which the depiction of the pupils was just classist caricature. The portrait of the Christian Brothers itself was pure boilerplate – the only thing missing here was nationalism the brothers were notorious for (and the 1980s was at the height of the troubles). Then again, very little Catholicism was seen in the film and Synge St did genuinely have vestiges of a Catholic ethos at the time. The clerical appearance of the brothers seems to have done all that.
Most of the overt anti-Catholicism in the film is voiced by the main character’s elder brother who was educated by Jesuits and then dropped out of college. Again, nothing is very cerebral here, but given how realistically the actor Jack Rayner plays the elder sibling, I wonder does this reflect the views of third level students from the mid-1980s on and if this is what we are seeing now. I think the dysfunctional family here is also a bit on the unreal side.
On the whole, the film presents caricatures of both the Christian Brothers as an institution and inner city life in Dublin and the 1980s in general. Entertaining on the whole but not to be taken too seriously. I’m a little disappointed that the principal and management of the school had a qualifier at the end of the credits to say Synge St is different now to then. Of course it is; every school is and not necessarily in a positive way all the time. My point rather is that Synge St in the 1980s was very different from the Synge St portrayed in this film.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 30, 2019 10:32:18 GMT
My main interest in watching "Sing St" was that I attended the Christian Brothers’ Secondary School in Synge St between 1981 and 1986, and this film is set in this school in 1985. The director John Carney was two years behind me. I didn’t know him, but I spoke by him on set in 2014 as I attended a funeral in Harrington St Church and wanted to take an opportunity to show my sons the school. At the time, the filming was in progress, but when John Carney heard I was at the school at that time, he wanted to hear my story. Don Wycherley, who plays Brother Baxter, was on set, in costume and in character, and he began a humorous interjection about remembering me asking smart questions (I’d like to tell my American friends that smart here doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent; it’s an example of Irish sarcasm. Just like “cute” has nothing to do with looks among older Irish people and if it is given as a compliment, it is a very back handed one). First I need to clarify who the Christian Brothers are. Synge St was run by the Irish Christian Brothers, which is a congregation of teaching non-clerical religious founded by Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice in the early 19th century to give a Catholic education to poor boys in Ireland. The model used was the rule of the Brothers of Christian Schools founded by St Jean Baptiste de la Salle in France in the late 17th century. These brothers are known as Christian Brothers internationally and De La Salle Brothers in Ireland. It is to Brother Rice’s congregation I am referring, known as the Christian Brothers in Ireland, but as the Irish Christian Brothers elsewhere. Right now, the only growth happening in the congregation is outside Ireland. Irish Christian Brothers are called by their title and surname, for example, Brother Murphy or Brother Kelly and we usually never knew what the brothers’ first names were, which may have been either their baptismal or religious names in any event. In regard to the film itself, it gave me many good laughs and it certainly does recreate what the 1980s was like. The look is authentic, with one key deviation. The garb of the Irish Christian Brothers was a black cassock with a sash around the waist, such as is worn by priests in continental Europe but not in Ireland and a collar which is white on the top half and black on the bottom half, a half-collar to distinguish them from priests. This was worn by the brothers in Synge St as a rule when I began there in 1981. The superior at the time was Brother Cripps and he struck me as strict about this thing. The on-screen brothers wear a clerical cassock and a full white collar and no sash, which is the way I would have expected priest teachers in the diocesan colleges (minor seminaries) to have worn traditionally, but I’m not sure how many of these were still active in the 1980s (the late Father Denis Faul still would have done so in St Patrick’s Academy in Armagh then and later, but I’m not sure how common it was at this was). But in 1983, we got a new superior/principal, Brother Hynes, who generally wore a suit rather than the cassock with the half-collar in a black clerical shirt. This became the rule among the brothers, though I remember the older Brother Campbell continued to wear the cassock (it was a surprise to see him in lay dress ten years later, but by then the brothers seemed to have given up on any distinctive dress). When the brothers changed from the cassock to the black suit, they also expected fifth and sixth year students to wear the uniform which had only been compulsory for junior cycle students before this, some students answered by saying they would wear the school uniform if the brothers wore theirs. This didn’t work, but I did perceive a diminishing of respect for the brothers when they modified their dress regulations. Also, brothers were invariably clean-shaven and I never remember them wearing beards or mustaches. I remember being quite surprised at seeing what I thought was a bearded brother with a group of O’Connell’s Schools pupils at an extracurricular event, but it turned out it was the O’Connell’s chaplain, Father Tony Finn, who was an Augustinian. In regard to the film itself, Synge St was certainly a tough place and the students could be horrible to one another. I am not sure if there was bullying in the school to the degree it was depicted in the film. It’s a point I am agnostic on. I know Éamonn Farrell, the elder brother of the actor Colin Farrell, has some harsh things to say about the environment for homosexuals in Synge St. Éamonn was in my class and I certainly don’t remember him being especially victimised at the time – the few occasions when I witnessed anyone laying a finger on him took place in different contexts. I would hope that I would have stood up for any victim of bullying who was physically threatened, but I saw little like this going on. Staff were a different matter. Corporal punishment had been abolished in 1981 (under an education minister who had himself attended Synge St, the late John Boland), but that didn’t totally eradicate it. It took place, but in a very limited manner. With the advent of Brother Hynes in 1983, Synge St began going in a liberal direction in terms of how punishment was meted out. Brother Hynes was a gentleman and very far from the brute that Brother Baxter in the film was. There was about three years of a certain laxity in Synge St after which Brother Hynes was sent to Dungarvan and was replaced by Brother Scanlan who was certainly a lot stricter. The character of Brother Baxter reminds me of Brother Byrne who was a relatively young and driven teacher of Maths and Irish. Brother Byrne was also to the forefront in training the Gaelic football team. He did his best to achieve results both in the class room and on the pitch and he had a degree of success. I never had Brother Byrne as a teacher and I rarely participated in extracurricular games, so my contact with him was limited. I saw the strict side, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t see he could be a decent man too. On the other hand, Brother Campbell could be very nice, but was strict in class. We had Brother Campbell for Latin which was taught to us very erratically in First and Second Year, so he began with the first declension of nouns and did three years in one achieving some impressive results. Oh, Synge St had both Latin and French. French superseded Spanish when Ireland joined the EU in 1973 and in the late 1980s, Latin was replaced by German and Spanish, but that was in the future. In the film, a near senile brother is shown as teaching Latin in a French class which never happened and also showed the boys as being ignorant of where French was spoken, which is,funny but is also a case of poetic licence. Sticking on the Synge St curriculum and the film, the premise of the film is interesting as it involves the pupils forming a band because the protagonist wants to impress a girl and some time is spent on getting the band together by looking for boys who could play instruments. In the real 1980s Synge St, this wouldn’t have been a problem as music was studied, mainly due to the interests of Brother Cripps and there was an orchestra in the school. In addition, Brother Cripps at one stage had a recorder ensemble and I remember seeing his appreciation of music when he walked into our class during lunchtime one day while Robert Elliott, who had a record of trouble, who had his back to the superior, was experimenting with playing Bach’s “Jesu Joy in Man’s Desiring” on the recorder. The brother stopped, listened carefully, praised Elliott for his effort, giving him some advice and then gently reminded us all we actually should have been in the yard at this time. I know you have to suspend your scepticism in film, but I really had to do this in this film. In regard to the behaviour of Brother Baxter, there is no way that a superior in Synge St at the time would have insisted a boy walk around the school without shoes. The superior of the time, Brother Hynes, tolerated some of the senior students with bleached hair and wearing make-up went with following certain bands. Neither Brother Cripps or Brother Hynes would have thought of putting a pupil’s head under the tap and washing eye-liner out. The idea might have occurred to Brother Scanlan, but the man was too clever to leave himself open to any action as a result. The rules of Synge St were very simple and were pinned in every classroom, so there was never a need to reference pages in a handbook. It is stretching the imagination, though, to see a strict disciplinarian micro-managing shoe colour and hair style, while allowing a dog eat dog atmosphere pervade in the school yard. I won’t say my experience of the brothers in Synge St was all rosy. It was far from it. My attitude was very ambivalent, and I suspect now that both my likes and dislikes of the staff, religious and lay, could have been for the wrong reasons on both counts. Adolescence is never easy, and adolescents don’t make things easy for everyone else – and I was no exception. But the idea of both the school and the order that managed it is distorted. The majority of pupils were Dublin working class, but there was a significant middle class minority even without which the depiction of the pupils was just classist caricature. The portrait of the Christian Brothers itself was pure boilerplate – the only thing missing here was nationalism the brothers were notorious for (and the 1980s was at the height of the troubles). Then again, very little Catholicism was seen in the film and Synge St did genuinely have vestiges of a Catholic ethos at the time. The clerical appearance of the brothers seems to have done all that. Most of the overt anti-Catholicism in the film is voiced by the main character’s elder brother who was educated by Jesuits and then dropped out of college. Again, nothing is very cerebral here, but given how realistically the actor Jack Rayner plays the elder sibling, I wonder does this reflect the views of third level students from the mid-1980s on and if this is what we are seeing now. I think the dysfunctional family here is also a bit on the unreal side. On the whole, the film presents caricatures of both the Christian Brothers as an institution and inner city life in Dublin and the 1980s in general. Entertaining on the whole but not to be taken too seriously. I’m a little disappointed that the principal and management of the school had a qualifier at the end of the credits to say Synge St is different now to then. Of course it is; every school is and not necessarily in a positive way all the time. My point rather is that Synge St in the 1980s was very different from the Synge St portrayed in this film. Fascinating post, Alasdair-- a slice of social history. Thank you. I remember a story of a Christian Brother sending a boy home for having long hair on the front page of the Evening Herald in the eighties, probably around 86 to 88. (At least, the photo and headline appeared on the front cover; I think the full story appeared on page two or three.) I can even remember his name, Brother O'Connell. At this time I was a heavy metal fan and so I was highly indignant and thought this was pure fascism. I was at the age where I idolised my elder brother and cousin, who were heavy metal fans. Soon after I reacted against them, and against heavy metal, and I remember drawing a picture of a Christian Brother raising his arms in the air with the caption: "Brother O'Connell: hero!" to antagonise my brother. I'm sure I got the garb wrong, whatever was current at the time.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 4, 2019 9:08:00 GMT
Another point about the film Sing Street , it said Viriliter Age (act manfully - a quote from the Psalms) was the motto of the (Irish) Christian Brothers. This is Synge St's school motto, but the Brothers' motto is Facere et Docere - to do and to teach.
One of the teachers in Synge was an ex-brother who told me this was originally on the monastery door which opened in 1864. He reckoned this had some influence on George Bernard Shaw who was born on Synge St and grew up on the street - this house is now a Shaw museum. Shaw famously came out with the quote "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, teach teachers." The teacher I referred to believed the brothers' motto was the inspiration for the Shaw quote.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Feb 4, 2019 11:29:34 GMT
Another point about the film Sing Street , it said Viriliter Age (act manfully - a quote from the Psalms) was the motto of the (Irish) Christian Brothers. This is Synge St's school motto, but the Brothers' motto is Facere et Docere - to do and to teach. One of the teachers in Synge was an ex-brother who told me this was originally on the monastery door which opened in 1864. He reckoned this had some influence on George Bernard Shaw who was born on Synge St and grew up on the street - this house is now a Shaw museum. Shaw famously came out with the quote "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, teach teachers." The teacher I referred to believed the brothers' motto was the inspiration for the Shaw quote. I believe men (and women) of action are generally failed and frustrated theorists. I always thought Do chum gloiré Dé agus onóir na hÉireann (sic, undoubtedly) was the Brothers' motto. It's a pretty fine one, whoever came up with it.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 4, 2019 11:48:08 GMT
The quotation is attributed to St Colmcille and it used in the Irish Constitution. It was also the motto of the Irish Press. BTW, anyone remember the Irish Press and Irish Independent used to give the saints of the day, which was also announced by Val Joyce on RTÉ Radio 1's Late Date immediately after midnight? Only the Irish Examiner keeps this up?
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 5, 2019 22:24:13 GMT
I notice the discussion so far has not mentioned the film's heavy insinuation that Brother Baxter is an abuser. (The older brother of the main character sarcastically suggests "Viriliter Age" really means "We Rape Our Pupils".) The film also has a jab at the inability of the character's parents to divorce and remarry in 1980s Dublin. It's an example of how for the younger generation the 80s have replaced the 50s as shorthand for ignorance, repression,hypocrisy and general uncoolness.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 5, 2019 22:42:27 GMT
I was flicking through some back issues of the SUNDAY BUSINESS POST from last year recently and coming across a profile of Paddy Cosgrove of the International Web Summit in which that gentleman's view that the Irish were never "really" Catholic but that Catholicism was promoted by the British in order to make them subservient, was cited as proof of his genius. Now it is certainly true that under the Union (and even to some extent before it) the British Government did try to defuse Irish nationalism by making concessions to the Catholic hierarchy. Here are some of the problems with Mr Cosgrove's interpretation of this fact: (1) It is quite clear for anybody who has studied this process that many/most of the British politicians involved disliked Catholicism and would have preferred the Irish to be Protestant if that was at all possible (there were sporadic attempts at conversion in the C19). (2) The British felt the need to co-opt the Church because the bulk of the Irish population already identified with Catholicism. The British may have tried to exploit this identification but they didn't create it. (3) The ability of the British to make concessions to the Church was limited by the pressure of Protestant (and to some extent Liberal) opinion in Britain and Ireland. (4) The willingness/ability of the hierarchy to do deals with the British was limited by fear and resentment of British Protestant influence and by the possibility of antagonising Irish Catholic popular/lay opinion (including much of the lower clergy; the "patriot priest" was a genuine though limited phenomenon). (5) Quite a few separatists expressly argued that the church should ally with nationalism because this would preserve Irish Catholicism more effectively by distancing it from de Catholicisation through Anglicisation.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 6, 2019 11:58:24 GMT
Somehow I think Goldvulture is nearer the mark when it comes to Paddy Cosgrave. And genius is not a word it would use. In fact, I think Goldvulture cited that example to draw the opposite conclusion.
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