|
Post by hibernicus on Jun 18, 2017 17:45:35 GMT
As regards Percy, the best starting point IMHO are the two satirical "Thomas More" novels, LOVE IN THE RUINS and THE THANATOS SYNDROME. It helps to have a sense of the Southern background and Percy's uneasy relationship to the image of the "stoic southern gentleman" as represented by his uncle William Alexander Percy (who is parodied as the aunt in THE MOVIEGOER). The depiction of the uneasy relationship between the cult of the Confederate hero and the present-day lowbrow redneck racists who appeal to it reminds me very much of the Northern Ireland loyalists (or the criminal fringe element of republicanism for that matter). The pro-life message of THE THANATOS SYNDROME is also related to Percy's awareness of being the descendant of slaveholders (he was involved in the civil rights movement in Louisiana) and what that says about the consequences of treating human lives as instrumental and expendable. (BTW I remember once visiting the West Port of Edinburgh and seeing a lapdancing joint called BURKE AND HARE'S after the two pedlars who took to murdering strangers and selling their bodies to the surgeons for dissection. I thought this was very appropriate, since both enterprises involved reducing the human body to a commodity to be bought and sold.)
|
|
|
Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 18, 2017 20:33:30 GMT
Well, I couldn't make heard nor tail of the Moviegoer. I'll believe you if you tell me the aunt was a parody; to me, she seemed like the mouthpiece of the author. Actually, I wasn't sure. Whether the lassitude of the narrator was meant to be a reflection of the society around him, a rejection of it on the grounds of his own spiritual fastidiousness, or whether he was simply empty as a person and thus an embodiment of his society...this was by no means clear to me. The only hint that he may be a sympathetic character is when he treats the paralyzed boy without condescension. Really, such works of literature are buried under so many layers of irony and authorial distancing that trying to work out what the author intends you to take from it is, in my view, not worth the effort.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 19, 2017 14:08:47 GMT
Read the piece on Ailbhe Smyth in The Phoenix. Though the woman has energy and academic intelligence, she doesn't strike me as the best person to pitch at the middle ground. The unfolding abortions debate is getting very scary
|
|
|
Post by Account Deleted on Jun 19, 2017 16:30:12 GMT
The unfolding abortions debate is getting very scary Indeed. David Quinn has an interesting point in his Irish Catholic piece about the potential timing of the upcoming referendum coinciding with the final Tuam report. I can well believe it will happen, as the last "report" (not even a report, but a web page) was in the media the very week before the pro-life groups were due to present to the assembly (and the very first floor questions - intended to undermine them - referenced Tuam.) Some very dirty tactics will be used against pro-lifers. irishcatholic.ie/article/calling-anti-catholicism-exactly-what-it-really
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jul 5, 2017 19:27:09 GMT
VILLAGE magazine has a piece suggesting the DUP are less reliably socially conservative than some people are predicting (a lot of their urban Protestant support is quite secular). It also points out that DUP Belfast councillors voted for the Marie Stopes resolution which the three SDLP councillors opposed (for which the SDLP suspended them) and attacks the SDLP (notably Alastair McDonnell, ex-MP for South Belfast) for taking pro-life stances. Let's be grateful to the DUP for whatever they do for social conservatism, but let's not get carried away. They are quite capable of opportunism when it suits them. BTW when I lived in Belfast I voted for a pro-life (and pro-Agreement) UUP candidate for the Assembly, and pro-life UUP and SDLP candidates (under varying circumstances) for Westminster.
The same issue of VILLAGE btw has a piece complaining about the sell-off of lands by religious institutions and calling for their expropriation in the public interest. Now it does strike me as iffy to see religious orders selling off land that was given for the needs of future generations, and the way it suggests their despair and loss of purpose, but there is a sinister little remark in the article where it says that donors gave to the orders for "secular as well as religious purposes" - which means, of course, that the author thinks education and health services are inherently secular and any religious dimension to them is an unnecessary excrescence.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Aug 14, 2017 21:06:59 GMT
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 20, 2017 21:15:34 GMT
Recently the IRISH INDEPENDENT published an article by a Dr Ciara Kelly denouncing a decision that US employers who object on grounds of their religious beliefs will no longer be forced to pay for their employees' contraceptives. Dr Kelly thinks this is outrageous, because "people have rights, religious beliefs do not". This is pure sophistry - it's like saying "people have rights, lawyers do not". Of course it is the people who hold the beliefs who have rights, not the beliefs in isolation. The development of doctrine on religious liberty at Vatican II was based on the realisation that the formula "error has no rights" overlooked the point that it was not the error in isolation but the people who are in error who have rights. Someone please introduce Dr Kelly to the Spirit of Vatican II. www.independent.ie/opinion/dr-ciara-kelly-people-have-rights-religious-beliefs-do-not-36225300.html [paywall]
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 20, 2017 21:26:26 GMT
Goldvulture is once again combining hosannas to Sinn Fein with cheerleading for the campaign to remove Katie Ascough as UCD SU President. The PHOENIX is now smearing her by association with Breitbart because Breitbart published an account of the impeachment campaign and expressed disagreement with it. This is rather rich from a magazine that has published articles on US foreign policy by someone who claims 9/11 was an inside job: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Craig_Roberts
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 26, 2017 23:18:47 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 16, 2017 9:10:28 GMT
Just got The Phoenix annual and went directly to the Clerical Errors column. I'm amazed at how good Goldhawk (Goldvulture) is at politics, business, the arts and horse racing and how relatively bad they are on the Church. They take what the ACPI tell them at face value when they would be more critical of any other group of substantially FG supporters. They see Francis as a liberal reformer, which he is not and the same can be said about Diarmuid Martin. They're cheering over Charles Brown's departure, but they have been predicting it for years They're still predicting a significant role in the Church for Mary McAleese, which isn't going to happen. And they're celebrating a "Mass" said by a bunch of female "priests" which had 40 attendants in Dublin. I would regard 40 at a special publicised EF Mass deep in rural Ireland as a failure. I wonder is Goldhawk so disinterested.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 16, 2017 23:25:22 GMT
I've read that article too, and what struck me about it is the way in which it repeatedly gloats and jeers over the death of Cardinal Connell, insinuating that anyone who expressed even the mildest sympathy for him was complicit with clerical abuse. That's obscene, and it's par for the course for Goldvulture's religion correspondent, who can never see any good in anyone who disagrees with him. Two generations back he might have been the sort of bad Redemptorist who threatened people with Hell for denying his personal infallibility in all matters of fact. What he said about Mary McAleese was not that she would have a prominent role in the Church, but that she would have a prominent role in the upcoming Papal visit, which sadly seems all too plausible. He is getting in some sneers at Diarmuid Martin as well. The worrying thing about the Womenpriests gang, whom he puffs unmercifully (I suspect that particular gasbag comes to him via Fr Tony Flannery, who has been promoting Bishop Bridget and her cronies for quite some time) is not the numbers but the fact that clerics in good standing are able to openly meet with them and support them without any sort of repercussions. Really the sheer hatred emanating from that column leaves a most unpleasant stench.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 21, 2017 20:12:17 GMT
This "From the Papers" piece has a couple of interesting items. Francie Molloy is lamenting that the politically correct in SF are alienating rural supporters by their take-no-prisoners attitude on abortion. (I suspect Gerry McGeough is behind the AOH pro-life petition mentioned.) Someone is making a documentary on Fr Willie Doyle SJ as symbol of reconciliation, emphasising that on more than one occasion he saved the lives of Ulster Division members. www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-42062763
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Dec 4, 2017 19:24:51 GMT
Yesterday's IRISH SUNDAY TIMES had an item on the front page reporting Educate Together as declaring that schools transferred from denominational patronage could not be really nondenominational so long as teachers who adhered to a Catholic ethos were present, and that such teachers should be transferred out. So according to Educate Together, it is wicked for denominational schools to get rid of,or avoid recruiting, teachers who don't uphold their ethos, but it is absolutely necessary that nondenominational schools should be allowed to do so. Freedom for me but not for thee, indeed.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Dec 8, 2017 20:23:27 GMT
MOLOCH'S HERALD marked the feast of the Immaculate Conception with a piece by Hillary Fannin in which she describes herself whining to her cat about the doctrine of original sin, about the idea that MAry is on a pedestal above the rest of us (she's the exemplar of how we are saved by God's Grace; if only Hillary Fannin could see this) about the "religious rubbish" that was "drummed into her" at school, and about the damage done by ideals of chastity and purity. Sounds very gloomy for someone supposedly rejoicing in liberation - she is so "liberated" from hope that she can't realise that is what she has rejected, just as she unwittingly reasserts belief in original sin when denouncing the possibility of virtue. It made me think of John Waters' book on the nature of fashionable Irish contemporary atheism, BEYOND CONSOLATION. MOLOCH'S HERALD (aka the IRISH TIMES). Classy as ever.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Apr 8, 2018 19:09:39 GMT
Did anyone else see Justin McAleese's recent op-ed piece in the IRISH TIMES, in which he objected to the organisation Courage (which helps Catholics of homosexual orientation to live in chastity), claimed it promotes conversion therapy (it doesn't, though it does use Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step therapy), used some of Fr Benedict Groeschel's unfortunate comments to smear the whole organisation, and generally implied that religious freedom should not extend to orthodox Christian teaching on homosexual acts, because he claims it drives gays to suicide? Expect more of this "religious freedom versus sexual freedom" commentary, with "sexual freedom" coming up trumps every time - for heterosexuals also.
|
|