|
Post by maolsheachlann on Aug 28, 2019 10:18:06 GMT
(2) In one of the Screwtape Letters CS Lewis has his senior devil explain that a major objective is to create "materialist magicians" who will actually worship the devil without realising that this is what they are doing. A couple of Christian commentators on this documentary have cited this quotation, and they're bang on the button. The same theme appears in That Hideous Strength.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 30, 2019 21:52:29 GMT
Last Sunday the SUNDAY INDEPENDENT had an article in which the columnist worried that the imposition of abortion and same-sex pseudomarriage on Northern Ireland would not be as definitive as in the Republic, because these things were being imposed on NI instead of clearly chosen by the people themselves. In this column the author quoted - more or less without comment - a statement by Graham Norton to the effect that before a major social change can take place "you have to drive all the rats into the corner" (i.e. you have to isolate the social conservatives). Fellow Rats - Let us now contemplate what sort of person historically compares people they don't like to rats, cockroaches etc and what would be the response if we pro-lifers started publicly describing our opponents as rats (we'd be accused of dehumanisation and incitement, just for starters). Let us also contemplate the effrontery of lectures on morality being delivered by someone who has run a television show where guests do with ping-pong balls what Rodrigo Borgia's dinner guests did with chestnuts.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 11, 2019 9:02:49 GMT
I got the Irish News this morning. There are two Church related stories worth mentioning. One is the closure of the Women's Confraternity in the Clonard Monastery after 122 years due to dwindling numbers. The crowds in the archived photos tell their own tale. The other is the funeral of Fr Des Wilson. I have a friend, a militant Republican if I must say that, whose father had Fr Wilson as a Latin teacher in St Malachy's when Fr Wilson was a young priest. My friend's father said this was the last priest in St Malachy's of the day he imagined would be any sort of a rebel. Right now, all we can do is pray for him.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 13, 2019 1:00:34 GMT
What I heard was that Fr Wilson as a young priest had a somewhat sheltered life and when he went out into parish work and saw conditions in working-class West Belfast he became radicalised. This is quite understandable; many of the things he subsequently said and did IMHO are not. But we all need prayers, and I will pray for him.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 20, 2019 23:22:54 GMT
Did anyone else see an IRISH TIMES a few weeks ago in which the present head of theology at Maynooth was interviewed? He said amongst other things that it would be wrong to turn loose on the praying public seminarians who are "authoritarian","defensive" or "legalistic". I wonder how he defines those terms?
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 22, 2019 16:28:27 GMT
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 23, 2019 0:25:56 GMT
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 24, 2019 22:58:12 GMT
Today's SUNDAY BUSINESS POST reports calls for images of child sexual abuse not to be called "child pornography" on the grounds that pornography, which when the phrase was coined was regarded as outside the pale, is now seen by society as disreputable but tolerable, whereas the child images are inextricable from abuse. This is a nice example of the slippery slope which we are always told doesn't exist.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 14, 2020 23:20:51 GMT
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 18, 2020 0:46:51 GMT
Just in from seeing A HIDDEN LIFE (Terrence Malick's new film about Franz Jagerstater, executed by the Third Reich for refusing to swear allegiance to Hitler when he was called up). I'll post my observations on another thread some other time, but here I'd like to note Donald Clarke's review in the IRISH TIMES, which I happened to read while waiting for the movie. Towards the beginning of the movie Clarke complains that the film's portrayal of farm work is pretty-pretty. This I think is overdone - yes, it is beautifully lighted, but the people have dirty clothes and dirty hands and are working with fairly primitive implements (the opening shot of Franz cutting hay with a scythe makes it quite clear how this requires all the muscles of the body) and that, at least in part because of Franz's decision, his wife Fani and other women relatives will spend the rest of their lives doing this back-breaking work without a man to help them. (It would be quite possible to read the "hidden life" of the title as that of Fani, who has to live on and by the nature of things gets less attention than Franz.) At least one critic points out that the emphasis on the beauty of the landscape can be seen as reflected through the mind of Franz, since it is his home and he is aware that he stands to lose it (and the audience are presumably aware that he will lose it) - perhaps it can even be read as how he remembers it from prison. More seriously, Clarke misses the point of the whole story, as we see from this passage towards the end: www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/a-hidden-life-terrence-malick-s-beautiful-serious-sometimes-infuriating-film-1.4139550 EXTRACT ...Towards the close, it becomes clear that the Nazis will allow him to serve in a non-combat role if he will sign the oath of allegiance. Even his supporters end up begging him to cross his fingers and make the mark. Germans shout at him in German and speak less angrily to him in English (no critic has yet made sense of this odd convention, and Malick ain’t talking). The dilemma is similar to that towards the close of Martin Scorsese’s Silence and, as there, the director fails to make sense of it. No caring God would, surely, want a man to die simply for telling a white lie in an affidavit. Both Scorsese and Malick seem to assume a latent religious faith in the observer. No bridge is made with the contemporary godless moviegoer... END OF EXTRACT First of all, it is not absolutely certain that the Nazis would show leniency (though it is fairly clear that the people making the offer are sincere). Given the peculiar sense of humour found in the Nazi penal apparatus, he might well be executed anyway, or put in a penal battalion and sent to clear out the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a minor point; Clarke's comment stands in that it is a shred of hope which Franz consciously refuses. Second, Clarke seems not to have noticed that the "white lie in an affidavit" is a pledge of allegiance to one of the most evil regimes this planet has produced, and a consequent acceptance of complicity (however minor) in its crimes. (In this sense those critics who amused some commentators by complaining about the story being set in the Third Reich had a point - how would we judge Franz's actions if there was more ambiguity about the nature of the regime to which he was asked to pledge himself? But of course this is a moot point since what happened to the Jagerstatters happened there and not elsewhere.) Third, Clarke seems to assume that the only coherent secular value system is consequentialist utilitarianism. (I get the feeling that Mr Clarke is in part a victim of the sort of moral miseducation analysed in THE FACILITATORS all those years ago.) In fact secularist moral philosophers can appeal to at least one other fairly coherent system and often do so - how satisfactorily is another matter. That system is Kantian deontology - the view that there are certain things we should do, and others we should not do, simply because we are human and therefore experience certain moral constraints. When Franz tells the judge who has called him in for a brief private conference that he does not judge anyone else's actions but simply cannot do it himself, that has a Kantian ring to it in its evocation of an inborn moral sense (although a consistent Kantian would presumably say he judges other people, because a Kantian is supposed to act as if his actions were to provide the basis for a general moral rule). Fourth, Clarke does not seem to even entertain the possibility that one might act heroically not simply because God commands it, but out of a positive sense that this is the right thing to do, or from love of God and desire to imitate Him. One thing Mr Clarke's comment does bring out is that the film makes the full cost of martyrdom - not just for Franz but for Fani and for others - very clear. The church painter who tells Franz that in painting the sufferings of Jesus he is flattering his audience, who think they would have sympathised with Jesus had they lived then, and that Jesus does not want admirers but imitators, sounds like the voice of Malick's conscience and should be the conscience of us all. (Later on, when Franz is in prison and the villagers are shunning her, Fani enters the church for a prayer ceremony. The congregation glare at her and she goes out again. Anyone who knows even a few words of German will realise that the ceremony from which she is being driven out is the Stations of the Cross.)
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 21, 2020 20:40:41 GMT
Whatever you may have thought of the DAILY TELEGRAPH's old-style Rule Britanniaism and Thatcher-worship, at least it used to allow some space for social conservatism. Now that it has dumbed down (dismissing many of its experienced staff in the process) has become infested with light-headed feminist columnists (I'm not saying feminists are necessarily light-headed, but the DT variety certainly are) and Conservative Central Office has been tipping the wink about the need to be socially liberal for the last 10-15 years, the DT has joined the pile-on against Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Corbynista Labour leadership candidate, for what it calls her "toxic views on abortion". These "toxic" views are, not that abortion should be banned or significantly restricted, but simply that aborting handicapped babies should have a time-limit, rather than being freely available up to birth. This, it seems, is "toxic" in the eyes of "respectable" Britons. Put not your trust in newsprint. conservativewoman.co.uk/long-bailey-abortion-and-the-hopelessly-out-of-touch-telegraph/
|
|
|
Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 22, 2020 11:17:03 GMT
Whatever you may have thought of the DAILY TELEGRAPH's old-style Rule Britanniaism and Thatcher-worship, at least it used to allow some space for social conservatism. Now that it has dumbed down (dismissing many of its experienced staff in the process) has become infested with light-headed feminist columnists (I'm not saying feminists are necessarily light-headed, but the DT variety certainly are) and Conservative Central Office has been tipping the wink about the need to be socially liberal for the last 10-15 years, the DT has joined the pile-on against Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Corbynista Labour leadership candidate, for what it calls her "toxic views on abortion". These "toxic" views are, not that abortion should be banned or significantly restricted, but simply that aborting handicapped babies should have a time-limit, rather than being freely available up to birth. This, it seems, is "toxic" in the eyes of "respectable" Britons. Put not your trust in newsprint. conservativewoman.co.uk/long-bailey-abortion-and-the-hopelessly-out-of-touch-telegraph/It also shows the dangers of paying too much attention to "respectable opinion", or what is considered extremism or "beyond the pale" at any given moment in social history.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jan 22, 2020 23:58:08 GMT
I agree that it is dangerous to assume that "respectable opinion" is right just because it's respectable. It's another thing to overlook its existence or ignore what its development may mean. If I met increasing numbers of people who were Asartru, if wearing Thor's hammer and swearing allegiance to Odin became the latest thing in coolness, if RTE and the IRISH TIMES started to produce items on how subjecting reactionary and oppressive Christers to a blood-eagle had much to recommend it as an exercise in self-empowerment, it would be advisable at least to discuss the possible significance of these developments.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jun 23, 2020 23:41:36 GMT
Has anyone else seen the shocking piece of pro-euthanasia propaganda that was the LETTER FROM THE HAGUE in the IRISH TIMES of Tuesday 23 July? Here's the link in case you didn't: www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/groupthink-exposed-in-prosecution-of-dutch-doctor-in-euthanasia-case-1.4285547 Basically, a Dutch doctor was prosecuted for murder after revealing that she had killed a senile patient who had signed a "living will" but always replied "not yet" when asked if she wanted to die now. The High and Supreme Courts ruled in her favour and expunged a censure administered by the Dutch Medical Council. Note the framing (the article begins with a paragraph about how the coronavirus epidemic has shown our hypocrisy in praising medical staff while they are poorly paid and not respected) and the buzzwords - euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands "in tightly controlled circumstances", the prosecution is "a shocking example of groupthink", the statement of the doctor that the patient was non compos when she said she didn't want to die and that her attempt to sit up when the lethal drug was administered was simply an instinctive reaction, are quoted in extenso and treated at face value. There is no attempt to convey the views of anyone who takes an opposing opinion of the doctor's actions (presumably because the article is commentary and not a news story) and the doctor is praised for simply making the difficult decisions we expect doctors to make in matters of life and death. Expect plenty more comment on these lines in coming years as Ireland moves on to the next "liberal agenda" life issue - euthanasia. Meanwhile, just as a reminder of the slippery slope, here's the story of a doctor who complained he was unjustly prosecuted for making tough medical decisions in relation to euthanasia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Brandten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_trial
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jun 28, 2020 0:20:22 GMT
Today's (weekend) IRISH TIMES has a letter from Brendan Butler of We Are Church Ireland complaining about the "clerical church" encouraging renewed infaction by "cramming as many people as possible into their reopened church buildings" and suggesting that ordinary believers should move away from the institutional church and take control by celebrating Eucharist in their own homes "as the early Christians did". Clearly it has not occurred to Mr Butler that some of us might miss going to Church, derive comfort from it, and look forward eagerly to coming back to Mass - nor has he noticed complaints in some quarters that elements of "the clerical church" are falling over themselves to restrict church attendance even more stringently than Caesar demands. This parody of the official response in England and Wales catches the spirit though not the letter: ecclesandbosco.blogspot.com/2020/06/three-news-items.html Meanwhile, the ACP (rightly for once) point out that some of the restrictions here seem to be designed with the aim of letting the bishops avoid liability for any renewed coronavirus outbreaks associated with churchgoing, while leaving the parish clergy with the full responsibility: www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2020/06/acp-statement-on-the-re-introduction-of-public-masses/
|
|