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Post by hibernicus on Dec 13, 2012 11:51:06 GMT
Last Sunday Justine McCarthy (who has been campaigning for legal abortion in her most recent columns) described some of the hate-mail she has received from self-styled pro-lifers (including an outrageous false claim, which every decent person should condemn without any equivocation whatsoever, that she herself had had an abortion, supposedly as the result of an affair with a politician). This is a very good example of how this sort of hate-mail and fantasy is not only wrong in itself (and of course it would be wrong even if it benefitted the pro-life cause, which it doesn't) but actually harmful. The people who produce it are engaging in criminal self-indulgence of a very nasty type and should be marginalised as much as possible. She mentions personal circumstances which make such messages particularly distressing for her, and in this she ought to have our sympathy on a personal level (whatever about the causes she advocates, which are a different matter entirely). At the same time, I notice that Ms McCarthy while implying that the mere existence of such messages discredits the pro-life cause, does not even consider the possibility that the hate-messages (visible, for example, on Twitter) accusing pro-lifers (often individually and by name) of being liars, murderers of women, advocates of shooting abortionists, and many other things too numerous to mention, say something bad about a type of person attracted to the "pro-choice" side. I think we have a double standard here. Ms McCarthy also criticises the bishops who attended the pro-life vigil outside Leinster House on the grounds that by engaging in pro-life campaigning they are aligning themselves with Youth Defence "an organisation guilty of intimidation". Leaving aside the question of whether Youth Defence's tactics have sometimes been problematic, has she noticed that "pro-choice" rallies such as the March for Choice regularly feature the banners of the Workers' Solidarity Movement (an anarchist group which celebrated on its website a systematic campaign of defacement against Youth Defence posters) and the Socialist Workers' Party, the Trot group well-known for its advocacy of the bloodstained ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Both these groups regularly engage in what they call "direct action protest" and what Ms McCarthy calls intimidation - when Youth Defence does it, that is. So does Ms McCarthy call on pro-choicers to avoid rallies featuring these groups? Don't hold your breath waiting for her to do so.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 30, 2012 21:04:24 GMT
In yesterday's year-end review in the IRISH TIMES Kitty Holland has a piece on the general oppression of women in Ireland, which for her boils down to denying the right of women to make choices about their own bodies. As well as the usual complaints about the non-availability of abortion, she also recalls the recent revelations about symphisiotomy. Her article, which does make some valid points, is at the link below. I have excerpted its most extraordinary feature, which I will leave for you to read yourself before I comment on it: www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/1229/1224328241992.htmlEXTRACT Women are still being told what to do and what not to do while pregnant: in May, it was that watching your weight while pregnant “can be beneficial”; in July, it was that working late in pregnancy “harms baby”; and last month it was that drinking one glass of wine a week could damage the baby’s IQ. At the other extreme, in June, we read how Chinese women can be forced to abort their babies. .. END OF EXTRACT In other words, Ms Holland thinks that giving pregnant women advice on how their diet may affect their baby is a form of oppression deserving to be spoken of in the same breath as the policy of forced abortion in China. (This from someone whose soulmates hold forth about the need for women to be given "non-judgmental information" so they can make "an informed choice".) She does not explicate the reasoning behind this extraordinary view, but it appears to be that such health advice acknowledges the child as a separate entity from the mother and suggests the mother should be concerned for its well-being. Just one more reminder of how doctrinaire pro-choice ideology denies the obvious, and something to bear in mind when Ms Holland is presented as a dispassionate reporter for the "paper of record".
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 31, 2012 17:33:27 GMT
Cristina Odone has attracted some well-deserved flak lately for her support of legal abortion, but here she draws attention to a really worrying case of a court ruling that a Baptist can be dismissed for refusing to work on Sundays when assigned by her employer (I should add that other workers were wiling to work the Sunday shifts to allow her to be exempted, but the employer refused). blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100196108/a-judge-rules-sunday-is-not-important-to-christians/There is a very disturbing aspect of judgement which she does not pick up on, which is reported in the story below. The judge appears to assume that because not all Christians believe work on Sunday is forbidden, it cannot be said to be part of Christian teaching. But of course there are many different types of Christian, and the relevant point is whether it is mandated by Baptist teaching, or by the particular Baptist sect to which she subscribes. The court is reducing Christianity to a "lowest common denominator" of what all Christians have in common, rather than the teachings of individual denominations. If this is to be the normal approach it could be used (for example) to deny that it was discrimination to restrict Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican access to the sacraments on the grounds that hristians are sacramentalists. Here's another example of a Protestant sabbatarian to be respected even if we don't share his views - Eric Liddell from CHARIOTS OF FIRE, who passed up a possible Olympic gold medal rather than run on the Sabbath. (BTW the real Eric Liddell was apparently a very ineffective preacher, but despite Ian Charleson''s well-known vices he gives marvellous expression to the man and his beliefs. I might add that the real-life Lord Birkenhead, depicted in the first clip trying to manipulate Liddell, started out by trading on Protestant politics in Liverpool for the sake of political advantage, though he cared as little for Protestantism as for Hinduism. Comparsons with certain present-day Irish politicians are unnecessary): www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnCkEaoTR4Uwww.youtube.com/watch?v=OlRfyjPWAMcwww.youtube.com/watch?v=GnCkEaoTR4Uwww.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9770825/Christians-have-no-right-to-refuse-to-work-on-Sundays-rules-judge.htmlEXTRACT Mr Justice Langstaff, who as president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal is the most senior judge in England and Wales in this type of case, upheld the lower tribunal’s ruling which said it was relevant that other Christians did not ask for Sundays off. The fact that some Christians were prepared to work on Sundays meant it was not protected, the court said. The senior judge said that a rule imposed by an employer which affected nearly every Christian would have a greater discriminatory impact than one which only affected a few. There was evidence that many Christians work on Sundays and this was relevant in “weighing” the impact of the employers’ rule, and the earlier decision did not involve an error of law, he added. Campaigners said the ruling showed that Christians are being treated less favourably than people from other religions, such as Muslims, Jews and Sikhs. They pointed to cases where the courts offered protection to other religions even when only a minority of adherents were affected... END OF EXTRACT
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 15, 2013 19:34:08 GMT
Michael Harding's column in the IRISH TIMES has been particularly irritating of late. Last November he had a long witter about how he was going to the Savita Havalanappar solidarity rally in Galway (i.e. joining a campaign for legal abortion) as an expression of what he regards as the unpayable male debt to women - in other words, if you are male and don't campaign for abortion you hate women. In another recent column, published just after the bishops issued their statement opposing legalised abortion, he portrayed two memorably nasty people resembling Pentecostal preachers gloating over the prospect that women who had abortions would spend eternity amidst the flames of Hell, naked and suspended on a fishhook through their tongues; then he had an alter ego-figure speculate that Pentecostal theology derived from wearing the wrong sort of pyjamas; finally he enquired what sort of pyjamas the bishops wore. So there you have it; if you oppose abortion you are a woman-hater who derives perverted glee at the thought of others being tortured in Hell, and the bishops' statement places them in this category. Once again, I wonder what sort of theology they were teaching in Maynooth in the 1970s, and how someone like Mr Harding ever made it through to ordination.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 15, 2013 19:57:14 GMT
Expect a fair bit of coverage in the papers of the forthcoming movie THE SESSIONS (with John Hawkes and Helen Hunt), about how an American disability rights advocate called Mark O'Brien (he was quadriplegic through polio and spent most of his time in an iron lung) hired a female "sexual surrogate" as a form of medical therapy. An acquiescent priest is one of the characters. I certainly will not be watching this movie, but there's part of the story which it apparently doesn't cover and which I suspect our beloved media who shed so many tears over the non-legalisation of "assisted suicide" won't cover either. Mark O'Brien was a vociferous campaigner against the legalisation of assisted suicide, as Wesley J Smith (who knew him) recalls: www.discovery.org/a/20481EXTRACT Mark’s true yearning was not for regular access to sexual release but for full inclusion in a society too often indifferent to the common humanity of its disabled members. Indeed, his personal calling was to wage all-out war against society’s tendency to isolate the disabled and, concomitantly, to demand respect, that simple but indispensable mutual acknowledgment that we owe each other as equals. His pursuit of the cause started early in a youthful rebellions against autocratic staff in nursing homes. (His rollicking tales reminded me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.) It continued in the physical ordeal of attending of UC Berkeley while fully quadriplegic. (Breathing Lessons includes clips taken by news crews of Mark driving himself to school on the city’s sidewalks lying supine on a motorized gurney.) It flowered in his long career as a journalist, disability rights activist, and poet, arguing vehemently on behalf of the independent living movement that had liberated him to live in his own apartment, cared for by a personal attendant that he hired—and could fire. By the time I met Mark, post-polio syndrome had sapped most of his remaining physical vitality. He was terrified of leaving the womb of the machine, but still would defy polio to make occasional personal appearances. For example, he made a triumphant presentation at a Berkeley screening of Breathing Lessons I attended, even taking questions from the audience (at the cost of significant exhaustion). His loathing of pity and marginalization were also the bases of his robust anti-euthanasia advocacy. He bitterly criticized Jack Kevorkian as a killer of disabled people and he bluntly described the message of assisted suicide as, “Get rid of these people. I don’t care how. Just get them out of my sight.”... END
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 15, 2013 20:21:13 GMT
Hibernicus, aren't you being a little too dismissive of Michael Harding? He actually raises a very interesting question. What pyjamas DO bishops wear?
Reminds me of the limerick:
There was an Archdeacon who said, "May I take off my gaiters in bed?" But the Bishop said "No! Wherever you go, You must wear them until you are dead.
Just trying to treat his comments with the seriousness they deserve.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2013 21:36:57 GMT
I don't read the IT so don't know who this Harding man is but what on earth is he talking about when he says man's unpayable debt to women? Is this a theme of his (like John Waters and dad's access to children) or a way to be cool and get girls to like him? Bizarre.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 15, 2013 22:07:35 GMT
I can't think of anything more cringe-inducing than a man trying to show off his feminist cred. I think I would rather be trapped on a desert island with twenty dungaree-wearing, mad-as-hell women's libbers than with a single creepy-crawly, scrawny-bearded, I-don't-mean-this-in-a-patronising-way-oh-my-god-maybe-I-do-without-realising-it male feminist.
I'm sorry. Let the rational discussion recommence.
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jan 15, 2013 22:17:58 GMT
Re. Bishops PJs. Maybe they dont wear any!! oops.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2013 22:22:11 GMT
I can't think of anything more cringe-inducing than a man trying to show off his feminist cred. I think I would rather be trapped on a desert island with twenty dungaree-wearing, mad-as-hell women's libbers than with a single creepy-crawly, scrawny-bearded, I-don't-mean-this-in-a-patronising-way-oh-my-god-maybe-I-do-without-realising-it male feminist. I'm sorry. Let the rational discussion recommence. The obvious reason why the pro-abortion marches have so many young men (morning-after pill doesn't work, get an abortion, either way thanks for the great weekend m'dear) seems to escape many a good hearted young woman. Some I suppose do genuinely believe women shouldn't be "burdened" with a baby and have the freedom to walk away just like them. However, there are men who are "gamma males" (I think, never listened in class) and are attracted to the idea of being a feminazi's crumpet or have no choice really in the matter, God love them, but that's another problem. I refuse to call them feminists because feminists (first wave) did not fight for the rot that powers the ideology today. This should probably moved to that misogynist thread if Hib thinks it's more pertinent there.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2013 22:31:39 GMT
Re. Bishops PJs. Maybe they dont wear any!! oops. There's a Bishop Len Brennan google search somewhere in that for you!
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 16, 2013 12:02:39 GMT
Louise: Michael Harding is a writer from the Cavan/Fermanagh borderland (his literary career is outlined HERE) - I must say the photo fits Maolseachlainn's description very nicely: www.irishwriters-online.com/harding-michael/ What this profile doesn't mention is that he went through Maynooth, was ordained in the late 70s and spent a couple of years in the diocesan priesthood before dropping out. His novella PRIEST (which I haven't read) apparently portrays priests as lonely and demented, and his play THE MISOGYNIST presents celibacy as inspired by fear and hatred of women. He has stated that he had girlfriends as a seminarian and that when seeking ordination he had assumed that clerical celibacy would soon be abolished; he detests John Paul II for closing down such everything-goes expectations. He now states that after a serious illness he has abandoned the last vestiges of religious faith and believes when we die that's it. This recent piece from the IRISH TIMES - reproduced on the Association of Catholic Priests website - expressly states that he now bases his hostility to celibacy on awareness of its significance as a form of bearing witness for the Kingdom of Heaven in which he no longer believes, and in the divinity of Jesus whom he now believes simply died a meaningless and futile death: EXTRACT ...And although I value solitude very highly, I’m not at all convinced about celibacy. I tried it once. But it was too public for me; I felt I was a puppet in a bizarre choreography of the unconscious mind. I suspect the practice will eventually be abandoned, like castration was in opera circles. Not that celibacy is merely a psychic castration; there’s more to it than curtailing the libido. Celibacy is a declaration that one will remain without a wife; ergo without a companion, ergo without children, ergo without all the consequent tenderness and intimacy that such family ties nurture in a human being. (You can see I was well schooled in Latin.) Like suicide bombers, celibates are a sign of paradise and the afterlife. They say no to the flesh in slow motion; bombers do it with a bang. These acts of renunciation are made in the name of Heaven, signifying a defiant confidence in a future realm, in contrast to which all pleasures and comforts on Earth pale into insignificance. The black-robed, sterile male has carried this sign of contradiction in unconscious societies for centuries. And he will continue to do so until, eventually, society wakes up, becomes more conscious, and comes to terms with humanity’s brief existential moment on Earth. We are beings for death. We carry our own death within us. We no longer need a costumed player to console us with the possibility of heaven or frighten us with the proximity of hell. The male celibate has lighted fools the way to dusty death for centuries. But Shakespeare’s wisdom prevails: life is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. And the question remains: what did Jesus signify, as he died on the cross in an existential moment of obliteration, after admonishing God for abandoning him? And how might the concept of a crucified God sustain us now in these times of anxiety? Those philosophical conundrums, like a lot of other things, were brushed under the carpet during the superstar papacy of John Paul II, when the intellectual elite of the church were ordered to be silent, or else leave the building... END OF EXTRACT An elderly mountain woman, apparently based on his mother, features in some of his fiction and I get the impression he has a sense of guilt over parental sacrifice that you often find in people from the first generation in a family to go to college - and in others as well. (One of the central themes of Confucianism is that children owe their parents an unpayable debt. I might add that this seems a somewhat saner attitude than the one which John McGahern adopted in response to his dreadful father - that instead of children owing obligations to their parents it is the parents who owe the children, since the parents conceived them for their own gratification and without consulting them first. The attitude that you cannot acquire obligations without your explicit consent is at the root of a lot of our present troubles IMHO.) I must say that declaring that you support abortion because of guilt over all the trouble you caused your mother seems an odd attitude, almost a form of despair. He may also (that I am not so sure of this) be suggesting that he is so unlovable that women who get involved with him are doing him a tremendous favour. The phenomenon of men trying to ingratiate themselves with feminist women by being outspokenly pro-feminist and pro-abortion is a real phenomenon. The American Catholic columnist John Zmirak (whose attitudes on certain issues I have criticised strongly, but he has a point on this) calls it "Nookie Feminism", and says it is particularly prominent among male heterosexual academics in the US (American academics are overwhelmingly liberal in their attitudes and feminism is strongest on the campus; it has also been argued that the "hookup culture on American elite campuses is partly driven by the desire of female students to avoid lasting relationships as these might interfere with their careers). By his account, it is not confined to gamma males - he describes, for example, jock types who volunteer to act as "escorts" at abortion clinics (i.e. "shielding" incoming patients from contact with those wicked pro-life demonstrators outside) in order to win the favours of Lena Dunham-type college students. takimag.com/article/tenderness_leads_to_the_gas_chamber/print#axzz2I5OVh1hvEXTRACT However, the introspective among the liberals understand just how fragile is a moral empathy based on identification. They know, for instance, that they don’t really regard gun-toting, Confederate flag-waving Nascar fans as human in QUITE the same way as the Vassarites waiting beside them on line at Zabar’s. The unborn have to be dehumanized right up front, to polish one’s feminist credentials. (This is particularly important for straight male academics who hope to have sex occasionally. One sees a lot of “nookie feminists” across the barricades at abortion mills.) The handicapped? Well, they’re a mixed bag. On the one hand they’re “disadvantaged,” and thus a group to be championed against evil corporations (or even mom-and-pop businesses that can’t afford to install a wheelchair lift). They have a “right” to demand that every bus in the city be equipped to give them “equal access,” and to open-ended special education programs at taxpayer’s expense. On the other hand, all that TLC is kind of expensive… so if parents don’t “feel comfortable” with (for instance) Down’s Syndrome kids, why should the government interfere? Every child who gets out of the womb alive with some handicap is going to cost us millions…. As will all those inner city kids who’d get born if we closed the clinics. And come to think of it, isn’t it a sinful waste of money to keep those terminal patients alive, when the money could be better spent in Darfur? Or refurbishing Lincoln Center? So why not use technology to make damned sure that “every child is above average”?... END www.catholicity.com/commentary/zmirak/08798.htmlEXTRACT He never really wrapped his head around the facts of the situation, the bleeding flesh of the moral anarchy that masqueraded as the government of his country, until one Saturday morning in the early 1990s. Early Saturday morning was prime time at the clinics, so that was the hour you had to show up for sidewalk counseling and prayer. It started off almost festively – an early morning Mass, then a group walk over to the Park Avenue clinic that processed so many non-Park Avenue clients. He stood there, with the sweet old Irish ladies who formed the bulwark of the movement, the small and uncertain knot of college students, the Missionaries of Charity and Franciscan Friars of the Renewal who knelt on the asphalt leading the Rosary. On the other side of the line were all the attractive people – the hot young women on weekend trips from Wesleyan and Wellesley, and the tall, muscled lacrosse players who'd joined them that morning to earn their points as "nookie feminists." All were there to "keep the clinic open," even though there was no prospect of a Rescue, and they'd suited themselves up in hip little vests that said "Clinic Escort." The vests were baby colors, pink and blue... END For an Irish example of Nookie Feminism, see the current PHOENIX, where a profile of Fintan O'Toole which praises his far-left views while criticising his supposedly unreasonable hostility to the "progressive" historical contribution of "actually existing republicanism" (read Sinn Fein/IRA) includes gushing praise of a "brilliant" piece he wrote attacking pro-lifers, and comments that this is the sort of thing which makes a girl see a bespectacled nerd as a Greek god. (I paraphrase from memory as I threw my copy out after reading it.)
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 16, 2013 12:28:59 GMT
There is quite a breed of those seminarian/priest-turned-critics-of-the Church, aren't there? Off the top of my head I can think of Peter De Rosa, who was the writer of the whismical and delightful Bless Me Father starring Arthur Lowe, but who also finds time to take potshots at Church teaching on contraception (at least); David Rice, my old lecturer in DIT, who wrote a book called Shattered Vows: Exodus from the Priesthood, and who (as I seem to remember) questioned priestly celibacy, contraception, and the lack of female ordination; Joe Higgins, not especially a critic of the Church as far as I can remember but determinedly pro-abortion and a former seminarian; John Cornwell, writer of the scurillous "Hitler's Pope", which fed the "Pius XII did nothing for the Jews" myth; and I'm sure there are more that I can't think of at the moment.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2013 17:18:17 GMT
I don't have much time now but just a quick nod to O' Toole. The nookie feminism is definitely only coming from the side of the feminist women. I don't doubt for a moment he truly believes he's right in his beliefs. He's not trying to impress the girls or feminists. I know his wife, she's a lovely lady, so out of deference to her and their marriage it's important for me to say that. I'm not saying that you suggested otherwise Hibernicus! Having said all that I have a massive crush on John Waters so it cuts both ways!
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jan 16, 2013 22:29:56 GMT
Just to introduce a little levity to the proceedings; Re. horsemeat crisis, Whats the price of a burger in Tesco? Even money.
Just checked the burgers in my fridge 'And they're off!
These Tesco burgers are low in fat but surprisingly high in Shergar.
Those Aldi burgers were nice but I prefer my Lidl pony.
A woman was taken to hospital after eating horsemeat burgers. Her condition is said to be stable.
Ok,Ok I'll be serious from now on, I promise.
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