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Post by stephentlig on Sept 8, 2009 20:25:19 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 9, 2009 13:58:13 GMT
Much as I don't like to disparage someone who has put a lot of thought and time into his response, it appears to me the apologist has studied the English versions of the quoted documents well, but has not touched the Latin originals. So his view is essentially private interpretation. I would go carefully on this one, even if I might agree with the writer on many points.
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Post by stephentlig on Sept 9, 2009 16:18:37 GMT
Hi, nice to meet you, could you perhaps support your answer with evidence on how his veiw of the documents is private interpretation?
I'm a little dazed by your answer. it doesnt make sense.
God bless Stephen <3
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 10, 2009 13:32:37 GMT
I reacted to the article perhaps too quickly, but it is interesting that the onus on me is to show that the piece is private opinion. My mistake was to complicate what is actually a simple matter. The author is not a Catholic bishop nor does he hold a chair in theology from a major theological institute of the Catholic Church nor does he work on behalf of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith nor the International Theological Commission nor any of the many commissions chartered by the Church. Therefore, his view, no matter how sensible or convincing, like your view or my view is private interpretation. It actually goes beyond that...though he ultimately comes down on the right side, he is arrogant enough to stand in judgement over the Church'es magisterium and the last five Popes.
As for the answer itself, it demonstrates wide reading of both the documents and the controversies, but it doesn't demonstrate deep reading. Many of the points made are the staple of traditionalist criticism of the Conciliar documents among those who stay within the Church. I say 'wide' but I don't believe it is deep. I don't believe the guy looked at the Latin documents, which are definitive. Documents in English are only a translation, and there are ambiguities. Indeed there is a lot of criticism of Father Austin Flannery's edition of the Council documents in English for their ambiguities. The give away on this point is his treatment of the article from Lumen Gentium that the Church 'subsists' in the Catholic Church. The English word 'subsist' is a lot vaguer than the Latin 'subsistere'. The apologist simply doesn't go there, as he should because it is the Latin text which is definitive, not the English. All he does is rehash what many other commentators already said.
I am a bit surprised, though, that someone who hosts a blog listing Oscar Romero as a martyr who find a radical traditionalist apologist convincing. Traditionalists generally don't see Archbishop Romero as a martyr.
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Post by stephentlig on Sept 10, 2009 20:01:18 GMT
thank you for your insight. I e-mail him frequently with the odd question here and there, and if you permit me to do so I shall put your answer forward to him.
I dont consider myself traditional or liberal. I'm just Catholic.
why dont traditional ( as you call it ) Catholics see Oscar Romero as a Martyr?
thank you for you replies so far.
God bless Stephentlig.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 11, 2009 12:51:12 GMT
Avoiding labels like 'traditional', 'liberal', 'conservative' or 'radical' is a good policy, Stephen.
I think a lot of traditional and conservative Catholics see the murder of Archbishop Romero as a political act and that therefore it was not true martyrdom. The problem with this is that St Oliver Plunkett was hanged, drawn and quartered for treason - as were all the Irish, English, Welsh martyrs and St John Ogilvie in Scotland. The martyrs in Rome were in a similar position. One might ask if Mary, Queen of Scots was a martyr too. I believe there is a strong case for this as it is hard to believe she would have been beheaded if she compromised her Catholicism.
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Post by stephentlig on Sept 12, 2009 12:37:08 GMT
its hard to see their veiw, because Oscar spoke out against this political people on many issues that contradicted the Catholic faith.
the only conclusion is that he died for the faith and has indeed attained true martyrdom.
Thank you for your reply.
God bless Stephen.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 14, 2009 15:21:59 GMT
The point to bear in mind is that many traditionalists (and not only traditionalists but Catholics of right-wing political views) saw the Cold War as a struggle against Cosmic Evil represented by communism, from which it followed that anyone against communism was on the side of good (this led to some Catholic traditionalists in Ireland being suckered into co-operation with the Moonies, who likewise saw the war against communism as a cosmic struggle; the fact that they saw Sun Myung Moon as a Messiah superior to Jesus was treated as a minor inconvenience to be ignored, since their hearts were on the right side) (b) If communism was cosmic evil it followed that anybody who did anything that could be seen as weakening the anti-communist side (such as pointing out that many right-wing dictatorships professing Catholicism and anti-communism practised and encouraged sins crying out to heaven for vengeance) must therefore be on the side of the devil, however good their intentions. It is easier to see the fallacies of this mindset now than it was when the USSR was one of two superpowers and its empire covered a third of the globe, but a fallacy it is nonetheless and often had appalling consequences. I believe Archbishop Romero was quite conservative in his personal theology and close to Opus Dei - but then I know of a lot of radtrads who detest Opus Dei (for various reasons, including the idea that it is somehow Masonic and the belief that by moving away from autarky the Opus Dei technocrats in Franco's cabinet were responsible for the subsequent secularisation of Spain - these sort of people think turning Spain into a Catholic North Korea would have been an improvement.)
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 16, 2009 13:39:13 GMT
Pertinacious Papist reports and links to articles by George Weigel (the sort of conservative sometimes perjoratively called "neo-Catholic") and Chris Ferrara (SSPX) over what is involved in asking the SSPX to accept Vatican II pblosser.blogspot.com/2009/12/cdf-sspx-talks-spark-new-interest-in.htmlEXTRACT Ferrara says that Weigel comes closest to clarifying what he means "in his note that the dialogue between the Society and the Vatican cannot involve 'mutual enrichment,' for 'it is not easy to see how the Catholic Church is to be theologically enriched by the ideas of those who, whatever the depth of their traditional liturgical piety, reject the mid-20th century reform of Catholic thought of which Joseph Ratzinger was a leader.'” What the substance of that "mid-20th century reform" is most clearly revealed (then again, maybe not) in a list of questions Weigel poses for the SSPX, which he believes it simply rejects. The Devil is in the details, however, and the difficulty of Weigel's sort of account lies in the fact that the details, which are anything but simple, could yield quite unexpected results. What are Weigel's questions, and what does Ferrara say about them? I do not have space to offer more than the barest highlights...
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 11, 2010 15:52:16 GMT
Mark Shea has a discussion on his blog about the use of the term "neo-Catholic" as in THE GREAT FACADE - as a perjorative term to describe what I would call "conservative" Catholics - i.e. people who believe the post-Vatican II changes were part of a legitimate development which should be worked through in the light of the Church's traditions, whereas the "palaeo-Catholic" position is that they are disastrous innovations which should be rejected en bloc. I have some difficulties with Shea; his "aw shucks, whatever I say is plain common sense" attitude can be very exasperating and he is inclined to be unduly dismissive of traditionalist concerns. But this quote from a dissection of Woods and Ferrara's use of the term is IMHO bang on the button. markshea.blogspot.com/2010/01/final-bits-and-pieces-about-mystery-of.htmlEXTRACT BEGINS What cracks me up about the whole thing is this passage from a review of one of the sacred texts of Rad Tradism, The Great Facade by Ferrara and Thomas Woods: The authors’ rhetoric does not advance an argument but rather trains the casual reader’s mind to associate disapproval with the label neo-Catholic. And this is precisely what neo-Catholic is: a label meant to habituate the reader’s mind into dismissing those who have the misfortune of falling under it. This is tactical writing reminiscent of political mudslinging and the ravings of modern liberals, but it is not argument. The practice of assigning labels that one side has invented to opposing positions in order to stack the argumentative cards in one’s own favor and thus avoid contending with the opposing argument is a liberal and precisely modern method of argumentation. Assigning these invented labels aids in dismissing the opponent because the authors of the label can create an opponent ready made for defeat. This is the epitome of a rhetorical abuse. The authors define what a neo-Catholic is in a manner favorable to their own argument, thus assuring their victory in debate. . . . Furthermore, there is a logical answer to why this defense for their linguistic invention fails. "Schismatic" and "integrist" are two terms that are often laid upon traditionalists. However, both these terms have definitions that originated outside of the imagined war rooms of neo-Catholic think tanks. One can find St. Thomas Aquinas defining schism. One can turn to Henri Daniel-Rops or Pope Benedict XV for an understanding of integrism. The authors can at least argue about the justice of the label being applied to them by appealing to these objective definitions. The same cannot be done by neo-Catholics, for this term came forth from the authors’ traditionalist imagination. To what objective standard can supposed neo-Catholics appeal to? The only standard is the aforementioned imagination. This is no fair standard, and this is no reasonable argument. EXTRACT ENDS The link Shea gives in the body of his post doesn't work; the real link is here: socrates58.blogspot.com/2005/04/traditionalist-pet-term-neo-catholic.html Note also that the style of "argument" dissected here is not confined to Radtrads, as regular readers of this board are by now all too well aware.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jan 14, 2010 15:53:34 GMT
I am not sure if Chris Ferrara is SSPX - I always assumed the Remnant/Fr McLucas' Latin Mass Magazine to be indult. However this does not defeat the points Hibernicus makes or quotes - he is very much in the rad trad camp - and I believe he has a great admiration for his own reasoning skills.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 14, 2010 16:33:52 GMT
I think Ferrara is SSPX - on one of our SSPX threads I link to a piece in which he denounces the tendency of some SSPX members to flirt with nazism, and he seemed to be speaking as one of the brethren rather than as an external critic. I thought the REMNANT was SSPX - it certainly does not strike me as indultarian from what I have seen of it. Matt signed the "We Defy you to the Face" statement which I have seen described as bordering on sedeprivationism. I am not sure where LATIN MASS sits on the spectrum. The issues I have seen have some good points but also a certain amount of nostalgia for old-style ethnic Catholicism (which is good within reason, but evades the limitations of that subculture and can be actively harmful, as when they denounce the Anglican Use purely because of its historical associations) and a tendency to assume nineteenth-century academic religious art a la St. Sulpice is the highest form of artistic expression and that the Impressionists and their successors are of the Devil. These however are crotchets. What they both certainly have is the same style of argument which Mark Shea notes in his attack on their use of the term "neo-Catholic"; a tendency to sneer at the opponent rather than engage with his views and to refuse to elaborate on their assumptions. Oddly enough when Mark Shea is criticising US secular politics he often links to palaeoconservatives who go in for exactly the same style of argument. I think the neocon/palaeocon argument is spilling over into divides among US conservative/orthodox Catholics, with faults and damaging results on both sides.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 18, 2010 13:02:06 GMT
Chris Ferrara contributes to both the Remnant and the Latin Mass Magazine (or used to...is it still going?)
The Remnant was always indult, even if on the lunatic fringe thereof. Their de facto chaplain for several years in the 1990s was Father Timothy Svea of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. Father Svea was known to be hard in both the pulpit and confessional and was described by Remnant editor Michael Matt as the only real traditional priest in the Indult movement. I am not sure what Michael Matt said when Father Svea became the first priest (and the only case I know of) of a traditional institute to receive a criminal conviction for sexual abuse of minors.
The 'We resist you to your face' came a couple of years after this. I am not sure where Atila Sinke Gumaraes and Marion Horvat fit (but as ex-TFP supporters, they would not come from a pro-SSPX background), but the others are all invariably indult. Chris Ferrara was also legal advisor to Howard Walsh, owner of Keep the Faith Inc which owns both the Latin Mass Magazine and formerly, the ex-Convent of Mercy in Mohill, Co Leitrim.
I think that a lot of Catholic trads, myself included, need to do quite a bit of meditating on the sin of pride.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 18, 2010 16:27:05 GMT
Here's a link to a row between Ferrara and Fr. Trigilio of the EWTN network, which Ferrara is accusing of modernism. The commenters on the thread seem unable to make up their mind whether Ferrara is SSPX or Feeneyie, but I notice that in his response one of his claims is that the SSPX were never in schism: www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1592495/postsFerrara also seems to have allied himself with Fr. Gruner; their hairsplitting mentalities are very similar. I think I'd prefer the SSPX over Fr. Gruner, to be honest www.fatimapriest.com/contro07.html I notice from the Wikipedia entry and the links that the Remnant is seen as sympathetic to SSPX, but they seem to argue in one of their pieces: remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-2008-0131-peter_and_the_wolves.htm that the SSPX should have accepted the deal offered by pope John Paul II, which would seem to justify calling them "indultarian".
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 18, 2010 16:41:47 GMT
Here is an eulogistic description of Guimaraes and Horvat from an American traditionalist website. Quite frankly, I think this stuff verges on sedevacantism, and I have my doubts about someone who was such a zealous supporter of the Brazilian military dictatorship as Guimaraes is here shown to be, and who starts from the assumption that the French Revolution and everything deriving therefrom must be rejected en bloc as the work of Satan. (this is considerably to the right of Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, for example, whom they will hardly reject as a heretic - though who knows?) www.dailycatholic.org/issue/04Jun/jun10ttt.htm
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