|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 30, 2010 10:05:16 GMT
I am reacting to the discussion of Christian Order, a staple from many traditionalists in Britain and Ireland, and the general disastifaction of Catholics with the secular and Catholic media.
We need to do something. But what? Let the discussion begin.
|
|
|
Post by assisi on Oct 4, 2010 12:23:58 GMT
Most impact would be made if there were contributors to the mainstream secular papers, contributors that would put forward a Catholic view to balance the anti-Catholic articles. The Guardian prior to the Pope's visit was a point in question. Article after article put the boot into the Church without any opportunity for the Church to defend itself. It is here that many people are having their minds made up for them. Writers like Desmond Fennell have complained of their inability to get a letter published in the Irish Times, never mind an article. There are plenty of articulate Catholics but the problem seems to be breaching the walls created by the big daily papers whose agenda doesn't seem to include Christianity. There was an organisation, Catholic Voices, set up in England to put forward the Catholic view during the Papal Visit and they were trained and put forward their views well on the several occasions I heard them (see URL below) www.catholicvoices.org.uk/homeIt would be good if we could do the same in Ireland but constitute the group to work all year round and pro-actively write letters, lobby for articles and generally make a nuisance of themselves among those media denying access to a Catholic opinion.
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Oct 5, 2010 13:39:41 GMT
The two approaches need not be mutually exclusive, but there is one problem in Ireland, which is not the case in England. We have little tradition of articulate lay Catholics and that state is worse now than ever with two generations of woeful catechesis in primary schools, worse follow-up in secondary school and a total absence of third-level formation in the faith.
The Catholic press in Ireland is anemic - a wishy washy Irish Catholic and an amateur Catholic Voice. The Brandsma Review is not of the quality it used to be and there is nothing else.
In the secular press, outside John Waters and William Reville in the Irish Times and David Quinn in the Irish Independent, there is nothing at all by way of commentary. This isn't going to change anytime soon, unless Kieron Wood becomes editor of a national daily or weekly. Even then, finding contributors would be difficult. It is easy enough for a letters editor to ignore the Catholic nuisance - or they could even print them as they used to print Fr David O'Hanlon's letters, because they helped cement the line the paper tried to put across.
It is true that print media is dying a death. But there is still a niche market for people who want arguments and ammunition in the constant war out there around culture and politics.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 5, 2010 15:49:41 GMT
Assisi has missed out a minor point - the underrepresentation of Catholic viewpoints in the secular Press is due to editorial selection as well as shortage of speakers. Most of the secular press have a line that is explicitly hostile to orthodox Catholicism, though they may allow the occasional individual through so they can pride themselves on giving all sides coverage. This won't be changed by providing more contributors. I might add that Des Fennell's inability to get published nowadays outside the confines of Athol Books and its associated publications is not entirely due to anti-Catholic bias - he has a very idiosyncratic worldview and he tends to demand as a precondition of dialogue that his interlocutor should accept his 'take' on events as indisputably true. The big problem I think is a lack of effective command structures and training facilities for controversialists. We need a leadership that is capable of providing guidance and marginalising the head cases, and that is what we haven't had since the X Case - and the first step would have to be a publication influential enough to rally the movement.
|
|
|
Post by hythlodaye on Oct 7, 2010 11:52:36 GMT
Interesting post from Askel McThurkill. Could he expand a bit on why he considers the Brandsma Review is not of the quality it used to be?
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Oct 14, 2010 11:25:48 GMT
Interesting post from Askel McThurkill. Could he expand a bit on why he considers the Brandsma Review is not of the quality it used to be? I knew I was opening myself to question on that, and I have to say straight away that the Brandsma Review remains the best trad Catholic publication on the Irish market. However, I would ask questions about the inclusion of pieces borrowed from the New Oxford Review and pieces culled from the Internet. Some of these are very good - some are dodgy. In regard to content, original writing is to be preferred, but some of the stuff comes across as a rant. With due respect to Hibernicus who has a very good reason for writing under a pseudonym, I think pen names are best avoided. But if they must appear, just try to avoid having more than one in the same issue. Ok, if the BR looks at its masthead, it should have at least one pro-life article in every issue. Most of the time it does, but this is an imperitive in a way the traditional Latin Mass is not. Also, idiosyncratic or whimsical pieces are best avoided. Could there be more of a news focus? I am throwing these ideas in the air and looking forward to discussion. Askel McThurkill isn't going to be editor of the BR anytime soon.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 14, 2010 13:40:16 GMT
Look putting a magazine like the Brandsma Review ( www.brandsmareview.ie) together on a shoestring is a very difficult thing to do. I am a long time fan - I even had a letter published in it once (or maybe twice? I forget). Chasing up contributors to write original pieces is a very difficult thing and I have seen the odd contributor contributing odd pieces - there was a young Cork woman who used to be among the regular writers who wrote some very self-indulgent stuff up to a few years ago. Not everyone can write and even less can edit. But this is not what I am worried about. Nick Lowry is not a young man and he has been beset by health difficulties over the years. It may well be that in a few months or a year, there will be no Brandsma Review at all.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 18, 2010 11:25:45 GMT
Indeed - the most recent BRANDSMA noted that John O'Reilly's journal RESPONSE which documented matters of interest has closed down because John O'Reilly is no longer able to keep it going and he could not get anyone to take it on. This is our big problem. We don't have an institutional base - we just have a network of overstretched individuals working off their own time and resources. When someone dies or drops out whatever they were working on dies with them and the memory of what they did also dies with them and their friends/personal acquaintances, so that everyone who comes afterwards has to start from scratch without any idea of how things got into their current position. The BRANDSMA is certainly the best trad publication we have in Ireland; it has been f
|
|
|
Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Oct 18, 2010 15:47:34 GMT
I don't think Hibernicus finished his last post.
I would agree with his point about lack of institutional cohesion. It seems a lot of people out there who call for things like the BR are not prepared to back up what's there. I don't know whether the problem is personal perception of Nick Lowry or any of the other contributors. But it seems similar to the oversized thread on co-operation among trads - a lot of trads just prefer to do their own thing rather than row in behind an outfit that seems to be making progress. Likewise, I think a lot of people out there are happy to criticise Nick Lowry without doing anything constructive: for example, buying the magazine.
It would be a pity to see the Brandsma go the way Response has just gone - but is there any plan of action out there to save it? Is any contributor to the magazine ready to take over as editor?
But looking from another point of view, there is not a lot of alternative trad media in Ireland and the participation in this forum sort of underscores that.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 19, 2010 12:38:23 GMT
Quite right - I was interrupted. I meant to say that the Brandsma has been fighting the good fight since the X Case and it would be a shame to see it go under now. I think the reprints from NEW OXFORD REVIEW are a mixed bag; they are generally good in themselves but NOR has its own quirks and should not be relied on too much. The emphasis on the Latin Mass is part of the Brandsma's mission - it would be different if it were claiming that only EF attenders could be true pro-lifers, for example. The big problem I think is that so much of the pro-life and Catholic traditionalist movement is reactive rather than proactive. We are to a considerable extent shut out of the political system, we don't have much input from a Catholic educational system, and without these two foci for our energies - without the sense that we are getting something done, which the Americans have - the tendency to retreat into an introversionist mindset is encouraged. One problem the Brandsma has is that it doesn't sell its full print run, and that there are Radtrads out there who will not buy it because they think there is no difference between someone who supported a Yes in the last abortion referendum and Ivana Bacik.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 19, 2010 14:04:57 GMT
I don't believe the rad trads Hibernicus is referring to have any concept that they may be responsible for damage. And to them, the BR is a compromising, liberal journal.
The BR has been around since 1992. Journals to its left (Céide, for example) and to its right (The Hibernian) have failed. It is a tragedy that many trads refuse to take the BR.
The EF Mass is part of the BR's mission, but it might not be so good that more than one major article on the Mass appears in each magazine. Also the NOR pieces tend to take up a lot of space and their is other stuff which comes from the intternet too of various quality.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 20, 2010 12:56:02 GMT
My point about the radtrads is that they operate on the assumption that they know everything already, and anyone who disagrees with them must by that very fact be wrong - not just mistaken but so self-evidently wrong that they need not be debated. (That is why I was so alarmed at the recent CATHOLIC VOICE pieces on REGNUM CHRISTI and Christopher West - not for the stance they took, but for their dismissive attitude towards the critics, who were seen as so self-evidently wrong that their arguments need not even be described or debated.) That sort of mindset means you learn nothing and sink more and more into a little paranoid huddle. I think a look at the IRISH FAMILY gives a good idea of the movement's basic weakness. That paper was started in the immediate aftermath of the X Case, it was reasonably well funded and the people behind it were dedicated - but it never developed a proper editorial analysis; it was always proclaiming that the people are on our side and only need to be given a lead, and predicting tremendous victories next week. When next week came and the victories did not materialise, they forgot all about their previous prediction and instead of analysing what had happened to see what had gone wrong, they predicted more victories the following week. Now it is gone and what has it left behind? If only someone had the time and resources to work through its back issues to see what can be learned from its mistakes. I have just been reading a piece on Stephen Greydanus' site discussing Christian films, in which he remarks that the maker of the film SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE LAST DAYS stated in an interview that although he is an atheist "I was a Christian when making that film" - in other words, he was prepared to set his own views aside in trying to understand how the Scholls saw the world. Greydanus points out that the problems with much present-day "Christian film" springs from the inability of many "Christian artists" to perform the opposite process - to try to set their own beliefs aside sufficiently to see how unbelief shapes the perceptions of unbelievers, so as to address them more effectively - like St Paul talking to the Athenians about their altar to "The Unknown God". This I think is the problem with a lot of Irish trad-Catholic material - not the Brandsma.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 11, 2010 15:38:23 GMT
Is there anyone in the Brandsma Review likely to keep it going after Nick Lowry?
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Nov 19, 2010 9:51:37 GMT
I think there needs to be more than one person to take over the Brandsma Review. To work, it can't be a one man band. And such a group must be predominantly Irish based.
Also, the mag has to do something about its website.
|
|
|
Post by shane on Dec 15, 2010 17:45:04 GMT
One suggestion I would have for the Brandsma Review would be to feature articles from Irish Catholic publications (like the Irish Ecclesiastical Record) from the 19th century/early 20th century. There's a real goldmine out there waiting to be exploited.
|
|