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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 3, 2008 9:21:29 GMT
There's a lot in that and I don't think is uncharitable. However, I don't think the clergy running the Dublin Mass ever tried to really compete with the SSPX, but they only offered an alternative Mass. I don't think the Chaplaincy, for all its publicity, is any different. This is the reason the result of the Ultimatum will be essential and crucial. If SPPX, via Bishop Fellay and Vatican, via Cardinal C de Hoyos, at least, find a way to discuss and go further toward the end the excommunications, which i hope indeed, it will be a great benefit for the SPPX. People, who might have left the Fraternity, because of her troubled relationships with Rome, will be more trusty toward the SPPX. They might go back to their mass in Saint John's or Athlone or Cork. And the SPPX, in Ireland, once a bit down at the moment, will revive. I repeat this ultimatum is essential and crucial. Willy, Aside from the fact this topic is off the point: neither SSPX nor Dublin Chaplaincy have ever shown a marked interest in Dublin's working class. There are a lot in this group and Askel has pointed out that the Archbishop of Dublin has reported that in some working class parishes, Mass attendance is as low as 2-5%. Personal experience of dealing with these people gives me the idea they are not irreligious - many of them have sacred images and holy water in their houses and other sacramentals are in evidence. I know of a priest who was working in a parish outside Dublin where many Dublin working class people moved. He said they never came to church, but they welcomed him into their houses and asked him to bless their new homes. There is obviously a huge disconnect here. Santiago says that he thinks any ordinary group of Catholics exposed to the EF or even the OF said well will react positively. I agree with him. I think among trad oriented clergy there is a middle to upper class oriented bias and I would like to see it corrected. In Limerick, Fr Groeschel's Franciscan Friars of the Renewal went into Moyross. This is one of the places which put the 'stab' into 'Stab City'. The FFRs are not trads, but they offer a very conservative Catholic message. And they are having a noticeable effect - even An Garda Síochána is saying that. The point of the thread here is why can't trads act similarly? With regard to the SSPX, there is more to the question than just the disciplinary matter of the Society operating outside the church. Even if all sanctions are revoked, I am not going to Mass where priests preach endlessly on the evils of television or how wrong it is for a woman to wear trousers or how bad Assisi was. I know Assisi was bad, but its in the past. It is not wrong in itself for a woman to wear trousers and television is only as evil as the person watching it. Unrelated to alleged ultimata from the Vatican or ongoing dialogue, the SSPX seriously need to look at who they are and where they're going. They are not the last remnant of the faithful. Alaisdir.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jul 8, 2008 15:57:07 GMT
I suppose the most powerful argument that liberal and progressive Catholics can make about traditionalists is this:
Where are the hospitals, schools for the poorest of the poor, hospices, work with prisoners, orphanages, social work and development programmes in the developing world done by traditionalists now? This was traditionally part of the Church'es apostolate, why did it stop for traddies after Vatican II. And this rather than any other is the criterion given in the last judgement in the Gospels. Is this the point of the thread?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 10, 2008 14:37:34 GMT
Well, we might start with a few conferences of the Society of St Vincent de Paul which are professedly traditional. Or a fundraising group for the Campos diocese.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jul 17, 2008 14:38:18 GMT
OK - I'll throw a couple of coins into the box.
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Post by braveheart on Jul 27, 2008 15:49:28 GMT
"most (not all, by any means) of the congregations at traditional Masses are emphatically middle class"
I never noticed this. Maybe it's just where you're sitting in the Church, Alaisdir6!
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 29, 2008 13:30:47 GMT
Well, I don't sit among the upper class like you do, Braveheart.
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Post by braveheart on Jul 29, 2008 20:29:32 GMT
Maybe you're right Al. If I sit in the posh pews I see the 'working class' when I look around and if you sit with the 'working class' you only see the poshers over the other side!
I work for a living and I work hard. Most people do these days. Is 'class' really a good way to 'class' people these days?
IMHO the 'working/lower' class are more loyal to tradition than the pseudo-elites that the Brothers and the Nuns broke their hearts to create.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 25, 2008 14:53:44 GMT
Maybe you're right Al. If I sit in the posh pews I see the 'working class' when I look around and if you sit with the 'working class' you only see the poshers over the other side! I work for a living and I work hard. And you still have plenty of time for this forum in addition to membership of five or six trad groups. Don't you mean SJs and CSSps rather than Brothers and a few specific orders of nuns?
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 22, 2008 23:08:38 GMT
In this context it might be relevant to mention James Hitchock's theory that what happened after Vatican II was an assimilation of the clerical subculture to that of equivalent middle-class professionals with the same educational qualifications. A lot of the modifications of the Religious Rules seem to have this effecy (abandoning fasting, communal life, distinctive habits etc). An important part used to be played in the past by religious orders which recruited from the working-class. Clerical recruitment nowadays appears to be based on the assumption that candidates should all be well-educated professionals. BTW an authoritarian approach, despite its well-known problems, does actually have an appeal to people with tough lives in a way an intellectually elaborate one does not. Cf the success of Evangelicals - and in Britain and America of Muslims among the black community. The old Legion of Mary approach was quite effective in its time. Population shifts and the consequent pressures on the parochial system have contributed to the problem. Ironically such gaps used to be filled by religious orders. Having allowed the orders to go to rack and ruin the church authorities here now seem to be trying to meet the situation by turning secular clergy into something like religious orders (i.e. there is a managerialist approach which erodes the traditional rights of pastors and makes them liable to be moved around without consultation whenever the bishop feels like it.)
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 22, 2008 23:11:15 GMT
By the way, I don't like to see the term "neo-conservative" used in the context of different strands of opinion within the church. It is often used to insinuate that such people are frauds or impostors, or to equate them with the American political faction - I think it is better avoided.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 23, 2008 13:11:14 GMT
In this context it might be relevant to mention James Hitchock's theory that what happened after Vatican II was an assimilation of the clerical subculture to that of equivalent middle-class professionals with the same educational qualifications. A lot of the modifications of the Religious Rules seem to have this effecy (abandoning fasting, communal life, distinctive habits etc). An important part used to be played in the past by religious orders which recruited from the working-class. Clerical recruitment nowadays appears to be based on the assumption that candidates should all be well-educated professionals. BTW an authoritarian approach, despite its well-known problems, does actually have an appeal to people with tough lives in a way an intellectually elaborate one does not. Cf the success of Evangelicals - and in Britain and America of Muslinms among the black community. The old Legion of Mary approach was quite effective in its time. Population shifts and the consequent pressures on the parochial system have contributed to the problem. Ironically such gaps used to be filled by religious orders. Having allowed the orders to go to rack and ruin the church authorities here now seem to be trying to meet the situation by turning secular clergy into something like religious orders (i.e. there is a managerialist approach which erodes the traditional rights of pastors and makes them liable to be moved around without consultation whenever the bishop feels like it.) For once I get a worthy contribution to this forum. I had been speculating that if a group of Christian Brothers set up a school in one of the worse off districts in Dublin and taught a traditional curriculum, dressed in their traditional cassock - that this would fast become a model school and a rejuvenation of the order. I could say the same about the Presentation and the Mercy. Similarly, if the nursing orders provided health care in such districts in similar manners. This would do more for faith and church than any amount of position papers from CORI or its equivalents.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Oct 23, 2008 13:28:53 GMT
We could do with the Sisters of Charity coming into some estates in Clondalkin if only to provide basic healthcare and hygeine. If they could also do nutritional advice, it would be good too. People live on frozen food if they don't go to the local chipper.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 23, 2008 21:49:08 GMT
It is interesting to see how the history of the nursing and teaching orders has been retrospectively redefined, so that we are now told (especially when the orders are threatened with having to pay compensation for the misdeeds of certain members) that they were "forced" into teaching and nursing because the state wouldn't live up to its duties, and that now the state has taken on these tasks the orders can withdraw with a clear conscience. In fact, the teaching and nursing orders were based on the idea that there was a positive value to having these tasks performed by professed religious (whether they always performed them to the best effect is another matter - there were quite a few well-authenticated cases of better-trained lay personnel being squeezed out by religious orders whose members treated their habits as a substitute for qualifications) and if at any time up until the mid-1960s the state had offered to relieve them of these functions it would have been resisted. This view assumes that there is no positive value to having specifically Catholic forms of teaching and healthcare, and that the state's provision is now so perfect there is no need to supplement it except by asking the state for more money. The Hitchcock theses might be expressed in the following form: - how much of CORI's present mindset is explicable by desire to avoid personally undertaking the dirty work of wiping bottoms and controlling unruly classrooms?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 24, 2008 12:57:28 GMT
The doublethink of CORI is well documented. For years they call on local authorities to provide Social Housing. But when Dublin City Council attempted to CPO religious houses for the purpose of providing social housing, CORI protested vigourously.
It is almost as if the institutionalised Church transformed into a left leaning middle class profession, following Hitchcock's theory. Even the emphasis on taking candidates who have experience of the world suggests this. They are looking for educated and professional people. It may be that in the past, working class children saw joining an order as a means of getting an education, but many contributed to the orders they joined. But I wonder - some left wing currents reckon it is better not to educate the classes at the bottom as it deprives them of leadership. The consequences of this have been dreadful, but it seems those in the Church, clerical and religious, involved in education have bought into this too.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 24, 2008 22:12:03 GMT
The other oddity of the modern Religious Orders seems to be a reaction against the submission of self involved in communal life, without which there is not much point in having religious orders at all. The "make yourself a stick in the hand of the superior" approach (or, in another form, the view held by John Charles McQuaid and many other pre-conciliar prelates that since the bishop derived his authority from God he should never have to explain his decisions and they should never be open to debate or criticism) certainly allowed some nasty abuses, but I think things have gone too far in the other direction and some of the orders seem to have lost faith in their basic charism. Fr. Joseph Fessio says his trajectory to his present position began when after a post-Vatican II spell of "isn't it great that we can go around in lay clothes, not observe curfew etc" he suddenly asked himself: "If this is all there is to religious life, why am I a Jesuit?"
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