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Post by hibernicus on Apr 15, 2015 16:49:20 GMT
Offhand I can think of St Edith Stein, St Hildegard of Bingen and St Catherine of Siena. As it happens, I am thinking of putting up St Margaret Clitherow next month. It would be possible to check the numbers/percentage more closely by running back through the "Saints" column, as I usually include a reflection on the saint of the month. It has been running for a couple of years, since late 2012 or early 2013, and there was a hiatus for a couple of months last year so any suggestions will be gratefully received.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 15, 2015 16:57:26 GMT
I would say there is a difference between conspiracy theories and wacky theories, but they tend to overlap because the crank theorist will very often decide at some point that if his views do not find official acceptance, this must be because the Establishment are deliberately suppressing them. I might add that it is not unknown for what were initially dismissed as "crank" theories to later find acceptance - plate tectonics and the Big Bang are two examples, and I can think of plenty of examples in historical studies (the long succession of Anglophone historians of the Reformation era who internalised Protestant presuppositions so deeply they didn't realise what they were doing, as distinct from those who recognised them as presuppositions and were prepared to analyse and argue for them). I would say bias counts for more than conspiracy. The trouble is that "wacky" theories tend to flock together, and if you have been labelled as "wacky" on dubious grounds (e.g. by the sort of Dawkinsite 'skeptics' who assume positivism and materialism to be self-evident and unarguable) it is very easy to get drawn into other "wacky" views and then have all your views written off as "wacky" by inquirers.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 15, 2015 17:05:38 GMT
As regards the scientific status of Freud, classical Freudianism is pretty much discredited at this stage - the versions of Freud that are found in academia derive from marxist or anarchist dissidents whom old Sigmund excommunicated (and I mean that quite literally - he saw disagreement with his views as a form of mental illness and expelled from the movement anyone who criticised him) or from other revisionists like Melanie Klein. One of the reasons for its discrediting, BTW was the rise of second-wave feminism - Sigmund maintained that women by and large were happiest in traditional feminine roles and attempts to break out of them reflected an unconscious desire to be a man and refusal to accept one's own femininity. (Mind you, I suspect this was stronger in some popularisers than in Freud himself; he had female disciples.) A lot of late 40s/early 50s Hollywood movies are based on this idea - I remember seeing one quite recently about a business rivalry between male and female executives which was based on this idea, and before the female executive saw sense and succumbed she was in the habit of strutting around wavinga big stick in a very Freudian manner.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 15, 2015 20:01:44 GMT
One of the reasons for its discrediting, BTW was the rise of second-wave feminism - Sigmund maintained that women by and large were happiest in traditional feminine roles and attempts to break out of them reflected an unconscious desire to be a man and refusal to accept one's own femininity. I don't think he was all that wrong, either.... The thing about Freud is, I think he was much more an artist than a scientist. His insights into human nature seem to be imaginative rather than experimental. Not that I know a whole lot about him. I was just using him as an example.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 16, 2015 8:13:33 GMT
I would like to mention a danger that is the opposite danger to Catholics becoming sponges for every conspiracy theory and fringe theory; that is, Catholics (and all supernaturalist Christians) overcompensating for the counter-cultural nature of their beliefs by trying to show how impeccably modern and intellectually respectable they are in other ways.
I think we can see this in avant-garde art and literature. Unfortunately, Christians were (and are) as heavily involved in the avant-garde as secularists. So many awful stained glass windows, churches, and stations of the cross are evidence of this. (Anyone who remembers me defending modernist churches might be surprised to hear me say that; but I never liked the outright monstrosities, and my views are changing on that matter, anyway.) And it's true in poetry as well. Let's be honest, T.S. Eliot may have been a genius, but he wrote a lot of rubbish as a result of his modernist literary theories. And there are other Catholic/Christian writers who fall into the same category. I hear Geoffrey Hill praised as a great contemporary Christian poet, but his work seems pure drivel to me.
The same applies to political correctness.
"I'm an orthodox Christian, but don't think I'm a reactionary" seems to have become a whole persona in modern times. It's as much a mistake as the "I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb" attitude of the sort of Catholics we're discussing here.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 17, 2015 7:59:23 GMT
Maolsheachlann is correct - we are looking for a happy medium between the counter-cultural fringe that we are talking about here and subservience to the status quo, which is what the likes of The Tablet seem to want. There is always going to be an element of swimming against the tide in Catholicism (Christianity is the religion of the cross), and on the one hand, a certain type of liberal Catholic wants to ignore this altogether (it is salutary to remember this in discussions such as this), but we're talking about people who in varying degrees made huge jumps outside the ordinary and mundane, in a way more reminiscent of the pharisee. One question we can ask is how evangelical can any of these positions can be. The tabletista has nothing to evangelise the world to; the zealot has all the fire, but ends up going over land and sea to make a single convert whom he then makes a son of perdition, worse than himself. What we have to aim is to present a vision of Catholicism which is apart from the world, but not to the extent that we will lay on burdens without lifting a finger to help. I am lapsing into scripture here, I know.
There's another thing about conspiracy theories - they're a good mechanism for evading responsibility for your own sins.
With regard to Freudianism and Arts faculties - this is a point well taken. In fact the tendency in the humanities faculties is to still have Che Guavaro on the wall and emphasise independence with the casual gear and left wing opinion. This is another cultural subset in its own right and well worth critical examination. For some reason, I would say "Beware the wrath that is coming". There is enough experience of third level and its funding here to know we are passing from state support to private support. Unfortunately, universities have ceased be independent and I think the days of the aging hippie, the ancien soixante-huitard, is numbered.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 18, 2015 21:02:16 GMT
The extent to which critical theory and its associated forms of lunacy (based on the idea that to recognise the existence of external reality is a reactionary act) is still au courant in academia is very depressing, especially since it is based on the view that there is no such thing as dialogue, only a struggle for power between the children of light (themselves) and the children of darkness. The way the IRISH TIMES and co have been covering the marriage referendum is one expression of this. BTW the IRISH TIMES has now started publishing articles on the wonders of transsexualism, and how it should be recognised and acted on as early as possible, the earlier the better.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 18, 2015 21:05:42 GMT
As regards conspiracy theories, there's another big problem - they're a way of avoiding the existence of reality. OK, they touch on real issues (the growth of a class of transnational progressive apparatchiks who bypass political debate and spread their views through administrative groupthink, for example) but they are useless in understanding where these issues come from and what might be done about them.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 28, 2015 21:15:33 GMT
Monica Barget's piece on the latest scandal in Germany is in the current BRANDSMA REVIEW (concerning a woman who was sexually and otherwise exploited in one of the new religious orders and has lost her faith as a result). Some points that come to mind: (1) The order in question was founded before the Council, around WW2. The impression I get is that a wave of such organisations arose independently and near-simultaneously and that one of their objectives was to come up with forms of religious commitment that blurred the lay/clerical distinction and tried to get round the strict restrictions imposed on vowed religious. (Indeed, a similar process can be seen in some of the older Orders; one of Fr Timothy Radcliffe's stronger points is that much of the work present-day Dominicans do among the poor in the Third World would not have been possible under preconciliar rules about enclosure and habits.) Both the original C13 friars and the apostolic orders of the C18 and C19 arose from a similar impulse, so this is not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately there's also a reason why such orders tend to develop rigid canonical frameworks over time, which is that looser structures can give greater scope to abuse the members and the public en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrovagues(2) Because it has both male and female members who work together, there is a tendency for the male members to shape the organisation and the women to be treated as add-ons. It is noteworthy that the women are not formally nuns but consecrated virgins, which might produce canonical ambiguity about how much/little responsibility the order has towards them; I've heard of similar problems with the status of consecrated women members of Regnum Christi (the lay organisation associated with the Legion of Christ). (3)There is a tendency to avoid potentially disturbing ideas. For example, the order has a house at Littlemore and this woman was told to give guided tours on Newman, but when she asked for permission to read Newman's works she was refused and made to memorise tapes of previous tour guides. Apart from anything else, this is tantamount to fraud on the people taking the tours, and treats Newman as dangerous while trading off his reputation (at least Manning was straightforward in his distrust). I wonder if male members are kept on such a tight rein?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 30, 2015 8:03:06 GMT
There has been a quite a reaction to this worrying article already and I am especially waiting to see what Donegal based BR readers have to say (Bishop Boyce brought this order into Letterkenny). I never thought the idea of mixing men and women in religious houses very good, but some of the stuff Ms Wagner describes in the book (I've read German language interviews and reviews in addition to this piece) is weird. But the idea of learning chunks of Newman off by heart and not reading the man is very worrying.
I recall reading something in a combox recently regarding nuns in the US before the Council and one thing that frightened me was that Carmelites were discouraged from reading St Teresa in case it would give them airs and were rather taught how to walk and hold their hands to look like pious nuns. The problem with the external was when it was kicked out of the way, the whole culture behind it collapsed. I think a lot of traditional and neo-traditional groups are taking to the so-called "tried and tested" means but are failing to analyse and parse them for potential flaws.
I think Father Timothy Radcliffe's case about habitless Dominicans doing non-traditional work might be a bit over-stated - any of my experience shows habits and cassocks to be more effective.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 30, 2015 9:49:07 GMT
When I was in a secondary school run by Dominican nuns, I always assumed that the most ferocious nuns were cast-iron, right-wing orthodox. Looking back I wonder (given a few things they said) if they were mostly liberal nuns. I can remember only two that always wore the habit. One was, to be blunt, a right wagon (though conscientious enough and I don't doubt the sincerity of her vocation). The other was a dotty and adorable old nun who, in one year, taught us more solid catechesis, including how to pray the rosary, than I had in all my primary and the rest of my secondary education put together. Amongst the majority that didn't wear the habit, there was a mixture of nice and nasty. Mostly nice but even a lot of the nice nuns just seemed bewildered and out of place and you wondered what they were doing in religious life. Of course, I can't see into anybody's soul. They might have been saints.
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Post by hibernicus on May 2, 2015 21:48:51 GMT
To be fair to Fr Radcliffe, he was talking specifically about Dominican nuns living and working among peasants in rural Latin America, where his point would have some substance. Bear in mind (a) one of the big problems of evangelisation has ALWAYS been to get evangelisers willing to go into really poor districts - the way in which the Redemptorists were shaped by the need to evangelise poor rural areas that couldn't support a priest - in a traditionally Catholic country where Catholicism was the state church (b) There are well-known instances of tensions over traditionally contemplative spirituality being adapted to orders involving apostolic work; one example would be the way in which the early Holy Rosary sisters who were trained by Dominicans could never quite shake off the idea that missionary life - which was what their Order was set up to undertake - was second best to traditional convent life, and nuns who returned to the motherhouse from the field were put through a rigorous programme of retreats to decontaminate them (c) there are also various preconciliar horror stories of some orders refusing to allow even obvious modifications to habits etc for tropical conditions on the grounds that that would be a breach of the rules. I suspect this is what Fr Radcliffe has in mind. OTOH he is probably overstating his case and dismissing the possibility of modification rather than abandonment. The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal work amid horrendous urban poverty and they make a point of wearing habits.
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Post by hibernicus on May 2, 2015 21:50:30 GMT
If I recall correctly, the author of the article wasn't even given chunks of Newman to memorise - she was given tapes of tour commentaries spoken by an earlier guide.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jun 11, 2015 7:33:10 GMT
Seems Newman is there to be revered rather than studied in this particular group.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 15, 2015 11:13:44 GMT
That is a problem Newman shares in common with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. He is revered; he is used as a support; but he is not carefully studied and read, which both men would want to be, even (especially) if it involves discussing them critically.
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