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Post by Ranger on Jun 15, 2015 18:46:25 GMT
One person who seems to have a fairly big following here, although only in certain circles, is a Filipino priest named Fr. 'Bing' Arellano who founded a movement called 'The Alliance of the two Hearts.' People I know who have been to some of his retreats (there's at least one every year or two here in Ireland that I've seen advertised) have said that it's mainly about conspiracy theories, the end of the world, apocalypticism etc. One older person I know involved in the Church told me, quite sincerely a few years ago, that Fr. Bing's 'contacts' amongst the New World Order had informed him that on a particular date there would be a terrorist attack in Los Angeles that would be used as an excuse to launch World War III, which was part of their plan. Naturally, the date came and went (it's been six or seven years now, I think) and as I'm sure you're all aware, there has been no third world war. Some critical info on them here from an orthodox Catholics point of view, although as I'm not involved in any way personally I can't say how accurate it is: www.allianceofthetwohearts.info/I bring this up because this movement has a large following in Ireland, at least in so far as any devout Catholic grouping has a large following, although one only hears about it in certain circles. I think that these are the dangers we face in terms of sub-cultures within the Church arising from conspiracy theories, the other being the radicalisation that Young Ireland and the others have mentioned above. I just wanted to bring this up again to illustrate a particular point that some of Alaisdir's recent posts on the various different groups of traditionalists have put me in mind of. I meant to raise this earlier but I've been quite busy. Shortly after posting this I came across a flyer for one of the retreats by this Alliance for the Two Hearts group run in Ireland. It had been left in a church in the city centre but not where most other flyers were left so I'm uncertain if it had the approval of the priests or not. According to the flyer Fr. 'Bing' was scheduled to be in attendance. What amazed me about it was that it had a list of Irish organisers on it for interested parties to contact. There were FIFTEEN of them! All to organise one retreat! I brought this up with a friend of mine involved in the Church. As he said, you're talking about almost the same number of organisers that would form the leadership of say Youth 2000 for example (which has about maybe 20-25 people centrally involved). Again, my point is more or less the same as the quote I've taken out above: there are whole circles within the Church in Ireland that we don't often come into contact with. I know about this group myself tangentially through people who've attended one or two of the retreats. We're incredibly fragmented. I hope Alaisdir doesn't mind me dragging this old post up, which can be found here, as I think it's quite pertinent: irishcatholics.proboards.com/thread/211/weird-new-movements?page=6Excerpt here: I think that part of the task we have is building bridges between the various different groups out there. I think that there are so many unknown unknowns here. I'm not saying that I would necessarily think that it would be a good idea to link up with the group I've mentioned, as they seem to me to be highly problematic, but rather that there are other circles out there which simply aren't aware of each other. I think that we could form networks not just between individuals but also between the networks that already exist, insofar as they are between groups that are genuinely building up the Church here. For example, I've attended the EF Mass many times, but I don't typically attend now and I'm probably out of touch with most traditionalist Catholics in Ireland, or even in Dublin. It's a circle I don't mingle in often and many of my other Catholic friends wouldn't be part of it at all. Likewise I'm sure that most here wouldn't be involved at all in the Youth 2000 circuit, which includes a large number of the dedicated Catholics under 35 across the country. I wonder how such connections might be facilitated, apart from via person-to-person contact.
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Post by Ranger on Jun 15, 2015 18:47:17 GMT
This is probably the wrong thread altogether on which to post this, but I was attempting to quote from here so here it goes...
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 16, 2015 8:44:21 GMT
I'm very flattered at Ranger digging up an older post of mine, but it shows that there are plenty of sparks of life within the Church, but this is being poorly harnessed. The problem is most clergy seem to want to run a mile rather than engage a young, idealistic and somewhat intense Catholic.
The extent of this is great. I just recalled being on pilgrimage in Italy more than a decade ago in a hostel, I think in San Giovanni Rotondo which catered for a lot of German-speaking pilgrims. There was a young Dominican priest from Cologne in the white habit. My wife had a friend of hers, German or Austrian, ask her did she know the habit. She looked and said she thought it was Dominican. The girl who asked didn't believe it was and suggested four or five new congregations that my normally well informed wife had never heard of, and she wondered if they were legitimate or not. In other words, there is a lot going on that we don't even know about. A better question is whether it is working to serve the greater good.
But there is something which I can bring to this thread which connects with stuff that Ranger, Hibernicus and I have said in recent posts and still relate to women/misogyny.
If trads have a problem with misogyny, some are reacting to a general problem of misandry in the Church. Look at my observations above. In many cases, I am describing male spiritual. The EF appeals to men; the neo-Ignatian movements appeal to men; the scouting movement appeal to men. We have said that men play an unappreciated role in transmitting the faith. This is in the context of a Church bending over backwards to accommodate women. Up to something so trivial as the acceptance in many parishes that recruiting altar girls is easier than recruiting altar boys as they don't have sports events scheduled at the time of meetings or training. One of the arguments against altar girls was the belief that they would take over and there would be no boys, with a corresponding down turn in vocations to the priesthood. This was dismissed as scaremongering at the time, but both have happened (not by design, by happenstance).
This relates back to the isolated, energetic and intense male who is more than a caricature. If this energy isn't directed in the right way, it is a case of the devil finding work for idle hands to do. These guys can and will drift into fascism, into male domination, into other stuff Hibernicus mentions and the illustration from The Butcher Boy is pertinent. In summary, the cause of women is not served by neglecting the needs of men. Neither does the Church flourish on ignoring one or other of the sexes.
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Post by Young Ireland on Jun 17, 2015 20:58:23 GMT
Ranger is spot on on the need to network between groups as well as individuals; Youth 2000 seem to be one movement worth trying to link with. One thing that might be worth keeping in mind is that any such network should not only be mutually beneficial but also balanced, so that one group does not end up taking over the other, turning it into a satellite. This is something we need to be wary of. As my own opinion, I think that one thing worth remedying is the fact that such a network should be made up of sub-networks of local groups where person-to-person contact would be much easier. This would also counter the tendency of many networks not to extend outside of Dublin, which is important if we are to mobilise support in the relative strongholds of the West and border areas, among other areas.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 18, 2015 9:50:45 GMT
Networking is the key; and from time to time, it might be necessary to encourage other committed individuals to diversify a bit and not to stack all their eggs in one basket.
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Post by Ranger on Jun 18, 2015 16:40:51 GMT
I'm very flattered at Ranger digging up an older post of mine, but it shows that there are plenty of sparks of life within the Church, but this is being poorly harnessed. The problem is most clergy seem to want to run a mile rather than engage a young, idealistic and somewhat intense Catholic. The extent of this is great. I just recalled being on pilgrimage in Italy more than a decade ago in a hostel, I think in San Giovanni Rotondo which catered for a lot of German-speaking pilgrims. There was a young Dominican priest from Cologne in the white habit. My wife had a friend of hers, German or Austrian, ask her did she know the habit. She looked and said she thought it was Dominican. The girl who asked didn't believe it was and suggested four or five new congregations that my normally well informed wife had never heard of, and she wondered if they were legitimate or not. In other words, there is a lot going on that we don't even know about. A better question is whether it is working to serve the greater good. Well, as the saying goes 'old but gold'! I think you did a good job of detailing a lot of the different divisions, if that is the right word (perhaps 'divisions' in the military sense might be an appropriate metaphor). That said, I think that there may be other headings that you missed, not that I can think of any off the top of my head. The problem you mention with clerical indifference I think is a critical one. There isn't a unifying force within the Church; as you said, these movements are centrafugal; there's nothing drawing them towards the centre which is needed to weed out the weird stuff. As to whether or not these things are working to serve the greater good, I think that new orders and movements springing up are always a mixed bag. There are good and there are bad, and the good have rotten apples and the bad have sincere dupes who nonetheless act as channels of grace due to their sincere love of God. There are good points being made on several threads at the moment about this diffusiveness as well as how traditionalism and the difference between the sexes ties into all of this. I wonder if there's a convenient way to tie this all into one coherent thread?
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Sept 7, 2015 9:11:07 GMT
It's been said about trads that they need to be cooled down while everyone else needs to be fired up. This is true of most of the groups and movements listed above.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Dec 2, 2015 11:40:57 GMT
I'm going to kick off some discussion here again and try to do so from a new angle. The French cliché "Vive la difference" was once popular, but is now something that the chattering classes are in denial off. I think the first point we need to anchor this discussion on is that there is a difference between men and women, which is fundamental to the vocations of priesthood, religious life and matrimony. A little ironic that for such a francophile opening, a lot of the assault on the notion comes from poor understanding of Derrida's deconstructionism, one consequence of such is forever having to state the obvious. Right now, on one hand there is a denial of difference but on the other there is a proposal that the traditional male-female binary understates the existence of sixty-four possible categories - which is one for every square on a chess board. Given the tendency to multiply, I will push this analogy a step farther. There is a story from ancient India or Persia, where the rajah/shah (whatever) was indebted to a faithful servant and asked him how he wanted to be rewarded. The answer was simple; the servant took a chessboard and put a grain of wheat (maybe rice - again whatever) on the first square; two on the second; four on the third; and kept doubling the amount until the whole board was covered. By the time the sixty-fourth square was reached, the servant was a very wealthy man indeed, because there was enough grain to cover half of England. I don't know if the rajah or shah had enough resources to make this payment. My point is that post-modernity is multiplying an original binary to absurdity. In this climate, we need to re-assert the traditional binary in a positive way. Reaction against the world in the manner outlined in many of the directions above (not all of them traditional) is counter-productive. Sometimes it is salutary to look at what the trads are reacting against. I would reflect on my time as a lay student in Maynooth where I did my best to keep an eye on developments in the seminary and among the missionary students (some religious too - there were Salesians and there were a small number of Mercy, Presentation and other sisters also studying there at the time). But substantially, the diocesan clerical students were generally encourage to be able to relate to women. This was a fascination. What was the case was that whenever one saw a clerical student addressing a lay student, if the lay student wasn't female, they were talking about participation in sports (and in terms of sport, the current Bishop of Waterford and Lismore was very active in the Golf Club as a student; the FG TD for Cork South Central who, inexplicably in my view, chaired the Oireachtas Health committee, but who was a Cork and Ross student at this time, was very active in the Hurling Club - I don't have to tell you which of the two did not let sport interfere with his studies). No, the clerical students were interested in interaction with the girls, mainly but not exclusively the lay theology students. There was humour about this - the Young Christian Students group (modelled on Cardinal Cardijn's Young Christian Workers) was known as "Young Cleric Snatchers" because of the pairings in the group, though a friend of mine (a former Columban student) remarked that it was mainly the clerics who did the snatching. At the same time, the more progressive lay theology students remarked the interaction between clerical student and female student was nowhere near enough and the missionary/religious orders went much farther. The SMA liturgies were well known - I recall one Mission Sunday Mass in the SMA chapel which was infamous. Two female theology students performed a liturgical dance dressed in cassocks which they pulled off to reveal albs - this was the victory of good over evil. At the same time, the IMU was encouraging friendships between male and famale novices/junior professed which usually went nowhere. At this time I heard a very liberal male lay theology post-grad come out with the usual line about the Church and women and how the cleric-female interface in Maynooth was so disappointing. I answered, partly as Advocatus Diaboli, that I thought the clerics had no problem with women but big problems with men. I found that there was more to this than gut instinct on my part. A couple of years later there were studies reflecting the plummeting rates of male attendance at Mass and the Sacraments. Still later, Evangelical Anglican minister, Rev Tony Lowe had an article citing a Swiss study showing that the major indicator of transmission of religion in families was the seriousness with which the father took it. Indeed, a cursory comparison between Catholicism and Protestantism on one hand; and Orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam on the other should show a distinct difference between religions based on a high participation rate of females (the two former) to that of the male (the three latter). Without going into caricatures, I found Catholic clerical students in Western Europe and North America looking like what we might call a bunch of Mammy's boys - like computer geeks except a bit more pious. When I was in Russia, I found the young monks I came across looking like a gang of bikers; had they been dressed in leather instead of cassocks, I would have kept clear of them. Now, to take Judaism, the mother has a key role (diet in the home for example; she keeps the family on track with the kosher regulations), but the male is important in the synagogue. The mother and the kosher role strikes me very forcibly when I think of the effective abolition of Friday abstinence in the Western Catholic Church (BTW, it's still there: if you're not abstaining from meat on Friday, it's up to you to know what type of prayer or penance you're doing as a substitute). Another observation I'll make about Judaism and at least Russian Orthodoxy, which is in contrast with the stark differentiation between men and women in Islam, is that you have a heightened sense of masculinity and femininity in their adherents in a way that is old-fashioned in the Christian West. With regard to Catholic traditionalism, sure it appeals to men. It has a defined ritual and order and though not experienced in Ireland or Britain, it appeals to groups of soldiers overseas - France in particular (the Irish Defence Forces have a big problem with political correctness). At the same time, Regina Magazine shows there is an appeal to women too - something Roger's references have borne out to a degree. The point is that it appeals to men as your common or garden OF Mass doesn't, but groups like Opus Dei and the Austro-German Servi Jesu et Mariae do the OF in a way that we normally associate with the EF; the Brompton Oratory even do this in the English language OF. The tendency, though, is for some trads to go over the top. And not just in a Resistance or SSPX or seddie angle either. This is the thing to avoid. If this thread has a point it is that zeal exists, and that it needs to be moderated, tempered and harnessed in a positive direction, as much in the other movements referred to as among traditionalists. It has the potential to achieve great things, but the way it is at present, it can also do more harm than good to its adherents.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 3, 2015 21:42:36 GMT
To be fair, the idea of encouraging friendship between priests and nuns for mutual support was known before Vatican II, based on the precedents of spiritual friendships between such figures as St Francis de Sales and St Jeanne-Francis Chantal, but I would think it was only recommended for mature religious and not for novices. I recently noticed an example of the absurdity involved in denying any difference between the sexes. There is a shop in Dublin city centre which advertises stag-party T-shirts showing a stick-figure bride and groom. The bride is smiling, the groom is pointing a gun at his head, and the caption reads GAME OVER. The shop has recently added same-sex equivalents of this T-shirt; one with two brides, one with two grooms. I would say this undercuts the whole point of the joke, which is the insinuation that the two sexes are easily distinguishable and benefit to different extents from marriage (i.e. the man loses and the woman gains). With a same-sex couple it simply becomes a matter of individual responses and so loses the pretence to universality which underlies the original joke. Of course that is not the only stereotype about which sex benefits from marriage: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4KJrvlMccw
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Dec 7, 2015 10:25:57 GMT
I think that some novice masters/mistresses were trying to live their own novitiate the way they would have had it through their novices. The problem was had they had these pairings in their own time, most of them would have left themselves. The point about friendship between religious is well taken - I could think of William Flete and St Catherine of Siena too - this was the justification used by the professed. But as Hibernicus says, it was not for beginners.
The YCS phenonomen in Maynooth in the late 80s was another example - there were mixed retreats, with 50:50 quotas, but virtually all the male retreatants were clerics. The descriptions I got suggest these were more a party than a retreat. I know one dean had the idea that YCS helped him do his job - the weaker students left of their own accord after meeting someone via YCS.
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Post by Young Ireland on May 30, 2017 21:42:32 GMT
I would like to revive this thread to discuss how best to promote chastity in our current society. At present, I think that there is too much emphasis in chastity education on divine authority and the presumption of religious belief (which does play a role, to be fair), and this has the side effect of presenting chastity/purity as merely a Catholic quirk that is irrelevant to those not sharing that faith. However, most of the Church's teaching on such matters falls under the category of natural law, meaning that it can be deduced from reason, and that it is binding on everyone, Catholic or else. For instance, one does not necessarily need to believe in God to know that sexual fantasising can be psychologically damaging and can inhibit emotional intimacy between spouses. In the same way, believing that the sexes are complementary or that marriage is a lifelong bond which provides the most stable environment for the rearing of children can be held independently of religious belief. If we present reason-based arguments in favour of chastity, it would no longer be possible for the secularists/social liberals to say "ah that's only for Catholics, we don't need to care about it". They might try to ignore and suppress it as they do to similar arguments against abortion, but they will no longer be able to claim that it is irrational, or that there is no basis in truth for the Church's teaching. I'll leave it here for now, and will expand on this tomorrow please God, but what do you think?
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Post by hibernicus on May 31, 2017 19:43:24 GMT
Agreed - there is a really serious problem about presenting the faith simply in terms of divine authority - it discourages thought about the positive reasons for those precepts, it encourages Pelagianism (i.e. the idea that we can save ourselves by our own efforts alone and that those who fall deserve no mercy) and it encourages the stereotype - already widespread - that those precepts are simply a form of gaslighting (that is, that the Church tells people to observe impossible standards so that it can manipulate their inevitable feelings of guilt). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting I don't think the answer lies in purely utilitarian arguments, though - this has to draw on trust and love, both for God and for the loved one.
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Post by Young Ireland on May 31, 2017 19:59:35 GMT
Agreed - there is a really serious problem about presenting the faith simply in terms of divine authority - it discourages thought about the positive reasons for those precepts, it encourages Pelagianism (i.e. the idea that we can save ourselves by our own efforts alone and that those who fall deserve no mercy) and it encourages the stereotype - already widespread - that those precepts are simply a form of gaslighting (that is, that the Church tells people to observe impossible standards so that it can manipulate their inevitable feelings of guilt). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting I don't think the answer lies in purely utilitarian arguments, though - this has to draw on trust and love, both for God and for the loved one. True, and of course it makes particular sense when seen in the light of Catholic teaching. I had in mind those people who see the Church's stance on sexuality as simply an arbitrary diktat - as something with no value in itself but merely as an expression of superiority. Of course, that perception is highly superficial and makes light of the fact that it often is a struggle even for otherwise devout Catholics, who struggle on regardless. I suppose that the utilitarian arguments I would intend to break down old prejudices and to show that Catholic advocacy of chastity is not the quackery it is often made out to be, but is in fact being increasing being borne out by psychology. By itself, I accept that it would be insufficient, but it would be a first step, and would win over hearts and minds that might resist a religion-based approach.
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 31, 2017 20:13:56 GMT
One of the strongest arguments, I think, is that monogamy and fidelity remain the ideal in pop culture, in music and cinema and so forth.
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Post by Young Ireland on May 31, 2017 20:16:13 GMT
One of the strongest arguments, I think, is that monogamy and fidelity remain the ideal in pop culture, in music and cinema and so forth. That is true, and even though now I think that these are being increasingly obscured as the years go by, it is easy to forget that these are still important themes even today.
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