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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 31, 2013 12:03:18 GMT
Never heard of the Palmarians until now.
I think they are wrong to ban women from college and secondary education, if such be the case (I hope it is rumour). All the same I don't know how damaging such a deprivation really would be, in the case of third level education. My father never went to secondary school, never mind college, and he is the most erudite and critical thinker I know. Increasingly I don't see any value to college education other than technical and vocational courses, and I wonder if university education is not actually damaging, intellectually as well as spiritually, specifically in weakening the very critical spirit it is meant to strengthen.
Secondary school is different; I do think most people would be damaged by missing secondary school and the social, cultural and sporting opportunities it affords.
I guess the balance between going into the world and keeping unspotted from the world is a difficult one to judge. I do admire lots of things about the Amish, although it's easy to sentimentalize them and I wouldn't want to be Amish myself. But for instance I read that their approach to technology is governed by the question; does it create or destroy community? So a telephone in a shared booth where you can expressly go to make an important phone call is OK, but a phone in the house where it can interrupt family life is not accepted. That makes a lot of sense to me.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 31, 2013 15:32:18 GMT
I can't definitively answer about the Palmarians, but I know this view Louise has quoted is the position of the former SSPX bishop Richard Williamson. A lot of articulate SSPX-supporting women with university degrees objected continually to this and other policies of Dickie Williamson, such as his attitude to the Jews. It wouldn't surprise me if the Palmarians had the same idea.
I probably mentioned somewhere or other that Mina Bean Uí Chribín's daughter Áine Ní Chribín (now Áine Sweeney) spent 10 years in a Palmarian Convent and had to be kidnapped and deprogrammed on release. She was effected by her time there but is now married and working as a civil servant. In her case, adjustment to the world was difficult. I have heard the story from a few different sources, but TG4 made a documentary about it some years ago, which seemed to highlight the fact that the mother was taken in, which Hibernicus mentioned (I think when he asked for prayers for the late Mina in August).
Anyway, I can understand why Maolsheachlann takes the view he does and I know a great many great minds who have not moved beyond primary or secondary education. I know plenty of graduates for whom third level education did blunt their intellects. But in the current cultural and economic conditions, a degree is a sine qua non. Put it this way, if I had a daughter, I would want her to go to university in spite of justifiable reservations.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 31, 2013 17:22:33 GMT
I agree with the usefulness of a degree for practical, career purposes. It's unfortunate but it seems to be a requirement for so many jobs.
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tobias
Junior Member
Posts: 77
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Post by tobias on Jan 31, 2013 21:49:08 GMT
I looked up these Palmarians, from what I see they seem like a bunch of head the balls! Certainly on the leadership side anyway. Regarding third level education, I have seven children all of whom went on to third level but only two ended up in jobs in their chosen field. They are all happy in the jobs they are in now. I formed the view over the years that it is important for students to go on to third level but the present system is flawed in that it requires children to choose third level courses too early when they have no idea what is involved or what their strengths will turn out to be. I believe that if the system would allow them to choose instead only after the leaving cert when they are somewhat matured and can judge more accurately the direction they want to go would lead to a better outcome. Not having got within an ass's roar of third level myself and whose secondary education was patchy due to serious illness, I am somewhat envious of those who have availed of the opportunity to obtain a degree. But to be consistent with my comments on other areas of this board I think it is totally wrong to ban anyone from any career course on the basis of gender.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 31, 2013 22:59:06 GMT
The problem with the Palmarians is not just that they are hostile to third-level education, but that they are motivated by a desire to brainwash their members. Palmarians are a classic cult in that they set out to isolate followers from any understanding of the world other than that provided by the cult leader (they've taken this to the extent of rewriting the Bible). Williamson's paranoia serves the same function, but the Palmarians make Williamson look like Aquinas or Newman by comparison. To be honest, I'm surprised that they allow male members to take up third-level education; a Palmarian might be capable of taking technical courses (there are quite a few young-earth creationists who have specialist science or engineering degrees) but I doubt very much if a Palmarian could navigate a humanities course successfully.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 1, 2013 9:21:21 GMT
We've got two issues here under discussion - Palma de Troya and education, but both are related to the thread.
The Palma cult, in short summary, originates in young man named Clemente Dominguez y Gomez purporting to have visions of the Blessed Virgin. All seemed pious and devout and he attracted a considerable following. Among those taken in by him was Archbishop Thuc of Hanoi who had spent a couple of decades in Viet-cong prison camps. Archbishop Thuc consecrated the young man as a bishop and then he proclaimed himself Gregory XVII on the authority of his visions. To say it all went pear-shaped here is an understatement. Gregory began consecrating bishops, most of whom were under-age, all over the shop. Top that, due to the visions, he had a ready made following in several countries. I mentioned Mina Bean Uí Chribín of Santry Post Office in this thread, but my first encounter with Palmarians was in Gorey in Co Wexford where I remember having fish and chips with my father in an establishment with every pope from Blessed Pius IX to Paul VI, and then instead of the John Pauls - "Suo Santitad, El Papa Gregorio XVII". I was begining to attend the traditional Mass at time (in St Paul's, Arran Quay) and I mentioned this to some old hands and as a result, a stalwart of the SSPX church in Mounttown called into the chip shop and was shown an elaborate oratory at the back. This, I believe, is or was the property of the Broadberry family. One of these was consecrated as a bishop and in turn consecrated Michael Cox as bishop. Ciarán Broadberry has since reconciled with the Church as a layman. When Gregory died in 2004, his followers began fighting among themselves over the succession - Hibernicus mentioned this elsewhere.
Tobias is absolutely right to describe the Palmarians as 'head the balls'. I'm not sure what part of the south of Spain Palma is in, but friends of mine told me it is presented as a type of local freak show by local tourism. There is plenty of youtube videos now that give you the picture.
Hibernicus' comment that Palma makes Dickie Williamson look like Aquinas or Newman is correct. We are talking relativity here - both are promoting a type of cult here. No doubt the Palmarians are worse, but if anyone were to ask my friend the late Mgr Serge Keleher if would prefer Williamson to Palma, he would respond by asking would you prefer cholera to diphteria. The avoidance of higher education is something that you would associate with the Jehovah's Witnesses and similar bodies. I think the Palmarians dissuade men as well as women from attending third level education as Hibernicus says. There is a current among the SSPX and wider trad community that see things this way too - it's an extreme rejection of the world. Built on despair, which the last time I looked was a sin against the Holy Ghost. I have a friend who does a lot of pastoral work with young men in the Cork area of trad leanings and has dealt with TFP and SSPX types too. He told me of one case, a boy in an SSPX family whom he tried to help get a trade. The father, himself a university graduate, undermined the efforts and justified himself on the basis that the boy's spiritual good was more important that material achievements (and I am talking about a trade rather than higher education). This is nuts, but this is not the view of most SSPX people. Dickie Williamson would promote education for men but not women. In fashion and in education, Dickie's advice is 'What's good enough for your great-grandmother should be good enough for you'.
With education, one problem is that there once was a good general primary and second-level education and that is no longer the case. Third level institutions are very specialised and many people find themselves in the situation of most of Tobias' children. Having said that, a third level education should be valuable in itself. I don't regret a day I spent in university, but I think I didn't appreciate enough when I was there and that I probably didn't make the most of it. If I compare the Irish and German systems, I see this difference. When I was in school, we did the Leaving Cert at 17 and it was possible to graduate at 20 and begin postgraduate studies then. In Germany, they do the Abitur at 19, which is when the women begin studying. The men need to do military service first and begin at 20. So the average German was starting university at an age that the average Irishman was leaving it and doing so with a much broader and deeper education. I am not saying that this is necessarily the model to pursue (for a start, I do not advocate conscription), but it is the type of thing to consider. I know most kids do the Leaving Cert at 18 these days, but I am not sure of the value of the Transition Year. But I do think that with a younger entry age, people are inclined to make choices which don't help them in the end - I agree with Tobias in this regard.
I'll reflect on a other point Tobias made, which I have heard from many others - a third level qualification, no matter how good, is no guarantee of common sense. If anything, over-educated people are probably more inclined to go off the beam than people of average education. Specialisation can lead to blinkered vision. As I said, I have much sympathy for Maolsheachlann's point about third level blunting the intellect.
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tobias
Junior Member
Posts: 77
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Post by tobias on Feb 1, 2013 15:11:14 GMT
Alaisdir makes very good points. Regarding the Palmarians, as they originate in the south of Spain, maybe the sun has got to them and put them off the rails! As to education, the German system sounds like a good way to go. As I said before the later a young person gets into third level (within reason) the more chance all the wires are connected up because at 16 or 17 when they are choosing a course they most certainly are not! As regards these cult's dislike of education, it seems to me that they probably know that to educate is to equip people with the ability to question which, from their point of view may be a problem. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, built great schools and colleges and educated many thousands of people who then, because they were educated, questioned the faith that had been passed on to them. A bit of a paradox that. But it was certainly a chance worth taking.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 5, 2013 8:31:54 GMT
I know a guy who lived in Madrid for years and he said the gossip about Clemente was that he invented the apparitions to con money from a wealthy aristocratic lady. Then at some point he was in a car accident which left him permanently blind. The Spaniards reckon that from then he began believing what he originally fabricated.
Good story, but I don't believe it; that's not how brain damage works. The sun has an effect alright, but something else was driving Clemente, and I don't think it was just money.
Hibernicus would probably say we should talk about education on another thread; but with this one we can certainly talk about the lunacy of denying women education.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 5, 2013 21:36:56 GMT
I'm inclined to think we should talk about the Palmarians on another thread, but since the discussion has started we may as well continue it. My understanding is that Clemente is a product of the worries and concerns among traditionalist Spanish Catholics in the aftermath of Vatican II, during the last years of the Franco regime when there was widespread uncertainty about what would happen in the near future. Palmar de Troya seems to have been the centre of something like our own moving statues hysteria, with several competing visionaries before Clemente came out on top. (I believe a small rival group still holds prayer-meetings near his basilica to claim theirs was the real apparition.) Clemente is said to have been a regular on the clandestine gay scene in Seville and to have started out as a conscious fraud before becoming convinced after the car crash. My own view is that he was always a hysteric and driven by megalomania, and that losing the ability to differentiate between reality and his own fantasies would be part of that. This is an occupational hazard for conmen, since a really effective conman has to believe his own lies to some extent. The same thing happened to L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology - by the end of his life he had got so caught up in his own fantasies that he applied to the US military authorities for replacements for the numerous medals he claimed to have been awarded for his super-secret heroic exploits in World War II, and was less than pleased with the four minor service medals he got. Clemente's escalating megalomania in his later years, which led him to rewrite the Gospels and to predict that he would eventually be crucified in Jerusalem, rise from the dead and be recognised as both Pope and Emperor etc etc is also very reminiscent of Hubbard. Hubbard had severe bipolar depression which led him to go through periods of grandiose verbosity and claims of epoch-making new insights which would solve all humanity's problems, alternating with paranoia and depression which he later presented as periods of research leading to his next dramatic breakthrough. A really effective cult needs a second-in-command or successor who can channel the founder-leader's manic visionary flights and keep them within some sort of rational command structure/plan ahead. According to Franco Noonan, the Irish ex-Palmarian, Manuel Corral who served as Clemente/Gregory's Secretary of State and succeeded him as Palmarian antipope under the title Peter II was the brains behind the whole scam. Williamson would be much more dangerous if he acquired a lieutenant of that sort; fortunately he does not seem to have one so far as I can see, though some of the priests who defected from the SSPX recently may see themselves in such a role. One point to bear in mind about the Palmarians' misogyny is that it may reflect the changes in social mores in Spain from the 50s onwards. Women were quite socially restricted in Spain until the 1970s, with the sort of double standard you see/saw in Latin countries. In the poorer rural areas the restrictions on women's dress and conduct were a bit like those in Islamic North Africa until quite recently (the same was true in rural Sicily). I've heard it said that there was an epidemic of mental illness in the tourist areas among impoverished young men who moved from the impoverished rural interior to the coast seeking work, and found they had moved from a society where women were expected to dress in black/spend a good deal of time secluded indoors, to one in which foreign women walked around publicly in bikinis, had casual sexual affairs, etc - and these young men just couldn't handle the culture shock. Perhaps Clemente had similar problems deriving from the contrast between his upbringing (I believe he lived with his mother, who was a devout Catholic, right up until he started the Palmarian racket) and his homosexuality. I suspect there was an element of camp blasphemy in the whole swindle, but it is also possible that Clemente's claims in later life that his sexual misdeeds were a sign of divine favour because God was submitting him to unbearable temptations in order to bring about his spiritual growth was meant to rationalise the discord between his spiritual fantasies and his real lifestyle (as well as giving him a license to act as predator among his unfortunate dupes).
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 7, 2013 22:59:01 GMT
Another thought occurs to me - Clemente Dominguez reminds me of the late Fr Sean Fortune, not just in terms of corpulence and being a sexual predator, but also in terms of being a grandiose and pretentious conman with an inflated self-image.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 8, 2013 14:57:22 GMT
Clemente as an even more megalomaniac version of Seán Fortune - horrific, but apparantly true.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Feb 25, 2013 15:04:49 GMT
About time to return to the original topic. Dickie Williamson has made a lot of the problems of women studying at third level institutions. Any reactions?
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Feb 26, 2013 8:47:20 GMT
Well after fashion for women, education is the next point of attack. On the other it is difficult. The feminist movement has flaws, but does pointing them out make you misogynist, even if the likes of Dickie Williamson and Palma go way over the top?
In regarding Dickie and his eccentricities. He gave a talk in St John's Mounttown in his early days as a bishop in the SSPX in which he said that the Irish, Scots and Welsh ought to accept that the English were their natural governors and the sooner, the better. The congregation reacted and protested to Econe and for several years, he was not brought back to Ireland. When he did, he didn't repeat it.
I wonder did he just wish to provoke and test the limits. He found he could do this in regard to the Jews, to women and 9/11; but he couldn't say what he did about the Irish in Ireland.
There were many articulate SSPX supporting women, many university educated stay-at-home mothers who took Dickie on in regard to some of his positions and these made some impression on Bishop Fellay. This was problematic, because there were more than enough pixies who were cheerleading him.
I know what I am saying challenges whether Dickie has his own convictions at all and suggests that he abused the episcopate, but I think that a lot of the extreme SSPX were only happy to hear what Dickie was saying - that he articulated what a lot were thinking and there are those among the 'pro-Western Christians' cited on another thread who share his views of the subordination of the Celts to the Anglo-Saxon. There is a very dark side to the trad movement which is more neo-pagan than Christian.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 26, 2013 23:12:54 GMT
A week or so ago I saw a commenter on one of the trad blogs (either RORATE or Fr. Z.) who from a SSPX viewpoint denounced "neo-cons" on the grounds that while they might have large families themselves (large families being taken as proof of adherence to Catholic doctrine) they encouraged their children to go to universities where they would mix with the ungodly and their daughters to pursue careers, with the result that the children of "neocons" tended to have small families. Obviously what we are seeing here is an introversionist mindset which assumes that ensuring the children's fidelity to the SSPX, and in particular making sure that women are primarily wives and mothers and are discouraged from careers which might take them outside the milieu, expose them to outside influences and tempt them to put professional advancement first. This introversionism is found in other religious sects - the Exclusive Brethren and the Amish, for example, discourage members from attending university or pursuing careers which require education past the age of 18, because they see this as weakening the member's ties to the group and making them dependent on the ungodly outside world. I wonder is there a class element here - at least in the US context - a sense that the SSPX people might be more bluecollar and resent the "neo-Caths" as being more willing to operate within the American system rather than rejecting it out of hand. BTW Des Fennell's attitude to feminism in THIRD STROKE DID IT really has to be seen to be believed. He proclaims that second-wave feminism (i.e. sixties onward; he simply equates this with feminism and doesn't mention the first-wave, i.e. the suffragettes - at all) is a malevolent movement driven solely by ideological hatred of men, insofar as it has achieved any successes these have been by collaborating with business's desire to push women into the workplace in the service of consumerism, and that non-western women totally and rightly reject it with horror. I must say this sounds suspiciously like "You're better off in a burka". Granted that second-wave feminism has many evil features (Fennell mentions its pro-abortion mentality, for example) it's also related to social developments which DF does not take into account (e.g the ways in which suburbanisation weakened the extended family and made housewives more isolated, the ways in which economic globalisation undermined the "family wage" concept).
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 27, 2013 8:41:36 GMT
I think we might miss an important point on this discussion - there are many problems in second wave feminism and in the consumerism that Des Fennell denounces like a perennial Jeremiah. Traditionalism reacts against this. Our point is that forming an introversionist cult like the Amish is no answer to these problems. There may be trads who admire this, but these moves are counter-evangelical.
I think, to use a term which trads use which I don't like, that the neo-conservative groups I mentioned on the continent earlier in the thread are doing the same thing. We are talking about running away from the world rather than confronting it in the name of a purer, truer faith. But have they considered that they are actually burying their one talant in the ground?
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