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Post by hibernicus on Feb 27, 2013 11:57:51 GMT
Trad introversionism is related to an element which Fennell exemplifies and which you have overlooked - that's apocalypticism. Fennell's attitude, and that of the trad introversionists, is (a) the world as it exists is so evil and corrupt that we must isolate ourselves from it. It cannot be reformed and to engage with it will only lead to our being corrupted as well (b) because the world is so evil and corrupt, it will soon collapse. Then we can re-emerge from our caves and rebuild the world from scratch in our own image (or alternately, the world will come to an end and none of this will matter). Justin Barrett has exactly the same mindset in THE NATIONAL WAY FORWARD. Apocalypticism is what gives them hope (given that trads are so attached to the idea of a Catholic state, and part of Des Fennell's message is that 1950s IReland was generally better than what we have now, the idea of living for generations to come as a despised minority in a hostile state is pretty unthinkable to them - this differentiates them from the Exclusive Brethren and the Amish, though I expect the difference will diminish over time). The problems with this view may be summed up as follows (a) the Parable of the Talents - the view of the world as irredeemably corrupt leads very easily to hatred and contempt for those who don't agree with us. Bede claimed that the Welsh deliberately refused to evangelise the Anglo-Saxons who had conquered and displaced them because they wanted them to go to Hell, and I must say many trads seem to have exactly this attitude towards the ungodly. Similarly, Des Fennell seems to take the view that those who embrace the values of consumer capitalism, or who don't agree with his version of nationalism, are not merely corrupted but have actually ceased to be human, and are so obviously wrong that their views are not worth engaging with or examining in detail (which reflects almost a Calvinist attitude - if you don't agree with his assertions, that shows you are damned and predestined to be damned and to reply to you is to demean himself for no good purpose). (b) St THomas More has a parable of the wise men who learned that on a certain day a rain would fall converting all whom it wetted into fools, so they hid in a cave believing that through their wisdom they would rule all the fools when they emerged - but the fools paid no attention to them and overwhelmed them with their superior numbers, and the wise men realised they themselves were the biggest fools of all. The appeal to the apocalypse is an excuse for doing nothing at all - taking no concrete measures, making no attempt to discern good from evil in the way society is developing (e.g what aspects of second-wave feminism are morally neutral or even good as distinct from those which are indeed evil such as the "reproductive rights" ideology) - and what happens if the apocalypse doesn't arrive on schedule? The pagan Roman Empire lasted an awfully long time (and I might add that the early Christians, right back to Our Lord and St PEter, maintained that Christians ought to have a certain respect for the authority of the emperors even when the emperors were persecuting them).
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 28, 2013 8:55:53 GMT
Seems to me that there is a close connexion between conspiracy theories and apocalypticism. I know many trads combine the two (not that you have to be particularly religious even to be an apocalyptist - the Green movement, for example, with its belief of impending global disaster has many unbelievers that are both apocalyptist and conspiracy theory nuts). The comfortable thing about this mindset is that it serves to exculpate the individual of any obligation to do anything - sin is the problem of small elites within the Masonic Lodge, or wherever, and as for me, I wouldn't sin at all if there weren't so many women going around in mini skirts and low cut blouses.
But the criteria for the Last Judgement, which a lot of trads ought to listen to and reflect upon, doesn't say anything about women's fashion. It doesn't even mention the sin of adultery. Strangely, I used to have these arguments with Born-again Christians/Fundamentalist Protestant who argued accepting Christ as a personal saviour was all that was necessary to do. When I confronted them with the words of Christ "I was hungry and you gave me to eat etc..."
Most people today - men and women, priests and religious included - would have appeared in public (granted in the context of swimming pools and beaches) at some time wearing what amounted to little more than underwear. I know there is a context here, but that is my point about dress in general, that it has to be put in context. Your average low-cut mini-dress cannot be more revealing that even a woman's modest one-piece bathing suit. But then, some people will argue that a one-piece swimsuit emphasises the female figure more than a bikini and is therefore, less modest - so you can't win.
Dress has changed radically in the past century. Before the First World War, a woman's ankles were exciting; now we hardly notice. Indeed we barely notice women's knees these days. The question here is whether God made the female form and figure good or not. Of course, He made woman good, down to appearance (if you doubt me, when outside the exception of modern religious art, did you ever see the Blessed Virgin depicted ugly?). That is not to say that there are no abuses, that there is no such thing as pornography - of course there is. The problem is that some trads have set an unrealistic bar; their principal purpose in doing so seems to be self-congratulation; and the danger is that they are fooling themselves into thinking that they are holier than the rest of us.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 28, 2013 22:55:10 GMT
Some of the other attractions of apocalypticism are that it rules out any sort of compromise and dialogue (since the opposition are direct minions of Antichrist) and therefore you need not consider the possibility that you might not be right about absolutely everything; that you need not make preparations for the future since there isn't going to be one. As regards Alasdair's point about the corporal works of mercy - I remember an online discussion about the prediction of three days of darkness during the endtimes (like much that is odd, it derives from the fringes of French and ITalian Catholicism in the C19, and some people of genuine sanctity have claimed private revelations concerning it. For a Wikipedia discussion see below). Apparently some variants of this story claim that during the three days (in which the faithful are advised to lock themselves in their homes and pray around candles blessed by priests as these alone will give light) demons disguising themselves as friends and relations of those inside the house will come begging for help and pleading to be let in; anyone who responds to these appeals will not only be killed but damned eternally. Several commenters remarked, quite rightly, that someone who believed their friends and relations were outside in such conditions and refused to help them from far for their own safety would be in much greater danger of damnation... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Days_of_Darkness
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 1, 2013 14:50:01 GMT
The three days darkness has been on the go some time - think I recall hearing in on the steps of St Paul's in Arran Quay a very long time ago now.
But we could extend the metaphor a bit. It almost as if trads see a darkness about them which they are privy to and the rest of us miss; that they believe their own relatives and acquaintances to be demons of some description or other. The vast majority of young to middle-aged women demonstrate this in dress, appearance, life-style and attitude, so the view is reinforced everytime they walk down the street in any sizable city. However, many of these women have embraced positive aspects of the second wave feminism but haven't necessarily embraced the negative. So they may find a place in heaven quicker than the trads.
The trouble about Williamsonian Pixieism is that, like Islam, Amishism and some others, its foundation is external.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 4, 2013 23:13:38 GMT
I am reading James Hitchcock's history of the church at present; very interesting though it could do with some editing as I have picked up some minor errors (e.g. Sixtus V presented as having been a loose liver before becoming Pope, which was not the case; Isaac Newton described as sincere Anglican when he was an Unitarian etc). One interesting detail is that the view that the faithful should withdraw from the wicked world to avoid contamination was characteristic of the Jansenists, while their Jesuit opponents believed in influencing and transforming secular culture in accordance with the Ignatian principle of making use of the creatures insofar as they lead us to God.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Mar 5, 2013 11:54:58 GMT
This last observation of Hibernicus is germane to the entire discussion here and on the other thread. To be honest, it seems to go back to the clash between Pharisaism and Christianity in the Gospels.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 5, 2013 15:05:22 GMT
The question is: ghetto or leaven model? If we are forced to the Mass Rock and Hedge School/catacomb, we have to go that way, but why would we build catacombs on our own?
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 5, 2013 21:24:26 GMT
To prepare for all eventualities. I don't think it is possible to completely separate the two models, because we need contexts in which we can work out the full implications of the faith on the basis of a shared knowledge/understanding (i.e. taking for granted that everyone you are talking to is a Catholic, or at least is prepared to treat Catholicism seriously _ I kicked out the atheist and trad cranks for this forum because they were not willing to engage in reasoned exchange at all) but such a milieu very easily becomes a hothouse or a cult. That is why some trads talked about the BEnedictine option - St Benedict's monasteries were places of withdrawal from the world but their aim was not to anathematise it but to issue forth and evangelise it.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 6, 2013 8:48:58 GMT
Yes the Benedictine model is good in the right context. So is the Ignatian model. But Ignatian spirituality is dangerous if the spiritual director is unbalanced. It is very popular in trad or near trad circles (eg the SJM in Germany and Austria). The SSPX use it, for example (do the CSSp use it?). The FSSP seem to have a preference for it. I know the Institute of Christ the King use Salesian spirituality, but they are no model of successful evangelisation either - ICRSS communities seem to similar retreats from the world.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 6, 2013 21:30:48 GMT
My big problems with the ultra-introversionist models are two. (a) Experience shows fairly clearly that it doesn't work - a subculture may be created for a time but it can't be insulated from the outside world permanently, and when people who have been brought up to take their beliefs as absolutely true and self-evident realise the outside world not only doesn't share those beliefs but takes their falsity for granted, the result is the spiritual equivalent of an epidemic disease striking a previously unexposed population. (The Irish experience over the last few decades has been a version of this on a somewhat slower scale.) (b) The logical conclusion of introversionism is the Church of One - either in the sense of the one-member Church of Me, or in the sense of a cult whose members achieve confidence and security by submitting to a single arbitrary leader who will supply the felt need to supply a new infallible decision every morning at breakfast. Both of these stem from a complete loss of faith in rationality, because the world seems so corrupt and hostile and so many certainties have been betrayed - any change is seen as betrayal and no-one can be trusted, and it is simply asserted that anyone who disagrees with what you "know" to be right cannot be sincere but must be a deliberate liar and conspirator. Obviously this attitude cannot coexist with evangelisation, because that requires that you (a) accept the opponent's sincerity (b) take opposing views seriously enough to consider why someone might believe them, a process which opens the possibility that on some points the opponent might actually be right and you might be wrong. Desmond Fennell and E. Michael Jones feature very frequently on this board, and they do so because they are classic exemplars of the paranoid Church of Me approach; they don't have the sense that beliefs have their own logic and implications which develop organically and are not simple assertions of an individual will. Fennell, for example, maintains that consumer-capitalist liberalism is not an actual belief system with its own inner logic, but simply a set off rules arbitrarily handed down by a power-centre somewhere; everyone who disagrees with him is either a conscious servant of Power or a dupe, and in either case he rules out the possibility of rational exchange with them; instead he simply lays down his own set of rules based on his own sweet will, and declares that opposing views are so obviously false that he refuses to address them. This is the Church of ME attitude, and its exponents thereby ensure that they will learn nothing, convince nobody, and remain absolutely powerless to counter the trends they oppose. We are all familiar with the parable of the frog in the pan full of water who doesn't realise he is being boiled alive because the temperature is only being raised gradually; the Church of Me adherent, on the other hand, realises that the temperature is rising and he is being boiled alive, but he doesn't know how to get out and is too angry and frightened to try to work it out. Newman, on the contrary, is very valuable when we consider responses to the current crisis, precisely because he was so concerned with understanding what it is to believe, how we come to believe, and how we may clear away the obstacles to true understanding - and he knew this because he had worked through those obstacles himself. He may have in retrospect seen the Church of England as like an ice-palace in a fairly tale which melted away in an instant, but he never assumed that those who remained in it must necessarily be fools and crooks with no third alternative, because he remembered what it had been to stand in their place - to really feel, for example, the fear that the Pope was Antichrist even when the arguments for such a belief had been recognised as fallacious. The assumption that everyone who disagrees with you must be a knave (who therefore need not be argued with) or a fool (and hence not worth arguing with) leads inexorably to a contempt for all mankind and a belief that no-one knows anything except yourself.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 2:08:52 GMT
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8dYxtv7IBc&feature=player_embeddedOf course we all aware of the cathedral attacked in Russia. I had no idea it happened in Brazil last winter too. Apparently it was attacked by homosexual women demanding abortion and gay shmarriage recognition. Then a group of Catholics united in front of the cathedral to stop any more desecration. I am wondering where the police where in all this and also who reared these feral cats? There is nudity at the end but you won't be incited to lust, believe me. Either way, these poor Catholics were assaulted by women and I think there should be grounds for sexual assault since the women targeted their genitalia with spraypaint and the woman at the end is clearly rubbing herself against the man. I have been subjected to verbal abuse myself at work. Generally though when a man sees a small woman coming the tone changes and the anger subsides a little. We women count on this and thankfully we still can. These women were very lucky in a sense because the men showed such self-control. If they really wanted equality they would have been beaten up. They counted on their numbers and the men treating them as women, otherwise they'd be dead on the ground. I'm sure had one those men returned fire as it were, all the Catholics would be have been stampeded to death and the cathedral burned to the ground. You can see they were just waiting for the invite. I am reminded of the riots in the UK where the areas that were not attacked were the ones dominated by Sikhs and was it Muslims too? The men came out to defend their property and were left alone. Sometimes Quaker style passivity in general is not good. I commend these men for keeping their cool, God bless them, they did the right thing at that time. It should never have come to that though. This is why I like the American notion of defending yourself and your property and taking responsibility for your own with your own gun. I really believe that had those Catholics, as citizens, been armed a long time ago the feral cats wouldn't have entered the cathedral because they would have learned about boundaries and consequences as they grew up. And the police would have shown up too for fear of a massacre. They really need World Youth Day there. Catacombs indeed.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 14, 2013 9:08:49 GMT
I think that when appetites, particularly the sexual appetite is unleashed and unfettered as it is and that this is presented as an absolute right, if not a duty if you read the Freudians a certain way, this is the type of thing we can expect if we say no. The trouble is that few enough are very interested in where sexual licence leads to and where it is taking the world around us.
On this thread, we have spoken a lot of archaic and destructive attitudes to sex and sexuality. We would do well to think of the opposite of this too.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 15, 2013 13:32:07 GMT
The phrase fewer but truer is used quite a lot in relation to Benedict's proposed creative minority. The thing to realise is that this should not come to mean exclusive and elitist.
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Post by shane on Mar 15, 2013 16:08:48 GMT
I agree that Catholicism must never be exclusive and elitist (and there is a lot of the latter in the traditionalist movement) but I would also stress the need for strong boundaries. I think most orthodox Catholics simply do not grasp the secularising force of modern culture and how overwhelming it is on individuals. I was first disturbed by this going to university - it was striking how many students I went to secondary school with, who went to Mass with their parents and seemed quite conservative, suddenly stopped attending Mass when they left home, went out to clubs etc. and adopted the social progressivism of popular culture. When we debated abortion in religious classes at secondary school, I was the only one who was pro-choice. I suspect the reverse is probably true now. Popular culture exudes a strongly secularist spirit and I would suggest that a priority for Catholics should be creating an alternative to it. In the past, Catholics who lived in non-Catholic milieus were sort of immunized from this by a strong sense of ethnic identity and the fact that it was intertwined with their religious beliefs. I am not surprised that about half of the children who attend Saint Mary's Academy (SSPX) in Kansas cease practicing soon after they leave.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 21, 2013 22:30:13 GMT
Shane certainly has a point - the thing about modern culture is that it sets a "default position" which refuses to treat religious belief as a serious possibility. (This goes back quite a long way - if you read CS Lewis, for example, one of his major aims is trying to shake up the unbeliever who thinks unbelief is mere common sense and doesn't need to be justified.) The statistic about SSPX defections may say something about the limits of the introversionist approach, though. I agree that there is a need for strong boundaries but the boundaries will inevitably be permeable, so the aim is to acknowledge and channel that permeability. The SSPX all-or-nothing approach makes it extremely likely that people who doubt on any point will end up rejecting it entirely.
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