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Post by hibernicus on Jan 9, 2019 18:48:26 GMT
One reason for the gap, I am suggesting, is generational change. The first crisis comes from a significant rebellion and has the unnoticed side-effect of making it difficult/impossible to transmit belief to future generations (because the institutions meant to do so become incompetent or hostile). The second crisis happens when enough of the older generation (who were formed by the previous status quo) have died or retired, and the generations who did not experience that formation have moved into positions of influence.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 9, 2019 19:14:36 GMT
I agree with the "double dip" thesis. What I disagree with is that the seeds of decline were in the Church from late nineteenth century onwards. I believe the Catholic Church in Ireland was in a state of robust health up until the 1960s and that a combination of TV, Vatican II (or the misguided application of it) and the counter-culture played havoc with it. Every opposite claim seems to me an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
It's the mystery of spiritual freedom. Every generation has to account for itself. I think we can see the same thing in Our Lord's address to the various churches in the Book of Revelation.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 9, 2019 22:34:52 GMT
There I disagree with you. I don't think the decline that actually took place was inevitable, and even if it was we would have to take account of successes as well as failures (which a lot of analysis doesn't do because it is produced by people who are either secularists or post-Vatican II liberals and don't recognise "success" in that sense at all - rather like an Eastern Orthodox blog I came across recently which denounced St Francis of Assisi as exemplifying spiritual pride, basically on the grounds that since his spirituality was not EO spirituality it could have no value whatsoever). The problem is that a lot of the features which led to the implosion (including a highly authoritarian mindset which took the view that commands need no justification - I once read a description of a 1940s Dublin debate on theatre censorship in which the censorship supporters - who were members of Maria Duce - simply recited extracts from various papal documents without any attempt to contextualise them or explain why they applied) are certainly visible from the late C19. Many of them BTW were not unique to Ireland - such as the snobbery in the education system, which we got from the British; there was an international populist-ultramontane Catholic culture, formed in the C19, which had run into problems well before Vatican II - but any account of the collapse has to face up to the fact that there was a good deal of suppressed discontent before the 1960s, and even if it had all been imported from outside we'd have to face the question of why so many people found it attractive once they were exposed to it.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 9, 2019 22:54:37 GMT
Many of them BTW were not unique to Ireland - such as the snobbery in the education system, which we got from the British; there was an international populist-ultramontane Catholic culture, formed in the C19, which had run into problems well before Vatican II - but any account of the collapse has to face up to the fact that there was a good deal of suppressed discontent before the 1960s, and even if it had all been imported from outside we'd have to face the question of why so many people found it attractive once they were exposed to it. Concupiscence. I see no need for a more complex explanation. All the attempts to explain the decline in Irish Catholicism due to structures and culture seem a diminution of free will and the drama of salvation to me. It's frightening to think a generation of well-catechized Irish Catholics who had every advantage could have effectively apostatized en masse. But I believe that is what happened.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 9, 2019 23:13:25 GMT
Structures and cultures may not be determinative, but they can help or hinder. (For example, they could not have stopped individual clerics molesting children but they could have done more to weed them out and stop it happening again.) I recommend Peter Tyrrell's memoir of his experiences in Letterfrack Industrial School in the 1920s and his subsequent attempts to get redress, FOUNDED ON FEAR. The fact that he lost his faith and eventually committed suicide because of this makes it all the more heart-rending. Furthermore, the pre-VII Irish church had its own forms of concupiscence - the priest too fond of easy living, of drink, of power or of money was not universal but he was fairly common. Oddly enough such priests seem to attract little attention these days because of the focus on abuse, since this can be fitted into a narrative attacking the church's teaching on sexuality while the everyday shortcomings can't so easily be included in such a narrative. I strongly suspect one reason for the post-Vatican II relaxation of standards is that many priests welcomed the relaxation of "empty formalities" in clerical discipline (which were often there for extremely good reason) and being left to "do their own thing" (innocuous in itself, or otherwise).
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Post by assisi on Jan 10, 2019 19:52:10 GMT
Looking at the big picture scenario we should be aware of the gradual wearing away of all institutions that held any authority. Royalty has been virtually sidelined. Even British royalty looked like it could go under during the Princess Diana years but just about survived. Nationalism, or love of nation, is viewed as suspect. Politics is at an all time low. Journalism as well. Police forces have been seen to be wanting and have been damaged by investigations such as the Hillsborough football disaster in England. Doctors and medical staff are still generally well thought of, but the likes of Harold Shipman have sullied their name. Banks too.
All our institutions of authority have been put under the microscope and have been shown to be wanting. The means and expertise to investigate and report wrong doings have got better. The media channels to publicise these shortfallings have multiplied, particularly with the advent of TV and the internet.
The ironic thing is that some of the newer institutions that have prospered from the ashes of the old are now themselves being questioned and found wanting. Charities such as Oxfam, transnational bodies like the EU and the UN. Media giants like Google and Amazon. Hollywood and TV stations like CNN and BBC.
In the absence of anything (or anyone) we can trust anymore there is a great opportunity to present a sincere and clean creed. The rise of individuals like Jordan Peterson are testimony to that.
The above failures all point to the flawed nature of human beings. Irish Catholicism is in there too. Maybe we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves or over analytical in the context of the above.
The conclusion to be drawn from all of above is that man is not going to change his nature any time soon. We must therefore look to those virtues we have been slowly abandoning - sacrifice, loyalty, honour, dignity, family, tradition, self control and faith. They will not eradicate human weaknesses but would temper them better than the current experiment in the West, the secular left's globalist one which is the newest attempt at rewriting history and planning the future - and I think we all see that it is inhuman, has too many internal contradictions and is bound to fail or turn to tyranny.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 15, 2019 13:29:31 GMT
I just think it's a mistake to keep asking why Irish Catholicism failed and forgetting that it was extraordinarily successful for so very long.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin came to Ballymun for a Mass organised by the Polish community. He gave a homily about the triumphalism and complacency of the Church in Ireland in the past. I couldn't help reflecting on the success of this "triumphalist, complacent" Church, compared to the situation we have today. By all means identify weaknesses in previous eras of Irish Catholicism, but I don't see why we should accept the thesis that they somehow led to the situation we see today. At least, it needs to be argued rather than asserted, and I only ever see it asserted.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 20, 2019 17:05:25 GMT
I just think it's a mistake to keep asking why Irish Catholicism failed and forgetting that it was extraordinarily successful for so very long. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin came to Ballymun for a Mass organised by the Polish community. He gave a homily about the triumphalism and complacency of the Church in Ireland in the past. I couldn't help reflecting on the success of this "triumphalist, complacent" Church, compared to the situation we have today. By all means identify weaknesses in previous eras of Irish Catholicism, but I don't see why we should accept the thesis that they somehow led to the situation we see today. At least, it needs to be argued rather than asserted, and I only ever see it asserted. I would say from this that our positions are closer than we may have realised. I am not saying that pre-Vatican II Irish Catholicism was all bad because it had flaws, any more than I am saying that it was all good because it had virtues. What I object to is refusal to think about it at all, whether that is represented by people who think everything that went wrong was caused by an external conspiracy and everything was perfect beforehand (I actually meet such people every now and again - of course even if what they said were true it would still raise the question of why the church was not able to repel the conspirators) or by a writer like Lois Fuller IRISH CATHOLICISM SINCE 1950: THE UNDOING OF A CULTURE) who seems to assume that pre-Vatican II Catholic religious culture was so radically inauthentic that change was desirable for its own sake and the possibility that some of the changes might have been harmful or misguided is ruled out in advance. Archbishop Martin, as you report him, seems to display a similar mindset.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 15, 2020 18:41:44 GMT
The current issue of the CATHOLIC VOICE has a short story, modelled on Dickens's A CHRISTMAS CAROL, which illustrates the point I was making in this discussion. The story imagines de Valera on Christmas 1937, taking delight in the knowledge of having drafted and ratified a constitution embodying Catholic values, being accosted by an angel who shows him visions of our present day and of a future Christmas. The present day vision shows de Valera dismayed at our corruption, walking invisibly through Leinster House and seeing beside the pictures of successive Taoisigh how they degraded the Constitution to one degree after another, culminating in the horror of the crowd in Dublin Castle in 2018 cheering for the slaughter of the unborn. The "our future" vision shows "the last Taoiseach" leaving Leinster House - as he goes into the snow he reveals himself as the Devil, gloats over how he seduced the Irish people one step at a time, and rejoices over our national damnation and entry into Hell. De Valera asks the angel what can be done, and is told to pray. Now the great problem with this, it seems to me, is that whereas A CHRISTMAS CAROL shows how Scrooge's unpleasant Christmas Present is shaped by his own actions and experiences in Christmases past (for which he is not entirely to blame) and if he does not repent and atone will lead to the horrors of his vision of Christmas Future, there is no suggestion in this story that De Valera's own shortcomings are in any way responsible for the slow degradation of his Constitution; he is presented simply as the embodiment of past perfection which we have betrayed - to understand where we are now we need to think about what he got wrong as well as what he got right. (This is not a point about de Valera per se; the same would apply if the central figure in the story were, for example, WT Cosgrave or Archbishop McQuaid.) A second, minor point is that de Valera should not be the central character of the story (for one thing, this raises the question of why after seeing this vision in 1937 he does nothing to avert it in the 22 years he spent in Dail politics afterwards) - it should be centred on our "present", not his. The story would work a great deal better if a de Valera released from purgatory were the supernatural figure guiding a person from our own present through the three visions of past, present and future, which would give some scope for facing the dark side of the past as well as its virtues. Perhaps a final point is that our national apostasy does not derive from the disintegration of the Constitution, but the other way round. It is that apostasy, and the "push" as well as "pull" elements behind it, which we need to face up to.
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Post by hibernicus on May 11, 2021 19:28:15 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 19, 2021 20:33:02 GMT
This is an interesting discussion of the Catholic-influenced Hollywood Motion Picture Code [i.e. censorship] as an example of genuine achievement and ultimate limitation. A few additional points which are often made: (1) The point about its resting on a confusion of Victorian restrictions on external behaviour with a positive code of morals helps to explain why some of its decisions were plain ridiculous (e.g. Joe Breen prohibited showing cows' udders as "an insult to motherhood") and how it was eroded in the postwar era by various "how far can you go" legalistic decisions which gradually stretched it to breaking point (e.g. the slow move from a prohibition on showing couples in bed together to allowing this provided the actor & actress each kept one foot on the floor). (2) The Second World War is often cited as undermining the Code because somuch of the audience had been exposed to extreme violence which could not possibly be depicted (the recurring "print the legend" theme in John Ford's postwar Westerns relates to this) just as the Vietnam War played a major role in finishing it off. (3) The contrast between the pious pretensions and actual lifestyles of certain studio employees was an open secret in many circles - here's a blatant example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Mannix www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/05/18/lessons-from-catholic-censorship-during-hollywoods-golden-age/EXTRACT Romantic love within the limits of pre-marital chastity reflects a vision of marriage far more secular and Victorian than Catholic. The conflation of the Victorian and the Catholic was the great blind spot of Catholic activists such as Daniel Lord and Joseph Breen. In Hollywood’s Golden Age, the absence of blatant affronts to Catholic morality obscured the absence of the broader social, religious and even political world in which Catholic morality made sense. In this way, Catholics contributed to the promotion of a kind of moral individualism that would ultimately lead many to question that last prohibition so faithfully affirmed in classic Hollywood cinema. Catholic censorship taught America to look to commercial entertainment as a reliable guide to morality. Victorian probity was good for business in the 1930s and 1940s. When television provided this for free in the 1950s, Hollywood moved on. So too did America. And so too did many American Catholics. END
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 16, 2021 23:12:11 GMT
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Post by annie on Aug 19, 2021 13:59:06 GMT
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