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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 21, 2022 9:51:08 GMT
Just looked at The Phoenix Annual. I always go straight for the Clerical Errors column here. This is a bit more positive of Éamon Martin crediting him with the appointment of Rev Dr Niall Coll as Bishop of Ossory (I'm agnostic on that, but I reckon this is a good appointment - I know Father Coll, but I am surprised he didn't get a northern or border appointment). I think Goldhawk gets that Francis is not the great reformer people like Austen Ivereigh and Massimo Faggioli cheer lead, but I think that the hopes are pinned on Francis' successor (who could be anything). However, I just don't get the weight Goldhawk gives to Mary McAleese.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Dec 8, 2022 17:10:24 GMT
In the current Phoenix, Róisín Ingle is rightly taken to task for her very petty response to scandal in the Holy Ghost Fathers, particularly around Blackrock College. She shows a remarkable standard of missing the point by gloating, in the guise of reacting against the arrogance and sexism of Blackrock rugby boys in her days in Sion Hill (which is hardly a poor girls' school).
In the same issue, John Cooney is lionised. I knew there was a close connection between Cooney and what got into the Clerical Errors column when he was active, but the Black Rock issue was used to refer to Cooney's biography of the school's most famous principal, John Charles McQuaid. According to Goldvulture, the publishers included a written piece of innuendo by the late Dr Noel Browne in the book, insinuating McQuaid was a paedophile without Cooney's consent. This took greatly from the value of the book, and the fact is that the piece comes from a time in which Browne was very bitter and he wasn't around to give any context to his writing (Cooney received this from Browne's widow). But aside from this, which was a stick for critics to beat the book with, Cooney had some observations in the book which would require qualification - allegations about the Archbishop's collection of pornography for example. Whether it's workable or not, one duty of a bishop is to advise people in his diocese about suitable literature, plays or films and one consequence of this is amassing collections of what might be called pornography. Anyway, the valediction of Cooney was very much a case of throwing muck in McQuaid's direction and hoping it would stick, which connecting McQuaid with the CSSp scandals. Now I won't say that McQuaid is above reproach, but first of all, he was out of Blackrock College since 1939 and there are few enough cases dating to McQuaid's term as archbishop (they abound in Dermot Ryan's term) and the personal allegations against him seem very hollow. It's very hard to imagine Archbishop McQuaid visiting pubs even occasionally during his term of office. This was a man who always insisted the registration on his car was changed when ever he disposed of one. There are only two anonymous allegations made against the archbishop, both made after Cooney's book was published. This is hardly vindication - they are more along the lines of the allegations which Cardinal Pell was convicted on. I don't for a moment believe McQuaid to have been a candidate for canonisation (though I heard a lot about his personal charity and little is said now about his uncharacteristic support of the rights of birth mothers).
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 10, 2022 22:57:28 GMT
The Cooney profile is noteworthy for its dismissal of those who criticised his claims as no more than "moral vigilantes", dismissing the possibility that any of them might simply have found his claims unconvincing. To be fair to Noel Browne, the problem is not that his accusation is "innuendo" - it is stated plainly enough - it's that it is based on a claim made orally by a stranger whom Browne was never able to trace or identify. (John Horgan's biography of Browne does find someone who saw Browne talking to a man on the occasion in question and shows that he tried to trace him, so Browne's good faith is not in doubt; what is in doubt is the genuineness of the claim, especially since Browne chose to write it up in fictional form so it is not clear which details are authentic.) Cooney does regularly use innuendo in the book - he implies, without ever saying it in so many words, that McQuaid was running a paedophile ring in the archdiocese. The big problem with Cooney's biography is his unremitting hatred for McQuaid, which leads him to portray the Archbishop as personally insane rather than behaving as a prelate of his generation expecting unremitting deference, and his assumption that it is impossible that anyone could have genuinely liked or respected McQuaid and they must simply have been afraid of him. (That said, a lot of people were afraid of him - he did have the power to wreck careers with a few words - and this is one thing that might give the allegations some credence; that he could do whatever he liked since nobody would dare complain; the thing is that he fell so spectacularly and died so soon after his fall that if he was acting with that sort of impunity one would expect more allegations to come forward, especially after the book was published in 1999. The reasons why there are so few cases reported on John Charles's time compared to Ryan would include lapse of time and the fact that the terms of inquiry did not cover McQuaid - one horrendous case where his leniency to a priest left the offender free to molest again is reported on because the offender's crimes continued under subsequent archbishops. The contrast with the stream of Blackrock College allegations since the dam broke is instructive.)
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 10, 2022 23:04:01 GMT
The PHOENIX also has a report on the recent troubles of the National Party - it seems that Justin's debacle in the Dublin Bay South by-election has led to at least one sidekick thinking he could do a better job as fuhrer, and the piece implies that NP insiders have been leaking to the antifa thugs who descended on the NP thugs' recent meeting in Fermanagh. Justin has also recently been caught quoting MEIN KAMPF without attribution (about the virtues of youth) on his social media platform; there is a similar unattributed quote in NATIONAL WAY FORWARD about the pointlessness of having opposition parties.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 12, 2022 22:49:41 GMT
Two other Cooney/McQuaid points: (!) Part of the problem with Cooney's unremitting pursuit of McQuaid is that it lets the rest of the Church apparatus off too easily. If McQuaid was uniquely malign, how is it that so many clerics behaved like buck-passing Pilates (which is putting it mildly)? (2) When Fintan O'Toole called recently for McQuaid's role to be investigated, I suspect he was not thinking of Browne's allegation but of Cooney's hints, never spelled out or substantiated, that McQuaid deliberately covered up abuse because he was the leader of a paedophile ring running the dioceses.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 23, 2023 22:52:57 GMT
The new issue of the PHOENIX notes Una Mullaly claiming it was because of Catholic oppression that Ireland rarely won the rugby Grand Slam. Una Mullaly is frequently absurd, but she has surpassed herself this time. At this rate we will soon see IRISH TIMES columnists wearing tinfoil hats to stop Pope Francis broadcasting messages through their tooth fillings.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 24, 2023 10:21:46 GMT
The new issue of the PHOENIX notes Una Mullaly claiming it was because of Catholic oppression that Ireland rarely won the rugby Grand Slam. Una Mullaly is frequently absurd, but she has surpassed herself this time. At this rate we will soon see IRISH TIMES columnists wearing tinfoil hats to stop Pope Francis broadcasting messages through their tooth fillings. Has she ever heard of Blackrock College? Or Belvedere? Or any other school run by Jesuits, Holy Ghost Fathers, not to mention the Carmelite Terenure College or the Dominican Newbridge College? Likewise, some of the diocesan colleges are Rugby schools, Mungret (Limerick) and Garbally (Clonfert) come to mind (Garbally is the mainstay of Connaught Rugby). And don't the Presentation Brothers play Rugby? So does the CBC in Monkstown (incidentally, I remember hearing a Sunday Miscellany broadcast once about CBC playing cricket in ages hence, but it made the Irish Independent sport column and then the principal quietly dropped - I can imagine a word in his ear by the superior general or Brother Provincial "Well, Brother, Rugby is one thing, but cricket is quite another...")
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 15, 2023 20:31:32 GMT
Not to mention that many of the traditional rugby-playing schools are historically Protestant institutions, and there have always been a significant number of Protestant players on the Irish international rugby team - partly because Irish rugby, unlike soccer, is organised on an all-island basis. Did they contract the low-performance virus from their Catholic team-mates?
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Post by hibernicus on May 6, 2023 22:40:46 GMT
The current PHOENIX reports Justin Barrett as being interviewed on a YouTube channel, and taking the opportunity to rant about how given the chance he would put the Irish passports and other nationality documents of naturalised immigrants through a shredder. Gemma O'Doherty's IRISH LIGHT rag seems unfortunately not to be quite defunct, and the most recent issue which I have seen has an article calling on the populace to rise en masse and blockade Leinster House until the current political establishment flees, after which we should set about the task of restoring a situation where 99/5% of the population are "real" Irish, with the comment that we all know who is really Irish, as if we hadn't been arguing over that for centuries. I interpret this as a call for mass denaturalisation and deportation. I don't want to seem politically correct, but denaturalisation as advocated by these lunatics would be a breach of a solemn compact made with the new citizens and would dishonour our country. I know immigration on the present scale involves some problems, but however they are to be addressed it cannot be by the methods advocated by Justin and Gemma and their ilk. The same issue of the IRISH LIGHT has an article by John Waters complaining about the history of Irish emigration being "weaponised" to support immigration. Now I do know something about the history of Irish emigration, and that includes the similarity between the "Great Replacement" theory and the denunciations of Irish Catholic immigrants by nativists in C19 Britain and America. On this as on so much else, what the IRISH LIGHT offers is in fact darkness visible.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on May 16, 2023 10:59:27 GMT
One problem is the Phoenix is linking Gript to the likes of Hermann Kelly and Justin Barrett and, I would say, hypocritically, calls Kevin Myers an anti-semite.
But this Phoenix also highlights TCD cancelling Bishop Berkeley while it accepts huge gifts from the Dubai Royal Family. It misses the opportunity to contrast how Mary McAleese can handbag the Pope on LGBTTIQAetc while accepting patronage from the same direction, as similar criticism can be made against Mary Robinson (which Goldvulture, being no fan of hers, has done in the past).
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 14, 2023 22:26:19 GMT
the latest issue of the PHOENIX has two items of interest to pro-lifers. There is a profile of Peadar Toibin which is relatively fair by Goldvulture's low standards - it does acknowledge that he has made a political sacrifice by breaking with SF - though it includes a nasty insinuation that his view that immigration should be limited and regulated puts him on a par with the anti-immigrant far right. This may be reasonable from the point of view of someone who thinks the only morally correct policy is unconditional open doors without ever explaining how this would work in practice, but in fact it is fairly common knowledge that Aontu has made a deliberate decision not to appeal to the "immigrants out" brigade, and are on a different moral plane altogether from the likes of Justin "put the passports of naturalised citizens through the shredder" Barrett. Oddly enough, while the profile gives a reasonable enough assessment of Aontu's limited chance of gaining seats apart from Toibin's own it does not note the criticism sometimes made that Toibin's extended family are over-prominent in Aontu, nor does the profiler seem to be aware that his mother was a prominent pro-life activist in Meath in the 1983 referendum. There is an interesting outline of his role in developing a SF industrial policy which tries to place less reliance on foreign direct investment, and I hadn't known he was in FF before joining SF.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 14, 2023 22:53:32 GMT
The second item of interest in the current PHOENIX is a smear on the July 1 March for Life which emphasises the high-profile presence of Justin Barrett and his National Party goons. This is an example of how the NP poisons everything it touches and should be avoided like the plague because of its toxic record of flirting with fascism (to say the least) and stirring up hostility to immigrants. I strongly suspect that the NP is doing what the Trot parties and their front groups do when they take up an issue - they make a strong visual impression at demonstrations and take the most intransigent position possible to make it seem that they care most, when their real concern is not so much to accomplish anything on the issue as to secure recruits for themselves. Some of these recruits will be permanently sucked into the cult, while others may break away but be left burnt out and disillusioned. This is how the far right and far left operate in Britain, and I suspect it will be the same here. The PHOENIX also highlights the presence as a steward of an individual who has been involved in anti-immigrant demonstrations and about whom they make various allegations or insinuations. They note that this individual was photographed with Mattie McGrath TD and other pro-life leaders, and ask whether McGrath is aware of the sort of political forces he is associating with. This reads to me like an attempt to scare away politicians from involvement with pro-lifers. I don't know what basis if any there is for Goldvulture's references to this individual. (Justin the Turkey and his goons, on the other hand, are all too familiar and I respectfully suggest they should be excluded from pro-life demonstrations as far as possible.) Nor do I know whether the PHOENIX's claim that numbers have visibly decreased compared to previous demonstrations is correct - I couldn't make it on the day because of family concerns. I strongly suspect, however, that the PHOENIX account is not the whole story - because at previous demos which I attended there were numerous immigrants of various ethnicities. Indeed, there have been non-white speakers at past demos. It is in justice to these people, as well as out of basic human decency, that we should have nothing to do with racists and neo-fascists however they disguise themselves.
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Post by Young Ireland on Jul 15, 2023 12:33:39 GMT
The second item of interest in the current PHOENIX is a smear on the July 1 March for Life which emphasises the high-profile presence of Justin Barrett and his National Party goons. This is an example of how the NP poisons everything it touches and should be avoided like the plague because of its toxic record of flirting with fascism (to say the least) and stirring up hostility to immigrants. I strongly suspect that the NP is doing what the Trot parties and their front groups do when they take up an issue - they make a strong visual impression at demonstrations and take the most intransigent position possible to make it seem that they care most, when their real concern is not so much to accomplish anything on the issue as to secure recruits for themselves. Some of these recruits will be permanently sucked into the cult, while others may break away but be left burnt out and disillusioned. This is how the far right and far left operate in Britain, and I suspect it will be the same here. The PHOENIX also highlights the presence as a steward of an individual who has been involved in anti-immigrant demonstrations and about whom they make various allegations or insinuations. They note that this individual was photographed with Mattie McGrath TD and other pro-life leaders, and ask whether McGrath is aware of the sort of political forces he is associating with. This reads to me like an attempt to scare away politicians from involvement with pro-lifers. I don't know what basis if any there is for Goldvulture's references to this individual. (Justin the Turkey and his goons, on the other hand, are all too familiar and I respectfully suggest they should be excluded from pro-life demonstrations as far as possible.) Nor do I know whether the PHOENIX's claim that numbers have visibly decreased compared to previous demonstrations is correct - I couldn't make it on the day because of family concerns. I strongly suspect, however, that the PHOENIX account is not the whole story - because at previous demos which I attended there were numerous immigrants of various ethnicities. Indeed, there have been non-white speakers at past demos. It is in justice to these people, as well as out of basic human decency, that we should have nothing to do with racists and neo-fascists however they disguise themselves. I think Goldvulture's article is heavily skewed - I was at the Rally, and it seemed to me that there actually was a slightly larger crowd compared to last year (though numbers did appear to thin out during the speeches). There was also a strong immigrant representation at this one too - in fact there was a brass band from a Romanian evangelical church playing both before and right after the Rally (from the podium in the latter case).
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 26, 2023 22:21:32 GMT
No doubt tomorrow's PHOENIX will have more about the latest National Party farce. Here are a few incidental points: (1) The PHOENIX's reports of internal discontent with Barrett within the NP are confirmed. (2) His statement that the gold was a reserve built up in expectation of the collapse of fiat currency is a reminder that the NP is not the usual type of political party. It's an apocalyptic sect whose whole strategy is based on the assumption that civilisation is about to collapse and then everyone will turn to Justin to pick up the pieces; THE NATIONAL WAY FORWARD published 2000 asserts that the USA is about to collapse on the same scale as the USSR and the Globalists will then orchestrate another Cold War between the EU and China to keep the world economy afloat with defence spending. This means that Justin can sit around predicting apocalypse now/tomorrow/later without having to do anything, just posture and wait for the country to fall in his lap. (3) THE NATIONAL WAY FORWARD also complains about the requirement that political parties can only be registered if they have democratic internal structures. The fact that Justin announces the expulsion of senior party officers without appeal or possibility of reversal suggests that the NP is based instead on Fuehrerprinzip - arbitrary and absolute dictatorship, which THE NATIONAL WAY FORWARD presents as the cure for all our ills. The outcome of this for the NP suggests how well it would work for the country. (4) Lastly and most importantly, however much Justin may blather about patriotism and religion, the National Party never has and never will achieve anything except to produce fantasies of omnipotence, exploit and discredit anyone and any cause associated with it, and make the secularist Philistines double over laughing. Treat its religious pretensions with the contempt that party deserves, and avoid it like the plague. politics.ie/threads/the-national-partys-gold-reserves-go-missing.288004/
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 2, 2023 23:15:41 GMT
Justin Barrett's erstwhile subordinates have declared him deposed as leader. Justin denies that he is deposed and says there is no way to depose him under party regulations, which suggests once again that the National Party is governed by Fuehrerprinzip.
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