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Post by maolsheachlann on Sept 14, 2018 8:15:30 GMT
I was away from base when this row broke out, or I would have reacted earlier. Let me just say that I will be VERY sensitive to anything that seems to me like racism, or like blaming all migrants for the crimes of some. Young Ireland is right to point out that a lot of what is said about Muslims is like what was said about C19 Catholics in the English-speaking world. As it happens, I do believe the media plays down the ethnicity of some criminals, but I don't believe this reflects a centralised conspiracy - just a belief that the plebes are too stupid to be told the truth without becoming nazis. This of course plays straight into the hands of the real nazis, who can say they are the only ones telling the truth about these disgusting crimes, so they must be right about everything else (cf how Nick Griffin of the BNP publicised the existence of grooming/rape gangs.) Hibernicus, I'd like to let this thread lie, but I can't resist replying to your contribution, as I feel it shows a way of looking at these issues that is all too prevalent. You seem to suggest that the only reason one shouldn't downplay a link between migration/Muslims and crime is because it might play into the hands of the far right. If you could successfully pull it off, would that make it OK? I get very frustrated at this trope, as though warding off the far-right is the only reason we shouldn't embrace full-blown open borders cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, etc. etc. It's OK for you to have that view, but there's nothing extreme about people disagreeing with it, and I think most people do. I want to be allowed to disagree with such ideologies on my own terms, and not just to avoid playing into the hands of extremists. There seems to be an attitude that a transition to a globalised, borders-free, cosmopolitan world is the ideal, but it should be done slowly and stealthily out of regard for the feelings of the less advanced. Whereas I am completely against this no matter how it is done, or how slowly-- whether the frog is boiled or squashed, as it were. People so often point out that "the same things were said" of Irish immigrants to America, etc. What is the argument here? I see none. People say much the same things of Catholicism as they say of Scientology. Should that get Scientology off the hook? I'm not making any contribution to that debate, I'm just saying I see this as an invalid argument. As I've said, I don't go in for collective guilt for anyone, so this isn't subject (the link between crime and particular ethnic/religious groups) I would take up myself. I agree with Peter Hitchens that it is not the Muslim terrorists who worry me as much as the great mass of law-abiding, devout Muslims in formerly Christian societies (and they only "worry" me because I want such societies to return to Christianity, or at least not become Muslim-- Muslims are absolutely within their rights to practice their religion, indeed I think it is commendable within their own terms). I do think we have to be respectful of a religion with a billion adherents, both on principle and pragmatically. But I do think Antaine is being rather unfairly treated here. Saying "I will be very sensitive to anything that seems like racism" isn't exactly indicting him, but it sounds like a caution. For my part, I don't think Antaine has said anything racist. I don't agree with everything he says, but that's beside the point. He's using the term "race" in a way I wouldn't, but I think he's describing something we all recognize as a reality, whatever we call it (I would call it "ethnicity"), and whether or not it is a social convention (I believe it is partly a social convention, but so are many good things). I have to admit that, personally, I feel LESS nervous around immigrants than I do around some categories of the native Irish. I have never had any hassle from the former and plenty from the latter. But that's incidental, too. And finally, I totally understand that many on this board (including you, Hibernicus) are Traditionalist Catholics and so are all-too-familiar with the nutty fringes of that movement, where every extreme view seems to be welcomed with open arms. I understand you want to distance yourself from this, but surely there is a danger of over-compensation.
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Post by Young Ireland on Sept 14, 2018 20:25:47 GMT
To be fair Maolsheaclann, the fact that Antaine started the conversation by highlighting the use of "White" in that list muddies the waters a bit, as does his own admission that he came onto this thread to wind me up.
As an aside the problem with closing the borders to outsiders is that it swings in both directions: other countries have the right to close THEIR borders to you, as the people of Britain are finding out.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 14, 2018 21:18:59 GMT
JUst to clarify some legitimate points which Maolseachlainn made: - I did not mean to say that the only legitimate reason for not covering up when crimes were committed by members of ethnic minorities was that it encourages nazis - I meant to convey that the view that the public are a pack of ignorant bigoted slobs who will turn into fascists at a moment's notice and must therefore be kept in the dark is arrogant and patronising, the fact that it helps nazis was mentioned as a subsidiary argument. BTW the left-wing Labour MP Anne Cryer played a prominent role in exposing grooming gangs - credit where credit is due. I also think the attitudes which led the social workers and police to overlook or tolerate the grooming gangs were not purely racial - they reflect a wider tacit "they're all at it" assumption which has led to the collapse of the age of consent among significant sections of the white population, and which encouraged the groomers in their belief that their victims were sluts anyway. www.newstatesman.com/node/195092www.city-journal.org/html/who-killed-childhood-12517.html As regards "we had the same treatment" I meant to echo the biblical injunction to be humane to strangers "for remember you were strangers in the land of Egypt". I confess to having my conscience stirred by a particular English Catholic who wrote excoriating denunciations of the British Government's handling of the Famine, and worked extensively to raise money for famine relief even though he was not Irish himself (indeed he made some complaints about the antisocial habits of many London Irish). If he could identify with the sufferings of people in many ways alien to him, surely we can. I might add that a lot of the countries from which refugees arrive have been severely affected by European policies past and present (French interventions to prop up pet dictators in the Francophonie, London money-laudering for crooked elites, European tariffs and subsidies keeping out their products). The same goes for America's role in Latin America.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Sept 15, 2018 5:57:33 GMT
JUst to clarify some legitimate points which Maolseachlainn made: - I did not mean to say that the only legitimate reason for not covering up when crimes were committed by members of ethnic minorities was that it encourages nazis - I meant to convey that the view that the public are a pack of ignorant bigoted slobs who will turn into fascists at a moment's notice and must therefore be kept in the dark is arrogant and patronising, the fact that it helps nazis was mentioned as a subsidiary argument. BTW the left-wing Labour MP Anne Cryer played a prominent role in exposing grooming gangs - credit where credit is due. I also think the attitudes which led the social workers and police to overlook or tolerate the grooming gangs were not purely racial - they reflect a wider tacit "they're all at it" assumption which has led to the collapse of the age of consent among significant sections of the white population, and which encouraged the groomers in their belief that their victims were sluts anyway. www.newstatesman.com/node/195092www.city-journal.org/html/who-killed-childhood-12517.html As regards "we had the same treatment" I meant to echo the biblical injunction to be humane to strangers "for remember you were strangers in the land of Egypt". I confess to having my conscience stirred by a particular English Catholic who wrote excoriating denunciations of the British Government's handling of the Famine, and worked extensively to raise money for famine relief even though he was not Irish himself (indeed he made some complaints about the antisocial habits of many London Irish). If he could identify with the sufferings of people in many ways alien to him, surely we can. I might add that a lot of the countries from which refugees arrive have been severely affected by European policies past and present (French interventions to prop up pet dictators in the Francophonie, London money-laudering for crooked elites, European tariffs and subsidies keeping out their products). The same goes for America's role in Latin America. Well, I don't want this thread to drag on forever, so only a couple of comments. Nationalists and populists are often seen as anti-immigration per se, when this is rarely the case-- more usually it's a question of scale, and also of the underlying philosophy at work-- it's not a reasonable scale of immigration in itself that rouses their opposition, but rather multiculturalism-- the idea that the host culture is no longer privileged or dominant (as it should be, in my view). And the fact that every newcomer is assumed (by the media and the quangocracy) to be a genuine refugee, asylum seeker or economic immigrant impelled by hardship, makes for cynicism. Also, it seems obvious to me that the tradition of Irish nationalism never envisaged anything like the demographic mix we have today, or indeed the E.U.-- if you read anything by pretty much any Irish nationalist writer of the past, the unspoken assumption seems to be that Ireland will remain the domain of the "native Irish", so to speak. Of course, you can say: "So what? we can't be dictated to by the dead". But, for my part, I do believe that the vision for which so many generations of Irish people sacrificed so much should be honoured. (I guess in this regard I am like the "intentionalists" when it comes to debates about the interpretation of the American Constitution).
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Post by Young Ireland on Sept 15, 2018 7:00:50 GMT
JUst to clarify some legitimate points which Maolseachlainn made: - I did not mean to say that the only legitimate reason for not covering up when crimes were committed by members of ethnic minorities was that it encourages nazis - I meant to convey that the view that the public are a pack of ignorant bigoted slobs who will turn into fascists at a moment's notice and must therefore be kept in the dark is arrogant and patronising, the fact that it helps nazis was mentioned as a subsidiary argument. BTW the left-wing Labour MP Anne Cryer played a prominent role in exposing grooming gangs - credit where credit is due. I also think the attitudes which led the social workers and police to overlook or tolerate the grooming gangs were not purely racial - they reflect a wider tacit "they're all at it" assumption which has led to the collapse of the age of consent among significant sections of the white population, and which encouraged the groomers in their belief that their victims were sluts anyway. www.newstatesman.com/node/195092www.city-journal.org/html/who-killed-childhood-12517.html As regards "we had the same treatment" I meant to echo the biblical injunction to be humane to strangers "for remember you were strangers in the land of Egypt". I confess to having my conscience stirred by a particular English Catholic who wrote excoriating denunciations of the British Government's handling of the Famine, and worked extensively to raise money for famine relief even though he was not Irish himself (indeed he made some complaints about the antisocial habits of many London Irish). If he could identify with the sufferings of people in many ways alien to him, surely we can. I might add that a lot of the countries from which refugees arrive have been severely affected by European policies past and present (French interventions to prop up pet dictators in the Francophonie, London money-laudering for crooked elites, European tariffs and subsidies keeping out their products). The same goes for America's role in Latin America. Well, I don't want this thread to drag on forever, so only a couple of comments. Nationalists and populists are often seen as anti-immigration per se, when this is rarely the case-- more usually it's a question of scale, and also of the underlying philosophy at work-- it's not a reasonable scale of immigration in itself that rouses their opposition, but rather multiculturalism-- the idea that the host culture is no longer privileged or dominant (as it should be, in my view). And the fact that every newcomer is assumed (by the media and the quangocracy) to be a genuine refugee, asylum seeker or economic immigrant impelled by hardship, makes for cynicism. Also, it seems obvious to me that the tradition of Irish nationalism never envisaged anything like the demographic mix we have today, or indeed the E.U.-- if you read anything by pretty much any Irish nationalist writer of the past, the unspoken assumption seems to be that Ireland will remain the domain of the "native Irish", so to speak. Of course, you can say: "So what? we can't be dictated to by the dead". But, for my part, I do believe that the vision for which so many generations of Irish people sacrificed so much should be honoured. (I guess in this regard I am like the "intentionalists" when it comes to debates about the interpretation of the American Constitution). They might support limited immigration, but the problem is that "limited" and "reasonable" are defined to make it almost impossible to immigrate legally, such that it amounts to opposition per se in practice. As for the host culture being privileged, be careful what you wish for: the Stormont regime justified its discrimination against Catholics on these very grounds. The problem with defining the "native Irish" is that depending on the definition, this would disqualify many of the leaders of 1916 such as Pearse, DeValera, and Connolly, all of whom were either born outside Ireland or had a foreign parent. It's best I think to use citizenship as the benchmark for Irishness, since it is at least objective and not vaguely defined.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Sept 15, 2018 7:21:33 GMT
Well, I don't want this thread to drag on forever, so only a couple of comments. Nationalists and populists are often seen as anti-immigration per se, when this is rarely the case-- more usually it's a question of scale, and also of the underlying philosophy at work-- it's not a reasonable scale of immigration in itself that rouses their opposition, but rather multiculturalism-- the idea that the host culture is no longer privileged or dominant (as it should be, in my view). And the fact that every newcomer is assumed (by the media and the quangocracy) to be a genuine refugee, asylum seeker or economic immigrant impelled by hardship, makes for cynicism. Also, it seems obvious to me that the tradition of Irish nationalism never envisaged anything like the demographic mix we have today, or indeed the E.U.-- if you read anything by pretty much any Irish nationalist writer of the past, the unspoken assumption seems to be that Ireland will remain the domain of the "native Irish", so to speak. Of course, you can say: "So what? we can't be dictated to by the dead". But, for my part, I do believe that the vision for which so many generations of Irish people sacrificed so much should be honoured. (I guess in this regard I am like the "intentionalists" when it comes to debates about the interpretation of the American Constitution). They might support limited immigration, but the problem is that "limited" and "reasonable" are defined to make it almost impossible to immigrate legally, such that it amounts to opposition per se in practice. As for the host culture being privileged, be careful what you wish for: the Stormont regime justified its discrimination against Catholics on these very grounds. The problem with defining the "native Irish" is that depending on the definition, this would disqualify many of the leaders of 1916 such as Pearse, DeValera, and Connolly, all of whom were either born outside Ireland or had a foreign parent. It's best I think to use citizenship as the benchmark for Irishness, since it is at least objective and not vaguely defined. Well, we have been over all that before, so I won't go into it again. You think it's best to define Irishness as broadly as possible, to avoid prejudice and discrimination, of which you have a horror which seems to me excessive. I think such "de jure Irishness" is banal and that civic nationalism is never going to satisfy the majority of ordinary people over time-- ethnicity might be vague, but that's life. I'm also quite sceptical about this objection. I believe that all of us-- you, Hibernicus, Antaine, and anyone else reading this-- mentally categorises anybody they happen to meet as Irish or non-Irish within seconds of meeting them. In my experience, accent is more of a barometer than physical appearance or name. My objection to all of the arguments made against particularly lamentable prejudice against minorities is: "Abuse does not negate use". Personally I would rather live in a country that had strong traditions, and that was proud of them, and that was ethnically quite homogenous, even if I was an outsider, than live in a country which had signed up to civic nationalism and was determined to avoid offending minorities. Then you get the Millennium Spire. My friend Harvey (an American) is married to a Swiss woman and he lived there for a year or so. He complained about the hostility from his Swiss neighbours when some of the American "ex-pats" had their kids go trick-or-treating. Even though they were told to only knock on doors with Halloween decorations, the local Swiss resented the incursion of a foreign tradition and objected to a poster about it. I said to him: "Harvey, I agree with the Swiss here". He also complained (mildly) about having to attend "naturalization" classes of some kind, and again I said: "Harvey, I agree with the Swiss". I think the fear of prejudice can become so paralysing that we end up dehumanising our societies, watering down our collective identity until it becomes no more than the lowest common denominator. The population of a nation has no more in common, in this view, than the population of a hotel-- shared use of living space and facilities. But I'm never going to convince you of this, so we will have to agree to disagree.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 22, 2018 21:51:03 GMT
Actually, I've been mistaken for an Englishman, an American or a German on several occasions, and once when I was wearing a hat I was mistaken for an Orthodox Jew.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Sept 22, 2018 22:12:58 GMT
I've been mistaken for Jewish, too. Which I took as a compliment.
However, these are rare and usually fleeting cases.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 13, 2018 20:28:03 GMT
When I was walking down Cathal Brugha Street (runs off O'Connell street to the east near the Parnell Monument end, leads to Sean McDermott Street) the other day, I came across the Sacred Heart statue which used to stand at the taxi rank in O'Connell Street, before statue and taxi rank were removed to make way for the Luas. The statue may not be a great artwork, and its new position may be less prominent, but it's nice to see it has been re-erected rather than dumped.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 6, 2019 15:54:04 GMT
It's also nice to see that Fr. Matt Talbot is back in O'Connell Street.
Yesterday I found myself in a place called Clunee, in Meath-- I'd never heard of it before-- I came across a lovely roadside Marian shrine. What pleased me was that the shrine is obviously still well-visited and maintained. There was a manger scene on it, as well as many other additions which were obviously recent. There must be quite a lot of popular piety still out there, though how well it accords with Catholic orthodoxy is another question.
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xarto
New Member
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Post by xarto on Jan 27, 2019 15:36:35 GMT
Fish on Fridays HAS been brought back in England and Wales, but it's very hard to get any information on how much it's been actually taken up. I was reading recently on fasting/abstinence in the Orthodox church and started wondering when it disappeared in Catholic Church. I was very surprised to discover that it hadn't and we were supposed to still abstain from meat on Fridays. I have never heard this mentioned by a priest or bishop here.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 27, 2019 16:15:43 GMT
Fish on Fridays HAS been brought back in England and Wales, but it's very hard to get any information on how much it's been actually taken up. I was reading recently on fasting/abstinence in the Orthodox church and started wondering when it disappeared in Catholic Church. I was very surprised to discover that it hadn't and we were supposed to still abstain from meat on Fridays. I have never heard this mentioned by a priest or bishop here. You don't actually have to. In Ireland, the bishops grant the individual the freedom decide what penance to perform. It can be abstaining from meat but it doesn't have to be. Still, the requirement for SOME kind of penance is rarely mentioned. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard it mentioned from the pulpit. Personally, I would be in favour of a restoration of Friday abstinence. The bishops in England and Wales did this in 2011, but it's hard to tell how it has been taken up. In secular society, Friday is very often the day workplaces have treats like doughnuts, which isn't very penitential...
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xarto
New Member
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Post by xarto on Jan 27, 2019 21:41:51 GMT
Catholicism has become so soft, (no fasting, no catechism being taught) Church doesn't speak out against anything anymore. Since abuse scandals it seems to have lost its moral authority and its voice.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 28, 2019 23:15:51 GMT
To judge from Rod Dreher's occasional account of his Orthodox practices on his blog, Orthodox fasting is much more stringent than hours (vegan diet throughout Lent) though they don't use the language of strict obligation. This is much closer to mediaeval Western practice than our present attitude, though I wonder how far it can be maintained in a modern urban society not bound to the agrarian calendar (when Lent would be the hungriest time of year anyway as stocks run low and before harvest can begin). www.beliefnet.com/faiths/the-feast-means-less-without-the-fast.aspx
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 29, 2019 9:22:51 GMT
Orthodox and Eastern Catholic fasting is more rigorous than Latin Catholic fasting, even as it was immediately before the Council. Advent is also kept as fasting season and in the first millennium, the week before Ss Peter and Paul was a fasting week too.
Friday is a penitential day and the ordinary form of penance is abstinence from flesh meat. You may substitute an extraordinary form of penance instead, but the onus is on you to know what you are doing and why. This is one of the most unknown precepts of the Church; I'm sure clergy are unaware, but I remember John Paul II reinstated Friday penance in 1983. Every so often the Brandsma Review quoted the relevant canon and the Irish bishops recommendation, which was always greeted by surprise. Often by the same people. The Bishops of England and Wales released an almost identical statement shortly afterwards and that was still the case when I last researched it prior to 2011. When I looked for the Scottish bishops statement I met a brick wall.
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