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Post by hibernicus on Nov 11, 2014 21:12:58 GMT
The problem about not commenting on particular cases in this instance is that this woman actively used her own death to campaign for a general right to commit suicide, so it's very hard to avoid commenting on it when the issue is raised. It would be different if it was just a matter of the death of some prominent individual through suicide, where it is best not to judge. Anyone who has been in a dark place mentally knows how difficult it is, and why we shouldn't judge them.
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Post by Ranger on Dec 4, 2014 11:10:15 GMT
Just wanted to raise a point here, the recent posts about the vandalism against the cross in Kerry got me thinking about it but I thought that it might be better placed here as it's a slightly different topic. Do people think that we're facing into a period of genuine persecution against the Church here in Ireland (and more generally Europe)? Is public opprobrium against the Church growing to the point where we will see laws restricting our beliefs and attempts to silence or punish those who speak out against conventional wisdom, or is this just a bit hysterical and will people not be carried away too much in their hatred for the Church? I'm not talking about the kind of persecution to the point of martyrdom that Christians face in, for example, the Middle East or North Korea, and it's unhelpful to compare our situations as we don't have to make any kind of sacrifice on that scale to be Catholics here (yet), but long term are we heading towards a kind of 'persecution lite' so to speak (I'm thinking of something along the lines of how Catholics were under Anglicanism in England post-Reformation, maybe less severe again). I do know, talking to priests I know, that they have had problems in Dublin when they dress as priests; they often encounter verbal abuse, in some cases have been refused service in shops and cafés, and one priest I know has been physically assaulted twice. I've heard from others that they're genuinely afraid for their safety if they wear clerical garb in Dublin, although I don't notice this being a problem elsewhere. I'm also thinking of laws coming into effect in the US, such as the contraception mandate and the implications for the legalisation of same-sex marriage (look at the charges levelled against Ashers' bakery in the North, for instance) Could this develop into something more serious long term, or is it inherently unhelpful to talk about persecution in a Western context? I genuinely don't have an answer, I'm just wondering if people have thoughts about how serious (or otherwise) or situation will become and whether or not it's helpful to discuss it in those terms.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Dec 4, 2014 11:42:29 GMT
I know a priest who always dresses in clerical garb and he told me he's only had one bad experience as a result, and that this has been outweighed by the amount of people who thank him for wearing it. It's funny that his experience has been so different from the others you mention.
As to your question, I genuinely don't know. The underlying assumptions of liberal democracy would seem to make it improbable that we will see a return to the times of Revolutionary France or the Spanish Civil War. But persecution seems to be very erratic and unpredictable. For instance, although the Soviet Union and the Third Reich both persecuted the Christian churches, it has always seemed odd to me that the persecution was not worse than it was-- though at times it was utterly brutal. The same applies to China today. Apparently North Korea is the only state that has ever succeeded in effectively stamping out Christianity. There seems to be a very elaborate cat-and-mouse game involved in most of these instances.
If I would make a guess, I would anticipate a partial persecution rather than a total persecution-- that is, Catholic freedoms in education or freedom of speech being suppressed, rather than a frontal attack on the Church.
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Post by Ranger on Dec 4, 2014 13:43:26 GMT
It would be interesting perhaps to canvas priests and see what their own experiences have been to get a broader picture, although I'm unsure as to whether or not they would be willing to go on the record. I don't imagine a French revolution style bloodbath at all, like I said I'm wondering whether or not something more along the lines of suppression of free speech and practice in the public square will become common practice, as you say; things like the cancelling of the abortion debate in Oxford last month because it caused 'offense' and was a 'security risk' seem to be happening more and more often, and Irish universities are certainly following that trend (although there is a question as to whether or not universities are representative of the country as a whole). These events make me question how many people actually believe (or indeed know and understand) the underlying assumptions of liberal democracy.
Perhaps to clarify, I don't think that it could be said that we face persecution here right now, but there are cases of discrimination and growing militant secularism and I wonder if this trend will grow into something worse in the next ten or twenty years?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Dec 4, 2014 14:09:49 GMT
I don't think it's possible to forecast. When the New Atheists were enjoying their heyday of success I fully expected they were the wave of the future. Now they seem to have lost all credibility. That was only a few years ago.
Of course, militant Islam is waiting in the wings as well. That could influence things, too. The New Atheists used militant Islam to bash religion in general, but I don't think it's impossible that the civilization formerly known as Christendom will start to turn back to Christianity as a response to aggressive Islam. I think that the strength of Islam in Europe might make Europeans cognizant of the spiritual emptiness of our own civilization, and the impossibility of building a civilization on abstract principles.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 4, 2014 18:50:06 GMT
One possibility would be Victorian England - Catholics tolerated and not subject to formal legal disabilities, but shut out informally from many influential positions/professions and regarded with a mixture of condescension and hostility even by many of those who supported tolerance. What really strikes me is the way in which traditional Protestant/secularist "Black Legends" about the evils of Catholicism have re-emerged in Anglo-American popular culture, and in the Irish context have been reinforced by the legacy of the scandals. In both cases, of course, there were genuine historical evils to point to (and Catholic apologists were very often over-generous with the whitewash, to put it mildly); what I am talking about is their integration in the public mind into a narrative based on the assumption that Catholicism is so evil that anything bad can be believed of it, and Catholics are followers of an absurd and harmful superstition which is so ridiculous that one need not take seriously the possibility that it might be true. I sometimes think of rereading Cardinal Newman's second novel CALLISTA (which is a response to the anti-Catholic demonstrations following the restoration of the English Hierarchy, and depicts early Christians in North Africa suddenly facing persecution after a long period of tolerance) and writing a short piece on its lessons for our own time.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 4, 2014 18:58:37 GMT
As regards Maolseachlainn's suggestion that Christendom might turn back to Christianity as part of an attempt to differentiate itself from Islam, that has its own dangers. There is a very nasty tendency within the European and American far right which calls for the creation of "Pro-Western Christianity" - basically for the reinvention of Christianity as an European tribal religion and repudiating Christian universalism (i.e the concept that those immigrants being smuggled across the Mediterranean, those Latin Americans crossing the Rio Grande, etc are all children of God). This is in some respects a revival of Charles Maurras's view that one could uphold Catholicism as a bulwark of classical European civilisation while regarding Christianity as a harmful Oriental subversion of said civilisation, or the widespread view among nineteenth-century German Catholics and Protestants that Christianity had been distorted by classical and oriental culture and needed to be reinvented to suit the freedom-loving Germans...
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Post by maolsheachlann on Dec 4, 2014 20:03:51 GMT
It does have its own dangers and it could happen in many ways, but the one I would hope for is that Europeans would sense that Muslims possess something important that they (the secular Europeans) lack and that this would turn them towards the spiritual. Hopefully towards Christianity rather than Islam.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Dec 5, 2014 9:26:58 GMT
First of all, Philip Jenkins' book The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice is something worth reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Anti-CatholicismIf I've linked to this before, apologies, but the July-August BR carried the reminiscences of a Lithuanian Catholic nationalist growing up in Brezhnev's Soviet Union: brandsmareview.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/issue-133-july-august-2014/. Some of the material in this are quite relevant to the west today, even if the penalties are not as drastic. Hibernicus' analogy of Victorian England is very apposite.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Dec 8, 2014 14:07:42 GMT
It is interesting reading the Chronicles of Narnia again in the context of what I know about modern Islam and mediaeval Islam (and its conflict with Christendom). Colormen is a caricature of the Islamic world, and it can be seen to represent earlier eastern despotic empires like Babylon, as the Narnians are the chosen people (or beasts). Another point Lewis gets very right is the fact Latin Christendom was no match for the Islamic world in the Middle Ages. The fact that the final conflict might be seen between an equally weak West (Narnia) and a resurgent Islamic world (Calormen). Chesterton hinted something similar in the Flying Inn and the prediction relating to Islam in Survivals and New Arrivals by Belloc is scary, especially the extent he has been borne out. Some people thought the fall of the Ottoman Empire finished Islam.
I don't know if I'd describe Islam as spiritual as a whole. The Alavi/Alouwite strain certainly is, but much Sunni Islam is very external and Suffism seems to have receded in influence in the Islamic world. We're dealing with a very different Islam, a more aggressive variety than in the past. And Christianity is weaker.
It seems that there is a demand for a new variety of "Positive Christianity" is out there; for a non-spiritual Christianity, bound by externals and devoid of the Judaic influence. This we need to watch out for. And if anything, the insights of Middle Eastern and North African Christianity, with their history of engagement with the Islamic world, are more necessary than ever.
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Post by Ranger on Dec 8, 2014 17:23:01 GMT
Alaisdir, do you mean that Western Christendom was weak militarily compared to the Ottomans, or more that it was divided or corrupt in some way?
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 8, 2014 21:34:10 GMT
Calormen is clearly cast in terms of oriental despotism and of Islamic monarchies as seen in those terms (i.e. the focus is on the Ottoman and Arab Caliphates rather than on Islamic theology; the extreme voluntarism of Islamic theology in which God cannot be bound by any covenant would actually chime rather well with the strain of puritan-gnostic anti-incarnationalism that haunts Lewis's sensibility, and the fear he displays from time to time, not that God might not exist but that God might not be good - but I don't think he makes the connection anywhere, because he would have been unlikely to encounter proselytising Muslims). BTW Pauline Baynes' illustration of the demonic Calormene god Tash is based on a stele of a Babylonian bird-god at the British Museum - I remember seeing it there some time ago and suddenly recognising the link. Calormen is a late development as Lewis looks for a major adversary for the later books. To be honest I am a bit uneasy with it because an external and exotic enemy is less challenging than an inner enemy, a tempter or someone you might be tempted to become. (For example, I like to think of PRINCE CASPIAN, whose hero discovers his people have historically conquered and oppressed the Old Narnians, as Lewis's comment on his Ulster Protestant background, and the Black Dwarf Nikabrik, who responds to oppression by turning to black magic and engaging in a necromantic attempt to revive the White Witch, as Sean Russell the IRA leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany.) In this context, it is advisable to remember Emeth, the virtuous Calormene in THE LAST BATTLE who has believed all his life that Tash is good and Aslan is evil, and when he discovers their true nature is told by Aslan that he has unknowingly served Aslan all along, because nothing good can belong to Tash and nothing evil to Aslan. Apparently this character was inspired by a Muslim student Lewis tutored.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 8, 2014 21:48:32 GMT
Ranger: for much of the mediaeval period the Islamic world was more developed and more highly-cultured than Christendom; even allowing for the fact that Eastern Christians played a significant role in the transmission of classical learning in and through Islamic societies, the fact that there was a significant Islamic input to science and philosophy can't be denied. (Christopher Dawson comments on this point very strongly.) The late political philosopher Ernest Gellner (who was basically a sort of Unitarian with a noticeable anti-Catholic animus derived from his Czech upbringing - official Czech nationalism of the interwar period tended to glorify the Hussites and associate Catholicism with the Hapsburgs) used to say that one of the intellectuals problems he could never figure out was why modernity had emerged from Christendom and not from the Islamic world, which by his worldview it clearly ought to have done. IN military terms the Islamic world was stronger for long stretches of the Middle Ages - remember at different times Sicily and most of Spain were under Islamic rule, and the Mediterranean came close to being an Islamic lake. The scholar of Islamic history Bernard Lewis said that until the late C17 and the second siege of Vienna it was perfectly plausible to read history in terms of continuous Muslim power and expansion (give or take the odd setback) illustrating the authenticity of Mohammed's divine commission, that it took the Islamic world a century to realise this was no longer the case, and the history of C19 and C20 Islam was of a series of attempts to come to terms with this and come up with an explanation. (Wahhabism - the ultra-purist reaction which the Saudis have been sponsoring since the late C18, is one such reaction.)
It's a bit difficult to say what is or is not external vs. spiritual; Orthodox Judaism for example combines ritual legalism with mysticism about the precise significance of various practices. A few trends within Islam would include; the decline of rural folk-religion based on local shrines and practices because of social upheavals, urbanisation, and spreading literacy; the spread of secular nationalism and other political creeds which see Islam in political terms (e.g. Mohammed as the greatest of Arab statesmen rather than as a divinely inspired prophet); the ability of Wahhabite puritanism to be easily vulgarised and disseminated. Part of the attraction of Islam for some western converts even seems to be that it is the "other", seen as dangerous and different, in the same way that some British and Scandinavian bohemians are/were attracted to Catholicism as a sort of exotic pose to set them off from the mainstream of their society, or to express alienation from it.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Dec 9, 2014 8:50:30 GMT
Hibernicus answered Ranger's question to me very thoroughly. Essentially, when there was western success against Islam, like for periods during the Crusades, it was due to exploiting divisions in Islam. Though the Ottomans came later in the Middle Ages, successes like Lepanto and the siege of Vienna demonstrated how serious a threat Islam was in the 16th and 17th centuries.
With regard to Lewis, I read the books as a boy, and am now doing so as a parent (who studied literature, philosophy and mediaeval history in the interim) and I can see though Lewis wanted the books read in chronological order; you can see that The Horse and His Boy and The Magician's Nephew came later, to set the stage for The Last Battle. The film series seems to want to follow the sequence which they appeared. I remember Emeth, but the female character Aravis in The Horse and His Boy who becomes Queen of Archenland is somewhat similar, if not articulated the way it is with Emeth in The Last Battle. I think the first hint of Calormen as an entity that is going to be developed is in the slave market at Narrowhaven in the Lone Islands in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; the land is mentioned in Prince Caspian.
I wondered what the dwarfs represented while reading The Last Battle; the hint of their ambiguity comes into Prince Caspian, in the case of Nikabrik and the black dwarfs. Reading Prince Caspian, with Old Narnia as Ireland and Telmar as the Anglo-Normans (or Ulster Scots) is interesting, and Nikabrik certainly does fit the Seán Russell type of character. I had wondered if the dwarfs in The Last Battle, who certainly are non-believers, represented a certain type of Jew (not for a moment suggesting Lewis was anti-semitic or trying to encourage it; as I said, certain images of Calormen, and the position of the boy Shasta in Calormen, again from The Horse and His Boy, suggests the children of Israel in Egypt or during the Babylonian captivity. But I don't want to get too much off the point...
Lewis does, however, seem to have wanted to make a point of the world in his own time, as well as using analogy to tell the Christian story in his books.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 9, 2014 21:19:36 GMT
The Christians weren't the only ones who exploited their enemies's divisions - for much of the seventeenth century the French kings had a thoroughly cynical alliance with the Ottomans (not a formal treaty, but both sides understood it perfectly well) whereby they co-operated against the Hapsburgs. (The Ottomans tended to assume that the Hapsburg emperors had the same function for Christians as the Ottoman caliphate had for the Muslims, so presumably they saw the French kings as the equivalent of the Persian Shah, who they thought should in theory be subject to them but unfortunately failed to see this.)
Aravis is certainly a parallel to Emeth, and in some ways in more depth (the incident where Aslan scratches her and tells her this is because her actions caused one of her serving-girls to be flogged without her ever giving a thought to the matter, fits into another stereotype of Oriental despotism, the ability of the master to engage in irresponsible cruelty; it also reflects Lewis's own awareness of the need to struggle with his own sadistic tendencies, which he acknowledges quite directly in his letters). The term "Black Irish" is probably relevant to bear in mind in relation to Nikabrik. The dwarves in LAST BATTLE are more explicitly materialists and part of Lewis's ongoing attack on positivism (the other big example that comes to mind is the Green Witch in THE SILVER CHAIR who tries to persuade the protagonists that her underground world is all that there is and that they have simply imagined the surface world by analogy with some features of the underground). - Though now that I think of it, the way in which the dwarves in LAST BATTLE try to remain independent of both sides, attack both equally as it suits them, and take pride in only being out for themselves, while remaining utterly blind to the fact that one side is clearly evil and the consequences of its victory will certainly be disastrous for the dwarves as well as for everyone else, could be read as an allegory of Irish neutrality in the Second World War as seen by the British and the Ulster Unionists.
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