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Post by shane on Oct 17, 2011 20:13:36 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 17, 2011 20:49:04 GMT
He was, but I regard it as a subset of the same "community of communities" mindset. His major statement on this is his mid-80s book BEYOND NATIONALISM - the first thing which soured me on Fennell (whom I initially thought was very exciting) was when he announced in that book that he was not trying to produce a coherent scheme but hoped to stimulate other people. Of course by doing this he evades facing up to any problems it might entail (or addressing the possibility that some people might actually not like it - for example, one reason why SF eventually rejected Eire Nua was the possibility that it would create a mini-Stormont, and since BEYOND NATIONALISM seems to advocate much more localised government than the provincial legislatures of Eire Nua, this criticism would be all the more relevant).
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Post by assisi on Oct 27, 2011 22:58:16 GMT
Thanks for the link, Assisi. As one who lived through the period, I concur completely with his analysis. He didn't touch on the further complications in Irish society which arose as a result of the abandonment by the state of catholics north of the border to the tender mercies of a protestant sectarian state. I would generally agree with Fennell too. But he talks of Catholicism opposing Communism but not opposing the consumerist liberalism of the 60s and henceforth. But I can understand the Church's hesitation in this context. Communism (like Fascism) was a very visible and recognisable phenomenon. It had the flags, uniforms and regalia, the visible leaders, the expressed philosophy, the committed countries, the standard rhetoric, the party newspapers, its own weapons. But the consumerist liberalism 'movement' is a much harder phenomenon to pin down and define and therefore it is a much harder enemy to fight. For example just think of the number of terms we as Catholics use to attempt to define this movement or aspects of this movement. A few examples: consumerism, liberalism, secularism, individualism, modernism, postmodernism, pluralism, relativism, celebrity culture, dumbing down, atheism, humanism, evolutionism, nihilism, existentialism, positivism, materialism.......feel free to add to this list. This gives rise to problems. It is much harder to draw attention to an enemy when it hides under a hundred different terms and under a different guises. Mention consumerism to the man or woman in the street and they may understand a trend but they cannot relate it to a predominating culture, Mention Communism and they can readily visualise and understand that tyranny. Also Communism and Fascism depended on brutality to enforce their philosophy and culture, while the consumerist liberal approach is one of seduction and appeal to emotion through advertising and reducing opposition, using the rights issues to subdue what they see as opponents. Thus is it any wonder that Catholics now (and the Church at the time of Vatican II) are not as concerted or focused in their oppostion to the new 'seductive' tyranny. Harder to define, harder to point at, more widespread but less visible, it has crept in surely but gradually without anyone being able to summarise it in one recognisable term - that is why it is all the more dangerous.
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Post by annie on Oct 28, 2011 7:27:26 GMT
More and more I think that Fabianism underpins these trends.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 4, 2011 0:53:21 GMT
Fabianism was part of a wider technocratic movement (the American version was known as Progressivism) which advocated an interventionist state ruled over by enlightened bureaucrats whose scientific social training would enable them to know what was good for the people better than the people did themselves. It wasn't purely a left-wing phenomenon (quite a few early British technocrats were inspired by the belief that if subjecting the colonies to administrators not responsible to popular opinion was a good idea it should be tried in the home country as well).
Part of the problem in relation to Catholicism and consumerist liberalism is that the alternatives advanced by Catholic social theorists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often seemed deeply unappealing. Traditionalist absolute monarchy? Autarkic dictatorships a la Franco and Salazar? Warrior states geared towards war and the aristocratic honour code as ends in themselves? Nineteenth-century Gladstonian liberalism (sometimes described as ascetic or producerist liberalism to distinguish it from the consumer variety, because it emphasised the accumulation of investment capital through self-sacrifice and deferred gratification, whereas consumerism emphasises the role of consumption in spreading prosperity)? Vocationalism, which was never really worked out properly and whose better elements don't seem to transplant easily outside the Rhineland states? Chesterbellocian distributism, whose glorification of peasant society glosses over the uncomfortable fact that peasants given the choice between peasant life and urban commercial society generally opt for the latter, our own experience in Ireland over the last 90 years being a striking example of this? All these tend to produce the distinctly unappealing sight of poor people being informed that their natural desire for material betterment for themselves and their families is inherently wicked - a sort of Manichaeism. At the same time I have a nasty feeling that consumerist liberal societies ultimately end up consuming themselves, because they sacrifice the future to immediate gratification and break down any obstacle to the view of human beings as anything more than pleasure machines. Perhaps we are just left with the Ibn Khaldun cyclical theory of society - the barbarians conquer civilisation because they are rugged and hardy and their civilised opponents are soft and corrupt, but in acquiring the advantages of civilisation they lose those qualities which enabled them to conquer it and are eventually overcome by a new wave of barbarians, after which the process repeats itself. I am often haunted by the thought that we Catholic Irish have now taken up and glorified many of the qualities which our ancestors denounced as proof of the decadence of the Anglo-Irish Protestant tradition (qualities which would have horrified the stern puritan ancestors of said Anglo-Irish).
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 14, 2012 0:57:48 GMT
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Post by guillaume on Apr 14, 2012 6:22:00 GMT
This question is a bit silly. Most of us did not experience the situation of the Church before the council. The NOM is born the same year as me. In order to have a good picture of the situation of the Church before VII we would have to be in our 60s 70s and more. A generation mostly liberal.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 14, 2012 17:09:40 GMT
Surely the fact that we did not experience it ourselves does not mean we can know nothing about it, or comment on how it was expected to turn out and how it actually turned out? Just ask Shane
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Post by guillaume on Apr 15, 2012 6:11:46 GMT
Surely the fact that we did not experience it ourselves does not mean we can know nothing about it, or comment on how it was expected to turn out and how it actually turned out? Just ask Shane Well I just started to read a book called "The Trojan Horse in the City of God" by Hilderbrand. Written in 1967 it seems to be the perfect book to understand the situation at that time. I am only starting so I cannot comment on it right now.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 23, 2012 11:56:12 GMT
William Doino Jr has a nice article in First things on this. Read the whole thing. Extract below - the point about John XXIII is useful. www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/04/the-serenity-of-vatican-ii-1EXTRACT Among those who share von Hildebrand’s concerns is Father Paulo Molinari, S.J., who was a contributor to Lumen Gentium. Several years ago, I had the privilege to speak to him in Rome. In our lively discussion, three things stood out. First, Vatican II was not a bolt out of the blue from Pope John XXIII. It was preceded by twenty ecumenical Councils, and Congar writes that “the Church has always tried to reform itself.” Pius XI and Pius XII had seriously considered holding a new Council themselves. Next, John XXIII’s famously jovial personality has led many to believe he was an unabashed progressive, and this has colored many accounts of the Council. But Molinari, a close friend of the pope, told me that this popular image of “Good Pope John” as easygoing and tolerant of almost any proposal, is “absolute nonsense.” Finally, statistics about the Church in the pre-Conciliar years are misleading, because there were many trends afoot—in theology, morality, politics, science, and exegesis—that were already having an unsettling impact on the internal life of Catholics. At the end of our discussion, I still had one question: “All that being said Father, and granting the necessity, beauty, and orthodoxy of the Council’s teachings—how did their implementation go so disastrously wrong in the immediate years that followed?” “The Council called us to find fulfillment in Christ,” he said gently, “but many Catholics confused that with their own self-fulfillment.” Stunned, I finally murmured, “That’s a pretty big mistake.” “Yes,” he replied, with tremendous understatement... END OF EXTRACT
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Post by catholicfaithdenier on Apr 23, 2012 14:35:49 GMT
Was Vatican II valid?
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 23, 2012 18:28:21 GMT
Yes. It was convoked and had its decrees approved by Popes and it was attended by a much higher proportion of the world's bishops than many previous general councils (some of the sessions at Trent were attended by less than a hundred bishops). If Vatican II wasn't a valid general council there has never been a valid general council.
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Post by Modern Irish Churches on May 16, 2012 21:58:41 GMT
I'm interested in the responses of people to the art and architecture in Irish Churches in the years immediately before and post-Vatician ll. My website details an oral history project I am conducting in this area.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 2, 2012 14:35:56 GMT
Here's an article by William Doino making the case that John XXIII was basically traditionalist, rather than the revolutionary for the sake of revolution often presented in liberal polemics; whether he was over-optimistic might be debated. www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/07/pope-john-xxiii-conserver-of-traditionEXTRACT By the time of Pius XII’s death, in 1958, Cardinal Roncalli—contrary to the idea he came out of nowhere to become pope—was actually one of those favored to be elected. He was well known, well liked and trusted. More things have been said about Blessed John’s pontificate than can be imagined, but a common observation is this: “The Church expected to get a ‘caretaker pope,’ but what she got instead was a holy shock.” But there was nothing shocking about John’s pontificate, nor his call for an ecumenical Council. Courageous and pro-active, yes, but not shocking. Ever since his days as a young priest in Bergamo, he had venerated St. Charles Borromeo—the renowned archbishop of Milan, and champion of orthodoxy, who had implemented the reforms of the Council of Trent with great discipline and zeal. Pope John saw a similar need to address the problems of our own day, with equal vigor. His reverence for the reformer was such that he arranged to have his coronation as pope on the saint’s feast day (November 4, 1958), just a week after John’s election. Blessed John knew, as does Pope Benedict, that Christianity is not simply a series of negative “No’s,” but an uplifting series of ringing affirmations—rooted in ultimate truth, designed for our salvation—and this is why he placed an accent on the inspiring side of the Gospel, in order to attract new believers, and strengthen the old. But John could warn and censure with the best of popes, and whenever he needed to, he did. He decried the errors of Communism, even as he welcomed productive dialogue during the Cold War; he vigorously opposed sexual immorality (and had strict requirements for seminarians), but treated everyone so tempted with Christ-like love; he opposed religious indifferentism, but welcomed common ground with non-Catholics; he cautioned exegetes and warned about technology, but approved modern advances in harmony with the faith. Of his eight encyclicals, only two of them (Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris) are well known, but all breathe with the language of the saints. They are deeply anchored in the Gospel and papal social teaching, and correct errors both secularists and libertarians make. John, in fact, had a deep devotion to many pre-Conciliar popes, including the traditionalist Pius IX (beatified on the same day as John), and those who followed: Pius X, Pius XI and especially Pius XII. Of the latter, John wrote in his final spiritual testament: I wish to profess once more my complete Christian and Catholic faith, belonging and submitting as I do to the holy, apostolic and Roman Church, and my perfect devotion and obedience to its august head, the supreme Pontiff, whom it was my great honor to represent for many years…and for whom I have always felt a sincere affection. On top of all this, John XXII published an Apostolic Constitution, Veterum Sapientia, celebrating Latin as the official language of the Church. Given this record, how is it possible that some still refer to Blessed John as a liberal progressive, if not a leader of a revolution? The answer is that they downplay his ascetic life, ignore or edit away his fundamental teachings, and pour into his legacy their own fashionable ideas and passions. They think the Church can change its essential teachings, and so assume Blessed John would agree with them. They confuse his orthodox reforms with their own heterodox dissents. The result is a massive case of mistaken identity. Blessed John XXIII was not a fashionable rebel, but a faithful hero, and the man who knew him best, Archbishop Capovilla, recently confirmed this. “For all the changes that Blessed John ushered into the Church,” said the Catholic News Service story, “and notwithstanding arguments that his reign marked a radical break with the past, Archbishop Capovilla says that the pope saw himself as acting in full continuity with Catholicism’s millennial teachings and traditions. ‘Precisely because he was a great conservative,’ the archbishop says, ‘he was able to bring the world a message of love, of hope and of faith.’” END
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 3, 2012 8:23:39 GMT
As an historian, Hibernicus will tell us history is rarely a case of black and white - never I would say, this is a consequence of the fallen nature of man. Ecclesiastical history is no different.
However, if there was ever a need of re-assessment of successors of Peter, there are few better cases than the relationship between Pius XII and Blessed John XXIII. The two were not antithetical as certain narratives (traditionalist and progressive almost equally - though some trads claim John, few liberals wish to own Pius). To be honest, a case can be made about Pius being liberal and John being conservative. John, for example, rowed back on some of Pius'es retractions in the Papal Court - Pius disliked the sedia gestatoria; John revelled in it. It is hard to believe that John would have abolished the Noble Guard and the Palatine Guard as Paul VI did in 1970. I recall one story about John XXIII being coached on the protocol of addressing the US First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, and then forgetting and simply saying 'Ah, Jackie' (source: Fr Joe Dunn, No Lions in the Hierarchy). This is a good yarn, but it does not fit the facts. As a career diplomat who finished his career as Papal Nuncio to France, John was thoroughly au fait with any form of diplomatic nicety that could have been thrown at him, up to and including the insistence of the then President of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle of conferring the red hat on French prelates and priests raised to the College of Cardinals including the retiring Nuncio in France, Archbishop Roncalli. For those who don't believe me or who believe that France is some type of super secular state - the footage is bound to be available somewhere (I'll post the link if I find it on Youtube). Vis a vis, secular France, I note that Francois Hollande is correctly described as the First Honorary Canon of St John Lateran Cathedral in Rome, an honour the President of the French Republic holds ex-officio.
John's record also includes conducting what many contemporary progressive commentators saw as a reign of terror against the 'Worker Priest' movement in France while he was Apostolic Nuncio there and leaving perhaps the most conservative document of any pope of the twentieth century, the Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia.
Back to Pius. The roots of most of the documents of the Second Vatican Council were largely encyclicals written by Pius, which had a liberal edge. The most obvious is Humani Generis, which I imagine six-day creationists or young earthers love to hate, insofar as they have heard of it. But Mystici Corporis Christi , Mediator Dei and Divino Spiritu Afflante are hardly works of unequivocal traditionalism. Pius too knew a council should be called, but did not believe he was the pope to do it. In that respect, those closely acquainted with the thoughts of Pius could not have been that surprised when John called the Council.
How the Council went - that is an entirely different matter. And one that all sets of partisans within the Church need to examine honestly as they also need to evaluate the legacies of recent (and indeed not-so-recent) popes.
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