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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 9:29:27 GMT
I am going to post comments on the scandal as they occur to me. I am not trying to argue a case, I am not trying to defend the indefensible, I am just trying to understand this and help others understand it. Please bear that in mind and abstain from smart remarks. First: the Catholic posters on this board are mostly traditionalists, and these revelations are something that traditionalists in particular have to take on board. A lot of traditionalists, especially in America, have blamed much if not all of the clerical abuse scandals on the breakdown in clerical discipline after Vatican II. There is some truth in this, but nothing like the whole truth - and clearly this is utterly inadequate as applied to Irish industrial schools. Here we have a system which was set up in the middle of the nineteenth century as part of the great ultramontane revival in Ireland and the corresponding revival in religious orders and importation of European Catholic practices into Ireland, which was at its height at the highpoint of pre-conciliar religious practice, in the decades that were hailed at the time as a second golden age in which Catholic Ireland after a long era of oppression was once again becoming the Land of Saints and Scholars. While your grandparents and mine were in the crowds at the Eucharistic Congress, while Frank Duff was founding the Legion of Mary, while missionary heroes like Donal Lamont and Bishop Shanahan were bringing the good News to Africa and Asia, while the ordination classes at Maynooth and Clonliffe and many other now-closed seminaries and novitiates were overflowing, these children were being raped and tortured.
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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 9:39:24 GMT
Second; because the religious orders and the Church as a whole have now adopted a secular social work model in which the state is assumed to be the natural provider of social services and church involvement is simply a matter of filling in the gaps, the full dimensions of this abomination of desolation have not been grasped. These institutions were originally set up in the belief that there was a specifically Catholic model of social relief which would be better and more humane than bureaucratised state provision; that members of religious orders, driven by religious fervour and by commitment to their vocation and their vows of poverty, would be better in caring for the poor than bureaucrats and professionals who were in it to earn a living. One of the first movers in the importation of the industrial school model into Ireland was a man called Frederick Lucas, an English Catholic convert (he founded the TABLET) who identified with Ireland much more than most English Catholics of non-Irish descent have done, who settled in Ireland and became a nationalist MP for an Irish constituency. Lucas was horrified by the inadequacies of the British official response to the Famine (his editorials on the subject make searing reading), which he saw as encapsulating the shortcomings of bureaucratic state provision. HE also saw the problems facing destitute children on the streets of Ireland, and inspired by the need to do something for them he worked to have Catholic industrial schools run by religious orders (as in Belgium) set up in Ireland. His brother's official life of him declares that although he did not live to see them opened, this was one of hsi greatest achievements. Alas, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions - and in Lucas's case the intentions were of the very best. More tomorrow.
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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 12:25:52 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 12:32:52 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 12:35:40 GMT
This comment by Lee Podles (author of SACRILEGE, which I have referenced here in the past) on one of the Welborn threads really says it all, I am afraid. Every other comment is just a footnote to this central point.
Lee Podles May 20, 2009 3:58 PM The weak are sacrificed to the strong. This is a rule of life, and it exists in the Church as well. Our Lord warned against those who would use their authority to lord it over others. This lording over meant that Irish children were beaten, raped, and tortured by priests, brothers and nuns, and nothing was done to protect the children, and everything was done to protect the criminals.
The Irish Church will have its lampstand taken away, because it sinned against the little ones.
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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 13:00:48 GMT
This comment (from the traditionalist blog RORATE CAELI, which has put up a post on the report - I should add that though I have a lot of differences with RC it is not necessarily responsible for the cranks who post comments in its comboxes) is a good example of how NOT to discuss the report. Note "Anonymous's" complete obliviousness to the fact that the institutions in question were founded well before Vatican II and closed down after it, and that most of the abuse described took place before Vatican II or involved perpetrators professed/ordained before Vatican II.
Anonymous said... I wouldn't worry too much about this issue, even though it was horrible....because God in hs own good time delivers his own judgement on these paedophiles and other deviants and the accomplices who by inaction or worse aid in the crimes/sins before God. Just look at the Vatican II Catholic Church! Before Vatican II, and up until the Council (but mostly in the 1900's thru the mid 1950's), the Catholic Church in Ireland was exporting +1,000 priests per year, as well as 2x the number of nuns for missionary work. Ireland ordained (before Vatican II), close to 1,600 priests per year! They had at least 8 huge diosecean seminaries. Orders of nuns, cloisters, and seminaries for priests were filled. The De la Salle Christian brothers, and the Irish Christian Brothers were bursting with vocations. Today, 40+ years after the disaster of Vatican II and it's implementation, and after the reign of 4 Vatican II Popes, there is but 1 seminary in all Ireland for diosecean priests. ONE. And that seminary, which had had 1,000 seminarians before Vatican II, has a handful today. ALL religious Orders of nuns in Ireland have gone the way of USA nuns in their dissent and radicalization...and discarding the habit. They have closed houses by the hundreds, and have a median age like the USA, approaching 75. Mass attendance has declined form 80% (still very high when JP II became Pope in 1978), down to less than 35% today. But then again, what can we expect? So, God has had his judgement on these perverts. The Bishops as a whole are disgraced (but have not been disiplined enough), the priesthood is ruined. Orders of nuns are all dead, as are the Brothers. Few go to Mass or any other Sacraments. It will take 200 years to restore in Ireland and elsewhere, what Vatican II and what came after it destroyed in 40+ years! The great Cardinal Giuseppe Siri once said (no lover of Vatican II or the Vatican II years that man!!), that it would take the entire Church 200 years to recover from the disaster of Vatican II. Looking at Ireland, the USA, and elsewhere...he was right. 22 May, 2009 11:34
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Post by guillaume on May 25, 2009 15:55:50 GMT
This comment (from the traditionalist blog RORATE CAELI, which has put up a post ont he report - I should add that though I have a lot of differences with RC it is not necessarily responsible for the cranks who post comments in its comboxes) is a good example of how NOT to discuss the report. Note "Anonymous's" complete obliviousness to the fact that the institutions in question were founded well before Vatican II and closed down after it, and that most of the abuse described took place before Vatican II or involved perpetrators professed/ordained before Vatican II. Anonymous said... I wouldn't worry too much about this issue, even though it was horrible....because God in hs own good time delivers his own judgement on these paedophiles and other deviants and the accomplices who by inaction or worse aid in the crimes/sins before God. Just look at the Vatican II Catholic Church! Before Vatican II, and up until the Council (but mostly in the 1900's thru the mid 1950's), the Catholic Church in Ireland was exporting +1,000 priests per year, as well as 2x the number of nuns for missionary work. Ireland ordained (before Vatican II), close to 1,600 priests per year! They had at least 8 huge diosecean seminaries. Orders of nuns, cloisters, and seminaries for priests were filled. The De la Salle Christian brothers, and the Irish Christian Brothers were bursting with vocations. Today, 40+ years after the disaster of Vatican II and it's implementation, and after the reign of 4 Vatican II Popes, there is but 1 seminary in all Ireland for diosecean priests. ONE. And that seminary, which had had 1,000 seminarians before Vatican II, has a handful today. ALL religious Orders of nuns in Ireland have gone the way of USA nuns in their dissent and radicalization...and discarding the habit. They have closed houses by the hundreds, and have a median age like the USA, approaching 75. Mass attendance has declined form 80% (still very high when JP II became Pope in 1978), down to less than 35% today. But then again, what can we expect? So, God has had his judgement on these perverts. The Bishops as a whole are disgraced (but have not been disiplined enough), the priesthood is ruined. Orders of nuns are all dead, as are the Brothers. Few go to Mass or any other Sacraments. It will take 200 years to restore in Ireland and elsewhere, what Vatican II and what came after it destroyed in 40+ years! The great Cardinal Giuseppe Siri once said (no lover of Vatican II or the Vatican II years that man!!), that it would take the entire Church 200 years to recover from the disaster of Vatican II. Looking at Ireland, the USA, and elsewhere...he was right. 22 May, 2009 11:34 ha, I was excepting that. The connection between VII and the scandals. That is the thinking of Bp Williamson. Well to be honest, I do not know if modernism - progressivism - liberalism is linked to the lack of morality from some part of the clergy. Scandals always existed, and that far before the reforms of VII. Direct link with the scandals and lack of morality within some part of the clergy and the reforms of VII, might not be very wise. However, the description given by Anonymous of the state of the Church in Ireland seems to be quite fair, and there is no doubt that this terrible downturn had for origin the reforms of VII.
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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 16:16:33 GMT
In response to Guillaume's points, I would say that much of the description is fair (or if not it soon will be - expect a further falling off in Mass attendance over the next few years). The central issue about Anonymous is surely that the problematic aspects of the Vatican II changes should not be taken in isolation - the strength of the reaction against the pre-Vatican II state of affairs is partly due to the presence of the faults before Vatican II, and those same faults help to explain why the implementation of vatican II went so badly wrong. Put this another way - anonymous's claim that the number of vocations before vatican II means everything in the garden was rosy raises the following question: Would Anonymous really be glad to go back to the pre-Vatican II state of affairs - to that level of vocations, etc - if as a price we also had to go back to the Magdalen asylums and the industrial schools, to the toleration and cover-up of the abusers and allowing them to act with impunity. IF Anonymous would answer "Yes" the Leon Podles' comment above applies to him. We have to sort out what was good from what was bad, and this can only be done if we acknowledge and atone for the evil and try to ensure it never happens again.
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Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 13:30:22 GMT
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Post by Askel McThurkill on May 27, 2009 14:31:38 GMT
More that a bit starry-eyed on Diarmuid Martin. He is given a large amount of slack from the Irish Times, for example, because of his brother Seamus Martin's connection with the paper. There is also a failure to realise that the numbers were in free fall long before the scandals broke.
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Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 16:41:20 GMT
Here is his blogspot, which seems mainly concerned with films. Sounds like a film and genre fiction nerd with interest in religion. The type is quite common in cyberspace - I should know. thethirstygargoyle.blogspot.com/ In reference to his post, it also strikes me that he may be young. The failure to realise the attendance fall-off began before the scandals (though if he treats the scandals as beginning with Bishop Casey this might actually be correct - I remember mass attendance figures were still above 90% when that broke) and the assumption that journalists were generally subservient to the Church before the 1990s (clearly he can't recall the 1980s IRISH TIMES, or the fact that all the Dublin dailies supported divorce and opposed the 1983 Amendment, or...) On the other hand, he may be responding to the fact that - in part because of recent developments, what seemed anti-clerical at the time now seems extremely mild compared to the present HOT PRESS generation of journalists. Mid-century anti-clericals generally either were actually Catholic or had an underlying sense of what it was like to be Catholic; since the early 1990s a new generation have arisen who see religious belief as self-evidently pernicious and absurd and no more worth taking seriously than the Flat Earth Society.
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Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 16:56:42 GMT
To return from linking to more extensive comment:- The overlap between Catholicism and Nationalism in Irish identity I think functioned like this - both maintained that Ireland's problems arose from being ruled by people who were self-evidently alien/ not like us and who therefore felt no sense of moral community with the plebeians. The argument was that if "people like us" were in charge they would recognise anyone Irish as brothers and act accordingly; everyone would be under the "sacred canopy", so to speak. In the same way the ultramontane project looked back to the Middle Ages as a time of communal responsibility bound together by a shared faith, and believed that if that faith were universally held utopia would result. (I even know of some nineteenth-century Irish novelists who argued that Ireland's problems stemmed from the fact that the landlords were Protestant; if they were good catholics they would treat their tenants fairly and all would be well). This sense of communal identity (and the great religious festivals of twentieth-century Ireland, like the smaller devotional processions etc were to a considerable extent about affirming a collective identity)was reinforced by (a) the presence of external opponents (British and/or Protestant) whose criticisms were often bigoted, biased and uncomprehending, leading to the assumption that all criticism must be invalid and that anyone who voiced criticism was deserting to the enemy (b) the fact that one Irish person looks pretty much like another to outsiders, so that Ireland was often romanticised as a classless society united in faith and love by outsiders denouncing what they saw as the soulless materialism and cruelties of their own societies. In fact, any Irish person can pick out Irish class distinctions pretty accurately, and much of what has been revealed was about class distinctions. The labourer, the very small Western farmer, the urban poor (especially the latter) were seen as different and inferior and expected to defer to their betters and be kept under control, and their children's complaints were not believed.
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Post by hibernicus on May 28, 2009 10:43:39 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 29, 2009 11:58:53 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 29, 2009 12:16:57 GMT
Another link, which raises the celibacy issue. I was a bit hesitant about making this connection here but it will be made anyway so we may as well discuss it. Blosser is commenting on another blogger called Greg Krehbiel who (while generally orthodox) suggests celibacy tends to create a church dominated by women in which priests are recruited from effeminates; he also suggests the post-Vatican II Church is more feminine in this sense than its precursor. Krehbiel is picking up on views/suspicions voiced by Leon Podles (to whom I often refer here). Blosser is a philosophy professor and some of the points he makes are very interesting. I never knew, for example, that Aquinas said that the man who rapes his wife is committing a worse sin than adultery. A very striking point (given that Aquinas is often presented as misogynist) and a refreshing contrast to the legalistic and mechanistic version of "marriage debt" thinking widespread in Catholic moral theology in the C19 and much of the C20 (and still favoured by the SSPX, if I am correctly informed). pblosser.blogspot.com/2009/05/sex-and-catholic-religious-culture.html
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