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Post by michaelpkelly on Dec 30, 2008 18:08:01 GMT
The Irish Catholic Inaugural Lecture Christianity and Europe - Pope Benedict's vision and the question of European integration John Allen Wednesday February 11, 2009 at 7.30pm The Davenport Hotel (Merrion Square), Dublin 2 Attendance is free of charge, but places are limited and bookings are now being taken. If you would like to be part of the audience, you can reserve your place by contacting Michael Kelly at The Irish Catholic, Email: michael@irishcatholic.ie Tel: 01.427.6481. ยท John L. Allen Jr is the most senior English-speaking Vaticanista (Vatican watcher) in Rome and is considered an international expert on the Vatican's foreign policy as well as Pope Benedict's priorities for the Church in Europe.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 3, 2009 18:41:13 GMT
I would like to discuss the way the IRISH CATHOLIC is going so I am using this thread rather than the older "Irish Catholic paper" one. I hope to start another thread sometime soon discussing the question of whether an European or even a world government might be a good thing. It appears to me that Gary O'Sullivan is leading the paper down a very dangerous path. His denunciations of "clericalism" as I have often said before, come close to maintaining that the ordained ministry and hierarchical nature of the church (bishops, priests and deacons) are not part of its original constitution, (he has published pieces by Fr. Murphy O'Connor and others declaring that "Jesus never ordained anyone", which directly contradicts the Church's understanding that the apostles were the first bishops, commissioned to set aside successors as they chose Matthias to replace Judas) and that they can be downplayed or if necessary discarded. Similarly his discussions of Vatican II seem to take for granted the "liberal" interpretation of the Council as marking a complete, irreversible and wholly desirable rupture with the past. John XXIII's pontificate is spoken of as a happier time "when radicals ran the Vatican" without ever expaining in what this radicalism consists, and with the implication that were such "radicals" to be back in charge things would be better. O'Sullivan proudly declares that what the Church needs is discussion and that such discussion is hindered by the complaints of "fundamentalists or Vaticanists". We have heard this before from liberals, and what it generally amounts to is that everyone is to accept their agenda without question and that any criticism of it or even requests that it be explained is illegitimate. Fundamentalists and Vaticanists are disqualified from participation in advance. I have some disagreements with David Quinn, but I think he generally explains clearly what he means and tries to challenge and set out the views of those he opposes. To be frank; I believe that many of the contributors to the IRISH CATHOLIC have lost touch with the fundamental doctrines of Catholicism and that were their preferred measures to be implemented the Catholic Church would be transformed into a smug little sect of social workers and middle-class seekers after psychological well-being, resembling the more nebulous liberal Protestant denominations. I would be very grateful if it could be shown that I am mistaken, especially as that paper has done good work in the past and still publishes some useful material. I would add that part of the reason why people adopt such views is that the Church authorities here in Ireland have dropped the ball so often and with such dreadful consequences; but the way forward does not lie with the measeures the paper seems to favour.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Feb 3, 2009 19:05:35 GMT
One of the shortcomings of the Irish Catholic's impressive new website is that there is no provision for comment and feedback. I'm sure that one consideration is that they might be besieged by nuisance postings from atheists as we were (I am not referring to the small number of courteous and open-minded atheist members who remain with us and take part in discussions); but it should be possible to retain editorial control and filter out undesirable postings rather than let them appear in real time as they do on a forum like this.
In fairness, they do have Ronan Mullen as well as David Quinn.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 10, 2009 18:06:59 GMT
The current IRISH CATHOLIC has a most extraordinary piece on the Society of St. Pius X which basically accuses the Vatican of showing consistently excessive tolerance towards the SSPX, apparently for letting them exist at all. It appears to suggest that they should have been prevented from ever using the Tridentine Rite at all. My understanding of the matter is as follows: Paul VI certainly did intend that the Old Rite be discontinued, and the SSPX were testing the waters to see what they could get away with. At the same time they did obtain canonical permission from the Bishop of Econe for the SSPX and its seminary (albeit on a trial basis) and in the beginning some dioceses were prepared to incardinate their students. This dried up because of pressure from the French bishops and because during a visitation some of the Visitors made provocative statements, which whether intentionally or otherwise, inspired the SSPX to make various accusations in return which led to thee withdrawal of its formal sanction. Archbishop Lefebvre then took to ordaining priests for the SSPX although it did not have canonical authority to do so, and he and they were subjected to various canonical penalties short of excommunication. The IRISH CATHOLIC is simply not telling the truth when it claims they were not penalised before the episcopal ordinations of 1986; I will charitably assume it errs through negligence.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 10, 2009 18:41:10 GMT
I might add that the formation of the SSPX was partly inspired by some of Archbishop Lefebvre's dottier politico-religious ideas but it also reflected genuine concern about the state of formation in many continental seminaries where standards of doctrine and discipline had been allowed to go to pot. If everyone who expresses such concerns is to be treated as a fascist, then many of them will be driven into the arms of fascists, and if the IRISH CATHOLIC is so keen on excommunications, doubtless it will take to advocating the excommunication of those who (for example) maintain that we need not believe in a physical Resurrection, that Jesus did not intend the Church to be a hierarchical body, and so forth. It will not have to look very far to find them.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Feb 10, 2009 20:09:58 GMT
If the IRISH CATHOLIC is so keen on excommunications, doubtless it will take to advocating the excommunication of those who (for example) maintain that we need not believe in a physical Resurrection, that Jesus did not intend the Church to be a hierarchical body, and so forth. It will not have to look very far to find them. Quite. One of the more preposterous elements of the recent controversy was the expression of concern in certain quarters that the Pope had weakened the instrument of excommunication. These were the very people who have been howling for years about so-called authoritarianism in the Church.
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Post by monkeyman on Feb 10, 2009 23:50:16 GMT
The current IRISH CATHOLIC has a most extraordinary piece on the Society of St. Pius X which basically accuses the Vatican of showing consistently excessive tolerance towards the SSPX, apparently for letting them exist at all. It appears to suggest that they should have been prevented from ever using the Tridentine Rite at all. My understanding of the matter is as follows: Paul VI certainly did intend that the Old Rite be discontinued, and the SSPX were testing the waters to see what they could get away with. At the same time they did obtain canonical permission from the Bishop of Econe for the SSPX and its seminary (albeit on a trial basis) and in the beginning some dioceses were prepared to incardinate their students. This dried up because of pressure from the French bishops and because during a visitation some of the Visitors made provocative statements, which whether intentionally or otherwise, inspired the SSPX to make various accusations in return which led to thee withdrawal of its formal sanction. Archbishop Lefebvre then took to ordaining priests for the SSPX although it did not have canonical authority to do so, and he and they were subjected to various canonical penalties short of excommunication. The IRISH CATHOLIC is simply not telling the truth when it claims they were not penalised before the episcopal ordinations of 1986; I will charitably assume it errs through negligence. Wrong year Hibernicus it was 1988.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 16, 2009 23:18:50 GMT
Correction taken, Monkeyman. Garry O'Sullivan had a column in the IRISH CATHOLIC the week before last about Mary Ward, the seventeenth-century founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (popularly known as the Loreto order of nuns) which illustrates the good and bad sides of his approach. He begins by describing Mary Ward's career and how her attempt to found an order based on the Jesuit rule was eventually condemned by the Vatican in the harshest terms; she was subjected to unjustified ecclesiastical penalties which blighted her last days and not for centuries were these lifted or the Loreto Order permitted to acknowledge her as their founder. He then goes on to talk about the decline of religious life in Ireland as represented by the closure of a convent in Cork, and remarks movingly that while the old days of plentiful vocations will never return the sanctity of past religious will still be detectible from its traces, just as people still make pilgrimage to the ruins of the ancient Irish monasteries. There was much that was moving about this piece, yet it seemed to me to contain certain false notes. First, he sneers at the Vatican document condemning Mary Ward - how harsh, how unjust, how bureaucratic, how clerical - in a manner which seems to me to be decidedly smug, as if he sees himself as a superior order of being who could never be so blind or unjust. There is no indication that he realises that such an injustice - and in this case it was an injustice, no question about that - could spring from legitimate concerns for the welfare of the faithful. If Christina Gallagher, for example, had been squashed by such a harsh, male, bureaucratic, clerical decree 10 or 20 years ago many elderly people might have been preserved from having their fears exploited and their savings extorted from them (or if Fr. Maciel, whose admirers used to point to the slandering of other religious founders as proof that the accusations against him were likewise unfounded, had been revealed in his true colours by a thorough investigation some decades ago, much suffering might have been prevented). What happened to Mary Ward was an unjust application of a legitimate principle of magisterial authority; O'Sullivan seems to use it to denounce magisterial authority altogether. Secondly, O'Sullivan seems to fall into a trap which Fr. Vincent Twomey notes in THE END OF IRISH CATHOLICISM? - namely that in charting the harsh and often unjust treatment which foinders of religious orders received from certain church authorities, they ignore the fact that the founders were basically committed to the institutional church as the working out of Jesus in the world, that they were not anti-institutional but wished to embody their particular charisms in institutions precisely because they saw this was necessary for them to bear fruit. Perhaps I am unjust to O'Sullivan, but I suspect that behind this column lurks a sense that it would not matter if religious life disappeared entirely so long as individuals could still draw nourishment from its memory. That's not enough; Mary Ward saw that or she would not have founded an order in the first place.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 24, 2009 16:39:25 GMT
The current IRISH CATHOLIC (19 February) has a lot of good commentary on the banking crisis (including a nice quiet column by Fr. Tierney. Unfortunately it also has a characteristically smug piece by Garry O'Sullivan in which he cites John allen's comments on the importance of steering a middle ground between ideologies as exemplifying what the IRISH CATHOLIC is trying to do. He may be trying to do this, but that doesn't mean he's succeeding - like many people, he identifies the centre ground with his own position and both with correctness. There are times when the "extremes" are right and the "centre" is wrong - equidistance can never be an aim in itself. Michael Kelly, in the back-page column, complains that the Vatican appoints too many elderly men as bishops (he thinks 64 is much too old to start an episcopate) and suggests that 20-year term limits shoudl be imposed on all bishops. To be honest, I think this reflects a post-Vatican II tendency to see bishops simply in managerial terms, whereas they are also supposed to be fathers and witnesses. The witness of Pope John Paul in carrying out his duties in old age and sickness, and the similar witness borne by many bishops in the years before the present compulsory retirement age of 75 - which quite frankly I think is a mistake - should in my judgement outweigh the very real difficulties of having a cranky or feeble bishop. Yesterday was the feast of St. Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna who was a disciple of St. john the Evangelist and who was martyred c.155 in extreme old age. When he was brought before hsi judges and asked to sacrifice to the pagan gods, he said "For eighty-six years I have served Christ, and received only good from him - how can I now betray my king who has saved me". He was burned in the arena. I recommend his story as a subject of meditation for Mr. Kelly. The faith is supposed ot be about the whole of life from birth to death - not keeping someone till retireme nt age and then throwing them on the scrapheap.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 13, 2009 17:12:05 GMT
Last week's IRISH CATHOLIC reprinted from the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER (this is the house journal of the ultra-liberal wing of American Catholicism, so ultra-liberal indeed that its right to call itself Catholic has often been called into question) an e-mail which one Sr. Sandra M Schneiders denounces the Vatican-sponsored visitation of American women's religious orders. Essentially she treats the Vatican and its proteges as hostile invading forces, sneers at those religious orders which cling to traditional habits, devotions and lifestyles, and proclaims that those orders which discard vows, habits, living in community etc have produced a new type of religious life as different from the old as the Franciscans and other mendicant orders were from the Benedictines. One problem with this analogy is that the mendicant orders produced a great burst of enthusiasm, thousands of new recruits immediately, and lasting institutional legacies, whereas the orders which have developed Sr Schneiders' new form of religious life are rapidly ageing and dying out. Sr Schneiders also sneers at the recent visitation of American seminaries intended to root out homosexual subcultures, which she claims was a cover-up intended to disguise the fact that the paedophile scandal did not derive from gays in seminaries but from bishops covering up for paedohile priests. (I would have thought the two explanations are not mutually incompatible - if large numbers of priests are breaking or have broken the rules, whether with boyfriends or girlfriends, they will be reluctant to inquire too deeply into their colleagues' questionable behaviour for fear of being exposed themselves. Leon Podles has some shocking discussions of this factor in the American scandals in his history SACRILEGE.) For those of you who are interested, here is an interesting riposte to Sr. Schneiders from the blog of the magazine FIRST THINGS. As the IRISH CATHOLIC has given Sr. Schneiders such a generous free advertisement, perhaps it might copy? www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1328
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 19, 2009 10:35:15 GMT
In connection to the above post on the IRISH CATHOLIC'S sympathetic coverage of the Leadership Committee of Women Religious in the United States and its protest against being investigated by the Vatican, here is a post from Amy Welborn's blog discussing a speech given at the LCWR conference in 2007 outlining the speaker's view of the new style of religious life. The speaker declares that this new style of life means it is necessary to move beyond Jesus and to accept all religions as equally valid. (I should note that Amy Welborn is by no means a rock-ribbed conservative; she has criticised compulsory clerical celibacy - partly, I suspect, because her late husband was a laicised priest - and one of E. Michael Jones' sidekicks made a very nasty attack on her some years ago.) What worries me is that this mindset is visible in some of the stuff the IRISH CATHOLIC publishes - for example, in Aidan Matthews' promotion of the late John Moriarty as a "Christian philosopher", whose critics in the institutional church are charmingly equated with Caiaphas. Moriarty was "Christian" in exactly the same sense as the nun cited here, and to equate Christ with Buddha or a shaman in this manner is to preach a false Christ. blog.beliefnet.com/viamedia/2009/04/why-the-lcwr-is-being-investigated.html
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 29, 2009 18:51:02 GMT
In the IRISH CATHOLIC of 16 April (p.2) Garry O'Sullivan has a piece on Tommy Tiernan which highlights both the legitimate aims which Mr. O'Sullivan is trying to achieve and the more than dubious means which he advocates to achieve them. O'Sullivan begins by discussing an interview in which Tiernan (known for his blasphemies on the Crucifixion, the Sacraments etc) recalls seriously considering a vocation to the priesthood in his late teens and talks about his continuing spiriual uncertainties and his fascination with the mysticism of John Moriarty. O'Sullivan discusses very perceptively how Tiernan seems to represent a "limbo generation" now in their forties who received a catholic upbringing, who remember a time when Catholicism was central to their lives and the society around them in a way it was not for today's teens and twentysomethings at the same age, and who after going wild and free in their twenties and thirties are now settling down, with growing children, and are starting to come to terms with their own mortality,looking for answers, and perhaps haunted by the possibility that the Church might after all have some answers. He asks whether the Church can give them "a home for their restless souls" or will they "walk into a church, find it unwelcoming, stifling or simply dying on its feet and walk away like the rich young man in the Gospel - saddened, confused, bitter". (This is a bit unfortunate as an illustration; surely the point of the Gospel story is that it ultimately was the rich young man's fault for not taking up the yoke which Jesus offered him, not Jesus' fault for offering him such a hard saying). This is a vitally important question (cf our recent discussion of anne Rice's return to the Church in the catholic Literature thread) and O'Sullivan is right to say "It may be that philosophers and comedians are entering the Kingdom of God before us". My principal worry is that O'Sullivan is buying into a prefabricated liberal analysis of what the Church is and how it should undertake evangelisation, rather than engaging in a fuller resassessment. Could it be that the place to which the particular philosophers and comedians who interest him are leading us is not in fact the kingdom of God? He quoteswith fascination John Moriarty's comment " wonder if we will have to follow Christ out of Christianity?" and suggests that Mark Patrick Hederman's suggestion that the first Christians were the fulfilment of Judaism and had to leave Judaism to fulfil it might be applicable to rule and regulation-bound Christians of today. Now this is capable of a perfectly orthodox meaning - we do need to test ourselves aainst the Word and the treasury of faith, we do need to distinguish between essentials and what is time-bound and can be discarded. The problem is recognising what is truly esential, and John Moriarty certainly did not adequately discern this. It is clear even on a cursory acquaintance with his thought that when Moriarty spoke of following Christ out of Christianity he meant abandoning Jesus' uniqueness, Jesus' Divinity, Jesus' authority and regarding him as only one of many wise masters from whom we can pick and choose in building a religion centred on subjective human experience. There does appear to be much that is admirable in Moriarty's life, in his embrace of poverty in the pursuit of wisdom and his attempt to embody it in life - he seems to have displayed many of the sort of natural virtues we see in such an admirable man as Marcus Aurelius. The philosophers of the ancient world did not merely see philosophy in intellectual terms, but as a whole way of life; in many respects the different philosphical schools of antiquity were like different religious orders, and such a figure as Justin Martyr, the first Christian philosopher, who retained his philosphical dress and debated with the other schools his claim to have found the true Philosophy, can be seen as bridging the two - but in the end they can only have so much in common. Christianity, the Church, is part of Christ - not just the Church in Heaven, but the Church on Earth with all its members' human flaws and failings. Did Newman live and write in vain of the guide he sought and found? We must love her and offer her advice as a lover does to the beloved, whether that advice is taken. to walk away from her as Moriarty did is to walk away from Christ, who has the message of eternal life. Such features as the Pope;'s teaching authority and the monarchical episcopate and the sacrificing priesthood, the role of creeds and intellectual propositions in relation to faith, are part of the Church's essence; we cannot walk away from them as the early Christians walked away from the Law of Moses. I hope Mr. O'Sullivan realsies this but I am not certain he does. Justin Martyr was put to death because he would not consent to compromise Christ's uniqueness by treating him as one among many by joining in the pagan sacrifices. Who was the Emperor in whose name he was put to death? Not Nero or Caligula but Marcus Aurelius, who sought justice in all sincerity but knew not what he did. Perhaps they are together now in heaven, but on earth wemust never forget the difference between them.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 29, 2009 19:01:12 GMT
A much more directly objectionalble item may be found in the IRISH CATHOLIC of April 2. Once again we find that paper drinking unwarily from the poisoned well of the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER. In this case the relevant item is an article by Thomas Patrick Melady, former US ambassador to the Vatican and a Republican, who accuses advocates of debarring pro-abortion politicians from Communion of "politicising communion". Now perhaps a rasnalbe case can be made (in terms of pastoral prudence, for example) for not denying these people the Sacraments. What scandalises me about this article is that Mr. Melady refuses to concede that his opponents have any valid or sincere concerns about the sight of participants and enablers of a heinous crime to partake unworthily, and to use that partaking to justify their conduct. (Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example regularly parades her reception of the Sacraments and her "pro-choice" views). He simply accuses everyone who disagrees with him on this of having political motives - it is not clear whether he means by this that they wish to promote the Republican party (though several of the bishops who take the position he criticises stated publicly that they would not administer the sacraments to pro-abortion Catholic Republicans such as Rudolph Giuliani if they presented themselves unrepentant), or whether he sees abortion as a merely political issue. If there is to be a debate about how such people's approach to the Sacraments should be handled, it should not be done in this spirit, and the IRISH CATHOLIC should have found someone to argue the case who does not do so by proclaiming as his sole argument that all his opponents are insincere.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2009 14:24:37 GMT
Since I noted the IRISH CATHOLIC's uncritical reprint of Sister Sandra Schneider's denunciation of the current Vatican-ordered visitation of women's religious orders in the US, viewers may be interested in Fr. Zuhlsdorf's analysisof that document. wdtprs.com/blog/2009/07/women-religious-in-discontinuity/
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2009 14:26:21 GMT
Some of the comments, IMHO, are also relevant to the IRISH CATHOLIC's recent promotion of so-called "new forms" of religious life, virtually or entirely detached from the so-called "institutional church".
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