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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 6, 2019 12:09:50 GMT
I notice the discussion so far has not mentioned the film's heavy insinuation that Brother Baxter is an abuser. (The older brother of the main character sarcastically suggests "Viriliter Age" really means "We Rape Our Pupils".) The film also has a jab at the inability of the character's parents to divorce and remarry in 1980s Dublin. It's an example of how for the younger generation the 80s have replaced the 50s as shorthand for ignorance, repression,hypocrisy and general uncoolness. I think a lot of what the older brother comes out with is anachronistic. We hadn't the same awareness of child abuse by clergy and religious in the 1980s, so in that way, he's playing to an anti-Catholic gallery. I don't know if I named the brother Carney said Baxter was based on, but it was Brother Byrne, the teacher of Maths and Irish /Gaelic football coach I described. I don't believe Byrne was an abuser, but I would say he gave the impression of being somewhat weird, and that characteristic certainly comes across in the film. Maybe Carney means that to be more loaded than someone like me might have noticed, having inside knowledge. Another past pupil told me Brother Byrne did drag someone into the principal's office, to hit him without witnesses. Baxter goes a bit further than that in the film, and I think the director is leading the audience in this case.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 8, 2019 9:01:59 GMT
Somehow I think Goldvulture is nearer the mark when it comes to Paddy Cosgrave. And genius is not a word it would use. In fact, I think Goldvulture cited that example to draw the opposite conclusion. The current Phoenix profiles Paddy's younger sister Anna who was responsible for the infamous repeal blackshirts. The article makes interesting reading.
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Post by annie on Feb 8, 2019 11:54:41 GMT
Somehow I think Goldvulture is nearer the mark when it comes to Paddy Cosgrave. And genius is not a word it would use. In fact, I think Goldvulture cited that example to draw the opposite conclusion. The current Phoenix profiles Paddy's younger sister Anna who was responsible for the infamous repeal blackshirts. The article makes interesting reading. I might start buying it again.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 8, 2019 23:22:44 GMT
The profile of Anna Cosgrave also has some interesting material about how the Abortion Rights Campaign were the core of the Repeal movement, with old Marxist warhorses such as Ailbhe Smyth (of PBP) played down in favour of winsome younger "woke" liberals such as Ms Cosgrave. The ARC have not, of course, gone away with the passage of the referendum; they are now campaigning for universal compulsory secular consent-based Relationships and Sexuality Education in schools, with religion-based approaches outlawed and abortion promoted as a legitimate option. The Cosgrave siblings strike me as a prime example of what Rod Dreher has been talking about so much lately - corporate capitalism combining economic individualism, woke social liberalism, and the exclusion of uncool social conservatism from public discourse.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 8, 2019 19:15:02 GMT
Mary McAleese is now campaigning for the suppression of Courage International, the Catholic organisation which tries to help those with same-sex attraction who wish to live virtuous lives, on the grounds that this is "rooted in homophobia". The Irish edition of the London TIMES is acting as her cheerleader and is pursuing a witch-hunt against the Dublin chapter of Courage. The link below is supplied only as a reference, since you have to be a subscriber to read the full story: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dangerous-gay-therapy-condemned-by-mary-mcaleese-0cnc8g69s
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Post by Account Deleted on Apr 8, 2019 21:22:24 GMT
Mary McAleese is now campaigning for the suppression of Courage International, the Catholic organisation which tries to help those with same-sex attraction who wish to live virtuous lives, on the grounds that this is "rooted in homophobia". The Irish edition of the London TIMES is acting as her cheerleader and is pursuing a witch-hunt against the Dublin chapter of Courage. The link below is supplied only as a reference, since you have to be a subscriber to read the full story: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dangerous-gay-therapy-condemned-by-mary-mcaleese-0cnc8g69sThere is legislation going through the Oireachtas at the moment, proposed by Senator Fintan Warfield, which would seek to enable this by legal means under the title "Prohibition of Conversion Therapies Bill". It is so vague in its definitions of what "therapies" it seeks to ban that potentially any counselor (or referrer) helping someone who is unwilling to indulge in a homosexual lifestyle could fall under its punitive remit, including Courage International. It also makes no distinction for the age or volition of the person who would seek out "therapy". It is quite clearly an abuse of a legal instrument of State to enforce an ideology - the ideology that abstinence from homosexual activity can not (and should not) be supported. You'd have to wonder what they find so objectionable - perhaps even threatening - in a grown adult voluntarily seeking support in leading a chaste life if that is what they choose to do.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 9, 2019 19:11:12 GMT
This has developed out of an older heterosexual attitude; the idea that chastity is always and everywhere harmful and that holding it up as an ideal is impossible, cruel, manipulative and hypocritical is to be found in quite a few celebrated C20 Irish writers. The idea that it should be outlawed as medical malpractice is, however, a new development associated with the normalisation of same-sex relations (precisely because of some very problematic attempts to medicalise/pathologise homosexuality). My understanding (based on bits and pieces I've seen; I have no actual experience) is that Courage are not practitioners of "gay conversion" therapy in the sense followed by many evangelicals and some old-style Freudians; they don't believe sexual orientation can be changed, but that it varies in degree and there is an element of choice involved. The rationale for a ban is that there is a clear divide between sexual orientations, so that such therapy must necessarily be futile and represent false consciousness rather than genuine choice. How this is supposed to be compatible with the current blather about "genderqueer" and "gender fluidity" heaven only knows.
EDIT - I mistakenly wrote "heterosexuality" for "homosexuality" - this has now been corrected.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 5, 2019 22:40:20 GMT
The current CATHOLIC HERALD has a review of a biography of the mid-C20 social campaigner and censorship advocate Fr Richard Devane SJ, and concludes by noting, as an example of how much Ireland has changed since Fr Devane's day, that the scriptwriter Alison Bea has circulated on social media a picture of the Virgin Mary with the superimposed face of Maura Higgins, the Irish contestant on the reality show LOVE ISLAND who made herself famous by highlighting her aggressive promiscuity. The combination of malevolence and ignorance this involves would be hard to beat. catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/how-ireland-became-a-suburb-of-hollywood/
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 23, 2019 0:51:41 GMT
Mary McAleese's recent antics (including accusing Pope John Paul II of supporting marital rape on the basis of an out-of-context quotation which I suspect she has picked up from a secondary source without checking it,and describing the IRISH CATHOLIC as "a fetid sewer of fake news" for pointing out the misunderstanding) have attracted attention, but the canon lawyer Ed Peters points out some of the more disturbing implications of her agenda, including a naive belief that the juridical aspect of church law can be separated from the sacramental aspect and suppressed without the latter being affected, and a desire for canon law to be routinely subordinated or suppressed by state law - which has serious implications for religious liberty amongst other things. Given that a good deal of her agenda was already visible when she was admitted to the Gregorian (though not the depths to which she has sunk - by her endorsement of legalised abortion, for example) why was she allowed to study canon law at a pontifical institution when it was clear that she would use her qualification to attack the Church? It's as if Thomas Cromwell had been sent to Rome with a letter of introduction from Henry VIII saying that he wished to study canon law so as to be more effective in suppressing the monasteries. canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/21/some-correctives-to-mary-mcaleeses-trinity-college-remarks/
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 2, 2020 20:31:07 GMT
A week or so ago I was visiting the Cleraun house of Opus Dei (I'd never been there before) and as I walked in the gate some smart aleck who was driving past in a car yelled "Papist" at me. What a striking example of how many of our secularist hipsters are turning into Orangemen without realising it (apologies to Orangemen).
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 25, 2020 21:33:38 GMT
I recently paid a brief visit to the Museum of Irish Literature at Newman House, and noted a poster advertising (if I recall correctly) some bursaries for young writers. The bursaries are named after Edna O'Brien, and the most prominent feature of the poster is a cartoon of Ms O'Brien in a blue mantle, apparently intended to make her resemble the Virgin Mary. Newman's grave must be unquiet indeed.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 30, 2020 21:42:06 GMT
The "comedian" Alison Spittle apparently improved the shining hour for her followers on Instagram yesterday by staging a "fake Mass" complete with "your favourite Mass songs" and potato crisps instead of Hosts. The Saturday magazine of the IRISH TIMES was promoting this on a list of the Coolest Things to Watch in Quarantine, or some such. (1) This is another nice example of the widespread contempt and outright hatred for the Faith that permeates Irish youth culture (and not only youth culture) whose existence our shepherds fail to acknowledge (because they have lost so much confidence). (2) This was a couple of weeks early - the Spittle in Our Lord's Face was on the night of Holy Thursday and Good Friday. (3) Lest anyone feels superior, remember that our own sins are also spittle in the face of Jesus - and Ms Spittle may be so deluded that she doesn't recognise what she is doing, whereas we should know better. Consider too the Love Jesus showed in dying for us, and for Ms Spittle and her fans, and how we ought to try to repay the unrepayable by loving and caring for others.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 30, 2020 22:13:58 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 7, 2020 0:10:57 GMT
I don't think this CRISIS article about Graham Greene's THE POWER AND THE GLORY is really applicable to the coronavirus crisis with which the author equates it, but it's useful to recall in this thread the other leading character in the novel, who is not mentioned in the article but comes up in the combox discussion. This is the lieutenant who is charged with hunting down the priest; unlike the priest, he is personally a sincere and in many respects virtuous man, who is so marked by bad experiences with the church, and by knowledge of its genuine vices, that he fails to recognise that he is engaging in monstrous acts which he sees as necessary to save the people from those who are making them delusional. This sounds painfully like some present critics of the Church, and we ought to examine our consciences when speaking harshly about them as persons, as distinct from their words and actions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_and_the_Glorywww.crisismagazine.com/2020/lessons-from-a-whisky-priest
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 11, 2020 0:01:14 GMT
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