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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Feb 2, 2010 12:38:17 GMT
If I am not mistaken, Tim Pat Coogan has disavowed Catholicism.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 2, 2010 15:17:04 GMT
I certainly get that impression - one thing that surprised me about MEMOIR was the extent to which he had done so from fairly early on. IRELAND SINCE THE RISING which came out in 1966 certainly gave the impression of being by a liberal Catholic, but after reading MEMOIR I suspect this was protective colouring. His recent books (MEMOIR and WHEREVER GREEN IS WORN) have a rather prurient obsession with what he calls the natural sexual virility of the Celtic race.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 2, 2010 15:18:17 GMT
BTW Pat Buckley announced in the SUNDAY TRIBUNE that he is entering a "civil partnership" with his boyfriend and that he would be the first priest to do so while remaining active in the Church. Of course he isn't active in the Church - he's excommunicated.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Feb 5, 2010 21:57:19 GMT
BTW Pat Buckley announced in the SUNDAY TRIBUNE that he is entering a "civil partnership" with his boyfriend and that he would be the first priest to do so while remaining active in the Church. Of course he isn't active in the Church - he's excommunicated. Buckley is what Lenin used to call a "useful tool", though in Buckley's case the adjective is redundant.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 9, 2010 12:04:58 GMT
The question is - for whom is he useful? Certainly he is useful for people like Liam Fay (now a SUNDAY TIMES columnist) who included a profile of him in his book BEYOND BELIEF, which profiles various nutcases with the aim of presenting all religious belief as insanity.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Feb 9, 2010 12:14:56 GMT
I glanced through Fay's book once - he profiles sedevacantist Michael Cox, for example. The only thing Fay proves in that portrait is that he doesn't know what he's on about. Another candidate described in the work is the manic Irish dancer who was formerly a priest of an English diocese (Southwark, I think), Niall Horan. God, I don't know how he got ordained.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 9, 2010 12:35:12 GMT
It's not just that he doesn't know, he doesn't care. He has a profile of a schizophrenic who protested in O'Connell Street and he goes on to say that in previous days she might have been a Superior in a religious order. I can think of some forms of insanity (e.g. paranoia) which might be compatible with functioning as a superior in a religious order, but that form of florid schizophrenia is not one of them. Horan so far as I remember that profile was a naive young countryman who got ordained young, sent on the English mission, and went off the rails when he fell in with an apocalyptic fundamentalist Protestant sect called the Christadelphians - their "end of the world is nigh" beliefs have left a permanent mark on him. He actually joined them for a bit - a more interesting question might be why he was allowed to return to ministry when he left them and rejoined the Church. Fay is actually quite good on how Horan's apocalyptic beliefs are driven by a fundamental egotism (which you get in a lot of apocalypticists - they want to be special, not just one of many generations but THE generation) and his profile/interview of Cox actually does pick up some of Cox's odder beliefs. Fay's basic problem is utter smugness.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 19, 2010 12:39:51 GMT
Here's an example of ignorance from a political conservative called Mike Potemra, over at the National Review Online blog THE CORNER. Potemra is referring to a controversy over the fact that an apologetics show on Eternal Word Television Network (Mother Angelica's bunch) had as guest someone who defended the practice of torturing apprehended terrorists or suspected terrrorists by waterboarding. To be fair to Mr. Potemra, he (a) states that he is a fairly liberal episcopalian so he may not fully understand what is at stake in the catholic view of conscience (b) states that he himself disagres with Thiessen's views (in a bit I haven't reproduced, he states straightforwardly that waterboarding is indeed torture) (c) As you will see from the second part of the extract, he is prepared to take a strong pro-life stand on abortion even in circumstances where this is uncomfortable. Nonetheless, the similarities to the liberal types featured in this thread is quite striking. Note particularly the misuse of Newman.
EXTRACT The question has been raised, Was it appropriate for a Catholic TV network to provide a platform for a torture advocate? In my view, the answer is yes. Marc Thiessen, who appeared on Raymond Arroyo’s TV show The World Over, defends the practices of the past decade because he believes that these practices are necessary to defend innocent lives. [THE PROBLEM IS THAT THERE ARE THINGS ONE OUGHT NOT TO DO EVEN TO DEFEND INNOCENT LIVES. IF DEFENCE OF INNOCENT LIFE IS THE SUPREME VALUE, THE MARTYRS SHOULD ALL HAVE APOSTASISED.] Not having followed his work in detail, I have no reason to believe that he is acting in bad faith. [HIS PERSONAL GOOD FAITH IS IRRELEVANT.] He was a government official with some knowledge of the issue. His conscience tells him that there is a moral necessity to disregard the Catholic Catechism in this particular case — and, as Newman reminded us, conscience has sacred claims. [NEWMAN'S DEFINITION OF CONSCIENCE DOES NOT EXTEND TO DISCARDING UNAMBIGUOUS CATHOLIC MORAL TEACHING IN THE NAME OF A HIGHER GOOD. IF YOU DO THAT YOU'RE NO LONGER A CATHOLIC. NEWMAN SPECIFICALLY ARGUES THAT THERE ARE LIMITS ON THE CHURCH'S TEACHING AUTHORITY, NOT THAT THOSE LIMITS CAN BE DISCARDED EVERY TIME THE INDIVIDUAL SEES FIT.] Furthermore, if the polls are to be trusted, he speaks not only for the majority of Americans but for the majority of American Catholics. [BUT DOES HE SPEAK FOR GOD? IF HE IS DEFENDING INTRINSIC EVIL, MAJORITIES ARE IRRELEVANT] His is, therefore, a view that it would be unwise to omit from the discussion. The fault was not in giving Marc a platform; the fault, if any, was in not having a guest who defended the official teaching, and thus perhaps leaving a misimpression of what the official teaching is [WHICH IS EXACTLY THE SORT OF TACTIC SECULAR/LIBERAL MEDIA RESORT TO WHEN THEY ARE SOFTENING UP THEIR AUDIENCE. I'M AFRAID THAT IN THIS INSTANCE EWTN SEEM TO HAVE BEEN ACTING LIKE POLITICAL RATHER THAN RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES]...
I recently found myself in a position that makes me realize what it must be like to be Marc Thiessen, even as I took a point of view quite distant from his. I was at a meeting at a liberal Catholic parish here in New York, the purpose of which was to discuss how to stop U.S.-sponsored torture. People were angrily declaiming, How is it possible that the U.S. could permit such a heinous practice? To which I responded, basically, with the following explanation: It is a negative consequence of something that is actually very positive about our country. More than any other country, we believe that there is no limit to what we can achieve, no problem that can’t be solved, no obstacle that can’t be overcome. This is the attitude that has made us great, but it also exposes us to the risk that we can come to believe that there are no real moral limits that conflict with our desires. When we find that an unborn child is inconvenient, for example, we redefine it as not having ‘personhood,’ and kill it — problem solved! Similarly, now, when he have a real (or just suspected) jihadist in our custody, we say, he should be understood not chiefly as a rights-bearing person with human dignity that should be respected, but rather as a box containing secrets that we can rip apart at will — and now our country is safe! We figure out what we want to do, then we set talented lawyers the task of defining our new limits in accord with our desires. Harry Blackmun spent many months researching the law, consulting medical professionals and concerned citizens, before writing the legal memo “drawing the lines” on abortion – a memo we now call Roe v. Wade. The legal justifications for torture, and the widespread public support for it, materialized in a similar way. [THIS IS ACTUALLY AN EXTREMELY GOOD POINT, AND IT'S A PITY IT SHOULD APPEAR IN THIS CONTEXT. THE 'BOX' IMAGE SUMS UP THE LIMITATIONS OF THE LEGALIST/UTILITARIAN WORLDVIEW MARVELLOUSLY.]
Now, there were perhaps, in that room, some people who were not offended by what I said; there may even have been some who were in agreement. But the only audible and visible response was negative — eye-rolling, dark mutterings, and dirty looks, as if to say: Here we are, trying to have a serious moral discussion about torture, and this right-wing nut has to bring abortion into it. I’m not so naïve as to have thought there would be no pro-choicers there — but I think I know now what it feels like to have someone read you out of a moral community, even when you’re acting in good faith. [NICE AND RATHER SAD POINT. I TEND TO RESPECT LIBERALS WHO ARE PRO-LIFE A LOT BECAUSE IT'S SO 'UNCOOL' FOR THEM TO EXPRESS SUCH VIEWS IN THEIR SOCIAL/POLITICAL CIRCLES.]
So yes, it’s important to hear Marc Thiessen’s view, expressed as well as he can express it. [SOUNDS MORE LIKE JOHN STUART MILL'S LIBERTY PRINCIPLE THAN ANY SORT OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY HERE.] Only by understanding it can we start to move toward what I hope will be a happier chapter in our nation’s history. EXTRACT ENDS
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 30, 2010 11:24:35 GMT
Today (Tuesday March 30) the IRISH TIMES has a piece by Dr. Eamon Maher of Dublin Institute of Technology (who writes a lot about John McGahern) on the French priest-novelist Joseph Lemarchand (who wrote as "Jean Sulivan") who might very loosely be described as an existentialist.
Dr. Maher holds up Sulivan as a suitable inspiration for contemporary Catholicism in our, and praises the following quotation "Can you imagine Jesus, like our shrewd modern bishops, trying to use democracy to impose Christian laws regarding divorce and abortion on non-Christians? As if Christian morality doesn't have to come to birth freely in each individual conscience!"
Now this quotation does indeed reflect a certain type of contemporary Christianity, but this is not as inspiring as Maher makes out. What Sulivan is putting forward is a sort of subjectivist antinomianism, in which Jesus' authority is confined to the subjective realm and He is excluded from the social-material world, which is seen as entirely alien to Him - a sort of anti-incarnationalist gnosticism.
To be fair to Sulivan, he is reacting against an opposite fault to which "conservative/integralist" Catholics, especially in France, have been prone (Fr. Denis Fahey was an Irish example of this mindset) - the belief that if only we have a Catholic state, a Catholic ruler, Catholic laws, an established Catholic church with state provision for the clergy, public Catholic ceremonies, Catholic industrial schools run by religious orders, whose members may all be assumed to be turned into angels by their vows and to act in a spirit of perfect and selfless Christian charity, a Catholic education system with the public expression of other beliefs marginalised or suppressed, then everything will be perfect and we will have Heaven on earth, and anyone who objcts to this political programme or criticises it working in practice may be assumed to be an agent of the Devil - whereas Heaven is not located on earth and attempts to turn earth into Heaven run the risk of producing something like Hell. The Sulivan/Maher view equates any sort of Catholic social action with this form of idolatry.
The trouble is that Jesus does tell us to act on the world around us, like the leaven in the loaf. The Maher/Sulivan view treats as self-evident and outside the sphere of Christianity many forms of embodied moral insight which in fact derive from Christianity and cannot permanently survive without it (Peter Hitchens' recent book THE RAGE AGAINST GOD makes many shrewd comments on this point) ; at the same time the Maher/Sulivan view treats as mere positivist expression of church law (on the same level as fasting regulations or clerical celibacy) such points as the wrongness of divorce and abortion which are in fact expressions of natural law and which when abandoned take vast areas of social morality along with them. From the moment of conception there is a human being entitled to protection; abandon that principle and you undermine the value of human life as a whole. When a man and woman marry - or even when they have sexual relations - they incur obligations towards one another and their children; allowing one party to repudiate those obligations at will cuts at the whole fabric of society and betrays vulnerable individuals. "Can you imagine Jesus, like our shrewd modern bishops, trying to use democracy to impose Christian laws regarding divorce and abortion on non-Christians? As if Christian morality doesn't have to come to birth freely in each individual conscience!"
Substitute for "divorce and abortion" such terms as "racial discrimination" "slavery" "cruelty to animals" "gladiatorial contests between consenting adults" "domestic violence" "employment" etc and its fallacy becomes apparent. In many instances some people who helped to redress these wrongs were Christians motivated by Christian belief (the fact that other Christians actually supported these evils, and that some who opposed them had faults and hypocrisies of their own, does not alter that).
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 12, 2010 21:55:36 GMT
Fr. Joe McVeigh has a letter in the IRISH CATHOLIC this week (8 April) declaring that Pope and Bishops have nothing to offer the Church and are impositions upon it, and that it must be re-created by small groups of the faithful a la liberation theology. If Fr. McVeigh has really thought through the implications of this view and still endorses it, his proper place is in the Non-subscribing Presbyterian church and he should betake himself there without further delay.
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Post by hibernicus on May 5, 2010 14:06:50 GMT
Splintered Sunrise reprints an early 1980s article by Balthasar about how Fr. Hans Kung brought his supension on himself. splinteredsunrise.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/it-is-amazing-that-the-roman-and-german-authorities-have-had-that-much-patience-with-him/#commentsThe comments are also interesting. Here are a couple from the blog host himself (a former Jesuit, apparently): ◦splinteredsunrise said, April 24, 2010 at 7:50 pm I think the point is - and the old boy has never accepted this - that if you're going to be a professor of Catholic theology, it helps if you're teaching something that vaguely resembles Catholic theology. It's not an ideal position for someone who, going by his books, is barely even a Christian. ¡ösplinteredsunrise said, April 24, 2010 at 9:40 pm It is possible to argue, however, that somebody who actually denies the divinity of Christ is not merely interpreting Catholic theology in an undogmatic manner, any more than Ayn Rand was an undogmatic Marxist.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on May 11, 2010 11:20:17 GMT
Fr. Joe McVeigh has a leter in the IRISH CATHOLIC this week (8 April) declarign that Pope and Bishops have nothign to offer the Church and are impositions upon it, and that it must be re-created by small groups of the faithful a la liberation theology. If Fr. McVeigh has really thought through the implications of this view and still endorses it, his proper place is in the Non-subscribing Presbyterian church and he should betake himself there without further delay. And if he does so, there will be no bar against him running for election as Rev Joe McVeigh.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on May 11, 2010 11:29:45 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 11, 2010 12:49:27 GMT
Very interesting - he is denying the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. He claims the episcopate and the hierarchical structure of the church only emerged in the second century. How remiss of Our Lord to make distinctions between the twelve apostles, the seventy-two disciples, and the rest of his followers. He also seems to deny the concept of a teaching authority when he says that only 3% of the church are ordained and the other 97% are lay, it is the view of the majority which counts. I'd like to suggest applying this principle to our educational system to show its absurdity, except that that is already being attempted, so I will just ask what the medical system would be like if it was based on the idea that doctors' training and experience does not confer any sort of advantage on them in deciding the best course of action.
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Post by hibernicus on May 12, 2010 12:22:31 GMT
The Irish Times today publishes an article by a Scottish theologian called James Mackey who claims that the concept of Jesus' death as atonement for our sins, of priesthood as sharing in Jesus' sacrifice, and of eternal punishment are responsible for abuse by making punishment appear a form of kindness, and that these concepts must be eradicated from the church. He denies that Jesus was a priest and claims He was simply a prophet who was crucified for standing against a high priest, and attributes the concept of His priesthood to the third century. How odd then that it is in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is certainly first-century whether or not St Paul wrote it: Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people. This consideration of course does not have any weight with Dr. Mackey, since he is prepared to denounce scripture when he disagrees with it. For example, he denounces the doctrine of eternal punishment as taught in the account of the Last Judgement in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and in so doing he glosses over the question of WHY those who were condemned are condemned: "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew 25:44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?' (NASB ©1995) Wasn't this real evil? Shold it not be warned against and punished, and are not the unjust reaping their own reward and have they not made themselves what they are? One of the most heinous aspects of the abuse cover-up was the desire of those in authority to show leniency to the perpetrators even at the expense of future victims. Surely that was wrong? Surely there is a distinction between mere vengefulness and punishment rightly incurred for evil against others? Is it not the case that one of the constant themes of the victims has been a demand that society collectively acknowledge what was done to them and punish the abusers and enablers to affirm that what they did was wrong? Here is the full Mackey text - judge it for yourself. www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0512/1224270207377.htmlThis I might add indicates one of the problems faced in the work of catholic restoration. Many liberals are equating the very concept of eucharistic sacrifice and a "high" doctrine of the priesthood and the Mass with abuse, and are claiming that abuse will only be ended when they are eradicated as well.
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