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Post by hibernicus on Jan 27, 2012 0:26:05 GMT
IN the IRISH CATHOLIC of 26 January 2011, Peter Costello favourably reviews a book entitled CAN I STAY IN THE CHURCH? by Brian Lennon SJ, who appears from the review to regard the election of the present Pope as a catastrophe on a par with the sex abuse scandal, and to believe that we can dispense with every detail of the visible Church so long as we retain "the personal encounter with God", however defined. Mr Costello declares: "Fr Lennon concludes with a call for a new Ecumenical Council. Let us hope that it is not to be Vatican III, but Buenos Aires or Manila I. Councils were never held in Rome until the mid-19th century when the modern model of the pontifical rule became established, thanks to the invention of the steam-engine and the electric telegraph..." I am sorry to have to correct such a distinguished scholar as Mr Costello, but he should check his facts. The first VATICAN council may not have taken place until 1870, but five previous General Councils (out of a total of 23 including the two Vatican Councils) were held in Rome at the Lateran Basilica, in 1123, 1139, 1179, 1215 and 1512-14. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_the_Lateranen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Council_of_the_Lateranen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Council_of_the_Lateranen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Council_of_the_Lateranen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Council_of_the_Lateran
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 7, 2012 21:49:38 GMT
The IRISH CATHOLIC of last week (3 February) published a remarkable letter on the new Mass translation by a certain S. Flanagan of Carrickmore, Co. Tyrone. He claims that the wording of the original Mass translation "for all men" was brought in by Vatican II as part of an initiative to improve relations with Jews, women and non-catholics generally, that "the bishop of Krakow - a future Pope" opposed and voted against said initiative at the Council, and he then asks whose salvation is being withdrawn now that the translation has been changed to "many" - in other words, Mr Flanagan is claiming that "for many" implies the Feeneyite version of exclusive salvation, that only members of the visible Church will be saved. Leaving out the egregious slander of Pope John PAul II (who notoriously did more than any Pope for centuries to improve relations between Catholics and Jews) as a Feeneyite, Mr Flanagan's claim that Vatican II mandated "for all" runs smack into the following facts: (1) The approved Latin text of the NO/OF says "pro multis" not "pro omnibus" (2) Most translations use the equivalent of "many", the English being exceptional in its inaccuracy. (3) The reason "for many" is used in the consecration ritual is that the Gospel according to Matthew records Our Lord as saying "for many" at the Last Supper. Note at the link below that ALL the parallel Bible translations give "many". bible.cc/matthew/26-28.htm Mr Flanagan also claims that "of one substance" does not mean "identical" and thus contradicts the doctrine of the Trinity. This would come as news to the Fathers of the Council of Nicea, who unlike Mr Flanagan had studied philosophy and spoke Greek. Legitimate debate is one thing, gross and slanderous ignorance is another. Mr Flangan's letter, instead of being published, should have been filed in the wastepaper basket specially reserved for the green ink brigade.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 8, 2012 21:22:44 GMT
Here is another example of mindlessness slander and bigotry from a commenter on the ACPI blog, with a dose of Pollyannish optimism added in - the possibility that there might be anything wrong with the IRISH TIMES view of the world is dismissed out of hand, while the Vatican authorities are compared to the Mafia. I have noticed the line about the implementation of Vatican II being hijacked by a "Roman Control Group" popping up on the IRISH TIMES and IRISH CATHOLIC letters pages recently. The idea is of course to demonise the PApacy and the Roman authorities, to suggest that their decisions are only motivated by power-lust and nothing else, and to suggest subtly or not so subtly that the Irish Church should shake off Rome (and the Irish hierarchy if the latter are not prepared to desert the "Roman Control Group") and set itself up as an independent congregationalist organisation devoted to contemplating its own navel (and points south) and parroting whatever it is told by the Donnybrook Curia and the Tara Street Magisterium. The interpretation of Vatican II on offer here is equally delusional. General Councils are supposed to proceed by consensus, with all sides having input into the final documents; but according to Mr Mulvaney the conservative faction in Vatican II were not really part of the Council at all and anything in the documents, or later Vatican decisions, ascribable to their influence can be dismissed as "opposed to Vatican II". His claim that the "Roman Control Group" have always been opposed to Vatican II will similarly come as news to Shane (who has stated on this board that he finds it hard to forgive Pope Benedict for the "harm" he did as a peritus at Vatican II), not to mention those radtrads who in CHRISTIAN ORDER and elsewhere never cease to harangue us about "The Heresies of Joseph Ratzinger". MAybe someone should introduce Mr Mulvaney to E. Michael Jones... www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2012/02/report-on-clogher-acp-meeting-january-25th-clones/#comments[This is the second reader comment on the thread - HIB] Joseph Mulvaney February 7th, 2012 at 4:34 pm I disagree with the analysis of John Waters as reported from your Clones meeting. I think it is unduly paranoid and pessimistic. It is true that there are “wars and rumours of wars” out there but it is not a bad evil world. [WHO SAID IT WAS? WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS THAT EVIL DOES NOT EXIST, WITH CERTAIN EXCEPTIONS NOTED BELOW.] God is at the heart of this marvellous universe and SHE/HE [HOW ABOUT "IT" IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE ALL INCLUSIVE] invites us all to play our part in the work of creation and salvation[FOR EXAMPLE, BY UPHOLDING THE TRUTH AND OPPOSING PROPAGATORS OF FALSE DOCTRINE]. The mafia may regard all media as hostile and inimical to its omerta code.[EQUATES THE VATICAN WITH THE MAFIA - NICE TOUCH OF ANTI-ITALIAN PREJUDICE] However, we Irish Catholics, [WHAT DO YOU MEAN "WE"?] are comfortable with an open, democratic Republic [SO BY IMPLICATION PEOPLE WHO DON'T AGREE WITH YOU ARE NOT?] and are happy to speak/listen/dialogue in a robust fashion [BY WHICH YOU MEAN YOU WILL NOT LISTEN TO ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU] on our way to freedom in the Truth. If it were not for the media and persons such as Mary Raftery-R.I.P., Marie Collins would not be addressing that hopeful conference in Rome today. [TRUE, ALAS, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD AGREE WITH MARY RAFTERY'S WHOLE AGENDA OR IGNORE THE FACT THAT SHE DID HAVE AN AGENDA WHICH HAD BAD AS WELL AS GOOD ASPECTS] John Waters appears to be echoing the official line of the Roman Control Group for the past 30 years – scolding/scalding about an evil, secular, modern world. I think they are excessively pessimistic and are setting up false boogeymen to knock down. [SO NO PROBLEMS, THEN, MOVE ALONG. BUT WHAT IS THIS STUFF ABOUT "THE ROMAN CONTROL GROUP" AND "THE MAFIA" IF NOT TREATING YOUR OPPONENTS AS BOOGEYMEN UNWORTHY OF SERIOUS ATTENTION/] It all seems so different from the era of Blessed John23rd and Vatican 2. He encouraged us to be incarnate in the real world [WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER UNREAL?]. He encouraged us to open the windows, breathe bracing fresh air and proceed to update or to put in modern language/concepts/systems/structures [SUCH AS?] the basic Good News of the Risen Christ which we all cherish. Vatican 2 was a great project – one hundred years late !![I.E. WE CAN DISMISS EVERYTHING THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE 100 YEARS BEFORE VATICAN II -WHICH IS VERY CONVENIENT IF YOU WANT TO PLAY POLLYANNA AND SAY THE WORLD IS PERFECT]. It needed to be promulgated, absorbed and developed. That might have made the Good News accessible and understandable and available to our fellow adult Catholics (most of whom have walked away) and to our children over the past 50 years. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Vatican2 was almost strangled at birth and hidden in the vaults by the Control Group who were part of the minority vote on all the documents[VERY FEW BISHOPS ACTUALLY VOTED AGAINST THE DOCUMENTS]. It needs to be rescued as a matter of urgency and this Word of the Church shared with all God’s People as we prepare in open parish assemblies and national assemblies for Vatican3 or Dublin1 in 2020 !!!. IN OTHER WORDS HE WANTS A NEW GENERAL COUNCIL TO WHICH HE CAN APPEAL WITH CONFIDENCE SINCE IT EXISTS ONLY IN HIS INFLAMED IMAGINATION, OR A NATIONAL SYNOD OF THE IRISH CHURCH WITHOUT REFERENCE TO ROME I am deeply grateful to The Association of Catholic Priests for starting the music on this wonderful project and for lighting a candle in the darkness. An intelligent Catholic and an articulate media person such as John Waters will have much to contribute to the Vatican 3 project IF AND ONLY IF HE AGREES WITH MR MULVANEY, SEZ MULVANEY. Peace be with you—and also with YOU. !!! END Here's another of those pessimistic purveyors of boogeymen MR Mulvaney so dislikes. Must be one of that "Roman Control Group": Jesus said to them: "Watch out that no one deceives you.Many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and will deceive many.When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them... Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation' standing where it does not belong--let the reader understand--then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains... False Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect--if that were possible.
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Post by hibernicus on May 5, 2012 12:49:36 GMT
This article on the decline of the liberal-arts model of higher education from the American leftie magazine THE NATION has a blunder so astonishing it just has to be shared. Of course, in addition to presenting Cardinal Newman as an American the commentator does not mention that NEwman was a Cardinal, or had any religious affiliation at all, let alone exploring the possibility that his emphasis on liberal education has anything to do with a religious worldview: www.thenation.com/article/167679/democracy-and-education-andrew-delbanco?page=fullEXTRACT Delbanco’s evocation of these nineteenth-century precedents is of central importance, for they allow him to demonstrate that liberal education, far from being an elite indulgence, is inseparable from our nation’s most cherished and deeply rooted democratic precepts. In the face of today’s hyper-accelerated, ultra-competitive global society, the preservation of opportunities for self-development and autonomous reflection is a value we underestimate at our peril. As Delbanco, invoking the nineteenth-century American [!!!!!!!] educator John Henry Newman, explains: “In today’s America, at every kind of institution…this kind of education is at risk. Students are pressured and programmed, trained to live from task to task, relentlessly rehearsed and tested until winners are culled from the rest. They scarcely have time for what Newman calls contemplation, and too many colleges do too little to save them from the debilitating frenzy that makes liberal education marginal or merely ornamental.”.. END OF EXTRACT
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Post by hibernicus on May 23, 2012 18:20:19 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 7, 2012 23:41:11 GMT
A recent IRISH TIMES opinion poll has found that over two-thirds of Irish Catholics surveyed believe that the Eucharist merely "symbolises the Body and Blood of Christ" - the Zwinglian view - rather than in transubstantiation, which the IRISH TIMES defines as that it "contains the Body and Blood of Christ". (In fact, as Kieron Wood points out in the letters column, this is the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation - transubstantiation means that the Elements simply ARE the Body and Blood of Jesus.) Could there be any connection between this finding and the fact that for at least two decades the official school catechetics programme has been describing the elements to young children as "blessed bread" on the grounds that they are not mature enough to understand the concept of transubstantiation? Just asking.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 7, 2012 23:57:54 GMT
www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2012/06/some-comments-on-the-irish-times-series-catholicism-now/#commentsPatsy McGarry breaks cover on the ACPI website to reply to a commenter who complained that he takes little interest in theology. Touchy, aren't we? EXTRACT Bro Jude June 6th, 2012 at 7:39 pm Thank you Padraig for the above. In recent years The Irish Times religious affairs reporting tends to stay at the level of reporting sociological data. Under its current reporter, it lacks depth or any critical faculty. There is what one can call ‘a mental or academic laziness’, coupled with poor journalistic standards. When one compares it with the standard of reporting from the economics reporters, it (religious affairs) is quite inferior and shoddy. Perhaps the current religious affairs reporter is just jaded or genuinely disinterested. One recalls the greats – Sean MacReamon, Louis McRedmond, Kevin O’Kelly and John Horgan. The current religious affairs reporter would do well to visit the Irish Times Library and,as the Leaving Certificate students today will be requested, to ‘compare and contrast’. There is room for a vast improvement. Patsy McGarry June 7th, 2012 at 12:55 pm I would remind Bro Jude that while those great predecessors of mine exercised their “mental and academic” faculties to his satisfaction children were being sexually, physically and emotionally abused in orphanages, industrial schools, reformatories and parishes across this island. I would have thought the exposure and reporting of such “sociological data”, with the object of bringing such abuse of the innocent to an end, was a far more worthwhile and Christian exercise than engaging with indulgent and arcane argument over matters of high theology which impinge on so few lives and all while preventable suffering was taking place. Then there have always been those churchmen who have preferred the academy to the grubbiness of the street where most humanity abides. It is one reason why our Irish Catholic church is in the sad state it is today. Such churchmen might reflect that Jesus spent little, if any, time in libraries. He would also appear to have had little time for those who may have, those such as ocupied positions of religious leadership in his day. He preferred the company of such unworthy ones as the woman at the well. Personally speaking, I would prefer her – and his – company too. Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times END OF EXTRACT Let's break down his post a little. What he's saying is (a) the abuse scandal means that nothing the Church says can or ever should be taken seriously, and any of his predecessors who thought differently were either mistaken or complicit in crime (b) theology is an entirely vacuous mode of thought which possesses no value whatsoever (an interesting attitude for a religious correspondent; it's like having a legal correspondent who is an anarchist and thinks all lawyers are simply sharks and all legal proceedings are con-jobs) (c) Patsy McGarry has a direct line to Jesus which means he doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Anti-intellectualism is one of our chronic Irish diseases, and Patsy McGarry appears to have it in spades. Also, although he has declared himself to be an agnostic and claims this makes him impartial in reporting religious affairs, we find him referring to "our Catholic Church". Apparently we are still obliged to defer to him while he disowns communion with us. This belligerence is remarkably like John Cooney. What high-quality religious correspondents we have on our major national newspapers...
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 8, 2012 11:17:32 GMT
I wouldn't agree that the four journos Bro Jude selects are greats, but Patsy McGarry's response is, touchy. If the scandal of paedophilia is, we hope, eliminated, how much will Patsy McGarry have contributed to its erradication? Difficult to evaluate, but I doubt it would amount to much. He was not a trail blazer on this issue - he fell in with a band wagon which was agreeable to him; and he has had little or nothing to say about the problem in wider society. In addition, he is making a virtue out of knowing little or nothing about what he is supposed to report upon.
We could satirise him at every turn and see how he reacts, maybe with a 'Patsy says' blog engaged in fisking his pieces in the IT or something similar.
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uriah
New Member
Posts: 25
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Post by uriah on Jun 8, 2012 17:34:02 GMT
A recent IRISH TIMES opinion poll has found that over two-thirds of Irish Catholics surveyed believe that the Eucharist merely "symbolises the Body and Blood of Christ" - the Zwinglian view - rather than in transubstantiation, which the IRISH TIMES defines as that it "contains the Body and Blood of Christ". (In fact, as Kieron Wood points out in the letters column, this is the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation - transubstantiation means that the Elements simply ARE the Body and Blood of Jesus.) Could there be any connection between this finding and the fact that for at least two decades the official school catechetics programme has been describing the elements to young children as "blessed bread" on the grounds that they are not mature enough to understand the concept of transubstantiation? Just asking. I thought the finding that 8% of those identifying as Catholics didn't believe in God was somewhat startling. Around 10% did not believe that Christ was divine. Religious eduction in schools is failing.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 8, 2012 20:47:53 GMT
Re; the Catholic atheists and unitarians Part of this, I think, is "cultural Catholicism" - people still identifying as Catholic because that is what their parents were, just as many people of no particular religious belief in England will call themselves "Church of England" as their default position. What is lacking is evangelisation which might draw on that residual identification and deepen it.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 8, 2012 20:59:53 GMT
Brother Jude does have a point (and given the general stance of those four journalists, he is presumably arguing from a "liberal Catholic" perspective). As John Waters points out in LAPSED AGNOSTIC, religious coverage in our mainstream media implicitly assumes an underlying narrative, whereby once we were naive believers and now we are inevitably becoming enlightened unbelievers, and opinion polls and similar data are used to support this narrative without ever raising the question of whether this is the whole story, whether secularisation is a good thing, and whether something is being lost in the process. "Objective" data is being used as a substitute for argument, and what we see in Patsy McGarry's post is a militant refusal to think. The tragedy is that, so far as a lot of people are concerned, this refusal has had its desired effect (with a little help from the bishops, priests and superiors mentioned in the Ryan, Dublin, Ferns and Cloyne Reports). I often cite the story of how the famous nineteenth-century art critic John Ruskin realised at a certain point in his life that his cultural beliefs logically implied that he should become a Catholic, but he found he could no more seriously consider this than he could become a Tibetan Buddhist, because Catholicism just seemed so alien. This is the attitude of an increasing proportion of our ex-Catholic people; it is not just that they do not believe in the Faith, they cannot understand how anyone could believe it. A contrasting example, which I have mentioned elsewhere on the forum, is a nineteenth-century book about Frederic Ozanam by a Protestant. The writer makes it clear that he did not believe in the Real Presence, and seems to regard it with shock and repulsion; but the fact that such an evidently good and wise man as Ozanam held it with the utmost reverence and sincerity led his Protestant biographer to admit that for Ozanam it must evidently have been a means of grace. We need to bear that sort of witness.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 22, 2012 19:28:51 GMT
HEre's an interesting American comment on a new theological-liberal debating point: that we're really all "cafeteria catholics" because nobody can really understand all the riches of Catholicism. The central point which is being obfuscated is that what makes a cafeteria Catholic is not choice but REJECTION - deliberate denial of Catholic doctrine when it doesn't suit you. Keep an eye out for this debating-point to pop up among Irish liberal-catholic types; it usually takes a couple of weeks/months before they start parroting the American slogans. actsoftheapostasy.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/no-lets-not-all-admit-were-cafeteria-catholics/#more-8192EXTRACT Dale Price PERMALINK June 15, 2012 11:22 am Well said. The problem with Cafeteria Catholics is that they are quite, quite proud indeed of what they reject. There’s not much humble struggling over at the Reporter–they know they’re right and the Church is wrong. QED. I have no problem with people who honestly struggle with aspects of Church teaching. It’s the ones who trumpet their righteousness who deserve a metaphorical belt to the chops. END This comment reminds me of a certain poster on the ACP blog who is always saying that she has "outgrown certainty" while at the same time making it clear she is quite certain that catholic orthodoxy is wrong and the liberal agenda is correct.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 22, 2012 20:49:44 GMT
A couple of interesting posts from blogs on the plight of Catholic schools/catechesis. Fr Lucie-Smith notes that the new catechetical methods coincided with a general decline in teaching standards/methods: www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2012/06/22/people-are-walking-away-from-catholicism-because-they-do-not-understand-it/ WHile this American priest, whose piece I got through the link from Fr Lucie-Smith, argues for a parish-based catechesis on the basis that Catholic schools are virtually extinct in all but name: EXTRACT You may have noticed that recently, at Mass, I asked the young people who attend our religious education program to stand up. Of the 250, give or take, who attend the program, I counted about 50 or 60 at all the Masses. Our teachers have done wonderful work. They have made great sacrifices for the sake of the religious education of our children. They have not failed. The 50-year-old system that they inherited has failed. We are using a model that was created before cell phones, soccer practice, twitter, facebook and video games. The model we are using is older than the Beatles. It’s as old as I am. We inherited a system from the good old days of flourishing Catholic schools another failure which was lovingly remembered in the book, “The Last Catholic in America,” a charming reminiscence about Catholicism during the 1950's in which young Eddy Ryan loses his faith. Religious education was called C.C.D. or the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. In this usage it refers to a form of classroom style religious education for children in public schools. It was, at least in my youth, the threadbare cousin of Catholic schools. Catholic schools, by and large, have become failures themselves. There are some splendid Catholic schools, but in my experience of 40 years in ministry, increasingly, especially in large urban areas, Catholic schools have become inexpensive private schools for middle class people who have little or no interest in the Catholic faith, maintained at great expense by Catholic parishes. Catholic schools are, for the most part, over. [AS I REMARKED ELSEWHERE, HOW MANY PARENTS OF CHILDREN AT SAY, CLONGOWES, BLACROCK, MOUNT ANVIL, WOULD REACT POSITIVELY IF THEIR SON/DAUGHTER ANNOUNCED THEY HAD A VOCATION TO THE ORDER RUNNING THE SCHOOL?] We may have a few parish schools still plugging along, but are they Catholic? It seems that all we have left to us is the threadbare cousin. All our resources and energies go to maintaining the private school in the building next to the church. While the world is starving for Christ, we are giving them bingo and bratwurst, raffles and dinner dances, all to keep the school going. “But,” I can hear you say, “this is our major form of evangelism!” Aren’t you paying attention? The few kids from our schools who go to church don’t go because the school has converted them. They go because they have parents dedicated enough to bring them every Sunday, even in summer. Even in soccer season. Those kids may end up Catholic, not because they went to our schools and religious education programs, but because their parents were the first and best of teachers. In a recent conversation with a local pastor who runs a school of 250, give or take, I asked how many of his students and their families attend Mass during the summer months. He said, “about thirty of them.” In order to commit a mortal sin, a sin that severs one’s relationship to God, one must have sufficient knowledge that what they are doing is mortally sinful. Our kids come to Catholic schools and religious education where, presumably, they learn that it is a mortal sin to skip Sunday Mass without a serious reason, such as illness or inability to travel. That means that by allowing children to come to religious education or to enroll in Catholic schools when their parents don’t come to Mass, we are enabling them to commit a mortal sin by giving them the sufficient knowledge to damn their eternal souls.That’s a plan. We have tied our religious education to the public school system of kindergarten and eight grades. The sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation have become graduation rituals, rites of passage, instead of the beginnings of a life of faith and commitment. We have turned sacrament into sacrilege. When you “get your sacraments” you’re “outta” there. (“Out of there” for those who don’t speak Chicagoan.) The Sacraments are an ending instead of a beginning. I can’t do this anymore. I believe it is morally wrong. The last time I brought this problem up, angry parents called the bishop. I remember one agitated parent who railed at me for questioning his Catholicism. He said that he was perfectly good Catholic. He went to Mass every single Easter and every single Christmas without fail. When I realized that Eastern Rite Catholics from the Middle East don’t have Communion and Confirmation classes, a light went on in my head. They receive first Communion and Confirmation when they are Baptized, even if they are infants. They have religious education for the rest of their lives and, consequently, they have a spiritual life. They are prepared for the Sacrament of Penance, but not for Communion and Confirmation. The result is that they have a vibrant spiritual like that they have maintained in the face of 1,300 years of unremitting persecution. In this country, we can’t manage a religious life because we are up against team sports... END OF EXTRACT reverendknow-it-all.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/we-are-starting-over.html
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 17, 2012 22:16:14 GMT
Here is an interesting piece by a British Protestant theologian about liberal Christianity and its weaknesses - he argues that the central feature of liberal Christianity is belief in the primacy of human experience over scriptural knowledge. (Apparently this is more true of Europe - American liberal Christians place more emphasis on social action - but he argues the same principle still applies.) The source of many of the frustrating aspects of the liberal-theologian mindset now becomes clearer. [Note that a distinction should be drawn between the view that human experience is the primary source of doctrine, and the view that human experience must be studied in order to understand doctrine and evangelise others. It is failure to grasp this distinction which underlies SSPX denunciations of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI as subjectivists, IMHO.] shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/defining-liberal-christianity/EXTRACT The greatest, and still defining, figure in the story is Schleiermacher [EARLY C19 GERMAN PROTESTANT THEOLOGIAN] , who attempted to refound theology on a different basis [AFTER KANT'S PHILOSOPHY, WHICH MAINTAINS THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND REALITY IN ITSELF BUT ONLY INSOFAR AS IT IS COMPREHENDED BY THE HUMAN MIND], an appeal to shared human religious experience. All religious traditions, and all systems of theology, were attempts to analyse this shared experience, and to say what must be the case concerning the divine if the experience was in fact accurate. (I am very conscious that recent scholarship on Schleiermacher has resisted this sort of foundationalist reading of his theology; if it is not accurate, then the story I am telling needs slight revision: ‘Schleiermacher was understood, wrongly, to be saying this; those who misapprehended his programme created a vibrant liberal tradition that proceeded on this basis…’) This central methodological place for human experience has remained, in different ways, central to the tradition of liberal theology ever since. If Douthat wants a ‘defining idea of liberal Christianity,’ the idea that attentiveness and fidelity to human religious experience is more determinative than attentiveness and fidelity to Scripture or church tradition would be a much better starting point than the one he offers. So what? Several things: 1. This explains the complexity of liberal Christian ethics much more successfully than Douthat’s definition. Giving priority to personal experience will inevitably lead to the embracing of an ethic that reflects the general ethic of the culture to which (the majority of) the denomination’s members belong. So, liberal Christianity assumed European racial superiority in the nineteenth century; supported imperial warmongering and argued in favour of eugenics in the early decades of the twentieth century (see particularly Anna Poulson’s doctoral research on the Lambeth conferences of 1920 and 1930) [NOTE BTW THAT IT WAS THE 1930 LAMBETH CONFERENCE WHICH APPROVED ARTIFICIAL BIRTH CONTROL]; was unwelcoming to immigrants from the West Indies in the 1950s; turned in favour of the sexual revolution in the 1960s or soon after; became active in arguing for racial equality in the 1980s; embraced environmental concerns in a major way in the 1990s; and so on. This is not to say any of the positions are wrong or right (I have my opinions…), but to point out that the history of liberal Christian ethical reflection, which is a complex mixture of reactionary and progressive positions, can be very plausibly narrated if we assume that a granting of primacy to human experience is somewhere near the intellectual heart of the movement. Oliver O’Donovan ANGLICAN THEOLOGIAN - SON OF THE IRISH WRITER FRANK O'CONNOR, WHOSE REAL NAME WAS MICHAEL O'DONOVAN]comments somewhere (first chapter of A Conversation Waiting to Begin – I don’t have the book with me) to the effect that the tragedy of liberal theology has been that it has discovered no critical purchase on ethical issues that mirrors its critical purchase on doctrinal issues. Quite. 2. This also explains the reason that the, heretofore extremely successful, liberal tradition of Christianity is currently in meltdown. It is not difficult to see that the idea that true notions of the divine can be derived from an examination of universally shared human experience is vulnerable to at least two, apparently devastating, lines of criticism: the claim that human experience is no guide to reality (a claim made classically by Feuerbach [GERMAN ATHEIST PHILOSOPHER OF EARLY C19] in his Essence of Christianity, and forming the basis of neo-orthodox criticisms of liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century); and the claim that there is no universally shared human experience to serve as a basis for the argument. This latter line has become extremely powerful in contemporary theology. The early liberation theologians developed a postcolonial critique of such claims: supposed accounts of ‘normative’ human experience are in fact an attempt to force others to conform their experience to norms created by white male Europeans. The explosion of contextual theologies demonstrated the power of such a criticism in contemporary culture: every proposed account of shared human experience is, on this analysis, a hegemonic attempt to impose a false consciousness on others. So African-American women properly refused to be assimilated to the project of feminist theology, seeing the accounts of human experience offered as too white, and properly refused to be assimilated to Black theology, seeing the accounts of human experience offered as too male. Instead, they constructed their own narration, womanist theology. (The great womanist theologians are poets, not just theologians: Emilie Townes somewhere entitles a chapter ‘To love our necks unloosed and straight’ – why can’t I write like that?!). The effect of all this is to make classical liberalism – ‘we all feel like this, so…’ – culturally incredible. For two centuries, it caught the mood of a culture which believed in metanarratives [I.E. GRAND THEORIES PURPORTING TO EXPLAIN THE WHOLE PROCESS/PROGRESS OF HISTORY - MARXISM WOULD BE AN EXAMPLE, AS WOULD THE "WHIG THEORY OF HISTORY" WHICH SEES THE GROWTH OF LIBERTY AS INEVITABE AND UNSTOPPABLE]; for the last two decades (or more) the culture has been incredulous towards metanarratives, and so has been profoundly unreceptive to classical liberalism. Today, liberalism sounds like cultural imperialism; when it tries not to, it simply sounds incoherent. (The best example is also the obvious and tedious one: White, metropolitan, Western culture regards the acceptance of gay/lesbian relationships to be an ethical imperative; the churches of sub-Saharan Africa (to give only one example) see the matter differently; one may be affirming of gay/lesbian people by dismissing the moral intuition of Black Africans, but not otherwise. To claim that gay people and Nigerian people share moral intuitions, or to claim to be simultaneously attentive to gay people and non-Western people, alike appear simply incredible.) Classical liberalism has failed to cope with recent intellectual and cultural shifts. To the extent to which the culture is now reflexively postmodern [I.E. DISBELIEVES IN TRUTH AS SUCH AND SEES ALL TRUTH-CLAIMS AS SIMPLY GAMES OR POSES]– and my observation is simply that it is – classical liberalism finds itself attempting a self-justification on the basis of attentiveness to contemporary culture, whilst simultaneously being unable to narrate the very visible differing ethical positions of contemporary culture in any convincing way. It appears to be an explanatory scheme that is unable to explain the key data it purports to narrate. It is no surprise that it is failing massively across the world.... END OF EXTRACT
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 7, 2012 21:47:57 GMT
We all live and learn. Until today I never realised that the Carmelites in Clarendon Street Church are Discalced (ODC) - adherents to the reformed Rule associated with SS Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, whereas those in Whitefriar Street are Calced (O.Carm.), followers of the original Rule. I didn't realise either that Bl. Titus Brandsma and Bishop Donal Lamont were Calced rather than Discalced. I should also say that when I used the term "simplex priest" in some former boards on this post, I thought it meant a priest who had been ordained without seminary training. In fact it means a priest who has faculties to say Mass but not to administer the other sacraments. I apologise for any confusion this has caused.
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