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TFP
Feb 26, 2009 17:10:10 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Feb 26, 2009 17:10:10 GMT
I remember a magazine called CLARION that used to appear in the 1980s. It was very anti-communist and I think it was run jointly by some traditionalists and the Moonies, the former being too naive to realise the Moonies' form of anti-communism reflects their own weird theology. Doris Manly published an issue of the BALLINTRILLICK REVIEW pointing out that these dealings wiht the Moonies were a mistake. CLARION used to publish articles promoting TFP so there was some input from them, which suggests they were in Ireland that early. I know one member of the congregation at St. Kevin's 9though I believe he has moved out of Dublin and so attends less frequently) who is in TFP and wears their red lion symbol. Benedictus Books in Cork sells a very attractively-produced anti-abortion booklet by TFP comparing abortion to the ancient worship of Moloch. One or two features of TFP (the nearworship of Plinio and his mother) seem to me oddly reminiscent of Comte's positivist Religion of Humanity. Positivism was very influential in brazil at one time - i wonder if Plinio meant TFP as a Catholic riposte to it.
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TFP
Feb 27, 2009 10:20:33 GMT
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 27, 2009 10:20:33 GMT
Funny you should mention Clarion - I believe I had a talk with the Irish TFP member you are referring to years ago (I won't name him, but is it true to say his father is a long-serving member of Dáil Éireann and his brother is an actor/comedian? This is a very clear hint). Anyway, the TFP man said he thought some of the ideas in Clarion were bordering on fascism. There are Irishmen in TFP, but their influence is limited. However there are a few families who go to the Limerick Mass who are associated with TFP. One sign, whereas in most 'indult' Masses (I know the term is obsolete, but I mean EF Masses which are not SSPX), most of the female congregants dress normally; in Limerick, feminine 'modesty' is more in evidence. This is not exclusively due to a TFP influence, but it is something of a pointer to it. It is not due to preaching on the subject by the Institute of Christ the King.
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TFP
Feb 27, 2009 18:47:21 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Feb 27, 2009 18:47:21 GMT
It is quite possible that Clarion had fascist overtones - the Moonies were closely associated with the dictatorship in South Korea and their anti-communism was [resented in eschatological terms, so they had a tendency to associate themselves with some very unsavoury right-wing forces in order to oppose communism. It's so long since I've seen CLARION that I can't remember what exactly was in it, though I recall Doris Manly pointed out they published a manifesto calling on all beleivers in God to unite against communism while leavign out the last pageof the original document which stated this was to be done under the leadership of Rev Sun Myung Moon. You have correctly identified the TFP member I had in mind; i have spoken to him occasionally but the subject of TFP never came up. He seems a decent person.
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TFP
Feb 27, 2009 23:38:51 GMT
Post by Michael O'Donovan on Feb 27, 2009 23:38:51 GMT
What is TFP? Traditional Family Planning or something more exotic? I believe I had a talk with the Irish TFP member you are referring to years ago (I won't name him, but is it true to say his father is a long-serving member of Dáil Éireann and his brother is an actor/comedian? This is a very clear hint). Yes, clear enough.
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TFP
Mar 1, 2009 18:00:12 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Mar 1, 2009 18:00:12 GMT
TFP is a Brazilian traditionalist group given to ceremonial quasi-mediaeval costumes on big occasions. The initials stand for Tradition, Family, Property. The discussion began on the Killaloe thread in the Motu Proprio from diocese to diocese section, so you may find further illumnination by checking there. I stated this thread to keep that one from being cluttered up.
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TFP
Mar 3, 2009 3:20:56 GMT
Post by Noelfitz on Mar 3, 2009 3:20:56 GMT
I am grateful for the explanation of what TFP means. I did a Google search and found it stood for the Tilted Forum Project – sexuality, philosophy and political discussion as well as Tradition, Family and Property.
It is mentioned that a member of TFP had a father a member of Dail Eireann and his brother was a comedian. Was the father a minister for health or or of Foreign Affairs? If the father was the former did the brother do irreparable damage to the Church, if the latter was a cousin a TV celeb?
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TFP
Mar 3, 2009 12:15:35 GMT
Post by Askel McThurkill on Mar 3, 2009 12:15:35 GMT
I am grateful for the explanation of what TFP means. I did a Google search and found it stood for the Tilted Forum Project – sexuality, philosophy and political discussion as well as Tradition, Family and Property. It is mentioned that a member of TFP had a father a member of Dail Eireann and his brother was a comedian. Was the father a minister for health or or of Foreign Affairs? If the father was the former did the brother do irreparable damage to the Church, if the latter was a cousin a TV celeb? No, I know who they're talking about NoelFitz. The description says 'brother' and not 'cousin' and also 'actor/commedian' and not 'TV celeb' - so it is not the radio/TV presenter. The father is still serving in the Dail.
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TFP
Mar 3, 2009 13:04:06 GMT
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 3, 2009 13:04:06 GMT
It is quite possible that Clarion had fascist overtones - the Moonies were closely associated with the dictatorship in South Korea and their anti-communism was [resented in eschatological terms, so they had a tendency to associate themselves with some very unsavoury right-wing forces in order to oppose communism. It's so long since I've seen CLARION that I can't remember what exactly was in it, though I recall Doris Manly pointed out they published a manifesto calling on all beleivers in God to unite against communism while leavign out the last pageof the original document which stated this was to be done under the leadership of Rev Sun Myung Moon. You have correctly identified the TFP member I had in mind; i have spoken to him occasionally but the subject of TFP never came up. He seems a decent person. The analysis of CLARION does seem to suggest that aspects of the traditional Catholic movement owe much to the apocalyptic nature of evangelical Protestantism. That it borrows anything from the Moonies is bad news. I agree that the TFP member under discussion is a decent person. I cannot say the same of every other TFP member I have met.
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TFP
Mar 6, 2012 22:52:52 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Mar 6, 2012 22:52:52 GMT
Telling It As It Is Ireland blog has a very strong critique of TFP and its front group the Irish Society for Christian Civilisation. I thought it would be a good idea to provide a link in this old thread. tellingitasitisirl.blogspot.com/2012/03/irish-society-for-not-so-christian.html A couple of points come to mind - the idea of celibate knights is very like the old Crusader orders, and I presume the resemblance is not accidental. Is there any connection to Guenonian neo-gnostic "traditionalism" and some of its offshoots which combine Catholic imagery with forms of asceticism owing more to Eastern religions than to Christianity? (The use of "tao" in this context may be a danger sign, though of course the Eastern term can be used to convey an orthodox meaning, as in CS Lewis's use of "Tao" as convenient shorthand for the Natural Law in ABOLITION OF MAN.) I notice one of the Unity Publishing sites accuses TFP's "preferential option for the nobility" as being based on the Hindu caste system. I must say this is news to me. My only knowledge of Plinio's career came from casual browsing in THE MOUTH OF THE LION, the SSPX-sponsored biography of the traditionalist Catholic Brazilian bishop Antonio de Castro Meyer, who was a friend of Plinio. The book states that the Bishop saw Plinio as having originally been an upstanding orthodox Catholic but as he got older having deteriorated into egoism and a personality cult focussed on him and his mother. I assumed that the mediaevalism and exaltation of Counter-Revolution as a religious duty derived from European nineteenth-century integralism a la Joseph de Maistre, which had a considerable influence in Latin America. The take on the blog would seem to suggest that there is a neo-pagan hidden agenda at work. I notice on checking the sources that much of the blog post derives word-for-word from the Unity Publishing pages linked at the end of the post. I would advise some caution in handling Unity Publishing - they write in a rather reckless style and seem to be promoting a dubious form of Marian apocalypticism (the suggestion that Plinio might have been one of the ten kings who serve the Antichrist in the Apocalypse of St John is made on one of the linked pages - but it is possible to do a great deal of harm without being Antichrist or his minion). On the other hand, they often pick up on things very early - they detected the full extent of Christina Gallagher's charlatanism some years before she was exposed by the SUNDAY WORLD, for example. Handle carefully.
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TFP
Mar 7, 2012 10:56:57 GMT
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 7, 2012 10:56:57 GMT
As I mentioned before, I have one acquaintance in TFP who is a member of a once prominent political family in the border region. I also have met TFP people in Washington DC and Rome.
The article that Young Ireland quotes has a lot of truth in it, but there are some distortions. In terms of reaction, I thought it interesting that the writer says the requirement of celibacy among the young men deprives the Catholic world of husbands and fathers; when I took a close look at TFP, my reaction was that if these guys were prepared to commit to a celibate, community life, they would serve the Church better as priests or religious. All TFP seems to involve is hand out literature to do with Fatima (worthy enough in its own right; but you don't need to live in community or be celibate to do it).
The requirement of TFP is to say 15 decades of the rosary a day and receive communion every day (within the regulation of confessing according to Church Law). Some wait outside Mass and enter the Church at communion time (I saw that happen at a particularly good OF Mass in Northern Virginia), but most attend daily Mass. The group have a very strong connexion with the ICRSS, which the Institute are very dicreet about - but I heard a TFP member say 'some people think TFP is a chauffer service for the Institute of Christ the King'.
There is a joke in the EF congregation in Washington DC that TFP have no family, no property and what they're doing isn't traditional. The Brazillian Bishops, French Bishops, SSPX, Apostolic Administration of St John Vianney and the FSSP have all distanced themselves from TFP.
Personally, I'm sceptical of TFP, but I might change my mind if they started doing something useful. As it stands, there seems to be little point to the sacrifices the men make. But then, there is a lot of mediaeval fantasising among trads - but virtually all of these see themselves as the lords and not as the serfs. There is a "Brideshead Revisited" syndrom out there leading uncomfortably towards Gnosticism.
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TFP
Mar 7, 2012 22:22:59 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Mar 7, 2012 22:22:59 GMT
Thanks for the clarification, Alaisdir. My big worry with the cult of knight-monks in this context is that it can easily be hijacked by the sort of warrior-asceticism associated with fascist occultists like Julius Evola, who basically use some Catholic imagery to disguise a worldview which has more in common with the Hindu caste system ( the lower orders basically assumed to have no souls) and Nazism (the SS glorified as heirs to the mediaeval Teutonic crusaders). I am not saying that TFP actually is Evolist, but that its self-presentation could make people susceptible to Evolism. I remember once coming across International Third Position literature, festooned with quotes from Archbishop Lefebvre, advocacy of distributism, and references to the Nationalists of the Spanish Civil War, and thinking that if I had been exposed to this at a particular adolescent stage in my development as a traditionalist, handled by someone skilled in seducing the unwary, I might have ended up as something like Derek Holland. GK Chesterton's under-rated fable THE BALL AND THE CROSS, about an honest Catholic and an honest atheist trying to fight out their differences and finding the whole modern world joining to muffle them, has two chapters in which the heroes are tempted by the Devil. The revolutionary is brought to what appears to be the final great revolutionary victory and tempted to acquiesce in the wholesale massacre of those who are regarded as insufficiently progressive. The Catholic, who is also a Jacobite, is told the true king has returned and brought to a neo-mediaeval London policed by knights in shining armour. When one of these knights hits a labourer who is going too slowly, and his supposedly angelic guide sneers that the canaille deserves no better, the Catholic realises "It is not the real king who has returned, and you are not a real angel". Too often a certain type of wannabe aristocratic snob Catholicism reminds me of that passage. Again, I do not say this is necessarily true of TFP. The nineteenth-century cult of knighthood often included an emphasis on an organic society involving the duty of the strong to help the weak, rather than despising them, and for all I know their version of knighthood may include something of the same sort. There are/were many forms of mediaevalism with good and bad points. We should emphasise discernment above all.
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TFP
Mar 8, 2012 11:13:55 GMT
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 8, 2012 11:13:55 GMT
Many of the points regarding TFP relate to general problems in the trad movement. But because of its particular organisation structure, TFP is a special case.
I remember talking to my TFP contact and asked him about the International Third Position (ITP) before I knew a lot about it, and he replied that as far as he could see, they were a bunch of fascists. This is a correct observation, but one wonders if this could be applied to TFP itself. What I can say is that they are not consciously fascists.
The problem with ITP is that they use a lot of Christian symbolism to promote essentially pagan ideas and the citing of oriental models by Hibernicus should not shock anyone as even the Nazis consciously drew a lot from these societies right down to the swaztika motive and this was responded too by Nationalists in Iran and India - for example, it was no coincidence that the Iranian Government insisted the country be called Iran and not Persia in the 1930s. For those saying 'So what?', Iran is derived from the word Aryan.
Hibernicus is referring to the traditionalism of Guenon, Evola, Schumann and others which is a huge influence on neo-fascist movements and each of these reflects a fascination with eastern religions. Justin Barrett proposes similar ideas in the National Way Forward - one could try to analyse the driving philosophy of YD as Barrett and Gerry McGeough were its guiding lights for a bit (though the MacMathúna family come from a very left-wing background - one of their relatives was heavily involved in a splinter Republican group). But this is a diversion.
Regarding TFP, I don't believe it is fundamentally Evolian - it is in the main based on the fanstasy world of Professor Plinio. When Hibernicus mentions a cult of knight-monks, there is something scary about TFP. Plinio was a Carmelite Tertiary (in all probability discalced - but I'm not sure). He designed a 'habit' for TFP which is rarely worn but which is an amalgam of the Carmelite habit and the tunic of the Knights Templar. The military fantasies of the members are palpable. So is the preferential option for nobility. There is a fascination with nobility among TFP, though they understandably despise some of the behaviour of the current aristocratic classes (I wonder whether this is an altogether recent phenomenon given some of the folklore I have heard).
Where there is no titled aristocracy they look for analogues - so the TFP in the US show a great affection for the Civil War confederacy. The relative anti-Catholicism of the southern states is a matter which is glossed over.
I said that TFP have a relationship with the Institute of Christ the King. This is evident in Rome where TFP come out in force at Institute Masses. The Institute have similar interests in nobility and militaria as the TFP (but there is a lot of this among trads). One figure who features prominently in ICRSS/TFP circles is the Duke of Oldenburg, whose conversion to Catholicism is something the ICRSS claim credit for.
I think a point I would make is that a lot of what the TFP are into falls short of ITP style fascism and is representative of general trad mediaeval escapism on the other, but the TFP is a trad hothouse that good propell the TFP and their hangers on towards Evolist fascism if they are not careful and that the presence of the ICRSS tends to sharpen rather than dampen appetites for this monarchist/aristocratic dreamworld.
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TFP
Mar 8, 2012 18:41:43 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Mar 8, 2012 18:41:43 GMT
There is of course a link between the Carmelites and the Crusades - the Carmelites began as a group of hermits living on the slopes of Mount Carmel, who relocated after the fall of the Crusader Kingdoms. So I can see how a Carmelite might develop an interest in the crusading orders from an interest in Carmelite history, rather than from more dubious sources. In relation to the issue of aristocracy, it might be worth noting that Brazil was the only Latin American country to have its own monarchy and aristocracy, and that the current claimant to the Brazilian throne and his brother/heir are both TFP members (they are both unmarried, which is not what you'd expect with royal claimants - I suspect the TFP membership has something to do with it). TFP is not popular with many Brazilian monarchists who lament that the pretenders' connection with such a dotty organisation has fatally hindered any possibility of a restoration. Does anyone know what Plinio's relationship was with the Brazilian dictatorship that ruled 1964-85? I know that Bishop Castro Mayer enthusiastically supported it for having saved the country from communism. The foundation of TFP in 1960 was probably not unconnected to the fact that a left-wing president came to power in 1960 (he resigned in 1961 and was succeeded by his vice-president, who was even more leftist and was overthrown by the military in 1964). I believe Attila Sinke Guimaraes of Tradition in Action was a supporter of the dictatorship, but I am not sure of his exact relationship with TFP. (The Unity Publishing articles linked by Young Ireland describe TIA as a section of TFP, but my understanding is that it is in fact a breakaway splinter group, so TIA's views are not necessarily representative of TFP.)
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TFP
Mar 8, 2012 20:05:00 GMT
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 8, 2012 20:05:00 GMT
TIA is an ultra-traditional breakaway from TFP.
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TFP
Mar 8, 2012 22:35:46 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Mar 8, 2012 22:35:46 GMT
So Unity Publishing's claim that TFP are responsible for statements by Marian Horvat of TIA is another example of why it is necessary to treat Unity's statements with a good deal of caution.
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