|
Post by Tertium Non Datur on Aug 6, 2014 14:04:03 GMT
If Fennel has exposed the third rate calibre of Seamus Heaney,s poetry it is to his everlasting credit.
I read Fennels book "The State of the Nation: Ireland since the 60s (1983)" and found many of the ideas in it worthwhile. Poster Hibernicus alluded to the somewhat closed nature of Fennels intellectualism which is I suspect due to it,s mainly "reactionary" fundus.
|
|
|
Post by Luke M on Jun 12, 2015 21:31:37 GMT
Hello,
I am wondering whether I can start a discussion on Desmond Fennell.
Basically I will put down my thoughts around him and hopefully someone will get back?
Reading him these past years I've come to some view of him. In one way he has radically continued what I found Chesterton did, that is a Catholic radically trying to combat the central problem of the age - the secularising, modernising, dehumanising force. Like Chesterton he trys to come up with some sort of plan of action. Think Chesterton's 'Outline of Sanity' if anyone's read it. In that Chesterton sketches a broad vision of a new society, in which he gives plans for a kind of smallholders revolution. The kind of programmes he is envisaging are at times really pioneering. And it is here that him and Fennell get really close to one another.
However after reading Fennell's greatest work which I would say is 'Beyond Nationalism', I am strangely contemplating the idea that Desmond for the first time to my knowledge in history has really in philosophical terms put complete flesh to the bones, in the form of a social idealism, to the central principals of the social teaching of the Church. As you know Chesterton was trying to embody Catholic Social Teaching, he was trying to embody Catholic principles in a form of lets just call it an active social idealism. Yet although as a kind of programme his 'Outline of Sanity' is far romantic and likeable.............it is in philosophical grounding and outcome far less superior to Fennell's vision in 'Beyond Nationalism'.
Chesterton's vision in "Napoleon of Notting Hill", you could say, is an artistic representation of Fennell's vision of a city as a community of self-governing communities. Fennell literally has you could say outlined the philosophy latent in 'Napoleon of Notting Hill', the principle of subsidiarity applied to a city's communities.
Desmond and Chesterton come so close to a meeting of minds in 'Beyond Nationalism' that one asks oneself -it has prompted me to write to you- has Fennell come up with the essential Catholic social idealism for the modern world? The clinching aspect of a social idealism of which Catholics from Chesterton to Beloc and others were grasping at and beginning to flesh out. This social idealism and plan of action does not centrally lie in a reeling back of usury and the revolutions of smallholders, it lies centrally in language and community.
To extrapolate this here now I can do, but its probably best to wait for a reply, as I wanted to share that I have been as I said strangely been thinking that perhaps Fennell in 'Beyond Nationalism' has made one of the most important contributions to humanity in the modern world, in the form of a realistic social idealism. I think if Chesterton had longer on this earth he would have come up with something what Fennell is saying.
There are other incredible aspects to this book such as his theory on the renewal of the Church which, again is somehow a philosophical description of what Chesterton was doing, and I would try to present this philosophy of renewal to someone if there's someone interested?
Just to say I have my difficulties getting a full understanding of Fennell the man. He's not a stock character at all or a saint is he. He gets involved thoroughly with Communist discussions and I'd like to know his view on communism. His writing, in spirit, though not in its arguments made, can tend to be slightly atheistic/socialist. You know that 'vibe' you get when coming across atheistic socialist literature. And even though he never makes explicit arguments against God there is this sense- perhaps its only perceived by me- that in his later works he has become gloomy, hard, bitter, proud, and sort of well without wonder and charity and well Christ...............I think he's cultivated this style as a way to help him see clearly but its so unattractive. I would classify his earlier works under the term 'Wonder', and his later period 'Estrangement'. Those two phenomena though similar in ways are dramatically different. Perhaps this is due to his loss of social idealism which he had around the 1990s. Even though I have heard a statement from him recently saying he feels very much close to God, I think clearly others are finding his later works unattractive to read, spiritually odd and full of pride, and I am as I take a normal interest in people, interested in his spirituality.
I think somewhere on this board in the past pages someone has said that Fennell is who he is because of his lack of intellectual companionship and I agree. I think what he is saying often gets clouded up by the developed style of a man stranded as it were on an island, especially more so as he lost his active social idealism in the 90s. I agree that his fixation on Hiroshima is hard to fully grasp but considering his weight as a thinker, I mean there must be something there we're not seeing.
For me he talks as someone who seems to know that they are the first person in history to have done something, and that something being something very profound. This fills him with pride a bit I feel, but you know I'd really like to understand in his later writings what that something is that he's done.
I think I will understand it one day, as his writings do take awhile to grapple with.
If he was a "normal" Catholic I think some people would regard him as a bit of an Irish, specifically philosophical- Chesterton, as he's not an ordinary Catholic, and is as he is, he's a kind of philosophical artist who has read, and enjoyed, a bit more Communism and Nietzsche, and enjoyed less Catholicism than Chesterton had.
Sorry for the long text, I am not used to writing on such boards and do not fully know the etiquette, please correct me if needed........
Thanks
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jun 13, 2015 10:38:50 GMT
My own view is that Fennell can be a solvent of liberal complacency but that the comparison with Chesterton is misplaced for quite a few reasons. For example: Chesterton was capable of carrying on respectful public debates, and maintaining personal friendships, with people like HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw, even though he thought their beliefs fundamentally wrong and misguided; he was capable of acknowledging their personal honesty (to a certain extent) and arguing with them on the basis of a shared commitment to logic/truth. (This is usually a good idea because you are addressing yourself not only to the person you are criticising, but to people who might be attracted to share their beliefs, and such people may be open to conviction even if the heresiarchs themselves are not.) Fennell operates on the assumption that when he has an idea, it is self-evidently right, and anyone who disagrees with it is beneath contempt. He is not willing to accept that an honest person might believe on the basis of rational argument that, for example, the Easter Rising was a disastrous mistake or that Ireland would have done better to adopt Protestantism at the Reformation. (I am not saying that these views are correct; what I am saying is that honest and intelligent people have believed them and it requires rational argument to show why these people were mistaken.) Fennell is much more a satirist than an analyst; he can point out flaws in other people's beliefs and attitudes, but he doesn't really address their internal logic.
I remember seeing a 1930s review of some radio talks Alfred O'Rahilly gave in refutation of HG Wells in which the reviewer pointed out that while Chesterton treated Wells with respect while disagreeing with him, O'Rahilly displayed nothing but contempt for him, and that much of O'Rahilly's argument consisted of denouncing Wells's beliefs for not being Irish and presenting them as the latest act of English aggression against the Irish (whereas of course if they were true they would be as true for the Irish as the English, and since they are false they are false for the English as well as the Irish). Now it seems to me that Fennell is much closer to O'Rahilly than to Chesterton in this, with the difference that O'RAhilly could get away with it much easier in the 1930s than Fennell could in the 1980s, or indeed now. I abhor the words and deeds of Ivana Bacik, Mr Panti Bliss, Fintan O'Toole, Fr Tony Flannery and so forth, but they are clearly Irish in their wrongness.
It seems to me that the difference between Chesterton and Fennell is that Chesterton is always writing about something he has discovered, whereas I think Fennell is post-Kantian (hence the Nietzsche comparison); he seems to fundamentally see reality as something we create on the basis of the will, and that is in conflict with his claim that there can be a "truly human" society at all. (The big problem with BEYOND NATIONALISM IMHO is its disavowal of intellectual coherence, which seems to me to amount to a disavowal of the concept of shared truth - he resists articulating his fundamental beliefs because to do so would expose them to criticism. I might add that he is extremely hostile to the idea that he might have affinities to people whose worldviews are similar to his own, e.g. HEidegger's critique of modernity; he operates on the assumption that he created his wordlview out of his own unaided being, like the Spider in Swift's BATTLE OF THE BOOKS who rebukes the honeybee for relying on external aids - the flowers - and therefore asserts that his own web is superior to the bee's honey.) Belloc might be a better fit than Chesterton - there is a willed assertiveness about Belloc, an attitude that this is true because I say it is so, and a broad-sweeping asserted worldview. Chesterton is detached enough to be humorous (and at his weakest, whimsical); Fennell is not humorous at all and it seems to me that he operates on the assumption that something only exists when he sees it.
There is a certain logic to his obsession with Hiroshima because he sees it as an act of inhumanity in the fullest sense, a claim to become a god precisely by renouncing one's own being and willing universal destruction. What is really worrying to me is the way in which he demonises America as the Faustian nation. I think there is a Faustian element in America, but that is not all of it (and I don't think the dark side of modernity is purely American).
|
|
|
Post by Oliver, on Jun 13, 2015 14:08:46 GMT
Hello
Thank you for your post.
I just explained in my last post on some other - is it called thread - that Luke M is in fact Oliver,, and explained the use of different names. Its get worse considering I've just applied as an official member under a different name again. Seeing as your the administrator I thought I'd confess, and well your probably used to such idiosyncrasies, whatever that means but the term is used for things like this.
You know I am very appreciative of your knowledge as I have been reading some of the posts on the boards. In my discussions with people I am aware that I am pretty limited in scope and can come across as at worst a mere drone for the latest book I've read that's won me over. Just an honest assessment. But I do enjoy to try and grasp philosophical ideas. I'll enjoy discussing with you. Thanks again for post.
You know I whole heartedly agree with your depiction of Fennell's character. Wholeheartedly. The one word which sums it up for me is pride. That's the spirit of it all.
But considering him proud in his writing , as I do you know, I also am having "strange" thoughts, which is why I'm on this board, that he may have done something well, yes world changing. If he did this pride may be put into perspective.
I think his unlikeness to Chesterton which you describe is so true but I was highlighting his similarity in drawing up a radical, pioneering -somewhat programmatic- active social idealism which embody principles of Catholic Social Teaching. I don't know anyone else who come close to Fennell and Chesterton in this regard. Fennell's is much more philosophically laid out. And am interested if there are any others as its an area I like.
(Other similarities there are between them. Fennell does humorously look at contemporary reality very, very, rarely. He does engage in Christian apologetics very, very, rarely. Specifically here I'm talking about apologetics involving "central" beliefs like I remember an instance he talked about why to love Mary, a mother is good. He has engaged in apologetics on the moral teaching of the Church quite often, like Chesterton. The fact that he rarely does the humour and the beliefs is no a similarity between him and Chesterton, but considering their unique position in the area of active social idealism, and often defence of Catholic moral teaching, when you come across these times when he is light-hearted and funny or defending central beliefs held by Catholics, they do make you think of Chesterton. You know what I mean.
Considering as well Fennell's obvious fighting spirit seen in the writings of his early period, there is clearly a similarity with Chesterton. And considering his technique of highlighting the inhumanity of something by representing it in an "exotic" way, that's sort of like Chesterton too, but he does it never in a humorous manner, on the whole never full of wonder but estrangement, and in his later works, always gloomy. In his strong value of lets just call it "nationalism", and value of patriotism and the action that proceeds from this, he is similar to Chesterton. O and there's more, in both departing from traditional "nationalism" in their own countries they are similar again.
I think his earlier period is different to the later writings post 1990s which makes me think, as I said, about has he had a crisis spiritually(if you allow me to use the term spiritually) or perhaps its the succumbing to pride. The earlier stuff is more readable, more Christian and has more wonder as I said.
The "conflict" you talk about I can sense in Fennell. He really goes over the edge sometimes and as you say sort of sees "reality as something we create on the basis of the will". Thank you for expressing this for me, this is what I meant when I said there was at times an atheistic/socialist spirit to his writings.
With 'Beyond Nationalism' though I can't see what you say of "its disavowal of intellectual coherence". I don't get that. I only see that no one has rigorously debated this book which I think it deserves. And probably would have helped him represent what he was saying more clearly. It is all in all a really, really ambitious book. He later on somewhere talks about it as something running in the same direction as Crotty's "Study of Capitalist Colonial Undevelopment". Fennel though in it is trying to reveal the historical force of provinciality and a way to tackle it. This is ambitious and far more ambitious than Raymond Crotty's study. Considering how ambitious it is I think it deserves attention. He puts a persuasive argument across, one that I agree with you requires more "rigorous intellectual coherence" and, I would say more of, "an articulation of his fundamental beliefs" but I certainly don't think its a "disavowal". If anything its a challenge to others and hats off to him for stimulating such a challenge. Hats off to an Irishman for doing it! Hats off to a professed Catholic! Hats off to an Irish Catholic
That it amounts to a "a disavowal of the concept of shared truth", I think considering he is trying to magnify or quarantine in some degree for examination a particular aspect of history and the present, its not a disavowal of the concept of shared truth. But more importantly the concept of shared truth is extremely central to his solution to overcome let's just call it the force of provinciality, which he examines. So I think IMHO "a disavowal of the concept of shared truth" is very unfair but I would be open to seeing an other side.
I think considering the book is filled with quotes from many writers is quite unfair to say that in this book anyway "he is extremely hostile to the idea that he might have affinities to people whose worldviews are similar to his own, e.g. HEidegger's critique of modernity". You would be right though with reference to his solution in the book to overcome modernity, but that is because in this aspect he does not "have affinities to people whose worldviews are similar to his own". This is what I mean in that I think he could have made a contribution to humanity which had not been made. And this solution and the theory it rests upon are not rigorously examined. Please don't take my presentations of his theories in any post as being a true depiction of them - it takes me a while to grasp such things and present them accurately.
I agree..."he operates on the assumption that he created his wordlview out of his own unaided being"..... its that pride thing almost really strong spiritual pride. I can't stand it.
I'm not exactly sure but I think the Faustian nation he gives is Germany. He states that in the last period of Europe the German influence was most marked. He gives a list of things which include I think Marx, Freud, Oppenheimer, amongst many including German words which came into the Wests general discourse. I find that interesting, and with my little knowledge of pre 1945, it is an argument. He doesn't demonise Germany though for it being the Faustian nation, he actually sort of sits with wonder at the idea that it was. With regard to America yes he sort of tears at it, in the same form of demonization as someone resentful of an imperialism with its epic and oblivious human destruction. Is that fair? Again its understandable. And considering he wants mankind to depart from America's norms, well its only logical that such a "demonization" if we should call it that, is part of his programme.
Thank you for your kindness to reply and for you work as is it moderator or administrator
Thanks
|
|
|
Post by assisi on Jun 13, 2015 21:38:34 GMT
I don't think there is much similarity between Fennell and Chesterton. I see Chesterton as an apologist who is also a poet and fiction writer. Fennell has assessed our modern situation from a mostly historic and political perspective. I find Fennell a little more like Malcolm Muggeridge in his book 'Jesus Rediscovered' than Chesterton.
Chesterton could be funny and managed to debate with the likes of GB Shaw on a friendly basis. Fennell is more serious and academic. However, even if Fennell wanted to be humorous I don't think there is any decorum in the current public arena, the likelihood is that any attempt at humour would be met with the typical corrosive response from the groupthink dominated media. In fact Fennell finds it difficult to get letters accepted in the national papers and hard to get publishers for his books.
I like to think that Fennell is more stubborn than proud. You need to be stubborn to keep issuing a counter cultural message well into your mid eighties. But I don't think that he is setting forth any alternate worldview as he has said that he just wants to show the truth of what is happening (and then let others decide what to do). However I do think that the reader can obviously deduce leanings in his work (i.e. I would say that he would lean towards a culture broadly based on Christianity despite all its historical flaws).
I believe that he sees the modern American liberal consumer 'experiment' as fundamentally lacking in sense as it has no meaning, no God, no ultimate destination and will eventually fail when wealth and money start to disappear (i.e. people in the West can just about cope with senselessness when there is money and prosperity, but will revolt when the money and wealth dry up). Are we seeing the potential for this in Greece, the rise of the right in France and elsewhere in Europe?
Fennell is undoubtedly important - just think how many other thinkers in Ireland that have consistently attacked the current state of affairs? Not many that I can see.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Sept 25, 2015 19:55:51 GMT
Desmond Fennell has an article in the new issue of the Jesuit quarterly STUDIES on the theme of whether the neo-liberal order can last. (He uses "neo-liberal" to refer to the difference between present-day bureaucratic liberalism and nineteenth-century classical liberalism, rather than in the more usual sense which equates it with the revival of laissez-faire capitalism.) He combines the view that this neo-liberalism empties life of value and meaning and reduces it to a senseless accumulation of consumer goods; at the same time he thinks it seems to be able to survive indefinitely. This I think encapsulates my problem with Fennell - he can be quite acute about what he doesn't like, but he doesn't really face up to the question of how things got this way, and he is clearly making value-judgements without admitting that that is what he is doing or spelling out the basis on which he makes them. Even when I agree with the judgements, this is tremendously frustrating; there is a sense of disdain and contempt for everyone but himself.
|
|
|
Post by rogerbuck on Oct 1, 2015 8:18:59 GMT
Desmond Fennell has an article in the new issue of the Jesuit quarterly STUDIES on the theme of whether the neo-liberal order can last. (He uses "neo-liberal" to refer to the difference between present-day bureaucratic liberalism and nineteenth-century classical liberalism, rather than in the more usual sense which equates it with the revival of laissez-faire capitalism.) He combines the view that this neo-liberalism empties life of value and meaning and reduces it to a senseless accumulation of consumer goods; at the same time he thinks it seems to be able to survive indefinitely. This I think encapsulates my problem with Fennell - he can be quite acute about what he doesn't like, but he doesn't really face up to the question of how things got this way, and he is clearly making value-judgements without admitting that that is what he is doing or spelling out the basis on which he makes them. Even when I agree with the judgements, this is tremendously frustrating; there is a sense of disdain and contempt for everyone but himself. This little summation of your difficulty is helpful, Hibernicus. In the past, I have found you hard on Fennell, in part because I profit greatly from his acuteness. And I just feel sheer gratitude when _anyone_ appears so acutely awake and articulate regarding many of the issues he is awake to. However, I have read him far less than you. I do not (yet) feel this universal contempt that you do, but am very open to the idea that it is there. Perhaps I am also too forgiving/lax with many author's various sins. (E.g. I can forgive a multitude of Belloc's sins, out of my "sheer gratitude" for his being "acutely awake" to so very, very much …) In other words, I agree with Assisi: Fennell is undoubtedly important - just think how many other thinkers in Ireland that have consistently attacked the current state of affairs? Not many that I can see. But I wonder how Fennell would be for you, Hibernicus, if he were only a little more humble? For example, if he still said _all the same things_ about modernity, whilst at the same time saying something like: "I am aware my approach is somewhat fragmentary and not systematic, but here are my observations. I am also aware I am not diagnosing "how things got this way". My incomplete observations may or not be true. Take them or leave them."
|
|
|
Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 1, 2015 9:24:05 GMT
I have not read Fennell in depth, but my impression is that he is FAR too systematic! He paints in enormous brush strokes and seems to be constructing grand narratives all the time. It reminds me of Hari Seldon, the founder of psychohistory in Isaac Asimov's foundation series, whose theory was that human behaviour is scientifically predictable over a long enough period and on a grand enough scale. He also reminds me of all the eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophers who worked out massive theories of historical development and historical cycles. His approach just doesn't seem fine-grained enough.
On an earlier post on this thread, Luke compared him to Chesterton and said both 'seek to come up with some plan of action'. Did Chesterton seek to come up with some plan of action? I'm not sure that he did. Aside from his work with the Distributist League, it seems to me that Chesterton simply re-affirmed a lot of traditional and Catholic teaching, and supported the institutions associated with such teaching. I wonder if we have too many plans of action? Surely we should just be doing what we really know, at heart, what we should have been doing all along? I'm not dismissing the need for individual initiatives, but I think that the notion of having a broad plan of action is a bit of a snare. Wheel re-invention seems to be a favourite hobby amongst a certain class of Catholic.
|
|
|
Post by Ranger on Oct 1, 2015 13:17:23 GMT
I wonder if we have too many plans of action? Surely we should just be doing what we really know, at heart, what we should have been doing all along? I'm not dismissing the need for individual initiatives, but I think that the notion of having a broad plan of action is a bit of a snare. Wheel re-invention seems to be a favourite hobby amongst a certain class of Catholic. It's funny that you should mention this since I'm just after posting on this thread something perhaps to the opposite effect. I think that there's truth to what you're saying to a degree; more important than any plan is our own personal sanctity, how much we love others, how much we try to live out our vocations to the best of our ability, how we reach out to those immediately around us. There is also a problem with reinventing the wheel as you say and also doubling up of good initiatives. But I think that plans of action are necessary nonetheless. There are massive cultural forces very effectively outflanking us (as I said in the post above). Take a look at this: www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/noel-whelan-exhausting-draining-and-life-changing-the-yes-campaign-1.2223941That's only the tip of the iceberg; years of preparation have gone into this campaign, and not only in Ireland. Look at all the soft pro-yes stuff RTE was peddling for months before the actual campaign ('Gay Daddy' on endless repeat and programs like that). Take this post by a political strategist on Rod Dreher's blog: www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/political-straight-talk-about-religious-liberty-gay-rights/Quote, referring to who religious institutions such as colleges can hire: 'That is, to make it where no discrimination based on LGBT status is permitted — at all. Twenty-eight states now lack these laws, including most of the presidential swing states. The smart LGBT strategists are likely two years into planning this next stage, and that’s exactly what I would do if I were them. These are serious and capable political operatives.' At the last World Congress for Ecclesiastical Movements, one of the problems Pope Francis said that new movements in the Church can (and do) run into is becoming too tied to their particular structures, thus not moving with the Holy Spirit. So I think that if we become too tied to strategies, plans, etc., then I definitely think that we run the risk of falling into a snare. But surely we need these things, if only as means to an end rather than ends in and of themselves? Those who want the Church to disappear from our society are putting plans and strategies into place and we need to do what we can. Seizing initiative and preventing your opponent from holding all of the initiative is key to any strategy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiative_%28chess%29 To lose the initiative is to lose the war, and we have entirely jettisoned initiative as far as I can see. The Church's response in Ireland (I mean the Church in its broadest sense) has been entirely reactionary, in the worst sense of that word; reacting to one defeat after another ever since 1983.
|
|
|
Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 1, 2015 15:58:36 GMT
Ranger, didn't the Church in Ireland jump first though? If it hadn't indulged in so much post Vatican-II madness, if it had stuck to its guns and its confidence, would we be in the position we are today?
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, because I think there is much truth to what you say. But when we look at the worst years of Irish Catholicism, they are full of grand strategies and proactive measures!
|
|
|
Post by Ranger on Oct 1, 2015 20:01:35 GMT
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, because I think there is much truth to what you say. But when we look at the worst years of Irish Catholicism, they are full of grand strategies and proactive measures! Ah, but herein lies the rub: not all grand strategies are created equal.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 1, 2015 20:56:04 GMT
Ranger's point is the one I am trying to make about Desmond Fennell - my beef with him is that, as Maolseachlainn says, he offers many grand strategies and sweeping statements but he never gets down to analysing how they might actually work, or not work, and why. Perhaps I feel this more acutely because my own attitude is the reverse - I am obsessed with matters of detail but find it hard to develop the bigger picture. I wouldn't say Fennell is valueless - he can be a very acute satirist when picking holes in other people's assumptions and self-presentations (e.g. NICE PEOPLE AND REDNECKS has some very shrewd deflations of the 80s-liberal self-image of a tiny enlightened minority beset by hordes of marauding rednecks).
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 3, 2015 22:26:13 GMT
This post by an American Catholic "mommy blogger" does I think reflect what Fennell is trying to get at when he complains about modernity (or whatever name you give the phenomenon) redcardigan.blogspot.ie/2015/10/bad-week-for-culture-of-life.htmlEXTRACT Friday, October 2, 2015 Bad week for the culture of life I've had a slight cold this week, which is one reason why I haven't been blogging (the other reasons are my usual lack of focus and the fact that one of my fiction books has been driving me crazy). But I wanted to refer to a few things that have happened this week, because this week hasn't been a great week for the Culture of Life: --Planned Parenthood continues to reveal that they are mass killers on a grander scale than most such killers throughout human history; --Even Pope Francis' pleas for clemency couldn't stop the state of Georgia from executing a woman who incited her lover to kill her husband, although the actual killer got life in prison instead; --A shooter went on a rampage at a college in Oregon, specifically targeting Christians and killing ten people; --Brave young American men and women continue to die in the Middle East in the name of freedom, while questions about the wisdom of our even being there anymore get swept under the political rug; --Russia began airstrikes in Syria, while the US and others condemned these actions by saying they would fuel more terrorism. We can, and should in many cases, focus on these issues individually. Planned Parenthood should be defunded, the death penalty should be abolished wherever it is no longer needed for public safety, sensible measures to keep guns out of the hands of would-be mass killers should be debated and sound actions taken, or Middle East commitments should be scrutinized closely, we should avoid escalating war while not failing to condemn unjustly disproportionate acts of war. But I think we're missing the underlying cause of much of this, which is that when you spend half a century or more convincing people that humans are not particularly special, that there is no eternity, that we are nothing but organic pain collectors racing toward oblivion, that shallow and fragile relationships are more self-satisfying than sacrificial and lasting ones, that children don't need mothers or fathers, and that we have no duty or obligation to anyone other than ourselves and no concerns greater than our own pleasures and entertainments, you have created a people who care so little about human life that none of these issues particularly matters anymore. END OF EXTRACT This post is very profound: to pick up one one example, I sometimes listen to old pop songs from my youth in the 80s on Youtube and follow the lyrics (which I didn't then) and one thing that really startles me is the noticeable minority which explicitly celebrate physical encounters between strangers who never met each other before and will never do so again. Another would be the fact that there is apparently a subculture on certain darkweb sites which hails people like the college killer in Oregon as heroes - I suspect this is a subculture which had a certain latent existence but would not have become so explicit without the web. The way in which the killer drew on a certain pop-culture satanism (which you get, for example, in a section of metal music) is really chilling. www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/4219/oregon_shooter_reportedly_targeted_christians_for_executionstyle_killings.aspx What annoys me about Des Fennell is that having identified this dark area in the modern sensibility he then does nothing except poke at it and describe it from outside. He doesn't seem to wonder why people might actually be attracted to it, or the roots of its historical development in anything else than the wills of shadowy elites.
|
|
|
Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 15, 2015 11:54:54 GMT
I've been reading Fennell's "Savvy and the Preaching of the Gospel: A Response to Vincent Twomey's The End of Irish Catholicism?", and a paragraph like this leaps out at me as an example of what I find difficult to take in his writing:
"I speak for more than myself when I say that the emergence of a powerful band of anti-Catholics among the Irish Catholic people hurts me personally; and this for reasons connected not with ideology or religion but with brotherliness and solidarity. We have come through long hard times together, we Irish Catholic people, times when we were not only oppressed politically and socially, but had our religion mocked and a for a time actually persecuted. During those centuries we developed, males and females, a sense of fellowship, a predisposition of friendless towards each other even on first encounters, which survived into the better times of the twentieth century. Our deepest, usually unspoken bond, was our awareness that we were Catholics together, whether good or bad, in a non-Catholic environment, and that being Catholic was part of our nationhood-- even if mere adherence to Ireland also suffered for inclusion in that."
This was written in 2003. Who is he talking about, exactly? It seems to me he's positing a collective memory that doesn't really exist. At least not at the moment. I think very few people in modern day Ireland feel any sense of identification with either the Irish nationalist or Irish Catholic narrative.
Fennell always seems to paint in these very broad strokes. I don't know I agree with Hibernicus's view that he doesn't accept disagreement as valid (though I have read less of his work than Hibernicus), but there is definitely an assumed agreement that is irksome-- where he doesn't seem to feel the need to argue something. On page three of his pamphlet, he writes: "I believe that, in recovering from its present crisis, the Irish Catholic Church collectively need to have and use profound and exact knowledge of the contemporary situation and the Church's place in it. The relevant situation embraces the Western world from San Francisco and Vancouver to Stockholm, Warsaw and Palermo. It obtains, in a particular form, throughout our island." He assumes the reader doesn't need persuading that there is one 'contemporary situation' which is relevant. I'm not at all convinced modernism or post-modernism is as unique as it is made out to be, or can be so straightforwardly diagnosed.
Some of his insights are very good, though. I like this:
"As the repeated liberal attacks on the Constitution soon made clear, our fundamentalist liberals were opposed to the amalgam of values which it represented. These comprised worship of the Christian God; the classical or 'Victorian' Liberalism which had been the secular creed of Irish Catholics since Daniel O'Connell's time; the liberationist nationalism which, in Ireland as in other foreign-dominated European nations, was an intrinsic part of that Liberalism; and elements of Catholic morality and social teaching. Insofar as the worldview, rules and norms derived from that amalgam clashed with fundamentalist liberal orthodoxy, as transmitted by London, our liberals wanted to replace them with that orthodoxy neat."
Apart from the 'transmitted by London' part, that all seems very perceptive to me.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Oct 15, 2015 21:31:45 GMT
Oddly enough, I do have a sense of what Fennell is talking about; I do have a sense that such a collective sense of identity was once there and now is there no longer. Remember that Fennell is in his 80s - our parents' or grandparents' generation - and the culture has changed quite substantially in recent decades. What gets me about the passage is (1) HE doesn't acknowledge that such a sense of collective identity can have its downsides; - for example, that it can be used by some people within the group to exploit others (this observation is not confined to socialists BTW, different strands of nationalist have pointed it out at different times) (2) He glosses over internal tensions - for example, his remark about a sense of belonging to IReland as sufficient is clearly meant to include non-Catholic nationalists, but such people - and indeed many Catholic nationalists - would often be at odds with a view of nationalism which emphasises Catholicism quite as much as Fennell does. There has historically been a farily strong strain of anti-clerical IRish nationalism, albeit not on a continental scale. (3)He underestimates the historic tensions between classical liberalism, nationalism and Catholicism (4) He seems to subordinate the question of religious truth to collective identity, and to assume that the "fundamentalist liberals" are simply passive imitators of London rather than people who actively believe that one form of social organisation/self-perception is better than another, and believe it on the basis of their own thoughts and experiences (however mistakenly). Catholicism is not simply a marker of Irish collective identity, though historically it has influenced the ways in which we Irish sought to shape our society. If we wanted a purely Irish religion we should have stuck with Crom Cruach.
|
|