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Post by hibernicus on Dec 27, 2011 18:29:31 GMT
Two disgusting columns from the week before Christmas: (1) In the IRISH TIMES of Tuesday 20th Anthea McTiernan has a rant complaining that the state values her son less because his parents are not married, even though they have cohabited for two decades. She denounces David Quinn for saying that the family based on marriage should be favoured by public policy, and declares that we should get used to having many different types of family, which should all be treated equally. (She expressly complains about various ways in which the state and society give preferential treatment to the marriage-based family, and demands that these should all be abolished in the name of equality.) A few points come to mind - first, that the argument for assisting/encouraging marriage is that IN GENERAL encouraging parents to make the binding public commitment entailed by marriage will produce better results for them and their children, not that cohabiting families are all and inevitably inferior to every married family - second, that if Ms McTiernan is so insistent that there is no real difference between marriage and cohabitation, why is she so unwilling to marry the man by whom she has had a child and with whom she has cohabited for two decades? Her column essentially amounts to saying that marriage is to be abolished for everyone (to deny it official recognition amounts to abolishing it) because she doesn't like it.
(2) In the SUNDAY BUSINESS POST review section of 18 December Jennifer O'Connell, their reliably obnoxious correspondent, highlights a study which argues that abortion does not produce harmful psychological consequences, but that these flow from the experience of unwanted pregnancy whether this ends in birth or abortion. Leaving aside this argument (which is an issue of fact and stands or falls on the evidence adduced for it) MS O'Connell's piece is a classic of how to present oneself as weighing both sides in a debate while keeping your finger firmly jammed down on one side. While purporting to discuss both sides she begins by stating as an absolute and unquestionable principle that a woman has the right to do whatever she liked with her own body - i.e. that abortion ought to be available on demand - and after much pro-abort boilerplate, which never deigns to consider the possibility that the issue involves two lives, not one, she ends by suggesting that when women do suffer psychological ill-effects from abortion it is because we wicked pro-lifers demonise their righteous "choice". What a welcome the SUNDAY BUSINESS POST offers the Child of Bethlehem in their last issue before Christmas 2011! [Correction - this post originally said MS O'Connell's exercise in Herodianism appeared in the SUNDAY INDEPENDENT. The Sindo has many sins but Ms O'Connell's piece is not one of them. My blunder - HIB.]
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 1, 2012 12:31:48 GMT
To open the New Year we note an example of bias in the IRISH TIMES -quelle surprise. A day or two back Paddy Agnew, their Italian correspondent, had a piece on a new book by the veteran vatican-watcher Marco Politi (not yet translated into English) which argues that the Vatican is drifting because Pope Benedict is more interested in being a teaching Pope than an administrator. Mr Agnew summarises this in such a way as to minimise the positive (i.e. the Pope's belief that preaching and articulating Church doctrine comes first because understanding is a precondition for right action) while accentuating the negative (the view that the Pope's election was somehow the result of a conspiracy by conservative Hispanic cardinals in the Curia - in remarking that until a few years before the Conclave few observers expected Cardinal Ratzinger to become Pope, he omits to note that this was because it is unusual for a Cardinal so prominent under one Pope to become Pope himself). In passing Mr Agnew casually refers to bishops' ad limina visits to the Pope as "infamous", without further explanation. Presumably this derives from the widespread denunciation in the Irish media of the ceremonial surrounding the Irish bishops' last ad limina visit which took place shortly after major developments in the abuse crisis, but the lack of any further explanation suggests the IRISH TIMES expects readers to take it for granted that any connection between Irish bishops and the Vatican is necessarily "infamous". Sorry for starting the year with a complaint about media bias, but there will be many more so we may as well get used to them.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 7, 2012 22:12:04 GMT
In today's IRISH TIMES Paddy Agnew complains that too many Italian cardinals have been appointed in the new consistory and that Italians are represented in the College of Cardinals out of all proportion to their numbers among the world's Catholics. He attributes this to a curial conspiracy to ensure that the next Pope will be Italian. In the same article he complains that Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has not been made a Cardinal. I would have thought there is a simple explanation for this - there have never been two Irish diocesan cardinals simultaneously, and Cardinal Brady will only be 73 this year. If Archbishop Martin is made a cardinal, it would probably happen after Cardinal Brady retires (2014) or turns 80 and loses his vote in the Conclave (2019). Archbishop Nichols of Westminster and Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia were not made cardinals at this conclave, though their sees are usually cardinatial, and the reason for this appears to be that their predecessors are still alive and under 80. (Archbishop Dolan of New York was named cardinal, but his predecessor will turn 80 in April.) I notice Mr Agnew's view that the Italians should have no more than their proportionate share of cardinals does not apply to the Irish - or rather, that he takes up and discards arguments as they suit him.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 11, 2012 12:41:30 GMT
On Wednesday 4 August the IRISH TIMES, as part of the luvvie-fest over the 50th anniversary of RTE, published an article in which four experts of various generations watched some old RTE programmes to see how they look now. "When we talk about the programmes we've seen, what everyone has noticed is how innate the religious references are in three of the four. The Child of Prague and Sacred Heart statues in Tolka Row [1968], the Christmas Eve candle in the Wanderly Wagon window [1971] and the assumption that most viewers were giving something up for Lent in Mailbag [1987 - in fact the article has noted that this was spoken in a somewhat sarcastic tone; I remember MAILBAG and like most reader-response programmes from that era it was presented in such a manner as to suggest that anyone who complained about the programme-makers was a buffoon and to invite the viewer to join the oh-so-sophisticated presenter in sneering at them - HIB]. "Religion is what comes across, over and over, Macken [businessman in his 60s] comments. "You'd never see any children's programmes these days with overt references to religion" O'Kane [20-year-old film and broadcasting student] says..." END OF EXTRACT
Now most of this is fairly unexceptionable; we are talking about a more religiously observant era and the religious references were simply taken for granted rather than being subject to discussion (this seems to be what strikes them. What is really startling however is the student's comment that the mere fact that the characters on Wanderly Wagon are celebrating Christmas amounts to an overt religious reference which you would never find on a children's programme nowadays. After all, Christmas is still widely celebrated, even as a consumer-fest, and it is particularly associated with children; you would expect it to get SOME mention. And isn't it very striking that this commenter should remark that children's programmes nowadays NEVER refer to religion, even in connection with Christmas. This is one of the changes that have come in gradually while we weren't looking, and shows the media not only reflecting but promoting the marginalisation of religious belief. (To be fair to RTE I don't think it began with them; I think they're copying American practice.]
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 18, 2012 20:13:39 GMT
An interesting column by Kevin Myers in today's INDEPENDENT. (Of course I do not endorse some of the cruder remarks therein). His central point is something that a lot of trads and Irish practicing Catholics have not taken on board. Any society necessarily has a simple set of assumptions about how it came to be what it is, which contains a certain amount of truth, a certain amount of oversimplification and a certain amount of falsehood (examples would be "the Founding Fathers created US democracy"; "a people without a land for a land without a people"; "you cannot reject part of the French Revolution unless you reject all of it"; "Elizabeth I made England great" etc). To an increasing extent the younger generations of Irish people are imbibing as self-evident the view that it was Catholicism which kept Ireland poor, backward and ignorant and that the Church should be shunned like a poisonous snake (look at some of the commenters below the Myers piece). We are facing people who look on Catholicism as you or I look on Scientology, and these are the very people we need to evangelise www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-church-is-not-responsible-for-all-our-woes-2990594.htmlEXTRACT Once upon a time, the Great Single Narrative of Ireland was largely provided by the Catholic Church. Now it comes from the new clergy in the secular media. In this current GSN, the hapless Irish people were oppressed by a sadistic caste of sexually depraved priests, who raped, brutalised and violated children at their ease, immune to all legal consequence. As with all successful GSNs, there is sufficient truth in these allegations to sustain the myth. But within the culture that has emerged around this GSN, virtually all memory of the selflessness and dedication of scores of thousands of priests, brothers and nuns down the centuries has vanished.... The Fianna Fail gravy ladle finally reached the bottom of the tureen with the bankers and the speculators; but by that time, its unprincipled munificence towards anyone who had made allegations of clerical abuse had created an insatiable army of litigants, – and not just in Ireland, but across the English-speaking world. From their howls, and the government-created enquiries which treated all allegations as jury verdicts, has emerged the Great Single Narrative of our times. THE new GSN created a very great lie: that the Catholic Church was responsible for all our woes, when the truth was more complex: a consensual and democratically endorsed pact between the governing political caste, the electorate and the Catholic Church created a strange society, in which all three components were responsible for the many failings. A people that believed in corporal punishment produced a like-minded clergy; and a sexually repressed society nominated a caste of sexually illiterate virgins to devise sexual norms for the non-virgins. Would you choose a plumber or electrician on such principles? No wonder things went wrong. But just for once, let’s look on the positive side. Irish Catholic priests and nuns were determined that Irish emigrants to the US arriving as third-class citizens wouldn’t remain that way. Yes, it’s easy now to mock the austere puritanism and sexual rigidity of Catholic mores, but the men and women who ran the Catholic Church knew what anarchy can be unleashed in the absence of order (as any O’Connell Street at midnight will now testify). And contrary to much current fiction, many women were immensely powerful in Irish life of yesteryear. Our hospital system was invented and run by an army of unpaid and mighty Irish females: the Sisters of Mercy and of Charity. (Take your pick: them or the HSE?) A vast network of hundreds of girls’ schools, educating millions of pupils across the world, was created by the Ursuline, Presentation and Loreto nuns of Ireland. An example: a single Ursuline convent, that of the Annunciation in Cork, spawned daughter-convents in Wales, New York, Kentucky, South Carolina, Ontario, Kenya, British Guiana, Demerara and Barbados. Overall, the Presentation Sisters of Ireland established 116 schools in the US alone. Knocking the Catholic Church is easy: but the work ethic, sobriety and discipline imparted by the Irish clergy were essential to the success of the Irish in the US. Having a Great Single Narrative is common to most societies; it is usually called a myth, and is generally composed of benign historical garbage. But what distinguishes the Irish Narratives is the overnight rejection and excoriation of previously respected forms of Irishness. And this is utterly counterproductive, for self-hatred is no way to build either a real future, a happy nation or a unifying Great Single Narrative.... END
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 18, 2012 20:55:48 GMT
Yes - I read the Myers piece yesterday. Very good.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Jan 25, 2012 20:11:35 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 1, 2012 23:07:18 GMT
The point about the Cof I becoming a Catholic sect in the South and a Protestant sect in the North is interesting - there has always been a tendency for the Northerners in that church to be the most Low/Evangelical, and it would be interesting to know how far the C of I in the South has been influenced by a drift of middle-class "liberal" Catholics into their ranks.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 7, 2012 21:33:49 GMT
In its accustomed role as Cheerleader for Moloch, the IRISH TIMES is going to town on the 20th anniversary of the X Case. On Saturday it had an article on the anniversary which did not quote a single pro-lifer (with the dubious exception of an old TV interview with Harry Whelehan) while giving three pro-aborts (including Ailbhe Smyth of UCd Women's Studies) free rein. On Monday they had an article by Senator Ivana Bacik calling for abortion to be legalised on the broadest no-right-to-interfere-with-a-woman's-choice lines. Both articles cited the defeat of the 1992 and 2002 abortion referenda as proof of popular support for the X decision, omitting to mention that many pro-lifers opposed them as not going far enough (and I confess I get more inclined every year to think they made a mistake - I was one of them in 1992 though not 2002). Bacik also found time to stick in the new catchcry "lifesaving abortion". Expect the TIMES to promote the illusion of balance by having a belated pro-life riposte a few days later when the message of the earlier pieces has already had time to influence/prejudice those of their readers who are not prejudiced already. They also duly reported a demo outside the Dail by a pop-up pro-choice micro-group calling on Enda to legislate for abortion.
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jaykay
Junior Member
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Post by jaykay on Feb 8, 2012 13:23:45 GMT
I have to say I avoided the Bacik piece on Saturday in the interests of my blood pressure. However, given her paternal background, I wonder if she would pause to reflect on the fact that in the Czech Republic, where abortions have been legal for almost 50 years, they totalled 40,000 in 2009, and that country now has a fertility rate of less than 1.5% (Ireland's is 2.02%) and a negative population growth (Ireland's is positive, just about, at 0.45). Yes, dear Professor, there really is such a thing as a culture of death and it leads to the demographic death of entire countries. And it doesn't take all that long, either. Just a couple of generations and the downwards trend is well and truly established.
Perhaps she could also reflect on the fact that fewer births means... fewer people around in 20 years to pay for that nice fat TCD pension! Not to mention fewer people to buy the paper of (self-defined) record. Awww shucks, now wouldn't that be just terrible?
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 10, 2012 0:50:37 GMT
So far as I can guess from encountering similar pro-choice absolutists, she would say that being concerned about declining national birth-rates makes you a racist, and that the hard work can be done by immigrants or [as in Japan] robots. It should also be noticed that Senator Bacik has two children of her own and would presumably argue (as does the dreadful Caitlin Moran in her book HOW TO BE A WOMAN when justifying her own abortion) that fewer children means better children because their mothers (a) will be able to give them more attention (b) will not be frustrated because they have had to sacrifice their own ambitions to the demands of "unwanted pregnancy". The assumption here is that self-fulfilment (defined as doing what you want because you want it) is an absolute good and you are justified in sacrificing everything else to it, indeed you have a duty to do so. It is not, of course, only women or feminists who have this mindset; the pro-abortion American feminist Barbara Ehrenreich quite correctly points out that one aspect of the origins of American second-wave feminism was a reaction against - or embrace of - certain types of male-oriented Fifties culture which encouraged men to regard wives and children as parasitic encumbrances unfairly forcing men to sacrifice the dreams and freedoms of their youth. Hugh Hefner's PLAYBOY, with its glorification of the urban bachelor pursuing a life of no-obligations-attached casual couplings, was a product of this mindset - and of course the vile rag's proprietors are still boasting of its consistent support for "reproductive rights". I remember a glowing profile of one of its (Irish, alas) executives in THE IRISH TIMES some months ago which stressed this point.
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jaykay
Junior Member
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Post by jaykay on Feb 10, 2012 19:00:23 GMT
Yeah, except that the migrants mightn't be too forthcoming in future either! Planned Parenthood apparently has published its strategy for Africa 2012-2015 in which it hopes to expand abortions by 80%. Alright, they may be starting from a low base but these things are exponential. And China's problems are well known.
Looks like they'll have to rely on all those reliably fertile Muslims to keep up the labour force. Y'know, those people with... erm... "different" views on the place of women.
Speaking of the paper of record, its second editorial today on gay "marriage" in the U.S. was, as ever, a model of balance (*cough*). Was there even a slightly wishful air about it? NEVER!
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 10, 2012 22:56:15 GMT
Actually, the birthrates in Islamic countries are dropping quite noticeably as well - Iran has been promoting contraception quite strongly among its population since the late 80s. The IRISH TIMES's coverage of the gay marriage issue has long since been based on the assumption that gay marriage is simply an "equality" issue, and that opposition to it is equivalent to racism and need not be taken seriously or even treated with elementary fairness. I notice they have an editorial when a US state brings it in, but not when one votes against it (as quite a few have done - of course its proponents hope the US Supreme Court will do it for them and never mind the voters).
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Post by hibernicus on May 1, 2012 20:22:23 GMT
Here is Fintan O'Toole's latest rant. Fisking duly follows. The central points to note are that (a) he equates the Vatican and the Irish church authorities in terms of blame for the abuse scandal - though the Vatican was not blameless - they're all "the institutional Church" to him (b) he starts from the assumption that orthodox doctrine is self-evidently ridiculous so the priests censured can have no duty towards it or to the faithful (c) He contrasts the leniency shown to abusers with the crackdown on the suspected heretics, as if the priests in question have not been using their positions to promote heterodoxy for decades, and as if previous complaints have not been made and ignored www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0501/1224315407633.htmlVatican loud on liberals but silent on abuse In this section » A blueprint for an effective human rights watchdog Church in need of new direction to avoid drift towards oblivion May 1st, 1912 FINTAN O'TOOLE We are witnessing the cruel humiliation of a generation of clergy that deserves better THERE’S A column I would have written a few years ago, but can’t be bothered to write now. It was a reliable old standby about the latest abuse of power by the institutional Catholic Church. It would be fuelled by anger and by expectation – rage at the hierarchy’s latest folly but an implicit hope that the innate decency of Irish Catholicism would some day be allowed to blossom. There was something real at stake in this argument – the church’s hold on Irish public culture was so strong that everything it did mattered. I thought about writing one of those columns in response to the Vatican’s censuring of five priests – Brian D’Arcy, Tony Flannery, Gerard Moloney, Seán Fagan and Owen O’Sullivan – simply for saying what most Catholics actually think about celibacy, women priests and homosexuality. But I couldn’t find either anger or hope. EXCEPT HOPE THAT THE CHURCH WILL BE DESTROYED - A HOPE YOU HAVE EXPRESSED IN AND OUT OF SEASON FOR YEARS. SPARE US THE CROCODILE TEARS All that’s left is a double dose of sadness – for a generation of idealists; for a society in need of moral leadership that is being given just one more, all too familiar dose of the most abject cynicism. What we’re seeing now is the sadistic REALLY? humiliation of a generation of clergy that deserves better. At a simple human level, there’s something genuinely tragic in the fate of these priests: not just those who have been silenced but all their like-minded colleagues. These were once young men and women, mostly in rural Ireland, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. They were infused with the energy of reform and renewal. The priesthood still had glamour, and it was still tied up with familial snobbery, social prestige and institutional arrogance. [IMPLIES THESE WERE THE REAL MOTIVES FOR MANY/MOST VOCATIONS] But there was also a promise of something more: that the institution to which they were drawn was changing, opening up, moving away from cult-like obedience to obsessive sexual doctrines. [NOTE THE ASSUMPTION THAT CATHOLIC SEXUAL DOCTRINE HAS NO RATIONAL BASIS AND THAT IT IS BASED ONLY ON ARBITRARY POWER AND A DESIRE FOR CONTROL] It was engaging with deep questions about power and poverty. And it was reasonable to think that this process was sure to continue, to imagine that by 2012 the church would long since have made its peace with democracy. WITH THE MAMMON OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, WITH THE IDEA THAT THE WORLD SHOULD TELL THE CHURCH WHAT IT MAY BELIEVE AND NEVER VICE VERSA These young men and women may have been naive, but they were not contemptible. Their families and communities invested in them their often meagre resources of pride and hope and idealism. They returned that investment, in many cases, by expanding the narrow horizons of the world from which they had come. Especially those who worked in developing countries brought back experiences and ideas that made Ireland a richer, more complex place. The relative success with which new migrants were integrated in the last decade, for example, owes much to their influence. These people don’t deserve to be called to heel like errant lapdogs. It is easy to say that they should refuse to follow orders or just walk away from an abusive institution. But that would be to walk away from the only adult life they’ve known. It would be to write off decades of work and sacrifice – to accept that the most profound decision of one’s life was based on a delusion. It’s desperately sad that what should have been a noble story in Irish life should end so cruelly. But there’s also a sadness for Ireland itself. Our society hardly needs yet more hypocrisy, another layer of self-serving cynicism. The institutional church disgraced itself by systematically covering up child abuse. It is almost beyond belief that its final conclusion from that trauma – the real outcome of all those apologies and visitations – is that the true problem is some mildly liberal articles in Reality or the Sunday World. IT DID NOT SAY ANYTHING OF THE SORT - WHAT IT SAYS IS THAT THE REAL PROBLEM IS LOSING SIGHT OF TH CHURCH'S RAISON D'ETRE - THE GOSPEL This is the institution that told us that it was unable to control child rapists in its ranks because it couldn’t just issue orders TO A CONSIDERABLE EXTENT BECAUSE OF THE GENERAL BREAKDOWN OF DISCIPLINE OF WHICH THE ACPI IS A SYMPTOM. Remember Cardinal Cahal Daly writing to the parents of a victim of the hideous abuser Brendan Smyth: “There have been complaints about this priest before, and once I had to speak to the superior about him. It would seem that there has been no improvement. I shall speak with the superior again.” Remember the stuff about how bishops were lords in their own dioceses and religious orders were their own kingdoms? TRUE, ALAS - THOUGH EXACTLY THE SAME NEGLIGENCE WAS SHOWN TOWARDS DISSENTERS IN DOCTRINE - BUT FINTAN O'TOOLE WON'T BOTHER ABOUT THAT AS HE CANNOT SEE ANY MERIT IN DOCTRINAL ORTHODOXY When priests were raping children, the institutional hierarchy was wringing its hands and pleading “what can we do?” The Vatican was very busy and very far away. But when a priest makes some mild suggestions that women might be entitled to equality, the church is suddenly an efficient police state that can whip that priest into line. THEY HAVE BEEN GETTING AWAY WITH IT FOR YEARS - WHAT'S WITH THE "SUDDENLY"? The Vatican, which apparently couldn’t read any of the published material pointing to horrific abuse in church-run institutions , can pore over the Sunday World with a magnifying glass, looking for the minutest speck of heresy. WHAT THIS OBSCURES IS THAT FR D'ARCY AND HIS ILK WERE ALLOWED TO PREACH HETERODOXY FOR DECADES AND THE BISHOPS WERE JUST AS NEGLIGENT IN DEALING WITH THEM AS IN DEALING WITH THE ABUSERS. AND IT DOESN'T NEED A MAGNIFYING GLASS. An institution so stupid that it thinks its Irish faithful is more scandalised by Brian D’Arcy than by Brendan Smyth IT DID NOT OF COURSE SAY ANYTHING OF THE KIND is not worth anyone’s anger. It is doing a far better job of destroying itself than its worst enemies could dream of. All we can do is mourn the passing of a strain of decency and hope in a society so inured to hypocrisy that one more example is neither here nor there. END
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 11, 2012 8:11:26 GMT
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/0510/1224315843965.htmlIt's very rare anything in Irish is posted here, but this is a link to Dr Alan Titley's take on Grúptinc or in his better rendering of it in Irish 'sluamhacnamh' (group think). Dr Titley was head of the Irish department in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra for most of his career and is a regarded critic of literature in Irish with some published writings of his own. I certainly agree with his assessment of post-Gaelic league revival literature - that very little would be of serious standing (generally that beyond Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Seosamh MacGrianna and Mgr Brendan Devlin, there is not much to go on). But that's an aside. The Irish is not the easiest to follow, but the general gist is that it is easy to knock the Church now, but few were doing it when it was brave to do so and also that right now, few are praising the tremendous good that the Church has always done and continues to do - though he says it is right to criticise abuses that were perpetrated. With this, I thoroughly agree. What I disagree is his differentiation between the Church of pomp and ceremony and the Church working with the poor. There should be no neat separation between the two (such a dialectic can go in the direction of Gnosticism), as we see in the ministry of, say the Curé of Ars. I suppose Franco Zeffrelli's 'Brother Sun, Sister Moon' reads this kind of post-Vatican 2 analysis into the life of St Francis of Assisi (also, it is interesting to compare 'Jesus of Nazereth' of Zeffrelli, which is informed by a broadly liberal analysis to the Council, and Mel Colmcille Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ', which is traditionalist - and I don't wish to take from either as works of art by that observation). Anyway, Dr Titley is saying what a lot of people think, but the trouble is that many traditionalists seem to want the Church of pomp and ceremony without the Church among the poor. This just proves the point which clergy, religious and serious laity of Dr Titley's generation make and there needs to be much soul searching on the matter. The backdrop Dr Titley uses is the now infamous 'Mission to Prey' programme and the RTÉ authority's reaction to the same (headed by former priest Tom Savage). If anyone has reasonable Irish, it's worth the effort of reading the piece.
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