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Post by hibernicus on Nov 22, 2013 10:47:01 GMT
This French archbishop is attracting a fair bit of attention on the Catholic blogosphere as indicating how steep the decline of the Faith has been in France: rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/11/ive-buried-120-priests-and-ordained-one.htmlmarymagdalen.blogspot.ie/2013/11/ordained-one-buried-one-hundred-and.htmlSome interesting comments on Fr Ray Blake's blog: EXTRACT toxteth said... It is important to note that Mgr Rey, the bishop of Frejus-Toulon [WHICH ORDAINS MORE PRIESTS THAN ALL THE REST OF FRANCE OUTSIDE PARIS], was a priest of the diocese of Paris (1984) and a member of the Communauté de l'Emmanuel, which was founded as recently as 1972. Why does Paris differ from the rest of France: Cardinal Lustiger. Not surprisingly, he was never elected president of the French bishops' conference, despite presiding over Paris for over a quarter of a century. The Pastor in Valle Adurni wrote a series of seven blog posts about the Church in France which are well worth reading. valleadurni.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/il-faut-que-france-survive-1.html21/11/13 11:17 pm Pelerin said... Those are grim figures indeed though I have no idea how they compare with dioceses here in Britain. I recently read that France had 25,000 Priests in the year 2000. Today the country has 13,000 and it was estimated that in 10 years time the figure will be 6,000. I have heard of single Priests being in charge of over a dozen country churches. They spend more of their time on the road than in their churches. On kto there was a fascinating film some time ago showing the work of two or possibly three Priests who looked after eighteen different county parishes. They needed an enormous calendar board in their presbytery to record where and when they had to be each day. I don't know anything about Mgr Patenotre (a great name for a Bishop!) but surely an open necked shirt teamed with a pectoral cross is not an image which encourages respect for a Bishop. 21/11/13 11:26 pm Pelerin said... Googling this particular Bishop I see that he has 95 Priests in his diocese of whom only 18 are less than 60 years old. There is not a single seminarian in the diocese which is somewhat ironic as I see that the Bishop was the director of the seminary in Reims from 1970 - 1976. 21/11/13 11:40 pm viterbo said... Seeing a lack of vocations as a sign of God that the sacred task of the shepherd should be handed over to the sheep?!? Why do so many Bishops seem to want to be politicians, or peace corp reps rather than Shepherds of the flock of Our Lord? St Ignatius of Antioch would surely find such a Shepherd most strange. On ChurchMilitant.TV a study called 'Dispatches' www.churchmilitant.tv/platform/index.php?ssnID=266&vidID=stingshow the figures for the United States. They are basically horrible. The numbers predict that within the next 40 years the Catholic Church will all but have disappeared from that land. 22/11/13 2:44 am Physiocrat said... I have been to churches in that part of France - the village has a service once a month, and the main town has just two churches remaining open. Nearby Vezelay is a bit weird too. But isn't SSPX keeping things going? 22/11/13 7:39 am END The ACPI have a point when they say that in 20-30 years IReland will probably be in a similar situation. Just because we reject their proposed solutions we shouldn't deny that the problem exists.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2014 20:37:46 GMT
Rod Dreher picks up on another report claiming that on present trends in 24 years there will only be 1,000 active priests in France as compared to 24,000 at present - and the majority of the 1,000 will be traditionalists. This might be an answer to the question of the ACP about where new vocations will come from if their pet reforms are not adopted. Of course, traditionalism is much stronger in France than in Ireland (and some of its manifestations are very dodgy) - and just as Andrew O'Connell recalls meeting vocations directors for some Irish religious orders who responded to data showing that orders which re-adopted traditional religious life were most successful in attracting vocations by saying that they would rather their Orders became extinct than go back, I suspect some of the most vocal members of the ACP would sooner see Catholicism vanish from Ireland than have an Irish Church with a strong traditionalist element. www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/if-france-stays-catholic-it-will-be-traditionalist/#post-comments
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 5, 2015 23:54:56 GMT
Rod Dreher discusses the latest provocation from the French novelist Michel Houellebecq, whose new novel portrays a near-future France in which the secularism of the Enlightenment (which he sees as bankrupt) is replaced by an alliance of Islam (the senior partner) and traditionalist Catholicism. (I should note that Houellebecq, who lived in Ireland for some years BTW, makes a career out of shocking and provoking people for the sake of shock and provocation.) One question Dreher asks is why an Islamised France would be thought more plausible (and it is clear that even H says it is not nearly as plausible as his novel presents it) than a revival of French Catholicism - the reader comment below gives an answer. www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/france-houellebecq-islamic-future/#post-commentsEXTRACT UPDATE: Reader Samn! writes: The thing about (non-immigrant) Catholicism in France is that in most places, it’s almost completely tied in the popular imagination to the upper middle, wealthy and formerly aristocratic classes and is closely associated with those classes’ historical reactionary politics. I’ve been living in France for a little over a year now, and when I first moved here, I took a job teaching English to –very– wealthy children. Almost all of them seemed to be actively practicing Catholics, while I pretty rarely meet practicing Catholics of other backgrounds. The French hierarchy is caught in the trap of wanting to free itself from that legacy while also trying to keep the only people they have in the pews coming to church, but more often than not they seem to mostly just alienate everyone. It doesn’t help that they perceive (not incorrectly, unfortunately) traditional forms of piety as a political statement. It’s likely that French Catholicism was much too tied to monarchist politics to have much of a chance of survival. END I would comment that this is true as far as it goes (and please bear in mind that we ought not to sentimentalise French monarchism and the French hard right, even those parts of it which have/had actually believed in Catholicism rather than treating it as an useful social fiction a la Maurras, or a disguise for primordial paganism. It is true that the intense persecution of Catholics and believers under the Jacobin terror and similar episodes is pretty heavily glossed over nowadays so that it is easy to be ignorant of the scale of the martyrdoms, it is also true that the hard right when in power could be pretty bloody itself, e.g the White Terror in some parts of southern France after the fall of Napoleon, or some of the activities of the Vichy regime.) At the same time, French Catholicism produced some of the most impressive and sophisticated expressions of liberal Catholicism (Ozanam, Maritain, etc). Why does this appear to have been unable to forestall long-term absorption by secularism, whereas the hard trads survive even if only as a fringe element? Part of the long-term decline of French popular Catholicism, BTW is probably related to urbanisation and industrialisation in the C19 and early C20; tradition popular Catholicism was very heavily bound up with place and disturbed by migration. (Again this shouldn't be overstated; there were significant rural areas which were predominantly unbelieving from quite early in the C19, and the sort of petit-bourgeois Catholicism which formed St Therese of Lisieux was a distinctly urban phenomenon.)
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 11, 2015 1:18:41 GMT
One incidental revelation from the recent atrocious murders at the French satirical magazine CHARLIE HEBDO and the related interests, has been the nature of that publication. Insofar as I had heard of that publication, I assumed it was a French equivalent of PRIVATE EYE (which regularly publishes mildly blasphemous and irreverent material, the speech-balloons they stuck onto a nativity scene on a recent cover, with angels telling each other "You've got bird flu" and "You're being replaced by a drone", would be an example). IN fact CHARLIE HEBDO was much more hard-core; various Catholic and other bloggers have linked to various cover cartoons in which, for example, the Bible, Koran and Torah are portrayed as toilet paper, the Persons of the Trinity are depicted sodomising each other, an enthusiastic crowd greeting a Papal visit to France is captioned THE POPE IN FRANCE; THE FRENCH ARE IDIOTS LIKE THE AFRICANS (and the word I have translated as "idiots" is much more obscene in French usage; I might add that the implication that nothing better could be expected from Africans might get the perpetrator had up for racism here), and so on. This was partly, it seems, a reflection of the "spirit of 68" with its revolt against all forms of authority (though some commenters pointed out that this spirit has so permeated the French ruling classes that CHARLIE HEBDO is widely seen as part of the Establishment) but it also reflects an older French tradition going back at least to eighteenth-century Enlightenment pamphleteers; the deliberate use of blasphemy and obscenity to dispel reverence and promote the view that unless you are an atheist and a sexual libertine you cannot be truly free (which has some bearing, I would suggest, on why certain Irish publications have recently been promoting public nudity and sexual exhibitionism as a means of showing that one has shaken off the so-called shackles of Catholicism, as I discussed on another page). This reflects the difference between old-style Anglo-American "separation of church and state" which allowed for religiously-influenced politics but not formal church-state links, and the French tradition of laicite which actively excludes any form of religious influence from the public sphere and confined it to the private realm. One aspect of this is the toleration or even promotion of the sort of literary libertinism which I have discussed above, which is meant to remind the believers to stay in their place and to emphasise that society detests and despises them and only tolerates them on its terms and because it would be too troublesome to suppress them altogether, and because it regards them as an insignificant subculture which is fortunately declining and will eventually vanish altogether. It is worth bearing in mind when listening to some of the rantings and ravings of the SSPX and similar groups on the Revolution and all its fruits without exception being the work of the Devil, liberalism being a sin, etc, that they are thinking of the tradition represented by CHARLIE HEBDO and similar publications, and share with it the assumption that no middle ground is possible between a Catholic confessional state on the lines of divine right monarchy, and a republic founded on atheism and libertinism. There are, I might add, affinities with a certain ultra-Protestant tradition in this; it is quite well known that a section of Anglo-American fundamentalist populism likes to get hot under the collar with the assistance of literature describing the real or imaginary sexual misdeeds of Catholic priests and religious (this stuff has unfortunately been given a new lease of life by the recent clerical scandals). I recently read some Kensitite literature from the beginning of the twentieth century (the Kensitites were ultra-Protestants who organised riots to disrupt public religious ceremonies held by Catholics and by Anglican "ritualist" Anglo-Catholics). This is quite explicitly based on the view that Catholics must realise that they are only tolerated because the Protestant people of Britain don't like to persecute people, but that they must realise that all decent people regard them as votaries of a harmful and degraded superstition which is only to be practised in private, and that if they parade their blasphemies, idolatries and superstitions in public these should be suppressed both by law enforcement and public indignation (i.e. mob attacks). Moreover, if it ever looked as if Catholicism was gaining ground and increasing its influence, it would be quite right and proper - nay, a positive duty, to prohibit it again in any form. From time to time in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this type of Protestant made alliance with continental secularists against Catholicism, in the belief that they could convert the secularists to Protestantism; the outcome for the Protestants generally resembled the fate of the young lady of Niger who went for a ride on a tiger. In this context, it is quite clear that quite a few of those people who wish to abolish blasphemy laws here and elsewhere do so not on the abstract principle of free speech, but as a means of spreading French-style laicite through defaming belief and believers. It is revealing that in his tribute to the murdered cartoonists, Martyn Turner informed us that when he is in France he takes CHARLIE HEBDO in preference to other satirical magazines. I repeat, nothing I have said here justifies, or is intended in the slightest to justify, the atrocious murders of the contributors to that magazine and of the other people killed by the murderers. There are many people whose views and actions I regard as reprehensible, but that does not justify anyone in murdering them -especially when the murderers wish to impose a regime which makes French laicite appear positively benevolent and tolerant. In the meantime, our homegrown advocates of free speech as an absolute should logically demand an end to the use of prosecutions and other forms of censure against the advocacy of Judaeo-Christian sexual morality. I expect them to make such a demand on Tibb's Eve, or when Mr Panti Bliss repents and becomes a Carthusian hermit, whichever of these events happens later. Some relevant links (warning; some of these reproduce some of the offending cartoons, which are so disgusting that once seen they are not easily forgotten. Proceed with caution) www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/no-we-are-not-charlie/www.stramentarius.com/january-10-2015/www.lmschairman.org/2015/01/i-am-not-charlie.htmlcumlazaro.blogspot.ie/2015/01/jesuislaloi.html(Warning; the link below prominently reproduces some of the offending images to show how bad they are. Click it only if you are willing to see those images) marymagdalen.blogspot.ie/
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 15, 2015 14:42:17 GMT
I wonder whether it is posturing or genuine, but The Phoenix has a hard hitting lead article titled "Je ne sui pas Charlie" (sic).
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 16, 2015 23:03:18 GMT
I think there's an element of posturing, and also of the relatively sympathetic view of Islam that is visible in (e.g.) their coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The PHOENIX always has a strong tendency to be "agin the establishment". The argument appears to be (a) as a vulnerable minority in Europe Muslims should not be subjected to that sort of invective (b) restrictions supposedly aimed at Islamist terrorism will in practice be deployed against other protestors such as trade unionists and radical leftists (c) Western governments in practice do not believe in absolute free speech (he instances Section 31's broadcasting ban on Sinn Fein and the 1980s ban on abortion information). They also point out that CHARLIE HEBDO is not committed to absolute free speech (they sacked a constributor some years ago for an allegedly anti-semitic article). The PHOENIX editorial is signed personally by the editor Paddy Prendiville.
Meanwhile, in the IRISH TIMES on Monday Una Mullaly was tying herself in knots drawing distinctions between free speech (good) and hate speech (bad), in which she suggests among other things that it's OK to blaspheme Catholicism because it has historically been "placed on a pedestal" in Ireland, but not Islam. As some correspondents point out, this is the same Una Mullaly who suggested the "marriage equality" referendum campaign should be subject to a form of regulation which essentially would ban just about every form of advocacy of a No vote as "homophobic"; MS Mullaly's position amounts to "free speech when, and only when, I agree with it".
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2015 16:21:36 GMT
I have to be honest, I've lost a deal of sympathy for Charlie Hebdo. Satire is one thing, but some of that is just outright crude. I have to wonder, how offended would the French be if somebody made cartoons about the dead cartoonists?
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 31, 2015 19:35:22 GMT
CHARLIE HEBDO itself had cartoons about the dead cartoonists (one was shown as an angel with an erection) in its post-massacre issue.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2015 12:17:08 GMT
I was thinking more alone the lines of a cartoon that is offencive to the cartoonists though.
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Post by hibernicus on May 14, 2015 20:50:26 GMT
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Post by streetlegal on May 27, 2015 13:45:14 GMT
One of the more interesting contemporary theological philosophers is Jean-Luc Marion. I strongly recommend:
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 31, 2015 21:17:46 GMT
As the recent rerelease of the film AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS got mentioned on another thread, it may be of interest to see Peter Hitchens' response on recently seeing it for the first time, with his comments on how it reminds him of his own experience of an old-style Church of England boarding school and how both France and Britain have changed since his youth: hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/07/au-revoir-les-enfants.html
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 23, 2015 21:35:18 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 25, 2015 14:25:10 GMT
Just read this very interesting article, and it does indicate that there is a lot to hope for in France, which could be a leaven for a lot of other European countries too, though with one caution. The widespread knowledge of French among the European educated class helped the dissemination of French ideas, but I would imagine there is a considerable break on it now. However, a lot of the movements mentioned in this article are present in Germany and elsewhere on the continent, so there is considerable opportunity.
When I read the comments, though, it occurred to me that the "trad" commentator is the equivalent here of the secularist in the secular news. Though the SSPX and tradition generally is relatively strong in France (and it's growing), it is nowhere near as as strong as many non-French traditionalists believe it is. Over the past 15 years, I've heard that one third, one half or a majority (it is statistically verifiable that more French Catholics go to the TLM, said one person of my acquaintance) attend the EF Mass. While attendance at the EF Mass is statistically significant, it is not near the fractions that are claimed for it and even attendance at the Paris-Chartres walk is misleading. A significant proportion of the walkers don't generally go to the EF Mass - many are as happy to attend World Youth Days. Many would feed into the charismatic style of the Emmanuel community (mentioned here).
This is not to put down the energies of French traditionalism, only to caution against the habit of overstating its strength. But as the article says, only 6% of Catholics go to Sunday Mass. The percentage in Germany (described as an empty shell) is a lot higher than that - you could probably multiply the proportion by three.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 25, 2015 21:22:51 GMT
One point that might be worth bearing in mind is that the French seem to be suffering from a bout of declinism at present and have been doing so for some time; the sense that France's place in the world is declining, that French social protections are under siege and may not be sustainable indefinitely, that the effect of 68, by discrediting both old-style Catholic conservatism and the old republican-rationalist ethos, has been to produce a demoralised and decadent society which no longer believes it has any sense of purpose. Rod Dreher has been discussing SUBMISSION some more on his blog, and one point that comes through strongly is that the book is not about the evils of Islam per se, simply about a sense that the French have ceased to believe in any higher purpose and will acquiesce in anything to survive. I suspect his point would be the same if the new President in the book was a Catholic traditionalist and the conformists and cynics were declaring "Paris is well worth a Mass" - I suspect from certain quotes that this may have been Houellebecq's original intention. Let's put things this way _ I remember seeing a piece in the SPECTATOR some time ago reviewing a biography of Campion (which was actually reviewed quite favourably, both as regards the book and Campion) in which the reviewer remarked that while 50 years or so English Catholics could celebrate their martyrs with unalloyed admiration, nowadays they seem awfully like their Islamic equivalents in their willingness to sacrifice their lives for the sake of divine truth and heaven. I recently read Challoner's MEMOIRS OF THE MISSIONARY PRIESTS, an eighteenth-century compilation of the stories of English martyrs, and the matter-of fact details of how they were dismembered are awfully challenging once they sink in. I saw some reproductions of the famous frescoes of the English martyrs from the English College in Rome, and the depiction of human bodies cut up like sides of beef are a reminder that they are the product of an early modern society when such executions were fairly common. That really brings their testimony home.
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