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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 24, 2012 12:05:54 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 25, 2012 0:30:51 GMT
Here is the full text. I'll offer some comments in CAPITAL LETTERS
THE SENSE that Christianity’s slow death since the Enlightenment has been accelerating in recent decades in the West has, for some observers, been sharpened by the current dramatic slump in Catholicism’s fortunes in Ireland.
One might perhaps do worse than heed a piece of advice I heard years ago from a German priest. In situations of crisis, he liked to invoke the “Gamaliel Principle”.
By this he meant the principle enunciated by the famous Jewish rabbi, Gamaliel, in Acts 5: 34-39, when he advised against trying to stamp out the nascent Christian movement on the grounds that, if it were from men only, it wouldn’t last, but if it were from God, it couldn’t be stamped out. In other words, truth is ultimately in God’s hands, not ours. THIS IMHO IS QUIETISM; WHAT IF GOD WISHES US TO BE THE INSTRUMENTS OF HIS WILL?
Yet, a more pessimistic assessment of the dire situation in which the Catholic Church now finds itself in Ireland, would of course claim that it is not facing extinction, but has already long been spiritually extinct. Having sacrificed their language in the 19th century in the struggle for survival and advancement, the Irish proceeded to sacrifice their religion in the 20th, in a continued pursuit of not just survival, but success.
This view, which sees the demise of Irish Catholic Christianity as beginning ironically with Catholic Emancipation, can certainly be contested. [THE TROUBLE WITH THIS VIEW IS THAT IT SENTIMENTALISES PERSECUTION AND IMPLIES THAT CHRISTIANITY IS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WICKED WORLD AND CAN AND SHOULD NEVER BE PUT INTO PRACTICE.] But the impression is hard to deny that over recent centuries “traditionalism” has been a more powerful force in Catholic life in Ireland than “tradition”.
The distinction comes from the late church historian, Jaroslav Pelikan: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” [PELIKAN WAS LUTHERAN, THEN BECAME EASTERN ORTHODOX, SO THERE MAY BE A CERTAIN PROTESTANT BIAS. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE IRISH CHURCH'S MAJOR PROBLEMS WERE PROVINCIALISM, RIGORISM AND AUTHORITARIANISM, NONE OF WHICH IS NECESSARILY IDENTICAL WITH TRADITIONALISM.] The “living faith of the dead”, or “the faith of our fathers,” can still give life, and continues to do so at a practical level throughout Ireland. WHAT EXACTLY DOES HE MEAN BY "PRACTICAL"? But the public face of Catholicism has come to resemble a death-mask, no longer capable of registering awareness of a new age AS IF NEWNESS WAS A VIRTUE IN ITSELF or radiating any vital connection with truth. AND MANY OF ITS OPPONENTS OBJECT TO IT PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY OBJECT TO THE VERY CONCEPT OF TRUTH. WHAT IF THE PROBLEM IS NOT THAT IT HAS LOST ITS CONNECTION WITH TRUTH, BUT IF WE LIKE PILATE ARE NO LONGER ABLE TO PERCEIVE AND DESIRE TRUTH?
But this in itself may not be too alarming. Christianity is neither a substitute for the world, nor a call to control and exploit the world. BUT NEITHER IS IT TOTALLY ETHEREAL AND DIVORCED FROM THE WORLD - JESUS ROSE IN THE BODY, NOT AS A DISEMBODIED GHOST. THIS IS COMING CLOSE TO TREATING THE WORLD AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIANITY.
Rather, Christianity sees itself as its leaven, or as the “salt of the earth.” Yet, if it fails to fulfil this purpose, it “is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men” (Mt 5: 13). This may be a way of interpreting the current state of religious affairs in Ireland. It may be the divine judgment on what Catholicism has largely become at this juncture in Ireland’s history. WHAT IF IT IS NOT ONLY CATHOLICISM THAT HAS FALLEN UNDER DIVINE JUDGEMENT? WHAT IF IRELAND AS A WHOLE HAS SINNED AND FALLEN?
But becoming reduced, as a result of this visitation of the “Wrath of God,” to a “minority culture,” may not be the worst thing in the world. In fact, it might even be closer to the Christian ideal.It is salutary to recall that Christianity tells us we have no abiding city in this world (Heb 13: 14). And cities built by Christian peoples can even disappear almost entirely, without Christianity ceasing to exist or to be true. WE MAY HAVE NO ABIDING CITY IN THE WORLD, AND CHRISTIAN CITIES MAY FALL, BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE SHOULD NOT TRY TO INFLUENCE THE WORLD BY THE ENLIGHTENMENT THAT COMES FROM THE GOOD NEWS. WERE THE JEWS MERE MATERIALISTS WHEN THEY SAT BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON AND WEPT FOR ZION? WERE NEHEMIAH AND EZRA WRONG TO REBUILD JERUSALEM SINCE IT WOULD EVENTUALLY BE DESTROYED AGAIN?
The places most associated with the growth of Christianity, the places where the decisive church councils were held, where the beliefs of Christianity were refined and the great Christian thinkers flourished – almost all lying nowadays in modern Turkey and north Africa – are no longer Christian.
Yet Christian truth can endure. BUT THE GREAT COMMISSION STILL APPLIES - WE ARE CALLED TO MAKE DISCIPLES OF ALL NATIONS, NOT TO BURY OUR TALENT IN THE GROUND AND DO NOTHING So, it may well be that Ireland’s and indeed Europe’s public culture generally will, as time goes on, lose more and more of its hitherto overwhelmingly Christian veneer WAS IT ONLY A VENEER, OR SOMETHING MORE? IS APOSTACY IRRELEVANT?. But the enduring truth of the Christian message will always find a way through to humanity. ALAS, THE AUTHOR SHOULD READ ROMANS 10:4 [How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? - HIB]
For religion is not something we have, but something we are. BUT IN ORDER TO BECOME IT WE MUST FIRST LEARN WHAT IT REQUIRES OF US Similarly, the church claims that Christian truth is not something we have, but what God is. And the living God can always be relied on to awaken living faith in the discerning human heart. THAT IS WHY HE GAVE US THE CHURCH AS HIS MYSTICAL BODY
How the truth of Christianity will express itself in the future can safely be left in Gods hands. AND HE HAS PLACED IT IN YOUR HANDS AND MINE. WE ARE TO DISCERN AND STRIVE FOR IT, NOT TO SIT BACK AND DO NOTHING, WHICH AMOUNTS IN PRACTICE TO TAKING THE IRISH TIMES AND RTE, THE GUARDIAN AND THE NEW YORK TIMES AS THE NEW MAGISTERIUM
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 25, 2012 12:36:13 GMT
Father Martin Henry, the author, is one of the bright sparks in Maynooth. He teaches dogmatic theology and he is interested in Nietzche.
Yet in this piece, he just parrots what older clergy and bishops think about the current crisis - that as the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, all they need do is sit back and watch.
I am reminded of the late Mgr Francis Cremin who said the Reformation had nothing on this present crisis. It took me a while to see, but he was right.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 25, 2012 18:02:28 GMT
I suspect that the real reason behind it is the same one which has been attributed to the notoriously passive leadership style of James Molyneaux (who led the Ulster Unionists for about 15 years in the 1980s and early 1990s). One explanation sometimes given for Molyneaux's inaction was that he realised the UUP was so disorganised and internally divided that any policy at all would lead to a split, so the only way to keep it together was to do nothing. That didn't work for Molyneaux and the UUP in the long run, and doing nothing won't work for the Irish Church either - but it is very comfortable for its advocates, and lets them avoid unpopular stances and the wearisome chore known as thought.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 27, 2012 0:46:13 GMT
rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2012/01/make-this-in-memory-of.html Here is an example of the sort of Pharisaism that gives trads a bad name. On the morning after the recent cruise liner shipwreck off the Italian coast, the local priest gave thanks to God by having various mementoes of the wreck brought up as offerings at Mass. Whatever one may think of this, it was surely well-intentioned and took place under exceptional circumstances, in which many people's lives were in peril and some died - yet the moderators at RORATE CAELI denounce it as an insult to God and man [see below], and certain commenters in the combox [go to the link and read them yourself if you can stand it] could not execrate it more fiercely if it had involved human sacrifice to Satan. They lack all sense of proportion, and their insult to the priest and the islanders, who, unlike the combox prophets at RORATE have just participated in the saving of human life, amounts to an exhortation to the heavens to rain down vinegar instead of justice. EXTRACT Do this in whose memory?... No shame. No rules. No sobriety. No propriety. No sense of ridicule. No respect for God, for the living, and for the dead. Novus Ordo. At Mass on Sunday morning in Giglio's main church, which opened its doors to the evacuees [of the cruise ship that ran aground the Tuscan island] Friday night, altar boys and girls brought up to the altar a life vest, a rope, a rescue helmet, a plastic tarp and some bread. Don Lorenzo, the parish priest, told the faithful that he wanted to make this admittedly "different" offering to God as a memory of what had transpired. He said each one carried powerful symbolic meaning for what happened on Friday night: the bread that multiplied to feed the survivors, the rope that pulled people to safety, the life vest and helmet that protected them, and the plastic tarp that kept cold bodies warm. "Our community, our island will never be the same," he told the few dozen islanders gathered for Mass. END The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector... But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18: 11, 13-14) ADDENDUM - another parable comes to mind. One interpretation of why the priest and the Levite do not help the wounded traveller in the parable of the Good Samaritan is that they were going up to Jerusalem to perform their liturgical duties, and they feared that if they tried to help the man and he was already dead, they would be ritually defiled and precluded from their religious observances until they had been formally purified. When the priest opened the church to give shelter to the survivors of the shipwreck, he behaved like the Good Samaritan; if RORATE cannot see that it is imitating the priest and levite by making such a big issue of those offerings, and impairing its witness when it complains about real and serious abuses, then it is deaf and blind indeed. Jesus answered, "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.' Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbour to him who fell among the robbers?" He said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 27, 2012 13:55:06 GMT
I recently heard that the term 'Pharisee' might be derived from the Farsi word 'Pars' which means Persian and which is used in English in naming the Parsees, adherents of the traditional Iranian Zoroastrian faith who left Iran for India after the former became Islamic.
I will not go into a detailed description of Zoroastrianism here, except to say that it did have an influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and whether the proposed etymology of 'Pharisee' here is correct or not, the Essene and Pharisee parties within Judaism in the time of Christ were influenced by their experiences in captivity in Babylon in a way that the Saducees were not. The dualist nature of Zoroastrianism would manifest itself again and again as a menace to Christianity, through Gnosticism, Manichaeanism, Albigensiansism/Catharism, the Bogomil movement and other more recent phenomena.
The Manichaeans were interesting - the faith combined elements of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism and Manichaeans were persecuted as heretics by Zoroastrian, Christian and Buddhist regimes rather than as a separate, rival religion. Essentially, Manichaean dualism more or less views all material creation as evil. Keep this and the original connexion I made between Pharisaism and Persia (origin of Manichaeanism) in mind.
I have a friend who spent some time (a few years; not a month or something like that) in the St Peter's Fraternity seminary in Denton, Nebraska. One point, little to do with the administration of the seminary, wore him down. A significant and vocal minority of students there were part of a party dubbed as 'Jansenists' by everyone else. I have to say I don't like the word 'Jansenist' in this context, as it carries the allegation of heresy whether it is meant to or not, but I understand why the word is employed given my friend's (not unbiased, but equally not uncharitable) description of what was going on. The 'Jansenist' faction had no scruples about delating fellow students for real or imagined offence; they vandalised seminary property (eg covers of phonebooks) if they imagined the pictured models were occasions of sin to the community; they censored books in the library apparently independently of the college authorities; and they held a generally censorious attitude towards other seminarians' enjoyment of cigarettes, wine (not generally over-indulged in) and, God help us, ice cream (over-eating was treated like a sin). This was reflected in certain traditional communities in the US, many of which were either ex-SSPX or ex-independent which was manifest in the lifestyle of the congregation - eg, the sight of pretty women making a deliberate effort to look unattractive or the absence of food in the fridge of the rectory. The elevation of monastic life as a model for all the faithful was another example.
My friend found the situation very trying. The interesting fact was that he wasn't given to flogging the term 'Jansenist' to death - instead, he called them neo-Manichaeans, which was and is a lot more biting. I opined that the principal influence here was not Jansenism imported from Ireland or elsewhere but actually New England Puritanism adopted as Catholicism. My friend conceded I might have a point.
It is in this context and in the context of what Hibernicus points out in the Rorate Coeli blog combox that I highlight some pitfalls in the happy adoption of a 'traditionalist' identity and ideology. I understand that by no means every self-described traditionalist is a Jansenist or a neo-Manichaean or an anti-semite or an absolute monarchist or a mysogynist or a promoter of long dead political and economic theories. The point I am making is that those who embrace traditional Catholicism will need to steer carefully through some very choppy waters and will presented with many visions of a model Catholic which on fuller consideration is hardly Catholic, or even Christian, at all but who approximates more to a Manichaean or a Pharisee. For the record, I am not directing this comment at the SSPX or their supporters. I am quite sure many within the SSPX-support base avoid this and I know many outside it do not. I am very much addressing the entire concept of a traditional movement.
The comments which Hibernicus refers to on Rorate Coeli highlights the skewed perspective by which traditionalists drift into Pharisaism without realising it. An Italian priest, who I believe to have been misguided, responds unusually to a desperate situation. The commentators don't seem to see the level of 'love of neighbour' exercised by priest and people through the crisis. In doing so, they have provided people like the camp followers of bodies such as the ACPI with a stick to beat all traditionalists with. I am reminded of something the editor of a trenchant overseas traditionalist publication (which has been criticised in these pages of late) once said to me - he was sure there was probably more charity at a neo-modernist sausage-sizzle than there was at a solemn extraordinary form Latin Mass. There are many occasions when I believe him to be right.
The relationship between love of God and love of neighbour has always been a fine and difficult balance - but Our Divine Lord sheds some light on the matter in the two parables from St Luke's Gospel cited above by Hibernicus - the Pharisee and the Publican and the Good Samaritan. I understand that many who are now traditionalists have been badly burned by either the complete disregard for liturgical legislation with the general collapse of ecclesiastically authority or by the raw contact with horrible aspect of the brave new secular world. But we must retain a sense of perspective and in the end, we will be asked have we fed the hungry etc and we face the possibility of hearing not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven - a reflection on the differences between the Catholic and Protestant positions on good work/personal merit should clarify this point.
I raise this as 'traditionalists' need to know who they are and what they are about. If they are just armchair liturical critics plus pundits of long dead ideologies, some of which are anti-social, the cause is lost. But if the spirituality of the traditional Mass, Sacraments and devotions animate them towards corporal and spiritual works of mercy, their zeal in this respect will evangelise the whole world. But the first step is to realise that this is walking on a tightrope without the benefit of a safety net.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 27, 2012 19:34:32 GMT
I suspect Jansenism is probably an influence given the French roots of much traditionalism; I also suspect a distorted version of Ignatian spirituality may underly it. I suspect that what they like best about monasticism is the Chapter of Faults. Fraternal correction so easily ceases to be fraternal. I entirely agree with Alasdair's point about the way in which traditionalists have been hurt and made suspicious by the evils of secularism and the misuse of ecclesiastical authority - I made this point myself in discussing why Rod Pead's CHRISTIAN ORDER has become so angry and gone so far off the rails. In his Anglican days John Henry Newman said: "If the Church of Rome is the Church of the Apostles, let it act as the Apostles did. Let them go out into the streets of our manufacturing districts and preach to the people as the Apostles did, and then I will believe." (I paraphrase somewhat.) So many did just that - I sometimes think the most impressive part of the APOLOGIA is the selection of testimonials to Newman's work for the sick during a cholera epidemic in Birmingham - and if we are their heirs we should carry on their work.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 30, 2012 14:22:56 GMT
The phrase 'Jansenism' is tossed as an insult at many groups other than traditionalists and it certainly is present in French traditionalism. But the rigorism which manifests itself in North America seems to go beyond that and it affects attitudes toward food and drink (especially alcohol) and clothing (especially women's fashions) in a way that continental Jansenism has little to say on. This is what may be derived from New England puritanism - many of the promoters are actually converts.
The traditional movement falls down remarkably badly on corporal works of mercy. Is there even an attempt to set up a trad conference of the Society of StVdeP? Given how some whitened sepulchres in the trad movement revile Blessed Frederic Ozanam, that is probably a stupid question. I remember having a conversation about the international trad profile with a prominent member of Una Voce America who believed that the international trad leadership seemed not to realise at how small and ineffective trads actually are. He suggested the sort of contribution made by trads was negligible in comparison to, say, the fundraising that the Knights of Columbus do for Catholic charities and Pontifical charities in particular. Trads are just not in that league and no amount of lashing out on comboxes on sympathetic blogs is going to redress the balance.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 30, 2012 17:39:45 GMT
Teetotalism is certainly an Anglo-American (and Scandinavian) practice foreign to European Catholicism - for one thing, there is a tension with the use of wine in the Eucharist. Among Catholics it is mostly found in Irish and Irish-derived contexts, and the Protestant roots are fairly clear. (Fr Mathew was influenced by Quakers.) I am not saying it is a bad thing per se (for one thing it was clearly a response to the horrific impact of alcohol abuse, especially among working populations in the social upheavals surrounding the Industrial Revolution). The Americans actually seem to be getting more teetotal again in recent decades - social drinking among the professional classes is in steep decline there, generally for health reasons. I wouldn't be so sure that restrictions on women's clothing come from Protestant sources. Southern European Catholic cultures (especially in Spain, Portugal and southern Italy) had dress codes for women which bordered on the Islamic, and given the association of women's fashions with status display I would not be surprised if real Jansenists favoured sober dress. (BTW if you have read Protestant as well as Catholic denunciations of women's fashion from the early to mid-C20, there is clearly an element of class resentment in them, contrasting the respectable working class and lower middle class with the godless aristocracy and the sort of unrespectable working-class youngsters who adulated film stars like Clara Bow.) Given that the SVP conferences are organised on a parochial/territorial basis you would only expect to find them where there are organised trad parishes in communion with Rome, which means in very few places, and nowhere in Ireland except perhaps Dublin. Even in the States, trads tend to travel long distances to attend EF masses and this naturally militates against the sort of local territorial involvement needed for the SVP (as would the moving of indult Masses from venue to venue that trads often experience - I know of a few trads who are in the St Kevin's SVP conference, but I wonder what would happen if the indult MAss were moved to some other church, just as it has been moved three times already). This is all the more regrettable given that indult masses are often assigned to older inner-city churches with small and declining congregations - precisely the places where conferences will be weak and could be reinvigorated by an influx of trads, and where the work of the SVP is most needed. I have some thoughts on Ozanam-hate among trads in the "French Catholicism" thread I started some time ago - it's a carry-over from ultras' denunciations of Bl.Frederick because he opposed the dictatorship of Napoleon III when that gentleman was posing as the Church's best hope. Certain people seem to think that the only legitimate form of Catholic social action is to advocate the establishment of a Catholic monarchy or suchlike, and that the absence of a Catholic state absolves them of the obligation to perform any works of charity other than those involved in supporting the trad movement.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 31, 2012 21:41:00 GMT
One problem I think that trads have is an assumption that everyone who disagrees is in bad faith. Here are some suggestions about why this is so: (1) Many "liberals" are indeed in bad faith, consciously and unconsciously, about the full heterodoxy of their positions and about their own intolerance of disagreement. (2) Fear of losing the truth can lead to authoritarianism (this I think was the problem with a lot of Irish Catholic education in the past - an emphasis on unquestioning obedience rather than understanding breeding resentment and adolescent rebellion) (3) Boundary reinforcement taking precedence over evangelisation; fear that in understanding the other you yourself may be corrupted, and the only way to avoid this is to distance yourself from the Other as sternly as possible. It helps that the Other will often advocate genuinely reprehensible views. (4) Taking one's own views for granted and thus failing to understand how anybody can possibly disagree with them. (5) Refusal to face the fact that we are in a situation very like that in which St Augustine wrote THE CITY OF GOD - that Christendom has broken down, it will take generations to rebuild, and then it will take shapes we can't now imagine. This is a hard saying.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 2, 2012 9:37:37 GMT
An American friend of mine contrasted what he called the 'ghetto' and 'leaven' approaches to traditionalism.
The 'ghetto' approach, which is by far the most vocal wing, would erect a type of fortress traditionalism along the lines that we are criticising here. Virtually every trad organisation, publication and website I'm aware off seems to be in this category - and most of the four points Hibernicus gives in his last post would apply.
The 'leaven' approach to me is a better one and it is not one that has really been articulated. If I summarise it, for traditionalism to work, it has to be evangelical. To be evangelical, some cherished notion and some comfortable positions will have to be jettisoned.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 8, 2012 20:46:21 GMT
Just as a matter of curiosity, Alasdir, how did the FSSP seminary authorities in Denton react to the rigorist students whom you mentioned? I would have thought that defacing seminary property (certainly the directory covers, possibly library books as well if the "parallel system of censorship" involved abstraction, defacement or destruction), making unproven accusations against other seminarians, and setting themselves up as censors of morals without reference to the superiors, would be serious offences and raise grave questions about whether people who engage in such behaviour are proper candidates for ordination.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 10, 2012 13:57:02 GMT
The nub of my friend's problem with the FSSP was paralysis in the administration. This paralysis encompassed broader issues than just the rigorism, but without supporting it, it refused to deal with it. The rigorists had supporters on the faculty too and so being rigorist was not disqualification. This was before Father Bisig became rector in Denton which I gather brought an improvement.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 10, 2012 23:17:41 GMT
The "no enemies on the right" syndrome is as dangerous for trads as "no enemies on the left" was to social democrats dealing with communists.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 11, 2012 22:28:04 GMT
Here's an example of how a certain type of far-right self-indulgence can wind up discrediting legitimate concerns. As discussed on other threads, E. Michael Jones is an American Catholic publicist who briefly lectured in English at St Mary's (Notre Dame's sister college, originally founded for women students when ND was men-only) but was refused tenure because of his outspoken support for HUMANAE VITAE. He is clever though eccentric, but over time he has gradually drifted into very dangerous waters. From becoming aware of the anti-catholic elements in much 1940s-1960s "cold war liberalism", he has come to see the assimiliation of American Catholics in the postwar (and especially post-Vatican II) era as the result of a deliberate conspiracy; then he decided it was a specifically Jewish conspiracy, and now he publishes holocaust denial material and appears as a talking head on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV, declaring that Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown because he stood for true democracy as distinct from the bogus American variety, which he claims is mere manipulation by "usurers". I outlined this sad story recently to a friend who had not previously heard of E. Michael Jones, and the response was "good tenure decision". So it is that by going into the wildest realms of malevolent wackadoodledom, Mr Jones has reinforced the stereotype of orthodox Catholics as Jew-hating nutjobs, and given retrospective justification to the original injustice done against him. A lot of trads act and talk in ways that end up doing the same thing, and actually assist the cause of heterodoxy.
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