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Post by hibernicus on Sept 21, 2019 21:02:32 GMT
I greatly dislike the blog to which I link below, because it is devoted to hitting the Anglican Ordinariate with any stick that comes to hand (using arguments which would logically imply, for example, that religious orders should be suppressed as a hindrance to the secular clergy and that the Eastern Churches should be latinised as crpto-schismatic) but he does sometimes highlight real problems. For example, he links below to an Ordinariate priest's account of how when they allowed an EF congregation to use their church, the trads systematically destroyed parish leaflets lest they might lead to contamination by contact with non-trads, and demanded assurance that none of the communion hosts had been reserved in the tabernacle from an earlier OF Mass. Quite frankly, trads who refuse on principle to communicate using hosts consecrated at an OF Mass are schismatics and should be treated as such. stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2019/08/more-on-latin-mass-at-our-lady-of.html
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Post by annie on Oct 13, 2019 9:31:50 GMT
Where "supertradmum" explains herself (from her piece about Rage)
"The family which adores God, pays homage to the Creator, asks for His intercession and that of HIs Mother and the saints, and follows His laws, have built-in restraints against narcissism. In other words, holy, emotionally mature parents, with balanced psyches will most likely produce children of like virtue.
The Church throughout the centuries quoted the Scripture passage which feminists hate.
1 Timothy 2:15 Douay-Rheims
15 Yet she shall be saved through childbearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety.
As a woman with a very long adolescent, enjoying the single life, but also pursuing God, I can attest to the fact that women can be saved through childbearing. What this phrase means in modern terms is that the act of having and raising a child, or children, forces one out of the self-centered life of singleness, or even coupleness without children, into a world of self-sacrifice and dying to self. What St. Timothy refers to is exactly an antidote to narcissism in women-the changing of priorities from one’s self, one’s looks, one’s cloths, one’s make-up, one’s career ambitions, and even undivided love of the husband, to one of servant. In fact, modern marriages seem to be challenged by child-bearing and child-rearing, as the woman or the man, or both, are simply too narcissistic to put the needs of the children before their own needs or wants. Again, sin plays a role in choices of selfishness, rising out of narcissism. No real mother or father states, “Me first, then kids.” Such a phrase resounds in the home of the dysfunctional parent. The mom or dad who wears state of the art cloths, while the mom or dad have to go to Good Will can be seen in the houses of the narcissistic parent. Or the parent who pursues money and status instead of being at home with the children, nurturing, and being a good dad or mom is a person seem daily in our society, In fact, what the psychologists and psychiatrists miss entirely has to be the connection between abortion, contraception and narcissism."
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 14, 2019 21:12:12 GMT
BEar in mind that there is spiritual as well as physical parenthood. That's why a priest is called "Father" for example.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 22, 2020 23:11:08 GMT
This is an useful discussion of the recent controversies caused by some US Catholic intellectuals who have responded to the failure of "fusionism" a la Novak and Weigel (i.e. the claim that the compatibility of Catholicism with US constitutionalism and free-market conservatism is unproblematic) by advocating a Catholic confessional/bureaucratic administrative state intended to rule the people for their own good whether they like it or not. The article points out some of the problems with this view, including the assumption that an integralist state would automatically embody the virtues it claimed to promote and the extent to which it reduces the Faith to a political project. Incidentally the description of the typical integralist as a hard-done by young man with a strong libido dominandi and an aesthetic attraction to certain forms of government distinctly reminds me of Hilaire Belloc (not Chesterton, because Chesterton was less aggressive and a bit more self-deceptive about the implications of some of his dodgier views). lawliberty.org/after-republican-virtue/
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Post by hibernicus on May 1, 2020 0:47:29 GMT
Here is a reply to the article cited above. The author argues that critiques of integralism greatly exaggerate its association with interwar fascism by (a) overlooking its nineteenth-century roots (b) overreliance on Theodore Adorno's dodgy Marxisant portrayal of the "authoritarian personality". lawliberty.org/how-not-to-challenge-the-integralists/ This critique is well taken but there are a couple of problems with the argument: (a) Nineteenth-century integralists could be quite savage both verbally (e.g. Louis Veuillot's defence of the Inquisition, anti-semitism and early support for Napoleon) and physically (there are several C19 and C20 examples of traditionalists engaging in civil wars with no holds barred because they saw themselves as engaged in a no-quarter existential battle against the enemies of God - to be fair, their opponents were equally merciless for similar reasons). (b) The fact that contemporary integralism often appeals to a certain type of discontented and power-hungry young man who is intellectually bright and low on empathy is not an invention of Adorno. Anyone who has studied the movement will come across it. To be fair, this applies to some extent to me when I was younger.
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Post by hibernicus on May 14, 2020 22:35:57 GMT
John C Rao, the well-known traditionalist commentator, has a rant on RORATE CAELI in which he denounces the epidemic lockdown as an example of global elites controlling the population and compares the wearing of facemasks to the wearing of yellow stars. Now this is really off the wall - First of all, the point of the yellow star was to signal out a particular group of people as alien, other and subhuman in order to isolate and eventually eradicate them. The point of the facemask is that everyone should wear them, and there is a perfectly plausible medical reason for doing so. There are quite a few modern developments (e.g. the use of lawfare against Asher's Bakery) which are signs of persecution, but the masks aren't such a sign. Second, the masks are not the same as the Nazi Holocaust, and if he makes such a comparison now, what is left in reserve to protest against something worse? (It also, of course, implies that anyone who disagrees with Dr Rao is a Nazi, collaborationist, or Kapo, and by implication that it is not possible that Dr Rao might be wrong. Dr Rao has a bad habit of implying that his take on Catholicism is the only genuine and orthodox one without deigning to spell it out or condescending to argue with people who disagree with him.)
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Post by assisi on May 16, 2020 15:09:07 GMT
John C Rao, the well-known traditionalist commentator, has a rant on RORATE CAELI in which he denounces the epidemic lockdown as an example of global elites controlling the population and compares the wearing of facemasks to the wearing of yellow stars. Now this is really off the wall - First of all, the point of the yellow star was to signal out a particular group of people as alien, other and subhuman in order to isolate and eventually eradicate them. The point of the facemask is that everyone should wear them, and there is a perfectly plausible medical reason for doing so. There are quite a few modern developments (e.g. the use of lawfare against Asher's Bakery) which are signs of persecution, but the masks aren't such a sign. Second, the masks are not the same as the Nazi Holocaust, and if he makes such a comparison now, what is left in reserve to protest against something worse? (It also, of course, implies that anyone who disagrees with Dr Rao is a Nazi, collaborationist, or Kapo, and by implication that it is not possible that Dr Rao might be wrong. Dr Rao has a bad habit of implying that his take on Catholicism is the only genuine and orthodox one without deigning to spell it out or condescending to argue with people who disagree with him.) I agree that the yellow star analogy is over the top. There is however a nagging fear at the back of my mind, and I'm sure in many other people's minds, that should we eventually get a vaccine, everyone will be mandated to take that vaccine. But what would happen if 5% of the population refuse the vaccine due to suspicion of vaccines or bad experiences with other vaccines? The example of China with its social credit system is already a living reality. Could it be that anyone not taking the vaccine will penalised in some way (not allowed to travel outside certain limits, refused entry to particular locations or events)? Now that the government has the majority of people in thrall to the medical experts and behaving in a docile manner in most cases, this would be the time to start a form of social credit. I don't think it will happen but I do see it as a possibility in the times we live in.
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 17, 2020 8:30:52 GMT
John C Rao, the well-known traditionalist commentator, has a rant on RORATE CAELI in which he denounces the epidemic lockdown as an example of global elites controlling the population and compares the wearing of facemasks to the wearing of yellow stars. Now this is really off the wall - First of all, the point of the yellow star was to signal out a particular group of people as alien, other and subhuman in order to isolate and eventually eradicate them. The point of the facemask is that everyone should wear them, and there is a perfectly plausible medical reason for doing so. There are quite a few modern developments (e.g. the use of lawfare against Asher's Bakery) which are signs of persecution, but the masks aren't such a sign. Second, the masks are not the same as the Nazi Holocaust, and if he makes such a comparison now, what is left in reserve to protest against something worse? (It also, of course, implies that anyone who disagrees with Dr Rao is a Nazi, collaborationist, or Kapo, and by implication that it is not possible that Dr Rao might be wrong. Dr Rao has a bad habit of implying that his take on Catholicism is the only genuine and orthodox one without deigning to spell it out or condescending to argue with people who disagree with him.) I agree that the yellow star analogy is over the top. There is however a nagging fear at the back of my mind, and I'm sure in many other people's minds, that should we eventually get a vaccine, everyone will be mandated to take that vaccine. But what would happen if 5% of the population refuse the vaccine due to suspicion of vaccines or bad experiences with other vaccines? The example of China with its social credit system is already a living reality. Could it be that anyone not taking the vaccine will penalised in some way (not allowed to travel outside certain limits, refused entry to particular locations or events)? Now that the government has the majority of people in thrall to the medical experts and behaving in a docile manner in most cases, this would be the time to start a form of social credit. I don't think it will happen but I do see it as a possibility in the times we live in. Agreed, Assisi. The uncritical docility towards state authority right now is quite scary.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 25, 2022 0:50:16 GMT
Interesting developments on the wilder shores of rad-trad-dom. Many rad-trads are supporting Putin over Ukraine because they see him as the defender of Christian civilisation (the idea of Putin as the new Constantine has been doing the rounds in these circles for some years, partly reflecting idiosyncratic interpretations of the Fatima prophecies) but the SSPX are pro-Ukraine under the influence of their Ukrainian Greek-Catholic affiliate, the Society of St Josaphat.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 2, 2022 22:56:42 GMT
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 3, 2022 13:26:31 GMT
The call to kindness at the end is very well-made. Some Catholics seem to think there should be outreach to everybody-- Protestants, Muslims, atheists, the rainbow flag crowd, etc. etc.-- but that right-wing Catholics deserve nothing but contempt. (Of course, many right-wing Catholics make it extremely hard.)
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 4, 2024 21:43:45 GMT
The European Conservative site has some useful material - e.g. commentary by Jonathan van Maren and Rod dreher. Unfortunately, it also has some very dodgy examples of so-called perennialism or traditionalism which is a form of gnostic occultism masquerading as Catholic. Here are two examples - \The quality of trad books certainly could be improved, but cheapness and the desire to reach as broad an audience as possible are considerations. Occult books which are explicitly aimed at a small audience who see themselves as a gnostic elite are something entirely different, and worse - and an author who habitually buys expensive occult books from obscure publishers seems to have his priorities qrong, to put it politely: europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/the-last-of-the-book-lovers/Similarly, an exhortation to conservatives to learn from a form of neo-pagan Nitzscheanism with strong strains of misogyny and homoeroticism is an invitation which should be firmly rejected: europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/what-the-bronze-age-pervert-can-teach-us/And this eulogy of Rudyard Kipling's glorification of Freemasonry as the cement of empire comes very oddly from a supposed Catholic traditionalist but makes perfect sense when you realise the author is a perennialist gnostic who believes in rule by a circle of initiates who believe they have penetrated the gnostic wisdom supposedly concealed within the varying religious beliefs of the vulgar many. George Soros and Richard Dawkins seem positively inviting by comparison - at least they're honest about what they are: europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/rudyard-kipling-islam-and-empire/
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 23, 2024 20:12:28 GMT
This is a very odd example (taken from an Evelyn Waugh novel) of denigrating personalist forms of moral theology in favour of older legalist approaches. To sum up the principle involved: Balbus and Julia have a valid sacramental marriage. Julia deserts Balbus and sets up as a courtesan. Balbus wishes to remain faithful to his marriage vows, and believes it will be helpful in doing this for him to employ Julia's services on the same basis as her other clients. Does Balbus sin by doing so, given that in the eyes of God he is still Julia's husband? The author of the article answers "No", dismissing objections as emotive and rigorist and employing the genetic fallacy (i.e. since the personalist view was developed by Max Scheler who became an unchaste apostate, it need not be considered on its merits). The author finds it strange that John Paul II and Dietrich von Hildebrand should have taken this view, without ever analysing their reasons for doing so. I might add that the view that marital relations corrupted by lust can be sinful is a good deal older - St Augustine, anyone? St Paul? Does the author consider a certain Teacher who provoked the response "This is a hard saying - who can endure it?" to be a rigorist? crisismagazine.com/opinion/permissible-lust
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 27, 2024 23:06:40 GMT
One problem with some trads which I have noticed quite a bit lately (and should have noted it sooner) is a form of introversionism expressed in a quasi-gnostic pursuit of secret conspiracies and private revelations, rather than trying to understand what is going on (including what anti-trads actually believe) and setting it out for a general readership in clear and intelligible form. (Michael Davies had quite a few flaws, but at least he wrote to make converts and not to stir up a little circle of initiates.) This was already noticeable in certain quarters before Pope Francis - I remember once browsing in a book by Fr Kramer of the Fatima Crusade which, right from Page 1, spoke of "Wojtyla" and "Ratzinger" in a tone implying that the author was St Thomas Aquinas scrutinising the term papers of a couple of semi-literate heretics.
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Post by Devotus Immaculatae on Sept 28, 2024 10:55:28 GMT
Trent Horn produced a short video/pocast recently on the dangers of "Catholic Fundamentalism" being dressed up (very damagingly) as genuine traditionalism, which has not gone down well with some trad channels in the US. Worth a listen.
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