|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 4, 2013 9:18:38 GMT
This is a real problem. Right now both Catholic Voice and Alive! are promoting this type of thinking. I think it is fair to say that this would not be reflective of the thinking behind groups like the Pro-Life Campaign, Family and Life and the Iona Institute.
I agree entirely with Hibernicus' point, which I believe that Christopher Hitchens (of all people) made in an American context much earlier.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 4, 2013 9:32:58 GMT
The IRISH TIMES overextended itself in the boom; the bust cut down on its advertising revenue and much of that will never come back because it's gone to the Net. That is even more serious than losing circulation; newspapers live or die on advertising revenue. BPAs's "abortion provider" ad, with which the IRISH TIMES disgraced itself still further yesterday, won't plug the gap. BTW I notice none of those Dublin papers who reported on the ad mentioned that the BPAS Chief executive Ann Furedi, whom I call Moloch's High Priestess, is a pro-choice absolutist who refuses to condemn sex-selection abortion and believes abortion should be available for any reason right up to birth. To be fair to Ms Furedi, she is quite honest and upfront about her views, it is the mainstream media who cover up for her and do not challenge BPAS on them, whereas if a pro-life organisation is associated however remotely with someone a bit iffy the same media will rush to present it as 'proof' that all pro-lifers are mad bombers who want to force women into burkhas. Bias shows even more in the questions that are not asked. This is very interesting. We all know that this is par for the course with the established media internationally. In the context of the Smeatonite/Bowmanite debate in this country, it shows the old principle of "divisa et impera" in operation. We really need to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 4, 2013 9:34:07 GMT
Irish Times circulation (1H): 2008- 118,259 2009- 114,488 2010- 105,742 2011- 100,951 2012- 92,565 2013- 84,201 29% decline in just 5 years!These figures speak for themselves. Thanks for posting Shane.
|
|
|
Post by shane on Nov 4, 2013 14:34:30 GMT
Irish Independent circulation (1H):
2008-159,363 2009-152,204 2010-144,896 2011-134,228 2012-125,986 2013-121,120 24% decline in 5 years
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 4, 2013 15:48:03 GMT
Serious leakage in the Indo too. Is there any publication bucking this negative trend?
The IT is down nearly a third and the Indo down a quarter....in five years. It's no wonder the papers are slimming down and allowing advocacy groups space. Somehow, I think the Times at least is going to take a turn for the worse. Remember the Irish Press. I'll wager it was on a higher circulation when it closed.
|
|
|
Post by shane on Nov 4, 2013 20:31:33 GMT
Hibernicus, in 2010 advertising revenue accounted for 65% of total Irish newspaper revenue, compared to 50% in Britain and 87% in the US (OECD report 'The Evolution of News and the Internet', June 2010).
Alaisdir, the Irish Press last had a circulation of 38,889. Most of this migrated to other papers, particularly the Independent (the total increase for all daily newspapers was 35,689).
Irish Examiner circulation (1H):
2008- 54,191 2009- 50,346 2010- 46,687 2011- 43,390 2012- 40,245 2013- 37,897 30% decline in 5 years
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 4, 2013 20:43:39 GMT
The PRESS was badly mismanaged; its distinguishing feature was that it had a core group of readers who were astonishingly loyal, but that they were dying off and not being replaced and it couldn't attract new readers. Furthermore, their core readers (older, more rural, dyed-in-the wool FFers) were of a type less attractive to advertisers who prefer young professionals with lots of discretionary income. (DINKS - Double Income, No Kids - is the formula; this BTW is a minor factor in why the media have become more gay-friendly in recent decades.) I wonder how much of the EXAMINER'S decline is related to trying to develop a national paper and move away from a regional base (though that regional base would have been challenged by local radio and other media such as freesheets.) That might be detectible from the circulation figures for the ECHO, which is still Cork-centred.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 4, 2013 21:00:29 GMT
I have now read Murphy's article and it is even stranger than I thought it would be. He begins by saying that for the last 40 years "prolife workers in Ireland and elsewhere have chosen to engage in the fight to protect human life with both hands tied behind their backs. I mean, they have left God out of the picture." What planet is this man living on? Has he not attended a pro-life demonstration for the last 40 years? It is clear to anyone who has looked at the subject at all that the majority of pro-lifers are religiously motivated, many pro-life demonstrations such as the March for Life make extensive use of Catholic and Christian images, and there are a lot of pro-life groups which focus on the religious argument. Murphy is not paying any attention at all to what pro-lifers have actually been doing and in weighing one tactic against another on the basis of events - he's making an a priori argument which amounts to saying that we would have no problems if everyone was a faithful Catholic - but that is not the case and we have to deal with the situation as we find it. His real underlying position seems to be that no pro-lifers should ever use secular arguments and that we should all use only religious arguments, and if we use any secular arguments at all it's all our fault that abortion is still legal. Towards the end of the piece he says that a prolife culture "cannot survive without a religious, indeed a Catholic foundation" - great, so now he's saying that victory can only come if we exclude Protstants, Jews etc from the pro-life movement. How does he think that would work in America. This argument is mega-crazy, on the level of the Xhosa Cattle Killing or the Sioux Ghost Dance - the chiliasm of despair. He's saying that if we destroy the pro-life movement as it currently exists, God will intervene to end abortion. Look how well that worked for the Sioux and the Xhosa - I'm sure it would work just as well for pro-lifers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_danceen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle-killing_movement#Xhosa_cattle-killing_movement_and_famine_.281854-1858.29
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 5, 2013 10:42:48 GMT
I love the analogy with the Xhosa cattle killing. I was aware of the Ghost Dance. I just can't believe Fr McKevitt would stand over a piece like that, which would be more at home in Catholic Voice.
And I'm saying this as someone trying to put forward Catholic media (we all are through this as it stands; if the rest of you want to come on the Brandsma Review Facebook page, please do), this is not the thing we need.
|
|
|
Post by chercheur on Nov 7, 2013 7:06:35 GMT
This is a real problem. Right now both Catholic Voice and Alive! are promoting this type of thinking. I think it is fair to say that this would not be reflective of the thinking behind groups like the Pro-Life Campaign, Family and Life and the Iona Institute. I agree entirely with Hibernicus' point, which I believe that Christopher Hitchens (of all people) made in an American context much earlier. There is a simple demographic reality at work here which cannot be ignored if we are serious about trying to stem the pro abortion tide....the reality is that there are not enough Christians to do it without alliances outside the Faith. In the UK its probably fair to say that no more than 10% of people are in any meaningful sense Christian in the sense of allowing their moral choices to in some way informed explicitly by Christian teaching. In Ireland it is a plumetting 35% to 40%. Every poll indicates this core third of the population ( largely over 50 yrs old) which can be relied on to support "Catholic positions". This is not enough to "win" democratis arguments if unsupported by some or other strands of humanist thinking
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 7, 2013 10:54:27 GMT
Totally with Chercheur. Seems obvious, but obviously not obvious to Alive!
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 13, 2013 23:23:53 GMT
There is a sense in which Murphy has a point which Chercheur misses - even if we could get a 51% majority to overturn X and the PLP Act and restore a comprehensive abortion ban, it wouldn't be a lasting victory unless we can influence the culture as a whole against abortion, by positive and negative means. The pro-choicers make it quite clear that they want a society in which the rightness of abortion is not debated because it is taken for granted and pro-lifers are seen as morally beneath contempt, and we should aim for the converse goal. The problem is that Murphy has no real idea of how to gain cultural influence other than by repeating the message at every opportunity and in the same form. Another comparison which is relevant to our discussion is the dispute between the JEsuits on one side and the DOminicans/Franciscans on the other over the best way to evangelise the Chinese. The JEsuits believed in lengthy study of Chinese philosophy, literature and culture in order to take what was best from it and reconcile it with Christianity, and in evangelising the educated classes because they would have more influence over the ordinary people. THe friars saw Chinese culture as much more alien and pagan than the Jesuits realised, and believed in a full-frontal attack on all forms of Chinese religion (including Confucianism, which the Jesuits saw as being not a rival religion but a philosophical school like those of the ancients). THere were risks in the Jesuit approach, but the general view these days is that they were much more effective and saw more clearly what needed to be done than the friars. I would say we need to copy that Jesuit approach in understanding which aspects of the pro-abortion mindset identify genuine problems for which solutions other than abortion might be found, and which are simply evil and must be fought without truce - and we also need to understand why people might be attracted to these evil views, must understand them as they seem from within to devotees so that we can develop antidotes.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 15, 2013 20:19:20 GMT
Meanwhile, in the US, the crusade to eliminate all restrictions/regulation of abortion whatsoever continues. Every time I think the Republicans are such lousy cynics on this issue that the Democrats couldn't be worse, the Democrats show that they can indeed be worse. A number of Democrat senators and members of Congress (and no doubt some me-too liberal Republicans will join in) are proposing a Bill to federalise no-restraints abortion everywhere in the US. Expect this attempt to prohibit any limitations on abortion whatsoever to be the next big cause. Expect the creeps who go on the Dublin March for Choice to start eulogising this (after all, their motto is "Why Can't Ireland Be Like Canada, which has no restrictions on abortion at all.) When the US catches cold, Ireland sneezes www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2013/11/blumenthal-announces-bill-to-overturn-state-abortion-laws/As the state legislator whose blog I found this on put it: EXTRACT I am so sick of hearing abortion equated with “women’s health.” What, I ask you, about ovarian cancer? Or, rape? Or egg harvesting? How about sex-selected abortion? Or … dare I say it? … unsafe, unclean abortion processing stations that call themselves clinics and that are run by doctors without hospital privileges who allow non-doctors to perform abortions and prescribe dangerous drugs without proper medical evaluation? How about outpatient surgical clinics — whose only surgery is abortion — that do not have the basic health and safety equipment that is required of every other outpatient surgical clinic? It is so wonderful that members of the United States Congress want to spare women the egregious requirements of having doctors who are licensed and have hospital privileges and do the procedures themselves rather than farming them out to underlings. I think we need to start doing that for prostate surgery and gall-bladder surgery and appendectomies. Those are “routine” too. Let the nurse do the surgery and use doctors who can’t practice in a nearby hospital. Do it without proper medical equipment. But wait. This is only women we want to spare the rigors of good medical care while they exercise their “right” to “women’s health” by having abortions. If you ever wondered how someone like Kermit Gosnell was able to operate for so long, let me explain it you. This is how. The Gosnells are protected by “abortion advocates” who oppose any and all regulations of abortion clinics. Do they ever ask about the women who end up in clinics like Gosnells? Or what about the women who have abortions performed by non-doctors, or who are prescribed RU-486 by a staffer with no ultrasound beforehand? Bleeding to death from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy evidently doesn’t constitute a “women’s health” problem if the rupture was caused by an abortion drug. That’s what can happen when non-doctors prescribe these drugs without proper medical evaluation. Why is it onerous to provide women with the same outpatient surgical care that the law requires for every other kind of surgery? Why is abortion so much more important that, ummmm, women’s health? The emphasis on abortion at the cost of every other right, every other need and all safety precautions is not only demeaning to women, it endangers them. This proposed law is particularly egregious because it is a law against passing a law. When you read the language in the thing, it is not a statute that stands on its own. It is rather a proposal to codify limitations on what laws the states may consider. That’s far-reaching and rather sinister. The idea has almost limitless applications that go far beyond abortion or any issue. It strikes to the heart of the notion of separation of powers in a federalist government. I expect more legislation by other members of Congress acting on behalf of special interest groups that attempts to shut down the states from enacting laws on all types of subjects, many of which will involve corporations and special interest money. This particular piece of legislation will not become law for the simple reason that it will not get a hearing in the Republican dominated House of Representatives. However, it will be a campaign fundraiser for the Ds and a campaign issue for the Rs. The abortion issue is necessary for both political parties. If you don’t know that, you don’t know American politics. END
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 19, 2013 9:19:52 GMT
Cora Sherlock points out on Twitter that Barbara Hewson, the British barrister who recently argued that rape victims often bear some responsibility for their fate and that the long-term effects of rape are exaggerated, and that the age of consent should be reduced to 13, is a trustee of BPAS, the pro-abortion "charity" who recently took out ads in the Irish media boasting that they will "take care" of Irish women who are pregnant and want an abortion until our government "takes care" of them - i.e. by legalising abortion here. The same media who gave extra free publicity to the ad and who are always ready to present some evil, stupid or just maladroit statement by anyone associated with the pro-life movement as discrediting ALL pro-lifers have been silent as the grave over Ms Hewson's connection to BPAS and the forces of organised Molochianity aka pro-choice. www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/there-is-no-rationale-whatsoever-to-lower-the-age-of-consent-barbara-hewson-should-know-better-8611624.html Note that I chose to link to the British INDEPENDENT to show Ms Hewson's views on the age of consent because they are generally supportive of the "liberal agenda" on sexuality, so they can't be accused of scaremongering and moral panic in the same way that a more conservative source might be.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 23, 2013 21:02:34 GMT
Three other points about the Murphy article in ALIVE occur to me on reflection:
(1) His argument amounts to saying that pro-life campaigning won't be effective without Catholic evangelisation. If he thinks that, nobody is stopping him from engaging in Catholic evangelisation. The problem with his article is that it assumes there is no distinction between these two forms of activity - that pro-lifers should engage in Catholic evangelisation as pro-lifers, and that they should do nothing else as pro-lifers.
(2) HE does not explain what sort of Catholic evangelisation he has in mind, or how it might be carried out. He seems to think that the methods of evangelisation are unproblematic and need not be discussed; that everyone knows what they are. Does he mean a rosary rally, or the production of apologetic texts, or what? HE doesn't tell us.
(3) He seems to think that we need not pay any attention to what the pro-aborts are doing, and he hasn't noticed that pro-aborts just love it when pro-lifers identify as specifically Catholic - e.g. when the rosary vigil was held outside the Dail pro-aborts turned out in force to jeer at it and pro-aborts in the media emphasised it in order to put across their preferred message that being pro-life is some sort of specifically Catholic disciplinary or devotional practice (like wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday or abstaining from meat on Good Friday) which we think is wrong only "because the Pope says so" and which has no rational basis whatsoever. The fact that the pro-aborts WANT pro-lifers to identify as specifically Catholic and publicise pro-lifers who do so in order to put across their message that the pro-lifers are religious nuts suggests that either the pro-aborts don't know what works for them, or that Gerard Murphy doesn't care what the pro-aborts are doing or how they react, because he assumes that his tactics are self-evidently correct and therefore he does not bother examining how they work (or don't work) in practice.
|
|