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Post by hibernicus on Oct 30, 2013 22:34:42 GMT
Part of the problem is I think a question of trust. You have to trust the hierarchy and the papacy to accept their authority, and a lot of trads as well as liberals expected too much and have got badly burned, not necessarily by the Church but by some of its authorities. Traditionally there was an acceptance that we might not understand a particular Church decision but accepted that there must be a reason for it. That was easily abused to produce a sort of "creeping infallibility" we might call the "spirit of Vatican I" as interpreted by those ultra-ultramontanes who thought the Pope must be infallible even in his private opinions. Now there's a widespread assumption that if a Church decision is hard to accept it must simply be arbitrary and irrational. IN one of Chesterton's detective stories a man who is always denouncing the Church turns out to be on the brink of conversion because he wouldn't be so angry at its defects unless he suspected at some level that it is what it is. Unfortunately Chesterton doesn't point out the converse problem - people who start off knowing the Church for what it is, find it falling short of what it ought to be (sometimes through real wrongdoing, sometimes because it requires something inconvenient) and wind up demonising it.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 30, 2013 22:36:19 GMT
I don't boycott the IRISH TIMES - I buy it daily because it's an useful information source on Irish society, and because it's helpful to understand how the other side thinks.
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Post by shane on Oct 30, 2013 22:50:52 GMT
I agree that it's an important source of information, which is why I read it online or in the library (remarkably few of my generation buy newspapers these days). That means I'm not contributing any of my money directly to it (reading it online is free and the library would buy it anyway, regardless of whether I bought it or not). I realise I'm contributing to its ad revenue by reading it online, but that's not a sustainable model and internet ad revenue is far less than ad revenue derived from hard copy.
It's not a formal boycott as such. The Irish Times is a dying newspaper and I just wish to hasten its demise. I don't want to perpetuate its existence as I believe its overall social and political impact is largely (but not wholly) negative. Obviously it's up to everyone whether he/she wishes to boycott it, just setting out my reasoning.
BTW, fair point maolsheachlann regarding Breda and Waters, but when has the IT published David Quinn?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 30, 2013 22:53:20 GMT
I just kind of assumed it did!
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 31, 2013 9:41:34 GMT
I agree with Shane's method - don't buy the IT. Get it online or in libraries. Shane is correct - nobody of the younger generation buys newspapers these days. The fact that people like Pat Rabitte is concerned shows how dependent WP types were on traditional media (the IT and RTÉ being prime examples in Ireland).
At the same time, Hibernicus is correct to say that virtually every established media outlet anywhere shares the same assumptions as the Times and the Indo.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Oct 31, 2013 15:55:05 GMT
David Quinn wrote in the Sunday Business Post and then the Sunday Times before he became editor of the Irish Catholic. He might have had the odd column in the Irish Times while there, but he moved definitively to the Indo after this. I think he was in the 'Irish' Daily Mail for a bit too.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 31, 2013 22:15:59 GMT
MAybe I'm a dinosaur but I still prefer hardcopy - you don't get through everything online and library copies have to be read during the day and in office hours (when I am working somewhere else). I remember Con O'Leary saying to me that he thought the IRISH TIMES got more aggressively secularist after Douglas Gageby went - I suspect because as a Protestant (with a certain admiration for John Paul II as a charismatic leader) he didn't feel the existential revulsion that overcomes the ex-Catholics and liberal Catholics on certain topics. Part of the change is that it used to see itself as "the paper of record" and publish all sorts of official documents - that went by the board once the internet era took off, and it switched much more to advocacy.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 3, 2013 12:32:43 GMT
Alive! has truly surpassed itself by shooting the pro-life cause in the foot. They have an opinion piece this week, by Gerard Murphy, headlined "Pro-life case requires belief in God."
He does make some reasonable points, such as the untenability of human rights without a religious foundation, the claim that barely anyone will be convinced to be pro-life through a human rights argument, and that pro-life movement needs the "intellectual, religious and moral resources" needed to make the-pro life case.
He even anticipates the objections, in a limited way: "For people who do not believe in God but are, nevertheless, prolife, talk of 'rights', of the right to life, may provide a kind of rational or intellectual basis for their views."
He also admits: Many pro-lifers will argue that this strategy [i.e., the one Murphy is advocating] is impractical, too indirect, inadequate or whatever, given the urgency of the situation. But, in fact, pro-life laws cannot survive without a pro-life culture. And such a culture cannot survive without a religious, indeed a Catholic foundation."
While nearly all of Murphy's points are true in themselves, his conclusion is horribly and disastrously and-- yes-- stupidly wrong.
It's not just that, by avoiding appealing to religious arguments, religious pro-lifers build bridges with non-believers and engage in argument with the secular world on its own terms.
It's that, if we let the pro-life cause be seen as a case of religious people imposing their beliefs on others, we are scoring a massive own goal in terms of pro-abortion and anti-Catholic propaganda.
I actually agree with Murphy that the concept of human rights is ultimately dependent upon a belief in God. However, human rights discourse does have a kind of autonomy and internal consistency of its own, and it seems foolish to ignore that.
Shame on Alive!
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 3, 2013 12:54:03 GMT
Regarding the boycott of The Irish Times. The only newspaper I've ever bought regularly was The Irish Catholic, and I don't buy that any more. And yet I regret the (possible) imminent demise of newspapers. They have been a feature of everyday life for generations, and they sustain a whole profession and a way of life-- one with many flaws, but which adds (I think) to the spectacle and richness of life.
I've often thought that an atheist should be in favour of religion, if only on the basis that a society without organised religion would be poorer and less interesting. I feel the same way about print journalism. I simply never got into the newspaper-reading habit, but I would lament the disappearance of almost any newspaper, and The Irish Times in particular, which is an important part of Irish history. Also, jobs would be lost.
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Post by shane on Nov 3, 2013 15:18:41 GMT
Alive's crass stupidity on this is being used by pro-choice people on Twitter to castigate all opposition to abortion as intrinsically religious
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Post by shane on Nov 3, 2013 15:23:29 GMT
I would join maolsheachlann's lament for the Irish Times save for the insurmountable fact that it's an active and powerful promoter of evil in our society; its overall social role is unequivocally evil. To me that overrides any other concerns I'd have.
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Post by shane on Nov 3, 2013 15:26:42 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!
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 3, 2013 15:40:19 GMT
I took out an Irish Times subscription for my father, a few years ago, as a birthday present. He asked me to discontinue after about a year-- if even that-- precisely because he found its editorial line so offensive and he didn't want to support it financially.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 3, 2013 21:17:42 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.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 3, 2013 21:23:36 GMT
Gerard Murphy's attitude, which I haven't got round to reading yet, is another example of the type of divide which I call Smeatonite v. Bowmanite which has crippled the British pro-life movement (John Smeaton was associated with 'all pro-lifers must support HUMANAE VITAE", Phyllis Bowman believed in broad alliances around the single issue of abortion). The problem with a "Smeatonite" approach is that its exponents generally treat pro-lifers who disagree on tactics as not being pro-lifers at all, and they don't realise that it is necessary to attract allies who are less than satisfactory not only to have some hope of making incremental gains but to keep the pro-life movement from being utterly marginalised and treated as akin to racism - something which the pro-choicers are quite explicit about wanting to achieve.
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