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Post by hibernicus on Mar 9, 2013 22:34:28 GMT
This is a broader topic than the Catholic literature thread, which is supposed to be specifically about imaginative literature written by Catholics. Just about anything can be covered - brief description/some comments. Last week I saw the new Terrence Mallick film TO THE WONDER. Mallick is very much an arthouse director with a love of light, and this is visually beautiful without a very straightforward narrative. The central story is about a stormy love affair between an American man and a French woman - they meet in France (they are shown at one point visiting the monastery of Mont St. Michel, which is shown again at the end of the film), when he returns to the US she comes along, leaves then returns again. This is juxtaposed with a Spanish or Mexican priest in the American's Oklahoma hometown who combines self-questioning over his faith with pastoral work among the poor and eloquent sermons on the relationship between God's love and human love, which appears to be the picture's central theme. BTW it says something about present-day attitudes to such matters that at the film premiere in Venice a large portion of the audience burst out laughing when the priest appeared onscreen even though the role is played perfectly straightforwardly. (This may be because the actor, Javier Bardem, is both a well-known atheist and has played quite a few, let us say, unpriestly roles, but it also seems to reflect an unwillingness to see priests treated as anything other than clowns and hypocrites a la Father TEd.) It is worth noting that as this film deals with a stormy love affair, some of the scenes feature intense emotional conflict and there is some nudity. Mr Mallick is apparently a believing Episcopalian, albeit twice divorced and remarried.
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Post by melancholicus on Mar 9, 2013 23:54:54 GMT
I have not seen it yet, but it sounds like it has much in common with his previous release The Tree Of Life, which my wife and I saw when it first appeared. The Tree Of Life is about the impact the death of a young man has on his family, spread out across several years. The narrative is somewhat disjointed and jumps forwards and backwards several times, but it is a film of great visual beauty and profundity. I would be interested to see To The Wonder also.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 10, 2013 17:45:24 GMT
I am not quite sure from one viewing whether it jumps back and forward or progresses in a linear manner (I think it is the latter) so I am not sure whether the central couple end up together or apart, though I have an opinion on it. The church used for filming in TO THE WONDER seems to be the same as the one used in TREE OF LIFE. In both it is supposed to be Catholic, but although it is a Gothic design the inscriptions on the stained-glass windows are in English with chapter and verse Biblical citations and the pictures are all Biblical scenes with no post-apostolic saints. I suspect this would be more likely in an Episcopalian church than a Catholic one of that vintage. The visual beauty is certainly there, and it does have considerable emotional force at times. As a bachelor I'm less qualified to comment on its verisimiltude than I would be on THE TREE OF LIFE, which is about ageing and mortality.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 9, 2013 22:28:02 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 25, 2013 17:10:05 GMT
Awhile ago I read HJA Sire FATHER MARTIN D'ARCY SJ - PHILOSOPHER OF CHRISTIAN LOVE published by Gracewing in 1997. Fr D'Arcy (1888-1976, not to be confused with the well-known Irish PAssionist Fr Brian D'Arcy) was a leading "fashionable" Jesuit in interwar Britain, close to such prominent converts as Evelyn Waugh. He also wrote on the philosophy of Christian love and friendship. Much of his post-1945 career was spent in the US. Here are a few incidental points: (1) The author complains that during the C20 English Jesuit schools became increasingly mediocre (partly from unimaginative copying of the standard public school) leading to their being outshone by their Benedictine rivals. He also complains that the international Jesuit leadership, both before and after Vatican II, exacerbated this by questioning whether the SJs should be running schools for the upper classes at all. (I suspect there is a certain political angle in the author's lamentations over this.) (2) Post-war US Catholic interest in English Catholicism was part of an explicit reaction against the Irish legacy of ghetto Catholicism, which was seen as anti-intellectual, authoritarian etc, the English variety being seen as more humane and sophisticated as well as classier (Americans love an English accent). I knew there was a tension over the two brands of Catholicism in the US but I hadn't realised how far the liberal or Americanist position identified itself as a reaction against the Irish. (I should have anticipated this, for I know there was a reaction in Australia in the same period against Irish dominance of the church, and this included emphasis on such figures as Newman and Dawson.) This helps to explain a book like THE VANISHING IRISH (written by & for Irish-American Catholics) and the fact that Irish liberal writers regarded as barely Catholic at home found a specifically Catholic audience in America - it was part of a reaction against the idealisation of Ireland as the home of pure Catholicism by older-style Irish-Americans. (The figure of the old authoritarian Irish-born priest played by Barry Fitzgerald (a Protestant!) vs. the forward-thinking, sophisticated American-born priest played by Bing Crosby in the film GOING MY WAY would fit with this perception.) (3) Before Vatican II Fr D'Arcy would have been regarded as a liberal (he thought Teilhard was treated much too harshly, for example) but he was horrified by the way things got out of control after the Council. There is a really horrendous description of the state of affairs at Farm Street (the main Jesuit church in London) during his last years - some older Jesuits who preferred to keep up traditional devotional and liturgical practices being actively persecuted by more "with-it" colleagues, the collapse through defections of the century-old tradition of apologetic writers based at Farm Street (which had included such figures as the hagiologist Fr Herbert Thurston), and the disintegration of discipline to such an extent that for a time at least one younger Jesuit regularly had his girlfriend to stay overnight in the residence and brought her to breakfast with the community!
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Post by assisi on Apr 26, 2013 13:46:33 GMT
Has anyone watched the DVD series 'Catholicism' by Fr Robert Barron? It seems to have been a recent release and is being used as a teaching and discussion tool for some Catholics.
I've watched about an hour of the boxset and found it to be well made and professional. There are some beautiful location shots as the scenes flit from country to country (from the Holy Land to Africa, Ireland, Mexico....) as scriptural topics are integrated with art, architecture and shrines.
Well worth a view and pitched at a level that is accessible to most people.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 26, 2013 16:17:24 GMT
I'd love to see it, but it costs about a hundred euro to buy. There have been screenings by various groups (including the Newman Society in UCD, where I work) but always at inconvenient times. I saw the first episode, which was really powerful.
Father Barron is wonderful because he avoids clichés. I find this a rare thing amongst Christian apologists. Though maybe it's unfair to say that because what is a cliché to one person might not be to another person.
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Post by hibernicus on May 22, 2013 21:39:53 GMT
Have just been reading Mary O'Rourke's memoir JUST MARY - it is quite an interesting book, the most revealing books as often in such cases dealing with her early life and her family. She writes quite movingly about her marriage and seems to have been blessed with a good husband (his last days and death in January 2001 are vividly described) Here are some passages which may interest readers of this board: (1) Fairly strong pro-life statement that "once there has been a conception... there is a life and there is another person involved" (pp104-105) though she remarks that such decisions cannot be taken lightly and speaks of implantation v. conception as a legitimate debate. This is still quite strong compared to the average politician, and may be related to the fact that one of her sons was adopted (and hence might have been aborted had present-day conditions prevailed). (2) Jab at campaigners against Stay Safe programme, which she presents purely in terms of warning children not to get into cars with strangers. Complains of effectiveness of Cork campaigners against the programme, and of their coming to Athlone to lobby her. Says she is "horrified" by their point of view which she finds completely incomprehensible, describes it as product of "a typically strong far-right Catholic ethos". Ends by citing subsequent clerical abuse scandals as proof that she was right. (pp82-85) (3) Much discussion of the Children's Rights amendment, attributes opposition to "an extreme right-wing element... which - even though the headlines scream of the shameful abuse of children - will regard any such intrusion as being against the Constitution and contrary to the fundamental rights of the family" (pp172-176) (4) This is the disturbing bit. On pp65-67 she talks about her efforts to promote multidenominational education and criticises both the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland for resisting it: "How could anybody in their right mind be against such a worthy concept, that children of all faiths and none should come together in the primary school their parents wished them to attend, that they should learn to live together, and that their young minds would be opened to influences from all sides, never requiring to fix on any particular one - at least, not until they were sufficiently mature to choose for themselves which, if any, to adopt?" {I NOTE IN PASSING THAT MARY O'ROURKE SEEMS POSITIVELY PROUD OF BEING UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND HER OPPONENTS' VIEWPOINT AND EAGER TO QUESTION THEIR MENTAL HEALTH, AND TREATS DISAGREEMENT WITH HER VIEWS AS INHERENTLY ILLEGITIMATE - SHE OBJECTS TO CARDINAL CONNELL AND HIS EDUCATION ADVISER OPPOSING HER ON MULTIDENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS. I WONDER HOW WOULD SHE LIKE HER CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO BE TAUGHT ANY OTHER SUBJECT ON THE BASIS LAID DOWN IN HER LAST SENTENCE THERE - YOU DON'T HAVE TO LEARN ANYTHING UNTIL YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO?] Towards the end of the book, O'Rourke (who is now on the board of Educate Together, makes it clear that she is not just in favour of more widespread multidenominational education - she actively wants denominational education to disappear because she sees it as an obstacle to the spread of religion-lite which will avoid any inconvenient and hard-to-understand teachings and confine itself to congregationalism and being good neighbours with a vague belief that God will see us right in the end. Perhaps this is too harsh, but if anyone has an alternative explanation for the passage below, please let me know what it might be: "As far as I see it, the Church has to get simple again: it has to be all about the parish priest and the local parishioners, because my feeling is that it is some of the Bishops with the high hats, and the pomp and circumstance that have alienated people from religion. For this and for many other reasons, I have always thought that separating the Church from the school system is a very good idea..." (pp229-230). To be fair, O'Rourke may be influenced by her own unhappy experience of being a boarder at Loreto Bray in her teens; but it is rather striking to see a former Fianna Fail minister for education - remember FF were supposed to be the "conservative" party in such matters - declaring that she has always held to a position (the complete abolition of denominational education, with the aim of encouraging a "simpler" religion), which would have been regarded as outrageously radical a generation ago. One last incidental point, apropos of nothing in particular; she remarks that her brother Brian Lenihan Senior was told after his liver transplant operation that he could expect five years of life, but in fact he lived for six (p.79). If he had been told that his best prognosis was five years' life, why did he subsequently stand in the 1990 presidential election, since the presidential term is seven years?
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Post by hibernicus on May 30, 2013 22:40:06 GMT
Walter Lowrie A SHORT LIFE OF KIERKEGAARD first published 1942. As I may have said elsewhere, I've been curious about Kierkegaard for quite some time because of his influence on Walker Percy, who is one of my favourite authors, but I have never got round to studying him in detail. Lowrie was an American episcopalian clergyman (he ran the Anglican church in Rome for many years) who learned Danish to translate Kierkegaard, producing the first English texts of many of the works. He was a pal of the Italian Catholic Modernist Ernesto Buonaiuti, who was excommunicated. I find this account of Kierkegaard's life a bit opaque and would like more explication on the background (a modern preface suggests that Lowrie over-idealises him a bit, but this is still a good way to start). A couple of points it brings out are (a) Lowrie explains why Kierkegaard, despite his extreme "protestant" individualism, has often tended to draw people to Catholicism. Kierkegaard took the position that the extreme forms of self-abandonment to God which he advocated were a council of perfection for a select few, and his complaint about the Lutheran State Church of his day was that in abolishing the Catholic system of monasticism, religious orders, celibacy etc it unintentionally produced a situation where rather than trying to "level up" everyone to the highest demands of the Gospels (which are unquestionably in the Gospels) it "levelled down" to universal mediocrity and the belief that there is nothing higher than everyday life and that we can get along very well by pleasing ourselves, as if those calls to perfection at the highest sacrifice were not in the Gospels at all. This is why the danish freethinker Brandes, who promoted Kierkegaard's reputation as a critic of the Church, said that if Kierkegaard had lived he would have become a Romanist or a freethinker; this is why the German Lutheran theologian Karl Barth, so heavily influenced by Kierkegaard, eventually rejected him as a crypto-Catholic. I wonder BTW if some of what he says about the difference between the Lutheran aspiration to universal holiness and its achievement of universal mediocrity might not also be applied to some of the post-Vatican II measures intended to achieve greater lay participation? I also wonder if Kierkegaard might really have been a Pelagian - a believer that the select few can be saved by their own efforts? I must try to find out more. The painful aspect of Kierkegaard for Catholics of the trad variety is his criticism of the idea of a Christian nation, his view that the defenders of the Establishment think that when there is a state church with its clergy as state functionaries and the whole nation as nominal members, then that is Christianity and no more is required. Some of the more enthusiastic trad defenders of the confessional state seem to me to say something very like this. Lowrie also notes that the only work of Kierkegaard's which in his day had been translated into Italian was this late attack on the state church and its complacent clergy, and it was translated by anti-clericals precisely because it so painfully resembled large numbers of the Italian Catholic clergy.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 2, 2013 20:21:42 GMT
Recently read Joseph Altholz's book on liberal Catholicism in mid-Victorian England. It contains some illuminating correspondence between Lord Acton and his mentor Dr Dollinger about the results they hoped for from the demise of the Papal States. Dollinger (who lived in Munich) hoped the Papacy would move to Bavaria, where it would shake off Italian backwardness and learn from the liberty-loving Germans. Acton hoped the Pope might move to Britain where the Papacy would not only learn liberty from the Brits but would dispel anti-Papal prejudice and lead to reunion with Anglicanism.
HAving a PApacy based in Bavaria would of course have been an utter disaster in the C20 for reasons too familiar to mention. HAving it in Britain would have been less disastrous, but would still have linked it to a state powerful enough to annoy most of the world at one time or another and in long-term decline. (The influence of Mussolini's Italy caused a good deal of harm to the Vatican as was; one reason for the anti-Curial reaction at Vatican II was longstanding resentment among the French and German hierarchies over a sense that the Italian curial officials had been susceptible to Mussolinian egotism, and the Greeks and others invaded by the Italians developed a whole new set of hostilities towards anything Roman.)
Is there a lesson here for George Weigel and his view that the best way to guarantee the Church's future is to Americanise it?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 10, 2013 19:00:04 GMT
Has anyone ever watched Bless Me, Father by Peter de Rosa? I have the three series on DVD and I've watched them a few times over the last few years. It's about a young curate going to work at a parish whose PP is a crotchety but loveable old Irishman, played by Arthur Lowe. It's very formulaic on first sight but it has some interesting points. The dialogue is quite lively and I'm impressed by its use of intentional humour, i.e., characters making deliberate jokes and witticisms, and especially how other characters don't react with exaggerated indignation or amusement when they do. Even though Peter de Rosa is something of a dissident Catholic (I think), you'd never guess it from the show itself-- its very gentle and non-controversial.
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Post by chercheur on Oct 11, 2013 13:50:51 GMT
Have just been reading Mary O'Rourke's memoir JUST MARY - it is quite an interesting book, the most revealing books as often in such cases dealing with her early life and her family. She writes quite movingly about her marriage and seems to have been blessed with a good husband (his last days and death in January 2001 are vividly described) Here are some passages which may interest readers of this board: (1) Fairly strong pro-life statement that "once there has been a conception... there is a life and there is another person involved" (pp104-105) though she remarks that such decisions cannot be taken lightly and speaks of implantation v. conception as a legitimate debate. This is still quite strong compared to the average politician, and may be related to the fact that one of her sons was adopted (and hence might have been aborted had present-day conditions prevailed). (2) Jab at campaigners against Stay Safe programme, which she presents purely in terms of warning children not to get into cars with strangers. Complains of effectiveness of Cork campaigners against the programme, and of their coming to Athlone to lobby her. Says she is "horrified" by their point of view which she finds completely incomprehensible, describes it as product of "a typically strong far-right Catholic ethos". Ends by citing subsequent clerical abuse scandals as proof that she was right. (pp82-85) (3) Much discussion of the Children's Rights amendment, attributes opposition to "an extreme right-wing element... which - even though the headlines scream of the shameful abuse of children - will regard any such intrusion as being against the Constitution and contrary to the fundamental rights of the family" (pp172-176) (4) This is the disturbing bit. On pp65-67 she talks about her efforts to promote multidenominational education and criticises both the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland for resisting it: "How could anybody in their right mind be against such a worthy concept, that children of all faiths and none should come together in the primary school their parents wished them to attend, that they should learn to live together, and that their young minds would be opened to influences from all sides, never requiring to fix on any particular one - at least, not until they were sufficiently mature to choose for themselves which, if any, to adopt?" {I NOTE IN PASSING THAT MARY O'ROURKE SEEMS POSITIVELY PROUD OF BEING UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND HER OPPONENTS' VIEWPOINT AND EAGER TO QUESTION THEIR MENTAL HEALTH, AND TREATS DISAGREEMENT WITH HER VIEWS AS INHERENTLY ILLEGITIMATE - SHE OBJECTS TO CARDINAL CONNELL AND HIS EDUCATION ADVISER OPPOSING HER ON MULTIDENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS. I WONDER HOW WOULD SHE LIKE HER CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO BE TAUGHT ANY OTHER SUBJECT ON THE BASIS LAID DOWN IN HER LAST SENTENCE THERE - YOU DON'T HAVE TO LEARN ANYTHING UNTIL YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO?] Towards the end of the book, O'Rourke (who is now on the board of Educate Together, makes it clear that she is not just in favour of more widespread multidenominational education - she actively wants denominational education to disappear because she sees it as an obstacle to the spread of religion-lite which will avoid any inconvenient and hard-to-understand teachings and confine itself to congregationalism and being good neighbours with a vague belief that God will see us right in the end. Perhaps this is too harsh, but if anyone has an alternative explanation for the passage below, please let me know what it might be: "As far as I see it, the Church has to get simple again: it has to be all about the parish priest and the local parishioners, because my feeling is that it is some of the Bishops with the high hats, and the pomp and circumstance that have alienated people from religion. For this and for many other reasons, I have always thought that separating the Church from the school system is a very good idea..." (pp229-230). To be fair, O'Rourke may be influenced by her own unhappy experience of being a boarder at Loreto Bray in her teens; but it is rather striking to see a former Fianna Fail minister for education - remember FF were supposed to be the "conservative" party in such matters - declaring that she has always held to a position (the complete abolition of denominational education, with the aim of encouraging a "simpler" religion), which would have been regarded as outrageously radical a generation ago. One last incidental point, apropos of nothing in particular; she remarks that her brother Brian Lenihan Senior was told after his liver transplant operation that he could expect five years of life, but in fact he lived for six (p.79). If he had been told that his best prognosis was five years' life, why did he subsequently stand in the 1990 presidential election, since the presidential term is seven years? The church has to get simple "AGAIN". It has to be "ALL" about the PP and his parishioners. The "again" is interesting and indicative of the historical vacuity of the argument. If she were to say "the church has to get simple" though problematic it would be at least coherent. However in uttering "again" I wonder what exactly is the era in the catholic past to which she looks when the magisterium, the episcopacy, the papacy and Canon law - all those ephemera getting betweent the PP and his people - were absent. Pomp has alienated people from religion. Indeed. Scores of millions of European catholics have fled the pomp of Rome and 99% of them now spend their sundays at simple prayer communing with godly pastors and having no interest in Sky Sports Super Sunday or breakfast in bed. That's right Mary. let's get rid of the episcopacy and the millions will flood back. Forgive the blunt satire but it all really is too risible for words. The pews are emptying because vast numbers of notional catholics are de facto agnostics and not a few are outright atheists who do not believe in God. Why can't commentators simply face this crisis of faith instead of talking nonsense about "high hats"?
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 25, 2013 19:41:44 GMT
I remember watching BLESS ME FATHER when I was young - Arthur Lowe (Captain Mannering from DAD'S ARMY) was the old PP. I enjoyed it a lot, or so I remember. A contrast with FATHER TED, which is based on the assumption that all priests are lunatics and hypocrites, might be instructive - the older series presents its priests as harmless eccentrics. I also read De Rosa's original two books of BLESS ME FATHER short stories, some of which are notably more offensive than the TV series. One I recall with particular distaste concerns a visiting priest with a youth group who says a "youth mass" in the sitting-room and leaves crumbs all over the carpet. The curate is horrified at this desecration of the Blessed Sacrament and tries to clean it up with a cleaning machine only to discover that the machine is not, as he thought, a vacuum cleaner with a bag but has brushes in which the particles are now entangled. Further complications now ensue and De Rosa's not-so subtle aim is to ridicule belief in the Real Presence. I suspect the TV executives would never have included that sort of thing in the series because it might affect their audience share.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 29, 2013 20:07:06 GMT
Have just been reading the memoirs of Padraic MacCormac, FG TD from Galway West 1989-2011. The early pages are a very interesting description of his upbringing on an old-style farm in Fenagh, Co Longford in the 1950s. He was born in 1942; he moved to Galway after getting a job running cattle marts, and made his living as an auctioneer before he was elected to the Dail. (Quite a few TDs have been auctioneers as the job involves travel and coming into contact with people.)
His principal focus seems to be on constituency affairs and the book gives a very clear picture of the constant hard slog of constituency work needed to build up a political base - and bear in mind that he got involved through an established party, not as an Independent building a machine from scratch. (He seems to have got into FG through family tradition; the former TD Luke Belton and the current TD James Bannon are cousins of his.) He goes into loving detail over the finer points of election count tallies, the rivalries and alliances of the County COuncil, why certain parishes voted for him at some times but not others etc. At various points he complains that the Dublin leadership did him down by ignoring his constituency concerns, favouring other candidates over him etc.
He seems to take his religion for granted, there are various references to attending Mass which is taken as a matter of course, and to after-Mass meetings and the like. There is very little on the "liberal agenda" - for example, he was in the Dail for the X Case but never mentions it or the subsequent abortion referenda. Darina Costello's 1992 Independent candidacy is mentioned in passing but not that she was a pro-life candidate.
Two references which readers of this forum may find interesting are as follows: (1) He pays extensive tribute to his wife whose support was vital to his political career, and spells out the strain this placed on her life. When describing their marriage in 1972 he remarks that although they bought a house two months before their wedding they did not move into it until after the ceremony -"there was no such thing as living together before marriage in those days". This is a very revealing sign of change - in just over 40 years we have gone from assuming (outside certain restricted circles) that premarital cohabitation is unthinkable, to a society where such cohabitation (very often not even pre-marital, since the parties have no intention of marriage) is taken for granted, so that an elderly man writing his reminiscences considers it necessary to point out that this was not always the case - not that he seems to object, he just takes the change for granted and even seems to think it's the obvious thing to do nowadays.
(2) In 1996 during the Rainbow Coalition government MacCormack had encouraged local men to undertake a drainage scheme which was urgently needed to relieve flooding in part of his constituency, on the strength of a bank loan and a commitment from him that the government would meet the cost. (He had got a pledge from the finance minister, but the drainage turned out to cost more than originally intended.) When the government still had not paid up and his friends were buckling under the financial strain, he barged into the Taoiseach's office and threatened to resign the party whip unless payment was made. What he didn't realise was that family law legislation (I presume implementing divorce legislation after the 1995 referendum) was going through the Dail and there was speculation that some conservative TDs would oppose it. The Government assumed he was thinking of this when he made the threat and speedily paid up. The fact that he wasn't aware of this (even though he would have been voting on it within days) says a great deal about the relative attention politicians and their constituents pay to constituency matters as compared to national issues (including supporting or opposing the liberal agenda).
While MacCormac thought the leadership coup attempt by Richard Bruton was a mistake, since it would divide the party -similarly he opposed the deposition of John Bruton on the grounds that a leader chosen for a Dail term should serve it out; he places a strong emphasis on party unity and loyalty, and it is quite clear that he disliked Fidelma Healy-Eames as a one-woman band - he notes that Enda Kenny showed a spiteful streak in his comments on the rebels and his response seemed at times unnecessarily vindictive. Yes, sir, that's the Herod Endipas we have come to know if not love, and who was on full display in the recent PLP legislation debates.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 6, 2013 23:36:25 GMT
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia A JESUIT IN THE FORBIDDEN CITY, a contextual study of Ven. Matteo Ricci the famous sixteenth-century missionary to China and his attempts to evangelise the Chinese by synthesising Confucianism and Catholicism in much the same way that the Church Fathers synthesised the Faith with Greco-Roman philosophy. I have had a certain interest in Matteo Ricci ever since I read Vincent Cronin's THE WISE MAN FROM THE WEST - a popular 1950s account of his life, which I am pleased to see Po-chia Hsia describes as founded on the best Western Ricci scholarship (though not on Chinese sources) and as presenting Ricci's life as Ricci would have liked it to be seen, and I think his attempts at bridging the two cultures are a model we might usefully follow in our own present-day evangelisation. Po-chia Hsia is a distinguished historian of the Counter-Reformation and is able to draw on the Chinese sources, so that he gives some interesting explanations of why Ricci's converts were receptive to his preaching (one being that the Ming dynasty was clearly in decline and many intellectuals were looking for a new worldview, and just as Jesuit accounts of China ironically led to certain Western intellectuals idealising it as representing a superior non-theological natural religion, so the rather idealised image of Catholic Europe presented by Ricci appealed to many in troubled Late Ming China). He does not really give an interior picture of Ricci and his spirituality, but it is clear that he was a man of extraordinary talents and virtues (in his later years he aroused so much interest among the Beijing intelligentsia that he was constantly troubled with visitors and social invitations, which were a considerable burden on his declining health; when he discovered that Chinese did not regard a fast based on eating fish as a real fast, he took only vegetables on fast days which caused him considerable discomfort) though he wasn't perfect (at one point after the Spanish massacred a large number of Chinese at Manila, he claimed that the "Dios" worshipped by the Spaniards was not the "Deus" of the Jesuits. One could justify this by equivocation, since those who massacre innocents do not worship the true God, but it was stretching it a bit IMHO). The message he brought to China has never quite died. Ricci's father wanted him to be a lawyer and rise in the world (he was the eldest son) when he heard his 19-year-old son had applied to the Jesuits after completing his Roman studies the father left his native MAcerata to try and stop him, but fell ill on the way and decided this was a message from God. When he completed his novitiate Ricci chose to leave for the missions without visiting his family, knowing he would never see them again. I must say I was a bit disconcerted by this, but it is clear from the regular letters Ricci wrote to them from China that he deeply loved them and was concerned for their well-being (he heard of his grandmother's death while he was ill, and at once got up to say Masses for her soul). His Cause has been introduced and he has been declared Venerable; I wonder how it will progress? Two odd little thoughts (A) The famous nineteenth-century Orangeman William Johnston of Ballykilbeg wrote a (very bad) novel called NIGHTSHADE in which the villain is a scheming Jesuit called Ricci. I suspect Johnston got the name through Protestant polemicists taking up claims by rival religious orders that the Jesuits' adaptation to Chinese culture unacceptably compromised the Faith. (B) One thing that struck me is that the sci-fi novel EIFELHEIM by Michael Flynn which I mentioned on the Catholic literature thread is in fact quite a perceptive account of the missionary encounter. There is a certain resemblance between Ricci's experiences and the way in which the mediaeval Black Forest priest who encounters a number of marooned space aliens is never altogether clear how far his extraterrestrial converts have really understood him, and the friar who is increasingly troubled and suspicious of what the pastor is doing (and has some rational grounds for so doing) has his counterparts in the Dominicans and Franciscans who complained (not altogether mistakenly, though I would say their complaints were harmful) that the Jesuits' Sino-Christianity was diluting the Faith.
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