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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 28, 2015 8:52:48 GMT
Oddly enough, Paul Johnson's book History of the Jews had quite an impact on my own religious opinions, though I was still an agnostic for many years after reading it. At the time I read it I was very interested in comparative religion and especially interested in Judaism. (I avoided reading about Christianity, as it was too close to home.) Reading such a sympathetic history of the Jews by a Christian had a big effect on me; at the time, I envied the heritage and traditions of the Jewish people, but that book made me see that Christians also share this tradition. (Of course, I knew that already, but it made me FEEL it vividly.) It was also here that I first encountered the idea that rigorist religions survive while liberal religions fade away-- a counter-intuitive idea, perhaps, but very simple and very observable, and one wonders how anyone with an interest in religion can get it so wrong. Johnson also portrayed various great Jewish figures (like Freud and Marx) as being God-haunted in a very convincing way. I started reading History of Christianity but didn't find it as interesting.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 28, 2015 19:56:28 GMT
Haven't read Johnson's HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY - I read some of his later culture history/cultural critiques when I was a teenager and they struck me as impressive, but in retrospect they come across as highly self-serving (e.g. unwilling to admit your own side has any faults or did any bad things; attribute your opponents's faults to their personal vices and assume their ideas can therefore be dismissed out of hand; use evidence that suits you and ignore what doesn't, not necessarily from dishonesty but because you already "know" who/what is right and therefore what is significant etc.) They were a bit later, though, when he had resolved his struggle between Thatcherism and Bennism (at one point he was publishing right-wing books and writing Bennite articles in THE NEW STATESMAN, and doing both under his own name without concealment), so he may have deteriorated intellectually. Part of Johnson's Catholic experience and that of his generation, I think, was breaking out of the Catholic ghetto and into the society's mainstream, and at the same time realising how limiting the ghetto was in many respects (anyone who contrasts the sort of official history in which all clerics are assumed to be saints, and unedifying facts are downplayed or omitted as far as possible, with accounts of the same events by professional historians, will get the idea). The realisation that valuable things were being discarded along with the bath-water came later (if at all).
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 28, 2015 20:04:27 GMT
Saw the new film version of Vera Brittain's TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, which really brings home the impact of the First World War in many respects. It's about how Brittain loses her fiancee, brother and male friends in the war - what I hadn't realised, not having read the original book or seen the TV adaptation, is that Brittain spent the war nursing and thereby getting a close-up of the aftermath of battle in ways that you don't get in much of the standard imagery of WWI which focuses on the experience of front-line combat. They must have either employed a lot of amputees in the hospital scenes or used digital imaging extensively; needs a strong stomach. I must certainly pursue the original book when I get the time. BTW there are scenes of Brittain at the end of the war visiting a Catholic-looking church, and I wondered if this was Anglican or Catholic and if Brittain herself was Catholic (since I know her daughter Shirley Williams is a cradle Catholic). In fact, Brittain was Anglican; her husband George Catlin (who appears in the film version earlier than he did in real life) was a Catholic convert.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 31, 2015 21:49:07 GMT
Recently bought a second-hand copy of Hamish Fraser's book FATAL STAR (published first in 1954; this is a memorial edition published after his death with extracts from some of his APPROACHES dossiers, tributes by admirers, and a biographical introduction). This is both interesting and depressing. I expected it to be a memoir like Douglas Hyde's I BELIEVED, but in fact it's an analysis of communism with the biographical material confined to the first chapter (why he joined) and the last chapter (why he left). The analysis of communism is very perceptive and based on personal experience; a great deal of his discussion of how communist regimes in practice tends to weed out true believers and become more exploitative than capitalism (because the state monopoly eliminates the possibility of changing employment) anticipates the processes which led to the decline and fall of the Eastern bloc. HE is also very clear on the folly of "progressive" Christians who overlook the fact that atheism and amorality are absolutely intrinsic to Marxism. It's also interesting that he traces his youthful departure from Christianity to revulsion against the remote laissez-faire non-interventionist God of Calvinism and nineteenth-century liberalism, and that he is attracted to Catholicism by the sense of divine presence (his becoming an outspoken Marian devotee fits this very well - he was in the Blue Army) and (more dubiously) by the concept of creating a Catholic social order. I say more dubiously because while he is well aware of the resemblances between laissez-faire liberal capitalism and communism he seems to me a bit vague and oversanguine about his alternative, and rather quick to endorse the suppression of subversives (especially in the later material; he seems positively enthusiastic about Pinochet and denounces the Chilean Christian Democrats along with Allende). He even is very suspicious of the Polish Solidarity movement because of the role of the reform-marxist group KOR (which he sees as using Walesa and the trade unionists as a catspaw) and actually defends Jaruzelski's crackdown and his credentials as a Polish patriot. It is often said that ex-communists always keep a tendency to see conspiracies everywhere (because they are so used to real conspiracies and have been conspirators themselves) and Fraser certainly has that in spades. The Irish material (only a small amount reproduced in the book) is quite valuable; because he starts from a very integralist position he sees very early just how dangerous the church's situation is, how strong the secularist pressures in Ireland already were by the early 1970s, and how the rowing back of the Church on certain matters in the late 60s/early 70s risks encouraging the response that Catholic teaching need not be taken seriously and isn't really true. One little footnote; in the late 70s and early 80s we used to hear a certain amount about the Irish Family League and its secretary Mary Kennedy, and I used to wonder if it was a one-woman organisation. Apparently it was a small group of Fraser sympathisers which started in 1973, with Fraser at the inaugural meeting; two members (other than Kennedy) pay tribute to him in the section at the end. I wonder when it died out? Was anyone here involved in it, or knew anyone who was involved?
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 7, 2015 21:40:57 GMT
I regularly read the British Film Institute's pamphlet series on Classic Films, and the most recent batch includes a study of DW Griffith's silent film BIRTH OF A NATION, which famously glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. Something which struck me about the pamphlet's analysis of the film is its point that in several places the film clearly expects the audience's instinctive reaction to be the exact opposite of what one would hope for today - e.g. a white man who refuses to shake hands with a black man is assumed to be engaging in a noble expression of self-respect, rather than acting like a jerk; it is assumed that the audience will see a white man telling the same black man "You're the equal of any man here" as a dangerous lunatic. Anyone who wants to see parallels for the way pro-choice ideology corrupts people, not just at a conscious level but in terms of unconscious and taken-for-granted assumptions,should take note. For a summary of the film and the controversies it has aroused, see the link below: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 8, 2015 0:34:38 GMT
There is a whole section about this phenomenon on TV Tropes... tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ValuesDissonance/FilmI've just spent an evening arguing with people who think morality is self-evident based on our common humanity. Examples like these are useful to refute that claim.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 9, 2015 21:31:47 GMT
The four-volume Manning-Gladstone correspondence, some of which strikes a very contemporary note in its discussions of secular education and separation of church and state. Manning does come across as glacial, not given to public self-analysis like Newman and Gladstone; he changes his mind and then announces the change without explaining why he changed. Sometimes he comes across as quite alarmist (he believes there is a single global revolutionary organisation orchestrating revolutionary movements across Europe; he predicts a great European war in the 1870s, he sees apocalypse just round the corner, he thinks Irish-American Catholics as a whole are apostasising) but he often has a point. (His remarks about how some forms of secular education seem to change the structure of the mind so the pupil not only cannot believe in anything but cannot understand the concept of belief, seem very familiar.) Gladstone's criticisms of Catholicism in practice often have some truth, but he seems incapable of grasping the problems with the concept of a national church or even of understanding the Roman viewpoint; he and RC correspondents are frequently talking completely past one another, and his attempt to browbeat an impending (lady) convert is not a pretty sight. One sad feature is the frequency with which Manning praises the fidelity of the IRish in Ireland to the faith, and appeals to IRish fidelity to the Pope when he is trying to influence Gladstone to seek concessions on various matters from the post-unification Italian government. Ichabod.
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Post by assisi on Dec 13, 2015 11:24:17 GMT
Came across the December 2015 issue of the National Geographic while in the dentist's waiting room. Its cover story is 'How the Virgin Mary Became the World’s Most Powerful Woman': ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/virgin-mary-textIt has also got access to a map which shows where worldwide apparitions occur. It references the website of a man who has listed Marian apparitions, approved and unapproved, throughout history: www.miraclehunter.com/
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 10, 2016 21:51:13 GMT
Recently saw the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel BROOKLYN. Not quite sure what I think of it, but here are a couple of oddities: (1) There are a variety of good and bad Catholic characters, but the film seems unsure about the extent to which the Saoirse Ronan character self-identifies as Catholic. She does various things which would be dubious to put it mildly in terms of Catholic moral teaching and which you would expect the product of a 1940s Catholic upbringing to feel at least mildly guilty about, but her exact feelings are never made clear. It would not be that unusual for an emigrant to lapse in new surroundings, but it is never made clear whether this is the case (especially as she is on friendly terms with a priest, regularly attends parochial dances, and has a determinedly pious landlady). I suspect the reason for this is that the audience, for whom she is the viewpoint character, are assumed to be secular in outlook, but I wonder whether this is more pronounced in the film than in Toibin's novel, which I have not read. (2) At the start of the film the Ronan character has to get up early to attend Mass with her pietistic and generally obnoxious employer before starting work, and during a Latin prayer she yawns. The odd thing is that the prayer given is one of the secret prayers said by the priest before the Consecration, which would not be audible to the congregation. I suspect somebody did not do their homework, and mugged up the text out of a book without attending a TLM to see how it goes in performance. Later in the film a church wedding is shown as embodying a more sympathetic side of Catholicism, and all the prayers we hear are in English. (I am not saying these particular prayers would not have been said in English, but there is an implicit English/Latin contrast aimed at a present day audience, whereas a 50s audience would be familiar with some of the Latin praises from repetition even if they did not fully understand them.)
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 12, 2016 22:30:11 GMT
Just a follow-up on BROOKLYN. One exchange that struck me as particularly odd in the film is where the Ronan character is mourning a close relative (won't say who in case anyone doesn't want to be spoilered) and Fr Flood is trying to comfort her. We have the following exchange: Ronan: "I'll never see X again" Fr Flood: "You know I think you will". Fr Flood's remark as given struck me as very odd for a 50s IRish priest. He seems to take it as said that Ronan is expressing disbelief in the afterlife, rather than meaning that she will never see X again in this life (and so far as we can see he has no reason to believe Ronan is not a believing Catholic), and he then simply refers to his personal belief that this is the case rather than trying to persuade her that it is so or getting angry with her (which quite a few 50s priests might have done if they thought she had lost the faith). As I happened to be passing through a bookshop today I looked up the corresponding passage in the novel. (I did not buy it because I refuse to contribute to the royalties of the perpetrator of THE TESTAMENT OF MARY.) Sure enough, in the novel Fr Flood responds that X is happy in heaven, assures the Ronan character that she will see X in the next life, and tells her that God's ways are not our ways. I wonder what lies behind the change?
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 2, 2016 21:48:14 GMT
Denis J Conlon GK CHESTERTON: A REAPPRAISAL. This is not so much a full biography as a collection of thematic essays structured around prolific quotations from published and unpublished material. Some interesting observations: (1) Chesterton developed the germ of a lot of his stories very early - antecedents for THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, MANALIVE etc can be found in material dating from his struggles for faith in the 1890s. This is one reason why, for example, there is such respect for Turnbull as well as MacIan in THE BALL AND THE CROSS - when Chesterton started to develop these ideas for stories, he was much closer to Turnbull's position than he was later. In one of the controversies referenced in this volume he replies to a charge that he wants everyone to stay in the intellectual enclosures into which they were born, by saying that if he had stayed in such an enclosure he would be a liberal freethinker like his interlocutor. Conlon presents Chesterton's life in terms of an adolescent crisis of scepticism and despair followed by a long and successful struggle to integrate the different parts of his personality - certainly a convincing reading IMHO. (2) Frances Chesterton suffered from a glandular complaint which left her infertile. (Some of her medical records are reprinted at what I really think is excessive length; this sort of material should be available to biographers for their information, but not to be published.) She and GKC appear to have had a lifelong habit of exchanging light verses addressed to each other about everyday matters; some of hers are reprinted, but she arranged for his (with the more intimate passages from their ordinary letters) to be destroyed after her death as they were private to her. IN one way, this is a pity; but she was quite entitled to do it. (3) George Bernard Shaw held many evil views, but he was a true and generous friend to the Chestertons. (I might add that I know of other instances of him showing remarkable generosity to poor and obscure people, which is a reminder that we should not judge people - as distinct from their views - too stringently. Leave him to God.) Many instances of their mutual respect are given. One will suffice; when Chesterton died it was widely believed Frances had been left badly off (actually when their affairs - which were in chaos - had been sorted out she was found to be quite wealthy) and Shaw offered her very extensive financial assistance. (4) The extent to which Belloc was a malign influence on Chesterton with regard to the Jews is shown by various 1890s writings about the Dreyfus Case, which are generous protests against injustice and sadly contrast with some later pieces of Belloc-influenced mealymouthedness about whether Dreyfus might have been guilty. The NEW JERUSALEM material is quite painful. He was interested in kibbutzim as a form of Distributism, but when he expresses concern about possible future mistreatment of the Arabs his concern is that the JEws through financial manipulation will enslave them, rather than what actually befell them. Furthermore, his suggestion that the future Jewish homeland should not be fully sovereign, and that "cantons" attached to it should be set up in different countries with the Jewish populations of said countries becoming citizens of these "cantons" whether they wanted to or not, has a very ugly ring to it if for "canton" you read "ghetto" (and anyone who is aware of the history of the Jews will recognise the similarity at once). There are some interesting quotes of his denunciation of Nazi persecution of the Jews (albeit he does suggest the little JEws are suffering for the misdeeds of the big ones) and some interesting examples of his ability to keep lifelong Jewish friends, and even to attract new ones initially suspicious of him but won over by his kindness - but it's still a painful read. (5) The discussion of GKC's conversion has a quote from an article in a Toronto paper just after his reception in 1922, in which he says that one of the deciding factors for him was Anglican ambivalence about birth control (which he describes as a heathen atrocity not far short of infanticide) contrasted with Catholic firmness on the issue. HE notes that there are Anglicans who feel as strongly as he does on this, such as Bishop Charles Gore, but there are others who openly advocate it (though his was of course some years before the notorious Lambeth Conference), and he believes that on such urgent moral matters a church needs to speak with one voice. What a falling-off there has been since, alas! This is certainly worth reading for any GKC aficionado.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 4, 2016 22:42:08 GMT
Another couple of details from Conlon on Chesterton: (1) The William Morris influence comes across very strongly, partly because I know a little bit more about Morris than I used. The extreme fluency in verse and drawing is straight out of Morris, as is the mediaevalism and Dame-worship and the idealisation of free peasantries (though Morris's would have been Germano-Scandinavian, rather than French). Morris was actually influenced by the Oxford Movement as a young man and almost went over to Rome with Robert Isaac Wilberforce (the last major Oxford Movement convert, a son of the great abolitionist - he died of fever in Rome while studying for the priesthood). (2) The sense the young Chesterton had, in the era between the retirement of Gladstone and the 1906 Liberal landslide (which of course produced its own disappointments a few years later) that an era of great political conflicts on principle had given way to a cynical consensus seems very like our own day - not only here but in the US and UK - for anyone old enough to remember the 80s.
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Post by rogerbuck on Feb 16, 2016 20:15:27 GMT
(4) The extent to which Belloc was a malign influence on Chesterton with regard to the Jews is shown by various 1890s writings about the Dreyfus Case, which are generous protests against injustice and sadly contrast with some later pieces of Belloc-influenced mealymouthedness about whether Dreyfus might have been guilty. Hibernicus, I am not aiming to start a detailed discussion here about this as I am not yet ready to address this tragic state of affairs competently. However, in my present state of incompetency, I would be hesitant in attributing this post 1890s shift solely to Belloc for three reasons: 1) The huge influence of Cecil, who appears to have been far more extreme than Belloc. 2) The general tenor of the times. I find Pearce's biography of Belloc lacking in its ability to really penetrate the man, however it is striking how he demonstrates that even mainstream figures like Churchill could be more extreme than Belloc. 3) I have a concern in this whole "Belloc badly influenced Chesterton" theme that certain people may lose sight of the fact that GKC could think independently. There is a strange thing I see in certain Chestertonian literature. Lothian called Chesterton a "Bellocian". And there were those who refuted this appellation saying he had his own original thought and couldn't be limited to "Bellocianism". However, those trying to defend GKC can also put these difficult things down to Belloc's influence. I feel like saying to them: "You can't have your cake and eat it, too." Either GKC could think for himself indeed had a great capacity for original thought (which I think) or he was a Bellocian. Again, this is a trend I see with certain writers. Not saying it of you and my thinking and research is far from mature here. I agree with you that there are terribly tragic things here with Belloc and both Cecil and Gilbert, all of whom were participating in a far greater tragedy of their times that afflicted great masses of Catholics and Protestants alike. Will also note that my own publisher Angelico Press has a book on this subject which I hope to read when I can afford the time and money. Link to that here: angelicopress.com/farmer-chesterton-and-the-jews/
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Post by maolsheachlann on Feb 19, 2016 9:47:29 GMT
I tend to think Chesterton was influenced by Belloc and also by his brother. This isn't because I want to absolve him-- even though his rhetoric about the Jews was unfortunate and he sometimes verged on antisemitism, I do think rather too much is made of it. Mainly because we don't have to speculate about what he 'really' thought about the Jews and whether his published remarks hid an even deeper prejudice. Chesterton was accused of anti-semitism in his own time and he wrote a great deal on the subject of his own supposed anti-semitism. He can be definitively cleared of the worst sort of anti-semitism from what he actually wrote. As Hibernicus says, he never went further than a belief in a kind of special status for the Jews which goes against our modern ideal of pluralism (which I think is a good ideal) and which has an especially sinister tinge to it in the light of the Nuremberg Laws (introduced in the last year of his life).
No, I think Chesterton was influenced by Belloc and his brother because the similarity between their views seems just too striking to be coincidental. Chesterton never seems to quote Belloc other than approvingly. The importance that both writers place on the English Reformation has always seemed exaggerated to me. Their shared republicanism is also interesting, and not what one would expect from their other views (although I understand Belloc became a monarchist later in life).
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 19, 2016 23:30:40 GMT
Conlon is referring specifically to GKC's move from being an enthusiastic Dreyfusard in the 1890s to a mild anti-Dreyfusard some years later. Given Belloc's lifelong views on this (related to his general Francophilia) this particular development is more likely to derive from him than from Cecil. Another interesting point which Conlon makes (quoting some of GKC's Catholic friends) is that after his conversion many Catholic groups expected him to speak and work for them free gratis and for nothing (he usually did, but these friends thought it an unreasonable demand to make on someone who had to write hard for a living). Similarly, he tended to confuse the Church's divine origins with the sanctity of its members, and so was regularly taken in by Catholic or pseudo-Catholic conmen. This, alas, is a tendency to which we Catholics are very prone (and not just Catholics; Bernie Madoff got a lot of Jewish charities to invest in his Ponzi scheme by playing up his own Jewish identity, and some books I have read on the famous Mormon documents forgery case of the 1980s say that Mormons are notoriously vulnerable to being swindled by people who profess to be devout Mormons, because their strong group identity encourages trust within the group). It also seems that some of the stories about GKC writing AQUINAS on the basis of a quick skim through secondary literature are untrue; he'd been dipping into the SUMMA for years.
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