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Post by hibernicus on Feb 22, 2016 23:31:17 GMT
Roger Scruton's FOOLS, FRAUDS AND FIREBRANDS (earlier edition called THINKERS OF THE NEW LEFT). What strikes me about this book is not just the critique of the individual thinkers (many of whom I don't know enough about to judge) but the extent to which Scruton's fundamental objection to these marxists and post-marxists is based on the mindset of an eighteenth-century Humean or Kantian sceptic who believes it is impossible to make any statement about metaphysical matters so we should just cultivate our gardens. A very secular mindset, surprisingly so. (I suspect Scruton's rhapsodies in some of his other works about reverence are no more than Kantian tributes to the starry heavens and the moral law either.) One thing Scruton does get right is the extent to which various Marxist and American-progressive thinkers deliberately avoid engaging with serious criticism of their views, and simply use a simulacrum of argument to mobilise the faithful and try to make any other views literally unthinkable. His view that Gramscian hegemony is simply another word for fascism in the sense of Gleichschaltung (i.e. the regime takes over the various associations and institutions of civil society) is a nice thrust.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 2, 2016 20:26:44 GMT
Read the first four volumes of THE MONKS OF THE WEST by the nineteenth-century French Liberal Catholic Rene Montalembert. Strong Irish connection; St Columbanus is prominent in volume 2, St Colmcille dominates volume 3, the Irish mission to Northumbria features strongly in volume 4. Very much a characteristic C19 work of Romantic historiography, based on published sources and taking them at face value with occasional rationalisations of alleged miracles (e.g. if Saint X is said to have reclaimed land from the sea by planting a few stones on the beach and forbidding the tide to go further, this is a misunderstanding of his having built embankments). For a Frenchman he is very keen on the Germanic spirit of liberty and very down on the Roman Empire; part of this is that when he denounces the Caesars as decadent tyrants and holds forth on the iniquities of their clerical flatterers, he is getting in a swipe at Napoleon III and his clerical admirers, and the praise of the barbarians reflects the Liberal Catholic view that as the Popes turned from Byzantium to the barbarians, they should now turn from the kings to the peoples. (It also reflects Montalembert's aristocratic Anglophilia; his mother was British and unlike some of his friends he preferred the British aristocratic constitution to more democratic models). He regularly quotes Ozanam's writings on mediaeval history; always with praise.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 10, 2016 22:51:15 GMT
Read HOLY SMOKE, the reminiscences of Otto Herschan who was managing director of the company that used to publish CATHOLIC HERALD, SCOTTISH CATHOLIC OBSERVER and IRISH CATHOLIC. Picked up a second-hand copy recently. A bit anecdotal and disorganized, but some of the anecdotes are interesting. One characteristic one is that in the pre-Vatican II era when the CATHOLIC HERALD published an article advocating a vernacular liturgy, a bishop wrote to them accusing them of heresy. A decade or two later they published an editorial saying that the Tridentine rite should be available for those who favoured it, and the same bishop wrote in again accusing them of heresy. I remember the interviews with Mr HErschan (who has died since) when the book came out, but oddly enough I had forgotten that he was born in Austria, his father being a former Hapsburg soldier of Jewish birth who had converted to Catholicism. Mr HErschan and his mother got out to Britain just before the war; his father survived two years in Theresienstadt concentration camp but died of typhus days after it was liberated.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 17, 2016 19:26:59 GMT
Kevin C Kearns' recent biography of the legendary Dublin Garda Lugs Brannigan. Kearns is a long-established oral historian who has published several books on Dublin tenement life, based on interviews with old people; when reviewing some of his old tapes he was startled at the number of times Brannigan came up, and produced this book on the basis of additional research (including talks with two surviving sons and searching online newspaper articles). The attitude to Brannigan is generally favourable, with even some elderly criminals agreeing he was a fair man, though a few instances are given of his hitting first and asking questions later (some reviewers thought more could have been made of this). A few points come to mind (a) There is a fair bit on how youth culture and what might be called the permissive society were already infiltrating Dublin from the 50s, well before Vatican II, the Lemass boom, and the end of censorship. (There was also ongoing social dislocation, caused by the decay of traditional city industries through technological change and the rehousing of much of the inner-city population in bleak housing estates on the outskirts.) One point that slightly surprised me is that the admission of women into bars was already producing higher rates of female public drunkenness and violence. (b) There is a fair bit on Brannigan's (often violent) interventions on behalf of women who were beaten up by their husbands. Kearns contrasts this quite specifically with the attitude of clergy who directly advised women not to seek separation, that they must be doing something to annoy their husbands, and to submit to his violence and sexual demands regardless of consequences. (Remember Kearns based his books on interviews with elderly people recalling their own and their neighbours' lives; I suspect there is more of this in his book DUBLIN'S TENEMENT HEROINES. Kearns also emphasises the role of religious devotion as consolation for these women, so he is not anti-religious per se.) We are also told that quite a few Liffey "accidents" in this period were actually suicides by abused wives pushed too far. This sort of thing helps to explain why the Church's position collapsed to such an extent before second wave feminism and contraception in the 60s and 70s; the feminists were addressing real problems that the Church was glossing over, even though they addressed them in the wrong way. (c) Similarly, Brannigan liked to help prostitutes and to beat up violent pimps (though this was kept quiet for fear of misunderstanding) and we are incidentally told that many Dublin prostitutes were country girls who were thrown out by their parents and reduced to destitution for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. This, and the previous point are something we have to come to terms with in understanding what went wrong. We should recover what was good about the past, but we shouldn't idealise it blindly - for love of God, Who Is Truth, and for subsidiary reasons too numerous to mention here. (d) Brannigan himself was quite a pious Catholic, and for that reason and many others deserves his plaque in Whitefriar Street Church (drop in and see it sometime, with the plaques to other famous frequenters of the church). His wife was born Presbyterian but converted to marry him (though the fact that she continued to read the IRISH TIMES, while he took the PRESS and INDEPENDENT, suggests a certain cultural residue). The home atmosphere is reflected in the fact that the couple's only daughter became a nun (this is clear from the text but not dwelt upon, possibly because she died before Kearns could interview her).
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Post by hibernicus on May 22, 2016 19:59:33 GMT
Some volumes of Newman's correspondence which I recently picked up second-hand. There's always something to be gained from reading or rereading Newman, and here are a few examples: (1) As an Anglican and non-believer in transubstantiation (though he believed in the real presence) Newman was shocked by the Church of Ireland proselytiser Nangle using the image of a mouse stealing the Host as an argument against transubstantiation; he saw this as an example of Protestant use of crude rationalist arguments which tended to destroy all religious belief whatever. (2) I always assumed that when Newman got his first shock by reading of the Council of Chalcedon, it was because the role of Pope St Leo the Great in the defeat of monophysitism supplied a precedent for papal authority. IN fact, he says in a late letter that the central point was that he had thought in terms of the state imposing heresy, the via media representing orthodoxy, and Rome representing going to extremes on the other side; what suddenly occurred to him was that in the conflicts of the early Church it was in fact the state who sought to impose a via media between orthodoxy and heresy, and the orthodox who were the "extremists". Above all, what strikes me from the whole thing is what a deeply incarnational and sacramental figure Newman was, and how the reality of the Incarnation and the redemption of the material world lies at the root of his lifework - and how right he was in saying that the Protestant denial of sacramentalism leads to the successive denial of the Incarnation, Revelation, and the supernatural (not of course that it does so in every individual case, but that is its long-term tendency).
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 22, 2016 20:04:10 GMT
What struck me when I was reading Newman's letters/diaries (I only started on them) was his sheer prodigious work rate, and how seriously he took sick calls and other humble duties.
The 'diaries', unfortunately, were only memoranda of his activities. I don't know if he continued to do this.
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Post by hibernicus on May 24, 2016 18:45:44 GMT
Indeed; Newman had a strong pastoral sense (his letters to potential converts are remarkably level-headed and he takes care to avoid any suggestion of misleading or deceiving parents/spouses) and the later volumes show his close involvement in the day-to-day running of the Birmingham Oratory and in the financial and other minutiae of his publications (he was the son of a banker, albeit an unsuccessful one). He is very clear-headed about how much he can and cannot afford to give to objects of charity. Lytton Strachey's portrayal of Newman (in the CARDINAL MANNING section of EMINENT VICTORIANS) as a pathetically naive dreamer is quite laughable once you make any sort of detailed acquaintance with the real Newman. One example of Strachey's carelessness or worse: he describes NEwman revisiting Littlemore (the village outside Oxford where he spent his last Anglican years in quasi-monastic seclusion with a group of friends and disciples) and being seen in tears by the Anglican rector of the place, the implication conveyed being that he regretted his conversion. It so happens that in one of the late letters in the volumes I read, Newman mentions this visit, which took place in the early 1860s, and mentions that he burst into tears -because his mother was buried in the churchyard and this was the first time for 17 years that he had seen her grave. (To be fair to Strachey, whatever source he uses may have emanated from the Rector and the misunderstanding may be his rather than Strachey's).
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Post by hibernicus on May 29, 2016 17:30:41 GMT
Another nice little detail is that NEwman repeatedly states in his letters that he isn't a theologian (by which he means he hadn't undergone the particular training laid out for Catholic theologians in that era, but was an autodidact). John Cornwell's NEWMAN'S UNQUIET GRAVE makes much play with Newman's repeated statements that he wasn't a saint to argue that he positively disapproved of canonisation (which is odd given Newman's veneration for saints, but Cornwell's mind works in truly strange ways, insofar as it works at all). By Cornwell's own logic, then, he should denounce anyone who describes Newman as a theologian...
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 13, 2016 20:21:31 GMT
TYBORNE AND WHO WENT THITHER UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH, a mid-C19 historical novel by Frances [Mother MAgdalen] Taylor. She went out nursing in the Crimean War, converted because she was so impressed by the faith of the Irish nursing Sisters and of Irish Catholic soldiers, and became the foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God. Her book on Irish Catholic charitable institutions, IRISH HOMES AND IRISH HEARTS, was reprinted by UCD Press a few years ago. I thought I would look up this novel after reading a life of Mother Taylor published by a member of her Order a few years ago (around the time she was declared Venerable). What impressed me was that it was much more concise than I would have expected from a Victorian novelist, and many of the details are drawn quite closely from Challoner's MEMOIRS OF THE MISSIONARY PRIESTS AND OTHER MARTYRS (it helps to have read Challoner, though TAylor provides footnotes providing details). It is less interiorised, perhaps less emotive, than RH Benson's Recusant novels. There is also a very strong emphasis on the possibility of repentance and forgiveness for the worst sins. Two shortcomings, I would say, are the very strong focus on aristocratic recusants as if they mattered more than their humbler brethren, and the absence of any characters who are really convinced Protestants (it is assumed they all conform for worldly advantage). The contrast with LOSS AND GAIN, where material considerations are excluded to focus on the spiritual struggle and the loss of friendships, is notable (though of course its dealing with religious persecution is behind this).
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 15, 2016 22:00:11 GMT
And one feature of TYBORNE AND WHO WENT THITHER which I forgot to mention is the emphasis on marriage breakdown, separation from children and forced divorce as part of what converts can expect. To some extent Taylor is clearly addressing her contemporary Victorian situation (some of the husbands of these characters obtain divorces with the right to remarry, which was not available to Anglicans - by special Act of Parliament - until the reign of Charles II). I think she is particularly glancing at the extension of divorce by the Palmerston government around the time she was writing.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 15, 2016 22:27:04 GMT
I was in Lough Derg at the weekend (hence the light posting) and among the religious books which I brought to keep awake during the 24-hour sleepless vigil were a couple on Marian themes - St Alphonsus Liguori's THE GLORIES OF MARY and Donal Anthony Foley's MARIAN APPARITIONS, THE BIBLE AND THE MODERN WORLD. Both give a very strong sense both of the importance of MArian devotion and of why people are so wary of many of its advocates. St Alphonsus's book, with its reliance on private revelations, hellfire threats and anecdotes of uncertain provenance, gives a good sense of how some of the more problematic aspects of old-style Redemptorist preaching date back to its founder. His emphasis on Jesus as Justice and Mary as MErcy to such an extent that Mary is seen as restraining Jesus almost against His Will is theologically dubious, and I can see how this work, with its long list of citations from theological authorities, made the Anglican NEwman's hair stand on end. Yet some of Ligouri's dubious stories can be seen as Italianate hyperbole masking a valid point (i.e. the frequent stories of the worst sinners brought to deathbed repentance or having their lives miraculously preserved because amidst their crimes they repeated Marian prayers however shallowly can be seen as emphasising how even the smallest residual devotion may leave a way open for repentance) and much of the private revelation can be read as profound theological reflection on a vitally important point - that Mary's role in the Incarnation is so intimate, and her free choice so important, that she requires special honour and devotion beyond what we routinely give her. I never really grasped the case for calling her MEdiatrix of All Graces and Co-Redemptrix before (the latter not in the sense of making her equal to God, as it is often misunderstood, but as the role model par excellence of how we are enabled by divine grace to co-operate in the work of our Redeemer). Food for thought. Similarly mr Foley makes genuinely illuminating use of traditional Marian typology drawn from the Bible, which has fallen out of fashion (reading him and St Alphonsus together - the saint uses the same typology unselfconsciously - is particularly instructive) but he has a lot of theses to prove and a lot of axes to grind, some of them very dubious. The numerous problems with his work include - unwillingness to take criticism seriously; his treatment of Fr Stanley Jaki's view on the miracle of the sun at Fatima being a case in point - Fr Jaki was a trained physicist and knew whereof he spoke on how atmospheric conditions affect vision, but you would never guess this from Foley's account of his views. - willingness to vary his arguments as he suits them; thus at one point he presents modern biblical criticism as a conspiracy by German anti-Christians (some of the examples he cites - such as the creation account in Genesis being a combination of two separate narratives - were actually first put forward in seventeenth-century France), but when it suits him (e.g. when the Book of Daniel being composed around the same time as the Book of Maccabees suits a typological point he is making he is quite willing to make use of it). -Dodgy history; thus he presents evolution as being invented out of whole cloth by anti-Christian revolutionaries and capitalists, but in fact it has numerous "conservative" antecedents, including Burke's emphasis on the tacit wisdom of experience and Newman's theory on the development of doctrine; he actually cites Newman without realising this. - Creeping infallibility; he makes very far-reaching claims for the extent to which private individuals are obliged to believe in approved apparitions, especially those which he himself favours. At times he is willing to bend over backwards to justify dubious features of certain approved or semi-approved apparitions which appeal to him, while condemning similar features in other non-approved apparitions. His harangues on how certain approved apparitions are more significant than others have a nasty overtone of telling God and the Blessed Virgin how to go about their business, and of lecturing the reader from an assumed height. Don't get me wrong - there is some valuable material in this book but it should be read with extreme care, and it is an example of how the capacity of Marian devotion to stir the heart can all too easily topple over into sheer emotionalism.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 27, 2016 20:33:29 GMT
This review of Diarmuid McCulloch's often genuinely scholarly and valuable Reformation history tells it like it is about the ways in which McCulloch often substitutes sneering for reasoned argument and how his scholarship is distorted by his desire to justify his own addiction to sodomy: www.quadrapheme.com/all-things-made-new/
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 27, 2016 20:35:31 GMT
And to add a PS to my critique of Donal Anthony Foley on Marian apparitions - my central beef with the book is that Foley is not content with telling us what God has done but claims to know with certainty why God did it and what He is or is not going to do next.
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Post by pugio on Nov 8, 2016 21:14:58 GMT
Has anyone been viewing THE YOUNG POPE starring Jude Law & Diane Keaton?
It's about a fictional first American Pontiff, the young Pius XIII. The series seems to be an Italian-American co-production and definitely benefits from the former influence (the humour is more European than American, and the script is clearly written by people who actually have some knowledge of Catholicism, which is a nice change). I won't give anything away, except to say while its opening scene might suggest Hollywood sensationalism a la THE BORGIAS, what actually develops is a surprisingly thoughtful and intriguing drama with high production values and an intelligent script. I'm really quite impressed. Granted, I'm only 3 or so episodes in...
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 8, 2016 21:40:28 GMT
I haven't been watching it but I have recently switched to Sky, and this series seems to be the flagship series on their website.
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