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Post by hibernicus on Dec 4, 2018 23:42:42 GMT
Part of the motivation behind the Irish clerics' response, it is quite clear from their comments, was that they saw the English Catholic commentators' remarks about the culture shock involved in Irish emigrants moving from a society where Catholicism was taken for granted to one where it was peripheral as casting doubt on whether it was a good idea to maintain a taken-for-granted society (e.g. by newspaper and literary censorship, embodying Catholic doctrines in civil law etc.) The question of whether it was sustainable in the long run (however desirable) is not addressed. This I think reflects the postwar tensions in the Church between advocates of a full confessional state and of an interdenominational "Christian Democrat" compromise. (Neither proposal has worn well, alas. The confessional states were all too often whited sepulchres and the Christian Democrats took an unduly benevolent view of secular modernity.) One interesting little detail is a remark to the effect that evening Masses to allow shiftworkers in factories to meet their Sunday obligations are now widespread in England (with the apparent implication that this is not the case in Ireland). This was presumably why the requirement to fast from midnight was reduced to a three-hour fast under Pius XII. The English Catholic commentators complain of elements in the Irish church trying to discourage emigration on the grounds that it endangers their faith (there is a reference to Redemptorist preachers proclaiming that a ticket to England is a ticket to Hell). This is criticised on the grounds that emigration is more or less inevitable and helps to spread the faith, but it is clear that the Irish are supposed to spread the faith by imitating the superior English Catholic and otherwise keeping their mouths shut. To be fair, some rational arguments are presented against trying to preserve an Irish identity among English-born descendants of immigrants (for example, that if they feel an Irish identity is being imposed on them against their will in the name of Catholicism they may reject Catholicism along with Irishness) but the idea that Irishness might have any positive value is treated dismissively. There is an English-based academic called Mary Hickman who argued that the Church in Britain deliberately collaborated with the state to discourage any sense of Irish identity among immigrant-descendants. I used to think she was a bit over the top (for example, she underestimates the extent to which immigrants desired to assimilate) but the attitude in this report makes me think she was on to something. Another notable absence, now that I think of it, is any reference to the American immigration experience, which surely would be an obvious parallel. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that Britain is a historic nation and as such not comparable with a nation of immigrants such as the USA.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 13, 2018 19:51:35 GMT
Bishop Willie Walsh's memoir NO CRUSADER. Admittedly, anyone's account of their spiritual development is bound to create a certain amount of sympathy (especially when written by an old person summing up their life after having experienced near-fatal illness) but the whole thing certainly helps me to see why the bishop was privately nicknamed "Wishy-Washy". A few points: (1) The fact that he was trained in Canon Law helps to explain why he has wound up with the form of "liberal" legalist mentality anatomised by Fr Vincent Twomey (i.e. focussing on extenuating circumstances which allow exceptions to the law, rather than to the underlying principle behind the law, until you come to think that the law is simply a series of arbitrary restrictions imposed at random). (2) He is quite remarkably mealy-mouthed in his statements that he is not questioning church doctrine on such matters as contraception and divorce/remarriage,merely calling for dialogue/debate. It is quite clear that he is questioning doctrine and that the dialogue in question is the sort that can only end in change (and the proscription of the former dialogue). (3) He is snarky about people who complain about his diocese's non-directive marriage preparation (i.e. explaining various types of contraceptives and their use, saying that the church forbids them, and leaving the couple to decide for themselves). Let us suppose that an accountants' training course included explanations/demonstrations of various methods of cooking the books, together with reminders that these practices are strictly illegal but the teachers will leave it up to the students to decide for themselves about using them. Somehow I don't think "non-directive" would be seen as the mot juste for such a course...
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 15, 2018 21:43:54 GMT
A couple of other details of Bishop Walsh's memoir, which may balance what I said above: (1) His legalistic mindset has deeper roots than his Canon Law training. He recalls that he was brought up to think of God as giving a set of arbitrary rules and sending you to Hell if you broke them. This was a real problem of pre-VII Irish Catholicism, and the fact that it has often been displaced by a "love means never saying you're wrong about anything" mindset doesn't make it any less problematic. I remember an elderly relative, who is very devout and with trad sympathies, remarking tome "we were taught to fear God but not to love Him". Walsh's reaction against that mindset is quite understandable, even if the form it took is wrong.
(2) He recalls that at one point he was briefly seconded to Galway diocese (then ruled by Bishop Browne) from his own Killaloe diocese, and says that it struck him that Galway priests were frightened of their bishop in a way that simply wasn't the case in Killaloe.
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Post by rogerbuck on Dec 24, 2018 12:09:40 GMT
Roger Buck's COR JESU SACRATISSIMUM is a book of two halves - the discussion of New Age and its limitations is fascinating (and I might add quite free from the hysteria of some Christian treatments which imply everyone involved is possessed by the Devil, though he does believe there was demonic influence behind Blavatsky). It is also a very fine exposition of the power of the Sacred Heart devotion as expressing incarnational/sacramental faith, as distinct from the bodiless gnosticism and arrogance of New Age syncretism. (I happen to have been doing some research recently which touches on theosophy, and I see the resemblance to this very clearly.) On the other hand, I think his account of the French Catholic-monarchist tradition is very idealised, and some of the occultists from that tradition whom he cites may be more dangerous than he realises (because he encountered them when he was moving towards faith and found them an assistance in that context). I'll try to do a longer review somewhere when I find time. A belated, hurried thank you for this, Hibernicus. I've been meaning to say more to this, but I just never find the right moment. Will just wish the people here a blessed Christmas, while I give thanks for how much this intelligent forum educates and helps. More when I can ...
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 1, 2019 19:09:51 GMT
Not meaning to distract from very interesting discussions a number of books, I recently made a point of re-watching a HTV children's series I saw last as a child which scared me to death called Children of the Stones (1977). The fact it was aired around the time that there were frequent power cuts accentuated this - it also heightened my political consciousness. I was in Second Class in the year that Cosgrave government fell and Jack Lynch was swept to power. My parents remarked while Liam Cosgrave was Taoiseach, the Scholarstown Road area of Rathfarnham/Ballyboden where Cosgrave's relatively modest house was never suffered cuts (like Mr Cosgrave, I grew up at the foot of the Dublin mountains, but I was nearer Tallaght). But at this time, Lynch was Taoiseach, that privilege went to Palmerstown Road in Rathgar where Jack Lynch had his Dublin residence. But that's an aside - the power cuts enhanced the scariness of the series and at the time, my father did his best to entertain us. Of course, when I revisited this, I was not so scared (though I probably would skip showing this to my own children), but very interested in the post-modern aspect of it. The synopsis of the series is this: there is a circle of neolithic stones in a rural English village which also seems to give out a strong magnetic field and a widowed professor of astro physics arrives with his son to study the area. His son had purchased a painting of a neolithic ritual some time before which seems to depict this particular stone circle. The professor is a sceptic and is confronted with all sorts of local superstitions, which he dismisses (though he is befriended by the widowed curator of the local museum, an archaeology graduate who gives the stories more credence - her daughter is in the same school class as his son). As the astro-physicist and his son stay longer and they piece together stranger and stranger facts about the village and its people. One feature that is particularly strange is that although there is a church in the village, it has been de-consecrated and though the living is in the gift of the lord of the manor, he is in no hurry to appoint a vicar. However, the locals appear happy without religion and have their own traditions and it seems to the outsiders that this comes before Christianity. Now, I hope I said enough to get you curious without spoiling it. But what interests me is the role Christianity plays in its absence and the assumptions about rural England and Wales in the 1970s. And how different the tale would be told now. More special effects and less acting. And the romantic connection between the widower and widow would be more sexualised. But I suppose one of my favourite scenes is how the astrophysicist confronts the lord of the manor when he realises what his game is and first calls him a priest and then a magus. But anyway, I would be interested in reactions. Anyway, the theme is an interesting interplay between science, religion and superstition. The writers might have been onto more than they realised.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 1, 2019 22:42:13 GMT
Not meaning to distract from very interesting discussions a number of books, I recently made a point of re-watching a HTV children's series I saw last as a child which scared me to death called Children of the Stones (1977). The fact it was aired around the time that there were frequent power cuts accentuated this - it also heightened my political consciousness. I was in Second Class in the year that Cosgrave government fell and Jack Lynch was swept to power. My parents remarked while Liam Cosgrave was Taoiseach, the Scholarstown Road area of Rathfarnham/Ballyboden where Cosgrave's relatively modest house was never suffered cuts (like Mr Cosgrave, I grew up at the foot of the Dublin mountains, but I was nearer Tallaght). But at this time, Lynch was Taoiseach, that privilege went to Palmerstown Road in Rathgar where Jack Lynch had his Dublin residence. But that's an aside - the power cuts enhanced the scariness of the series and at the time, my father did his best to entertain us. Of course, when I revisited this, I was not so scared (though I probably would skip showing this to my own children), but very interested in the post-modern aspect of it. The synopsis of the series is this: there is a circle of neolithic stones in a rural English village which also seems to give out a strong magnetic field and a widowed professor of astro physics arrives with his son to study the area. His son had purchased a painting of a neolithic ritual some time before which seems to depict this particular stone circle. The professor is a sceptic and is confronted with all sorts of local superstitions, which he dismisses (though he is befriended by the widowed curator of the local museum, an archaeology graduate who gives the stories more credence - her daughter is in the same school class as his son). As the astro-physicist and his son stay longer and they piece together stranger and stranger facts about the village and its people. One feature that is particularly strange is that although there is a church in the village, it has been de-consecrated and though the living is in the gift of the lord of the manor, he is in no hurry to appoint a vicar. However, the locals appear happy without religion and have their own traditions and it seems to the outsiders that this comes before Christianity. Now, I hope I said enough to get you curious without spoiling it. But what interests me is the role Christianity plays in its absence and the assumptions about rural England and Wales in the 1970s. And how different the tale would be told now. More special effects and less acting. And the romantic connection between the widower and widow would be more sexualised. But I suppose one of my favourite scenes is how the astrophysicist confronts the lord of the manor when he realises what his game is and first calls him a priest and then a magus. But anyway, I would be interested in reactions. Anyway, the theme is an interesting interplay between science, religion and superstition. The writers might have been onto more than they realised. I have never seen it but have heard many good things about it. The post-Christian, pre-Christian or non-Christian element seems similar to The Wicker Man, a film made in 1973, one of my favourites. That also involves the lord of the manor being confronted by the protagonist-- in this instance the protagonist is a Christian police detective and the lord of the manor, Christopher Lee, is an open pagan.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 2, 2019 8:58:27 GMT
In my post above, the title of the series gives the YouTube link to the complete series. It's about two and a half hours long, so watch it at your leisure
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Post by assisi on Feb 6, 2019 13:56:26 GMT
George Orwell’s name is popping up more and more these days, mostly because of his book 1984 and its relevance to our current global political divisions. He is seen as socialist but often quoted by conservatives as he was prescient enough to see the flaws of the left.
I recently read one of his earliest books, ‘A Clergyman’s Daughter’ (1935), a book that he himself, in retrospect, didn’t like and didn’t want republished. It is a bit experimental starting with a normal portrayal of the work of the clergyman’s daughter. She, Dorothy, suffers a serious memory loss and finds herself adrift in London. Orwell depicts her involvement in the grim realities of hop picking in Kent and sleeping rough in London including an aimless and chaotic conversation amongst the tramps in a style reminiscent of Joyce.
Interestingly from a religious viewpoint he touches on two themes that I thought were interesting. One is the effect of modernism on the fall off of belief with one character declaring that the Bishops are ‘all Modernists and time-servers’.
The bigger religious theme is that the previously very pious Dorothy loses her faith completely after her prolonged memory loss and fall into destitution. Near the end of the novel she is in conversation with a cynical atheist acquaintance who casually proposes marriage to her and is refused. She can no longer pray to God but feels that ‘either life on earth is a preparation for something greater and more lasting, or it is meaningless dark and dreadful’. She finds comfort in routine and realises that she can’t articulate a solution to her dilemma. She ends up living like a Christian, but without the belief, as she believe this the best thing to do.
Interestingly Orwell himself, although an atheist, attended Anglican services and had an Anglican burial, but at heart was anti-religious, and particularly anti-Catholic. Using terminology we have used on here before, he could be termed a cultural Christian.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 8, 2019 23:45:12 GMT
He went through a period in the 1930s when he was actually a communicant Anglican, but in general he seems to have believed that the world was so unpleasant that a God who made it was unlikely to be benevolent. (He was quite close to being an anarchist, and their opposition to authority in general often extends to anti-theism and would certainly rule out a sacerdotal church.) He was very anti-Catholic and in one of his letters mentions giving money to Kensitites (an ultra-Protestant group of the Paisley type) since he sees them as an useful counterweight to Catholic influence. The world of 1984 can be read as having anti-Catholic undertones (Big Brother can be read as God; the Irish name of the inquisitor O'Brien associates him with Catholicism; there is a character called Syme - the hero of Chesterton's THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY - who praises Newspeak in terms resembling Chestertonian paradox, and is marked down for liquidation because the regime wants people to take Newspeak for granted rather than defending it since defence implies opposition; Inner Party members are encouraged to be celibate, at least nominally; as part of O'Brien's final interrogation of Winston aimed at forcing him to accept that reality is whatever the Party says it is, O'Brien claims that the Party can work miracles and that he can levitate but chooses not to do so). One recurring feature of Orwell's writings is dislike of birth control and abortion (it's probably relevant that he appears to have been sterile). When the hero of KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING decides to abandon his artistic ambitions and settle down to marriage with his pregnant girlfriend, he is explicitly described as motivated not only by love and concern for the woman but by feelings of protectiveness and pity for the unborn child and revulsion at the thought of its being aborted.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 10, 2019 21:54:19 GMT
MITRE AND CROOK by Fr Bryan Houghton. I had heard of this 1977 epistolary novel when I first read CHRISTIAN ORDER as a 12-year-old, but had never seen a copy until I came across one in a recent book sale. I confess my expectations were not high; Fr Houghton was briefly famous as the only priest in England & Wales to retire rather than say the NO/OF when it came into force. (He was independently wealthy.) I had also heard rumours (which may be untrue) that he was in private a sedevacantist. In fact the book is quite witty and reflective. It tells the story of a bishop who on learning he is dying decides to set about liturgical restoration in his diocese, and the ecclesiastical politics which follow on from this. There are long expositions on the status of the EF and suchlike, but these are incorporated into the narrative more skilfully than I had expected. There are also long passages on prayer which give the distinct impression that the author knew whereof he spoke; his major praise of the EF is that it promotes contemplative prayer,whose neglect among priests he blames for the catastrophe. Some noteworthy points: (1) The novel is very strong on the arrogance and contempt shown towards the faithful laity, the consequent suffering, and the mistreatment of orthodox nuns in convents and candidates in seminaries. He writes at particular length about the rapid disintegration of convent life, its causes and consequences. There is also some treatment of the plight of converts - one character laments that the changes make him feel he was "not so much received as deceived into the Church". (2) While he admits the OF is legitimate, his general attitude towards it is contempt and disgust. There is a scathing portrayal of a Charismatic liturgical celebration, which is described as the logical endpoint of the liturgical reforms; the celebrant is called "Fr Sludge" (after Robert Browning's poem "Mr Sludge the Medium") and the bishop has the venue exorcised before it is used again. (3) While the enthusiastic support the bishop receives for his reforms seems rather like wishful thinking, it must be borne in mind that it portrays a situation less than 20 years after the Council, where the majority of Catholics remember the older forms and there are many relatively young priests and religious who were trained in older ways. The bishop predicts that the death of Paul VI will rapidly be followed by a schism and the appearance of two rival churches, one of which will revert to traditional ways. This was a fairly wide expectation at the time among trads. (One interesting detail is that a successful City financier who has two children and is expecting a third is financially strained in paying for their education - obviously he is thinking in terms of 70s rates of taxation and writing well before City salaries took off with "Big Bang" in the mid-80s.) It's a product of its time in many ways, but its elements of shrewdness can still be appreciated. www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-fr-bryan-houghton-1562266.htmlunavoce.org/uva-archive/rejected-priest-fr-bryan-houghton/theradtrad.blogspot.com/2015/10/bryan-houghton-mitre-crook.html
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Post by Young Ireland on Feb 10, 2019 22:31:39 GMT
MITRE AND CROOK by Fr Bryan Houghton. I had heard of this 1977 epistolary novel when I first read CHRISTIAN ORDER as a 12-year-old, but had never seen a copy until I came across one in a recent book sale. I confess my expectations were not high; Fr Houghton was briefly famous as the only priest in England & Wales to retire rather than say the NO/OF when it came into force. (He was independently wealthy.) I had also heard rumours (which may be untrue) that he was in private a sedevacantist. In fact the book is quite witty and reflective. It tells the story of a bishop who on learning he is dying decides to set about liturgical restoration in his diocese, and the ecclesiastical politics which follow on from this. There are long expositions on the status of the EF and suchlike, but these are incorporated into the narrative more skilfully than I had expected. There are also long passages on prayer which give the distinct impression that the author knew whereof he spoke; his major praise of the EF is that it promotes contemplative prayer,whose neglect among priests he blames for the catastrophe. Some noteworthy points: (1) The novel is very strong on the arrogance and contempt shown towards the faithful laity, the consequent suffering, and the mistreatment of orthodox nuns in convents and candidates in seminaries. He writes at particular length about the rapid disintegration of convent life, its causes and consequences. There is also some treatment of the plight of converts - one character laments that the changes make him feel he was "not so much received as deceived into the Church". (2) While he admits the OF is legitimate, his general attitude towards it is contempt and disgust. There is a scathing portrayal of a Charismatic liturgical celebration, which is described as the logical endpoint of the liturgical reforms; the celebrant is called "Fr Sludge" (after Robert Browning's poem "Mr Sludge the Medium") and the bishop has the venue exorcised before it is used again. (3) While the enthusiastic support the bishop receives for his reforms seems rather like wishful thinking, it must be borne in mind that it portrays a situation less than 20 years after the Council, where the majority of Catholics remember the older forms and there are many relatively young priests and religious who were trained in older ways. The bishop predicts that the death of Paul VI will rapidly be followed by a schism and the appearance of two rival churches, one of which will revert to traditional ways. This was a fairly wide expectation at the time among trads. (One interesting detail is that a successful City financier who has two children and is expecting a third is financially strained in paying for their education - obviously he is thinking in terms of 70s rates of taxation and writing well before City salaries took off with "Big Bang" in the mid-80s.) It's a product of its time in many ways, but its elements of shrewdness can still be appreciated. www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-fr-bryan-houghton-1562266.htmlunavoce.org/uva-archive/rejected-priest-fr-bryan-houghton/theradtrad.blogspot.com/2015/10/bryan-houghton-mitre-crook.htmlInterestingly, the British Independent obituary notes that he criticised Abp. Lefebvre for "destroying the Church", so I highly doubt he was a sedevacantist.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 11, 2019 20:10:54 GMT
You're right - I had confused him with Fr Oswald Baker, the other cause celebre priest connected with the introduction of the OF in England and Wales (he continued to celebrate the EF until he was kicked out, then set up an independent congregation in the same town) who to judge by this obit was definitely a sedevacantist: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1467024/Father-Oswald-Baker.htmlThe obit's description of the widespread publicity and initial support received by Fr Baker suggests to me that it inspired Fr Houghton's description of the enthusiasm aroused by the actions of his fictional bishop.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 21, 2019 23:03:40 GMT
Helen Galgano (pseudonym) THE DEVIL HATES LATIN. This is a thriller published by Regina Press in 2017, set in the period immediately after the election of an African traditionalist Pope (clearly meant to be Cardinal Sarah) in which a group of people including an exorcist American Dominican priest, a wealthy American family one of whose daughters is a member of Cardinal Winning's Sisters of Life (though the order is not named), and an Italian family whose daughter is pregnant outside of wedlock find themselves under attack by a combination of demonic forces and human gangsters associated with a fake religious order "the Community" clearly modelled on the Legionaries of Christ. I got this because of a review by Joseph Shaw in MASS OF AGES mentioning the Legion connection. Taking on board his remark that the author reminds him it is meant only as light entertainment, here are a few points that come to mind: (1) It is quite clear from the start who are the good guys and who are the bad, and with the exception of one character who is reclaimed from servitude to vice arising from a porn habit, and of the pregnant daughter who is seriously tempted to abort her baby in the hope of winning back her boyfriend, no-one seriously wavers or is tempted to change sides. Within a page or two of the Community being introduced we learn that their leaders are conscious hypocrites engaged in money-laundering for drug cartels and willing to poison those who become inconvenient, and further horrors follow. (I should state at this stage that I do not intend to suggest at any point that the real-life Legion are guilty of the crimes attributed to the fictional Community, other than the activities of Fr Maciel and the associated cover-up which are already public knowledge.) Given that one of Satan's most dangerous abilities is that of disguising himself as an angel of light, it would have been much more effective if the reader were led to believe at first that the Community are what they profess to be before their true character is revealed. It is noteworthy that although the real-life Legion very clearly presented themselves as a bastion of orthodoxy, and one or two references to the Community in the novel relate to this, elsewhere we are told that the Community present themselves as neither conservative nor liberal. Given that Maciel was shielded for so long not only by bribes (sorry, charitable donations) in certain quarters but by the fact that so many people wanted to believe he was what he pretended to be, removing this element (however embarrassing to orthodox Catholics) removes a major explanation for why such an organisation should flourish for so long. (One flaw of the Shaw review is that he holds forth about this organisation and about the real-life Legion as exemplifying the shortcomings of conservative Catholicism as distinct from traditionalism; but these characters in the novel are not any sort of Catholic except in pretence, and the central flaw of the Legion is its formation by an evil man masquerading as a saint.) Again, one of the principal villains is described as always having been an atheist and having originally become a priest to serve Marxism under the name of Liberation theology, later developing into a cynic. Quite frankly a Marxist Liberationist (the latter commitment being open) would presumably become a secular priest or join some other Orders which I won't name rather than one resembling the Legion, and he would hardly be able to transfer from elsewhere and then rise to a leadership position in a cult-like organisation which would take good care to form its own leaders for the same reason that the Mafia does not recruit members through advertisements in newspapers. Malachi Martin is very clearly an influence on this novel, but he is much more adept at conveying the power of temptation and the fascination of certain types of evil - how he got this knowledge is another matter - and even his duplicity and manipulation of the reader gives his novels a certain depth which makes this appear flat. Ms Galgani is a better person than Malachi Martin, but she's certainly a worse writer. It's getting late so I'll break off now and conclude my thoughts on the novel some other time.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 24, 2019 21:20:41 GMT
THE DEVIL HATES LATIN part 2 - One of the strong points of this is that while it gestures towards dark financial conspiracies of the wealthy and powerful and the growth of satanic cults, these are largely allowed to remain in the shadows (compared to, say, Michael O'Brien's CHILDREN OF THE LAST DAYS novel series, which goes deep into tinfoil hat territory). For example, one of the major villains practices yoga at moments of stress (mostly caused by his own criminal plans) and the reader may infer that this serves as a channel for demonic influences, but this is never made explicit and the character remains an atheist (when he sees supernatural manifestations he persuades himself they are faked and thus rushes to destruction). This leads on to the major problem - the huffing and puffing about exorcism and satanism (including the unintentionally risible remark that even the mafia have basically gone from bad to worse by substituting satanism for their previous hypocritical invocation of Catholicism - since Our Lady of Pompeii is mention, the author should know from the story of Bl Bartolo Longo that invocation of Satan by the Italian underworld goes back to the C19 and probably much earlier) is out of all proportion to their actual role in the novel. For example, it would be quite possible for the hitmen who play a role in the climax to be, for example, followers of the Mexican criminal cult of Santa Muerte, but they are simply stone-cold professionals. In order to justify divine intervention on the scale we see at the highpoint of the novel, the villains ought to be much more clearly in cahoots with and drawing power from Satan. (I must say though that the cartel boss who switches his money-laundering channels to please his politically correct student daughter is a nice touch, as are the two corrupt priests called Cromwell - no explanation needed - and Pilar, which is a female name.) Once again, I think the central failing of this novel is the absence of serious temptation and deception for most of the major characters. The grim fascination with the transformation of fanaticism into antinomianism in Hogg's MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER, or the more detached scenes in Chesterton's THE BALL AND THE CROSS where Professor Lucifer separately offers MacIan and Turnbull the apparent fulfilment of their noblest dreams if only they would connive at the touch of cruelty that would turn them into nightmares- and the reader must accept that although Turnbull is mistaken in his central belief he is a brave and honest man and there is much to be said for his political hopes - give a much stronger sense of Satan's wiles than the hints and shadows of this book. Similarly, the background context of a conservative African Pope (identifiable as Cardinal Sarah) being elected brings little or nothing to the story - other than as a plot device for getting some of the characters to Italy because the Pope wants more exorcists - and comes across as wishful thinking. It is also slightly awkward that a heroic financially-reforming cardinal is clearly based on Cardinal Pell, since this puts a plot element at the mercy of later developments. The suggestions that most/all corruption and other ills began with Vatican II are clearly risible for anyone who knows anything about the history of Italian or US Catholicism - the two countries which feature most. Basically lightweight - read it if you like that sort of thing.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 29, 2019 17:21:07 GMT
I have been reading I Remember Maynooth by Fr. Neil Kevin, an impressionistic memoir of being a seminarian there. The book was published in 1937. Fr. Kevin seems a very interesting character in his own right. historicgraves.com/church-sacred-heart/tn-saht-0005/graveI've only read the first quarter or so of the book, which is rather short. It's very interesting on many grounds, but one interesting aspect is how Fr. Kevin writes about the theological and homiletic formation of the time. Today we complain (quite rightly) that catechesis, theology, homiletics, etc. aren't solid enough. It would seem that, in Fr. Kevin's time (he was born 1908) the formation in Maynooth was TOO solid for some. He describes theology class as being a very arid and rigorous Thomism, and admits he has no happy memories of it in the manner he has happy memories of some of his other classes, such as literature. He also describes the formation in homiletics as being very standardised and precise, and daunting for just this reason. (I should emphasise that Fr. Kevin was not denouncing any of this, simply describing his own reaction, rather ruefully. From what I've read so far he seems to have been a perfectly loyal son of the Church.) Edward Feser has often written about this hostility towards Thomism and scholastic philosophy on the ground that it is dry and mechanistic-- a reaction by no means confined to liberals, he says. The reaction against this seems to have been what inspired a great deal of theology which in turn inspired Vatican II. So it's a big subject which may have had a massive influence on the Church. He writes about it in various interesting posts. edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/08/development-versus-decay.htmledwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/11/nietzschean-natural-law.htmlthomasaquinas.edu/news/lecture-dr-edward-feser-what-we-owe-new-atheistsCould it have been that traditional Irish Catholicism was not anti-intellectual, but actually OVER-intellectualized-- for many peoples' tastes, at least? I came across an article in An Sagart, the Irish language journal of Cumann Na Sagart, where Monsignor Padraig Ó Fiannachta was complaining that the catechesis in schools, in his day, was too drab and formulaic. Of course, it was also substantial and coherent, which it certainly isn't today...
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