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Post by hibernicus on Jun 5, 2015 23:02:48 GMT
The latest issue of the CATHOLIC HERALD has a short reflection on the decline of the urban Irish working-class element which was so prominent for so long in English Catholicism: www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/june-5th-2015/england-is-getting-less-irish-by-the-day/ I think this qualifies as "Catholic geography" since this phenomenon is very closely associated with the decline of the old industrial cities in the North of England (and in Lowland Scotland).
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jun 11, 2015 8:24:19 GMT
Very interesting. Which leads to another question. At the time of the Council, the working-class participation in the Church across the English-speaking world was much higher than on continental Europe. This is another message that that's all gone. And it seems to have a relationship with decline of Catholicism in this country.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 11, 2015 19:50:01 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 12, 2015 7:58:39 GMT
Luxembourg has a history of state supported Catholicism, and it is clear the Church in Luxembourg are not willing to throw it all away. The new guy seems like a new broom. Not unlike our present government, Bettel seems to have replaced a discredited regime under Juncker - and is using it to impose his own agenda.
But to contrast it with the earlier point, about the Irish working class in the British industrial cities; Luxembourg, like Belgium (especially Wallonia), the Rhineland and northern France is heavily industrialised. Yet the Luxembourgeois Church seems to have lost touch with the working class, as elsewhere. I say this as these areas were seen as cutting edge at the time of the Council and the Anglophone world was seen as the backwater.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 12, 2015 8:19:43 GMT
Reflecting on the Irish working class in England, I have another observation, based on my experience of international lay advocacy of the traditional liturgy. Bear in mind, I'm essentially thinking out loud.
Following the council, several national Latin Mass associations came into being. The first came in one of the countries one would least expect - Norway in 1964. The reason being that the largely convert Norwegian Catholic population believed the disappearance of Latin would compromise their distinction from the Lutheran majority. Following Una Voce Norge, several other national associations were founded. By and large, these were bodies of an intellectual elite, with aristocracy and profoundly articulate converts. Ireland was not one of the countries included in this movement - our first national body came in 1989. This is reflective of how clerical the Irish church is. But anyway, most of these were not successful. The most successful body was the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. Of course they benefited from the indult Paul VI gave to Cardinal Heenan in 1971 (and I believe the influence of the petition signed by Agatha Christi is overstated; essentially the Cardinal was behind this) - unlike everyone else they had something to work with.
But I think there was another factor too. The LMSEW had a substantial working class base, unlike the other models. This is what Damien Thompson liked to slag as the "Low Mass Society". However, I suspect these generally had a background in the Trade Union movement and the Labour Party. First thing this meant was they were joiners and they fitted in with organisation (this has made Irish EF organisations very weak - few join and many haven't the slightest conception of getting organised. There's almost a pride in attending Masses others have put time, energy and even money into getting and knowing it didn't cost them a bead of sweat). Even if they contributed little to policy or planning, they certainly provided backbone and muscle to the organisation. Importantly, if permission came through in an unusual location, there was automatically resources there to put up the best effort. In Ireland, we were often overstretched, and older continental and non-European bodies were not much different. Now, I think that the LMSEW has weaknesses as well as strengths and I don't believe they effectively use the resources they have. But they are coming from a different culture than us. How far this will transfer to a coming generation, I don't know.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 13, 2015 10:58:40 GMT
I would point out that while there was no indult trad group in Ireland until the 1980s, the SSPX (and worse still, the Palmarians) established a presence here very early on. This is another aspect of "how clerical the Irish church is" - it produced outright rebels but not a "loyal opposition".
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 15, 2015 11:11:28 GMT
SSPX groups sprung up everywhere. I suppose there is an irony in the fact that some of the main movers behind the SSPX in Ireland are heavily involved in the St Kevin's, Harrington St.
The LMSEW have always had a pro-SSPX element. It's a bit ironic looking back that from 1971 to 1976, it was possible for the few incardinated SSPX priests to say the Indult Mass in England & Wales. This sent out a lot of mixed messages, both within and outside England. Every couple of years there is an internal upheaval within the LMSEW and one of the troublesome factors is the lingering SSPX presence. This varies through lay movements internationally.
The Irish indult groups have been relatively SSPX-free until recently (with exceptions), but at present this is not the case through all of the current competing groups.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 15, 2015 20:48:16 GMT
I have come across instances of SSPX literature being surreptitiously left in St Kevin's, obviously with the aim of getting people to go to their Masses in Mounttown.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 16, 2015 8:47:48 GMT
This has been the case since the days of Ss Michaels and Johns. Plenty of SSPX supporters look at the indult Masses as fair game. When the Assumption day EF Mass takes place in Letterkenny Cathedral, a local SSPX man comes out to leaflet the congregation. The organisers have had to make it clear to the administrator that this was a crank acting on his own initiative.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 16, 2015 20:42:27 GMT
Rod Dreher links to a piece (from the NEW YORKER) about how euthanasia has become mainstream in Belgium, and is available pretty much on demand and as an assertion of the right to personal autonomy (and promoted in school ethics classes). Anyone who criticises this state of affairs is accused of being Catholic even if they are not, and proponents actively promote the availability of euthanasia as a break from Belgium's "backward" Catholic past. Does this remind you of a certain country with which we are familiar, and a constitutional change which we are likely to be asked to vote on after the next general election? www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/suicide-post-christian-west-liberalism-belgium/#post-comments
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Post by Young Ireland on Jun 16, 2015 20:51:27 GMT
Rod Dreher links to a piece (from the NEW YORKER) about how euthanasia has become mainstream in Belgium, and is available pretty much on demand and as an assertion of the right to personal autonomy (and promoted in school ethics classes). Anyone who criticises this state of affairs is accused of being Catholic even if they are not, and proponents actively promote the availability of euthanasia as a break from Belgium's "backward" Catholic past. Does this remind you of a certain country with which we are familiar, and a constitutional change which we are likely to be asked to vote on after the next general election? www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/suicide-post-christian-west-liberalism-belgium/#post-commentsYes, very much so. How sad that killing off the most vulnerable has been elevated to a virtue. The use of Catholic as a smear word has something Orwellian about it as well.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 17, 2015 9:25:09 GMT
Worked through the original article by Rachel Aviv in The New Yorker with increasing horror, especially at the creep who said Belgium was ethically on top of the world. Given that Rik van Niewenhowe quoted from the Apocalypse to describe Flanders as neither hot nor cold in the Brandsma, I thought of the letter to the church in Sardis: you have the name of being alive, and you are dead. (Apocalypse 3,1), or indeed Matthew 11, 23 - And thou Capharnaum, shalt thou be exalted up to heaven? thou shalt go down even unto hell.
To see the way Belgium has been boiled like a frog - Distelmann going off to Auschwitz is a good an illustration as you are going to get. You can see in the story of the main family where this all came from and that there is a need for new radical Christian witness. The juxtaposition of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg is interesting. All have euthanasia, but Belgium scrapes the bottom of the barrel with euthanasia for minors. All the dystopias I read come together in one summary of evil. I hear Orwell's Squealer singing "Science tells us, comrades" and of course St Thomas More saw through this nearly five hundred years ago in Utopia.
This is obviously something which will have to be revisited soon, because it is coming here fast. And I can anticipate all the arguments pro; we've heard something similar.
This spurs the drive to develop a robust Catholicism.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 17, 2015 21:16:19 GMT
One striking feature is that once euthanasia is accepted/taken for granted, the idea that involuntary euthanasia is the right thing to do, and opposition to it is positively evil, becomes thinkable/acceptable. (This BTW is something Fr Twomey missed out on when he said the marriage abolition referendum was a triumph of sentiment - because sentiment derives from intellectual propositions which people have come to take for granted. Any society will have a dominant ethos, and freedom of conscience only goes so far.)
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 18, 2015 8:10:40 GMT
Should I be careful at whom I am calling a creep as Etienne Vermeersch is regarded as the leading Flemish intellectual. He is also an ex-Jesuit scholastic. However, the Belgian story under discussion and Fr Twomey's comments in The Irish Times a few days ago point in another direction, towards Antonio Gramsci. Yes, the "Yes" campaign was driven by sentiment, but this was based on the fact that intellectually we have taken a totally new set of assumptions on board, and the example of Belgium is a pertinent one. It is significant, and very a propos of this thread, that Gramsci came from a Catholic background and came from a milieu which was Catholic and the degree to which Catholicism permeated Italian society had an influence over his philosophy.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 18, 2015 9:03:43 GMT
Is there any more tiresome claim than the claim that one's opponents are driven by sentiment rather than logic?
Personally I am driven by both. When I voted 'No' to same-sex marriage, it was as much out of sentiment as logic.
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