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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Dec 4, 2018 9:05:42 GMT
I found among the Polish community here, you could not take their support for the 8th Amendment for granted. So, I worry about Poland. There seems to be great evil afoot in the world today.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 4, 2018 23:16:50 GMT
It is sometimes suggested that one reason for the recent advance of the PiS (Law and Justice) party in Poland is that younger and more secular Poles are more likely to emigrate and older and more traditionalist to remain. I remember during the last Polish presidential elections (in which Poles overseas had the vote) there were some signs of attempts to get Irish-based Poles to vote for Civic Platform (e.g. posters for their presidential candidate put up on walls) but no visible effort to rouse support for PiS. [I am not BTW saying "PiS all good, Civic Platform all bad" - just making an observation.)
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 9, 2019 23:02:00 GMT
Some interesting posts and discussions from Rod Dreher's blog on the Spanish Civil War and its relationship to the long-term cultural role of Spanish Catholicism: www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/lee-podles-roots-of-spanish-anticlericalism/www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/learning-from-the-spanish-civil-war/www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/past-future-spanish-catholicism-franco/One point that strikes me about the discussion of how Spain (and other Latin countries) has a strong modern tradition of seeing religion as for women and priests as effeminate, is that this helps to explain why Opus Dei spirituality, from what casual and superficial contact I have had with it, seems very masculine-oriented (e.g. emphasising the Our Father as well as the Hail Mary as a casual prayer, St Josemaria as father figure, the emphasis on divine filiation) - in other words, it's reacting against this social stereotype. I wonder how this relates to the experience of women in OD? Dreher remarks that the mutual demonisation of the Spanish Right and Left in the run-up to the Civil War reminds him of the current American political situation. Certainly the declarations of Trumpistas such as John Zmirak that 2016 was a "Flight 93 election" - in other words, that the Democrats are the equivalent of Islamic suicide hijackers, with the deliberate or unintended implication that it would be better to destroy the plane rather than let them take control of it - are distinctly alarming. This Peter Hitchens review-essay on Franco, arguing that while his victory in the Civil War may have been preferable to the alternative, those - including Solzhenitsyn - who regard his subsequent regime as upholding Christian civilisation are dangerously self-deceived, may also be of interest. hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2019/01/a-review-of-a-new-biography-of-francisco-franco-by-enrique-moradiellos.html
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 9, 2019 19:51:41 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 24, 2019 19:22:49 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 1, 2020 0:34:25 GMT
This profile of Cardinal Sarah, which emphasises such matters as his relatively friendly attitude towards Muslims and his criticisms of the exploitation of immigrants to the West and the impact of the world economic system on the global South (in which he sounds quite like Pope Francis) is a handy reminder that the labels "conservative" and "liberal" do not apply straightforwardly in the sense that (say) they are often used in America. churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/cardinal-sarahs-warning-to-the-west/
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Post by hibernicus on May 14, 2020 22:42:14 GMT
The latest issue of the England and Wales Latin Mass Society journal MASS OF AGES has an article discussing why the Latin Mass movement was slow to take off in some countries as compared to others. Several possibilities (e.g. the convert factor, the role of extra-liturgical devotions) are discussed without any seeming decisive, and there is a request that people from outside E&W might submit articles discussing the question in relation to their own countries. I wonder will anyone submit anything on the Irish case? issuu.com/latinmasssociety/docs/mass_of_ages_summer_2020_no._204_web
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 15, 2020 12:13:30 GMT
The latest issue of the England and Wales Latin Mass Society journal MASS OF AGES has an article discussing why the Latin Mass movement was slow to take off in some countries as compared to others. Several possibilities (e.g. the convert factor, the role of extra-liturgical devotions) are discussed without any seeming decisive, and there is a request that people from outside E&W might submit articles discussing the question in relation to their own countries. I wonder will anyone submit anything on the Irish case? issuu.com/latinmasssociety/docs/mass_of_ages_summer_2020_no._204_webI read the article, which was not one of Dr Shaw's better. I did think of submitting a response, but I think there is an assumption that contributors fall in with the opinions of the current leadership of the LMS E & W, which is not necessarily what it was 20 years ago, or earlier. I think there is a habit in England (and Wales) to fail to realise that they are a unique case in the Traditional world, in that the Heenan Indult of 1971 made that so. The prominence of the LMS E & W owes itself to that, rather than the other way round as there were several national Latin Mass organisations in existence in the 1960s and most of them disappeared. Dr Shaw lists Scotland as in the forefront of the traditional movement, which I would say is an exaggeration - I would think Ireland ahead of Scotland. The trouble with the traditional movement worldwide is that it is a history of missed opportunities and a history of egomaniacs. In regard to Ireland, I think there were twin problems in the 1990s, when Ecclesia Dei Adflicta was fresh. The initial response of the bishops was good, but it blew offside after Bishop Diarmuid Ó Súilleabháin of Kerry left a meeting with the then President of the PCED, Cardinal Innocenti, in 1992 with the opinion that the Holy See was not serious about the Indult and Apostolic Letter and cited this in correspondence to a petitioner in Cahirciveen. Between 1992 and 1999, there were no new Indult Masses, though no shortage of petitions. The second factor was that the Latin Mass Society of Ireland, founded in 1989 and renamed Ecclesia Dei Ireland in 1992, became an opposition in residence in St Paul's Arran Quay, later St Audoen's High St and any attempt to get initiative going outside Dublin was silenced while efforts made in Dublin misfired. When the new Latin Mass Society of Ireland was founded in 1999, the revival of EDI sapped a lot of support and good will towards the newer body, despite the fact that LMSI quickly was doing more in a year than EDI had done in its entire existence. But the existence of two societies let to further fracturing and later the LMSI was effectively neutralised. Right now, the traditional Mass in Ireland, could be described more in terms of devotionalism than being a liturgical movement. The clergy may have a different opinion on what they are doing, but I think they are content with the congregations they have which are relatively small.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 26, 2020 14:16:11 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 1, 2020 17:47:04 GMT
Have been reading Tom Gallagher's new biography of the Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar. This is of interest because Salazar's Estado Novo regime was often seen as an ideal Catholic social model in mid-century Ireland, and traces of this view could still be found until it collapsed in the 1974 revolution. (Salazar ceased to hold power after he had a stroke in 1968, though nobody dared to spell it out to him and he continued to claim he was merely convalescing until he died in 1970.) A few points, in no particular order: (1) Overall Gallagher comes off as relatively favourable to Salazar, partly because a biography (which focuses on Salazar's good intentions) can pay less attention to such features as the secret police, the treatment of colonial populations, and the detention camps for political opponents which existed at a distance from Salazar. (Gallagher does mention them, and argues that the first and the last were not so harsh as often believed, though he does not describe them in detail. He also argues that Salazar's complicity in the murder of the exiled opposition leader Humberto Delgado - which Gallagher maintains was complicity after the murder and not in its planning and commission, is the darkest stain on Salazar personally, and Gallagher also mentions Salazar suppressing investigation of a vice ring involving senior army officials molesting young girls, how young is not specified but outrageous in any case.)
(2) It appears that Salazar was genuinely austere and honest; he left very little and the favourable element of his ambivalent reputation in contemporary Portugal rests on the recognition that he really was working for the good of the country as he saw it and not for himself. Although he was often seen as a monastic figure he had a number of friendships with women, some of which could be described as courtships, and one of these broke down when the woman turned up an hour late for a meeting wearing an expensive dress and he told her that any woman he married would have to wear dresses he could afford on his salary.
(3) He adopted two daughters with his housekeeper and many of his opponents believed that she was his mistress and the girls were their biological children. This has been conclusively disproved; the girls were the housekeeper's nieces and an autopsy when she died in 1980 showed she was a virgin.
(4) The Salazar regime is often described as based on "Fatima, football and fado" [the last is a type of Portuguese traditional singing resembling sean-nos.] This may be true of the regime as a whole, but Salazar rarely went to Fatima because he saw it as the territory of Church rather than state, he disliked fado because he saw its melancholy tone as enervating, and he took no interest in football - partly because its stirring up of mass passions was not his style. The Estado Novo was not based on mass mobilisation of the populace, as with Fascist Italy and nazi Germany, but on the view that Portugal had too much politics and what was needed was to quiet the population and make them passive, to replace politics with paternalist administration. Originally the Estado Novo was supposed to create a cadre of educated Catholic administrators in Salazar's own image who would run the country in the long term - in practice little was done to make this a reality and the regime was increasingly shaped by Salazar's sense that he was the one indispensable man and when he left Portugal would return to the political chaos which it had experienced in the period between the establishment of the Republic in 1910 and the 1926 military coup which eventually installed him as prime minister because he was seen as the only man who could stabilise the economy - which he did through extremely conservative fiscal policies.
(5) Given the portrayal of the Salazar regime as a Catholic ideal, I was surprised to discover that under him Portugal was not formally a confessional state as Franco Spain was. Salazar was personally on good terms with Cardinal Cervejera of Lisbon, but he refused his requests that Portugal should be declared a Catholic state and that the church should be compensated for lands confiscated in the nineteenth century. This was because Salazar had not seized power but was granted it by an existing regime, and though he marginalised the military leadership to some extent he still had to balance different factions within the regime, some of which were quite secular. The Cardinal, and the Church, in turn were seen as giving refuge and protection to middle-class critics of the regimes (although in any case it was working-class opponents who were more likely to end up in the detention camp.) Oddly, Salazar's handling of the Cardinal as described distinctly reminds me of Eamon De Valera in matters of church and state, particularly de Valera's similar refusal to insert a "one true church" clause in the 1937 constitution. More on the book later, when I find time...
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 1, 2020 18:23:06 GMT
Fascinating stuff, Hibernicus. I know nothing about Salazar so this is very educational. Thank you.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 11, 2021 0:05:44 GMT
An Australian guest blogger on a US Catholic blog gives a devastating account of the collapse (through a combination of internal corruption and imported American faddism) of Australian Catholicism, once a bright jewel in Ireland's spiritual empire: gaudiumetspes22.com/2021/03/05/stranded-under-the-southern-cross-news-from-a-shrinking-church/The description of the Carapace - the self-sustaining bureaucracy whose purpose is to provide cushy jobs with a "Catholic" veneer for the like-minded and their in-laws, and which cringes before an increasingly hostile state apparatus because of its dependence on government subsidies - seems very familiar.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 18, 2021 9:54:20 GMT
To me the carapace Dr Martyr is referring to is a universal phenomenon, at least in the developed world.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 22, 2021 23:23:13 GMT
Indeed - as in Germany where the Kirchensteuer pays for it, as we have been reminded lately. The post-conciliar bureaucratisation of the Church is an understudied phenomenon.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Mar 23, 2021 8:48:11 GMT
Is it fair to say that the occupants of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy are those who push more for progressivism? The German example is a case in point: the occupants of this caste are expected to keep marriage and family norms. It is from this quarter, rather than the clergy or religious, that the clamour comes for communion for the re-married divorcees (there is another observation re: Germany - anecdotal evidence from there suggests that ecclesiastical tribunals are less generous at annulling marriages than in the Anglosphere. Now there are a number of ways of reading this, but I am reminded of a similar sense here prior to the 1995 divorce referendum where more conservative high court judges were seen as more likely to grant civil nullity decrees to couples than more liberal ones and this was believed to be related to an urgency to get divorce on the statute. Could be that neither perception stands up to analysis, but the connexion has been made). In Australia, like Ireland, there is a less of a stratified bureaucracy, but a very considerable patronage through the school system. I don't know if anyone saw the Irish Catholic this weekend, but several bishops were interviewed in relation to the proposed synod, notably the relatively new Armagh auxiliary and the new bishops of Clonfert and Achonry. I believe that their lordships were bending over backwards to accommodate the dissenters. The orthodox are completely taken for granted. Now this is not the case of the parable of the Prodigal Son - the problem is that the orthodox are not in the same boat as the elder brother. The hierarchy may believe they can say "everything that is mine is yours" - this is not how orthodox faithful have been treated and the story is the same in each of the three countries under discussion here and a great deal of the rest of the west too.
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