eala
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Post by eala on Apr 19, 2023 12:38:40 GMT
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eala
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Posts: 156
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Post by eala on Apr 19, 2023 12:54:59 GMT
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eala
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Post by eala on Apr 19, 2023 13:25:56 GMT
Cúirt an Mheán Óiche— allpoetry.com/Cirt-An-Mhean-Oche-(The-Midnight-Court) Irish and English versions here Written at the end of the 18th century, the Midnight Court is healthy, frank, earthy and roundly sexual, more so than much of the 19th and 20th and maybe the 21st attitudes in Ireland. So, again I'm thinking, how much of what has been passed down as traditional really is.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 19, 2023 13:29:23 GMT
I've always been quite sceptical of the idea of tradition with a capital T. There are traditions, plural. There isn't a pure tradition of anything that can be isolated. Of course this can be overstated, but the opposite is also an overstatement. I think the decline of Catholicism in Ireland had much more to do with international forces than anything inherent to Irish Catholicism.
I don't think the Church of the twentieth century had a twisted view of sexuality!
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eala
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Post by eala on Apr 19, 2023 13:36:00 GMT
I've always been quite sceptical of the idea of tradition with a capital T. There are traditions, plural. There isn't a pure tradition of anything that can be isolated. Of course this can be overstated, but the opposite is also an overstatement. I think the decline of Catholicism in Ireland had much more to do with international forces than anything inherent to Irish Catholicism. I don't think the Church of the twentieth century had a twisted view of sexuality!No? The Irish church? I don't know where to start with that one.
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eala
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Post by eala on Apr 19, 2023 13:43:21 GMT
Tradition is multiple of course, and there is a danger for us all of seeing those parts which make most sense to us stretch further back in time. That said here's a piece from Merriman of the late 18th translated by Noel Fahy
872 One: He who reaches twenty-one without a mate 873 Shall be dragged off by the hair of his head 874 And tied to a tree there among the dead 875 His coat to be taken and he be made to strip 876 And the daylights beaten out of him with a whip. 877 Two: Those of the men who are old and sick 878 Who shamelessly failed to use their prick 879 And wasted the best years of their youth 880 Without giving pleasure however minute 881 With women willing, they could have had a spree 882 But hung round like Mad Sweeney in the tree 883 The design of their torture to you I entrust, 884 You women of dashed and disappointed lust; 885 Use female ingenuity to plan the details 886 Of a hell of fire and a rack of nails 887 Put your heads together and stay the course 888 I'ill give you the power to put it in force 889 You are free to punish the old men at will 890 In their case, I don't care if you torture or kill. 891 In my commission to you, I don't mind 892 How you treat the oldsters, blighted and blind 893 With their bony bodies and grimacing grins 894 Their lifeless loins and scabrous skins. 895 Three: If the young go about the job of copulation 896 Then my law will protect them from condemnation.
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eala
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Post by eala on Apr 19, 2023 13:46:35 GMT
I've always been quite sceptical of the idea of tradition with a capital T. There are traditions, plural. There isn't a pure tradition of anything that can be isolated. Of course this can be overstated, but the opposite is also an overstatement. I think the decline of Catholicism in Ireland had much more to do with international forces than anything inherent to Irish Catholicism. I don't think the Church of the twentieth century had a twisted view of sexuality! The forces of modernity are in operation everywhere but the fall has been spectacular here, and it clearly has much to do with what the Irish church has done and what they have failed to do
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 19, 2023 15:15:38 GMT
I've always been quite sceptical of the idea of tradition with a capital T. There are traditions, plural. There isn't a pure tradition of anything that can be isolated. Of course this can be overstated, but the opposite is also an overstatement. I think the decline of Catholicism in Ireland had much more to do with international forces than anything inherent to Irish Catholicism. I don't think the Church of the twentieth century had a twisted view of sexuality! The forces of modernity are in operation everywhere but the fall has been spectacular here, and it clearly has much to do with what the Irish church has done and what they have failed to do There was further to fall! In truth, I think the remarkable thing is that Catholic Ireland held on so long in the face of such pressures. Remember that Irish liberals were undermining it from a position of power for some forty or fifty years before it finally collapsed.
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Post by Séamus on Apr 20, 2023 4:15:00 GMT
It's a bit hard to compare our era with the Pius IX/Sacred Heart/Immaculate Conception/papal infallibility epoch. Church-going Catholics generally obeyed John XXIII, Paul VI,in particular, and John Paul II and their many changes in practice and attitude fairly blindly. That won't happen now with either the intensely secular or the intensely religious. It goes beyond Benedict XVI stating that a traditional mass was never banned, decades after it was essentially banned- we see situations like an American nun who was dismissed from her institute under the direction John Paul's Rome for her work with Catholic homosexuals now given an award by Francis' Rome... for her work among Catholic homosexuals.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 20, 2023 8:28:40 GMT
When it comes to sex, I think human sexuality is quite malleable. Constraints which many people now find unbearable were not considered especially difficult a hundred years ago. I think a lot of this comes down to our socialisation. The truth is we are all hyper-sexualised today. Our great-grandparents were not.
My own grandfather was (as far as I can tell) a somewhat anti-clerical socialist republican whose wife died at the age of thirty, he would have been of a similar age. He raised his family himself and there's no hint of another woman in his life though he lived to his seventies. I've never heard him held up as a paragon of purity. It was just not strange at the time.
When I even look back at my own childhood, I see a social context where marital fidelity was just the expected thing and nobody seemed to see it as heroic or noteworthy. Divorce was not a live option. I'm sure the social expectations made it easier, not harder.
I'm sceptical that, in the past, there were untold numbers of people painfully suppressing their desire to identify as the opposite sex. Or that every person who experienced same-sex attraction and lived a heterosexual life was living a lie.
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eala
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Post by eala on Apr 20, 2023 14:43:57 GMT
When it comes to sex, I think human sexuality is quite malleable. Constraints which many people now find unbearable were not considered especially difficult a hundred years ago. I think a lot of this comes down to our socialisation. The truth is we are all hyper-sexualised today. Our great-grandparents were not. My own grandfather was (as far as I can tell) a somewhat anti-clerical socialist republican whose wife died at the age of thirty, he would have been of a similar age. He raised his family himself and there's no hint of another woman in his life though he lived to his seventies. I've never heard him held up as a paragon of purity. It was just not strange at the time. When I even look back at my own childhood, I see a social context where marital fidelity was just the expected thing and nobody seemed to see it as heroic or noteworthy. Divorce was not a live option. I'm sure the social expectations made it easier, not harder. I'm sceptical that, in the past, there were untold numbers of people painfully suppressing their desire to identify as the opposite sex. Or that every person who experienced same-sex attraction and lived a heterosexual life was living a lie. I'd agree, sexuality is malleable. Homosexuality becomes more prominent in all male environments where there is limited access to heterosexual relations. I think the trans thing is essentially social contagion, and generally an inability to think in anything other than literalism. It also tracks fairly closely with autism. Marriage is a desirable institution, and we'd likely agree on the ills of a commodified throwaway culture. As for divorce, there are situations where it is and was warranted, battered wives etc. It was the norm for grandparents born a hundred years ago to come from families pushing double digits, and to have half a dozen children themselves. I don't think they were particularly sexually repressed. What we possibly disagree about is the extent of the twisted view of sexuality among the clergy. I'm guessing you are of an age with myself. Pope memorabilia on granny's mantlepiece from a few years earlier. Holy water by the front door. Rosaries and first Friday masses, no divorce, precontraception etc. I was around for John Paul II visit, but too young to remember it. Think of the great and the good flanking John Paul II on stage at that time, Casey, Cleary, Magee the reverence each of these three was held in... think of them now ignominious end all having to do with a twisted view on sex. Sordid stuff, and not just the 'human weakness' kind. And, if we are of the same generation, it's harder to think of a fouler leering cesspit than Brendan Smyth. Any reflecting child and adolescent of the 80s must surely have given thought to what they had been raised in. Bona fide psychopaths exist and always have of course but who with any balanced view would send this creature out of the country as far away as Fargo when the alarm bells had been ringing for decades.
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eala
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Post by eala on Apr 20, 2023 20:35:41 GMT
The forces of modernity are in operation everywhere but the fall has been spectacular here, and it clearly has much to do with what the Irish church has done and what they have failed to do There was further to fall! In truth, I think the remarkable thing is that Catholic Ireland held on so long in the face of such pressures. Remember that Irish liberals were undermining it from a position of power for some forty or fifty years before it finally collapsed. Bearded lefties is one possibility, another is Tuam, Ferns, Murphy, rape, torture and sale of children is intolerable.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 21, 2023 8:46:42 GMT
There was further to fall! In truth, I think the remarkable thing is that Catholic Ireland held on so long in the face of such pressures. Remember that Irish liberals were undermining it from a position of power for some forty or fifty years before it finally collapsed. Bearded lefties is one possibility, another is Tuam, Ferns, Murphy, rape, torture and sale of children is intolerable. It's hard for me to believe that a concern for children's welfare played a big role in the secularisation of Ireland when the same process led to a legalisation of abortion and commodification of children via surrogacy, etc. Which is not to deny the gravity of the Church's crimes. I grew up when the sex abuse crisis was just coming out. I remember hearing a story in a class discussion in school (true or not) which involved a priest hearing a boy confess sex acts a priest had performed on him. According to the story, the priest asked the boy to see him later and did the same things to him. Whether or not that was true, equally awful things were true. But it never even came into my mind that this affected the truth or otherwise of Catholicism. Or that it outweighed all the good that ca,e from Catholicism in Ireland. I particularly remember, on the day that we received our Junior Cert results and got the rest of the day off, a priest (not connected to the school) standing in the street and congratulating every kid in uniform he saw at that early hour. Without asking about results. A small thing, but I knew even then that only a priest would do something like that, and that it reflected a particular humanistic sort of outlook which was already ebbing.
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eala
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Post by eala on Apr 21, 2023 16:55:26 GMT
It's probably not the place to have a disagreement about the difference between a 12 week old fetus and a 12 year old child. The arguments are known to everyone.
If the story you mention didn't happen there, it is well and horrifically document elsewhere.
I think absolutely the rape, torture and sale of children has led to the fall of the Irish church, but more especially it has been th cover up. And positively I think the mountain of lies affects the truth claims of Catholicism for many of us; I, and many of our generation, can't see that the church is a trustworthy institution — if the church cannot tell the truth, and actively tells lies about its recent history I can't see that they are credible with regards subtle metaphysical claims.
With regards to a priest out in the early hours talking to teenage boys... might be humanism, but I wouldn't be sure, and I wouldn't want my young lad alone with him.
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Post by hilary on Apr 21, 2023 21:53:37 GMT
I think absolutely the rape, torture and sale of children has led to the fall of the Irish church, but more especially it has been th cover up. And positively I think the mountain of lies affects the truth claims of Catholicism for many of us; I, and many of our generation, can't see that the church is a trustworthy institution — if the church cannot tell the truth, and actively tells lies about its recent history I can't see that they are credible with regards subtle metaphysical claims. With regards to a priest out in the early hours talking to teenage boys... might be humanism, but I wouldn't be sure, and I wouldn't want my young lad alone with him. That sounds to me like a "holier than thou" attitude. I think it's a convenient excuse too to postpone serious reflection. You say that the "mountain of lies affects the truth claims of Catholicism for many of us", mentioning Tuam, for example. If you are interested in finding out the truth about that you should read Brian Nugent's book "@tuam Babies - a critical look at the Tuam Children's Home scandal" or the chapter on Tuam in the Final Report of the Commission of investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. You mentioned in an earlier post that divorce is or was warranted for battered wives. Provision used to be made for women (financial/custody of children etc) through separation agreements or judicial separations without divorce. I'm not sure remarriage is a big issue for most battered wives - more likely it gives the abuser the opportunity to do the same to another woman. I don't think rates of domestic abuse have decreased with the introduction of divorce.
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