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Post by cato on Dec 21, 2018 12:48:02 GMT
Yesterday the president of Ireland signed the new abortion act into law just in time for Christmas. Future generations will ponder our lack of irony.However that is a minor vice compared to others that are lauded and celebrated.
Today is the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year . Bit by bit , very slowly from now on the light starts to grow . I pray the light of hope may never die.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 21, 2018 13:05:11 GMT
Good observation. And it reminds me of something for another thread...
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Post by cato on Jan 4, 2019 13:58:48 GMT
Gerard Howlin has a reflective piece in the Irish Examiner on the meaning of Repeal in the wider culture of Ireland and what it means to be Irish.
Basically we are now defined by what we have rejected ; Nationalism , Language and now Christian practice and belief. Rod Dreher at the American Conservative website has taken it up as a discussion piece. Of course all of these cornerstones of Irishness are complex and were undermined in a variety of ways for quite some time but the symbolic significance of May 25 should not be overlooked. It will be as significant a date , or more so in my opinion ,in our nation's story as Easter Monday or July 12th.
Ireland now stands for ..... ? We know what we are against but what if anything unites us?
The Howlin and Dreher articles are both worth a read.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jan 4, 2019 19:38:10 GMT
Gerard Howlin has a reflective piece in the Irish Examiner on the meaning of Repeal in the wider culture of Ireland and what it means to be Irish. Basically we are now defined by what we have rejected ; Nationalism , Language and now Christian practice and belief. Rod Dreher at the American Conservative website has taken it up as a discussion piece. Of course all of these cornerstones of Irishness are complex and were undermined in a variety of ways for quite some time but the symbolic significance of May 25 should not be overlooked. It will be as significant a date , or more so in my opinion ,in our nation's story as Easter Monday or July 12th. Ireland now stands for ..... ? We know what we are against but what if anything unites us? The Howlin and Dreher articles are both worth a read. I suppose people would say that a nation doesn't have to stand for anything. It's just a place for people to live. I can never see a nation in such utilitarian terms, though.
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Post by kj on Jan 5, 2019 10:09:31 GMT
Cato, thanks for the heads-up on the Howlin and Dreher pieces.
I take issue with Howlin's claim that perhaps most Irish people never believed in Catholicism - that strikes me as a post hoc overreach. It's far more likely that the post-60s generations simply stopped believing for all the usual assortment of reasons.
But Howlin is spot-on in identifying what appears to be a gaping void at the heart of Irish identity. I know it's an old tune, but the fact that Gaelic culture was deliberately targeted by the Crown over the centuries surely has to be the core reason. Of course, such debates are ultimately pointless, as we are where we are. The future for Ireland strikes me as a big blank void.
Perhaps if the worst environmental prophecies come true, we shall simply become a prime target for climate refugees. You could probably ram up to 40 million people on the island. I'm only half-kidding.
I see Dreher gives himself a plug for his Dublin speech. He is occasionally interesting, but like most converts to Orthodoxy he buys into the meta-narrative of the Western Church and Western theology being responsible for all the world's ills, while the mystical 'East' remains pure and unsullied. Typical convert zeal and over-compensation.
If anyone here does attend his talk, it would be interesting to hear their impressions.
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Post by cato on Jan 5, 2019 14:19:40 GMT
[/quote]I suppose people would say that a nation doesn't have to stand for anything. It's just a place for people to live. I can never see a nation in such utilitarian terms, though. [/quote]
I have been thinking a bit about about what you said Maolsheachlann and about what modern Ireland stands for , what its vision is , if any. It is easy to criticise it and indeed there is much wrong with it but modern Ireland also has major achievements to its credit. There were also major flaws in the previous traditional outlook. The current government arrangement has roughly 60% approval ratings so it can't be getting everything wrong.
As an exercise I am planning a thread on a sympathetic portrait of the "vision" of modern Ireland. Partially I am doing it as a devil's advocate but also I don't think it's strictly accurate to see our society as one defined solely by what it has rejected.
Maybe I am becoming tolerant in my old age.
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Post by kj on Jan 5, 2019 16:26:53 GMT
Cato, that sounds an excellent idea. I probably need to stop fretting about the state of Ireland, for my own peace of mind.
A Polish woman of my acquaintance made an observation that I think may have a lot of explanatory power as to why Ireland is what it is. She said she had been reading about Irish history and found it all very depressing, largely because although countries like hers and most other European states had had tough times at one point or another, they had all also had glorious periods which were still a source of pride and motivation today. But with Ireland, she felt, there was no such period. It was always oppression and reaction and so on.
I think there may be a lot to this. The patriotic Englishman can think of the Empire, the Frenchman of Napoleon or Louis XIV, the Spanish of Charles V and the Conquista, and so on but we really have nothing like that. I feel a lack of such a period of greatness may help explain to some degree the way we blow with the wind so easily as a nation.
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Post by cato on Jan 6, 2019 16:59:23 GMT
Cato, that sounds an excellent idea. I probably need to stop fretting about the state of Ireland, for my own peace of mind. A Polish woman of my acquaintance made an observation that I think may have a lot of explanatory power as to why Ireland is what it is. She said she had been reading about Irish history and found it all very depressing, largely because although countries like hers and most other European states had had tough times at one point or another, they had all also had glorious periods which were still a source of pride and motivation today. But with Ireland, she felt, there was no such period. It was always oppression and reaction and so on. I think there may be a lot to this. The patriotic Englishman can think of the Empire, the Frenchman of Napoleon or Louis XIV, the Spanish of Charles V and the Conquista, and so on but we really have nothing like that. I feel a lack of such a period of greatness may help explain to some degree the way we blow with the wind so easily as a nation. Regarding your last paragraph our golden age was the famous Age of Saints and scholars. This is what inspired the Gaelic revival of the 19th century and much of the artistic and political Irish Ireland movement. Ireland was artistically and internationally through its missionaries to Europe was at its zenith in terms of its contribution to European civilisation after the fall of the Roman empire . Today this view is highly non PC of course and is radically out of kilter with the zeitgeist blowing around diverse leafy middle class Dublin suburbs. There are some good accounts of this period in print but generally it is ignored by historans and anti catholic propagandists eager only to unearth negative stereotypes. Few if any attempt to answer why Christianity came here , caught on so rapidly and became an integral part of our national identity for almost 1600 years. The modern Irish church itself strangely by and large makes little of this great legacy. The concept of Greatness you mentioned is not something it is terribly comfortable with.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jan 6, 2019 17:56:23 GMT
For my part, I consider the late-nineteenth to early twentieth century to be the golden age of Ireland, although I take kj's point-- even our best periods were times in which we were downtrodden or at least under attack.
Paddy Manning, on Twitter, points out the savage irony of Colm O'Gorman, who works for an organisation that was set up to protect freedom of conscience, lobbying to have the right to protest suppressed. He really is a loathsome creep. I try to be gentlemanly in my rhetoric but in O'Gorman's case I am happy to make an exception.
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Post by cato on Jan 6, 2019 20:23:16 GMT
] Paddy Manning, on Twitter, points out the savage irony of Colm O'Gorman, who works for an organisation that was set up to protect freedom of conscience, lobbying to have the right to protest suppressed. He really is a loathsome creep. I try to be gentlemanly in my rhetoric but in O'Gorman's case I am happy to make an exception.
[/quote]
I heard the veteran left wing protester Ailbhe Smyth who spent the last 35 years plus organising demonstrations and actively undermining the law recently demanding similar laws immediately to restrict pro life protesters.
It shows how illiberal these individuals and causes really are. As soon as they get power they abandon any respect for lawful protest or peaceful dissent. I presume the new laws will be used to prevent protestors demonstrate outside the Israeli embassy.
O Gorman has done a lot to damage the real struggle for human rights. I haven't heard much from him on the anti christian genocide in the middle east...
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