Yet another group of dissidents forms … where else?….

Tens of people came!

Get this from the Irish Examiner:

Umbrella group aims to speak for Catholics
By Claire O’Sullivan
Friday, November 09, 2012
A new lay organisation which wants to articulate the views and opinions of mainstream Irish Catholics is being established. [The premises you are supposed to accept here are, first, that they are “mainstream”, and next that they can speak for anyone.]
The Association of Catholics in Ireland (ACI) will function as an umbrella group for a number of existing lay Catholic organisations, including local parish groups, and is hoping to attract thousands of members.

Whether it will be a standalone association with strong links to the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) [You just knew these clowns had to be lurking.  It “hatched” from this group.] or whether the ACP will join together with the new organisation will be up for discussion at the ACP’s annual general meeting in Dublin this weekend.

Noel McCann of ACI said there had been a realisation that there were a number of lay groups which shared the same objectives but were not linked in any way.

“We see our organisation as being the common thread, that the different groups around the country who will join the organisation will share that common interest in seeing the teachings of Vatican II implemented,” he said.

[…]

The Irish Catholic has this photo:

A new lay organisation seeking liberal reform in the Catholic Church agreed a statement of objectives at its first general meeting at the weekend committing it “to the pursuit of a reform and renewal agenda in the Irish Catholic Church based on the letter and the spirit of Vatican II”. [“Letter and spirit” is the new cover under which they will completely ignore what they don’t like.]

About 300 people attended the meeting of the Association of Catholics in Ireland (ACI), which also agreed to set up a website and governance structures, with elections to be held at an AGM next year, when there will be a formal launch of the organisation.  [Oooo!]

The objectives, which include a re-evaluation of the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, [That is mostly what these liberal groups are about.] are broadly similar to the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), whose annual meeting preceded the ACI meeting at the weekend.

Its statement of objectives also said the ACI believed “the spirit is present in the voices of all the baptised” and in “the consequent right of all the baptised to have their voices heard in the formation of Church teaching and to participate fully in the life of the Church, including decision-making” at all levels. [The Church of Ireland needs these people right now.]

The group wants to bring about what it describes as a “renewed understanding of the primacy of the individual conscience” and the “full participation of women in every aspect of the Church”.

[…]

I wonder what the average age was in that room.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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72 Comments

  1. Sorbonnetoga says:

    I’m reminded of a contemporary of mine at University College Dublin who found the Catholic Church too “authoritarian”, without enough scope for the consciences of believers etc. etc. So he wrote to the then Archbishop, Cardinal Connell and stated his intention to withdraw from the Catholic Church and join the Church of Ireland. He then did just that. Canonically, it might not have been effective and theologically it’s just plain wrong but I had to admire his honesty!

  2. Marion Ancilla Mariae says:

    I wonder what would happen if someone were to form a dissident group with the mission to reform the Church from within by proactively promoting the letter and spirit of the Church’s historic and authentic teachings on marriage, life, and human sexuality? Such a group might devote itself to writing, preaching, and teaching about the value of prayer and fasting to maintain virtue, about how caring solicitously and reverently for the very young and the very old is the duty of all Christians; about kindness, gentleness, and respect toward all; about modesty in dress and behavior, about the dangers of dating apart from a serious quest to find one’s spouse, about the importance of fidelity – in thought, word, and deed – in marriage; about avoiding and deploring unseemly images, conversations, reading materials, about how the entire concept of “gay” this or that is such an abomination before God that the topic ought not to appear on the lips of any Christian except for grave reasons and in consequential situations. What’s more, such a group might propose that to the extent that for some years now the institutional Church in numerous quarters has failed to communicate these points to the faithful, she has been negligent and that negligence ought to be remedied post haste.

    Now that’s my idea of quite a group.

  3. Catholicity says:

    The average age in that room? To paraphrase from a classic, “they reek of elderberries.”

  4. Athelstan says:

    Alas, the dark side of this photo may well be: “Where are the young people?” I can’t say I’ve spent any time on the ground in Ireland, but the data suggest that most can’t be bothered to care one way or the other.

    But it’s worth asking why that is. Notwithstanding that liberals have more or less been running the Irish Church for decades now, our seasoned “Spirit of Vatican II” crowd here no doubt wants to blame it all on Humanae Vitae (written by the very same Pope who oversaw and implemented the Council in its first heady years) and the refusal to ordain women. If that were true, however, the Church of Ireland would be experiencing explosive growth. Instead, it’s grown slightly, all due to foreign immigration (and then some) from Britain and Africa.

    Trying to make your church relevant instead of reverent is the path to suicide. The liberal Protestants have been learning that the hard way. So have the most liberal orders and communities inside the Catholic Church as well.

  5. onosurf says:

    File under “Fruits of Vatican II”. They are plentiful and can be found everywhere.

  6. Long-Skirts says:

    Marion Ancilla Mariae says:
    “I wonder what would happen if someone were to form a dissident group with the mission to reform the Church from within by proactively promoting the letter and spirit of the Church’s historic and authentic teachings”

    That’s been done by the Society of St. Pius the X and they are marginalized

    VATICAN II PLUS TWO =

    And where are the schools?
    The daily Mass,
    Lines to confess,
    A uniformed lass?

    And where are the schools?
    The Latin class,
    Cassocked priest,
    Candles in brass?

    And where are the schools?
    To strengthen souls,
    Shape their wills,
    Set the goals?

    And where are the schools?
    The altar boy,
    Assisting priest,
    Like Christ, their joy?

    And where are the schools?
    Oh, time you lied,
    Two generations
    Have gone and died.

    And where are the schools?
    Which don’t derive,
    That two plus two
    Are sometimes five?

    S – S – P – X,
    They’re found in large,
    Where struggling families
    Let priest take charge.

    For the good of the whole,
    Priests’ lives are laid,
    So many may come,
    Not be afraid.

    And win the Faith,
    From Christ-like hand…
    St. Pie the Tenth
    Two and two are grand!!

  7. Supertradmum says:

    Sadly, the dissidents here in Eire are not just the over-sixties left-over rebels but the generations underneath them as well. The problem is simply the Celtic Tiger, as it is called here. of the greed and moneyed interests which such became god. In other words, in the boom time of the 2000s, Eire sold out to Mammon, and now that Mammon has deserted them, they are bitter and angry, but instead of turning against their idol, they blame the Church.

    Sexual ethics are definitely confused here and the Irish seem more obsessed with sex than the Americans to me. One cannot listen to the secular radio at all, as the diatribe against the Church is a constant, especially with regard to homosexuals and lesbians. It is not a riddle, as the Irish refuse to take responsibility for their own faith as adults, blaming this priest or that priest.

    Eire is not a happy place to live. The 100 plus priests who are in open rebellion regarding homosexual marriage and abortion and married priests are on the radio and in the press more than the one good bishop I can find here.

    Most people outside the fantastic trad community are hostile to Rome and any semblance of obedience. Sorry for the grim news, but this is missionary country, full of misplaced anger and depression.

  8. Supertradmum says:

    May I add that I have a trad Catholic friend who is a medical student and she informs me that all the Irish med students in her group, who claim to be Catholic, are pro-abortion and pro-contraception. They also do not think it is a sin to miss Sunday Mass. The rebellion is not confined to one generation.

  9. Sorbonnetoga says:

    The Church in Ireland (it’s called Éire in Irish but as I’m posting this in English…) is well and truly lost but that’s been true for most of my lifetime and I was born in the early 1970s. However the signs of hope are there. The few seminarians that there are are very good men, highly motivated and eager to be what the Church needs. The young priests (who are sadly too few) are generally liturgically and doctrinally sound. Ireland as a whole is mission territory or very soon will be but there are signs of hope; the practical question is what sort of bishops are we going to get in the next few years? That will determine whether the first green shoots will have a chance to blossom or will be buried under concrete! I am a little puzzled by Supertradmum’s reference to one good Irish bishop; sadly I can’t think who that might be.

  10. CatholicMD says:

    Perhaps their slogan could be Non Serviam! Reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote: “In the end there are only two types of people. Those who say to God thy will be done and those to whom God says thy will be done.”

  11. CatholicMD says:

    Also blaming every problem on Vatican II gets old. This is what liberals do and they would be doing it even if there never was a council.

  12. Jack Orlando says:

    Two thoughts:

    1. The consequence in Ireland is not so much the fault of the actual documents of Vatican II as it is of the dubious Sexual Revolution. That revolution started in the 1950s with the seemingly harmless proposition of “just go ahead and do what you feel like doing”, a proposition that ignores Burke’s warning that before we let people do as they like, we ought to first ask what they like to do.

    Now, almost 60 years later, that Revolution is well into its own Reign of Terror against children, heterosexuals, Real marriage, the concord between the sexes, the Church, and against demography itself, with countries who disparage these issues losing its population to Global South folks who like kids – or at least don’t kill them – and dislike sodomites and Sapphics. Fortunately for those in Anglo America, the Global South folks are from Catholic, not Islamic, countries.

    2. Light at the end of the tunnel: It has been my experience over three score of years that every single fad and trend in the United States becomes popular in Middle Europe, France, and England ten years later, in Celtic and Mediterranean Europe 15 years later, in Eastern Europe twenty years later, and in the rest of the world 30 years later. So it’s the Clinton era in Ireland; just remember what the US Church was like then.

    The trend now in the US among young people is toward more traditional religion and morality. The 4th Great Awakening among Protestants now is ending in a Calvinist revival, and among Methodists most of their seminarians attend a conservative seminary. The Pentecostalism of the 80s is fading. The liberal “mainline” Protestant denominations are turning into old folks’ homes. And people on this blog know the way the wind is blowing in the Catholic US: Where the bishop is liberal, no vocations; vice versa where the bishop is conservative with traditionalist sympathies. Since the events of 2002, homosexuals no longer want to be priests.

    Moreover, Sexual Revolutionaries and Cultural Marxists aren’t having kids. We are. People become economic conservatives when they own property; they become social and moral conservatives when they have children.

    So cheer up! Go buy some popcorn and a Coke, sit back, and enjoy the show, it entitled “The Decline and Fall of Liberal Christianity”.

  13. SonofMonica says:

    These folks hate the perennial teaching of the church. They hate any semblance of traditional sacraments. They hate the thought of marriage being between a man and woman for life. They hate the idea of the church having any say about sexual morality. They hate the very idea of the priesthood.

    How about instead of merely calling these folks dissident groups, we call them what they really are. They are hate groups.

  14. These folks are ludicrous.

    Do they suppose that when our Lord was going about teaching, “take up your cross,” and no divorce, and if you don’t like that, you can be a “eunuch”…do they suppose that somehow, chastity and self-control was easy back then?

    It’s always been hard. They haven’t “discovered” anything.

  15. Supertradmum says:

    One of the things which astounds me daily here in Eire is the almost universal support of Obama. I blame two things. First, the Irish labourers’ preference for socialism and even Marxism, which dates back over a 100 years, in disobedience to Church teaching, and the universal brainwashing that the party of John Kennedy has to be the right one. I am spending much time revealing the O’s horrible track record on abortion, which is shocking. And, not even the good nuns I was staying with knew of the Bishops’ lawsuit against Obamacare. Shocking, as how can one pray if one is in ignorance of such things? Well, the dissident attitude fits in with the general schizophrenia about politics. If one is disobedient to Rome in one thing, one will probably be disobedient to Rome in many.

    Sadly, as one Irishmen said, Americans see socialism everywhere and get upset about it. You are darn tootin’. I do not believe in a revival here, but a slow death and descent into barbarism. Sorry, Celts, but there are too few holding down the fort. Remember the Alamo.

  16. Phil_NL says:

    “all the baptised”

    This phrase keeps appearing – do they now want to include protestants in Catholic decision-making as well? I’m sure the heirs of Ian Paisley would be quite happy with the opportunity….

  17. Gregg the Obscure says:

    My “re-evaluation of the Church’s teaching on human sexuality” concluded that we’ve suffered about fifty years of excessive lenience that should be immediately and forcefully reversed.

  18. Phil_NL says: “all the baptised”…This phrase keeps appearing – do they now want to include protestants in Catholic decision-making as well?

    Yes. They are, in effect, little Protestants. They are faithful to a Magisterium, but it is the Magisterium of One, and that One is “ME.”

  19. lelnet says:

    By all means, all the faithful should have the right to have their voice heard. Glory and halleleujah, that mission, at least, is fulfilled. We hear their voice loud and clear.

    What they _don’t_ have a right to (although often enough in recent decades, they’ve gotten it anyway from the bishops down in the dioceses) is the abject supplication of the Magisterium before them and their ideas.

    Too often “we want to be heard” is really code for “we want everyone who disagrees with us to shut up”.

  20. Muv says:

    Well, Fr. Z, you have given them the solution, albeit (probably) inadvertently – they can all dash off and join the Anglicans in Ireland.
    I know it’s confusing, but allow me to enlighten you. In England it is quite easy to differentiate between the Church of England and the Church in England. In Wales the Church of England is known as the Church in Wales, so if one speaks of the Church in Wales what is meant all really depends upon who is speaking to whom. In Ireland the Anglicans are known as the Church of Ireland, and I suspect you meant to say the Church in Ireland. In Scotland the Anglicans are the Episcopalians, and the Church of Scotland are Presbyterians and an anagram of Britney Spears. Simple, really.

  21. VexillaRegis says:

    Britney Spears – you made my day, Muv!!!

  22. I offer Mass in the school where I work everyday and the chalice I use is from the Penal era. Back then things were very bad here and the faith was in dire straits. Still a Dublin silver smith made a beautiful silver chalice with simple, classical lines and engraved it with a small crucified Christ and an inscription to Thomas Corcoran, a Capuchin like myself. Those men have long gone to their rewards and we Irish Catholics are still here.

    Ireland has problems – so doe the rest of the Church! The Dutch child abuse scandal got very little attention on the web and there are scandals looming in India and Africa. We have always had scandals and rebels. The ACI, like the ACP, are an unrepresentative minority of poorly catechised liberals.

    The real problem, in Ireland as in the rest of the West, is that after forty years of poor catechesis, the impact of the ‘sexual revolution’ and the other fads that have swept over the West most Irish people are indifferent. The clergy have largely been fed a diet of Rahner et al, encouraged to be liturgically experimental and pastorally liberal. The bishops have towed the Roman line in public and who knows what they’ve taught in private. Check out http://lxoa.wordpress.com where Shane has resources on what was going on over the years. There are still homosexual cliques in the Church (Rome has them too it is rumoured) even among the younger clergy.

    The majority of the young are indifferent or hostile because they have never been taught the faith neither have their parents. They are rejecting what they do not know. They are bombarded with American or American-style trash TV . The web makes porn easier to get than than sweets! Is it any wonder we are in trouble?

    We are a small country (no more than 300 miles by 150) with only about 4.7 million people. We are easily dominated by the cultures of the West and we’ve swallowed all the garbage we’ve been fed. There are signs of hope though – a chapter of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy has been suggested, there are many who still pray and we have our saints to intercede for us. I offered Mass in a full parish church this morning supplying for a young priest whose on his own with two churches to run. There were lots of kids but it was respectful and prayerful.

    I like living in Ireland. It is my home and the home of my ancestors as far back as we can go and we’ve always been Catholic. The present economic situation, the social problems, the loss of faith, make it hard for people but it is a good country to live in. The people are generally kind, good humoured and easy-going. There is a deep faith in Ireland and if some of our ancient prophecies are true the Catholic faith will not die out but will return renewed. Unfortunately they also say we won’t see the end of the world – we’re to sink beneath the sea seven years before hand! C’est la vie!

  23. Supertradmum says:

    Dear Br. Tom Forde OFM Cap , I have spent almost six months in Eire this year, and I have not found deep faith nor the kindness which you talk about, except in the Polish students and in the small trad groups. The faith of even those at the TLM is tainted by errors, and I do my best to catechize daily. Do not blame anything but the lack of desire to learn. We have the Internet, papers like the Catholic Herald and Alive, and EWTN, which is easily available on the island. The will to love the Church is gone. If the Faith is not a priority among adults, they will continue to fall away, to the extent of losing their souls and those of their children and grandchildren. I evangelize wherever and whenever I can. Why are not the Irish out there on the streets, in the myriad coffee shops, in the colleges and universities, preaching the real deal?

    As an American, I have met prejudice and slander and the above pro-Obama nonsense I wrote about above from 99% of Catholic populace stuck in old ways of thinking. As a Anglophile, I have met extreme hatred of the English, which will not open the gates of heaven, as I have tried to point out. No hatred does.

    I pray to St. Oliver Plunkett, a cultured man who spent his energies and finally his life catechizing this people, but those people wanted it. Do not blame American television. Adults do not have to watch that stuff. Do not blame bad catechesis. Adults can find the truth if they want to do so. Blame the indifference and prejudices of the very people whose ancestors had the linen on the hedgerow. Blame their own sell-out to secularism and the faith of Europe, which is socialism.

    If Eire is to be a land of saints again, the laity need to claim their own faith and pass it on. As laity, this is our duty as baptized Catholics. As to comparing Eire with other countries, For those to whom much is given, much is expected”-Luke 12.

  24. Mariana says:

    “Sadly, as one Irishmen said, Americans see socialism everywhere and get upset about it.”

    I don’t know a thing about the situation in Ireland, but the above quote goes for most of Europe, many are absolutely certain socialism somehow MUST be right, and wasn’t implemented correctly in Russia and elsewhere, and out and out socialists and communists are supposed still to ‘mean well.’ The feeling is, if you don’t have today’s socialised everything people just won’t cope!

    But seen from this Scandinavian country Ireland still looks heavenly, Catholic parishes everywhere, choice!

  25. BaedaBenedictus says:

    “Also blaming every problem on Vatican II gets old. This is what liberals do and they would be doing it even if there never was a council.”

    Well, they wouldn’t have been able to invoke the authority of an ecumenical council to force their filth and heresy on everyone else. If only the Council had not been mealy mouthed, if only it had anathemized in no uncertain terms the “synthesis of all heresies” (St. Pius X), then perhaps we might have had a schism. But don’t we already have a schism—within the visible bounds of the Church. In my opinion the one we have is far worse, like a cancer growing in the body and devouring so many souls that there are few left in many countries.

    I think we learned a terrible lesson here: Councils should not be called to “open the windows” of the Church to the world. What on Earth does that mean? It means that those who gain the levers of Church power can fill it with whatever meaning they like and force it on the flock.

  26. contrarian says:

    “The objectives, which include a re-evaluation of the Church’s teaching on human sexuality…”

    And here I thought they were going to talk about the Filioque.

  27. Long-Skirts says:

    Br. Tom Forde said:

    “The real problem, in Ireland as in the rest of the West, is that after forty years of poor catechesis, the impact of the ‘sexual revolution’ and the other fads that have swept over the West most Irish people are indifferent. The clergy have largely been fed a diet of Rahner et al, encouraged to be liturgically experimental and pastorally liberal.”

    TIMELESS
    FIELDS

    The Irish had their hedges
    The English had their homes
    The French they had their Vendee
    The U.S. roots in loam.

    Way out in mid-west cornfields
    Out past the waves of grain
    Stand right the schools and churches
    That put all else to shame.

    They labor in the pasture
    They labor in the field
    And everyday the Holy Mass
    Where priestly-powers wield

    The force to take the whole grain
    That swells from roots in loam…
    And generate the Bread of Life;
    The fields of timeless Rome!

  28. LisaP. says:

    Br. Forde,

    Really interesting.
    And alarming, I’d better arrange my trip soon or it will be too late! ;)

  29. thefeds says:

    Fr. Z, I’m confused… If this group wants the true teaching of Vatican II to be implemented, they should be in complete agreement with Pope Benedict XVI, right?

  30. Cheesesteak Expert says:

    Contrarian, best comment I’ve ever seen!

  31. These dissidents think they have the wind at their backs with widespread state-institutionalized immorality. What’s making things worse is that the bad apples in the Church are allowed to linger, spoiling the rest by the bunch.

    Why won’t the Church excommunicate these people? Bad apples get expelled, suspended, or otherwise disciplined from school to avoid spoiling the rest of the bunch. Why is it that we think these people should not be disciplined? What are the authorities afraid of? Our Lord was merciful, I get that, but he wasn’t a merciful slob. Our Lord in his short 3 years of public ministry threw out the money lenders from the temple, overthrowing tables expelling dissidents at the receiving end of the whip; Our Lord used the term, ‘brood of vipers’ and other terms that were hard to hear. Yet when was the last time we heard of an excommunication? Those who so far have been obedient to the Church are starting to wonder . . . if they can get away with it, I guess I can too? Is this a test of loyalty? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? The rest of us who refuse to give in are starting to throw our hands up asking ourselves, why are we allowing this to fester? It’s very possible that the obedient ones are going to get fed up and start dropping out in stunned bewilderment.

  32. robtbrown says:

    BaedaBenedictus says:

    I think we learned a terrible lesson here: Councils should not be called to “open the windows” of the Church to the world. What on Earth does that mean? It means that those who gain the levers of Church power can fill it with whatever meaning they like and force it on the flock.

    VatII was very effective at proclaiming an end to a certain era, the By The Numbers Counter Reformation Church, with its negative anthropology). No one, incl JXXIII, knew what to put it its place–he had counted on a Council to breathe new life, but it didn’t. The exception was the Northern European progressives, who arrived with a plan–years in development–that would effectively Protestantize the Church, subordinating theology to Existentialist philosophy.

    The best description I’ve ever heard of what happened was that because the Church had flourished with vocations and conversions for so many years, the Vatican naively misread the signs of the times and took too much for granted, esp the system of discipline (e.g., Latin liturgy and philosophical and theological formation) that supported Catholic life. When it was apparent that there were forces intent on destroying Latin liturgy, the Vatican naively thought it would make little difference–even though it contradicted Veterum Sapientia.

    One day they looked up, and it was all gone. And they didn’t know what to do about it.

  33. lelnet says:

    “It’s very possible that the obedient ones are going to get fed up and start dropping out in stunned bewilderment.”

    If they do that, they’re not really “the obedient ones”, now are they? Anyone who is persuaded to leave God’s Church because of the actions of their fellow mortals must necessarily have been in it for the wrong reasons to begin with. Not-yet-saint Peter said it best, I think. “Lord, to whom should we go? Your words are the words of eternal life; we have learned to believe, and are assured that you are the Christ, the Son of God”. The Church has the fullness of Truth, and the Real Presence of Christ. Nothing any of our fellow sinners do can make it any less real, any less present, or any less Christ. Anyone who sincerely believes that will not leave. And anyone who doesn’t is certainly already wondering why they’ve stayed this long.

    It is annoying almost beyond endurance that here on Earth, this means that the dissenters have more political leverage than we do, because they can credibly threaten what we cannot. But God’s ways are not man’s ways. One of the best bits of evidence for the guidance of the Holy Spirit of which I’m aware is that, despite this manifest and grossly unjust imbalance of power, the Magisterium remains faithful. On the basis of merely worldly and human incentives, that would definitely not be the way to bet. And yet, it happens.

  34. Pingback: Irish Bishops Issue Statement on Death of Savita Halappanavar | Big Pulpit

  35. pmullane says:

    “re-evaluation of the Church’s teaching on human sexuality” = Approval of homosexual acts
    “full participation of women in every aspect of the Church” = Woman Priests
    “renewed understanding of the primacy of the individual conscience” = Approval of Abortion

    Theres nothing as old as people who think they are doing something new. Poor Ireland, it has never realised how much it had and now it has thrown it all away. I’ve got to say that my experiences of that Island are similar to Supertradmum, there is a country with real problems, and im glad I’m not charged with fixing them.

    St Patrick, Pray for us.

  36. sea the stars says:

    There is no way there were 300 in attendance as reported by the “Irish Catholic”, if their photo is anything to go by. the 7th or 8th chair rom the aisle is rougly in the centre of the row (diectly in ront of the screen) so about 15 or max 16 seats per row. Even ten full rows of seats would only add to 160, and there aren’t ten full rows in that photo.

    Supertradmum’s analysis is however very much correct. The Irish simply are no longer interested in the Faith. It saddens me every time I return to see how Irish society has changed from my childhood in the 70s and 80s. Greed greed and more greed.

    But the post-V2 Church has also its share of the blame. Since the 1970 every single one of the cathedrals in Ireland (bar one) has had its sanctuary physically and liturgically wreckovated, the only exception being Cobh Cathedal, and that only because there was a preservation order on the Pugin inteior, which stymied Bishop +Magee’s efforts to get the cathedral in line with the “spirit of Vatican II” (his own words to the faithful of his diocese).

  37. Ed the Roman says:

    “The Church of Ireland needs them NOW.”

    Reminds me of Victor McLaglen’s character in The Quiet Man (he was the villain) saying of something he wouldn’t do, “I’ll join the Church of Ireland first!”

  38. Supertradmum says:

    http://www.tallglass.com/trips/Europe/trip3/012702-cobh-cathedral-main-large.jpg

    http://www.cobhroadtrain.com/wp-content/gallery/cobh/cobh_cathedral.jpg

    Most people go to Cobh because it was the last stop of the Titanic and there are museums there. But, the cathedral, as noted above , is drop-dead gorgeous. Thankfully, it was not tampered with….by ecclesiastical hooligans.

  39. Supertradmum says:

    Pronounced “Cove”, not Cob

  40. The Masked Chicken says:

    “One day they looked up, and it was all gone. And they didn’t know what to do about it.”

    They kept the dogmas and destroyed the disciplines that enforce them, so that, left unguarded, the presence of the dogmas have faded.

    Of course, they know what to do about it, but they are dealing with a Church that has become addicted (maybe, better to say, infected, like a disease) to the World – a Church where some are intent on finding their salvation through their interaction with the World, unlike the, “By The Numbers Counter Reformation Church,” that was intent on finding its salvation despite the World. The Church could stop the addiction cold turkey by forcing people to make a choice between obedience to disciplines (re-instated) that support dogma, or disobedience and excommunication. They can force the people within the Church to take a shot of spiritual penicillin or go away in isolation as infected. The withdrawal symptoms might be too harsh for some to take, so the Church has been patient, but the World keeps gaining ground.

    The Church has not hit bock bottom, yet. The biological solution, where, “tainted blood (heterodoxy) is replaced with good blood (orthodoxy) depends on an assumption: that only orthodox Catholics are having large families. This is not the case. In reality, the number of large-family orthodox and heterodox Catholics, worldwide, is about equal. This will put even more stress on the Church for the next thirty years as a house sharply divided into two camps emerges and will force a crisis sometime around 2060. The Church will contract for a while, but the rest of the world will be even worse off, suffering war after war and famine. Eventually, the Church will emerge stronger, the world will emerge weaker, and then the correct teachings of Vatican II will be implemented.

    I know I sound like Hari Seldon in the Foundation series by Issac Asimov, but we can prevent all of this, now, if the Church is willing to be direct and stringent in applying its disciplinary powers. I don’t see this happening until much more suffering has occurred. According to the infamous Wikipedia, Existentilism is:

    “Existentialism is the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the experiences of the individual. Moral and scientific thinking together do not suffice to understand human existence, so a further set of categories, governed by “authenticity”, is necessary to understand human existence.[1][2][3] (“Authenticity”, in the context of existentialism, is being true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.[4])”

    Existentialism is nothing more than a five year old running after candy. It posits that the desire for candy defines the child. Very sad. By contrast, Scripture says:

    Sirach 6:18-37
    My child, from your youth choose discipline;
    and when you have gray hair you will find wisdom.
    As though plowing and sowing, draw close to her;
    then wait for her bountiful crops.
    For in cultivating her you will work but little,
    and soon you will eat her fruit.
    She is rough ground to the fool!
    The stupid cannot abide her.
    She will be like a burdensome stone to them,
    and they will not delay in casting her aside.
    For discipline is like her name,
    she is not accessible to many.
    Listen, my child, and take my advice;
    do not refuse my counsel.
    Put your feet into her fetters,
    and your neck under her yoke.
    Bend your shoulders and carry her
    and do not be irked at her bonds.
    With all your soul draw close to her;
    and with all your strength keep her ways.
    Inquire and search, seek and find;
    when you get hold of her, do not let her go.
    Thus at last you will find rest in her,
    and she will become your joy.
    Her fetters will be a place of strength;
    her snare, a robe of spun gold.
    Her yoke will be a gold ornament;
    her bonds, a purple cord.
    You will wear her as a robe of glory,
    and bear her as a splendid crown.
    If you wish, my son, you can be wise;
    if you apply yourself, you can be shrewd.
    If you are willing to listen, you can learn;
    if you pay attention, you can be instructed.
    Stand in the company of the elders;
    stay close to whoever is wise.
    Be eager to hear every discourse;
    let no insightful saying escape you.
    If you see the intelligent, seek them out;
    let your feet wear away their doorsteps!
    Reflect on the law of the Most High,
    and let his commandments be your constant study.
    Then he will enlighten your mind,
    and make you wise as you desire.

    The Chicken

  41. Supertradmum says:

    Masked Chicken: The biological solution is not the answer. Although Ireland has one of the highest birthrates in Europe, it is not necessarily Catholics who are being born and baptized. Nor is it the Irish. What good is invoking biology when most of Europe is committing demographic suicide? Even Malta is beneath replacement numbers.

    Not enough priests for even the remnant will reduce access to the sacraments. Churches will close as there will be no priests or even nuns or laypeople to carry on the Faith. I am really trying to undo ostrich thinking here. People tell me there is going to be a revival of Faith and Christendom will return. No, sorry, we have crossed that fork in the road and the view is not good.

    The readings in the past week included the saying of Christ that if the time of tribulation were not shortened, even the faithful would not keep their faith. We are fast going into those times. We need to be realistic and deal with the times we have. I have mentioned several times here and on my blog that my home diocese will only have 15 active priests for 100,000 Catholics in two years. Wake up. Ireland will look the same. Large stretches of land in the States and in Europe will not have regular sacramental life. Too many people on this blog live in built-up urban areas with Catholic and other churches in numbers. That is not true for most places in the world. Churches in France are being converted into mosques….see an excellent article on this on line, with this opening quotation:” Emile Cioran cast a sad prophecy on Europe: “The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque.” And more from this article: In the past decade, French Catholic bishops formally closed more than 60 churches, many of which are destined to become mosques, according to the research conducted by the newspaper La Croix.

    “According to a recent report of the U.S. Pew Center, Islam is already ‘the fastest-growing religion in Europe,’ where the number of Muslims has tripled over the past 30 years. One-third of all European children will be born to Muslim families by 2025.”

    “Demography is the most important symptom of exhaustion: Without a cradle, you can’t sustain a civilization.”

    Gandalf: All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

    Get holy, evangelize, prepare for holy death. Do not whistle in the dark or pretend in a glorious revolution. The remnant is exactly that-a small, very small group, which survives. Eire may end up with the smallest remnant of all.

  42. robtbrown says:

    lelnet says:

    “It’s very possible that the obedient ones are going to get fed up and start dropping out in stunned bewilderment.”

    If they do that, they’re not really “the obedient ones”, now are they? Anyone who is persuaded to leave God’s Church because of the actions of their fellow mortals must necessarily have been in it for the wrong reasons to begin with.

    Not so fast. Priests in these days are under incredible pressure from all sides, and there is much dissension among fellow priests. In fact, Mother Teresa was said that priests now have very little protection of their vocation.

    And it’s not merely a matter of a lack of discipline. Some are so determined during formation to persevere that they fail to look ahead and consider how difficult (or acc to one, how boring) the life will be. I had classmates in Rome who left a few years after ordination, among whom was a grad of the Naval Academy, another had been a successful businessman. There were others who looked down the road at what their lives would be and left before ordination. I particularly remember one classmate, a Salesian from California, very Catholic, a superb student, and a great guy. He left a year short of finishing the STB–and ordination.

  43. robtbrown says:

    If I might add one comment: Having taught in the FSSP seminary, I didn’t see a lot of difference between the students there and the Americans I met during studies in Rome. The FSSP post ordination dropouts from the priesthood are nil, but several whom I knew in Rome have left.

  44. robtbrown says:

    The Masked Chicken says:

    Of course, they know what to do about it,

    I put it in the past tense, referring to Paul VI and his inner circle.

    On the other hand: Re whether they know what to do about it now, I disagree. There have been many, incl JPII, who thought the Church could function well with vernacular liturgy. One reason is that it was hammered into so many heads for so long that vernacular versus populum celebration was the Will of God. Thus the persecution of anyone wanting Latin liturgy.

    but they are dealing with a Church that has become addicted (maybe, better to say, infected, like a disease) to the World – a Church where some are intent on finding their salvation through their interaction with the World, unlike the, “By The Numbers Counter Reformation Church,” that was intent on finding its salvation despite the World.

    The By the Numbers Church was intent on finding salvation in a method (thus BTN).

  45. robtbrown says:

    According to the infamous Wikipedia, Existentilism is:

    “Existentialism is the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the experiences of the individual.

    An adequate explanation only if tbe thought of St Thomas is not an alternative. Nihil in intellectu sine prius in sensu.

  46. acardnal says:

    robtbrown, if you don’t mind me asking, what subject(s) did you teach in the FSSP seminary?

    I have an acquaintance who is a seminarian in the FSSP seminary in Denton, NE. I anticipate he will be ordained to the deaconate soon!

  47. The Masked Chicken says:

    “An adequate explanation only if tbe thought of St Thomas is not an alternative. Nihil in intellectu sine prius in sensu.”

    Of course. I had a really cool commentary of Existentialism vs. Aquinas involving Schroedinger’s Cat, collapsing wave functions, and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, but I realized, before I pressed the POST button, that this really had nothing to do with the Irish situation…at least I don’t think so…

    One less long post to read.

    The Chicken

  48. LisaP. says:

    “One less long post to read.”

    Phooey. Guess I have to do dishes, then. Unfair.

  49. asophist says:

    In the photo, which was obviously taken from the back of the room where this meeting was held, the backs of the heads I saw were all grey and/or balding. Figures. Mind you, I am not making an “age-ism” remark because I, too, am grey and balding, and there but for the grace of God go I. Why my contemporaries bought into the anti-authority stuff of the 1960’s, I couldn’t say. I suppose more to the point, now being 64 years old, why didn’t I buy into it? Maybe it’s because my parents stayed together, set a good example, and we prayed the rosary as a family every evening, gathered around the dining-room table after the dinner dishes were cleared away. My mother belonged to the Legion of Mary, so we had a small Marian shrine on a table in the corner of the dining-room. Good memories. More of us should have such. Maybe the world would be a better place.

  50. Ed the Roman says:

    “Of course. I had a really cool commentary of Existentialism vs. Aquinas involving Schroedinger’s Cat, collapsing wave functions, and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, but I realized, before I pressed the POST button, that this really had nothing to do with the Irish situation…at least I don’t think so… ”

    Oh I do so want to read that.

  51. Supertradmum says: Not enough priests for even the remnant will reduce access to the sacraments. Churches will close as there will be no priests or even nuns or laypeople to carry on the Faith. I am really trying to undo ostrich thinking here. People tell me there is going to be a revival of Faith and Christendom will return. No, sorry, we have crossed that fork in the road and the view is not good.

    I’m afraid this is right. Why? Because Western Civilization continues, not only to be mired in grave sin, but to want to continue to be mired in grave sin, with no great conversion visible on the horizon. Our recent elections in the U.S. prove this. God is under no obligation to rescue us from the consequences of our obstinacy, and the time eventually comes when His patience runs out. I’m afraid we have missed our last chance to turn the bus around.

  52. Supertradmum: Might I suggest that as an American Anglophile working in Ireland you are at a considerable disadvantage when trying to evangelise (six months – imagine being here for nearly fifty years!) but I will pray the Lord will bless your efforts. Given Irish history I do not think we have to apologise for our dislike of the English – the Scots and the Welsh are not exactly fond of them either. Though do not mistake dislike for outright hatred and there is much about Irish conversation that is deceptive. Foreigners have complained before that one can spend many years here and still not be on the inside – why it can take four centuries to be accepted on the Arann Islands by all accounts!

    I reassert that there is a deep faith here buried under the ashes and though it is much charred. Not all our problems are imported no, we have plenty of our own sins and they didn’t come into Ireland because of Vatican II (the Council gets much blame for what clergy and laity, catechised before the Council, did with the Church after it) – they’ve been here since the beginning. But what has come in has largely fed the flames of evil and dissent.

    Much that was fair has passed. But there is still faith in Ireland. I live with a friar who has converted whole areas in Africa to the Faith. Another friar still insists on working in his mid-80’s and has collected millions for the missions. I have known Catholics here in Ireland who have had their careers blocked because of their Faith. I have known those who’ve suffered at the hands of family or lost friends because of their Faith. I know people who spend hours praying before the Blessed Sacrament, others who give of their time and money freely to those in need, and all of them love the Church deeply. These people outnumber the dissenters. They are not noisy or pushy. They are quiet and faithful people who believe. These people are often overlooked much as one of the early Franciscan chroniclers completely missed St. Anthony of Padua at his first Chapter in the Order.

    Above all I still have hope and faith in Christ – if we do not have that what is the point of anything?

  53. robtbrown says:

    acardnal says:

    robtbrown, if you don’t mind me asking, what subject(s) did you teach in the FSSP seminary?

    I have an acquaintance who is a seminarian in the FSSP seminary in Denton, NE. I anticipate he will be ordained to the deaconate soon!

    1. The Sacraments in general, Baptism & Confirmation

    2. Mystical Theology

    3. Angelology

    4. Mariology

    5. Eschatology (Indiv and General)

    6. God the Creator and Governor

    I was scheduled to teach Ecclesiology when a family situation caused me to resign.

  54. The Masked Chicken says:

    ““Of course. I had a really cool commentary of Existentialism vs. Aquinas involving Schroedinger’s Cat, collapsing wave functions, and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces…
    Oh I do so want to read that.”

    Well, they do have cats in Ireland, so, as this is the tippiest-tinniestly connected to the topic of the post (ha!), let me just say, with regards to Schroedinger’s Cat (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger’s_cat), that the vial of cyanide was either tipped over killing the cat or not depending upon the state of the wavefunction (there are different versions of the story), which, before the box is opened exists in all possible states and, hence, the cat is both alive and dead. The wavefunction (actually a linear combination of wavefunctions) is supposed to collapse into one or the other single state (dead or alive) when the box is opened and “observed” by a consciousness (the scientist), since, if you believe modern physics, wavefunctions collapse into a single state when observed.

    Well, the point is: has anyone thought about the cat? Does the cat’s sense of, “Oh, drat, I can’t breath,” count as being conscious enough to collapse the wavefunction before the box is opened? It seems everyone who tells the story forgets to ask the cat!

    I’ll leave the extrapolation to Existentialism and Aquinas as an exercise.

    The Chicken

  55. LisaP. says:

    Chicken, fabulous. And no, never considered the cat. How is it possible no one considers the cat?

    Forgive the following typed from memory, think it was in a magazine in the 1920s?:

    There once was a man who said, “God
    Must find it exceedingly odd
    To find that the tree
    Will continue to be
    When there’s no one about in the quad.”

    In reply:

    “Dear Sir, you’re astonishment’s odd,
    I am always about in the quad.
    And that’s why the tree
    Will continue to be
    Thus observed by Yours Faithfully,
    God.”

    Sorry if this one’s old hat, but I loved it when I read it.

  56. robtbrown says:

    The Masked Chicken says:
    Of course. I had a really cool commentary of Existentialism vs. Aquinas

    St Thomas’ thought is based on the analogy of being, denied by both the philosophy that dominated the Church for hundreds of years and the Existentialism that took over in the mid 20th century.

    involving Schroedinger’s Cat, collapsing wave functions, and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, but I realized, before I pressed the POST button, that this really had nothing to do with the Irish situation…at least I don’t think so…

    Schroedinger’s paradox has little effect on St Thomas’ Cosmology. The concept of Substantial Form is the determining principle, so it allows for various material actions and relations of matter it determines.

    The same is true for Hilbert spaces or any other examples of spaces with an unlimited number of dimensions. St Thomas’concept of infinity is much more comprehensive than that of mathematicians.

  57. The Masked Chicken says:

    “Schroedinger’s paradox has little effect on St Thomas’ Cosmology. The concept of Substantial Form is the determining principle, so it allows for various material actions and relations of matter it determines. ”

    Yes, but it does not allow for a superposition of A and not-A, which is the whole purpose of the Cat paradox. In quantum mechanics, this exact situation occurs. How can there be a substantial form that contradicts itself? Instead of a cat, we could have a man in the box. Since the soul is the substantial form of a man (at least as I understand it), then the superposition situation where the man is both alive and death – with and without his soul, would reek havoc on Aquinas’s ability to define a substantial form as a singular. The “man,” before the box is opened, seems to be a superposition of a Man and not-Man. In this case, it seems language cannot adequately describe what the exactly the “thing” is inside the box. Does it have no substantial forms, one, or two?

    “St Thomas’concept of infinity is much more comprehensive than that of mathematicians.”

    More comprehensive in terms of breadth, perhaps, but not depth. Having studied the history of music theory in detail, the understanding of infinity is particularly important for the 13th century, since this was when mensuration was becoming defined in music. The French school, in particular Philippe de Virty, developed an infinite mensuration theory which pretty much defined the state of the mathematical understanding of infinity for the period. I understand that Aquinas’s definition is a philosophical one and, hence, broader, but there were several uses for infinity during the period.

    It is true that a Hilbert space is a single thing and does not contradict Aquinas’s use of substantial form. I never said it did. It does make a shambles of, Nihil in intellectu sine prius in sensu,” as applied to man, since man is incapable of applying his senses to an infinite-dimensional space. It does not apply, however, to God, who apprehends everything simply.

    I’m too tired to make more sense, so I will await the brutal reply I’m sure to get until morning. Maybe, we can discuss this over a cup of Irish coffee (I had to sneak Ireland in there, you know).

    The Chicken

  58. lelnet my friend, I am using reason and a sense of justice to explain that there are good folks out there who see that there are some gaping holes in our American Catholic governing oversight that is clearly on display here. How Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, and Joe Biden still remain Catholics in good standing is astonishing. They are still in good standing because they are permitted to receive Holy Communion. Yet they tagteam to promote the policies that are hostile to the Church’s Law and to the Natural Law of God.

    Belligerent students get expelled from school because the disciplinary action does the following:

    1. instills to the malefactor and to the entire school that there is a sense of justice and consequence from a higher authority,

    2. it causes the malefactor to reflect on his wrongdoing and provides the opportunity to humble their spirit and acknowledge a higher authority is still governing, and

    3. the disciplinary action instills a final outcome of order, peace, and harmony for the whole.

    The Pelosi’s, Sebelius’, and Biden’s that remain in the fold will continue to bring rebellion, cynicism, and disobedience among the remaining ‘classmates’ of the Church. It is actually a charitable thing to discipline a dissident this proud and haughty against the Natural Law and the laws of the Church that they claim to submit to by their adherence to the Blessed Sacrament.

    Catholics out there who are Catholic because common sense and reason has brought them here and less up to speed on Scripture passages will begin to wonder what they belong to. I for one am assured that Our Lord is the Head of the Church, from years of study and discernment and to abandon Her is to be lost in the wilderness. But can we just assume that others have this understanding? No. For their sake, for the sake of the common person, the Church should now be imposing disciplinary actions against the bad apples so that the remaining Faithful can continue to study and discern their ordered Church.

  59. Supertradmum says:

    Br. Tom Forde OFM Cap, Thank you for the encouragement, but I am with college age people mostly. As to the English, I try and make the Irish say “Protestant” and show them the list of English martyrs who suffered under the hands of the Protestants and atheists. This hatred, and I use the term as that is what I have been told bluntly, must stop. No nation has a right to carry grudges. I lost family in Czechoslovakia on my grandmother’s side. Property stolen, people gone…I do not hate the Nazis or the Russians. Peace of heart only comes with forgiveness. God cannot enter a heart full of the past.

    The need for evangelization is such that it must be out of the churches and onto the streets. The chaplaincy at the Med School is so liberal, the Masses are most likely invalid or at least illegal. Thankfully, I can get to both legal and valid Masses.

    All the med students in one of my friend’s group who are Catholic believe in contraception and abortion. Yet, I have heard only one sermon on abortion in all the time I have been here, one. and that was last January. No priest talked about the new law which took power from the parents and gave it to the socialist state, and most of the people I have met, in fact, all but one, believe that socialism, condemned for over a hundred years by the popes, is a viable and necessary option. The need for catechesis is so great, that it boggles the mind. Yet, I cannot get a position here as I am too orthodox.

    The largest retreat centre offers new age stuff condemned by the Vatican years ago. Ignorance is no excuses at this stage of the game. Either we preach the radical Gospel and the real teachings of the Church, or souls will go to hell. Of course, I have hope in Christ, but I do not kid myself about the numbers of those who actually listen. What saddens me most are the people my own age who refuse to obey the Church and have insisted on following false teachings and vote accordingly. Sad. Still, one works for the few.

  60. Supertradmum says:

    http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/government-will-act-speedily-to-legalize-abortion-irish-labour-party?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=cc15ee2f9e-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Full_Text_11_27_2012&utm_medium=email

    Catholics will vote for this and support it. The Church has allowed Herself to be weakened by old relationships with the Labour Party, and even Fine Gael–see my blog from last winter on this point. Abortion may be pushed to legal status as early as before the turn of the year, believe it or not . I have this on my blog as well.

  61. Imrahil says:

    Dear @Supertradmum,

    Do not blame bad catechesis. Adults can find the truth if they want to do so.
    Of course they can! But thing is that people must be forced to learn; that’s what schools are there for; and that’s what catechesis is there for. That we theoretically can blame somebody if they have not learned does not help an inch.

    People tell me there is going to be a revival of Faith and Christendom will return. No, sorry, we have crossed that fork in the road and the view is not good.
    To which I simply say that this is the sort of realism which, treated objectively, has good claims of being correct but which, apart from that, should in my very humble opinion be treated as if nonexistent. “And if so?”, we ought to ask facing these things, be they realities or no. We know that Christianity is true whether or not people accept it. Hence, we have a right to claim Christianity as the universal religion whether or not the universe actually professes it. No one has yet forbidden to dream; God gave the land to the French, the sea to the British and the clouds to the Irish (the originial proverb says “Germans”, but from my prejudices Irish suits even better, setting patriotism aside). I hate to quote Martin Luther but I come to understand him when he wanted to, facing World End, plant an apple tree… (though in the actual sense I’d prefer a good Confession of course).

    Dear @masked chicken,
    I have to admit here that I never understood what Schrödinger’s cat is all about. That beast is simply either dead or alive, depending on whether that radioactive material actually has or has not produced a radioactive decay. As if the act of measuring would produce the reality! … Of course I may be influenced by the thought that there is an External Spectator (Who is more than a mere spectator, but you get my drift) Who constantly measures and sees everything.

    Guess I’m too much of a rationalist to be a modern physicist. It takes a great deal of mysticism to create a status between death and life only for the reason that oneself does not know which status a given cat has in a certain moment.

    I’ll leave the extrapolation to Existentialism and Aquinas as an exercise.

    Laughing. Out. Loud.

  62. jaykay says:

    Supertradmum: it won’t be, for the very practical and mundane reason that there isn’t enough room on the legislative calendar, for a start, and they are NOT going to fast-track this one through, despite all the palaver about “acting speedily” yadda yadda blahdy-blah. The Labour Party, being for the most part good little middle-class 60s/70s era student socialists, can be expected to produce this sort of BS in quantity (and they do), but the cold reality is that quite a number of their own backbenchers are firmly aganst such a move and they are the junior party in Government with an even more substantial segment of the senior party firmly against.

    Not saying they’re not going to try to do it at some stage, mind you, but it will be a bitter struggle as this issue is a real poisoned chalice here. Our esteemed leader will be forcefully reminded of his pre-election promise that he would not legislate for abortion. That’ll be an interesting one, all right.

  63. Supertradmum says:

    jaykay, did you read about the leaked document?

  64. wmeyer says:

    Supertradmum said: I pray to St. Oliver Plunkett, a cultured man who spent his energies and finally his life catechizing this people, but those people wanted it. Do not blame American television. Adults do not have to watch that stuff. Do not blame bad catechesis. Adults can find the truth if they want to do so.

    But you and I both know, and have discussed many times, the urgent need for catechesis. And in a later post, you say it yourself. Yes, adults can find the truth for themselves, but they live in a world in which the truth is shouted down on every corner, and they have been raised without proper catechesis. It is a situation parallel to the person who decides according to his (all but unformed) conscience that birth control and abortion are OK for a Catholic. How will he find the truth when he is ignorant of nearly all teachings, and surrounded in his parish by the Spirit of Vatican II people who dominate in so many places?

    Consider, for one thing, that in two years of RCIA, I never once heard mention by any catechist of the CCC. And in the parish library, though they have copies of the “Adult Catechism” from the USCCB, no copies of the CCC are on the shelf. Happily, my own sponsor gave me a copy of the CCC. But in my chats with various catechists, when I raised questions based on the CCC, they would generally refer me to dissident literature, instead, including the notorious “Catholicism” by FR. McBrien, which, of course, is in the parish library.

    Adults need first to learn that they have not been taught, or have been taught improperly. But we need more priests who will preach this message. Right now, I know one or two, and I see the resistance among the laity to the message they present. It’s easier to stick with the spirit of Vatican II warm and fuzzy approach. I’m OK, you’re OK, and we’ll all go to heaven.

    Catechesis has, in too many parishes, not simply been poor — it has been MIA.

  65. jaykay says:

    Supertradmum: yes of course. I live here. There was an entire TV talkshow on the Report last night, one of those yap-a-thons wherein they try to give the appearance of balance while… well, you know.

    Anyway, our Great Leader (he who chose to fiddle with his mobile phone at a recent Papal audience – what a classy act he is) is now on record as saying more or less “festina lente”.

    “Speaking on his way into Government Buildings this morning, Taoiseach Enda Kenny insisted the Government was united on the issue of abortion legislation. He said the matter requires careful, calm and sympathetic consideration and he would not be rushed on the issue.”

    As expected. Hope the little… gets well and truly hung out to dry on the pre-election promise.
    While both sides of my family have been traditional supporters of that party since the foundation of the State, and its predecessors before that, never again will I cast a vote in their favour. Never. The hypocricy, while expected to a certain extent from all of them, has just become too much.

    Here’s the latest link from the “paper of record”:

    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1127/breaking3.html

  66. Supertradmum says:

    wmeyer, the problem is the parishes and some dioceses do not want orthodox catechetical people teaching. I know this personally. So, it is up to the adults to get knowledge on their own, as you did. We are accountable.

    jaykay, yes read on line and saw screaming headline in the print version this a.m. as well as yesterday’s articles. Put such on my blog. Sickening. The cell phone photos are horrid and were all over the papers, of course.

    Fast and pray.

  67. jaykay says:

    Supertradmum: of course – I was forgetting you’re here! You knew, of course, that the “Expert Group” was fitted-up with…sorry, ahem, cough… provided with … some members having a certain… ahhh… ‘worldview’. As I recall, they did this during the last Christmas recess, when they thought that no-one was looking. It’s called Transparency, I think. Or something.

    http://www.thelifeinstitute.net/latest-news/update-fourth-member-of-expert-group-has-history-of-support-for-abortion/

    This is not just crying over spilt milk. Anyone with eyes could see that it has been coming for a long time, and the atrophy and rotting of proper Catholic education in our schools – which was starting even when I was there in the 70s – is to blame, along with the all-pervasive pseudo-liberalism and cynicism masquerading as intellectualism.

    In a bizarre way it’s actually funny to watch our soi-disant prophets and illumined ones of the kultur mouthing the approved attitudes of the day, not realising they’re every bit as regimented as they imagine the sheeple of the “bad old days” being in their “subservience” to the Church. It’s just that their catechism is the Irish Times, Guardian, BBC et alia. Oh yes, and the Spirit of you-know-what, at least in the case of the senior citizens featured in Fr. Z’s post above. Who have now had their 15 minutes of fame and will slide into well-deserved obscurity, until the Times decides that they’re worth another exhumation for whatever particular badly-informed rant they want to publicise.

  68. The Masked Chicken says:

    “Adults need first to learn that they have not been taught, or have been taught improperly.”

    Amen.

  69. robtbrown says:

    The Masked Chicken says:

    etc.

    Quantum problems are subject to space-time distortions while the cat exists in an inertial frame of reference. The paradox assumes that sub atomic particles can act as efficient causes for inertial frames of reference, which I would deny.

    St Thomas distinguishes between not only actual and possible infinities but also absolute and relative infinities. Your example confuses them.

  70. Magash says:

    It is easy to get discouraged, but in many ways to do so is to buy into a materialistic world view. Ireland, the North America, Britain, even Europe itself, as a political entity, are transient. They bare little resemblance to the way they looked in 120 AD or the ninth century or the eighteenth or as they will look in 2750, should the Lord not return by then. Ireland was never so pagan and full of danger for Christians as when St. Patrick trod that emerald isle. Britain never so perilous for Catholics as when Elizabeth I sat on the throne. American so dangerous as when Saint Jean de Brébeuf traveled the Ottawa River.
    The truth is that the Church is under siege in every age. Often from without, but how can anyone forget the Bogia Popes? The Arians, the Carthars, not to mention the Gnostics.
    It is somewhat self centered to believe that the Church has never been in worse shape than it is now, or that things would be better if it were not for Vatican II, or if only the bishops had acted a certain way. It is a way of saying that we know better than the Holy Spirit, or that the fate of the Church is in our hands rather than Gods.
    Yes we have a duty to evangelize and catechize. Heck we have a duty to carry our cross and, if it come to it, to hang on it, for the love of Christ. What we’re really complaining about is in many cases a kind of petulant whine that we do not live in a Catholic Golden Age whereby we can sit peacefully in our monasteries or sitting rooms studying Augustine and Aquinas, taking care of the poor from our excess, while our Christian monarchs (or democratically elected governments) keep the heretical barbarians at bay. No we are called to real Catholicism. Soon like our beloved first and second century Saints we will probably be called upon to by our acts seed the future Church, and we’re a little put out about it. The doesn’t mean we won’t remain faithful, but we should never forget of all of the bishops of England only St. John Fisher remained true.
    So yes the Church is in trouble in Ireland. It’s in trouble in almost every corner of the world in one way or another. It aways has been. We must soldier on. You can’t give what you don’t have. So we must save our own souls first. Which basically means cooperation with Christ, since no man can pay his own ransom. Then we must try to save those others we can, always realizing that we can only offer the Truth of salvation we can can force no one to take it.

  71. Imrahil says:

    Dear @Magash,

    I have the strange feeling that you’re trying to be comforting. But you would be more comforting if you’d just allow us to deplore, or if you will, whine, what we have lost, or what at least we should have had.

    What we’re really complaining about is in many cases a kind of petulant whine that we do not live in a Catholic Golden Age whereby we can sit peacefully in our monasteries or sitting rooms studying Augustine and Aquinas, taking care of the poor from our excess, while our Christian monarchs (or democratically elected governments) keep the heretical barbarians at bay.
    I, for one, have a sympathy for these petulant whiners. Nor, I think, can it be proven on moral theological principles that this whining is sinful.

    I will not deny that it is often less the Church (which stands while the earth revolts) than our fatherland and what is good in it, the loss of which we deplore. If you allow to mention a very little thing which maybe serves for a reality, it is a sad country in which the Game-Shooters “Joyfulness” Littlespringfield, registered club, no longer can or wants to approach a priest, who comes from the same country, to bless their new flag in a splendid festivity.

    It will be a sad life in a country where no mallorn-tree grows. But whether mellyrn grow beyond the seas, none have reported it.

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