How Ireland Lost Its Faith

[Niccolo and Donkey]

How Ireland Lost Its Faith (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/26/how_ireland_lost_its_faith?page=full)

Foreign Policy

Patsy McGarry

February 27, 2010


http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/church.jpg

There was a time when Irish Catholics might have been delighted to see the pope lavishing attention on their bishops. On Feb. 15 and 16, however, when Ireland's bishops were at the Vatican to discuss an ongoing child sex abuse scandal, Catholics back home were furious. Catholics were already upset about Pope Benedict's refusal to apologize to the thousands of abuse victims in Ireland or even hint that he would meet with them, as some had requested. But what really set them off seems to have been the images of their bishops kissing the pope's ring.

Photos of the traditional greeting were plastered across broadsheet front pages and TV broadcasts over the following days. These, combined with images of the Vatican's opulent Apostolic Palace -- where the bishops met the pope and senior cardinals -- as well as the regalia of all those elderly men and the complete absence of lay people or any woman, had a profoundly negative effect. The response was unqualified rage.

Andrew Madden, the first person in Ireland to go public about his abuse by a priest, described the meetings at the Vatican as "a complete waste of time" and the greatest act of window dressing he had ever seen. Abuse survivor Marie Collins said it was an insult that the resignation of bishops didn't even make the agenda. Additionally, she said it was deplorable that the pope's statement was "so far away from accepting that there was a policy of coverup."

Of course, it's not unusual for bishops to kiss the pope's ring, and the Vatican has always been heavily male and ornate. The difference now is that Irish Catholics, after decades of alienation from the church, are finally nearing a breaking point.

Not so very long ago and for the great majority of Irish people, their Catholicism was synonymous with their national identity. To be Irish was to be Catholic. It was something of which most Irish were very proud.

In the latter part of the 19th century, the church grew to become the most powerful civic institution on the island, controlling most of Ireland's schools and the greater number of its hospitals.

This allowed the church unparalleled influence throughout most of the 20th century in what is now known as the Republic of Ireland. That continued to be the case until the latter decades of the last century when its influence began to wane due to increased affluence and a better-educated population. With the events of the last few years, church leaders can no longer ignore the extent to which they've lost control of Irish society.

The most recent scandal has centered on a series of damning government reports into the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of children by clergy members. The Murphy Commission report, published last November, found that in Dublin's Catholic archdiocese, by far Ireland's largest, "clerical child sex abuse was covered up" by church authorities from 1975 to 2004. It also found that all four archbishops of Dublin over that period investigated sexual abuse complaints and that many of the auxiliary bishops handled these complaints badly. None of the four archbishops reported their knowledge of abuse to the police "throughout the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s."

The report also found that church authorities used the concept of "mental reservation," which allows clergy to mislead people without being guilty -- in the church's eyes -- of lying, and that, though some courageous priests had brought complaints to their superiors' attention, in general there was a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the issue.

The Murphy report was been the most widely publicized investigation of sex abuse in Ireland, but it wasn't the first, and it won't be the last. The first notorious sex-abuse case in Ireland hit the headlines in 1994, when it was disclosed that church authorities had dealt with a serial abuser, Father Brendan Smyth, by moving him from parish to parish in Ireland, Scotland, and the United States -- over a period of 40 years. The attorney general's mishandling of an arrest warrant for Smyth eventually led to the collapse of the Irish government.

More recently, the Ryan Commission report, published last May, found that thousands of children suffered physical and sexual abuse over several decades in residential institutions run by 18 religious congregations during the last century. To date, almost 14,000 of those victims have been compensated by the Irish state. And the Murphy Commission is currently investigating the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Cloyne diocese and will publish its results by the end of this year.

Not surprisingly, the combined effects of these sex scandals have driven Irish Catholics away from the church at a time when many were already drifting away. For instance, according to recent surveys, 43 percent of Irish Catholics attend weekly Mass, a drop of 52 percent since 1973, though still about twice the average for most Catholic countries in Europe.

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer young men are entering the priesthood. For people of a certain age, the very idea of an Ireland without Catholic priests is truly beyond imagination. The bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, recently recalled that of the 50 students in his Leaving Cert class (equivalent to the U.S. 12th grade) in 1952, 20 went on for the priesthood. In 1961, Pope John XXIII even said: "Any Christian country will produce a greater or lesser number of priests. But Ireland, that beloved country, is the most fruitful of mothers in this respect."

Almost 50 years later the situation is dramatically different. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has said his archdiocese will soon have barely enough priests to serve its 199 parishes. "We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes," he said in November. The average age of Irish Catholic priests today is 63. Members of religious congregations have an average age in the early 70s. Each priest must retire at 75. As the Americans say, you do the math!

But even the lack of priests does not completely explain the falling away in religious practice. That began as far back as the 1960s, when two events heralded the death knell for what has been referred to many times as "the long 19th century of the Irish Catholic Church." Those were the Second Vatican Council, when things apparently immutable for all time were seemingly changed overnight, and the introduction of free second-level education as well as the introduction of state university grants in 1967.

Both produced skeptical Irish Catholics, less credulous than previous generations and demanding more sophisticated answers to age-old questions. Those answers were not always forthcoming.

In a 2003 article for the Irish Times, Father Vincent Twomey, a retired professor of moral theology at St. Patrick's College who studied with Pope Benedict himself at a postgraduate program in Germany, wrote, "Irish writers in the early part of the 20th century ... sensed that something was seriously wrong with 'traditional Irish Catholicism'. They saw it as narrow-minded, anti-intellectual and rigorist on morality. They were right."

In the 1960s, cultural influences also came into play -- television for instance. Irish state television, RTE, began broadcasting in 1961. Later in that decade, Oliver Flanagan, a well-known and outspoken politician, stated that "there was no sex in Ireland before television." The cultural revolutions of the second half of the 20th century hit Ireland just as hard as they did every other Western country, and so began Ireland's culture wars, known as Ireland's "moral civil war" and fought between younger liberal elements and the Catholic Church over contraceptives, divorce, and abortion, among other social issues.

Ireland's younger and more-educated Catholics began to assert independence from Rome's teaching on sexuality, particularly following Pope Paul VI's "Humanae Vitae" encyclical in 1968, which banned all artificial means of contraception. Many Irish Catholic women ignored "Humanae Vitae." They took contraceptive pills and found that the heavens didn't fall. Doctors got around Irish law, often with the tacit approval of priests, by prescribing the pill as a regulator for the menstrual cycle rather than as a contraceptive.

In 1979, contraception finally became legally available in Ireland, but only to married couples and on prescription. It was 1992 before contraceptives became freely available to everyone. That same year, coincidentally, the church had its first major sex scandal when it was revealed that the bishop of Galway, Eamonn Casey, had a 17-year-old son; a favorite T-shirt at the time featured a condom and the caption, "Just in Casey."

Divorce was also an extremely pivotal issue, not becoming legal until 1995. Abortion remains banned in Ireland despite referendums in 1983, 1992, and 2002. Although opinion poll after opinion poll over recent years has indicated a great majority now favor legalizing it, Ireland's politicians run scared from yet another bitter and divisive abortion referendum campaign.

With Irish society largely lost to it, the church's final frontier may be the primary-school system, of which it controls 92 percent. But now, the child sex abuse scandals, along with substantial immigration into Ireland over the past 10 years, have significantly increased pressure toward more pluralist control of primary education, something which -- to the surprise of many -- the Catholic bishops now say they favor. Archbishop Martin even called the Catholic control of schools a "historical hangover that doesn't reflect the realities of the times and is, in addition, in many ways detrimental to the possibility of maintaining a true Catholic identity in Catholic schools." If this is the case, it seems the last great battle of Ireland's moral civil wars -- that over control of education -- may be avoided.

And the Catholic Church in Ireland will continue its retreat from a position of unquestioned dominance in society for more than a century and a half, to a more humble role on its margins. "In the painful solitude of the desert, the church must learn how to return to its fundamental mission," Archbishop Martin has said. Some might suggest that is exactly where it belongs.

[Petr]

American-Irish writer John Dolan, the probable true identity of "War Nerd" - as well as a nihilistic death-obsessed atheist - has opined that Roman Catholicism acted as a tribal identity-fetish for most Irishmen, and became less relevant to them once they were no longer persecuted for it:

My parents were almost appallingly rigorous and devout Catholics, but they died without a shred of comfort from the Church to which they gave everything, let alone its “God.” We couldn’t even get a priest to come to the house. That was the painful part, though: the nonexistence of the Church when they needed it. But that was a mere historical accident, bad luck, the collapse of Catholicism in the US at the end of the 20th century.

The other absence, of any notion whatsoever of going to a better place, one of those bus station heavens—that was just an unspoken premise in our house. You could believe in the Church because it was there, it existed. And served a purpose: for the slave class of the British Empire, it was a counter-hierarchy, a way of reinventing oneself as something more than despised vermin infesting the lawn. And they maintained that belief as long as they needed it, until convinced that America, for all its alarming Anglo echoes, wasn’t going to do that to them again. Then they very sensibly dropped it and dove into the money pit. Sane behavior. But the God part? As far as I know, no one of us was pitiful enough to believe in that.
http://exiledonline.com/people-start-to-die/


Petr

[Monty]

American-Irish writer John Dolan, the probable true identity of "War Nerd" - as well as a nihilistic death-obsessed atheist

<startled look>
Really?

The Exile, when it wasn't putting out solid work, tended to be just another Village Voice clone. Go to any bar or nightclub in the USA and you'll see racks and racks of these newspapers, for free.

- has opined that Roman Catholicism acted as a tribal identity-fetish for most Irishmen, and became less relevant to them once they were no longer persecuted for it:


This isn't unique to the Irish, BTW. You should see what the Latinos do with it.

[Petr]

This isn't unique to the Irish, BTW. You should see what the Latinos do with it.
I have observed it:

http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14442&highlight=hispanics


Petr

[Monty]

I have observed it:

One of the under-discussed pieces of American church history is that the various ethnic enclaves within the RCC don't get along. It is like the ethnic squabbling in EO, which nobody on the outside can understand. Worse, the Catholic ethnics often resent the pre-Ellis Island non-Catholic ethnics who once dominated,

[Petr]

Worse, the Catholic ethnics often resent the pre-Ellis Island non-Catholic ethnics who once dominated,
One of the best proofs that "War Nerd" is Dolan are the resentful anti-Anglo rants that often occur in War Nerd's columns. His Irishness is shining through. Like this:

I keep telling you guys, you’ve got the completely wrong idea about the Brits. You’ve been watching too many of those BBC comedies where everybody’s cute and harmless. The Brits, up to the mid-20th-century, were stone killers, the most ruthless conquerors of the past thousand years.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=18764&IBLOCK_ID=35&PAGE=3


Petr

[Monty]

One of the best proofs that "War Nerd" is Dolan are the resentful anti-Anglo rants that often occur in War Nerd's columns.

BTW, you should read the resentful anti-Anglo stuff that pours fourth from Scottish nationalists.

[Petr]

This here is the king of all anti-British rants:

And to this day, they don’t catch even a little bit of Hell for it. Everybody thinks the Brits are all cute and harmless. You’re all a bunch of suckers for those suave accents, you suckers! The truth is that compared to the Brits, the Nazis you’re always yammering about were a gang of eighth-grade stoners who ran around spraypainting swastikas on school property. The Nazis lasted one decade; the Brits quietly ran their extermination programs for three hundred years, and to this day they wouldn’t even think of feeling guilty about it. Wouldn’t cross their minds.

...

What does “rebel” mean, anyway? I’ve noticed that in English press it’s a bad word. Here it’s different, because we were the rebels in 1775 and proud of it. But see, people who know the American revolution think that the Brit policy against the Yankees, where (give or take a Banastre Tarlteton or two), the redcoats tried to avoid killing civvies, was normal Imperial policy.

Bullshit. The reason the Brits let us go, didn’t try scorched-earth on us, was that we WERE Brits, as far as they could tell: white protestant English-speaking humans. If you weren’t all of the above, you weren’t human. The only other war where English troops had the same restraint was–take a guess. Right: the English Civil War. In England, they fought clean. But when Cromwell marched up to subdue the Scots, who were Protestant (good) but non-English (bad), a lot of POWs never made it back to the holding pens, and a lot of crofts were torched, and a lot of girls were raped. When he moved from Scotland to Ireland, where the filthy locals were filthy Papist as well as non-English, well, you don’t want to know what happened there.
http://exiledonline.com/when-pigs-fly-and-scold-brits-lecturing-sri-lanka/


Petr

[Monty]

Right: the English Civil War. In England, they fought clean. But when Cromwell marched up to subdue the Scots, who were Protestant (good) but non-English (bad), a lot of POWs never made it back to the holding pens, and a lot of crofts were torched, and a lot of girls were raped

1. If the Irish cranks realize this, why do they turn around and talk as if Cromwell was the prototypical English-speaking protestant?
2. Popery is now the dominant religion in England. This has had zero effect on the Irish question.

[Mike]

Random thoughts:

1. Yes, Brecher = Dolan, probably at least. I think Petr's citations reinforce that.

2. It seems a bit crude to me to interpret Irish Catholicism, or any other European country's Catholicism, as some sort of negation; in other words, Irish Catholicism is not just based on not being British. Moreover, the decline of the faith on that island, entailing the rise of divorce and perhaps soon abortion (bad developments), is not based on the British laying off of Ireland; it's based on the same liberal trends permeating all the modern West.

3. The RCC really needs to take the gloves off with pedophiles and homosexuals. There are political and social considerations here that it can no longer afford to ignore. The Church must take all action to counter the PR meat grinder that has menaced it, whether justly or unjustly, in recent years.

[Petr]

2. It seems a bit crude to me to interpret Irish Catholicism, or any other European country's Catholicism, as some sort of negation; in other words, Irish Catholicism is not just based on not being British.
It was not me but materialist-reductionist Dolan that presented that idea. I myself would say that such "negationism" is only a part - although a big part - of Irish Catholic identity.


Petr

[Petr]

But Leonard Feeney himself had similar thoughts already back in 1952:

If you ask most Americans what the term “Boston Irish” means to them, they will tell you that it makes them think of strong, vigorous Catholicism. That this notion should prevail despite all evidences to the contrary, is due partly to the Boston Irish themselves, who like to create the impression, “Whatever we say, that’s the Faith,” and partly to the non-Catholics of the country, who feel that if this blustering, red-faced, unattractive thing can be passed off as Catholicism at its best, then they are well-excused in staying out of the Church.

The fact is, the Boston Irish have long since lost the Faith as the kind of bright, burning presence that fills the soul with joy and zeal. It has become for them merely a kind of national tradition, and they hold it not because it is true, but because that is what they were taught in Ireland.

There once was a time when the faith of the Boston Irish was strong, and they were persecuted for it — their convents were burned; they were told they need not apply for preferred jobs. But now the Boston Irish have ceased to make their Faith a challenge to those who hate it. They keep it to themselves, and try to conform to Protestant manners and Jewish morals. They are happy to take to their bosom any Yankee heretic who will agree to put on a green tie for St. Patrick’s Day and to attend a banquet given in his honor by the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. And they can aspire to nothing higher than to send their sons to Harvard, where, they imagine, they may hobnob with the sons of rich Protestants and Jews.
http://www.fatherfeeney.org/point/52-oct.html


Petr

[Basil Fawlty]

Random thoughts:2. It seems a bit crude to me to interpret Irish Catholicism, or any other European country's Catholicism, as some sort of negation; in other words, Irish Catholicism is not just based on not being British. Moreover, the decline of the faith on that island, entailing the rise of divorce and perhaps soon abortion (bad developments), is not based on the British laying off of Ireland; it's based on the same liberal trends permeating all the modern West.I agree with you on both points. The Catholic church was never a friend of the Irish struggle for indepndence, they were a drag anchor every step of the way. This is mainly because high Vatican policy was always focussed on returning Britain to Rome. Ireland in the UK would better serve this aim than Ireland out. The cause of the decline here is, as you suggest, the liberal trends permeating the west. It seems dramatic now because Ireland held out longer than anyone else, Catholic and Protestant.

[Petr]

The Catholic church was never a friend of the Irish struggle for indepndence, they were a drag anchor every step of the way.
I suspect that this is hyperbolic exaggeration prompted by your anti-clerical Republican prejudices.

Without the RCC factor, the Irish might well have been assimilated by Britain just like the Cornish, Welsh or even the Scottish were. Like it or not, you can thank Rome for sustaining your strong separate cultural identity.


Petr

[Basil Fawlty]

I suspect that this is hyperbolic exaggeration prompted by your anti-clerical Republican prejudices. This is wrong on all counts. What I said is not controversial but you wouldn't know that because you don't know 19th century Irish history or Vatican policy of the day.
Without the RCC factor, the Irish might well have been assimilated by Britain just like the Cornish, Welsh or even the Scottish were. Like it or not, you can thank Rome for sustaining your strong separate cultural identity.
Sometimes you talk about things you clearly don't know much about, this is one of those occasions. You discount the fact that the Irish always opposed English occupation - for half of this period, England was Catholic.

[cerberus]

Correct me if I am wrong Basil the majority of those killed in the Siege at Drogheda were English catholics , within the folklore which has grown up around this action by Cromwell , and very brutal it was ....the fate of the english is rather forgotten.
(Brutal by our standards , but accepted behaviour within the rules of war at that time , refusal to surrender would mean death).

[Basil Fawlty]

Correct me if I am wrong Basil the majority of those killed in the Siege at Drogheda were English catholics , within the folklore which has grown up around this action by Cromwell , and very brutal it was ....the fate of the english is rather forgotten.The garrison was English as it was a Royalist stronghold. My point in this thread is despite the intrioduction of a religious dimension from the time of Henry VIII, which is always political anyway, the native Gaelic Irish (and the assimilated Vikings) have engaged in continuous armed resistance to England/Britain since Henry II's invasion to this very day regardless of confession.

[VUK]

Random thoughts:

1. Yes, Brecher = Dolan, probably at least. I think Petr's citations reinforce that.

Yup, "Gary Brecher" is simply one of Dolan's pseudonyms. These voice recordings confirm that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R53eYMricc

http://exiledonline.com/exiled-radio-host-john-dolan-talks-genocide-monsters-with-pol-pot-biographer-philip-short/

[Errigal]

Correct me if I am wrong Basil the majority of those killed in the Siege at Drogheda were English catholics , within the folklore which has grown up around this action by Cromwell , and very brutal it was ....the fate of the english is rather forgotten.
(Brutal by our standards , but accepted behaviour within the rules of war at that time , refusal to surrender would mean death).

This Wikipedia entry on the Irish Penal Laws is quite interesting on this topic more broadly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws_(Ireland)

Macrobius posted it in the shoutbox yesterday when talking about a different matter and I found it interesting.

[Charlie Robespierre]

Republican volunteers where denounced by Bishops during the War of Independence and the pro-Catholic Emancipator Daniel O'Connell was a fairly strict constitutionalist who's primarily interested was in setting up Catholic universities and the like. The IRB was also regularily denounced by the Church and Balfour successfully prevailed upon the Pope to intervene during the land agitation. If anything the Catholic Church served pro-British interests once the Penal Laws where dropped.

[Petr]

This Wikipedia entry on the Irish Penal Laws is quite interesting on this topic more broadly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws_(Ireland)

Macrobius posted it in the shoutbox yesterday when talking about a different matter and I found it interesting.
In what sense did you find it interesting?


Petr

[Monty]

If anything the Catholic Church served pro-British interests once the Penal Laws where dropped.

So if the RCC is on the side of the Unionists, shouldn't Irish Republican zealots have abandoned it in droves?

[Basil Fawlty]

So if the RCC is on the side of the Unionists, shouldn't Irish Republican zealots have abandoned it in droves?You misunderstand. The Vatican supported the Union for different reasons.
Why do you call Republicans zealots?

[Petr]

There is one clear precedent for what is happening in Ireland now - the collapse of militant Roman Catholicism in French Quebec. There, too, anti-Anglo nationalism and ultra-Montanism had smooth co-existence until they parted ways in the 1960s.

Then Scandinavian-model soft-totalitarian welfare state made mincemeat out of Quebecian Romanism.


Petr

[Basil Fawlty]

There is one clear precedent for what is happening in Ireland now - the collapse of militant Roman Catholicism in French Quebec. There, too, anti-Anglo nationalism and ultra-Montanism had smooth co-existence until they parted ways in the 1960s.

Then Scandinavian-model soft-totalitarian welfare state made mincemeat out of Quebecian Romanism.


PetrI don't really see any parallel in this description.

[Monty]

There is one clear precedent for what is happening in Ireland now - the collapse of militant Roman Catholicism in French Quebec.

Did Ireland ever have that much ultra-Montanism? I would think that it would produce right-wing counterrevolutionary movements. Besides Denis Fahey and a few others, what is there? Political tradcats look to France and Spain, not Ireland.

[Petr]

I don't really see any parallel in this description.
I myself see a lot of parallels between Quebec and Ireland.

The pre-1960s Irish Republicans might not have been very warm RCs but they still did not have actually hostile relations with the Vatican - like secular French and Italian nationalists often did. Was de Valera's reign noted for its anti-clericalism?


Petr

[Basil Fawlty]

Did Ireland ever have that much ultra-Montanism? I would think that it would produce right-wing counterrevolutionary movements. Besides Denis Fahey and a few others, what is there? Political tradcats look to France and Spain, not Ireland.You're right to query this. Petr does not really know what he's talking about. Cardinal Cullen was a proponent but the Irish Church has tended to plough its own furrow, especially in politics. I have been talking about Vatican policy rather than the more complex question of the Irish Church policy in politics.

[Basil Fawlty]

I myself see a lot of parallels between Quebec and Ireland.

The pre-1960s Irish Republicans might not have been very warm RCs but they still did not have actually hostile relations with the Vatican - like secular French and Italian nationalists often did. Was de Valera's reign noted for its anti-clericalism?No, but it would have been impolitic for him to oppose them, given the clergy's enormous influence within society. Irish Republicanism has always hostile relations with the Church, both locally and with Rome. The anti-Treaty forces were excommunicated, my own grandfather amongst them. The Bishop of Kerry in the mid-19th century said of the Fenians "Hell is not hot enough, nor eternity long enough, to punish these miscreants." It doesn't get any more hostile than that!

[Kodos]

There is one clear precedent for what is happening in Ireland now - the collapse of militant Roman Catholicism in French Quebec. There, too, anti-Anglo nationalism and ultra-Montanism had smooth co-existence until they parted ways in the 1960s.

Quebec is sort of considered the Vegas of the North around here...

[RuneX2]

I think the whole case owes much to the liberal press being preoccupied with these cases, as it proves their preconceived notions of Christianity. Priests entrusted the care of children, should like any other trusted person, naturally be beyond reproof, but in the real world this doesn’t happen and I have yet to see numbers that indicate that priests have been abusing children in above what other persons with the same responsibility have been doing.

[Errigal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws_(Ireland)
In what sense did you find it interesting?
...

Just that it gives more background detail to the topic of some of the posts here.

There is one clear precedent for what is happening in Ireland now - the collapse of militant Roman Catholicism in French Quebec. There, too, anti-Anglo nationalism and ultra-Montanism had smooth co-existence until they parted ways in the 1960s.

Then Scandinavian-model soft-totalitarian welfare state made mincemeat out of Quebecian Romanism.


Petr

I wouldn't agree with either of your statements here. Ultra conservative Roman Catholicism in Quebec was much closer to Basil's description of Ireland. What in Ireland were called "castle Catholics" by some had very close cultural cousins in Quebec. They were able to have their religion, laws and militia in return for loyalty to the Crown. Their anti-Anglo feelings were to do with the Anglos as Protestants and merchants more than anything else. The Canadiens defined themselves as New World French Catholics. They did not define themselves in opposition to the English.

The Quiet Revolution was far more about becoming "Masters in our own house" - "Maitres chez nous" by buying up the hydro-electric companies and fast-tracking French graduates into the fields of engineering previously dominated by the Anglos. The resentment against the RC education system was that it turned out priests, doctors, lawyers and journalists but almost no engineers. "Then Scandinavian-model soft-totalitarian welfare state made mincemeat out of Quebecian Romanism" almost entirely inaccurate.

[Petr]

The Quiet Revolution was far more about becoming "Masters in our own house" - "Maitres chez nous" by buying up the hydro-electric companies and fast-tracking French graduates into the fields of engineering previously dominated by the Anglos. The resentment against the RC education system was that it turned out priests, doctors, lawyers and journalists but almost no engineers. "Then Scandinavian-model soft-totalitarian welfare state made mincemeat out of Quebecian Romanism" almost entirely inaccurate.
Well, I guess I must admit that I might have talked presumptiously about subject I did not know that well.


Petr

[Errigal]

Well, I guess I must admit that I might have talked presumptiously about subject I did not know that well.


Petr

It's not a big deal. The Quiet Revolution was an economic, political and cultural shift all over the same period so it's impossible not to blend one aspect of it with another.

But I often wonder why you are so happy when things go badly for Catholics. What harm have they done to you all the way up in Finland? Similarly I wonder why you would be so gleeful about Quebecers having a cultural crisis because of rapid secularism? Again what have they ever done to you?

[Petr]

It's not a big deal but I often wonder why you are so happy when things go badly for Catholics. What harm have they done to you all the way up in Finland?
And I wonder why you feel need to defend Catholics.

The godlessness of Scandinavia has been thrown as a proof of what supposedly results from Protestantism. But Quebec proves to us that even if welfare-statism defeated Lutheranism in northern Europe, Romanism was no match for the Canadian welfare state either:

So, what happened to Canadian Christianity, asks Dr. Noll, and for the next 39 pages of his book, he searches for the explanation – searches among the explanations offered by Canadian historians and reaches a few conclusions of his own.

He examines two churches in particular – the Catholic Church in Quebec and the United Church of Canada, both of which have suffered a catastrophic decline in membership. Though the churches are, of course, quite different, he discovered curiously similar explanations.

In Quebec, he finds an explanation in the rise of Catholic Action, a movement that gained great momentum after the Second World War and recruited platoons of talented young people – like Pierre Trudeau, Marc Lalonde and Gerard Pelletier. Its object was to supplant what had become the moribund Catholicism of historic Quebec with a new amalgam of democratic socialism and a reformed Catholic spirituality and practice.

Quebeckers bought the first half of the proposition, but not the second, and people abandoned Christian practice en masse.

Then United Church, created in the 1920s by the union of the Methodists, Congregationalists and most Presbyterians, sought to combine the socialistic reforms of the social gospel with the spiritual message of evangelicalism. This had much the same result. When the government itself legislated the social gospel, the church was left with no message at all.
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4711&highlight=canada


Petr

[cerberus]

Ireland has not really lost its faith , older generations will still cling to the clergy as if they really were one step down from God , younger people will not tolerate the invasive control which the catholic church enjoyed until relatively recently.
Not only the recent child sex scandals but its abuse of the people in its charge at all levels , the bullying the degrading attitude towards women , the laundries , the harsh treatment meted out at schools all largely church run .
Change was long overdue , Ireland has not lost faith it has just demanded change and accountability from the Catholic Church.

[Monty]

Romanism was no match for the Canadian welfare state either:

The difference with Ireland is that it was secularized, yet still managed to use religion as an excuse to settle old scores.

[Errigal]

And I wonder why you feel need to defend Catholics.

The godlessness of Scandinavia has been thrown as a proof of what supposedly results from Protestantism. But Quebec proves to us that even if welfare-statism defeated Lutheranism in northern Europe, Romanism was no match for the Canadian welfare state either:


http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4711&highlight=canada


Petr

The answer to your is initial question is contained within your post. Your quote is another piece of evidence that we're all in the same mess which arrived for us all at almost exactly the same time, give or take a few decades. It is similar to the problem of mass exotic immigration to France, the UK and several other European states. The French Republic and its empire was always said to have a very different relationship than the UK with its empire and the two countries' decolonization process was said to be markedly different. And yet the two countries have remarkably similar messes on their hands. A mess which is far more similar than it is different from the immigration messes in Scandinavia, Germany, Italy and so on.

This is similar in my opinion to the different roads taken to a common crisis of legitimacy by the Lutherans, Anglicans and Catholics.

[Petr]

The difference with Ireland is that it was secularized, yet still managed to use religion as an excuse to settle old scores.
The interactions between religions and earthly tribal loyalties can be complicated affairs.

For example, based on my YouTube sightings, I would say that many modern Turks have seemingly managed to "transcend" the old quarrel between the Ottoman-Muslim identity and secular Young Turk nationalism.

The Janissary military bands were abolished for a while by ascendant Young Turks as a symbol of old reactionary system - but in time, Mehter music made a comeback in Kemalist Turkey, now symbolizing proud Turkish heritage to pious Muslims and secular nationalists alike.


Here is a techno-version of Mehter music, significantly honoring alongside Atatürk (at around 1:30) Mehmed II, the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople:


znlrtLEQgDw


Petr

[Józef Piłsudski]

I wouldn't agree with either of your statements here. Ultra conservative Roman Catholicism in Quebec was much closer to Basil's description of Ireland. What in Ireland were called "castle Catholics" by some had very close cultural cousins in Quebec. They were able to have their religion, laws and militia in return for loyalty to the Crown. Their anti-Anglo feelings were to do with the Anglos as Protestants and merchants more than anything else. The Canadiens defined themselves as New World French Catholics. They did not define themselves in opposition to the English. During elections a favourite expression of the Quebecois clergy was "Le ciel est bleu et l'enfer est rouge" (red=grits, blue=tories) - Ah, to think there was a time when Quebec wasn't Godless.

[Monty]

within the folklore which has grown up around this action by Cromwell.


One of the nice things about having Cromwell as a forebear is that I can't be accused of following the pacifistic wimpiness that neocons equate with Christianity.

(And, no, he didn't let bring back the Jews.)

[Man of Ash]

The difference with Ireland is that it was secularized, yet still managed to use religion as an excuse to settle old scores.
How has a secularized Ireland used religion as an excuse to settle old scores?

[Petr]

One of the nice things about having Cromwell as a forebear is that I can't be accused of following the pacifistic wimpiness that neocons equate with Christianity.
Are you literally descended from Cromwell?


Petr

[Monty]

Are you literally descended from Cromwell?

There's a breed of Catholic that waves the name "Cromwell" like a bloody shirt.

[Petr]

There's a breed of Catholic that waves the name "Cromwell" like a bloody shirt.
I thought you might be using the word "forebear" literally. I am fond of spotting famous familial connections, since I suspect of myself being descended from one of Napoleon's marshals...


Petr

[Man of Ash]

The difference with Ireland is that it was secularized, yet still managed to use religion as an excuse to settle old scores.
How has a secularized Ireland used religion as an excuse to settle old scores?
Monty, I am still curious about this.

[Monty]

Monty, I am still curious about this.

The Irish conflict is painted as Catholic vs. Protestant, when both sides are quite secularized. You can see how silly this is.

The English are supposed to be oppressive Protestants, yet Catholicism is dominant there.

There's the Old Firm sports rivalry in which the Rangers are the Protestants and Celtic are the Catholics.

There's the fact that the Irish and Scots-Irish rarely clash in the United States.

And why do these "Catholics" talk like they're fighting for Castro instead of St. Michael?

[Basil Fawlty]

The Irish conflict is painted as Catholic vs. Protestant, when both sides are quite secularized. You can see how silly this is.

The English are supposed to be oppressive Protestants, yet Catholicism is dominant there.

There's the Old Firm sports rivalry in which the Rangers are the Protestants and Celtic are the Catholics.

There's the fact that the Irish and Scots-Irish rarely clash in the United States.

And why do these "Catholics" talk like they're fighting for Castro instead of St. Michael?It's only the British press who paint it as religious. This is so as to avoid talking about the real issue which is the legacy of colonialism. The Plantation was part of a late Elizabethan-early Stuart divide and conquer strategy. The Plantation of Ulster was particularly important as this was the bastion of the O'Neills, who were the most powerful magnates in Gaelic Ireland. The English were all but driven out and Hugh O'Neill was set to be crowned King of Ireland until defeat by Mountjoy put an end to that inaugurated the great catastrophes that followed.

[Errigal]

The Irish conflict is painted as Catholic vs. Protestant, when both sides are quite secularized. You can see how silly this is.


The Irish conflict is painted as Catholic vs. Protestants far more by outsiders than the Irish do themselves. Many times I've heard the North American media pretty much replace "Catholic" and "Protestant" into statements made by Irish politicians who refer to "Nationalists" "Unionists" "Loyalists" and "Republicans". It's similar to how Americans and the French replace "British" with "English" when the former is clearly correct. When talking about diplomacy at the UN for example.


The English are supposed to be oppressive Protestants, yet Catholicism is dominant there.

What you talkin' 'bout Monty?


There's the Old Firm sports rivalry in which the Rangers are the Protestants and Celtic are the Catholics.

Bottom of the barrel people engaging in sectarian taunts are not much more that that.


There's the fact that the Irish and Scots-Irish rarely clash in the United States.

They rarely lived anywhere near one another and the Ulster-Scots descendants had gone off in their own squirrelly Baptist direction. In any case they were Dissenters when they left for America and were often more politically allied with the Catholics against the conforming Protestants.


And why do these "Catholics" talk like they're fighting for Castro instead of St. Michael?

Because the argument is political, not theological.

[Monty]

It's only the British press who paint it as religious.
Most people paint it as religious.
This is so as to avoid talking about the real issue which is the legacy of colonialism.
Every multiculturalist and Third World enthusiast thinks their real issue is "the legacy of colonialism." The Irish whine about being an oppressed minority, however justifiable, created a precedent that could be used by many, many others.

[Niccolo and Donkey]

Most people paint it as religious.

Every multiculturalist and Third World enthusiast thinks their real issue is "the legacy of colonialism." The Irish whine about being an oppressed minority, however justifiable, created a precedent that could be used by many, many others.

Well obviously the solution to that is to remove the occupying foreign power so that the locals can no longer "whine".

Voila!

[Errigal]

Well obviously the solution to that is to remove the occupying foreign power so that the locals can no longer "whine".

Voila!

It would be that simple if the occupying power had been around for only a few years and had very little contact and interaction with the locals: Cyprus or Egypt for example. England has been involved in Ireland for centuries.

[Niccolo and Donkey]

It would be that simple if the occupying power had been around for only a few years and had very little contact and interaction with the locals: Cyprus or Egypt for example. England has been involved in Ireland for centuries.

Yes, it's much more difficult to kill the cancer when it has been growing for a long, long time as opposed to early detection and treatment.

[Errigal]

Yes, it's much more difficult to kill the cancer when it has been growing for a long, long time as opposed to early detection and treatment.

Sometimes metaphors get in the way of understanding a problem rather that making things clearer. Comparisons to cancer or to African or Asian
British colonies confuse things more than they clarify. It's just cheap rhetoric.

I'm sure there are worthwhile comparisons to be made between British rule in Ireland and other parts of the Empire but I still think many such comparisons I've heard in my life have been more off the mark than on.

[Man of Ash]

The Irish conflict is painted as Catholic vs. Protestant, when both sides are quite secularized. You can see how silly this is.

The English are supposed to be oppressive Protestants, yet Catholicism is dominant there.

There's the Old Firm sports rivalry in which the Rangers are the Protestants and Celtic are the Catholics.

There's the fact that the Irish and Scots-Irish rarely clash in the United States.

And why do these "Catholics" talk like they're fighting for Castro instead of St. Michael?
That doesn't answer my question: which old scores has the Republic of Ireland settled using religion as an excuse, and how? That was what you said, wasn't it?

[Monty]

That doesn't answer my question: which old scores has the Republic of Ireland settled using religion as an excuse, and how?

The Irish "Catholics" have a long list of charges of oppression and mistreatment by the British. Many of the accusations are likely justified.

[Basil Fawlty]

Most people paint it as religious.You know "most people" do you? Let's assume that most people do. This just testifies to the power of British propaganda.
Every multiculturalist and Third World enthusiast thinks their real issue is "the legacy of colonialism." The Irish whine about being an oppressed minority, however justifiable, created a precedent that could be used by many, many others.So are we supposed to suppress the truth because you are afraid of a precedent being set? The trouble in the north really is a legacy of colonialism, literally!

The Irish "Catholics" have a long list of charges of oppression and mistreatment by the British. Many of the accusations are likely justified.I do wish you would stop trying to make this into a sectarian issue. The original causes of all this predate the reformation.

[Errigal]

....
So are we supposed to suppress the truth because you are afraid of a precedent being set? The trouble in the north really is a legacy of colonialism, literally!
....

This is a good point worth making. The word "colonialism" is so loosely thrown around that many people understandably baulk at it. It really does apply though in the case of the Ulster Plantation.

[Man of Ash]

The Irish "Catholics" have a long list of charges of oppression and mistreatment by the British. Many of the accusations are likely justified.
When you said "Ireland", did you mean "Irish Catholics"? North and South of the border? I'm still trying to figure out what you meant, as the idea of the government of the modern Republic acting on nationalist or religious grudges is pretty laughable.
The English are supposed to be oppressive Protestants, yet Catholicism is dominant there.
Again, where? Northern Ireland?
And why do these "Catholics" talk like they're fighting for Castro instead of St. Michael?
A valid, and lamentable, point.

[Monty]

Again, where? Northern Ireland..

England. Catholicism is the dominant religion in private, although atheism rules in private.

[Errigal]

England. Catholicism is the dominant religion in private, although atheism rules in private.

What is this assertion based upon?

[Monty]

What is this assertion based upon?
Catholics set to pass Anglicans as leading UK church
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1386939.ece

Look at today's paper:
Anglicans: England is not a Catholic nation
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1573549/Anglicans-England-is-not-a-Catholic-nation.html

More Catholics than Anglicans attended Sunday church services in England last year, according to new research.

[Errigal]

Catholics set to pass Anglicans as leading UK church
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1386939.ece

Look at today's paper:
Anglicans: England is not a Catholic nation
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1573549/Anglicans-England-is-not-a-Catholic-nation.html

That doesn't make it the dominant religion.

[Monty]

That doesn't make it the dominant religion.

The people who care enough to actually attend services are predominant Catholic. Actually, the predominant religion is NO religion.

[Basil Fawlty]

The people who care enough to actually attend services are predominant Catholic. Actually, the predominant religion is NO religion.Is that a religion though? A certain kind of atheism can be a religion, the kind that Dawkins evangelises, for example. But your average godless British person is mindlessly atheistic rather than religiously so.

[Monty]

Is that a religion though? A certain kind of atheism can be a religion, the kind that Dawkins evangelises, for example. But your average godless British person is mindlessly atheistic rather than religiously so.

Atheism has a stronger Establishment than Anglicanism has known since the 19th Century. It is an integral part of modern democracy.

[Petr]

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/news_from_ireland/Dramatic-drop-in-number-of-Irish-priest-vocations-101713223.html

Dramatic drop in number of Irish priest vocations

By DARA KELLY, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Saturday, August 28, 2010, 8:37 AM

The number of young Irish men being ordinated to the priesthood in Ireland has dropped below competing figures in England and Wales for the first time in living memory.

The plummeting number of vocations are a dramatic departure for a country that once used to export Catholic missionaries globally and provided Britain with a significant proportion of its priests.

New figures released by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ireland this week show that just 16 men are due to start training for the priesthood this autumn, less than half the 39 that signed up for the priesthood last year.

In contrast, back in the 1980's Ireland would regularly draw more than 150 new recruits to the priesthood every year.

Ireland’s newfound recruitment problems will be a cause for concern in Rome since it has always been seen by the Vatican as a stronghold of Catholic faith in secular Europe.

Over the last two decades, the Irish Catholic church’s reputation has been damaged by a series of widespread child sex abuse scandals and by the revelations that senior church officials deliberately covered up the crimes of paedophiles priests.

This year there are a total of 99 men training for priesthood in Irish seminaries compared with 150 in England and Wales.

"The recent difficulties with Church scandals mean that those thinking tentatively about priesthood, are not going to be launching themselves forward," Father Patrick Rushe, National Coordinator of Diocesan Vocations Directors in Ireland he told the Irish press. "This has been a difficult year for the Church and is bound to have an effect on numbers."

But Father Rushe suggested that the numbers this year were a "blip" and should return to a more steady level of 25 or 26 new vocations in the years to come.

The true extent of the crisis was revealed in 2008 when the Irish church admitted that 160 priests had died that year with only nine new ordinations.

Figures for Irish nuns were even more dramatic, with the deaths of 228 nuns and only two taking final vows for service in religious life last year.

[cerberus]

People have finally caught themselves on.

[Hakluyt]

Petr was actually correct about Quebec earlier in this thread, but there is one important qualification. The most common interpretation is that the "bidding war" between the provincial and federal welfare states during and after the "Quiet revolution" directly contributed to the decline of religion. Whenever the Quebec government would announce some new social programme, Ottawa would compete with it and offer to fund it more thoroughly - or the other way around. More so than in other parts of the country, the competition between the two branches of government for the loyalty of the faithful welfarists hastened that transition and made it seem all the more immanent.

This perceived consensus is one reason Quebec is the most socially liberal part of Canada today.

[Errigal]

Petr was actually correct about Quebec earlier in this thread,
....

I'm guessing you mean this quote?

There is one clear precedent for what is happening in Ireland now - the collapse of militant Roman Catholicism in French Quebec. There, too, anti-Anglo nationalism and ultra-Montanism had smooth co-existence until they parted ways in the 1960s.

Then Scandinavian-model soft-totalitarian welfare state made mincemeat out of Quebecian Romanism.


Petr


...but there is one important qualification. The most common interpretation is that the "bidding war" between the provincial and federal welfare states during and after the "Quiet revolution" directly contributed to the decline of religion. Whenever the Quebec government would announce some new social programme, Ottawa would compete with it and offer to fund it more thoroughly - or the other way around. More so than in other parts of the country, the competition between the two branches of government for the loyalty of the faithful welfarists hastened that transition and made it seem all the more immanent.

Compared to Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia? The state took over the schooling, hospitals and social welfare programs run by the RCC in those provinces too, along with the others. How is Quebec all that different in this matter?


This perceived consensus is one reason Quebec is the most socially liberal part of Canada today.

This is a leap. How do you define "socially liberal" in any case?

[Kodos]

This is a leap. How do you define "socially liberal" in any case?

Here in New England Quebec has a reputation as the Vegas of the North. I'm told there seems to be a very high # of strip clubs per capita.

[Hakluyt]

I'm guessing you mean this quote?





Compared to Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia? The state took over the schooling, hospitals and social welfare programs run by the RCC in those provinces too, along with the others. How is Quebec all that different in this matter?
Because the programs run by the RCC affected more people in Quebec, presumably. The other provinces were not subject to the type of bidding war I described either. A good discussion of that is in Brian Crowley's recent book "Fearful Symmetry" if you're interested: http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.ca%2FFearful-Symmetry-Canadas-Founding-Values%2Fdp%2F1554701880&rct=j&q=crowley%20fearful%20symmetry&ei=QFG3TNbhCYeusAO6t6yCCQ&usg=AFQjCNEnDI08zBYISqJlb_B1szwsNSeaUQ&sig2=IkAHypP2Ta4HfqKW_jFupg&cad=rja

This is a leap. How do you define "socially liberal" in any case?
Liberal in the social sphere as opposed to the political sphere: private morality, family life, the workplace, etc. If you want to avoid the word liberalism you could say Quebec is the most socially permissive part of Canada.

[Errigal]

Because the programs run by the RCC affected more people in Quebec, presumably. The other provinces were not subject to the type of bidding war I described either. .....

Well that's the question: how much the bidding war between the federal and Quebec governments to buy the goodwill of the populace matter when it came to adhesion to the RCC? So the obvious thing would be to compare the social changes within Quebec to similar majority RC communities in other parts of Canada. If Franco-Ontarians, Catholic Newfies. Catholic Cape Bretoners, Catholic Anglos in rural and urban Ontario, Acadians, Franco Manitobans etc experienced a similar estrangement with the RCC and social liberalization then the theory is disproved. I'd guess that it would be shown to be faulty.

Add to the list of communities being compared and I think the theory goes right out the window. Did Italy, France, Ireland and Spain change because of the federal-provincial bidding war in Quebec?



Liberal in the social sphere as opposed to the political sphere: private morality, family life, the workplace, etc. If you want to avoid the word liberalism you could say Quebec is the most socially permissive part of Canada.

Quebec has always been less puritanical than most of Anglo Canada on a number of matters and more strict on others. They are a different nationality.