Of Ireland and Catholic Social Teaching

[Aloysius]

Forget hudge and gudge (for non-Chestertonians, that's liberals and conservative), Catholic social teaching requires something extremely different. Most social teaching you'll find out there is watered down to compromise with the modern world. There is something that's been burried and swept under the rug, and I believe the only place to rediscover it is in Eire. Because somewhere buried under the history of conflict and tradgedy there is something to be said of what a Catholic Nation would really be like. What Sinn Fein used to be, what Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum used to mean; it's all burried there. Where did Sinn Fein go wrong in implementing Rerum Novarum so much that it completely self destructed and resurected with the Communist Manifesto instead? That is the one mistake we need to learn from to ressurect Christendom.

And that is actually what Catholic Social Teaching is all about. It is all ordered towards the ressurection of Christendom, and I personally will accept nothing less than a campaign to truly make that happen. Now, America was never part of Christendom and I'm not sure it ever can be. But Europe is where the Faith was cultivated for thousands of years. Europe is the issue.

The Faith traveled northwest from its origin in Jerusalem to the entire Roman Empire. The barbarians of the North were the last to be converted, and ever since they have been the first to revert and cause trouble and havoc upon the rest of Europe. Ireland was one of the strongest of the strongholds of the Faith (England was too until the barbarians opened their minds towards shattering it). She has been most consistent through most persecution ever since the snakes were expelled by St. Patrick and the faith took root. Germany, sadly, has been the trouble maker. The Germanic barbarian tribes attacked Rome until they were converted, and eventually came in and shattered Roman Christendom later with Luther et cetera. And the worst thing of all they ever produced was Karl Marx.

Now we get to what has burried true Catholic Social practice in Ireland. It really has its roots in the barbarians of the North, like most of Europes troubles always do. Karl Marx and the European Union are really tearing the Irish people away from the true Christendom they ought to inherit as a reward for the years of persecution they held on to the true faith through. Sinn Fein, the only political party for the whole Island (Republic and North) used to follow Rerum Novarum. Now it seems to tie too much into marxism. Fianna Fail is dominant in the Republic and it's pretty socialist.

The Devil knows that Ireland is the biggest threat, that is why it has been burried under so much trouble for so long. Because Ireland has the POWER to pave the way to a New Christendom, with widely diffused prosperity and strong Catholic Faith. I believe it to be the only nation with the potential to truley ressurect REAL Catholic ideals. The only one that can set the world strait. If only it would not be so caught up in being like the rest of Europe...

So, what do all the Catholic hudges and gudges think out there?

Erin go Braugh

[ilovechrist]

BUMP

i'm definitely not one of this knowledge of topic, but surely there are others here who are.

[argent_paladin]

Ireland needs to save itself before it can save the world. And right now, Ireland is in no position to be the Messiah of the world...

[quote]    In De Valera's time the Catholic Church's power was vast, and it lingered on into the 1980s. No politician could contemplate proposing a law without winning the approval of the Catholic hierarchy. Divorce, abortion and most forms of birth control were in effect illegal. ...

    But as the country has become richer over the past two decades, all this has changed. Divorce was legalised only in 1995 and abortion remains illegal in most circumstances, but Irish family life has evolved to look more like the rest of Europe's. The birth rate has tumbled, and many more married women are at work. The abortion rate is estimated to have risen from around 4.5% of pregnancies in 1980 to over 10% in 2002 (mostly carried out in Britain); over the same period, births out of wedlock have soared from 5% to 31% of the total. The divorce rate is creeping up.

    Crime and violence are on the rise. ...

    As for religion, although almost 90% of the population still claim that they are Catholic, the Catholic Church is not the force it was. It fought hard against the legalisation of divorce, but lost decisively. It is hard to imagine the church in its heyday tolerating a taoiseach living with a woman who was not his wife, as Mr Ahern did for many years. ...

    It is not only churchmen who regret Ireland's growing secularism. David Quinn, a journalist at the daily Irish Independent, points to rising drug and alcohol consumption, a sharp increase in suicides, a greater incidence of sexually transmitted diseases and a growing “yob culture”. He suggests that with the decline of religion, society has lost a moral compass. ...[/quote]
From the Economist

[Aloysius]

which is why I was saying it's burried under all this garbage they have taken on. I'm saying that buried under there way back fifty years ago there was a great oppurtunity in which Ireland would have been one of the greatest Catholic civilizations ever. What went wrong? Can Ireland be taken back? It is still the closest to the final stronghold of Christendom in this modern world, the rural areas have not yet fallen.

Anyway, to me: the path to a Modern Catholic State lies buried in Ireland's history. Discover what went wrong and figure out how that can be made right...

I wouldn't count Ireland out yet.

[Mickey's_Girl]

I'm not a Debate Table regular, but I thought I'd weigh in to say that my Irish (Catholic) friend and my other friend who has many Irish (Catholic) friends both say that Irish Catholicism is, in many respects, not really Roman Catholicism (even though it falls under that rite). My friend who *is* Irish Catholic (and formerly a real-life Druid/pagan--her mom was literally the first Christian in her family, ever) says that the practice of the people is still ridden with paganism, and my other friend says that even the priests she met there don't seem to be in love with Jesus like one would hope.

This is, of course, merely anecdotal evidence from a small section of Donegal (both friends were discussing Donegal). I don't claim that it represents the country as a whole. But Ireland needs prayer for a revival of *love* of Christ, not just ritualistic obligation with no relationship.

Prayers for Ireland.

MG

[Socrates]

I'll pray for Ireland. I personally don't see much good coming out of the violence going on there (but I don't closely follow such things.)

As for the rest of Aloysius' first post, I think its Southern Europe-good/Northern Europe-bad position is simplisitic and silly. (I don't agree with everything Belloc wrote. He was a hopeless francophile who revered the irrelgious Napoleon Bonaparte as the restorer of Christendom.)
Rome collapsed because of its own decadence.
Most of Southern Europe is Catholic-in-name-only, and has the world's lowest birth-rates (hardly the sign of a vibrant Catholic society).

Do you really see a religious revival occurring in Europe?
While I would pray for one, I think to entirely write off America and place hopes in a European revival (as some Catholics have done over the years) is increasingly naive and unrealistic.

[Aloysius]

I'm just saying that somewhere burried under history there exists what a modern Christendom would need. I know southern europe and sadly even Ireland now has a crises of faith.

I sort of buy into what Belloc said in the sense that Europe converted from the south up and deconverted from the north down BASICALLY. While southern Europe is bad, compared to Northern Europe it's freaking pious!

Anyway I'm not writing off America, but America in its nature has never been a specifically Catholic culture. I'm considering where we could bring back an actual Catholic culture, in a Catholic Nation, hopefully eventually as part of an alliance of Catholic nations called Christendom all under the pope...

Oh and in response to the "paganism", people say that about Mexico too. People don't understand Traditional Catholic inculturation.. the myths and legends were the precursors to the True Faith that helped them convert. It's when we fail to recognize the merit of them that we fail to truly spread or even understand the real Faith. If it weren't for that kind of thinking China would be Catholic right now (but that's for another discussion).

it depends on what you mean by "lovign Jesus" and what is really the signs of whether someone loves Jesus. sometimes people confuse touchy feely stuff for showing love, and when someone doesn't get touchy feely about Jesus it might seem that they don't love.

I see Ireland as in a bad spot right now but holding A LOT of potential that needs to be tapped into. Ireland and Portugal and Poland are the three main nations I see to have such POTENTIAL. I'm not commenting on their current state, but in the break up of Christendom and the recent plague of modernism sweeping the world, those three nations held out the longest. For a sign notice that Ireland and Poland are the two European Nations with the strictest abortion laws (Ireland's are still stronger)

There is a threat and there is a crises. But way back fifty years ago Sinn Fein had the oppurtunity to really get Rerum Novarum APPLIED and working. The party died and ressurected as marxist... what happened? how could Rerum Novarum really be applied?

I didn't say I like the way any of Europe is now, but I see the most potential for an application of real Catholic Social Teaching (I'm mainly speaking Catholic economics here) in Ireland.

[Guest Eremite]

Catholic social teaching is an ironic spectacle, because it's a scandal to the right as much as it is to the left.

The Holy See recently published a Catechism on Catholic social teaching. I haven't read it yet, but look forward to doing so.

[Aloysius]

I should read that... but I love most to get back to stuff like Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and some of the insights into it written by Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Not that it would contradict the stuff now, it's just that I think people tend today to water it down to make it more "feasable" in the "modern" world. They turn the economics side into some liberal thing and they turn the moral side into some conservative thing. That's baloney. To go from the right-left spectrum into Catholic Social Teaching you must go so far to the Right you cannot even identify with the "conservatives" anymore, then take a turn and see why the left is like it is but realize their solutions are all wrong, take another turn and you'll find a tree. climb up it, hung upsidedown, and look ad orientum, to the east.

there are three directions in politics from my perspective: LEFT, RIGHT, and EAST.

lol.. something like that.

[argent_paladin]

I think the Church in Poland is a far more likely candidate. They are 99% Catholic, have an overflow of priests, are 10 times more populous than Ireland, are young, intellectual and vibrantly Catholic. They have the pope, many new pontifical institutes, growing religious orders and have first hand experience with both Communism and Capitalism. I think they are by far the best equipped for finding their way as a modern, free and Catholic country.
And you can't count out Lithuania either, it is similar to Poland, but smaller.
Abortion is highly restricted, family is valued and they are leading the fight in the EU against secularism, economic centralisation, etc.

[Aloysius]

you're probably right about that. I'm really just thinking of the TRADITIONAL Ireland, not what it is currently, and seeing potential in the path it could have taken and the oppurtunity to fix it and put it back on that path.

come to think of it, seeing as I don't have any clearly defined position or anything, this wasn't exactly the best topic for the DEBATE table. ah well.

I still think there's something there in its history that would shed light on how exactly to bring about a truly Catholic economy.

[MichaelFilo]

[quote name='Mickey's_Girl' date='Mar 23 2005, 01:12 PM'] I'm not a Debate Table regular, but I thought I'd weigh in to say that my Irish (Catholic) friend and my other friend who has many Irish (Catholic) friends both say that Irish Catholicism is, in many respects, not really Roman Catholicism (even though it falls under that rite). My friend who *is* Irish Catholic (and formerly a real-life Druid/pagan--her mom was literally the first Christian in her family, ever) says that the practice of the people is still ridden with paganism, and my other friend says that even the priests she met there don't seem to be in love with Jesus like one would hope.

This is, of course, merely anecdotal evidence from a small section of Donegal (both friends were discussing Donegal). I don't claim that it represents the country as a whole. But Ireland needs prayer for a revival of *love* of Christ, not just ritualistic obligation with no relationship.

Prayers for Ireland.

MG [/quote]
The celtic Rite was merged witt he Roman Rite as was the Spanish Rite (not the actual name at the time). Irish Catholicism is quite different in practice because it's deep roots in Celtic culture, but the Celtic Rite is long gone. As far as being the first Christian in an Irish family, druidry stopped existing in Ireland for quite some time. IT's hard to believe an Irish family was of druidic decent. It seems mor elikely that it happened at somepoint when England took over Ireland, because by that poin tEngland had spread into protestantism and of course druidry poped-up with that (no link whatsoever). Druidiry never was completley expelled from Britian and Scotland, but I am fairly sure it was not in practice for a while in Ireland.

God bless,
Mikey