Path of Totality Updates

[Stella]

I personally have a sense of the meaning of fundamentalism as a very basic attitude that can affect any group. That is, "I’m right and every person in society must accept this is the only permissible belief".

Do you detect a whiff of this in the material aaoo posted?

Nostalgia for a pre-Vatican II golden age, when it is assumed that Church never changed, was then a powerful force in the world, undivided by misguided devotees of the Council’s values.

A common issue all fundamentalists have is with the notion of religious liberty. Also with ecumenism, multi culturalism and the primacy of conscience/equal rights. Catholic fundamentalists want a world where Catholic power converts people rather than the grace of the Holy Spirit and evangelical witness. I interact with them everyday on the internet.

[Doom]

That is just an accurate description of the quoted essay “these are the people I hate and here is why you should hate them as well” is good one sentence summary

[Stella]

Fr Arbuckle, an Aussie who wrote about fundamentalism cited by aussie aussie above...is a globally respected anthropologist and nonagenarian. He’s been observing the Church within culture since before Vatican II. :FYI:

That doesn't mean that he isn't an uncharitable jackass in the way he characterizes the people he doesn't like, because that is exactly what he is doing. To use the language of the "woke" crowd, what he has done is to "other" a rather large group of people "Othering" means "to single a certain group out as inferior or worthy of contempt, ridicule, scorn, and social exclusion", this description is not anything more than a long list of insulting and demeaning terms, it is not a useful category or description, it is not useful for anything except to use as an expression of contempt for a vaguely defined group of people whom the reader is being called on to dislike and exclude. This kind of reasoning is the exact opposite of Christian charity.

I personally have a sense of the meaning of fundamentalism as a very basic attitude that can affect any group. That is, "I’m right and every person in society must accept this is the only permissible belief".

This is just another abuse of language, a word like fundamentalist used to have a very specific meaning, and not an insulting or derogatory one either, it originated as a self-description used by a certain subgroup of conservative Protestants who held to a set of more or less well-defined set or principles or doctrines. To extend it to mean something as vague as "someone who thinks I'm right and everyone else is wrong" is to empty the word of all meaning and turn it into an all-purpose insult, similar to other empty insulting words like a moron, creep, weirdo, freak, loser, or to put those thoughts into one basket fundamentalist, which now means all of those things and more, none of them positive.


And now that a formerly useful word has become utterly useless and meaningless, someone who wants to use the word in its original sense, such as a historian or a sociologist of religion, is unable to do so without preceding it with several long paragraphs explaining exactly what he means by the word. This is similar to other words that have become insults like "racist", "fascist'" or "Nazi"

Would you say that Pope Benedict XVI used it correctly in this assessment of a situation in 2012?

Pope Benedict described fundamentalism as "a falsification of religion," which goes against its true purpose as "an invitation to share God's peace throughout the world."

"Therefore the commitment of the Church and of religions is to undertake a purification of such temptations, to illuminate consciences and to try and provide everyone with a clear image of God," said Pope Benedict on Sept. 14 during an in-flight press conference on his way to Lebanon.

"We must all respect each other," the Pope told a group of journalists at the beginning of his three-day trip, "Each of us is an image of God and we must mutually respect each other."

Pope Benedict's condemnation of fundamentalism comes as anti-American protest spreads across the Middle East following the online publication of a low-budget film mocking the Prophet Mohammed, the 6-7th century founder of Islam.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news ... f-religion

[peregrinator]

I personally have a sense of the meaning of fundamentalism as a very basic attitude that can affect any group. That is, "I’m right and every person in society must accept this is the only permissible belief".

Do you detect a whiff of this in the material aaoo posted?

Nostalgia for a pre-Vatican II golden age, when it is assumed that Church never changed, was then a powerful force in the world, undivided by misguided devotees of the Council’s values.

That's a straw man though.

[Doom]

It is not just a straw man, it is useless as a description, what possible objective way could there be to identify such people? An insult, or a string of insults as in the long selection posted earlier is useless as a description of anything. If you don't have a reasonably objective way of defining the people you are talking about, you haven't done anything useful.

[Stella]

It is not just a straw man, it is useless as a description, what possible objective way could there be to identify such people? An insult, or a string of insults as in the long selection posted earlier is useless as a description of anything. If you don't have a reasonably objective way of defining the people you are talking about, you haven't done anything useful.

Profiling of ideologies has been a critical part of defining heresy and error since the very beginning of Christianity ie. Gnosticism. Also the profile of ideologies can and does evolve in successive era's. Pope John Paul II demonstrates that in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope...

“A separate issue is the return of ancient Gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age. We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practicing Gnosticism — that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting his word and replacing it with purely human words. Gnosticism never completely abandoned the realm of Christianity. Instead, it has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian.”

Similarly with the term 'modernism', I don't remember which of the Popes at the time of that era said it but he scoffed defiantly 'they may call us papists!'. Part of the modernists definition at the time was to disregard the authority of the Pope. Today it is fundamentalists that are accusing the 'modernists' of being papists and hyper papalists. So you see, definitions change.

[aussie_aussie_oi_oi]

434966726_10161153565746070_79802315339580317_n.jpg

[Stella]

You know by now, I hope, that I am anything but an extreme right-winger, but this is pejorative writing at its finest.

Might also have been said of St Irenaeus profiling of Gnostics...

“As soon as a man has been won over to their way of salvation, he becomes so puffed up with conceit and self-importance that he imagines himself to be no longer in heaven or on earth, but to have already passed into the fullness of God’s powers.

“With the majestic air of a cock he goes strutting about, as if he had already embraced his angel.”

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Catholic progressivism is an often aggressive reaction to the anxiety-creating turmoil of these two cultural and religious upheavals. It is an ill-defined but powerful movement in the Church to discard uncritically all pre-Vatican II structures and attitudes. Here are some signs of this progressivism among Catholics:

Eager anticipation for a post-Vatican II golden age, when it the Church will be a powerful force in the world for selected causes, undivided by misguided devotees of pre-Conciliar values.

A highly selective approach to what progressives think pertains to the Church’s teaching: teachings on social justice are obsessively affirmed, but Church teaching before Vatican II is ignored or considered a matter for debate only.

The vehemence and intolerance with which they attack co-religionists who are striving to relate the Gospel to the world around them according to the whole living tradition of the Church.

Attempts to infiltrate governmental structures of the Church in order to obtain legitimacy for their views and to impose them on the whole Church.

An elitist assumption that progressives have a kind of supernatural authority and right to pursue and condemn those who disagree with them, including bishops and theologians.

[Please note that I had to change virtually nothing in the above three points.]

A spirituality in which the overwhelming compassion and mercy of Christ is emphasized to the extent of obscuring the reality of sin and judgment.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Fr Arbuckle, an Aussie who wrote about fundamentalism cited by aussie aussie above...is a globally respected anthropologist and nonagenarian. He’s been observing the Church within culture since before Vatican II.

I'm sure he is highly respected by people in his echo chamber.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I don't expect you to agree with me; I do hope that you can see that there's a tendency to see in others what we overlook in ourselves.

[Doom]

I think Reinhold Niebuhr, of all people, did a decent job of defining Progressive Christianity:

"A God without wrath, brings men without sin, into his kingdom without judgment, through a Christ without a cross."

Although, in 2024 that would be regarded as sexist, transphobic and heteronormative. An updated version might be something like:

"A goddess without wrath, who probably doesn't even exist anyway, brings all 822 genders, but not homophobes, transphobes or Trump supporters, into her queendom without judgment, by Muhammed, Buddha or Krishna, but definitely not by Christ because he didn't exist, he's just a fable invented by the Patriarchal. bigoted and racist Early Church."

[gherkin]

It looks like I survived it. Anyway, I don't appear to be dead. Not at present. Anyone else?

[Doom]

I think I might be dead

[Stella]

I don't expect you to agree with me; I do hope that you can see that there's a tendency to see in others what we overlook in ourselves.

If that were a legitimate reason to dismiss an academic observation, you could say it of all academics.

[Doom]

It is not just a straw man, it is useless as a description, what possible objective way could there be to identify such people? An insult, or a string of insults as in the long selection posted earlier is useless as a description of anything. If you don't have a reasonably objective way of defining the people you are talking about, you haven't done anything useful.

Profiling of ideologies has been a critical part of defining heresy and error since the very beginning of Christianity ie. Gnosticism.

By accurately and with great precision and delicacy, describing beliefs they had, not just stringing together random abusive terms and insults. St Irenaeus didn't say "A Gnostic is a stupid. moron, a creep, a weirdo, a freak and a weirdo", if he had, we wouldn't have any idea what Gnosticism was.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I don't expect you to agree with me; I do hope that you can see that there's a tendency to see in others what we overlook in ourselves.

If that were a legitimate reason to dismiss an academic observation, you could say it of all academics.

It is not wrong to examine critically the biases that may be at work. I know some of mine; do you know yours?

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

It looks like I survived it. Anyway, I don't appear to be dead. Not at present. Anyone else?

I had a vision of a salad shooter ....

[Stella]

I don't expect you to agree with me; I do hope that you can see that there's a tendency to see in others what we overlook in ourselves.

If that were a legitimate reason to dismiss an academic observation, you could say it of all academics.

It is not wrong to examine critically the biases that may be at work. I know some of mine; do you know yours?

This seems to have drifted away from the academics and into the personal which I don’t think the original topic was about. But yes I’ve grown in all ways over the last 62 years and recognized and worked on overcoming biases some of which I remain a bit horrified by. When I was a kid, if we did something nasty my mother would chastise “don’t be a Jew” for example. I grew up really believing that Protestants would never be saved and that indigenous people were more close to animals than white people. Having an Uncle who was a Priest ordained in the wake of Vatican II made a huge difference for our growth as Catholics. It took time for Catholics of that era to embrace these new world views and I know that I certainly would not want to go back to those days. I believe that people who don’t really understand how those attitudes weren’t really Christlike are wanting to return to them. The criticisms of that are necessary.

[anawim]

This seems to have drifted away from the academics and into the personal which I don’t think the original topic was about. But yes I’ve grown in all ways over the last 62 years and recognized and worked on overcoming biases some of which I remain a bit horrified by. When I was a kid, if we did something nasty my mother would chastise “don’t be a Jew” for example. I grew up really believing that Protestants would never be saved and that indigenous people were more close to animals than white people. Having an Uncle who was a Priest ordained in the wake of Vatican II made a huge difference for our growth as Catholics. It took time for Catholics of that era to embrace these new world views and I know that I certainly would not want to go back to those days. I believe that people who don’t really understand how those attitudes weren’t really Christlike are wanting to return to them. The criticisms of that are necessary.

You paint with a very broad brush. I never heard the message that you did Pre-Vat II, and I have about 8 years on you. My mother was raised Presbyterian and converted when she married my father. She, and the nuns in school, only told me that they do not have the truth, or the fullness of truth, so pray for them, and evangelize as much as possible, with love of course. Leave the rest to the mercy of God. I also never heard any anti-racial slurs, despite growing up in the 50's & 60's. Yes, the southern part of the US had its problems, but not here in the NYC suburbs.
It was post Vat. II that the message of truth got garbled with poor catechesis. It was only after JPII that the message of truth returned. It was when I started attending Catholic conferences in the 90's, that my understanding and knowledge really grew.
Your experience in AU is not the experience of most Americans that I grew up with. Speak for "down under" if you like, but just understand it is definitely not universal.