Path of Totality Updates

[Kage_ar]

Per my friend in Little Rock, one of the gas stations in Conway, Arkansas is already sold out of gas!

[Kage_ar]

Hot Springs gas stations started selling out at noon today.

[Doom]

There is a story that has gone viral, and probably exaggerated, of a mayor in a small town in Arkansas who was asked to "prevent the eclipse" and his response was "I don't have the authority to do that", of course, authority isn't the problem, the problem is the ability.

[aussie_aussie_oi_oi]

So a quake in NYC, and the eclipse, is promoting end of the world predictions from fundamentalists (protestant and catholics).

[Doom]

A fundamentalist, by definition, is a conservative Protestant who opposes theological liberalism and practices separatism, that is, quit the mainline Protestant denominations and formed their own. There is no such thing as a fundamentalist Catholic.

[aussie_aussie_oi_oi]

Catholic fundamentalism 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 restore uncritically pre-Vatican II structures and attitudes. Here are some signs of this fundamentalism among Catholics:

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. The fact is that the Church and its teachings have often changed. Some statements have been shown to be wrong and were either repealed or allowed to lapse.
A highly selective approach to what fundamentalists think pertains to the Church’s teaching: statements on ‘incidental’ issues are obsessively affirmed, but papal or episcopal pronouncements on social justice are ignored or considered matters 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 Vatican II.
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 fundamentalists have a kind of supernatural authority and right to pursue and condemn those who disagree with them, including bishops and theologians.
A spirituality in which Jesus Christ is portrayed as an unforgiving and punishing God; the overwhelming compassion and mercy of Christ is overlooked.

[peregrinator]

An elitist assumption that fundamentalists have a kind of supernatural authority and right to pursue and condemn those who disagree with them, including bishops and theologians.
A spirituality in which Jesus Christ is portrayed as an unforgiving and punishing God; the overwhelming compassion and mercy of Christ is overlooked.

This could have been written by one of Francis's coterie.

[Doom]

Catholic fundamentalism 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 restore uncritically pre-Vatican II structures and attitudes. Here are some signs of this fundamentalism among Catholics:

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. The fact is that the Church and its teachings have often changed. Some statements have been shown to be wrong and were either repealed or allowed to lapse.
A highly selective approach to what fundamentalists think pertains to the Church’s teaching: statements on ‘incidental’ issues are obsessively affirmed, but papal or episcopal pronouncements on social justice are ignored or considered matters 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 Vatican II.
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 fundamentalists have a kind of supernatural authority and right to pursue and condemn those who disagree with them, including bishops and theologians.
A spirituality in which Jesus Christ is portrayed as an unforgiving and punishing God; the overwhelming compassion and mercy of Christ is overlooked.

You can't just invent your own personal definition of the words you use, words mean things, you are speaking as if you are Humpty Dumpty ("When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, neither more nor less").

[aussie_aussie_oi_oi]

Catholic fundamentalism 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 restore uncritically pre-Vatican II structures and attitudes. Here are some signs of this fundamentalism among Catholics:

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. The fact is that the Church and its teachings have often changed. Some statements have been shown to be wrong and were either repealed or allowed to lapse.
A highly selective approach to what fundamentalists think pertains to the Church’s teaching: statements on ‘incidental’ issues are obsessively affirmed, but papal or episcopal pronouncements on social justice are ignored or considered matters 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 Vatican II.
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 fundamentalists have a kind of supernatural authority and right to pursue and condemn those who disagree with them, including bishops and theologians.
A spirituality in which Jesus Christ is portrayed as an unforgiving and punishing God; the overwhelming compassion and mercy of Christ is overlooked.

You can't just invent your own personal definition of the words you use, words mean things, you are speaking as if you are Humpty Dumpty ("When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, neither more nor less").

I copied it from an Australian diocesan website so we are all Humpty's down under.

[zeno]

I really wish you wouldn't take things from other websites without providing the source.

[Doom]

I hate the way that words like "fundamentalist" which used to have an actual meaning become nothing more than just insults that people direct at anyone they happen to dislike.

Alvin Plantinga has a hilarious commentary in one of his books on the word "fundamentalist" which he mockingly defines as "a dumb son of a (censored) whose theological views are slightly more to the right of my own". He then notes the irony of how flexible the word has become in popular usage, so that according to the late John Spong who was one of the leading Progressive theologians in the late 20th century, in his book "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism" says that traditional doctrines like the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, and the resurrection are relics of "fundamentalism". But according to atheist author Richard Dawkins, Spong is a fundamentalist because he believed in the existence of God. (Based on what I've read of Spong's work I'm not sure he did, but that's beside the point.) And there are even other atheists who call Richard Dawkins a fundamentalist! If traditional Christianity, progressive Christianity, and militant atheism are all just different forms of fundamentalism, the word has no meaning at all.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Catholic fundamentalism 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 restore uncritically pre-Vatican II structures and attitudes. Here are some signs of this fundamentalism among Catholics:

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. The fact is that the Church and its teachings have often changed. Some statements have been shown to be wrong and were either repealed or allowed to lapse.
A highly selective approach to what fundamentalists think pertains to the Church’s teaching: statements on ‘incidental’ issues are obsessively affirmed, but papal or episcopal pronouncements on social justice are ignored or considered matters 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 Vatican II.
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 fundamentalists have a kind of supernatural authority and right to pursue and condemn those who disagree with them, including bishops and theologians.
A spirituality in which Jesus Christ is portrayed as an unforgiving and punishing God; the overwhelming compassion and mercy of Christ is overlooked.

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

[Doom]

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

Things like that are evidence of Plantinga's statement that the word fundamentalist, the way most people use it, means nothing more than "A dumb SOB whose theological views are slightly to the right of my own"

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

One noticeable thing about it is that an extreme right-winger would say much the same thing about the left, only reversed. This indicates to me that it's a caricature any way you look at it.

[Doom]

One noticeable thing about it is that an extreme right-winger would say much the same thing about the left, only reversed. This indicates to me that it's a caricature any way you look at it.

There is no equivalent insulting term that compares to "fundamentalist." Although I will note as I did before, still following Plantinga, the irony of the fact Richard Dawkins once described John Spong as a fundamentalist, even though I'm 90% sure Spong was an atheist (or at the very least he openly spoke about the need of Christians to abandon belief in God).

[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.

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".

When Pope St JPII referenced fundamentalism in his encyclical CENTESIMUS ANNUS (1990), it related to the communist totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. He wrote…

“Man was compelled to submit to a conception of reality imposed on him by coercion, and not reached by virtue of his own reason and the exercise of his own freedom. This principle must be overturned and total recognition must be given to the rights of the human conscience, which is bound only to the truth, both natural and revealed.”

He then referenced a reason why we must continue to resist…

“c) because in some countries new forms of religious fundamentalism are emerging which covertly, or even openly, deny to citizens of faiths other than that of the majority the full exercise of their civil and religious rights, preventing them from taking part in the cultural process, and restricting both the Church's right to preach the Gospel and the rights of those who hear this preaching to accept it and to be converted to Christ. No authentic progress is possible without respect for the natural and fundamental right to know the truth and live according to that truth. The exercise and development of this right includes the right to discover and freely to accept Jesus Christ, who is man's true good.”

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-pau ... annus.html

And it’s a reality today that Catholic integralism is an increasingly aggressive machine in places like Spain, Brazil and the USA wanting the same kind of political authoritarianism as the far left Communist regimes.

What is Catholic integralism?

“Catholic integralists believe that, “rendering God true worship is essential to [the] common good, and that political authority therefore has the duty of recognizing and promoting the true religion.” Contemporary integralists include Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. (quoted here), Patrick J. Deneen (Notre Dame), Gladden Pappin (University of Dallas), and Adrian Vermeule (Harvard). The movement has been endorsed in the pages of First Things, Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal, and its online home is a website called The Josias.”

https://uscatholic.org/articles/201910/ ... tegralism/

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

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?

[Doom]

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"

[Doom]

Let's talk for a minute about the origin of the word "fundamentalist".

The US Civil War (1861-1865) is one of the most important events in American history, so much so that in university and high school history classes the curriculum is usually divided into "Before the War (antebellum) 1492-1865)" and After the War (1865-Present) and the division is entirely justified because the war permanently transformed every aspect of American society, including popular religion. (See Mark Noll's excellent book "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (2006) for more on how and why popular religion changed as a result of the war.)

One of the effects of the devastation and mass death caused by the war was the rise of a certain kind of religious skepticism in the mainline Protestant churches (something similar happened in Europe following both World Wars). This new liberalism, as it was called even then, de-emphasized traditional doctrines, rejected traditional, naive views of scripture, embraced evolution, and focused on what was called "the social gospel" which later be renamed "social justice". As this new movement arose, it met opposition from traditionalists, as the controversy grew, many traditionalists came to the view that the denominations they belonged to had become so corrupt that they could not possibly be reformed, and they started to embrace separatism, and break off from the big denominations and form their own independent churches.

This, ironically, had the effect of making these denominations even more liberal. While the conservatives were still part of the denomination they could slow down the descent into liberalism and offer an alternative to the prevailing liberal view. With the conservatives gone, there was no one to apply the brakes and the move to liberalism went into overdrive.


The separatists had a general sense that they had something in common even though they came from different traditions like Reformed, Lutheran, Baptist, etc. In 1910 a pair of brothers who had earned millions in the oil industry decided to bankroll a set of 6 books titled "The Fundamentals" to unite the movement.

I have downloaded a copy of these 6 books, long in the public domain, onto my Kindle and have read significant portions of it, and I have to say that the popular impression that fundamentalists are just a bunch of dumb, ignorant, obscurantist hicks, couldn't be more wrong. The essays are well written, and display a degree of erudition and theological sophistication that I honestly didn't expect. The authors were largely seminary professors and historians, one was an Egyptologist. Even though I agree with very little of what I have read, you can't just dismiss these books as the work of "dumb fundamentalists."

There is a bit of a historical debate over where exactly the term "fundamentalists" to describe the people who agreed with these books came from, one school of thought thinks the term originated as an insult. But there is a second school of thought that believes the word originated as a self-description and only became an insult later. Regardless of which view is correct, this is the origin and meaning of the term "fundamentalist" and to use it in any other sense is to abuse language.

[VeryTas]

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.

So, for example, if someone is called an "uncharitable jackass"? ... Oops! ...