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Wednesday, March 30, 2016

THE LITTLE MONSTERS OF LIBERAL COMMENTERS

Praytell has a post on the death of Mother Mary Angelica. There were several comments that were mortal sins against charity and never speaking ill of the dead. Credit must be given that the blog administrator removed those comments and from the cadre of commenters there that are so typical of the lost souls of the 1970's generation.

Then more comments were added of the same nasty ilk. This morning I noticed that those comments too have properly been removed and the Comments tool is deactivated, meaning comments closed.

What has happened to Catholics in terms of faith, hope and charity in the liberal, progressive post Vatican II era? It ain't good and it is down right nasty, ugly! Liberal blogs and periodicals that allow for comments, like Praytell, the National Catholic Reporter and CRUX show forth in a brilliant way the failure of liberal Catholicism and that it is a nasty cauldron of insults and epitaphs. Who in the world would be attracted to this kind of Catholicism and her liturgies concocted by the same nasty groups? If there was ever a case for the Vertical crushing the horizontal, liberal, progressive, nasty Catholics are it and so too with neo-conservative, neo-traditional nasty Catholics.

Read about the following by pressing the following:

Mother Angelica's last days: priest describes her suffering, death on Easter



38 comments:

TLM said...

I always wonder whether those 'nasty comments' come from Catholic people at all. Happy to hear that the nasty comments about Mother have been removed. Mother was an awesome, remarkable woman who's love for the Lord Jesus was so very evident. When the Lord created Mother, He threw away the mold, and what a BEAUTIFUL mold it was!! She COURAGEOUSLY stood for the truth of Christ in His Church whether outside or INSIDE the Church. God help you if you offended her Jesus, you would have her righteous wrath to deal with, she was a warrior for the Bride of Christ. I am sure she is pleased with the Rosaries, Divine Mercy Chaplets, and all the prayers offered for the repose of her soul, but I am hoping she prays for us even MORE! We are still in the trenches, and the war is escalating big time.

May Mother Angelica rest in the peace of Christ. Pray for us too Mother!!

Victor said...

That the comments were allowed in the first place (and the first one was totally disgusting) shows all this current "no comments" policy is part of the ploy to get across the message represented by the beastly picture of her on that web page. Would it not be wonderful if the process of her canonisation be started?

TJM said...

Pray Sniff, thanks for the laugh. NO one is more il-liberal than a liberal and when they rant about the nastiness and controlling nature of the right, they are engaging in classic projection.

Jusadbellum said...

This is what happens when dissent is weaponized (or demonized). See, Liberals can (and did) protest, complain, foment black legends about "the bad old days" justifying their euphoric adoption of "anything new must be better" ideas. Feeling the wind at their backs (much like LGBTQ crybullies today), they scorned anyone who would disagree as prudish church ladies.

The 1960s and 70s was not a time of live and let live "open minded non-judgmentalism"... that's what the rhetoric was, but that's not how the Church operated when they unilaterally declared the Latin Mass over, unilaterally declared the past null and void and started "modernizing" everything including whitewashing the churches and tossing out popular piety, culturally significant songs, etc. and started introducing from whole cloth brand new songs, brand new "spiritualities" etc. to the dismay of Catholics.

Now ensconced in positions of authority, they declare any language they disagree with to be 'violence' or 'hate speech'. Thus forcing any criticism to go underground. No one can have an open debate on the merits of any change without being decried and shouted down by the powers that be.

Try begging to differ about anything to do with sexuality in the pop culture and you'll see how swiftly violence breaks out from the self-proclaimed 'coexist' crowd who simply can't deal with actual co-existence.

In the Church, we stifle almost all controversy - it's not represented on the Newspaper, or in Parish bulletins or in homilies. That Catholics disagree about almost everything is not even broached in homilies.

Nodding one's head to this disagreement, accepting that honorable people can (and do) in fact disagree about say, immigrant or capital punishment etc. would go a long way to making it socially acceptable to air disagreements face to face.

Instead we pretend we're all on the same page and then mute anything to do with moral controversy for fear of 'offending'.... we're terribly afraid of having the public argument because we've been trained to regard all public disagreement as explosive and negative.

So we all keep our controversial opinions to ourselves, and then are stunned when social change happens.

Anonymous said...

"There were several comments that were mortal sins against charity and never speaking ill of the dead."

Kinda like the lack of charity and civility found in: "THE LITTLE MONSTERS OF LIBERAL COMMENTERS"

Frederick (Fritz) Bauerschmidt said...

While hardly a disinterested party, I do feel that I should point out that liberals hardly have a corner on the nastiness market. As I recall, it was not a liberal who promoted the phrase "biological solution" to refer to the Vatican II generation dying off.

Anonymous said...

Is she going to have a Traditional Reguiem in the EF??? I think she would have preferred this to the OF form.

Anonymous 2 said...

How about the term “neo-nasties” for those of all stripes who post nasty comments?

TJM said...

Fritzie, what is wrong with the phrase "biological solution" It's just a fact.

Tony V said...

I don't and can't applaud Pray Tell for censoring comments. I didn't see them all, before they got removed, but I saw some and I found some of the critical ones in very poor taste. But liturgical liberals are notorious for stifling debate and dissent, and I can't approve of this censorship any more than I can of their removing comments that support the TLM (which happens there on a regular basis).

Crux is another story. For one thing it's not focused on liturgy and isn't geared towards liturgists. It tends to be heavy on the pro-homosexual, pro-abortion wing of post-Catholics, but now that the Boston Globe is out of the picture that's likely to wane. It also focuses tiresomely on Pope Francis, as if being Catholic is all about the pope.

Anonymous said...

By Bee (my OpenID doesn't work):

When my mom was dying (at 98 year old!) in the hospital, I told them I wanted a very minimum of any pain killer to be used, and only when necessary (for instance, her obvious distress). They wanted to give her a morphine drip (who knows at what rate they would have cranked it up to.) I refused. My mother had been a staunch Catholic all her life, a fearless and brave woman who suffered many physical pains throughout her long life. She was no lightweight when it came to the cross of suffering. At the time of her dying, she could not speak for herself, but I knew she would want to "offer it up" and suffer with Jesus at end of her life.

When I tried to patiently explain to the palliative care guy that, as Catholics, we understand and believe in the value of redemptive suffering, and so a very minimal, if any, amount of morphine would be wanted or needed, he was visibly horrified. They acted like I was crazy. Luckily (or should I say, providentially) Our Lord sent a very holy priest (the chaplain for the hospital who had come by just to see how she was doing) and he backed me up with them.

My mom was a trooper to the end. With just a very minimum of morphine (1 mg lasted 8 hours or more) she rested comfortably as the pneumonia progressed. She clutched a crucifix in her hand during her last hours. Father gave her the Last Rites, the Apostolic Blessing, and Viaticum (which I received in her stead, since she was not opening her eyes and we did not know if she could or would swallow.) We prayed very much at her bedside, out loud, assuming she could still hear us and maybe pray along. At no time was she was in obvious discomfort or pain, and finally, as her oxygenation dropped, her bodily functions stopped, and she breathed her last.

When I read the account of Mother Angelica's death, I realized I did very much the same for my mom as Mother Angelica had requested her caretakers do for her: I did everything I could to help my mom live. I did give in to use of a little pain killer (they tell you it helps them breathe, so I let them administer the 1 mg dose) but also respected the possibility of redemptive suffering. Anyway, I am so glad Our Lord helped me to do the right thing.

God bless Mother Angelica for being willing to suffer for and with Our Lord.

As for the nasty commenters, well, maybe one day some of these people will begin to realize that we can sin in thought, word or deed. So even those who didn't write an unkind thing but willfully thought it should realize a confession is necessary, and those who wrote it committed the sin in deed. Well, I guess we should pray for them.

Anonymous said...

What puzzles me is that the praytell moderator deleted the positive/ non-hateful comments as well. While it is true that the liberals are from being the only nasty ones, their nastiness is a bit more puzzling since they attack such language in people on the other side. The praytell moderator is a great case in point: he admonishes people for their polemical language but then himself arguably uses such language and allows those in his inner circle to use it. For example, disparagement of the extraordinary form (oops i mean "old abrogated unreformed liturgy") is ok, but objecting to such language and answering charges made against it may get one banned. In the end they come off as saying "How dare you talk to us in the same manner that we talk to you?!"

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Deacon FB I get my share of nasty comments concerning Pope Francis, most of which I don't post although I hate being a gestapo in this regard. Nastiness in commenting on blogs,etc is epidemic and I don't think people in a face to face communication would be so mean-spirited.

What I find unfortunate about Praytell's narrowness is that its ideology wouldn't allow positive comments about Mother Angelic precisely because she was such a lightening-rod opposing the dictatorship of theological progressiveness in the Church. She, a woman by the way, happen to be the most powerful Catholic leader in the Catholic Church. You would think a progressive blog like Praytell would praise her for this--a pioneer of sorts in women's leadership in the Church. But no, her leadership led to a recovery of pre-Vatican II habits, liturgical piety, promotion of ad orientem in the OF and support for the EF and respect for orthodox Catholic teaching.

I find it shameful that Praytell would delete positive comments about Mother Angelica because she doesn't fit its narrow ideology. That a Catholic institution and Benedictines who should be leading the way in liturgy and not dragging us back to the 1970's is rather sad.

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

Fr. McDonald, you regularly approve for posting comments that are "insulting to others," that are nothing but "name calling," and that show disrespect to clergy and laity. This, in spite of the fact that you state explicitly that these "will not be published."

How do you, then, have the gall to say that you find it "shameful" that PrayTell, or any other blog, moderates the comments that are offered for publication.

TJM said...

Fr. Kavanaugh, alas, some members of the clergy have earned that disrespect because they are intellectually dishonest and engage in the very antics they condemn. I find it amusing that a priest can trash the Pope, their bishop, etc., but DON"T you DARE let me have it when it is justly deserved!

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

TIM - This is not about what you or anyone else thinks a member of the clergy "deserves." It is not about your questionable judgment regarding their intellectual dishonesty, a judgment that may very well be wrong.

If Fr. McDonald is going to have rules and, then, blatantly disregard those rules, he has little space to criticise other blog managers for what they do in terms of posting or not posting comments.

TJM said...

Fr. Kavanaugh, thanks for the laugh. You are exhibit A

Fr Martin Fox said...

Father:

Thanks for this post. And you are correct, this nastiness is not limited to the "progressives." I have seen some sites, as we all have, where the vitriol toward the Holy Father makes my blood run cold. Sorry to say, I expect more from those who claim to be totally traditional; because so many self-described "progressives" make it very clear they have no use for hierarchy or deference to authority anyway. But not so traditionalists.

The thing is, the comments section of any site is a kind of mirror. It should tell the proprietors of the site something about the fruit their work is bearing. After years of reading the National (so called) Catholic Reporter online, I have formed the conclusion that its commenters are overwhelmingly either not Catholic at all, or only have a tenuous relationship to the Church.

Now, PrayTell is a special case. The editorial decisions of that blog are highly questionable. Anyone who pays attention can see that comments are deleted not simply because they are offensive, but simply because their point of view is unwelcome. I know from personal experience of a situation in which comments were "closed" -- only to have them reopened precisely to admit a comment that was attacking someone -- me -- and then the comments were promptly closed, again. And I've seen them closed to prevent comments that expressed positive sentiments or rebuttals they didn't want.

TJM said...

Father Fox,

On college campuses today they are called "snowflakes." I have generally found liberals to be nastier, unwilling to debate the substance but very quick to call you a moron or a Nazi. This behavior is fueled either by a lack of confidence in their own positions or an arrogant attitude that only they they possess the truth. I recall that it was either Gallup or Pew Research a year or so back concluded that so-called liberals are nastier on blogs than conservatives.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Fr. Fox, my biggest gripe with their comments policy is that Fr. A shuts down conversations if they become traditional. In fact the traditional comments and the bantering back and forth is what made the blog interesting to read. Today with its sterile progressive ideology strictly enforced it is as blah and sterile progressive liturgies are.

The fact that positive comments concerning Mother Teresa were removed as well as those that denigrated her tells you how insecure the blog moderator is when there is anything said positive about either a traditionally celebrated OF Mass, or God forbid, the EF Mass.

I agree, I expect more from traditionalists in terms of defending the pope whoever His Holiness is. When Pope Benedict was Pope and the new and glorious English translation was revealed and promulgated, the nastiness towards Pope Benedict at Praytell was overwhelming and the comments were left to stand since Fr. A had an ax to grind. It was very sad and I felt that if the shoe were on the other foot traditionalists would still defend the pope. In fact I stated in one comment at Praytell years back when they were bashing the Holy Father that I would stand behind any pope, not just a Benedict type, even if I didn't appreciate all that the pope was doing.

We who are traditionalist in the true sense must defend the reigning pope no matter what although constructive, respectful disagreements can be made in the right way.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Mother Angelica of course, not Mother Teresa.

Anonymous said...

Traditionalists are not shut out of the comments section on the PrayTell blog. The suggestion that they are is simply not true.

Nastiness is shut out, whether it comes from the traditionalists or the progressives.

TJM said...

Anonymous, so you are calling Fathers McDonald and Fox liars, Well the liar is you. I was cut off from PraySniff because I suggested the Propers replace the 4 Hymn sandwich

Anonymous said...

I suggest you were cut off from PrayTell because you say things like "Pray Sniff."

Fr Martin Fox said...

TJM said:

...or an arrogant attitude that only they they possess the truth.

Bingo.

Father A. at PrayTell is always cutting off discussion of the merits of the actual implementation of Vatican II, and of what ought to be the right approach to interpreting Vatican II. When I've seen him do so, he uses one of two reasons. One is that the discussion becomes tiresome; and, I agree, it can. But the other reason he gives is some variant of, it's well established that Vatican II means such-and-such, or "that ship has sailed," which are just another way of saying, no one at his blog is going to offer any alternative view on that subject. Of course, the blog belongs to him and whoever he shares control with, so he gets to make the rules. But it is as you say.

TJM said...

Anonymous, of course I wouldn't say Pray Sniff. When are you going to apologize to Fathers McDonald and Fox for your falsehoods about them?

Father Fox, I remember one "liberal" priest when I cornered him about the actual language of Sacrosanctum Concilium, e.g. Latin Mass is to be preserved, the faithful are to learn to sing in Latin the parts of the Mass pertinent to them, he told me quite confidently that those provisions had been superseded. When I asked for his supporting authority he just got angry and walked away.

Fr Martin Fox said...

TJM:

Yes, that sort of interaction is rather typical.

When the new translation of the Missal was being introduced a few years back, the diocese here spent a lot of time with seminars for the priests to review the texts. And I recall one priest at one of the sessions venting fury about the new translation.

But the funny thing was, his complaint was not -- repeat, not -- that the new translation had either misrepresented the meaning of the underlying Latin prayer; nor that the resulting English was too muddled or difficult to say. No, his complaint was the ideas expressed by the prayer. They were too medieval! Did he allege that this was a misrepresentation of the actual content of the prayer in Latin. No, he did not. On the contrary, that was his complaint: the prior translation had obscured -- and thus, changed -- the meaning of the prayer, and that's what he wanted to continue!

Similarly, the actual text of Vatican II is not what's important to so many of these folks. They want what they want; if Vatican II can be made to support the agenda, so much the better; but if not, as your interlocutor said, "those provisions have been superseded." Brilliant!

Fr Martin Fox said...

Anonymous:

I will happily tell the rest of my experience of PrayTell's dishonesty if you wish. Simply ask.

Anonymous said...

I just saw the april fool's post at praytell, it's jaw droppingly catty. It basically implies that Mother Angelica's approach to Catholicism is something Trump would like. And that the shrine there is in the style that Trump likes. Ouch.

TJM said...

Anonymous, that's why I call it "PraySniff." They are exhibit A for the sickness and lack of charity which pervades "liberal" catholicism.

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

Fr. Fox - I, too, attended presentations on the New Translation. Many present did express concerns over 1) the rules for translations as found in LA, and 2) the resulting muddled English texts we have now. One priest noted that we were all going to sound like an admixture of Hyacinthe Bucket and Yoda.

The ideas are fine, the expression of those ideas is, I think, very much wanting in many cases. Throughout the Easter season the prefaces speak of our being "overcome with Easter Joy." "Overcome" may well be a literal translation of the Latin, but it misses the mark, I think, is describing our state.

Also, this "participation at the altar." "Participation" is an odd way to speak of what we are doing at mass, what we are doing in communion.

And then there's the collect for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: "O God who show the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor."

"...give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christian..." is much more elegantly and understandably rendered "...give all who profess the Christian faith..." or "...give all who hold the faith of Christ..." or some other from.

These are but a few examples. In many places the rules of LA have resulted in disjointed, run-on English sentences. As Fr Sidney Griffiths, I believe, has noted, men of exceptionally high education and erudition complain to him that, halfway through a text, they come to the point of having no idea what is being prayed.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

It's the Italian phraseology that the Latin exudes and we now have on a glorious retranslated Mass. I love it as it is often how I heard my mother speak English and I do too as well as write it, that is English the way you highlight the translation which is glorious!

But apart from that only academics and religious professionals complain about it! Not those grandmotherly Catholics Pope Francis so admires. No one on the simple periphery is complaining just the religeous professionals and we know how the Holy Father feels about the Pharisees.

TJM said...

The left-wing loons who destroyed the sacred liturgy complain about the new Mass translation. Asking them their opinion on the Mass translation is like asking the Europeans how to avoid starting a World War

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

Italian phraseology is fine . . . for Italians. Not so much for English speakers.

Anonymous said...

With 20-30 percent of Catholics in the USA attending Sunday Mass, the new English translation is the least of our problems. Back to Pray Tell: it started out as an interesting blog but has recently become an elite closed circle of liberal liturgists all cut from the same cloth. The fact is that they're a big yawn and the less said about them the better. Mother Angelica's legacy will outshine all of their blog members put together, and I can't help but notice a little envy there. I pray for them: the first thing they need to to do is change the name of their blog, one of the worst puns for a blog ever.

TJM said...

FR. Kavanaugh is the quintessential Pray Sniff devotee

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

TJM - No, I'm not a devotee of PrayTell Blog. I read it from time to time and sometimes comment. Mostly I learn from the "elites" who are frequent posters there. They know their history and their theology.

I also enjoy the fact that certain people are banned from the blog because they cannot add much, if anything, to an adult conversation, even a conversation that includes full-throated disagreement. It makes for more pleasant and useful reading.

And PrayTell frequently publishes posts from the "traditionalist" side of the coin.

TJM said...

Fr. Kavanaugh, nice to know you're in favor of a blog that blocks comments from your brother priests, like Father Fox, who always comes across as eminently reasonable. Scratch a liberal, find a fascist!