Among the Flutterers- Colm Tóibín [Calumny from the London Review of Books]

[Tybourne]

Very subtle and snake-like, the most powerful depth-charges against the Church are laid by those who were nourished in Her bosom:

"In 1993 John McGahern wrote an essay called ‘The Church and Its Spire’, in which he considered his own relationship to the Catholic Church. He made no mention of the fact that he had, in the mid-1960s, been fired from his job as a teacher on the instructions of the Catholic archbishop of Dublin because he had written a novel banned by the Irish Censorship Board (The Dark), and because he had been married in a register office. Instead he wrote about the great gift of being brought up in the Catholic Church:

I have nothing but gratitude for the spiritual remnants of that upbringing, the sense of our origins beyond the bounds of sense, an awareness of mystery and wonderment, grace and sacrament, and the absolute equality of all women and men underneath the sun of heaven. That is all that now remains. Belief as such has long gone."

The rest of the article is here…

 

[colmcille1]

Very subtle and snake-like, the most powerful depth-charges against the Church are laid by those who were nourished in Her bosom:

"In 1993 John McGahern wrote an essay called ‘The Church and Its Spire’, in which he considered his own relationship to the Catholic Church. He made no mention of the fact that he had, in the mid-1960s, been fired from his job as a teacher on the instructions of the Catholic archbishop of Dublin because he had written a novel banned by the Irish Censorship Board (The Dark), and because he had been married in a register office. Instead he wrote about the great gift of being brought up in the Catholic Church:

I have nothing but gratitude for the spiritual remnants of that upbringing, the sense of our origins beyond the bounds of sense, an awareness of mystery and wonderment, grace and sacrament, and the absolute equality of all women and men underneath the sun of heaven. That is all that now remains. Belief as such has long gone."

The rest of the article is here…

Hi Tybourne,
Having read this article which is brimming over with hate, the one solitary thought that comes to mind is : hate the sin, love the sinner.
This beautiful precept of Christ’s Love is an alien concept to the writer of this repulsive essay.
I will continue doggedly to love humanity just as fervently as I will hate sin.
This essay reeks of so much warped thinking one is led inescapably to sad reflection.
This writer is a darling of the liberal media here in Ireland. No doubt he cherishes that role.
There is no platform within said media for strong debate because it is run by people who may claim that they are either personally “scarred” by wrong Cathechesis or whose friends are so scarred and they are sticking by their friends. The rest of us can take a run and jump as far as they are concerned.
Everything in this essay, from the arrogant placing of gays’ “private, wounded, solitary and self-aware…way of understanding” on the same moral platform as Our Lord right through to the deliberate misrepresentation of Pope Benedict XVI’s words and on into the grubby little hack’s methods of giving a lukewarm tut-tut to a vile gay book (but revelling in the fact that he has given it publicity) constitutes hatred. There is no other fancy or euphemistic word for it.
We are all of us moral agents. Gays too, whether they like it or not. Talk about not doing your “cause” any favours! This writer rightly should feel ashamed. But then, right and
wrong don’t figure on his moral compass. Sad.
God Bless,
Colmcille1.