READING AROUND AND ABOUT POPE FRANCIS' new apostolic letter in which he issues restrictions on the use of the 1962 Tridentine Mass, popularly, "the Latin mass," I was kind of shocked at how fast the actual use of the permissions granted by two of the more clueless recent popes, John Paul II (in 1988) and even more permissively Benedict XVI (in 2007) for the expanded use of it was given away. In short, the "Latin mass" was easily and effortlessly hijacked by Neo-fascists as a rallying point:
Among the first instances of the Tridentine Mass being celebrated in D.C. was at the prompting of Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan in 1992. In his book Right From the Beginning, Buchanan said that even during the Tridentine Mass he would read a book during the homily because after Vatican II the Catholic Church had become "the First Church of Christ Socialist."
So much for the Holy Spirit guiding the bishops as teachers at Vatican II. At the same time, Buchanan may have been ahead of his time by hiring a priest to celebrate "their" Mass in a high school chapel. I regret to say it, but I can sadly envision the volume of requests that those who want the (then) extraordinary form to be celebrated will make of schools and seminaries.
I believe his speech at the Republican convention that year was the one about which Molly Ivins said it must have sounded better in the original German. But, then, JPII originally gave permission for the use of the Latin mass in a move to woo the fascist schismatic movement of Marcel Lefebvre back into the fold - you remember the scandal about some of those Benedict welcomed back turned out to be Holocaust deniers, something that Benedict didn't look into before he made nice with that far right. Benedict's choice of aids and advisors may be among the dumbest in the history of the modern papacy. His secretary should certainly have checked stuff like that out even if Benedict, noted as a careful scholar, neglected to. I admit I have come to blame "Gorgeous Georg" for a lot of the worst that has happened during and after Benedict's papacy.
Some of the commentators I've read noted that with the rise of the internet, something which probably neither JPII nor Benedict would have predicted nor noticed much once it happened, there has been an enormous organization by Catholic conservatives many politically fascist, all of whom hold an ahistorical, romantic view of what pre-Vatican II Catholicism was, those I have encountered are positively addicted to bearing false witness, slander, libel, QAnon level fantasizing. Some of them read like an inversion of Dan Brown, ironically sounding about the modern Catholic church a lot like the anti-Catholic invective of Chick Publications.
I can understand the entirely more pastorally clued in and far less sympathetic to right-wing fascists Francis not wanting to so dramatically overturn his still-living immediate predecessor's fascist enabling (I assume clueless enabling) act at least not until Benedict dies but he was right not to wait any longer, he already waited too long. I think it might be too late as that cult which has the financial and media support of billionaire and millionaire loot is not going to disappear anytime soon. My guess is that they will, in fact, become a schismatic sect, probably taking with them some of the most corrupt current members of the hierarchy and getting the funding of billionaire and millionaire gangsters because they will be useful to their political and so financial purposes.
Someone who knew Benedict very well, as a colleague and friend when, as young theologians, they were advisors at the Vatican II sessions, the late Hans Kung, said that a lot of the worst things he did as Pope were due to him having lived entirely in the artificial realms of a university faculty and then in the most inside of the inner circles at the Vatican during the long pontificate of John Paul II. He may, as pope, have been slightly less of a generator of scandal than JPII, he certainly saw more of the dangers of not doing something more dramatic about the clergy sex abuse crisis than JPII did - though his own response was hardly sufficient (perhaps he didn't want to do something implying serious criticism of his immediate predecessor, either - he should have extradited Bernard Law's ass back to face the music). But his permission for the expanded use of the Latin mass and the entirely awful accompanying creation of the cult of the Latin mass has done great damage which will persist for a long time. And I don't mean only to the Catholic liturgy or the unity of Catholics I mean in promoting entirely secular and cultural right-wing gangster fascism of the kind that Pat Buchanan no doubt has been pleased by.
I hope that the bishops who are asked by young priests (pretty much anyone younger than 60, these days) for permission to say the mass in Latin is told to spend their time on more urgent pastoral matters:
If you doubt that the pope really understands the nature of the problem, look to Article 4 of the new letter. It states: "Priests ordained after the publication of the present Motu Proprio, who wish to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962, should submit a formal request to the diocesan Bishop who shall consult the Apostolic See before granting this authorization." Seminarians who are asking older priests to teach them how to say the old rite need to be more focused on improving their bedside manner for hospital visits.
I'll go into what I'd like to add about the world spawned by EWTN here but that would take something a lot longer than I've already written.
"I've never been a fan of his neo-classical period stuff, neo-classicism often being a symptom of fascism)."
ReplyDeleteYou're so right, sweetums. Prokofiev's "Classical Symphony" and the Beatles "White Album" are fatally compromised by admiration of Il Duce.
You put this in the wrong place, dopey. But I'll answer it here. I'll answer it with this:
DeleteThe first ever guide to the manifold uses and reinterpretations of the classical tradition in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany explores how political propaganda manipulated and reinvented the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome in order to create consensus and historical legitimation for the Fascist and National Socialist dictatorships.
The memory of the past is a powerful tool to justify policy and create consensus, and, under the Fascist and Nazi regimes, the legacy of classical antiquity was often evoked to promote thorough transformations of Italian and German culture, society, and even landscape. At the same time, the classical past was constantly recreated to fit the ideology of each regime.
I was talking about Stravinsky not Prokofiev or the mop heads. It is indisputable that Stravinsky, beyond any doubt the most significant of the self-consciously neo-classical composers was deeply into that in 1930 when he made his explicit support of Italian fascism, that connection is embodied in Stravinsky at that time.
Try googling neoclassicism and fascism, there are loads and loads of scholarly and other articles and papers discussing the link between neoclassicism and fascism, Nazism, even Trumpism. It's not my fault you're such an ignorant non-reader and non-thinker.
I had a few minutes so I looked up a piece I recalled reading in the NYT (reading, Simps R E A D I N G). It carries this quote about Prokofiev in regard to neo-classicism:
DeleteNeither a villain like Kabalevsky, nor a party-propped nonentity like Khrennikov, nor a doddering relic like his old teacher Gliere, nor even a mute witness like his great friend Miaskovsky, whose 27 symphonies describe a heartbreaking slide from passionate commitment into numb "Neo-Classicism," Prokofiev just went his methodical way. His exquisitely crafted scores strike his newly critical countrymen as unprincipled, aloof to the point of witlessness, even soullessness.
Richard Taruskin: NYT, April 21, 1991
I have always marveled at how he knowingly returned to the Soviet Union after tasting Western freedom, where he could certainly have made a good living, exactly at the time when Stalin's dictatorship was reaching its worst levels. It would be like someone voluntarily going back to Nazi Germany WITHOUT ANY INTENTION OF FIGHTING AGAINST NAZISM.
If you want to claim that Prokofiev's first symphony, "The Classical Symphony" of 1916 (a few years too early to count as "neo-classical") is an example of neo-classicism, it's not something Prokofiev kept up. Just which of the mop-head's White Album pieces are you referencing? Why Don't We Do It In The Road? "Rocky Racoon?"
Neo-classicicism is an esthetic,not a historical term.
ReplyDeletePGood freaking god, you’re a lunatic moron.
Stupy, you think that esthetic movements don't occur in history due to historical trends they arise, flourish, fall into decadence and then are surpassed in. Yet again you prove you don't understand the most basic things about how time works. It works on things, if you doubt that look in the mirror and really see what's there. And that's only what you can see on the outside of your head.
DeleteThis is too easy, Simps, come on, give me a challenge, not something I can bat down with both hands tied behind my back with.
DeleteCatch a fart and paint it green.
DeleteIf I had a dollar for every time you'll emitted that one I might be able to buy a new computer. I will admit that I didn't suspect how degenerate the world of college credentialed, uppper-middle-class, mid-brows was. Before going on Duncan's blog I hadn't realized how much TV and pop kulcha had rotted out the allegedly educated class. I guess wisdom should have been expected to have a cost, though being attacked by such a putz has been good for some unchallenging fun. So, Stupy, have you bothered to look up the massive scholarly literature that shows the links between neo-classicism and fascism and Nazism? In music but even more so in literature, painting, sculpture and, most of all architecture? It's a hot field in scholarship, though since it comes more than five decades after someone forced you to read something (or, rather, pretend to have read it) you're bound to not know about that. Your mind is one thing you do not want blown, though I'd imagine you're as incapable of having it blown as the thing you would most like to have.
Delete" So, Stupy, have you bothered to look up the massive scholarly literature that shows the links between neo-classicism and fascism and Nazism? "
ReplyDeleteSo you're seriously suggesting the Beatles White Album is Nazi propaganda? Good luck trying to push that twaddle past serious people. Assuming you know any serious people.
The only time I mentioned the White Album was asking you a question. I said nothing about it other than that. You haven't answered the question, which of the numbers on that piece of crap are you putting in the same category as Stravinsky's neo-classical compositions. Maybe its Revolution #9? Perhaps the most boring piece of musique concrete I ever heard outside of a student electronic music recital. I said nothing like what you, no doubt have informed Grandma P and the others who pay attention to you said I said when I said nothing like that. I have figured that along with you crying "antisemitism" so you won't have to deal with the fact that it's your assholism, not your ethnicity that makes people dislike you. If you make believe people said what they didn't say, you don't have to deal with what they said while pretending you did. Like what Rand Paul did with Dr. Fauci yesterday.
Delete"If I had a dollar for every time you'll emitted that one I might be able to buy a new computer."
ReplyDeleteNah, I've only used that joke with you a couple of times. The idea that you could buy a groovy computer for under five bucks is too idiotic to contemplate, even for a hick nitwit like you.
You've said it way more than five times, I'll bet you in your senile echolalia have said it thousands of times.
DeleteYou can buy one of the grooviest computers ever for five bucks, a Raspberry Pi Zero, for ten you can get it with WiFi, for fourteen with GPIO pins presoldered. I will bet you that those who think of computers as groovy would think that, knowing it's what you do with a computer that makes it groovy, not what you buy. I use one for word processing and another for editing music, I've got four of them, two I use, two I keep for spare and I'd still be able to pay for them on the Simp's fart joke plan. With money to spare for high-end SD cards and a hub thrown in.
FROM OUR DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT:
ReplyDelete"Come on, give me a challenge, not something I can bat down with both hands tied behind my back with. "
You know, I'm beginning to think you're not just illiterate, but probably also autistic. There's no other explanation for your continued repetition of these easily corrected style disasters,
You know Stupy, I tell you that you clulessly let me know how to push your buttons and then are shocked that I push your buttons as I push them again. And you still haven't got a clue.
DeleteOh sure. You're pushing my buttons.
ReplyDeleteNot only are you delusional, you're...uh, now that I think of it, delusional and having some kind of grandeur thing.:-)
You don't see me trolling your comments, if you didn't make your existence obvious to me through your trolling here and libeling me elsewhere I'd find it uninteresting enough so I wouldn't go looking for you. As it is,I look on this as a minor vice I engage in when my morals are at low ebb.
DeleteUh, Simps, I know those who love you wouldn't tell you so let me, there's nothing grand about someone pushing your buttons, a. it's not an intellectual achievement, b. it's too easy, c. they're not big buttons or small ones on someone big. It's not even challenging enough that it rises to an interesting exercise in word play, though I have a weakness for that. It's not because you ever rise to the challenge of trying to come up with an answer to a question like which numbers on the friggin' White Album did you mean were an example of neoclassicism. Which is something you brought into this and immediately started arguing as if I'd brought up the mop heads who I would not think of in terms of neo-classicism nor would I think anyone who had ever played any Stravinsky, or other, actual neo-classical compositions. There's a reason that when people think of Stravinsky it's the early stuff they almost always think about, me, I think almost all the discs I have of his music are either the early stuff or the late stuff when he abandoned neo-classicism for his own interpretation of 12 tone procedures. I think he got bored with the sterile note spinning. In comparison, I have never found Arthur Berger's or Aaron Copland's neo-classicism comparably uninteresting.
The White Album is neo-classical rock, and the exception of one self-consciously avant-garde tape collage was intended to be that as a corrective to the excesses of SGT. PEPPER. If you had ears you might have noticed.
ReplyDeleteAh, yet another example of the world of pop-"criticism" pretentiously using a term that is as inapt as the scribbler is inept. All I heard in either was the potential of generating unwelcomed earworms. I strongly suspect John Lennon would have been a Trumper had he not been taken out by one of his fanboys.
DeleteThe Mop Heads' music is about as far from relevance to what I said as it is from being in my record collection. I have never owned a Beatles album though I heard almost all of them a large number of times so they can come back like overcooked brassicas tend to. Someone said you claim to have burst out bawling hearing "In My Life"? I know the feeling but I have more self control than that. I detest nostalgia. It's not healthy.
It was The Beach Boys “Wouldn’t It Be.” And nostalgia has zero to do with it, as the record is by any reasonable criterion a masterpiece and a work of art.
DeleteYeah, yeah, big deal. Did you sob into your Shirley Temple?
Delete