tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post3591991363301137701..comments2024-03-29T10:53:28.617+11:00Comments on loon pond: In which the pond discusses the many failures of prattling Polonius, SSM hating fundamentalist Catholics and angry Sydney Anglicans clutching their complimentary woman doll ...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-23469980977022348402016-07-31T17:47:01.260+10:002016-07-31T17:47:01.260+10:00These days DP, we evolution believing agnostic pro...These days DP, we evolution believing agnostic proto-atheists would probably reference "arguing against a Gish gallop" as our chosen description.GrueBleennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-84917618874180564352016-07-31T17:26:53.026+10:002016-07-31T17:26:53.026+10:00It's not exactly "Catholic" TR, but ...It's not exactly "Catholic" TR, but I have always enjoyed this little bit from Tom Jones, of which I expect the Vati-can has its own version:<br /><br />Mr Thwackum:<br /><br />When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.GrueBleennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-30493312778073330952016-07-31T12:06:48.612+10:002016-07-31T12:06:48.612+10:00Reading Fr Brown, it seems Chesterton was prejudic...Reading Fr Brown, it seems Chesterton was prejudiced against anyone outside the Home Counties. His negative generalisations about Scots (particularly Protestant) & Irish, let alone Jews, Indians & Negroes (all brown people are "niggers", by the way), are jaw droppingAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13467071669624321286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-67556733727905151392016-07-31T09:53:02.389+10:002016-07-31T09:53:02.389+10:00"catholics" a soft target!
Never mind th..."catholics" a soft target!<br />Never mind that there are now more "catholics" in the world than ever before, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the human population.<br />Never mind that collectively the "catholic" church is the worlds third largest property owner, and has a huge and growing presence in world banking, especially in the 21st century due to the behind the scenes influence of opus dei.<br />Never mind too that it runs the worlds largest "privately" owned propaganda apparatus, the tentacles of which reach into almost every village on the planet.<br />Never mind too that the "catholic" church is also a very strong player in world politics altogether, especially via various Concordats www.concordatwatch.eu which grant it the "right" to trump any local laws that it deems to be unfavorable to its interests.<br />Never mind too, that all of the "princes" (ponces) of the church have diplomatic unity in every country.<br />Never mind that the vati-can has the status of a national state, with all the consequent privileges and immunities.<br />And why do many countries, including Australia have full time ambassadors in the said shit-hole.<br />Shit-hole because the vati-can is arguably THE single most corrupt place on the planet - even more so because it is mistakenly called the "holy" see. <br />And of course Belloc was deeply anti-Semitic, as was Chesterton too, though probably to a lesser degree.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-16830581519940461062016-07-31T07:04:09.246+10:002016-07-31T07:04:09.246+10:00Thanks FrankD, for doing the research the pond cou...Thanks FrankD, for doing the research the pond couldn't be bothered doing. As always, the pond turns to the pond's comments section for enlightenment ... especially that lovely Belloc quote, though as always, the pond prefers its NRA approved Glock ...dorothy parkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00816807935021738560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-91674817768201757942016-07-31T07:01:56.716+10:002016-07-31T07:01:56.716+10:00Love that Wells quote about a hailstorm Anon. The ...Love that Wells quote about a hailstorm Anon. The pond is sorely tempted to purloin it, because debating anyone at News Corp is very much like swallowing a hailstone ...dorothy parkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00816807935021738560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-33804471840548468452016-07-31T01:44:06.270+10:002016-07-31T01:44:06.270+10:00Speaking further of pedantry, the senile old pedan...Speaking further of pedantry, the senile old pedant has the quote wrong. It should be "The faith is Europe and Europe is the faith."<br /><br />But far more importantly, Belloc was <i><b>not</b></i> talking about Christianity, as Polonius claims. He was talking about <b>history</b>, and more particularly our ability to understand it. It is, perhaps, worth considering what brackets that quote (sorry its a bit long). After talking about the difference between others' view of one and ones view of oneself, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uZSDCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=europe+is+the+faith+and+the+faith+is+europe&source=bl&ots=9O_j8-98Cl&sig=fiVA_NXAkQI7MVkT6XwA-tKG5aM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUqZD5s5vOAhWBopQKHTMDBC44ChDoAQglMAI#v=onepage&q=europe%20is%20the%20faith%20and%20the%20faith%20is%20europe&f=false" rel="nofollow">he says</a>:<br />"Now then, so it is with us who are of the Faith and the great story of Europe. A Catholic as he reads that story does not grope at it from without, he understands it from within. He cannot understand it altogether because he is a finite being, but he is also that which he has to understand. The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.<br /><br />"The Catholic brings to history (and when I say "history" in these pages, I mean the history of Christendom) self-knowledge. As a man in the confessional accuses himself of what he knows to be true and what other people cannot judge, so a Catholic, talking of the united European civilization, when he blames it, blames it for motives and for acts which are his own. He himself could have done those things in person. He is not relatively right in his blame, he is absolutely right. As a man can testify to his own motive so can the Catholic testify to unjust, irrelevant, or ignorant conceptions of the European story; for he knows why and how it proceeded. Others, not Catholic, look upon the story of Europe externally as strangers. They have to deal with something which presents itself to them partially and disconnectedly, by its phenomena alone; he sees it all from its centre in its essence, and together."<br /><br />Now one may disagree with the specifics here (I doubt a Catholic has a privileged view of the Norse diaspora, or Lutheran Sweden's wars with Orthodox Russia, or anything much Balkan), but I don't think he's completely off. I would never devalue the view of the insightful "outsider", but it seems reasonable that the "insider" would grok the history of his/her own culture more easily. It's not so different from L.P. Hartley's "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."<br /><br />But what is splendidly, hilariously, daft about Polonius's dribble is that, having used a quote that expressly says actions can only truly be understood by insiders, he goes on to tell us what Muslims do and don't think. Sorry, Gerard, but if I want to know what a Muslim thinks, I'll ask a Muslim, not you, you tiresome old windbag.<br /><br />He should have stuck to more useful Belloc quotes, such as <i>The Modern Traveller</i>: "Whatever happens we have got the Maxim Gun, and they do not." Seems like that would be much more appealing to his readership.FrankDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-85964845399093962002016-07-30T20:59:36.341+10:002016-07-30T20:59:36.341+10:00Same prattling, same Polonius: everything old is o...Same prattling, same Polonius: everything old is old again.<br /><br /><i>(this week with a box of Jaffas and a bowl of popcorn)...</i><br /><br />No popcorn on offer, but there's 75,000 Jaffas repeatedly hurled from the world's steepest street <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/food-news/70313844/75000-jaffas-hurled-from-worlds-steepest-street" rel="nofollow">here.</a><br /><br />At least with a different year they do a different colour: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWDgsBRqGWM" rel="nofollow">Jaffa Race in Dunedin - vids </a> <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-88713091176066242302016-07-30T19:27:10.477+10:002016-07-30T19:27:10.477+10:00But Dorothy,we are blessed with a Judeo-Christian ...But Dorothy,we are blessed with a Judeo-Christian heritage and have the right to invade the middle East whenever we like.John Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15341782964283178701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462488453822156883.post-32845540782284519862016-07-30T18:47:50.413+10:002016-07-30T18:47:50.413+10:00According to Wiki Belloc and Henderson are truly a...According to Wiki Belloc and Henderson are truly a case of peas in a pod. A heavy bit of bromance seems to be going on there. It must be that Catholic thing.<br />I quite liked this piece from In Controversy and Debate.<br /><br />He was at his most effective in the 1920s, on the attack against H. G. Wells's The Outline of History, in which he criticised Wells' secular bias and his belief in evolution by means of natural selection, a theory that Belloc asserted had been completely discredited. Wells remarked that "Debating Mr. Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm". Belloc's review of Outline of History famously observed that Wells' book was a powerful and well-written volume, "up until the appearance of Man, that is, somewhere around page seven." Wells responded with a small book, Mr. Belloc Objects.[12] Not to be outdone, Belloc followed with, "Mr. Belloc Still Objects."<br /><br />G. G. Coulton, a keen and persistent opponent, wrote on Mr. Belloc on Medieval History in a 1920 article. After a long simmering feud, Belloc replied with a booklet, The Case of Dr. Coulton, in 1938.<br /><br />His style during later life fulfilled the nickname he received in childhood, Old Thunder. Belloc's friend, Lord Sheffield, described his provocative personality in a preface to The Cruise of the Nona.<br /><br />Polonius,always the crusader,always fighting from the rear.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com