alanjjohnstone
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Pope Francis is one of the most hated men in the world today. Those who hate him most are not atheists, or protestants, or Muslims, but by some in his own church. With more than a billion followers, the Catholic church is the largest global organisation the world has ever seen.one prominent English priest said: “We can’t wait for him to die. It’s unprintable what we say in private. Whenever two priests meet, they talk about how awful Bergoglio is … he’s like Caligula: if he had a horse, he’d make him cardinal.” Almost a quarter of the college of Cardinals – the most senior clergy in the church – believe that the pope is flirting with heresy. Last year, one cardinal, backed by a few retired colleagues, raised the possibility of a formal declaration of heresy – the wilful rejection of an established doctrine of the church, a sin punishable by excommunication. Last month, 62 disaffected Catholics, including one retired bishop and a former head of the Vatican bank, published an open letter that accused Francis of seven specific counts of heretical teaching. In 2015, American journalist Ross Douthat, a convert to Catholicism, wrote a piece for the Atlantic magazine headlined Will Pope Francis Break the Church?; A Spectator blogpost by the English traditionalist Damian Thompson threatened that “Pope Francis is now at war with the Vatican. If he wins, the church could fall apart.” The pope’s views on divorce and homosexuality, according to an Archbishop from Kazakhstan, had allowed “the smoke of Satan” to enter the church. Doctrine holds that the pope cannot be wrong when he speaks on the central questions of the faith; so if he is wrong, he can’t be pope. On the other hand, if this pope is right, all his predecessors must have been wrong. Francis’s cautious reforms seem to his opponents to threaten the belief that the church teaches timeless truths. And if the Catholic church does not teach eternal truths, conservatives ask, what is the point of it? To carry out its work all over the world, it depends on voluntary labour. If the ordinary worshippers stop believing in what they are doing, the whole thing collapses. Francis knows this. If he cannot reconcile theory and practice, the church might be emptied out everywhere. If all the church offers people is something they can manage without, Francis’s opponents believe, then it will surely collapse.The central dispute is between Catholics who believe that the church should set the agenda for the world, and those who think the world must set the agenda for the church. American cardinal Raymond Burke, who has emerged as Francis’ most public opponent. The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a group with about 600 members (men and women), had been placed under investigation by a commission in June 2012, under Pope Benedict. They were accused of combining increasingly extreme rightwing politics with a devotion to the Latin Mass.When the commission reported in July 2013, Francis’s reaction shocked conservatives rigid. He stopped the Friars using the Latin Mass in public, and closed down their seminary. They were still allowed to educate new priests, but not segregated from the rest of the church. What’s more, he did so directly, without going through the Vatican’s internal court system, then run by Cardinal Burke. The next year, Francis sacked Burke from his powerful job in the Vatican’s internal court system. By doing so, he made an implacable enemy. Cardinal Burke’s combination of anti-communism, ethnic pride and hatred of feminism has nurtured a succession of prominent rightwing lay figures in the US, from Pat Buchanan through Bill O’Reilly and Steve Bannon, It was Cardinal Burke who invited Bannon, then already the animating spirit of Breitbart News, to address a conference in the Vatican, via video link from California, in 2014. Among the bishops, between a quarter and a third are passively resisting the change, and a small minority are doing so actively. The leader of that faction is Francis’s great enemy, Cardinal Burke. Sacked first from his position on the Vatican court, and then from the liturgy commission, he ended up on the supervisory board of the Knights of Malta – a charitable body run by the old Catholic aristocracies of Europe. In Autumn 2016, he sacked the head of the order for supposedly allowing nuns to distribute condoms in Burma. This is something that nuns do quite widely in the developing world to protect vulnerable women. The man who had been sacked appealed to the pope. The outcome was that Francis reinstated the man Burke had sacked, and appointed another man to take over most of Burke’s duties. Burke had opened a new front, which came as close as he could to accusing the pope of heresy. Along with three other cardinals, two of whom have since died, Burke produced a list of four questions designed to establish whether or not Amoris Laetitia contravened previous teaching. These were sent as a formal letter to Francis, who ignored it. After he was sacked, Burke made the questions public, and said he was prepared to issue a formal declaration that the pope was a heretic if he would not answer them to Burke’s satisfaction. In February this year, posters appeared overnight in the streets of Rome asking, “Francis, where’s your mercy?”, attacking him for his treatment of Cardinal Burke. These can only have come from disaffected elements in the Vatican Full articlehttps://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/27/the-war-against-pope-francis
Been a while since this thread has had any contributions but the topics is still active in the real world.Steve Keen interviewhttp://www.dw.com/en/can-we-avoid-another-financial-crisis/a-41111841
Quote:Where are financial crises likely to arise next?First, it's important to understand that bank lending creates new credit and new debt in equal measure, by keystroke entry in double-entry spreadsheets. The British and German central banks have both published papers and videos in recent years explaining how this works. Banks don't on-lend deposits they take in from depositors. Banks create money — and debt — whenever they extend credit to a client, whether it's by means of credit cards, mortgages, or business loans.In most countries, the bulk of credit creation is mortgage lending. And when bigger and bigger mortgage loans are made in an environment of fast increases in house prices, i.e. in countries or cities where there's a major real estate bubble inflating, like Sydney in Australia or Vancouver in Canada, you get bigger and bigger private debt mountains.When real estate prices stop rising, banks reduce the scope of their mortgage lending, and debtors start trying to pay down their debts. They cut back all their other expenditures and focus on trying to keep up with their monthly debt obligations. This causes an economic slowdown, reducing incomes further, and so on, in a self-reinforcing spiral. This is how financial crises arise. Mortgage overlending and real-estate bubbles, in particular, are very often the main cause. So, look for crises to happen in any country which has excessive private debt, and especially countries which have big mortgage bubbles that are nearing their peak, but have no big trade surpluses in their favor to offset the growing domestic debt burden. An environment of low commodity prices combined with already-inflated real estate bubbles is a nasty combination, and both Australia and Canada are at risk for that reason.Dawkins position has been criticised by ourselves in more than one article so i won't dwell on your reference to himI returned to the migrants topic to see if i was guilty of personal disrespect to yourself. It wasn't until #53 that i accused you of being a racist, I gave you lengthy replies to your posts since that is what serious debate is all about, covering all the ground…And you, in return, responded at length point by point. I decided it was no longer a fruitful exchange and declined to continue it as i was frustrated by your state of denial…racism and racialism being somehow differentI may well have misunderstood your argument but i think not although pot and kettle comes to mind when you assume we agree with "social engineering and do not expect workers themselves to learn by self-education and i gave a concrete example to cement my case by referring to local miners attitudes changing to Lithuanians simply by experience of working alongside and sharing in the class struggle together as comrades in arms and not enemies.But i am pleased that you continue to take an interest in the forum and note that our case has been consistent in that we have opposed the 2014 Scottish referendum and the 2017 Catalan referendum and opposed the ethnic/religious poitical divide and rule tactics being practice throughout the world. Certainly, one sure thing we cannot be accused of is courting popularity by abandoning our principles
Yes, our position is not a popular one. And Diana Johnstone's second article describes the attacks on those who criticise Antifa.But ever since Mosley we have been consistent in defending democracy and freedom of expression. And we always pay a price for abiding by our principles.Our blog also posted this https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-right-way-to-fight-right.htmlNot sure if i'm 100% right but after they passed the anti-paramilitary uniform law against the Blackshirts, in Scotland the first time it was used was against someone in the Troops out of Ireland…for having on a black beret and a combat jacket, IRA-style. I mention this because it is so easy for crackdowns on freedom to have unintended consequences
You may have missed it but our blog drew had this post on antifahttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2017/10/anti-antifa.htmlThe writer Diana Johnstone (no relation) has just written another critique of antifa. It, too, is worth quoting from https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/25/the-harmful-effects-of-antifa/
Quote:Antifa contributes to this confusion by giving precedence to the suppression of “bad” ideas rather than to the development of good ones through uninhibited debate… Antifa is notoriously generous in distributing the fascist label. Most of the people Antifa targets are not fascists …By claiming to defend helpless minorities from a rising fascist peril, Antifa arrogates to itself the right to decide who is, or might be, “fascist”…Actual defense of a truly threatened community is best done openly by respected members of the community itself, rather than by self-styled Zorros who arrive in disguise… Antifa claims that it is in favor of free speech in general, but racists and fascists are an exception, because you can’t reason with them, and hate speech is not speech but action. This amounts to an astounding intellectual surrender to the enemy. It is an admission of being unable to win a free argument. The fact is that speech is indeed speech, and should be countered by speech. You should welcome the chance to debate in public in order to expose the weaknesses of their position.The Daily Telegraph take http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/10/23/universal-basic-income-may-hurt-seeks-help/
Perhaps some enterprising SPGBer will bring along a few copies of our latest book on the Russian Revolution to sell
My preferred option would be simply a storage space for our archives/records, easily rented and for the Party to go online totally, including the cessation of the hard-copies of the Standard except on occasions where special issues are printed to distribute at specific political events. All other literature – pamphlets/books – print-on-demand. Halls rented for meetings and conferences.My second best option for the transformation of HO into cafe/reading room/bookshop. We have a member who is in business as a book-seller who could have professional input. I'm sure some members have catering experience but i'm not sure of this but ech conference we lay on food. I would also like HO to be a resource centre…renting out our office space/ and meeting rooms to grass-roots radical groups. It may mean either broadly vetting applicants. We ourselves at branch level in Edinburgh make use of a Quaker hall and an anarchist venue without conflict of interest. i think you make a good case for regional offices to kick-start local activity. I knew Glasgow had branch premises at one time (and two branches). But neither Glasgow or Manchester or Midlands have contested elections in recent years. If local members cannot organise an election campaign, it casts a cloud over their capacity to do even more. So we have London, the Home Counties, ( Brighton already has Cowley Club and Folkestone the Lime Bar) and South Wales. At one time Cde. Johnson was keen on the HO being a Help Centre, not sure now if he is still keen this type of activity.I think we must also look at the need for paid staff full-time or part-time and all the legal ramifications of that.But another possible future is we become like the ILP, a publisher…but our book choice would be limitedhttp://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/about/ .
What is the purpose of having premises?To hold our records. To store our archives. To mail out the Standard. To host the occasional public meeting. To accommodate our two national conferences. To act as an election office and leafleting base every several years.Now, what is the cost to us?And what could be future costs be of the above functions without using HO?
Wouldn't it be desirable if folk like ourselves, Robbo, unable to attend were able to watch a live video-link of the proceedings?I assume the technology is available and within the capability of the Party to arrangeIn fact, isn't it technically possible that you and i and many others could actually participate directly via our computers with those meeting up in Clapham High St, Robbo?It isn't just only Edwardian language we remain wedded to, but Edwardian methods to communicate and interact and practice our democracy.
I think yo are ignoring the fact that there was mass participation in the Russian Revolution, as there was in the French and in the English and i dare say the American. Slavery wasn't ended by abolitionists but by the realities of fighting a civil war but the post-war re-construction showed that there was mass involvement of liberated slaves building a new South. A counter-revolution and Northern apathy ended it.The simple fact is that there was little documentation of it but flashes of the truth is glimpsed in passing references from those who like to say that they led the revolution. Mass discontent is what fuels revolution and participation is what differentiates social revolutions from purely political ones….i'm sure you heard the attitude…go to go and join the movement to lead it. But being smaller in number and with more identifiable interests, the capitalists are, as you say, more class-conscious than the workers. And Buffet said it well…there is class war and my class is winning…And it is raising class consciousness which is our task and i will be frank…our approach has not been successful but what is worse…we don't have a strategy that is any different from the past one. Nor do any other self-styled-socialists. That makes me pessimistic.
