Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Saturday, 17 December 2011
Left-Footers, Indeed
It is not yet online, if it ever will be, but my friend Michael Merrick has a very good article in this week's Catholic Herald, on why the Left is not the enemy of the Catholic Church. Do get hold of a copy.
I bet he is a friend of yours if he is writing for that. With your record of just getting rid of senior editorial staff who have crossed you and threatening to out them if they seek redress, he would not dare be anything else.
@16:12, would that be the one whose column from the print edition is the only post for the day on the newspaper's near death blogging site that he edits?
Haven't you heard, David Lindsay is a saint. Next to nobody bought Essays Radical and Orthodox but only a select few were really supposed to and they all did. They are rarely in academia exactly. But they are the coming doctrinally conservative, politically leftish power in the Catholic Church on this island and he knew them all already. He has been hanging around in those circles for years and years, he has contributed significantly to defining their position from a very early age and within weeks of becoming a Catholic. Through them if he wants to administer a vengeful kicking to the ageing godfather of some gay mafia, he can easily do it. He easily did it. A shot has been fired in the great coming battle for control of that newspaper. Lindsay and his cronies look set to win it. An article like the one he praises here could not have been published under the man we are not naming. But it was published this week.
Merrick is several years younger than Lindsay and this article certainly reads like a popularistion of the great man's thought. There is indeed a cult of him, an idea of him as the great white hope. It occurs in several contexts and that particular strand of Catholicism is one of them. Lindsay has an undeniable lack of baggage, no apparent business interests, no apparent relationships, past or present.
This is exactly on topic. It is about the rise of post-postmodern trad Catholic/Blue Labour synthesis embodied by people like Merrick (30-ish, if that) and you (mid-thirties).
Too many Catholics equate the Left with Marxism, but only one segment of the Left is Marxist, and that segment is not as strong as it used to be. There is a rich Social Catholic tradition that is out there to study.
Unfortunately, so much of the lay Catholic intellectual universe, at least in the United States, is dominated by fusionists, although I am not sure how long this will continue to be the case.
I bet he is a friend of yours if he is writing for that. With your record of just getting rid of senior editorial staff who have crossed you and threatening to out them if they seek redress, he would not dare be anything else.
ReplyDelete@16:12, would that be the one whose column from the print edition is the only post for the day on the newspaper's near death blogging site that he edits?
ReplyDeleteOn topic, please.
ReplyDeleteHaven't you heard, David Lindsay is a saint. Next to nobody bought Essays Radical and Orthodox but only a select few were really supposed to and they all did. They are rarely in academia exactly. But they are the coming doctrinally conservative, politically leftish power in the Catholic Church on this island and he knew them all already. He has been hanging around in those circles for years and years, he has contributed significantly to defining their position from a very early age and within weeks of becoming a Catholic. Through them if he wants to administer a vengeful kicking to the ageing godfather of some gay mafia, he can easily do it. He easily did it. A shot has been fired in the great coming battle for control of that newspaper. Lindsay and his cronies look set to win it. An article like the one he praises here could not have been published under the man we are not naming. But it was published this week.
ReplyDeleteMerrick is several years younger than Lindsay and this article certainly reads like a popularistion of the great man's thought. There is indeed a cult of him, an idea of him as the great white hope. It occurs in several contexts and that particular strand of Catholicism is one of them. Lindsay has an undeniable lack of baggage, no apparent business interests, no apparent relationships, past or present.
ReplyDeleteI mean it, on topic.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly on topic. It is about the rise of post-postmodern trad Catholic/Blue Labour synthesis embodied by people like Merrick (30-ish, if that) and you (mid-thirties).
ReplyDeleteWell, let's keep it on that, then.
ReplyDeleteToo many Catholics equate the Left with Marxism, but only one segment of the Left is Marxist, and that segment is not as strong as it used to be. There is a rich Social Catholic tradition that is out there to study.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, so much of the lay Catholic intellectual universe, at least in the United States, is dominated by fusionists, although I am not sure how long this will continue to be the case.