Cross on summit of Carrauntoohil cut down with angle grinder (Warning: contains TLAs)

katydid

goose2005 wrote: »

No, prayer or an open-air mass are an expression of religious faith. Erecting crosses is marking territory, like spraying a graffiti 'tag' or pissing on a tree.

That's your opinion.

lazygal

katydid wrote: »

That's your opinion.

Of course it is. Who else's would it be?

katydid

lazygal wrote: »

Of course it is. Who else's would it be?

ONLY your opinion...

Delirium

katydid wrote: »

That's your opinion.

care to offer an alternative explanation for erecting a cross that isn't an expression of religious faith?

lazygal

katydid wrote: »

ONLY your opinion...

It's not mine.
What's your opinion on the erecting of a Christian symbol of worship?

lazygal

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Religiously observant/follower of a doctrine is what I meant, not brainwashing. But interesting nonetheless the willingness in some quarters to see oppression at every turn.




Just hypocrisy, and as often happens, an unwillingness to think one's position on an issue through. Perhaps they just find it harder to hate people they know.






That's it! The cross should've been replaced with an Inanimate Carbon Rod.

IN ROD WE TRUST. USA USA USA etc.

obplayer

katydid wrote: »

ONLY your opinion...

No it's mine too.

challengemaster

katydid wrote: »

ONLY your opinion...

If you're implying they're the only person in the world with that opinion and nobody else agrees with them, you'd be wrong.

Similarly I'd associate sticking crosses and other religious symbols everywhere as "being seen to be religious" rather than actually being religious. No more than the "patriotism" in the US, american flags hanging everywhere - to be seen to do something by everyone is much more important than to actually do it. Same mentality applies to the largely fair-weather christians of today.

scotchy

obplayer wrote: »

No it's mine too.

And mine.


.

shruikan2553

katydid wrote: »

ONLY your opinion...

It would be my opinion too. What is the purpose of putting up crosses?

Its not like they gather holy energy to make prayers more powwerful.

J Mysterio

magicbastarder wrote: »

i think you missed the point.
dismissing someone else's belief as being a result of indoctrination can come across as highly patronising.

Patronising the majority of the population no less. So arrogant.

greasepalm

money in scrap metal.

gctest50

greasepalm wrote: »

money in scrap metal.

more money when you can convince some middle class white bitch a particular prayer in a particular spot will cure what ails them



.

When I thought this was just vandalism, I was quite ambivalent about replacing it, up to the landowner etc.

However, now that I see they have issued "demands", they deserve to be locked up, and a bigger cross put in its place..

jank

robindch wrote: »

There are at least two people, both atheists, both well known to Michael Nugent, who are from Kerry and who have been to the top of Carrauntoohil and who have seen, and are familiar, with the cross there.

I hope this calms your fear that AI is not "inclusive".

Well that is even a lamer excuse if AI put out an official line that they did not even know that this cross or similar crosses exist on the summit of Irish mountains. Shows them up as incompetent and reactive. AI not as slick as they think they are.

jank

shruikan2553 wrote: »

By your logic then anyone who didnt see the cross being cut down cant care about it. Of course I am expecting "no no, thats different" and more moving of goalposts until we eventually get a very narrow definition that just so happens to about AI.

At least if you would just say their opinion doesnt matter because they are godless heathens we would see where you stand.

What makes you think that I am not one of those 'godless heathens'? Just because someone disagrees with AI and the general view taken on this forum does not make them a Catholic priest.

jank

seamus wrote: »

I like how so many people have assumed there is some atheism relevance in this whole thing.

Atheism is like the new "Pagan". Anyone who's not Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jewish is automatically a filthy baby-eating atheist.

This is kinda correct in the extreme examples. However, on the other hand any who critiques AI or this vandalism or indeed any cross being displayed in a public placed is a right wing catholic fascist. No side here is without sin, pardon the pun.

seamus wrote: »

Now they've grown up and had families and and in order to secure a decent future for their children, they find themselves having once again to play the nice face to that same priest, who has no reason or qualification to be at all involved in education.

And they're sick of it. Incidents like this in rural Ireland will become more commonplace until the catholic church is removed from all state schools.

That is a dangerous road to take. What you are essentially saying is that because 'A' happened 'B' will take place and is somewhat justified until 'C' happens. This is the exact mindset that kicked of 30 years of murder and slaughter by the PIRA in the north, all in our name apparently.

Actions such as these will only harden mindsets and create polarisation among the community. As I said there seems to be a big rural/urban divide in this and AI does not seem to represent the average rural non catholic as much as they would like to think.

There are better ways to go about getting the RCC out of schools then illegal activity tbh. I am sure you agree with me there. This act was pointless.

jank

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

It's a fear of "what will the neighbours say". I get it quite a lot when contentious issues come up in my role with the local GAA club. You've got to remember too that rurally everybody knows you, and quite often in a parish everybody is a member of one or more of a small number of families who've been living in the same area for generations.
While people are a lot more open and free in what they say, and what they express about their true feelings, rural Ireland is only very slowly getting rid of the old bad habit of omerta.

People being more 'conservative' in rural settings is not news and is certainly not an Irish only concept. This urban/rural divide is common in almost every country in the world. From Australia to Iran, from France to China.

obplayer

jank wrote: »

Atheism is like the new "Pagan". Anyone who's not Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jewish is automatically a filthy baby-eating atheist.

This is kinda correct in the extreme examples. However, on the other hand any who critiques AI or this vandalism or indeed any cross being displayed in a public placed is a right wing catholic fascist. No side here is without sin, pardon the pun.




That is a dangerous road to take. What you are essentially saying is that because 'A' happened 'B' will take place and is somewhat justified until 'C' happens. This is the exact mindset that kicked of 30 years of murder and slaughter by the PIRA in the north, all in our name apparently.

Actions such as these will only harden mindsets and create polarisation among the community. As I said there seems to be a big rural/urban divide in this and AI does not seem to represent the average rural non catholic as much as they would like to think.

There are better ways to go about getting the RCC out of schools then illegal activity tbh. I am sure you agree with me there. This act was pointless.

If you are comparing 30 years of murder and mayhem to cutting down an ugly cross on a mountain then I frankly do not know what to say.

seamus

jank wrote: »

That is a dangerous road to take. What you are essentially saying is that because 'A' happened 'B' will take place and is somewhat justified until 'C' happens. This is the exact mindset that kicked of 30 years of murder and slaughter by the PIRA in the north, all in our name apparently.

Actions such as these will only harden mindsets and create polarisation among the community. As I said there seems to be a big rural/urban divide in this and AI does not seem to represent the average rural non catholic as much as they would like to think.

There are better ways to go about getting the RCC out of schools then illegal activity tbh. I am sure you agree with me there. This act was pointless.

I see you've made the exact error I was calling out in my post by assuming there was any link between this act and atheism, or Atheism Ireland and anti-Catholicism in general.

One can point out the reasoning behind actions without condoning them.

Turtwig

gctest50 wrote: »

some middle class white bitch

.

///Mod:///.

That kind of vernacular isn't really appropriate for this forum.

jank

obplayer wrote: »

If you are comparing 30 years of murder and mayhem to cutting down an ugly cross on a mountain then I frankly do not know what to say.

Eh, no. I mentioned 'mindset' not actual events or history. I am comparing that such a thought process of legitimising crime and illegal activities by those disgruntled with the RCC can and/or may lead to an escalation and polarisation in the community.

jank

seamus wrote: »

I see you've made the exact error I was calling out in my post by assuming there was any link between this act and atheism, or Atheism Ireland and anti-Catholicism in general.

Not at all. I just mentioned that both sides engage in this activity in pillaring and demeaning a made up caricature of the opposition. That Kerry FF politician engaged in it as well AI engaged in it.

And they're sick of it. Incidents like this in rural Ireland will become more commonplace until the catholic church is removed from all state schools

Using a term 'removed' would normally mean by force.

One can point out the reasoning behind actions without condoning them.

One can do this with everything and anything however, your post read more like excusing this activity rather than condemning it.

It was like saying in the 80's, " I don't agree with the IRA blowing people up in shopping centers but the sooner the Brits are out of Ireland then the sooner this stops!"

This is what your post comes across like, pushing the blame so to speak.

Cabaal

katydid wrote: »

ONLY your opinion...

Actually, I share the view.
So you claim it's only her opinion is incorrect.

Brian Shanahan

J Mysterio wrote: »

Patronising the majority of the population no less. So arrogant.

No, catholicism is not in a majority position in this country. Regular mass attendance is only at 25% of the population, and old. Any time a detailed survey is done it is found the majority don't think of religion, and definitely don't follow church rules.

If religious patrinage of schools was dropped for next September, in five years baptism rates will fall off a cliff as school admittance is the biggest factor, followed by grandparental pressure.

If the rcc were a true majority, none of these facts would hold true. Just because the deeply flawed and biased statistical measure, the census, says something that doesn't hold that its true.

Peregrinus

Deeply flawed and biassed as it may be, it's based on people's self-identification. Call me a dangerous liberal, but on the whole I have a view that census participants have a better right to determine their own religious identity, and can do so with more authority, than you. If they say they're Catholics, I really don't care that Brian Shanahan says they're not.

SpaceTime

I think Ireland really needs to start looking forward at what kind of society it wants to be.
Like it or not, the religious aspect of Irish society has caused a lot of problems in the past, continues to do so in Northern Ireland and has the potential to cause serious social exclusion in the future as society becomes more and more religiously diverse while public services continue to be delivered through the Catholic Church and to a lesser extent the C of I.

We need to plan for the future, not get locked in some status quo mess.

Two big issues that I see all the time are:

1) The primary and secondary education systems (Take a leaf out of UCC and NUIG's book.. they both work fine as secular universities and have done for a *long* time).

2) Local government - it's weak, unaccountable and remote. The result is that instead of having a structure at local level that's accessible to everyone, instead you've a lot of dependence on 'parish' facilities in many communities. While they're open (usually), there's an element of throw back to the established church mentality about them.

I'd really like to see schools and community facilities being something that are actually owned and run by local communities, for local communities and not by a 3rd party of any type. I think it encourages ownership of the facilities from a psychological point of view, provides community space that helps cohesion and might actually bring people together a lot more.

kylith

Peregrinus wrote: »

Deeply flawed and biassed as it may be, it's based on people's self-identification. Call me a dangerous liberal, but on the whole I have a view that census participants have a better right to determine their own religious identity, and can do so with more authority, than you. If they say they're Catholics, I really don't care that Brian Shanahan says they're not.

They say that they're Catholics, but is it because they actually believe in the Catholic god and the churches teachings, or do they say it because Mammy said they were Catholic? If someone says they're Catholic but they don't believe in god, or that Jesus was his son, or that pre-marital sex is sinful, or that practicing homosexuals are going to hell, or that crackers and booze magically turn into flesh and wine, or any of the other Catholic teaching then are they actually Catholic? I mean, I could identify as homosexual and say that I have more authority to know than you do, and some people would argue that you have no right to say that I'm not, and that I know my own sexual orientation better than you do, but if I don't find people of my own gender sexually appealing then am I actually homosexual, or am I just wrong?

Dades

jank wrote: »

obplayer wrote: »

So if you have never known about something which would upset you but then find out about it, you should still not be upset because you should have known sooner? So if I find my wife has been having sex with the neighbour then, because I never knew, when I do know I should be ok with it? 'Shure it did me no harm for all these years!'

If you are comparing the emotional distress of finding your wife/husband in bed with a neighbour to finding out that there is a cross on a mountain that you never climbed than I frankly do not know what to say.

obplayer wrote: »

jank wrote: »

That is a dangerous road to take. What you are essentially saying is that because 'A' happened 'B' will take place and is somewhat justified until 'C' happens. This is the exact mindset that kicked of 30 years of murder and slaughter by the PIRA in the north, all in our name apparently.

If you are comparing 30 years of murder and mayhem to cutting down an ugly cross on a mountain then I frankly do not know what to say.

I see what you did there.

I'll take this opportunity to reiterate the difference between comparing something and equating something. I wish people would understand this more.

SpaceTime

Well, I know that despite my own folks being quite open minded, I still get the odd gibe about not being religious from one relative and I find that quite typical in Ireland.

This lady is not religious herself - never goes to mass, never prays, talks about how it's all nonsense and so on. Then when it comes to something like a relative deciding not to baptise their kids, she laid on a huge guilt trip about 'the family tradition' and cracked out the grandmother's christening robe and got all nostalgic about various religious members of the family who had been Bishops and stuff in the 19th century. She then lectured the parents of the kid about how they were turning their back on the family's heritage!

One of the parents isn't even from Europe and has a totally different outlook on religion entirely and the other is an atheist.
Yet, this relative seems to think it's fine to stick her ore in and manipulate, completely hypocritically.

I find she can go from completely liberal and open minded to suddenly switching back to 1970s Catholic Official Ireland officiousness in the blink of an eye.

She told them: Oh she won't be able to get into school. When they pointed out that they'd resolve that : Oh but what about when all the other *normal* little girls make their holy communion. She'll be left out and she'll feel terrible. (implication: you're horrible people who are going to deprive your little girl of a lovely dress)

I also had one British-Irish (has lived there for decades) relative take me aside and lecture me about how I was "worse than an Englishman" because I'd 'turned my back' on my heritage!
Now, for someone who never went to mass himself, lived in England for 40+ years, spoke with an English accent and was a total anglophile in most senses, I thought it was a rather bizarrely hypocritical statement to make and deeply offensive to me, as an Irishman and also to English people too!

To be quite honest, I find people like that just mindbogglingly conflicted. It's like they're locked into a notion that Irish = Catholic and they cannot see past that.

That's Ireland though - a land with a very deep and long-standing identity crisis.

I actually genuinely think that the younger generations (I mean under about 40) tend to not be quite so badly impacted by this issue as they tend to define Irishness quite differently to their ancestors.