tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27941559.post3773954335681440566..comments2024-03-13T18:03:14.612+01:00Comments on South Of Watford: Tough Times For The TDT PartyGraemehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05948656158638818739noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27941559.post-84778690361084632912011-08-05T10:22:07.600+02:002011-08-05T10:22:07.600+02:00All those funny handshakes. They should get a life...All those funny handshakes. They should get a life.Graemehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05948656158638818739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27941559.post-46658065714490149602011-08-04T13:27:03.499+02:002011-08-04T13:27:03.499+02:00Masons = secret society = danger to paranoid dicta...Masons = secret society = danger to paranoid dictator, to be blunt. Can't see why the Catholics have anything to do with it.<br /><br />Mind you, after meeting some of them, I have started to understand just why Franco had them all shot.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27941559.post-63090698303744088572011-07-31T22:53:08.448+02:002011-07-31T22:53:08.448+02:00Like EJh says, the nefarious influence of Masonry ...Like EJh says, the nefarious influence of Masonry seems to be an internal product of Catholic countries; correction - of officially Catholic countries.<br /><br />For contrast nevermind Protestant countries, just look at a Catholic country such as Ireland where civil institutions were formed under AngloSaxon influence. Can it be coincidence that in Ireland, despite the best efforts of the revived Church post-1830s Emancipation and eventual independence from Britain, there has never really been an anti-clerical tradition to speak of?<br /><br />It seems that whenever the Catholic Church has been embedded in the state, all the violent backlash that it engenders only serves to reinforce its reactionary attitudes.<br /><br />But of course, the necro-Catholic right in Spain (and Italy to an extent) prefer to see the Church through the prism of victimism.<br />Really? After centuries of wielding near total control over matters of education, it could still not command the 'gratitude' nor kindle the affections of its populace. And this is not to justify the anti-clerical outrages in those countries...but certainly it helps to explain it. And apropos, more than a victim, was not the Church an active belligerent during the Civil War? I thought the Church was supposed to be above all that temporal titter-tatter.<br /><br />By the way, in light of the revelations emerging from the Cloyne Report on the clerical abuse scandal in Ireland, any lingering sympathy towards the Church and the notion that it is being unfairly subjected to an aggressive secular witchunt is fast falling appart in the country.<br /><br />When the Irish PM, that butter-wouldn't-melt, rural schoolteacher and devout Catholic Enda Kenny is so exapserated by what he sees a Vatican skullduggery that he finds himself reduced to launching a speech that would have had convents blazing in 1930s Spain - you know the thing is bad.<br /><br />It really makes me thankful that Ireland hadn`t been formed under Catholic Rule ... just looking at Rouca Varela makes me see just how right-wing and unctious our already high-and-mighty bishops would've been.Roberticushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16156151793691858430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27941559.post-78055387019445333392011-07-27T11:47:16.046+02:002011-07-27T11:47:16.046+02:00Well yes, but didn't Catholic Italy have power...Well yes, but didn't Catholic Italy have powerful lodges too?Graemehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05948656158638818739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27941559.post-19095454132723942462011-07-27T11:20:24.482+02:002011-07-27T11:20:24.482+02:00I've never really explored the roots of the Fr...<i>I've never really explored the roots of the Francoist obsession with the masons</i><br /><br />It's a Catholic thing, to be unhelpfully brief about it.ejhhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01582272075999298935noreply@blogger.com