Regarding footnote 1: so like, Confucianism? 

I'm not sure I follow your argument that the Church is superbly neutered. There cetainly *is* a call to perfection for all Catholics -- that's why we're supposed to emulate the saints and, post-Gregory, report regularly to priests on our failure to do so.
In the same way, this means there *is* a kind of suffering to be overcome, even if suffering itself is just something you have to deal with and learn to like -- you are *not* supposed to come to like your sins.
The secret teaching thing is clever -- it does have secret teachings, and I can only imagine that in the past they were even more secret what with the Latin and all, but they're an open secret. If you want to know the secret of anything, you can look it up in the Summa, or ask your priest and very likely they'll get the answer.

You have missed out Mary. So did the prods, but they had a reason for it. Mary offers a kind of deliverance from suffering, a big warm bosom to cry into for immediate there-there-diddums shit. The prods rightly saw that she ruined the Jesus theme and didn't fit into that... but what *is* she and how does she fit into your progressive-deprogressivification schema. Note that Marian devotion, if anything, has increased over the centuries, with more and more apparitions and titles getting attached to her. She is a strange, strange woman.

Vatican II, incidentally, made hha big deal about Mary, as with so many other things. Since finding out that the sedevacantists are actually a pretty detailed [if not 'big' exactly, though one of the bigger trad

ungh, sorry, posting from my tablet. the browser doesn't like the little window and got too annoying to continue there.

As I was saying... one of the bigger trad trad catholic movements has a local hq here, though this is a rather catholic part of england] movement, i have become more convinced that they are right. the post-V II church seems much less Catholic and more Universalist. This suggests that Vatican II was a failure of the containment system, but I have a suspicion that this might not be the case. This would be contrary to contrary to contrarian thinking and, just as the Modernist/Novo Ordo putative heretics in Rome insist, part of God's Popish Plot all along.

@Muflax:disqus I have often had similar thoughts about the Catholic Church (and Christianity more generally), specifically that they must be significantly hollowed out shells of what once was taught.  Unfortunately, greed and stupidity probably account for that - action without an actor and all that (though it would be way cool if it were in fact planned that way by a shadowy cabal somewhere).  A pity too - only Christianity (of a appropriately mystical sort) and Buddhism strike me as plausible accounts of the way things could possibly be (besides physicalism, I guess).

By the way, it brings me great relief/sense of vindication to encounter another person who clearly takes Buddhism seriously but also has a contrarian streak (e.g. Moldbug).  It makes me feel more sane.

@0f7cd721f600a9fc064b14c0f7e93882:disqus What secret teachings?  I live for that stuff.

A friend was telling me about some 'demonic' book that the Vatican is hiding somewhere that has evil instructions in it (e.g. rituals involving human sacrifice).  I'm sure there's at least a couple of those floating around, but I have had this pet theory that perhaps these are not actually demonic but secret teachings (soft of like Buddhist Chod) the true meanings of which, due to the hollowing out of the mystical branches, have been forgotten.  If there's any possibility that this could be the case I would be more than a little bit curious to know!

IMHO sociologically Marian devotion could be a reaction to modernity itself as increasingly putting her up as the New Eve and as a symbol of traditional femininity. I don't even think I would affirm such a view but it seems to be worth exploring.

Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI was/is conservative popes and as Peter Kreeft demonstrates in one of his lectures (I think its "Can a Catholic be a Liberal") the liberal faction within the Catholics invoke the "spirit"of Vatican II but don't draw on the actual text and thus tend to lose in actual argument. There is additionally serious talk among the modernist Catholic factions that the recent death of Cardinal Carlo Martini might spell the end of Catholic theological liberalism at least on the level of radical reform. Benedict is a strong critic of moral relativism and modernity in general.I'm not sure about the priesthood and the future though. I hear conflicting reports but the winds do seem to be blowing in the traditionalist's direction. Liberalism may not live beyond Boomerism or at least go into a post Boomer lull.

@facebook-1051845691:disqus

Yeah, now that you mention it, it looks a lot like Confucianism (and I'm obviously very sympathetic to Neo-Confucianism). But it's not quite right: it doesn't accept pain (at best, tolerates it), it doesn't necessarily other, it has harmony as a goal.

So maybe Dark Confucianism?

@0f7cd721f600a9fc064b14c0f7e93882:disqus

You're right about the call to become saints (although the Church doesn't exactly advertise this most of the time). I meant to contrast it with the Gnostic call to become More Perfect Than The Demiurge, to overcome this world. A saint is still part of the world and its hierarchies, and so a much more useful being.

Suffering is not overcome in *this* life, but only after death, which is about as far away as you can push it without throwing it out entirely. This is quite different from many early teachings (compare docetism), and I think it's unlikely *any* salvation movement starts out with distant salvation.

Good point about Mary. The Church has, to a large degree, made Jesus untouchable. (And destroyed the Father.) That's good. But that isn't enough to contain these things in the long-term. Other beings just absorb their properties. It doesn't really matter who you get your hugs from, as long as that person can collapse into a singularity.

I think the criticism that Mary is a substitute Christ is basically correct, at least as far as charismatic / gnostic attributes are concerned. (And maybe a case can be made that she's just a rebranded Sophia with some Christ sprinkled on, now that He's busy being mostly dead.) And then obviously Vatican II is a huge problem.

A problem with secret teachings is that they tend to get lost. You start out with an inner and outer circle, but after a few generations (and sometimes much faster than that), you're only left with the outer circle, and the text becomes the subtext. If you're lucky, you can improvise a new inner circle every once in a while, but that didn't work out well for the groups I'm familiar with. If the Catholics actually succeeded at keeping hidden teachings, I'm incredibly impressed.

@2e1f8c6d9bc346e3812eb8ddc2495bf7:disqus

I'm not sure I'm suggesting a long-term conspiracy. There clearly were many intentional trolls, like the rewriting of Marcionite scripture, but it might derive more from simple ideas, like "What can I do to preserve my power / weaken my enemies?", and just not being influenced by the idea that otherness is a bad thing.

Honestly, there being a hidden God Emperor that guides the Church and aims to defeat the Christ / Mary / Father demon seems more plausible than humans being *that* strategic for several generations.

Confucianism advocates ren, yi and li, and ren and yi both imply universal benevolence. Han Feizi-style Legalism would come closer to the ideal: everyone is evil and must be punished mercilessly.

One other problem with this argument, a problem because it goes against all my tribal norms that Catholics are Better, is that it means the Church of England has outcatholicked the Catholics, since they *did* manage to get rid of Mary and a bunch of other stuff that the Church still insists you believe in, despite Vatican II. Which has led to it becoming progressive as fuck. I remember, when the Occupy movement was a thing, pointing out to some Leftists who were pleased to get the CoE on their side "But it's the CHURCH! They own good land in EVERY VILLAGE IN THE COUNTRY! The QUEEN is at the head of it! They're PROTESTANTS!" to which their response was "Yes, so? That doesn't mean anything.".

And they were right. The CoE followed the Catholic containment-of-Christianity to its logical conclusion, at which point *something* managed to get in, and what got in was what had been getting into Protestantism everywhere for the past half-millennium: the State. And you don't have to be down with Moldbug to realise that the State is *the* progressive institution par excellence. So much for that.

So this makes me wonder what the end game [or at least, the next stage of the game] for the Catholic church is. They've sat on Christ for two thousand years and have discovered, to their horror, that they've smothered him. Nietzsche teams up with the Traditional Catholics and says "We told you this was going to happen". If the Church of England is any sign, then it means the Church will become more and more undead, shifting away from Europe and towards the South, with the only living parts of it being another Americanised Charismatic protestant sect wallowing around in unreason and falabala. ungh.

Excellent point.

I think you could argue that the Anglicans have failed even before that because they have made the mistake of conceding slippery slopes. They set precedents that marriage and legal authority are up to debate, and that opened them up to the monstrosity of popularism. (See also the Orthodox churches. I think the "you gotta have a pope" debate is now firmly settled in favor of Catholicism.)

Catholics have insisted much more on their Schelling points, and even strengthened them through papal infallibility. (They even avoided the mistake of scriptural inerrantism, as that just opens you up to whoever is in charge of interpretation. Better make one specific person/office doing the interpreting inerrant than the medium.)

Eldritch politics is hard.

Oh well, I agree that the CoE set itself up for that failure way before the 20th century, probably even as soon as it was formed, because it was ALWAYS a State-backed church [Clue: the name] that was a big tent collecting together every kind of Christian except the extremists who didn't want to join any church that would have them as a member.... so long as they were in England. And went on to think of itself as being still basically Catholic.

But then all the Stephenson System of the World stuff happened, and England got stuck on the Whig railroad. Being as Catholic as the North Sea, English Channel and Irish Sea would allow, the Christians themselves who were setting the agenda got dragged more and more towards the Cathedral, and so the fate of the CoE was sealed. Eldritch politics become only more confusing when you add English politics :)

--

Also I found a thing out about Lutherans last week which disturbed me. I discovered that Lutherans believe that the solar system, the galaxy and
indeed the whole universe is *already* colonised by humanity:

"Luther taught that there is a real transference of properties from the
one nature (divine) to the other (human). They exchange something of
their substance as if by a process of endosmosis (osmosis from the
outside to the inside). Thus, even in his human nature Christ is
almighty and omnipresent. The divine nature interpenetrates the human.
Thus Christ’s humanity participates in the attributes of his deity (more
specifically, the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence,
and adoration).

"One consequence of this view is that **the Logos now has no existence outside the flesh,
nor the flesh outside the Logos** (logos totus in carne). When Zwingli
and others objected to Luther’s doctrine of the physical presence of
Christ in the elements of the eucharist, he countered by appealing to
the doctrine of the communication of attributes, according to which **the attribute of omnipresence (ubiquity) is predicated of the human nature**"
http://www.enjoyinggodministri...

A consequence of this is that Lutheran views on the Real Presence are even weirder than Catholic ones. Wikipedia says that the Lutheran doctrine differs from that of transubstantiation in that "it
does not assert a "local" (three dimensional, circumscribed) presence
of the body and blood in the sacramental bread and wine respectively,
which is rejected as "gross, carnal, and Capernaitic"". The Eucharist, rather than turning bread into Jesus is merely a means by which we can *ensure* that the Logos manifests its flesh in a place of the universe where we can be *sure* that Christ wills himself to be present.

The reason this disturbs me is because I am used to thinking of the Real Presence as being made of plutonium, which must be contained inside a special building; if you want to take it out from there, you need special containers and permission from the priest; anything it contacts becomes low level theological waste which needs to be disposed of separately with a special sink which goes to a buried waste dump; every so often it is put in a golden display case to shine special radiation on people and it must be watched over day and night when it is in this state etc. etc. And then Luther comes along and says "no no, you see you're just *swimming* in radiation all the time! It's great stuff!. Suddenly that Weberish stuff you hear about how Luther sacralised everyday life suddenly made more sense to me.

And now I read your post and realise that this is another case where Protestants outcatholicked the Catholics.

"I could make three additional points besides tools / card design, namely
1) how to grammar,
2) why The Gostak is such a great example of my approach, and
3) the theoretical framework and how you would improve on the method, if you had certain resources (which are currently non-existent or expensive).
... I won’t write these posts, most likely. "

Pretty please do? =D

(Particularly the third point.)

Phtag, Have you read much John Henry Newman? I just finished Apologia Pro Vita Sua and I think he agrees with your analysis that Whig elections in the State lead to liberalism within the COE and their refusal to listen to him lead him to eventually jump ship (that and he began to see the COE as no better than the Donatists or Arians) 

I have not, but he's someone I've long been intending to read. It wouldn't surprise me if he had become received opinion among English Popery, though.

Regarding post 1. Fascism, no? 1984? Or am I missing something

@b5de967b0c357bd6ed054c221a08a6de:disqus

I don't see how Fascism fits. It's violently energetic, cataclysmic, notoriously pro-unity, hopeful and deeply embedded in tragedy. It's painful, but that's about it.

1984 fits much better, but it still has inherent hope and revolution to crush. But I was definitely partially thinking of the end, when Winston finally loved Big Brother. A system that *naturally*  creates this state of mind, without corruption, without *forcing* you into it, might be a good fit.

Sounds more like fascism, no? 1984 style, w the exception of "unity" but the only unity there was strictly propaganda.

Fair enough regarding unity (amended my original statement in the comment above) but to defend my point: party members and non party members fill the roles of alphas and epsilons respectively in nazi Germany and mussolinis Italy (thereby enforcing a hierarchical social order). Also old vs young, strong vs weak, etc makes a de facto hierarchy despite the statism nominally promoting unity.