Freethought & Rationalism Archive

leonarde · 09-28-2002, 06:46 PM

Posted by Vorkosigan:

Quote:

important as the Immaculate Conception became in Mariology, it is hardly at the core of
Christianity OR R Catholicism. That core is typically what is taught to a child in the first few years of religious instruction. I don't agree that a "French peasant" of 1858 would likely know what the Immaculate Conception was: devotion to Mary existed throughout the Middle Ages without any such dogma.

It's nice that you don't agree, but sociological history by Thomas Kselman has already shown your belief to be incorrect.

The theological important of the Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with sociology. Since
I was raised a Roman Catholic, and evidently you
weren't (for if you were you would know better)I
have a VERY good idea what the most important dogmas and doctrines are and the order that they
are generally presented in. I'm NOT saying that
peasants didn't say or think that Mary was "born
without sin" but the FORMAL THEOLOGICAL FORMULATION and the term "Immaculate Conception"
was unlikely to be know by peasants, especially
ones who had so little formal religious instruction as Bernadette. The two books I consulted today BOTH say that Bernadette on repeating Aquero's words, when asked admitted she
did not know their meaning and CONSISTENTLY mispronounced the patois word for "Conception".
Let your sociologist explain why THAT is!

Cheers!

leonarde · 09-28-2002, 06:52 PM

Posted by Vorkosigan:

Quote:

Leo, the earliest account, prepared ten days after Berna's vision by the local police commissioner, does not run this way. What you have is a mishmash of truth and legendary
embellishment. In the earliest account, Berna is gathering bones by the river.

NO! All the three girls said the same thing:
they were gathering firewood. All the bios of Bernadette and all the books that have BEEN devoted exclusively to Lourdes that I have read
have said that. Did you read the police commissioner's report?

Cheers!

Vorkosigan · 09-28-2002, 07:47 PM

Posted by Vorkosigan:
The theological important of the Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with sociology. Since
I was raised a Roman Catholic, and evidently you
weren't (for if you were you would know better)

Wrong again. Raised Catholic, one priest in the family on each side. I am well aware of Catholic tradition and peasant Catholicism, all four of my grandparents and two of my great-grandparents were immigrants from Poland and Italy.

but the FORMAL THEOLOGICAL FORMULATION and the term "Immaculate Conception" was unlikely to be know by peasants, especially ones who had so little formal religious instruction as Bernadette. The two books I consulted today BOTH say that Bernadette on repeating Aquero's words, when asked admitted she did not know their meaning and CONSISTENTLY mispronounced the patois word for "Conception". Let your sociologist explain why THAT is!

There's not much point in talking to people who refuse to listen, but the facts are as follows:

Bernadette was already familiar with the Immaculate Conception tradition. Not only did she demonstrate this in her March 25 statement, in which she compared the figure to a popular medallion about the IC, but, as you say, she knew the word itself (sorry, but just because I can't properly say, for example, "Mahaballipuram" doesn't mean I don't know where and what that city is famous for). Further, as Kselman and other researchers have shown, the Immaculate Conception had been popular among the French Peasantry for at least a quarter century prior to Bernie's visions. So you are refuted by facts. In fact, Kselman's book on this topic won an American Catholic Historical Society Award; Kselman himself is a leading specialist on religious belief in 19th century France. The fact that the Peasant tradition and the Church view of the Immaculate Conception are different is irrelevant. Bernie's own peasant background was the source of her inspiration, she had the typical views of the French peasantry of her time. Which including extensive experience with the Immaculate Conception, an idea celebrated since the late Middle Ages in Europe. There's a liturgical feast in December for it, which was very popular in Europe since the Middle Ages. Oh, and March 25, the day Bernie came out with her "I am the Immaculate Conception" phrase, was the Feast of the Annunciation.

It is now up to you to produce comparable historical and sociological data with the weight of Kselman's and Zimdars-Schwartz. Compilations of hagiographic hogwash will not get you anywhere. In any case, I will happily concede that Bernie was gathering firewood, if you like, it is of no importance.

The earliest account, not a hagiography but that of the police chief, was compiled ten days after the first vision. It contains none of these motifs you note about Bernie. As Zimdars-Schwartz noted above, hagiography has obscured much of the data, and exaggerated the low levels of Bernie's poverty and education. This is a common tactic in hagiographic writing -- "She was too dumb to make this story up" -- an especially contemptible form of pernicious class chauvinism.

In any case, you have yet to supply any of the protocols I asked for earlier. You were the one who stated that the RCC had a set of tight procedures that could confirm that the miracle was Catholic Christian in origin. I'd like you to show how they confirm that and rule out all other miracle claims and psychic powers.

Vorkosigan

Lone Wolf · 09-28-2002, 08:51 PM

Quote:

<strong>Orignally posted by Radorth:</strong>

AA recovery rate when Jesus was always the "higher power": 78%

AA recovery rate in India, employing the powers of gods like Mithra: 6%

Criminy. 6% would give it up by praying to FamilyMan.

Don't you hate facts? I do.

Yeah... damned pesky facts...

Quote:

The AA GSO (Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Organization) conducts triennial surveys where they count their members and ask questions like how long members have been sober. Around 1990, they published a commentary on the surveys: Comments on A.A.'s Triennial Surveys [no author listed, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., New York, no date (probably 1990)]. That publication states that newcomers drop out at a staggering rate:

* 81% are gone after 1 month;
* 90% are gone after 3 months,
* and 95% are gone at the end of one year.

That gives A.A. a maximum possible success rate of only 5% (if you define success as staying sober for only one year). That is not what a competent doctor would call good medical treatment. But not even all of those five percent who Keep Coming Back are continuously sober. Some of them relapse repeatedly. And then the attrition continues. Old-timers with 20 years are as rare as hen's teeth. Fewer than one in a thousand makes it for that long.

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/ageorange/orange-effectiveness.html" target="_blank">The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment</a>

<a href="http://www.drugwar.com/yabltaalies.shtm" target="_blank">AA Lies</a>

So, of the 1% to 5% that 'recover' in the AA cult, 78% of those can give Jesus credit? You'd think the old messiah could swing a better batting average than that!

Radorth · 09-29-2002, 08:17 AM

Quote:

* 81% are gone after 1 month;
* 90% are gone after 3 months,
* and 95% are gone at the end of one year.

That gives A.A. a maximum possible success rate of only 5% (if you define success as staying sober for only one year).

I see. So we have to count those who leave before a year as not having remained sober for a year. Is that correct? So somebody who shows up for one meeting and leaves is counted in your tally?

The rate has always been directly proportional to the insights and original teachings as employed by the original CHRISTIAN founders. People who failed to follow those failed to recover, but in the 30's and 40's the rate of recovery for those who stayed in was from 70-93% depending on who was running individual programs.

Now you can argue the AA records are doctored, but then you need to prove it. Oh wait! Christians are guilty and deserving of slander until proven innocent.

OK, so sometimes I forget the rules here.

Radorth

Lone Wolf · 09-29-2002, 10:13 AM

Radorth,

I went through a situation where someone very close to me had a problem with alcohol. I've done extensive research on the recovery topic, and have been to AA and AlAnon meetings as an observer. I can say with complete confidence that the whole AA approach is not only ineffective, but downright destructive. It is, by definition, a cult.

Quote:

I see. So we have to count those who leave before a year as not having remained sober for a year. Is that correct? So somebody who shows up for one meeting and leaves is counted in your tally?

First of all, it's not my tally, it's AA's. Further, the 95% after 1 year figure is telling in itself. In understanding AA's doctrine, you have to remember that leaving AA is equal to falling off the wagon - even if one continues not to drink. The whole idea is to replace one addiction (drinking) with another (AA itself). If 95% leave in the first year - or even more accurate - if 99.9% never become lifers, then you're left with a .1% success rate.

Quote:

The rate has always been directly proportional to the insights and original teachings as employed by the original CHRISTIAN founders.

You mean Bill W and Dr Bob? They were, at the time of founding, members of a fringe cult called "The Oxford Group Movement", a religion created by a deceitful fascist renegade Lutheran minister. However, Bill and Dr Bob were even too looney for the cult and were thrown out.

Old Bill was also a known womanizer, both before and after his alleged sobriety. Ironically, though honesty was such a big deal in his approach to sobriety, he advocated dishonesty in disclosure about cheating on your spouse. What a guy.

It's also well documented that he used LSD in the sixties. But hey, acid isn't booze so I guess that's ok.

Quote:

People who failed to follow those failed to recover,

And your proof of this is? I could point you to several other treatment programs that have vastly greater success rates than AA, none of which have any focus on religion at all. Perhaps where the jesus recovery failed for that 99%, a real treatment actually worked?

Quote:

but in the 30's and 40's the rate of recovery for those who stayed in was from 70-93% depending on who was running individual programs.

You're back on the logistic slippery slope. 70-93% of .1% is a failure by anyone's measure.

Quote:

Now you can argue the AA records are doctored, but then you need to prove it.

And AA would doctor their own records to look dismal... why? The numbers I'm using are from AA GSO's report. Your numbers are from where?

Lone Wolf · 09-29-2002, 11:31 AM

BTW, instead of hijacking this thread any further I've started a specific topic on AA in MRD:

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=45&t=001190" target="_blank">The AA Cult</a>

Please resume your regularly scheduled programming.

leonarde · 09-29-2002, 04:24 PM

Posted by Vorkosigan:{QUOTE]Posted by Voskosgian:
That's funny: all the books that I read years ago have the parish priest himself remarking that Bernadette was ignorant of both the term Immaculate Conception AND the concept.

Well, since accounts written at the time say she mentioned the medal, whatever embellishments she made later are meaningless.[/QUOTE]

Yes, she had SEEN the medal (usually called the
Miraculous Medal of Mary not the Immaculate Conception) but that does NOT mean she was familiar with the term. Since I too wore that particular medal when I was about 10 years old---
and by the way I don't know that Bernadette herself WORE the medal---I know that one can indeed wear it, see it, and not have a clue as
to the theological significance of the "Immaculate
Conception". The fact that Aquero resembled in
some ways (but not in others) the depiction of the
Virgin Mary in the MM hardly means that Bernadette
didn't talk about what the apparition looked like
to others BEFORE the interview with Commissioner Jacomet (ie I don't agree with your characterization of the chronology implied by the
phrase "later embellishments"). But let's look at one account of that
(first)police interview:

Quote:

Bernadette sat in her ragged capulet, her hands folded on her knees,
and her head slightly bent to her chest. Her voice
was hoarse.
"Tell me, Bernadette Soubirous (since that is your
name), is it true that you see a lady in the grotto?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very beautiful?"
"Yes sir, very beautiful."
And he asked her leading questions about the apparitions and he wrote down the answers. "You see, I am writing down everything you tell me. We will see if you are telling the truth. But
beware if you are lying! Come! It is best for you
to admit that you have been lying if you do not wish to go to prison!"
"I am not lying to you, sir."
And then he pretended to threaten her by his looks
and gestures as he talked to her. He would change
her story around and misquote her, but she was quick to catch him.
"I never said that, sir" she would challenge him.
She was not upset and her story was always the
same.

[emphases by leonarde]
Then the account relates how Bernadette's father
came into the room and Commissioner Jacomet warned
him that if the father didn't keep Bernadette away
from the grotto that Jacomet would lock her up.
(Above from page 78-79 "The Miracle of Bernadette"
by Margaret Gray Blanton, Prentice Hall, Englewood
Cliffs NJ. 1958; Blanton states in her foreward that she is a Protestant and that "it is not the business of the biographer to say what Bernadette saw at the Grotto, it is to say what Bernadette believed and reported what she saw [...])

In none of the sources that I remember reading was
her reference to the Miraculous Medal made in her interview with the Commissioner(though at
SOME point she DID make such a statement).

If there WAS such a statement at the interview it
was probably another one of Jacomet's "leading questions" (which I am not criticizing: it can be
a very useful police interrogation technique).

Cheers!

leonarde · 09-29-2002, 06:09 PM

But Bernadette's own account of that first interrogation is here:

The 1st Interrogation � Feb. 21, 1858

The first Sunday of the fortnight, when I was coming out of the Church, an employee from the town hall seized my hood and ordered me to follow him. I did so, and on the way he said that I would make acquaintance with the prison. I listened in silence and we arrived at the office of the Police Superintendent (Jacomet).

He took me into a room alone, gave me a chair, and I sat down. Then he took paper and asked me to tell him what happened at the grotto. I did so. After having written some lines which I dictated to him, he wrote other things that I had not said. Then he said he was going to read them to me to see if he had not made a mistake, so I listened attentively. But as soon as he had read
a few lines I saw that there were errors and I quickly replied: 'Sir I did not say that.' Then he became angry and said I did say that, while I repeated that I did not. These disputes went on for some minutes, and when he saw that he was wrong and when I persisted in saying that I had not said that, he went a little further and started again (to read what I had not said, while I maintained that it was not so). This repetition went on for a long time.

I stayed there for an hour or an hour and a half. From time to time I could hear the sound of kicking on the door and the shutters and voices of men who shouted: 'If you don't let her out we'll burst open the door'. When it was time for me to go, the Superintendent accompanied me to the door, and there, I found my father waiting impatiently with a crowd of other people who had followed me from the Church. This is the first time that I was obliged to appear before these gentlemen.

Bernadette Soubirous

The URL for above is here:
<a href="http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/interrogation1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/interrogation1.htm</a>

[ September 29, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]

[ September 29, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]</p>

leonarde · 09-29-2002, 06:32 PM

And a rough outline of the apparitions is here:
<a href="http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/lourdeschronology.htm" target="_blank">http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/lourdeschronology.htm</a>

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09-28-2002, 07:47 PM	#133
Vorkosigan Contributor Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Barrayar Posts: 11,866	Posted by Vorkosigan: The theological important of the Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with sociology. Since I was raised a Roman Catholic, and evidently you weren't (for if you were you would know better) Wrong again. Raised Catholic, one priest in the family on each side. I am well aware of Catholic tradition and peasant Catholicism, all four of my grandparents and two of my great-grandparents were immigrants from Poland and Italy. but the FORMAL THEOLOGICAL FORMULATION and the term "Immaculate Conception" was unlikely to be know by peasants, especially ones who had so little formal religious instruction as Bernadette. The two books I consulted today BOTH say that Bernadette on repeating Aquero's words, when asked admitted she did not know their meaning and CONSISTENTLY mispronounced the patois word for "Conception". Let your sociologist explain why THAT is! There's not much point in talking to people who refuse to listen, but the facts are as follows: Bernadette was already familiar with the Immaculate Conception tradition. Not only did she demonstrate this in her March 25 statement, in which she compared the figure to a popular medallion about the IC, but, as you say, she knew the word itself (sorry, but just because I can't properly say, for example, "Mahaballipuram" doesn't mean I don't know where and what that city is famous for). Further, as Kselman and other researchers have shown, the Immaculate Conception had been popular among the French Peasantry for at least a quarter century prior to Bernie's visions. So you are refuted by facts. In fact, Kselman's book on this topic won an American Catholic Historical Society Award; Kselman himself is a leading specialist on religious belief in 19th century France. The fact that the Peasant tradition and the Church view of the Immaculate Conception are different is irrelevant. Bernie's own peasant background was the source of her inspiration, she had the typical views of the French peasantry of her time. Which including extensive experience with the Immaculate Conception, an idea celebrated since the late Middle Ages in Europe. There's a liturgical feast in December for it, which was very popular in Europe since the Middle Ages. Oh, and March 25, the day Bernie came out with her "I am the Immaculate Conception" phrase, was the Feast of the Annunciation. It is now up to you to produce comparable historical and sociological data with the weight of Kselman's and Zimdars-Schwartz. Compilations of hagiographic hogwash will not get you anywhere. In any case, I will happily concede that Bernie was gathering firewood, if you like, it is of no importance. The earliest account, not a hagiography but that of the police chief, was compiled ten days after the first vision. It contains none of these motifs you note about Bernie. As Zimdars-Schwartz noted above, hagiography has obscured much of the data, and exaggerated the low levels of Bernie's poverty and education. This is a common tactic in hagiographic writing -- "She was too dumb to make this story up" -- an especially contemptible form of pernicious class chauvinism. In any case, you have yet to supply any of the protocols I asked for earlier. You were the one who stated that the RCC had a set of tight procedures that could confirm that the miracle was Catholic Christian in origin. I'd like you to show how they confirm that and rule out all other miracle claims and psychic powers. Vorkosigan

09-29-2002, 11:31 AM	#137
Lone Wolf Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 383	BTW, instead of hijacking this thread any further I've started a specific topic on AA in MRD: <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=45&t=001190" target="_blank">The AA Cult</a> Please resume your regularly scheduled programming.

09-29-2002, 06:09 PM	#139
leonarde Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: North America Posts: 1,603	But Bernadette's own account of that first interrogation is here: The 1st Interrogation � Feb. 21, 1858 The first Sunday of the fortnight, when I was coming out of the Church, an employee from the town hall seized my hood and ordered me to follow him. I did so, and on the way he said that I would make acquaintance with the prison. I listened in silence and we arrived at the office of the Police Superintendent (Jacomet). He took me into a room alone, gave me a chair, and I sat down. Then he took paper and asked me to tell him what happened at the grotto. I did so. After having written some lines which I dictated to him, he wrote other things that I had not said. Then he said he was going to read them to me to see if he had not made a mistake, so I listened attentively. But as soon as he had read a few lines I saw that there were errors and I quickly replied: 'Sir I did not say that.' Then he became angry and said I did say that, while I repeated that I did not. These disputes went on for some minutes, and when he saw that he was wrong and when I persisted in saying that I had not said that, he went a little further and started again (to read what I had not said, while I maintained that it was not so). This repetition went on for a long time. I stayed there for an hour or an hour and a half. From time to time I could hear the sound of kicking on the door and the shutters and voices of men who shouted: 'If you don't let her out we'll burst open the door'. When it was time for me to go, the Superintendent accompanied me to the door, and there, I found my father waiting impatiently with a crowd of other people who had followed me from the Church. This is the first time that I was obliged to appear before these gentlemen. Bernadette Soubirous The URL for above is here: <a href="http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/interrogation1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/interrogation1.htm</a> [ September 29, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ] [ September 29, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]</p>

09-29-2002, 06:32 PM	#140
leonarde Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: North America Posts: 1,603	And a rough outline of the apparitions is here: <a href="http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/lourdeschronology.htm" target="_blank">http://www.catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/lourdeschronology.htm</a>

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