The Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period. While it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into the scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. It may be conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries, or about 1350 to about 1850 ... crops failed and livestock could not be maintained through increasingly harsh winters. In North America, American Indians formed leagues in response to food shortages. In Portugal, snowstorms were much more frequent than today. Heavy snowfalls in the winters of 1665, 1744 and 1886 were reported.
[TMcM: Note the Irish Potato Famine is a sharing in The Little Ice Age. Perhaps this is why today we refer to such tragedies as "acts of God". Cullen will use these harsh weather conditions as smoke and mirrors to force out the communitarian aspect of the Irish culture. Love will be replaced by law.]

Wikipedia Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

Paul Cullen: [TMcM: There is far too much important data for me to copy here from Wikipedia. I urge you to read the Wikipedia page. I select only a few snippets. Aloof Roman power over people is the core of Cullen' so called spirituality. Note in the following the politician Cullen is trained in Rome.]

Cullen is most notable today for being the first Irish Cardinal after 1,400 years of Christianity on the island. The improved condition of the Catholic Church in Ireland on his death in 1878, contrasted with what it was in 1850, afforded proof of the fruitfulness of Cullen's relentless zeal during his episcopate. Those twenty eight years marked a continuous period of ultramontane orthodoxy in matters connected with religion, discipline, government-funded education and charitable institutes.
While rector of The Irish College (1832-1850), Cullen was admitted to the intimate friendship of Gregory XVI and Pius IX. He profited by the influence which he thus enjoyed to safeguard the interests of the Irish Church and to counteract the intrigues of the UK diplomatic staff who at this period were lobbying the Vatican for support in European affairs. (W)
During the revolution that marked the demise of the Papal States and the beginning of the Roman Republic, he accepted the position of rector of the College of Propaganda while retaining charge of the Irish College. Soon after his appointment the Revolutionary Triumvurate issued orders that the College of Propaganda was to be dissolved and the buildings appropriated. The rector appealed to Lewis Cass, a United States politician, for the protection of the citizens of the United States who were students of the college. Within an hour, the American flag was floating over the Propaganda College. A decree was issued to the effect that the Propaganda should be retained.
Cullen also started the practice of Irish priests wearing Roman collars and being called "Father" (instead of "Mister") by their parishioners. [TMcM: At Trinity in Dublin I learned the Roman collar was the original sign of roman slavery.]
Cullen has been credited with the revival of Catholic devotion, e.g. Benediction, and rosary, in Ireland and what has been considered sexual repression. An extreme Ultramontanist, he vigorously opposed secret societies with revolutionary aims, as well as the system of mixed education then in force. His opposition was largely responsible for the failure of Gladstone's Irish Universities Bill in 1873, and he is held by some historians to have frustrated Cardinal John Henry Newman's plans for setting up a Catholic university along the lines proposed in Newman's The Idea of a University. [TMcM: Gentle Newman spoke of Cullen as out of touch with reality.]
In James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the protagonist's father mentions Cullen as one of the Catholic clergy who were very destructive to Ireland: "Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw of coarse scorn. O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple of God's eye!"
[TMcM: This Ultramontane (beyond the mountains, aka Rome) Primate of Ireland preached that the simple Irish people are responsible for the famine and have brought upon themselves the wrath of God by their infidelity. They are a simple uneducated country folk as was this writer's great grandmother who fled Ireland to come to San Francisco in the 1860's. Cullen removes the clergy from the people, setting up seminaries so as to make proper English gentlemen of the priests. (Read Leon Uris's TRINITY and A.J. Cronin's KEYS OF THE KINGDOM, books that penetrate the Vatican smoke and mirrors.) Cullen supplants a gentle Jesus' community love with harsh theologies and petty devotions such as pleasing God by mortification and corporeal punishment for sinfulness. Cullen is the Mel Gibson of the 1800's.

Wikipedia Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cullen_(cardinal)

Augustine and Original Sin [a repeat from last week] One of the silent messages that underlies the conduct of the Christian Brothers who teach the boys in the film is Augustine's vile interpretation of the beautiful work of the Creator. Augustine, totally unaware of evolution as were the originators of the Garden of Eden myth, proposes a fall (a downward collapse) from the original human nature given generously to all human kind by a loving Creator. [Genesis] Augustine, having lived abusively a wanton life of debauchery, immoral sex, child and wife/partner abandonment projects his own degradation onto all human beings. Michael Morwood in his books has done an excellent job of exposing this fraudulent theology. Fear of God and hatred of the body are the teachings Paul Cullen mandates on the Irish clergy and educational system.

Last week's commentary:
www.catholica.com.au/gc1/tm6/252_tm_121012.php

Charles Dickens is a major feature of the February 2012 Smithsonian Magazine. "Going Mad for Charles Dickens" is the title. The article begins with British film director Mike Newell wading ankle deep in ooze and mud that is the replica of West London's Smithfield Market circa 1820, the quagmire a symbol of. the degradation and poverty of the day. Such is the arena in which Oliver Twist is born and survives.

[From Wikipedia] Oliver Twist, also known as The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin, naively unaware of their unlawful activities. The book exposed the cruel treatment of many a waif-child in London, which increased international concern in what is sometimes known as "The Great London Waif Crisis" – the large number of orphans in London in the Dickens era.

TMcM: Furthermore I recall a saying concerning the French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille: "Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky". Dickens wrote with an understanding of the Gospel conversions highlighted by Jesus. Dickens was a champion of the underdog, the poor, and the mistreated. With his father, once in debtors' prison, "Dickens made the wickedness, squalor, and corruption of London his own." He wrote about heartlessness and, rags to riches, seeing the world more vividly than others. Today's use of A CHRISTMAS CAROL may amuse many children while its centuries old message about greed and need still carries a powerful message.
Seeing them as God's children, Dickens does not condemn the poor but empowers them to revolt and demand justice. Dickens stands in sharp contrast to Cardinal Cullen. Their approach to life and people differ. I wonder what it would have been like in Newfoundland and for the Boys of St. Vincent if the works of Dickens were in seminary libraries and novitiates of the Brothers? Perhaps somewhere Bro Hockey got the Jesus' message?

Smithsonian Magazine Source:
www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Going-Mad-for-Charles-Dickens.html
See also related stories linked on that page.
Wikipedia Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Twist

TMcM: Edmund Rice, a married man with the noble purpose of helping unfortunate boys founds the Christian Brothers, the first school, on Waterford's New Street, a converted stable in 1802, with a second school opening in Stephen Street soon after to cater for increasing enrolments. I see Cardinal Cullen strongly influencing the curriculum of Rice and his followers, they are careful to be obedient to the controlling power of Rome. Benedict, in the 4th Century, had mandated his monk followers to be obedient, that is to listen to one another, especially the youngest, so as to be well informed. Top down authoritarianism was not for the great founder of the monastic system. For centuries Rome has distorted obedience to be a mind controlling experience. Rice will teach Original Sin and his once innocent followers fall victim to a non-Gospel approach to children. Can one imagine the historical Jesus who bids the children to come to him abusing the little ones?

Somewhere and somehow some of the Christian Brothers, seduced into the want for power over another walked the dysfunctional Cullen path, forsaking the Jesus' model. The Crusades, the Black Death, Dante's Inferno, and corrupt ecclesiastical power, had taken a stranglehold on the Roman Catholic system of education.. John the 23rd's Pacem in Terris and the Vatican Two Council are the keys that unlock the stranglehold of medieval unchristian power. Vatican Two beckons us back to the Jesus and his loving Father. I encourage readers to meditate on the story of the Prodigal Son.

Wikipedia page on Bl Edmund Ignatius Rice:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Ignatius_Rice

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©2012Tom McMahon