From: mfulsmb@uts.mcc.ac.uk (Martin Barry)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Communication Problems, Gregory XVI and (oh, no, not again) Railways
Date: 7 Jan 93 11:30:46 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre, Manchester, England, M13 9PL.

A long post, this. Feel free to opt out at any time.

There I was, firing off post after post in my usual erudite and polymath
way, benignly distributing my pearls of wisdom on the Eastern Catholic
Churches, state funding of Church schools, the date of Christmas, and, of
course, the nature of _obsequium religiosum_ in the light of documented
papal aberrations of the past. Gradually it dawned on me that I was being
studiously ignored, and I began to get a bit crabby about it, departing from
my usual measured tones of sweet reasonableness into the odd (and
uncharacteristic) bit of _ad hominem_ invective and the occasional resorting
to SHOUTING AT PEOPLE because they were ignoring me.

The fact was someone round here had accidentally stuck a pickaxe through the
pipe labelled 'netnews', and all my posts had gushed out over the streets of
Manchester and trickled down the nearest drain.

My exasperation is now behind me, and I've got used to the idea that you
could actually manage without me for a month. But, boy, you missed some good
ones: that crucial passage from Innocent IV's bull _ad extirpanda_
instructing civil powers to use torture when necessary; the eclipse of
so-called 'Uniatism' as an instrument of Ostpolitik; and who knows what
else.

To get to the point: I even posted sources for Gregory XVI's ban (that's the
correct word, Steve) on railways a whole week before Steve Barr attempted to
fabricate a quote from the _Oxford Dictionary of Popes_. Here's my reply to
his obnoxious effort, edited with the benefit of hindsight to remove the
references to posts of mine that nobody had replied to because... you know
why now.

In article <BzBBoJ.DyL@news.udel.edu> 15942@brahms.udel.edu (Stephen Barr) writes:
>
>     A little while ago, our esteemed colleague, Martin Barry,
>asserted that the Popes had once "condemned" railway travel and 
>gas lighting. I expressed the view that this could not have been         
>the case and ventured the following explanation of this myth.
>Perhaps, I said, it arose from the fact that the Papal States were
>slow to introduce railways and gas lighting, and it was not until
>Pius IX that these amenities were introduced into the Papal
>lands. Martin, however, assured me that these "condemnations" are
>well-known and frequently cited by historians, and said he would
>look for documentation.
>
>     Well, it looks like my conjecture was right. I have searched
>high and low in our university library for evidence of such
>Papal condemnations of railway travel and have found none. 

I am surprised. Evidently your library or your field of vision is
smaller than mine. I'll give a few of the several citations I have
unearthed since we both started looking, at the end of this post.
       
>     But I did find evidence of my thesis!
>In a book entitled "A Dictionary of the Popes" by the noted
>Anglican historian J.N.D.Kelly I looked up the predecessor of
>Pope Pius IX, namely Gregory XVI. Kelly says:
>     "Gregory XVI was an austere, learned monk who was hostile
>     to modern trends (he refused to have railways in his
>     domains, calling them 'chemins d'enfer')."  

Steve: I have a copy of the book in front of me. It says:

	"[...] An austere, learned monk, hostile to modern trends
	(he banned railways in his domains, calling them 'chemins
	d'enfer') and to Italian nationalism in particular, ..." (p 307)

So why did you misquote it? In particular, you replaced the word
'banned', which seems to be rather inconvenient for your thesis, with
the more equivocal 'refused to have'. 

>'His domains' means the Papal States. I do not know French,
>but it appears that 'chemins d'enfer' is a pun. Railroads
>were called 'chemins de fer' meaning 'roads of iron'. I
>suspect 'enfer' is related to the English 'infernal'.

In other sources it is given as 'chemins de fer, chemins d'enfer',
which means 'railways, roads to hell'. (I do know French; one doesn't use
'd'enfer' in the weak metaphorical sense like 'infernal').

>So it
>is clear Gregory XVI disliked these newfangled things and
>refused to have them in the Papal States.

A pope bans something and describes it as 'the road to hell'. And you
seriously expect us to believe that this was not a 'condemnation'?
You'll have to do better than that.

>There we have it. Gregory did not like railways and gas lighting
>and did not introduce them in the Papal States. Thus arises the
>"historical fact" that the Popes "condemned" railways and gas
>lighting as an example of the unreliability of the doctrinal
>teaching of the Popes!

It seems your determination to misrepresent the argument knows
no bounds. The point was not to typify papal teaching, but, as you
know, to point out that there are examples where papal teaching has
certainly been questionable: all directed towards the more interesting
question of the limits of 'obsequium religiosum' (deference to the 
Magisterium) and the primacy of conscience. If you choose to misrepresent
my position as trying to discredit the papacy, you are free to do
so; but I will not waste my time in continuing to discuss it with you.

>Thus arise most of the myths of the
>"progressives". Lesson: before we believe the worst about the
>Church let us check our sources. Steve Barr.

Sanctimonious claptrap. If you're going to preach about fidelity to
sources you'd better be a bit more careful when you cite sources
yourself; or choose something a bit more obscure than the _Oxford 
Dictionary of Popes_ to attempt to misquote.

I'm tired of this discussion, Steve. We started by discussing the nature
of authority in the Church and of our response to it. It's been at
your prompting that the discussion has degenerated into this frantic
burrowing in libraries over obscure incidents in the lives of
unimportant popes. You chose to split hairs over historical facts (to
remind you: you proposed that Innocent IV never really approved of torture,
ample historical documentation notwithstanding; and you attempted to
rationalize away Gregory XVI's documented condemnation of Railways).

I'm left at a loss to understand your position. "Every papal utterance
deserves our submission," you say. "Any papal utterance to which submission
would be manifestly insane is in fact NOT a papal utterance." This is what 
we philosophers of science call a non-falsifiable theory. Intellectually
incoherent and historically uncontaminated by contact with the facts. (Happy
New Year, Steve :-) )

I, meanwhile, am happy to continue to be guided by the wise words of Bishop
Butler. Nothing in all the evasiveness and name-calling has come even
remotely close to refuting the clarity of his vision of the church.
One last time:

"One of the positive results of the [Humanae Vitae] crisis was
that many Catholics, aided by theologians, were driven to
make a sharp distinction between the 'infallible' and the
'non-infallible' pronouncements of Church authority,
including the authority of the Pope himself. ... The upshot
is that responsible Christians have a wide area of reflection in which
they are not constricted by papal or episcopal 'infallibility'."

Martin Barry.

PS: A couple of citations for Gregory XVI's feelings about railways. There are
more, but I'm not sure this discussion is not worth the walk to the
library to note down the authors. :-)

(1) "Chemins de fer, chemins d'enfer." Pope Gregory XVI, quoted in F. Nielsen,
_The history of the papacy in the XIXth century_, tr. A.J. Mason, London:
Murray, 1906.
 
It means roughly 'railways, roads to hell'. You may also like to know that
the same Pope condemned the attendance of scientific conferences:

"The Papal Universities received a letter informing them that the Holy See
had good and sufficient reasons for not merely forbidding all subjects of
the Pope to take part in any scientific congress; it was even forbidden that
anyone should enter into correspondence with them." (ibid)

So no submitting abstracts either, guys. Best to follow Steve Barr's advice,
and abstain voluntarily. You know it makes sense.

(2) "With hindsight, it is clear that his [i.e. Pope Paul VI's] best course
would have been to procrastinate and equivocate indefinitely so that the ban
on contraception was never explicitly disowned, but quietly allowed to
lapse, like earlier papal anathemas against co-education, gaslighting and
railways. However, by setting up in the glare of modern publicity a
commission to investigate and report on the matter, first Pope John and then
Pope Paul had manoeuvred the Papacy into a dogmatic cul-de-sac from which
there was no escape. The only saving grace in the situation (suggesting that
the Holy Spirit might, after all, have been playing some part in the
proceedings) was that it was made clear on its publication that the
encyclical [i.e. Humanae Vitae, of July 1968] was not an "infallible"
pronouncement. This left open the theoretical possibility, however narrowly
defined, of conscientious dissent from its conclusions, and of some future
reconsideration of the issue"
 
David Lodge: "How Far Can You Go?", Penguin Books, 1980. pp114-5.

P.P.S. If you've got this far (haven't you got anything better to do?) I'd
be very grateful if you'd mail me to let me know that this post has
reached the outside world. Thanks.
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