From: I am a newcomer and having difficulty using the site.
This thread has really moved into meaningful areas since it started. Not sure if this contribution is continuing it or moving to another topic ...
My situation, as many know, is that my partner, has returned to the BK way of life. Living together since 1993, we, of course, know a lot about each other and our backgrounds. In relation to Leela's statement above - "internal system ... set up in childhood" - what I see is a definite resonance between the "heavier" aspects of BK teachings & culture and the pre-Vatican 2, Irish Catholic tradition she was born into and informed by.
In Australia, up until only recently (maybe the 1970's), the primary form of social discrimination was between Catholics and Anglicans. The majority of Catholics in Australia came from Irish roots. As I understand it, Irish Catholicism never really gave up the culture of Jansenism (or the Jansenist heresy - eventually condemned by the Pope but influential right up to the present). It's an approach which vilifies the body, believes the human condition (original sin etc) was beyond redemption (but continual penance was still expected!), life was a trial, only few attain salvation and so on.
Although in the 1960's Vatican 2 was to "modernise" the church, the existing nuns and priests had all been brought up under this old Irish Catholic culture, and many disputed or disliked the changes pronounced by the Pope. These people were the teaching nuns and priests in the Catholic school system, as well as the people turned to for advice & counselling in times of difficulty. Hatred and fear of sex and the sexual impulse, indoctrination of eternal damnation or salvation and so on, poured into malleable young minds, all created a "perfect storm" - a psychological conditioning ripe for exploitation, or at the least, ripe for easy transference to a substitute dogma.
I'd be interested to learn about others' reflection and experience on these questions;
Leela wrote:the BK system tapped into my own internal system that had been set up in childhood, and compounded it. I don't know if that is true for everyone.
This thread has really moved into meaningful areas since it started. Not sure if this contribution is continuing it or moving to another topic ...
My situation, as many know, is that my partner, has returned to the BK way of life. Living together since 1993, we, of course, know a lot about each other and our backgrounds. In relation to Leela's statement above - "internal system ... set up in childhood" - what I see is a definite resonance between the "heavier" aspects of BK teachings & culture and the pre-Vatican 2, Irish Catholic tradition she was born into and informed by.
In Australia, up until only recently (maybe the 1970's), the primary form of social discrimination was between Catholics and Anglicans. The majority of Catholics in Australia came from Irish roots. As I understand it, Irish Catholicism never really gave up the culture of Jansenism (or the Jansenist heresy - eventually condemned by the Pope but influential right up to the present). It's an approach which vilifies the body, believes the human condition (original sin etc) was beyond redemption (but continual penance was still expected!), life was a trial, only few attain salvation and so on.
Although in the 1960's Vatican 2 was to "modernise" the church, the existing nuns and priests had all been brought up under this old Irish Catholic culture, and many disputed or disliked the changes pronounced by the Pope. These people were the teaching nuns and priests in the Catholic school system, as well as the people turned to for advice & counselling in times of difficulty. Hatred and fear of sex and the sexual impulse, indoctrination of eternal damnation or salvation and so on, poured into malleable young minds, all created a "perfect storm" - a psychological conditioning ripe for exploitation, or at the least, ripe for easy transference to a substitute dogma.
I'd be interested to learn about others' reflection and experience on these questions;
- • was the Roman Catholic education system & culture - particularly up to the time of Vatican 2 in the 1960's and '70s - a forerunner and major reinforcement of your BK life (or your particular approach to it or experience of it)? Particularly for you Irish or Australian Roman Catholics, and
• was it different for the British, Latinos and other Roman Catholics?