FOR WHAT SEEMS like eternity those in this country whe have been trying to bulld sappert for the right of the Irish people to MESSING UE OWE TUITE DATE conducted their affairs in an atmosphere aldn to an Orsage BOUNCI meetings, mystericas references to past faction fighes, been the order of the day.
So it is refreshing to report that last weekend saw a change from all that. Approximately two HUMMELE WEISS MICE BE LURER to rebuild a troops out movement which had boon all but decimated tion complexes, and threats of That more people attended the London meeting than had been present at any similar event for a That a new liled Troops Out Movement Inanched were not the only gains.
which the conference projected.
loevitably the predominated, cach having different attitades on how to take the movement forward.
Nevertheless an amended reso. lution submitted in the nameof tbe Big Flame, and the International Marxiat Group received whelmingsupport. рог There was general agreement on the maio perspective of the united TOM, with provision fo other activities to be taken up in the localities.
WAS perspectives centred the planned Internatiocal bunal ef Britain's Crimes Against the Trish organised initiative in which it is hoped broad support will he huilt in this country and internationally for a public hearing of British oppres sion in Ireland The spirit and determination of the activists is perhaps hest hown by the fact that after two othere me conferee to Bller the kaflet for a public meeting of three Belfast motbers organised matched in the localities, •InPeople masters of Westminster.
Insernarionol
the Women and Ireland group warin meenue and Socialise Women S Grega
N IRISH newspaper recently carried a detailed, sober report Most Rev. Dr. Lucy, Bishop of Cork and Ross, on the subject of delayed haptism. The bishop warned parents that babies who died before being baptised would certainly lose their measure of supernatural happiness, but would probably still receive a modicun of natural happiness. Not only infants: "Equally, we should not regard pagans, Moslems, and nonChristians generally as lost for all eternity. They won't get to Heaven, of course, but if they live a good life, neither will they go to Hell - they too will have their lesser reward. Independent, 16 May 1977).
Apart from signalling a convergence of Feuerbach and the Church on the question society which reflects even the phenomena of underdevelopment must be encouraging for militants prematurely cut off from 0030 1321 153C SOCINO ROGERI to discover that they really have been 'dead people on holiday all along"
Yet once the immediate incredulous amusement recedes, it has to be faced that the existence of this atrocious old prelate as • social force (while no longer typical of even the Irish Hierarchy in the sheer crudity of his utteranoes) is merely a local, exquisite twist of the law of uneven development which has permitted the Church to survive on a global scale, when according to the logic of bourgeois elichtement and progress, it should lie quiedly with the spinning wheel and bronze "museum of antiquities".
The tenacity of powerfal Churches warns advanced bourceds societies that their certainties are paralleled and in some ways undercut by obscurantist ideologies, useful as they prove to be in reproducing the forms of social relations given by those societies. (Frish Engels, 'Issued from a post-tribal ethnic minority, triumphant in late Antiquity, dominant in feudalism, decadent and renascent under capitalism, the Roman Church has survived every other institution -juridicial or linguistic — coeval with It.' [Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, NLB] NEIL BELTON discusses the continued existence of cultural, political, RCOBB SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 7 Juty 1877 p13 of section free are rape andy latin of Europe America (the involvement of sections of the side the scope of this short article, with it Segressive reiection of ideolomes ininical to certain sets of "traditional values, especi ally and crucially those that threaten tbe family and patriarchy.
Althouch its mass appeal has charac teristically been in the under-developed regions, a palpable cause of the Church's survival is its social roots in those states which achieved national unification or hecame major capitalist powers in the latter hail of the nineteenth century. The West European system of capelalist states has proved remarkably stable, despite severe SHOCKS, MAD ACE CEMETE RAN COURSES main haven, Just as its missions depended CRITICAl rapidly with the rise of anti-calonial movements. is important centres remain the old imperialist states and their former colonies Cold War The Church's wealth, which Is regarded as the essential guarantee of is spicitual authority is not based solely on its ability to mate marketing skills with its traditional techniques of moral coercion to raise funds: the Church is a wealthy corporate investor, in 1968, and this merely the amount from which dividends were being coblected. Until the Seventies, the Vacican's most important mobilare, a huge real estate corporation with operations in the USA, Mexico and France (one of its projects was a certain Walergate Hotel in Washington) and the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction = the semi-state cartel set up by Mussolini to protect private industry, It also bad a large direct interest in SNIA-Viscosa, an Italian aulds and Hambros Bank.