Miscellanea Agnostica

The latest example of what I like to refer to as “the Christian martyr complex” comes in this pronouncement by Pope Benedict XVI. The Catholic News Service reports that the Holy Father has declared Christianity — and even religion itself — to be in danger of extinction (WebCite cached article):

Christianity and even religious belief are in grave danger across the globe, risking oblivion, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“Across vast areas of the earth, faith runs the danger of extinguishing like a flame that runs out of fuel,” he said.

Last I knew, religious faith was still going strong. The vast majority of people in the world are religious, and while religious fervor is fading in a few places such as Europe, in most regions religion is going strong and is nowhere near dying out.

It almost goes without saying that, in those few places where religion is becoming less common, the Roman Catholic Church’s own conduct has very likely contributed to this trend. “Charity begins at home,” or so the saying goes, so maybe the Pope should look in his own mirror and figure out how he might try to reverse this trend that so alarms him? My guess is he’ll refuse to do so and continue to wail about the evils of “secular humanism,” rather than examine and ferret out the evils within his own Church.

The article includes an additional quote, though, which I find remarkable:

“Without faith, the whole ecumenical movement would be reduced to a form of ‘social contract’ that’s adhered to out of common interest,” the pope said.

I’m not quite sure what the problem is with a “social contract” that people embrace “out of common interest.” Wouldn’t that be the best thing … for people to get along with each other, because it’s in their own best interest? And isn’t this precisely how the Ethic of Reciprocity works — a principle which, ironically, none other than the founder of the Pope’s own religion promoted? If this is something Jesus taught, why would the Pope find it objectionable?

None of this should be news to any Vatican-watcher. As the clerical child-abuse scandal has hammered the Catholic Church around the world, the current and prior Popes both staunchly refused to acknowledge any part in it; they both tried to prevent bishops from allowing abusive clergy to be investigated by local authorities; and Benedict remains committed to a policy of evading responsibility for it, becoming offended when he’s forced to face it. He could, in one moment, restore the credibility of his own Church — and by extension, that of Christianity and of religion generally — by dealing with the scandal in a contrite and moral manner. But he never will. Count on it.

Hat tip: CNN Belief Blog.

Photo credit: Catholic Church (England & Wales).

Tags: benedict xvi, catholic church, catholicism, christian martyr complex, christian persecution complex, ethic of reciprocity, golden rule, holy see, persecution, persecution complex, pope benedict, pope benedict xvi, religionism, religionist, religionists, roman catholic, roman catholic church, vatican, vatican city

Yesterday’s post on the latest reprehensible excuse for child abuse by priests — and for hierarchs doing nothing to stop it — offered by the Roman Catholic Church, got me to thinking about the number of excuses the Church has made over the years, concerning its handling of the vast worldwide child-abuse scandal that has dogged it for around a decade. Here are some of the ones I’ve blogged about:

1. What’s wrong with abusing children?
2. Claims are claims, so we don’t care
3. The Devil within the victims caused the abuse
4. The Devil lurking in the Vatican caused the abuse & the scandal
5. The scandal is a plot against the Pope
6. The Bible forbids anyone to “judge” the Church
7. The scandal was falsely cooked up by “masonic secularists” and “great newspapers”
8. The scandal is a conspiracy of the Jews
9. Admitting wrongdoing would cost too much money
10. The scandal is an attack by “the world”
11. Sexually assaulting children is not pedophilia & there’s nothing wrong with it
12. The priestly-pedophilia scandal is all society’s fault
13. The victims liked it, so it was OK

The above are all serious statements offered by current or former Church officials, accused clergy, or the Vatican’s defenders. In addition to all of these, there’s also a widespread assumption among lay Catholics that allegations of child abuse are all fabricated, made up in order to extort money from dioceses.

The aforementioned excuses are all depraved evasions of the truth, which is that Roman Catholic clergy around the world abused children in their care; they sometimes did so systematically; abusive clergy were aided and abetted by the Church’s hierarchs; and to date the Church still tries to keep its clergy from being prosecuted.

And yes, folks, the abuse absolutely did occur. While it’s not reasonable to assume each and every individual allegation is true, a long line of independent reports in many countries have all verified that the abuse happened, it happened on a wide scale, and it took place over the course of decades; see e.g. reports from Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, to name just three.

I’m sure more excuses will be offered in the future, but at this point I expect they’re likely to be variations on the above … along the lines of “it wasn’t all that serious” or “it’s a conspiracy!” More’s the pity.

Photo credit: Demotivators blog (defunct).

Tags: catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, catholic clerical child abuse, catholic clerical child abuse scandal, child sexual abuse, christian, Christianity, christians, conspiracies, conspiracy, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, excuse-making, excuses, holy see, papacy, pope, priestly pedophilia, roman catholic, roman catholic church, sexual abuse, vatican, vatican city

Most of us realize that, when we’ve dug ourselves into a hole, the best thing to do is drop the shovel and climb out. Apparently, the archdiocese of Hartford never got the memo on this. With the Roman Catholic Church already having dug itself into the abyss of an international child-abuse scandal, the archdiocese and its attorneys have decided the solution is to keep right on digging. Toward that end they pulled a truly reprehensible stunt, as the Hartford Courant reports in a little nugget near the end of the story (WebCite cached article):

In his cross-examinations, [church lawyer Jack] Sitarz has implied that, since [plaintiff] Doe and his friend never forcefully resisted [Fr] Ferguson’s advances, they may have enjoyed them.

That’s right, folks. In a court of law, no less, an archdiocesan lawyer dared imply that the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest enjoyed being abused!

I’m almost at a loss for words to use to describe this maneuver. This is truly sick behavior.

Sitarz must, I’m sure — being an attorney — know full well that minors cannot legally consent to any kind of sexual activity, and that “liking” the abuse cannot and never will make it legal, much less moral or acceptable.

Yet he trotted out that old saw anyway — knowing it’s legally pointless.

Once again, I’m left asking: Why oh why, lay Catholics, are you tolerating the self-serving, greedy, manipulative, crafty, hateful, and horrific antics of the robed old men who rule your Church? When you are going to say to them, “Enough! No more!” When are you going to take back your own Church, turn them out, and change it into the organ of humility and compassion your own Jesus Christ himself supposedly taught about? What part of any of this behavior do you find acceptable … and why? If (as I hope) you don’t find it acceptable, why are you tolerating it?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: archdiocese of hartford, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, catholic clerical child abuse, child abuse, clerical child abuse, clerical sexual abuse, derby CT, hartford ct, jack sitarz, priestly pedophilia, roman catholic, roman catholic church, st mary's school, waterbury CT

Here’s a news story of a sort that I’m surprised is not more common than it is. The Los Angeles Times reports on the fall of a Roman Catholic hierarch in California (WebCite cached article):

From humble beginnings in southwest Mexico, Gabino Zavala entered the priesthood and embarked on a remarkable journey that landed him squarely in the corner offices of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese. …

Popular and approachable, Zavala was widely known by his first name. To many, that sensibility made the Vatican’s announcement on Wednesday unthinkable: For more than a decade, Zavala had harbored a dark secret. He is the father, church officials said, of two children, and had resigned his post.

Zavala’s fatherhood, a violation of canon laws of celibacy for priests, was the first controversy to rock the local church during the tenure of Archbishop Jose Gomez, who succeeded Roger Mahony last year.

As usually happens with such revelations, this triggers the LA Times to ramble into a discussion of Catholic clerical celibacy:

Zavala’s resignation is likely to spark renewed debate over the ecclesiastical laws of celibacy. The earliest popes — St. Peter himself, under some interpretations — were married men and fathers. Later, in the fourth century, church officials concluded that men who were not celibate “shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical life.”

The idea was to mimic the sacrificing, chaste life of Jesus — for priests to be married, in a sense, to the church. But in recent years, hundreds of theologians have argued that the rules are dated and needlessly restrictive.

Actually, in spite of efforts beginning in the 4th century to make all clergy celibate, the fact is that this was not universally observed. By the 11th century, clerical marriages were still taking place, among the “secular clergy,” and the matter had to be addressed as part of the Gregorian Reforms.

And while the Catholic Church’s stated reason for priestly celibacy is to emulate Christ’s chastity, the actual reasons are a bit less spiritual and more mercenary than that. Clerical celibacy meant that priests no longer were having children (legitimate ones, anyway), so that church offices no longer passed automatically down from father to son; this in turn meant that church office appointments were made explicitly by the bishops and the Pope, giving them greater control over the Church and permitting them more nepotism. Another reason is that celibate priests don’t have families to take care of or worry about, eliminating the possibility that a priest’s loyalty to the Church might be diminished.

This last is the chief reason the Church will never willingly do away with priestly celibacy; it would cease to be a closed club of bachelors with few external influences. It would fundamentally change as an organization, in a way that would — almost by definition — reduce the hierarchs’ control. There’s no way they’d forfeit that, at least not without a fight.

Photo credit: Xavier de Jauréguiberry.

Tags: archbishop jose gomez, archdiocese of los angeles, bishop gabino zavala, catholic church, celibacy, celibate, clergy, clerical celibacy, gabino zavala, irwindale CA, los angeles, los angeles CA, priestly celibacy, roman catholic, roman catholic church

I’ve already blogged about the case of Raymond Lahey, erstwhile Catholic bishop of Antigonish (NS), who was found to have had child porn on his computer. He pleaded guilty, and the CBC reports on his sentence, which appears rather lenient (WebCite cached article):

Raymond Lahey, the disgraced Roman Catholic bishop who admitted he was addicted to looking at child pornography, has been released from prison after being sentenced to time served.

He was sentenced Wednesday to 15 months in prison and two years probation but received a two-for-one credit for time served. Lahey pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography for the purposes of importation to Canada.

What’s ironic here is that, as a bishop — presumably at the same time that he was collecting child porn — Lahey had negotiated a settlement a substantial settlement over child abuse in his diocese. So one would assume he’d been well aware of the fact that what he was doing was wrong, and that it harmed children, at the time he was doing it. Moreover, it turns out his child porn was religiously-flavored:

The Crown’s case involved 588 photos and 63 videos, with the Crown pointing out that some involved adolescent boys engaged in sex acts while wearing a Crucifix and rosary beads.

Naturally the current bishop of Antigonish had some remarks on the sentencing:

In a written statement, the current bishop of Antigonish said many people have been disturbed and upset by Lahey’s case.

“This entire matter has caused a great deal of hurt, disappointment and anger within and outside of our Diocese,” said Bishop Brian Joseph Dunn.

“Church leaders are called to provide good example and to show moral integrity in their lives. When they commit serious moral failures, this can have a significant impact on the faith community.”

This sounds all nice and contrite, but that apparent contrition is contradicted by the fact that, in most cases (albeit apparently not in Lahey’s), the R.C. Church goes to bat for abusive clergy and refuses to acknowledge they might have done anything wrong. This repeated denial is a pattern of conduct the Church has exhibited around the world. And I find it difficult to believe they’ve given up this particular habit.

Photo credit: CBC.

Tags: antigonish, antigonish NS, canada, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, child abuse, child porn, christian, Christianity, christians, clerical abuse, clerical child abuse, clerical child abuse scandal, diocese of antigonish, nova scotia, pedophilia, priestly pedophilia, raymond lahey, roman catholic, roman catholic church, sentence, sentenced, sentencing

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Hartford has a number of problems on its hands. It has several misbehaving priests to deal with, in addition to its campaign to control the state of Connecticut. One would think that Archbishop Mansell would be working to address these and other issues — such as the continuing lawsuits and controversy over a deceased pedophile doctor at St Francis Hospital in Hartford (cached). But if one thinks that, one would be wrong. It turns out that the archdiocese has a much larger agenda, which includes an effort to promote abstinence among gays in Connecticut, as the Hartford Courant reports (WebCite cached article):

The Hartford Archdiocese wants gays and lesbians to practice abstinence in the new year.

On Tuesday, the archdiocese announced it was launching a local chapter of a national ministry called Courage “to support men and women who struggle with homosexual tendencies and to motivate them to live chaste and fruitful lives in accordance with Catholic Church teachings.”

This effort is ironic; on the one hand the archdiocese is putting forth a specific effort to reach out to gays; on the other hand, it’s telling them they’re disordered and need to curb themselves:

Linda Estabrook, executive director of the Hartford Gay & Lesbian Health Collective, took offense.

Thousands in the state receive services each year from the health organization, whose motto is “Be well. Be yourself.” The ministry implies that many of them “are not moral and are not leading fulfulling lives, and that is not true,” Estabrook said.

Those of us with brains can see how insulting and backhanded this ministry is, but I’ll concede that the folks who came up with it don’t see any problem with what they’re doing. The Catholic Church is run by a bunch of celibate men; they probably don’t consider it unreasonable to order gays to be celibate, too. They’re celibate themselves, so — in their eyes — there’s nothing wrong with it.

This idiocy serves as further evidence of how out-of-touch with reality the leadership of the Catholic Church is … as though we needed any more such evidence. I think the archdiocese of Hartford should work on putting its own house in order before it runs around telling other people how to live. And this shouldn’t be too much to ask of a Christian organization. After all, Jesus Christ himself is reported to have said:

Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the great log in your own? And how dare you say to your brother, “Let me take that splinter out of your eye,” when, look, there is a great log in your own? Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye. (Mt 7:3-5)

How can you say to your brother, “Brother, let me take out that splinter in your eye,” when you cannot see the great log in your own? Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take out the splinter in your brother’s eyes. (Lk 6:42)

Time for the archdiocese to put Jesus’ own teachings into effect, and straighten out their own act before ordering other people around.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: abstinence, abstinent, archdiocese of hartford, catholic church, celibacy, celibate, connecticut, gay, gays, homosexual, homosexuality, lesbian, lesbians, roman catholic, roman catholic church

I blogged a long time ago about the Roman Catholic clerical child-abuse scandal hitting the Netherlands. The AP via CTV relates the release of a report into the abuse of children by Catholic clergy there, and the numbers are staggering (WebCite cached article):

Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse in Dutch Catholic institutions over the past 65 years, and church officials knew about the abuse but failed to adequately address it or help the victims, a long-awaited report said Friday. The release of the report was followed by an apology to victims by the archbishop of Utrecht, who said the revelation “fills us with shame and sorrow.” …

The Dutch report said Catholic officials failed to tackle the widespread abuse, which ranged from “unwanted sexual advances” to rape, in an attempt to prevent scandals. Abusers included priests, brothers, pastors and lay people who worked in religious orders and congregations, it said. The investigation followed allegations of repeated incidents of abuse at one cloister that quickly spread to claims from Catholic institutions across the country.

The suspected number of abuse victims who spent some of their youth in church institutions likely lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, according to a summary of the report investigating allegations of abuse dating back to 1945.

It’s nice, I suppose, that Archbishop Wim Eijk apologized and expressed remorse over this, and compensation will be offered to victims, but once again I must ask why it took so long — the culmination of a thorough examination and investigation — for the apology to be forthcoming? Would it have been so fucking hard for the Dutch Catholic Church simply to have owned up, right at the start? Why does the Catholic Church, which claims to be the sole remaining arbiter of morality in the world, to show some damned courage and moral fortitude, just once? They love telling everyone else what they ought to do, but refuse to be held accountable for their own actions, or inaction as the case may be, and must have all concessions of wrongdoing dragged out of them. Hypocrites!

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: archbishop wim eijk, archdiocese of utrecht, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, catholic clerical scandal, child abuse, child sexual abuse, christian, Christianity, christians, clerical child abuse, clerical child sex abuse, holland, netherlands, priestly pedophilia, roman catholic, roman catholic church, utrecht, wim eijk

America’s Catholic bishops have had enough of not being in control. They’ve taken their gloves off and slapped them down. At issue — they say — is their “religious liberty.” In yet another expression of the Christian martyr complex, they’re griping and bellyaching that they no longer have the influence they once did; that government is no longer bending over for them on demand; and that society is leaving them behind. USA Today‘s Faith & Reason blog reports on their latest petulant, sniveling whine (WebCite cached article):

The U.S. Catholic bishops Monday blasted “aggressive secularism” and the Obama administration for attacking the Church — and all believers — on religious liberty by curtailing the voices of faith in the public square. …

Their leader, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, told the annual gathering of 300 prelates to employ their passion for Jesus and the Church to face down the “chilling statistics” of people leaving the church and the cultural onslaught of critics of the Church.

The bishops are carrying the standard of “religious liberty,” because in their minds, their “freedom of religion” equates with “everyone in the country doing whatever they say.” Anyone who insolently dares not to follow the strict dogma of Roman Catholicism is — by their definition — depriving them of their religious liberty.

Well, boo fucking hoo, bishops. Your “religious liberty” stops at your own front doors; it does not entitle you to control the lives of anyone else. Grow the fuck up and stop presuming the power to tell everyone — Catholic or not — what they can or cannot do. OK?

If you think my refusal to obey you somehow diminishes your “religious liberty,” well then … by all means, I invite you to come right here and assert your control over me. Go ahead. I dare you. Do it. Now!

If you cannot or will not do so, then you’re all just a bunch of crybaby cowards who just want to weep and wail that you aren’t getting your way any more. Well, too fucking bad, your Excellencies. The Roman Catholic Church did run the show, once upon a time … but the rest of humanity outgrew that. The Catholic Church doesn’t control the occidental world any longer. The sooner you accept that, they better off you’ll be.

Photo credit: Jianghao1.

Tags: archbishop timothy dolan, catholic church, roman catholic, roman catholic church, timothy dolan

Later this month, Catholics around the country will have to deal with a revised English liturgy. As CNN’s Belief Blog reports, this new liturgy has been over a decade in the making (WebCite cached article):

The Roman Catholic Mass is undergoing a major overhaul. In an effort to unify how the global church prays, the English translation of the church’s worship service is being modified in order to more accurately reflect the Latin from which the Roman Missal is translated.

Supposedly this is being in order to have the Mass more accurately reflect the Latin text:

“There is an Italian proverb,” said the Rev. Msgr. Kevin W. Irwin, a professor of liturgical studies at the Catholic University of America, “that ‘every translator is a traitor.’”

“Every translation is less than the original,” he said.

What’s funny about this remark, of course, is that the Latin Missal is certainly not the “original” Mass of Christianity. The first Christians, living as they did in the eastern Roman Empire during the first century CE, for the most part didn’t speak Latin at all. Those in the Levant — including Jesus’ own putative homeland, Galilee — most likely spoke Aramaic. A minority there, and almost everyone in other parts of the Near East, spoke Greek. Some in Egypt would have spoken Coptic. Latin would have been even rarer than that, in the earliest Christian churches.

There’s a reason the vast majority of Christianity’s literary output in its first three centuries was in Greek … and that is, that Greek — not Latin — was the language the average Christian was most likely to understand. All of the New Testament books were originally in Greek. Nearly all the ante-Nicene Church Fathers wrote in Greek. (The first major Church Father who wrote mostly in Latin was Tertullian, and he lived near the end of the 2nd century.) As it turns out, the oldest complete and extant Christian liturgy is found in the Didache, which was written in Greek. Not Latin.

So the good monsignor is factually wrong to state that the Latin Missale Romanum is the “original” Mass. It’s demonstrably not true.

The other problem with this new English translation is that, while it may or may not be “closer” to the official Catholic Mass in Latin, it’s simply not the kind of English that most people speak. An example that the CNN story provides is this:

And in that same prayer [i.e. the Nicene Creed*], where Jesus was once “Begotten, not made, one in being with the Father,” He is now, “begotten, not made, con-substantial with the Father.”

No speaker of English talks that way! “Con-substantial” is not an English word. It’s actually an artificial construct conjured up solely to reinforce the Trinity doctrine. This term is otherwise unknown in English. It makes no sense to translate something into a language, if you aren’t going to actually use that language in a way that its speakers do naturally.

On the other hand, some of the changes are insubstantial and useless:

In the Nicene Creed*, where once Catholics said that God is the “Maker … of all that is seen and unseen,” they will now say God makes “all things visible and invisible.”

Call me crazy — and many do! — but I fail to see how “seen and unseen” is all that far off in meaning from “visible and invisible.” They’re parallel phrases in English. What’s the reason for changing it … except maybe to make a meaningless change just for the hell of it?

I wish American Catholics the best of luck dealing with this new wrinkle in their weekly services.

* Despite the moniker “Nicene Creed,” the creed in question was not composed or propounded at the Council of Nicaea (325). Rather, it was a product of the First Council of Constantinople (381) and later referred to as “Nicene” in order to make it seem as though it had been a product of the earlier Council.

Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales).

Tags: catholic church, english, language, latin, latin mass, mass, missal, missale romanum, roman catholic, roman catholic church, roman missal, translate, translation

As if the Roman Catholic Church didn’t have enough to deal with already, it apparently decided to turn the heat up on itself. The house organ of the archdiocese of Boston, The Pilot, had to withdraw a column that claimed that the devil was responsible for homosexuality, as the AP reports via the Boston Globe (locally-cached article):

The oldest Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States has retracted an opinion column suggesting the devil may be responsible for gay attraction.

The column, which appeared Friday in the Archdiocese of Boston’s official newspaper, The Pilot, was titled “Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction.” It was written by Daniel Avila, an associate director for policy and research for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In the column, Avila says “the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil.”

The language Avila used in his column is reminiscent of the “biological error” quip that talk-radio heroine Laura Schlessinger ran aground on years ago:

It also says “disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart.” It says that when “natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God.”

Way to go, guys. Way to go! You must all be so proud.

Photo credit: Marshall Astor.

Tags: archdiocese of boston, boston, boston MA, catholic church, daniel avila, devil, gay, gays, homosexual, homosexuality, homosexuals, roman catholic, roman catholic church, the pilot