Ireland stands up to the Catholic Church

Last week, the Cloyne report was released. This document describes patterns of child abuse and in particular the willful intransigence of the Catholic church in correcting the problems in Ireland, and it’s pretty damned damning. One significant detail: the Church’s defense in recent months consists of claiming priestly pedophilia was a thing of the past, a product of the laxity and corruption of the general social atmosphere in the 60s and 70s, pushing the blame onto that awful liberal culture, not the church. Unfortunately, the Cloyne report assesses policies in the late 1990s, so we’re talking about relatively contemporary church practices. Maybe they can start blaming investment bankers instead of hippies.

Anyway, the report rips into the church at all levels, from the local diocese to the Vatican, and accuses them of failing to report cases of abuse, providing support for victims, or even of recording problems — the church had basically closed all doors for redress, and had insisted as usual on keeping the horrors hidden in house. It’s been a cult of secrecy that has permitted the abuses to continue.

Some of the local church officials have apologized — small comfort to the people who were sexually abused as children — but wouldn’t you know it, the Vatican rejects all criticisms. They say the Vatican’s instructions to Irish clergy were perfectly reasonable, because opening up these cases to secular authorities “risked contravening canonical law”. Right. Raping children isn’t as significant a contravention of canonical law as arresting child-rapers in a dog collar would be. It’s just more of the same dodginess from the Vatican.

However Maeve Lewis, director of abuse survivors’ group One in Four, hit out at Fr Lombardi’s claims. Saying they “completely lack substance”, she added his words are “part of the now familiar refusal by the Vatican to acknowledge that the culture of loyalty and secrecy which facilitated the sexual abuse of children extended far beyond the Irish Church.

“It is further evidence, if needed, that the Vatican’s claim to prioritise the safety of children is completely lacking in credibility,” she said.

Now though, in a major step, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland Enda Kenny has spoken out rather forcefully against the church.

Mr Kenny told the Dáil that the Cloyne Report highlighted the ‘dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.’

The rape and torture of children had been downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold, instead, the primacy of the institution, which are its power, standing and ‘reputation’.

The hierarchy had proved either unwilling or unable to address what he called the horrors uncovered in successive reports, a failure which he said must be devastating for so many good priests.

Mr Kenny said that the Catholic Church needed to be truly and deeply penitent for the wrongdoing it perpetrated, hid and denied.

‘Instead of listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal,’ Mr Kenny pointed out that the Vatican’s reaction had been to parse and analyse it, with the eye of a canon lawyer.

The full speech is available online. Kenny is a believing Catholic, unfortunately, but good common sense and a recognition of what is morally right overrides obedience to the church, and here are a few more parts I liked.

But thankfully for them, and for us, this is not Rome.
Nor is it industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish-Catholic world.

This is the ‘Republic’ of Ireland 2011.

A Republic of laws…of rights and responsibilities…of proper civic order…where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version…of a particular kind of ‘morality’…will no longer be tolerated or ignored.

Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.”

As the Holy See prepares its considered response to the Cloyne Report, as Taoiseach, I am making it absolutely clear, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this State, the standards of conduct which the Church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic.

Not purely, or simply or otherwise.

CHILDREN FIRST.

Bravo!

Dembski is just another wacky Christian

How do people stomach this stuff? Bill Dembski was on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, so I tried to listen — the host goes on and on about his dogma, and it makes no sense. “Here’s what the Bible says, it’s true, therefore you have to believe.” And then he introduces Dembski as someone who uses science to justify Christian superstition in a “biblically satisfying” way.

Then Delusional Dembski gets on, and the first thing he does is claim the evidence for design in nature has been getting stronger and stronger…and he claims that the reason scientists haven’t been embracing it is the problem of evil. No, wrong, it’s because there is no evidence for design. He cites things like the rabies virus that seems to be designed to destroy human nervous systems, and fire ants, and parasitic wasps, and that these are problems for Darwinists (?) and that this natural evil has to be explained. His explanation: the Fall. But wait, he also admits to being an Old Earth Creationist; if natural evil was present long before Adam and Eve, how can the Fall be an explanation?

Easy. The effects of the Fall work backward through time. God created a world containing evil in anticipation of Eve chomping on an apple.

That was enough. I stopped right there. I’m not a psychiatrist, so listening in to two lunatics babbling at each other isn’t particularly interesting.

Wait…let’s add a third lunatic. Ken Ham was outraged at Dembski’s “outlandish statements” and is very peeved at the Bible Answer Man. They’re heretics! He doesn’t find them outlandish because they’re babbling pseudoscience, it’s because they don’t immediately reject this old earth stuff to accept Ham’s literal interpretation of the Bible. Ham is upset because Dembski is undermining the authority of the Word of God.

I say put ’em in a cage match and let them tear each other apart.

Happy 189th Birthday, Gregor!

It’s really a shame he didn’t live to be even 78 or so, so Gregor Mendel could have lived to see his work recognized.

I also wonder what he would have thought to know that even godless atheists centuries after his life would know his name and his scientific work so well…

Also, via Google today:

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Notice the parental, F1, and F2 generations from left to right, and the 3:1 ratio in the F2s…nice.

The loyal shield bearer

Is anyone surprised that Bill O’Reilly slavishly defends Rupert Murdoch? Of course not — I’m pretty sure his employers have tattooed the word “tool” somewhere on his anatomy. You might be surprised at the stupidity of his rationale…wait, no, you won’t be. Nothing the “tide goes in, tide goes out” man says could be unexpectedly inane.

I give up. There’s nothing surprising here. Bill O’Reilly brings in a stooge from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and they sit around whining about the fact that the NY Times has been reporting on the NewsCorp scandals…because it’s a British affair. Who cares what goes on in other countries? So what if NewsCorp is based in America, it’s just a bunch of foreigners. Why does the NY Times go on and on about irrelevant stuff going on outside our borders?

OK, since it’s an entirely foreign affair, let’s kick Rupert Murdoch out of the country and seize all of his holdings and put them in American hands.

Matthilda Dillahunty does good

As you may recall, I maneuvered a gang of atheists into offering forfeits if they could beat me in fundraising…and Matt Dillahunty agreed to appear in drag on his show. And he has come through! Watch the latest Atheist Experience TV Show — he’s looking good.

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Watch the show, though. He didn’t just treat this as a joke: he actually took it very seriously as an opportunity to see what it’s like to fit into unconventional boxes. It’s always a good show, but the opening of this one is particularly informative and enlightening.

Why are they even debating this?

The UK has been having a debate about Sharia law in the House of Commons. Why, I don’t know; it’s so regressive and oppressive, such a step backward, that it ought to be simply dismissed out of hand. Maryam Namazie gave a speech opposing Sharia law, and here’s a small piece of it.

After all, Sharia law is based on the Koran, the hadith (sayings and actions of the prophet Mohammad), and Islamic jurisprudence. They all agree that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s, a women can’t sign her own marriage contract, men have the unilateral right to divorce whereas a women have limited rights to divorce; child custody goes to the father at a preset age; girls get half of the inheritance boys do and so on.

The Islamic Sharia Council explains why this is so: With regards to women’s testimony, ‘If one forgets, the other can remind her.’ It’s the difference between a man and a woman’s brains.’ ‘A woman’s character is not so good for a case where testimony requires attention and concentration.’ And this also applies to divorce. ‘Women are governed by emotion; men by their minds so he will think twice before uttering talaq [divorce].’ It goes on to say it is not ‘derogatory’ but ‘the secret of women’s nature.’

We’re done. Really, there’s no debate necessary at this point; we live in the 21st century, when no legal code should enshrine inequalities (and I’m well aware that there are inequities in US law, but we’re fighting hard to remove them, not add more).

Guess what makes Josh McDowell cry?

I think the loony Christian apologist has got something right. He has identified the greatest threat to Christianity:

The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it or not.

Hooray for the internet!

Now here is the problem, going all the way back, when Al Gore invented the Internet [he said jokingly], I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that’s exactly what has happened. It’s like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance [of information] has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics].

Somebody should book this guy for the next skeptics’ conference — he’ll make everyone very happy.

Canadians! You have been called to serve your country!

The Canadian Centre for Inquiry has an ambitious goal of establishing a physical center in every major Canadian city, and they’ve got substantial matching funds to help them do just that. This is the time to donate, if you’ve got the inclination. I’m sure they’d also accept donations from foreigners, although I’m already jealous enough of Canada that I don’t know why I’d want to make them even more awesome.