Replies to post #28206 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[migo]

F6,
"It is a very slow, creeping decay. When the sun is shining, as it has on Europe
for so long since the war, people feel they don't need God," explained Roehmel.
[F6 comment -- well then, dear Vatican, get busy and do your best to aid and abet
yet another cycle of war and pestilence so people will flock back to your churches (. . .)

good observation.
i have to wonder what unholy alliances will be formed to meet that particular need.
I just read through the Dawkins interview below.
Perhaps your article is a cause for celebration...and hope.

The atheist
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Gordy Slack

April 28, 2005 / Richard Dawkins is the world's most famous out-of-the-closet living atheist. He is also the world's most controversial evolutionary biologist. Publication of his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene," thrust Dawkins into the limelight as the handsome, irascible, human face of scientific reductionism. The book provoked everything from outrage to glee by arguing that natural selection worked its creative powers only through genes, not species or individuals. Humans are merely "gene survival machines," he asserted in the book.

Dawkins stuck to his theme but expanded his territory in such subsequent books as "The Blind Watchmaker," "Unweaving the Rainbow" and "Climbing Mount Improbable." His recent work, "The Ancestor's Tale," traces human lineage back through time, stopping to ponder important forks in the evolutionary road.

Given his outspoken defense of Darwin, and natural selection as the force of life, Dawkins has assumed a new role: the religious right's Public Enemy No. 1. Yet Dawkins doesn't shy from controversy, nor does he suffer fools gladly. He recently met a minister who was on the opposite side of a British political debate. When the minister put out his hand, Dawkins kept his hands at his side and said, "You, sir, are an ignorant bigot."

Currently, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position created for him in 1995 by Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft millionaire. Earlier this year, Dawkins signed an agreement with British television to make a documentary about the destructive role of religion in modern history, tentatively titled "The Root of All Evil."

I met Dawkins in late March at the Atheist Alliance International annual conference in Los Angeles, where he presented the alliance's top honor, the Richard Dawkins Prize, to magicians Penn and Teller. During our conversation in my hotel room, Dawkins was as gracious as he was punctiliously dressed in a crisp white shirt and soft blazer.

Once again, evolution is under attack. Are there any questions at all about its validity?

It's often said that because evolution happened in the past, and we didn't see it happen, there is no direct evidence for it. That, of course, is nonsense. It's rather like a detective coming on the scene of a crime, obviously after the crime has been committed, and working out what must have happened by looking at the clues that remain. In the story of evolution, the clues are a billionfold.

There are clues from the distribution of DNA codes throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, of protein sequences, of morphological characters that have been analyzed in great detail. Everything fits with the idea that we have here a simple branching tree. The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.

British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what would constitute evidence against evolution, famously said, "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian." They've never been found. Nothing like that has ever been found. Evolution could be disproved by such facts. But all the fossils that have been found are in the right place. Of course there are plenty of gaps in the fossil record. There's nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn't there be? We're lucky to have fossils at all. But no fossils have been found in the wrong place, such as to disprove the fact of evolution. Evolution is a fact.

Still, so many people resist believing in evolution. Where does the resistance come from?

It comes, I'm sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States.

My American friends tell me that you are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, it's slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted Bush in.

But the broad direction of history is toward enlightenment, and so I think that what America is going through at the moment will prove to be a temporary reverse. I think there is great hope for the future. My advice would be, Don't despair, these things pass.

You delve into agnosticism in "The Ancestor's Tale." How does it differ from atheism?

It's said that the only rational stance is agnosticism because you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the supernatural creator. I find that a weak position. It is true that you can't disprove anything but you can put a probability value on it. There's an infinite number of things that you can't disprove: unicorns, werewolves, and teapots in orbit around Mars. But we don't pay any heed to them unless there is some positive reason to think that they do exist.

Believing in God is like believing in a teapot orbiting Mars?

Yes. For a long time it seemed clear to just about everybody that the beauty and elegance of the world seemed to be prima facie evidence for a divine creator. But the philosopher David Hume already realized three centuries ago that this was a bad argument. It leads to an infinite regression. You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing. Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.

Those who embrace "intelligent design" -- the idea that living cells are too complex to have been created by nature alone -- say evolution isn't incompatible with the existence of God.

There is just no evidence for the existence of God. Evolution by natural selection is a process that works up from simple beginnings, and simple beginnings are easy to explain. The engineer or any other living thing is difficult to explain -- but it is explicable by evolution by natural selection. So the relevance of evolutionary biology to atheism is that evolutionary biology gives us the only known mechanism whereby the illusion of design, or apparent design, could ever come into the universe anywhere.

So why do we insist on believing in God?

From a biological point of view, there are lots of different theories about why we have this extraordinary predisposition to believe in supernatural things. One suggestion is that the child mind is, for very good Darwinian reasons, susceptible to infection the same way a computer is. In order to be useful, a computer has to be programmable, to obey whatever it's told to do. That automatically makes it vulnerable to computer viruses, which are programs that say, "Spread me, copy me, pass me on." Once a viral program gets started, there is nothing to stop it.

Similarly, the child brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other adults tell it. In general, it's a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected.

You've said that raising children in a religious tradition may even be a form of abuse.

What I think may be abuse is labeling children with religious labels like Catholic child and Muslim child. I find it very odd that in our civilization we're quite happy to speak of a Catholic child that is 4 years old or a Muslim of child that is 4, when these children are much too young to know what they think about the cosmos, life and morality. We wouldn't dream of speaking of a Keynesian child or a Marxist child. And yet, for some reason we make a privileged exception of religion. And, by the way, I think it would also be abuse to talk about an atheist child.

Next page / The God delusion, 9/11 and environmental apocalypse
1, 2, 3
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/index_np.html

[F6]

(COMTEX) B: Spanish bishops press assault on gay marriage law ( EFE )

Madrid, May 6, 2005 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Spain's Roman Catholic hierarchy
escalated Friday its assault on legislation providing for gay marriage, saying
that if passed - as is expected - it would not be "a real law, because it would
contradict upright reasoning and the moral norm."

The Spanish Bishops's Conference described the bill - which is supported by the
Socialist government, has been passed by the lower house and is expected to be
passed in the coming weeks by the Senate - as "a retreat along the path of
civilization."

Alluding to the senators now weighing the measure, the bishops said that
Catholics, which a large majority of Spaniards profess to be, cannot vote in
favor of same-sex marriage.

In a statement issued by their executive committee, the prelates said the
measure under consideration "would lack the character of a real law, because it
would contradict upright reasoning and the moral norm."

They also maintained that even if enacted, the law would have no force.

"Every individual could claim the right to conscientious objection," the bishops
said. "Opposing immoral regulations, ones that are contrary to reason, is not to
go against anyone, but rather in favor of the love of truth and of the welfare
of every person."

The pronouncement from the bishops's conference became public after several
mayors, who often preside over marriages here, said they would refuse to conduct
weddings for homosexual or lesbian couples.

The government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero warned
that public officials may not decline to apply a law, and that those who do so
could face removal from office.

According to a Sociological Research Center poll conducted October-November of
last year, 57 percent of Spaniards approve of same-sex marriage, 32 percent are
opposed and 11 percent don't know or did not reply.

Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said after the Cabinet
approved the final draft of the bill in late December that far from threatening
the institution of marriage, the legislation "strengthens it by making room for
and taking in groups of people who are equal to everyone else."

If the law gains final passage, Spain will become the third nation, after
Belgium and the Netherlands, to legalize gay marriage.

The bishops, in Friday's communique, argued that only a union between a man and
a woman can be called a marriage. They said the bill before the Senate
"signifies a flagrant negation of fundamental anthropological facts and a
genuine subversion of the most basic principles of social order."

"It is not true that this norm expands any right, because the union of persons
of the same sex cannot be marriage. What it does is corrupt the institution of
matrimony," the clerics continued.

The statement also expressed sadness for "the harm that will be caused to
children given in adoption to those false marriages."

In closing, the Catholic bishops said it was their duty "to speak out clearly
when elements in Spain try to lead a retreat along the path of civilization with
an unprecedented legal regulation that is gravely damaging to the fundamental
rights of the married couple and the family, of youths and of educators."

Late last month, the Vatican blasted the pending Spanish legislation and called
on Spaniards to exercise "conscientious objection" to the law.

The official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said that "nobody has the
right to alter ... (the) essence and identity" of marriage, which it asserted
that the law "destroys." EFE

mvf/dr

http://www.efe.es

Copyright (C) 2005. Agencia EFE S.A.

-0-

*** end of story *** (emphasis added)

[F6]

(COMTEX) B: Pope's dream of healing ancient Christian rift is still a distant glimmer
( AP WorldStream )

ATHENS, Greece, Jun 07, 2005 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- It's a goal that
has eluded Christianity for nearly 1,000 years: mending the rifts between the
Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Pope Benedict XVI has already declared a
"fundamental commitment" to heal the divide, and this week will engage in an
indirect round of talks with the Russian Orthodox.

In spiritual terms, it's an epic invitation to repair the broken foundation of
the faith - at a time when the European Union is erasing the last Cold War
separations and some Christian leaders appeal for greater cooperation to
challenge the rise of militant Islam.

But then comes a reality check. Even the smallest steps toward reconciliation
can kick up disputes that require the finesse of a diplomat and the perspective
of a historian to overcome. And, in the end, any serious bids at rapprochement
will force the Vatican to confront some core differences such as honoring
Orthodoxy's traditions of autonomous leadership and married clergy.

Greek theologian Athanasios Papathanasiou calls it "the pain of brotherly
debate."

It's made more acute because the ancient divide reaches beyond religious
differences, which are mostly over liturgical points and joint recognition of
sacraments. The bigger gulf, clerics and theologians say, is one of conflicting
perceptions and priorities.

When Vatican leaders look east, they see a patchwork of Orthodox churches with a
shared fellowship in the roots of Christianity. On May 29 in Italy's Adriatic
port of Bari, Benedict declared a "fundamental commitment" to advance dialogue
with the leaders of the world's 200 million Orthodox and 1.1 billion Catholics.

The Orthodox view of the West, however, is often shaded by historical grievances
- both religious and political - and deep suspicion of Vatican motives and
power.

"It's not an even equation," said Thomas Groome, director of the Boston College
Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry. "The deeper skepticism
to any improved relations resides within Orthodoxy."

No clear vision exists about what type of unity is even possible or desirable.

For the faithful, one important landmark in the future would be a formal pact on
mutual recognition of baptism, marriage and other aspects of church life. But
that would need the Orthodox to speak in a single voice - something that's
nearly impossible at the moment. The Orthodox world is divided among more than a
dozen autonomous churches and other congregations, each with different views.

The Vatican, too, could be pushed into some unfamiliar spots.

Closer bonds with married Orthodox clergy don't present a distinct problem. The
Vatican's priestly ranks include married Eastern Rite clerics and some Anglican
priests who converted to Catholicism. It could, however, put added pressure on
the Vatican to reconsider its ban on married clergy.

A bigger challenge is sorting out the main reason for the split 10 centuries
ago: the clout of the papacy versus the Orthodox view of equal distribution of
power among its churches.

"Can Rome devise a new way of thinking of primacy that does not lead to
dominance over any other churches?" said Anton Vrame, director of the Patriarch
Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, Calif. "That is the question only
Benedict and the Vatican can answer."

It may not be needed for a long time. Church experts from both sides believe any
increased collaboration in coming years may be slow and safe - such as possible
joint declarations on social issues or sharing resources for aid work and
Christian education. A hint of common ground emerged last month in Ukraine,
where Catholic and Orthodox leaders put aside their many internal disputes to
urge the government to keep Christian-oriented classes in schools.

Last month, the head of Russia's small Catholic community, Archbishop Tadeusz
Kondrusiewicz, said the pontiff seeks to join forces with Orthodox to battle
"aggressive secularism." Similar dialogue is ongoing with the two churches and
the many Protestant denominations.

"Don't expect big things in a short time," said Brother Jeff Gros, a spokesman
on interreligious affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "If
anything, this will be a gradual evolution."

A World Council of Churches conference last month outside Athens - bringing
together clerics and scholars from nearly every Christian denomination -
demonstrated the sensitivities.

The head of the Greek Orthodox church, Archbishop Christodoulos, welcomed more
than 700 delegates with a call for greater contacts among Christians. But he
added some direct swipes against the West - a point-by-point litany of past and
present wounds felt by most Orthodox.

They go back to the Crusades, including the 1204 sacking of Constantinople, the
ancient center of Greek Byzantium and now - as mostly Muslim Istanbul, Turkey -
still the spiritual center of Orthodoxy. Christodoulos zeroed in on the main
contemporary obstacle: The growing Eastern Rite churches that follow most
Orthodox traditions but are loyal to the Vatican.

Many Orthodox see these churches as Roman Catholic encroachment and attempts to
poach followers. Hard-line Orthodox go further. To them, all non-Orthodox
Christians are heretics.

"Repent!" a small group of Orthodox zealots shouted through bullhorns outside
the conference.

Rifts between the two ancient branches of Christianity began as early as the
fifth century over the rising influence of the papacy and later over wording of
the creed, or confession of faith. The split was sealed in 1054 with an exchange
of anathemas - or damnations - between the Holy See and the patriarch of
Constantinople. Centuries of cultural separation deepened the estrangement and
the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century further fragmented Christianity.

Pope John Paul II turned his attention to the Orthodox world late in his nearly
27-year papacy. He traveled to several predominantly Orthodox nations and built
close ties with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the "first among equals"
among Orthodox leaders. In Greece in 2001, John Paul apologized for "sins of
action and omission" by Catholics against Orthodox.

The mutual outreach wasn't enough to win over one of the most powerful figures
in Orthodoxy, the ailing Russian Patriarch Alexy II. He refused to allow a papal
trip to the world's most populous Orthodox nation. Benedict appears content to
move slowly on any proposals to visit Russia, but one of his first meetings as
pontiff in April was with the Russian church's top foreign affairs envoy.

This month offers another chance for high-level messages.

On June 16, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev.
Samuel Kobia, is scheduled to visit Benedict at the Vatican. Kobia then heads
for talks with the Russian Church leaders from June 18-24.

The Geneva-based group includes the Orthodox churches. The Vatican is not a full
member, but participates on many levels. The pope - then German Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger - served on a WCC panel in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, a joint commission is expected to be formed by next year to "set out
an agenda" on improving relations, said the Rev. Brian Farrell, a member of the
Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The council president, Cardinal Walter Kasper, also urged a pan-Christian synod
- Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants - to "form an alliance to rediscover the
Christian roots of Europe."

Among the Orthodox, Russia is the heavyweight. But it's not the only voice.
Smaller Orthodox churches have power to shape the dialogue. At least one, the
Macedonian Orthodox Church leader, believes it's "still too early" to talk
seriously of moving closer.

"There are too many differences from the past which cannot be easily resolved,"
said Archbishop Timotej. "It would be very difficult to ensure a full
reconciliation. This is more the pope's good will (gesture) than reality."

By BRIAN MURPHY
AP Religion Writer

Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved

-0-

*** end of story *** (emphasis added)

[F6]

(COMTEX) B: Spirituality, Commerce Meet in Pope Trip ( AP Online )

COLOGNE, Germany, Aug 19, 2005 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The unofficial beer of
World Youth Day was a popular draw for thirsty pilgrims looking for more than
something to drink.

The beer, bearing a photo of Pope Benedict XVI and brewed in his home of
Bavaria, was among the scores of items being sold or traded among the more than
415,000 pilgrims who journeyed to Cologne for the 20th World Youth Day.

Officially sanctioned T-shirts and mugs with the event's logo, finger rosaries
and pictures of Benedict also were selling quickly as retailers and
restaurateurs reported surging sales from the influx of visitors.

Tomas Medrow, hawking papal suds to the thousands of pilgrims making their way
toward the twin-spired Cologne Cathedral, said he was doing a brisk business.
The sweet-tasting beer, available in a four-pack, sells for $3.05 a bottle.

"They want them as a souvenir to take home, something to show their friends back
in France or the United States," the Cologne resident said.

Other vendors - a mix of young and old - offered candles bearing the image of
the pope, while rosaries and sun hats were ubiquitous. Folding stools with the
event's logo also were popular among weary pilgrims waiting in lines.

Some products were officially sanctioned by the Weltjugendtage 2005 GmbH, the
company that organized the event, and were limited to offerings like candles,
caps, key chains and enamel pins bearing the German flag and the Youth Day logo.

Others, like the T-shirts with Benedict's picture on the front, those with his
name and the numeral 16 in a circle on the back like a soccer jersey, and the
hand-hewn rosary beads sold from street-side stalls, were not.

Katherine Abbt, a 24-year-old German pilgrim from Augsburg, questioned the
tastefulness of some products - in particular the T-shirts bearing Benedict's
photo with the slogan: "The German Shepherd" - but didn't mind the others.

"I think it's OK to sell small pictures of the pope or other mementos," she
said.

Cologne residents have found other ways to make a few extra dollars off the
event as well, from renting rooms in their apartments and homes to listing bunk
beds on the auction Web site eBay.

Stephan Schmidt, 35, pasted fliers on light poles around the cathedral square
advertising a roomy, airy place with a bathroom and kitchen. He hoped to earn an
extra $305.

"I had one person call, but they said it was too expensive," he said.

Others sought to alleviate pilgrims' aches and pains, offering back and foot
massages in their hotels, rooms and even on the streets.

The city plans to release official figures tracking the economic impact later.

On the streets of Cologne, around the cathedral and various churches, people
often engaged in their own barter, trading T-shirts, buttons, badges and flags.

Two Italians approached a group of Nigerian pilgrims, wearing flowing green
robes, on Friday morning.

"Will you trade me your T-shirt for mine?" one Italian girl asked, gesturing
with her hands and offering her hat. The Nigerian pulled one out of his bag and
walked away with a blue safari hat bearing the Italian tricolor.

Hotels and hostels also have been booked for months while restaurants from kebab
shops to steak houses have seen their tables filled with pilgrims washing down
their schnitzel with wine and beer.

Even electronics stores reported a slight uptick in the sale of portable radios
for pilgrims who want to hear real-time translations of the pope's speeches,
including his planned Mass on Saturday, which are being translated into English,
French, Spanish and Italian.

Enrique Reyes, 31, of New York, said pilgrims want to bring home more than just
memories. "We've been waiting for this since last year," he said.

---

Associated Press reporter Melissa Eddy contributed to this report.

---

On the Net:

http://www.wjt2005.de/index.php?id=6&si=1

By MATT MOORE
AP Business Writer

Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved

-0-

*** end of story ***

[F6]

Worship God not technology, says Pope

December 26, 2006 - 6:49AM

Mankind, which has reached other planets and unravelled many of nature's secrets, should not presume it can live without God, Pope Benedict said in his Christmas message.

In an age of unbridled consumerism it was shameful many remained deaf to the "heart-rending cry" of those dying of hunger, thirst, disease, poverty, war and terrorism, he said.

"Does a 'Saviour' still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium?" he asked in his Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) message to the faithful in St Peter's Square.

"Is a 'Saviour' still needed by a humanity which has reached the moon and Mars and is prepared to conquer the universe; for a humanity which knows no limits in its pursuit of nature's secrets and which has succeeded even in deciphering the marvellous codes of the human genome?"

He appealed for peace and justice in the Middle East, an end to the brutal violence in Iraq and to the fratricidal conflict in Darfur and other parts of Africa, and expressed his hope for "a democratic Lebanon".

The Pope said he hoped to visit the Holy Land as soon as the situation allowed.

Speaking to tens of thousands of people in a sunny square, he wished the world a Happy Christmas in 62 languages - including Arabic, Hebrew, Mongolian and Latin - but his speech highlighted his preoccupation with humanity's fate.

Marking the second Christmas season of his pontificate, he said that while 21st century man appeared to be a master of his own destiny, "perhaps he needs a saviour all the more" because much of humanity was suffering.

"People continue to die of hunger and thirst, disease and poverty, in this age of plenty and of unbridled consumerism", he said from the central balcony of Christendom's largest church.

"Some people remain enslaved, exploited and stripped of their dignity; others are victims of racial and religious hatred, hampered by intolerance and discrimination, and by political interference and physical or moral coercion with regard to the free profession of their faith.

"Others see their own bodies and those of their dear ones, particularly their children, maimed by weaponry, by terrorism and by all sorts of violence, at a time when everyone invokes and acclaims progress, solidarity and peace for all."

The Pope also made reference to the controversial case of Piergiorgio Welby, a paralysed Italian man who was denied a Catholic funeral because he had asked to die.

"What are we to think of those who choose death in the belief that they are celebrating life?" he said.

Welby, an advocate of euthanasia, died on Wednesday after a doctor gave him sedatives and detached a respirator that had kept the victim of advanced muscular dystrophy alive for years.

In his midnight mass for 10,000 people in St Peter's Basilica earlier, the Pope said the image of the baby Jesus in a manger should remind everyone of the plight of poor, abused and neglected children the world over.

At that mass a member of the congregation read a prayer in Arabic asking God to encourage "a spirit of dialogue, mutual understanding and collaboration" among followers of the three great monotheistic religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

© 2006 Reuters

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Worship-God-not-technology-says-Pope/2006/12/26/1166895265797.html

[F6 comment -- hey Ratz -- oh heaven forbid any should 'presume' that they can live without being enslaved against knowledge and critical thought in worship of the god unproven you proclaim, a god whose annointed representative on this mortal coil is somehow none other than your sorry 'infallible' azz -- . . .]

[F6 note -- in addition to (items linked in) the post to which this post is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (items linked in):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=14256598 and preceding;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=13127414 and preceding;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=11168025 and preceding (and following);
in particular the items linked in http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=7325456 (and preceding) (. . .);
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6342961 and (the many) preceding and following;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6093769 AND (the many) following]

[F6]

German pope becomes an embarrassment in homeland


Pope Benedict XVI blesses the faithful as he leads a mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican February 2, 2009.
REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

By Madeline Chambers
Tue Feb 3, 2009 3:26pm EST

BERLIN (Reuters) - Nearly four years after a rare outburst of national pride over the election of a German pope, Germans are falling out of love with Pope Benedict because of his rehabilitation of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Prominent Catholics, politicians and newspaper commentators in Joseph Ratzinger's homeland are pulling no punches in their criticism of his lifting of the excommunications of four bishops, including one who denies the extent of the Holocaust.

Chancellor Angela Merkel also criticized him, prompting a sharp response from the Vatican.

"Worldwide criticism of the Pope," read the front page of top-selling daily Bild. It was a contrast to the jubilant "We are the pope!" headline in April 2005 to celebrate his election.

"The pope has made a serious mistake. That he is a German pope makes the matter especially bad," read its editorial.

"Pope Benedict XVI is inflicting great damage on Germany ... The pope must correct his mistake, reverse his decision and excuse himself," it said, in comments echoed by other papers.

Former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher wrote in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: "Poles can be proud of Pope John Paul II. At the last papal election, we said "We are the pope!" But please -- not like this."

More than 60 years after the end of World War Two, Germans are still struggling to come to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust, in which Nazis killed 6 million European Jews, and relations with the Jewish community are highly charged.

Last week, Germany's Central Council of Jews said it was breaking off ties with the Catholic Church over the pope's move.

The rehabilitated bishop at the center of the storm is Richard Williamson, who belongs to the ultra-traditional Society of Saint Pius X and denies the extent of the Holocaust.

SERIAL ERRORS

Last month the British-born bishop told a Swedish broadcaster he believed there were no gas chambers and no more than 300,000 Jews perished in concentration camps.

Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany and state prosecutors in the southern city of Regensburg are investigating Williamson for incitement. German neo-Nazi websites and blogs have published contributions supporting Williamson's stand.

In his commentary, Genscher argued that Ratzinger, forced to join the Hitler Youth as a boy though his parents opposed the Nazis, was making a habit of offending non-Catholics.

He has shown little respect to Protestants and angered Muslims by hinting Islam was violent and irrational in a 2006 speech in Regensburg, Genscher said.

"This is a deep moral and political question. It is about respect for the victims of crimes against humanity," he wrote.

Other politicians joined in, and in an unusual intervention Chancellor Merkel, daughter of a Protestant pastor, called on him to make clear he rejected any Holocaust denial.

"It is a fundamental question if, through a decision by the Vatican, the impression arises that the Holocaust can be denied," she said, adding she wanted a clarification.

The Vatican hit back, saying the pope's position on the Holocaust was unambiguous. "The condemnation of declarations which deny the Holocaust could not have been any clearer," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement.

The pope has also been criticized by German Catholics. Hamburg Archbishop Werner Thissen was quoted as saying the decision risked undermining trust in the church.

Cardinal Karl Lehmann, former chair of Germany's Catholic bishops' conference and head of Germany's 26 million Catholics, has described the affair as a catastrophe. Others say it has exposed flaws in the pope's detached governing style.

"It's an unforgivable mistake, and also a political error that Swiss, German and French bishops' conferences, where most people of the brotherhood live, were not informed beforehand," widely respected theologian Hans Maier told Vatican Radio.

(Editing by Charles Dick)

© Thomson Reuters 2009

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5124E320090203 [ http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5124E320090203?sp=true ]

----------

and see:

Bishop Williamson says SSPX will never agree to “conciliarism”
January 28th, 2009
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/01/28/bishop-williamson-says-sspx-will-never-agree-to-conciliarism/

Vatican/SSPX — the fallout continues
February 2nd, 2009
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/02/02/vaticansspx-the-fallout-continues/

Germans fall out of love with their pope
February 4th, 2009
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/02/04/germans-fall-out-of-love-with-their-pope/

Vatican orders Williamson recant after calling case closed
February 4th, 2009
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/02/04/vatican-orders-williamson-recant-after-calling-case-closed/

[F6]

The Irish Affliction


Churches in Ireland, like St. Mary’s Cathedral in Kilkenny, have had a decrease in Mass-goers.
Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos, for The New York Times

Slide Show
Can the Catholic Church Atone for Its Sins in Ireland?
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/02/13/magazine/irish-church.html

By RUSSELL SHORTO
Published: February 9, 2011

Andrew Madden is one of a relatively new breed of Irish celebrities who would just as soon be less well known. He was among the first people in Ireland to go public about being sexually abused by Catholic clergy — one of those who set off the intense bout of soul-searching that has racked the country lately. When I met Madden last fall in Dublin, the early rumbles of the collapse of Ireland’s economy were shaking the country, and throughout much of a pub lunch he talked about the failures of the government and the banks. It was only later, once we were driving around his old neighborhood, past the pebbledash house where he grew up and where his parents still live, that he began to talk about his childhood. As we sat in his car in front of Christ the King Church, where he spent much of his youth as an altar boy and a choir member, he outlined the four years of torment he suffered in the late 1970s at the hands of the Rev. Ivan Payne, one of the infamous serial sex offenders among the Irish Catholic clergy whose stories have transfixed the country over the past year and a half.

Madden has recounted his tale many times for the Irish media, and there was a rote, dutiful quality to the recitation of the details. It wasn’t until we pulled up in front of the house where Father Payne had lived — the scene of the abuse Madden endured, to which he had not returned since his teens — that he tensed with what seemed like deeply coiled anxiety and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

My afternoon with Andrew Madden might serve as a snapshot of what Ireland has been through lately. The country is preoccupied with the fallout — personal, social and political — from the crash and burn of the Celtic Tiger. But beneath that, and in a way connected to it, is a more primal pain: one deeper, lodged in the bones, maybe. The phenomenal economic boom over the past two decades, and the secularization that came along with it, allowed Ireland to think it was no longer what it once was: a backward land dominated and shaped by the Roman Catholic Church. But as the economy has crashed, the Irish have come face to face with their earlier selves, and with a church-state relationship that was and in many ways still is, as quite a few people in the country see it, perversely antimodern.

Of the various crises the Catholic Church is facing around the world, the central one — wave after wave of accounts of systemic sexual abuse of children by priests and other church figures — has affected Ireland more strikingly than anywhere else. And no place has reacted so aggressively. The Irish responded to the publication in 2009 of two lengthy, damning reports — detailing thousands of cases of rape, sexual molestation and lurid beatings, spanning Ireland’s entire history as an independent country, and the efforts of church officials to protect the abusers rather than the victims — with anger, disgust, vocal assaults on priests in public and demands that the government and society disentangle themselves from the church.

This past December a fresh bout of fury was touched off by the publication of the investigation into perhaps the worst clergy sex offender: the Rev. Tony Walsh, who raped and molested children while serving as a priest in Dublin and who was shielded by the Vatican even after Irish Church officials wanted him defrocked. Yet another large-scale report will be released shortly. And a 1997 letter — in which the papal nuncio to Ireland told Irish bishops that the Vatican had “serious reservations” about a plan for mandatory reporting of clergy sex-abuse cases to the police — came to light last month, causing further anger.

Among those who were most outraged by the abuse reports were people in their 20s and 30s, who came of age during the economic upswing and who grew up in a newly secular culture without a sense of obedience to the church. “When I saw the reports, I thought, I can’t even pretend to be part of this club anymore,” says Grainne O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old graphic designer. Late in 2009, together with a Web developer named Cormac Flynn and a civil servant in Cork named Paul Dunbar, she began a Web site, CountMeOut.ie [ http://countmeout.ie/ ], which walked Catholics through a three-step process for formally defecting from the church. It was to be, she said, “a way of protesting, using their own process against them.” Over the next several months, CountMeOut became a focal point of anger at the church; 12,000 people downloaded the official form for defection — “Defectio ab Ecclesia Catholica Actu Formali” — from the site.

Then last August, the Vatican introduced a change in canon law that will apparently make it impossible for Catholics to defect. Flynn, O’Sullivan and Dunbar have thus suspended their service. But the Web site continues to be a clearinghouse for information on the church in Ireland and its abuses, and it has helped start a debate on Irish identity — on the possibility of separating the two parts of the term “Irish Catholic.”

Certainly many Irish people find the idea of abandoning Catholicism to be as counterintuitive as giving up their racial or sexual identity. A televised panel discussion on the abuse crisis last summer ended with a reporter asking a woman who was voicing her anger if she was ready to leave the Catholic Church. She paused, as if befuddled, then said, “Where would I go?” Then again, while until recently, being a member of the church had obvious social rewards, Eamon Maher, who has edited books about Irish Catholicism, told me, “now it’s a positive disadvantage.” Maher continued: “If you go around saying you’re an ardent Catholic, people will be distrusting of you.”

Ireland’s move away from the Catholic Church began before the reports were released. Between 1974 and 2008, regular Mass attendance dropped by some 50 percent. The situation today highlights a problem that is looming for the Vatican, especially in the West, as the global sex-abuse crisis, coupled with the increasingly conservative rule and top-down control that have prevailed since the 1970s, is contributing to the departure of populations the church once considered foundational. “Ireland is a prime example of what the church is facing, because they made this island into a concentration camp where they could control everything,” Mark Patrick Hederman, abbot of Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in County Limerick, told me. “And the control was really all about sex. They told you if you masturbated, it meant you were impure and had allowed the devil to work on you. Generations of people were crucified with guilt complexes. Now the game is up.”

To reach the geographical heart of Irish Catholicism, you leave the main road in windswept County Donegal and drive through miles of gorsy heath, past sheep poised on gray knuckles of rock, until you come to Lough Derg, a wilderness lake edged with pines. Half a mile offshore lies Station Island, where according to legend, St. Patrick had a meditative epiphany in the fifth century, during his mission to convert the Irish.

Station Island has been a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. Its director, Prior Richard Mohan, who has worked there since 1974, greeted me as I stepped ashore, while a brewing autumn storm roiled the tea-colored water of the lake. Over lunch in the staff dining room, he told me how he has modernized the pilgrimage center. Early pilgrims relived the saint’s experience of huddling in a pit in the ground. Today there are updated dormitories, showers, even a gift shop. Prior Mohan said that Station Island “is in the genes of the Irish people,” so much so that there is a phrase for making the pilgrimage: going in on Station. Indeed, Ireland’s greatest living writer, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, devoted what is perhaps his most beloved collection, “Station Island,” to a meditation on the pilgrimage, the Irish and their tug of war with the church.

Mohan reckoned that the island’s impressive number of visitors — more than 20,000 a year — actually relates to a drop in church attendance in Ireland. Many people have abandoned the institutional church but not their faith, so they come to this wild spot in an effort to plug directly into their historical religious tradition without the mediation of the church. “This is seen as independent,” he said. In fact, the Catholic Church maintains control over the island, as it does over dozens of such places around the world.

Over the course of the 20th century, Station Island became a symbol of the way that Catholicism rooted itself in the Irish nation. Politics at the beginning of the century centered on two debates: British rule and religion. There were those — like the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the poet William Butler Yeats — who thought that the potential break with England constituted an occasion for Ireland to cut the strings to the Catholic Church and to embrace a progressive, international sensibility. Others wrapped Irish patriotism together with Catholicism, agrarian traditions and the Gaelic language, and they won the day. Eamon De Valera, the political leader, drafted a constitution side by side with the all-powerful archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, which gave the Catholic Church a special role in state affairs and which to this day begins with the words, “In the name of the most holy trinity.”

Thus the 20th-century image of “Irishness” came into being: rural, charming, locked in an eternal, tragicomic struggle with the church. The archbishops of Dublin became something like grand inquisitors, wielding great power. The church’s heavy influence on Irish society kept the wider world at bay for a surprisingly long time. Eamon Maher told me that in the 1970s, his parents found it profoundly disorienting when the evening recitation of the rosary suddenly had to compete with American shows like “Dallas,” and “the world of wealth, flash cars and extramarital affairs.” Contraception was illegal in Ireland as recently as 1980, and until 1985 condoms were available only with a prescription.

As secularism advanced in other parts of the world, successive popes relied on Ireland as a bulwark and pushed Irish leaders to keep the church in the country’s structure. In 1977, Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald noted that in a private meeting, Pope Paul VI stressed to him “that Ireland was a Catholic country — perhaps the only one left — and that it should stay that way” and that he should not “change any of the laws that kept the republic a Catholic state.” That continues to this day, according to Ivana Bacik, a senator for the opposition Labor Party who has been a leader in the effort to extricate the church from the state. As she put it, “In no other European nation — with the obvious exception of Vatican City — does the church have this depth of doctrinal involvement in the affairs of state.”

According to Abbot Hederman, the hierarchy of the church in Ireland believed that the nation had a special role as a kind of citadel of Catholicism: “Ireland was meant to be the purest country that ever existed, upholding the Catholic ideal of no sex except in marriage and then only for procreation. And the priest was to be the purest of the pure. It’s not difficult to understand how the whole system became riddled with what we now call a scandal but in fact was a complete culture. Because you had people with no understanding of their sexuality, of what sexuality even was, and they were in complete power.”

The sexual mistreatment and corporal punishment that went along with the code of purity were hidden in plain sight all along. A careful reader of James Joyce’s “Dubliners” knows this is part of Ireland’s cultural past, but violence in church-run schools was tolerated late into the 20th century. The novelist Colm Toibin, who was in a Christian Brothers school until age 15, told me: “At times it didn’t feel like there was a line between sexual abuse and corporal punishment. Every Friday one of the brothers would take a boy in front of the class, and whichever way he hit you he’d always put his hand on your testicles. We would laugh, but in fact you were in a permanent state of fear. I would vomit in the morning before going out to school. They would hit you across the face if you got a sum wrong. I suppose they did teach me to read and write and that I should be grateful, but I’m not.”

The changes taking place in Ireland have global ramifications for the Vatican, which has been beset by controversies. Some could be traced back to Pope Benedict XVI himself and his tough conservative style, which has struck many Catholics as insensitive and out of touch, including his suggesting in a speech in 2006 that Islam is inherently violent; his reinstatement of an excommunicated bishop who denied the Holocaust; and his decision to bring back into usage a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.

But the global sex-abuse scandal is of a different order entirely. Americans may be inured to the saga; in the United States, cases made news starting in the 1980s, and a 2004 report enumerated some 11,000 abuse allegations covering 95 percent of the Catholic dioceses in the country. But for other parts of the world, the story is newer, and it is seen as being less about sex than about the church hierarchy’s ideas of holding and wielding power. Last year, the scandal swept across Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. There have been highly publicized cases in Britain, Italy, France, Malta, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, Kenya, the Philippines, Australia and other countries. Nearly all involved systemic efforts to cover up the abuse and protect abusers. Last March, the scandal pointed toward the pope himself, when it emerged that as archbishop of Munich he was informed of a decision to return a pedophilic priest to church duty and then that as Cardinal Ratzinger he failed to heed the pleas of American bishops who asked the Vatican to defrock a priest in Wisconsin who molested 200 deaf children between the 1950s and 1970s.

The Vatican’s repeated efforts to deal with the scandals seem to bring only further outcry. During his Christmas greetings, Pope Benedict touched off another global storm by suggesting that the wider Western culture had normalized pedophilia. In the estimation of Peter Nissen, a Vatican-watcher and professor of the cultural history of religion at Radboud University in the Netherlands: “This is the largest crisis the Catholic Church has faced since the French Revolution, and in a way you could say it is even worse. In those days, the church was a victim of the crisis. Now she has caused the crisis herself.”

In Ireland the stakes for the Vatican are tangible. The abuse reports have led to popular demands that the state disentangle the Catholic Church from the country’s infrastructure. More than 90 percent of primary schools are under church patronage — even though they are state-financed — so that parents generally have no choice but to place their children in a school with what is called a Catholic ethos. Most public hospitals are also controlled by the church, which means that certain procedures that would be commonplace elsewhere have been problematic in Ireland. These include not just abortions — which in December the European Court of Human Rights decreed that Ireland must permit in cases where a woman’s life is at risk — but also vasectomies, among others.

Nonetheless, Ireland is the first country to bring the force of its federal government to bear against the church, according to Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest who was once a canon lawyer for the Vatican embassy in the U.S. and later represented sexual-abuse victims and also served as an expert consultant to the Irish investigations. “There have been three commissions in Ireland, and all were government funded, all chaired by judges,” he says. “In other places with a traditional Catholic presence and where there has been sexual abuse, there is intense interest in what is going on in Ireland. Quebec has now begun an investigation. There are signs of it beginning in the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain and France.” Ireland, then, provides a model for investigative legal action on a host of fronts.

Not surprisingly, the Vatican is trying to control the damage in Ireland. The pope has organized a team of top churchmen from outside the country, who are traveling through Ireland now and who will reportedly investigate not just its abuse scandal but also its system for training priests and running parishes. Martin Long, spokesman for the Irish Bishops’ Conference, described this “visitation” as “an offer of assistance from the holy father, and it is welcome.” But it, too, has angered many in Ireland, who say that it is precisely the sort of top-down approach that has put the church into its current state. The Rev. John Littleton, onetime head of the defunct National Conference of Priests of Ireland and a prominent Catholic voice in the country, said bluntly, “We don’t need help from Rome.” The Rev. Sean McDonagh, a leader of the Association of Irish Priests, which formed last year after the reports were published, suggested that to get at the root of the problem, the team of investigators “should begin by scrutinizing Rome’s own handling of sex-abuse allegations.”

The Rev. Donald Cozzens, an American priest who is one of the most-respected moderate voices on Catholic issues, outlined the church’s wider problem in these terms: “I’m not aware of any major diocese in the world that has not had a sexual-abuse scandal, and I believe part of the problem lies with the very structures of the church. I don’t want to say change would require a different pope or even a different culture, but it will require radical openness. We have to take an honest look at all the things that are in play. Is mandatory celibacy wise or even theologically sound?”

In proportion to its population, Ireland easily ranks as the country with the most reported cases of sex abuse within the church. It is second only to the United States in the total number of cases, despite a population approximately one-hundredth that of the U.S. Of the two reports published in 2009 detailing the findings of civil investigations, the so-called Ryan Report examined abuse in institutions that were run by the Catholic Church, while the Murphy Report detailed abuse within the Diocese of Dublin. The reports fill five volumes and run more than 2,500 pages. Sample entries from the Murphy Report include an account of a priest who digitally raped a girl during confession and then washed his hands in a bowl at the altar; a priest who probed a girl vaginally and anally with a crucifix; and a priest who routinely forced altar boys to drop their pants and beat them and then masturbated. The Ryan Report entries that detail the desolate existence of the mostly poor children in so-called industrial schools read like a cross between Charles Dickens and Dan Brown: “I was beaten and hospitalized by the head brother and not allowed to go to my father’s funeral in case my bruises were seen” and “I was tied to a cross and raped while others masturbated at the side.”

The Murphy Commission — headed by Yvonne Murphy, a circuit-court judge — noted in its report that as cases of abuse became public, church officials repeated the refrain that they had not dealt with abusers properly because they were on “a learning curve.” The commission roundly dismissed that claim. The interests of church officials “were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets,” the report concluded. “All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.”

Maeve Lewis, executive director of One in Four, a counseling and advocacy center for victims of abuse, said that “on paper the church is now ahead of the state in putting policies in place to protect children.” The Rev. John Littleton, the former president of an Irish priests’ organization, agreed with this, saying that when a priest prepares to celebrate Mass at a church in Ireland today, he would never be alone with a server, provided the church’s new guidelines for protecting children are implemented. Then again, Lewis said that based on her watchdog experience: “Many churchmen in fact feel very hard done by the reports. They don’t accept the reports at all.”

Martin Long, the Irish bishops’ spokesman, told me that the church is not just paying lip service on the abuse issue. “Acknowledgments have been made that the actions of church representatives resulted in the institution being placed above the welfare of individuals,” he said. He then went on, however, to restate the learning-curve theme, suggesting that church officials had shielded abusers at the expense of children because “the deviousness and level of duplicity that perpetrators of abuse exercised was not understood for a long time,” a reading of the situation to which abuse victims have repeatedly reacted with scorn. Nevertheless, Long insisted that today things have finally changed: “The bishops get it, to use an Americanism.”

Do the church authorities get it?

Last March, Pope Benedict issued a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, which was much anticipated as the Vatican’s definitive response to the crisis. Beyond authorizing the visitation of churchmen from outside Ireland, the letter called on Irish Catholics to pray, to fast and to engage in “eucharistic adoration.” When I asked Long what plans there are for rebuilding the Church in Ireland, he said that the pastoral letter “will be the core of the pastoral renewal.” Bishop Eamonn Walsh likewise told me that the Irish bishops’ plan for renewal will focus on prayer, fasting and alms-giving.

For a reaction to Benedict’s plan for the country, I turned to a lifelong lay member of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Marie Collins is a 64-year-old native of Dublin. In 1960, when she was 13, she was hospitalized for three weeks at what was then called Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children. The chaplain, the Rev. Paul McGennis, read to her in the evenings and played games with her, which evolved from touching her to, finally, digitally raping her. “I had no idea what he was doing, but I knew it was wrong,” Collins said. “He might abuse me one night, then give me communion in the morning.” Collins spent most of the ensuing years dealing with depression, anxiety and agoraphobia. In her late 30s, she finally talked about her experience, first to a doctor and then to the curate of her parish. She says he told her that what happened was probably her fault, that she may have tempted the other priest, but that he would forgive her. Her spiraling illnesses went on, while Father McGennis continued as a priest and an abuser. Ten years later, Collins wrote to the archbishop of Dublin, Desmond Connell, who is now a cardinal. She says Connell told her that McGennis was a good priest and that she should not try to “ruin his life.” Eventually, with the help of the police and despite intimidation from the church, she succeeded in having McGennis sentenced to prison. When the Murphy Report came out, it revealed that church authorities knew about McGennis’s behavior starting in 1960, the year Collins was abused.

Collins told me that in the aftermath of the reports, she hoped that church officials would show accountability. Last year, the news broke that Cardinal Sean Brady, the highest-ranking Irishman in the Vatican, participated in the 1975 cover-up of the sex abuse of one of the Irish church’s most notorious pedophiles, the Rev. Brendan Smyth. The cardinal considered resigning but decided he would stay in office. “That means the church here in Ireland is being led by a man who will not be accountable,” Collins said.

Regarding the pastoral letter, abuse survivors said they were angered by the fact that the pope blamed the clergy sex abuse in part on the “secularization of Irish society,” which Collins said is a far cry from accepting responsibility. “Prayer and adoration of the eucharist is fine,” she said, “but we have had the pope on a number of occasions saying how shocked he is by revelations of abuse around the world. It’s hard to take that seriously when we know that as Cardinal Ratzinger, in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he saw the abuse reports.”

Events of the past two years have done to Marie Collins what the abuse itself could not: “I don’t practice as a Catholic anymore,” she said. “It’s so hard to reconcile what the men at the top do with what Jesus preached.”

One Sunday morning in late November, I wandered into the Capuchin Friary in picture-pretty Kilkenny just as its Gaelic-language Mass was beginning. The peach-colored walls were suffused with light, and there was what one would have to describe as a warm and true feeling of community among those gathered. Sexual abuse and debt crises seemed far away. As impressive as the decline in Irish Church statistics has been, the 40 percent or so of Irish Catholics who go to Mass regularly outpaces some other once-traditionally Catholic countries. Clearly a lot of Irish want a faith community. But what kind, and under what conditions?

The Rev. Tony Flannery, an organizer of the Association of Catholic Priests, told me he recently attended meetings about the future of the church with members of a rural parish. “These were Irish people of 60, 70, 80 years of age,” he said. “And I was amazed at the radical nature of what they were saying. They want women more involved. They want to take their church back from Rome. The child-abuse business has shaken the Catholic Church structure here in a way I would never have felt possible in my lifetime. So for the likes of me, that’s an upside to all that has happened. There’s an openness now, among priests and laity.”

I asked him if he thought the openness extended in any way into the hierarchy, and he laughed. “Oh, no,” he said, “no indication of that at all.”

Actually, one of the few high church officials anywhere who has attempted reform is Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin. Martin offered the Vatican resignation letters from two Irish auxiliary bishops who were named in the abuse reports. But Benedict refused to accept the resignations, then passed Martin over for promotion to cardinal. People who follow the Irish Church say the country’s bishops have since shied away from the archbishop and are rallying around the pope and his team of outside “visitators.”

The visitation itself is seen by many as another indication that the Vatican intends not to bring reform but to exert control. “If the Vatican wanted to do a credible investigation of sexual abuse,” Thomas Doyle said, “they would not send archbishops and cardinals. These people — the church hierarchy — are the very people who have caused this problem.”

The economic meltdown, meanwhile, may be playing to the church’s advantage. Worries about lost jobs and pensions have taken precedence over concerns about the church’s role in society. Last summer, there was talk of a plan to divest the church of its control of state-financed schools, but when I asked a Department of Education and Skills spokeswoman last month what the department was doing, she gave me only the Catholic Church’s current position — that there is need for “reflection” on the issue — and actually referred me to the church for further information.

After the abuse reports were published in 2009, the public was outraged to learn the government earlier agreed to cap the church’s liability in compensating abuse victims to what in 2009 was only about 10 percent of the likely total. Under pressure, Catholic orders last year agreed to increase that to 50 percent. Some of that money is contingent on the church being able to sell property in the midst of a financial collapse. The Irish taxpayer may still end up paying most of the church’s tab.

Russell Shorto, a contributing writer, is the author of “Descartes’ Bones” and other books.

© 2011 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13Irish-t.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13Irish-t.html?pagewanted=all ]


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