The Church’s Sins Are Ours

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org) thinks that Frank Bruni op ed ( Nov 4 NY Times) “The Church’s Sins Are Ours,” re sex abuse scandals" is right on target.

"It’s fashionable among some conservatives to rail that there’s insufficient respect for religion in America and that religious people are marginalized, even vilified.

That’s bunk. In more places and instances than not, they get special accommodation and the benefit of the doubt. Because they talk of God, they’re assumed to be good. There’s a reluctance to besmirch them, an unwillingness to cross them.

The new movie “Spotlight,” based on real events, illuminates this brilliantly.....

“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one,” says a character in “Spotlight.” Indeed it does: a village too cowed, and a village too credulous."

There were 414 comments on this OpEd including:

"American history is replete with examples of religious institutions and ministers betraying their spiritual mission through the pursuit of political influence. Catholic authorities who valued the church's power and influence over the welfare of the faithful violated, in the most egregious manner, the commission they believed they had received from Christ. The Protestant evangelist, Billy Graham, while innocent of any criminal behavior, also betrayed his spiritual calling when he used his pulpit to claim that God wanted Christians to vote for Richard Nixon...."

Below it the comment Edd posted in the Times on-line is a good column.


Bruni's point is reinforced by the 2014 book, Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse, by church-law trained lawyer Kieran Tapsell.


Also note a report this week in the National Catholic Reporter by Jack Ruhl titled "NCR Research: Costs of sex abuse to US church underestimated."


Ruhl's research shows that the sex abuse scandal has cost the Catholic Church in the US $4 Billion in the past 65 years. Ruhl adds that "separate research recently published calculates that other scandal-related consequences such as lost membership and diverted giving has cost the church more than $2.3 Billion annually for the past 30 years." That adds up to a total of $69 Billion! No wonder church officials have been seeking public funds through vouchers and tax credits for their shrinking system of private schools.

NCR research: Costs of sex abuse crisis to US church underestimated

Link provided by Edd Doerr

A three-month investigation of data by National Catholic Reporter (NCR) , including a review of more than 7,800 articles gleaned from LexisNexis Academic and NCR databases, as well as information from BishopAccountability.org and from reports from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concludes that:

"The U.S. Catholic church has incurred nearly $4 billion in costs related to the priest sex abuse crisis during the past 65 years, according to an extensive NCR investigation of media reports, databases and church documents.

In addition, separate research recently published calculates that other scandal-related consequences such as lost membership and diverted giving has cost the church more than $2.3 billion annually for the past 30 years."

Edd notes that " NCR is the leading liberal Catholic newspaper in the US. NCR has published a number of my letters over the years. Let’s note also that Catholics tend to be more liberal than Protestants and that most Catholics are out of sync with the Vatican on many issues, such as contraception, abortion, marriage, divorce, clerical celibacy, ordaining women, and  the necessity to send kids to church schools. "

See NCR research: Costs of sex abuse crisis to US church underestimated for details.

Did Junipero Serra embody the church’s direction?

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org) posted online in the Washington Post on 9/24/2/2015  -in response to the story “Serra embodied church’s direction, pope says”  -------

The canonization of Junipero Serra, a process begun before Francis became pope, should be a source of great embarrassment to the Catholic Church. It is certainly a slap in the face to the Native Americans who suffered horribly at the hands of the Spanish missionaries. The abuse of the Indians in California was so bad that the Spanish civil governor of California (1775-1782), Felipe de Neve, severely criticized Serra and the missionaries. The missions' mistreatment of the Indians is detailed and documented in California Latino author Elias Castillo's important 2015 book, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California's Indians by the Spanish Missions. After Mexico won independence from Spain its government expelled the Spanish missionaries and closed the missions. And all this was before California became part of the US.

Curiously, the Vatican never canonized Bartolome de las Casas, the earlier missionary who exposed and criticized the mistreatment of Native Americans.

It is embarrassing that Serra's statue stands in the US Capitol. It should be removed and replaced by the statue of Thomas Starr King, the real American that Lincoln credited with keeping California in the Union during the Civil War. Starr King's and Serra's statues stood in the Capitol since 1931 until Starr King's was replaced by that of Ronald Reagan. Serra's should now be replaced by that of Starr King. Jerry Brown should start the process. 

Life Begins When? How much money is involved?

Ok, folks, the RCC is now toast.  Their teachings that life begins at conception have now been exposed as so much rubbish - IF it's going to cost the Church money in a lawsuit!

Turns out, when a man sues a Catholic hospital for malpractice because his wife and the twins she was carrying inside her died when she turned up in the emergency room and her doctor never bothered to answer a page—well, things get a little tricky. Yes, the Catholic hospital adheres to the strict Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church, as set forth by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. And yes, those directives include the claim that "[t]he Church's defense of life encompasses the unborn" and a mandate to uphold "the sanctity of life 'from the moment of conception until death.'" But come on. That obviously does not apply when Catholic Health Initiatives, the Church-affiliated organization that runs the Church-affiliated St. Thomas More Hospital where a young woman and her two unborn fetuses died, is the lead defendant in a lawsuit:

Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

As Jason Langley, an attorney with Denver-based Kennedy Childs, argued in one of the briefs he filed for the defense, the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”

 So, if you EVER hear a Catholic say that the RCC Teaches that life begins at conception, now you know where to direct their attention to give that claim the lie!

If ever I have seen a more disgusting example of religious hypocrisy, this one is pretty doggone near the top of that list!


Robert Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

Luis Granados June talk

by Gary Berg-Cross

Luis Granados a Washington, DC attorney and a student of the scandals of religious history will speak Saturday June 2nd at Wheaton Library about his "God Experts" blog & his first ebook, "Damned Good Company,"Damned Good Company – A ‘Profiles in Courage’ for Humanists” - a collection of stories of humanist heroes through the ages who bucked the prevailing God experts. See http://www.facebook.com/events/155686517896346/

“Damned Good Company,” an ebook, tells 20 stories of individuals who stood up against the prevailing religious wisdom, from Socrates to Frederick II to the housewife who nearly nipped Mormonism in the bud. His talk will focus on one of these stories: the conflict between Manuel Azaña, leader of the secular Spanish Republic in the 1930s, who was brought down by Benito Mussolini, the lapsed atheist who collaborated with the Catholic Church to chase his dreams of empire.

Luis' weekly God Experts blog relates a current headline or anniversary to a curious episode from the past.

On Attending a Catholic Mass

09-25-2011

Catholic Mass. Not the words you hoped to read on a secular perspectives blog? Perhaps, but yesterday, that’s where you would have found me, me who was raised in the Jewish faith and who is now an ardent atheist. Don’t misunderstand me - I have no interest in conversion, no belief in a god and no belief that the Pope deserves my special attention unless it‘s for reasons other than religion or faith. But I’m an academic through and through and I thought I ought to know, as I come to define my own secularism, what it is that thousands of people, including some otherwise scientifically minded friends, are up to every Sunday morning…or, as I soon learned, Saturday night…or Saturday morning…or heck, any weekday, sometimes twice a day.

I am not an expert on any religion, and learning that Mass was not a Sunday-only thing was the first surprise. What to do? I was advised by someone familiar with all things Catholic to go to a Saturday night Vigil rather than a Sunday morning Mass or a weekday Mass. ’Vigil’ would get me the pomp and ceremony of a full Mass, and ‘Saturday’ would allow me to avoid the crowds who went to Church just to be seen. Wait…’just to be seen’? In a big impersonal secular-ish city like Washington, DC? Oy vey.

Where to go? St. Mary’s is where one of my favorite authors (F. Scott Fitzgerald) is buried, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception has many beautiful mosaics and St. Patrick’s is the oldest Catholic church in DC, built for the masons who built the White House. History won out in the end, and I decided to go to St. Patrick’s for a Saturday night Vigil.

So, how was it?

Depressing, though not because of the religious teachings from the priest nor the readings from the laity. One could barely understand these given the echoing acoustics of the interior space. (The priest’s message encouraged parishioners to say ’I do’ to Jesus multiple times a day and to work hard to sustain that commitment.)

No, it was depressing for an unexpected reason - no one wanted to be there! Ok, that’s probably (I hope) a bit of an exaggeration. As I sat though the Mass, a sense of emptiness or obligation seemed to come from the entire congregation. Let’s take a look at the three parties I followed most carefully throughout the ordeal.

First there was the lone young woman (mid-to-upper 20s), short black hair, fashionably dressed, sitting to my right. Let’s call her Mary. Mary entered the nave on time (bravo!) but failed to cross herself as she entered (minus one point). Throughout the entrance of the officiants, the opening hymns and first prayers, Mary was deeply occupied with an amusing text conversation (minus one chance at eternal Heaven?). Rather than excusing herself to finish the conversation outside the nave, she went through the motions (kneeling, head bowing, crossing, etc.). For whom was she doing this? Wouldn’t standing outside be more comfortable than sitting on those hard straight-backed planks of wood?

There was the family in front of me. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Grandma, Elder Aunt, Mother, Father, Child. They arrived about halfway into the 50 minute Mass (minus 10 points), got to the front of the line for Communion and then left (for those of you unfamiliar with the structure of a Mass, there was a hymn/exit processional after Communion). Was Communion the only reason they were there? Did they believe they were taking in the blood and body of Jesus Christ and that was all they needed to do to check off ’Mass’ from their weekly list of things to do? If that IS the only ‘necessary’ part of a Mass, why don’t more folks show up just for Communion -- after all, isn‘t everyone busier these days?

Lastly, there was the family behind me: Mother, Father, Young Daughter (who was quite clearly ill), Older Daughter, Older Son (~8 years old). Father left to take phone calls (bravo!) throughout the Mass (minus 5 points); when he was present, his arms were folded across his chest and he stared resolutely at the back of the pew in front of him. From this posture he did not deviate. Son didn’t once crack an ‘Amen’ or ‘Jesus, hear our prayer’ and seemed to have inherited the ‘resolutely staring‘ gene from his father, but who can blame an 8 year old for wanting to spend Saturdays otherwise occupied? Mother was busy comforting red-cheeked Young Daughter who couldn’t stop coughing throughout the Mass. Poor girl. What sense of religious obligation/guilt makes it ok to have taken her out of the house that morning?

It seems that my source for all things Catholic had a different experience of Saturday Vigil than I did. If the people I observed were not there just to be seen, what were they there for? Certainly, the three parties I observed could not have been the only, or even main, contributors to the atmosphere of emptiness that permeated the nave throughout the Mass. I’ve been to other religious services relatively recently and for various reasons - Unitarian Universalist; secular Judaism (Shabbat on Sundays!); Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism; nondenominational/born again Christian; and various Protestant - but whether it was because the congregants were warmer or more sincere, or because I was in a different mood, I did not detect the same feeling of wanting to be elsewhere as I did at the Mass.

CODA:
There was one person who clearly demonstrated her fervent wish to be exactly where she was. Older Daughter (~6 years old), I’m quite convinced, is the next Pope (you know, when they get around to allowing that sort of thing). Every ‘Amen’, every ‘Jesus, hear our prayer’, every invocation of God/Jesus, every line of every hymn and every word of the Lord’s Prayer issued forth from her mouth with perfect timing, but…but! also with clearly detectable ardor. How informed is her religious passion? One wonders to what it would be put if her parents weren’t churchgoers…or more to the point, were raising her in a humanist or secularist household.

As I write these lines, I realize that Older Daughter’s zeal, or rather that it should be directed at religion, is as saddening to me as the observation that hardly any (autonomous!) adult I saw showed signs of wanting to be where s/he was. We can reflect on our own childhoods, or we can observe our own children or those of others, to remember how much energy and curiosity we had to invest into figuring out the world around us. Imagine the potential contribution to human knowledge if this energy were invested in rational, critical thought at an early age.

The Borgias

 Last night I enjoyed the astonishing story of Pope Alexander VI as told in the first episode of “The Borgias.” This is a first rate production by Showtime with Jeremy Irons in the role as the newly elected Pope. It is a story of extravagant bribery, conniving, debauchery and murder. It is billed as the story of “the first crime family.” Obviously, there were cases of brutal criminal action prior to this time but it does make for a rather stark, dramatic story to have the Pope being accurately portrayed as the head of a violent crime family.