Vatican hypocrisy

by Edd Doerr

The Vatican and top church leaders have a strange, even pathological obsession with pelvic matters. They are all bent out of shape over same-sex marriage, homosexuality, contraception, abortion, and clerical celibacy. The vast majority of ordinary Catholics, however, have no problem with contraception and the Catholic abortion rate is about the same as for non-Catholics. As for same-sex marriage, just look at what happened in Ireland in May. By 62% to 38% Irish voters approved of same-sex marriage, an obvious slam at the church hierarchy. And Ireland is probably the most Catholic country in the world.

Incidentally, we might note that Ireland has produced two hilarious comedy television series, “Moone Boy” and “Father Ted”, that scoff at Catholicism in ways that even the brashest American producers are too timid to attempt.

But to the point. If you have not already done so, you need to read Leah Mickens’s article “Theology of the Odd Body: The Castrati, the Church, and the Transgender Moment,” in the August/September Free Inquiry. Mickens brings to our attention the “castrati,” the 6 to 9 year old little boys in Italy who were castrated so that they could be trained to sing as adult sopranos in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel choir and other Catholic churches throughout the Papal States from the 16^th century to the end of the 19^th century. Of course many of the kids did not even survive the ugly, disgusting, inhumane procedure. All this was approved and encouraged by the top echelons of the Vatican and ended only when Italian nationalists took over the Papal States in 1870.

Then we have the ongoing worldwide clergy sexual abuse of minors scandals, only seriously exposed to light in the last 30 years or so in a flood of books in the US, Spain and other countries. See my review of lawyer and canon law trained author Kieran Tapsell’s 2014 book, Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse, in my column in the August/ September Free Inquiry and in the current issue of Americans for Religious Liberty’s journal Voice of Reason. Tapsell concludes with citing a  2014 UN report showing that thr church hierarchy has long been involved with covering up the widespread abuse and shielding the clergy abusers. My review of Seton Hall University political scientist Jo Renee Formicola’s 2014 book, Clerical Sexual Abuse: How the Crisis Changed US Catholic Church-State Relations, will also appear shortly.

So the Vatican’s sustained attacks on contraception and abortion should be taken as clericalism at its worst, not only seen as attacks on women’s rights of conscience, health and religious  freedom but also contributing to the world human overpopulation that is driving climate change and environmental  degradation.

All Male Panels and the Culture Wars

By Gary Berg-Cross

Thursday on Capitol Hill in Washington Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, invited a panel for a four hour plus hearing on what he called a “federal rule's impact on freedom of religion and conscience” before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee of the House of Representatives. What we saw in the now infamous first panel was a Lutheran, 2 Baptist clergymen and an Orthodox rabbi who joined a Roman Catholic bishop on an all male panel. They proceeded to tell gathered lawmakers that President. Obama’s latest policy of shifting the responsibility for paying for such things as contraceptives and prenatal screenings from religious institutions to their health insurers was unworkable. I guess they are policy wonks too. But they had much more to say about their fears. The compromise did not allay their concerns about government entanglement with religion. In the words one hears from Republican candidates, its more of a broad, moral, "theological" argument. That seemed to be the big topic although to many it was about women’s rights to health care including contraception.

Why no women on the first panel? Well according to California Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who heads the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, it was all clear. She is not a member of the clergy, unlike the five men who did testify in the first panel. Representative Joe Walsh, Republican of Illinois, defended the choice this by dodging from individual rights to some vague combination that mixed organized religion rights and freedom:

“This is not about women. This is not about contraceptives. This is about religious freedom.”

The representative might have been better informed on such things if he had attended Rob Boston’s recent talk on what the Founders really intended here.

As someone at CNN said “welcome to the culture wars 2.0, where the front lines now are religious freedom and contraceptives.” This indeed may be a political gambit to switch the topic from a winning liberal issue on preventive and women’s health to a cultural-religious one. That was somewhat of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va) who addressed the 5 very clerical men during the first half of the hearing:

"I believe today’s hearing is a sham. I have to believe each of you came here in good faith." But he added, "Surely you are being used for a political agenda."

I’ve now seen pictures of the 5 men in a number of venues, but I knew little about them. Who were they? Well here are their names and affiliations:

1. Rev. William E. Lori, Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., who testified on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in opposition to the rule.

2. Reverend Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and moral philosophy professor. (wow, a Rev. Dr. !)
   

3. C. Ben Mitchell, Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Tennessee

4. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Director Straus Center of Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, and
   

5. Ethics professor Craig Mitchell of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

What they had to say had quite a bit of dog whistling. Lori, the Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, testified on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which denounced the compromise last week, saying it still raised "serious moral concerns." Bishop Lori is known as a “conservative cleric who has carried out controversial church mandates in the past. Some critics, however, say he does not question the church hierarchy and, at times, has acted harshly in order to please his superiors (from Wikipedia).” I think that Stephan Colbert did a reasonable job of laying out the hypocrisy of the Bishops on the contraception topic.

The Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the large Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, told lawmakers that the St. Louis-based denomination:

"stand(s) with our friends in the Catholic Church" in opposition to a recent government ruling on contraception.

Harrison went on to say that the synod's opposition to "abortion-causing drugs" was one reason the denomination maintains its own health plan. He’s worried that the provision in the government's
new ruling would "grandfather" the Missouri Synod's plan, meaning its 50,000 members would not have to participate in the new mandate. Isn’t that a solution?

No, apparently he wants a total capitulation that imposes his values on others. It’s about moral conscience as defined by organized groups. It’s about violating the consciences of these group members, who feel they can impose their values on others. Sort of like the White Man’s moral burden idea. We should understand what a solution is to group like this.

C. Ben Mitchell of Union University told the committee the rule "is an unconscionable intrusion by the state into the consciences of American citizens."

"Contrary to portrayals in some of the popular media, this is not just a Catholic issue," said Mitchell, Graves professor of moral philosophy at the Baptist school in Jackson, Tenn. "All people of faith - and even those who claim no faith - have a stake in whether or not the government can violate the consciences of its citizenry. Religious liberty and the freedom to obey one's conscience is also not just a Baptist issue. It's an American issue enshrined in our founding documents."

There they go with that slanted view of the Founders again. They should have come to Rob Boston's talk to hear what the Constitution says and what the Founders thought about freedom of religion.

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik an Orthodox rabbi described in an Israeli paper as of impeccable pedigree at Yeshiva University. He testified orthodoxically which I guess is the old fashion word for fundamentalist:

"The administration impedes religious liberty by unilaterally redefining what it means to be religious." “The putative accommodation is no accommodation at all,” said the rabbi, from NYC:

“Religious organizations would still be obligated to provide employees with an insurance policy that facilitates acts violating the organization’s religious tenets.”

It’s all about violation and what it means to be religious? This seems like more than a bit of a stretch. As a BBC article points out Judeo-Christian ideas about contraception come from church teachings rather than scripture, as the Bible has little to say about the subject. But then again the rabbi is probably more comfortable in a religio-centric national environment.

Craig Mitchell, associate professor of Christian ethics at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas told members the requirement

"is wrong not just for religious conservatives.It's wrong for all Americans, because it takes away the freedom of the citizens while emboldening the federal government to do whatever it wants,",. "It's wrong because it violates the Constitution. It's wrong because it violates religious liberty. It's wrong because it forces people to violate their consciences. ... This ruling is just plain wrong for America."

There’s lots of culture war bricks to be thrown about in rhetoric like this and I hope that we are saved by some sensible discussion. As part of more discussion we might get to the uncomfortable issues of contraception and sexual activity.

This very recent discussion which started as a health care discussion now seems like a regressive, perhaps reactionary one, with a subtext of group’s attitude toward sex and sexual morality. We had moved towards a more progressive attitude from our Puritan days. Even mainstream religious groups had come to see sex as other than a pure danger. Some Christians moved to the view sex as one of God's great gifts. One can rationalize this since sexual bonding helps preserve the institution of marriage and birth control helps mitigate the stresses caused by too many children.
This pragmatic view of mainstream Protestant churches on the use of birth control lead to a more tolerant policy of quietly letting its followers use birth control as their own consciences dictated as opposed to a doctrinaire view centrally imposed.
In a tide of fundamentalism we’re back to an intolerant and centralized view with imposed morality. As a result modern family planning/birth control "cannot be spoken of without repugnance. " It's now denounced as "demoralising to character and hostile to national welfare." All of which means that Culture War Part 2, with such things as silencing of women, may be with us for this political campaign period at least. We should all gear ourselves up with well-considered, humanistic moral arguments.

Getting United Around Winnable Battles

By Gary Berg-Cross

Rob Boston’s recent WASH MDC talk on "The Christian Nation Myth” was a real crowd pleaser and provoked some interesting Q &A and follow on discussion. One from WASH board member Stuart Jordan who noted that the total atheist-nonreligious-freethinker-humanist community in the US is still both small and diverse with some estimates around 17 -19% (Demographics of Atheism - a 2002 survey by Adherents.com, estimates the proportion of the world's people who are "secular, non-religious, agnostics and atheists" at about 14%). So one important question is how to get united on issues and be effective, something discussed at various times in this blog. Rob’s response was two-fold -on the nature of the conversation and the need to “pick battles carefully.”

The first problem is how we address people of faith. We need to dial back the message so it doesn’t sound as if people who believe in God are necessarily idiots. This is too much like a debilitating culture war in which we start out by denigrating the intellectual ability of all religious people. A tough stance may win an immediate argument but humiliating groups can also stop conversations that might be fruitful and lead to practical allies.

On the 2^nd we aren’t likely to make much progress on getting ‘In God We Trust’ off of our currency. We won’t easily reverse having the ceremonial use of ‘One Nation Under God’ in on the Pledge of Allegiance. These things will take many decades to reverse.

We should not antagonize people with issues that we can’t win in a reasonable amount of time and effort. Instead we should focus on areas like government subsidies to religious groups, faith-based initiatives that consume tax dollars that could be used elsewhere or their efforts to block the teaching of evolution.

The latter weakens school curriculums in a covert & disingenuous way, often as a effort to introduce creationism via Intelligent Design into the schools. This like the excesses to block women’s reproductive rights, abstinence only programs, & blockage of stem cell research provides natural allies to our secular humanist efforts.

Such things as special tax exemption for churches religious bothers some and will also produce allies. This increases the overall tax burden for everybody else. Enough people recognize that in the US synagogues and churches have affluent constituents that can take care of their financing.

The thing to stand up for as we gather allies is that religious groups have no right to tell us how to run our live. One this principle we can find allies in the fight for human-based rights.

Infographic Insights into proxies for Faith and Facts

By Gary Berg-Cross

The graphic abilities provided by the modern Web allow quite a range of infographic and geographic displays. You can see briefings on many topics such as “Visualizing the Nutritional Terrain of American Cities" which leverage advancements in visualization and geographic data.

These can pack a mix of data, text and analysis into a single image. Sometimes its basically an ad such as are appearing for Valentine’s day and what you can get your “sweetie pie.” Organizations use them for various purposes including advertizing events and showing overall organization. The one below is calendar-map infographic from Infographer.ru, which is a Russian infographics site and design agency in Moscow (but can be viewed in English). The Infographic Events Calendar 2011-2012 shows many (but not all) of the visualization, data and infographic conferences and events being held around the world in 2012. Without a big poster its hard to read, but one can zoom in and find things.

But scientific results can be packed into infographics like these too especially using a spatial or map dimension to lay information out in a way that humans can easily process. There are now a wide range of urban and national maps using a range of data often displayed geographically. One that I ran across of the http://www.floatingsheep.org/ site. It has many interesting summary graphics. One visualizes the abortion debate. The map shows:

“difference between the number of abortion alternatives and abortion providers listed in the Google Maps directory is mapped across the US in quarter degree intervals. The greatest difference in favor of abortion providers is found in New York City, with Los Angeles and Seattle representing a similarly disproportionate number of abortion providers. “

The mapping christianity infographic is one that Secular Perspective readers would probably be interested in. Floatingsheep displayed several images at a New Technologies and Interdisciplinary Research on Religion. The image below shows their map of Europe with a split between

“Orthodox Eastern Europe, Protestant Germany, and Catholic everywhere else. In places such as the U

K that contain more Protestants than Catholics it is likely that people aren't using the actual term "Protestant" as a signifier of their religion.”

But my favorite of theirs is what they call their “Baptists,bibliophiles, and bibles, Oh My! “ Others have called it Churches vs. Books and a rendition of 2 powerful, often opposing forces within society - faith and reason or knowledge seeking as they say on their site:

“Regardless of the extent to which a cultural war exists, the balance between the two (e.g., teaching evolution in the schools, etc.) is a prominent feature of popular socio-political discourse in the United States. Thus, the topics makes a perfect subject of a map and leads us to ask which parts of the country prefer bookstores to bibles? What's the ratio of Baptists to bibliophiles?

Using the number of Google Maps directory listing for
"bookstores" and "churches" as proxy values, this visualization maps the spectrum of the faith and reason conflict. As there are an overwhelmingly larger number of churches than bookstores nationwide it is important to index each of these variables before comparison. The technique used in this map was to divide the number of churches (or bookstores) at a location by the national average of churches or bookstores. If a location had twice the number of churches as the national average it would receive an indexed value of 2. Similarly having only 50 percent of the national average of bookstores would produce an indexed value of 0.5. The church index was then divided by the bookstore index to see each locations relative balance of churches to bookstores. If each of the indexed values were the same, the faith-reason index would be equal to 1. But as in the case of the example above (church index = 2, bookstore index = 0.5) the faith-reason index would be 4. This indicates that this particular location has a much higher relative number of churches to bookstores. In order to exclude places that had approximately equal number of churches and bookstores, this map only includes locations where the faith-reason index was skewed more than 20 percent in either direction (i.e., values greater than 1.2).

For the most part, the relative prevalence of bookstores occurs in and around the big cities - Los Angeles, California is the site of the highest indexed value, and is joined by the megalopolis of the eastern seaboard as having the highest concentrations in favor of bookstores. Even cities such as Atlanta, nestled in the Bible Belt of the American southeast, tend towards a relatively large number of bookstores. On the converse, other large cities like Dallas, San Antonio and Houston continue to favor churches, with New Orleans (the largest city in Louisiana) having the highest relative concentration of churches in the nation. Suburban areas surrounding large population centers also show a near-universal favoritism for churches.”

Of course like many graphic summaries there is a devil in the detail. Cleary the US south has a lot of churches, but as some have noted many are tiny, with modest congregations. You can’t see in the map population % this is church going versus to compare it to the % that purchase. Still it is an interesting view of a seeming antagonism.