Rosminian Regrets?

After the BBC documentary detailing the abuse meted out by the Rosminian Order to pupils in its charge, and the subsequent cover-up, they have issued a notpology:

A statement from Fr David Myers, leader of the Rosminian order in Britain:

“I apologise without reservation on behalf of the Rosminian brethren in the UK to all those who
have suffered. Such abuse was a grievous breach of trust to them and to their families. We are appalled by what was done to them.
“I and all my brethren are deeply shocked at what has happened and acknowledge our inadequate response. We are committed to the pastoral care and support of those who have suffered abuse and to the procedures laid down by the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission.”

They 'acknowledge [their] inadequate response'. As with the Catholic Church in toto, acknowledgement is just the first trivial step. What victims want is a full and independent inquiry to stop the abuses, and cover-ups, from continuing. And they damn well are continuing, despite any number of mealy-mouthed statements from clergy saying they're sorry when they're clearly not, or they'd do something about it!

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The Cover-up Kings Strike Again

Colourful priest with a practical grasp of Catholic values.

Whatever his weaknesses – and he readily acknowledged that he was as human as the next man – Cunningham was always redeemed by his sense of humour, his sound judgment as to what the church should really be about, and his willingness to serve whoever needed his help.

Obituary, The Guardian, 6th January 2011

Endowed with a genial Chestertonian figure and a powerful voice...

Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 13th December 2010

He was greatly loved by many people whose lives he touched.

Andrew M. Brown in the Daily Telegraph Blogs, 12th December 2010

One of the good 'uns.

Comment on that blog.

All descriptions of Father Kit Cunningham, a celebrity priest of sorts, of the Rosminian Order. But, in fact, he was another child abusing Catholic priest:

[John] Poppleton had been repeatedly sexually abused as a young boy by Fr Kit, an experience that he says "broke me down and broke my spirit". The abuse took place at St Michael's, Soni, in the 1960s, in what was then Tanganyika, now Tanzania. Four of the priests who taught there, all members of the Rosminian order, and including Fr Kit, perpetrated physical and sexual abuse that made this boarding school, according to Poppleton, "a loveless, violent and sad hellhole".

Now a new BBC documentary, Abused: Breaking The Silence (Tuesday, 22:35 on BBC One), is to be screened telling the story of the abuse that took place at St Michael's, Soni in Tanzania in the 1960s.

The piece by Peter Stanford in The Guardian is chilling, because it shows how easily these evil but charming and charismatic men can fool the credulous. Stanford penned the Guardian obit, but now has to come to terms with his inability to spot a monster in his midst; it turned out that Father Kit had returned his MBE because of the abuse he committed. Not a hint of this in the fulsome obits above, although there are some ironic (if they weren't so tragic) double entendres. How could this have been missed? Stanford is starting to ask questions, thank dog:

In almost three decades of writing about the church, and a lifetime as part of it, I thought I knew how to read a priest. Since the 1990s, when the scandal of paedophile priests first emerged in the public domain, a question mark has been hanging over almost every cleric as a result of the church's cover-up. Almost every priest, but not, for me, foolishly imagining myself a seasoned observer, over Fr Kit.

Such credulity is, unfortunately, an all too human failing. That is why the Catholic church cover-up is an even worse evil than the original abuse, because it has taken a dreadful abuse of authority and multiplied it by n, placing the welfare of the Church above the welfare of people. This supervenience of the institution over people is the evil of the religious institution in principle. Consider this:

However, Frenkiel [the reporter] points out in her film that on the day that Pope Benedict XVI, during his visit to Britain last September, was in Westminster Cathedral expressing his "deep sorrow to innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes", the Rosminian order was writing to refuse to pay any compensation for what it has openly acknowledged are the crimes of four of its own priests.

This is nauseating. Remember, Pope Benny was saying:

"It is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly mission was possible"... He said the first priority was to help the victims to recover from the trauma they had undergone "and rediscover too their faith in the message of Christ".

..while his Church was still denying compensation to its victims. Stanford wonders about the ongoing cover-ups and realises it calls into question the priorities of his Church. He continues:

Such questions might nag away slightly less insistently if I thought the Catholic authorities were genuinely trying to understand the root causes of this scandal. But this month the quasi-official Catholic Truth Society published a booklet on clerical sex-abuse that blames it on the "permissive society" of the 1960s. So while everyone else took sexual liberation to mean you didn't have to wait until you were married, priests took it as licence to abuse children?

I would urge Stanford to leave his Church, but first insist that it opens up its records for a full independent international inquiry into this scandal. It's a disgrace that this priest didn't die in disgrace.

UPDATE: Note that Patrick Wall, working for lawyers for the abused, is quoted as saying that abuse continues:

"I'm working on stuff that happened in the summer of 2010," he says. "It's the same old sodomy."

If this is true, the Catholic Church must be held accountable.

He recommends that the church "completely get out" of child protection, hand over all its files to civil law enforcement, and make bishops sign a legal oath every year that there are no perpetrators in the ministry - which would open them to criminal prosecution if they are found to have lied.
"Otherwise," he says, "I'll be prosecuting priest sex abuse cases for the rest of my life."

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We Are Sinners All

What to say about Jeremy Stangroom's latest flailing effort to marginalise gnu atheists? He says:

I don’t have time for the new atheist idiots right now.

Could one say, that's hardly civil or good behavior?

Or I actually don’t think many 'public intellectuals' would make a comment about folks being idiots in a blog?

Is it evidence that Jeremy doesn't have a good nature?

Karla, if you’re reading this, which I doubt, you probably know by now it’s a mistake to engage with these morons

Hmmm. Perhaps remarking that the targets of your criticism are morons is a bit... well, moronic?

Should one point out that calling gnus morons has nothing to do with [their] argument?

Should we conclude that, because he thinks I really don’t think that many public intellectuals would have said the sort of thing that Dawkins said. I don’t think I would have said it (except maybe ironically), he is calling gnus morons ironically? Or perhaps he thinks he's not a public intellectual? Well, he's certainly public.

In the comments of an earlier attack, he said:

The point here is that it has been stated quite explicitly that the new atheists do not “fall short” (though it’s not expressed quite like that, obviously) enough that they can reasonably be viewed as uncivil; and that the other side – i.e., the “accommodationists” – fall short a damn sight more often and more egregiously. I intend to show that neither of these things are true.

It's amusing that he's proving himself wrong on his own blog. And, for the record, I don't think that accommodationists "fall short a damn sight more often and more egregiously" than gnu atheists. From the start of this self-defeating accommodationist crusade, my objection has been that gnus do not fall short of acceptable standards of discourse any more than anyone else does. But they are cast by theists and accommodationists alike as if they do. I don't know the motivation for this 'othering' of gnus, but it's difficult not to conclude that it's driven, somewhat, by society's privileging of religious beliefs, over and above other beliefs. When this privileging stops, then gnus will have a lot less to complain about, civilly or otherwise. Until then, accommodationists are simply more evidence for its existence.

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Hit and Myth

R. Joseph Hoffmann has been making a lot of news in the blogosphere recently, through his intemperate attacks on gnu atheists - consider this comment highlighted by Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels:

There are no butterflies there [at B&W] anymore just gasbags like the seminally under-qualified Eric McDonald and clowns like PZ Myers, who could benefit from a reading comprehension course with an emphasis on analogies.

Calling Eric Macdonald 'seminally under-qualified' is indicative of a critical faculty that has become unhinged, and now Richard Carrier has cause to question Hoffmann's sanity:

But in private conversations about some of the problems I had with the book, Hoffmann was a complete dick to me, and wouldn't own up even to the mistakes I had actual proof he had made.

...and...

Thereby tempting me to conclude that he [Hoffmann] must be a lunatic.

This all comes in an analysis of Hoffman's book, Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth. Sadly Hoffmann also supports the view of Jacques Berlinerblau that new atheists think that:

Unless you as an atheist are willing to disparage all religious people, describe them all as imbeciles and creeps, mock every text and thinker they have ever produced, then you must be some sort of deluded, self-hating, sellout, subverting the rise of the Mighty Atheist Political Juggernaut...

A straw man of dickish proportions, to be sure. I don't know what's happened to RJH, but it's worth reading about Carrier's concerns for his editorial skills. Despite that, the book's still worth purchasing, apparently!

UPDATE: Hoffmann has replied to Carrier's criticism, including this paragraph:

Hoffmann, probably

I am still not sure what “mistakes” he’s referring to other than his own, which were as substantial as his contribution was irrelevant, a long discursus on Bayes’ theorem that never once budges above pedantic lecturing to engage the literary material – the New Testament – to which its application is implied to be relevant. A cautious, or less sympathetic editor would have cut it eo ipso as being totally to the left of the topic, though Carrier shows a fleeting acquaintance with some of the methods (and limits) of conventional New Testament criticism. It does not rise to the level of convincing expertise.

One wonders why he included Carrier's chapter, in that case! He displays little sympathy, so maybe he was just being incautious.

And Carrier's reply.

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The Power of the Bible

After the predictable failure of Biblical predictor Harold Camping, we are now witnessing the ability of the human mind to rationalise its own credulity.

Here is a remarkable example: Peter Lombardi is a 44-year-old from Jersey City, N.J. who had had taken an "indefinite break" from his job in April to preach about May 21, and John Ramsey is a N.J. resident who had rearranged his life in recent months to devote himself to spreading the news of the Rapture.

Followers like Ramsey and Lombardi said they had few hard feelings toward Camping and still agreed with some of the self-taught preacher's views, such as one that says all churches and denominations have been corrupted.
"I have learned to study the Bible really well. This guy has opened my eyes to a lot of truths," said Lombardi.
"If he makes another prediction, I can't tell you what I am going to do," said Ramsey. "But I've really taken an interest in the Bible. I know it's the word of God. And I've been reading into more parts today."
He quoted Mark 13:22: "For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall [show] signs and wonders, to seduce, if [it were] possible, even the elect."

Despite the apparent stupidity of thinking some nut with a radio station can predict an event that is, in any case, a fiction, these guys still think the Bible's worth reading. One of the master-strokes of early Christianity was its forging of a range of old stories and texts into a whole that makes no sense but can be utilised in the service of any agenda that one wants to push. I've spent my life listening to sermons and preachers, Thoughts for the Day and miracle stories, and they've all found something in that hotchpotch of platitudes to support the view they're pushing.

With a text as full of contraries as the Bible, it's easy to make it fit any narrative that arises, and Ramsey manages it here. Oh yeah, shit, that Rapture prediction culled from the Bible was wrong, and here's the Bible telling me why. Here's the Bible telling me the Bible's wrong. But there really aren't any contradictions in the Bible, in the philosophical sense of jointly exhaustive but mutually exclusive stories and morals; it's too complex and incoherent for that. If the book wasn't 'Holy', everyone who used it would be slapped into prison for deception. For nefarious politicians with an agenda, or just for mad old millionaire radio evangelists, it's the Book that keeps on giving, and keeps those who believe in it giving.

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Orders must be followed, however evil

A New York Jewish newspaper is banned from publishing photos of women by rabbinic authority, so when it printed the White House situation room photo it naturally removed Hilary Clinton and Audrey Tomason from it.

It's the blithe disregard for what this actually means that shocks. Sexism is prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex, according to the online OED. Here's some snippets from the statement issued by Der Tzeitung, the offending rag:

Our photo editor realized the significance of this historic moment, and published the picture, but in his haste he did not read the “fine print” that accompanied the picture, forbidding any changes.

Yes, the 'fine print' is more important than the equal standing of women, apparently.

The allegations that religious Jews denigrate women or do not respect women in public office, is a malicious slander and libel.

Of course! Air-brushing women out of important historical photographs is in every way consistent with respect for them, isn't it?

The Jewish religion does not allow for discrimination based on gender, race, etc.

Well, you just did, and do, discriminate based on gender because, as you go on to say:

In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women...

See. Not, you do not publish photos of men, or children, but women. That is discrimination based on gender.

...which in no way relegates them to a lower status

Again, of course not! Air-brushing women out of important historical photographs is in every way consistent with granting them equal status, isn't it?

Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board.

That is a surprise.

Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention.

Sigh.

So the argument goes, it's not sexist; they're not doing it because they're women, but because the Rabbis tell them so.

They're only following Holy Orders.

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Reason-able?

Chris Mooney has been posting some excellent pieces recently, thankfully avoiding (mostly) his accommodationist nonsense. At Mother Jones he wrote The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, detailing many studies exploring our cognitive problems. It's well worth a read to get acquainted with some of the studies exercising psychologists at the moment. In it he talks about how emotion informs and, to a degree, poisons one's pre-existing beliefs and affects how one argues.

And that undercuts the standard notion that the way to persuade people is via evidence and argument. In fact, head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.

This is his standard retort to gnu atheism. But it's quite modest, and doesn't do the work he wants it to. I mean, obviously on many (most?) occasions people are persuaded by evidence and argument. What he means to say is that this may not be the best way when the issue under discussion triggers deep emotions. Later he says:

If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn't trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.

Again, this, I presume (!)  is the reason for his tone trolling, but it's not doing the work he wants. I don't think any gnu denies that tone is important, and these studies indicate some reasons why a sympathetic context can work. But that doesn't mean it's the only way to get results. Ridicule also generates an emotional reaction, and that may produce results too, without evidence and argument. I can remember being persuaded as a child not to do certain things by the ridicule heaped on me by my brothers when I went wrong. There was precious little evidence and argument presented.

More recently he's blogged about a study relevant to that article, calling it Is Reasoning Built for Winning Arguments, Rather Than Finding Truth?. That title's not really accurate, as a read through uncovers. It's based on a study by Mercier and Sperber, called Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory. Mooney sums it up better in the final line:

When it comes to reasoning, then, what’s good for the group could be very bad for the individual–or, for the echo chamber.

An interesting finding. We have an imperfect reasoning tool in our locker. If we just reason our way around the world as individuals, disaster can strike. So, an example in the comments, the Unabomber living alone in the woods can easily go crazy because no one is there to say, “Whoa, where’d you get that idea?” A better evolutionary survival tactic is to introduce some argument. This, I guess, moderates some of the flaws in our thinking, such as cognitive bias, and is more likely to produce a better result for the genes (this is an evolutionary psychology argument). In the comments it's also made clear that like-minded groups are a problem too. Hugo Mercier pops up to confirm what he thinks the solution is:

What we’re suggesting is that in a normal debate, you try to convince the other guy when you produce arguments, but you’re mostly objective when you evaluate arguments (after all, if you’re better off changing your mind, you’d rather know about it). So a normal debate is the solution, and it has worked very well for ever. There is no need for any new thing really, just fixing institutions that don’t rely enough on genuine debate.

A pretty good addition to the argument for freedom of speech, I think. Further, it counters the accommodationist position that gnu atheists shouldn't confront the moderately religious and dismiss their beliefs. Genuine debate is what gnus demand, and these studies suggest that if moderate religionists aren't challenged, they will operate in an echo chamber that may end up radicalising their views.

No doubt accommodationists can accuse gnus of operating in their very own echo chamber, but this chamber rings very hollow indeed. In a world where atheists are outvoted and outprivileged wherever one looks, it will be a long time before it becomes a dangerous in-group. But one would have to concede that it may happen one day. O, frabjous day!

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