Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Gillard tells it as she sees it on the god issue

    The Christian lobby claims a large constituency and makes no bones about requiring political leaders to take heed.

  • Science journalists don’t know the obstacles

    Scientists would love to do more outreach, but they don’t have the resources.

  • Jerry Coyne on why evolution of eyespots

    The evolution of “eye avoidance” (which generalizes to eyespot avoidance) is likely to be innate rather than learned.

  • Christopher Hitchens to undergo chemotherapy

    Double-plus ungood.

  • The pope’s plans

    The pope has plans to fight the good fight against secularization and re-impose Catholic theocracy in developed countries where it has lost a lot of popularity lately.

    Pope Benedict XVI announced the new Vatican department dedicated to tackling what he called “a grave crisis in the sense of the Christian faith and the role of the church”…

    The new department, to be called The Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation, will try to reinvigorate belief among Catholics in rich, developed countries — or, in the Pontiff’s words, “find the right means to repropose the perennial truth of the Gospel”.

    Do we detect a note of sarcasm? Anyway, one wonders how this pontifical council will go about the reinvigorating. Posters on buses? Exciting new youth programs? Stem-winding sermons at malls? Hip hop at mass? Better-tasting crackers? Archbishop Fisichella, the Vatican’s top bioethics official who will head the new council, appearing on Oprah?

    “Bioethics official” nothing, anyway – that’s not bioethics, it’s just authoritarian religious dogma. It’s just theocracy. Here come the theocrats, offering more theocracy. Yee-ha.

  • Belgium sets the Vatican straight

    Belgium isn’t having it. Very good.

    Belgium and the Vatican are on a collision course after the Holy See accused the Belgian police of using communist tactics in their paedophilia raids on Catholic bishops last week…

    The Belgian Foreign Minister, Steven Vanackere, underlined the Belgian judiciary’s independence from the Church and its freedom to investigate.

    “It’s good to [keep in mind] very important principles of the state of law. [There are] very elementary principles of having a separation of powers and accepting that the judiciary has to do its work,” Mr Vanackere told RNW. “That’s crucial for every democratic state.”

    And that’s all there is to it. The Belgian government is the right body to investigate crimes by priests; the church is not. The church has a vested interest, and we already know what that interest is: concealment, protection of its own reputation for holiness and all-over goodness, impunity.

    That panel set up by the church doesn’t see things that way. But it’s out of luck.

    Belgium insisted Monday in a dispute with the Vatican over credibility that Belgian law enforcement authorities — not the potentially biased Catholic Church — will investigate sexual abuse cases involving clergy.

    A panel created by Belgian bishops 12 years ago to look into abuse cases disbanded on Monday, saying last week’s seizure of its 500 case files rendered its existence pointless. Its chief, Peter Adriaenssens, accused authorities of betraying the trust of hundreds of victims and using his group to tap into information and testimony from abuse victims.

    The chief of a church-appointed panel accused the Belgian government of using the testimony of victims. What did Mr Adriaenssens plan to do with the testimony then? Put it in a vault? Seal it in amber? Lose it?

    Belgium’s government doesn’t appear to be concerned about having pushed the panel to the sidelines, despite an outburst from the Vatican that Thursday’s police raid was an unprecedented intrusion into church affairs.

    “I respect Peter Adriaenssens, but his commission was created by the Church,” Glenn Audenaert, head of Belgium’s judiciary police, said after last week’s police raids. “That commission cannot start a prosecution. Only the justice department can.”

    That’s the way to tell them.

  • Buddhists have their sentiments hurt!

    Combining pseudo-humility and threats in a new and exciting way.

  • Belgium trumps Vatican on chuch abuse probes

    Insists that Belgian law enforcement authorities — not the Catholic Church — will investigate sexual abuse cases involving clergy.

  • Belgium reminds Vatican who is in charge

    Belgian Foreign Minister underlined the Belgian judiciary’s independence from the Church and its freedom to investigate.

  • Pope plans new theocratic push

    Ratzinger will create a new Vatican office to fight secularisation and “re-evangelise” the West.

  • Why Belgian cops raided church institutions

    They had reliable information that the church was hiding information on sexual abuse.

  • The chat show in Pakistan

    Is it okie dokie for Muslim men to have concubines?

    Why of course it is; what a silly question. Evry fule kno that.

    The first condition is that if during waging of jihad the women who come with the enemy forces to support them are captured and the emir of the army distributes them, it is his discretion, we can keep them as concubines. Second, if we explore and find some market where slaves and concubines are sold and the sale is established as a social institution there, the women you buy from there will be concubine. Abducting a free woman to take her as a concubine or to sell a free woman is, I think, wrong…

    Oh my, how liberal, how generous, how really fair and just and all that anyone can expect. If selling women is established as a social institution, then men can buy them, no problema. Just don’t abduct a free woman to rape her or sell her, that’s all. Agreed? Splendid. Let’s all go for a smoke.

  • Heads I win tails you lose

    The Vatican seems to want to have it both ways. It wants to tell everybody what to do, especially all Catholics, especially especially all priests. It wants to tell everybody what to do about abortion and condoms and assisted suicide. It wants to tell all Catholics what to do about that only more so, and on pain of excommunication. It wants to tell priests not to marry or have sex with women (children are ok) or go to the police when they know a colleague has been raping children. It wants to be the boss of everyone. But – then when people get angry about what its priests have been getting up to, it wants to say no no that is nothing to do with us, we don’t employ these priests, you cannot haul us into court and make us give you money like any peasant.

    Jeffrey Lena, the American attorney for the Holy See, argued the Vatican is not responsible for individual priests in dioceses, saying the existence of the priest in the case “was unknown to the Holy See until after all the events in question.”…”The Holy See does not pay the salary of the priest, or benefits of the priest, or exercise day-to-day control over the priest, and any of the other factors indicating the presence of an employment relationship,” Lena said.

    It tells the priest what to do, and what not to do; it issues rules, it consigns people to hell…but then when the bailiff shows up at the door, suddenly the priest is way off in the distance where the Holy See can’t even see it.

    According to the lawsuit, Ronan, who belonged to a religious order, began abusing boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in the Archdiocese of Armagh, Ireland. He was transferred to Chicago, where he allegedly admitted abusing three boys at St. Philip’s High School.

    Ronan was later moved to a parish in Portland, Ore., where he was accused of abusing the person who filed the lawsuit now under appeal. He was removed from the priesthood in 1966, according to the Archdiocese of Portland…

    Which of course is entirely independent from the Holy See.

  • Vatican and Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act

    Is the Vatican a state or an employer?

  • Pakistan TV Debate on Concubines in Islam

    Does Islam permit Muslim men to keep concubines? Yes of course. There are no two opinions about it.

  • Vatican arguing over child abuse

    And briefly, cryptically, makes the argument public.

  • Supreme Court declines to hear Vatican’s appeal

    So the clergy sex abuse case will go to trial in an Oregon district court.

  • Belgium: church-backed “commission” resigns

    Members are angry that Belgian police are investigating crimes against Belgian children.

  • Where are the atheist women?

    Busy? Too nice to argue? Poor? Not invited?

  • Farmworkers challenge: take our jobs!

    United Farm Workers urges unemployed Americans to sign up for backbreaking jobs at low pay in dangerous conditions.