Author: Ophelia Benson

  • You need to have leaders who have learned the hard way

    Cardinal Brady is still at the same old stand – saying he won’t resign despite new disclosures of his failure to pass on names and addresses of children being abused by Brendan Smyth.

    The Catholic primate of all-Ireland has said that he will not resign as Church leader despite revelations in the BBC’s This World programme.

    It found Cardinal Sean Brady had names and addresses of those being abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.

    However, he did not pass on those details to police or parents.

    And Brendan Smyth went on abusing the children in question.

    He says he had no authority. He says it was all the higher ups. He says he trusted them to deal with Brendan Smyth. He says he was just there to hold their coats. He says why is everybody picking on him. He says the BBC is being mean to him.

    Senior Vatican Prosecutor Monsignor Charles Scicluna has defended Cardinal Brady.

    “My first point is that Fr Brady was a note taker in 1975, he did what he should have done. He forwarded all the information to the people that had the power to act,” he said.

    “My second point is that in the interest of the Church in Ireland, they need to have Cardinal Brady as the archbishop of Armagh because he has shown determination in promoting child protection policies. You need to have leaders who have learned the hard way and are determined to protect children.”

    You need to have leaders who have learned the hard way. Really. So leaders should all be involved in botched self-protecting institution-protecting pseudo-investigations of child abuse early in their careers so that they can do a good job later, having “learned the hard way”? So it’s good that Ratzinger grew up under the Nazis and it’s a pity that other “leaders” missed out on that experience?

    Sean Brady’s role in the affair became clear in 2010, when it became known that he had been present when the abused boy [Brendan Boland] was questioned.

    He claimed, however, that the boy’s father had accompanied him, and described his own role as that of a note-taker.

    However, the BBC This World investigation has uncovered the notes Cardinal Brady took while the boy was questioned.

    The child’s father was not allowed in the room, and the child was immediately sworn to secrecy.

    Brendan Boland’s father was not allowed in the room as a matter of canon law, according to Irish Times Religious Affairs Correspondent Patsy McGarry. Good old canon law, eh, protecting the clergy at the expense of anyone and everyone else.

    H/t Sigmund.

  • Jesus proves to Mo about the miracles

    He’s all like dude, yes I can.

  • Have a pie chart

    A little more on Rothamsted Research and its wheat trial.

    It’s a research facility founded in the 19th century. It’s a charity and a company. Its funding is laid out on its corporate information page.

    Rothamsted Research is a grouping of private organisations and is one of seven institutes sponsored by the  Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Rothamsted Research is a charity and a company  limited by guarantee and occupies land and buildings owned by the Lawes Agricultural Trust. The Rothamsted Research Association is an independent body that facilitates interaction and dialogue between researchers, especially those at Rothamsted, and practitioners in the agri-environment sector.

    Sources of income as percentages for 2010/11 (total £29m) are shown in the figure below:

    PIE chart of finances

    I hope that helps.

  • Measles is on the road to recovery

    Well done anti-vaxxers – another triumph for public health. There are more than 200 confirmed cases of measles in the outbreak on Merseyside.

    There are 210 confirmed cases, 39 of which needed hospital treatment. Ninety two cases are under investigation.

    About 50% of the cases are in children under five years old.

    The outbreak, which is concentrated on Liverpool where there are 125 confirmed cases, is the largest since the MMR vaccine was introduced.

    Strange, isn’t it. There’s an effective vaccine for measles. You’d think it would be going away, not coming back.

    Dr Roberto Vivancos, a Health Protection Agency consultant, said: “It’s obvious from these statistics that people who are not fully vaccinated are not just at risk themselves, but they pose an infection risk to others, such as defenceless babies and toddlers who are too young to be vaccinated.

    “Measles is a very infectious illness that spreads rapidly amongst children and adults who are not protected by MMR vaccine.

    “It is also a serious illness that can lead to serious complications. On rare occasions, people die from measles.

    “It should not be treated lightly, but it is an avoidable illness and we strongly advise parents to ensure that their children are vaccinated.”

    Fascist! It’s every parent’s right to refuse to get children vaccinated. Our ancestors died to protect our right to refuse to get children vaccinated; the right to be infected and to spread infection to others is sacred and cannot be abrogated.

  • Obama proclaims May Day as “Loyalty Day”

    Workers? What workers? There are no workers, so they don’t need a workers’ holiday.

  • Cardinal Brady will not resign over BBC disclosures

    This World found Cardinal Sean Brady had names and addresses of children being raped by priest Brendan Smyth, but did not pass details on to police or parents.

  • Measles outbreak on Merseyside: more than 200 cases

    There are 210 confirmed cases, 39 of which needed hospital treatment. About 50% of the cases are in children under five years old.

  • Come on, kids, let’s destroy the crops!

    Good old “activists” – anti-vax activists, pro alt med activists, anti-GM crops activists. Hooray for crop failure and famine!

    Scientists working on a new generation of genetically modified crops have sent an open letter to anti-GM protesters pleading with them not to destroy “years of work” by attacking their research plots.

    The activist group, Take the Flour Back, has pledged to carry out a “decontamination” at a test site in Hertfordshire, where agricultural researchers are growing the world’s first genetically modified wheat that can repel insect pests by emitting a repellent-smelling substance.

    Because…it’s a good thing to have crops eaten by insects?

    Scientists said that the suggestion they had used a cow gene “betrays a misunderstanding which may serve to confuse people or scare them but has no basis in scientific reality”.

    Matt Thomson, from Take the Flour Back, told The Independent yesterday that action against the Rothamsted site would go ahead as planned.

    “The concerns that we have are not addressed in this letter,” he said. “The way that Rothamsted have publicised this trial has been patronising. This wheat contains genes that are not naturally occurring.”

    The publicity is patronizing, therefore they’re going to trash years of research into how to improve the production of staple food? 

    That’s the most revoltingly frivolous thing I’ve seen in awhile.

    Sense About Science has a petition you can sign and circulate.

    Via Simon Singh at Twitter.

  • Protesters plan to destroy GM test site

    “Activist” group has pledged to carry out a “decontamination” at a test site where researchers are growing GM wheat that can repel insect pests with a smell. Hooray for crop failure!

  • Small world

    Surly Amy has a nice post about the women in secularism conference (cue squawks from agonized bores with facetious cod-Edwardian advice for zee laydeez). She’s made Surly-Ramics necklaces for people who donate to a scholarship fund to send students to the conference.

    It is important that we lend our support to conferences like this groundbreaking event so that we can pave the way for future events while encouraging future leaders in the movement to stand up and be counted. I support women in secularism and I hope you will too.

    I think that’s true. I think that’s true even if you accept the contemptuous premise that all the speakers at the conference were invited solely because they have the korrekt genitalia. I don’t accept that premise, of course; I think Susan Jacoby and Margaret Downey and the rest [bracketing me, of course] have more than that; but if I did, I would still think it was true that we should lend our support to conferences like this. I’ll tell you why. It’s because just representation, by itself, does something important, and lack of representation does too, but in the opposite direction. It has to do with that business of encouraging future leaders. It has to do with stereotype threat, with give me the colored doll, with implicit associations.

    On another note: while reading the post I noticed something I hadn’t known, which is that Skepchick is international, and there’s a Swedish Skepchick. Swedish! There’s a post up right now advertising a debate between Christer Sturmark and a guy called Marcus Birro. Google translate reveals that the Swedish Skepchick blogger considers Birro a bullshitter. But small world, hey, I know Christer Sturmark! Isn’t life funny.

    I’ve been seeing a lot of excitement about the conference, here and there. I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty good fun.

  • Houston and New York are spared

    One piece of slightly good news: Helen Ukpabio has canceled both her planned trips to the US. That doesn’t do the children of Nigeria any good, but it does throw a wrench into her plans to go global.

    Once Ukpabio’s travel plans emerged, campaigners against her activities in Africa began appealing to the US authorities to prevent her from preaching in that country. Prominent Nigerian humanist Leo Igwe, who has had many confrontations with Ukpabio and her Liberty Gospel Church, wrote that “efforts must be made to stop this evangelical throwback from spreading her diseased gospel in the US”, while online campaigners called for her exclusion from the US, and set about raising money for the UK-based charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, which campaigns to protect children threatened by witch hunts in the Niger Delta region of Africa.

    Now, four months after details of Ukpabio’s US trip first emerged, it seems the campaign against it has paid off, with Nigerian media reporting that she will no longer be visiting the country. In a report sympathetic towards Ukpabio, the Nigerian Voice website quotes the preacher’s attorney Victor Ukutt, who confirms that the trip has been cancelled, and makes a series of bizarre allegations against her opponents, including Stepping Stones, suggesting that the campaigns against her are a front for obtaining money through fraudulent means. This is a common tactic for Ukpabio, who has long dismissed the “child witch scam” as an atheist conspiracy.

    Actually, what that website says is that Ukpabio got death threats “on behalf of” Stepping Stones Nigeria.

    The President and founder of the Liberty Gospel Foundation Church, Lady Apostle Helen Ukpabio says she has indefinitely cancelled her scheduled visits to the USA which where billed for March and May this year.

    Speaking through her attorney, Victor Ukutt, Esq., the Pentecostal Pastor and Nollywood actress, who has her church branches spread all over Africa, said her decision to cancel her trip was based on the series of death threat she received from organisations like Stepping Stones Nigeria a based in the United Kingdom which claimed to work as a charity to protect witch children in Nigeria.

    I don’t believe that for a second.

     

  • Dan Savage on the fairness of citing the Old Testament

    Is it just totes unfair to confront anti-gay Christian hypocrites with Leviticus 20:13? No.

  • Helen Ukpabio cancels 2 US trips

    Leo Igwe wrote that “efforts must be made to stop this evangelical throwback from spreading her diseased gospel in the US”, while online campaigners called for her exclusion from the US.

  • Missing

    Teresa MacBain is another one of those ministers – the ones who lose their grip on god and then wonder how on earth they can deal with the situation.

    “I’m currently an active pastor and I’m also an atheist,” she says. “I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday — when Sunday’s right around the corner — I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up and say things that I no longer believe in and portray myself in a way that’s totally false.”

    MacBain glances nervously around the room. It’s a Sunday, and normally she would be preaching at her church in Tallahassee, Fla. But here she is, sneaking away to the American Atheists’ convention in Bethesda, Md.

    Her secret is taking a toll, eating at her conscience as she goes about her pastoral duties week after week — two sermons every Sunday, singing hymns, praying for the sick when she doesn’t believe in the God she’s praying to. She has had no one to talk to, at least not in her Christian community, so her iPhone has become her confessor, where she records her private fears and frustrations.

    I can’t think of any other job that has exactly that problem. Even various woo-based jobs like homeopath aren’t exactly the same, because homeopathy isn’t a person, or a Person. It’s that that makes it a matter of conscience, I think.

    She was raised a conservative Southern Baptist. She had questions about conflicts in the Bible and the role of women.

    She says she sometimes felt she was serving a taskmaster of a God, whose standards she never quite met.

    For years, MacBain set her concerns aside. But when she became a United Methodist pastor nine years ago, she started asking sharper questions. She thought they’d make her faith stronger.

    In reality,” she says, “as I worked through them, I found that religion had so many holes in it, that I just progressed through stages where I couldn’t believe it.”

    The questions haunted her: Is Jesus the only way to God? Would a loving God torment people for eternity? Is there any evidence of God at all?

    And another, key question: would a loving God make the evidence so hard (we, being atheists, would say impossible) to find and then punish us for not believing without evidence? Would a loving God give us useful capacities to seek out the truth and test for falsehood yet demand that we ignore all that and have faith that there is a loving God?

    I say no. That’s not a loving god. I am completely unable to believe in god, and I’m unable to countermand the aspects of my mind that make me unable to believe. That’s not something a loving god could or should or would punish me (or anyone) for.

    MacBain misses the relationships, and she misses the music. But she doesn’t miss God.

  • An edge in his voice

    It sounds like an awkward time at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature panel on the life and works of Christopher Hitchens last night. Apparently it was billed as a tribute but it was also a discussion, and the result is that it wasn’t an unadulterated tribute.

    Mr. Hitchens’s erudition, wit and prolificacy were taken for granted by the five participants: Katha Pollitt and Victor Navasky, his erstwhile colleagues at The Nation magazine; Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair; and George Packer, a staff writer for The New Yorker. The question initially posed by the writer Ian Buruma, the event’s moderator, was whether Mr. Hitchens’s work and ideas would stand the test of time.

    Well I’ll tell you what I would have said if I’d been on that panel. Yes. Absolutely yes; very much yes. I think he had huge flaws – or, more to the point, that there were huge flaws in some of his ideas and work – but I also think the quality of his work was of the kind that stands the test of time. I think he wrote far too well and too shrewdly on too large a range of subjects with too much wit and insight not to stand the test of time.

    Mr. Navasky said Mr. Hitchens didn’t have “original theories,” but rather offered “original takes” on things. Ms. Pollitt said that no magazine writer who “weighs in” so regularly on the issues of the day can expect their work to age well. She went further — since, she claimed, it was probably “the reason” she was invited to be on the panel — and called Mr. Hitchens a “tremendous misogynist” who didn’t have “a lot of serious, professional respect for women writers.” She also chided his habit of greeting her with a kiss on the hand, a habit she called “grotesque.”

    That was one of the huge flaws – although I’m not sure I would call it misogyny (but then Katha knows a lot more about it than I do, having been a colleague for many years) – the failure to take women seriously. (Although there were exceptions. That Jefferson scholar who wrote about him shortly after he left the scene, for instance.)

    But they also pointed to some of his vital work, both serious and comic, like the time he was voluntarily waterboarded, or his series about self-improvement, for which he had a seaweed body wrap and dabbled in yoga. Mr. Packer singled out Mr. Hitchens’s performance in a debate with Tony Blair about whether religion is a force for good, and he also praised Mr. Hitchens for speaking out strongly and often about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie when no one else was willing to “stick out their neck.”

    Mr. Rushdie, the festival’s founder, was sitting front and center in the crowd. During the time allotted for audience participation, he approached a microphone and said he wanted to pay tribute to Mr. Hitchens, “which is what I thought we were doing tonight,” he added, with an edge in his voice. He championed his friend’s best works as “masterpieces of style,” called his book “God is Not Great” an “extraordinary polemic,” and said he fit comfortably in the tradition of great essayists going back to the 18th century and his work would undoubtedly endure.

    That’s what I think. It’s exactly what I think. I said much the same thing almost ten years ago, when B&W was new.

  • The joke’s on them

    For awhile there it looked as if Mali were going to have a new and better Family Code to improve the rights of women.

    Its provisions included raising the minimum legal age of marriage for girls, improving women’s inheritance and property rights and removing the clause demanding a wife’s obedience to her husband. The law was adopted by the National Assembly in August 2009 but was withdrawn following uproar from conservative Muslim groups.

    Provocative headlines in newspapers warned that women would no longer have to obey their husbands and thousands took to the streets in protest. A task group formed by Mali’s top Islamic council called it an “open road to debauchery” and the National Union of Muslim Women’s Associations said the law reflected the wishes of a tiny minority of women. When the Family Code was finally enshrined in law in January this year, it was substantially watered down. Campaigners say that far from protecting women’s rights, the code perpetuates discrimination.

    Religion trumped women’s rights, as it so often does. Religion equated equal rights for women with “debauchery” – as if women weren’t people at all but just walking genitalia; as if all equality and rights could possibly mean to women would be fucking any man they could find; as if all women ever want to do is just fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck and therefore they can’t ever have rights.

    According to Safiatou Doumbia, a member of the Malian Association for Care and Assistance to Women and Children, the new law has set women back. “The new law brings women’s rights back to more than 50 years ago because some rights women had in the former law have been banned. Before, a woman would automatically keep her children if her husband died. This is not the case with the new law, which allows a family counsel to decide who should keep the children.”

    Under the new Family Code, as in the original 1962 law, a woman must obey her husband, men are considered the head of the family and the legal age for marriage is 16 for girls, and 18 for boys.

    In short, women (including girls) are on a par with livestock. They are wholly owned by men; a woman without an owner is as nature-defying as a feral Bichon Frise.

     

  • Women in Mali: no rights for you!

    Under the new Family Code, a woman must obey her husband, men are considered the head of the family, and the legal age for marriage is 16 for girls and 18 for boys.

  • PEN Festival panel discusses life and work of Hitchens

    Salman Rushdie said he fit comfortably in the tradition of great essayists going back to the 18th century and his work would undoubtedly endure.

  • Surly Amy says support women in secularism

    She made limited edition Surly-Ramics necklaces as gifts for people who donate to student scholarships to the Women in Secularism conference.

  • From minister to atheist: questions haunted her

    Is Jesus the only way to God? Would a loving God torment people for eternity? Is there any evidence of God at all? And one day, she realized: “I’m an atheist.”