Ethics
Priests who sin remain priests who win
The Catholic Church denied a pedophile priest sexually abused two young sisters more than a decade after the man was jailed for attacking children over a period of 50 years. The denial came despite an earlier letter written to the girls’ parents by Cardinal George Pell, apologising for the priest’s crimes and acknowledging the findings by the church’s investigator that the cleric had raped both the children.
The revelations are contained in a new book by Chrissie Foster, a mother whose daughters were abused by Oakleigh priest Father Kevin O’Donnell in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1995, O’Donnell became, at 78, the oldest man to be jailed in Victorian history after he admitted abusing 10 boys and two girls over a 31-year period. He is believed to have abused hundreds of children all over Victoria between 1942 and 1992.
Hell On The Way To Heaven, written by Ms Foster in collaboration with ABC journalist Paul Kennedy, chronicles her family’s fight to obtain justice from church authorities on behalf of her daughters, Emma and Katie.
Emma died of a drug overdose in 2008 after years of drug addiction and mental illness caused by her abuse as a primary school student at the hands of O’Donnell.
The book also reveals that, in the year O’Donnell was jailed, lawyers for the Catholic Church accused a man – attacked by the cleric in 1972 when he was in grade 6 – of being guilty of contributory negligence because he:
FAILED “to take care of his safety”;
DID NOT make any complaint at the time of the abuse; and,
LATER, failed to report O’Donnell’s conduct to the authorities.The church’s denial that Ms Foster’s daughters had been abused by O’Donnell was made in 2004 in response to the Foster family’s lawsuit against the church.
In a letter from lawyers acting for the Archdiocese of Melbourne, the Fosters were told that the defendants “do not admit that the plaintiffs were subjected to physical and/or sexual and/or psychological abuse while an infant by Kevin O’Donnell”.
The denial came despite earlier findings by Peter O’Callaghan, QC, the church-appointed commissioner who investigates complaints against clerics, that both girls had been abused by O’Donnell.
It also came despite a letter to Emma Foster in 1988 from then Melbourne Archbishop Pell, in which he sought “to apologise to you and those around you for the wrongs you have suffered at the hands of Father Kevin O’Donnell”.
O’Donnell was released from jail in late 1996 and died in March the following year.
The book also reveals the church recently made a compensation payment of $50,000 to a retiring priest who had worked for many years on behalf of clerical sexual abuse victims.
The payment to the priest came despite the church’s refusal to make payments to the so-called “secondary victims” of sexually abusive clergy – and is $20,000 more than some child abuse victims have received from the church.
The book alleges that Mr O’Callaghan ordered the church to pay $50,000 to a priest who had worked on behalf of young sex abuse victims after the cleric became burnt out.
The payment was partly for “stress and strain” and was despite the fact the priest had not suffered from sexual abuse.
The payment was outside the terms of Mr O’Callaghan’s appointment.
Kneeling before the alter of political correctness
An intelligent debate on the subject has been strangled as much by rabid conservatives as by cloth-eared cultural relativists. Pseudoliberals insist on taking a soft line on the burqa by framing the debate in terms of free choice and tolerance, writes Sushi Das.
A robust discussion does not equate to fanning bigotry.
A PERTH judge made international headlines last week with her ruling that a Muslim woman must uncover her face while giving evidence in a fraud trial so the jury can assess her facial expressions to help weigh her credibility as a witness.
The woman later issued a statement saying she accepted the ruling and regretted that the case had ignited a debate about a burqa ban in Australia.
In Western liberal democracies, where robust debate is pivotal, it should not be a matter of regret that a debate has been ignited. In fact, it’s time Australia properly debated whether a burqa ban is the right way to go.
An intelligent debate on the subject has been strangled as much by rabid conservatives as by cloth-eared cultural relativists. Pseudoliberals insist on taking a soft line on the burqa by framing the debate in terms of free choice and tolerance.
It’s all part of the rich tapestry of multiculturalism, they say. Or as one non-Muslim woman on this page wrote: ”Who am I to judge these women’s motives for wearing the burqa?”
The burqa, a formidable head-to-toe billowing garment to hide the contours of a woman’s body as well as her eyes, has been designed by men for the gross subjugation of women. The niqab, which allows a slit for the eyes, is no different.
The Koran does not command women to shut themselves off from view. It only calls for modesty in dress. But even on a test of modesty, the burqa fails. If modesty, the cousin of shame and humility, is about showing decency and propriety by not exposing too much flesh, then the burqa makes a mockery of the concept by pushing it to complete absurdity.
It obscures peripheral vision, has the potential to conveniently hide marks of physical abuse and is tantamount to bad manners in a modern society that lauds transparency, equality and participation.
If, as some Muslim women argue, it protects them from the lascivious leers of men, how come women in countries where they are forced to cover up are still being raped? It also insults honorable men to suggest they are potential rapists, incapable of self-control in the presence of women not wearing a burqa.
It is embarrassing to hear people oppose the ban on the burqa out of slavish commitment to multiculturalism. Western apologists who furnish arguments of cultural protectionism in an attempt to atone for past colonial ugliness seem unaware they have jumped into bed with the murderous regimes that enforce the cloaking of women by pain of violence.
It is equally troubling when anyone who dares to challenge the veil is howled down as a racist, a right-wing extremist or simply stupid.
This was the treatment given to Senator Cory Bernardi when he described the burqa as ”un-Australian”. Christian Democrat Fred Nile was accused of chasing the ”bigot vote” when he introduced a private member’s bill to the New South Wales Parliament calling for a ban on face covering in public places.
Such hysterical responses deter people from expressing their views openly. They also encourage mealy-mouthed mutterings that retard the fight for equality for women everywhere. Political correctness kills intelligent debate.
Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard, with the apologetic coughs of people who don’t want to get in too deep on the burqa ban debate, have both described the garment as ”confronting” and quickly moved on.
The burqa is not just confronting, it is frightening because of what it looks like and what it stands for. You simply cannot discuss it without at least a passing glance at what is happening to women in conservative Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
Ethics [still] vs Scripture
Far from any religion, and especially Christianity, being essential to the development of a sound ethical sense, it is a destructive hindrance from whose influence all children, but especially those in our public schools, should be protected.
Prominent clerics in New South Wales are claiming that ethics which are not based on Christian teaching are somehow not proper. They are labouring under the delusion that ethics and religious belief are interdependent. In fact, religion is to ethics as pseudoscience is to science. In each case, the proselytisers of the former try to establish a right to make significant statements about the latter by presenting the latter as being somehow owned by the former.
In NSW, the anxious clerics are even going to the extent of insisting that they should have a prominent role in evaluating the ethics courses being tried out in ten schools because, as they falsely argue, ethics is a subset of religion.
In fact, far from the churches being allowed some role to play in the design or evaluation of ethics courses in schools, they should be not allowed within a bull’s roar of them.
Ethical and religious teachings are both concerned with how people should behave in particular situations and to this extent have a seeming similarity, but there are at least three ways in which they are starkly different and largely incompatible.
Objective:
Ethics concerns itself with how people should behave so as to secure the greatest possible well being of all human beings in this life. Religion concerns itself with how people should behave so as to secure the greatest possible well being for themselves in the next life. Ethics is about securing benefits for everyone in the one existence we know we all shall have; religion is about securing benefits for yourself in a future existence that many (maybe most) do not even think will happen.
Methodology:
Ethical conclusions are reached from rational analysis of the effects on everybody concerned of all available ways of behaving. Religious conclusions, certainly Christian ones, are handed out by influential human beings who claim that they know the wishes of a god. In making an ethical judgment, people have to work out the course of action that will minimise the total amount of personal discomfort in the world. In making a religious judgment, people have to work out what to do to avoid hell.
To be ethical, you have to open your mind and engage your brain. To be religious, you have to close your mind and open your ears. The hallmarks of ethical behaviour are intellectual engagement with issues and their consequences. The hallmarks of religious behaviour are unquestioning obedience to received articles of faith and to observance of rituals.
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Australian Prime Minister dumps God
Parliament House in Australia has well earned the title The Best Little Whore-house in Texas thanks to erstwhile PM’s, Kevin Rudd and John Howard, pandering to Southern USA style Christian lobbyists. Howard’s love affair with George Dubya Bush is a national disgrace made only worse by the fact that residue of this insanity remains at the helm of his party.
This 13 year nightmare has seen a rise in Creationism and literal bible lessons forced into schools, Chaplains usurping Counselors, rising homophobia and retardation of public health initiatives and life saving research. Of course we must add erosion of science literacy, dangerous dilution of policies that ensure blood borne virus control, orchestrated attacks on Ethics and Secularism and an annual $30 billion taxpayer funded gift to the masters of false claims and grand promises – to name only a few theocratic stains.
It is with utter joy one notes our first female PM, Julia Gillard is an unmarried independent woman with no such propensity toward such intellectual repugnance [ABC]. As Gillard begins to repair the foolishness that ensured Kevin from heaven was deposed a warm glow settles over Australia.
Interview with Jon Faine, ABC Radio June 29th, 2010:
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‘Taxpayer funded abuse’ – Scientology
From © Fairfax:
Former members of the Church of Scientology have told a Senate committee of the ”ruthlessness” of the church and its judicial system, and argued it should not be eligible for tax-free status.
”Australian taxpayers should not be funding systematic, organised abuse,” said Janette Vonthehoff, who claimed her passport was taken from her and she was forcibly prevented from returning to Australia from the United States when she was eight weeks pregnant, because the church ordered she must finish ”training”.
Sydney tax lawyer and social identity Louise McBride defended the church, and clashed with independent senator Nick Xenophon during the hearing.
Senator Xenophon accused Ms McBride of being ”unprofessional” for suggesting the committee was ”making a mockery of the law” by considering his private member’s bill. The bill seeks a tax law amendment that would require religious and charitable organisations to meet a public benefit test.
Ms McBride – who said she was not a Scientologist and had never been to a Scientology church – told the committee: ”You are singling out a group in a government bill as the purpose of the bill. [It] is discrimination. But for parliamentary privilege, it would amount to libel.”
Ms Vonthehoff said she resigned from the church in 2007 because of bullying, two coerced abortions and Scientology justice proceedings that included its own court hearings.
Another former member, James Anderson, said he and his wife had paid up to $1.2 million in Scientology training fees.
Senator Xenophon said Scientology ”auditing” sessions were regarded by some as a cross between personal counselling and Maoist self-criticism, and had been a factor in the UK Charities Commission deciding against granting Scientology tax-free status there.
The Church of Scientology’s social reform director, Virginia Stewart, said the sessions made members ”a better person”, and the fee charged formed the basis of donations to the church.
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