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Post by bjorn on Nov 16, 2009 16:05:51 GMT
The debate is up and running at www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNODiU_-CNo. Another one of those at the moment triumphed in atheist foras. Which leads on the one hand to discussions on the Evils of the Church and OTOH on Hitchens' evil views on the war in Iraq, like James did in his comment. |
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Post by humphreyclarke on Nov 16, 2009 16:25:14 GMT
Stephen Fry came up with one howler on this one. Galileo was never tortured, unless being detained in the house of the Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican is now torture, in which case tell the inquisition I deny the trinity and think that Hermeticism is the true religion.
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Post by timoneill on Nov 19, 2009 0:29:26 GMT
Stephen Fry came up with one howler on this one. Galileo was never tortured, unless being detained in the house of the Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican is now torture, in which case tell the inquisition I deny the trinity and think that Hermeticism is the true religion. Fry's howler aside, he and Hitch wiped the floor with the Blinking Bishop and that appalling woman who was like the embodiment of every vile, dim-witted, querulous-voiced headmistress ever to walk the earth. While, as some of you know well, I am the first to defend Catholicism and Christianity against my more clueless fellow atheists (and their name is legion), the Catholic Church should know that it will always have a very hard time of it in this kind of encounter and really need to put up far better defenders than the likes of these two. The Blinking Bishop seems to have never encountered criticism of the Church before and seemed genuinely startled and quite frightened at times. And the Headmistress seemed to think wobbling her jowls and mumbling "Oh, well of course you'd bring up that trivial little child sexual abuse thing!" as though that was some kind of argument, was sufficient to make the opposition's valid and trenchant points disappear in a puff of faith. Some of the commentary on James' article tried to dismiss the result as being a product of an audience of people with a reflex anti-Catholicism. A look at the numbers and how they changed after the debate shows this is not valid. Before: 678 for the motion 1102 against 346 undecided If the audience were all knee-jerk papist haters then the for and the undecided numbers would have been much smaller. Which they certainly were afterwards: 268 for the motion 1876 against 34 undecided Sorry, but that change in the numbers represents a complete and utter thumping by any measure. Fry and Hitchens won this one comprehensively. |
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Post by James Hannam on Nov 19, 2009 10:01:17 GMT
There's no doubt that they won. IMHO that was a tribute to Hitch's rhetorical power more than the arguments. The bish was no good and Widders (actually my MP) was simply unprepared to make any telling points.
I don't think the audience was particularly prejudiced, but I do think Hitch knew exactly the right buttons to press to turn them to his side. As for Fry, it is unconstitutional to criticise him in this country.... Like David Attenbough or Alan Bennett, you should never get into a debate with him that will be settled by a vote. You will lose.
Best wishes
James
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Post by timoneill on Nov 19, 2009 11:04:36 GMT
There's no doubt that they won. IMHO that was a tribute to Hitch's rhetorical power more than the arguments. The bish was no good and Widders (actually my MP) was simply unprepared to make any telling points. I don't think the audience was particularly prejudiced, but I do think Hitch knew exactly the right buttons to press to turn them to his side. Sorry, but rhetoric or not the buttons worked because there were valid arguments behind them. The stuff about Galileo and the crusades aside, the issues that really seem to have struck a chord with the audience were the child sexual abuse cover up and the issue of condoms and AIDS. However much Catholics like the Headmistress try to wave it aside, the child sexual abuse issue has done the Church massive damage. The insensitivity and hypocrisy with which it has handled the whole business simply does outweigh all the kindly nuns and shiny hospitals you care to mention. Not least because it continues to handle the whole business with ham-fisted insensitivity. A couple of years ago during "World (Catholic) Youth Day" here in Sydney our local archbishop - the loathsome Cardinal Pell, who would have made an excellent late Medieval prelate of the kind crowds liked to throw dung at - made dismissive remarks about sexual abuse victims and his spokesman seemed exasperated that anyone in the media wanted to cover the issue rather write endless stories about guitar-playing pilgrims. These guys are still totally out of touch with the genuine disgust and anger that their institution and their attitudes engender. And the nonsensical Catholic dogmatism over contraception was bizarre when its major consequence in the Third World was overpopulation. Now that one of its major consequences is the spread of a vile and deadly epidemic, I'd say "evil" is not too strong a word for it. In the face of that kind of thing, you don't need a Fry or a Hitchens to "push the buttons" with any thinking crowd. Face it James - your institution has some massive problems on its hands and they aren't going to go away via the kind of dismissive or feeble nonsense and wibbling noises we saw from the two Catholics in that debate. |
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Post by James Hannam on Nov 19, 2009 14:29:19 GMT
Face it James - your institution has some massive problems on its hands and they aren't going to go away via the kind of dismissive or feeble nonsense and wibbling noises we saw from the two Catholics in that debate. Well quite. A point I made in my article is that the Church is still very bad at facing up to its mistakes. But the debate motion was not "This house thinks the Church could do better." or even "This house thinks the Church sucks." It asked whether, on balance, and getting beyond the hot button issues where it is obviously in the wrong, it is a force for good. And by focusing on the hot button bad stuff, Hitch could keep the good stuff out the picture. Partly it's the headline fallacy. Here in the UK we are all stratching our heads over an apology for shipping our kids out to Oz in the 50s and 60s. Fact is, no one over here even knew it had happened (except me because my wife is Australian). The fact that the media here are not interested means it is simply not an issue. Likewise with most good news stories in the third world, many of which involve simple Christians living out their faith. In rhetorical terms, the only way to proceed is to grant Hitch and Co all the bad stuff before making any attempt to turn people's attention to other issues. And that really is a question of rhetoric. Best wishes James |
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Post by turoldus on Nov 19, 2009 18:58:15 GMT
In the face of that kind of thing, you don't need a Fry or a Hitchens to "push the buttons" with any thinking crowd. Face it James - your institution has some massive problems on its hands and they aren't going to go away via the kind of dismissive or feeble nonsense and wibbling noises we saw from the two Catholics in that debate. I really don't see how a Catholic or even a mere sympathizer (there are some) can deflect those "arguments" except by offering their mea culpa which adversaries will see as either hypocritical or as a capitulation. So it's a lose/lose game in the end. |
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Post by himself on Nov 19, 2009 21:48:56 GMT
There was in the US a couple of decades ago a considerable movement to downplay "intergenerational sex" [the proposed non-judgmental euphemism]. The focus was primarily on "chickenhawking," which was a term of art among homosexuals for hooking up with teenaged boys. ["Intergenerational sex" with girls remained beyond the pale.] Some of the books and articles claimed that it was the young boys who were the "real" predators, that "age of consent" was culturally arbitrary, etc.
One good thing: the cultural gatekeepers' animus against the Catholics was greater than their commitment to homosexual chicken-hawking and, at least for now, we no longer see those progressive articles.
+ + +
And the nonsensical Catholic dogmatism over contraception was bizarre when its major consequence in the Third World was overpopulation. Now that one of its major consequences is the spread of a vile and deadly epidemic, I'd say "evil" is not too strong a word for it.
The Third World is not overpopulated because of Catholic dogmatism for the excellent reason that most of the Third World is not Catholic. It is overpopulated because Europeans and North Americans think there are already too many dark people in the world, and would rather not see more. The birth rates have not climbed so much as the death rates have dropped.
Nor does AIDS spread because of a lack of contraception, or even specifically of condoms. As the head AIDS researcher at Harvard has pointed out, the use of condoms may actually exacerbate the spread of AIDS. This is because, as most any risk analyst can tell us, people adjust their behaviors to achieve a comfort level, much as they began in the US to drive faster and more recklessly when seat belts were included in automobiles. This sometimes startles the technophile, for whom the only factors in play are the technological features of a physical device; but what we gain on the technology we sometimes lose on the behavior. That was why Uganda was so successful, until strong-armed by the white people. Their program was ABC: 1) Abstain as much as possible; 2) Be faithful to a single spouse or partner; 3) Condoms as a last resort. These put the focus on the promiscuity, where biology says it belongs.
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Post by timoneill on Nov 19, 2009 22:23:52 GMT
Face it James - your institution has some massive problems on its hands and they aren't going to go away via the kind of dismissive or feeble nonsense and wibbling noises we saw from the two Catholics in that debate. Well quite. A point I made in my article is that the Church is still very bad at facing up to its mistakes. But the debate motion was not "This house thinks the Church could do better." or even "This house thinks the Church sucks." It asked whether, on balance, and getting beyond the hot button issues where it is obviously in the wrong, it is a force for good. And by focusing on the hot button bad stuff, Hitch could keep the good stuff out the picture. Sorry James, but the topic of the debate was "The Catholic church is a force for good in the world." There's nothing in that topic that says the debaters had to "get beyond" what you're trying to brush aside as "the hot button issues" at all. Those issues are entirely relevant and very much a valid part of the debate. So what Fry and Hitch did was bring some focus on those very valid issues and, by doing so, they won the debate by a resounding margin. |
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Post by timoneill on Nov 19, 2009 22:27:46 GMT
In the face of that kind of thing, you don't need a Fry or a Hitchens to "push the buttons" with any thinking crowd. Face it James - your institution has some massive problems on its hands and they aren't going to go away via the kind of dismissive or feeble nonsense and wibbling noises we saw from the two Catholics in that debate. I really don't see how a Catholic or even a mere sympathizer (there are some) can deflect those "arguments" except by offering their mea culpa which adversaries will see as either hypocritical or as a capitulation. So it's a lose/lose game in the end. My point was that the two Catholics on the panel were so feeble that they were pretty much going to lose regardless of the opposition. By the same token, the impact of the AIDS issue and child sex abuse scandal issue is such that you probably could have put Chesterton and Aquinas up there and they still would have lost. The Church has created a "lose/lose game" for itself with the hamfisted and wall-eyed way it has handled those issues. |
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Post by timoneill on Nov 19, 2009 22:39:33 GMT
There was in the US a couple of decades ago a considerable movement to downplay "intergenerational sex" [the proposed non-judgmental euphemism]. The focus was primarily on "chickenhawking," which was a term of art among homosexuals for hooking up with teenaged boys. ["Intergenerational sex" with girls remained beyond the pale.] Some of the books and articles claimed that it was the young boys who were the "real" predators, that "age of consent" was culturally arbitrary, etc. One good thing: the cultural gatekeepers' animus against the Catholics was greater than their commitment to homosexual chicken-hawking and, at least for now, we no longer see those progressive articles. I must have missed this "considerable movement", which is odd considering most would regard me as one of those wicked "progressives". All I recall is the general revulsion across the board when a group in the US called NAMBLA tried to claim some kind of legitimacy. I think these shadowy "cultural gatekeepers" who secretly want to bugger boys while publically condemning certain priests for doing just that for years are a construct that exists mainly in your head. I didn't say the whole Third World was Catholic or that the Catholic bits were neccesarily overpopulated or even that the bits that are were solely because of a lack of contraception. BUt you don't have to be a genius to see that an ossified doctrine that condemns contraception isn't exactly helping those poorer Catholic areas that are suffering from population pressures. Oh, please. We effectively stopped what was becoming a rampant AIDS epidemic in the gay community here in Australia in the 80s by a combination of an education campaign and a (for the time) rather aggressive government-backed campaign to make free condomns and syringes available to at risk groups. To pretend that the Catholic teaching on condoms isn't exacerbating a chronic situation in Africa and elsewhere is simply ludicrous. That teaching alone, with its willful ignorance and blithe disregard for catastrophic suffering and death, is an evil that derserves to be nailed to the door of the Vatican. I'll defend you guys against stupid attacks, but I sure as hell won't sit by while you guys make stupid defences. If you don't like people criticising your Church, perhaps you should do something to fix it. |
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Post by unkleE on Nov 20, 2009 2:55:20 GMT
However much Catholics like the Headmistress try to wave it aside, the child sexual abuse issue has done the Church massive damage. The insensitivity and hypocrisy with which it has handled the whole business simply does outweigh all the kindly nuns and shiny hospitals you care to mention. Not least because it continues to handle the whole business with ham-fisted insensitivity. ....... These guys are still totally out of touch with the genuine disgust and anger that their institution and their attitudes engender. I am not a Catholic, but as a christian looking in from the outside, I must say I've thought pretty much the same. Repentance and forgiveness are two of the distinctives of christianity, and it is hard to find any reason or excuse for not following that path. It would help address the PR nightmare, but, much more importantly, it would be practicing what Jesus preached and doing something towards easing a lot of people's pain. And then of course, there would be the christian responsibility to do something tangible about making as much amends as is possible. I guess the fear in admitting guilt is that the reparations may be costly. But again (and this is easy for me to say) we/they are supposed to be following the teachings of a revolutionary who criticised people for giving too much importance to wealth. To adapt a famous saying: "What does it profit a church if it gains all the property and loses the people it's supposed to be caring for?" It is interesting that the Australian Government has twice in the past two years made formal apologies to groups of people that Australia has treated poorly - indigenous Australians and child immigrants. These apologies have been labelled as tokenistic by some critics, but they have been very well received by the affected people, have created goodwill where there was little before, and may actually lead to some useful action. Surely the Catholic church could learn from this (if it cannot learn from Jesus)? |
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Post by timoneill on Nov 20, 2009 7:01:02 GMT
Surely the Catholic church could learn from this (if it cannot learn from Jesus)? Well, maybe you've forgotten, but the Vatican has issued several such apologies, including one during the 2008 visit to Sydney by Pope Benedict. But it was marred by the kind of ham-fistedness I criticise above. The Sydney Archdiocese knew that they simply couldn't get away with having the Pope in town and not have him address the sexual abuse issue somehow. But it seems the apology was stage-managed in such a way as to have as little impact on and distraction from what they wanted as the "main event" - the "World Youth Day" festivities. So instead of inviting victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy to a Mass or ceremony at which the Pope made the apology, they had him make it to a general congregation in St Marys Cathedral and then he met with a (handpicked) group of four victims. Not surprisingly, the other victims thought this was a pretty shoddy and rather token effort. One guy who was the father of two girls abused by a priest cut short a holiday in Britain and flew home specifically to meet the Pope over the issue. He was ignored. That's when Cardinal George "Bow before me, for I am a PRINCE of the Church" Pell made his dismissive comments about the victims and his spokesman did some whining about how upsetting to him it was that victims kept "harping on about old wounds". So what could have been a genuine gesture by the Church and an outward sign of real regret and empathy turned into a cold, stage-managed and utterly tactless PR disaster. And then old Jowly Woman wonders why people keep "bringing up the child sexual abuse thing".  |
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Post by foxymoron on Nov 20, 2009 11:03:38 GMT
I’ve posted on the AIDS & Condoms and Catholic sexual abuse scandal several times on RDF but, due to the total f**k-up of the once excellent search engine there in recent months, the references and sources I’d dug out appear to be lost forever. Always backup!!!
Anyway. As regards the paedophile priests issue there’s no doubt it went on and that the catholic church have handled the whole thing badly. However similar scandals in secular settings have shown exactly the same pattern, both in terms of the prevalence of abuse (because priests really don’t molest children any more than anybody else) and the clumsy handling of abuse allegations. I was in social services for a while in the 90’s when paedophilia suddenly became an international moral panic, and the sexual abusers that were being brought to light all had virtually the same story: a long history of unproven allegations made against them, and repeatedly being passed along as “someone else’s problem” to other roles in other areas where they still had access to children. The explanation for this is the usual list of human weaknesses: gullibility; the hushing up of a scandal to protect one’s own job and reputation; a cultural aversion to the distaste and shame that surrounds child sexual abuse; failure to understand the compulsive nature of paedophilia and the plausibility and cunning of many paedophiles; incredulity at the idea that there could be groups of paedophiles working together to abuse children and cover up the evidence; and willingness to ‘pass the buck’ on to some other individual, organisation or authority.
The extent to which this repeatedly occurred beggars belief. it would be the same guy and the same allegations, over and over again for decades, yet still no one saw the pattern and blew the whistle due to a sort of semi-willful blindness and a lack of the kind of checks and record keeping that are now mandatory.
What marks the catholic church out from other organisations or institutions where sexual abuse has occurred is the disproportionately high media media feeding-frenzy on the ‘paedophile priests’ issue. Possible explanations for this include the high-profile of the catholic church as an easy identifiable explanation, the juicy sordidness of the idea that spiritual men of God can secretly be sex-crazed perverts, and the instinctive conviction that many people hold that celibacy is an inherently bad idea and that if you try not to have sex you’ll go mad: to paraphrase Hunter S Thompson, ‘the semen backs up and their eyes go over-bright’.
Another explanation is of course that the issue has become a great stick to beat the catholic church with, wielded both by outsiders who despise it and insiders who want to pressurise it into change. Both may be justified, but presenting the problem as being something exceptional and specific to the church isn’t. It doesn’t surprise me that an element within the church are becoming rebellious over the unfairness of the never-ending demands for a mea culpa. The church is in a very difficult position: defending itself makes it look unapologetic and uncaring, but accepting responsibility for failures that have been greatly exaggerated will only damage their reputation further.
On the AIDS and Condoms debate, after some considerable time searching I was unable (to my own amazement) to find any evidence for the assumption that the Catholic prohibition against contraception has increased the incidence of HIV prevalence. The data I did find (from the World Health Organisation) was that the predominantly catholic african countries have lower HIV rates (by a small but significant amount) than other African countries. Critics such as Polly Toynbee, who has repeatedly accused the church of responsibility for millions of AIDS deaths, have nothing to back this claim up. Similarly those campaigns that have had the most success in reducing HIV rates, most famously the Ugandan one, have strongly emphasised faithfulness, celibacy and monogamy, with condoms only recommended for and supplied to particular high-risk groups such as prostitutes. These programs have worked, with real measurable changes in sexual behaviour: less sleeping around, more faithfulness and more celibacy.
Of course it is true that wearing a condom significantly reduces the risk of infection, but in real life the issue is more complex. The western message is basically that Sex is Great, but Wear a Condom. This has reduced HIV rates in western gay communities, but although lower than they once were infection rates remain steady. The problem is that, as Himself pointed out, this message doesn’t really change sexual behaviour outside of wearing a condom, and the high-risk promiscuous behaviour continues so that the temptation to take risks and the possibility of accidents through improper use, condom failure and spontaneous sexual opportunities are ever-present. Amongst catholics there are no doubt some infections caused by an unwillingness to break the rules and use condoms (although why a catholic would think it ok to have extra-marital or adulterous sex yet still conscientiously obey the injunction against condoms baffles me), but there are also undoubtedly infections that are prevented by those who obey the rules. If, on the whole, catholic teachings prevent more infections than they create, then that’s a Good Thing. So far at least the evidence suggests this approach is at least as good as the 'Use Condoms' approach, and, in combination with other efforts at changing risky behaviour, it has proven to be more effective.
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Post by toadie on Nov 20, 2009 14:52:09 GMT
Regarding HIV/condoms and the Catholic church, I am not so sure the siuation is quite as simple as you make out ('To pretend that the Catholic teaching on condoms isn't exacerbating a chronic situation in Africa and elsewhere is simply ludicrous.').
See Dr Edward Green's comments (He works for the Harvard AIDS prevention research project) in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html). He also has a similar letter in the Lancet (2009 May).
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