Get well soon Jack!

It’s always a shock when someone you know and admire is struck down by illness. In this case, Jack Layton, leader of the federal NDP, announced this afternoon that he is fighting a new bout of cancer and that he’s already started receiving treatment. Jack’s a fighter and he says he’s going to fight this and win and wants to be back in the House of Commons when it resumes in September. I want to wish Jack and Olivia all the best in the weeks ahead as the treatments continue. Get well soon my friend.

The cracking rock - Part III

Part III

The Irish Prime Minister gave a very apt description of the upper echelons of the Roman Catholic Church when he described it as “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican”. Ambition and ruthlessness are two words that should be on that list as well.

It’s no small secret within the Roman Catholic Church that the only ones who ascend to the lofty heights are those with ambition. Very few men aspire to work within the mediaeval feudal culture of the Vatican where ecclesiastical obedience and deference are the order of the day. In every sense of the word, it is Catholic Corporate Central – from the parents who push to have their sons join the Sistine Choir through to the Monsignor who knows that if he bides his time and stays out of trouble for another few years, he too might get the Archbishop’s ring that will make him part of the real elite. He becomes “Your Grace”. Church royalty. Even the Swiss Guard recognizes the owners of those rings as being the real movers and shakers within Città del Vaticano.

If  the men in control at the Vatican are ambitious types who want to move up the ladder, then it is highly unlikely they willingly will admit to error – whether in thought or action. That’s why, like a good civil service, they take so long to do anything. And, like a good civil service, they will quote chapter and verse at you as to why change is neither permitted nor encouraged. Unlike a civil service, they can use Scripture and tradition as the dual foundations of their argument.

So, the stage is set. If you want to move up to and within Catholic Corporate Central, then you follow the party line. This means for example that those responsible for seminary formation, who aspire to higher ranks within the Church, will do whatever it takes to impress those above them on the ladder. If Joseph Ratzinger thinks that Vatican II was a little too progressive, then you can be sure that seminarians are going to be taught what the Boss thinks. The seminary rector, whether Roman or Sulpician, with his mitre-in-waiting, does not want to upset the apple cart.

So while the “fellowship of persons” described by Yves Congar has evolved in the celebration of their faith, the young and younger new priests want to haul the liturgy back to Gregorian Chant and 16th century dirges. These young and younger new priests also want the faithful to know who’s in charge and it’s not the people who built the community church; instead, it’s the new priest just assigned by the bishop to be the spiritual leader.

I recall a few years ago having a 30-something priest-in-training (who was a convert from the Mormon Church) tell me that he could hardly wait to become my “spiritual father”. I barely made it to the Gravol in time!

Maturity is an issue. The four English seminaries in Canada still accept 18-year olds into priestly formation. These young men, directly out of high school, are enrolled in philosophy studies and placed within the same formation programs as others who have completed undergraduate degrees and in some cases, advanced degrees. In many cases, these teenagers are still searching for self-identity while expected to become mini-priests. As you might expect, many of them don’t last.

The real problem is that many diocesan Vocation Directors, the priests assigned by their bishops to find new priests, play a numbers game. The more warm bodies they push through the seminary door, the better they’re doing their job and the happier the bishop who can tell the pope that he has an increasing number of seminarians. Talk about an archimedean paradox.

There is no question but that there are good and holy priests who graduate from such a system but there are just as many, if not more, who are so convinced of their own superiority in all things that it is frightening. I have heard too many anecdotes over the years from pew-dwelling Roman Catholics like me, who say that the new priest tells them their expression of their spirituality is wrong. “Bind Us Together” is being replaced with “Dies Irae”.

This “father-is-right” attitude is not new – it’s been with us for generations. But just like the Irish Roman Catholic kneeling on the street to ask a blessing from the priest, the sense of blind obeisance meant that many things, including the sexual abuse of children, happened right under the noses of the parents and guardians of those children. Experts have written reams about it, but this blind obeisance, coupled with the psycho-social and psycho-sexual immaturity of the abusing clergy, nourished the depravity.

I remember the first time I heard the stories from the Newfoundland outports of how parents would allow the visiting priests to share a bed with their young sons, not knowing and/or not being willing to accept, that the priest might be sexually abusing their son while they slept in the next room. To be fair, the abusing priests were in the minority, but it has stained the priesthood to such an extent that never again the line “suffer the little children to come unto me” will be part of the priest’s presence in the community. I know good and holy priests who are afraid to touch a child.

The response of most bishops to allegations of sexual abuse on the part of their priests was simply to move the priest to another parish, another town, another province, whatever it took to sweep the problem under the ecclesial carpet. As we saw in the case of cardinal Bernard Law in Boston, pope Karol Wojtyła (John Paul II) thought it best to simply move Law to Rome and made him archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in a move that many thought was an attempt to save Law from further legal entanglements in Boston. Law himself was never accused of sexual abuse of children, but was considered to be a champion ecclesial carpet sweeper.

Another example of the Vatican’s role in the sexual abuse scandals was the case of Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican-born Roman Catholic priest who founded the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement. Reports speculate that Maciel maintained relationships with at least two women and fathered up to six children, two of whom he allegedly abused as well. He enjoyed what appeared to be unlimited support from pope Wojtyła, who observers suggest, had to have known about the rumours surrounding Maciel. Was it a case of no one would challenge the pope? Did the Vatican “culture” permit Maciel to achieve as much influence as he did?

Some have wondered aloud if the rush to move Karol Wojtyła into sainthood is an attempt by that same Vatican culture to stay one step ahead of investigations into the late pope’s approval of the Mexican priest.

In Part IV, some critical questions from the Cloyne Report in Ireland.

Your comments are welcome.

© ViewPoint2010

The cracking rock - Part II

Part II
On July 20, 2011, the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny made a statement in the Irish Parliament in which he condemned the Vatican’s attempts to circumvent justice in the sexual abuse scandals that have ripped asunder the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

In his statement, Prime Minister Kenny said this: “[f]or the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

Kenny went on to talk about how clericalism had so infected the Roman Catholic Church that it left many of its leaders nearly useless, “Clericalism has rendered some of Ireland's brightest, most privileged and powerful men, either unwilling or unable to address the horrors.”

Kenny’s comments match my experience of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. I lived in Ireland thirty years ago and I came away with two distinct impressions of the Roman Catholic Church.

The first impression was one of clerical hypocrisy. To me, there was no better example than to see a priest in the Sunday pulpit, railing against the evils of television and drink and to find that same priest two hours later, sitting in front of the television with a glass of liquor in his hand. That was the most blatant example, but there were many others. While many people in smaller Irish communities felt lucky to be able to have a meal of old mutton now and then, the local priests might be having expensive fine roast beef dinners. The further up the clerical ladder you went, the more luxury you found. There was a serious disconnect between the life of the clergy and the life of the faithful who provided the means for the life of the clergy.

The second impression was the absolute power held by the clergy. The deference paid to the clergy was almost embarrassing to this liberation-theology-formed-Canadian Roman Catholic. I saw Irish Roman Catholics kneeling in front of a priest on the street to ask for a blessing. In many ways, it felt surreal, like stepping back in time. Seeing the standing-room-only crowds for Novenas and the like made me wonder what we North Americans were missing. For one thing, we had missed a Church in persecution. Sitting quietly beside a “Mass rock” or visiting Oliver Plunkett’s remains in Drogheda give you a visceral understanding of why Roman Catholicism is so intense in Ireland.

Having experienced the quiet revolution in Quebec, I also wondered how long it would last. The clericalism that permeated the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec is what led generations to abandon the Church.

It is this power that still dominates the mentality of those who work within the Vatican hierarchy. They are ambitious men who want to climb higher up the ladder and reportedly will do whatever it takes to achieve that power. For many of them, the red cap of the Cardinal is the goal for which they strive. Being able to tell their friends that they attended Mass with the Pope gives them a rush that is not 100% spiritual. Such ambition should seem out of place in the Roman Catholic HQ; instead, it’s right at home.

I remember an old priest telling me one time that “the further you are from the Vatican, the less it matters.” It’s very important to remember that while there is evil within the walls of the Vatican, it is not a universal truth for all Roman Catholic clergy. There are many excellent priests, deacons, brothers and bishops who labour long and hard in the spiritual fields without any scandal or any acknowledgement.

The Irish Prime Minister spoke of these men in his statement, “This Roman Clericalism must be devastating for good priests, some of them old, others struggling to keep their humanity, even their sanity, as they work so hard to be the keepers of the Church's light and goodness within their parishes, communities, the human heart.”

Prime Minister Kenny makes an important ecclesiological distinction when he separates the governing structure of the Roman Catholic Church from the Church itself in speaking of the “light and goodness”.

This understanding of Church was perhaps best explained by the Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles in his four basic models of Church: as institution, as mystical communion, as herald, and as servant. In any such discussion, it is important to keep those models in mind because one, in this case the institution, cannot cancel out the others, regardless of how dysfunctional the institution may be. Just as disease can infect any living organism, the disease of clericalism, rampant in the Church hierarchy, does not mean that the entire Church is diseased.

The Dominican theologian Yves Congar said that the ultimate reality of the Church is a fellowship of persons. The challenge arises when the clericalism meets the fellowship.

Ireland is experiencing the same spasms now that another island nation, Newfoundland went through thirty plus years ago in the wake of similar sexual abuse scandals. As in Ireland, there were official reports in Newfoundland which detailed the abuse in the Mount Cashel orphanage and in the province generally. The similarities are common throughout the Roman Catholic world – the widespread clericalism, combined with the absolute power of the clergy allowed the abuse to happen and go unreported for a long time. When the abuse scandal finally did become public, it was like a sledgehammer striking Congar’s “fellowship of persons”.

In Part III of this essay, some consideration of the conditions that provide fertile ground for the scandals.

Your comments are welcome.

© ViewPoint2010

The cracking rock - Part I

Part 1

Faith is a strange thing. It can sustain us in time of need and be something we run from when it’s not going our way or we feel that we’re in control. For more than a billion people on this planet, their faith in Jesus Christ is channelled through the Roman Catholic Church, the world's largest Christian church.
For those of us who are “cradle Catholics” (raised as such from birth) we have been taught that the Roman Catholic Church is the “one, holy and apostolic Church” with all of the others apparently being lesser lights. For many of us, this dogma meant we believed that Jesus Christ somehow CHOSE the Roman Catholic Church as the embodiment of the Holy Trinity on earth.

That belief has been taking a serious beating as we’ve come to understand just how “human” the Roman Catholic Church, and more specifically the Vatican, really is. It’s not new, by any stretch – consider the popes in the 15th century. “The Borgias” is a current historical fiction television series based on the reign of Pope Alexander VI and his family; it shows their struggles to maintain their grip on power in ways that would alarm even the present day Mafia. One has to wonder if much has changed.

While the better known sexual abuse scandals of the last sixty years in the Roman Catholic Church have held center stage in much of the secular media, the list of other suspected crimes is very long – everything from clerical pilfering from the collection plate to money laundering to suspected murder in the case of Pope John Paul I. Taken in its full context, it truly is frightening.

And yet the Vatican officials, including the present pope Joseph Ratzinger, ask the “faithful” to be patient, penitent and pray for forgiveness as if it was the faithful who had committed these horrendous crimes instead of corrupt priests and bishops, possibly going right to the top of the clerical ladder.

While apologies are offered, there is still a river of denial as wide as a Mexican river coming from the Vatican. And with that denial is often an attempt to circumvent secular law while hiding behind “canon law” using the argument that Church law supersedes civilian law. Nothing could be further from the truth, but like a skip on a record, we hear it over and over again. In reality, it amounts to the obstruction of justice.

I recently read an article on how many Roman Catholics are leaving the Church. I don’t recall the exact numbers but in the United States alone, it is staggering. The flood of immigrants may appear to be compensating for the loss, but it is a far larger problem than simple numbers. People are so thoroughly disgusted with the Church that they no longer want to be associated with it. They have heard so many stories of the abuse and misuse of power that it has sickened them.

Those who have dared to speak up have been silenced by Church officials. Think of the number of leading Roman Catholic theologians who have been censured and threatened with excommunication if they continue to teach their beliefs. Think of the extraordinary number of Roman Catholic liberation theologians who were condemned by the Vatican because they dared to suggest that perhaps Jesus really was preaching a social gospel, a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions. To the swishing soutanes of the Vatican, that was outrageous.

There are far larger problems in the Roman Catholic Church than the sexual abuse scandals, but the sexual abuse scandals focus our attention on much that is wrong within the Church. We can see through the prism of a multitude of reports and investigations by police and other authorities how the corruption is endemic to the Church hierarchical structure. The motto would seem to be “protect the Vatican at all costs”. What is really being protected is a group of power-hungry, ambitious men who want to climb the hierarchical ladder in the Vatican. They create their own rules and play by those rules. Like a modern-day cult, anyone who challenges them is subject to shunning in the most dramatic sense.

There have been three recent reports in Ireland dealing with the sexual abuse scandals which have laid bare the operating methodology of the Vatican as it has attempted at every turn to circumvent the investigations. Those reports have created an uproar among the Irish people and may have put the dagger into the heart of the legendary Irish Catholicism.

In this past week, the Irish Prime Minister made a statement to the Irish Parliament in which he condemned the actions of the Vatican, “The Irish people, including the very many faithful Catholics who - like me - have been shocked and dismayed by the repeated failings of Church authorities to face up to what is required, deserve and require confirmation from the Vatican.”

In Part II of this essay, we’ll explore some of those Church failings.
Your comments are welcome.

© ViewPoint2010

Is a new playbook in this man's future?

It’s very possible the world’s most famous Blackberry user soon could become the most famous Playbook user.

US Prez Barack Obama defied government officials when he won the job of President and insisted he keep his Blackberry. There were reports the unit was modified by US security officials so it was triple or quadruple encrypted and getting on the President’s e-mail list meant clearing the top levels of the security grid.

Now, Research In Motion, the company that makes both the Blackberry and the Playbook has received approval from the US government for use of the Playbook by government employees. It’s great news for RIM because the Ontario-based company has been taking a beating lately in the stock market.

What launched RIM into the stock-market stratosphere was when it became the smartphone of choice for governments and other large global organizations. Apple’s I-series devices have significant penetration into the consumer market but they don’t compete with the Blackberry in the prosumer market of government and big business. Of course, it was RIM’s commitment to security which helped the BlackBerry smartphone become the mobile device of choice for governments.

In my recent previous incarnation, I seldom was separated from my Blackberry and found it to be an indispensable tool for the work I was doing. I easily understand how someone like Obama would see it as being the same. As to whether he’ll opt for the Playbook is anyone’s guess. As for me, it’s not in my foreseeable future, simply because I don’t need it. With a desktop, laptop, netbook and Blackberry, I’m technologically enough enabled!  :-)

Hunger knows no colour barriers

Why does it take the world so long to respond to starving people?

This week, the United Nations tells us there’s a full blown famine underway in southern Somalia, that tens of thousands of people already have died and that it needs $300-milion in the next two months to address the problem.

My question is where was the U.N. when a thousand people had died and it would have taken much less to address the problem? The answer is that in large part, aid agencies were prevented from doing work in the region because of the Islamists who insisted that they did not want help and would prefer to see their people die rather than let the aid agencies bring in food and water for those people, especially since some areas in the region have not had such a low rainfall in 60 years, the aid group Oxfam said.

It was almost 30-years ago that Brian Stewart, the CBC reporter, showed us the first images out of Ethiopia where a similar famine was underway – then, as now, it took a long time for the western governments to crank up their response and begin to deliver assistance. By the time they got there, it was too late for thousands and thousands who had perished in the drought and heat. It’s almost as if someone had pushed replay on the video screen – again, local governments have stood in the way of aid delivery, preferring to see their people die rather than allowing assistance to come in – and then blaming the west for not responding earlier.

Neighbouring Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya have also been badly affected, and Eritrea is also believed to be hard hit, though its repressive government does not release figures. Oxfam says the drought has been exacerbated by poor governance and neglect, war in Somalia and land policies that restrict grazing land for nomadic communities.

NATO rushes in where there is self-interest involved. What will it take to change the leadership mindset in the west that the same determination for regime change is as necessary in Africa as it is in the Middle East?

Social media data mining takes a new twist

I’m regularly amazed by the number of people who insist that I must belong to Facebook because, otherwise they say, I’m missing out on something really important. Most of these people are quite rational but they have been so consumed by the pervasiveness of Facebook that they feel not being a member leaves you out of very important social interactions.

My response has been that I tried it a few years ago, was not terribly impressed with it and closed up my account, although I now suspect that whatever information I had uploaded to Facebook is sitting somewhere on their servers waiting for me to return like the prodigal son to take my place among the legions of members.

It is precisely that data mining aspect of Facebook that turned me off to the process. I realize there is a price you must pay for the ability to see twenty six pictures of the new puppy but for me, the price was too high. There are enough data banks out there now scouring every purchase I make, likely every e-mail I send and every online banking transaction I do. I don’t need to contribute to yet another one that makes uncertain use of the data it harvests from its members.

A recent study from the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland raises even more questions. The HCIL says that potential employers are now using data collected from Facebook pages to make decisions about potential employees. At one time employers were using a brace of psychological profile tests to rate potential hires, now they apply the same analytical processes to Facebook sites, doing very accurate personality assessments based on what the online profile offers.

A recent study predicted a person’s score on a personality test to within ten percentage points by using words posted on Facebook.

There were all sorts of things that came out. People who tested positive as extroverts tended to have more Facebook friends, but the friendships were superficial – perhaps not unlike real life. On the other hand, those who tested as neurotics (in any way similar to introverts?) had fewer friends but had more detailed exchanges with them. The researchers also found that certain personality types tended to use certain kinds of words more often than others.

Should we be concerned? I think so, because what we offer in terms of an online presence is only one tiny slice of our personality. To suggest that what is offered on Facebook, Twitter or on a blog is a complete representation of who we are, is inaccurate. To think that a potential employer might be using this to determine someone’s employability is disturbing. It confirms for me the correctness in my decision to remove my presence from Facebook.

Your comments, identified, anonymous or psuedonym’ed, are welcome!

Update ...

Earlier this weekend, I wrote an item entitled “Trash Begets Trash”. It was a commentary on the sad state of journalism today, highlighted by the shameful circumstances surrounding the phone hacking scandal committed by the Murdoch newspaper operation in England. One quick update: there is a report today that one of the most senior members of the Murdoch operation, Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World, has been arrested as part of an investigation into allegations of phone hacking and bribing police.

I just finished reading a blog entry by a young reporter named Kai Nagata, who until a few days ago was the Quebec City bureau chief for CTV News. His blog entry is about why he quit that job. While he has the self-centered, mercenary ideology I find common in young reporters, he also provides some interesting personal insight into the journalism profession today. It’s worth a read and you can find it here.

The democratic price tag

In the geo-political realities of the 21st century, how do you pick your fights?

History has shown that when you’re up against a population of 1.35 billion living in a land mass that covers 9.6 million sq km, you tread lightly. Remember the Chinese trumpets of World War II?

That’s certainly what Barack Obama did yesterday when he met with the Dalai Lama, the Nobel prize winner and exiled spiritual leader of Tibet.

Obama apparently encouraged the Dalai Lama on his commitment to non-violence and pursuit of the "Middle Way" approach with China, the White House said in a statement. According to the reports from the White House, Obama stressed the U.S. policy that "Tibet is a part of the People's Republic of China and the United States does not support independence for Tibet".

In other words, it’s a done deal and isn’t going to change because the Chinese government is too big, too powerful and too important in the world economy to risk pissing off.

American support of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, has long been a subject of contention in U.S.-China relations. Chinese officials view the religious leader as a separatist. The Nobel Prize laureate denies this, saying he wants a peaceful transition to autonomy for the remote Himalayan region that China has ruled with an iron fist since 1950, when Chinese troops marched in and took over the country – with hardly a peep from the freedom and democracy-loving west. One must be careful what one chooses from the democracy buffet.

Fascinating contrast with Libya.

In Libya - Canadian, American, British & French fighter aircraft have been having target practice trying to kill Muammar al-Gaddafi and doing so without much luck or concern for the legality of the exercise. The French especially, trying to get attention away from the sad state of their economy, have been re-exercising colonial muscles they haven’t used since they were booted out of Algeria. Nothing to get the population whipped up like a little air warfare with highly sophisticated fighter jets shooting rockets from two miles away.

Ever wondered how the Libyan “rebels” were able to get so quickly organized and be on their way to Washington for meetings with U.S. officials and others? Gee, might there be a different geo-political agenda at work here than in Tibet where just as many people have suffered just as grievously at the hands of the contemporary Chinese warlords? Of course, that no longer is important news.

Similarly, as we have watched the complete and utter destruction of the bread basket of Africa – Zimbabwe - the world has stood by and lamented the suffering of the Zimbabwean people but has done nothing about it. The country is reeling from 94% unemployment and people are starving to death but the west does nothing while Robert & Grace Mugabe put billions of dollars into private bank accounts and live a life of unparalleled luxury. We don’t hear of any sort of similar response as to Libya, even though Mugabe and al-Gaddafi are equals on the domestic terror and rule-by-fear scale.

One might almost think that because you’re black and poor or Tibetan and poor, your life is worth less.

One wouldn’t be wrong.

Trash begets trash

I heard a passing comment by a radio performer the other day in which he dismissed the Sun media operation as being something less than quality journalism. My sense is that he’s right. I haven’t spent a lot of time reading or looking at Sun media publications but a week in Ottawa a few weeks ago gave me enough exposure to be disgusted with what they call journalism.

The point?

I’m disgusted with much that passes for journalism these days and especially that led by Australian Rupert Murdoch and his news-for-money empire. Many believe that the current debate over the News of the World’s news gathering techniques is just the leading edge of the wedge in the Murdoch kingdom. The USA`s FBI is looking into the company`s operations in the States in the apparent belief that similar telephone hacking operations may have been used to gather information on those affected by the September 11, 2001 disasters in the USA.

There`s no question but that Murdoch’s minions used every dirty trick in the book to dig up as much garbage about people as they could and then tried to dress it up as “news”. Nothing could be further from the truth. And nothing could be further from professional journalism practice of which, surprising to many people, there is a Statement of principles and ethical guidelines published by the Canadian Association of Journalists which can be found at: http://www.caj.ca/?p=20   (I had the good fortune to sit in on some CAJ meetings many years ago when the ethics principles were being debated. The people in the room took their job seriously.)

One has to wonder how the Toronto Sun’s decision to publish the picture of Kate Middleton’s skirt being blown up by the wind could be described, as one of their flacks did, as compellingly newsworthy. Perhaps for the few adolescent pervs on their editorial board who get off on such pictures. And, of course, their audience.  Demographic assessment anyone?

The News of The World, the Toronto Sun and its various satellite operations, the FOX television news operation and all of their ilk wallow in infotainment. One might think their credo is the joke from newsrooms past: “why let the facts get in the way of a good story”?

One has to wonder if British Prime Minister David Cameron subscribes to that principle. Recent information released from his office shows the British Prime Minister has met Rupert Murdoch's executives on no fewer than 26 occasions in just over a year since he entered Downing Street. He also has invited some of those executives to the private country retreat he enjoys at Chequers. I doubt if the main topic of their conversations was Mrs. Cameron’s mustard pickles recipe.

Certainly collusion between high level politicians and news reporters is not new. Think of the too-many examples of recent Canadian politicians making fools of themselves in an attempt to suck in some popular support. Even Mr. Stodgy himself, Stephen Harper, lately seems to be willing to sacrifice his dignity for a chance at being a stage or TV screen performer. Does it make him appear to be more human or more desperate for attention?

It exacerbates the public perception that contemporary journalism is mostly fluff and at its worst, deception and manipulation. Is it any wonder that more residents of the United States (that media capital of the known universe) claim to get their news from the comedy production “The Daily Show” than mainstream network news programs?

Your comments are always welcome.