Furthermore, just about anyone who has worked closely with Catholic clergy can attest that accusations of sexual crimes and/or homosexuality are, throughout history, by far the most common complaint heard by church officials and are almost always fraudulent accusations for reasons of revenge, jealously, unrequited love, etc.
There have been very few allegations against alleged "victims" in Ireland that they are bringing an action for the reasons you cite. The guilt of most of the alleged transgressors is not even disputed. Generally they have not been convicted until decades after their initial offences and after many more children were abused. Their victims were silenced on pain of excommunication. At best the perpetrators were sent to an institution for "therapy" which was known not to be effective. Usually they were moved to another dioceses with no restriction on, or monitoring of their subsequent activities.
What you are repeating here is really the most vile, pernicious, self-serving, institutional self rationalisation ideology which has virtually no basis in fact.
False allegations are a feature of any civil or criminal judicial system. There are huge safeguards to prevent wrongful convictions - and even more in the case of offences against juveniles which are generally held in camera.
Anybody else who is accused of a crime has to go through this judicial process. On what basis could the church arrogate to itself the power to decide that its members need not submit themselves to the demands of civil or criminal justice like any other citizen?
To this day the Papal Nuncio still refuses to meet the Irish parliament sub-committee charged with investigating the degree of cover up. Rome has not even acknowledged the Murphy Commission's requests for information on what files were sent to Rome. Could they be any more contemptuous of the secular institutions of a democratic state that is Governed by the rule of law?
And BTW, church leaders are the first to run to the civil courts if they feel their prerogatives have been challenged in any way.
Can I please reiterate: we are dealing with children here. Many far too young to have sexual fantasies or fixations of their own. Many were beaten by their own parents for daring to say anything against the priest. They had virtually no prospect of a fair hearing. The police and health services had a policy of not interfering in Church affairs. Anybody who took up their case risked being ostracised and having their career terminated.
Have you any idea of the scale and magnitude of what went on? Please don't extrapolate from a couple of instances were injustices were committed in entirely different contexts and buy into a whole corporate ideology which has very little to do with the reality of the vast majority of cases.
And finally - my last word on this - whatever about the Polanskis and tabloid media of this or any other age - child care professionals knew very well - 35 years ago - the scale of the damage being done to children. There may have been a great deal of popular innocence and ignorance, but that did not extend to professionals - doctors, teachers, nurses, psychologists,church administrators and social workers in the field. Many chose to ignore it because their jobs depended on Church patronage. But don't buy into the collective hand wringing and hand washing and selective memories now. They didn't want to know.
I lived through that period and had to contend with the culture of fear, blind obedience and silence. But anyone with any integrity òr worth their professional position knew better.
What has changed is that the balance of power has changed. The Church is no longer in absolute control. And the main consequence of that is that children are listened to know. There is mandatory reporting and proper independent investigation of allegations - and still a very high threshold of evidence which results in very few cases going to court.
But what has changed is not that there is any great fund of new knowledge now. All the knowledge needed to deal with the problem was available 35 years ago. What has changed is the balance of power. And don't you think there is something peculiarly Christian about children being listened to and taken seriously when they exhibit severe symptoms and voice a complaint? notes from no w here
I've worked myself to see a teacher brought to justice for abusing a child, so, yes, I do have a very good idea of the magnitude of what went on -- I claim to be an insider on this issue. And, no, there is simply not the evidence to date that this is a large scale, institutional problem. Rather, it is a problem where church policy has given too much credence in the excuses of accused priests precisely because child and other sexual abuse allegations have usually proven to be false and have occurred against clergy members for centuries, often part of a concerted political narrative by state authorities aimed a silencing or destroying political or economic rivals among the clergy.
Church policy is guilty of erring on the side of the accused, and this needs to be corrected because we now have in place larger societal protections such as the privacy ones you've mentioned in Ireland than what existed even 25 years ago. (In the US, Latin America, privacy protections for people accused of sexual crimes don't exist, particularly in civil suits, so you may have better protections in Ireland.)
You say I don't have facts? I'm not the one making allegations of institutional problems in Catholicism here. For all we know with the evidence presented in public to date, the Catholic Church is ahead of the curve on dealing with this now while it goes on unaddressed in the rest of society. You're the one here using a few tragic cases in Ireland to indict a whole class of people -- in this case Catholic clergy -- here. I'm just being skeptical about it, so the burden of proof rests on you, not the skeptic. Show me compelling facts, and I'll change my mind.
And, no, there is simply not the evidence to date that this is a large scale, institutional problem.
You mean, apart from the Ryan Report?
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Conclusions Conclusions included: Overall. Physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions. Sexual abuse occurred in many of them, particularly boys' institutions. Schools were run in a severe, regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff. Physical abuse. The Reformatory and Industrial Schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and the fear of such punishment. A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from. Sexual abuse. Sexual abuse was endemic in boys' institutions. The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence. Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions. When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again. The safety of children in general was not a consideration. The situation in girls' institutions was different. Although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse by male employees or visitors or in outside placements, sexual abuse was not systemic in girls' schools. Neglect. Poor standards of physical care were reported by most male and female complainants. Children were frequently hungry and food was inadequate, inedible and badly prepared in many schools. Accommodation was cold, spartan and bleak. Sanitary provision was primitive in most boys' schools and general hygiene facilities were poor. Emotional abuse. Witnesses spoke of being belittled and ridiculed on a daily basis. Private matters such as bodily functions and personal hygiene were used as opportunities for degradation and humiliation. Personal and family denigration was widespread. There was constant criticism and verbal abuse and children were told they were worthless. Supervision by the Department of Education. The system of inspection by the Department was fundamentally flawed and incapable of being effective. Complaints by parents and others made to the Department were not properly investigated. The Department did not apply the standards in the rules and their own guidelines when investigating complaints but sought to protect and defend the religious Congregations and the schools. The Department dealt inadequately with complaints about sexual abuse, which were generally dismissed or ignored.
Conclusions included:
Overall. Physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions. Sexual abuse occurred in many of them, particularly boys' institutions. Schools were run in a severe, regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff.
Physical abuse. The Reformatory and Industrial Schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and the fear of such punishment. A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.
Sexual abuse. Sexual abuse was endemic in boys' institutions. The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence. Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions. When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again. The safety of children in general was not a consideration. The situation in girls' institutions was different. Although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse by male employees or visitors or in outside placements, sexual abuse was not systemic in girls' schools.
Neglect. Poor standards of physical care were reported by most male and female complainants. Children were frequently hungry and food was inadequate, inedible and badly prepared in many schools. Accommodation was cold, spartan and bleak. Sanitary provision was primitive in most boys' schools and general hygiene facilities were poor.
Emotional abuse. Witnesses spoke of being belittled and ridiculed on a daily basis. Private matters such as bodily functions and personal hygiene were used as opportunities for degradation and humiliation. Personal and family denigration was widespread. There was constant criticism and verbal abuse and children were told they were worthless.
Supervision by the Department of Education. The system of inspection by the Department was fundamentally flawed and incapable of being effective. Complaints by parents and others made to the Department were not properly investigated. The Department did not apply the standards in the rules and their own guidelines when investigating complaints but sought to protect and defend the religious Congregations and the schools. The Department dealt inadequately with complaints about sexual abuse, which were generally dismissed or ignored.
Why are you defending this?
The solution has been to close virtually all the Catholic institutions (except some elite private boarding schools and hospitals), to de-stigmatise illegitimacy and single parenthood and allow single and unmarried parents to retain their children, to de-stigmatise poverty and provide better social welfare and child care benefits and services, to provide better state oversight of private provision of social care services, with mandatory reporting, social care orders for children at risk, multi-disciplinary case conferencing etc. and strengthening legal safeguards for children and greater provision of fostering and adoptions facilities and services.
It's far from perfect and some at risk children fall through the cracks because of inadequate provision largely due to underfunded services or inadequate coordination of services. But we didn't have a choice in any case since the Catholic Church has imploded with almost zero vocations of nuns, brothers and priests. Many existing nuns, brothers and Priests have been laicised, married or left the Church altogether.
There are almost no religious teachers or nurses any more, and the role of the Church is restricted to a management role as they generally hold title to the deeds of the premises even though the services are entirely funded by the state. Even this residual role is gradually ending with a growth of non-denominational schools and hospitals in all sectors.
The argument you make is almost irrelevant in Ireland. The Catholic Church has been all but destroyed by a variety of factors and trends, the most dramatic of which have been the revelations of child abuse. It is withdrawing from public life and engagement in all but the most basic ritual functions - Mass, confirmations, weddings, funerals - and even that much less so.
Virtually nobody would take your conspiracy theories seriously in Ireland. The Church accomplished this state of affairs almost by itself. notes from no w here
Here's how it works:
Asking this question this way, I argue, is the only honest way to address this issue without tainting the argument with social constructions for or against Catholic identity.
There are, of course, more possibilities involving combinations of Catholicism and nationality (as opposed to just Ireland) to consider as well, but the issue is doing it in a way that treats evidence as honestly as possible without making dishonest a priori assumptions about things based only on the dominant social narratives of the day.
Would this approach better protect children when dealing with this issue? Yes, emphatically. Consider that in the past, as recently as the 1970's, the importance and social priority of specifying children's rights was absent from the dominant social narratives and likely contributed to a de-prioritization of accusations of abuse in a way we would find surprising today. Depending primarily on dominant social narratives for arguing policy consistently leads to ignoring pleas for help from the people who don't fit the narratives.
A few years back, I took quite a few counselling courses (most of a degree, in fact), and did volunteer work as a counsellor.
Of the people I met, spoke to and counselled who were open about having been sexually abused in that time, approximately 60% had been raped by Catholic priests. This is not a Catholic country. If priests "only" raped at the rate of the general population, one would expect to find far fewer examples than that.
100% of those raped by priests had had their families bullied into covering it up. 0% had ever taken the matter to the police. Or claimed compensation. As I recall, "They're making it up for the money" was one of the vile slanders tried on at the time.
Cry "statistically insignificant" if you will, but you seem to think that your anecdotes of the biased constitute evidence. This is what I found. And I was not alone in finding it.
The bit that interests me personally a bit more - I do not have the time to do original empirical research - is to attempt to de-construct the differing narratives employed. I would characterise my narrative as broadly structural/functionalist with with a bit of materialism thrown in. What were the structures at work, what role and functions did the various actors play within them, whose interests were being served?
When I recovered from the shock of your original intervention - I had never heard anyone in Ireland argue that it was all an anti-Catholic conspiracy even if some victim advocates were suspected of leftist or securalist agendas - I hypothesised your narrative as being a faith based institutional protection narrative: the real incidence of child abuse was being grossly exaggerated, the church was only doing what other organisations would have done in similar circumstances, there was no evidence of endemic or systematic abuse, the controversy was being hyped by anti-catholic propagandists opposed to Catholicism per se, it even constituted hate speech by catholic haters.
It reminded me of the Holocaust denial narrative, and then, as Jake pointed out, also of attempts by Zionists to portray all opposition to Zionism, or support for Palestinian human rights as anti-semitism similar to what has blighted European (and Christian) discourse regarded Jews in the past. I hypothesised that this was a debate going on in Catholic circles in the US where perhaps the Catholic Church is still a serious player in national and local political and social discourse.
But I don't think you appreciate just how "discredited" that discourse is in Ireland and Europe. Hence the dismissive attitudes of other ETers here. Hence my argument that the Catholic Church is no longer a serious player in public policy formulation in Ireland - except for some residual elite secondary education and primary school management functions - and that even the Bishops themselves no longer seek to make the case you were making. Several have already resigned and more will follow. And the reason is simple: the evidence of endemic abuse in Irish Catholic institutions is massive and unequivocal in countless personal testimonies, official reports, court judgements and admissions from within the Church itself.
Your narrative may still have traction within faith based communities in the US. It feeds into popular conspiracy theories and attempts to portray the state as evil. There may still be a culture war between faith and secular narratives in the US, but that war is largely over in Ireland and large parts of western Europe. In Ireland it is actually devout Catholics who feel most betrayed by their Church. Secularists were either disinterested or anti the Church anyway.
Your narrative seems, to me, to put the Church's short term interests - damage limitation, asset protection - at the risk of destroying its core message in the eyes of its own believers: that the Church represents the Kingdom of God and that ordained Priests are its consecrated and near infallible representatives. The problem for the faith based narrative is that real danger lies within. As such I see it as a flawed narrative which ill serves the interests it is designed to protect. The Church is imploding not, primarily, because of some external secularist, Islamic or Protestant onslaughts, but because it has become dysfunctional where the rest of society has moved on. notes from no w here
My concern comes from this point which you made in a recent comment (I think to Jake):
<blockgroup>The Irish police are notoriously discrete when it come to dealing with people in positions of influence, and the courts still notoriously lenient on offenders. There really was no excuse for not reporting in Ireland. The odds are still stacked against the victim who still does not have independent representation or advice in court unless they can afford private legal fees...</blockgroup>
The problem with this is that, if true, it just validates the argument that the Church was not, or is not, doing anything differently than civil authorities would do. Secrecy and a perhaps overly aggressive presumption of the innocence of an accused caregiver is how the civil state treats abuse claims as well as the Church, according to your statement. And the damning reports on this issue confirm this -- its the Irish police who gave the benefit of the doubt to accused clerics as well as the now-Cardinal Primate of Ireland.
I think you and others here are interpreting my emphasis on this argument as my trying to protect the Church. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've encountered enough ill will among Church officials in my time to feel no vested interest in helping them out of problems of their own making or oversight. What matters most to me is the narrowing of policy reform possibilities that are inherent in a blame-the Church narrative of these events.
Namely, by blaming the Church for protecting the interests of its priests from damages they may personally face if accusations are false (which they often are, even if they often enough are true as well) the narrowing of options for reform gets limited to two possibilities: Give more power to the state, and/or take power away from individuals by reducing their claims to innocence until proven guilty and allowing them to be punished before their guilt has been determined through some fair process. It's straight out of Foucault, sexual deviancy and all -- the tyranny of a rights=based discourse.
Just because we know that the Church has failed does not mean that we should trust the state to do a better job (the principal agent problem is not automatically corrected if the state is given more responsibility than private organizations with more experience, even bad experience, in such work) or that protections of victims rights need to supersede the rights of innocent people who are accused of grave crimes.
That is why it is necessary to seriously and explicitly address, through an empirically compelling argument, that something inherent in the Church is the important causal factor here, and that it's not really something else.
Collusion between Church and state was certainly a problem at some levels, but the state moved on much faster than the church. The problems I was referring to - in latter years - was much more related to the inherent difficulty of proving sexual abuse against a child - if it was some time before it was reported, if there were no witnesses, no forensic evidence, a respected adults word against a childs... etc. a defendents rights are pretty well protected in Ireland, including an extensive free legal aid scheme for defendants (but not for victims).
However in general the states response was entirely different to the church - victims were not sworn to silence, allegations were investigated by the police, files often went to the Director of Public Prosecutions who decided (based on the likely of a successful prosecution) whether a case should go to court. Sentencing in Ireland is hugely more lenient than the US for all offences - Murderers often serve less than 10 years - but there was also a need to educate older judges of the traumatic impact that sexual offences could have on children. Latterly, victim impact statements have become commonplace.
There was an instance in my locality of a local policeman encountering huge hostility for pursuing a case against a local priest - however he did his job and the priest was eventually convicted. Those who thought that the church could do no wrong and that the child must have been fantasising have kept something of a low profile since.
I take your point about a wrong analysis of what went wrong leading to flawed policy recommendations for the future. However with the Church imploding there is no choice but for the state to take over - assisted by some charities subject to state regulation.
In another context I would also be very critical of the state response - social workers working only 9-5, lack of emergency accommodation, children ending up going from one set of foster parents to another in quick succession etc.
It really is incredibly difficult (and expensive) to care for children when their family breaks down. The provision of generous state benefits for single parents has actually led to a huge increase in very young single mothers who cannot care for their children very adequately according to some authorities.
In this regard I would have one last crib against the Catholic Church. Having a child, in my view, is an incredible responsibility which you should only undertake after careful consideration, preparation and planning. Yet the Church discouraged contraception and taught that it was a sin to try to prevent conception. This has led, in my view, to many parents who didn't really want children, have no idea how to care for them, and who go on to neglect or abuse them terribly - with many going on into state or foster care: a very suboptimal solution at best.
So in summary - the Church got very screwed up about sex, and screwed up society in turn. It's going to take a very long time before that baleful legacy is overcome. Better sex and relationship education, less single sex schools, more responsible attitudes to parenthood, state funded training courses for parents, a reduction in alcohol and drug abuse, less deference to authority, but also greater personal responsibility for actions taken. You would think that a Christian ehtic could have a role in this. Sadly the scandals have so besmirched Christianity that the solutions will have to be largely secular for a very long time to come. notes from no w here
Yet the Church discouraged contraception and taught that it was a sin to try to prevent conception. This has led, in my view, to many parents who didn't really want children, have no idea how to care for them, and who go on to neglect or abuse them terribly - with many going on into state or foster care: a very suboptimal solution at best.
Is Catholicism really the contributing factor in too many births among people, Ireland and elsewhere, who can't handle more kids? And if so, why isn't Catholicism a contributing factor in increased marriage rates among such people (going down), decreased divorce rates (up), or any observed reduction in incidences of extramarital sex or adultery, all of which the Catholic Church also provides specific normative direction. It doesn't really make sense that people who ignore Catholic teaching when it comes to extramarital sex all of sudden become devout when it comes to birth control, does it? Or are you suggesting that it's all those irresponsible, albeit humorless, young couples who actually go to Mass every week who are the ones who also can't handle the children they have?
The only narrative we should be following in all of this is to keep a healthy sense of skepticism and critical thinking about what seems like common wisdom.
Is Catholicism really the contributing factor in too many births among people, Ireland and elsewhere, who can't handle more kids?
Hmm - let's see. The Church says that contraception is sinful and evil, and people who use will spend an eternity in utter torment.
So - yes, there's absolutely no reason for the Church to be blamed when people don't use contraception and have large families they can't afford or manage.
Clearly, there couldn't possibly be any connection between cause and effect there.
And, regarding large families, are those really the ones who surrender their children's care to Church or other authorities? Or are they perhaps the kids from smaller, but broken families?
CJO - Abstract - Ideal family size in the Irish Republic
Irish wives have high family size preferences, the overall mean ideal family size being 4.3 children. The Irish data are compared with American and western European; they show that the ideals of wives in Ireland are significantly higher than in these other countries. The concept of ideal family size appears to possess validity in its own right, and is not solely a rationalization of actual fertility experience.
Condoms weren't legal in Ireland until 1978 - 'not legal' meaning you could go to prison for trying to sell them.
I expect you'll say there's no evidence the Church was responsible for this, but - of course - that would be some distance from political reality in Ireland.
In Africa, meanwhile, where there are a million preventable AIDS deaths every year:
BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
Pope Benedict XVI, who is making his first papal visit to Africa, has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids. The pontiff, who preaches marital fidelity and abstinence, said the practice only increased the problem. "A Christian can never remain silent," he said, after being greeted on arrival in Cameroon by President Paul Biya.
Pope Benedict XVI, who is making his first papal visit to Africa, has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids.
The pontiff, who preaches marital fidelity and abstinence, said the practice only increased the problem.
"A Christian can never remain silent," he said, after being greeted on arrival in Cameroon by President Paul Biya.
If people are listening less now to this kind of nonsense, that's an entirely good thing.
Somewhere along the line the Church got it into its head that sex was almost always evil and that it was its job to control it - despite the fact that Christ had very little to say on the topic other than in the context of prostitution.
It was the Church which invented celibacy, condemned extra-marital sex, single mothers and Homosexuality (as late as the middle ages), became a haven for sexual deviancy, opposed contraception and the control of sexually transmitted diseases through protective measures - all in pursuit of some idealised notion that sex was for procreation within lifelong relationships between opposite sexes and was evil under any other circumstances.
Instead of focusing on exploitative relationships like paedophilia, sexual torture and incest it sought to create impossible norms which ended up screwing up itself and the societies within which it was/is located.
And as Ronald Regan might have said "there you go again" and fall into the same trap as the Church and seek to blame sex for everything when it is the perversion of sex by the Church which is the problem. Sex is NOT the problem, it is NOT inherently evil, and for you to blame the human sex drive for all the problems of the Church is so perversely wrong it isn't even funny. notes from no w here
Part of the problem here is that the Church's ability to control sexual behaviour is declining faster than its ability to block access to protection. The former requires nothing more than a general enlightenment of society. The latter requires both a general enlightenment of society and that the holdouts in the existing power structures are purged.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Part of the problem here is that the Church's ability to control sexual behaviour is declining faster than its ability to block access to protection.
It's an empirical question though. In societies with large Catholic populations, is it actually difficult to get access to birth control. Statistics I've seen before on abortion would indicate otherwise. (I think Guttmacher Institute.) In Catholic Latin America, even where abortion is illegal, abortion rates are higher than in many less Catholic countries where it is legal, which means that we have no evidence that access is difficult even if where nominally prohibited. Also, where, in Africa, Ireland, or anywhere, is it difficult to get access to condoms today? This would seem to indicate that the Church's ability to block access to protection is a bit overblown.
it's the cultural problems at large regarding sex that explain the variation in the data, not the Church
What cultural problems at large are you referring to? The Church was THE authority on sexual behaviour in society. The state entirely delegated its Authority on moral matters to the Church even providing in the Constitution that: "Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Article 44.1.2: The State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens
The Church thus spoke for and was regarded as the authority regulating the morals of all Catholics whether they were practising or not. The state enacted laws implementing Catholic moral theology such as the prohibition on contraception on all citizens - Protestants and Atheists included.
By you own logic it is not only higher use of birth control and reduced sexual monogamy which are attributable to the reducing influence of the Church, but also the reducing rate of new cases of sexual in secularised child care institutations abuse being reported. notes from no w here
It is certainly true that in Ireland the Church has institutional advantages in contesting power that it doesn't have in most other Western countries, including other predominantly Catholic countries. And that laws reflect such power given the Church. But does actual behavior reflect that power. By your own admission it does not, which means, as marketing researchers learn in school, there is a big difference between what people say and what they do. I argue that causality can only be attributed honestly to what people do, not what they say, and that means that the Church reflects society much more than it leads it, at least as far as sexual behavior or misbehavior is concerned.
By you own logic it is not only higher use of birth control and reduced sexual monogamy which are attributable to the reducing influence of the Church, but also the reducing rate of new cases of sexual in secularised child care institutations abuse being reported.
No, I argue that neither use of birth control, nor sexual monogamy, nor incidences of abuse, can be attributed to the Church, positive or negative. Even the case of Ireland, which is pretty unique even among Catholic countries in the modern era, that's not the Church but the state that chose to solve it's problem of developing policy-making institutions by providing an explicit role for the church to do that. The fact that other equally Catholic societies found other ways of solving institutional problems for contesting power in other ways shows that what you are attributing to the Church is what you should instead be attributing to Irishness. It's Ireland that explains the variation in the data, not Catholicism. (Which argues for changing Irish political institutions to something more secular but not for any advocacy regarding the church in other countries such as the US, Germany, or even Nigeria, for example.)
shows that what you are attributing to the Church is what you should instead be attributing to Irishness
Ah so the Irish are intrinsically more inclined to abuse children and cover it up? Some would regard that as a borderline racist thesis especially as the pattern of abuse and cover-up was so similar in other Catholic countries/institutions.
You appear to regard the RC Church as something of a Deus ex Machina and not the dominant and defining influence on sexual practices (not just opinions) in Ireland. notes from no w here
Instead, it seems that Church teaching on sexual morality might instead be an aggravating factor, instead of a causal factor. Anglo culture is known, I think much more than Catholicism, for its sexually repressive character. Bill Clinton's misdeeds barely raised eyebrows in Catholic France, Brazil, and Argentina, for example. (And, more perversely, although the same abuse scandals in the Church have apparently been occurring in Europe just as in the Anglo world, people are only just getting around to worrying about it now, almost two decades after the story first broke in the US.)
So it also seems plausible that Catholic influence on sexual behavior and the politics around it may have different effects in different societies. And the fact that Anglo culture, due to recent English and American imperial successes, is the dominant one in the world (the Anglo discourse on rights and laws is the default elite discourse in most of the non-Anglo world too), it seems entirely plausible that the cultural contradictions between Catholicism's traditional Roman outlook of law-as-ideals and the Anglo outlook of rule-of-law, or law-as-rules, could be problematic even globally, though whose responsibility it is to change seems unclear.
The Church is unable to remove the needs - they're hardwired - but it doesn't really need to. All it needs to do is make people feel bad about having them and acting on them.
People who feel bad about themselves express that through masochism, or though authoritarian and abusive sadism - which is exactly the kind of acting out we've seen in Ireland, in Germany, in the US, and in Africa.
Sexual morality is not the issue, and never has been. The issue is power through psychological manipulation.
The Church discovered - or rather reinvented - the use of sexual and other ethical double-binds for mass political psychological control. But it was only able to enforce its brand of religious totalitarianism while it had exclusive control over the narrative space.
The fact that monogamy is waning and birth control is increasing are proof that the Church has lost its narrative monopoly - not that it has given it up voluntarily.
People mostly don't understand the distinction between process and content, which is why 'religious' leaders find manipulation so straightforward.
The Church lost its hold in the West because it was pushed out by competing narratives, not because the processes it used to try to legitimise its narratives were ever fully deconstructed. That was effective as far as it went, but individuals remain vulnerable.
Disagreeing with religion, Dawkins style, isn't enough, because content and belief are a cover story for psychological process, and arguing with the content isn't a very effective form of attack.
The next stage of secularisation will be wider awareness of process. Once that starts happening - and it's beginning already in other areas - social and political institutions that derive their power from psychological manipulation will have a tough time surviving.
It's going to be a very interesting century.
However, you're still assuming, a priori, that the Church is the principal and not the agent in this story. Your narrative puts the Church in the role of being the one trying to manipulate repression and psychological conflicts for the ends of power, when it seems just as likely that the Church is merely the tool of other political actors toward that end. In fact, the main scholarship of the left on this topic, in the works of people such as Foucault and Hannah Arendt among others, would put the church in the role of victim/tool of totalitarian tendencies of the modern capitalist, law-based state toward the ends you describe.
With your rhetorical skills, you can derive why you're wrong about the entire direction of your objections. Align culture with our nature.
Odd then, that when it's priestly unchastity he has no problem keeping silent about it at all.
Apparently in the Pope's moral reckoning, millions dying of preventable AIDS is a lesser calamity than Catholic sexual abuse and its exposure.
Luckily as Frank says, the Church is imploding - its immorality is too great to support its own weight now.
Interesting times.
So what explains, if your version is true, why people are such devout Catholics when it comes to birth control but not chastity?
There is a fundamental asymmetry between sex and birth control.
Birth control requires that you know what it is, know how to use it and are able to get your hands on it ahead of time.
Sex requires no prior knowledge, and while it does require some forethought, it requires less forethought than safe sex.
In short, safe sex is planned, unsafe sex is (or at least can be) unplanned. Social mores operate more powerfully on planned actions.
The basic problem, as I see it, is that there was such a "Victorian" repressive attitude to sexuality in Ireland generally - generally fostered by the Church, but perhaps also due to other factors - that the level of ignorance about all things sexual was so high. Does kissing lead to pregnancy wasn't entirely a rhetorical question even 30 years ago - such was the level of ignorance, and of course the Church opposed sex education.
However I accept these are complex issues and a simple liberalisation of sexual mores isn't necessarilly the answer either - although it may in part have been an over-reaction to over repression earlier. The problem is that all morality has been given a bad name by the utterly hypocritical and repressive morality of the past.
No doubt a new ethical sensibility will emerge in response to excessively individualistic selfish hedonistic attitudes and perhaps the emergence of "green values", a greater emphasis on individual and social responsibilities, higher levels of education and self-awareness generally are a response to this. However its hard to see Catholicism playing a lead role in this, or any very strong role in Ireland for a very long time to come. notes from no w here
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It is blockquote on ET. I recommend TribExt to easily quote with link to the stuff quoted.
European Tribune - Download ET's own Firefox add-on: TribExt
Download ET's own Firefox add-on: TribExt Do you browse the web on Firefox? Then you can download TribExt, a nifty little add-on, written by ET user someone, to navigate around European Tribune easier. It can also be used on Booman Tribune and Daily Kos.
Given you persist in accusing me of engaging in a hate narrative, this dialogue is over. If we can't respect our good faith differences, there is no point in pursuing it. notes from no w here
Would you take the same approach to a story that insinuated that being gay (or other despised minority) was somehow causally relevant to sexual crimes? If so, at least you're being consistent.
coloring everyone in a group with the same ugly paint
Where have I done this - beyond pointing out that the processes under which the Catholic Church investigated child abuse where based on binding victims to oaths of secrecy, ignoring civil authorities, and actively moving offenders around - thus assisting them in avoiding detection and apprehension by civil authorities.
Given that these procedures were governed by the same code of Canon law and Vatican documents like Crimen sollicitationis, it is hardly surprising that the same patterns are evidenced worldwide. All the Bishops who did this reported directly to Rome where their reports remain held in secret to this day despite the fact that they contain details of criminal behaviour on a vast scale.
How can you you expect such behaviours not to tarnish the institution that practised them on such a scale in Ireland and elsewhere? Can you give me an example of any other organisation/religious institutions which did so on such a scale and which invokes diplomatic privilege whenever civil authorities seek details on individual cases? notes from no w here
But you didn't clarify that you weren't doing that either, and I think you should have because comments on your piece, like comments in general on this topic, were doing so, having gleaned that message from your diary, intended or not. That's what hate narratives -- any narratives really -- do. People take messages because of familiar stories they are already familiar with, unless clarified by the writer to focus on something else.
If you're making an argument that there are institutional reasons for the abuse within the church, and specifying them, that's something I have a lot more trust in, and I think it's a reasonable one. There are arguments both ways on it of course -- mostly that such documents seem to actually encourage outing and getting rid of problem priests, not protecting them, even if secrecy is a part of them (secrecy is an important part of civil and criminal complaints too, as you cited earlier) so it would become a story of unintended consequences more than one of willful conspiracy if true, with different policy reforms needed. But clarifying arguments like this go a long way toward separating writing that is critical of a social class from a poisonous narrative meant to silence that class and others.
There have been several scandals in Ireland, Frank knows this better than me and, I suspect, you yet you continue to dismiss him. There are other sex abuse crimes moving to trial elsewhere in Europe, Austria and Germany both spring to mind (no, I'm not talking about the papal one).
As I said elsewhere, this isn't about the crime, it's about the cover up. Time and again you skate away from that and change the subject. STOP IT. Step back and listen to yourself. You're simultaneously trying to belittle this as an isolated incident, yet which is somehow equally redolent of some worldwide conspiracy of false allegations that almost never stand up in court. This way lies madness.
This isn't about some change in public morality, as if priests abusing sexually children with the collusion of their "management" has only recently been seen as a difficulty. It's not about the priests who attacked children, it is about a hierarchy who preferred that children were left at the mercy of the (few) predators in their midst rather than damage the good name of their institution. Listen to yourself please. I appreciate you want to protect an institution that is important to you, that somehow an attack, any attack on it is an attack upon your faith. But what you're doing is exactly what the hierarchy did, deny the events and the scope of them, belittle those who report it, call them mistaken or attention seekers or brush it under the carpet.
I see their need as desperate, they've allowed themselves to believe that any chink in the image of absolute verity shakes the foundations utterly. A strong church would not need to be so fearful, but these are weak people and it does you no good to defend them. keep to the Fen Causeway
However, even if it turned out that abuse and cover-up are, in fact, less common in Catholic institutions than others, it still would not change the fact that such abuse is a major problem in its own right that needs addressing in the Catholic Church, as well as justice for the victims. It doesn't excuse anyone.
But that's not the story that people read when the writer isn't sufficiently careful about making class-associations with things that people despise. In a careless story people read, "Priests are perverts and bishops protect them, and the Catholic Church is a corrupt and evil force in the world." If that's your thesis, then it's not really a story about abuse of power -- it's a story about hate, legitimate or not. But if it is supposed to be a story about abuse of power and protecting innocents, then care must be taken regarding unjustified class associations.
You obviously have too much of a a vested interest in not hearing and I am done with this futile exercise. I just hope no child has only you to call upon should a priest get too friendly. You do not listen and you never will. keep to the Fen Causeway
But what's the evidence? I don't know myself, so that's why I ask authors like Frank to provide it while they provide helpful fodder for faith-bashing. We know now that such a problem exists in the Catholic Church, but why does the narrative of the topic stop at the Catholic Church as if it is a Catholic problem primarily and not a more general problem in a society that for years has had an undercurrent of child sexual objectification? Skepticism shouldn't rest just because the target is a faith based organization.
What is different with the Catholic Church is that it had an official world-wide policy of covering it up, codified in canon law and other Papal documents, which resulted in victims being sworn to silence, perpetrators being moved on to avoid detection and to facilitate their behaviour elsewhere, and the civil authorities not being informed. This didn't happen with any other Church in Ireland though perhaps you can find examples of small sects elsewhere in the world with a similar pattern.
To this day the Vatican and local Catholic dioceses invoke diplomatic and clerical privilege to avoid handing over incriminating evidence to the police. If this were done by any other organisation, it would be declared a criminal conspiracy and prohibited from operating in the state at all. notes from no w here
Article 24 The rights of the child 1. Children shall have the right to such protection and care as is necessary for their well-being. They may express their views freely. Such views shall be taken into consideration on matters which concern them in accordance with their age and maturity. 2. In all actions relating to children, whether taken by public authorities or private institutions, the child's best interests must be a primary consideration. 18.12.2000 EN Official Journal of the European Communities C 364/13 3. Every child shall have the right to maintain on a regular basis a personal relationship and direct contact with both his or her parents, unless that is contrary to his or her interests. notes from no w here
Part of that discussion would require due diligence on the part of Church authorities that children are, in fact, demonstrably safer today under the civil institutions of the EU, because such has arguably not been the case historically in Europe and even possibly presently elsewhere, but I'm certainly compelled by the public available evidence on the Irish scandal that more civil oversight rather than church oversight may have prevented the cover-ups had people actually prioritized child protection during in the 1970's like they do now.
Which presents another good reason why political advocacy groups should not be allowed to claim religious exemptions in their hiring practises, etc. It ferrets out the worst fundagelicals without having to snoop around at their internal meetings.
The very fact that human rights are so controversial - e.g. in Gaza - should make it obvious that they are not universally accepted absolutes. notes from no w here
Santiago won't touch this. Align culture with our nature.
So I think it's a good assumption that the Church might also justify its use of legal maneuvers to avoid hurting innocent people with public embarrassment in much the same way.
There's absolutely no evidence that the Catholic Church systematically uses legal maneuvers to avoid hurting innocent people.
And there's plenty of evidence that the Catholic Church has systematically attempted to cover up criminal activity.
Lawyers, journalists, police and psychologists are not a monolithic pseudo-corporate multinational, and are hardly comparable to the Church's institutionalised attempts to claim moral authority while deriving political influence through deliberately sanctioned abuse.
The closest comparable organisation is Scientology - and not even Scientology has been credibly abused of systematic child abuse.
This is one of the rare situations where the moral questions are entirely black and white.
'Other people do it too' is hardly a defence against them - because they don't on anything like the same scale, or for the same reasons.
This isn't moral rocket science for most people, and healthy skepticism can draw its own conclusions when there's such overwhelming evidence of wrong doing.
You're clearly deciding to ignore that evidence, or to keep lying about it knowingly and hoping that no one will notice.
Well - good luck persuading anyone with that, here or elsewhere.
Again, is this different than what occurs in non-Catholic institutions? It might be, but until the evidence is offered that it is, any story writing about it must qualify itself as such,
So having been caught, the argument isnt even everyone else was doing it, rather everyone else might have been doing it, and untill you can prove they werent, its unfair to pick on the poor catholic church? Give me a break. thats a laughable line to even consider taking
Is being Catholic clergy part of the relevant identity to the story or not?
Damn right it is, and arguing that there is anything other than a culture of moral exceptionalism amongst the hierarchy of the church worldwide becomes more laughable with every extra report and court judgement handed down in countries worldwide Is the catholic church an oppressed minority? Being the only Church that has a seat on the United Nations, and can make use of diplomatic immunity, then its probably the least oppressed religion on the face of the planet. I am an atheist, anyone who wants to believe in any invisible being has the right to, but the point where they start saying that they have a moral superiority, or that I should live under their religious rules, or that they should be able to avoid the rules that everyone else has to because they have the permission of their "imaginary friend" then that's where there rights end. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
American Democrats didn't get to cry "hate speech" when the Banana Republicans went after Clinton with every propaganda trick in the book - including a couple of pages they'd written themselves. Nike doesn't get to cry "persecution" when its political enemies bash it over the head with a child-labour scandal. Shell doesn't get to piss and moan about bias when people point out that it's funding civil wars in Africa.
And, incidentally, as long as the Catholic Church insists on peddling homophobia, and supporting far-right idiots, I'm one of those political enemies who are willing to use any sex scandals as a blunt instrument to beat it into submission.
When they stop playing politics, I'll stop using political tactics against them. But right now they're playing a shell game where they're a religious group here, a business there and a political action network over yonder.
Santiago asks whether there is any evidence that child abuse is more prevalent in Catholic run institutions than others and the answer in the case of Ireland is yes - but I couldn't prove that on a larger global scale especially when you consider the scale of child labour abuse in India etc. It is a reasonable question for research.
Secondly, he seemed to argue that the way the Catholic Church covered up instances of abuse was no different to cover-ups elsewhere - and again I argued that the formalised, centralised and consistent nature of the policies applied - silencing of victims, transfer of offenders, non-cooperation with civil authorities what unique in scale, longevity, and consistency across many different jurisdictions.
Thirdly he implied that the vast majority of allegations were simply mischievous and false and pointed to the small proportion of successful prosecutions as evidence for this. I argued that this had more to do with the culture of deference and silence, the power of the Church in Ireland, the connivance of professionals whose jobs depended on Church patronage, the vulnerability of victims, the difficulty of surmounting the evidential hurdles, and the policy of making secret out of court settlements to prevent successful prosecutions and the attendant publicity. Added to this is the fact that most victims don't want to go to court at all, just want to forget the whole thing, have buried it deep in the subconscious, and remain scared, scarred and damaged by their experience. An acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an apology would have done so much to help healing in those instances.
Fourthly, he argued, that it was all an anti-catholic conspiracy invented by political opponents in the same way as anti-Semitic mythologies were invented by Jew haters. You are in danger of playing into that narrative if you simply use the child abuse issue as another stick with which to beat the Church with regardless of the merits of the argument. What bothered me about that argument was actually almost the reverse: his denial of the seriousness of the child abuse prevalence within the Church and the way it was managed by those in Authority was almost akin to Holocaust Denial in my eyes. It was almost like he was saying that Hitler wasn't really an anti-Semite at all: it was just a few bad apples in the Nazi party who should have been managed better. The Hitler in this case, was not of course any one individual, but an attitude towards children that they could be used or abused more or less as those in authority wanted.
I don't want to over-state the case or over use the analogy, but when Santiago started talking about conspiracies against the Catholic Church I found it reminiscent of the Holocaust denial narrative. How many dead Jewish bodies did they actually find in Auschwitz anyway? What evidence do we have that Hitler knew what was going on? How many Nazis were actually convicted of Mass murder? Some of the Jews were probably criminals anyway... you get my drift
Children are no angels, and times were hard. In many ways the Irish state abrogated its responsibilities to the Catholic Church. The training and resources many of the Church institutions had were pitifully inadequate. In part the Church created the problems by ostracising unmarried parents and mothers. But it also inherited problems created by imperial domination, famine, class inequality, war and civil war.
So I'm not really into the blame game. I want the problem fixed and will oppose anyone who puts their interests above the best interests of children. The Catholic Church has almost been destroyed by this crisis in Ireland. Now we have to pick up the pieces and manage the fall-out. Its not going to be easy for anyone. There is such a legacy of pain and suffering which will be with us for generations to come. notes from no w here
But I think it would be wrong to use the child abuse issue as just another stick to bash the Church with in support of a larger agenda.
It's not just another issue to bash the Church over the head with. However, my point was that it is also another issue to be used to bash the Church over the head with, and people don't get to cry foul when it's used as such.
Certainly in the context of this diary, the question is whether the Catholic Church is more culpable that other non-Catholic religious/secular organisations in terms of the incidence of child abuse.
santiago's objection seems to be that the Church is no more culpable than other organisations in similar positions of power - that is, if you have any reasonably tightly knit old boys' network that cuts across several layers of formal jurisdiction, you'd expect it to abuse its power.
That's a fair point, as far as the specific Irish issue goes - replacing the Church but not the institutional system of authoritarian childcare, incestuous (you should pardon the term) political old boys' clubs and assorted nepotism would probably not make the abuse go away. Forcing the Church to comply with civilised standards of childcare and breaking up the clubby relationships between judges, police officers, childcare professionals, politicians and pundits would probably solve the problem without necessarily requiring the Church to be removed from childcare functions. The Church may be politically opposed to such a reorganisation because it is politically in favour of authoritarianism, nepotism and legal impunity for its own membership. But that's not a particularly confessional issue - secular far-right extremists run on the same kind of platform.
There are other good reasons to want to remove the Church from childcare functions, such as secularism and freedom of and from religion (and the fact that the Church lends political support to authoritarian thuggery). But in the particular matter of child abuse the difference between a confessional organisation and a non-confessional organisation with a similarly authoritarian structure and power is likely to be slight.
Of course, the fact that it is hard to find a non-confessional organisation with the kind of power that the Catholic Church makes the question somewhat hypothetical. Your best bet would be to look among (other) transnational corporations. But they are less intimately involved with childcare, so the abuse you find there is likely to be of a different kind - allowing foremen to rape factory workers, murdering union organisers, employing slave labour, poisoning the local water supply, and so on and so forth.
I don't think that's the case among groups of similar power and organisation. (Other) transnational corporations play the same kind of legal shell games, with the difference being mostly that they don't whine quite as much when they get caught.
Fourthly, he argued, that it was all an anti-catholic conspiracy invented by political opponents in the same way as anti-Semitic mythologies were invented by Jew haters. You are in danger of playing into that narrative if you simply use the child abuse issue as another stick with which to beat the Church with regardless of the merits of the argument.
I understand your point about the rhetorical demerits of playing into that narrative, but on the factual merits of the case, it's bullshit to compare the Catholic Church with Jewish minorities. (Given the role of the Catholic Church in whipping up antisemitism, it's also rather tasteless, but that's politics for you.)
A more apt comparison in terms of power, political aspirations and organisational structure (and the degree of persecution complex and paranoia) would be comparing the Catholic Church to the Israeli military-industrial complex. We don't accept the propaganda that bashing Israel or the Israel Likud lobby is equivalent to antisemitism, and we shouldn't accept the propaganda that bashing the Catholic clergy is equivalent to fomenting hate against the Catholic laity.
So I'm not really into the blame game. I want the problem fixed and will oppose anyone who puts their interests above the best interests of children.
And on that specific issue, I will have to defer to your superior knowledge of the local conditions, which is why I don't really touch upon the specific Irish questions. I hope you'll keep educating me and the rest of ET on those matters. I assure you that I'm hearing your recommendations, and they sound intuitively reasonable. But I can't claim the necessary local knowledge to comment on them in more specific terms.
we shouldn't accept the propaganda that bashing the Catholic clergy is equivalent to fomenting hate against the Catholic laity.
Agreed, and your Likud analogy is perhaps more apt than my Holocaust denial one. But I'm not even bashing the Catholic Clergy in general - many were entirely innocent of child abuse or complicity in its cover up. What I am concerned with is that there seems to have been a globalised system, supported by episcopal appointments being made made on the basis of proclivity to supine obedience, direct reporting to Rome, and clearly laid out guidelines for how to deal with allegations of child abuse - keep all investigations in-house, don't inform the civil authorities, silence he victims, move on the offenders to avoid scandal, protect the good name and assets of the institution at all costs - that were consistently applied across many jurisdictions.
I can accept Santiago's point that one might have qualms about reporting an instance of abuse to the civil authorities in (say) Uganda, particularly if they implement the death penalty for homosexuality - at the behest, inter alia - of protestant fundamentalist groups in the US. But that really doesn't excuse not reporting cases were prima facie evidence of abuse has been established and where there is a danger that the suspect might re-offend.
The Irish police are notoriously discrete when it come to dealing with people in positions of influence, and the courts still notoriously lenient on offenders. There really was no excuse for not reporting in Ireland. The odds are still stacked against the victim who still does not have independent representation or advice in court unless they can afford private legal fees...
Bashing the Catholic Church in Ireland now is a bit like kicking a half dead dog. The Catholic Church used to be a state within a state. Now its a belief system almost without a home.
Cardinal Brady 'ashamed' over failure to uphold values - The Irish Times - Wed, Mar 17, 2010
The Catholic Primate Cardinal Séan Brady said today he "will reflect on what he has heard from those who have been hurt by abuse."In his St Patrick's Day homily at Armagh Cathedral this morning, Dr Brady said he was "ashamed" by the fact that he has not always upheld the values that he professes and believes in.There has been calls on the cardinal to consider his position after it emerged at the weekend that he had conducted canonical inquiries into allegations of child sex abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth 35 years ago, involving two young people, without reporting the allegations to civil authorities.Speaking today, the cardinal apologised again to victims of clerical child sex abuse."This week a painful episode from my own past has come before me. I have listened to reaction from people to my role in events thirty five years ago," he said."I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologise to you with all my heart. I also apologise to all those who feel I have let them down. Looking back I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in," he added.In his homily the cardinal said there was a need to take responsibilty for any mismangement or cover-up of child abuse."We must humbly continue to deal with the enormity of the hurt caused by abuse of children by some clergy and religious and the hopelessly inadequate response to that abuse in the past," said Dr Brady."For the sake of survivors, for the sake of all the Catholic faithful as well as the religious and priests of this country, we have to stop the drip, drip, drip of revelations of failure," he added.
The Catholic Primate Cardinal Séan Brady said today he "will reflect on what he has heard from those who have been hurt by abuse."
In his St Patrick's Day homily at Armagh Cathedral this morning, Dr Brady said he was "ashamed" by the fact that he has not always upheld the values that he professes and believes in.
There has been calls on the cardinal to consider his position after it emerged at the weekend that he had conducted canonical inquiries into allegations of child sex abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth 35 years ago, involving two young people, without reporting the allegations to civil authorities.
Speaking today, the cardinal apologised again to victims of clerical child sex abuse.
"This week a painful episode from my own past has come before me. I have listened to reaction from people to my role in events thirty five years ago," he said.
"I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologise to you with all my heart. I also apologise to all those who feel I have let them down. Looking back I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in," he added.
In his homily the cardinal said there was a need to take responsibilty for any mismangement or cover-up of child abuse.
"We must humbly continue to deal with the enormity of the hurt caused by abuse of children by some clergy and religious and the hopelessly inadequate response to that abuse in the past," said Dr Brady.
"For the sake of survivors, for the sake of all the Catholic faithful as well as the religious and priests of this country, we have to stop the drip, drip, drip of revelations of failure," he added.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has also called for the opening of Church files to obviate the need for the state to extend the Murphy (Dublin) enquiry to all dioceses in Ireland. There have already been similar enquiries in two other dioceses - Ferns and Cloyne. With an ageing an declining clergy in any case, there may be very few men left standing if all the files are indeed opened. notes from no w here
You should pardon the reference to venereal disease and its long term consequences... Align culture with our nature.
