Predation is as predation does...

I was notified of this website, Stop Baptist Predators, the mission of which is "to break the silence of Baptist clergy sex abuse."

Sexual abuse is its own phenomenon, a truly non-sectarian problem and while I think it's crucial to keep the "Catholic sex abuse" scandals in perspective, I think it's even more important to attack the offenses on their own grounds. Using sex abuse to bludgeon the Church is like using incest to undermine the family as an institution, or like saying that, since the majority of accidents and death happen at home, people should not live in homes.

I have heard people argue that "the Church" or "religion itself" is the perfect breeding ground for sexual abuse, because it has a strong authority structure, deals in moral pressure, relies on internal governance despite outsider hearsay, etc. This argumentation is flawed, because those woeful traits are endmemic to prolonged social human existence. The very measures devised to protect children are themselves a strong authority structure, are based on moral outrage, demand a large degree of investigative autonomy despite external lobbying, etc., so it's just a matter of time before those measures, once codified and universalized, will generate the same woes. The problem is the human heart, which sounds like a cliche, but only because it's so simple as to be scandalous. You can't argue you are trying to improve society by undermining the core features of its maintenance.

Stood firmly...

December 23, 1940 TIME magazine, page 38, Albert Einstein:

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

The New York Times editorial, December 25, 1942 (Late Day edition, p. 16):

This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things.

The Economist, Dec 9th 2004, "The Papacy: For God's Sake":

Devil's advocates were supposed to be fair-minded, and in the past Mr Cornwell, a prolific writer on Catholic matters, has at times been anything but. As he admits, “Hitler's Pope” (1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following ‘Hitler's Pope', that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

Chastened by this experience, Mr Cornwell is now a better biographer. In this life of John Paul II, he celebrates his subject's achievements as well as deploring the mistakes. The pope's heroism is affirmed. As a young would-be priest in occupied Poland, Karol Wojtyla was not intimidated by Nazi efforts to liquidate the Catholic clergy. A priest under Communism, he was again courageous. When the Soviet system imploded, “few would dispute that the inexorable and bloodless process had been initiated by the Polish pope.”

Approval rating…

"Be happy, move ahead, take risks, have faith, don't let fear rule you, live your life--but do it on my time-line with my approval. That is all. Carry on."

"I don't expect unconditional and unflagging support, I expect it now!"

Act now!

Hurry! Spend more money! You'll live longer and feel better! Stave off the darkness inside with shadows of opulence! Bigger, better, faster!

For instance: 3D no better than 2D and gives filmgoers headaches, claims study –– www.guardian.co.uk

Spectacles on a spectacle…

Ah, the spectacle of Darwinists on the one hand undermining various human conventions on the grounds that said conventions exist merely because they promote health and longevity, yet on the other hand defending The Theory on the grounds that it's true even beyond its survival benefits.

+ + +

Nature is, allegedly, a human construct, but naturalism holds that humans are natural creations.

Notes…

Have been busy. Got married. Have peace. Not as much money as I'd like, but peace. Have been reading and writing more than my moribund pace of the past year or two. I've read so many books recently, in fact, that I haven't even kept proper notes of them in my reading log. Here are some I recall.

Boston Teran, God Is a Bullet
T. Jefferson Parker, The Blue Hour

Stephen King, Under the Dome

King, Duma Key

King, The Dead Zone

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Dan Simmons, The Terror

Stephen King & Peter Straub, The Talisman

Don DeLillo, Point Omega

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

I've left some out, and I'm not even going to try recalling which movies I've seen (aside from Captain America--twice, no less!). It has felt great to read such large books again, and especially with such intensity: it reminded me of my younger summers. I believe in Story. I believe in the Borgesian craft. I will be getting back into more "academic" reading, and work will be keeping me quite busy, but I still have an exciting roster of novels to read from the library.