Africa - Analysis and practice of Information

Teen girls get ‘porn star’ treatment - with mum’s help?

2010-09-24T04:12:00.001+02:00

A couple of weeks ago my local newspaper thought it newsworthy that men are getting Brazilian waxes. Now an Australian paper reports that girls as young as 14 are being accepted for what it euphemistically calls “intimate beauty treatments”.

Apparently their “boyfriends” are demanding it. And, thanks to the sexual liberation won for them by their mothers and grandmothers generations, the girls are saying yes.

Worst of all, it seems that some mothers are going along with their daughters to make it clear that they have permission. One shop owner in Brisbane says:

''Mostly it is girls around 16 but we do occasionally get younger girls in, but they must have a parent with them,'' the store manager said.

Do you get these 'parents'? One, their daughter wants to get what child and youth advocates point out is a “porn star” treatment. Two, this is to please the girl’s boyfriend (real or imaginary). At 14? At 16? Don’t they care that she is making herself a sexual object, or about the likely consequences?

Melinda Tankard Reist, a leading critic of the pornification of culture and the sexualization of girls, notes the harmful effects on young women’s body image:

''They've come to despise their natural bodies,'' she said.

How very sad, that adult women are prepared to sacrifice the happiness and health of girls in this way.

By: Carolyn Moynihan

Technorati Tags: parental consent,sexualisation of children

“I felt as if I had been given my country back”

2010-09-24T03:55:00.001+02:00

It was all joy. There had been such muddles over the complex ticketing arrangements, and such hostility from sections of the mass media, and such horrible things said by campaigners opposed to the Church’s teachings, and such tragedy over the evil actions of priests who had betrayed their calling.

But now, here was Pope Benedict, arriving at Edinburgh airport and standing next to the Queen for the national anthem.

Pope Benedict is small. And quiet. His voice and manner is that of a gentle, kindly professor, with a warm smile and large intelligent eyes. Long years in public view have trained him in the art of maintaining stillness and dignity while speeches are made and greetings are exchanged, but he still doesn’t look quite at home with military bands and official formality; he walked nicely along the guard of honour but was much smaller than all of them. Things got more relaxed when he was sitting chatting with the Queen (she is small, too) and the Duke of Edinburgh, and everything positively erupted into joy when he cheerfully donned a tartan scarf and went out into the city.

He has a rapport with the young – not unexpected in one who spent years teaching them at universities – and a gentle pastoral style with children. People held up babies to be blessed, waved flags and banners of welcome, and called out greetings – and when he celebrated the first Mass of his visit, at Bellahouston Park, before a vast crowd, with everyone roaring out glorious hymns, the style of the visit was established.

Why were we led to believe that this was a nasty, cruel, ranting figure of hate? People who had never met Joseph Ratzinger, who hadn’t read his books, who knew very little about him, repeated one another’s myths and legends – even though the internet makes available masses of material, videos, books, reports, interviews, and more. When he arrived in Britain, the reality became clear: this is a man who long ago placed his entire life at the service of Christ, and has, down all those years, tried faithfully to imitate Him and to live according to His teachings. And it shows.

I was privileged to be invited to Westminster Hall, where, in an extraordinary moment of British history, the Pope was to address Members of Parliament and a great gathering of men and women in public life from across Britain. These walls have echoed to the great events of British history – notably the trial of St Thomas More, who in this place was condemned to death for refusing to follow a king’s rebellion against papal authority, adhering to God and conscience instead. And now, here was a pope arriving – heralded by trumpeters standing in the arches of the great glowing window of stained glass.

The band of the Coldstream Guards played as we waited seated on gilt chairs set in long rows on the ancient stone flags, above us the great hammerbeam roof, and on either side the old grey walls with their Norman arches. A line of former prime ministers awaited his Holiness, along with the Speaker of the House of Commons who would introduce him. He came with the Archbishop of Canterbury from an ecumenical Vespers in Westminster Abbey, another first for a pope.

He arrived looking small and polite, and there were handshakes and pleasantries. And then came his speech. The voice, low and quiet, with its fizzy accent and precise vowels, takes a moment to assimilate: this is no passionate orator. But he had us spellbound. He drew attention to the central issues of our day – the big questions: by what values do we live? How on earth do we decide? Does it matter what is right and wrong? Have we anything by which we can make decisions and judgements? Are we spiritual and cultural orphans, adrift with nothing to guide us?

With clarity, and delicate precision, this priest who represents an authority dating back in an unbroken line across two millennia, spelt out what Western man knows but has forgotten: we cannot live as though religion does not exist, we cannot live without truth. Man has to use his mind, he has to open himself to what is good and true and beautiful. Attempts to marginalise faith – including Christianity – impoverish all and rob human beings of their dignity. Parliamentary democracy – a gift from Britain to the world, and a heritage of which British people should be proud – did not arise in a spiritual vacuum, and will not flourish in one.

I felt as if I had been given my country back again. For too long we have been told that our ancestors, with their assumptions about God and man’s unique destiny, were ignorant and muddled, and that now we must shake off the nonsense passed on to us. Morality as previously known was dangerous; it could now be reinvented by television pundits and if we were smart we would not challenge their views.

Now, sitting in Westminster Hall, I heard all this challenged, and new and much more interesting vistas opened up: of course we must be allowed to think along large lines, to lift our minds to things that are great and noble, to ponder the things of God, and to connect these with our public life, our common life and the search for the common good.

The Pope was not asking for the Church to have a privileged position, not seeking the reinvention of a Church-dominated society; on the contrary, he was inviting us all to a national conversation, a way of living and serving one another in a country where there are people of many faiths and none, and where the place of faith is recognised and enjoyed and honoured for the contribution it can make and the good fruits it brings.

He was applauded all the way down the aisle – where he stopped to view the plaque that commemorates Thomas More – and afterwards the glorious bells of Westminster Abbey pealed out as people milled about in a wonderful traffic-free area, savouring London in a new way.

Whatever you think about the Pope, there has to be an admission that he wasn’t what most people had expected, and his message was timely.

I expect we’ll ignore it. We have become used to dismissing matters of religion (“Oh, it’s all rubbish”; “Causes more trouble than it’s worth” etc) and we find it easier to sludge along with our culture soaked in TV soap operas and rising crime figures and drunken teenagers hanging around bleak shopping centres shouting at one another on Saturday nights. But we would be stupid to do this. We have been given another vision of Britain – brighter, more interesting , and one that we know is realistic, honest, and attractive. It echoes with our common sense and our desire to get along with one another in a workable way and achieve things. It carries resonance from the best of our past and offers a way forward.

Please, don’t let us marginalise faith in God, or ignore what Christianity offers, or sneer at the possibility that men and women can know about the deepest and greatest things. Perhaps it shouldn’t have had to take a Pope to tell us this. But he has done so, and it is a wake-up call. Often, elderly gentle clergy with quiet wisdom do say wise things.

Joanna Bogle writes from London.

Technorati Tags: Benedict XVI,Catholic Church,Papal visit to UK

Is tolerant Islam a myth?

2010-09-24T03:50:00.001+02:00

It appears to be a sign that you’re doing something abundantly right when the leaders of major Arab and Muslim groups demand that your conference be monitored by the thought police to make sure nothing too incendiary is being said.

This happened in Canada recently when the Canadian Arab Federation and the Canadian Islamic Congress insisted that a gathering entitled, “On The Front Line of Immigration, Terrorism, and Ethno-Politics” by investigated by the Toronto Hates Crimes Unit.

We’ll never know if the boys and girls in blue in the True North Strong and Free –- a quote from the Canadian national anthem that only just still rings with an authentic tone -- responded to these somewhat hysterical cries.

But one of the speakers, internationally renowned author Bat Ye’ or, is more than used to such persecution. This diminutive, gentle and brilliant woman in her late 70s seems to positively terrify her critics. Being deported because of Arab anger would, however, be nothing new to the author of a host of internationally acclaimed historical works on the history of Islam and its treatment of Jews and Christians.

She and her family were forced to leave their native Egypt in 1957, part of the more than a million Jews who were exiled from Muslim states after the Second World War and the foundation if Israel. Bat Ye’or’s name roars the horror of it all. It is a pseudonym, meaning Daughter of the Nile in Hebrew. Her given name is Gisele Orebi.

The persecuted Jews of the Middle East. The silenced catastrophe. A wave of innocents whose existence in Arab lands pre-dated the birth of Islam. Their numbers were greater than those of Palestinian refugees and they were frequently treated far more harshly. Yet the world said very little and today the Islamic bloc and their allies in the United Nations and elsewhere pretend the post-Biblical exodus did not happen.

“It is, I suppose, deeply ironic that I was told that I was not allowed to live in Egypt when I was a girl and now as a grown woman I’m told, in part by people from Egypt, that I shouldn’t come to Canada either. As for Israel, they’d like that to disappear,” she says, more bemused than bitter.

“Where ought I to go? No matter. The story has to be told, the true story of how Islam has treated and still does treat its minorities.”

It is her collection of work on the Islamic conquest of the Christian heartlands of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and North Africa that have caused so much frustration from Muslim opponents. She writes in detail of Dhimmitude, the method in which Jews and Christians were subjugated and humiliated.

“As late as the early twentieth-century in some Muslim countries Jews had to remove their shoes when they left their own quarter, were not allowed to ride a horse, were treated as second-class citizens. This idea of equality is nonsense. Their numbers were restricted, especially in the Holy Land, and the same was true of Christians. There were periodic pogroms, right up till the 1940s.”

A pause, searching for the right words. “What occurred back then is history, but history has to be understood and accepted. What we have now is revision, denial. Muslim immigrants are taking this false idea of the past to Europe and North America, along with a culture that does not share the Western notion of tolerance, equality, criticism of religion and freedom.”

The concept of dhimmitude is little known in the West but Bat Yeor is doing a great deal to correct that state of affairs.

“The whole notion differs fundamentally from the Western, Christian idea of tolerance” she explains. “Obviously Christians have not always lived up to this idea but modern pluralism is a direct result of Christian thinking. Islamic ideology, on the other hand, aspires to something entirely different. At best it is a paternalistic tolerance for a despised minority but often outright persecution. This is what has happened in contemporary Egypt.”

Indeed so. Christians enjoyed a relatively open and equal citizenship under more secular Cairo governments but under a more aggressive Islam they are persecuted, attacked, forcibly converted, exiled and killed. “Part of the horror is the pain they suffer,” she explains. “The other is the denial we see and hear from Egypt and from Muslims throughout the world. The same applies to Pakistan, Sudan, Turkey and so many other Islamic societies.”

So the idea of Islamic tolerance is untrue?

“Completely so. Dhimmitude is the natural consequence of the jihad mindset. As a Muslim you conquer, dominate and convert because Islam is to triumph. That you would then respect those who do not become Muslim is self-contradictory. Those who reject Islam are considered immoral and the immoral are never to be trusted. This is why it is so difficult to form a working relationship between the West and genuine Islam, even when it appears to be moderate. We have to question motives, we have to understand intentions.”

This thesis of the spread of such ideas is discussed at length in what may be her most famous and controversial book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. In it she argues that Islamic fundamentalism has found its way to Europe because most Muslim moderates are frightened of speaking out and European intellectuals and activists have been seduced by its anti-American dynamic.

“I cannot stress enough the incompatibility between the concept of tolerance as expressed by the jihad-dhimmitude ideology, and the concept of human rights based on the equality of all human beings and the inalienability of their rights. In Europe there is a connection between local socialism, communism and neo-fascism with the judeophobia and anti-imperialism of the new Muslim communities.

“There are courageous Muslims who do resist but it is difficult and dangerous. There is an underground of sharia law across Europe, with terrible treatment of women. This is combined with the threat of violence aimed at anybody who speaks out against what is going on. Censorship through fear. We even see this to a mild degree in Canada, an example being the attempt to stop me entering the country.”

The cause of Palestine, she emphasises, is at heart about the triumph of Islam. “Most of Palestine is in Jordan but we do not hear cries for Jordan to return land. This isn’t about the rights of the Palestinians but about the refusal to accept a non-Muslim state in the region. Palestine has become the fashion of the West, without them understanding the deeper issues of the conflict.”

Paradox wrapped around irony packaging hypocrisy. Untied by a brave and wise woman who wants only peace and juctice but who is still being persecuted for what she is and what she says. A daughter of the Nile, a teacher for the world.

By: Michael Coren is a broadcaster and writer living in Toronto, Canada.

Technorati Tags: dhimmitude,Islam,tolerance

A new battler for Britain

2010-09-24T03:47:00.001+02:00

Defying dreary weather and drearier protests, the state visit of Benedict XVI to England and Scotland was, by all accounts, a smashing success. Although only about 5 million of 60 Britons are Catholic, the enthusiasm of the crowds bowled over a sceptical media.

London’s saucy tabloids ran interviews with star-struck teenagers under punning headlines like “Bene’s from Heaven”. One young woman gushed to the News of the World, "English Catholicism needs a bit of oomph and this is our chance to give it some welly. I have got a feeling that I've not had for a long time. He should come more often."

No doubt the Pope appreciated the devoted crowds, but he had come with a message, not an applause meter. British Prime Minister David Cameron picked that up. In his farewell remarks, he thanked the Pope for raising searching questions. “You have really challenged the whole country to sit up and think, and that can only be a good thing.”

Think about what?

Five themes impressed me about Benedict’s subtle and subdued addresses.

Remember 1066 and all that. Even in Britain it’s easy to forget how yoked we are to our past. Voldemort Dawkins and his disciples seemed unaware of how much they owed to generations of anti-popery campaigners. Different costumes, same script.

Benedict, on the other hand, has a knack for placing messages in an historical framework. In Westminster Hall, he said, “The angels looking down on us from the magnificent ceiling of this ancient Hall remind us of the long tradition from which British Parliamentary democracy has evolved. They remind us that God is constantly watching over us to guide and protect us. And they summon us to acknowledge the vital contribution that religious belief has made and can continue to make to the life of the nation.”

Britain, he reminded his hosts time and time again, is incomprehensible without its faith. Even its first history was penned by a Saxon monk, Bede the Venerable. “The Christian message has been an integral part of the language, thought and culture of the peoples of these islands for more than a thousand years. Your forefathers’ respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity come to you from a faith that remains a mighty force for good in your kingdom, to the great benefit of Christians and non-Christians alike.”

In short, democratic values of freedom, equality and solidarity have Christian roots. The greatest triumph of British democracy in the 19th century, the abolition of the slave trade, was due to the work of reformers like William Wilberforce and David Livingstone, both staunch Christians.

And, taking a leaf from the tormented history of his own homeland, Benedict reminded listeners that atheist regimes, like the slavers, denied a common humanity to Jews and other subject peoples. “As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a ‘reductive vision of the person and his destiny’.”

What lies ahead if secularism erases religion from civic life?

Reason and faith are compatible. Benedict could easily have side-stepped the enormous tensions of this trip. Nowadays beatifications are normally proclaimed by local bishops. But the life and work of Cardinal Newman offered him an opportunity to take the battle against aggressive secularism into enemy territory. Without ever mentioning He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, he pounded his contention that “There is no logical pathway from atheism to wickedness.”

A schoolboy knowledge of the 20th century shows how dumboundingly daft that is but Benedict put it more eloquently:

“Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason … can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.”

Young people need challenging ideals. The last 40 years have thrown a soggy blanket of booze and sex over youthful idealism and generosity. One of the leaders in the Pope’s Unwelcome Committee, the Commissar of the British secularist commentariat, Polly Toynbee, exemplified this in a recent column when she wrote that repression of “sex lies at the poisoned heart of all that is wrong with just about every major faith”. What Jack and Jill need is more safe sex, in other words.

Benedict, on the other hand, offered young Britons the demanding challenge of creating a civilisation of love, rather than a civilisation of indulgence. “There are many temptations placed before you every day - drugs, money, sex, pornography, alcohol - which the world tells you will bring you happiness, yet these things are destructive and divisive. There is only one thing which lasts: the love of Jesus Christ personally for each one of you.”

The Pope has a vision of life as demanding commitment to dignity, friendship, wisdom and truth – like John Henry Newman – instead of the frantic pursuit of “the glittering but superficial existence frequently proposed by today’s society”. The eruption of petulant nastiness in the media before the visit made a shabby contrast with the Pope’s invitation to reach for the stars.

Religion has a place in the public square. Nowhere in the Western world is religion more on the back foot than in Britain. But as Prime Minister Cameron pointed out, Christianity is challenging: “For you have offered a message not just to the Catholic Church but to each and every one of us of every faith and none. A challenge to us all to follow our conscience to ask not what are my entitlements, but what are my responsibilities? To ask not what we can do for ourselves, but what we can do for others?”

Faith has a role in political life, Benedict insisted. Politics is not just a matter of administrative effectiveness or balancing interests, but of ethics. “Substantially politics came into being in order to guarantee justice, and with justice, freedom. Now justice is a moral value, a religious value, and hence faith, the proclamation of the Gospel, is linked to politics at the point of ‘justice’, and from here are born common interests.”

The 20th century has shown that that governments are constantly tempted to tyranny. It is faith that protects citizens from being swallowed up by Leviathan:

“Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident - herein lies the real challenge for democracy.”

The foundation for tolerance is respect, not relativism. The Pope’s critics accuse him of being deaf to dialogue but they were in no mood for dialogue themselves last weekend. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named told a rally of supporters that he was “a leering old fixer” and “an enemy of humanity, of children, of gay people, of women, of the poorest people on the planet, of truth, of science, of education”. Isn’t Britain’s Pope of atheism capable of civility or tolerance?

By contrast, Benedict pulled no punches but gave no offence. In Westminster Hall he reminded the great and good of British society that Thomas More had been martyred for his loyalty to Rome. In Lambeth Palace, the residence of the Anglican Primate, he made a veiled reference to the ordination of homosexuals and women and Newman’s conversion from the Anglican Church. In Westminster Abbey, he described himself as the successor of Peter. He met Muslim leaders and alluded to the lack of religious freedom in Muslim-majority countries. Everywhere he spoke with courtesy and respect and without insolence or irony. But everywhere he sought out common ground for promoting human dignity and religious freedom.

More with deeds than with words he gave a memorable lesson in tolerance. On the one hand, it is not forbearance, or ignoring points of difference. On the other it is not minimising differences as if they did not matter. Benedict showed that tolerance is possible without being a relativist. Is it because he is sure that reason will ultimately triumph that he has the courage to dialogue?

Read the speeches yourself. It is not for nothing that MercatorNet nominated Joseph Ratzinger as one of the great champions of human dignity.

By: Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Technorati Tags: Benedict XVI,Christianity,UK

The Rwandan genocide: a revisionist history

2010-09-24T03:43:00.001+02:00

Political wars around the history of genocide are most evident in controversies over the Holocaust (see "The Holocaust, genocide studies, and politics", 18 August 2010). But they are also sharpening around Rwanda, where in 1994 the “Hutu Power” regime killed hundreds of thousands of Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus (see Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 1954-94: History of a Genocide [C Hurst, 2nd edition, 1998]).

The political context of this development is that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government headed by Paul Kagame - which ended the genocide when it seized power - is both determined to use the west's guilt at failing to stop the 1994 genocide to entrench its own impunity, and trade on the victims of the Rwanda genocide in order to deflect criticism of its domestic authoritarianism and external aggression.

This strategy is diminishing in effect. A real momentum is growing behind the recognition of the RPF's own responsibility for massacres of civilians, mainly Hutus, leading to accusations that it too has committed genocide. Until now most attention has focused on massacres inside Rwanda, during the RPF's invasion in 1994 and subsequent consolidation of power, most notoriously at Kibeho in 1995.

These events led some Hutu propagandists to propound the theory of the “double genocide”. This is a simplistic and distorting idea because RPF massacres were localised, with neither the national scope nor the consistent targeting of the huge Hutu Power murder-campaign. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the RPF committed genocidal massacres of Hutu civilians.

The spotlight now, however, is on the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, when the RPF pursued Hutu génocidaires into what was then Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), initiating the devastating wars which engulfed that country until 2003 and continue in some regions to this day. In these wars, a changing (and to the uninitiated, bewildering) array of states and Congolese armed groups have both fought each other and committed atrocities (including systematic rape) against civilians.

A new report

Gérard Prunier, in his monumental study of the Congo wars - From Genocide to Continental War: The 'Congolese' Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa (C Hurst, 2009) - explains that Rwanda's RPF regime remained the most consistent and determined external participant throughout these conflicts, and that its responsibility for massacres has long been known (see Gérard Prunier, "The eastern DR Congo: dynamics of conflict", 17 November 2008).

For their part western governments, especially the United States and Britain’s, have consistently deferred to Rwanda's “victim” status, in some cases defending it against serious charges of having perpetrated crimes for which there is real evidence.

But a detailed report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - leaked to Le Monde - maps “the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law” committed within the DR Congo in 1993-2003: namely, charges that civilians were systematically attacked on a large scale. A summary on paragraph 512 reads:

“These attacks resulted in a very large number of victims, probably tens of thousands of members of the Hutu ethnic group, all nationalities combined. In the vast majority of cases reported, it was not a question of people killed unintentionally in the course of combat, but people targeted primarily by [Rwandan and allied] forces and executed in their hundreds, often with edged weapons. The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who posed no threat to the attacking forces. Numerous serious attacks on the physical or psychological integrity of members of the group were also committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten. Very large numbers of victims were forced to flee and travel long distances to escape their pursuers, who were trying to kill them. The hunt lasted for months, resulting in the deaths of an unknown number of people subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading living conditions, without access to food or medication. On several occasions, the humanitarian aid intended for them was deliberately blocked, in particular in Orientale Province, depriving them of assistance essential to their survival.”

The report therefore carefully argues (paragraphs 514-18) that the attacks on Hutus could have amounted to genocide.

This is an explosive conclusion for the Rwandan government (which has predictably reacted by threatening regional peacemaking arrangements). The United Nations and western governments will also find it embarrassing and inconvenient - to the extent that there is doubt as to whether the report will ever be published officially.

A great denial

All this is also welcome fuel for a determined group of Rwanda genocide-deniers. A new book by Edward S Herman and David Peterson focusing on the use of the term “genocide” in the media and academia - The Politics of Genocide (Monthly Review Press, 2010) - argues that the western establishment has “swallowed a propaganda line on Rwanda that turned perpetrator and victim upside-down” (p.51); the RPF not only killed Hutus, but were the “prime génocidaires” (p.54); there was “large-scale killing and ethnic cleansing of Hutus by the RPF long before the April-July 1994 period (p.53); this contributed to a result in which “the majority of victims were likely Hutu and not Tutsi” (quoted with approval, p.58).

Herman and Peterson state that “a number of observers as well as participants in the events of 1994 claim that the great majority of deaths were Hutu, with some estimates as high as two million” (p.58). But a check of the reference for this shocking statement finds no more than a letter from a former RPF military officer and personal communications from a former defence council before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (n.127, p.132) - both participants rather than “observers”. That is enough for these authors to dismiss the idea of “800,000 or more largely Tutsi deaths” as RPF and western propaganda (see Adam Jones, "On Genocide Deniers - Challenging Herman and Peterson", AllAfrica.com. 16 July 2010).

This book deserves attention for the fact that it opens with a lengthy foreword by Herman’s long-term collaborator, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky remains for many an exemplary champion of human rights; a quote from him even emblazons the respectable academic website on which the leaked UN report has been published.

Many others, however, reached a very different view after examining his comments on the Khmer Rouge record in Cambodia, his indulgence of Holocaust-denying writers, and his encouragement of Bosnian genocide-denial. But even in this gruesome context (to use one of Chomsky’s favourite words) his endorsement of The Politics of Genocide - with its denial of genocide in Rwanda as well as Bosnia - goes further.

A dead zone

This book and Noam Chomsky’s foreword inadvertently show just how multi-directional the politics of genocide have become. It is true that official western propagandists minimise “our” crimes and represent those of “our” enemies in over-simplified ways, and that such legerdemain merits exposure. But it also clear that anti-western propagandists - Herman, Peterson and Chomsky among them - are guilty of the same evasions and distortions from the “other” side.

They argue that in official western narratives, “our victims are unworthy of our attention and indignation, and never suffer ‘genocide’ at our hands” (p.104, italics in original). Yet in anti-western, Chomskyan narratives, an identical process occurs: the west's enemies, whether Serbian nationalist or Rwandan “Hutu Power”, have never committed “genocide”, and their crimes are always of less significance than those of western-supported forces.

The journalist John Pilger endorses The Politics of Genocide on its cover by saying that Herman and Peterson “defend the right of all of us to a truthful historical memory”. This important right can never be exercised by treating the men and boys of Srebrenica, the massacred and expelled Kosovo Albanians, and the slaughtered Rwandan Tutsis as “unworthy victims”.

For scholars of genocide studies, this book is rich source-material. It is not a serious contribution to analysis in the interest of “truthful historical memory”.

By: Martin Shaw is professorial fellow in international relations and human rights at Roehampton University, London, and an honorary research professor of international relations at the University of Sussex. His website is here This review has been reproduced from openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence.

Technorati Tags: genocide,international relations,Rwanda

United Nations demands inquiry into mass rapes in Congo

2010-09-10T05:56:00.001+02:00

Mass rapes of women and children strongly condemned

A United Nations Security Council has strongly condemned the mass rapes in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC and urged the DRC government to immediate launch an inquiry into the tragedy, which also involved children victims.

The latest victims of sexual violence in the eastern Congo include 21 girls between seven and 21 years old, and six men.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Claude Heller, the Mexican United Nations ambassador spoke to reporters in his capacity as the chairman of the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict.

"We expressed our strong condemnation of the tragic events which occurred in Walikale territory beginning late July and the following weeks in the Kivus involving minor victims," Heller said. "A total of 32 cases were reported. Thirty two cases of rape against children, 31 girls and one boy."

Heller's statement came at the end of a meeting of the working group, which reitereated a previous comment by the U.N. Security Council which strongly condemned the mass rapes in the eastern DRC in late July and early August.

It's estimated that 500 women have been raped by rebel soldiers in eastern DRC. Since U.N. officials first revealed that large numbers of women had been gang-raped, the number reported has grown to 242 victims from at least 150 concentrated in 13 villages in North Kivu province, including 28 minors.

"We recall the firm commitment of the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict in fight against impunity, in particular for sexual violence crimes," Heller said. "We call upon all parties to cease immediately violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, in particular sexual violence.

"We urge the government of the DRC to immediately launch an inquiry, arrest, and prosecute the perpetrators of such attacks," he said. "We encourage the U.N. to take all of the necessary measures to improve efficiency, to help prevent and to respond to such attacks and to better coordinate its actions."

The Security Council convened an open meeting to hear the briefing from Atul Khare, the U.N. under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, and Margot Wallstrom, the UN secretary-general's special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

The latest victims include 21 girls between seven and 21 years old, and six men, said Khare, who then told the Council that the U.N.'s actions "were not adequate" in preventing the mass rapes of women and children.

"While the primary responsibility for protection of civilians lies with the state, its national army and police force, clearly we have also failed. Our actions were not adequate, resulting in unacceptable brutalization of the population of villages in the area," Khare said.

Margot Wasstrom called for "collective responsibility" in the U.N.'s failure to prevent the brutal sexual attacks in the war-torn African country.

"At this moment, we are all compelled to look in the mirror and face our collective responsibility for our inability to prevent the mass rapes in Kibua," Wallstrom told the UN Security Council.

By: Catholic on Line

Technorati Tags: Congo,Africa,rape,inquiry,violence

Reaping the whirlwind

2010-09-10T05:49:00.001+02:00

“It began on Saturday 7th September 1940 at around tea-time… That Saturday was a warm, sunny Autumn day. In the late afternoon we of the Auxiliary Fire Service, stationed at the London Fire Brigade Station … [were] watching from the window towards Greenwich, across the Thames, we suddenly saw aircraft approaching, quite low, their shapes black against the bright sky. We watched, mesmerised, until someone said, uneasily, ‘I think we’d better go downstairs, these blokes look like they mean business’ They did. We closed the window and were walking, unhurriedly down the stairs when suddenly came loud rushing noises and huge explosions. Bombs! we were being bombed! “ ~ Doris Lilian Bennett

This month marks 70 years since the German Luftwaffe began its systematic bombing of English cities, killing 43,000 Britons in nine months of bombing. Nazi Germany adopted this tactic after failing to gain the air supremacy needed for a full scale invasion of Britain, and in retaliation for earlier limited bombings of German cities. “The Blitz” failed to defeat British morale; but the tactic of “terror bombing” became a central feature of the Second World War.

From 1942 onward, Britain’s Royal Air Force began the systematic bombing of German cities, under the direction of Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris:

“Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.”

Harris’ rationale is the epitome of “whatever it takes”, the principle of military expedience. But there is also a hint of vengeance in his words: “The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them… They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”

Estimates of German civilian casualties suffered under Allied bombing range from 300,000 to 600,000 killed. The RAF were far more effective than their German counterparts.

In the Pacific region the Japanese military made no secret of their contempt for the rules of warfare. The numerous war crimes and atrocities committed by Japanese forces were more like natural extensions of the perverse Imperial ideology, rather than concessions to military expedience.

But the US firebombing of Tokyo from February 1945, and finally the use of nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are the epitome of doing “whatever it takes” to shorten the war, forestall invasion, preserve the lives of Allied soldiers, and let enemy civilians “reap the whirlwind”. The lessons of military expedience culminated in the most direct and effective violence ever inflicted upon an enemy population.

In the past few decades, Western democracies have shied away from the targeting of non-combatants. A narrative has emerged affirming the “exceptional” nature of World War II, that increased civilian mobilisation according to the principles of “total war” removed the distinction between civilian and military. Yet this “straw man” argument does not tell us why it should suddenly become morally licit to intentionally target enemy non-combatants; for it is the “combatant/non-combatant” distinction that determines the moral use of force, not the “civilian/military” dichotomy. Medics and chaplains may be military non-combatants, while civilians will become legitimate targets if they enter into combat.

The value of this distinction is most apparent in the two wars that have engaged Western democracies this past decade. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the enemy is not “military”, yet he is most definitely a combatant. At the same time, the enemy has embraced whole-heartedly the principle of expedience, doing “whatever it takes” to achieve his goals. This principle is made explicit in the self-serving justification of al-Qaeda:

“Muslim scholars have issued a fatwa [a religious order] against any American who pays taxes to his government. He is our target, because he is helping the American war machine against the Muslim nation.”

Another al-Qaeda leader offered justifications for the killing of non-combatants that read almost like a parody of arguments for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

“The citizens in democratic Western countries become full participants in governmental decision-making by voting in elections and therefore they are no longer considered ‘non-combatants’ as in past wars.”

Islamic terrorists and “insurgents” have even displayed an astonishing degree of callousness toward the lives of their fellow believers:

“The killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom [suicide] operations has been sanctified by many scholars even if it means killing innocent Muslims… The shedding of Muslim blood... is allowed in order to avoid the greater evil of disrupting jihad.”

We have returned to a point where Western nations uphold the ethics of warfare, while our enemies will do “whatever it takes” to win. Yet the temptation will always exist for us to abandon our self-imposed rules of warfare for the sake of a quicker, easier, or more vengeful victory.

To avoid this temptation, we must confirm that we are truly acting in accordance with the ethics of warfare, and not simply responding to the demands of the present era. It is clear, for example, that domestic and international politics will not condone the targeting of non-combatants as it did in the past. But is this opinion based on the fact that it is always wrong to target non-combatants? Or is it based on a pragmatic sense that such actions are not yet justified? We do not know what challenges the future holds, so we cannot predict how our judgment will be tested and warped by coming events.

Many people believe that war with Iran or North Korea are very real possibilities, and the threat of nuclear weapons from these nations cannot be ignored. How would we respond in such a terrible scenario? Would we view their non-combatant populations as worthy of protection? Or would we find some rationale to let them “reap the whirlwind”?

By: Zac Alstin works at the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in Adelaide, South Australia.

Technorati Tags: terrorism,utilitarianism,World War II,9/11

NYC Imam says 'No Deal' after Florida Pastor Cancels Burning of Quran

2010-09-10T05:41:00.001+02:00

Pastor Terry Jones announced earlier today that he was cancelling the burning of copies of the Quran in response to a decision by the Imam in New York City to relocate the mosque. He also stated he would be traveling the NYC to meet with the Muslim leader. In quick response, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf refuted the report saying all was moving ahead as planned.

UPDATED (Catholic Online) - Not long after Rev. Terry Jones announced he was cancelling the buring of the Quran and meeting with NYC Mosque leaders, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the planned city worship center issued his own statement, indicating he was surprised by the announcement and that he would not barter.

As was reported earlier, Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, said to the Associated Press after a news conference, "I told the pastor that I personally believe the mosque should not be there, and I will do everything in my power to make sure it is moved. But there is not any offer from there (New York) that it will be moved. All we have agreed to is a meeting, and I think we would all like to see a peaceful resolution."
It is still unclear whether a meeting is to take place. ABC News reported that a statement from SoHo Properties indicated, "The Muslim Community Center called Park51 in Lower Manhattan is not being moved."

"We are, of course, now against any other group burning Qurans," Jones said earlier today during the news conference. "We would right now ask no one to burn Qurans. We are absolutely strong on that. It is not the time to do it."
President Obama, members of Congress and General Patraeus and others have condemned to action of burning copies of the Quran. They had indicated that such an act would put troops in harm's way and intensify the determination of Islamist extremists. While most of them chose to communicate to Jones only by way of the public media, it was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who actually called the pastor personally and discuss the situation.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said, "Secretary Gates reached out to Pastor Jones this afternoon. They had a very brief phone conversation during which the Secretary expressed his grave concern that going forward with the Quran burning would put at risk the lives of our forces around the world, especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he urged the Pastor not to proceed with it."
Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies had increased security for the pastor and his church, Dove Outreach Center, an independent Pentecostal church in the firestorm of controversy surrounding the proposed activity. Counter-demonstrations had already begun to take place in other parts of the world as news of the burning spread. In Kabul, Afghanistan, hundreds of protestors burned an American flag while chanting, "Death to Christians."
President Obama received a letter from Indonesian President Susilo Bamban Yudhoyno requesting that he stop "this hideous act." Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, issued a warning that Muslims would react harshly to the burning. He went on to blame Washington for failing to protect the rights of American Muslims.
*****
WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - Rev. Terry Jones, the controversial pastor who announced his intentions to publically burn approximately 200 copies of the Quran on September 11 has called it off. He stated that the reason for his change is that the leader of the proposed NYC mosque has agreed to move locations.
News agencies were not able to confirm that report but a Florida Imam, Muhammad Musri, told The Associated Press that what he offered was a meeting with Jones, the New York imam planning the Islamic center and himself to discuss the location of the mosque.
The AP went on to report that Musri, who is president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida told Jones that he does not believe the mosque should be built near the World Trade Center site and would do everything in his power to make sure it is moved. The pastor has indicated he trusts Musri's sincerity and willing to participate in this new plan.
Jones, who pastors a church with less than 50 members, drew international attention with his "Burn the Quran" day protest. Objectors to this event publically urged the minister to cancel, calling his actions irresponsible, outrageous and dangerous. The President, members of Congress and the Military warned Jones that he would be putting the US military overseas in harm's way. The Vatican also condemned the proposed action.

- - -
By: By Randy Sly.

Deacon Keith Fournier asks that you join with us and help in this vital mission by sending this article to your family, friends, and neighbors and adding our link (www.catholic.org) to your own website, blog or social network. Let us broadcast, we are PROUD TO BE CATHOLIC!

Technorati Tags: Imam,Florida,Mosque,New York,Jones,Musri,Congress,Obama,Pastor,Feisal Abdul Rauf

Hard questions

2010-09-10T05:29:00.001+02:00

As Operation Iraqi Freedom morphs into Operation New Dawn, we cannot forget that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths.

After seven and a half years, the United States has ended its combat mission in Iraq. Only 50,000 American troops remain there to assist Iraq’s Security Forces, support Iraqi soldiers in targeted counter-terrorism missions, and protect American civilians. “Now, it’s time to turn the page,” President Barack Obama told the nation in an Oval Office address on August 31.

But turning the page to the challenge of a rickety economy should not mean allowing memories of this war to slide into a black hole. There are many questions about the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but surely the most important is: was it a just war? This was the question when the war began and it is still the question now. How can we move on without confronting it squarely and honestly?

Back in 2003 there was a fierce debate over whether toppling the repulsive regime of Saddam Hussein could be justified ethically. Pundits debated the four traditional criteria for a just war: success must be probable, the cause must be just, war must be the last resort, and the benefits of victory must be proportionate to the evils of war.

By the end of 2003, we were already in a position to answer the first three of these questions. Had there been a reasonable chance of success? Absolutely. Before, during and after, there was never the slightest doubt about the immediate outcome. On May 1, when President Bush stood on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner announcing “Mission Accomplished”, Operation Iraqi Freedom was an overwhelming victory with minimal casualties for the Allies.

Had it been a just cause? True, the Iraqi people were no longer in thrall to a barbaric dictator – but that was a side-effect of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The main aim of the war had been to defang and dethrone a mortal threat to world peace. But despite Saddam’s insane bluster, and to the embarrassment of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, he possessed no weapons of mass destruction.

Had there been other effective avenues to confront the danger? Probably. Since there was no imminent danger of the deployment of those fabled WMDs, it is conceivable that United Nations sanctions would have eventually toppled the regime without an invasion.

Now that the war is over and we can do a balance sheet of its debits and credits, we also need to apply the fourth criterion: did recourse to arms produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated?

Most of the media coverage of the conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the past week has failed to face this essential issue. Are the Iraqi people better off?

By some criteria, the answer is Yes. It may be surprising to readers of Western media who shudder at the appalling news of suicide bombers in markets and police stations, but Iraq’s economy has improved substantially. The estimated GDP growth in 2009 was 4.5 percent.

Before the war, there were 4,500 internet subscribers in the whole country. In January, there were 1.6 million. Before the war, there were 833,000 telephone subscribers; in January there were 1.3 million landlines and 19.3 million cell phones. Direct foreign investment in 2004 was running at about US$10 million per month. By late last year, it was about $100 million per month.

Iraqi optimism about the future has grown. In February 2009, a survey showed that 84 percent of Iraqis thought that security was “good” or “very good”. In the same month, 64 percent thought that Iraq should be a democracy, compared to only 19 percent for an Islamic state, and 14 percent for a “strong leader”.

On the debit side of the quality of life ledger, of course, fewer than half of Iraqis are satisfied with their supply of electricity, clean water and medical care. Education and justice are shaky.

But surely the main index of whether Iraqis are better off must be how many perished in the wake of the invasion. The website Iraqi Body Count estimates that between 97,700 and 106,600 Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths since 2003. More than 20,000 of them are still unidentified.

The actual number is disputed, but IBC’s figures are based on documented deaths, not statistical estimates. They include only civilians, not combatants. It is probably the most reliable – and conservative -- of all the estimates and has been quoted by relief agencies, WHO, UNHCR, the World Bank and the IMF, the BBC, Economist, and other media. Even the report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction to the US Congress used its figures.

These numbers are almost impossible for us to grasp in comfortable countries like the US and Australia. A figure of 100,000 Iraqi civilians out of a population of 29 million is roughly equivalent to 1 million Americans in a population of 307 million. A million violent deaths in seven years in the US are simply unimaginable. Only 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks and this was the cause of unparalleled grief. For every death in Iraq, there were mothers and fathers and wives and children rent by sorrow and despair.

How can this figure be ignored? As the staff of Iraq Body Count put it in a letter to the British government’s inquiry into the lessons of the war:

“One of the most important questions in situations of armed conflict and in the laws of war is whether the use of force has been a proportionate response to the threat that prompted it. It is impossible to establish the wisdom of actions taken - even if in hindsight and without a view to apportioning direct blame – if the full consequences in human welfare are not taken into account. Casualty data are perhaps the most glaring indication of the full costs of war.”

For the most part, the invading troops were not directly responsible for these deaths, but the power vacuum after regime change was a trigger for internecine slaughter. These calamities were foreseeable, but the Bush Administration’s horizon had only been regime change. After that was a new dawn of free elections and an orderly parliamentary democracy. If this was optimism, it was ignorant optimism. If it was naïveté, it was reckless naïveté.

A soberly-written report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction to the US Congress, Stuart W. Bowen, Jr, suggests that the Bush Administration had been negligent in basing its skimpy planning on a “liberation model”:

“From the outset, the Pentagon’s leadership believed that victory would be swift and that a new interim Iraqi authority would quickly assume power. They planned on Iraq’s police providing postwar security and anticipated that Iraqi oil revenues would fund most relief and reconstruction projects. When Iraq’s withering post-invasion reality superseded these expectations, there was no well-defined ‘Plan B’ as a fallback and no existing government structures or resources to support a quick response (page 324)”

Politically, it is too divisive for President Obama to state clearly that the Iraq War was unjust. But somehow, sometime, America’s share of responsibility for those civilian deaths must be acknowledged. Until then, the sombre and statesmanlike words in Obama’s address last week will be hollow: “Throughout our history, America has been willing to bear the burden of promoting liberty and human dignity overseas, understanding its links to our own liberty and security.”

Does anyone really believe that 19 million cell phones are ample compensation for 100,000 civilian deaths?

By: Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Technorati Tags: Iraq,just war,Quran,Imam,Mosque,New York,Florida

Younger working class miss out on jobs, marriage, religion

2010-09-10T05:24:00.001+02:00

Younger working class people are drifting further away from middle class America and traditional values because they cannot find work in the changing job market. The social and political implications may be drastic.

That’s the gist of an article in the Wall Street Journal last week by sociologists Andrew J. Cherlin and W Bradford Wilcox. I am a week behind with this but the trends are not going to disappear any time soon.

Wilcox and others have drawn attention to the dilemmas of the working class before, noting for example how the “mancession” could increase the “divorce divide” between middle America and those further down the socio-economic scale.

(BTW, we are using “working class” here as shorthand. Cherlin and Wilcox say that that the real class divisions in society today are based on education.)

Now he and Cherlin point out that because younger members of this class can’t earn enough in the lower-skills jobs still available, they are not even getting married. That’s because, like most Americans, they believe that a couple isn’t ready to marry until they can count on a steady income.

Thus, in the early 1990s, 10 per cent of working class women were cohabiting when they gave birth; by the mid-2000s that figure had risen to 27 per cent -- the largest increase of any educational group. Since cohab relationships are more likely to break up, their children will pay the price.

Unmarried and without steady incomes, working class men and women are abandoning religion as well. The drop off has been greatest among whites. “In the 1970s, 35% of working-class whites aged 25-45 attended religious services nearly every week, the same percentage as college-educated whites in that age group. Today, the college-educated are the only group who attend services almost as frequently as they did in the 1970s.”

Some observers might say that there's nothing alarming about the working class's retreat from marriage and organized religion. It's true that not everyone wishes to marry or to worship, and that family and religious diversity can be valuable.

But the working class is not a cultural vanguard confidently leading the way toward a postmodern lifestyle. Rather, it is a group making constrained choices. For the most part, these are people who would like to marry before having kids but who don't think they are economically ready.

In contrast, college-educated Americans—the winners in our globalized economy—are now living more traditional family and religious lives than their working-class peers. More than 90% of college-educated women are married when they give birth.

What will be the effects of this working class drift?

Will their social disengagement leave them vulnerable to political appeals based on anger and fear? Will their multiple cohabiting unions and marriages prevent their children from developing a sense of attachment to others?

This, surely, is a gap that has to be bridged -- in other countries as well.

By: Carolyn Moynihan

Technorati Tags: employment,marriage,religion,working class

Can you hear us now?

2010-09-07T20:13:00.001+02:00

When Melinda Tankard Reist’s latest book, Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, was published last year, a reviewer described it as a “collective shout against the pornification of culture”. “I liked the phrase so much I decided to give it to a new grassroots campaign I’d been thinking about,” says the Australian advocate for women and girls. Here she talks to MercatorNet about the impact that campaign is having.

Mercatornet: What is your overall aim in confronting the pornification of culture?

Melinda Tankard Reist: The aim of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation is to name, shame and expose advertisers, corporations and marketers who objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services. We are at the forefront of nation-wide action to pressure them to recognise their corporate social responsibility not to depict women and girls in ways that harm them.

Our overall aim in confronting various forms of objectification is to make them unacceptable. We want companies to think twice before using exploitative, hyper-sexualised imagery of women. We also want them to think twice before marketing inappropriate sexualised toys, games, clothes and other products to children. We want them to recognise what the research says about the connections between over-sexualised imagery and negative physical and mental health outcomes in young people and children especially.

We also oppose the ultimate outworking of repackaging little girls as sexually interesting, which is the global trade in their bodies. We challenge anything that treats the bodies of women and girls as appropriate elements of sexual commerce and fuels the global industries of pornography and prostitution.

How long have you been fighting this issue personally? Who else are you working with?

I have been interested in this issue for a long time. It is connected to so many human rights violations against women around the globe. Last year my book on the subject, Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, was published (Spinifex Press 2009). One of the contributors described it as a “collective shout against the pornification of culture”. I liked the phrase so much I decided to give it to a new grassroots campaign I’d been thinking about. I felt it was time to harness the widespread concern on the issue into an organised and strategic campaign.

Collective Shout’s team comprises researchers, child advocates, eating disorder specialists, academics, journalists and campaigners and advocates. We join forces and collaborate with other groups working on the same issues, both in Australia and internationally. We also have the support of prominent experts in the field.

What have been some of your main campaigns, and what success have you had?

We have had a combination of ‘instant response’ campaigns against certain products and advertising, as well as more thought out, longer term campaigns which are ongoing. The former include successful campaigns against sexualised clothing (Best&Less push up bras for tween age girls, Cotton On’s sexualised baby clothing), a bus advertising a strip club using a large image of a prone semi-naked woman, and an on-line rape simulation game for boys. Other campaigns have been against Supre for a range of sexual slogans on tween girl t-shirts and against menswear store Roger David for t.shirts depicting women bound, gagged and semi-naked.

We regularly campaign against sexualised advertising. Our members post various action items on the website. We have an on-going campaign against porn in corner stores, milkbars, 7-11s and petrol stations, much of it containing illegal content which promotes sex with under-age girls, rape and incest. We are calling for an overhaul of our classification system, which has failed us.

We are about to launch a campaign against Lynx (LynxStynx) for its highly offensive sexualized depictions of women as mindless sexual robots. We will highlight the hypocrisy of Lynx being owned by Unilever which also owns the Dove ‘real beauty’ campaign. We will also soon launch a campaign called ‘Bye Bye Bunny’ to expose the mainstreaming of Playboy, and another called “Crossed Off” which will be a list of brands and products not to purchase this Christmas – ie cross them off your Christmas list.

How useful has the internet and social networking been?

Our campaigns are run through an interactive website, which is the lynchpin of our operations. Our Collective Shout community ‘gathers’ there, finds out what is happening and is empowered and equipped to act. We are heavy users of new forms of social media and social networking sites. Collective Shout has a twitter account and FaceBook page. I write on the issues regularly on my own website as well, and am active on twitter and FB also. Many new members find us in these ways and our message reaches a broader audience. We have been asked to establish CS overseas as a result.

Are the news media helpful?

We have a significant media profile, with media seeking comment from us most days. I am a regular on morning television. There appears to be heightened interest in and awareness of the issue.

Do you think much of the public is with you? What are the signs? Any surveys on this issue?

We don’t have statistics, however I believe much of the public is with us. Many people tell us how they are now emboldened to take action because they know they are backed by an organisation. We have had a significant sign up to Collective Shout in a short period of time. Our members are from a diverse range of backgrounds. We receive encouraging emails most days. I can barely keep up with the request for speaking engagements on the issue. I think for a long time many people held their concerns to themselves, and perhaps thought they were the only ones who felt this way. But now they feel they can express their views because they know they are not in a minority.

Are politicians taking the issue seriously? Are they taking any effective steps against sexploitation?

Some of them are, but not enough of them. We are working on educating them. There was a Senate inquiry into the sexualisation of children in 2007. Most of the recommendations have not been acted on. We will continue political engagement and lobbying until real action is taken. The (so far – could change any moment!) opposition leader committed to reviewing the classification system if elected, so we will make sure that happens. The Prime Minister (again, this could change) also indicated some concerns about sexualisation in a recent media interview, so we would hope to meet with her and take this further as well.

"The standard you walk past is the standard you set." This is one of your favorite quotes and it's a telling one. However, porn is so prevalent that tackling everything we see could be a full time job. Do we need to be selective? What can the average mum or dad do to raise standards?

That’s true. We just have to do what we can to expose the globalization and proliferation of sexual imagery and do what we can to make known the harm it is causing. I’m co-editing a new book on the subject called Big Porn Inc to be released next year.

Parents of course have a role to play in trying to protect their children from porn exposure and to talking about it with them in age-appropriate ways. But the task is much too difficult for parents on their own. We need our regulatory bodies and governments to act as well, for example on ISP filtering. There is a growing body of research on the harms caused by pornography. In Australia we are seeing a rise of child-on-child sexual assault, which the Australian Crime Commission has linked to exposure to sexualized imagery. We need Governments and regulators to acknowledge this and act.

The porn industry is largely a male affair -- right? Is this also true of the wider sexualisation of the culture? What role are women playing in this trend?

The porn industry is primarily operated and run by men. It is certainly men who produce the most hardcore, violent and degrading pornography. In terms of the broader sexualisation of culture, yes of course women are involved, especially in fashion, women’s magazines and the beauty industry. Women can participate in their own objectification and in the objectification of other women. We are trying to help them see the harm this is causing and make the necessary changes within the industries they are involved in.

Is there a need for a Collective Shout initiative from men?

Collective Shout is open to men and we have many male members. It would be great to see men refuse the pornography industry’s plan for their lives. Just last the weekend after addressing 2000 young adults at a conference in Sydney, three young men approached me and said they wanted to do all they could to battle the industry and help other young men avoid its grip.

By: Melinda Tankard Reist is a Canberra author, speaker, commentator, blogger and advocate for women and girls.

Technorati Tags: Australia,pornography,sexualisation of children

Marry, pray, love

2010-08-28T22:42:00.001+02:00

In a book of self discovery so popular that it has been made into a movie -- Eat, Pray, Love -- the American writer Elizabeth Gilbert took herself to India to learn to pray. That was after bingeing on food in Italy and before stumbling on a new love in Bali.

Gilbert set the stage for the voyage around herself by getting a divorce. But if she had prayed with her first husband they might never have parted, as research on marital happiness shows that the couple that prays together is more likely to stay together.

This has been confirmed by a new study from the National Marriage Project based at the University of Virginia: "The Couple That Prays Together: Race and Ethnicity, Religion, and Relationship Quality Among Working-Age Adults," appears in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Co-authored by sociologists Christopher G. Ellison , W Bradford Wilcox and Amy M. Burdette, it is the first major study to compare religion and relationship quality across America's major racial and ethnic groups. It finds that for all groups, shared religious activity - attending church together and especially praying together - is linked to higher levels of relationship quality.

African-Americans derive the most benefits from that connection because they are significantly more likely than whites or Latinos to pray together and attend church together, offsetting other socio-economic factors tied to lower relationship quality - a finding dubbed the "African-American religion-marriage paradox," says Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and a professor of sociology at the U of V.

Narrowing the racial divide

"Without prayer, black couples would be doing significantly worse than white couples. This study shows that religion narrows the racial divide in relationship quality in America. The vitality of African-Americans' religious lives gives them an advantage over other Americans when it comes to relationships. This advantage puts them on par with other couples."

The same is true, to a lesser extent, for Latino couples, says Wilcox.

But religion may not always benefit couples. Couples holding discordant religious beliefs and those with only one partner who attends religious services regularly tend to be less happy in their relationships, the researchers found. Being on different pages religiously is a source of tension for couples across racial and ethnic lines. "That may be due to less time spent doing things together," Wilcox says, "or having different values about child rearing, alcohol use or any number of things."

A substantial body of research has shown that relationship quality tends to be lower among racial and ethnic minorities, and higher among more religious persons and among couples in which partners share common religious affiliations, practices and beliefs, explained the study's lead author, Christopher G. Ellison, a fellow of the National Marriage Project and a professor of social science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The study uses data from the National Survey of Religion and Family Life, a 2006 telephone survey of 1,387 working-age adults (ages 18 to 59) in relationships, funded by the Lilly Endowment and designed by Ellison and Wilcox. The overwhelming majority of respondents were married (89 percent), with a somewhat lower rate among the racial and ethnic minorities.

The respondents reported high levels of relationship satisfaction (4.8 on a 6-point scale), but African-Americans reported being significantly less happy than whites. However, after controlling for age, education and income, the racial differences disappear.

Blacks reported higher levels of church attendance, both with and without their partners. Forty percent of black respondents reported that they attended services regularly as a couple, compared to 29 percent of whites, 31 percent of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans and 32 percent of all respondents.

Home life

Blacks were also significantly more likely than the other groups to report shared religious activities like prayer or scriptural study. That difference is probably driving the relationship improvements more than shared church attendance.

"The closer you get to the home, the more powerful the beneficial effects," says Wilcox. "It makes sense that those who think about, talk about and practice their beliefs in the home, those who bring home their reflections on their marriage, derive stronger effects from those beliefs, especially compared to those who simply attend church weekly.”

One practical effect seems especially important, Wilcox suggests: "I think forgiveness is probably a pretty key dimension to the link between shared religious practice - prayer in particular - and success in the relationship." In past studies, forgiveness has been found to be a key influence on the success of relationships, home life and even workplace happiness.

Previous research linking religious involvement to improved relationship quality has ascribed the connection to three factors.

First, religious communities typically promote ethical behaviour (the Golden Rule, forgiveness) that helps define appropriate relationship conduct, encourage partners to fulfil their familial roles and responsibilities, and handle conflict in a constructive manner.

Second, family-centered social networks found in religious communities offer formal and informal support to couples and families, from financial help to models of healthy relationships, to advice from an elder about how to discipline a difficult child.

Third, religious belief seems to provide people with a sense of purpose and meaning about life in general and their relationship in particular, which increases resilience to stress.

That's particularly important for blacks and Latinos, says Wilcox, because they are more likely to experience "poverty, xenophobia, racism, neighborhood violence, underemployment, or similar factors that can stress a relationship."

None of this has anything to do with learning meditation techniques in India and is therefore unlikely to be the stuff of bestsellers and movies. But it is the stuff of real life and happiness, so people deserve to know.

This article incorporates a press release from the University of Virginia. Carolyn Moynihan wrote the introduction and the ending.

Technorati Tags: marriage,prayer,race

Welcome to the Club of Ancient Wrongs

2010-08-28T22:36:00.001+02:00

With one war in Afghanistan, another in Iraq, a possible war with Iran, and an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems bizarre that the biggest political issue in the US is whether to build a mosque near Ground Zero, the former site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.

Muslims overseas are puzzled. “The mosque is not an issue for Muslims,” says Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, a leading Arab journalist based in Dubai, “and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim US citizens!”

First of all, some facts.

Only part of the US$100 million Cordoba Initiative is a mosque which will accommodate about 1,000 for Friday prayers. The rest of it is a community centre with a library, gym, auditorium, restaurant, 9/11 memorial and so on. Second, it is not a “Ground Zero Mosque”. It is a full two blocks away from the place where more than 2,700 people died.

Third, it is not a gathering place for radical Muslims. The Kuwaiti-American imam organising the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, may have sent mixed messages, but he claims to be promoting dialogue between Americans and Muslims. He has even written a book titled, What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America. Since we have George W. Bush’s word for it that Islam is “a religion of peace”, at least New Yorkers should believe in Mr Rauf’s good intentions.

There are two strands in the commentary defending the proposed Islamic centre.

The first is that Muslims have a right, like other Americans, to build places of worship wherever they like. In the words of President Obama, "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country." Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a prominent Jewish leader, says: “it is not only the constitutional right of the peace-committed Muslims of the Cordoba Initiative to build a community center in Lower Manhattan, but they are ethically right and profoundly wise to lift there a beacon.”

The other is that “Demonization of the Muslim religion is what this brouhaha is all about.” It is “as irrational an act of scapegoating as blaming all ethnic Germans for the acts of Nazis,” in the words of one left-wing pundit, Robert Scheer. Even the usually sensible Economist says that “The campaign against the proposed Cordoba centre in New York is unjust and dangerous.”

But the right to free commercial activity and the right to freedom from discrimination and vilification are very blunt instruments for dealing with a “sacred site”. His opponents may be using the controversy as a way to weaken President Obama (when 20 percent of Americans think he is a Muslim) but the source of the opposition is more an inarticulate sense of sacredness than bigotry.

If New Yorkers were really that prejudiced, why is the current Islamic centre in downtown Manhattan located ten blocks away in the basement of a Catholic Church?

Today, in most Western countries, the concept of reverence for the sacred is often dismissed or ridiculed or simply viewed with perplexity. But even a secularised sense of the sacred is a tenuous link to transcendence and an important element in forging a personal and national identity.

To take a non-political example, would Walmart ever build a mall and parking lot in Yellowstone? Will California ever sell off Redwood National Park to timber companies to balance its budget? Such proposals somehow violate places revered for their awe-inspiring beauty. Or if Mr Rauf somehow managed to shift his centre to the battlefield of Gettysburg, would the ensuing protests be due to hatred of Islam or to outrage at the violation of this hallowed ground?

And for Americans Ground Zero has been hallowed by senseless deaths, heroic sacrifice, national humiliation and an outpouring of grief.

It is hard to find words to explain why a plot of ground should be revered for memories like these. That is what poets are for. But part of being human is to be connected to places and spaces and memories. Analysing the conflict in terms of constitutional rights is utterly inadequate. Something more ancient is at work which disappears in sterile political battles over rights.

It is not pandering to prejudice to recognise that America, like other societies with a long and deep history, now has its own taboos which ought to be respected even if they are legally indefensible.

A Pakistani professor Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC, Akbar Ahmed, understands this. A former ambassador to the US, he has a deep knowledge of both cultures.

"I don't think the Muslim leadership has fully appreciated the impact of 9/11 on America,” he says. “They assume Americans have forgotten 9/11 and even, in a profound way, forgiven 9/11, and that has not happened. The wounds remain largely open. And when wounds are raw, an episode like constructing a house of worship – even one protected by the Constitution, protected by law - becomes like salt in the wounds."

Protectiveness and anger are typical of disputes over sacred sites in the Old World. Perhaps the passions in this controversy mean that America is growing up, or at least growing older. What could be more characteristic of an Old World society than fights over sacred sites?

In newer countries like Australia passions seldom run so high. I used to live in Tasmania where the indigenous people, the Tasmanian Aboriginals, had lived in complete isolation for perhaps 15,000 years. Within two generations after contact with Europeans they had all perished. It is one of the darkest chapters of Australian history, even of world history. Yet there is no fitting memorial to them, just a few wretched plaques and a hiking track named after Truganini, the last of her people.

Ancient cultures have deep feelings. Why is Jerusalem the world’s most volatile city? Because Christians, Jews and Muslims would all die to defend their sacred places. The Babri mosque in Ayodhya was destroyed in 1992 by a mob of 150,000 Hindus who believed that it had been built over the birthplace of their god Rama. Serbia fought a war rather than grant independence to Kosovo partly because the Field of Blackbirds, north of the capital Pristina, is hallowed ground where the Serbs made their last stand against the Ottoman Turks in 1389.

It is easy for unscrupulous politicians to exploit sacred sites for their own political gain, as Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo to rally Serbs against separatists, and perhaps Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are doing now. But that doesn’t mean that ordinary Americans’ attachment to a sacred site should be dismissed as redneck prejudice. It’s more like the anger and exasperation you might feel if an intruding stranger made a scene at your mother’s wake.

And, to draw on the Australian experience, a sacred site can draw Western and Muslim cultures together. Arguably, Australia’s most sacred site is not on the island continent at all, but in Gallipoli, a Turkish peninsula in the Dardanelles Straits. There in 1915, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders died in a doomed attempt to capture Istanbul. Now it is a place of pilgrimage for both Australians and Turks who remember their forebears’ sacrifice and heroism.

Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and the Turkish commander, later wrote a touching memorial which displays far more magnanimity and sensitivity than anything uttered by American politicians in the past few weeks:

“You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Technorati Tags: Ground Zero,Islam,New York

‘We insist: leave your conscience at the door’

2010-08-23T17:06:00.001+02:00

Pharmacists dispense advice to a colleague who will not sell the morning after pill.

I recently wrote an article expressing my delight that Washington State pharmacists will no longer be forced to dispense products or provide services they find morally objectionable. My elation at the Washington victory was quickly numbed, however, when an edited version ran as a “Point of View” on the Canadian Healthcare Network website. It is one thing for the public to oppose our freedom of conscience, quite another for pharmacists to be shooting themselves in the foot.

Only 42 per cent of pharmacists who voted on the network’s site agreed that “they should have the right to refuse to sell products or provide services they consider morally objectionable”. Sadly, the other 58 per cent believe they should be forced to do what they believe to be wrong -- “Well, Mr. Smith, I hate to do this to you, but if you really insist, take this overdose and don’t bother calling me in the morning.”

My happiness at the Washington victory was further squelched by the plethora of intolerant, and in some cases highly dogmatic, statements posted by fellow pharmacists. While some offered considered views that mirrored common misgivings among the public, others shot assertions from the hip, epitomizing the very judgemental attitude they so fear in their opponents. “Pharmacists are to be non-judgemental” -- except, it seems, when criticizing one another.

A common thread running through the posts is deep consternation about conscience, showing, at the very least, that the authors have one. Yes, every living, rational, being has this capacity for self-reflection, regardless of dogmatic beliefs. But, alas, some have decided it is best to leave their conscience at the pharmacy door. They propose that we all live by one set of mores at work and another set at home.

One person writes: “If moral issues are a concern, provide a reasonable alternative…”

And, were euthanasia legalized, what might that be when Mr Smith insists on his overdose? -- “Ah, er, sorry Mr Smith, I’m afraid I cannot offer you this service, but Frankie’s Pharmacy down the street most certainly will! Have a nice day… Um, see you in the next life… I hope?”

“In some cases”, the comment continues,” you just have to separate work from home, and the professional judgment involved cannot be swayed by moral beliefs.”

Yet no one makes judgments in a vacuum. What, then, will professional judgment be swayed by: Consumerism? Feminism? Drug-company-ism? The next ideological “ism”?

Let me stress that I agree it would be unethical to deny the sick treatment. But because neither fertility nor pregnancy constitutes an illness, I refuse to pander to the feminist ideology that forces us to view and treat them as such.

It is a rather scary thought, is it not, that pharmacists should leave their morals at home. (Care to help yourself to that left over morphine in the back of the safe? How about chewing on low-dose Concerta?) Do we want robots in the pharmacy, people devoid of ethical or philosophical insight who simply follow orders and take no responsibility for their actions? Did we learn nothing from the crimes of the Nazi doctors who separated moral judgement from professional “duties”?

If reason allows us to reflect upon our professional actions in the area of therapeutics, moral conscience accompanies us always so we can discern the goodness or baseness of our own actions. So, when a pharmacist decides not to provide you with an overdose, he uses both his moral judgement and professional judgement simultaneously.

Pharmacists who refuse to dispense products they believe to be harmful are putting the health of the patient first. A pharmacist who will not sell the morning after pill, for example, chooses not to stock it because he believes that life is precious from the moment of conception. This is not a religious feeling or belief, but an ethical opinion that is just as worthy of respect as any other. P>What if a pharmacist decides to not dispense a medication simply out of caprice or bigotry? The oft-cited hypothetical example is someone who will not dispense anti-retrovirals to AIDS patients. I can only say that no pharmacist with an upright conscience would ever deny necessary treatment to a patient on a whim.

Sean Murphy of the Protection of Conscience Project has summed up well the contradictory position of those who demand ethical conformity without demonstrating “the superiority of the ethical judgements [they] propose to force upon unwilling colleagues.”

They could, he says, at least explain “how professional ethics will be improved if the only candidates admitted to professions are those who promise to do what they believe to be wrong.”

By: Cristina Alarcon is a Vancouver pharmacist and writer. She holds a Masters in Bioethics.

Technorati Tags: conscientious objection,morning after pill,pharmacists

Waiting makes the heart grow fonder

2010-08-23T17:01:00.001+02:00

It is always gratifying when research coincides with common sense and everyday experience, as in the case of a new study showing that a relationship in which sexual intimacy is delayed is more likely to endure.

Researchers questioned 642 adults and 56 per cent of them said they had “waited until they got serious before they had sex” (quoting the Toronto Sun here). Most of them also reported that they had “a high quality relationship”.

The number was higher than for the 27% of people who had sex while dating casually and the 17% who were intimate while in a non-romantic relationship.

Professor Anthony Paik of the University of Iowa who reported the study suggested that the courtship process acts as a screening mechanism.

“The debate is ‘why can’t we have sex now?’ The expectation is that sex should occur very quickly. But doing so, you’re losing out on some information that might be useful,” he explained in an interview.

It’s almost an economic equation, he added.

“On average, the more costly the process leading into the relationship, the more likely it is to work. That’s what the data would suggest.”

Alas, he then confuses us by saying that further analysis showed it was not the early sex that caused low-quality relationships but the personalities of the people:

Certain people are simply prone to finding relationships less rewarding, and they are more likely to have sex in casual relationships, he added.

Either way, rushing into sex is not a good sign.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

Technorati Tags: abstinence,relationships

China’s crisis conundrum

2010-08-17T15:41:00.001+02:00

Despite the government's attempts to regulate consumer safety, corrupt business practices are deeply rooted in Chinese culture.

China lurches from one man-made catastrophe to another, despite the efforts of its government to improve laws and regulations to protect people and the environment. In the latest front-page scandal, baby girls have been developing breasts after consumption of milk powder allegedly laced with growth hormones.

This comes just two years after another milk formula scandal that killed six babies and saw nearly 300,000 others become ill with kidney ailments from powdered milk contaminated with a toxic chemical (melamine), which is used in the manufacture of plastics.

While it’s true that the West has its own problems, China’s crises point to fundamental problems in its corporate culture. Problems in food and pharmaceutical products in the West are usually due to a breakdown in systems or processes, or sometimes to malicious sabotage or extortion. In most cases companies move quickly to protect consumers, thereby enhancing their own reputations.

In China, on the other hand, crises have been too often caused by greed: companies place profits ahead of people. Health and safety standards are ignored to obtain better bottom line returns. Many Chinese glibly explain that life is not worth much.

To a large extent, the problem in China is compounded by the incestuous relationships between the Communist Party, government and business. Indeed, they are often one and the same. Sanlu, the company at the centre of the 2008 melamine scandal, was part owned by the city government of Shijiazhuang where it was headquartered in Liaoning Province. Its chairwoman was a Party appointee and a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body to the Central Government.

Often, too, laws are not enforced if they reduce profits that go directly to government coffers. The worst example is China’s mining industry where the annual death toll is unimaginable by Western standards. The government admits that 2,631 coal miners died in 1,616 mine accidents in 2009, down 18 percent from the previous year.

Many mines that breach occupational health and safety regulations are at least partly owned by local governments. In many cases local officials do not enforce strict regulations.

But don’t rush to blame Mao Zedong and Communism. China is also a prisoner of its ancient culture. Two deep-seated aspects of Chinese culture – guanxi and mianzi – are also important.

The concept of guanxi or connections allows many business leaders to act with impunity. This dates back to the days of imperial rule and the Mandarins. Today it means weakened corporate governance as many companies are led by company directors with strong connections to members of the Party and politburo and can skirt laws and regulations.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Beijing correspondent, John Garnaut, recently argued that Du Shuanghua, one of China’s richest entrepreneurs and the businessman at the heart of the Rio Tinto bribery scandal that landed three of its executives in prison, not only escaped censure but continues as a leading player in China because of his guanxi with the family of the nation’s president, Hu Jintao.

Mianzi or face is important when the government or companies seek to cover up a crisis. The melamine milk contamination crisis, for example, was covered up by Sanlu so that China would not lose face in 2008 when it was hosting the Olympics.

In some cases senior managers do not become aware of simmering issues until it is too late because subordinates either want to save face for themselves or for their bosses. Simply put, junior managers are averse to reporting problems up the line.

While China is unlikely to end its system of State-sponsored capitalism or implement major democratic reforms to address these problems, the country needs some political reform, however limited. At least it should unshackle its judicial system. As long as courts remain under government and Party control, justice cannot be served and the darker aspects of culture and politics will continue to thrive. A freer judiciary might also provide China’s seething underclass with an outlet for its frustrations – a point not lost on the Communist Party, which came to power on the back of proletariat and peasant disenchantment.

But even limited reform seems revolutionary and unlikely. A truly independent judiciary would undoubtedly threaten government connections and vested interests. Where’s the face in that?

By: Constance Kong is the pen name of a Shanghai-based business consultant.

Technorati Tags: business ethics,China,corporate governance,corruption

Who respects the human body? Not homosexuals

2010-08-17T15:14:00.001+02:00

The ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down Proposition 8 raises a host of issues that go far beyond the California case. Especially troubling is Walker's view of gender. His ruling makes the sweeping assertion that "gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage."

This declaration is being quoted in astonishment for its sheer breathtaking exaggeration. Yet it reveals a pivotal element in the liberal view of human sexuality.

Liberal ethics is based on a fragmented view of the human being that pits biology against choice. Its roots go back to the French philosopher Rene Descartes, who proposed that the body is a machine controlled by a completely separate thing called the mind. The ghost in the machine.

As philosopher Daniel Dennett explains, "Since Descartes in the 17th century we have had a vision of the self as a sort of immaterial ghost that owns and controls a body the way you own and control your car." In other words, the body is no longer regarded as an integral part of the human person but as sub-personal, functioning strictly on the level of biology and chemistry – almost like a possession that can be used to serve the self's desires.

This is the philosophy that underlies arguments for same-sex "marriage." The assumption is that our bodies have nothing to do with our identity as persons. And that, therefore, anatomy can be overridden by sheer self-expressive choice.

The denigration of physical anatomy does not stop with same-sex "marriage." The cutting edge issue today is transgenderism, a movement that rejects the distinction between male and female itself as a mere social construction – and an oppressive one at that.

According to the New York Times, several universities now offer separate bathrooms, housing and sports teams for transgender students who do not identify themselves as either male or female. Some schools no longer require students to check male or female on their health forms. Instead, they are asked to "describe your gender identity history."' In other words: Which genders have you been over the course of your lifetime?

Gender has become a postmodern concept – fluid, free-floating, completely detached from physical anatomy.

Several states have already passed laws mandating that schools and workplaces accommodate transgenders, and supporters are pushing hard for the same laws at the national level. In 2007, California passed a law requiring schools to permit transgender students to use the restroom or locker room of their preferred gender, regardless of their anatomical sex. The new law redefines sex as socially constructed gender: "Gender means sex and includes a person's gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth."

Note the assumption that your sex is "assigned" to you, as though it were purely arbitrary instead of an anatomical fact. The law is being used to impose a secular liberal worldview that dismisses physical anatomy as insignificant, inconsequential and completely irrelevant to gender identity.

As I show in "Saving Leonardo," this represents a devastatingly disrespectful view of the physical body. It alienates people from their own bodies, treating anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity. No dignity is accorded to the unique capabilities inherent in being male or female.

Ironically, Christians are often dismissed as prudes and Puritans because of their "repressive" sexual morality – and yet the Christian worldview actually affirms a much higher view of the body than the liberal, utilitarian view. It offers the radically positive affirmation that the material world was created by God, that it will ultimately be made whole by God and that God was actually incarnated (made flesh) in a human body.

In the ancient world, these claims were so astonishing that the Gnostics rejected them, and tried to turn Jesus into an avatar who only appeared to have a human body. They could not accept the idea of a Creator who celebrates our material, biological, sexual nature.

Today's liberal elites such as Judge Walker may pose as enlightened liberators, but in fact they are secular Gnostics, treating physical anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity or purpose. In an unexpected twist of history, it is once again Christians who are defending a high and holistic view of the human person.

Best-selling writer and speaker, Nancy Pearcey, editor at large of the Pearcey Report, is author of "Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning," which launches Sept. 1.

Technorati Tags: Proposition 8,Marriage,Catholic,Gay,California,Liberal,Nancy Pearcey,Same-sex marriage

What’s driving earlier puberty in girls?

2010-08-12T20:51:00.001+02:00

Evidence that girls are reaching puberty as early as seven years of age is in the news this week following the publication of an article in the journal Paediatrics. It is a topic that has been debated for decades.

The new data shows that in the United States white girls are catching up with Black and Hispanic girls, who are still well ahead statistically when it comes to maturing early but among whom the trend has slowed right down.

More than 10 percent of white 7-year-old girls in the study, which was conducted in the mid-2000s, had reached a stage of breast development marking the start of puberty, compared to just 5 percent in a similar study conducted in the early 1990s.

Most lay people would be concerned about little girls’ physical development getting ahead of their intellectual and emotional development. For one thing it could make them vulnerable to sexual interest by older males. They are also more likely to mix with older children and mimic older behaviour.

But the current study (which did not include menstruation) was driven by concern about increasing rates of breast cancer among women:

Early puberty in girls is a growing public health concern because studies have shown that girls who start puberty earlier are more likely to develop breast and uterine cancer later in life. The National Institutes of Health funded the study as part of a larger investigation into the environmental factors that contribute to breast cancer risk.

Experts are not certain about the factors driving the trend, which has been evident since the 1950s. Among the chief suspects are excess body fat which affects the level of hormones (estrogen and progesterone) that trigger puberty; environmental chemicals; and the environment in the womb resulting from maternal characteristics -- including first period before age 12, smoking during pregnancy, and being pregnant for the first time.

Some researchers have found links with television viewing, as Aric Sigman has noted:

Dr Sigman’s report, which is based on his analysis of 35 scientific studies, claims that television viewing affects levels of melatonin, a hormone linked to when puberty occurs in girls. Melatonin levels increase in the evening, at the onset of darkness, but staring into a bright screen during this period hinders its production.

Another factor, cited by Leonard Sax in his book Girls On The Edge, is the absence of a girl’s biological father. Sax writes:

Robert Matchock and Elizabeth Susman at Penn State University are convinced that pheromones are the mechanism whereby the presence of the biological father slows down the tempo of his daughter’s sexual development. They believe that this phenomenon is hardwired in our species, as it is in many other mammals, in order to decrease the likelihood of a father having sex with his daughter. “Biological fathers send out inhibitory chemical signals to their daughters,” says Matchock. “In the absence of these signals, girls tend to sexually mature earlier.

As for early exposure to the sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone, no-one seems to be mentioning the possible contribution of hormonal contraceptives. Could they, for example, help explain why a first pregnancy -- after coming off the pill etc -- is among the risk factors for starting puberty earlier?

By:Carolyn Moynihan

Technorati Tags: tags : breast cancer,girls,puberty

THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS IDEA

2010-08-12T20:39:00.001+02:00

We have asked several of our contributors to respond to a question in our occasional series of forums. This time the question is: What is the world's most dangerous idea? We expect that the answers will be quite controversial. Please add your comments.

* * *

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. ~ Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

One day, we may remember 1948 as the peak of mankind’s respect for one another. Sixty years later, ivory tower snobs, animal rights activists, abortion and euthanasia proponents are increasingly attacking the foundation for freedom and justice declared in the UDHR, the special value of each and every human being, also known as human dignity.

A few years ago, a New York Times reporter celebrated the extension of human rights to nonhuman animals, after the environmental committee of the Spanish Parliament voted to grant great apes the right to life and freedom. In an odd but recurrent pattern of increasing animal rights at the expense of human dignity, the reporter exclaimed that we were kidding ourselves with our belief in unalienable “human” (his quote) rights.

Animal right activists often exhibit a stunning insensitivity to human tragedy. Animal liberation is routinely compared to slavery or the women’s rights even though no one would suggest a radical difference between blacks and whites or men and women. Over the last few years, the increasingly shrill People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have compared the victims of the Holocaust to animals kept in warehouses or killed. Whatever sympathy Holocaust on a Plate ad may bring for chickens, can such campaigns do anything but trivialized human suffering?

Such rhetoric may be mere attention-grabbing, hyperbole. However, the race card and Nazi bogeyman also reflect a popular rational basis for animal rights articulated by Princeton University bioethics professor, Peter Singer. Singer argues in Animal Liberation (1973), the Magna Carta of four-legged freedom, that the belief in the inherent dignity of human beings is speciesism and no more rational than racism. Of course the implication is that since racism is evil then the belief in human dignity is also evil.

Singer is not alone in the halls of our academies. Earlier this year, London School of Economics sociology professor Alasdair Cochrane published a paper contending that the concept of human dignity should be removed from bioethics. Cochrane at least avoids dragging in the KKK but attacks the claim that only and all humans have inherent moral worth as “unhelpful and arbitrary.”

If human dignity is only a crazy, cruel fiction, what happens when we dump the myth?

First, the most vulnerable human beings, the very young and the very sick increasingly may be left outside the umbrella of the human community. In Practical Ethics Singer argues that infants are no more self-aware than snails or dogs. Therefore, killing a preborn child or a week old infant is not murder, nor anymore immoral than squashing a slug.

The inversion of ethical sensibilities doesn’t stop with issues of life as ethicist look to animals as our new moral guides.

Repulsed by cannibalism? Grow-up. A New York Times writer declares that we are in a “community of equals” with apes and female chimpanzees who are known to eat their rivals’ babies.

How about cuddling with animals? Singer argues that we are all animals and sex with animals cannot be an offense to our dignity as a human being.

In the end, if with lose our connection to the high ideas expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, our moral universe would be turned upside down. Both man and animal will suffer. Can human beings be human without dignity?

Theron Bowers MD is a Texas psychiatrist.

Technorati Tags: tags : animal rights,forum,human dignity,Peter Singer

Flawed evidence about gay marriage

2010-08-12T20:30:00.001+02:00

In one sense, Judge Walker can’t be blamed for his decision since he was provided a great deal of inaccurate and incomplete information through the trial process. I hope that future amicus briefs will be able to correct those deficiencies.

It’s not that heterosexuals think their marriages are superior per se but that heterosexual marriage has vulnerabilities that are not found in same-sex relationships. Kurdek (2008) found that gay/lesbian couples reported greater levels of happiness over time than did heterosexual couples, especially the latter who had children. Kurdek admitted that gender conflicts would be expected to be more prevalent in heterosexual relationships. There are also more risks in heterosexual relationships in terms of unwanted pregnancies or struggles over fertility control.

At the same time that heterosexual relationships inherently entertain higher risks, they also provide society with a very important product – biological children who are genetically related to both of their parents, which tends to be correlated with taking better care of children (unrelated boyfriends, for example, often abuse their girlfriend’s biological children).

As an example of the bad information provided to the court, it is clear that lesbian parents have far less stable same-sex relationships than do heterosexual parents, even when the lesbian parents have advantages in terms of higher education or income (Schumm, 2009). The court was told that lesbian relationships are just as stable as heterosexual relationships, which may be true but only for persons who are not parents. The court may not have been told about the high rates, on the order of 50 percent within three years, of extramarital affairs engaged in by gay men in civil unions or marriages (Schumm, 2009).

The court was probably told that lesbian and gay parents are not more likely to have non-heterosexual children, which my research shows is false (Schumm, in press). The court was probably told that the children of lesbian and gay parents are doing just as well as the children of heterosexual parents. What is overlooked is that there is a great deal of cherry-picking going on, pitting highly educated, high income gay or lesbian parents against less educated, lower income heterosexual parents. I have yet to see any study control for education and for per capita household income before making comparisons between the two types of parents.

For example, Patterson and her colleagues (Farr, Forssell, & Patterson, 2010) recently published an article claiming that gay and lesbian parents of adopted children were parenting just as well as heterosexual adoptive parents. I tried to submit a rejoinder to that journal but the editor told me that his journal doesn’t accept any letters to the editor or criticisms of their published reports. Now there’s a great ploy – send your papers to outlets where you know in advance that your research, once published, will escape any criticism no matter how flawed your article might be!

However, in Patterson’s report, the gay father households had an average income of US$190,000 compared to $150,000 for heterosexual households and probably had fewer children. Neither level of household income represents anything close to what the average parent, heterosexual or non-heterosexual, must manage economically. For example, my base pay at the University after working here for over 30 years is less than $83,000, though I earn more by teaching overtime and getting occasional summer research money. With that, I have had to support my wife and seven children over years, including many years which involved much less income. And most people would consider me quite advantaged economically compared to the average household. And yet, our per capita household income would be almost trivial compared to that of the subjects who participated in Patterson’s research.

Patterson presented data from the “teachers” of the three-year-old children but the “teachers” were mostly daycare providers being paid by the parents. Now, why would anyone expect such an employee to run down the children in their care by describing them as psychologically troubled? Furthermore, there were no measures of social desirability used that could have been used to statistically control for any tendencies to overrate their children’s levels of psychological adjustment.

These types of flaws are widespread in research on gay and lesbian parenting but whether Judge Walker apprehended these issues, or even was provided clear evidence about them, is questionable.

Judge Walker was correct in that legal marriage does provide many benefits for legally married couples. Clearly, legally married gay or lesbian couples would be helped from such benefits. But, in my view, it’s just like universal healthcare. Sure, if free healthcare were provided to all residents of a nation, that would seem a great help. But someone has to pay the bill, surely some more than others. You end up with an equality of outcome but an inequality of input.

It’s easy enough to establish an apparent equality of outcomes for different types of couples, but if their inputs in terms of risks are unequal and their contributions to society in terms of jointly biological children are unequal, have you really established an equality or actually an inequality? That is why I have argued (Schumm, 2009) that making same-sex relationships socially and morally equivalent to heterosexual relationships creates an injustice rather than correcting one.

Dr Walter Schumm is a Professor of Family Studies in the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University. He has published over 250 scholarly articles and book chapters and is co-editor of the Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods: A Contextual Approach (Plenum, 1993; Springer, 2009). He is a retired colonel in the US Army Reserve, a former brigade and battalion commander. His views may not reflect the positions of Kansas State University or the US Department of Defense.

References

Farr, R. H., Forssell, S. L., & Patterson, C. J. (2010) Parenting and child development in adoptive families: Does parental sexual orientation matter? Applied Developmental Science, 14(3), 164-178.

Kurdek, L. A. (2008). Change in relationship quality for partners from lesbian, gay male, and heterosexual couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 701-711.

Schumm, W. R. (in press). Children of homosexuals more apt to be homosexuals? A reply to Morrison and to Cameron based on an examination of multiple sources of data. Journal of Biosocial Science.

Schumm, W. R. (2009). Gay marriage and injustice. The Therapist, 21(3), 95-96.

Technorati Tags: tags : homosexuality,Proposition 8,same-sex marriage

Girls On The Edge

2010-08-12T20:07:00.001+02:00

American family doctor turned writer Leonard Sax talks in his latest book about what's driving the new crisis for girls.

When Leonard Sax, doctor, psychologist and promoter of single sex education, wrote his second book, Boys Adrift, in 2005 he tapped into a widespread concern that boys were doing badly in education and social development. The girls are fine, people said, pointing to their superior academic performance, but the boys were in trouble.

After 15 years in family practice Sax knew that was not true. Sure, the girls were hardworking and achieving, but those traits often had an obsessive character that was the flip side of the boys’ retreat into their bedrooms with World of Warcraft and a bit of porn on the side.

Increasingly, girls he dealt with in his practice were fixated on some ideal -- to be the top student, the top athlete, the girl who’s really thin -- to the point where failure could bring on a major existential crisis, if not psychological collapse.

Beyond his office, observation, research and lots of contact with girls’ schools showed that an increasing proportion of girls were locked in a cyberbubble. When not honing their image on Facebook they were texting non-stop, keeping the cellphone under their pillow at night and under the desk at school, so that they could receive messages (“OMG, I thought you were Jason’s girlfriend but I just found out that…”) 24/7, and picking up a double-shot espresso coffee on their way to school to stay awake.

More fundamental, and in a way driving other trends, was the wholesale sexualisation of girls that has been increasing in momentum over the past 50 years, causing an identity crisis. With even pre-pubescent girls dressing as though they had a sexual agenda, in their hot pants and midriff-baring tops, sexual confusion reigned.

Something else, not so obvious, was bothering the doctor: environmental toxins (leaching out of plastic food packaging, for example) that contribute to the early onset of puberty, depriving girls of part of their childhood and exposing them to higher risks of depression, eating disorders and delinquency, not to mention cardiovascular problems and breast cancer in the long run.

Sexual identity, the cyberbubble, obsessions, environmental toxins: these are the four factors driving the current crisis for girls that Sax describes in his latest book, Girls On The Edge. It could just as easily have been called Girls On The Surface, because that is the cumulative effect of the risks he is concerned about: girls focused on how they look, on performance, on what they do rather than who they are; girls insatiable for the next bit of gossip or the next A grade, and inconsolable when they meet with setbacks and failures.

That grim scenario represents only half the book, however; the other half is about solutions, and what those solutions have in common is the importance of gender -- one of the most fraught issues of our age, and one on which Sax definitively took a stand when he helped found the National Association for Single Sex Education back in 2002.

Some people think Sax is obsessed with gender -- his first book was Why Gender Matters -- but that is because the dominant gender narrative in recent decades has ignored or tried to obliterate the roots of gender in masculinity and femininity, concepts which he takes seriously, if not in quite the way some of us might want (more on this later). In his new book he says:

Most enduring cultures of which we have any record have taken this process -- the process of transition to a gendered adulthood -- very seriously. We ignore it. Indeed American parents seldom speak to their children at all about the meaning of womanhood or manhood (as opposed to generic, un-gendered adulthood). Most parents today don't know what to say.

But girls still want to know, What does it mean to be a woman? Boys still want to know, What does it mean to be a man? We don't tell them. As a result, the marketplace fills the vacuum, providing "the ready-made masculine and the ready-made feminine" which are caricatures of the real thing; but young people don't recognize them as caricatures, because they have received no guidance. (page 185)

In a conversation with MercatorNet when he was passing through Auckland (on his most recent speaking tour of schools in New Zealand and Australia) Dr Sax said he has never had a “gender agenda” as such. He simply had to confront its importance in his work as a family doctor -- in much the same way that he was faced with the greater need for general practitioners when he entered medical school to become a neurosurgeon.

“In the course of my 22 years of medical practice I dealt with children who I felt had issues that were gender issues and yet, not only the parents but also the consultants didn’t seem to be aware of the importance of gender, and that’s what led me to start writing about it.”

But there was also a very personal motive for writing Girls On The Edge. Extracting some photos from his bag, an obviously proud father spoke about his four-year-old daughter Sarah.

“I would never, ever have written the third book if were not for the birth of our daughter. My wife and I were infertile for the first 15 years of our marriage. Then my wife, Katie, gave birth to our one and only child.” Baby Sarah provided a new incentive to think about girls’ issues and to identify the keys to success in bringing up a daughter. These keys he treats in his book in chapters headed “mind”, “body” and “spirit”.

“Mind” is largely about the education of girls and the advantages of single sex schooling, both in the way traditionally non-girl subjects such as physics are (or can be) taught and in the community of “women who bridge the generations” that girls schools provide. Sax is strong on the importance of girls learning from older women what it means to be a woman -- something much more difficult to learn in the sexually precocious and distracting environment of a co-ed school.

(It is worth noting here that Sax has visited more than 300 schools -- not only in the US but in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK during the last 10 years to conduct workshops for professionals and speak to parents. )

The single-sex advantage also applies to athletics and sports, which are treated in the chapter, “body”. Not only sexually but in other ways the bodies of boys and girls are different, and this needs to be taken into account. Contrary to what is often supposed, the single-sex format can have a broadening effect, and co-ed a narrowing and homogenising effect on girls sporting choices and achievements.

But it is when he deals with the “spirit” that Sax gets particularly interesting and, he hints, controversial with crusading secularists. Some parents, too, are uncomfortable when he tells them that the core of their daughter’s identity is “about the spiritual journey”. But since parents are “the greatest single influence on children’s spiritual development” he urges them to put aside their own hang-ups from the past and encourage the interest in spiritual questions which often arise after puberty. He writes:

If you fail to nurture your daughter’s budding spirituality, it may be extinguished. And if that happens, your daughter will be at risk for the all-too-common substitution of sexuality in place of spirituality. The spiritual and the sexual are often tightly linked, especially for teenagers and young adults. Some girls will try to find the deepest meaning of their lives in a romantic or sexual relationship. They will be disappointed, because no young man (or woman) can fill the niche in the heart that belongs only to the spirit. But those girls don’t know that. In the first thrill of sexual awakening, they may plunge into sex and romance with the zeal of a new convert.

This may involve giving boyfriends a kind of authority that belongs to God, with disastrous results.

The protective effects of religion for adolescents are well documented in research. Sax cites a study of 3000 American teenagers which shows, for example, that only 3 per cent of religiously devoted teens think it’s OK to have sex “when you’re ready for it emotionally” compared with 56 per cent of disengaged teens. Religious teens are also less likely to smoke, drink alcohol and be unhappy with their body image -- something that is a major source of malaise for many girls.

Sax talks about girls who discovered their spiritual centre -- who they are -- in quite different ways, though all with the assistance of single-sex educational communities. But the need for inter-generational communities of women extends beyond schooling; Sax recommends it in place of co-ed church youth groups. His ideas on these things seem very sound to me.

If there is one thing I disagree with him about it is his acceptance of the idea that gender is mainly a personal “construction” and not mainly a given. Relying -- rather too much -- on the work of philosopher Robert Bly and psychoanalyst Marion Woodman, he writes of the transition to womanhood in terms of finding one’s personal balance of feminine and masculine traits.

While it is true that masculine and feminine are not simple opposites, and that women can have masculine qualities and act in masculine ways, it is going too far to say, as Sax does, “Any individual may be very feminine; or very masculine; or both feminine and masculine, androgynous; or neither feminine nor masculine, undifferentiated.” This seems to me to separate the psyche and behaviour, which are shaped by circumstances, from the fact of the body, from one’s given sex and what it tells us about who we are.

But girls still want to know, What does it mean to be a woman? Boys still want to know, What does it mean to be a man?

When we discussed these words of his during our conversation he made it clear that he was not referring to anything like “the essential” feminine or masculine -- the idea that sexuality means something different for men and for women and that this fundamental to the question of identity. "I don't think sexuality has one meaning, but rather a diversity of meanings," he said.

It is a conversation I would like to pursue with Dr Sax because it seems to me so important for the success of his project on behalf of young people. And because everything else he says on the subject of girls and boys makes such a lot of sense.

Dr Sax’s website: leonardsax.com

Technorati Tags: book reviews,education,girls,psychology

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet

Prop 8 judge displays ignorance of marriage

2010-08-12T19:55:00.001+02:00

Jennifer Roback Morse, foundress and president of the Ruth Institute, laments the overturn of Proposition 8 by Judge Vaughn Walker, who is widely reported to be g*y.

The Ruth Institute has been active in the efforts to educate the public about the essential public purpose of marriage, the social benefits of natural marriage, and the harms to society from redefining marriage. Dr. Morse is a former economics professor at Yale and George Mason Universities. In a press release she says:

Judge Walker’s reasoning today in overturning Prop 8 illustrates that he does not understand the essential public purpose of marriage, which is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. He replaces this public purpose with private purposes of adults’ feelings and desires.

By the time Judge Walker and his ilk are finished, there will be nothing left of marriage but a government registry of friendships. The essential problem of attaching children to the mothers and fathers will be pushed aside, and will have to be solved some other way.

* Redefining marriage as the union of any two persons will undermine the biological basis for parenthood, which amounts to a redefinition of parenthood.

* Same sex Marriage will marginalize men from the family.

* Redefining marriage will increase the power of the state over civil society, including religious bodies.

Surely the voters have the right to be consulted before making such a major change in public policy,” Dr. Morse said today. “Judge Walker has no right to disparage the voters of California the way he does in this opinion. “His opinion amounts to this sloppy syllogism. ‘First, I don’t understand that there are any arguments in favor of natural marriage. Therefore, there are no arguments in favor of natural marriage. Conclusion: unlawful animus against gays and lesbians is the only possible reason 7 million voters supported natural marriage.’

The fact that he doesn’t understand the arguments, doesn’t mean there aren’t any. And it is truly unprecedented for a judge to decide that some ideas cannot even be contested in public debate. The Ruth Institute will continue to educate the public about the significant role of natural marriage in society, and the harms from redefining marriage.

tags : Proposition 8, same-sex marriage, U S Constitution

Asia’s fragile families lead to parent-child suicides

2010-04-07T04:14:00.004+02:00

A recent article in Time magazine highlights a rising number of suicides involving a parent and child in Hong Kong. These “filicide-suicides” are not a new phenomenon in East Asia, but there have been at least 15 since the start of 2008 and three in February-March -- all mother and child -- provoking alarm amongst welfare agencies and experts.

In Taiwan it is worse. As we noted recently in a post about research showing that motherhood protects women against suicide, Taiwan has high and increasing rates of suicide amongst men and women. It also has the highest filicide-suicide rate in East Asia, with 61 reported cases since 2008.

The parent’s desperation is often linked with joblessness and financial hardship as well as marriage breakdown. Cultural attitudes come into play:

Two years ago, a study co-authored by the University of Hong Kong and the University of Macau found that a deranged sense of compassion was common - parents killed their offspring to spare them from destitution and believed it their right to do so. "We take our children as our property," says Fernando Cheung, former head of the Hong Kong legislature's welfare panel. "Asian culture dictates that they're ours, that they are not independent beings, especially when they're small."

This is an attitude very common before birth in the West, of course, where a “deranged sense of compassion” also seems to be a factor. But there’s a difference when it comes to older children:

The child victims of murder-suicides in the West are typically killed in violent attacks, as one partner's way of taking revenge on the other. In Asia, on the other hand, parents leap together with their children or succumb arm in arm to carbon monoxide inhalation in a kind of ghastly euthanasia.

Feelings of isolation unite all cases: “parents feel there is no friend or relative able or trustworthy enough to care for the children”.

The extremely low birthrates of these societies combined with their materialistic pressures appear to set the scene for this tragic isolation and the increased fragility of the family.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

Who can heal a guilty conscience?

2010-04-07T03:49:00.003+02:00

We are familiar with the idea that the psychiatrist’s couch has taken over from the confessional in dealing with mental or spiritual distress. And yet, says says psychiatrist Aaron Kheriaty, his profession has no cure for the greatest psychological malady -- a guilty conscience.

In the following article Dr Kheriaty, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine, explains why this is so and where the real remedy lies. Although prepared for a group of professionals and much longer than most of our articles, this paper struck MercatorNet’s editors as both accessible for a lay audience and a fascinating read that many will not want to miss.

I am delighted that you have invited a psychiatrist to comment on the question of conscience. I hope that my explorations here can help shed some light on the mystery of man’s conscience – for conscience lies close to the center of the human mind and heart, and to the ultimate concerns that give meaning to people’s lives.

While I am pleased with the opportunity to offer this perspective, I should begin with the frank admission that modern psychiatry and the psychological sciences have paid remarkably scant attention to questions about conscience. With the exceptions of psychoanalytic theory early in the 20th Century, which gave an idiosyncratic but influential account of the formation and workings of conscience, and perhaps a few developmental theorists like Kohlberg, modern psychology and psychiatry seem to have mostly ignored questions about conscience.

How do we account for this neglect? Perhaps it is because any understanding of conscience and its operations must be premised upon human freedom. But the major theories and movements in modern psychology and psychiatry were often prone, in theory if not always in clinical practice, to various forms of psychological (or biological) determinism. This left little room for freedom of the will, and thus, moral conscience was often disregarded as an object of study. The limits of these theories, particularly in their unexamined foundational assumptions, reveal how they need to be corrected and augmented by insights from philosophy and theology. While we critique, we can also learn from modern scientific investigations of human behavior, cognition, and affect. Setting aside the frequent reductionist tendencies of the behavioral sciences, a careful examination of their findings can provide insights into the development, formation, and workings of conscience.

This paper makes no claim to be a comprehensive psychiatric account of our theme; there are several potential avenues of investigation. In the interest of time, I will limit myself to exploring only two. First, I will look at what psychoanalytic theory reveals (and conceals) about conscience. Second, I will highlight some insights from contemporary studies of individuals in whom the formation of conscience has gone radically wrong. Both of these avenues of inquiry may (perhaps ironically or paradoxically) shed some light on our topic.

Conscience in Psychoanalysis

The superego and conscience

Sigmund FreudPsychoanalysis is dead, some will object, so why bother with Freud at all anymore? While it is true that the specific tenets of orthodox psychoanalytic theory no longer have much traction in departments of psychiatry, the continued influence of Freud’s concepts is undeniable. This influence is still strongly felt in areas ranging from popular culture to literary criticism. Even in contemporary psychiatry, which now prides itself on being a “hard” medical science grounded firmly in neurobiology, many unquestioned and unexamined assumptions from psychoanalysis still operate (if you will excuse the term) unconsciously, beneath the glossy scientific surface. We cannot ignore psychoanalysis, nor can we yet consign it to the dustbin of history.

Freud’s theory of the mind, including his account of conscience, can be understood in part as a reaction to earlier rationalist theories, with their one-sided emphasis on reason’s role in determining human experience and behavior. Descartes and his rationalist descendents claimed that we are to give assent only to clear and distinct ideas – only to those ideas most immediately accessible to conscious awareness. Thus, reason was to be our exclusive guide in terms of thinking and behaving.

Along came Freud a few hundred years later to shatter the hard-won Cartesian confidence in reason. Descartes’ extreme position begat Freud’s opposite extreme. Following a trail blazed by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Freud claimed that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors – no matter how clear, distinct, and rational they may appear on the surface – are for the most part controlled by tumultuous unconscious forces, operating relentlessly beneath the tranquil surface. Although the irrational unconscious was inaccessible to all but the psychoanalyst, it nevertheless influenced us in radical and often disturbing ways. In contrast to Descartes’ portrait of “rational man,” operating from the clarity of consciously experienced logical reasoning, Freud introduced us to “psychological man,” operating from unconscious, irrational, and contradictory ideas, affects, fantasies, and wishes.

Freud’s biographer Ernest Jones listed the six most common words Freud used to describe the unconscious: repressed, active, bestial, infantile, alogical, and of course, sexual. Such were the forces bubbling up from the seething cauldron of our unconscious. When the patient (with necessary assistance of the expert psychoanalyst) looked inward, what he saw was not pretty: the “ego” was really a precariously constructed mask, placed tenuously over a deep reservoir of sexual and aggressive drives. How was a person to manage a moral life with the twin forces of unreserved libido and a death instinct pressing up relentlessly from the deep wells of the psyche? Where lies man’s conscience in all of this? How is it formed, and how can the conscience help the ego to manage such primitive drives? Could this grim view of our mental topography leave room for the moral life? We will return to this question shortly.

Freud argued that despite outward appearances we are for the most part controlled by deterministic forces outside of our awareness. Humans are not the freely deliberating, rationally choosing, autonomous beings that the rationalists claimed. With reason so dispensed with, freedom of the will would be the next faculty to go. Indeed, Freudian theory insisted upon a strict psychic determinism – final causes were jettisoned. We may give reasons for our behavior or our moral choices, but these really amount to rationalizations that mask our deeper purposes. For Freud, whatever conscience was, it was not hyper-rational. As he famously quipped, man is not even master of his own house. Freud called his theory a blow to self-love, but it was more than this: it was a blow to any sort of love – for love can only be given and received freely, but freedom was precisely what his theory of the unconscious seemed to exclude.

It is within this rather bleak account of the human person and his psychological makeup that we need to situate Freud’s account of conscience. It is clear that when we perform an act that we judge to be immoral, we typically experience feelings of shame, thoughts of regret, and so on. How did psychoanalytic theory account for this phenomenon? In addition to the unconscious reservoir of sexual and aggressive drives (dubbed the “id”), Freud posited another largely unconscious component of our mental topography, which he termed the “superego”. The superego consisted of two parts: first, the unconsciously internalized prohibitions – the “no’s” and “don’t do that’s” – first experienced from our parents and later from society; and second, the “ego ideal” – the character or behavior that the person consciously wishes to develop or to exhibit.

The superego and its inhibitions, prohibitions, and commandments keeps the id and its impulses in check. Thus, the superego is necessary for all social life; indeed, it is the precondition for civilization itself. A sort of dialectical tension is established between the id (which operates exclusively on the pleasure principle), and the superego (which operates resolutely on the reality principle). The poor pummeled ego – the conscious self – is a bruised and battered synthesis between these two unhappy extremes, pressured by desires from below and subdued by punishments from above.

Morality is thus always a crabbed compromise, a concession. The claims of the subject must forever be restricted by the internalized claims of the social order. The moral life on this account is not ordered to happiness, but only to the social survival of the species. The superego has its way, but always and only at the expense of what the individual really wants. Such desires, when unmasked, are nothing but “primary process” hedonism: “me, mine, now, yes”. The superego represses these drives so that we can live socially; but the resultant neurosis is the price paid for civilization. Freud had no messianic pretentions, and psychoanalysis was no salvific system: he once stated flatly that the goal of therapy was to transform neurotic misery into everyday unhappiness. This, for Freud, is the best that can be hoped for.

The superego is sometimes identified straightforwardly with the conscience; but this simple equation is not entirely accurate. Freud’s account of the formation of superego was partially correct, insofar as he understood relationships and community as essential elements in the formation of a moral individual. Yet the superego, with its inner punishments and strictures, operated almost exclusively outside of the subject’s conscious awareness. It remained, in some sense, extrinsic to the person. The internalized moral norms that constitute one’s superego are not fully understood by the subject or ratified by the subject’s own insight, however much they may be obeyed. Remaining to some degree external to the self, the dictates of the superego are experienced as burdensome. Subjective guilt and the mechanisms of repression (with the resultant neuroses) spring from inner sources over which the person has only dim awareness, limited insight, and little conscious control. This is hardly an account of a healthy conscience at work.

Let us contrast the workings of the superego (with its unconscious source, extrinsic demands, and punitive strategies) with the workings of a healthy conscience, which issues objective moral imperatives of which the person is consciously aware. Drawing on the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand, John Crosby describes the psychological phenomenology of conscience elegantly:

We have to marvel at the “gentle strength” of moral imperatives: they are so demanding, so imperious, invested with divine authority, and yet… they do no least violence to the person, they do not terrorize him or manipulate him, but appeal to him where he is most a being of his own, eliciting his powers of acting through himself. They are also gentle in the sense that they can be ignored, and that it is easy to repress them. (1)

Moral imperatives issued by a healthy conscience (in contrast to the operations of the superego) allow us to act in a fully seeing and understanding way. If we fail to make this distinction, and mistakenly equate conscience with the superego, then we fall into the error of thinking that an ethical or virtuous life is not the path to human happiness, mental health, and human flourishing. The moral life becomes merely a compromise that must be managed as best we can.

What does this compromise look like? In his perceptive book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff described the new “therapeutic” character type, which psychoanalysis ushered onto the human scene: he argued that in modern times psychological man replaced political man of ancient Greece, religious man of Christendom, and economic man of the nineteenth century. Psychological man, he writes, “is anti-heroic, shrewd, carefully counting his satisfactions and dissatisfactions, studying unprofitable commitments as the sins most to be avoided.... Psychological man has constituted his own careful economy of the inner life.”(2) It is immediately clear how much psychological man, with his calculating behavior and narcissistic gaze, differs from the character ideal of the virtuous pagan or the Christian saint. Rieff summarized the difference nicely when he quipped, “religious man is born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.”(3)

Psychological defenses and self-deception

After this admittedly critical assessment, one more descendent of the Freudian system deserves brief comment in relation to a study of conscience and its operations. I refer to the psychoanalytic concept of unconscious defenses (of which repression is the prototype) – what in later clunky terminology came to be called “defense mechanisms”. The workings of various unconscious strategies of avoidance, self-justification, distorted perception, and impaired reality testing – which collectively go under this heading of psychological defenses – strikes me as important for our study of conscience and its various deformations. To cite an example: a psychiatric colleague of mine at UC, Irvine, Andre Novac, has studied one such defense, which he terms “depersonification”. This is the defensive process that temporarily makes one unaware of the human and personal characteristics of other individuals, making it possible to victimize such a person as if he was an inanimate object.(4) The mind’s capacity for such depersonifying distortions is astonishing, as illustrated by the now-famous Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo, and by the historical example of German soldiers carrying out Nazi orders in World War II.

The detailed psychoanalytic descriptions of these and other psychological defenses are frequently insightful accounts of the vast repertoire of ways and means that we employ to avoid the truth about what we have done, to assuage our guilt, and to manage the awareness our moral imperfections. Unhealthy defenses in response to guilt often constitute what I like to call “the revenge of conscience”. Whatever our conscience is, for most of us, it is not easily quelled. When we attempt to ignore it, it takes its revenge under the guise of all sorts of destructive symptoms and behaviors.(5) Guilt and its associated emotions of fear, shame, and regret are quite intolerable. If we have not found the true cure for these – that is, the cure effected by contrition and divine forgiveness – then we instead resort to the most astonishing mental gymnastics in order to ward off guilt. Anticipating Freud’s concept of repression as the fundamental psychological defense from a guilty conscience, Nietzsche wrote: “’I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that’ – says my pride, and remains adamant. At last – memory yields.”(6) But I would add, memory does not yield quietly or complacently. We still pay the price and suffer in other ways.

One of the more common effects, which I have observed in many clinical cases, is a compulsive repetition of the same sin over and over, as the person unconsciously both punishes himself for the sin with the repeated sin, and simultaneously tries in vain to justify himself by willful repetition of the same self-destructive act, as though it became less sinful with repetition. With this sort of habituation, the sin paradoxically becomes a “freely chosen compulsion”.(7) The person who acts thus becomes progressively unaware of what compels him; he grows increasingly hardened and more miserable; and finally, he becomes blind to his own interior state.

These and related forms of self-deception are described in countless carefully documented case histories populating the psychoanalytic literature. A constellation of these unhealthy defenses in Scriptural language is known simply as “hardening of the heart”. One of the chief effects of this hardening is an inability to know ourselves as we truly are. When we ignore or disobey our conscience, our capacity for true and accurate self-knowledge is impaired. Again, I quote Nietzsche, who for all his faults knew well our propensity for self-deception: “We are unknown, we knowers, to ourselves,” he wrote. “Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in our selves we are bound to be mistaken.” In his hilarious parody, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, the novelist Walker Percy echoes this with characteristic wit: “Why is it possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life?” and, “Why is it that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos—novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes—you are beyond doubt the strangest?”(8) Careful psychological studies confirm that a guilty conscience, perhaps more than any other factor, accounts for our paradoxical inability to know and understand ourselves.

Sociopathy: The absence of conscience

I will now turn from this historical sketch of conscience in Freud’s influential theory to a contemporary area of psychiatric research. If one searches for “conscience” in current psychiatric literature, the most frequent studies that turn up are those that examine individuals who seem to lack a conscience. One way to potentially shed light on the workings of conscience, and to highlight the importance of a healthy conscience, is to study such impaired individuals. These terrifying persons are commonly referred to as sociopaths (or less accurately as “psychopaths”), and designated by psychiatrists as having “antisocial personality disorder”. This extreme condition is characterized above all by the inability to feel guilt or remorse, even after committing heinous acts. With such persons, the “hardening of the heart” is complete: it becomes difficult to discern any traces of conscience beneath the rubble of psychological defenses.

The analogy to a diseased body is apt for understanding this condition: sociopathy is a spiritual disease of the worst sort. Citing psychiatrist Albert Gorres, who argued that the capacity to recognize guilt belongs essentially to the spiritual makeup of man, Joseph Ratzinger explains:

[Guilt] is as necessary for man as the physical pain that signifies disturbances in the normal bodily functioning. Whoever is no longer capable of perceiving guilt is spiritually ill, ‘a living corpse’…. No longer seeing one’s guilt, the falling silent of conscience in so many areas is an even more dangerous sickness of the soul than the guilt that one still recognizes as such. He that no longer notices that killing is a sin has fallen farther than the one who still recognizes the shamefulness of his actions, because the former is further removed from the truth and conversion.(9)

Whatever else it is, conscience is an organ that requires proper development. A full study of the origins of sociopathy would take us too far afield here. Suffice it to say that underlying genetic vulnerabilities, coupled not only with a lack of basic formation and education of conscience, but also typically with severe early childhood trauma, seem to be necessary ingredients in the dark brew that breeds sociopaths. It is a frightful reality: a person’s conscience can indeed become stunted, and even stamped out. Let us now examine this problem by looking at three aspects of sociopathy: the lack of empathy, the lack of inner integration, and a profoundly distorted concept of freedom.

Conscience and empathy

Philosophy has typically examined conscience from the perspective of rational judgment, i.e., applying a universal norm, such as a divine commandment or a categorical imperative, to particular situations or concrete sets of circumstances. Reason or will (or some combination thereof) are given priority. By contrast, contemporary psychiatric literature tends to study moral behavior by examining its affective and relational aspects. In itself, this is an incomplete account of moral behavior and conscience. However, it can help to augment modern philosophical perspectives.

Prior to the separation of passions and virtues from moral thinking effected by the nominalists, philosophical ethics tended to pay much more attention to the role of the passions and appetites (rightly ordered by the requisite virtues) in moral behavior. Much of the work in modern psychiatry and the social sciences can be understood as an attempt to round out our moral picture of man by reintroducing these affective and relational factors, which are often neglected in a deontological or a divine command theory ethics.

Modern psychiatry and the social sciences typically understand conscience (or the absence of conscience in antisocial personality disorder) in terms of the presence (or absence) of the capacity for empathy. This is defined as the ability to “feel one’s way into” the experiences of another person, who is affected by my actions and choices. This focus on empathy, while limited and incomplete as an account of conscience, nonetheless highlights inherent social and relational factors as necessary conditions for acts of virtue or vice. This line of enquiry sometimes mistakenly tends toward a simple equation of conscience with the capacity for empathy – as though I would automatically behave well if only I accurately knew or felt how my actions affected others. While conscience cannot simplistically be said to consist of the capacity for empathy, this capacity does seem to be a necessary condition for a well-formed and well-working conscience. It is clear that sociopaths lack this capacity in many respects (or at least, if they have it, they use it only to manipulate and harm others). Studies of early attachment indicate the importance of healthy bonds between parents and child for the formation of empathic capacities. A more thorough account of healthy and unhealthy attachment would take us too far afield here. But recognizing the essential role of early parental and familial love provides an avenue for further enquiry in understanding the development and formation of conscience.

Conscience and unity of life

In addition to their lack of empathy, another feature of sociopaths that has received some attention in recent years has to do with the lack of inner unity or integration that such people exhibit. Forensic psychiatrists who study criminals with antisocial character traits have carefully examined the personal autobiographical narratives given by such people in structured interviews. These studies have demonstrated that when sociopaths recount their personal life story, their memories and personal histories are fragmented, inconsistent, and full of internal contradictions. In other words, their interior life, particularly their personal narrative history, is incoherent. These cases provide vivid and extreme examples of how ignoring one’s conscience (or never developing one’s conscience in the first place) results in profound inner chaos.

We can contrast this disintegrated person with the person of moral integrity – the person who develops and follows a well-formed conscience. A healthy individual’s interior life is characterized by unity and consistency. The word “integrity,” frequently employed to designate a person of sound character, literally means that one is complete, whole, unbroken, and undivided. Philosophical investigations confirm and complement this clinical insight. Crosby, whom I cited above, describes the profound connection between conscience and psychological integrity:

I know that in deciding whether or not to act in accordance with the dictate of my conscience I will at the same time decide about myself, I will dispose over myself. If I act as my conscience admonishes me, I am aware of affirming myself in a certain way, of willing my deepest human integrity. And if I act against my conscience I am aware of radically compromising myself. That is why persons who are caught up in a moral crisis will sometimes speak as if what binds them to do the right thing is not so much the good that they act to preserve, but rather the integrity of themselves – as if they would split apart as persons by acting against their conscience.(10)

The sociopath who cannot give a coherent or consistent personal narrative account of his acts or experiences is literally split apart – indeed, fragmented into many pieces – in precisely the fashion described here. Crosby goes on to describe how the determination of oneself in conscience is a determination from within – an incommunicable act that springs from the integrity of one’s interior life; it is a determination that I can exercise only toward myself and not toward another. “Thus,” he writes, “the term conscience is often used to mean the innermost center, the inner sanctuary, of the human person.” (11) Sociopaths seem to lack such a center: their inner sanctuary seems inaccessible, or perhaps nonexistent.

The psychological sciences, no matter how refined our techniques become, can no more plumb the depths of this inner sanctuary of a person than a stethoscope can measure one’s imagination. However, these sciences can shed light on the effects of following (or not following, as the case may be) one’s conscience, by examining the unity and integrity (or disunity and disintegration) of one’s psychological life that issues forth from one’s repeated volitional acts. A person’s habitual moral (or immoral) acts will shape that person in such a way that the effects can often be observed, described, and measured externally.

Only a person who is inwardly constituted by repeated acts in accordance with conscience will truly possess the inner unity of life, and the requisite virtues, to be called free. The theme of freedom brings us to the final aspect of sociopathy to be examined here.

Conscience and freedom

As a take off point, I cite a contemporary study of sociopaths by psychologist Robert Hare. In his book, Without Conscience: the Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, (12) he claims rather implausibly that the sociopathic person actually has more freedom than the rest of us. Hare’s argument runs as follows: the choices of a normal person’s freedom are limited by their conscience, while the sociopath knows no such constraining limits upon his freedom. On this account, it is normal people who have a so-called “freedom deficit”.

This rather flimsy argument rests upon a profoundly confused notion of freedom and its relationship to conscience, and yet it is a confusion than runs rampant today. The reason his conclusion appears (and in fact is) so implausible is that his argument relies on a flawed understanding of freedom. For Hare, as for so many contemporary psychologists, freedom (if it exists at all) is merely the raw power of choice. I would like to contrast this with a notion of freedom as the ability to pursue the good. (13) Hare’s book, and many other examples could be cited, provides evidence of the degree to which voluntarist philosophical notions can creep into the psychological and social sciences and influence the interpretation of clinical and research data, particularly when we are dealing with phenomena or behavior related to the moral order.

We can contrast Hare’s false freedom of indifference with a beautiful account of true freedom for excellence, provided by the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart in his insightful essay, “Freedom and Decency”. Allow me conclude this section by quoting Hart at some length on the topic of freedom:

To be fully free is to be joined to that end for which our natures were originally framed, and for which – in the deepest reaches of our souls – we ceaselessly yearn. And whatever separates us from that end – even if it be our own power of choice within us – is a form of bondage. We are free not because we can choose, but only when we have chosen well. And to choose well we must ever more clearly see the “sun of the Good” (to employ the lovely Platonic metaphor), and yet to see more clearly we must choose well; and the more we are emancipated from illusion and caprice, the more our will is informed by and responds to the Good, the more perfect our vision becomes, and the less there is really to choose. The consummation for which we should long, if we are wise, is that ultimately we shall, in St. Augustine’s language, achieve not only the liberty enjoyed by Adam and Eve – who were merely “able not to sin” – but the truest freedom of all, that of being entirely “unable to sin”, because God’s will works perfectly in ours.(14)

The problem of sin and the limits of the psychological sciences

Freedom as the inability to sin.

Guercino: Guercino Christ and the Woman of Samaria (1647 ) This mention of sin brings me to my closing remarks. Regarding questions of conscience, the psychological and medical sciences clearly have their limits. I want to conclude with a few words on what is perhaps the most significant limit. The language of therapy – of psychiatry and clinical psychology – has often replaced the language of morality and religion in the modern world. Philip Rieff dubbed this, “the triumph of the therapeutic.” But a therapeutic approach to human problems – helpful as it sometimes is – has its limitations. Therapy or medicine cannot cure our deepest disorder, which is the problem of guilt, the problem of sin.

There is a prevalent denial of sin today, a denial often amplified by the triumph of a therapeutic mentality. Rather than liberating us from the guilt of sin by keeping the conscience in a state of invincible ignorance, such widespread denial only serves to augment our anguish and unhappiness. To put it plainly, the therapeutic mentality has often served to obscure, rather than illuminate, the precepts of the natural law written on every human heart.

And so I conclude by turning from psychology to literature – specifically, to drama, which has plumbed the depths of the human psyche more profoundly than any clinician or scientific researcher. T.S. Eliot explored the psychology of conscience in his play, The Cocktail Party.(15) One character, a young woman named Celia Copleston, is having an affair with a married man. When she suddenly realizes emptiness of this relationship, her life is shaken profoundly. One could say that beneath the rubble of her culturally-influenced character deformations, her conscience still operated – veiled and disguised, yet not quiescent. Like many people today, in her distress she turns to physician for advice. There’s something not quite right, she tells him:

“I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me –
Because, if there isn’t, there’s something wrong
Or at least, very different from what it seemed to be,
With the world itself – and that’s so much more frightening!
That would be terrible. So I’d rather believe
There is something wrong with me, that could be put right.”

She tries to name her disorder. It is not simply that she has violated some norm, but that she has failed in something more personal and perhaps more relational. She has an inchoate sense that she has fallen short in regards to something (or someone) outside of her self. These dim intuitions seem to run contrary to the conventional bourgeois ideas and values she was raised with and taught to embrace. And yet, beneath her internalized social conventions, there is a persistent anamnesis – a remembrance or recollection of something or someone else that calls to her. Finally, after floundering, she comes up with the only diagnosis she can think of to explain her symptoms:

Celia: “It sounds ridiculous—but the only word for it
That I can find, is a sense of sin.”
Doctor: “You suffer from a sense of sin, Miss Copleston? That is most unusual.”
Celia: “It seemed to me abnormal…
My bringing up was pretty conventional –
I had always been taught to disbelieve in sin.
Oh, I don’t mean that it was never mentioned!
But anything wrong from our point of view,
Was either bad form, or was psychological.
… And yet I can’t find any other word for it.
It must be some kind of hallucination;
Yet, at the same time, I’m frightened by the fear
That it might be more real than anything I believed in.”
Doctor: “What is more real than anything you believed in?”
Celia: “It’s not the feeling of anything I’ve ever done,
Which I might get away from, or of anything in me I could get rid of –
but of emptiness, of failure
Towards someone, or something, outside of myself;
And I feel I must… atone – is that the word?
Can you treat a patient for such a state of mind?”

The answer of course is no. Freud himself recognized these limits, when he said, “It would be absurd for me to say to a patient, ‘I forgive you your sins’.” The psychotherapist has no power to do this.

According to its Greek root, the word “psychiatrist” literally means, “doctor of the soul”. And yet, the psychiatrist has no cure for this greatest of all psychological maladies – the problem of sin. If he is astute, he can perhaps define and describe guilt; but he can in no way cure the guilty conscience. All of our human attempts to do so, whether by psychological defense strategies, medical ministrations, or therapeutic techniques, ultimately prove insufficient. But we need not despair. For our own failures suggest to us what faith has already revealed: that, in the last analysis, there is only one true and effective Doctor of the soul.

Article by: Dr Aaron Kheriaty is assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine, and director of the university's Psychiatry and Spirituality Forum. He can be contacted at akheriat@uci.edu

Footnotes:
1. Crosby, John F, The Selfhood of the Human Person. Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1996, p. 211.
2. Op. Cit.
3. The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Harper & Row, New York: 1966, p. 25.
4. “Depersonification/Dehumanization: A syndrome of neglect in victimization of others. An exploration based on case studies.” Andre Novac, MD. (This is an unpublished paper provided me by the author.)
5. This is not to say, of course, that all neuroses or mental suffering is the result of a guilty conscience – the causes and contributions to mental illness are many and complex, and most typically not the fault of the suffering subject.
6. Beyond Good and Evil
7. Cf. Joseph Pieper, The Concept of Sin. South Bend: ST. Augustine’s Press, 2001, chapter 7
8. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux,1983. These are two of the “subtitles” of the book.
9. On Conscience. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007.
10. Crosby, John F, The Selfhood of the Human Person. Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1996, p. 88.
11. Ibid., p. 89. Cf. Vatican II’s formulation: “His conscience is man’s most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.” (Gaudium et spes, n. 16)
12. Guilford Press, 1999.
13. This is a false freedom of indifference, not a true freedom for excellence. Cf. Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, Part III, Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1995.
14. In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009.
15. Orlando: Harcourt, 1950.

Easter is always about dying and rising

2010-04-07T03:38:00.004+02:00

The Resurrection, 1596-1600Easter is always about death and resurrection – and down the centuries countless people must have applied its message to their own lives, their own circumstances.

I have a special and poignant memory of this. When my dear father was dying, it was the season of Lent. Daily, we gathered at the hospital to be with him. Initially, we hoped that he might recover from the respiratory infection that had felled him – and indeed on Laetare Sunday, traditionally the day when the church takes a break from Lenten penance and looks ahead to Easter and rejoices, he was a little better and was even able to sit up, and recognise us. But it was not to be: the illness was overwhelming and he died as Lent was drawing to its close. We had all been able to be with him, and although this was a dreadfully sad time – we all loved him dearly, he was quite simply the best of fathers – somehow there was a peace and unity among us all that robbed those days of any horror and gave them instead tranquillity and sanctity. I cannot and will not reveal the sacredness of such a time in detail – but will only say that praying around my father’s bed, and accompanying him all through that time was something that will always remain with me.

The funeral was in Holy Week. We chose the inscription for his grave: “The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God.” Good Friday had a deeper meaning than ever that year. The house was filled with cards and kind messages – we put these up along the mantle piece and shelves, tangible evidence of the kindness and thoughts of so many friends. The young grandchildren spent the day making two big beautiful cards, working with craft paper and tissue and crayons and paints quietly and busily in the kitchen.

On Easter Sunday, by common consent it was decreed that the message would be solely that of Resurrection: symbolically the cards of condolence were taken down (though not destroyed – they were cherished and re-read many times) and just the two big cards from the grandchildren dominated the main room with their huge golden cross, and a great Resurrection message, the glorious news of Easter. With banks of flowers – and the promise of the usual chocolate eggs for children, and a very special time of family togetherness, it was an Easter Sunday that is etched in my memory. We did all the things we had always done – church, of course, and a big Easter lunch, and then egg-rolling and a country walk. A loved face was missing, and always would be from now on, but the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God – and the Resurrection shows us the fullness of the truth of that promise.

That was all some years ago. Today, I’m approaching another Easter. My father’s grandchildren are all grown-up now, and there are great-grandchildren who will be romping around and hunting for eggs and having fun. And all of us in the middle generation are edging inexorably closer to our own long-term destiny. The message of death and resurrection still holds its hope and its joy and consolation – and as the years go by it all gets more important and more serious.

As a Catholic journalist, I have found the last part of this year’s Lent almost unbearable. It has been horrible to see the vile and unrelenting attacks on the pope and the church – unrelenting and inaccurate. What began as legitimate outrage at the discovery of yet more sexual abuse of children by clergy dating back several decades became an odyssey of bizarre denunciations of the one man who had done more than anyone to cleanse the church of such filth. Distortions and outright untruths began to dominate the media. I woke every morning to the grim thought, “What will it be today?”, and every day was a bit worse than I had expected.

One gives up treats in Lent – snacks, chocolate, sticky cakes. For the first time ever, I had no problem with that this year. I couldn’t eat, and everything felt weird. The saga is not over yet: as I write this, the climax of Holy Week and Easter approaches. I do not know what further attacks there will be on the pope, nor how the media will handle his usual Easter message.

Pope Benedict visits Britain in September – presumably there will be more attacks then. We will need the message of Lent and Easter to sustain us. As I learned years ago, Easter joy is not an easy thing – it isn’t superficial. It does not mean that everything just works out all right, that every problem is resolved. As my mother learned at my father’s death – as we all learned – the truth of the Christian faith and in particular its glorious Resurrection message is deep and true and real. But it does not guarantee a superficial beaming smile that coasts you through all that is to follow. It is much richer than that, much more important, much more complicated. Christ showed Thomas the wounds – and they were deep – in his hands and side.

The Easter message has sustained the church and all Christian people for two thousand years. It will reach its great fulfilment only when Christ comes again. Until that time, we all struggle on, sustained by its hope and transformed by the inner peace it offers. No one can take this from us, and the sneers of atheists, the attacks of the disaffected, the hatred of those who despise church teachings, the sufferings of those hurt by people within the church who have besmirched the latter’s good name...none of this can alter it, all can be transformed by it.

When I was a small child, Good Friday meant hot cross buns, fish at lunchtime, and a vaguely solemn air with grown-ups going to church. Easter meant chocolate galore and new dresses and a delicious cake and tea with the grandparents. Things are different now: but all the intervening years and all the years ahead are part of that process of maturity, often painful, that leads to the great and final culmination. As with the life of an individual, so with the life of the church – accompanied by Christ, walking in faith, towards the final climax which is all in God’s hands.

By: Joanna Bogle writes from London

You’re teaching my child what?

2009-10-07T05:07:00.001+02:00

A psychatrist exposes the harm done to children in the name of sex education.

The following is an interview with Miriam Grossman, MD, author of the recently-released You’re teaching my child what? A physician exposes the lies of sex education and how they harm your child. The interview was conducted by Peter Jon Mitchell, Research Analyst, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada and is published here at Mercatornet with permission.

IMFC: What was your motivation for this new book?

Miriam Grossman: Frankly, I wrote it because I was fed up. As you know, I worked for twelve years as a psychiatrist for students at the UCLA campus here in California. During that time, thousands of kids came through my office. I was alarmed at how many of them had sexually transmitted infections and concerned about students, mostly young women, whose sexual lifestyle placed them at risk for disease, emotional distress and even infertility later in life. I was frustrated to see patient after patient in similar situations, yet my hands were tied. There wasn’t much I could do for them. These were young people who were otherwise well informed and proactive about their health. They were careful about what they ate, they exercised, avoided tobacco, and so on. But in this one area, in their sexual behaviour, they took alarming risks, and that was perplexing. I began to question these students carefully, and I examined how campus health and counselling centers approach sexual health issues. Those findings were discussed in my book Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Harms Every Student.

This new project was an extension of that. I went deeper into the field of sex education, looking at exactly what kids are taught, and at the history of sex education in the United States. I went online and explored the websites, books, pamphlets and videos created for kids and young adults. What I discovered was deeply disturbing, and that’s what this book is about.

IMFC: In the book you argue that sex educators and activists dismiss the fundamentals of child development, and omit critical findings of neurobiology, gynaecology and infectious disease. You suggest this has profound consequences, particularly for girls. How so?

MG: Absolutely. We have a wealth of new science that’s omitted from sex ed. For example, in the past decade our understanding of the teen brain, and how it reasons and makes decisions during moments of high stimulation has grown tremendously. We didn’t know until recently that the brain area that is responsible for making rational, thought-out decisions, the area that considers the pros and cons and consequences of decisions, is immature in teens. The circuits aren’t complete; the wiring is unfinished. Sex educators insist that, like adults, teens are capable of making responsible decisions, they just lack information about sexuality and access to contraceptives. So the way to fight sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancies, these authorities argue, is to provide teens with information and contraceptives, and teach them skills like how to say “no” and how to put on a condom. But current neuropsychological research does not support this stance. We know now that teens’ poor decisions are likely due not to lack of information, but to lack of judgement. And there is only one thing that will bring that: time.

Another example of critical information omitted from sex ed: a girl’s biological vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections. The cervix of teen girls is covered by a layer that is only one cell thick. That area is easily penetrated by the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer. (The human papillomavirus is the STI we now have a vaccination against, and that’s another controversial issue.) With time, the surface is covered by cells that are 30 to 40 layers thick, and is therefore much more difficult to infect. Girls need to understand this from an early age. We have dramatic images [of the immature cervix] that we must show girls so they can grasp the importance of delaying sexual behaviour. These kids must be informed that putting all questions of morality aside, if they are sexually active at a young age, they are at risk for infections that could impact their physical and emotional well-being over the course of their lives.

A third point is kids aren’t told that oral sex is associated with cancers of the throat. Needless to say this is important, and indeed life-saving, information yet it is withheld from kids, and that is the height of irresponsibility. One of the points I make in the book is organizations such as Planned Parenthood and SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US) claim to be providing up-to-date, medically-accurate information. But they do nothing of the sort.

Instead, these organizations teach kids that they are “sexual” from cradle to grave, that adolescence is the natural time to explore sexuality and that kids have the right to express their sexuality in whatever manner they choose. This message promotes sexual freedom, not sexual health. This is ideology, not science. When sexual freedom is the priority, sexual health suffers. And indeed, the statistics in the US on sexually transmitted infections, HIV, teen pregnancy, and abortion are mind numbing.

IMFC: Where do these organizations place the role of parents in their ideology? What are they saying to kids about parents?

MG: This is another disturbing feature of the sex ed fiasco. I discovered a duplicity exists. When speaking to the media, and in their material for parents, sex educators state that sex education should start at home and that parents should be the primary sex educators of children. But in material directed at kids the message is altogether different. Here’s what SIECUS says in an online booklet for kids called All About Sex. It opens with eight pages on sexual rights: “Every human being has basic rights. Still, adults may say and do things that make young people feel like they don’t have rights. It’s important for you to know your rights so you can stand up for yourself when necessary.” Then a bit later: “You have the right to decide how to express your sexuality at every point in your life. You can choose if and how to express your sexuality.”

Ninety per cent of parents want their kids to delay sexual behaviour, and they expect sex educators to enforce that message. Organizations like SIECUS promise to do so, but they don’t. All About Sex is a good example of what really goes on. The goal is for the young person to realize that, sure, adults may have their opinions, but kids of all ages have the right to their own ideas about sexuality, as well as the right to behave in any way they like. Nowhere in this pamphlet are kids told: we urge you to delay sexual behaviour because that’s the healthiest choice.

IMFC: The book will be an eye opener for parents. What can concerned parents do?

MG: The situation is sobering but my overall message is positive. The good news is that all these sexual health problems are 100 per cent avoidable. And there is so much parents can do to protect their kids. We know that young people are profoundly influenced by their parents, the messages they get from their parents, their perceptions of what their parents believe in, their parents’ values, and what their parents’ expectations are. There are many studies that I go through in the book that demonstrate that a parenting style of being warm and supportive and yet having high expectations and firm rules has profound influence on children and teens and the decisions they make. Obviously parents need to be informed. They need the information in this book; they are not going to find it anywhere else. I’m a medical doctor and I scoured the literature for the latest on sexually transmitted infections, how girls are more vulnerable emotionally and physically than boys, what kids are told about same-sex attraction, gender identity, and many other topics. My book is not politically correct, but it is medically accurate. I explain biological truths that are not discussed elsewhere. For example, kids are being told that they can be male, female or something else; that there are more than two genders and that it is natural to question who you are at any time in your life. This is madness. It’s not only medically inaccurate, it confuses our kids and it leads them into a minefield of emotional and physical hazards.

IMFC: What would you say to government policy makers?

MG: They must find the courage to challenge the status quo. People need to stand up, be politically incorrect, and acknowledge the truth of biology. Certain groups will object, because what is seen under the microscope and on brain scans contradicts their vision. It’s going to take that courage to change policy, to have an extreme makeover of our approach to sex education. You see, sex educators have institutionalized 20th century theories and social agendas, but hard science from this century completely discredits those theories and agendas. Sex education needs to come into the 21st century and leave behind ideas that are remnants of the sexual revolution and feminism.

Posted by: Miriam Grossman

tags : adolescence, parenting, sex education

A marriage proposal

2009-10-07T05:02:00.001+02:00

Leading marriage scholars have come up with an index for monitoring the health of marriage in society.

Spring has sprung in the southern hemisphere and the wedding season is under way. A billboard in my city advertises a wedding “expo”, a sign of the trend that has turned a simple but dignified community event into a commercial extravaganza of daunting proportions. A young couple from abroad told me that it would cost at least forty thousand pounds to get married back home. That was one reason, apparently, why they had been cohabiting for six years.

Weddings are big, yes, but there are fewer of them, they happen later and in circumstances that often lead to marital conflict, divorce, and misery for any children of the union. The bad statistics are aired from time to time, governments step in to limit the damage, and things go on much as they did before. It is true that many community groups and, increasingly, scholars and even a few politicians voice concern about the state of marriage, but there is no agreed way of monitoring its health -- nothing like, for instance, the economic indicators that keep the state of the economy constantly before our eyes, so that we know every little rise or fall in GDP and, therefore, in our collective fortunes.

It is precisely this lack that one of the leading marriage research and advocacy institutions in the United States proposes to rectify. This week the Institute for American Values, together with the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting, has launched The Marriage Index, a set of five key indicators that can be used to monitor the health of American -- and, of course, other -- marriages. As IAV scholar David Blankenhorn and colleagues authors point out, “no social progress is possible without widely shared, trackable goals”, and, “for any society that cares about its future, leading marriage indicators are as important as leading economic indicators”.

What are these indicators? Taking the baseline year as 1970, they look, decade by decade until 2008, at the percentage of adults married; happiness in marriage; the percentage of first marriages intact; the percentage of births to married parents; and the percentage of children living with their own married parents. There are charts on the institute’s website setting these figures out clearly in grid form for both the general and African American populations. Overall they show that the health of marriage in the US sits at 60.3 per cent -- better than many countries, no doubt, but notably worse than four decades ago and no cause for complacency.

Percentage of adults married. The age range here is from 20 to 54 years, to take account of (a) the large number of non-marital unions amongst the youngest age group and (b) the distortions that would arise from including the population older than 54 and its increasing proportion of widows. The marriage trend, as we know, is down. In 1970, 78.6 per cent of adults were married; in 2008 the figure had dropped to 57.2. Cohabitation, by contrast, has grown enormously: from 439,000 couples in 1960 to 6.4 million in 2007.

Married persons “very happy” with their marriage. Theoretically, the easy access to divorce that has existed for several decades should mean that those who are married are, on average, happier. But this is not the case; surveys show a moderate but significant decline in marital quality between 1970 and 2000. Ironically, this is partly to do with divorce -- the ideal of permanence has declined, and with it a sense of security in marriage.

Marriages intact. The decline here has also been marked -- from 77.4 per cent of first marriages intact in 1970 to just under 60 per cent in 2000. The good news is that there has been a slight increase in marital stability since then -- a sign that “we can renew marriage as lifelong commitment,” say the authors of the index.

Births to married parents. In 1970, 89.3 per cent of children were born to married parents, while today the figure is 60.3 -- a dramatic decline. More children are born into cohabiting or single-parent homes.

Children living with their own married parents. While the percentage of children living with their biological or adoptive mother and father has dropped since 1970 (from 68.7 to 61.0 in 2007) this trend has also levelled off over the past decade -- another encouraging sign.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags : cohabitation, divorce, marriage

Raining on their parade

2009-10-07T04:56:00.001+02:00

Who is responsible for China's infamous one-child policy? Surprisingly, it is not 60 years of Communist rule.

Today China celebrates the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule. The Party is highlighting the nation’s huge and powerful military, its international influence, its towering role in the world economy, and its growing prosperity, at least in the large coastal cities. It has left behind the barbarities of Mao Tse-tung and has become a "civilized", "harmonious", "prosperous" and "democratic" country.

But one barbarity persists: the one-child policy. On September 25, 1980, the Communist Party announced that, with very few exceptions, couples were permitted to have only one child. Party officials insisted that the population had to be capped at 1.2 billion by the year 2000.

This policy has not only blackened China’s reputation as a human-rights abuser. It also is leading to economic and social disaster. China’s population is ageing so rapidly that care for the elderly will impose a crushing burden on its economy. And because Chinese have a traditional preference for sons, infant girls are often aborted or murdered, which means that as many as 15 percent of Chinese men will never find wives.

How was this insane idea endorsed by the government of the world’s largest nation?

This is the question raised by anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh in her valuable book Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China. Greenhalgh reads and speaks Chinese and used to work for a US-based NGO which promotes birth control, the Population Council. With this background, she won the confidence of many high-ranking government officials involved in forging the policy. Her detective work yielded a surprising answer.

Article by: Michael Cook

tags : China, one-child policy, population control

Russia looks to its religious culture

2009-10-07T04:53:00.001+02:00

The Orthodox Church has won its battle to make religious education compulsory in schools, but secularists have won concessions too.

Patriarch Kirill's public triumph in Ukraine in July was preceded with another achievement no less important for the Russian Orthodox Church. This took place in the much more intimate atmosphere of the presidential residence in Barvikha, in the Moscow Oblast. There Dmitry Medvedev met with the leaders of Russia's traditional religions, and responded to two appeals from them.

He agreed that the history and culture of the country's main religions should be included in the core school curriculum. He also agreed that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation should have military priests.

Patriarch Kirill was the first to sign both documents. The Muslim and Jewish religious communities supported the Orthodox position, despite previous objections from some muftis and rabbis.

What will this decision mean in practice for schools? Twice a week from the spring of next year, pupils in the fourth and fifth classes will study one of three new subjects. They and their parents will be able to choose between the religious culture of one religion (Orthodox, Islam, Judaism or Buddhism), the history and cultural background of the world's great religions, or the foundations of secular ethics. It will be compulsory for pupils to choose one of these three modules.

To start with, it will be introduced in 18 regions in six of the seven federal regions of Russia. The three-year experiment will be introduced in 12,000 Russian schools, 20,000 classes, 256,000 children and 44,000 teachers, according to the Ministry for Education and Science. From 2012, the new modules will be introduced to all Russian schools.

These three modules, "Foundations of religious culture", "Foundations of history and culture of world religions" and "Foundations of secular ethics",- will be taught by teachers who have taken a special training course, though most of them will probably have had a secular education. The rector of Moscow's State University V.A. Sadovnichy has already expressed a desire to put the resources of the country's leading university behind the re-training of these specialists. But it is clear that at first the main problem will be a serious lack of qualified teaching staff.

The contents of the textbooks for these modules is also likely to prompt public debate. Consequently, the Church has already declared its readiness to work with the Ministry of Education and Science, the Russian Academy of Education, and a number of other institutes in order to inspect the new textbooks and study materials. This has already been announced by the head of the Synodal Department for Religious Education, Bishop Zaraisky Merkury.

Article by: Viktor Malukhin

tags : Orthodox Church, religious education, Russia

Parents wonder if cancer jabs are worth the risk

2009-10-07T04:47:00.001+02:00

Debate over vaccinating girls against the human papillomavirus to prevent cervical cancer is running hot in Britain after a 14-year-old schoolgirl died and an older teen developed epileptic seizures and brain damage following the jabs.

A couple of weeks ago the UK’s drug safety watchdog, the Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), reported that over 2000 individuals had suffered adverse reactions, some more than once, giving a total of 4602 suspected reactions to the vaccine Cervarix. They ranged from mild (rashes, pain in the arm, and allergies) to serious (convulsions, eye rolling, muscle spasms, seizures and hyperventilation). A similar report about Gardasil was published in the United States in August.

Anti-vaccine groups are warning parents off the Cervarix programme, which has been rolled out through schools (on a voluntary basis) starting in April last year, while professionals and cancer charities are urging people to continue. The latter argue that, given the millions of girls and young women vaccinated so far, serious reactions are extremely rare and are far outweighed by the benefits of reducing the risk of developing cervical cancer from the now very widespread and sexually transmitted HPV.

Drug companies manufacturing and promoting the vaccine (and profiting handsomely from it) are naturally rejecting the assumption that it caused particular reactions until there is proof. They -- and public health officials -- say that 14-year-old Natalie Morton most likely had “a serious underlying medical condition” that caused her death. The chaplain at the Anglican school she attended said there was nothing on her file to indicate that she suffered from epilepsy or any health problem.

Here is how one public health number cruncher sees it:

Even if the girl’s death proves to be a consequence of the vaccination, and it is still a big ‘if’, only one death would be prevented for every 500,000 girls who decided not to be vaccinated – albeit at the cost of 700 deaths to cervical cancer.

That is no comfort to her bereaved parents, however, or the parents who now have brain damaged daughter to look after. And, really, we have to come back to the truth that the HPV and cervical cancer epidemics -- like AIDS -- are basically very preventable with a change in behaviour. But rolling back the sexually permissive society seems to be the last thing on the minds of health authorities.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: cervical cancer, HPV, vaccination

Working mums have less healthy kids

2009-10-07T04:45:00.001+02:00

Last night on New Zealand television the British female lead of the live show Mamma Mia! joked about how she went to work to get away from her four young children -- a firstborn plus triplets who are on tour with her. Great for her, but how are the kids doing?

Research just published in her homeland suggests that the children of working mothers are less healthy and are more likely to have poor dietary habits and a more sedentary lifestyle. They eat less fruit and vegetables, watch more television and consume more crisps and fizzy drink than the children of mothers who stay at home.

This is bad news for British authorities, whose crowded social agenda includes fighting childhood obesity and getting women to return to work. It looks as though the two goals are at loggerheads. Flexible working arrangements for mothers in full-time work seem to make no difference, and children of part-time working mums were still not as healthy as those whose mothers stayed home. Variables such as socio-economic background, single parenthood and household income were taken into account in the results, which are based on 12,000 British children born between 2000 and 2002.

Researchers on the latest paper concluded that with approximately 60 per cent of British women with a child aged 5 or younger in employment, more support was needed. “For many families the only parent or both parents are working. This may limit parents’ capacity to provide their children with healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity,” they said. “Policies and programmes are needed to help support parents and create a health-promoting environment.”

To say nothing of emotional health and character development.

Nobody, of course, is rushing to say that mothers of young children should not go out to work. The authors of the study suggest that the quality if childcare needs looking at; they are not sure whether the link they found was associated with what the kids did while the mother was at work, or with time pressure on parents when they are back in the home -- that is, whether it’s the staff at the daycare centre or the grandparents allowing bad habits, or the parents themselves being too busy and exhausted to insist on good habits.

All the same they hint that there may be something wrong at policy level:

“What policymakers need to understand is that what might be a solution to some issues may create others. There are upsides and downsides.”

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: children's health, working mothers

China’s stolen babies

2009-10-07T04:40:00.001+02:00

Girl babies adopted by American and other overseas couples from orphanages in China in recent years may have been forcibly taken from their parents, not abandoned, as the adoptive parents were told. The Los Angeles Times reports at length on a scandal that can be laid at the door of China’s inhuman population control policy and corrupt local family planning officials.

It seems that many couples in China have been left distraught by what amounts to baby trafficking, and couples who have adopted the babies are left wondering whether their little girl was snatched from a sobbing mother or tricked away from a bewildered father or grandparent.

Since the early 1990s, says the LA Times, more than 80,000 Chinese children have been adopted abroad, the majority to the US. Many, perhaps, were abandoned, but some parents are coming forward to report that they were coerced to give up an unauthorised baby by government officials motivated by the $US3000 per child that adoptive parents pay orphanages.

The Times puts its finger on the basic problem:

The problem is rooted in China's population controls, which limit most families to one child, two if they live in the countryside and the first is a girl. Each town has a family planning office, usually staffed by loyal Communist Party cadres who have broad powers to order abortions and sterilizations. People who have additional babies can be fined up to six times their annual income -- fines euphemistically called "social service expenditures," which are an important source of revenue for local government in rural areas.

Where people are too poor to pay the fine, officials often punish them by ransacking their homes or confiscating cows and pigs. That’s how it was for the residents of Tianxi, a village in the mountains near Zhenyuan, during the 1980s and 1990s.

Then, in 2003, things changed. The year after the Social Welfare Institute in Zhenyuan was approved to participate in the burgeoning foreign adoption program, family planning officials stopped confiscating farm animals. They started taking babies instead.

The villagers, by the way, “resent the suggestion by some that they don't love their daughters and readily abandon them.

"People around here don't dump their kids. They don't sell their kids. Boy or girl, they're our flesh and blood," said Li Zeji, 32, a farmer who says his third daughter was taken in 2004.

In Gaoping, a small town in Hunan province, officials have used family planning laws to confiscate even first-born children on the ground that a couple did not meet all the requirements. These include having a birth permit before conceiving, the woman being at least 20 and the man 24, and having a marriage certificate -- itself dependent on each partner having a proper residency permit.

The officials, of course, deny forcibly taking children:

"It's a lie that they took babies away without their parents' permission. That's impossible," said Peng Qiuping, a party official and propaganda chief for Zhenyuan. "These parents agreed that the children should be put up for adoption. They understood that they were greedy and had more children than they could afford."

"They're better off with their adoptive parents than their birth parents," argued Wu Benhua, director of Zhenyuan's civil affairs bureau.

They claim the money all goes to improve conditions in the orphanages, but theTimes could not verify that, noting that “most of the babies had been housed with families who were paid only $30 a month for their services, according to one foster parent.”

Some people blame international adoption itself, saying that the money involved creates the opportunity for abuse. With China there are obviously reasons to be extra careful -- the lack of freedom for a couple to found and raise a family, and the absence of a free press that might thoroughly investigate the whole question of “abandonment” of baby girls.

Since most of those adopted overseas go to the US, it is certainly an issue for the government there to investigate and put the heat on Beijing if necessary.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags : adoption, China, one-child policy, trafficking,

Stand Up and Pray: The Blaspheming of the Sacred Must End - Catholic Online

2009-10-04T09:13:00.001+02:00

Stand Up and Pray: The Blaspheming of the Sacred Must End - Catholic Online

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Raising boys for fun and profit

2009-09-07T05:31:00.001+02:00

There are things parents can do to help their sons make the leap from stumbling boyhood to manhood.

Okay, I was kidding about the fun. And, I was lying about the profit. There are, however, a few things parents can do to help their sons make the leap from stumbling boyhood to manhood.

In a recent article I commented on the numerous reports of boys’ poor academic and employment performance compared with girls, and the growing concern that so many young males are trapped in what appears to be a permanent adolescent world of porn, sports and video games. Somehow, the societal landscape has shifted and the young men who tamed the West and built the nation’s robust economy are now sitting numbly in classrooms and office cubicles. The male needs to achieve, to become independent is not slaked by Fantasy Football and watching American Idol. And while it may be too late for your beer-and-bong addicted brother-in-law, there is much that can be done to save our boys.

First, however, I need to confess my modified adherence to the "Bad Seed" theory. The Bad Seed is a 1950s novel, later a movie, about a child who stops at nothing, even murder, to get her way. While the child of loving and sober parents, she appears as evil incarnate. I bring this up because while I have never encountered an evil child, I’ve known a few smart and loving parents who have borderline monster kids who seem to possess a teflon ability to reject the good influences surrounding them. In their quest for freedom or whatever, they seem to have defined their parents as the enemies they must conquer. While a few of these teenaged fiends have grown up to be self-centred ogres, a surprising number of them in their 20s and 30s make a caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis that is quite astounding. In the meantime, though, their parents have been dragged through various circles of Dante’s Inferno. All of which is to say, there are no universal, guaranteed rules in child raising. Suggestions, yes. Ironclad rules, no.

New baby, new priority

First, then (and it may be an obvious point) raising a child has to be the numero uno priority -- especially in the case of a boy in today’s world. Whether the "package from Heaven" was carefully planned -- or was or an upsetting surprise -- isn’t the issue. When Junior arrives, he (like all his siblings) needs to go to the top of the list. His upbringing must leapfrog over parental career, romance, friendships and, certainly, over sport, recreation and leisure. It is not that these lesser priorities are abandoned, but that they are recast or rearranged in the face of new responsibilities.

In bygone eras, when most moms and pops were farmers or small shop owners, the total training and education of their sons was in their hands and this child-raising priority had real teeth to it. And the incentives were high. Their sons were part of their survival system and they were, de facto, the insurance policy of their old age. The stakes were high for making Junior a loyal and upright guy. In the modern world, parents have outsourced much of the education and training to schools, and camps and professional youth workers. Few children are going to pursue the vocations of their parents. Few parents can help with algebra or compete with their 13-year-olds in computer literacy.

The one area to which the schools and youth workers give a wide berth is moral training. One of the mixed blessings of a democratic and diverse society is that, in principle, "imposing ethical values", let alone a moral compass, is a social no-no. However, in the absence of a strong moral training from home, these "secondary parents" will take over.

Article by: Kevin Ryan
tags : boys, character, parenting, temperament

The spiritual world of children

2009-09-07T05:28:00.001+02:00

News that the spiritual welfare of young children is being neglected somewhere will not surprise anyone, but the evidence adduced by a British researcher produced an eye-catching headline in the London Telegraph. “Angel sightings ‘should not be dismissed’”, it read.

Kate Adams, who lectures at an Anglican university college, interviewed 94 children who believed they had a dream with a religious connection but one third never confided in anyone. Exploring children’s belief in the unseen, Dr Adams was told by a seven-year-old girl that her parents paid no attention when she told them she saw an angel at her bedside every night.

Dr Adams said such testimonies were a saddening indictment of adults’ misunderstanding of children. She was presenting her findings to an educational research conference in the hope of encouraging teachers to take more interest in the spiritual life of children.

(It is one of the charming things about Britain that, despite being the home of atheist poster-boy Richard Dawkins, it still has legislation requiring schools to give religious education and to attend to children’s spiritual development.)

Another study to be presented to the conference, based on interview with 166 trainee teachers at eight English universities, showed that 44 per cent felt their course barely covered spiritual development.

No doubt some Britons would like to see an end to religion in schools, and yet growing numbers of religious (faith) schools are being opened across the country and more students are opting to take senior exams in religious studies.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: children, religion, United Kingdom

Parenting pathways

2009-09-07T05:26:00.001+02:00

If your parents were negative and harsh with you growing up, that’s the way you will be with your kids. And if they were positive and affectionate, well, lucky for your kids. That’s the assumption behind a popular theory of parenting, but researchers who have done long-term studies say it’s wrong.

Parenting styles have their effect much earlier, says David Kerr of Oregon State University, by allowing good or bad behaviour to take hold in adolescence. And this happens in two ways: by modelling good/bad ways of dealing with people, and by monitoring/not monitoring what they learn from other people.

"For instance, if you try to control your child with anger and threats, he learns to deal in this way with peers, teachers, and eventually his own children.

“If you do not track where your child is, others will take over your job of teaching him about the world. But those lessons may involve delinquency and a lifestyle that is not compatible with becoming a positive parent," Kerr pointed out.

So, the “pathway” from one generation to another is not a matter of remembering back to how your parents did it, but through the habits you have already formed. The good news is that it works in a positive sense as well.

"We knew that these negative pathways can be very strong," Kerr said. "What surprised us is how strong positive parenting pathways are as well. Positive parenting is not just the absence of negative influences, but involves taking an active role in a child's life."

The researchers found that children who had parents who monitored their behavior, were consistent with rules and were warm and affectionate were more likely to have close relationships with their peers, be more engaged in school, and have better self-esteem.

"So part of what good parenting does is not only protect you against negative behaviors but instill positive connections with others during adolescence that then impact how you relate with your partner and your own child as an adult," Kerr said

The study, by the way, was done with 206 boys considered at risk for delinquency, from the age of 9 to 33. Whatever those risks were (and the full study is to be published in the journal Developmental Psychology this month) they were clearly less critical than what the parents actually did. And that seems to be another argument for parent education.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: adolescence, habits, parenting

The UN’s sex-ed plan for kids

2009-09-07T05:23:00.001+02:00

Some years ago I saw a cartoon whose subject becomes more real by the day. It showed a Brave-New-Wold nursery in which newborns were being instructed via a loudspeaker: “Today you will be going home, but before you go, here is your first sex education lesson...” I was reminded of it by a Fox News report of a new universal sex-ed curriculum from UNESCO.

The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has decided that, “in a world affected by HIV and AIDS”, it is “imperative” to teach children as young as 5 about masturbation as well as “gender roles, stereotypes and gender-based violence”.

By the time they're 9 years old, they'll learn about "positive and negative effects of 'aphrodisiacs," and wrestle with the ideas of "homophobia, transphobia and abuse of power."

At 12, they'll learn the "reasons for" abortions — but they'll already have known about their safety for three years. When they're 15, they'll be exposed to direct "advocacy to promote the right to and access to safe abortion."

Not sure what’s left for 15 to 18-year-olds: maybe they’ll be getting work experience in a clinic.

The scheme, with its surrounding material – including long lists of experts consulted, studies “rigorously reviewed” and footnoted, and various rationalisations -- runs to 98 pages. The authors are Douglas Kirby, the elder statesman of comprehensive sex-ed research and advocacy in the United States, and Nanette Ecker, employed at the time by SIECUS – the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US.

Mark Richmond, director of UNESCO’s Division for the Co-ordination of UN Priorities for Education (wonder how many staff he has...), was asked to justify the curriculum (which it is up to governments to accept or not):

Richmond defended teaching about masturbation as "age-appropriate" because even in early childhood, "children are known to be curious about their bodies." Their lessons, he added, would hopefully help kids "develop a more complex understanding of sexual behaviour" as they grow into adults.

For "complex" read "perverted". One doesn’t like to bash the UN, but really, doesn’t this sort of thing illustrate that it is trying to do far too much and that its brief should be severely curtailed?

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: abortion, AIDS, sex education, United Nations

Calling all monogamous men

2009-09-07T05:16:00.001+02:00

Family scholar Patrick Fagan has come up with an elegant schema contrasting “monogamous” culture with other kinds of sexual culture which he calls, collectively, “polyamorous”. Speaking at the World Congress of Families recently in Amsterdam, he highlighted the gulf that exists between the two cultures in terms of values and practical consequences. And he proposed a solution.

Fagan, who is with the Family Research Council, argued that these cultures can only co-exist in once society if parents in both are given control over the programs that cause conflict: education, adolescent health and sex education.

At present, he said, the polyamorous culture is expanding through its control of these three areas by means of the public bureaucracy, snatching children away from their parents by drawing them into sexual activity. Each time this happens, the polyamorists have won several “victories”:

* The adolescent has been initiated into the polyamorous culture (albeit without knowledge of what is at stake) by having his first sexual experience outside of marriage;

* With the out of wedlock births or abortions that follow they have broken the family before it has started, solidifying the polyamorous stature of the adolescent or young adult;

* And, especially, they have pulled the young person away from participating in the sacred because formerly religious teenagers who begin to engage regularly in sex outside of marriage tend to stop worshipping God.

They -- the polys -- even fight any attempt by monos to defend their kids, through abstinence education, for example, or home schooling. And all this while the poly culture is being subsidised by the mono through tax funded welfare. As Fagan says, it’s simply unjust; the polys should have to pay their own way.

One way to progress in this direction and to make the behavioral bureaucracy to serve both cultures is to give all parents, parents of both cultures, and control over the program money set aside for their children. That is giving parents vouchers, in one form or another for all three program areas

The social welfare safety net will still be in place but the parents (be they monogamous or polyamorous) will choose who holds the net in place for their children.

Fagan admits it will require a huge political effort. And this is where the monogamous men come in. It’s their job, above all, to protect the family, he says.

Monogamy men will be expected to fight for control over is what is his and his family’s just due, what his taxes fund, and what he can use in raising his children: control over the three big programs of childhood education, sex education and adolescent health programs, so that they can be carried out in a way that supports the norms of monogamy culture. In this rearrangement polyamory parents have the same control to do as they wish for their children.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: education, family, men, monogamy,

Ted Kennedy’s ambiguous legacy

2009-08-31T06:07:00.001+02:00

For America’s most famous Catholic, morality and politics had little to do with each other.

Today Massachusetts mourns its Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy. At Dunkin Donuts, the flags are flying at half mast. Boston's famously snarled traffic has come to a standstill because of "Kennedy events". The casket of Camelot's last survivor made a final tour of its shrines – Hyannis Port, his family's summer residence, St Stephen's, his mother’s church in Boston’s North End, and Faneuil Hall, where he had announced his unsuccessful bid for the presidential 1980 nomination. The Massachusetts royal family waved through tinted car windows at the crowds. Thousands passed through the Presidential Library at Harvard dedicated to his brother to view the casket and sign the condolences books.

For Boston, it is a Diana moment.

Edward M. Kennedy died of a brain tumour on Tuesday at the age of 77. He had been in the Senate since he was 30 and stayed there for 47 years, the third longest-serving Senator in American history. Some wits quipped that while most politicians grow up and then enter politics, Kennedys enter politics and grow up later.

But Massachusetts voters doted on Ted Kennedy and patiently gave him time to mature. There was his expulsion from Harvard for cheating; there were rumours about drinking and womanizing; there was Chappaquiddick; there was his 1982 divorce, his 1992 remarriage (after an annulment from the Catholic Church). He was a Kennedy – Joe and Rose's son, Jack and Bobby's brother – and nothing stuck. He had a scare in the 1994 election when he faced Mitt Romney -- and won with only 58 percent of the vote. Other politicians can only dream of that kind of support.

But Ted Kennedy was not a seat-warmer. Politicians from both sides of politics praised him as an accomplished lawmaker. With the years, the lion-maned Bostonian became a consummate deal-broker who worked both sides of the aisle to get what he believed in. In 2001 he worked with President George W. Bush to pass the No Child Left Behind Act. He was a liberal, the very Aslan of American liberalism, a consistent champion of government spending to right wrongs and remedy disadvantage. Health care was the cause of his life, although he died without seeing victory for the Democrats' plans to reform it. In the words of President Obama, “He became not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.”

But one of Ted Kennedy's most important legacies to American politics has hardly been mentioned in the acres of newsprint – how he shaped the debate about faith and politics.

For Ted Kennedy was a Catholic. He had the Massachusetts Catholic vote in his pocket. His mother was a saintly woman. His brother was the first Catholic president. He was married in the Catholic Church, received communion in the Catholic Church, saw a priest before he died, is being buried in the Catholic Church.

But he was a peculiar kind of Catholic. On the one hand, he always supported big-spending social policies for the last, least, lost and most vulnerable. It was his interpretation of Catholic social teaching. On the other hand, he was a strong supporter of abortion and human embryonic stem cell research. There was no ambiguity about this. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood gave Kennedy ratings of 100 percent as a champion of abortion rights. He ignored criticism from the bishops of his Church.

Through his role as the spokesman for America's leading Catholic family, Teddy helped to entrench the feeling that Catholicism is a tribal loyalty, not a divine light shining on religious and human truths. The doctrine of separation of Church and State meant that morality and politics had little to do with each other. In fact, political expediency should trump moral truths.

For politicians anywhere, this is a disastrous starting point for debate. It means that it is impossible for them to argue rationally about moral positions. On the issue of abortion, for instance, the Catholic bishops' opposition was based less on the Bible than on science, which tells us that the foetus is human. On this issue, at least, Kennedy's self-serving rationalisations turned his politics into expediency and his religion into sentimentality.

“I hope for an America where neither 'fundamentalist' nor 'humanist' will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of goodwill look at life and into their own souls,” he said in an influential 1983 speech at Liberty University before Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Twenty-six years later, President Obama would make a similar speech at Notre Dame University, gracefully acknowledging differences on abortion, and obstinately refusing to change.

Shortly after his death, Mr Obama declared that Ted Kennedy's “ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives.” Including his own. In particular, when he addresses issues like abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage, perhaps the President will be using the dark art of charming without changing which he learned from America's most famous Catholic.

By: Michael Cook is the editor of MercatorNet. He is currently in Boston.

tags : Catholicism, Edward Kennedy, politics, United States

The Democrats after Kennedy

2009-08-31T06:03:00.001+02:00

What Obama must now do is to articulate a clear, distinct course of policy.

The first time I met him, on a boat trip along the coast in Florida at Easter 1962, just before he was manoeuvred into the Senate by family clout, arguably before he had reached the qualifying age, he and his first wife, Joan, were as beautiful as young gods. They were tanned and toned in seersucker, the very image of the American rich on vacation.

The last time I saw him, at a fundraising lunch in Boston in the late 1990s, he was ravaged - face brick-red, boozer's nose and eye, grossly overweight, but still charged with rare charm and formidable energy. This was the image that characterised his later years, until his death on 25 August 2009 at the age of 77.

In a Newsweek article he wrote after he had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, called "The Cause of My Life", Kennedy listed just some of the medical and psychological disasters he and his family had survived, among them the plane crash that broke his back and several ribs, a son's leg amputated for one cancer, and a daughter treated for another.

He might have mentioned a sister's crippling by a (possibly unnecessary) frontal lobotomy, the death of a brother, a sister-in-law and a nephew in separate plane crashes, and the murder of his two brothers.

His point in the article was that he and his family survived in part because of his congressional insurance, in part because of his family's great wealth. He understood that many other Americans less fortunate than him, were wiped out financially by healthcare costs, or simply died miserably for lack of the money to pay for care. That was why, he was saying, healthcare was, of all his liberal causes, the one that meant most to him, and it is true that in his forty-seven years in the Senate reform of the American healthcare system was his absolute top priority.

By: Godfrey Hodgson was director of the Reuters' Foundation Programme at Oxford University

tags : Edward Kennedy, Obama, United States

All shall be poor

2009-08-31T05:59:00.001+02:00

How today’s sexual narcissists insist on propagating their dreary values.

A hot new must-read book making the rounds is Frenchwoman Corinne Maier's No Kids: Forty Good Reasons Not To Have Children. Having read her embarrassingly superficial Maclean's interview and perused the jejune list of what constitutes "reasons" for Maier --kids cut into your "fun," kids are "conformists" --I'll pass on actually reading the book. Yet, because it would seem there was both money and celebrity to be gleaned from time Maier might otherwise have idly frittered away in an afternoon nap, I'm tempted to give the idea a whirl myself.

Since wisdom clearly isn't a prerequisite for success in this genre, but a knack for "shocking" hopelessly retrograde traditionalists is, how's this for a book concept: Forty Reasons Women Should Love the Burka (1--No more pesky skin cancer fears! 17 --Size 2 or 14, who's to know, so goodbye dieting! 31 -- You're out of that whole beauty rat race thing! etc.).

Does this parodic riff exaggerate the inanity of Maier's thesis? Just a tad. I wouldn't normally dignify such lifestyle bumf with a column, but it struck me that the hoopla around this silly book falls into a cultural pattern, according to which the media eagerly aggrandize purveyors of utter banality, as long as they are advocating for the abandonment of demonstrably valuable social norms.

The 19th-century Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem commonsensically pointed out what seems obvious to me: "It's no sin to be poor, but it's no great honour either." The problem is, in this age of self-esteem uber alles, in which all must have prizes, being known as "poor" is no longer acceptable to the, er, poor. Or at least not the evolutionary version of poor -- those bent more on their own pleasure than the producing and raising of society's future citizens: you know, the ones paying for Corinne Maier's Parisian nursing-home bed.

Nowadays, our culturally wealthy live and let live: Since the rise of counterculture in the 1960s, we dull normals -- faithful marrieds privileging the natural law and their children's happiness over our own transient self-indulgence -- have for some time eschewed any labelling of alternate lifestyles as sinful. But our cultural poor aren't satisfied to return the favour and let dull normals live their socially productive lives in peace.

Unlike Marxists, the evolutionary poor don't want the wealthy to share their wealth. They just won't stop pestering them to concede that it is as desirable -- what am I saying? more desirable -- to be poor than to be rich, a theory the rich are disinclined to endorse for excellent reasons.

A case in point: In a long feature article in the July/August issue of Atlantic magazine, by regular columnist Sandra Tsing Loh, "Let's Call the Whole thing Off," one of America's top journalists exploits the failure of her own 20-year marriage (two young kids) as a self-esteem-boosting springboard to the argument that traditional marriage is no longer a good thing for anyone: "Isn't the idea of a lifelong marriage obsolete?" (a question she never asked when happily married).

Adducing validation of her thesis in the disintegration of several friends' marriages, as well as a few cherry-picked theorists urging radical family re-engineering, Loh eventually arrives at "some modest proposals" that include: "marriage as a splitting-the-mortgage-arrangement"; or "some sort of French arrangement" with a gourmet cook or handyman for a husband "and the occasional fun-loving boyfriend the kids never see."

Above all, Loh cautions all women to "avoid marriage" and with it the pain that accompanies "something as demonstrably fleeting as love." Deep stuff, eh?

Why couldn't Loh just divorce and shut up about it? Because she felt lousy. Infidelity (hers) and divorce felt like failure. Her self-esteem took a hit. That didn't compute with a lifetime of assurance that self-esteem is an automatic entitlement, rather than the fruit of earned achievement. Fortunately, as an intellectual with a social podium, she knew just how to get it back: Publicly announce that henceforth marriage failure is actually ... success!

Sholem Aleichem would scratch his head in puzzlement at the modern syllogism Maier and Loh represent: All are entitled to self-esteem; Having children cramped my style/my marriage flopped: Eureka! All must stop having children/must not marry!

Non-reproductive sexuality-pride, infidelity-pride, divorce-pride, anti-children pride: In this topsy-turvy politically correct world, the media have glommed onto the mantra that poor is rich, even if it's only the exhibitionistic, the immature, the egotistical and the narcissistic who keep repeating it.

By: Barbara Kay is a columnist for Canada’s National Post, in which this article was first published.

tags : marriage, narcissism, parenthood

Decline of traditional media

2009-08-31T05:52:00.001+02:00

Should the threat to traditional media from the internet really be a cause for concern?

The new social media -- blogging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube are current faves -- revolutionising the publishing world, for better and worse. Let's look at both the better and the worse in perspective.

The current tsunami of personal choices in communication is slowly draining the profit from mainstream media. These media traditionally depend on huge audiences who all live in one region and mostly want the same things (the football scores, the crossword, the TV Guide, etc.). But that is all available now on the Internet, all around the world, all the time.

One outcome is a death watch on many newspapers, including famous ones like the Boston Globe. As journalist Paul Gillin noted recently: "The newspaper model scales up very well, but it scales down very badly. It costs a newspaper nearly as much to deliver 25,000 copies as it does to deliver 50,000 copies. Readership has been in decline for 30 years and the decline shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile, new competition has sprung up online with a vastly superior cost structure and an interactive format that appeals to the new generation of readers."

Traditional electronic media are not doing any better. As James Lewin observes in "Television audience plummeting as viewers move online" (May 19, 2008), mainstream broadcasters "will have to come to terms with YouTube, video podcasts and other Internet media or they’ll face the same fate as newspapers."

Radio audiences have likewise tanked. Overall, the recent decline of traditional media is remarkable.

Some conservative writers insist that mainstream media's failure is due to its liberal bias. But conservatives have charged that for decades -- to no effect. Another charge is that TV is declining because it is increasingly gross or trivial. True enough, but TV's popularity was unaffected for decades by its experiments with edgy taste.

Let's look more closely at the structure of the system to better understand current steep declines. Due to the low cost of modern media technology, no clear distinction now exists between a mainstream medium and a non-mainstream one, based on either number of viewers or production cost. Today, anyone can put up a video at YouTube at virtually no cost. Popular videos get hundreds of thousands of views. Podcasting and videocasting are also cheap. A blog can be started for free, within minutes, at Blogger. It may get 10 viewers or 10,000, depending on the level of popular interest. But the viewers control that, not the providers.

The key change is that the traditional media professional is no longer a gatekeeper who can systematically admit or deny information. Consumers program their own print, TV, or radio, and download what they want to their personal devices. They are their own editors, their own filmmakers, their own disc jockeys.

Does that mean more bias or less? It's hard to say, given that consumers now manage their own level of bias. So they can hear much more biased news -- or much less. And, as Podcasting News observes, "Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development."

Understandably, traditional media professionals, alarmed by these developments, have constructed a doctrine of "localism" and, in some cases, called for government to bail them out. That probably won't help, just as it wouldn't have helped if the media professionals had called for a government "bailed out" of newspapers when they were threatened by radio, or of radio when it was threatened by TV. Video really did (sort of) kill the radio star, but the radio star certainly won't be revived by government grants.

Still, the news is not all bad. Yes, new media do sometimes kill old media. For example, no one seriously uses pigeon post to send messages today. But few ever thought birdmail was a great system, just the only one available at the time. However, radio did not kill print, and TV did not kill radio. Nor will the Internet kill older media; it will simply change news delivery. Sometimes in a minor way, but sometimes radically.

Media that work, whether radio, TV, newspapers, books, blogs, or any other, thrive when there is a true need. Today's challenge is to persuade the consumer to look at alternatives to their own programming decisions.

By: Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

tags : culture wars, internet, public opinion, social networking

Abstinence, yes, but what about marriage?

2009-08-31T05:48:00.001+02:00

The abstinence-until-marriage movement in the United States has been a positive and courageous response to the sexual revolution. As the basis for sex education it has met with determined opposition because of adult scepticism, and probably dislike of the very idea of abstinence. Now a sociologist who is also an Evangelical Christian is suggesting another reason for reviewing the way Christians promote abstinence.

…[A]fter years of studying the sexual behavior and family decision-making of young Americans, I've come to the conclusion that Christians have made much ado about sex but are becoming slow and lax about marriage—that more significant, enduring witness to Christ's sacrificial love for his bride. Americans are taking flight from marriage. We are marrying later, if at all, and having fewer children.

Professor Mark Regnerus, chairman of the sociology department at the University of Texas, specialises in the study of romantic relationship formation. He sets out his case for earlier marriage in the August issue of Christianity Today. There are pragmatic reasons, such as compelling evidence that marriage provides the optimal conditions for child-rearing and increases the wealth and independence of the individuals involved. But there is also the evidence that most people, Christians included, find the temptation to begin a sexual relationship irresistible. Regnerus argues that it defies nature for those aiming at marriage to postpone it beyond the early 20s and remain chaste:

Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It's battling our Creator's reproductive designs. The data don't lie. Our sexual behavior patterns—the kind I documented in 2007 in Forbidden Fruit—give us away. Very few wait long for sex. Meanwhile, women's fertility is more or less fixed, yet Americans are increasingly ignoring it during their 20s, only to beg and pray to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.

Delay, he says, suits men better than women; it means they can delay growing up, and this produces an increasing mismatch in maturity between men and women, making marriage more difficult to achieve. The difficulty is compounded by “Christian practical ethics about marriage” that have evolved into “a nebulous hodgepodge of pragmatic norms and romantic imperatives, few of which resemble anything biblical”.

Regnerus is not advocating teenage marriages, which, on the whole, are not successful, and he reviews the reasons for this. But he is advocating for marriage to be seen as a formative institution in which a couple mature together, rather than the “capstone” that completes a relationship where everything else has been put in place.

The response to Regnerus’ ideas, from both Christians and secularists, has been mainly in the range of sceptical to hostile. In April he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on the same subject and got 296 mostly negative online comments. The 240 comments posted on Christianity Today were not altogether favourable either.

But his ideas are well worth pondering and discussing.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: abstinence, Christianity, marriage.

Rag trade withdraws sexy baby clothes

2009-08-31T05:44:00.001+02:00

It is almost beyond belief what some companies will try to get away with in the line of exploiting children. Australian clothing group Cotton On has withdrawn baby clothes with slogans which include “I'm a tits man", "The condom broke", and “I'm living proof my mum is easy" after they caused an uproar in Australia and New Zealand.

The company shed crocodile tears of repentance:

"The Cotton On Group is an organisation that respects family, social and moral values and ... would like to announce that the issue has been taken seriously and in agreeance [sic], willingly extends an apology to those who have been affected by the slogans," the company said.

Why would they produce anything so vile to start with if that were true?

The sexualization of babies brings a broader trend to a new low. Suggestive T-shirts for older children have been around for some years, a 2008 Little Losers line featuring slogans such as : “Miss B**ch”, “Miss Wasted” and “Miss Floozy”, and for boys “Mr Well-Hung”, “Mr Pimp”, “Mr A**hole” and “Mr Drunk”.

Here is another example (see our previous post on art galleries) of “adult” material intruding on children. Where adults claim the right to play with filth, the dirt will inevitably rub off on children.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: fashion, pornography, sexualisation of children.

Are girls risking death now to avoid cervical cancer?

2009-08-31T05:41:00.001+02:00

The vaccine promoted as a safeguard for girls against developing cervical cancer later in life has been linked with at least 20 deaths in the United States and hundreds of other serious adverse reactions. This is prevention, if you like, but not the sort most parents envisage.

The vaccine has been given to more than seven million girls and young women in the US, a large number of them 11- and 12-year-old schoolgirls, the New York Times reports.

Some 12,424 reports of adverse events were made to a voluntary government database. Of those, 6.2 per cent (772) were considered serious, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The most common serious complications were fainting and an increased risk for potentially fatal blood clots, possibly related to oral contraceptive use and obesity. There were 32 reports of death, but only 20 could be verified. Among those, other causes are implicated (diabetes, drug abuse, Lou Gehrig’s disease, flu and others) and it is not at all clear what are the risks of Gardasil for any individual girl.

The majority of the reports were filed by Merck and company, manufacturer of Gardasil, but most failed to provide enough information for further investigation, say the study authors. However, they are confident in recommending that people get the vaccine, which, they say, seems to be as safe as other vaccines.

Merck is also upbeat, saying that the study “confirms the very favourable safety profile we’ve seen in our extensive clinical trials”. Mind you, this is the company that wooed professional groups with grant money for educational programmes to promote the vaccine.

But an accompanying editorial in JAMA questioned whether any level of risk is acceptable for vaccination when there is an alternative way of preventing cervical cancer:

“There are not a huge number of side effects here, that’s fairly certain,” said the editorial writer, Dr. Charlotte Haug, an infectious disease expert from Norway, about the vaccine. “But you are giving this to perfectly healthy young girls, so even a rare thing may be too much of a risk.

“I wouldn’t accept much risk of side effects at all in an 11-year-old girl, because if she gets screened when she’s older, she’ll never get cervical cancer,” Dr. Haug said in an interview. “You don’t have to die from cervical cancer if you have access to health care.”

The other point is that you probably don’t have to die from cervical cancer if you avoid contracting the sexually transmitted disease -- human papillomavirus -- that is the precursor in the vast majority of cases. But HPV is now so widespread that there is no telling who has it.

Then again, should this really be a dilemma that parents and their young daughters have to face? Wouldn’t a truly rational response to the prevalence of HPV and other STDs be to redouble efforts to encourage chastity among young people?

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: cervical cancer, Gardasil, HPV,

Justifying one’s existence

2009-07-28T06:13:00.001+02:00

Choosing to live out one’s natural life will soon be as unpopular as refusing an abortion.

Have you noticed that the subject of euthanasia/ assisted suicide is picking up momentum -- that it is, so to speak, taking on a life of its own? I mean in particular that we seem to be approaching one of those interesting tipping points in public debate where the tone of those supporting a once-shocking idea is shifting from defensive to offensive.

Take for a representative example one of the "letters of the day" in the Post's July 22 edition, from Alexander McKay of Calgary. Mr. McKay argues for assisted suicide with the conviction of one endorsing, rather than flouting, received wisdom. The notion that the individual not only has the right to control his time of departure from this Earth, but has the right to society's complicity in a death deliberately chosen, is embedded in the calm and confident air with which Mr. McKay projects his reasons for wishing, when his "wonderful life" dwindles down to a putative final season of debility and suffering, to "consider my options."

Mr. McKay does not wish to see his life "cruelly extended" (assumption: suffering and pain are unnatural add-ons to life, not as much a part of life as youth and vigour). He says, "life is for the living" (assumption: the terminally ill no longer hold the moral status of "living"). And, of course, "Canada's medical system is for those who need it" (assumption: medical "need" is an entirely fungible notion).

His trump card -- or so he believes -- is his final flourish: "What possible exercise in logic or morality (my emphasis) would deny me my dignity and force me to suffer against my will?" (assumption plus corollary: dignity is a quality that only attaches to health and personal autonomy; those who willingly suffer pain and suffering with a view to a naturally prescribed death have no dignity).

All right-thinking people, religious and secular, already believe that in cases where there is no hope of recovery and a life is seeking its own natural end, life should not be unnecessarily prolonged through artificial or heroic measures. As to the deliberate, state-sanctioned and/or state-activated termination of a life because it is no longer pleasurable, or because it involves chronic caretaking and/or is burdensome to loved ones, or for any other reason we squeeze under the benign umbrella of "quality of life," that's a whole other subject: Mr. McKay's in fact.

Well, here is where my sense of "logic or morality" leads me. The idea behind legalized suicide is that it will free the elderly, the infirm and the pain-wracked from their misery. In fact, those who will effectively be freed will be the young and the healthy. By removing the sanctity of life from the equation and replacing it with logic, we will be shifting responsibility for the care of the old and the vulnerable from their loved ones and society to themselves alone.

We have up until recently assumed that we cannot control life's end. When that was the case -- just as when we used to think we could not control life's beginning -- caretaking for those at the heart of the drama was accepted as everyone's responsibility. But now we would view late-life sufferers, as we used to consider unwed mothers, as having gotten themselves "in trouble" and in need of a termination to that trouble. Of course, as with abortion, the pregnant woman, or the sufferer pregnant, so to speak, with pain, can choose not to terminate. But then, if that's your choice, the result of the choice (the baby, the suffering) is also your problem, isn't it? Because in the case of the sufferer, if you haven't made a deliberate decision to die, then continuing to live is not a given, something you needn't concern yourself with; rather, continuing to live then also becomes a deliberate decision, one for which you, not your family and society, are responsible.

For a glimpse into a future in which euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal, read a short essay by Richard Stith, Her Choice, Her Problem: How Abortion Empowers Men in the August/September issue of First Things magazine. Stith, who teaches at Valparaiso School of Law in Indiana, makes the persuasive case that when having children became an elective rather than a natural consequence of sex, responsibility for children shifted wholly to women. Men instinctively understood that if conception could be undone, then so could their responsibility for being involved with the children women chose not to terminate.

Instead of empowering women, abortion has placed many women in a cleft stick. As Stith notes: "One investigator, Vincent M. Rue, reported in the Medical Science Monitor, that 64% of American women who abort feel pressed to do so by others. Another, Frederica Mathewes-Green in her book Real Choices, discovered that American women almost always abort to satisfy the desires of people who do not want to care for their children." If you substitute the words "euthanize" for "abort" and "elderly" or "chronically ill" for "children," the analogy with end-of-life termination could not be more clear.

As with abortion, if euthanasia and assisted suicide become legal, the voices of those who cling to the "sanctity of life" rubric will be pushed to the margins of public life. They will become pariahs, just as pro-life voices on campuses must fight tooth and nail to be heard.

Ironically, if euthanasia and/or assisted suicide are legalized (philosophically it comes to the same thing), by the time Mr. McKay's "wonderful life" has become less wonderful to the point of chronic pain and suffering, he may find, to his surprise, that against all logic he wishes to "cruelly extend" his life. But he may also find -- nothing could be more logical -- that others around him reproach him, saying no, "life is for the living," and therefore it is unconscionable for him to have such expectations.

And thus, as is so often the case with those who privilege "logic" over human nature and the natural law, Mr. McKay, and others who are so smugly sure they know in advance what their late-life wishes will be, may be chagrined to discover that the words "deny me my dignity" and "against my will" have taken on a whole new -- and rather macabre --meaning.

Article by: Barbara Kay is a columnist with Canada's National Post, in which the above article was published July 27. She writes and lives in Montreal.

Manipulating pain

2009-07-28T06:09:00.001+02:00

The euthanasia lobby insists on confusing pain relief with euthanasia. There is a clear distinction.

Yet again, euthanasia is making headlines in Canada since the Quebec College of Physicians was reported as “tentatively proposing” legalized euthanasia. The college says that it could be seen “as part of appropriate care in certain particular circumstances.”

An Ottawa Citizen editorial (“Debating life’s end,” July 20) interprets this to say: “Terminally ill patients sometimes require increased dosages of painkillers to alleviate their pain although that can prove fatal. It certainly happens across the country that terminally ill patients are sometimes quietly given more painkillers despite the risk that they could die as a result. Many people would conclude that is the most humane course of action.”

We can all endorse the last sentence: People in pain have a right to fully adequate pain relief treatment. But that does not entail endorsing euthanasia, as pro-euthanasia advocates propose.

The pro-euthanasia lobby has deliberately confused pain relief treatment and euthanasia in order to promote their cause. Their argument is that necessary pain relief treatment that could shorten life is euthanasia; we are already giving such treatment and the vast majority of Canadians agree we should do so; therefore, we are practising euthanasia with the approval of Canadians so we should come out of the medical closet and legalize euthanasia. Indeed, they argue, doing so is just a small incremental step along a path we have already taken.

It’s true and to be welcomed that the vast majority of Canadians agree we should give fully adequate pain relief, but the pro-euthanasia lobby is wrong on all its other claims.

We need to distinguish treatment that is necessary to relieve pain, even if it could shorten life (which is a very rare occurrence if pain relief is competently prescribed), from the use of pain relief treatment as covert euthanasia. The former is not euthanasia, the latter is.

The distinction hinges on the physician’s primary intention in giving the treatment. Pain relief treatment given with a primary intention to relieve pain and reasonably necessary to achieve that outcome is not euthanasia, even if it does shorten the patient’s life. Any intervention, including the use of pain relief drugs, carried out with a primary intention of causing the patient’s death and resulting in that outcome, is euthanasia.

Acting with a primary intention to kill is a world apart from acting with a primary intention to relieve pain. And this is not a novel or exceptional approach. The law recognizes such distinctions daily. If we accidentally hit and kill a pedestrian with our car, it is not murder. If we deliberately run him down with our car intending to kill him, it is.

It is a tragedy for patients, especially those who are terminally ill and in pain, and a major disservice to physicians, nurses and humane and good medical care to confuse these situations as the college seems to do. Physicians and patients become frightened of giving and accepting adequate pain relief.

Physicians should not fear that giving adequate pain relief treatment is unethical or illegal; in fact, they should fear the ethical and legal consequences of not doing so. It is now generally accepted in the palliative care literature and practice that it is a breach of human rights to unreasonably leave a person in pain; doing so is medical negligence (malpractice); and, I believe, in extreme cases, it should be treated as criminal negligence — wanton or reckless disregard for human life or safety. It is torture by willful omission.

The proper goal of medicine and physicians is to kill the pain. It is explicitly not their role to kill the patient with the pain — to become society’s executioners — which is what euthanasia entails, no matter how merciful or compassionate our reasons.

Even most people who support legalizing euthanasia believe its use needs to be justified, usually as being necessary to relieve pain and suffering. Surveys of the general public that ask the question “Do you believe people in terrible pain should have access to euthanasia?” reflect that belief. But again this approach causes confusion between pain relief and euthanasia. It makes euthanasia the treatment for pain, and it makes it impossible for people to agree that all necessary pain relief must be provided, without also endorsing euthanasia. Respondents have either to agree to both pain relief and euthanasia or to reject both. Of course, to have the public endorse euthanasia might be the goal of some of these surveys.

Rights to pain relief treatment will, however, be nothing more than empty words unless that treatment is accessible. If, as I do, we believe legalizing euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide would be a terrible mistake for society, we have serious obligations to ensure fully adequate pain relief treatment is readily available to all Canadians who need it.

As to why legalizing euthanasia would be a terrible mistake, ask yourself the questions, “How would I not like my great-great-grandchildren to die?” and “What values do I want to pass on to the world of the future?” For answers, have a look at the 30-year history of legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands.

Article by: Margaret Somerville is director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, and author of Death Talk: The case against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. This article first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, July 24.

Abortion unbound

2009-07-28T06:00:00.001+02:00

If passed as written, health care ‘reform’ in America would expand abortion more radically than anything since Roe.

Abortion activists first introduced the misnamed ‘Freedom of Choice Act’ (FOCA) with the help of Senate sympathizers in 1989 to create a fundamental right to abortion for all women, spread its access, and limit any government regulation, including any that even Roe v. Wade allowed. Twenty years and countless successes since then, the abortion movement put a sympathizer in the White House who had promised them he would sign that sweeping and radical legislation into law if elected.

Most Americans had not heard of this until sometime around election day 2008, others are still unaware that FOCA would change life in America dramatically, and eliminate vast numbers of them. The US Bishops mounted a formidable campaign to inform and engage citizens to defend against the assault on life and laws and fundamental rights of conscience. And they energetically implored President Barack Obama to resist the pressure to sign what they and the pro-life movement identified as “the most radical abortion legislation in US history,” without the slightest risk of exaggeration.

'Congress has to explicitly exclude abortion, or it will be mandated'

FOCA would enshrine abortion as an absolute right and require unfettered access to it; invalidate all state and federal laws regulating abortion through term pregnancy, including informed consent, parental notification, physician licensing, clinic safety, and the rights of health care workers to exercise conscientious objection participating in abortion. And, it required U.S. taxpayers to fund it all.

Obama did not sign FOCA into law when he took office. But pro-life leaders weren’t exactly celebrating. They warned it would turn up in a stealthier form.

It has.

Abortion as health care

The plan was laid out clearly and early for the Obama administration when a coalition of 50 abortion-advocacy groups delivered a 55-page report to the president-elect during the transition phase detailing their wish-list for sweeping provisions. It was actually a breakdown of what was already contained in FOCA, mapped out with a navigation system that would direct it through various government departments and committees to overturn existing laws and mandate new ones. It would especially require abortion coverage in any national health-care plan produced by the Obama administration. That turned out to be the key.

When the Senate and House versions of health care reform proposals came to light last week, it was clear they were the vehicle to drive FOCA into law, though under radar. The word “abortion” is nowhere to be found in over 1,000 pages of dense bureaucratic legislation. But the health care bills being finalized in Congress have an abortion mandate, with taxpayer funding. If passed as written, health care “reform” in America would expand abortion more radically than anything since Roe. And the president and congressional leaders are doing all they can to rush it through as written, before the actual text of the bills can be vetted in congressional hearings or debated in members’ home districts.

This prompted an immediate and unprecedented mobilization of the pro-life movement to stop passage of this overhaul until it can be reviewed and revised with the input of American citizens. In 96 hours, leaders of nearly two dozen organizations rallied and staged the largest pro-life web event in history, a nighttime webcast that drew 36,187 into a brainstorming session and a call to action. Nineteen speakers covered the facts of the stealth politics behind the abortion mandate in the health care bills, and prompted response to them.

After the last election, the media wanted to write an obituary about the pro-life movement,” said Dr. Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life, “but on Capitol Hill they’re getting a lot of questions about FOCA, and this event is being taken very seriously. This battle over health care may seem new in some ways, but it’s the latest fight over FOCA, dressed up differently.”

The center of gravity in this whirlwind is a clause pro-life leaders say any bill must contain to resist the congressional enactment of the new stealth-FOCA. “Congress has to explicitly exclude abortion, or it will be mandated,” said National Right to Life Committee’s Douglas Johnson. Speaking for the Democrats for Life, Kristen Day reinforced that linchpin wording. “Democrats for Life have mounted a herculean effort to keep the abortion mandate out of this bill,” said Day. “Twenty House Democrats sent Speaker Pelosi a letter saying they wouldn’t vote for a bill that doesn’t exclude funding for abortion. There are at least 39 Democrats we know of who say the same.” She named two Democratic senators opposing abortion funding in their version of the bill.

“Some members of Congress are cobbling together a phony compromise with bogus legislative language,” warned Congressman Chris Smith, one of the most prominent pro-life activists in Congress. “Without abortion explicitly excluded from any government mandated or government funded benefits package, abortion will be included. This is the big one. Not since Roe v. Wade have women and children been so at risk.”

No freedom, no choice

The threat lies in the terminology, like the unqualified “essential benefits package” the health care bill promotes. Legal experts say that such a broad term can and will include abortion. Because public and private plans will be required to meet the minimum benefit mandate, the bill will eventually require Americans to pay into a plan that covers abortion, and help fund a vast expansion of abortion facilities to make it available.

The wording of the bill may be dense, but the intent is clear, says Johnson. It will nullify state abortion regulations on everything from informed consent to parental notification and waiting periods. The principle is “that once the feds have said this is a service you have a right to, no state could stand in the way of it.”

'The abortion industry is using this as a last-ditch effort to save a dying business'

Not even physicians and health care workers who morally object. “Choice cuts both ways,” said Fr. Frank Pavone, Director of Priests for Life. “But if abortion is an essential health benefit, funded as never before, it will take away the health providers’ choice. The state may prefer childbirth over abortion and choose not to pay for it, a right which has been upheld by the courts. Medical providers may choose not to provide abortion. All this would be taken away by this legislation. The abortion industry is using this as a last-ditch effort to save a dying business, since more and more abortion mills have closed down and fewer medical professionals are providing them. There is no disease that abortion cures, no proven medical benefit to the procedure, and they know that.”

And yet, during his campaign, Obama described “reproductive care” including abortion as the “heart” of his health plan at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event. He also signaled that he expected all insurers be forced to cover abortion. One of the very few pro-life representatives to meet with Obama staffers, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, spoke on the pro-life summit webcast. “Someone on the White House staff said it’s not their goal to reduce the number of abortions,” she stated.

And yet that’s what Obama reportedly told Pope Benedict is his goal in their private meeting at the Vatican. “Obama saying he wants to reduce abortion is just not credible,” said Congressman Smith. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, host of Hardball and known Obama admirer, said something similar: “By the way, the night he tells the Pope, he goes over to see the Pope and says they're going to reduce the number of abortions, and then that same week he pushes to subsidize abortion? You can't do that!”

Right now, his administration is on track to do just that, reversing federal law prohibiting taxpayer funded abortion. Obama started on that track in January by reversing the Mexico City Policy, freeing up funds for overseas abortions. But since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has prevented Medicaid or Medicare funding for abortions in most cases, and Obama’s health reform plan will repeal that law, “opening up the spigots” for abortion coverage, in one pro-life participant’s words. If that happened, abortions would likely increase by 20-35 percent by most estimates. Congressman Smith cites that figure from Planned Parenthood’s own research wing, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which reported that public funding restrictions lowered abortion rates by that much, especially in poor areas.

Tremors in the House

The night of the critical pro-life summit webcast, leaders were enthusiastic that Congressman Mike Pence’s amendment to strip Planned Parenthood of its taxpayer funding had passed the House Rules committee that day (they called it “an act of God”, under the circumstances and climate in Congress right now). The Health and Human Services “family planning” (Title X) fund is a major source of funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider. Pence wanted Title X funding to exclude services that perform abortions, and passage by the Rules committee was unexpected. The following day, it was rejected in a larger House vote, 183-247.

“Representative Mike Pence offered an amendment to respect the will of the majority of pro-life Americans, the citizens who do not want their hard-earned tax dollars supporting abortion providers,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List. The latest Gallup Poll revealed that 51 percent of Americans identify themselves as pro-life. And 71 percent don’t want their tax dollars to pay for abortion. Pro-life leaders launched the ‘Stop the Mandate’ campaign to do just that, eliminate mandated taxpayer-funded abortion from health care reform.

They know they’re in a rush, to keep up with the push in Congress. The morning after this historic webcast, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel promised a House vote on the bill before the August recess. And pro-life leaders promised to “use every available tool to educate pro-life Americans across the country” about the House vote on Pence’s amendment, name by name, so they’ll “know whether or not their representative voted on the side of the pro-life taxpayer.” But Douglas Johnson assured webcast participants it’s not a done deal. “Many members of Congress are undecided on this,” he said. “They need to hear from the electorate, to take the pulse of the people.”

It’s either racing right now, or it will be.

By: Sheila Gribben Liaugminas is an Emmy Award winning journalist who reported for Time magazine for more than 20 years. She blogs at InforumBlog.com and on MercatorNet

Children engulfed by armed conflict

2009-07-28T05:16:00.001+02:00

A distressing report from UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, says that more then one billion children live in countries or territories affected by armed conflict. Just think of it: that’s about one-sixth of the world’s total population. More than 300 million of these children are under the age of five, and 18 million children are refugees or displaced persons, reports the Population Reference Bureau.

Children are not only directly affected during wars and armed conflict, but suffer from effects that can last for years or entire lifetimes. The proliferation of small arms, armed groups, and terrorism and counter-terrorism measures all impact the long-term development and well-being of children.

The trend of armed groups targeting civilians, including children, continues. Violence is fragmented -- there are fewer inter-state conflicts but rebellions and secessionist movements multiply, leading to the victimisation of civilians, deterioration of basic services, social divisions and the decline of local economies.

Children are forced into labour and to act as soldiers by these paramilitary groups. They have been targeted by terrorist groups and also used to perpetrate terrorist acts. Counter-terrorist measures then result in hundreds of children being detained in various conflict areas.The report notes:

According to the Control Arms Campaign, an average of $22 billion a year is spent on arms by countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The campaign points out that this sum would otherwise enable those same countries to be on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals of achieving universal primary education (estimated at $10 billion a year) as well as targets for reducing infant and maternal mortality (estimated at $12 billion a year).

The blighting of the lives of so many of the world’s children is a tragedy (and a crime) that should drive negotiators to much greater efforts to reconcile warring groups.

Machel Study 10-Year Strategic Review: Children and conflict in a changing world .

By: Carolyn Moynihan

Why are young men still living at home more violent?

2009-07-28T05:11:00.001+02:00

We are used to the idea that young men are responsible for much of the violence in society, but who would have thought that living under the parental roof was the strongest risk factor for such behaviour? And yet, that is what researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, found when they asked over 8000 men and women about violent behaviour over the past five years and mental health problems.

Men still living at home in their early twenties make up only four per cent of Britain’s male population but this study shows they are responsible for 16 per cent of all violent injuries in the last five years. Few responsibilities and more disposable income is a toxic mix.

Says Professor Jeremy Coid, one of the study authors:

"Young adult men living at home in Britain are no longer influenced by parents to conform to standards of behaviour expected of previous generations.

"Violence outside of the home, mainly involving strangers, is the most common scenario and just one of a series of hedonistic and negative social behaviours such as hazardous drinking, drug misuse, sexual risk taking, and non-violent antisocial behaviour.

The problem is delayed adulthood:

"And these are more common among young men who do not have responsibilities of providing their own accommodation, supporting dependent children, or experiencing beneficial effects on their behaviour from living with a female partner.

Pity he didn’t mention marriage there.

"Young men who live at home are also more likely to receive financial support from their parents than in the past when the pattern was reversed. However, in this study their earnings or benefits were the same as those who had left home and taken on greater social responsibility. They therefore had more disposable income which may have partly explained why they had more problems with alcohol."

Actually, the problem is not living at home in your early twenties, since lots of young people do that in this era of extended education and expensive housing. The problem is surely living with parents who have tolerated self-centred behaviour from an early age.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

Lessons from career woman’s no-baby shock

2009-07-28T05:07:00.001+02:00

I have just caught up with a classic “confessions of a career woman” story by a British woman who has reached the age of 45 bitterly disappointed that she will never have her own child. The Daily Mail headline says it all: “Seduced by stories of stars giving birth later and IVF myths, career-obsessed Lucy believed children and love could wait.”

As a young woman Lucy wanted nothing more than to have a great job and plenty of fun.

By 24, I was a strategist at a leading ad agency. I drove a Golf convertible, wore red wool suits with gilt buttons, and thought I was Paula Hamilton from the iconic TV advert. I remained very single, but I told myself - and my concerned mum - that the mews house and engagement ring would come later.

My life didn't revolve around marriage and children. My friends and I were taking our time. We were big kids in shoulder pads, and life was about working, shopping, drinking and having fun.

In her 30s things changed; her “relationships were tinged with desperation” but she refused to “prioritise the man-hunt”. At 36 her step-mother helpfully suggested having her eggs frozen with a view to IVF when Mr Right came along. She didn’t, regrets it and now recommends it to younger women.

At 41 she met and fell in love with David. They set up house together in an idyllic country town. She gave up full-time work and started freelancing, changing her lifestyle and diet to increase her chances of pregnancy. A year went by and the couple turned to IVF, only to run into a dead end.

The odds of success were so slim that it was, they claimed, unethical to take my money. 'Have a think about it and if you're interested in egg donation, we can do that up to the age of 50.' I didn't understand. What about all those fabulous, famous fortysomethings whose 'baby joy' stories were so often in magazines.

The actress Jane Seymour and model Iman both had children at 44, actress Mimi Rogers was 45, Susan Sarandon 46, Holly Hunter 47. Each headline seemed to confirm that, yes, it was possible to put having a family at the bottom of your priority list until you were good and ready.

But here's the rub - a very high proportion of babies born to women in their 40s are conceived using donated eggs from younger women. It's a secret that many will never let you in on.

David didn’t want a donor egg baby. So that was it. Lucy got over being angry with everyone and everything -- including “the government for never having had a public health campaign on the subject of increasing age and decreasing fertility”; she and David got married, to express how much they appreciate each other (better late than never), and she settled down to write a book about it.

My chance to experience the profound joy of motherhood has come and gone. But to the generation of career girls who are a decade or two behind me, I would say this: don't wait for a bigger house, a better job or a more expensive car, because if you do, you're a lot more likely to miss out on the most precious prize of all - a child.

This seems a pretty honest story. The most surprising thing about it is the ignorance of this woman about her fertility, especially since professional warnings about the dangers of delay have been multiplying over the past decade. Lucy is smart enough to hold down a well-paid job in the city -- which she didn’t learn from the women’s magazines -- but when it comes to her own body and the question of motherhood she is happy to take celebrity “baby-joy” stories in Woman’s Day as a guide.

More serious is Lucy’s idea that a child is some kind of “prize” to crown her life and give her the experience of being a mother -- a finishing touch that she believed a technician could achieve for her if necessary. This mindset seems all of a piece with the idea of marriage itself as a prize -- falling into the arms of a soul-mate after establishing a successful career and being free of commitments during early adulthood. Really, delaying adulthood -- “We were big kids in shoulder pads, and life was about working, shopping, drinking and having fun.”

If ideas about marriage were sorted out, the fertility issues would look after themselves.

By: Carolyn Moynihan

The Good News guy faces tough questions now

2009-07-22T09:06:00.001+02:00

President Obama has chosen an evangelical Christian as the new head of the National Institutes of Health. He is coming under fire from both sides of the culture wars.

For many years, new National Institutes of Health head Francis Collins has been a good news guy for Christians concerned about the "new atheists'" strident insistence that evidence from science is evidence for their views. His folksy manner is a hit, as he leads sing-alongs sporting a double helix-branded guitar. He recently co-founded the BioLogos Foundation, (with Karl Giberson and Darryl Falk), whose mission statement, "We believe that faith and science both lead to truth about God and creation," is intended to comfort Christians.

Collins is best known to science as the genome mapper who sat with President Clinton and others on the White House lawn, celebrating success in 2000. But his strong identity as an evangelical Christian may have made him better known for his recent book, The Language of God, part personal testimony and part explanation of how to reconcile faith and science.

Of course, his advocacy of faith as a public scientist has received mixed reviews, to the point of attracting histrionics about looming "theocracy."

But now that Collins faces confirmation hearings before the Senate, the focus will shift from his persona to his view on issues relevant to his new job. He seems much more relaxed about abortion and human embryonic stem cell research than the average evangelical leader, so it will be interesting to see if he attracts any flak on that account.

And there's the curious passage in The Language of God where he writes,

I would argue that the immediate product of a skin cell and an enucleated egg cell fall short of the moral status of the union of sperm and egg. The former is not part of God's plan to create a human individual. The latter is very much God's plan, carried out through the millennia by our own species and many others. (page 256)

Most traditional Christians would not relate to a view of God's providence where humans can simply exempt other humans from it by their own wilful actions. Although some have argued that Collins is simply confused, his confusion always veers in one direction - against the exceptional status of human life.

Now, given that his key goal has been to reconcile Christianity and Darwinian evolution, this is precisely where they come into conflict, and even his supporters admit it. Either we are the 98% chimpanzee or we are made in the image of God. The 98% chimpanzee movement seeks quite seriously to blur the boundaries between humans and other primates, with predictable results for such issues as abortion and experimentation on human embryos.

Collins's public statements on these subjects have been less than forthcoming. In a discussion of these evasions, Justin Barnard notes,

Collins needs to come clean. Either he upholds the dignity of human life or he doesn't. If he does, and he accepts the nomination to head the NIH, then it seems that he is deeply compromised as a professing evangelical Christian. If he does not, then the evangelical community needs to know.

No doubt the upcoming confirmation hearings will provide him with an opportunity to explain more clearly, both to those who disparage his faith and to those who doubt it.

Evangelicals face a critical decision here: Do the American evangelical leadership want a place at the table, even if the placeholder may not be all that they would want? Or do they prefer to be represented only by someone who is onside on key issues such as the sanctity of human life? The future of the evangelical movement will - in a small way - be shaped by the answer to this and similar questions on the road ahead.

By: Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Messing with Mother Nature

2009-07-22T09:04:00.001+02:00

The human species is changing but we're stuck on polar bears

The single 69-year old Spanish woman who gave birth to twins at the age of 66 died last Saturday. Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara, who thought she had every prospect of living to see her now two-year old boys Christian and Pau into adulthood because her own mother died at 101, claimed not to regret her late-motherhood decision, even though her doctors told her that "the powerful drugs used during her fertility treatment could have helped her disease [believed to be breast cancer] to spread."

Although at the time of the birth Ms Bousada de Lara's case attracted a few stalwart supporters of the "right" of a woman to control her own fertility destiny, the general reaction was one of dismay and recoil. The most commonly adduced argument was that her children's odds of growing up motherless were sharply escalated by her selfishness. And so it came to pass, which will doubtless serve to dampen the enthusiasm of other older women contemplating the idea of post-menopausal pregnancy.

But that was the wrong argument. For what if in fact she had lived to be 101 like her mother? Would that have made the adventure any the less grotesque in a moral sense? That children may be deprived of a mother is sad, but children are deprived by bad luck of young mothers all the time, and these newly orphaned twin boys may be no worse off in the end than if their mother had died of ovarian cancer at 33.

The peculiarly neat moral symmetry in this cautionary tale applies to the woman. She sold her soul to the devil of technology and she paid a terrible price. Case closed in most people's minds. But this rather sensational story does not bring closure to the moral questions that arise in general when science, female fertility and human emotion collide. Because scientists mess with human nature all the time, and yet there seems little indication of general public concern in this area. Recently scientists announced the possibility of autonomous conception through stem cell-manufactured sperm: that is, the end of any real need for men, not to put too fine a point on it and potentially, the end of the human species as we know it. I've seen jokey allusions to the idea, but no serious discussion on the monumental implications of such a possibility coming to fruition.

Much more advanced mechanically, and already in unofficial progress is the technology-aided conception of donor siblings. The movie My Sister's Keeper should have initiated intense discussion amongst cultural observers. The plot revolves around an 11-year old girl's attempt to free herself from bodily servitude to her leukemia-stricken older sister. The younger girl was conceived for the purpose of providing life-saving nutrients to her sister. In fact her umbilical cord and later, marrow transplants, do keep the older sister going for many years. The crisis occurs when the older sister, obviously dying, needs a kidney which, it is made clear, will not save her life. The desperate mother assumes the younger sister will happily contribute a kidney. What happens next, though marred by Boston-legal style courtroom histrionics and some pretty unrealistic family dynamics, should have been the basis for a flurry of in-depth commentaries by cultural observers. Unlike the 66-year old mother's case, in which one person's selfishness is the core of the story, issues like cloning, autonomous conception and donor siblings present a variety of emotional and moral claims that cannot be so easily sorted out and judged.

When we look back at our era and its consequences, I think we may be rather astonished at the amount of media coverage given to every form of nature under the sun except human nature. Environmentalists think it is immoral that we have not taken adequate steps to meet the challenge of the earth getting warmer. A thin polar bear rates front page coverage. The attention paid to Miranda Del Carmen Bousada de Lara only serves to remind us how little attention is paid to the bigger story in which she has played a very minor role. Surely the prospect of human nature as we know it changing before our eyes should capture our imaginations and consciences with at least equal, but hopefully more urgency than we give to plants and animals.

Barbara Kay is a columnist with Canada's National Post. She writes and lives in Montreal.

A voice of conscience in the Kenyan media

2009-07-22T09:02:00.001+02:00

Leading journalist Chaacha Mwita discusses the challenge of achieving citizen power in Kenya.

"Daddy, you have dinner with us these days!" piped six-year old Monika, eldest daughter of Chaacha Mwita, a leading Kenyan journalist and name familiar to regular newspaper readers. While Gabriel, one of the five-year-old twin brothers, remonstrated with his dad: "If you ever go back to the US again for so long a period, you’re not my father!"

"Kids are observant," Chaacha chuckled, quite obviously having made a discovery.

Chaacha was telling me how different life is now that he has left the corporate rat-race and set up his own media-strengthening, publishing and research organization, Global Africa. Typically he had dropped the kids at school on his way to meet me that morning, something unheard of when he was senior editor at the Nation Group, the largest media house in the region, and, later, Group Managing Editor at the Standard, running close behind the Nation. Those days he would get back home physically and morally tired and brave a smile, and, almost always, find the kids already tucked in bed, asleep.

Then he took a gamble and decided, for the sake of family -- his first passion -- to go it alone and, with his wife Eunice, he set up their own media consulting firm. The day before we met he had been invited to scenic Great Rift Valley Lodge, overlooking Lake Naivasha in Kenya’s Rift Valley to speak to 132 Kenyan members of Parliament on media and parliamentary relations, and had got home in good time to be with the family and supervise the children’s homework.

He checks their writing and Maths. Eunice, who plans to write books for children, reads to them. Story-telling, which played a big role in traditional African society, still does in the Mwita household. As a media professional and knowing the influence of television on children, the set is kept under safe control, and the children have been taught how to manage it. Monika and the twins switch off when a bad scene appears, or change channels. "Bad manners!" mutters Gabriel, referring to certain types of on-screen behaviour.

Chaacha Mwita was born 36 years ago in a very remote corner of Kenya, just beyond the world-renowned Masai Mara game reserve. But no tourist will travel those extra miles to Kuria-land, his home, where large tobacco plantations have ruined the soil and brought starvation and high food prices to the local people.

He was a university student during turbulent times in Kenya, just after the collapse of Soviet communism and the international pressure for multi-party rule in Africa. Long-serving rulers, formerly propped up by the Western powers, were being given the push, including Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi. Chaacha was in the thick of student politics, and, later, pro-democracy mass action. A founder member of the Nairobi University students’ union, SONU 92, which the Moi administration banned, and of the National Convention Executive Committee, which spearheaded constitutional change, a job that is not yet completed; as well as various civil society organizations that have tried to promote civic education.

Chaacha has always been a fighter, a crusader, and has seen the inside of Kenya’s police cells more than once. His mother’s death "defined" him, he says, when, as eldest son, many responsibilities fell on him, including the education of three siblings, his father’s fortune having dwindled by then. He was at the time in his final year at university. His father, Samson Mwita Marwa, who had been a preacher, teacher, civic leader and member of parliament, aroused his interest in civic affairs. One of eight children from his mother –- his father was a polygamist -- Chaacha had not traveled farther than the closest trading centre before going to university in Nairobi.

But his interest in the world outside was sparked by his parents –- for whom education was the key to happiness -- by his elder sister’s description of a trip she made to see the not-so-far-away Lake Victoria, and his primary teacher, Mr Miseda, whose mastery of the English language and love for Literature stuck with Chaacha, who recalled how Miseda would insist they repeat the word ‘stealthily" in a sentence several times until they got it right.

His career as a journalist, publisher and activist has led him to cross paths with many of today’s celebrities: Nelson Mandela, one of his personal icons, whom he admires for suffering nobly for his people; Barack Obama (twice, and Chaacha was amazed he remembered him at the second meeting); John Glenn; Kofi Annan, with whom he shared a platform just after the former UN Secretary General had brokered a peace deal in Kenya; Mo Ibrahim, initiator of the US$5 million democracy award for honourably retired African heads of state who have made a positive contribution to democracy; Tom Peters and Larry Ellison. "Completely normal human beings," was his comment.

Two particularly sad moments in his life were when they lost their little son seven days after birth, and his venture into the political arena, during the controversial and historical December 2007 elections. It was here that he lost his political innocence when the party he was supporting, Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, cheated him out of his nomination. Yet he continued to support the party until after the results were out and violence escalated.

He has collected all his ideas and experiences on media, politics and his knowledge of Africa -- his second passion, after his family -- into a book he has just launched: Citizen Power. It is a powerful indictment of, among other things, the political and economic control of the media in Africa, and how the Kenyan media aligned itself with the powers that ‘stole" the election.

It also comes down heavily on the developed countries and their ready acceptance of "free and fair" elections in Africa, as if in Africa seriously flawed elections can pass for "democracy". Because his third passion is justice, he is prepared to fight for it. He loves his country and wants to bring it out of the mess it’s in.

There are three other people he particularly admires besides Mandela: Pope John Paul II, whom he regrets never having met on his three trips to Kenya, and whom he admired before joining the Catholic Church; Mahatma Gandhi, for his belief in progress through non-violence and non-retaliation; and St Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, for his "revolutionary" idea that holiness is meant for everybody through their ordinary work regardless of social level.

Chaacha’s book will ruffle a few feathers, but it is only through people like him, ready to stick out their necks, who will provide a voice of conscience in a society where many political leaders, at all levels, have become compromised or overwhelmed by wrangling and bureaucracy, and much of the general public has given in to sterile criticism and apathy. Chaacha Mwita reminds us that not only is Africa not a basket-case but a continent of huge potential and hope; and that it is possible to combine family, faith and values and be a top professional too.

By: Martyn Drakard who writes from Kampala, in Uganda.

US teen sex statistics show ‘disheartening’ trend

2009-07-22T08:59:00.001+02:00

Birth rates among teenagers are on the rise again in the United States after large declines between 1991 and 2005, according to a report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Other sexual health indictors also have flattened or worsened in what the CDC calls a “disheartening” reversal. Predictably, there are calls for “better sex education” -- meaning more stuff about condoms and pills, evidently.

After decreasing annually since 1998, gonorrhea infection rates among adolescents aged 15–19 years of both sexes increased during 2004–2006. Rates of AIDS cases among males aged 15–24 years increased during 1997–2006.

The earlier positive trend in teenage sexual data coincided with the growth of the abstinence education movement and federal backing for it from the late 1990s until now, when President Obama has dropped this funding from his 2010 budget. A campaign against “abstinence only” has been gathering momentum, especially since 2007 when several studies were published purporting to show that it “doesn’t work”.

News reports on the CDC’s review of data have highlighted statistics on sex education. This from Reuters:

* Among 18 and 19-year-olds, 49.8 percent of girls and just 35 percent of boys had talked with a parent about methods of birth control.

* More than 80 percent of boys and girls said they had received formal instruction before age 18 on how to say no to sex.

* Nearly 70 percent of teen girls and 66 percent of boys had received instruction on methods of birth control.

The implication is that being instructed on how to say no isn’t much use -- and it probably isn’t without a whole lot of supporting circumstances. But instruction on birth control doesn’t seem very effective either -- unless all the pregnancies came from the one third of young people who had not been taught about condoms and pills.

It appears that parents are not super keen to talk to their teenagers about birth control. I wonder why. Perhaps they think it’s wrong to give their children the impression that they expect them to be sexually active.

By: Carolyn Moynihan

Gender equity at close quarters

2009-07-12T21:58:00.001+02:00

By mixing women and men on board, isn’t the navy asking for trouble?

It was a shock-horror story for a slow Sunday night, but the news of a sexual scandal on board an Australian Navy ship has drawn comment from the country’s Prime Minister and his deputy, serving to highlight problems surrounding women’s role in the military.

HMAS Success has a mixed crew, in line with a gender equity policy that has counterparts in the defence establishment of many countries. This mixing of men and women is supposed to be a great thing for them and for the military. Women who hanker after risk and adventure can fulfil their desires while putting their special talents at the service of their country.

But some of the men on board Success have grown ho-hum about the privilege of having women around and the opportunities for sex that it presents, so four of them devised a betting game in which they competed to see who could have sex with the most women crewmates. They kept a written record and there were extra points for taking advantage of female officers and lesbians.

Since an Australian television channel broke the story on Sunday, the Defence Department has confirmed that four men were sent home in May from Singapore, where the ship was stationed, and that a formal inquiry is under way. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called the allegations “disturbing” and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has indicated she wants a full investigation.

Ms Gillard said that both the government and the nation had been saying for a long time that women should be able to join the army, the navy or air force. "We don't want to see anything that precludes women from having a good career in our armed forces if that is what they choose to do with their lives.”

According to Defence, the allegations came to light during “an equity and diversity health check” when women “raised a number of concerns”. If the details of the “game” are true, it showed utter contempt for the women being targeted, if not the whole female complement of the ship. Dismissal would be too good for these men; a spell in the stocks would be an appropriately shaming punishment.

But, what then? Is it a question of replacing a few bad eggs, drilling the others on the sexual harassment policy, upping the penalties -- that sort of thing? Or is there something fundamentally wrong with the military’s experiment with sexual integration?

Sexual harassment and assault have become a huge issue in the United States forces. According to an AP report last year, 15 per cent of women…(more)

By: Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

Headlines don’t do Caritas in Veritate justice.

2009-07-12T21:55:00.001+02:00

Caritas in Veritate, an encyclical about love, is sparking argument in the media over what it really means.

The headline from The New York Times sent me back in time; “Pope Urges Forming New World Economic Order to Work for the ‘Common Good.’” The headline invokes memories of President George H.W. Bush calling for a “new world order” as he rallied the world to fight Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait in 1990.

Those words, spoken by the president, sent some into delirious dreams of a one-world government and black helicopters hanging overhead. Today, the words of Pope Benedict XVI initially sent some, hoping to use his words for political gain, into fits of joy or anger. Dan Gilgoff at U.S. News and World Report calls the encyclical “…a boost for progressive Catholics” adding “There is much in Benedict's third encyclical, in other words, for American conservatives to scorn.” Journalist David Gibson writes at Politics Daily, “The Pope Is a Liberal. Who Knew?”

Now prior to the publication of Caritas in Veritate, several writers I had read, including Damian Thompson the religion writer for the Daily Telegraph in London and editor-in-chief of Britian’s Catholic Herald, had been warning that both liberals and conservatives would be disappointed, that the encyclical would not endorse either side as the pope sought to address the economic crisis.(more)

By: Brian Lilley is the Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations 1010 CFRB in Toronto and CJAD 800 in Montreal. He is also Associate Editor of Mercatornet.

Money from love

2009-07-12T21:51:00.001+02:00

In an encyclical released this week, an intellectually adventurous Pope asserts that love is ultimately the solution to the world economic crisis.

Today, by "economy" or "economical", what first comes to mind is low-cost, parsimonious, sparing, small, fuel-efficient, and, often, cheap. But now, with his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate ("Charity in Truth") Benedict subverts and reverses the common understanding of "economy" as a parsimonious reduction in costs or a miserly (re)distribution of resources.

For this counter-cultural Pope, "economy" is principally a question of charity, of love. In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est ("God is Love"), the Pope argued that love is inherently expansive, ecstatic, and effusive. For Benedict, the social doctrine of the Church, that includes a now rapidly developing theology of political economy, is not just about the distribution of wealth. Benedict is at least as interested in fostering wealth creation motivated by love, while exercising responsible stewardship over the environment.

The Catholic Church claims that God challenges all human beings to collaborate with the Creator by, not just conserving his creation, but improving and expanding upon all of creation. Therefore, we enjoy the right and duty to continue God's creative work. A good Christian, in particular, must strive to create wealth and to foster development, especially seeking to promote the integral development of the poorest. The first book of the Bible says that Adam and Eve were created to be fruitful and to multiply, to extend and to propagate the gifts received from God. Man and woman were created in God's image, and so, they are to continue his work. Demographic growth and human fruitfulness, giving birth to offspring and extending human life through the generations, are components of the broader fruitfulness of expanding upon the vast wealth of the marvelous array of nature found on our planet, and beyond.

With his penetrating analysis of economic affairs, within the framework of human freedom and his recommendation that our activity be done out of love, often for free, and always in accord with the truth, Benedict surpasses the stale commonplaces of much current political debate between left and right, progressives and conservatives, communism and capitalism. Like the Gospels themselves, Benedict's message is revolutionary. He applauds neither of the two sides of the debate, typically contested by partisan politics. Within the Church, Benedict challenges both social justice and pro-life activists to seek even more ambitious and more well-rounded goals. In sum, the Pope challenges the world to overcome the current economic crisis by transforming all human transactions in accord with love in truth.

In the 144 pages of Caritas in Veritate, the Pope addresses a wide-range of topics. For instance, he proposes more robust supranational governance for the world economy:(more…)

An article by: Rev. Robert A. Gahl, Jr., is Associate Professor of Ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in Rome.

Where teen pregnancies come from - the Brits still don’t get it

2009-07-12T21:46:00.001+02:00

A programme launched by the British government in 2004 to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies in the UK has had the opposite effect, a study published in the British Medical Journal shows. Young girls who followed the programme were nearly three times as likely to become pregnant, about 1.75 times more likely to have sex and also more likely to expect to be a teenage parent. The only good news is that the government is going to ditch the programme.

A senior government member, Harriet Harman, stressed that the programme was only a pilot scheme and there was no “dishonour” in experimenting with different solutions to the “complex” problem of teenage sex and pregnancy -- even if it did cost £5.9 million to the end of 2007. Everyone wanted to see a fall in the number of teenage pregnancies (Britain has the highest rate in Europe), said Mrs Harman, adding:

"This is to do with good sex education, this is to do with contraception, this is to do with girls having aspirations for something beyond an early pregnancy...it also involves responsibility on boys as well. This was a pilot scheme and the point is it was an experiment that was tried out. That is the whole point of a pilot scheme -- to find out if something works.”

The one thing it never occurs to the British authorities to “try out”, apparently, is to educate young people not to have sex at all. The failed programme (Carrera) was borrowed from the United States where it is said to have been a success in reducing pregnancies and alcohol and cannabis abuse among at risk teens. Why not borrow that other good American idea -- abstinence education? In spite of the fact that the “safer sex” brigade in the US didn’t like it, teenage sexual activity and pregnancies declined dramatically during the years that “abstinence only” education was being pushed by the federal government.

Perhaps the key statistic from the British pilot scheme is the percentage of girls (they were between 13 and 15 years of age) who expected to become teenage parents: 34 per cent in the programme group and 24 per cent in the control group. This is what the government is up against in trying to “reduce” teenage pregnancies (without reducing sex itself): many girls, especially from culturally deprived backgrounds, actually want to have a baby. It seems to be a lifestyle choice.

Why? Perhaps their own mothers did it and managed to get by with a council house and welfare payments. Perhaps the career path looks too much like hard work. Perhaps they fondly think their lives will suddenly be transformed into a version of their favourite celebrity’s lifestyle --the one that’s just added a baby to her accomplishments.

And really, one doesn’t have to go further than the popular media to find encouragement for teenage sex. The Daily Mail has an article on fiction aimed at teenagers that makes you wonder why the authors are not behind bars. It’s an eye-opener, but be warned, it will make you sick and angry -- in that order.

If the government thinks it can control the consequences of all this with condoms, it is dreaming.

By: Carolyn Moynihan

Pope’s letter calls for openness to human life

2009-07-12T21:43:00.001+02:00

Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical letter, “On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth”, discusses a wide spectrum of social realities, among them the need for openness to new human life, which, he says, “is at the centre of true development”, and protection of the family founded on “marriage between a man and a woman, the primary vital cell of society”. Here are some excerpts from Chapter II:

28. One of the most striking aspects of development in the present day is the important question of respect for life, which cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples. It is an aspect which has acquired increasing prominence in recent times, obliging us to broaden our concept of poverty and underdevelopment to include questions connected with the acceptance of life, especially in cases where it is impeded in a variety of ways.

Not only does the situation of poverty still provoke high rates of infant mortality in many regions, but some parts of the world still experience practices of demographic control, on the part of governments that often promote contraception and even go so far as to impose abortion. In economically developed countries, legislation contrary to life is very widespread, and it has already shaped moral attitudes and praxis, contributing to the spread of an anti-birth mentality; frequent attempts are made to export this mentality to other States as if it were a form of cultural progress.

Some non-governmental Organizations work actively to spread abortion, at times promoting the practice of sterilization in poor countries, in some cases not even informing the women concerned. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that development aid is sometimes linked to specific health-care policies which de facto involve the imposition of strong birth control measures. Further grounds for concern are laws permitting euthanasia as well as pressure from lobby groups, nationally and internationally, in favour of its juridical recognition.

Openness to life is at the centre of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man's true good. If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away[67]. The acceptance of life strengthens moral fibre and makes people capable of mutual help. By cultivating openness to life, wealthy peoples can better understand the needs of poor ones, they can avoid employing huge economic and intellectual resources to satisfy the selfish desires of their own citizens, and instead, they can promote virtuous action within the perspective of production that is morally sound and marked by solidarity, respecting the fundamental right to life of every people and every individual.

In Chapter IV the pope says it is a mistake to see population growth as the primary cause of under-development and he calls for attention to responsible procreation, respect for human values in the use of sex. He also calls on states “to enact policies promoting the centrality and the integrity of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman, the primary vital cell of society”:

44. The notion of rights and duties in development must also take account of the problems associated with population growth. This is a very important aspect of authentic development, since it concerns the inalienable values of life and the family. To consider population increase as the primary cause of underdevelopment is mistaken, even from an economic point of view. Suffice it to consider, on the one hand, the significant reduction in infant mortality and the rise in average life expectancy found in economically developed countries, and on the other hand, the signs of crisis observable in societies that are registering an alarming decline in their birth rate. Due attention must obviously be given to responsible procreation, which among other things has a positive contribution to make to integral human development. The Church, in her concern for man's authentic development, urges him to have full respect for human values in the exercise of his sexuality. It cannot be reduced merely to pleasure or entertainment, nor can sex education be reduced to technical instruction aimed solely at protecting the interested parties from possible disease or the “risk” of procreation. This would be to impoverish and disregard the deeper meaning of sexuality, a meaning which needs to be acknowledged and responsibly appropriated not only by individuals but also by the community. It is irresponsible to view sexuality merely as a source of pleasure, and likewise to regulate it through strategies of mandatory birth control. In either case materialistic ideas and policies are at work, and individuals are ultimately subjected to various forms of violence. Against such policies, there is a need to defend the primary competence of the family in the area of sexuality, as opposed to the State and its restrictive policies, and to ensure that parents are suitably prepared to undertake their responsibilities.

Morally responsible openness to life represents a rich social and economic resource. Populous nations have been able to emerge from poverty thanks not least to the size of their population and the talents of their people. On the other hand, formerly prosperous nations are presently passing through a phase of uncertainty and in some cases decline, precisely because of their falling birth rates; this has become a crucial problem for highly affluent societies. The decline in births, falling at times beneath the so-called “replacement level”, also puts a strain on social welfare systems, increases their cost, eats into savings and hence the financial resources needed for investment, reduces the availability of qualified labourers, and narrows the “brain pool” upon which nations can draw for their needs. Furthermore, smaller and at times miniscule families run the risk of impoverishing social relations, and failing to ensure effective forms of solidarity. These situations are symptomatic of scant confidence in the future and moral weariness. It is thus becoming a social and even economic necessity once more to hold up to future generations the beauty of marriage and the family, and the fact that these institutions correspond to the deepest needs and dignity of the person. In view of this, States are called to enact policies promoting the centrality and the integrity of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman, the primary vital cell of society, and to assume responsibility for its economic and fiscal needs, while respecting its essentially relational character.

By: Carolyn Moynihan

A family-friendly White House?

2009-07-12T21:39:00.001+02:00

American first couple Barack and Michelle Obama are trying to keep some balance between their hugely demanding jobs and family life. They have also promised a family-friendly workplace for their staff. How well are they doing?

Quite well with their own family, according to the New York Times. He gets to dine with them at night, attends schools presentations and joins impromptu plunges in the White House pool with his girls. But not so well with their employees, it seems. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has found the White House “brutal on family life”, despite the good intentions of his boss.

To support working parents, the Obamas distributed laptops to aides with families — before those without children — so they could work from home. They invited the children of some advisers to a White House screening of the film “Madagascar” and a Take Your Kids to Work Day hosted by the first lady. They have created some flexible work schedules and encourage their aides to take their children to work when child care arrangements fall through, as well as to swim in the White House pool or play outside.

“Part of the reason that we built the swing set out there was to say, you know, on weekends or after school, bring the kids here, set them loose, because, you know, we want to make sure that you’re staying in contact with your family,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on “NBC Nightly News.” “That, ultimately, I think, makes people work better.”

Emanuel, who has three children, took up the swimming pool offer recently -- with a 5am dip with his two daughters, aged 9 and 11. It was the only time he could squeeze it in. White House advisers have very prestigious jobs, but they often work 60 to 70 hours a week for the privilege. Some manage school trips and soccer matches, but others bear the scars of missed birthdays and bedtimes, cancelled dinners and playdates. Two aides with young children have already left the White House for administration jobs with better hours.

Obama’s chief economist managed her first visit to her son’s school at 10pm on a Friday, when he pointed out his classroom in the dark. The budget chief, a divorced father of two, relies on his parents to care for them while he works weekends. Jill Biden’s communications director (the vice-president’s wife actually needs one?) “kisses her 11-month-old son outside the White House gates when her baby sitter strolls by on sunny afternoons.”

Mr. Emanuel said he knew the Obama-mania was waning in his household when he told his son recently that they would again be savoring father-son bonding time at the White House on a Saturday.

The 12-year-old did not jump for joy. He set conditions.

“I’ll go,” his son said, “but I don’t want to sit through another Iranian meeting.”

By: Carolyn Moynihan