http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4331755.ece
![Ben Macintyre]()
Argentina’s terrible truth may stay in the dark
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the times... Argentina’s terrible truth may stay in the dark Ben Mac
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Argentina’s terrible truth may stay in the dark
“I COULD come out of this one dead,” Alberto Nisman remarked darkly last Saturday. Three days earlier the Argentine prosecutor investigating the bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 had accused Argentine officials, including President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, of plotting to hide Iran’s role in the terrorist attack in exchange for lucrative trade deals.
Last Monday Nisman was due to testify about those accusations. On Sunday he was found dead in his locked apartment with a bullet in his head and a .22 calibre pistol lying alongside him.
The body was barely cold before officials declared this a suicide. Kirchner herself now says it was not, and that Nisman was murdered by people who had fed him false information pretending to be state intelligence agents: “Spies who were not spies.” This theory, of course, conveniently undermines Nisman’s accusations against Kirchner.
Whether Nisman killed himself or was murdered by one of his many enemies, this brave man was undoubtedly the 86th victim of the 1994 bombing, the bloodiest attack against Jews since the Second World War — a crime for which no one has ever been convicted. The attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) and its aftermath is an astonishingly nasty tale of murder, corruption, terrorism and diplomatic intrigue. But more than that, it is an object lesson in the way a state can be fatally undermined by its failure to confront the past.
Imagine if the attacks of 9/11 in America or 7/7 in London had been left unsolved for two decades, its perpetrators unidentified, the families of the victims left uncertain, and you have a sense of the moral outrage sweeping Argentina today.
The elderly Jewish-Argentine occupants of the AMIA building were quietly chatting and playing cards when a 600lb car bomb exploded in front, reducing the structure to rubble, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300. The attack came two years after the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, in which 29 died.
Argentina’s large Jewish community had little doubt who was behind the attack. Argentine prosecutors, Jewish groups, the state of Israel and Interpol have all accused Iran of orchestrating and financing the bombing, and Hezbollah of carrying it out. Tehran was enraged by Argentina’s decision to cease nuclear co-operation over fears that Iran’s program was not limited to peaceful purposes. Hezbollah was keen to avenge the Israeli assassination of its leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992 and send a message that no Jewish community was safe.
Yet the investigation from the start was a travesty, a fatal combination of corruption and unwillingness to confront reality. The Argentine political establishment showed little interest in the case. As with Argentina’s Dirty War, many preferred to look away and forget. It was not until 2005 that the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, became the first public figure to sign a petition calling for justice in the AMIA case.
That year seemed to mark a change of government attitude. President Nestor Kirchner (late husband of the current president) condemned the failed investigations as a “national disgrace” and appointed Alberto Nisman as a special prosecutor to root out the truth.
Nisman set to work with vigour and courage. A year later prosecutors formally accused Iran and Hezbollah of carrying out the bombing and indicted seven Iranians and one Lebanese-born member of Hezbollah. None has ever been captured and some are still believed to hold government jobs in Iran.
In 2013 the Argentine government announced it had signed an understanding with Iran to set up a “truth commission” to investigate the AMIA bombing. Mrs Kirchner (who succeeded her husband in 2007) claimed it would “advance knowledge of the truth about the attack”. Jewish groups were outraged. Inviting the Iranian regime to a truth commission, said one, was like “asking Nazi Germany to help establish the facts about Kristallnacht”.
The indefatigable Nisman set to work once more, and last week dropped his bombshell. The joint agreement, he claimed, was a sordid secret cover-up: former Iranian officials would be absolved and in return Argentine grain would be exported to Iran and Iranian oil would flow to Argentina to aid its chronic energy deficit.
The talk of justice was a sham, Nisman claimed, aimed at “faking Iran’s innocence to serve geopolitical and commercial interests”. The government dismissed the allegations as ridiculous and now claims that Nisman was the target of a murderous conspiracy to smear Kirchner’s name.
For many in Argentina, the smell left by cover-up, denial and violent death is all too familiar. As the country emerged from the brutal years of dictatorship, those in power chose to hold their noses. Unlike Germany and South Africa, Argentina has never embraced a full reckoning with its grim history.
“We are used to things in Argentina remaining in the dark,” said one opposition politician. Darkness has become a habit. Argentina vowed to establish the truth about the 1994 bombing and never did. Nisman set out to uncover the truth behind that failed promise and died as a consequence. The truth has been abused, degraded and suppressed for so long in Argentina it may never be found.
The Times
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var links re racism racists /race
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JUNE 2013: TONTI - FILIPINI The Catholic Church and paedophilia: Learning from failures
IN A NAIVE CHURCH, THE TRUST IN WHICH PERPETRATORS WERE HELD WAS TOO EASILY EXPLOITED AND THEIR CRIMES TOO READILY FORGIVEN. WE HAVE LEARNED, BUT AT A TERRIBLE PRICE FOR VICTIMS AND THEIR FAMILIES.CREDIT: WWW.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
The current clerical paedophilia crisis affecting the Catholic Church in Australia is a surprise only in that it seems to have taken so long for the extent and gravity of events to have become public knowledge.
That there are priests who abused prepubescent or adolescent children is to be expected. They are prone to the same human frailties as the members of any other professional group. It is has been claimed that in the United States, the evidence indicates that paedophilia (sexual attraction to prepubescent children) affects 0.3% of the entire population of clergy, which is lower than the average for males, and homosexual attraction to adolescent boys affects around 2% of clergy, about the same proportion that affects married males. However, a report commissioned by the United States Catholic Bishops in 2002for the period 1950-2002 produced some disturbing results:
- 195 dioceses and 140 religious communities were surveyed; 7 of the dioceses and 30 of the communities did not respond to the survey.
- From the responses, a total of 4,392 priests, deacons and religious were identified to have been accused of such offenses.
- They represented 3-6% of priests in the dioceses and 1-3% in the communities. The overall percentage of accused in terms of all priests and religious in the United States was 4%.
- 75% of the alleged incidents took place between 1960-1984.
- A report to the police resulted in an investigation in almost all cases. 384 of the 4,392 were criminally charged. Overall only 8.7% of those accused ended up being charged.
- Of the 384 charged, 252 were convicted - a 66% conviction rate. Some of them had more than one conviction on different counts. Those convicted represented only 5.7% of the total that had been accused.
- As of 2002 (before all the massive costs since then imposed by subsequent court rulings), the cost to the dioceses and communities between 1950-2002 was estimated at about $573 million - $501 million for victim compensation and treatment, and the rest for priest treatment and legal fees.
It is claimed that the incidence of priests abusing their office in these ways would seem to be no greater than for doctors abusing their patients, lawyers abusing their clients, or teachers abusing their students. The main difference may be that the community expects a higher standard of morality for clergy, and sexual crimes by clergy involves both hypocrisy and offence against their high office.
However, it is very disturbing that in my home city of Melbourne, in evidence to the Victorian Parliamentary Enquiry, Professor Des Cahill reported that 14 of 378 priests graduating from Corpus Christi, the diocesan seminary, between 1940 and 1966 were convicted of child sexual abuse, and Church authorities had admitted that another four who had died were also abusers - a rate of 4.76%. I have since confirmed the likelihood that these numbers are correct with some priests who were training for the priesthood during that period (though I am not free to name them).
If the American data showing only 5.7% of those accused were later convicted were indicative of the fate of complaints here, then the proportion of priests in Melbourne about whom complaints had been made would be impossibly high given that 4.76% were convicted. If the data were indicative of a very high proportion of priests being the subject of complaints that might explain why there appears to have been little response to complaints. There would simply have been too many of them. Professor Cahill told the Victorian Parliamentary Enquiry, "I remain comfortable with that figure and the incidence is much higher than in the general population and much higher than for any other professional group."
It is difficult to know what to make of the American data and the low proportion of complaints that result in conviction, and the extraordinarily high proportion of priests who have been convicted in Melbourne and whether that indicates a very high proportion of priests against whom complaints have been made here. It seems significant that in the United States the rate of offending among diocesan clergy seems to be roughly double that of offending by those in religious life. That might have something to do with selection and formation. It might also be something to do with greater surveillance when living in a religious community.
There are questions about whether the high proportion of convicted offenders in Melbourne is related to systemic issues in selection and formation. However, the public concern, rightfully, would seem to have focussed more on the way in which the Church authorities have responded to complaints and proven offences, especially where victims were underage and there was a reasonable suspicion of activity that was criminal in nature.
Deficiencies in clerical and religious formation
In relation to formation, I asked questions of some of those who were trained at the diocesan seminary at Werribee, during the period in question, about conditions in the seminary. One priest told me that the Jesuit community responsible for their formation retired to their own community in the evenings and left the seminarians to themselves. Two priests said words to the effect that some of those who were later convicted were considered a little strange or eccentric, and some were known by their peers to have had other problems, such as alcoholism. Some had clearly identified their homosexual orientation to their peers and the former tended to form their own sub-group. A senior priest was responsible for the formation of the seminarians. The priests I spoke to questioned the quality of the spiritual direction that they experienced.
The selection and spiritual direction of candidates for the priesthood and religious life has been subjected to intense scrutiny since the 1980s when the problem first began to come to notice both in the Church and publicly. It is not a matter about which I have expertise, but I am puzzled why the "Theology of the Body" and the related topics of affectivity and Trinitarian anthropology do not seem to be taught with any degree of enthusiasm in theology programs attended by seminarians. The result is that an opportunity for a strong theological formation in sexuality, relating the vocation to celibacy or to married life to Christ and the common vocation of a Christian to seek communion with God by making a gift of oneself, seems to be being missed.
In my view, the seminarians could be better prepared to respond to the modern realties and the challenges of the sexualisation of our secular culture. Much more could be done to develop a mature, theologically and scientifically informed approach to sexuality in our seminarians that encourages them to integrate their sexual identity into their personal identity as a Christian called to communion with Christ. In that way, they would be encouraged to genuinely celebrate their own choice of celibacy positively as a witness to the Kingdom and a way of upholding the values and attitudes that see marriage as a witness to divine love.
Failure to report abuse
Referring to the period before 1996, the concern that has been expressed by many victims, and those who support them, includes the claim that the Church authorities have been reluctant to report sexual crimes involving underage victims, to the police or child welfare authorities, that they have encouraged secrecy, including offering settlements that required confidentiality, that they have always not acknowledged the gravity of the harm done, or ensured adequate treatment of complainants, and that they have not always removed the perpetrators from office, and, as a result, the latter have been able to reoffend.
Lay Catholics know that priests are as frail as the rest of us when it comes to committing sin, and we would be naive if we thought that there would not be a proportion of those in the priesthood likely to commit many of the same sins in the various categories as in the general male community. The Catholic community often seems to be being willing to forgive the sins of our pastors. It is not uncommon for parish communities to support their priests, even when their past sins are public knowledge.
What is difficult for lay Catholics to accept is that conduct that amounts to a serious crime against a child would not be reported by Church authorities to the police so that justice may be done. This neglect is contrary to current official Vatican policy, which is that civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed.
In many jurisdictions, professions such as doctors, social workers and teachers are in mandated professions and required by law to report that a child is at risk, but priests (and bishops) are not a mandated profession. The obligation to report crime for those not mandated to do so may be a moral and social obligation but, apart from some recent changes to the law in some jurisdictions, it appears not to be a legal obligation, except that if one helps to hide a crime then that may be considered to be an offence of aiding and abetting.
As far as I am aware, until relatively recently, no Church authority in Australia had been charged with aiding and abetting crime for not reporting criminal sexual offences against children, despite credible complaints and even sometimes admission of guilt by perpetrators. The only cases of action for alleged misprision are very recent.
So in the past, the question of Church authorities reporting crime would seem to have been a matter of a failure to meet a moral and social responsibility rather than a legal issue. That situation is now changing. It is also expected that the Victorian parliamentary enquiry and the Commonwealth Commission may make recommendations for further changes to the law with respect to obligations to report a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed against a child.
Failure to remove priests and protect children
Leaving aside the obligation to report a crime, there is concern about the ways in which these matters were managed, particularly with respect to priests known or strongly suspected to have committed crimes against children, and those with unresolved complaints against them, being appointed or re-appointed to circumstances where they had opportunity to re-offend. There is concern about what would seem, in some cases, to have been a failure to protect children, including a failure to warn others in authority about the risk.
Again, current official Vatican policy is that during the preliminary stage a Bishop can act to protect children by restricting the activities of any priest in his diocese. According to the policy, this is part of the Bishop's ordinary authority, which he is encouraged to exercise to whatever extent is necessary to assure that children do not come to harm, and this power can be exercised at the Bishop's discretion before, during and after any canonical proceeding. The policy has been criticised because it permits, but does not require, a Bishop to suspend or remove the priest while the allegation is investigated.
In dealing with the Ireland situation, Pope Benedict XVI said that the Irish Bishops had failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse, and serious mistakes and grave errors of judgment were made, and failures of leadership occurred:
"It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness."
Moreover, the Pope asked Bishops to co-operate with the civil authorities. In his pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland dated 19 March 2010, he also said:
"The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings."
The Pope has acknowledged the wrongs, and repeatedly apologised and asked forgiveness on behalf of the Church for its own failures in responding to the child abuse by clergy. In recent years, there has been a great deal of re-writing of policy by Bishops' conferences and the establishment of better mechanisms for investigating and responding to complaints. We can therefore expect the future to be different.
There remains a puzzle however over how it was that, in the past, known offenders, or those who were reasonably suspected of grave offences against children, were not at least suspended indefinitely or removed from the priesthood or religious life. In some instances, even convicted paedophiles, after serving their term in gaol, have been admitted, as religious, back into their religious communities, and presumably a position of trust and respect, even if restricted from contact with children.
Misjudgement of the psychotherapeutic response to paedophilia
In the past, the response to offences against children appears to have been dealt with in a spirit of providing pastoral care to perpetrators and to victims and treating the wrong as a mental and or spiritual disorder requiring treatment and spiritual rehabilitation.
The response appears to be more fitting for a judgment that the perpetrators were good men who had erred on an occasion out of human weakness. That they were in fact criminals who should be punished and the community protected from them, and that they were more likely to be multiple offenders living a life of deception, would not seem to have informed their management.
It is unfair to say that secrecy was preserved in order to protect the Church, because at that time it was generally accepted that confidentiality was in the interests of the victims. The change in psychiatric opinion to an understanding that promotes the need for admission and recognition of the harm done is more recent. If one compares the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of 1980 (the DSM-III) with the DSM-IV of 1994, one of the major changes is in relation to the inclusion of childhood sexual abuse as one of the diagnostic criteria for mental disorders, especially borderline personality disorders. The latter were not even listed in the DSMIII. The DSM IV had the following new entry:
"Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between child abuse, especially child sexual abuse, and development of BPD [Borderline Personality Disorder]. Many individuals with BPD report to have had a history of abuse and neglect as young children. Patients with BPD have been found to be significantly more likely to report having been verbally, emotionally, physically or sexually abused by caregivers of either gender. There has also been a high incidence of reported incest and loss of caregivers in early childhood for people with borderline personality disorder.
They were also much more likely to report having caregivers (of both genders) deny the validity of their thoughts and feelings. They were also reported to have failed to provide needed protection, and neglected their child's physical care. Parents (of both sexes) were typically reported to have withdrawn from the child emotionally, and to have treated the child inconsistently.
Additionally, women with BPD who reported a previous history of neglect by a female caregiver and abuse by a male caregiver were consequently at significantly higher risk of claiming sexual abuse by a noncaregiver (not a parent). It has been suggested that children who experience chronic early maltreatment and attachment difficulties may go on to develop borderline personality disorder."
The great harm done by sexual abuse and, more to the point, the need to acknowledge the abuse in order to adequately treat it, is something that has emerged within psychiatry. It would thus be unfair to blame those in authority in the Church, prior to the current era, for not understanding the importance of acknowledging the abuse and validating the feelings of the abused person. It would appear that the Church was simply in line with the thinking of the time in not adequately understanding the needs of people who were abused as children.
In relation to the perpetrators, there appears to have been a general ignorance about paedophilia and recidivism and about the inability to treat it. It would appear that the responses of Church authorities were often based on the idea that successful treatment of the offender was possible. Presumably, they were given that advice by experts in the field. It would help the community to better understand the responses of the Church authorities if the advice they received were to be made public.
There was also a belief that the children were better off if less were made of the abuse and parents, doctors and even police seemed to act upon that assumption. There were no specialist units in police forces with the expertise to deal with this issue and to manage alleged victims well. So the Church authorities would have made assumptions and received advice about both the victims and the perpetrators that were quite different from current expert advice, and, if they had gone to the police, there was no guarantee that the victims would have been well managed.
The current thinking, in the recently released DSM-V, on the perpetrators is quite different and is summarised in the followingparagraph:
"Pedophilia, the sexual attraction to children who have not yet reached puberty, remains a vexing challenge for clinicians and public officials. Classified as a paraphilia, an abnormal sexual behavior, researchers have found no effective treatment. Like other sexual orientations, pedophilia is unlikely to change. The goal of treatment, therefore, is to prevent someone from acting on pedophile urges - either by decreasing sexual arousal around children or increasing the ability to manage that arousal. But neither is as effective for reducing harm as preventing access to children, or providing close supervision."
That paedophilia is an orientation that is not to be cured or treated was not understood or at least not well understood. The emphasis on the primary means of preventing harm being to prevent access to children or to provide close supervision is also a significant development. There have thus been considerable changes in the psychiatric understanding of paedophilia.
As a matter of history, the Church authorities were not alone in not notifying the civil authorities when there was a reasonable suspicion or knowledge of sexual offences against a child. It appears that most organisations lacked the capacity to deal with this issue adequately, including not only religious and State organisations that had the care of children, but also the armed forces which recruited pubescent children. The latter seemingly did not provide the protection, supervision and avenues for complaint that are now thought to be essential wherever there are underage persons or persons who are otherwise vulnerable.
Organisations in general were ill-equipped to deal with the problem. Like the Church, most were also naive about the risks and the need to provide supervision. Most organisations and children in their care were easy prey for those paedophiles who had developed a deceptive lifestyle around their criminal activities. This is no more evident than in the recent revelations about BBC legend Jimmy Savile.
A spirit of therapy rather than punishment, the perceived needs of victims and their families for privacy and confidentiality, the lack of appreciation of the gravity of the harm to the victims, and ignorance about the harmful psychological effect of not validating a complaint, might account for the failure to report crime and to seek justice in that respect. However it can only be considered now as a grave misjudgement.
Among other matters related to the investigation and punishment of serious crime and the protection of children, the misjudgement concerns the needs of victims and their families to have their complaint validated and to see that justice was done. They have a legitimate grievance that there appears to have been a failure to recognise and take account of the harm done.
There also seems to have been a policy of pursuing settlements that included confidentiality clauses. It is difficult to explain the latter except as a design to protect either the Church or institution or the alleged perpetrator from the harm that might be done by further disclosure of the matter. There was no other reason to establish such an obligation. Whether or not it was in the interests of the victim to disclose the abuse should always have rested with the victim and his or her family. If anything, the pressure should have been towards disclosure in order to be able to better protect others.
To my knowledge, the policies in place now do not include confidentiality clauses and I would expect the practice to have ceased altogether. The idea that a settlement buys silence does not serve the legal or the therapeutic interests of victims, and it certainly does not serve the interests of the community if it means that the perpetrator can continue to abuse others.
The misjudgement was also about the nature of the perpetrators and the tragic reality that a perpetrator, in this respect, seldom had only a solitary victim. In fact, in some instances, it would appear that perpetrators had lived a life of deception and may have joined the priesthood for the opportunities that it afforded. The high probability of recidivism and inability to "cure" paedophilia are also a matter of more recent knowledge, certainly post 1990-1994. To the credit of the Church authorities, the policies changes soon after the medical advice changed, so that by 1996 the approach had completely changed.
Finally, the misjudgement was in relation to the effect of gross immorality on the office of the priesthood. The therapeutic approach would seem to have missed the significance of the grave harm done to victims and the heinous nature of an offence against a child which could only have been addressed by severe penalties for the perpetrators. The failure to remove them from office, or at least suspend them, also damaged the office of priesthood and has continuing effects on both laity and on other clergy. That a perpetrator of such a grave offence and such a misuse of the office could be permitted to continue in office is a grave scandal.
Failure to impose penalties
The failure to report crime, the secrecy and the adoption of a therapeutic approach, can be explained by the general lack of knowledge of the time about the grave harm done, the belief that it was a curable condition, and lack of understanding about the high risk of recidivism. The failure to impose penalties, however, is more difficult to explain.
That the offences are serious crimes is not new to the Church. Pope Pius V's Constitution of 30 August 1568 designates priestly abuse (sodomy) of children as horrendum illud scelus - that horrendous crime! There was also a ruling by the Third Lateran Council in 1179 on violations of the clerical state requiring those who committed sodomy to be dismissed from the clerical state:
"Clerics in holy orders, who in open concubinage keep their mistresses in their houses, should either cast them out and live continently or be deprived of ecclesiastical office and benefice. Let all who are found guilty of that unnatural vice for which the wrath of God came down upon the sons of disobedience and destroyed the five cities with fire, if they are clerics be expelled from the clergy or confined in monasteries to do penance; if they are laymen they are to incur excommunication and be completely separated from the society of the faithful. If any cleric without clear and necessary cause presumes to frequent convents of nuns, let the bishop keep him away; and if he does not stop, let him be ineligible for an ecclesiastical benefice."
The removal of clerical state for such an offence would probably have exposed the perpetrator to capital punishment by the civil authority for such an offence. Moreover, the Cluniac reforms of the tenth century and the Gregorian reforms of the eleventh were in part to address sexual abuse issues by clergy and in the monasteries.
This is thus not a new problem for the Church: there have clearly been episodes in the Church when widespread sexual offences by clergy had to be dealt with specifically. That there should be penalties for sexual offences against children is longstanding in the Church. It is thus puzzling why it was that, in the period between 1950 and 1996, it appears that some Church authorities, at least, did not think it appropriate to ensure that those who had committed serious criminal offences crimes against children should be prosecuted and punished. There appears to have been little commitment to informing the civil authorities of a reasonable suspicion or even certain knowledge of a serious criminal offence against a child. The burden of reporting crime seems to have been left to the victims and their families.
At the same time, the Church authorities had no capacity to impose penalties themselves, nor the powers of the police and the courts to investigate, gather evidence or compel witnesses. The most that they could do was to remove perpetrators from office and withdraw priestly faculties, and even that could be canonically difficult given the lack of investigative powers to establish wrongdoing in the face of denial. There have been cases of priests successfully appealing to Rome against a local removal or suspension of their faculties in the absence of concrete evidence.
The public apologies have tended to be non-specific. Perhaps they need to address each of these aspects of the misjudgements. There is certainly a need for those who were involved to explain the advice they received and why they did what they did.
There has been a complete change of sensitivity within the Church. It would now seem that we can be confident that those who have been found to have committed offences of this nature are not left in positions where they can re-offend. Nevertheless, there remains an issue concerning the social obligation to report crime to the civil authorities so that justice is done and can be seen to be done. The circumstance in which the victim and his or her family do not report the allegation to the police appears to remain a difficulty.
The complexity of investigations
Because this is not the first time in history in which the Church has been riven by scandal of this nature, we can expect that the Church will survive the present difficulties, but there is an opportunity to limit the extent of the harm done by the scandals by the nature of the response and the restoration of confidence.
The outstanding issue for Church authorities is that some victims and their families do not want action by the civil authorities. The problem then is that an internal investigation lacks the powers and the capacity of the police and the judiciary, with respect to obtaining evidence and acting upon it. There is thus good reason to support making reporting, by those in authority in the Church, mandatory. The other side of the argument, however, is whether such a requirement would inhibit the reporting of offences by victims and their families.
There are also difficulties when a complaint is made and investigated by the police but no charges are laid or charges are laid but no conviction results, through lack of evidence. The Church may then have the matter investigated internally.
One of the oddities of a matter being handled internally is that a finding may be made in favour of a victim on the balance of probabilities and compensation paid, but there may not be sufficient evidence to provide cause to punish or at least remove the offender from office. There are issues of justice involved for both victim and perpetrator when an accusation is made and, with only a small proportion of complaints resulting in successful prosecution, the complaint is not proven. That raises a question about how the Bishop or the religious superior should act in that case when an accusation is not sustained, but it is not disproven either.
When an accusation is made, the alleged perpetrator is likely to stand down or be stood down while the matter is investigated but what should happen when, as is often the case, the matter is not resolved either way? Is this a case in which someone remains innocent until proven guilty and so they are to be returned to office when the case lapses? Is it prudent for the person in authority to return a man to office when uncertainty remains? What is just for both the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victim? What is prudent in terms of protecting children, if some suspicion remains? Is the practice of returning the alleged perpetrator to office, but restricting their activity so that they do not have unsupervised contact with children, the solution? If a man remains a member of a religious community or retains his faculties as a priest, is it realistic that he can be prevented from reoffending especially as others may be unaware of the restrictions and the history, and still treat him with respect and trust? Also deception is commonly a significant aspect of paedophilia and it may be difficult to enforce the restrictions. Does his retaining that position scandalise the complainants and their families because, despite his past actions for which they have been compensated, as far as they are concerned he still holds a respected and trusted office?
After the victims themselves and their families, those most harmed by what has occurred are the vast majority of priests who lead good and holy lives of great sacrifice and devotion. They benefit most from the adoption of rigorous approaches to those who have abused their office. However, they can also become the victims of the change in sensitivity because now an allegation, whether or not it is well-founded, is likely to bring immediate suspension from public ministry for an indefinite time. Such allegations are often difficult to prove or disprove and, in the meantime, during the prolonged investigative process which may ultimately not end in resolution, both victim and accused remain in a state of limbo.
I have seen this happen to a priest who was accused of sexual offences against adults, not criminal matters, nor even matters for police investigation. When nothing was found against him after repeated investigation by a variety of Church agencies, and evidence was also obtained to the contrary, he was still unable to clear his name through the lack of the Church process to act, as a police and a court investigation might, in gathering and presenting the evidence. He has thus resorted to taking defamation actions against the media and the reporters in order to seek a court judgement in his favour exonerating him.
Nevertheless, where children or vulnerable people are involved, I would suggest that the primary obligation is the protection of potential victims from what is grievous harm. There is also an obligation to the alleged victim because we now know that not being believed, if someone has been harmed this way, compounds the psychological harm done. That would seem to require that justice for the alleged perpetrator, who may have been falsely accused, may need to be sacrificed, if significant doubt remains about what occurred. There may be circumstances in which an innocent man cannot be returned to office because of the perceived risk.
The importance of the witness of holiness
A concern I have is that loss of confidence on the part of Bishops will cause them to take a low public profile. I have heard of priests being advised by their Bishop not to be seen in public, such as on public transport or attending a sporting event or the theatre, wearing clothes that identify their priestly status, for fear of being spat on or otherwise badly treated. That is very sad, but perhaps even more a matter of concern is if Bishops and other Catholic religious leaders choose to remain silent on other public issues because of the adverse publicity on this issue.
In my view, in addition to admitting our faults and expressing our sorrow, it is only holiness and genuine witness to holiness that will overcome the damage done by the scandals. At this difficult time, I feel it is most important for Catholics, especially Catholic laypeople, to increase their efforts to give that witness. We especially need to give witness to the importance of chastity and its meaning within our vocation to seek communion with Christ. The "Theology of the Body" reforms have a vital role in providing meaning where so much harm has been done to the Catholic brand.
The Royal Commission
The cooperation with civil authorities that Pope Benedict XVI urged on the Irish Bishops would seem to be advice that would best be taken generally. There would seem to be a need, for those appointed to manage responses to allegations against clergy by Church authorities, to cooperate closely with the civil authorities in order to expedite effective resolution as quickly as possible for the sake of all concerned. In this case, justice deferred is justice denied for all.
The response of the Australian Bishops Conference was to support the appointment of the Royal Commission and to express a desire to openly embrace and co-operate with its work. Shortly after it was appointed, the President of the Bishops Conference,Archbishop Denis Hart announced a council to assist the Royal Commission:
"The Truth, Justice and Healing Council fully supports the Royal Commission and will do everything within its power to cooperate with it and its exploration of truth for everyone who has been affected by the tragedy of child abuse by:
- Identifying systematic institutional failures that have impeded the protection of children;
- Promoting lasting healing for the survivors of previous abuse;
- Identifying all necessary measures to prevent abuse of children in the future."
My major concern with the enquiries, including the Royal Commission, is that I fear they will not reveal what needs to be revealed. At some stage we will reach saturation with the stories of children being abused, including abuse within indigenous communities. Each story is horrifying, but as a community we can only absorb so much.
The identification of perpetrators, at least those still alive, is a task for police, not for a commission, and I doubt the commission will be very helpful in that respect, although it does have the function of preparing prosecution briefs for the police. The Commission will no doubt address the systemic issues, how organisations should act to protect children and to respond to complaints, and issues such as mandatory reporting for clergy.
What is likely to be missing, however, is the second-tier of those in authority who made poor decisions - not reporting to police, not removing known or reasonably suspected perpetrators from ministry or other positions, causing their transfer to other parishes or schools, or not warning other Bishops or religious leaders into whose jurisdiction they were moved, even when there was evidence of possible, probable or even acknowledged criminal behaviour. Those people who were responsible for those decisions have every reason to avoid the enquiries, or to avoid answering questions if they are called. Why should they expose themselves to civil litigation, even, if not, criminal prosecution? Why would they not withhold material if they can lawfully do so?
However, it would certainly help to clear the air if they offered explanations of what they did and the advice on which they acted. As I have suggested, it would seem that the mistakes made, according to contemporary understanding, might be explained if we were to know the assumptions on which the decisions were based, including the authority and his or her advisers not understanding recidivism and paedophilia and that paedophilia is not a treatable condition, and not understanding the extent and nature of the harm done to victims and their need to have their complaints validated.
I suspect that the only way that these enquiries will uncover significant material of that nature is if, in its setting-up, something like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission were to be achieved. The latter indemnified those who made truthful admissions as to their wrongdoing, against civil or criminal proceedings. That is what we may need. There are some people in the Church who were in significant positions of responsibility prior to 1996 when the current policies were put in place, and are still in high positions.
Learning from the Melbourne Response
I am confident in the current policy in Melbourne, the so-called Melbourne Response. I would prefer that the national policy,Towards Healing, did not involve someone who has been abused by the clergy having to front another member of the clergy or a religious carrying out the investigation or offering pastoral or other support. That must be very difficult for those who have reason to mistrust the clergy. There is also something of a conflict of interest in having priests and religious involved, because the community they belong to as priests and religious is quite small and they are usually well known to each other. There is a danger of an internal group acting protectively towards colleagues.
The Melbourne Response handed the issue across to professional non-Catholics. I do not accept the criticism of the Melbourne Response that they have not referred to the police. The reason for that is that the Melbourne Response does not enquire into anything that is the subject of police enquiry. The rationale for the Melbourne Response was to try to assist those people who had either had their matters dealt with by the police, or for whom there was either insufficient evidence or an unwillingness to deal with the police. The purpose was to assist those who had fallen through the cracks of the government response and to take responsibility for providing them with support, counselling and, in many cases, compensation.
Had there been a requirement that those involved in the Melbourne Response mandatorily report, that would have made it easier, and I support that possibility. Without mandatory reporting it is very difficult to know how to deal with a complainant who will not go to the police, despite being urged to do so.
***
Reading some of the evidence of witnesses to the Melbourne parliamentary enquiry, I have wondered whether the sexual determinism that pervaded the Kinsey Report and appears to be endemic in our culture, may have extended its influence to some priests and religious, leading them to believe that they had little control over their sexual desires and causing them to act out in the way that "God had made them." However, if that was so, it was the opposite of what the Church teaches about freewill and individual responsibility.
Perhaps those who have been convicted of these awful offences will be able to shine some light on why they did as they did. However, I suspect that the priesthood and religious life were a convenience and not a cause. In a naive Church community, the trust in which they were held was too easily exploited and their brothers in the priesthood and religious life too willing to disbelieve the victims or too willing to forgive what was a heinous crime against a child. We have learned, but at a terrible price for the many victims and their families.
Professor Nicholas Tonti-Filippini is Associate Dean and Head of Bioethics at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne. His most recent book is About Bioethics - Volume 4: Motherhood, Embodied Love and Culture, from which this piece is drawn.
Comments (16)
LION IRC :
17 Jun 2013 5:05:09pmI was astonished to see in the transcript from the Victtorian enquiry;
“Father Gannon said his sexual offences ranged over the years from about 1957 to 1979.”
Here's my question directed at the governments Royal Commission
"Why did it take until the year 2013 (it's only been 30 years)
to FINALLY look into this matter?
Answer : Better late than never.
Another question directed at the parents who never reported the rape of their child to the police.
"Why did it take until the year 2013 to finally hear public testimony from you?
Answer : Better late than never.NILBELIEVER :
12 Dec 2013 12:38:55amBlaming the victims, then? And everyone else but the actual perpetrators, and their organisation? How disgraceful.
Yes, "victims" includes the parents of abused children, who may have felt/been unable to approach police or other authorities for any number of reasons, including trust in the church to sort it out, not actually knowing what happened (or possibly until much later), reflexive respect of priests and other church officials, fear of being ostracised from their faith/local community as "troublemakers", etc etc.
And yes, that's all pure speculation on my part. I don't pretend to know their reasons. But neither do you, and your uncharitably insinuating the worst, presumably as a means to diffuse blame and responsibility, is nothing short of risible victim-blaming.
Please read David Marr's Quarterly Essay. How many times over the years did the catholic church, and George Pell in particular, deny that an independent government inquiry was even needed, and reject any such suggestion? Yet, it's the government's fault?
The first failure of "religious morals" was the abuse itself. The second was the patently inadequate (or worse) institutional responses, or lack thereof. Attempts at self-interested deflection such as this have joined that list. Well done, quite an achievement, that.
JIM :
13 Jun 2013 5:39:57pm... continuing my comment
Misjudgement of the psychotherapeutic response to paedophilia
Whatever the guidelines quoted from various versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it is obvious to all observers that many of the known offenders were, and were recognised as, unstoppable recidivists. As one blatant example, Chrissie Foster quotes that Kevin O’Donnell’s abuse record spanned over 50 years – surely all clergy aware of such behaviour (even perhaps by “gossip”) were and are culpable of gross evil by continuing to tolerate appalling crimes.
Validation for victims and families
Professor Tonti-Filippini acknowledges a need for complaints to be validated and for justice to be done, yet bishops and Vatican authorities have impeded and often prevented such actions as the laicisation of abusive priests.
As examples:
• Archbishop Hart acknowledged that the Vatican resisted attempts to laicise Desmond Gannon for 18 years;
• Archbishop Hart resisted every attempt to have the name of an abuser – Monsignor Penn Jones, removed from a plaque honouring clergy in St Patrick’s cathedral until forced to do so by the then papal nuncio;
• Kevin O’Donnell’s name is reported to be still honoured on a plaque in the Oakleigh parish church.
Failure to impose penalties
No bishop or cardinal has ever apologised for his lack of action in any case under his jurisdiction. There has been no apology from Rome for inaction, unduly delayed actions, or for the acceptance of what appear to have been unjustified appeals by suspended priests.
Professor Tonti-Filippini writes:
There appears to have been little commitment to informing the civil authorities of a reasonable suspicion or even certain knowledge of a serious criminal offence against a child. The burden of reporting crime seems to have been left to the victims and their families.
Perhaps, we could say more accurately:
The burden of reporting even certain knowledge of serious criminal offences has been deliberately left to the victims and their families according to evidence from Mr O’Callaghan QC.
The complexity of investigations
Professor Tonti-Filippini writes:
Nevertheless, where children or vulnerable people are involved, I would suggest that the primary obligation is the protection of potential victims from what is grievous harm. … … That would seem to require that justice for the alleged perpetrator, who may have been falsely accused, may need to be sacrificed, if significant doubt remains about what occurred. There may be circumstances in which an innocent man cannot be returned to office because of the perceived risk.
This attitude reflects a proper concern that protection of vulnerable children (and of vulnerable adults) is rightly a high priority. Would that it was observed in practice.
Perhaps one factor to consider in this context is that real experience, includiJIM :
11 Jun 2013 11:04:11amA response to Professor Tonti-Filippini
Re: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/06/04/3774696.htm
Professor Tonti-Filippini appears to be using rose-tinted spectacles when commenting on the Catholic Church and paedophilia. In common with many commentators he conflates the problems of paedophilia and ephebophilia – which is a minor criticism, but one that indicates a general imprecision in a supposedly professional commentary.
Failure to report abuse
In his discussion of the failures to report abuse, there is no mention whatever that church policy as defined by the edict Crimen Sollicitationis expressly forbade disclosure of church investigations and conclusions:
• Crimen Sollicitationis in Clause 11:- Since, however, in dealing with these causes, more than usual care and concern must be shown that they be treated with the utmost confidentiality, and that, once decided and the decision executed, they are covered by permanent silence.
To say that current Vatican policy is to observe civil law requirements regarding reporting of crimes indicates a barely minimal response by the church – i.e. “don’t break the law!” An organisation claiming to offer moral leadership ought not hesitate to report all crimes to civil authorities for proper investigation, most especially those alleged crimes committed under, and facilitated by, the authorities invested in the perpetrators by that organisation.
Can anyone imagine a priest or bishop not reporting a burglary to the police? Why are abuse cases so different?
Professor Tonti-Filippini assumes that these failures are criticised only “referring to the period before 1996” which is quite untrue – the criticisms rightly include the periods since 1996 and include both the Melbourne
Response and Towards Healing.
He writes that “the question of Church authorities reporting crime would seem to have been a matter of a failure to meet a moral and social responsibility rather than a legal issue.” That is accurate. Church authorities have failed to meet moral and social responsibilities and so, clearly failed to provide moral leadership.
Failure to remove priests and protect children
Professor Tonti-Filippini writes as though all relevant cases are in the distant past, yet documented cases are as recent as 2006 – for example Fr Pavlou in Healesville and the appointment of Barry Robinson to work in the Melbourne Archdiocese after he was known to have had sexual relations with a 16 year-old in USA.
Those examples illustrate that changes in 1996-7 did not fix all the church’s problems in this area.
The quotation of Pope Benedict’s admonitions to the Irish bishops rings hollow alongside the policies of Crimen Sollicitationis quoted above.
Misjudgement of the psychotherapeutic response to paedophilia.
Whatever the guidelines quoted from various versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ofGRAEME :
10 Jun 2013 8:36:07pmDecisive action by bishops, provincials, principals and others in charge of students would have been helpful where offences against students had occurred and saved victims much suffering. As Nick points out there are difficulties even when allegations are made and Broken Rites and the public enquiries reveal that a significant number of victims have been intimidated into silence and the offences remain hidden. The offences of a much respected older teacher were not known for some 5 to 6 years after the offender and one of the victims had left the country school in the late 1980s. No word, as far as I knew, ever reached a teacher or the principal or any other adult about the offences. When the victim did let adults know, he received a payout from the Order involved. This illustrates the difficulty for those responsible to take the decisive action required. The offender had died so did not face any charges, as far as can ascertained.
Strange that Nick did not clearly identify canon law 1395.2 (laicization) as the punishment for the sexual abuse of a minor.
Again as with Pell, there is an attempt to take refuge in statistics ( no worse than in comparable institutions) as if this somehow excuses or mitigates the enormity of what has been done when really the rate of offending by holy men publically vowed to celibacy and chastity should have zero. Not sure that the Jesuits in the seminaries should be held responsible for adult men giving way to temptation!
Not sure how the church is going to extricate itself from these scandals without some spectacular purging of those who acted as though these matters were low in priority and regarded complainants as "dwelling crankily on old wounds" or "better late than never".CHRIS :
06 Jun 2013 10:40:54pmUnpalatable as it might be, the Vatican decided some time ago that clergy sex abuse is closely linked to homosexuality--because clergy victims were overwhelmingly teenage boys (not young children). That is why it issued its 2005 Instruction barring gay men from entering seminaries. The Western media generally ridiculed this measure as homophobic, supposedly because it suggests a direct link between homosexuality and sexual abuse.
Let me say that I certainly reject the idea of a direct link; I regard homosexuality as totally natural and healthy. However, we should seriously consider the possibility that there was, in the past, an indirect link in this way: society gave gay men absolutely no socially-acceptable outlets for their sexuality, and actually it criminalised their relationships. Should we be surprised that gay sexuality manifested in inappropriate ways, or that there were abuses of power and enforced secrecy?
People say that clerical celibacy was the problem, but actually it wasn't: heterosexual men who had no vocation to celibacy tended to get married, whereas homosexual men who had no vocation to celibacy still went into the priesthood, because marriage was not possible. I feel sure that was an element for many clergy. Anyone who knows the Church realises that it has always had a homosexual subculture : see,e.g. Donald Cozen's The Changing Face of the Priesthood (2002)
I am arguing for greater acceptance of mature, adult gay relationships. That is actually the reform the Vatican should make. Unfortunately, however, most people lack the wisdom or maturity to discuss these issues rationally. The danger is that many will perceive what I am saying as demonising homosexuals, when my intention is quite the opposite.HUDSON GODFREY :
07 Jun 2013 12:49:16pmIf you want to say that in the past, "society gave gay men absolutely no socially-acceptable outlets for their sexuality" then moving forward to the past decade or so we're talking about an era in which the church stands out as living in the past in a couple of ways. I think it is still true and quite problematic that it gives no outlet for homosexuality and even less for priests who still meant to remain celibate. I don't hold religious convictions myself, but I would nevertheless appeal to the view that if there is a god who gave us our sexuality then she might prefer it to be celebrated rather than repressed. That old story about the monk who found a mistranslation (celebrate/celibate) may yet have legs!
If the truth lies somewhere in between the opinions you're presenting and the figures Nick is quoting in his article then at best we may manage is to reduce rates of offending in line with the average across society at large. Whereas addressing offenders' motives doesn't seem likely to take away means and opportunity.
Even if you want to split hairs between definitions of peadophiles and ephebophiles or delve into whether they're typically associated with psychopathic tendencies, the fact remains that what may not occur to an offender as guilty behavior is nevertheless well known to them to be wrong, illegal and evidently so by the fact that they cover it up. So there's a moral burden on both the offender and the church they represented to provide victims with recourse before reconciliation may take place.
Attitudes whereby they prefer not to confront that reality are also rooted in the past, and obviously very much called to question by the current spate of inquiries. Questions about how best to prevent priests, or anyone for that matter, from offending should probably be secondary among good people who aren't afflicted with some sociopathic disorder to coming down on the side of victims.
It just seems disappointing that we wouldn’t emphasise the psychology of what’s best for the victims in asking whether the best remedy all round might not be swift action to intercede against all offending behaviour as decisively as is reasonably possible.
HUDSON GODFREY :
05 Jun 2013 10:51:59pmI think one of the more problematic oversights in the way that these figures are construed is that even if levels of abuse within clerical ranks were within the national mean the number of victims in some cases is appreciably higher. We're talking about people who've been implicitly trusted around children and in some cases have access to numbers of young people under their care or tutelage.
You can't just write off reports of up to 500 unreported cases as somehow acceptable, put it or down to the inadequacies of secular authorities and laws. A moral case has to be made that victims are owed recourse before this or any other kind of crime can be forgiven or healing truly commence. We need to ask the question as to why offenders have not been urged as part of how this is dealt with within the church to do what seems to be the minimum requirement for mercy in legal matters, to show remorse by admitting their crimes and facing the consequences.
The mandatory reporting loophole that may yet exist in some states seems almost certain to be closed. But when it comes to the moral gap between vicarious absolution and outward signs of remorse within the church's thinking on this I am less than convinced that recognition is forthcoming.
And I really am less convinced that this is truly in the past, because in any number of cases it has typically only surfaced as a suppressed memory once victims are well into their adulthood. The nature of what is wrong with this crime, and what the harm that it does actually consists of seems to get overlooked by theologians who're content to rely on something like the account of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. Much as we condemn this crime in the strongest possible terms we don't fully understand it. By comparison with other kinds of rape we lack many of the tools that we need either to help victims or to prevent perpetrators from offending and reoffending. But I certainly don't regard doing the best that we can with a limited grasp of the psychology to be anything like a waste of time, or anything like an excuse for ignoring the imperative to try. To retreat to the position that we can tend to people's spiritual welfare while ignoring the real psychological problems of both victim and offender takes a ridiculously dim view of what god or providence gave you a brain for. And yet most of the intelligentsia of a religious persuasion seem to conflate devotion to their faith with fervent apologetics for an indefensible set of responses that they don't believe need to change, even when too many cases and a Royal Commission are telling us otherwise.SUZANNE :
05 Jun 2013 4:51:17pmBy not allowing priests to become fully functioning men - by infantalising them in seminaries, making them afraid of their bodies (and of women) and turning them away from their own biology - the church has created a monster of epic proportions. These men claim the highest moral authority - that is why the offences are worse and more significant and searing than those of the general population. Any other organisation that had such a record of institutionalised abuse of little children would have long ago been shut down. The truly risible attempt to blame Kinsey and the sexual revolution made me nearly fall off my chair.RHINO :
05 Jun 2013 3:56:31pm"A concern I have is that loss of confidence on the part of Bishops will cause them to take a low public profile. I have heard of priests being advised by their Bishop not to be seen in public, such as on public transport or attending a sporting event or the theatre, wearing clothes that identify their priestly status, for fear of being spat on or otherwise badly treated. That is very sad, but perhaps even more a matter of concern is if Bishops and other Catholic religious leaders choose to remain silent on other public issues because of the adverse publicity on this issue.”
With a person like George Pell at the metaphorical helm of the RCC in Australia, keeping a low profile is probably a good thing. After all, when he opens his mouth, it is only to switch which foot he has in it. Comments like, “I put the victim first” which no victims believed at the Victorian inquiry are classic Pellisms. Especially when followed up with evidence he had continued to pay a stipend to convicted priest, has paid pittances out to his churches victims, meanwhile buying $30 million properties in Rome. Even his appearance at the Victorian Inquiry, was not to say sorry, which none of the churches victims believed anyway, Pell was there because he had to be there. The churches actions since the 1990’s in addressing child rape, is only because they have been made to do it. Even then, it was out of a desire to self protect, not help the victim, the case of the Fosters is a classic example, Pell offered them $50k for each daughter raped in a manner that destroyed the faith of Chrissie Foster, the Fosters took his church to court and ended up with 9 times that amount for just one of their daughters. It wasn’t enough, one is dead, the other a permanently disabled. Even some Priests like Kevin Dillon think Pell acted in a completely unacceptable manner. Interestingly, Father Dillion noted that if Melbourne Response and Towards Healing worked, Pell wouldn’t be sitting in that inquiry. Telling isn’t it?
Moving on, for the broader priests and such types of the RCC not being seen in public in the robes of office, due to the risk of being harassed makes sense to me. A huge swathe of society now has little to no respect for Pell and his ilk, worse, many are downright disgusted. The church has lost this respect and moved to the level of outright loathing for a very good reason: the ham handed, ineffective, attempted self-preserving, inability to acknowledge how wrong they are is at the heart of it, the claims of piety and morality are shown by actions to be non-existent. When Pell says he is sorry, no one buys it, no one believes it, because he has only said it when he was in a place in which he had to say it.ANNA :
05 Jun 2013 3:23:18pmAs an adult survivor of child sexual abuse (although not within the context of a church or religion) I do get tired of the over-use of the term "paedophile". Not all individuals who sexually abuse children are paedophiles. Some offenders are opportunistic and don't care what age their targets are. Children are, to them, easy targets, but their age is not the primary attraction - having the opportunity for sexual gratification and/or power over a vulnerable individual is quite sufficient irrespective of age.
To lump all offending priests (or others) under the term "paedophile" is problematic, as it seems to suggest that all we have to do is keep children safe from one category of offender, while other categories of offender (those who target any age group) are quite simply overlooked.
What can be said for any Catholic priests who sexually abused children (irrespective of whether they were paedophiles or not): they were entering an institution which was pre-disposed to treat offenders with care, dignity, concern and forgiveness, while their victims could anticipate scorn, doubt and cynicism. A sex offender's paradise!
If there is no disincentive to sexually abuse, why stop?CHRIS :
10 Jun 2013 12:57:15pmThis is an extremely important point. The term paedophile says nothing about the actions carried out. In some ways it can assist in watering down the visual and emotional impact it has on the public, thus providing further shelter from the crimes for the perpetrators. Rapists and sex abusers are more accurate terms and the church and the media should be using these terms more often when referring to people who have had sexual relations with someone else unwillingly.
DAN :
05 Jun 2013 12:40:52pmThank you for this interesting article.
In particular the parts about psychiatry...very interesting. I'm very interested to hear more about the advisory role and influence that psychologists and psychiatrists had in the church
http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/page196-conway.htmlNOVELACTIVIST :
05 Jun 2013 9:42:50amThe abuse by priests is far worse than by 'ordinary' members of society because they are supposed to be moral leaders. They are not, by the nature of their office, supposed to have the same "human frailties".
↧
Child abuse inquiry: don't forget the big picture
''And there was nowhere near enough prominence given to the report's most significant finding - that a senior Catholic church official could be charged, not with child sex offences, but concealing or failing to report them.
As I said on Lateline that night, if the official is charged it will be significant in world terms, because there have been less than a handful of such prosecutions anywhere in the world.''
One final point about the "Peter Fox is to blame, nothing to see here" assessment of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report. There were findings about me, reported in the Newcastle Herald but virtually nowhere else except for the ABC. They were:
In other words, the police had alleged I had concealed evidence from police and hindered the Strike Force Lantle investigation, but Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, found there was "no evidence" of that.
So Fox's allegations against police were not substantiated, and the NSW Police Force's (extremely serious, I might add) allegations against me were not substantiated, at all, which would appear to be a resounding media win under extraordinary circumstances.
And thanks for asking.
Child abuse inquiry: don't forget the big picture
OPINIONUpdated
Many people want to move on after findings from the Special Commission of Inquiry into allegations of a cover-up of child sexual abuse claims in the Catholic diocese, but we should still be focussing on the bigger picture, writes Joanne McCarthy.
Let us think about the release of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report into Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox's allegations about NSW Police and Catholic Church handling of child sex allegations, and imagine a car crash.
We're sitting in traffic, passing slowly by, but from what we can see in the tangle of cars and crushed metal, it looks like Inspector Fox is to blame.
Certainly police at the crash site are waving us on.
"Nothing to see here, people," they say. "Move along."
And so a lot of the media did move along on May 30, after the first rush of headlines on the night of the report's release.
Peter Fox was to blame. The "hero" cop wasn't a hero anymore, just a man who was "deliberately untruthful" and prone to exaggeration. Oh dear. The police were vindicated. And what about that journalist, the one who made the speech at the Walkleys? Didn't she do something dodgy?
If the report's release has demonstrated anything to me, it is that the media isn't as good at spotting and pursuing bigger picture issues as it thinks it is.
Fox's allegations on the ABC's Lateline in November 2012 were clearly the starting point for the commission of inquiry, and his failure to substantiate his later evidence to the Inquiry that a police investigation into the Catholic Church was a "sham", or that a "Catholic mafia" existed within the NSW Police, obviously needed to figure prominently.
Sorry, this video has expired
VIDEO: Commissioner delivers damning assessment(7pm TV News NSW)But in the rush to meet deadlines after the report's 3pm release there was too much reliance on the findings alone, too few questions about why a very senior NSW police officer would engage so closely with the media in the first place, no questions about the number of police on stress leave, including Fox, in the Hunter, or whether we should be drawing conclusions about police culture, based on the aggressive treatment of one of its own.
And there was nowhere near enough prominence given to the report's most significant finding - that a senior Catholic church official could be charged, not with child sex offences, but concealing or failing to report them.
As I said on Lateline that night, if the official is charged it will be significant in world terms, because there have been less than a handful of such prosecutions anywhere in the world.
A too-close focus on the "Peter Fox is to blame, let's move on" narrative also misses another point - the inquiry confirmed the Catholic Church had known about two child sex offender priests, Denis McAlinden and Jim Fletcher, for decades. Not only had it known about them, but despite being given many chances to come clean in these more "enlightened" times, it had not told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I should know, because I was the journalist putting the questions directly to the church - and not just in the Hunter region - since 2006.
So if the church had known all this time, and the police have been prosecuting paedophile priests in the Hunter since 1995, and the Newcastle Herald has been providing public proof, since late 2007, that the church has hidden and moved its child sex offenders both in Australia and overseas, why hasn't there been a successful "conceal"-type prosecution in this country yet?
And that's where all the fascinating bigger picture issues that haven't been reported dwell - the kinds of things being explored at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
If I learnt one thing from my experiences in 2010, after taking the documents to police that started this whole thing rolling, it is that the true culpability of institutions like the Catholic Church will never be fully explored within the criminal justice system, by way of prosecutions against individuals who failed to report clergy sex offenders to police.
The specific NSW conceal serious crime charge, section 316 of the NSW Crimes Act, is problematic and only applies to matters from the early 1990s. But at least NSW has such a charge on the books. Other Australian states don't.
That throws up another bigger picture issue. If the true culpability of the Catholic Church cannot be addressed in the criminal system, then we need a robust compensation system to address not just the crimes of the offenders, but the culpability of the church that knew of their offences against children.
And in Australia today that avenue, too, is blocked to victims, because of a High Court decision popularly known as the "Ellis defence", which forces victims back to the now discredited Towards Healing process that is administered by the Catholic Church.
Bigger picture, I know, and possibly eye-glazing, but these are the kind of holes that victims kept falling into, and which I became aware of after those first articles back in 2006. Which is why I ended up writing "There will be a royal commission because there must be", back in August 2012.
One final point about the "Peter Fox is to blame, nothing to see here" assessment of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report. There were findings about me, reported in the Newcastle Herald but virtually nowhere else except for the ABC. They were:
In other words, the police had alleged I had concealed evidence from police and hindered the Strike Force Lantle investigation, but Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, found there was "no evidence" of that.
So Fox's allegations against police were not substantiated, and the NSW Police Force's (extremely serious, I might add) allegations against me were not substantiated, at all, which would appear to be a resounding media win under extraordinary circumstances.
And thanks for asking.
Joanne McCarthy has been a journalist for 34 years. She has been at the Newcastle Herald since 2002 and won the Gold Walkley in 2013 for reporting on child sexual abuse and the need for a royal commission. View her full profile here.
First posted
Comments (82)
Comments for this story are closed, but you can still have your say.
sdrawkcaB:
09 Jun 2014 3:21:41pmI am only a distance viewer on this...
It seems the Salvos stepped on the front foot and apologized 4 years ago and are taking steps.
Conversely, the catholic church have been dragged kicking and screaming through the whole process.Mitor the Bold:
09 Jun 2014 6:21:52pmThe Catholic church's attitude seems to be that it's no big deal, that if it had the chance it would would do everything the same again, that the interfering secular authorities have no moral right to judge the church on this 'internal' matter, and that the greatest issue here is that it's all become so public. From the Pope down this is how the church has responded. They have expressed nothing but perfunctory regret and grudging apology - and only then after all other avenues for wriggling out of culpability have been exhausted.
It was clear from day one of the Royal Commission that this whole issue would bland-out into background noise and that no-one would held accountable. In the UK one ex-DJ, Jimmy Saville, was shuffled around the BBC rather than being prosecuted, which has led to many sackings and much institutional change - in the Catholic church hundreds of paedophile priests have been shuffled around diocese and around the world with the church hierarchy in full knowledge of their actions and with the single intent to avoid accountability to victims and scrutiny to the outside world.
It's time this insidious organisation was treated like a bikie gang - a meeting of clergy on the matter of paedophile priests should be regarded in the first instance as a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.Rabbithole:
10 Jun 2014 10:27:44amMitor,
Further to your argument, look how the Catholic Church protect a high profile American Bishops who protected the pedophile racket for wealthy American Priests in the US for years? They made him the president of Vatican City to exclude him from Lawful prosecution in the US and elsewhere.
awake:
09 Jun 2014 3:27:58pmWhile I am not for one minute saying anything like this grotesque finding has happened in Australia - the bodies of 798 children in Ireland is somewhat of a blight on the church.
God only knows what else has happened to children in the hands of the religious. For their sake keep going. Never mind the embarrassment for those in power.Zing:
09 Jun 2014 3:32:10pmGiven the time which has passed, it is unlikely that many of these offenders will be brought to justice. It is also unlikely that the Church will be found accountable for the criminal actions of those it employed.
The true point of this inquiry is the bigger picture: To take an organisation which society once held beyond scrutiny and finally drag them into the light for all to see.
As a result, today's parents will think twice before letting their children become alterboys. Departments will think twice before putting children in state care. Our society will think twice before noting something odd and thinking "It's not my concern - I shouldn't say anything".
The victims may never achieve justice. But by telling their story, countless potential victims will be saved.Val Doxan:
09 Jun 2014 6:15:18pmThe saddest part of all this to me is, even in the light of what we now know about the catholic church and the on-going failure of that organisation to admit to and address the problems, this catholic riddled government are now enforcing a school chaplaincy program.
I do so hope that the High Court will overturn this on constitutional grounds.whohasthefish:
10 Jun 2014 1:01:09amThe Chaplaincy Program in our schools is regressive and offensive to many, especially for those of other or no religious beliefs. It is quite ridiculous for our Government to force the Christian religions ,on our young people. I have no problem with the chaplains themselves, as I am sure the vast majority are well meaning good people, it is their organizations that are discredited and for good reason. The Catholic Church in particular has been dishonest and dishonourable, from the papacy down in their dealings with abuse victims and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest they are reformed at all. These things take time is an excuse and not an answer. They are disgusting in their self righteous arrogance and criminal cover ups.
This chaplaincy program does show this Government for what it is. A bunch of zealots who actually believe they know what is best for our children. Back to the 50's in every way is this governments ethos to the detriment of our society. When asked about this program, the LNP front bench has stated that it is the Federal Governments money and they will spend it as they see fit. Well, it is not their money it is ours, the Australian People. Unbelievable arrogance from an unbelievably out of touch government that simply ignores the wishes and needs of the People.
The sooner this government is ousted for their lies and their arrogance and the sooner religions of all faiths are removed from out state funded educational institutions the better. Studying religions in a historical context is legitimate but indoctrination and forced values is abhorrent and has no place in our secular schools. ps. $245,000,000 is the equivalent to 35,000,000 x $7 co payment visits to the doctor.Frisha:
10 Jun 2014 10:24:03amWait one minute....the school chaplaincy program is NOT a product of the Catholic church. It is a product of the pentecostal churches and John Howard's government was one of its biggest supporters.Our local council was also very big on supporting them and the mayor belonged to one of their churches.Miowarra:
10 Jun 2014 3:37:20pmNo Frisha, as Val Doxan clearly said, its continuation and support is a product of this Catholic-riddled government.
A Catholic-riddled government and the Catholic church. It's a difference of no consequence.
I draw your attention to one of the fundamental laws of geometry.The Law of Congruence.
"Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other"
DannyS:
09 Jun 2014 7:19:26pmZing,
Some parents will think twice before letting their sons become altar boys, but there will still be altar boys. And government departments have no other option than to put children in state care. This Royal Commission has had the effect of putting everyone under scrutiny, the Catholic Church, The Church of England, the Salvation Army and other institutions that have hidden the evil doers in their ranks for so long. The evil individuals that would have joined such organisations in the future will most likely find other ways to destroy our young people and that is what we must look out for.
And much, much more needs to be done to stop the growing trend of abuse of children by other children. And there is growing evidence that children are being groomed by paedophiles to bring other children into their despicable world.
BTW, I went to catholic schools and I was even an altar boy. There was never any inappropriate behaviour of any description. I have been an atheist for many decades, but for no other reason than I think religion is quite frankly laughable.Corbachov:
10 Jun 2014 4:28:56amSo based on your scientific sample of one, the culpability of the catholic church is overblown? I can't understand what your point is, if indeed there is a point. The greatest victory the catholic church has had was to broaden the commission to include other denominations and state run facilities. The revelations that brought about the commissions were all to do with the Catholic Church. Subsequent muddying of the waters make it almost certain that no substantial reforms will be forced upon this child raping institution. For what it's worth, I was brought up Catholic as well.Lee:
10 Jun 2014 12:46:27pmSo you say that abuse never happened in other institutions? Are you negating or downplaying the experiences of people who were abused in other institutions?
Abuse has been systematic in MANY institutions public/private/religious for many, many years and cover-ups in all institutions was also systematic. By scapegoating one institution you are denying justice to all the other victims. The one thing that this Royal Commission HAS shown is that the abuse was not confined to one religious institution but was a fault of society as a whole and that is the situation that must be addressed instead of the narrow focus on one organisation.
I was working with a survivors group when the Royal Commission was first proposed and was only going to focus on the Catholic Church, several of the victims I was working with who had been abused in Salvation Army homes were devastated and were horrified at the thought that they would be forgotten and the abuse that they suffered would be swept under the carpet. Much of the push for an expansion of the commissions role came from the survivors groups not the Catholic Church.
Skeptic:
09 Jun 2014 3:36:43pmThank you, Joanne, for your tireless efforts. You represent the best ideals of journalism; a frank and fearless search for the truth and justice for the disadvantaged. Peter Fox may have been mistaken about his allegations that there was a conspiracy by his colleagues to cover up the crimes of the Church, but considering how unsuccessful he was in motivating them to act, is this so surprising? The fact that an inquiry has finally revealed the true horror of the situation vindicates his efforts, one hundred percent. Something dreadful was, and had been, happening, but the NSW Police Force was not doing enough - for whatever reason - to protect the vulnerable from being preyed upon by monsters. Let us never have such a situation ever again!paul:
09 Jun 2014 3:39:41pmAs more information comes out of Galway Ireland
it becomes clear what an evil institution the church
is.To allow such monstrous treatment of children
obviously on an international scale.
If this is happening in the first world.
What in God's name is happening in the third!Mitor the Bold:
09 Jun 2014 6:31:18pm"If this is happening in the first world. What in God's name is happening in the third!"
And perhaps more importantly, if this is happening in Christian institutions where such things can now be spoken about, what is happening in Muslim and Jewish institutions where such speculation is forbidden entirely and risks bringing 'dishonour' to the families of those involved? Are we to believe there's something peculiar about Jesus that makes men abuse children whereas the other religions are all sweetness and light?JohnnoH:
09 Jun 2014 8:37:06pmpaul the Church is not an evil institution that is just your persoanl bias showing through. Yes there were cover ups by people in authority, but not by the many, many innocent priest and lay people who want this brought out into the open and have it dealt with.paul:
10 Jun 2014 7:52:23amAnd how many hundreds of years of inquisitions and repression
does the church have behind it. only to be dragged screaming
and kicking into the light.Not by its own leaders but by outsiders
that it would have probably burnt at the stake 300 years ago.
Sorry but where exactly have these good and righteous people
been all these years?Erik the Red:
10 Jun 2014 10:10:01amThe good and righteous people have always been there and are still here now. The nun who cradles and comforts the dying child in the gutter of a 3rd world slum is a product of the same Catholic Church.
Your argument can also be used to demonise the current white Australia for the crimes condoned and covered up by the early European settlers against indigenous peoples. Only extremists and haters judge the people of this time for the crimes of people of another time. Repairing the damage is something else altogether.
Other than criminal acts, would each of us be judged on only the bad things we have done in our lives or on the balance of the good and the bad? Would we have our family judged by all of the crimes of our ancestors? Many of the criminals in our jails had their crimes covered up for fear of bringing shame to their family, until they could be covered up no more.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Response is appropriate and has been exposing the behaviour of institutions that, at worst, condoned these crimes and at best concealed them.
The Catholic Church, and others, have said that they would hand over investigations to an independent body and contribute financially to the independent body. They have said that they will hand over all of the previous settlements to this commission for reconsideration and would increase compensation if required. They encourage the prosecution of the criminals in their ranks. They now recognise that no matter how diligently they attempt to make good on the suffering of the victims through an internal process it is impossible to do so. The victims, understandably don't want to talk to the perpetrator.
Finally the institutions concerned realise that the victim is the ONLY one requiring care, repair and compensation and that is best dealt with by an independent commission where their case can be heard without judgement and they can seek justice without the glare of publicity that the media, legal and advocacy system thrust upon them.
We have a set of independent bodies that moderate the behaviour of corporations to protect the rights of shareholders, employees and customers. They prosecute individuals and impose fines on the company who break the law but don't punish innocent shareholders or the customers for the crimes of the corporations or its executive.
We need to venerate those victims brave enough to survive and bring us to where we are now. Thank you all, I wish you a future life full of happiness.
It is only the catholic haters, radical journalists and the lawyers who want to perpetuate the suffering of the victims of the crimes of these institutions. For some of them, only the destruction of the church will be enough.
Most of the rest of us want to bring to the victims justice and peace for their suffering. Repair is something that may be impossible to deliver, but it is rarely achieved through revRobP:
10 Jun 2014 10:12:24am"Sorry but where exactly have these good and righteous people been all these years?"
Those people have always been there, but in the examples you cite, they have been out-muscled by bigger forces.
The Church is just an empty slate, an inert entity, that is only as good as the activities it carries out which is, in turn, a function of the motives of the prime movers within it. Plenty of bad things have been done in the name of the Church, but that has normally been instigated at a high political level in the past, when the Church sought power by aligning itself with national Governments.
leafygreens:
10 Jun 2014 11:40:22amAll the time 'good' christians turned to the church before they turned to the law, even when they could see there had been nothing done, they were also hiding the truth.
The church may not be evil, but neither is it the bastion of morality & goodness it professes to be. It would do well to admit it is a human institution, containing flawed people on both sides of the altar.
Erik the Red:
10 Jun 2014 11:31:00am@paul Did you understand the story about the bodies in the septic tank or did you just swallow the headline?
The tank was discovered in 1975 by children playing in a field, it is believed that they accumulated over almost a century. So at a rate of maybe up to ten a year.
Ireland during this time was a third world country and the Catholic Church provided education and health care to the poorest of the poor, the state provided nothing. They took in the people that polite society rejected and helped them survive.
An unwed mother was considered a pariah and a sinner. Our current moral framework cannot be caste back to the treatment of unwed mothers of the 60s, let alone centuries ago.
Today we consider an aborted foetus to be medical waste and treat it accordingly. The rate of accumulation in the tank could be accounted for by still births alone.
I know that there are corpses of older children have been found but there are many explanations as to why that might be. There are times when the disposal of a corpse is one of expedience and not ceremony.
There is an investigation underway with the full co-operation of the Catholic Church to discover the circumstances. This is not a cover-up but a great sadness to be fully documented.
There are historical records of those interred and hopefully they will be given recognition as something more than medical waste.Patricia:
10 Jun 2014 1:35:11pmAustralian journalism muddied the facts of this story. The researcher of the 800 documented deaths of children DID NOT at any time suggest the bodies were discarded in a septic tank. The 10 (or so) bodies discovered on the site of what MAY HAVE BEEN a septic tank was a separate story. See the facts (as far as they are presently known) in The Irish Times. Take note also of the Irish outrage at Australian reporting of the story.
Ted:
09 Jun 2014 4:09:52pmThese were terrible crimes. There is no valid reason why NSW cannot deal with it properly. The press should be asking why.taxedoff:
09 Jun 2014 5:25:04pmthere were big crimes and also smaller ones and many have been hushed up. I attended a catholic school in the 60's and 70's and there was a year 7 teacher who most of us considered to be odd. in secondary school the subject somehow arose during a lesson and I and 2 others named the year 7 teacher as touching up the students. the outcome was immediate being picked up and literally dropped kicked up to the front of the class along with being slapped around the head. the 3 of us were subjected to some physical abuse and a lot of verballing . being intimidated by the reaction of the marist brother we decided to let it drop and not to tell our parents as to what had happened. fast track 20 years later and my mum sent me a clipping from the papers about the year 7 teacher being sentenced to prison for child abuse at another school . at the time of his prison sentence he was then 70 years old and I wondered if the brother who had over reacted to our claims was in fact aware or part of the child abuse as both worked in the next catholic school together. there were other stories and I like countless others were just brushed aside and things hushed up.
themoor:
09 Jun 2014 4:23:24pmThose that covered up the abuse or turned a blind eye to it also need to be punished. Their crime is far worse.
After all that has happened it is very disturbing to find that people are still trying to conceal abuse within the Defence Forces. That must not happen because failure to deal with it has terrible consequences.
Those that commit or conceal abuse must be dealt with no matter what their position is or how well they are regarded and / or connected politically. To do otherwise is not acceptable.ScottBE:
09 Jun 2014 4:33:19pmI think most recognise the bigger picture here. I see the attack on Mr Fox as being merely a legalistic strategy to release the Police from culpability. The arguments made to discredit Mr Fox and the decision by Ms Cunneen are certainly limited to legal argument and not to actual facts.Harry:
09 Jun 2014 4:36:26pmJoanne, why the special focus only on the Catholic Church?
I would think in those un-enlightened times Newcastle state schools, sporting clubs swimming clubs, hospitals would likewise have been fertile grounds for child sexual abuse. No?
You see what I don't get about our "new enlightened times" is the focus is too narrow.
Every night we're watching grim newsreaders tut-tutting a British Court sexual abuse case case of an 80 years old.... a child of 1960's sex revolution....so where are all the other rock band hippie druggies 60's rock and roll groupie victims?
Answer: No interested in victims! Just tall poppies, saucy police corruptions and a juicy story that bashes 'officials'.
God help us if today if these are enlightened times.whogoesthere:
09 Jun 2014 5:20:07pmLike it or not, it's the sheer, utter, hypocrisy. Sporting clubs, entertainers, State schools, etc have never pretended to be the moral voice of 'God'.Miowarra:
09 Jun 2014 5:25:06pm"Joanne, why the special focus only on the Catholic Church?"
Every investigation must gave a focus.
Why the Catholic Church?
Because they've been shown to be the greatest offenders over the longest time period and regular investigations have finally encouraged victims to have some hope of redress.
Remember that they were still castrating unwilling boys for their choirs until the early 19thC, too.
However, that sect hasn't been the only 'focus".
Remember that the Anglicans faced up to their responsibilities (except for Gov-Gen Hollingsworth). The Salvos have admitted their faults and have cleaned out their house as also have the Scouts and YMCA.
Of the secular institutions, Parramatta Girls Home, the RAN and ADFA have been and are still undergoing their own cleansing.
Tell me again where this "narrowness of focus" might be, please.
Of what has been alleged in the UK, Saville was not able to defend himself in court against his attackers who have had an unopposed opportunity to drag his name through the sensationalist newspapers of filth and for the rest, let's wait until the court delivers a verdict.Ann:
09 Jun 2014 6:17:55pmWe hear about schools, government orgs and other institutions - in fact, nearly every kind of institution - being involved in child sex scandals, but we hardly ever hear the call for dismantling the whole shebang like we do with the Catholic church or other faith-based orgs.
I think people need to realise that when you have ANY organisation that has a power structure, you create the opportunity for that power to be abused. Obviously when children are involved that abuse will be worse.
This means any organisation needs transparency, the ability for anonymous whistleblowing, and as much as possible, a vertical power structure.
It doesn't matter what the org is based around or what it does - some people will always abuse power if it is given to them, especially over the vulnerable like children.
Don't pretend that by getting rid of "backwards" groups like churches that all orgs will be cleansed of abuses. They'll keep happening as long as we don't keep our eye on them.Mitor the Bold:
09 Jun 2014 9:04:12pmAnn - you are missing the point. It's not about the abuse of children - it's about the institutional covering-up of the abuse. It's not about individual abuses of power - as the church continually tries to portray it - it's the organisational abuse of power and community trust. It's not a few bad apples it's the whole barrel.
A secular organisation is transparent, in theory at least. The catholic church is opaque and is fighting to remain that way. Priests have fought and won the right to keep crimes to themselves if learned in confession. In other words, the church is fighting to protect the problem rather than solve it - this is why it is so reluctant to admit culpability as an organisation. Comparing the church to a scout hall is playing into their hands.
The internal church 'Towards Healing' process for examining crimes against children should be dismantled immediately - would you allow a scout master to investigate a claim of child abuse in the scouts? Then why allow a church with a history of both abuse and cover-up to do it? There's only one reason they want to keep it internal and it's the same reason today as it was in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990's, 2000s etc.Kerrie:
10 Jun 2014 11:48:24amThe Towards Healing program is not and was not an investigation into claims of abuse. If there was any chance the claims have basis, then the claims were accepted. So if someone said they were abused as a student at school x then f the records show both parties were at the school during that time then the claim was accepted.
The aim of the program was for the victim to find some kind of healing. In the best instances the mediation would result in the victim of abuse finally understanding, through dialogue with senior clerics, why they were chosen and why the Church did nothing. The understanding and apology were as important as the reimbursement for damages caused by the abuse. I've heard that some victims dislike the compensation aspect because it makes them feel like they are putting a price on their abuse. I suppose it makes them feel like they have prostituted themselves, but I'm just guessing. In the worst mediations, the process degenerated into an informal negotiation of the victim's payout amount. The unstated bias of the mediator was an additional problem.
The Catholic Church and many organisations have been culpable in hiding the truth. Other posters have questioned why the Catholic Church and other religious organisations are allowed to continue. Part of the problem is that these organisations do the welfare work that the State misses. When Ireland didn't have a program for unmarked mothers, the Catholic Church stepped in. When South Australia didn't have public education for poor people, the Catholic Church stepped in. When the Australian government doesn't give people enough money to live on, St Vincent De Paul step in.
If you want more transparency and less religious involvement in welfare programs then the government and non-religious organisations have to do more heavy lifting. In short stop giving religious organisations things to do (eg the treatment of boat-travelling refugees and insane budget cuts).
I should point out that I think the Chaplaincy program is wrong and irrational in public schools.Bazza:
10 Jun 2014 12:11:43amPoooooooooooor catholic church - oh wait, no, they willfully and systematically protected child molesters for centuries right up until the modern day.
Again, this isn't about the fact that some priests molested children - it's about the fact that the entire church power structure continually protected them from any fall out just to save their own precious organization's reputation. This should be neither forgiven or forgotten and should lead to us cutting back on power and influence of all churches - a first step is to tax them properly, the accountability that brings would shine a light into their illegal activities.
A second, and obvious step, is to stop channeling government funds to the church's purposes - no chaplains unless they want to pay for them out of their own massive hoard of cash, it'd be less money to hide child molesters from the law with.
Note - this applies to all "faith" based organizations - not just the Catholic church, all of them have tawdry histories and don't respect the rights of women or children.Miowarra:
10 Jun 2014 6:31:01amAnn protested: "...dismantling the whole shebang like we do with the Catholic church or other faith-based orgs."
You're conflating two separate issues, Ann.
There _are_ "calls" to unravel the links between faith-based organisations and the public purse as well as "calls" for such to be completely disassociated from anything to do with children, but I've never seen any such calls to dismantle any of them completely.
The reasons are that, for the social value of the community work they do, the social COST (both monetary and in the propagation of untruth as fact) is too high.
"Schools, government orgs and other institutions" are subject to levels of public scrutiny and control which the faith-based organisations are not. We've seen in so many other aspects of our modern life that self-regulation just doesn't work.
External oversight is essential if we want to eliminate those abuses of power of which you spoke.
Government can do that but the churches have demonstrated that they can't be trusted to adhere to community standards or report criminal behaviour by its agents to the civil authorities..RobP:
10 Jun 2014 11:44:43amAnn, I think the correct word in this context is "cleansing". The Church, its practices and its processes, need to be subjected to the cleansing effect of scrutiny. That way, what is good about the Church is retained while the bad bits are separated from it so that they can't do any more damage.
Miss Information:
09 Jun 2014 4:49:44pmKeep up the good work Joanne, as long as people like yourself keep asking the hard questions justice will always be on the minds of those people that keep stacking the deck in favour of the mongrels and those too gutless or self-interested to help the real victims of so many crimes over so many years....special commission? what a load of rubbish, it should have been a royal commission to begin with.chris:
09 Jun 2014 5:19:11pmI'm sorry, but has not Justice McLellan himself said that 68-95% of sexual abuse (depending on the state) occurs between school students? It does not involve an adult at all. Read it for yourself in his 2014 Families Australia Oration.
So the media needs to get onto the real story, i.e. schools. That is what the Royal Commission will be hammering home when it reports.
The Royal Commission if anything will be a salutary lesson that the Catholic Church cannot be singled out as it has been for too long now.kolbe:
09 Jun 2014 6:39:30pmI am bewildered at the lack of reference or response to two recent ABC articles. On 30/4/14 Dr Freda Briggs describes a horrifying report into young children (from pre school age) sexually abusing their peers. Then on 6/6/14 the ABC reports on almost 1000 cases of serious sexual assaults between students reported by schools to state education departments across the nation. By all means recoil in horror at the stories of the past but sexual assault of children is still happening, and regularly, across the nation. We can't change the past but we can definitely jump up and scream about the current situation and hopefully stop the torment, damage and pain that children are experiencing today. Doesn't anybody else get this??Lady Cecilia Longbottom:
10 Jun 2014 2:35:10pmExploratory sexual behaviour among children is a normal stage in their development.
If there's coercion involved it might be "abuse" but otherwise schools (and helicopter parents) need to stand back and let them learn by doing.
The schools are placed in an invidious position because they're "mandatory reporters" so any sexual activity is reported and the media (and apparently yourself) are happy to lump every instance into one basket call it all "abuse".
You don't "jump up and scream" about other physical learning activities, throwing and catching a ball for example. Why do so just because it's about sexual matters?
So, to answer your initial question, there's a lack of reference or response to the reports because there's nothing new or horrible about what's being reported, only the usual distortion of reportage.
D R Frenkel:
09 Jun 2014 5:33:52pmThis is a very important article by Joanne McCarthy. Indeed the Royal Commission's rebuke against Peter Fox curiously rings alarm bells. The man who heroically and honestly exposed dark systemic truths is shunned and discredited when he should be lauded. How is it that the concealment and accessory behaviour of senior members of the Church have resulted in no prosecutions? How is the Church not accountable for the abuses? What really happened inside police command? What hasn't come out? The right of the continued existence of a very powerful institution is at question here.AJS:
09 Jun 2014 6:14:43pmThe man who heroically and honestly exposed dark systemic truths is shunned and discredited
Yes - that's because he was shown in the Royal Commission to be wrong
What happened inside Police Command. What hasn't come out?
All the information did come out and it concluded there was no case to answer.
The independent umpire has spoken, read the decision
GrumpiSkeptic:
09 Jun 2014 5:35:02pmI have been following the child abuse cases very closely even before the establishment of the Royal Commission. I found it really hard to accept the fact that people who held the position of trust could absolutely trash people's faiths in goodness, and left a trail of victims behind, so many years later !
Why those dirty old men were allowed to carry on in such manners? I often asked myself. Where is the spiritual meaning in all these? Where is God? Who is in charge? Where is the goodness in these bastards ?
Then it took one courageous amigo named Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox to come out and blew the whistle on the establishments. According to him, the cops and the religious mobs were getting too close for comfort. I thought perhaps that is why many serious cases of child abuse never got the spot light shone on them.
Then, thanks to Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, and Ms. Joanne McCarthy, a Royal Commission was set up, many years too late I believe.
It came as a real shock to me when I learned that Peter Fox copped some blames for being "overly zealous" ! For goodness sake, wasn't it because of his pit-bull like attitudes to finally bring about the inquiries?
So now he is a tarnished figure ? As I suspected, something is going on between all the establishments, the cops, the churches, and those with "blind faith" placed on them, believing that they will always do the right thing by the vulnerable folks. How wrong ?Ann:
09 Jun 2014 6:21:25pmWe also tend to have "blind faith" that our children won't be preyed on by teachers, or scout group leaders, or that children in government institutional care won't be abused, or that children lodged at boarding schools won't be abused, etc. etc.
Unfortunately we only now seem to be entering into an era where we don't dismiss children's experiences and tales out of hand or discomfort.
Going forward I think more states need laws on the books that punish people who know about abuse and don't come forward with it.
Both in situations with children and in the armed forces, where abuse also seems to be rife.Bazza:
10 Jun 2014 12:13:12amIf the entire school and education system was keyed towards hiding such predatory teachers? If the government protected them from on high? If they continued this behavior for centuries and when caught cried 'oh help, we're being persecuted for our beliefs!'?
We'd burn the lot of them to the ground.
Sally:
09 Jun 2014 5:53:58pmIt didn?t happen today but a long time ago, and we all know that it lasts for such a long time even until now. If the government in NSW or some organizations solved this problem effective. I think you won?t stand out and fight for the kids? rights again now. And we have to know that it doesn?t only happen among Catholic diocese but also schools, hospitals, clubs and everywhere. What should we do to prevent it? What is the plans of the ?royal commission??AJS:
09 Jun 2014 6:07:53pmPerhaps the police didn't want to work with Peter Fox.
It seems now in the light of the findings that they had good reason.
The trouble with loose cannons is they go off in all the wrong directions and rarely hit the intended target.
And then there are those that follow them - writing articles and gathering awards without really asking their source to substantiate their claims.
Like Mr Fox, I think the Walkley has had its reputation tarnished a little as wellCurious one:
09 Jun 2014 6:30:13pmWell done Joanne. You should have been knighted or "damed" in the birthday honours list. And so should Peter Fox. Anyone with a grain of sense will know that the rebuke he received from the commission is totally wrong. You have both been complete stars.blixen:
09 Jun 2014 6:47:22pmThank You, Joanne!
Your courage and Peter Fox's too, brought about this Special Commission.
You have been vindicated, both of you.
And I fully support Fox's allegation of a Church-Police "Catholic mafia", whose object was to suppress public knowledge of priests abusing minors, for the sake of the good name of the Church.
The Church is a good business, like leeches preying on the gullible public.
If the truth came out and was generally known in the community, the donations might dry up.
Jesus said, speaking about the Pharisees:
"You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?..." Matthew 12:34
But I don't see much improving actually. There are so many stupid people out there, just so driven to worship anything, like these puffed up abusers in their red cassocks and gold head gear. There's one born every minute, as they saying goes.
And the Church, Roman Catholic as well as Anglican, is so so powerful. It is almost that no-one has the power or will to hold them to account.mike fitzgerald:
09 Jun 2014 7:09:21pmGood words and applaud you for seeking the truth despite the smoke screen put up by the authorities. Let's see if the commission findings stand up to scrutiny by the royal commission.
However, please refrain from using images of Jesus and Mary in your articles.ntheynhave NOTHIHG TO DO WITH the behaviour of paedophiles or the church, sadly!Nina:
09 Jun 2014 7:30:41pmGiving power to authorities who claim to take responsibility for our safety and our souls, particularly that of children are a farce. We are too eager to hand responsibility to those who claim to have the moral high ground and assume they will be good gatekeepers.
Adults need to take critical control of where they and their children are and with whom and to make sure the people they are with are transparent.
Often embarrassment and religious scaremongering fend of intelligent scrutiny, true transparency welcomes scrutiny. We are pressured to dump kids and race off to work that our lives are at stake if we are late whilst brushing aside the tantrums and reluctance that are our children's alarm bells.SteveS:
09 Jun 2014 7:56:48pmAs a Catholic man, a resident of the Hunter Valley, a student of both Catholic nuns and Catholic brothers, I have witnessed first hand the inhumane behaviour of these people and have, even as old as I am, never truly understood what motivated a human being to debase the life and the dignity of another, when so young and so vulnerable, and to leave these so fractured, to dwell in the depths of such inhumanity, with neither anyone seemingly caring for their well-being, or prepared to do anything for them
Along came Peter Fox and Joanne McCarthy, two people who made "game-changing" decisions, two people for whom those who suffered so much, now owe so much, but a debt, those two will never seek to exploit.
Margaret Cuneen's report represents no 'catharsis" for me, I wonder if it does for other Catholic people. Her determinations leave more questions unanswered than answered and it smacks of an attempt to protect, rather than expose. Fox is the scapegoat, McCarthy, well she has to be contained and the fallout has to be controlled.
Sad to think that already, this is a "no news" item, relegated to obscurity, lost somewhere in the 24 hours news cycle.
The latest news from Ireland; how can this be. What is it, more than 600 young children dead, their bodies disposed of in a septic tank. Children aged from infancy to 6 years. Their crime; they were born to unmarried women/girls and under "conservative" Catholic teaching/dogma, as a child born to parents in an unmarried relationship, the child could not be baptised, and in death, it could not be buried in consecrated ground.
I have lived a long time, but never have I felt more saddened for the life of a child than I do having read this report. To those who perpetrated such injustice, I have nothing but utter contempt, and for a "church" to cultivate such doctrine, I simply ask; how could you?.
So many questions, so few answers, how can any one believe in religion and the sanctity of life of the individual when one reads of these atrocities.
I am ashamed, I am disgusted, I feel a great burden of weight for believing in an institution that I thought had relevance in my life. I feel the Catholic Church is demonstrably damaged and in becoming that, it has irrevocably recalibrated my own and I expect, many other peoples faith as well.
For the God that they believe in, may he have pity on them.John S.:
09 Jun 2014 7:56:58pmScandal happens to all kinds of people but not limited.
If I say that every occupation do has someone doing completely reverse stuff, like the government make use of people instead of providing service, it is just trying to justify the acts talking here. I really felt said to every accident no matter who committed it. But I am also somehow became anesthetic because people around the cities, always doing what we are supposed not to do.Corbachov:
09 Jun 2014 8:20:49pmTwo kids playing in an Irish field come across a concrete pit lid. It has a cracj and so they move it, revealing bones inside. They contact the authorities, who in turn contact the catholic church, after all, the pit lid was found on the land of a catholic institution for unwed mothers and children.
The local archdiocese know exactly what to do, and so they pour a new concrete slab and say a prayer. It will be a further 20 years before the pit is exumed, revealing the bodies of 798 children aged between 6 days and 5 years.
This shocking, yet true story tells you everything you need to know about the catholic church and their ability to accept responsibility for their crimes.
This dreadful organisation has long since lost it's last right to public respect. It should and must be dismantled by the state in response to the systematic child rape that they have enabled, carried out and shamelessly covered up.
I have seen what they have gotten away with in Ireland and Australia, countries with fully developed legal and judicial systems.
I go to bed each night and shiver with the thought of what they have likely done and continue to do in places like Thailand, Peru, Cambodia and the many other countries where they operate without the oversight of such institutions.JohnnoH:
09 Jun 2014 8:31:29pmChild Sexual Abuse needs to be stamped out, no matter where it occurs. The Catholic Church has paid a very heavy price for its cover ups and will pay even heavier. The same goes for the Salvation Army, State run child homes and orphanages. There are a few areas that are not deing looked at. Namely child sexual abuse in the home, child sexual abuse by organisations other than religious or state run organisations, and child sexual abuse by the military namely apprentices. That $7M ripped out of the current royal commission could have gone a long towards that, instead of going into a politically motivated witch hunt into pink batts.Alice:
09 Jun 2014 8:40:54pmCovered with religious coat of rascality, how pathetic it is!Avargo:
09 Jun 2014 8:47:27pmI fail to understand how any group, religious or otherwise, can think it will ultimately be better to hide these hideous paedophiles.
Rather than out them for their vile abusive behaviour and have them gone form their group.
What it says to me about these groups, is that they have no respect or empathy for their children.
They have no care or any idea of consideration for the future of their organisation, which of course is the children they allow to be defiled and abused.
And it is " allow ". Because by not casting out the paedophiles the organisation is allowing and condoning that behaviour.
And by trying to shift the focus of media attention away from the heart of the issues is just another example of the corrupt form of thinking that is prevalent within these organisations.
Shame on them all.IB:
09 Jun 2014 8:48:14pmHere is a bigger picture. Who is talking about the underlying cause of the atrocities committed against the children? Why will these atrocities stop? We punish thieves and murderers, but stealing and killing keep on coming. How about stopping to think what would be effective action to bring these kind of crimes to an end? How about, as a starting point, a life of celibacy means ineligible to work alone with children?maj:
09 Jun 2014 9:48:38pmLook..over there...that's the villian....
Can someone inform me of the proportional amount of abuse that occurs within 'the family'?
It must be very insignificant given that no one is sharing those family experiences.
And I applaud the scientific conclusion, repeated here, that if we all hold hands and think nice thoughts the heads of all those religious god bothers will explode in heavenly retribution and humanity will be saved from this evil forever and ever.
Besides, what point is there in holding a royal commission into the abuse occurring in families? We all know that just doesn't happen. We know the real villain is over there...not in here. Not in families.markt:
09 Jun 2014 9:59:50pmLovely to see the apologists for the catholic church coming out to defend their faith. "Look over there, look over there, no-one's abusing any children here, and anyway even if they are everyone else is doing it too!"
You people make me feel ashamed to be human.Frank O'Connor:
09 Jun 2014 10:02:18pmMmmm ... that's pretty much what i thought when i read the findings of the Special Commission. Because if one concentrated on the findings they basically excused the NSW authorities, and blamed the messenger.
Ergo: It was a political cover up for police and child protection authorities in NSW.
The facts remain that:
1. Egregious child molestation and other criminal activities occurred for years in NSW without any of the responsible authorities either bringing it to a halt or investigating it.
2. It was only after Peter Fox and the media got the light of publicity shone of the issue that the problem came out.
3. Every subsequent enquiry and commission federally and across the states has revealed that child molestation, child abuse and cruelty to children was the rule rather than the exception in state, religious and public benevolent institutions for many many decades. Thousands of children were abused across Australia ... and the authorities (who have now been so conveniently exonerated) did absolutely nothing.
4. None of these enquiries would have even gotten off the ground without whistle blowers like Peter Fox.
My contempt for this NSW exercise in justifying the neglect and incompetence of their authorities is therefore beyond measure.
Pity the compliant media didn't take the time to examine the report more sceptically ... but there are so few media outlets with principle and conviction left nowadays.
Lets see what they do when the Royal Commission and Vicorian reports get released.
It may be a vain hope, but I'd really like to see some integrity and backbone in our Fourth Estate.Emo:
09 Jun 2014 10:24:02pmThe bigger picture is that not only do the victims suffer, but more so the whole Australian community. These poor, tragic people are ill for a lifetime, they do not attain according to their potential, we miss out on their contribution, their relationships and family life are destroyed, we pay the bills and the Church can rely on the legal system to deny and procrastinate. It is so premeditated and, yes, so EVIL. There would be so much stuff that we will never know about and the Church will get away with. They very nearly got away with the babies bodies in the septic. This is not church business, it is everyone's business.Bazza:
10 Jun 2014 12:06:15amTax all religious institutions - if they are actually spending significant funds on charity (estimates are at about 2 percent of total income spent that way) then they can claim it against all their other sources of income.
As it is we're giving them a free ride to become the largest land owners as well as acting as a brothel for child molesters. By making them accountable on the fiscal level at least then we can tell just how much official sanction and protection is being given to those who ignore Australian law and damage Australian children.
Also get the chaplains out of the schools - no excuse for them to be there whatsoever.Paul Williams:
10 Jun 2014 12:49:54amMale sexuality is opportunistic, and there seems to be no greater aphrodisiac than vulnerability. Wherever there are women, children and even men without protectors, these people swoop.
In the past, we trusted no-one, and women were guarded and chaperoned. There was little doubt concerning the intentions of the male sex at large.
As I entered a Christian Brothers' boarding school to try the religious life in my last 2 years of school, I feel comfortable saying that these 15 year olds were high-minded. It wasn't the life for me, as celibacy was so daunting.
It is my belief that some of these young men, having committed to this life (under considerable pressure of various sorts) lost their religious faith, but were unable to return to their families - the tenor of the times in the wider Catholic community declared such people to be "failed religious" and they were a shame to their families (though this was denied). Trapped in a sterile life without the consolation of religious faith, some turned to perverted sex- with the vulnerable. The drive of the Catholic Church to recruit people to the priesthood and the other clergy should not be under-estimated...and the drive to keep them there, no matter what.
Yes, as one of the boys I was at that school with, and who was himself a victim with a tragic story http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/4978017
said, "when all this comes out, as it will, it will hurt many good people, but it will not surprise them, because they have always known."
I wrote a short (22K) memoir called "My Two Years with God, or How I lost my Vocation."
My colleague's book was 70K and was called "With God behind the eight-ball."
I agree that the crime was greater because of the unbelievable betrayal of trust.
As for the current governmental Catholics, I am ashamed but also puzzled with their support of the Chaplaincy program, which seems to be more Protestant in tone - I agree it has no place in state schools.Talismancer:
10 Jun 2014 2:07:22pmHow vile. You claim that they MUST have lost their faith to perform such atrocities? That's akin to the Catholic stooges claiming "this is all really the fault of atheism". This is classic slimy "No True Scotsman" fallacy. It's simply a weaselly excuse to claim that they weren't actually Christians when they clearly WERE.
Emotional wreck:
10 Jun 2014 3:45:21amYour comments saying "Nothing to see here move along" are very similar to the views of the NSW Police Force when they were caught pirating and stealing software from Micro Focus.
Nobody has fallen on their sword for that institutional crime!ij:
10 Jun 2014 7:38:26amThe big picture is that the catholic church continues to commit atrocities, and is being protected by powerful politicians.
Bikie gangs have been outlawed for less.Factsseeker:
10 Jun 2014 7:45:39amThere are many things wrong with the focus of this Royal Commission. Firstly, and perhaps the most disturbing, is that the commission only looks at sex abuse when this type of abuse only makes up about 10% of all child abuse. The research shows clearly that othger forms of abuse is just as permanently damaging and that emotional abuse is even more damaging than sex abuse. Yet, all the media and the government are interested in is the 'sex' part of it because it is more emotive and sensational. This has got less to do with children than it has with sensation. We need to have a Royal Commission into child abuse if we want to protect our children. Secondly, there is plenty of evidence from the US that shows that female perpetrators of child sex abuse is much more common than is admitted in Australia. Will there be even one women investigated by the Royal Commission ? There is something very wrong here.Scott:
10 Jun 2014 8:07:51amWe should treat religious organisations like any other. Take away their tax exempt status. Hold board members responsible. Gail them.Breach of peace:
10 Jun 2014 8:13:45amYou seem to forget that the Roman Catholic Church-State has afoot in each camp. It is a vile organisation that 'proclaims' it is Christian and it has a small piece of land in Italy. These were crimes committed by perverted and vile priests and covered up or moved on by other priests or bishops. The problem is that politicians including the ex-Premier Barry O'Farrell are Roman Catholic and will try to protect this vile organisation. One of the ways it did this was to have all of this covered up for decades. The other was to cut the Legal Aid funds to any victim so they could not sue the Roman Catholic Church-State. Then there was the creation of hush funds to pay out some of the victims without going public. It did not matter that these criminals continued to offend and were never charged appropriately. Very few have been made accountable, charged appropriately and placed in prison for their crimes and complicity as punishment. This is the Catholic way. The Roman Catholic Church is to blame is the big picture in the endalan stone:
10 Jun 2014 9:07:57amJoanne-Look up Chris Chandler pleads guilty.And Wings submission to Royal Commission. Thanks AlanJust get in there and fix it:
10 Jun 2014 9:42:19amWhat people need to wise up to is the way organisations go into cover-up mode when charged with immoral, illegal or improper behaviour.
What they do is inaugurate a new body to look into the problem (eg, the Church's Toward Healing program and the Defence Force's DART). Give it a catchy name or acronym and promise that everything possible is being done. While this is going on, run a parallel agenda where the principals are fulfilling their career ambitions, at the expense of the taxpayer, and not much is really being done so that the job can be handed over to the next one in the pecking order, who is then said to bring "excellent credentials" to the job and who in turn says what a great job his predecessor did. All the while, glacial progress is being made which is beautifully calibrated to the career desires of the principals of the body.
Re the accusations of rape in the Defence Forces, isn't it just a straightforward case of running a criminal investigation into the problem? Like, stop farting around with process and just get in there with some DIRECT ACTION, like Tony has pontificated about in relation to the mitigation of greenhouse gases.octavio:
10 Jun 2014 10:39:21amThe senior officials in the Catholic church who should be investigated are the popes who since the 1920s have forbidden their bishops to notify the civil authorities of crimes committed by clergy. I imagine it might be a bit like an army general being charged with court martial if he gives out information about what happens in-house. You won't solve this problem by addressing the small fry, you need to examine the system that refuses to acknowledge the right of the civil authorities to deal with all offenders, including those who are Roman Catholic clergy.blax5:
10 Jun 2014 10:47:20amThe more it remains in the public eye, the better because new parents come through all the time and need to be alert. In that context, it does not matter at all, how public awareness is kept up. I would personally outlaw the practice of altar boys. They are dollied up for all to gawk at. Is this necessary? Tradition is no answer.Mel:
10 Jun 2014 11:31:58amIt is time to shut down this religious institution and their enablers in this country , to remove them is no loss to society , to preserve them is no gain , why then do We allow them to exist ? Some will argue that there are some catholic clergy that don't support pedophilia but as it's the futures of Our children at stake surely it's better to arrest ten innocent people by mistake than allow a single guilty party to go free ?
Time for Australia to achieve enlightenmentRobP:
10 Jun 2014 12:49:04pmSorry, too simple.
If the dog has got fleas, liberally apply the flea powder. No need to kill the dog.Talismancer:
10 Jun 2014 2:12:51pmSorry, too lenient on an organisation that has held humanity back for centuries. They are NOT leaders on morality in any way and in fact have opposed almost every advancement toward the modern age (and continue to do so). The Catholic Church has no redeeming features at all amongst their hypocritical and misguided attempts to "do good".
In terms of long term damage, the Catholic Church takes the cake. It's time for them to go. That simple.
awake:
10 Jun 2014 2:50:05pmWhere are all the comments from the usuals? This is more important than politics. This is about children's lives.
Why only 76 comments while there are 100s for and against Abbott and Shorten.
Where are the priorities?????
Comments for this story are closed, but you can still have your say.
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CULT Synopsis !!! of Jon Faine this Morning!
Synopsis of Jon Faine this Morning!
9 10 am
Interview with Tim Cartright acting Commissioner of police
9 10am
Re Rabbi Kluwgant resignation
Faine:
They are part of A cult – he comes from a cult – an extreme form of Judaism...
then
F
Do you trust the Rabbinic Council?
Rabbi Kluwgant dinosaur...proven to be...
no time for more..full text availlable on Faine's podcast.
GS
no time for more..full text availlable on Faine's podcast.
GS
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Rabbi Kluwgant unfarily brutalized!
An Open Letter To those who are so manifestly thoughtless!
Note reader, that the Yeshivah Centre and various people are so easy to criticise.
Some are deserving – say Feldman the younger! And the committee who seemingly retained him as Rabbi!
But contemplate this.
Other than a poor choice of words – Rabbi Kluwgant has not deserved opprobrium.
Indeed – look below and learn.
Merely contemplate that Rabbi K sent a private email to the Editor of The Jewish News.
The clear SHORTHAND message was merely – probably his horror at the evidence of Zephania Wachs as it unfolded in real – time.
This editor was clearly empathetic to ZW – and treacherously sent it to Wachs’ solicitor.
There is nothing wrong with being empathetic to Wachs. Somewhat perhaps – if you discount the humbug SEE BELOW LINK.
But there is something wrong with treachery – incorporating the taking a cryptic message which surely should have given far greater gravitas
to what Wachs senior had done – instead of the unfortunate comment ‘Zephania is killing us ... lunatic etc.
AND SENDING IT ON WITH INTENT TO DO HARM _ AND KNOWING - AS THE AJN EDITOR MUST HAVE KNOWN – what was really meant!
Hey – there WAS VIRTUALLY NO ETC!!
So – instead of being able to hold the Wachs pair to account – Rabbi’s comment undermined him and forced his resignation!
HEY – how about this?
Context anyone? Could those who have so brutally attacked Rabbi Kluwgant – try their minds around the above?
Things are happening so quickly – I do not have time to append much more for now.
BUT LOOK AT THIS CHILUL CHASHEM THAT CAME MY WAY!!WHO IS THIS WOMAN??
I DO NOT EVEN HAVE TIME TO CHECK GOOGLE!!
IF YOU LOOK AT THE ABC PM YESTERDAY – AND JON FAINE TODAY – SEE LINKS ABOVE – THEN THE READER WILL UNDERSTAND THE EVIL / DELIBERATE DISTORTION THEREIN.
LOOK WHO THE ABC INTERVIEWED!!!
http://cognatesocialistdystopia.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/pm-abc-162-australasias-most-senior.html''Danny Ben-Moshe directed the Walkley award-winning documentary Code of Silence. It examined the ostracism and vilification Manny Waks and his father Zephaniah faced in Melbourne's ultra-orthodox Yeshivah community after going public.''
THAT IS IT FOR NOW: IT IS TIME TO DO SOMETHING TO RIGHT THIS WRONG.
THE FIRST SHOULD BE A MAJOR DEMAND TO JEWISH NEWS TO ALLOW A MAJOR ARTICLE!!
THE FIRST SHOULD BE A MAJOR DEMAND TO JEWISH NEWS TO ALLOW A MAJOR ARTICLE!!
I wrote to little avail to the Royal Commission... no time for now.
GS
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SO THIS IS ALEX FEIN - AUG 23, 2009 and more recent trolling!
AT LEAST SHE IS PRETTY! HERE IS AT LEAST ONE ARTICLE ELICITED EX GOOGLE SEARCH OF ALEX FEIN FROM 2009.
OHH!
SHE GIVES BLOGGERS A BAD NAME!!
AJN Watch: Who is Alex Fein?
ajnwatch.blogspot.com/2009/09/who-is-alex-fein.html
Sep 25, 2009 - Thank you to all who sent us some personal background material re Alex Fein. Very interesting stuff indeed which we would be more than ...FURTHERMORE....SEE ALL THE GALUS LINKS!! gs
Alex Fein | Galus Australis | Jewish Life in Australia
galusaustralis.com/category/author/alex-fein/
By Alex Fein (Editor): I received the email below from Zephania Waks. It threatens us with a defamation suit, despite my best efforts to moderate fairly, unless I ...CSG | Galus Australis | Jewish Life in Australia
galusaustralis.com/tag/csg/
By Alex Fein: Well, they didn't call my parents…. But they did call someone whom I (and many others) very much respect. This person – who was connected to ...http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-return-of-the-sensible-jew-20090822-euho.html
See article below.
SEE EARLIER:
http://cognatesocialistdystopia.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/who-is-alexandra-fein.html
The return of the Sensible Jew
http://cognatesocialistdystopia.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/who-is-alexandra-fein.html
The return of the Sensible Jew
The blogger, Alex Fein (left), pictured with her mother, Yvonne Fein, says she has been surprised by the level of intolerance to debate within the Jewish community. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer
CAPTAIN Pugwash was delighted when the Sensible Jew announced she was shutting up. Captain Pugwash is what's known in cyberspace as a troll - an anonymous commentator who enters an online discussion to post abusive, inflammatory and disruptive messages.
The Sensible Jew is a blog set up in May to stimulate debate among Melbourne Jews about what its author perceives to be failings of Jewish community leaders.
Until recently, it, too, has been anonymous.
The site's commentary on community affairs, and its labelling of high-profile local Jewish leaders as ''unrepresentative swill'', sent a ripple through Melbourne Jewry.
From community leaders, there was defensiveness. From trolls like Captain Pugwash, there was abuse. And on all sides there was a guessing game: Who is the Sensible Jew?
Last month, when the author of the Sensible Jew announced the blog was temporarily closing, Captain Pugwash was beside himself, claiming credit for the site's demise.
''The best part of this whole thing was just seeing how easy it is to derail and, ultimately, destroy a site like this,'' he wrote. ''It's been a blast!''
''The site's commentary on community affairs, and its labelling of high-profile local Jewish leaders as ''unrepresentative swill'', sent a ripple through Melbourne Jewry.
''They'd always assumed it was a male. They could not conceive of a Jewish female with such a big mouth,'' Ms Fein says.''
He also took a punt at the identify of the Sensible Jew, speculating she was ''just another chubby Jewish housewife''.
As it turns out, she is female. But she's tall, not chubby, and hardly a housewife.
And, after a one-month hiatus, her blog is back in action, and she's outed herself: she is Alex Fein, 34, who, in between blogging on Jewish identity, community leadership, and the motivation of terrorists, runs what she describes as a nascent cosmetics business.
She says her initial decision to remain anonymous and then to temporarily close the blog are linked to serious and sensitive family issues. But she's been amused by the guessing game.
''They'd always assumed it was a male. They could not conceive of a Jewish female with such a big mouth,'' Ms Fein says.
''People were assuming it was not only a man, but one of a particular generation, a young Boomer, and an insider. I'm an outsider, generation X, and female - and that gobsmacked people who found out.''
She says she was struck by the response to the blog. The site regularly attracts up to 500 visitors a day, and closer to 3000 in June, when The Sunday Age first reported on the debate it has sparked, and the emergence of Ms Fein's mother, the writer Yvonne Fein, as the blog's public representative.
But despite the number of readers, only a handful would regularly leave comments.
While most of the messages, even from critics, were rational, a significant minority were highly abusive. She found this intolerance of debate to be ''symptomatic of something quite disturbing'' within the Jewish community.
Many readers, she says, were reluctant to enter the debate, fearing not only abuse from trolls like Capitan Pugwash, but the ''aggressive debating style'' of conservative community leaders.
''Such people felt that if their opinions were made public, they would be publicly shamed, ridiculed, or defamed,'' she wrote last month when she announced the blog was closing.
''Again, such people were not propagating radical views, and ours is not a violent community, so it shocked me profoundly that there was enough fear to keep a significant number quiet.''
What she detected, she says, was that many Australian Jews were ''easily shamed about not being Jewish enough''. They ''feel somehow less able to defend their position because only the most vociferous is seen as a rightful Jewish representative''.
The reluctance of people to enter the debate led her to ponder if a ''bullied'' mentality had taken hold, leading to a ''bizarre submission to some unrepresentative collective ideal of what a good Jew should be''.
Ms Fein says her own decision to initially remain anonymous, and then to temporarily silence the Sensible Jew, had nothing to do with fear of intimidation - at least not in Australia, and not within the Jewish community.
Instead, a family member was concerned that the safety of relatives living overseas could be jeopardised if Ms Fein was publicly identified with a blog related to Jewish issues.
Ms Fein won't go into details of what she says are sensitive family issues, but the relatives are non-Jews, living in the Muslim Middle East. If her blog was ever a danger to them - something Ms Fein doubts - the danger has now passed.
So she's resumed blogging, under her own name. She plans to write on the Middle East, religion, freedom of speech, the drug problem among young Jews, and the role of public relations and propaganda. And then there's terrorism.
Captain Pugwash, meanwhile, hasn't been lost for words. He's back, posting abusive, sexist and racist comments, anonymously, using multiple names all posted from the same address.
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Paradigm wiki 1
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Paradigm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Paradigm (disambiguation).
In science and epistemology (the theory of knowledge), a paradigm /ˈpærədaɪm/ is a distinct concept or thought pattern.
Contents
[hide]Etymology[edit]
Paradigm comes from Greek παράδειγμα (paradeigma), "pattern, example, sample"[1] from the verb παραδείκνυμι (paradeiknumi), "exhibit, represent, expose"[2] and that from παρά (para), "beside, beyond"[3] and δείκνυμι (deiknumi), "to show, to point out".[4]
In rhetoric, paradeigma is known as a type of proof. The purpose of paradeigma is to provide an audience with an illustration of similar occurrences. This illustration is not meant to take the audience to a conclusion, however it is used to help guide them there. A personal accountant is a good comparison of paradeigma to explain how it is meant to guide the audience. A personal accountant's job is not to tell you what and what not to spend your money on; however, they are there to help guide you and your spendings based on financial goals you may have. Anaximenes defined paradeigma as, "actions that have occurred previously and are similar to, or the opposite of, those which we are now discussing."[5]
The original Greek term παράδειγμα (paradeigma) was used in Greek texts such as Plato's Timaeus (28A) as the model or the pattern that the Demiurge (god) used to create the cosmos. The term had a technical meaning in the field of grammar: the 1900 Merriam-Webster dictionary defines its technical use only in the context of grammar or, in rhetoric, as a term for an illustrative parable or fable. In linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure used paradigm to refer to a class of elements with similarities.
The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines this usage as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly: a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind."[6]
The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy attributes the following description of the term to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
Scientific paradigm[edit]
Main articles: Paradigm shift, Sociology of knowledge, Systemics, Commensurability (philosophy of science) and Confirmation holism
See also: Paradigm (experimental) and Scientific consensus
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the basic meaning of the term paradigm as "a typical example or pattern of something; a pattern or model".[8] The historian of scienceThomas Kuhn gave it its contemporary meaning when he adopted the word to refer to the set of practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period of time. In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as: "universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners,[9] i.e.,
- what is to be observed and scrutinized
- the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject
- how these questions are to be structured
- how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted
- how is an experiment to be conducted, and what equipment is available to conduct the experiment.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn saw the sciences as going through alternating periods of normal science, when an existing model of reality dominates a protracted period of puzzle-solving, and revolution, when the model of reality itself undergoes sudden drastic change. Paradigms have two aspects. Firstly, within normal science, the term refers to the set of exemplary experiments that are likely to be copied or emulated. Secondly, underpinning this set of exemplars are shared preconceptions, made prior to – and conditioning – the collection of evidence.[10] These preconceptions embody both hidden assumptions and elements that he describes as quasi-metaphysical;[11] the interpretations of the paradigm may vary among individual scientists.[12]
Kuhn was at pains to point out that the rationale for the choice of exemplars is a specific way of viewing reality: that view and the status of "exemplar" are mutually reinforcing. For well-integrated members of a particular discipline, its paradigm is so convincing that it normally renders even the possibility of alternatives unconvincing and counter-intuitive. Such a paradigm is opaque, appearing to be a direct view of the bedrock of reality itself, and obscuring the possibility that there might be other, alternative imageries hidden behind it. The conviction that the current paradigm is reality tends to disqualify evidence that might undermine the paradigm itself; this in turn leads to a build-up of unreconciled anomalies. It is the latter that is responsible for the eventual revolutionary overthrow of the incumbent paradigm, and its replacement by a new one. Kuhn used the expressionparadigm shift (see below) for this process, and likened it to the perceptual change that occurs when our interpretation of an ambiguous image "flips over" from one state to another.[13] (The rabbit-duck illusion is an example: it is not possible to see both the rabbit and the duck simultaneously.) This is significant in relation to the issue ofincommensurability (see below).
A currently accepted paradigm would be the standard model of physics. The scientific method allows for orthodox scientific investigations into phenomena that might contradict or disprove the standard model; however grant funding would be proportionately more difficult to obtain for such experiments, depending on the degree of deviation from the accepted standard model theory the experiment would test for. To illustrate the point, an experiment to test for the mass of neutrinos or the decay of protons (small departures from the model) is more likely to receive money than experiments that look for the violation of the conservation of momentum, or ways to engineer reverse time travel.
Mechanisms similar to the original Kuhnian paradigm have been invoked in various disciplines other than the philosophy of science. These include: the idea of major cultural themes,[14][15] worldviews (and see below), ideologies, and mindsets. They have somewhat similar meanings that apply to smaller and larger scale examples of disciplined thought. In addition, Michel Foucault used the terms episteme and discourse, mathesis and taxinomia, for aspects of a "paradigm" in Kuhn's original sense.
Paradigm shifts[edit]
Main article: Paradigm shift
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote that "Successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science." (p. 12)
Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, a statement generally attributed to physicist Lord Kelvin famously claimed, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."[16] Five years later, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity, which challenged the very simple set of rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for over two hundred years. In this case, the new paradigm reduces the old to a special case in the sense that Newtonian mechanics is still a good model for approximation for speeds that are slow compared to the speed of light. Philosophers and historians of science, including Kuhn himself, ultimately accepted a modified version of Kuhn's model, which synthesizes his original view with the gradualist model that preceded it. Kuhn's original model is now generally seen as too limited.
Kuhn's idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major change in the way that academics talk about science. Thus, it may be that it caused or was itself part of a "paradigm shift" in the history and sociology of science. However, Kuhn would not recognize such a paradigm shift. Being in the social sciences, people can still use earlier ideas to discuss the history of science.
Paradigm paralysis[edit]
Perhaps the greatest barrier to a paradigm shift, in some cases, is the reality of paradigm paralysis: the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking.[17] This is similar to what psychologists term Confirmation bias. Examples include rejection of Galileo's theory of a heliocentric universe, the discovery of electrostatic photography,xerography and the quartz clock.[citation needed]
Incommensurability[edit]
Kuhn pointed out that it could be difficult to assess whether a particular paradigm shift had actually led to progress, in the sense of explaining more facts, explaining more important facts, or providing better explanations, because the understanding of "more important", "better", etc. changed with the paradigm. The two versions of reality are thusincommensurable. Kuhn's version of incommensurability has an important psychological dimension; this is apparent from his analogy between a paradigm shift and the flip-over involved in some optical illusions.[18] However, he subsequently diluted his commitment to incommensurability considerably, partly in the light of other studies of scientific development that did not involve revolutionary change.[19] One of the examples that Kuhn used was the change in the style of chemical investigation that followed the work ofLavoisier on atomic theory in the late 18th Century as an example of incommensurability.[13] In this change, the focus had shifted from the bulk properties of matter (such as hardness, colour, reactivity, etc.) to studies of atomic weights and quantitative studies of reactions. He suggested that it was impossible to make the comparison needed to judge which body of knowledge was better or more advanced. However, this change in research style (and paradigm) eventually (after more than a century) led to a theory of atomic structure that accounts well for the bulk properties of matter; see, for example, Brady's General Chemistry.[20] This ability of science to back off, move sideways, and then advance is characteristic of the natural sciences,[21] but contrasts with the position in some social sciences, notably economics.[22]
This apparent ability does not guarantee that the account is veridical at any one time, of course, and most modern philosophers of science are fallibilists. However, members of other disciplines do see the issue of incommensurability as a much greater obstacle to evaluations of "progress"; see, for example, Martin Slattery's Key Ideas in Sociology.[23][24]
Subsequent developments[edit]
Opaque Kuhnian paradigms and paradigm shifts do exist. A few years after the discovery of the mirror-neurons that provide a hard-wired basis for the human capacity for empathy, the scientists involved were unable to identify the incidents that had directed their attention to the issue. Over the course of the investigation, their language and metaphors had changed so that they themselves could no longer interpret all of their own earlier laboratory notes and records.[25]
Imre Lakatos and research programmes[edit]
However, many instances exist in which change in a discipline's core model of reality has happened in a more evolutionary manner, with individual scientists exploring the usefulness of alternatives in a way that would not be possible if they were constrained by a paradigm. Imre Lakatos suggested (as an alternative to Kuhn's formulation) that scientists actually work within research programmes.[26] In Lakatos' sense, a research programme is a sequence of problems, placed in order of priority. This set of priorities, and the associated set of preferred techniques, is the positive heuristic of a programme. Each programme also has a negative heuristic; this consists of a set of fundamental assumptions that – temporarily, at least – takes priority over observational evidence when the two appear to conflict.
This latter aspect of research programmes is inherited from Kuhn's work on paradigms,[citation needed] and represents an important departure from the elementary account of how science works. According to this, science proceeds through repeated cycles of observation, induction, hypothesis-testing, etc., with the test of consistency with empirical evidencebeing imposed at each stage. Paradigms and research programmes allow anomalies to be set aside, where there is reason to believe that they arise from incomplete knowledge (about either the substantive topic, or some aspect of the theories implicitly used in making observation.
Larry Laudan: Dormant anomalies, fading credibility, and research traditions[edit]
Larry Laudan [27] has also made two important contributions to the debate. Laudan believed that something akin to paradigms exist in the social sciences (Kuhn had contested this, see below); he referred to these as research traditions. Laudan noted that some anomalies become "dormant", if they survive a long period during which no competing alternative has shown itself capable of resolving the anomaly. He also presented cases in which a dominant paradigm had withered away because its lost credibility when viewed against changes in the wider intellectual milieu.
Concept of paradigm and the social sciences[edit]
Kuhn himself did not consider the concept of paradigm as appropriate for the social sciences. He explains in his preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that he concocted the concept of paradigm precisely to distinguish the social from the natural sciences (p.x). He wrote this book at the Palo Alto Center for Scholars, surrounded by social scientists, when he observed that they were never in agreement on theories or concepts. He explains that he wrote this book precisely to show that there are no, nor can there be any, paradigms in the social sciences. Mattei Dogan, a French sociologist, in his article "Paradigms in the Social Sciences," develops Kuhn's original thesis that there are no paradigms at all in the social sciences since the concepts are polysemic, the deliberate mutual ignorance between scholars and the proliferation of schools in these disciplines. Dogan provides many examples of the non-existence of paradigms in the social sciences in his essay, particularly in sociology, political science and political anthropology.
However, both Kuhn's original work and Dogan's commentary are directed at disciplines that are defined by conventional labels (e.g., "sociology"). While it is true that such broad groupings in the social sciences are usually not based on a Kuhnian paradigm, each of the competing sub-disciplines may still be underpinned by a paradigm, research programme, research tradition, and/ or professional imagery. These structures will be motivating research, providing it with an agenda, defining what is - and what is not - anomalous evidence, and inhibiting debate with other groups that fall under the same broad disciplinary label. (A good example is provided by the contrast between Skinnerian behaviourism and Personal Construct Theory, PCT, within psychology. The most significant of the many ways these two sub-disciplines of psychology differ concerns meanings and intentions. In PCT, these are seen as the central concern of psychology; in behaviourism, they are not scientific evidence at all, because they cannot be directly observed.) These considerations explain the conflict between the Kuhn/ Dogan view, and the views of others (including Larry Laudan, see above), who do apply these concepts to social sciences.
Handa,[28] M.L. (1986) introduced the idea of "social paradigm" in the context of social sciences. He identified the basic components of a social paradigm. Like Kuhn, Handa addressed the issue of changing paradigm; the process popularly known as "paradigm shift". In this respect, he focused on social circumstances that precipitate such a shift and the effects of the shift on social institutions, including the institution of education. This broad shift in the social arena, in turn, changes the way the individual perceives reality.
Another use of the word paradigm is in the sense of "worldview". For example, in social science, the term is used to describe the set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect the way an individual perceives reality and responds to that perception. Social scientists have adopted the Kuhnian phrase "paradigm shift" to denote a change in how a given society goes about organizing and understanding reality. A "dominant paradigm" refers to the values, or system of thought, in a society that are most standard and widely held at a given time. Dominant paradigms are shaped both by the community's cultural background and by the context of the historical moment. The following are conditions that facilitate a system of thought to become an accepted dominant paradigm:
- Professional organizations that give legitimacy to the paradigm
- Dynamic leaders who introduce and purport the paradigm
- Journals and editors who write about the system of thought. They both disseminate the information essential to the paradigm and give the paradigm legitimacy
- Government agencies who give credence to the paradigm
- Educators who propagate the paradigm's ideas by teaching it to students
- Conferences conducted that are devoted to discussing ideas central to the paradigm
- Media coverage
- Lay groups, or groups based around the concerns of lay persons, that embrace the beliefs central to the paradigm
- Sources of funding to further research on the paradigm
Other uses[edit]
The word paradigm is also still used to indicate a pattern or model or an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype. The term is frequently used in this sense in the design professions. Design Paradigms or archetypes comprise functional precedents for design solutions. The best known references on design paradigms are Design Paradigms: A Sourcebook for Creative Visualization, by Wake, and Design Paradigms by Petroski.
This term is also used in cybernetics. Here it means (in a very wide sense) a (conceptual) protoprogram for reducing the chaotic mass to some form of order. Note the similarities to the concept of entropy in chemistry and physics. A paradigm there would be a sort of prohibition to proceed with any action that would increase the total entropy of the system. To create a paradigm requires a closed system that accepts changes. Thus a paradigm can only apply to a system that is not in its final stage.
Beyond its use in the physical and social sciences, Kuhn's paradigm concept has been analysed in relation to its applicability in identifying 'paradigms' with respect to worldviews at specific points in history. One example is Matthew Edward Harris' book The Notion of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: The Idea of Paradigm in Church History.[29]Harris stresses the primarily sociological importance of paradigms, pointing towards Kuhn's second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Although obedience to popes such as Innocent III and Boniface VIII was widespread, even written testimony from the time showing loyalty to the pope does not demonstrate that the writer had the same worldview as the Church, and therefore pope, at the centre. The difference between paradigms in the physical sciences and in historical organisations such as the Church is that the former, unlike the latter, requires technical expertise rather than repeating statements. In other words, after scientific training through what Kuhn calls 'exemplars', one could not genuinely believe that, to take a trivial example, the earth is flat, whereas thinkers such as Giles of Rome in the thirteenth century wrote in favour of the pope, then could easily write similarly glowing things about the king. A writer such as Giles would have wanted a good job from the pope; he was a papal publicist. However, Harris writes that 'scientific group membership is not concerned with desire, emotions, gain, loss and any idealistic notions concerning the nature and destiny of humankind...but simply to do with aptitude, explanation, [and] cold description of the facts of the world and the universe from within a paradigm'.[30]
See also[edit]
 | Look up paradigm in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Concept
- Conceptual framework
- Conceptual schema
- Contextualism
- Dogma
- Perspectivism
- Programming paradigm
- The history of the various paradigms in evolutionary biology (Wikiversity)
- Metanarrative
- Poststructuralism
- World view
- Mental model
- Mental representation
- Mindset
- Set (psychology)
- Schema (psychology)
- Basic beliefs
Notes[edit]
- ^ παράδειγμα, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
- ^ παραδείκνυμι, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
- ^ παρά, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
- ^ δείκνυμι, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
- ^ Sampley, J. Paul (2003). Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook. Trinity Press International. pp. 228–229. ISBN 9781563382666.
- ^ paradigm - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
- ^ Blackburn, Simon, 1994, 2005, 2008, rev. 2nd ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283134-8. Description & 1994 letter-previewlinks.
- ^ Paradigm definition from Oxford English Dictionary Online
- ^ "The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. page 10
- ^ Kuhn, T S (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd Edition) University of Chicago Press. Section V, pages 43-51. ISBN 0-226-45804-0.
- ^ Kuhn, T S (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (2nd Edition) University of Chicago Press. Pages 88 and 41, respectively.
- ^ Kuhn, T S (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (2nd Edition) University of Chicago Press. Page 44.
- ^ a b Kuhn, T S (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (2nd Edition) University of Chicago Press. Page 85.
- ^ Benedict, R (1971) Patterns of Culture. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
- ^ Spradley, J (1979)The Ethnographic Interview. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- ^ The attribution of this statement to Lord Kelvin is given in a number of sources, but without citation. It is reputed to be Kelvin's remark made in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900. See the article on Lord Kelvin for additional details and references.
- ^ Do you suffer from paradigm paralysis?
- ^ Kuhn, T S (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd Edition) University of Chicago Press. Page 85.
- ^ Haack, S (2003) Defending Science – within reason: between scientism and cynicism.Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-59102-458-3.
- ^ Brady, J E (1990). General Chemistry: Principles and Structure. (5th Edition.) John Wiley and Sons.
- ^ Smith, P J (2011) The Reform of Economics. Taw Books. ISBN 978-0-9570697-0-1. Page 129.
- ^ Smith, P J (2011) The Reform of Economics. Taw Books. Chapter 7.
- ^ Slattery, Martin (2003). Key ideas in sociology. OCLC Number: 52531237(Cheltenham : Nelson Thornes). pp. 151, 152, 153, 155. ISBN 978-0-7487-6565-2.
- ^ Nickles, Thomas (December 2002). Thomas Kuhn. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1, 2, 3, 4. doi:10.2277/0521792061. ISBN 978-0-521-79206-6.
Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996), the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is probably the best-known and most influential historian and philosopher of science of the last 25 years, and has become something of a cultural icon. His concepts of paradigm, paradigm change and incommensurability have changed the way we think about science.
- ^ Iacoboni, M. (2008), Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Page 17.
- ^ [16] Lakatos, I. (1970), "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," in Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (eds.) (1990), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge.
- ^ Laudan, L. (1977), Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth.University of California Press, Berkeley.
- ^ Handa, M. L. (1986) "Peace Paradigm: Transcending Liberal and Marxian Paradigms".Paper presented in "International Symposium on Science, Technology and Development, New Delhi, India, March 20–25, 1987, Mimeographed at O.I.S.E., University of Toronto, Canada (1986)
- ^ Harris, Matthew (2010). The notion of papal monarchy in the thirteenth century : the idea of paradigm in church history. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-7734-1441-9.
- ^ Harris, Matthew (2010). The notion of papal monarchy in the thirteenth century : the idea of paradigm in church history. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-7734-1441-9.
References and links[edit]
- Clarke, Thomas and Clegg, Stewart (eds). Changing Paradigms. London: HarperCollins, 2000. ISBN 0-00-638731-4
- Handa, M. L. (1986) "Peace Paradigm: Transcending Liberal and Marxian Paradigms" Paper presented in "International Symposium on Science, Technology and Development, New Delhi, India, March 20–25, 1987, Mimeographed at O.I.S.E., University of Toronto, Canada (1986)
- Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd Ed. Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3 - Google Books Aug. 2011
- Masterman, Margaret, "The Nature of a Paradigm," pp. 59–89 in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave. Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970. ISBN 0-521-09623-5
- Encyclopædia Britannica, Univ. of Chicago, 2003, ISBN 0-85229-961-3
- Dogan, Mattei., "Paradigms in the Social Sciences," in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 16, 2001)
- "JSTOR: British Journal of Sociology of Education: Vol. 13, No. 1 (1992), pp. 131-143". Retrieved 2007-06-18.
- The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, Microsoft Research, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9825442-0-4 http://fourthparadigm.org
- Harris, Matthew Edward. The Notion of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: The Idea of Paradigm in Church History. Lampeter and Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7734-1441-9
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http://www.thefreedictionary.com/paradigm
paradigm - a standard or typical example; "he is the prototype of good breeding"; "he provided America with an image of the good father"↧
WOW!!! folk.uio.no/erek/essays/paradigm.pdf
https://www.google.com.au/#q=paradigm+should+never+be+used
PDF]What is "paradigm"?
folk.uio.no/erek/essays/paradigm.pdf
by E Göktürk - Cited by 9 - Related articles
Abstract. Today, the word “paradigm” is being used with a vague definition. ... watering down of its meaning, which was never exactly concrete to start with, and ... So the dictionaries fall short of being a source from which we can learn about the.- Abstract. Today, the word “paradigm” is being used with a vague definition. ... watering down of its meaning, which was never exactly concrete to start with, and ... So the dictionaries fall short of being a source from which we can learn about the.
What is “paradigm”?
Erek Göktürk
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo
Postbox 1080 Blindern 0316 Oslo, Norway
erek@ifi.uio.no
Abstract. Today, the word “paradigm” is being used with a vague definition.
In this paper, an attempt at clarifying the meaning of the word “paradigm” is
made, with reference to its philosophical roots and how it came to its
proliferation of use.
1. Introduction
The last decades witnessed a proliferation of the use of the word “paradigm”, in
connection with many subjects. But the question still runs unnoticed: What exactly is
“paradigm? And where did it come from? This paper is an attempt to put together
answers to these two questions.
The word surely escaped from the laboratory of philosophers, mostly due to the
fact that its meaning is vague. Kuhn’s use of it as an inherited set of preconceptions,
acting as a darkened glass from which we perceive the world, gave the word a mystic
aura. Then it was only a natural consequence for everyone and anyone who are to
make a claim in changing the way the world goes around to come about advocating
their point of view as “the new paradigm” which gets rid of the “blinding effects of
the previous one”! So the word’s popularity has grown in direct proportion to the
watering down of its meaning, which was never exactly concrete to start with, and
has grown thinner with every new use [7].
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THE PARADIGM WORD IS PRETENTIOUS JARGON FORBES
nvvn
The Most Annoying, Pretentious And Useless Business ...
www.forbes.com/.../the-most-annoying-pretentious-and-useless-business-...
Jan 26, 2012 - The next time you feel the need to reach out, shift a paradigm, leverage a best ... “
The Most Annoying, Pretentious And Useless Business Jargon
By Max Mallet, Brett Nelson and Chris Steiner
The next time you feel the need to reach out, touch base, shift a paradigm, leverage a best practice or join a tiger team, by all means do it. Just don’t sayyou’re doing it.
If you have to ask why, chances are you’ve fallen under the poisonous spell of business jargon. No longer solely the province of consultants, investors and business-school types, this annoying gobbledygook has mesmerized the rank and file around the globe.
“Jargon masks real meaning,” says Jennifer Chatman, management professor at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “People use it as a substitute for thinking hard and clearly about their goals and the direction that they want to give others.”
To save you from yourself (and to keep your colleagues and customers from strangling you), we have assembled a cache of expressions to assiduously avoid.
We also assembled a “Jargon Madness” bracket—similar to the NCAA college basketball tournament—featuring 32 abominable expressions. Each day, for 32 days, readers will get to vote, via Twitter, on one matchup. The goal: to identify the single most annoying example of business jargon and thoroughly embarrass all who employ it and all of those other ridiculous terms, too.
In the meantime, here are some of the worst offenders Forbes has identified over the years. For a full list of 45, click here.
Core Competency
This awful expression refers to a firm’s or a person’s fundamental strength—even though that’s not what the word “competent” means. “This bothers me because it is just a silly phrase when you think about it,” says Bruce Barry, professor of management at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Business. “Do people talk about peripheral competency? Being competent is not the standard we’re seeking. It’s like core mediocrity.”
Buy-In
This means agreement on a course of action, if the most disingenuous kind. Notes David Logan, professor of management and organization at theUniversity of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business: “Asking for someone’s ‘buy-in’ says, ‘I have an idea. I didn’t involve you because I didn’t value you enough to discuss it with you. I want you to embrace it as if you were in on it from the beginning, because that would make me feel really good.’”
S.W.A.T. Team
In law enforcement, this term refers to teams of fit men and women who put themselves in danger to keep people safe. “In business, it means a group of ‘experts’ (often fat guys in suits) assembled to solve a problem or tackle an opportunity” says USC’s Logan. An apt comparison, if you’re a fat guy in a suit.
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The Vocabula Review - Worst Word - PARADIGM
The Vocabula Review - Worst Words
www.vocabula.com/vrworstwords.aspThough I have used this just to be funny, people overuse this word and it's become ..... Paradigm has lost its original meaning and become a squishy term for ...- has lost its original meaning and become a squishy term for anything having to do with a new way of doing or viewing anything. It sounds pretentious and it is.
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jargon.... Paradigm.... people like to pretend it does"
16 business jargon words we never, ever want to hear again
www.news.com.au/...words-we.../story-e6frfm9r-1226651466738May 27, 2013 - 1200 jobs axed, without mention of the word "fired". ... "The terms for sacking people have been hilarious over the last 10 or 15 ... Paradigm shift- 16. Paradigm shift but people like to pretend it does"
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PARADIGM AND THE GIRL PEOPLE AND MORE!!!
SEE PAGE 70: ''SILLY BIG WORDS'' GS
https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=1101218665
Phyllis Mindell - 2001 - Language Arts & Disciplines
Silly big words Do big words impress people? ... Words such as egregious,paradigm, and exegesis add panache and exactitude when you use them ...How To Say It for Women - Page 70 - Google Books Result
10 Things New Agers Don't Understand About Science: Part 5
https://spiritualityisnoexcuse.wordpress.com/.../10-things-new-agers-dont...
Jan 4, 2014 - Kuhn clearly recognized that a paradigm is more than just a conceptual model. ... The down side of this is that silly people can use it to reject those parts of .... The quacks will latch onto any new scientific term that becomes ...↧
I HAVE FUN WITH GALUS EDITOR BRACHA RAFAEL
NOTE READER THAT MY AMAZINGLY SIMPLE PARODY [see below] WAS ALLOWED TO REMAIN MERELY FOR 2 HOURS OR SO - YESTERDAY EVENING UNTIL THEY FINALLY WORKED OUT WHAT I WAS DOING TO THEM INTELLECTUALLY!!
SO MUCH FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!
BUT ONE SHOULD READ HER PARADIGM - INFLICTED COMMENTS:
FOR EXAMPLE - SEE QUOTE BELOW.
So you can see she effectively uses the interesting devils' advocate tool; sad really.
No time for more.
But there have been no comments at 1 45 pm on Wed. 18/2/15 Amazing - they censured my words and have no one else?
GS WED. 1 51 pm 18/2/15
“I thought we had cured him.” Again, to be fair, Rabbi Telsner didn’t say this. Rabbi Groner did. But Rabbi Telsner was asked to explain this statement, essentially, to explain why Rabbi Groner would have thought it reasonable to allow a paedophile — reformed or otherwise — to continue to work amongst children.'
Shalom Bracha Rafael!
I failed to go past your 4 times use of the paradigm word in the first 2 smallish paragraphs.
Indeed - a reasonable paradigm has it thatone should essentially never use the word!
Look at my secondary blog - socialistdystopia.blogspot.com.au
At the last 7 entries. All devoted to teach you about the use and abuse of language.
Your comment I will determine my commentary.
It is expected that there will be challenges that I will find paradigmatic.
All the best
Geoff Seidner
East St Kida
Op-ed: rabbinic failures go deeper than a lapse in judgment
February 17, 2015 – 1:05 pmNo Comment
I want to dig into what is fundamentally wrongwith the current generation of rabbinic leadership in this country, as exemplified by one Rabbi Tzvi Telsner. The Royal Commission is giving a lot of airtime to a paradigm that goes largely unchallenged. I am interested in challenging this paradigm because children’s safety depends upon it.
This paradigm is worlds away from mainstream society. It is worlds away from most religious homes. And the expression of this paradigm — as clear in Rabbi Telsner’s evasions, half-answers, and omissions as it is in what was said — is giving rise to fury, but not much discussion. I am hoping to name this problem so that we can fix it.
The problem is the terrifying moral equivalence that the rabbis are still struggling to shake themselves from. Rabbi Telsner’s testimony is the most recent illustration of this.
Most people hold child sexual abuse apart from just about every other evil they can think of. The report title Little Children Are Sacred spells it out clearly: when secular society uses religious terminology, you know it cares very, very much about the matter at hand.
But it is clear from Rabbi Telsner’s testimony that for our rabbinic leaders, child sexual abuse is just another evil, just another sin. It is merely one way that God’s will can be thwarted. Eating bacon is another way. Lashon hara is yet another.
The Torah and halacha does not encourage scholars to rank sins from bad to worst. This is helpful for discouraging sin altogether but is not helpful when two sins need to be weighed against each other. Until 2011 the rabbinic leadership weighed the evil of allowing children to be harmed against the evil of reporting on fellow Jews and favoured the former.
The religious leadership has changed its mind on that issue (due to Manny Waks changing the terms of the debate) but Rabbi Telsner’s statements indicate that the above approach is alive and well. We, the lay people, find ourselves in the bizarre position of questioning the moral compass of our religious leaders.
This is the failure of the rabbis coming before the Royal Commission. They are failing to spell out, in clear terms, that abuses against children constitute a violation of God’s will several orders of magnitude greater than the other common aveirot they are normally faced with. This is what we want to hear, and they are dancing around this point.
Perhaps it is simply the case that there is not room in the halachic system to accommodate this paradigm shift. That to place child sexual abuse apart from other sins (sins, not crimes) is intellectually dishonest. If this is true, then the rabbinic leadership must abdicate authority on this matter. If halacha does not allow them to ensure that their institutions are safe for children, then the lay leadership must do so.
If one is inclined to be generous to Rabbi Telsner — and I am not, particularly, but here goes — there is a smidgen of entrapment in the questions he was posed. He did not draw the link between paedophilia and homosexuality: he was asked to comment on it by a lawyer.
All he needed to say was “I object to these terms of reference. The two issues are nothing alike.” But he didn’t do that. He retreated to academic possibility-granting, to probablies, and I-can’t-recalls.
Let me be very clear. I do not believe that homosexuality is a disease. I do not believe it is wrong to be gay. I think it is cruel — oppressive — to suggest either of the above. However, the point that Rabbi Telsner was making was that oppression, or rather, repression can work. Put enough effort into it, and you can convince gay people not to have sex. Put enough effort into it, and you can convince paedophiles not to offend.
The first is an act of oppression, motivated by homophobia. The second is straightforward rehabilitation, and is necessary for the safety of society. Most paedophiles do not serve life sentences. They will one day re-enter the community. So we do need ways to keep leashes on former offenders. If therapy helps to do that, fantastic.
Which brings me to yet another problematic element of Rabbi Telsner’s testimony:
“I thought we had cured him.” Again, to be fair, Rabbi Telsner didn’t say this. Rabbi Groner did. But Rabbi Telsner was asked to explain this statement, essentially, to explain why Rabbi Groner would have thought it reasonable to allow a paedophile — reformed or otherwise — to continue to work amongst children.
Because even if therapy can be effective at helping a paedophile not re-offend, surely we shouldn’t be making it harder for them to do so. By which I mean: why on earth would you allow anyone with a history of hurting children anywhere near children?
And again, to be fair, we, the community, don’t actually want an explanation. We want an apology. Because the answer here is foregone: it is indefensible that David Cyprus was allowed to continue to work amongst children. At best, that was the outcome of reckless naiveté, at worst a shocking indifference to the pain and suffering of children. Either way, it speaks of a rabbinate that must change radically or must hand over certain responsibilities.
This is why we have Working With Children Checks. Why recovering alcoholics don’t touch alcohol. Why I, as a paramedic, am required to consider a patient’s past abuse of opiates before I administer morphine. The principle at work here is that re-exposure interferes with recovery. A paedophile who truly wishes not to re-offend would make every effort to deny themselves the opportunity to do so.
This principle exists in halacha as well. It’s why we have fences around real prohibitions, so that we do not even come close to sinning.
Rabbi Telsner’s testimony, like Rabbi Feldman’s, fills us with fear and fury because we are not being permitted to feel confident that things will get better. And if the leadership can’t change themselves, then our children are still at risk.
I invite religious scholars and leaders to make a halachic case for the protection of children. And I invite the community to judge it. Do we have faith in our religious leadership on this matter? If the answer is no, a restructure is in order.
No Comment »
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THES ARE ALEX FEIN AND BRACHA RAFAEL
Editorial
גלות אויסטראליס
Galus Australis – The Southern Exile
Galus Australis is a forum for discussion and debate about Australian Jewish life. We’re interested in identity, culture, politics, religion, sociology, food and humour (to name a few). Sometimes even sport.
Galus Australis does not subscribe to any particular ideological viewpoint, and is committed to the value of robust and challenging debate. We endeavour to publish a range of viewpoints and welcome well-written, considered (and controversial!) submissions from across the religious and political spectrum.
Each writer is responsible for the opinions expressed in their own posts, and the views expressed do not represent any Galus Australis editorial position.
The editorial committee of Galus Australis consists of:
Alex Fein (Editor-in-chief)
Bracha Rafael (Editor)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: alex fein<alex.fein@gmail.com>
Date: 16 February 2015 at 14:46
Subject: An open letter to our Rabbis
To:
From: alex fein<alex.fein@gmail.com>
Date: 16 February 2015 at 14:46
Subject: An open letter to our Rabbis
To:
An open letter to our Rabbis:
Dear Rabbis Kennard, Goodhardt, Genende, Caplan, Freilich, Baroda, and Waks.
Dear Rabbis Kennard, Goodhardt, Genende, Caplan, Freilich, Baroda, and Waks.
Over the past couple of weeks, the Royal Comission into child sexual abuse has confronted our community with an appalling reality. Many of our rabbis are simply not fit to lead us.
They seek to represent us to government. For example, the Organisation of Australasian Rabbis (ORA) has submitted to government opposing marriage equality and has attempted to get Rabbi Rabi's hechsher banned, without any prior community consultation.
They seek to represent us to government. For example, the Organisation of Australasian Rabbis (ORA) has submitted to government opposing marriage equality and has attempted to get Rabbi Rabi's hechsher banned, without any prior community consultation.
They meet with the Prime Minister and send out media releases in which they claim - falsely - to represent Orthodox Jewry
They elect leaders such as Yossi Felfdman and MS Kluwgant.
This is not just a Chabad problem. This is a problem for all Orthodox Australian Jews.
Currently, the Melbourne Beit Din is composed solely of judges who come from the same religious persuasion as Rabbis Feldman and Kluqwgant.
Chabad comprises a tiny part of our community, yet we allow our religious lives to be dominated by the sect and by its rabbis - too many of whom equate homosexuality with paedophilia.
While most Australian Jews know that homosexuality is not a disease to be cured, too many of our Rabbis do not.
After the revelations at the Royal commission, many of us within Orthodox Jewry can no longer stay silent on these matters.
Rabbi Kluwgant may have stepped down as President of ORA; however, that organisation is still a body that saw fit to elect him as its leader, and it is composed of rabbis who do not reflect the spiritual makeup of the majority of Jews in this country.
I am writing to you to request you form a rabbinic body that better represents Orthodoxy as it is practiced by the majority of observant Australian Jews.
We need better representation and we need an Orthodox Beit Din that is not populated by men of a minority sect who have demonstrated time and again that they are not in step with the sensibility of Australian Jewry.
I ask you all - men of good faith - to begin building institutions that will serve our community better than the existing, crumbling edifices.
If there's any way in which I can assist, please call on me any time.
Yours sincerely,
Alexandra Fein.
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CRICKEY- 10 Nov 2014 From mensch to meshuggah: why Bob Carr turned on Israel
http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/11/10/from-mensch-to-meshuggah-why-bob-carr-turned-on-israel/?wpmp_switcher=mobile
![Crikey]()
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From mensch to meshuggah: why Bob Carr turned on Israel
Bob Carr, the former foreign minister (2012-2013) and New South Wales premier (1996-2006), has gone from Israel’s No. 1 pin-up politician in Australia to one of the most reviled.
When he co-founded Labor Friends of Israel with Bob Hawke in 1977, Carr was accorded “honourable gentile” status by Israel’s rulers. The Jewish state needed friends on the international stage, and Australia’s moral authority on international affairs loomed large in their calculations.
But Carr has changed his mind. Now he is publicly critical of Israel’s ruthless policies of settlement-building in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank and its attacks on Gaza.
At the NSW Labor conference in July Carr moved the successful resolution deploring the death of innocent civilians in this year’s assault on Gaza and declaring that “NSW Labor recognises a Middle East peace will only be won with the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
It also included the guarantee that “a future Labor government will consult like-minded nations towards recognition of the Palestinian state”.
One of those like-minded nations is the new government of Sweden, which last week officially recognised Palestine as a state. Israel immediately recalled its ambassador from Stockholm.
In moving the resolution underpinning Palestinian rights, Carr widened the critique of Israel’s policies, which he first developed in his memoir, Diary of a Foreign Minister, published last April.
Carr’s identification of the ham-fisted and heavy-handed lobbying of the “the Melbourne Jewish lobby” infuriated the Zionist state’s ardent supporters, and they rounded on him.
One of those to rebuke Carr was Michael Easson, a lifelong friend and former head of the NSW Labor Council who had joined Labor Friends of Israel in 1977 and become an unwavering supporter. Carr’s motion, Easson declared, “lacked balance, was loosely and inappropriately worded, and seems to equate Israel with Hamas”.
Amid all the gnashing of teeth, the fire and the fury, the simple truth is that Israel no longer holds the powerful diplomatic sway that it did 37 years ago, when Carr first took sides.
The Israeli government has swung to the hard Right, and its domestic and foreign policies are identified as more militaristic than pacific. When the United Nations voted to give Palestine diplomatic status in November 2012, Carr scored a victory over prime minister Julia Gillard with Australia’s abstention on the vote (she wanted Australia to join the United States and nine other countries in voting against).
And last month the British House of Commons voted 274 to 12 in support of a future Palestinian state.
These are the global developments to which Carr’s “tinny” ear is tuned. He is not a reckless politician, but a conservative-minded one.
He is moving on the Israeli question because he has developed acute contacts in Washington, the US State Department and the global think tanks. He would not move a millimetre without consulting close friends like Dr Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, Kim Beazley, Australia’s ambassador in Washington, and Dennis Richardson, a former intelligence chief, Australia’s Washington ambassador and currently secretary of the Defence Department in Canberra.
Carr’s is moving with the times while his critics are increasingly sounding like those who rallied to white South Africa in the final decade of apartheid.
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March 2, 2015 Nick Dyrenfurth Why the silence of the left on anti-Semitism?
inc comments as at 12 31 pm 3/3/15
Why the silence of the left on anti-Semitism?
- 8 reading now
- Comments 47
Nick Dyrenfurth
Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.
On February 15, 38-year-old volunteer security guard Dan Uzan was shot and killed outside a Copenhagen synagogue during a bat mitzvah celebration. A month earlier, a gunman executed four customers at a kosher grocery store in Paris.
In May 2014, a gunman killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. In 2012, a gunman murdered three students and a teacher at Toulouse Jewish primary school in south-west France. Eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego was shot point-blank in the head.
You might discern a common theme to these shocking crimes. Seventy years after the Holocaust, Jews are again being murdered in Europe for being Jews.
These recent outrages are but the tip of an anti-Semitic iceberg. About 7000 French Jews made aliyah (migrated) to Israel last year. For good reason. Jews make up 1 per cent of the French population, but half of all racially-motivated crimes during 2014 targeted Jews. In recent weeks several hundred graves were defaced at a Jewish cemetery in north-east France; in Germany a synagogue in the city of Wuppertal was firebombed.
This is to say nothing of Jew-hatred besides physical violence. During last year's Gaza conflict European protesters chanted "Gas the Jews" and "Death to the Jews". In several countries, Jews are being warned not to wear religious clothing or enrol their children in schools with a high numbers of immigrant (allegedly Muslim) students.
Far-right, anti-Semitic political parties are gaining ground across Europe. In a Greek government dominated by the far-left Syriza, right-wing ally and defence minister Panos Kammenos says that his Jewish compatriots don't pay taxes. In Britain, a recent all-party parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism showed an alarming rise in such bigoted attitudes.
Australia has not been immune. A video produced by the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir shows the organisation's head, Ismail Al Wahwah, alleging that "where Jews thrive corruption abounds" and that the world is afflicted by the Jewish "hidden evil".
Yet, as #jesuischarlie hashtags proliferate, violence carried out by supporters of a far-right brand of totalitarianism, radical Islam, is met with thundering silence in the West. Most disturbing is the response of progressives. Recent events demonstrate that a section of what purports to be the left wing no longer stands unequivocally against all forms of fascism and racism and is prepared to ignore or, worse, excuse an ideology that rejects Enlightenment values and promotes a racist, misogynistic and homophobic death cult.
Condemnation has been non-existent or heavily qualified. What about Anders Breivik, they say? The killers have nothing to do with Islam – despite most attacks being launched with the cry of "Allahu Akbar"– but are alienated, radicalised "lone wolves", the argument goes.
Some seek to place the blame on Jews. A BBC anchor suggested that violence directed against French Jews might be understandable given Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. A left-wing Australian "anti-Zionist" tweeted that should Israel's oppression of the Palestinians continue, more attacks on Jews would follow. The normally voluminous twitter feeds of leading progressives are mostly devoid of sympathy or solidarity.
At the root of this silence is denial. A denial of the seriousness and source of the new/old anti-Semitism, whereby a classical racial/religious hostility to Jews has conjoined with a politically motivated denial of the rights of the Jewish people to a state of their own. Yet it is clear that the recent European attacks have occurred in cities that host relatively large migrant Muslim communities, of which a small but significant minority are willing to act upon the message of jihadist militancy fostered by the likes of ISIS.
These outrages have also drawn less opprobrium from progressive sources because, as militant opponents of the policies (and often very existence) of the State of Israel, they view anti-Semitism as a term deployed by Zionists to deflect criticism.
Moreover, confronting the resurgence of anti-Semitism would mean accepting that the demonisation of Israelis and Jewish diaspora – such as the toxic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that effectively calls for the destruction of Israel – has in part contributed to the legitimation of violent attacks against the Jews of Europe.
Instead, we have seen a bizarre reversal of victimhood. The first instinct of many, rather than sympathise with the victims of terror, has been to warn against a potential Islamophobic backlash. According to this warped and infantilising logic, Muslims, as the "new" Jews, are all innocent victims of Western (and Israeli) imperialism and racism.
No one wishes to see the peaceful majority of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims subject to discrimination because of the actions of a minority. We are not, as Roger Cohen has written in these pages, at "war with Islam". However, fear of giving offence or singling out a minority for criticism is scarcely a reason not to oppose anti-Semitism.
What then is to be done? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wrong to call for Europe's 1.4 million Jews to consider a mass aliyah to Israel. This suggestion can only embolden the thugs seeking to hunt the Jewish people off the continent.
Rather the solution is easy and begins with us. We need to talk about the threat of modern anti-Semitism not as some 1930s throwback but as a real and present danger. The next time you are privy to anti-Semitic abuse, speak up. The next time a protest calls for the destruction of Israel, or explains away terrorism with "but Israel", speak up.
Do so as a matter of principle. But we should also not forget the darkest chapter of European history: fascists come for the Jews first and never stop there.
Nick Dyrenfurth is the co-author of Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis (to be published in May by NewSouth).
47 comments so far
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Article 3
QUOTE FROM NICK DYRENFURTH ARTICLE BELOW ON March 2, 2015
Yet, as #jesuischarlie hashtags proliferate, violence carried out by supporters of a far-right brand of totalitarianism, radical Islam, is met with thundering silence in the West. Most disturbing is the response ofprogressives. Recent events demonstrate that a section of what purports to be the left wing no longer stands unequivocally against all forms of fascism and racism and is prepared to ignore or, worse, excuse an ideology that rejects Enlightenment values and promotes a racist, misogynistic and homophobic death cult.
![Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.]()
Yet, as #jesuischarlie hashtags proliferate, violence carried out by supporters of a far-right brand of totalitarianism, radical Islam, is met with thundering silence in the West. Most disturbing is the response ofprogressives. Recent events demonstrate that a section of what purports to be the left wing no longer stands unequivocally against all forms of fascism and racism and is prepared to ignore or, worse, excuse an ideology that rejects Enlightenment values and promotes a racist, misogynistic and homophobic death cult.
Why the silence of the left on anti-Semitism?
- 8 reading now
- Comments 47
Nick Dyrenfurth
Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.
On February 15, 38-year-old volunteer security guard Dan Uzan was shot and killed outside a Copenhagen synagogue during a bat mitzvah celebration. A month earlier, a gunman executed four customers at a kosher grocery store in Paris.
In May 2014, a gunman killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. In 2012, a gunman murdered three students and a teacher at Toulouse Jewish primary school in south-west France. Eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego was shot point-blank in the head.
You might discern a common theme to these shocking crimes. Seventy years after the Holocaust, Jews are again being murdered in Europe for being Jews.
These recent outrages are but the tip of an anti-Semitic iceberg. About 7000 French Jews made aliyah (migrated) to Israel last year. For good reason. Jews make up 1 per cent of the French population, but half of all racially-motivated crimes during 2014 targeted Jews. In recent weeks several hundred graves were defaced at a Jewish cemetery in north-east France; in Germany a synagogue in the city of Wuppertal was firebombed.
This is to say nothing of Jew-hatred besides physical violence. During last year's Gaza conflict European protesters chanted "Gas the Jews" and "Death to the Jews". In several countries, Jews are being warned not to wear religious clothing or enrol their children in schools with a high numbers of immigrant (allegedly Muslim) students.
Far-right, anti-Semitic political parties are gaining ground across Europe. In a Greek government dominated by the far-left Syriza, right-wing ally and defence minister Panos Kammenos says that his Jewish compatriots don't pay taxes. In Britain, a recent all-party parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism showed an alarming rise in such bigoted attitudes.
Australia has not been immune. A video produced by the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir shows the organisation's head, Ismail Al Wahwah, alleging that "where Jews thrive corruption abounds" and that the world is afflicted by the Jewish "hidden evil".
Yet, as #jesuischarlie hashtags proliferate, violence carried out by supporters of a far-right brand of totalitarianism, radical Islam, is met with thundering silence in the West. Most disturbing is the response of progressives. Recent events demonstrate that a section of what purports to be the left wing no longer stands unequivocally against all forms of fascism and racism and is prepared to ignore or, worse, excuse an ideology that rejects Enlightenment values and promotes a racist, misogynistic and homophobic death cult.
Condemnation has been non-existent or heavily qualified. What about Anders Breivik, they say? The killers have nothing to do with Islam – despite most attacks being launched with the cry of "Allahu Akbar"– but are alienated, radicalised "lone wolves", the argument goes.
Some seek to place the blame on Jews. A BBC anchor suggested that violence directed against French Jews might be understandable given Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. A left-wing Australian "anti-Zionist" tweeted that should Israel's oppression of the Palestinians continue, more attacks on Jews would follow. The normally voluminous twitter feeds of leading progressives are mostly devoid of sympathy or solidarity.
At the root of this silence is denial. A denial of the seriousness and source of the new/old anti-Semitism, whereby a classical racial/religious hostility to Jews has conjoined with a politically motivated denial of the rights of the Jewish people to a state of their own. Yet it is clear that the recent European attacks have occurred in cities that host relatively large migrant Muslim communities, of which a small but significant minority are willing to act upon the message of jihadist militancy fostered by the likes of ISIS.
These outrages have also drawn less opprobrium from progressive sources because, as militant opponents of the policies (and often very existence) of the State of Israel, they view anti-Semitism as a term deployed by Zionists to deflect criticism.
Moreover, confronting the resurgence of anti-Semitism would mean accepting that the demonisation of Israelis and Jewish diaspora – such as the toxic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that effectively calls for the destruction of Israel – has in part contributed to the legitimation of violent attacks against the Jews of Europe.
Instead, we have seen a bizarre reversal of victimhood. The first instinct of many, rather than sympathise with the victims of terror, has been to warn against a potential Islamophobic backlash. According to this warped and infantilising logic, Muslims, as the "new" Jews, are all innocent victims of Western (and Israeli) imperialism and racism.
No one wishes to see the peaceful majority of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims subject to discrimination because of the actions of a minority. We are not, as Roger Cohen has written in these pages, at "war with Islam". However, fear of giving offence or singling out a minority for criticism is scarcely a reason not to oppose anti-Semitism.
What then is to be done? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wrong to call for Europe's 1.4 million Jews to consider a mass aliyah to Israel. This suggestion can only embolden the thugs seeking to hunt the Jewish people off the continent.
Rather the solution is easy and begins with us. We need to talk about the threat of modern anti-Semitism not as some 1930s throwback but as a real and present danger. The next time you are privy to anti-Semitic abuse, speak up. The next time a protest calls for the destruction of Israel, or explains away terrorism with "but Israel", speak up.
Do so as a matter of principle. But we should also not forget the darkest chapter of European history: fascists come for the Jews first and never stop there.
Nick Dyrenfurth is the co-author of Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis (to be published in May by NewSouth).
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Indeed – a reasonable paradigm has it thatone should essentially never use the word!
Look at my secondary blog – socialistdystopia.blogspot.com.au
All the best
East St Kida