Austrian prisons (and ours)

The Quakers who first devised American penitentiaries tried (and failed) to create the conditions for criminal repentance, reform and restitution to society as good citizens.

Austria has similar goals and an entirely different approach, as the sentencing of Josef Fritzl revealed to us all this week.

The London Times reports:

“The Austrian penal system aims not only at enforcing punishment, but also attempts to bring the inmate back within the norms of society,” said a spokesman for Austrian prisons last week when asked whether it was right that Fritzl should enjoy such a lax regime.

The man who was jailed last week for murder, rape, enslavement, coercion and incest after locking his daughter in his cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children by her (six of whom survived):

. . . will be able to improve his English or study other foreign languages, as well as singing in the choir or training in a gym that is better-equipped than those of many hotels. As an inmate, he will be offered a wide variety of hobbies and entertainment, including tennis, darts and art classes.

Your thoughts?

Uncommon ground on abortion

Rereading ethicist David Gushee’s USA Today essay describing the arc of Obama administration abortion policy, I don’t find a call to anti-abortion arms. Just the prelude to one.

Gushee still hopes for “a serious abortion-reduction initiative that I could wholeheartedly support.” But he foresees a deeply conflicted future:

Christian conscience requires me to make this case even if it has no chance of prevailing in American society. And if we lose on abortion, as it appears we will lose for a long time to come, Christian conscience requires me to ask the government not to require citizens to pay for procuring services that violate their sacred beliefs.

And if we lose there, as it appears we will, Christian conscience requires me to insist that religious institutions and professionals not be required as a condition of accreditation, or employment, or contact with federal dollars, to actively facilitate or perform deeds that their conscience forbids them from doing.

And if we lose there, then the entire relationship between religious faith and American society will move into a period of profound crisis.

So give me my abortion-reduction initiative Mr. President, he in effect concludes.

His powerful sense of entitlement seems to be matched on the pro-life side, as Mark Silk suggests.

Unaltered, therein lies the possibility of trench warfare, not common ground.

Holy Re-Seeing

How did we miss the Vatican’s Wednesday condom backtrack? The London Times reported:

On Tuesday he told reporters accompanying him on his trip to Africa that AIDS was a “tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. Taken aback by outrage worldwide, the Holy See altered the Pope’s remark yesterday to read that condoms merely “risked” aggravating the problem.

This is not the first time the Vatican has put words in Pope Benedict XVI’s mouth. Backtracking followed in 2007 when the pope suggested that Mexican officials who supported legalization of abortion had been excommunicated. Reinterpretations were offered and the final transcript was altered to make it appear that the Pope’s comments were general and did not refer to a specific incident.

“Clarification” or apology following some provocation of public anger has become something of a pattern for Pope Benedict XVI, no doubt contributing to the Pope’s decline in French public opinion poll numbers.

In this case, Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, found the Papal revisionism hopeful. He said:

The pope has admitted that he is unsure whether condoms can help alleviate the spread of HIV. Where there is doubt there is freedom and Catholics can make up their own minds whether they use condoms or not. . . . We call on the pope to revisit the teaching on condoms with a view to lifting the ban at the earliest possible moment. In his review, he should include experts who are unequivocal that condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV, like UNAIDS, the World Health Organization and HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations around the world.

O’Brien also observed that the Catholic Church required “359 years to stop continuing the line taken by their predecessors on Galileo.”

U.S. Blasphemy

Death or decades-long sentences attend violations of blasphemy law in Afghanistan and other Muslim-dominated countries — penalties considerably more severe than those of surviving state laws in the U.S.

One state law is already in court. George Kalman is challenging the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania state law forbidding the use of blasphemous words in corporate names in that state.

Howard M. Friedman says:

Kalman wanted to name his production company “I Choose Hell Productions,” to reflect the philosophical theme of his movies. In 2007, articles with that name were rejected because of the blasphemy and profanity prohibition, and he ultimately refiled under the name “ICH Productions LLC”.

Similar statutes are still “on the books in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming,” reports the New York Times.

Expect more heat over this one, even though the U.S. Suprement Court in 1952 ruled that “It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine.”