Pope’s outreach to Anglicans and clerical sexual abuse

Across the pope’s outreach to conservative Anglicans this past week falls the shadow of 25 years of sex abuse scandals, writes E.E. Evans at GerReligion, most of which “involve mostly pederasts — clergy abusing children.”

Add to that “Catholic clergy who have affairs with [adult] women” – a subject which Get Religion suggests deserves more coverage:

Why hasn’t the media, particularly the Roman Catholic press, spent more time on this issue, if it is indeed more common that we’d like to think? On the other hand, when Protestant figures are caught with their pants down, the media seems to dwell on the particulars of the acts rather than trying to examine the surrounding culture of the parish or the denomination. That doesn’t serve much of a purpose beyond titillation.

One recent survey by Baylor University does say clerical abuse of adult parishioners is commonplace. There is data on the psychological profiles of sexually abusive clergy and the techniques they apply. There are research findings that predators consider church members “easy to fool” and the church’s propensity for forgiveness convenient.

All of which, we join GetReligion in suggesting, deserves more coverage.

The civility conspiracy

Are we unconscious fellow travelers in the civility conspiracy? After all, we did write about the Interfaith Alliance civility letter, although it hit the political right and the political left alike.

The Interfaith Alliance is about religion, and former Reagan White House political director Jeffrey Lord argues at The American Spectator that there’s a conspiracy of religious institutions and the FCC aimed at silencing talk radio and Fox.

Although it pretends to be about “hate speech” and its contributions to “hate crime.”

Which is apparently not a concern for talk radio stars like Rush Lumbaugh, who has accumulated his own PolitiFact.com page. Not for Fox. Nor for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land, who is preoccupied with finding and raising the alarum about echoes of Nazi philosophy he may contrive to find in Democratic discussion of health care reform. Nor is factual accuracy a concern for them or for Fact Free Land.

Even so, hyperventilating rhetoric and inaccuracy do concern some of the rest of us. Hence the call by the National Interfaith Coalition for Media Justice for an examination of the use of the public airwaves to foster incivility. They are [shudder] asking folks who agree with them to sign a petition [oh noes]:

As a participant, you will be asked to sign a petition to the Federal Communications Commission asking that it open a notice of inquiry into hate speech in the media. We will also urge the National Telecommunications and Information Agency to update its 1993 report, The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes.

Note the last two words: “Hate Crimes.”

They’re not calling for censorship. They want to know whether hate speech over the public airwaves is in fact giving rise to violence.

The petition-associated letter is of necessity specific. The most specific example it cites is strained. It says:

The possible correlation between hate speech and violent crime gives us great pause. Immigrant, minority, and religious populations are often targets of hate speech before they are subsequently the target of physical hate crimes. For example, in June 2006 four teenagers posed as federal agents and asked two Mexican men [on a jetty in Rocky Point, N.Y.] for their green cards. The teenagers then beat and robbed the two men, while accusing them of stealing jobs from U.S. citizens. This incident occurred after radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Mexican immigrants [on March 27, 2006], regardless of legal status, “a renegade, potential crime element that is unwilling to work.” According to the most recent FBI hate crimes statistics, while hate crimes against all other groups have been holding steady or attenuating, hate crimes against Hispanics have been increasing over the last four years. Moreover, electronic media have a strong influence on children and teenagers since they are not yet fully developed cognitively.

The general issue has nonetheless attracted concern from several religious denominations, and Lord has by dent of hard work and considerable imagination spun together from their concern and the concern of others a conspiracy:

There is an organized campaign now afoot, a carefully planned, well-funded systematic assault on talk radio and Fox News that involves at least seven major liberal American religious denominations. All of whom are apparently planning to spread the gospel that talk radio and Fox News personalities are spreading hate speech. This message will be spread to their parishioners’ children, in adult education materials, in sermons and through lay leaders — people like me.

That conspiracy is very much like Richard Land’s discovery of an attack on his First Amendment rights in objections to his use of Holocaust metaphors and allegations of budding Nazism to attack efforts to provide health insurance to people who need it. There was no such attack on Land’s rights in this nation where some 45,000 people die a year for lack of appropriate health insurance. Censorship isn’t afoot here. Allegations of censorship are being used as part of an effort to mask legitimate debate.

Ethics Daily calls Richard Land out on his unapology

Contributing Editor Brian Kaylor at the Baptist Center for Ethics’ online publication Ethics Daily writes:

One week after apologizing for comparing Democratic leaders to the Nazis, a prominent Southern Baptist leader has reneged on his promise to stop using such comparisons.

Land is president of Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

Nice name, but what’s in a name?

What I did the day I walked out of the Southern Baptist Convention

Curtis Honeycutt does an unusually good job of explaining what he did the day he walked out of the Southern Baptist Convention.

First:

I didn’t want to be part of a group who was known for what they were against; I wanted people to know me for what I was for . . . although I didn’t know exactly what that was yet. All I knew is that I couldn’t leave the parking garage fast enough to head back to the intern house at 23rd and Broadway in Indy. I grew frustrated at myself, as I had forgotten my umbrella, and the rain fell on the protestors and me alike, without playing favorites.

What to do next answered itself:

I answered the door. A rain-soaked man stood on the other side, homeless. He introduced himself as Percy, a guy who had fallen on some bad luck. I decided to let him in, and he asked me if I had any dry clothes he could change into. I ran upstairs and found a pair of brown cargo shorts, a pair of socks, and a Pacers shirt to give him. These weren’t exactly clothes that were in the Goodwill pile; they were some of my favorite shorts and a shirt I recently got at a Pacers’ playoff game. He said he liked basketball, so I gave it to him. Now, dressed like a college student, he asked me to help him find a place to stay. That didn’t sound like too big of a request for me, so we got in my car and drove.

We recommend you read both posts[1, 2] in their entirety. [H/T: Bruce Gourley at BaptistLife.Com]

Health reform abortion complexities [Addendum]

While Steven Ertelt of LifeNews.com argues that there is a single-shot, pro-abortion health care reform bill before the U.S. House of Representatives, the situation is actually so complex that Ezra Klein of the Washington Post offers a guide to public option compromises.

With regard to abortion alone, the matter is so complex and hotly debated that PolitiFact.com has an entire page devoted to Abortion statements.

Among House Democrats, the Associated Press reports, what the legislation means to abortion rights is a matter of debate. Clarifying matters, Catholic Anthony Stevens-Arroyo argues at On Faith in a painstaking analysis that the muddle of legislative opinions does not translate into support for “abortion on demand.”

The matter has been and remains, complex, nuanced, shifting.

Addendum:

Mark Silk explains how ant-abortion logic for opposing health-care reform would lead to support for abolition of Medicaid.

Vatican/Anglican theological scandal

Roman Catholic feminist theologian Mary E. Hunt could not be more blunt about Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to disaffected Anglicans:

Let history record this theological scandal for what it is. Touted by Rome as a step forward in ecumenical relations with a cousin communion, it is in fact the joining of two camps united in their rejection of women and queer people as unworthy of religious leadership.

The case she makes at Religion Dispatches is compelling and for those who are not satire-averse, somewhat delicious.

Friday link farm

1. CNN Politics.com: The Senate passed groundbreaking legislation Thursday that would make it a federal crime to assault an individual because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity and sent it to Obama for his signature. Obama has pledged to sign the measure, which was added to a $680 billion defense authorization bill.
2. The Advertiser: The Archdiocese of New Orleans and Catholic Charities has agreed to pay more than $5 million to settle 20 lawsuits, most alleging sexual and physical mistreatment of children decades ago at homes for boys from troubled families.
3. The Guardian: The Anglican communion ended 20 years ago.
4. Catholic News Agency: Vatican could handle the Society of St. Pius X by applying a personal prelature strategy like the one applied to Anglicans, says the Superior General of SSPX, Bernard Fellay:
   

   He also noted that the controversy unleashed by Bishop Richard Williamson’s statements on the Nazi holocaust “was a well-planned attack, not against the Society, but directly against the person of Pope Benedict XVI, in order to tarnish his gesture.”

5. Sandro Magister “L’espresso”: The ecumenism of Pope Ratzinger appears increasingly influenced by fidelity to tradition. That’s the way it is with the Lefebvrists. And even more so with the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
6. Religion Clause: 9th Circuit Denies En Banc Review Of Arizona Tuition Contribution Tax Credits:
   

   In the case, a 3-judge panel ruled that, as applied, Arizona’s tax credit of up to $500 to individuals who contribute funds to nonprofit “school tuition organizations” violates the Establishment Clause.

7. Rapid City [South Dakota] Journal: Stealing religion is ignored if it’s Native American.
   

   I’m referencing, of course, the recent Arizona fiasco where three people paid $9,000 each to die in a sweat lodge under the guidance of their white “spiritual leader.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t surprise me. What does is reports that the white “medicine man” who hosted this “Spiritual Warrior” event “declined to be interviewed” by the local sheriff’s department after the deaths.

8. Boxing Scene: Muslim Khan, orthodox Jew Salita tell the media to leave religion out of it and focus on the sweet science itself.
9. Houston Chronicle: Marge Simpson’s Playboy cover occasions Christian uproar.

Quantifying the price in pain of hate crime

Social Psychologist Gloria Cowan, Phd., offers scientific quantification of the price in pain of hate crime. In the San Bernardino Sun, she writes:

In a study of the effects of ethnoviolence experienced by college students in 1986 by Ehrlich, Larcom and Purvis, two types of emotional responses by victimized students were noted: they felt 1) angry, upset and disturbed, and 2) disgusted, helpless and shamed. In a later study in 1991, many students reported serious disturbances, including anger (54.1 percent), not being about to stop thinking about the event (42.6 percent), fear (30.3 percent) and revenge fantasies (28.1 percent).

Like other extreme crimes against the individual, hate crimes have a long-term impact. Beyond the post-traumatic stress, victims of hate crimes for which the perpetrators are not prosecuted learn that they are not part of the justice system in this country. They are outsiders in a country that calls itself a citadel of law and justice. They don’t feel safe in their own country.

Read the entire piece here

Richard Land declares himself ethical; critics of his Nazi-baiting ‘delusional’

In a sly self-exculpation, reiterated by Baptist Press, Richard Land explained away his apology to the Anti-Defamation League and laid down the law:

He will continue to compare the Obama administration to the Nazis. He not only refuses be held accountable, having excused himself, he attacks his critics as “delusional.”

Land’s illogic is as shameless as it is unpersuasive, very much like his earlier pseudo-apology. BP reports:

“There were very lethal and deadly philosophies loose in 20th century Germany prior to the Nazis’ ascendancy to power that called for devaluing some human beings as less worthy of life than other human beings,” he said, recalling there were arguments for euthanizing those who were perceived to be “useless eaters” and those who had “lives unworthy of life,” lebensunvertes Leben, in the 1930s and beyond.

“These poisonous philosophies became ever more deadly as the Nazis applied them to ever wider categories of people, such as Jews and Gypsies,” he continued.

Land said there are some involved in the health care debate who appear to believe some lives are less valuable and less worthy of medical treatment than others.

In noting he had previously used “imprecise language,” Land said he should have said some of the philosophies that are being espoused “bear a lethal similarity in their attitudes toward the elderly and the terminally ill and could ultimately lead to the kinds of things the Nazis did.”

Land said there are some involved in the health care debate who appear to believe some lives are less valuable and less worthy of medical treatment than others.

In noting he had previously used “imprecise language,” Land said he should have said some of the philosophies that are being espoused “bear a lethal similarity in their attitudes toward the elderly and the terminally ill and could ultimately lead to the kinds of things the Nazis did.”

“To equate expressing concerns that such a mindset could be carried to such an extreme at some time in the future as the equivalent of saying the Obama administration is like the Nazis or that Barack Obama is Hitler is either delusional or deliberately misleading,” Land said.

He has not merely “expressed concerns.” In his Sept. 26 speech to the Christian Coalition of Fla., Land made it clear that he does believe “the Obama administration is like the Nazis.” Specifically, he said:

I want to put it to you bluntly. What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did.

Having asserted he was merely “expressing concerns,” Land proceeds with slippery dishonesty to attack his critics, in particular Indiana State University professor Richard Pierard. Land first says Pierard “attempts to remove the Third Reich as a subject of discussion when it comes to the healthcare debate.” From there, establishing a patter for his other rebuttals, Land bridges to ad hominem, asserting:

The last time I checked, Dr. Pierard had not been made speech czar.

Although Land is correct in asserting that it is his First Amendment right to employ Third Reich imagery alongside the massive factual inaccuracies with which he assaults Democratic health reform efforts, there is nothing exhaustively ethical about his behavior. It does violence to the first half of the name of the Southern Baptist entity of which he is president: The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.