Impetus for Belgian police raids on Catholic Church offices

Vatican outrage which greeted raids by Belgian police last week on church offices and a cathedral in the Archdiocese of Malines-Brussels was misplaced.

Doreen Carvajal of the New York Times reports that they were the result of “a formal accusation that the church was hiding information on sexual abuse lodged by the former president of an internal church commission handling such cases.”

The Flemish newspaper Nieuwsblad reported [via Google translate] that Godelieve Halsberghe, who from 1998 to 2008 “directed the [church] commission for handling complaints of sexual abuse in a pastoral relationships,” went to authorities after receiving a phone call warning that she and commission files she had were in danger. She turned over her files and talked to authorities about the possibility that the church was hiding other files.

Taking action on serious, formal complaints like those lodged by Ms. Halsberghe, a retired magistrate, is the responsibility of the police in a free society.

The incandescent Vatican response, which descended to references to Communist police state tactics, was inappropriate.

[H/T: Religion Clause]

Australia’s atrophied religious right vs faithless Baptist PM [Addendum]

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard is a “non-practicing Baptist [atheist]” who lives without benefit of matrimony with her male companion.

Australians, it seems, are even less attentive to the blandishments of their religious right than voters in this country have become to the overstated suasions of the likes of Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land. As Joel Gibson wrote recently for the Sydney Morning Herald:

We’re a weird mob when it comes to God and politics. Two-thirds of us tick a religious box in the census but research for the Herald by Nielsen last year found three-in-four don’t care whether our leaders believe in God. There are as many of us who abhor it in politics as there are who crave it, and both are small minorities.

Macquarie University academic, Marion Maddox, whose book For God and Country details the religious dynamics in Australian politics, says “Australians are suspicious of anyone who sounds too religious.” She has also said she expects the religious beliefs of politicians to fade from public discourse.

Aussie Labor Party member Gilliard isn’t like to be the final test of that, but this far she has been a boon to her party. She and her allies ousted failing Labor PM Kevin Rudd and the Herald Sun reports:

Ms. Gillard has turned around Labor’s fortunes, even in Western Australia where support had slumped to 28 per cent thanks to the mining tax. A poll in The West Australian yesterday showed support had jumped to 36 per cent in the wake of her promotion.

She’s expected to call for an election soon to establish her own governing mandate.

Don’t expect an American-style debate over the church she doesn’t attend. Indeed, that uproar Down Under isn’t happening already.

Addendum

Gillard attracted attention Wednesday by announcing her opposition to gay marriage. That was not unexpected. Before her announcement, the Southern Star of Melbourne reported:

“CAAH [Community Action Against Homophobia was less hopeful] Sydney believes that Julia Gillard won the leadership with the support of the anti-gay right within the Labor Party and she will be beholden to their agenda,” [Ben] Cooper said. “We hope she will be supportive of issues such as same-sex marriage but we are not optimistic that this will occur any time soon.”

Pope seeks (somewhat like Southern Baptists) ‘renewed evangelization’

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is not alone in its quest for a Great Commission Resurgence, or something somewhat similar:

Pope Benedict XVI announced he is establishing a pontifical council for new evangelization to find ways “to re-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel” in regions where secularism is smothering church practice.

. . .

“I have decided to create a new organism, in the form of a pontifical council, with the principal task of promoting a renewed evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of faith has already resounded and where there are churches of ancient foundation present, but which are living through a progressive secularization of society and a kind of ‘eclipse of the sense of God,’” he said.

No church planting required, reversing secularization is only in part of matter of reversing or at least slowing the decline in church membership and attendance in countries like Austria, Belgium and Germany. Yet as Philip Jenkins recently pointed out in The Christian Century, it is a battle with many fronts, including replenishing the depleting ranks of the priesthood:

Particularly in Western Europe, Catholic countries have been becoming steadily more secular for at least a generation, quite independent of any claims of priestly deviance. In no sense is European religion dying — just witness the continuing popularity of pilgrimage and other popular devotions — but loyalty to the institutional church has weakened disastrously. Rates of mass attendance have declined steeply, as have the numbers of those admitting even notional adherence to the church. Today, fewer than half of French people claim a Catholic identity. The number of priestly vocations has been in free fall since the 1960s, leaving many seminaries perhaps a quarter as full as they were in the time of Pope John XXIII.

Failure of atavistic movements like the SBC’s GCR and the pope’s pontifical council for new evangelization is probably foreordained by the degree to which the secularization they attack is embedded in the cultures to which they speak. Again, as Jenkins observes regarding secularization and the Roman Catholic Church:

One gauge of transformed Catholic attitudes has been the sharp drop in fertility rates and family size. Since the 1970s women increasingly pursued careers and higher education, and the use of contraception spread rapidly, despite stern church disapproval. Fertility rates plummeted, such that Spain and Italy today have among the lowest fertility rates in the world, far below the level needed for population replacement. Catholic Germany stands about the same level. German sociologist Ulrich Beck notes wryly that in Western Europe today, the closer a woman lives to the pope, the fewer children she has. Ireland’s fertility rate today is less than half what it was in 1970.

There is no reason a couple with few or no children should not be fervently pious. But the trend away from large families reflects broader social changes. A society in which women have more economic autonomy is less likely to accept traditional church teachings on moral and sexual issues. The resulting conflicts have steadily pushed back the scope of church involvement in public life. Abortion became legal in Italy in 1978 and in Spain in 1985. The Irish church suffered a historic defeat in 1997 when a referendum narrowly allowed the possibility of divorce. Today, across Catholic Europe, same-sex marriage is the main moral battlefield—with Spain in the vanguard of radical secularism and sexual liberation. The Catholic Church struggles to present its views to a society suspicious of institutional and traditional authority of any kind and quite accustomed to ideas of gender equality, sexual freedom and sexual difference.

Austrians priests would ordain both women and married men into their number

A telephone survey of 500 Austrian parish priests found 79 per cent support allowing married men to be ordained, and 51 per cent think women should be allowed to become priests.

Commissioned by ORF (Österreichischer Rundfunk: “Austrian Broadcasting”), 51 per cent said the Vatican does a poor job of handling sexual abuse cases.

A survey earlier this month of 406 Austrian Catholic priests by researchers from Kepler University in the Upper Austrian city of Linz found that more than half supported putting an end to celebacy.

Austrians in general support harsher reform, according to the Viennese public opinion agency Karmasin. They reported that “57 per cent of the 500-odd Austrians they interviewed were of the opinion Pope Benedict XVI should resign amid the wave of alleged sex abuse incidents across Europe were there a rule that enabled him to do so.”

Their call for reform isn’t toothless. Like Americans, Austrians have been leaving the Roman Catholic Church in droves:

Earlier this week, the head of the Vienna archdiocese’s church tax office estimated that up to 80,000 of Austria’s roughly 5.5 million Catholics could leave the church this year — a new record. Last year alone, 53,216 people formally had their names removed from church registries, a 31 percent increase compared to 40,654 in 2008.

Adding married men and women to the ranks of candidate priests could find doctrinal acceptance after the practical necessity has departed.

How to make free speech martyrs of atheists

Deface their billboards, again(?). This time on the Billy Graham Parkway in North Carolina.

William Warren of Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics was civil in his response. According to the Charlotte Observer:

He said his group considered the vandalism an isolated act and not indicative of Charlotte’s religious community.

It would be ironic if Christians were found to be responsible for the vandalism. For the pledge in its original form, without the “under God” wording which was added in a Cold War heat in 1954, was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister (and socialist).

Re Belgium, the pope has lit some fires

Other fires were lit by incandescent papal response to Thursday’s daylong Belgian police raids.

Mark Silk saw evidence that “the wheels are coming off the popemobile,” while groups representing those abused by Catholic clergy were themselves outraged.

Neither was quite as blunt as Fr. Rik Deville, 65, interviewed by the Italian newspaper La Stampa interviewed Devillèon June 27. He was, for example, unimpressed by the Adriaenssens Commission, which resigned en masse to protest the Belgian police action:

The problem was its connection with the Archdiocese, and the absence of either a lay component internally or a connection with the civil authorities. I always hoped that a truly independent commission would be formed, an organism whose objective was to help justice take its course. That must be the way. It’s not up to the church to decide who violated the law and who should be punished.

As for whether “the plague of sexual abuse by clergy a common evil?”

It happens everywhere, believe me. Belgium believed itself to be an exception because no case ever came to light. Yet as early as 1994, I had collected 82 accusations. The victims wanted to be heard by the church, they wanted to break the curse. It’s been useless, at least up to now.

Perhaps the most shocking allegation came from the Belgian right, via Dr. Alexandra Colen, MP. She is a member of the Belgian House of Representatives and wrote in The Brussels Journal of a catechism textbook, Roeach. She alleges:

The editors of Roeach were Prof. Jef Bulckens of the Catholic University of Leuven and Prof. Frans Lefevre of the Seminary of Bruges. The textbook contained a drawing which showed a naked baby girl saying: “Stroking my pussy makes me feel groovy,” “I like to take my knickers off with friends,” “I want to be in the room when mum and dad have sex.” The drawing also shows a naked little boy and girl that are “playing doctor” and the little boy says: “Look, my willy is big.”

When the wheels come off, the vehicle may eventually be found deep in the weeds. The question was and remains, how deep?

Oops? Again? In the case of FBC Jax Watchdog

Oops is in a way how FBC Jax Watchdog was robbed of his anonymity.

Formerly anonymous blogger Thomas A. Rich’s identity was made public after an unnecessary investigation whose details are still being unearthed in court.

Although some evidence pertaining to the involvement of State Attorney Angela Corey was somehow inadvertently destroyed.

Really, and that destruction is cited as part of an argument against deposing Corey as part of the proceedings.

“Oops!” indeed.

Another injustice.

Huh? Caner out as dean; still a professor

By Steve DeVane

Liberty University decided to end one contract with Ergun Caner because of his “self-contradictory” statements, and offer him another.

Liberty announced June 25 that Caner would not be dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary after June 30, according to a report in the Lynchburg News and Advance. Whereupon the school offered to let him stay on the faculty, and he accepted.

The university’s statement said Caner made “factual statements that are self-contradictory.” It also said the school’s investigation found “discrepancies related to matters such as dates, names and places of residence.”

A post on the SBC Today blog managed to somehow focus right on the phrase in the announcement which says there is no evidence Caner was not a Muslim, thus allowing the blogger to conclude that Caner was “exonerated.”

In fitting response, Wade Burleson says, “Huh?”

Liberty’s decision to keep Caner on its faculty is not surprising given the way school officials have reacted to accusations against him. At one point, a school official said the discrepancies were neither an ethical nor a moral issue.

Again: Huh?

Media inquiries eventually prompted the university to investigate. Those questions led to stories in newspapers across the country.

The statement from Liberty said Caner “apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements.”

Will another round of newspaper (not blog) articles move the school to explain why it has different standards for “discrepancies and misstatements” by deans and professors?

Unless Liberty plans to leave us all with a resounding: Huh?

Catholic News Agency blistered for journalistic malpractice [Addendum]

USCCB [US Council of Catholic Bishops] Media Blog called out the right-leaning Catholic News Agency this week for “fabrication.”

Bold Faith Type deftly summarizes:

Helen Osman, the Secretary for Communications at the bishops’ conference, writes in the USCCB blog that the Catholic News Agency simply “cobbled together its own fabrication of the session.” Osman, who attended the executive session closed to reporters, also went back and reviewed the transcript to verify the errors. In contrast to CNA’s report, Cardinal George “never used the phrase ‘so-called Catholic,’ accused the Catholic Health Association of creating a ‘parallel magisterium’ or said the meeting of the three bishops with Sr. Keehan had ‘frustrating results,” Osman writes. Disagreement between the USCCB and CHA over health care legislation has been well documented. But, as Osman points out, to “confuse the situation with quotes that aren’t true is just plain dishonest.”

Osman also called out CNN:

For CNN to elaborate even more on what CNA said in error is even more disturbing. If CNN had tried to verify the citations, it would have learned that CNA fabricated quotes. It also would not have made its huge and erroneous assumption that the issue in question was an example of the bishops at odds with the sisters.

None of this appears to undercut analysis based upon the reporting of the National Catholic Reporter’s John L. Allen Jr., who also covered that meeting. Using Allen’s account, Mark Silk argued:

So now we know: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cares more about its authority than being right. That’s the clear import of a fine piece of reporting by NCR’s John Allen on the split between the USCCB and the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) over the health care bill (which, you’ll recall, the former opposed and the latter supported).

Nor would it be fair to argue (we were tempted) that the sting from such analysis helped prompt the corrective, which stands quite well on its own merits.

Addendum

CNA stood by its story.

The Catholic weekly America averred that perhaps the USCCB and CNS were “telling the truth,” albeit “In very different ways, and that is the bad news.”

Specifically:

es, Helen Osman was in the room, CNA was not, and we have no reason to doubt that the quotes she mentioned were, in fact, fabricated. Even though CNA is a tendentious and slanted media outlet, fabricating quotes goes beyond the pale. Why anyone would trust them before this is beyond me, but now their reputation is in tatters. You do not put a person’s remarks in quotes unless you know that they said it. This is reason enough for Bishop John Wester, who has a column at CNA, to disassociate himself from the organization immediately.

CNA would argue that their sources – “several bishops” – provided the quotes, leading me to think that no one at CNA ever played the game of telephone, in which a group of people sit at a table, and the leader whispers something into the ear of the person on their right. The whisper goes around the table and it is often unrecognizable by the time it gets back to the leader. The “several bishops” may have heard what they wanted to hear, that is to say, they placed their own prejudices and arguments in Cardinal George’s mouth. CNA needs to evaluate these “several bishops” as sources going forward but, arguably, the reporters and editors at CNA thought when they published their original article that the quotes were accurate.

But, here is where it gets dicey. What if the quotes are not “fabrications” and “several bishops” did tell CNA what they thought Cardinal George had said. It is one thing for Cardinal George to have difficulty with a fringe right-wing media outlet. It is a different, and larger, problem to have “several bishops” who have decided to leak to the press in order to push the USCCB towards their more conservative position. Cardinal George’s first task as leader of the USCCB is to keep the body of bishops on the same page, to keep them together and I think a case can be made that while his raw intelligence has helped, the principal reason for his success as president of the Conference is that all the bishops trust him. The question now is: Can he trust them? Why did these “several bishops” go leaking to the press after the meeting? Given the nature of the quotes, they obviously want some severe sanctions taken against the Catholic Health Association, they want some kind of showdown and, I think it is safe to venture that, not detecting sufficient movement in their direction at the USCCB meeting, they decided to take their arguments to the press.

Which, if they were thus taken in, does little to redeem CNS. Being aware that axes are being ground, and communicating that, is after all part of a journalist’s job.

When is ‘Creation Science’ most clearly not science?

When someone is attempting to award a degree in it, a Texas federal district court would seem to have ruled. Howard M. Friedman at Religion Clause writes:

In Institute for Creation Research Graduate School v. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, (WD TX, June 18, 2010), a Texas federal district court upheld the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s refusal to grant the Institute of Creation Research Graduate School a certificate of authority to offer a Master of Science degree with a major in Science Education. The Texas Education Code (Sec. 61.301) authorizes the Board to regulate the use of “academic terminology” in order “to prevent deception of the public resulting from the conferring and use of fraudulent or substandard college and university degrees.” The Board denied ICRGS’s application because its curriculum which was designed to promote “scientific creationism” and “Biblical creationism” does not adequately cover the breadth of knowledge of the discipline taught. The Board’s decision was based on the conclusion by the Commissioner of Higher Education that the school’s program “inadequately covers key areas of science and their methodologies and rejects one of the foundational theories of modern science,” and thus “cannot be properly designated as either ‘science’ or ‘science education.’”

Indeed, Melissa Ludwig of the San Antonio Express-News writes:

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin found no merit in the institute’s claims and criticized its legal documents as “overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering and full of irrelevant information.”

Hard times, Southern Baptists? Or does a Creationism MS one way or the other matter to Al Mohler and his allies?