Nuclear damage

The details of the murder of Daniel Pelka have been dreadful beyond description.

Our first response must be one of prayer: for the repose of his soul, of course, but also for the pardon and healing of his murderers.

Beyond that, however, there is always talk of the lessons to be learned.  Yet again, the 'agencies' involved will be castigated for their failures, and perhaps some improvements will be made.

But it seems to me that there is a potential blind spot in the public examination of this and other cases.  I heard on the Today Programme, this morning, for example, the comment that he had been killed by his parents.

That is not true.

As is clear from the more detailed reports, he was killed by his mother, and a man who was not his father who was living with his mother at the time.

Whilst that has been noted in passing, it is not the subject of any comment.  I find that worrying, as I think we should look at such data.  And this is by no means the first case featuring such non-nuclear family relationships.

But the media do not want to do so. Co-habitees are given a free ride.  To see what I mean, imagine if this were the second or third case where the murdering male was a member of the EDL or the BNP or had some other identity of which the media disapproves.  It would certainly not simply be mentioned in passing. Or imagine if it was the second or third time a home-schooling traditional Catholic was guilty, come to that...

But because our societal norm (or at least the one desired by the ever-wonderful BBC and most journalists) is one in which the myth that consensual sexual behaviour, temporary relationships and so on, are healthy and have no adverse consequences, these questions will never be asked:

• Is there a disproportionate frequency of abuse and murder of women and children by men living with women who have children by previous relationships?
• If so, is there a causative link between such patterns of relationship and abuse, or is it merely a co-factor of other determinants (eg chaotic life style, educational levels, deprivation, poverty)?

I don't know the definitive answer to these questions, though I have a strong intuition about them...  But what is scary is that they are not even being asked.

Evil at work...

I know a few journalists.  I have done various courses on working with the media.  One of the things I have learned is that we now live in a 24/7 news world, in which there is a desperate need for news stories, all the time.

All of which makes it strange when a newsworthy story is largely ignored.

Consider these elements:

• multiple murder charges 
• medical malpractice
• exploitation of poor ethnic minority women
• macabre storage of body parts
• treating white patients better than black ones
• local political and medical authorities turning a blind eye..

and the list goes on.

Yet the trial of Kermit Gosnell has received very little coverage.

The BBC reported that he was charged 2 years ago, but has not covered anything since the trial started. Likewise, the only national news organisation in the UK that seems to have covered it at all is the Daily Mail.  The same pattern holds true in the American media.  Apparently, it is deemed to be a local story; which is odd, really, when the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland was regarded as very newsworthy indeed by the same media.

The only sane conclusion one can draw is that the Savita story was covered because it seemed (as initially reported) to be a useful tool to push for the legalisation of abortions in Ireland.  Whereas the Gosnell story, throwing into sharp relief the truth that abortion kills children, is clearly not welcomed.

So much for the media.

But the sheer barbarism of Gosnell is worthy of note. Not only did he break several laws, and show scant regard for the women he was treating; he also deliberately and regularly delivered live babies and cut their spinal cords.  He also kept their corpses, or parts of them, all around his facility.

This kind of barbarity is more than the greed of a man making millions from others' tragedies.  It is diabolical.  

I believe that the same dynamic is present here as was manifest in the Philpott case: there comes a time when one is so steeped in evil, by repetition and hardening of heart, that one becomes a tool of a will other than one's own.  The Devil, when he gains power, revels in human sacrifice.

So we must pray: for the mothers, for the babies, for the staff, and for the appalling Kermit Gosnell.  For Christ thought he was worthy of saving, and died on the Cross to offer him the chance of salvation.  Let nothing diminish our hatred for his evil deeds, and for the malevolvent will of Satan that inspired them; but let us remember not to hate Gosnell, but to hope for his repentance and ultimate salvation.

His Grace responds

Further to my recent post, His Grace has now posted a fuller response to the ludicrous interference of the Advertising Standards Agency in his right to free expression.

Given that the allegedly 'offending' advertisement is in favour of the (current) law of the land, it would be quite extraordinary were this to be pursued any further.  But that doesn't mean it won't be.  In these days of austerity, there is still plenty of resource behind various branches of the unofficial thought-police whose job it is to make sure we think the way our political and social masters think we should think.

It is perhaps comforting to realise that the only real impact of the ASA's intervention - apart from causing undue stress on Cranmer, which is of course lamentable - has been to get the advertisement spread all over the web, by those like me who take an I am Spartacus approach to such bullying.  Stuart at eChurch blog carries a list of many such sites, though it is not comprehensive, and there are more being added daily.

40 Days for Life

Now that the 40 Days for Life initiative is over for the year (update: inaccurate, as ED points out in comments - 40DFL resumes in the autumn), I think it worthy of reflection.

One thing I have noticed, watching the commentary on it from various directions, is that people's view about it seems sometimes to say as much about themselves as it does about what actually happened.

Thus the Grauniad, to take one example, knows a priori that it's a load of bigoted old men, wishing to restrict women's rights in pursuit of semi-delusional beliefs and an extreme right-wing agenda.  So they send out their reporters and photographers, and guess what kind of stories their reporters file, what kinds of pictures their photographers choose to submit?

Then there are the fans: those who believe that prayer and witness are important.  They go along and pray and witness; or if they can't, they watch and pray from a distance. They find it a prayerful experience, and some of them witness real changes of heart.

There are also those who have felt bereft of any spiritual leadership from our episcopate in this arena for years: they see a bishop who is brave enough to turn up, and are heartened.

There are also those of a more political bent. Some of these on the pro- side go along, looking to gain the political advantage that the increased media interest presents - looking for the PR edge.  They see it as a political success.

Then there are those who doubted it was a good idea all along; sometimes for political reasons. sometimes because of a longstanding mistrust of others involved, sometimes for other reasons.  They see it as a complete disaster.

Of course, these groupings are necessarily crude, and some individuals may overlap several, or fit none: I am not trying to stereotype or box people in: rather to look at how people starting from different places view things differently, all the while appealing to the evidence.

What does the evidence say?  As so often, that depends on what evidence you pay attention to, and how you interpret it.

Do you pay more heed to the fact that hundreds of people turned up, prayed quietly and peacefully, and endured a level of abuse and vitriol that it is hard to imagine - or to the fact that the Grauniad carried some adverse coverage?  Do you pay more heed to the fact that several pro-life voices were heard on the media, or to the fact that there were occasional awkward moments?  Do you pay more heed to the many who behaved perfectly, or to the few who, apparently, didn't? And so on.

I am in the camp that believes in the power of prayer and witness: so you can deduce for yourself what I make of it all.

That does not mean that I am uncritical of any lapse of prudence or charity; but I also do not think it helpful - or charitable - for those on the pro-life side who started out critical of the event to use isolated incidents to attack the whole venture.

In particular there was the famous 'cameraman' incident.  I do not know what he was doing or why he was doing it.  Some allege he was filming those arriving at the clinic, others deny that.  Clearly to do so would be to say the least, extremely imprudent.  He was, apparently, asked by the organisers not to do so again.  Then there was what struck me as synthetic outrage when he turned up again at the vigil on Friday - but this time without a camera.

That has led for some to call for the whole thing - and indeed the whole pro-life movement - to be taken over by the Catholic bishops, and put in the hands of paid professionals with PR expertise etc.

I think that is a flawed idea for many reasons.  Whilst I would welcome greater episcopal spiritual leadership, I do not think paid PR professionals is the right way forward.  Any attempt to spin this is a move away from the authenticity that gives this witness its power (at a human level).  Moreover, it would inevitably, I think, lead to the pro-life issue being seen as exclusively Catholic, and also to it being viewed increasingly through a political lens.  I see neither of those as desirable.

A graver charge issue is the claim by some of these critics that those involved in the vigil have no compassion for women.  I do not know on what they base that evaluation, but in my experience, it is those who have a spiritual frame of reference, rather than a political one, who demonstrate their charity, both in the way they think and speak of women seeking abortion, and in the way they get stuck in to the practical business of finding ways to help them.

What's wrong with CV's critics?

In my last, I summarised what I think has gone wrong with the Catholic Voices project.

I think it is also worth looking at the other side of the coin: the way in which some on the Catholic blogosphere have interacted with, and commented on, CV and CV members.

I include myself in that number.

It seems to me that some of us, at least, have been viewing any CV activity, and the activity of anyone associated with it, in a prejudicial light.

For some, that prejudice is partly an occupational issue: for journalists, bad news generally makes better stories than good news: and that applies not only to the likes of Damian Thompson, but also to bloggers who lose sight of their real purpose in pursuit of hits.

On top of that, some have a predisposition to attack anything in which  Opus Dei or any member thereof is involved (let's not rehearse the no involvement argument here...)

Then there are those who feel they have been slighted by CV collectively or by Jack or Austen individually.  Understandably, that risks colouring their perception of CV.

And there are those, and this included me, who had high hopes of CV, but were dumbfounded at some stage (in my case, the view that the BBC's programme The Pope's Divisions was 'superb').

The result of all that is that a small but vociferous number of Catholic bloggers and journalists have been looking critically (and no doubt from the CV point of view with jaundiced eyes) at everything they do.

Positive things are less likely to be commented on, both because they are less newsworthy (no newspaper ever sold with a headline that every plane landed safely at Heathrow yesterday) and also because they do not fit the dominant narrative about CV in these circles.  Anything that can be questioned, is.  And anything that is ambiguous is presented as proof at least of incompetence, if not of collusion with some dodgy agenda.  That's all fairly understandable, if not always wholly edifying.

But there has also, it seems to me, been something more; something that on the receiving end has felt like harrassment and bullying, even if that was not the intention.

To some extent that is to do with style, but there is something more.

So what have I seen?

Bombardment with a series of messages, showing no inclination to listen to the responses, merely to repeat the message with ever increasing force; name-calling ('CVeebies'); leaping to judgement rather than enquiring ('that's heretical' rather than 'can I check what you're getting at here...?'); treating individuals as part of a collective all the time - and tarring them all with the same brush; casuistry and nit-picking to score points; failure to recognise (even when told) that someone is in an emotionally fragile state, and so on; failure to recognise that these are not career bureaucrats, nor theological experts (that's the point!) but rather individuals who wish to serve the Church and give freely of their time and energy to stand up in the public square and take the hits from the enemy (do they really need 'friendly fire' too?).

I am sure that most of this is done with good intentions: in the pursuit of truth.  But when we forget the fundamental inter-relation of Caritas and Veritas, we have lost the plot.

Mea culpa, 
Mea culpa,
Mea maxima culpa.

What’s the problem with Catholic Voices?

When first I heard of the Catholic Voices project, I thought it a great idea.  I was fed up with heterodox people popping up on the BBC allegedly representing the Church - and even the occasional orthodox person they found made me look young (and I was born before Vatican 2).

So training up some young orthodox Catholics in media skills, and helping and encouraging them to present a positive and accurate view of the Church in the public square was a solution to a real problem.

However, recently there has been quite a lot of antagonism between some members of Catholic Voices and others on the Catholic blogosphere.  I think the roots of this go quite far back and have little or nothing to do with some of the Catholic Voice members who have got involved more recently.

I hope, in this post, to shed a little light, from one perspective at least, on some of this mess, in the hope that more light will equate to less (inappropriate) heat.

I think there are several separate but intertwined issues that make the CV project very hard to execute successfully as things stand, including the context, the remit, the history, and issues of competence.

The context, as I see it, is that the Catholic establishment in this country has lost its identity and purpose.  There is a degree of institutionalised dissent (pace The Tablet, CAFOD etc) and a larger degree of ambiguity and poor leadership, such that Catholics are frequently surprised and dismayed to witness bishops and their officials say and allow things that would have been unimaginable in previous generations (pace Soho Masses, ‘Who knows what’s down the road?” etc.)  

In that context, providing a positive and clear voice for Catholicism to the media poses some immediate challenges.  What is CV to do when something emerges from the bishops or their agencies that is ambiguous or frankly dubious?   

That leads us to the remit.  I think for CV to work, they should stick very closely to the areas where there is clear and definitive teaching by the Church: that is areas of Faith and Morals. They should avoid areas where there is scope for prudential judgement and therefore legitimate diversity of opinion between Catholics in good faith.  However, many of our  bishops seem to like to talk definitively about such things (eg Fairtrade) whilst maintaining a studied ambiguity or steadfast silence about issues of Faith or Morals.  When CV start to back the bishops’ positions on prudential matters (whether or not these positions are right) they are inevitably going to alienate some, and position themselves as a mouthpiece for the bishops rather than doing what it says on the tin.

When it comes to history, I was first really alarmed by Catholic Voices when they proclaimed the BBC Programme The Pope’s British Divisions to be ‘superb’ which was an extraordinary verdict, and seemed to me to suggest more complicity with the establishment than Catholic sense, as I blogged here. Many other British Catholics were similarly outraged at the programme.  There have been a number of other occasions on which CV has taken a position that has dismayed some orthodox Catholics.

It is against this background which people judge current CV proclamations - and indeed members: they see CV as having ‘form’ - that is being compromised.

Finally, there are issues of competence.  Recently Damian Thompson wrote a characteristically snide piece on his Telegraph blog, mainly attacking Opus Dei, but including the assertion that Catholic Voices has ‘Opus Dei's fingerprints all over it.’

Catholic Voices then tweeted: Opus Dei has no financial, spiritual, managerial, or indeed any other involvement in CV. Damian Thompson is spreading counterknowledge.

Yet we all know that one of the leading figures in Catholic Voices is Jack Valero.  His Twitter profile says: 'Press Officer for Opus Dei in UK. In 2010 Press Officer for Newman's beatification. Coordinator for Catholic Voices.'  He is not just a press officer as a hired hand, of course: that is not how Opus Dei works: he is a senior member of the organisation.

As PR experts, could CV not see that the tweet was not hugely convincing?  When I suggested that CV had shot itself in the foot with this one, the reply was:

‘Two of the coordinators are members of a parish in Pimlico. Does that mean their parish is involved in CV? Of course not.'

This starts to look like casuistry. Is that really the image to cultivate?  

The Pimlico parallel is so weak as to be ridiculous: if the PP at Pimlico were involved, the parallel would be closer - and the claim of ‘no involvement’ even weaker.  And of course, we know that any numerary member of Opus Dei is bound by the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. When Jack Valero is acting as Coordinator for Catholic Voices, he does not, presumably, leave his obedience to his Opus Dei superiors at the door.  So the claim that he is acting in a purely private capacity is hard for anyone outside Opus Dei to understand, however self-evident it may be to those within Opus Dei...

But my point is not the propriety or otherwise of this, but that, given that context, the CV tweet saying Opus Dei has no financial, spiritual, managerial, or indeed any other involvement in CV was inept.  There is so much else they could usefully have said that would not have made them look either stupid or deliberately misleading.  And the tweet ended with an Ad hominem attack: a poor and unworthy strategy, I think. And that is just one, recent, example of what I see as a very poor record in managing PR.

My hopes are two:

One is that CV finds a way to re-invent itself, and does not fall into the trap which so many parts of the pro-Life movement have fallen into, of keeping people at the top who had  a great idea but are not the best leaders for the long term...

The second is that those young Catholics who have joined CV with the sole intention of sticking up for the Church are not brow-beaten by those who, like me, have grown frustrated with the ineptitude and complicity of some at the top of CV.  If people have a quarrel with Austen or Jack, don’t take it out on anyone else - and don't tar all CV members with the same brush.


Update: further musings here.

Ouch! Was that my foot...?

I have removed this post as I am not sure it was helpful.  I will pick up the issues raised in other ways...

non invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) 'Safe'

The Times yesterday, reporting excitedly on NIPD quotes Dennis Lo, the scientist leading the research, as saying 'It is safe for the baby.'

This is some new meaning of the word 'safe' given that the sole purpose of the process is to identify candidates to be killed.

All the best iTunes...

It has been said (I can't remember who by) that the Devil has all the best tunes.

He also has control of the best computers and iTunes apparently.

I'm a huge Apple fan, in that I love their products. However they are not admirable in other ways.

Their latest idiocy is to pull the plug on an app that supported the Manhattan Declaration - see NCR article here and then if you are so minded, sign the petition here.

The Distorting Mirror

I've just been on a media training course: great fun, culminating in a day in a TV studio being interviewed several times and watching the results.

One of the things that struck me was how dreadful a profession journalism is. The journalists and broadcasters running the course were drumming home two things: one is that if it isn't 'a good story', it isn't news; the other is that it must be told simply as people will not attend to anything for very long.

By 'a good story', essentially they mean it has to be conflict-ridden; and by 'simply' they mean in short words, short sentences, and a short time overall.

All of which I knew already, but hearing it in such stark terms - and working with people whose professional skill is to package information in that way and discard information which doesn't fit that model - made me reflect again on what a distorting mirror our media are.

This distortion, in favour of over-dramatising and over-simplifying, is then amplified by the media culture; it struck me anew that a particular type of person is drawn to work in the media (or possibly that working in the media results in one becoming a particular type of person); and that is typified by the BBC culture,w here they all associate so much with themselves and their types that they genuinely do not see the bias that they bring to everything: they are genuinely outraged when any one suggests that they have any bias: yet to the outside observer with a different set of prejudices, their bias is obvious, persistent and consistent.

As a father, one of the things i have worked hard at is protecting my kids from being damaged by the prevalent culture: hence counter-cultural father. A key part of my strategy has been to minimise their reliance on the mainstream media as sources of information and comment. We have no TV, we don't have a paper every day, we listen to the radio news infrequently; we do talk about news and current affairs (a bit) at home and discuss it from our perspective. We watch films rather than TV (among other reasons, films demand a longer attention span: TV's crazy pace is one of its stuctural problems!), and choose them with some care, watch them together and talk about the implications of the stories, including the moral implications and the attitudes underlying the characters and their decision.

Above all we encourage the kids to think about things themselves, to challenge received ideas and opinions, and to do so from within a framework of beliefs, opinions and attitudes which we set, rather than those who think the key attributes of reality are conflict and simplicity (and a BBC worldview)...

Just because they won't listen...

... is no reason to stay silent.

The Advertising Standards Agency is conducting a consultation on their decision (oh, sorry, it's just a proposal at the moment, I'm sure no decision has been taken prior to the consultation... of course I am...) to allow the promotion of abortions via television advertising, and the further promotion of the condom culture.

My Heart Was Restless tells you all you need to know about the proposals, and in particular how to respond.

These people don't seem to understand Open Systems Theory, a well-known way of analysing how actions may have results contrary to their intentions.

A classic example is using antibiotics to treat diseases. In the short term, it works (which is why we do it) but in the longer term we risk creating diseases which are resistant to antibiotics.

Likewise, the welfare system: in the short-term it prevents immediate, acute poverty, but in the long term it creates a culture of chronic poverty, handed on from generation to generation.

And so the condom: on each individual occasion of condom use, it may reduce (but certainly not eliminate) the risk of HIV. However, the promotion of condoms creates a culture in which young people (in particular) come to believe that recreational sex is normative and socially approved behaviour. This leads, (and has clearly and demonstrably led) to vast increases in early promiscuous sexual activity, leading to far higher rates of teenage pregnancy and STIs.

Likewise, the provision of 'sexual health services' free of any stigma (non-judgemental etc), intended (at best) to reach that small minority of young people who are promiscuous in every generation, has de-stigmatised and normalised what used to be rare and socially disapproved behaviour, contributing to the same problem.

And yet the establishment, in blind oblivion, and continuing to proclaim their rhetoric of 'evidence-based practice' ignore both the evidence (huge increases in STIs, ever-growing teenage pregnancy rates etc) and the sound theoretical explanations for that evidence, and instead say: the policy's not working: we must do more of the same...

So, in a triumph of hope over experience, I exhort you to take part in this consultation, and tell them why their thinking is so fatally flawed.

Ugandans proclaim Pope right - from experience

A group of Ugandan health and social workers, working in the field in the African country which has made the most progress in combatting AIDS has come out in support of the Pope.
Whereas the Lancet editor, in his ivory tower, has swallowed the pseudo-consensus developed by the AIDS industry...

Who do you choose to believe?

The abusers are in charge of safeguarding our kids...

TMAP is the Teenage Magazine Arbitration
Panel. It proclaims: "TMAP is the magazine industry's self-regulatory body which ensures that the sexual content of teenage magazines is presented in a responsible and appropriate manner."

Which may sound reasonable (though the idea of self-regulation is perhaps a little alarming, not least in the light of the banks' self-regulation and its consequences; and for me the whole sentence is something of an oxymoron; and 'appropriate' is one of those words...).

But it is when you dig a little deeper into their website that you discover the philosophy of this panel. Under research, for example: "Is early sexual activity a bad thing?"

"Much is made of the notion of `readiness' as if there were a fixed time to have sex. There is no absolute logic about sex at any one age. Biologically, a young person is ready for sexual experience at the point at which they become physically mature but the age deemed socially appropriate varies through time and across societies. In the Middle Ages the legal age for marriage of girls in England was 12 and for men 14. In the Trobriand Islands adults do not mind if children engage in sexual play and attempt precociously to perform the sexual act, and adolescents may sleep with one another provided only that they are not in love with one another."

You get the drift.

Go and have a look, and then see if you think, like me, that such attitudes are abusive of developing kids.