Church’s Continuing Saga with Sexual Issues

The Malleus Maleficarum Series

Southern Baptists Vote To Hold Churches More Accountable For Mishandling Abuse Claims

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/12/731919189/southern-baptists-vote-to-hold-churches-more-accountable-for-mishandling-abuse-c

12 Jun 2019

Delegates representing some 47,000 Southern Baptist churches gathered at the Convention Complex in Birmingham, Ala., approved an amendment allowing individual churches to be expelled from the Convention if they mishandle or cover up sexual abuse cases. The vote comes as U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meet in Baltimore to address issues of accountability in the Catholic Church's own long-running abuse scandal. The Southern Baptists have long sought to dismiss similar allegations in their midst. The change in the Convention's constitution follows reports in recent months of widespread abuse by Southern Baptist clergy.

More than 300 Pennsylvania priests abused 1,000 children over decades

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/14/more-than-300-pennsylvania-priests-committed-sexual-abuse-over-decades

15 Aug 2018

More than 300 “predator priests” were found to have committed sexual abuse in Pennsylvania, harming more than 1,000 children, according to a grand jury report. The near-900-page report is the result of one of the largest US investigations into sexual abuse in the Catholic church. In painful detail, it showcases how for decades one of the most powerful churches in the world hid the abuse and suffering of children. The incidents described include a priest who impregnated a minor and helped her get an abortion, then was allowed to stay in the ministry; a priest who confessed to the oral and anal rape of at least 15 boys, including one as young as seven; and a priest who collected the urine, pubic hair and menstrual blood of girls he abused in his home. Because the priests had largely escaped public accountability and in some cases were promoted, the report said: “Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic church sex scandal.”

Preacher

Chile police raid Catholic church HQ in sex abuse investigation

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/14/chile-catholic-church-sex-abuse-scandal-police-raid-latest

14 Aug 2018

Chilean authorities have raided the headquarters of the Catholic church’s Episcopal Conference as part of a widespread investigation into sex abuse committed by members of the Marist Brothers order, prosecutors said. The Marists operate in dozens of countries around the world. The pope denounced a “culture of abuse and cover-up” in Chile’s Catholic church and said he was ashamed that neither he nor Chilean church leaders truly ever listened to victims as the abuse scandal spread. Chilean prosecutors summoned the archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, to appear in court and testify about the alleged cover-up of years of abuse.

LA Cardinal Mahony 'stripped of duties' over sex abuse

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21289854

01 Feb 2013

A retired Los Angeles cardinal accused of mismanaging a child sex abuse crisis has been stripped of all administrative and public duties by his successor. The Los Angeles archdiocese, the largest in the US, has released thousands of pages of files on priests accused of child molestation. The Catholic Church in the US has been embroiled in a series of child sex scandals over the past two decades. A Church-commissioned report said more than 4,000 US priests had faced sexual abuse allegations since the early 1950s, in cases involving more than 10,000 children - mostly boys.

Jimmy Savile: Catholic Church bid to remove papal knighthood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20108980

27 Oct 2012

The papal knighthood given to Jimmy Savile "should not have been bestowed", a Vatican spokesman has told the BBC. The Catholic Church in England and Wales confirmed it has written to the Holy See to ask if the honor can be posthumously removed. Savile, who may have abused some 300 people, was granted the award in 1990. Savile was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II for his charity work. It is one of the highest awards the Pope can bestow.

Irish Catholic bishop in apology over pedophile priests

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-19495135

05 Sep 2012

The Catholic bishop of Clonfert in east Galway has apologized for moving two priests from one parish to another in the 1990s after they had abused children. Of all the allegations 142 were made against the Irish Province of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit.

US Catholic priest convicted of sex abuse cover-up

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18560069

22 Jun 2012

A high-ranking Philadelphia Roman Catholic Church official has been found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child in a sex abuse case. Prosecutors alleged that Lynn, who supervised hundreds of priests, helped cover-up child sex abuse, often by transferring priests to new parishes. He is now the highest-ranking US Roman Catholic official convicted in connection in a wider scandal.

US 'radical' nuns to hold Vatican talks over criticism

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18405302

11 Jun 2012

Leaders of the largest group of US nuns are due to meet Vatican officials in a bid to defuse an escalating row. A Vatican report in April accused the nuns of adopting "certain radical feminist themes" and of ignoring official church teaching. The Vatican report accused the Leadership Conference of taking positions on issues ranging from homosexuality to the all-male priesthood that undermined Catholic teaching. It proposed replacing the group's leadership with three bishops that would have the authority to rewrite the organization’s statutes, meeting agendas and liturgical texts.

Vatican critical of US nun's book on sexual ethics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18321830

04 Jun 2012

The Vatican has sharply criticized a book written by a US nun and theologian on sexual ethics. The Holy See's orthodoxy office said the 2005 book, Just Love, by Sister Margaret Farley posed "grave harm" to the faithful. It said her ideas on masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions and remarriage were in "direct contradiction" with Catholic teaching. The move came after a Vatican report criticized the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, whose 1,500 members represent some 80% of about 57,000 American nuns, saying that they were becoming feminist and politicized, promoting radical ideas and challenging bishops.

Pope defends celibacy rule amid sex abuse scandals

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8564074.stm

12 Mar 2010

Pope Benedict XVI has defended celibacy among priests, saying it was a sign of "full devotion" to the Catholic Church. He was speaking at a theological conference before meeting Germany's top bishop for talks about a new crisis over the sexual abuse of children. Europe's Catholic pedophile scandal now affects institutions in Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. The Archbishop of Vienna had suggested that the Church should examine celibacy and priests' training. But the Pope said on Friday that celibacy is "the sign of full devotion, the entire commitment to the Lord and to the 'Lord's business', an expression of giving oneself to God and to others". He defended "the value of sacred celibacy, which in the Latin Church is required for ordination and is held in great regard by Eastern Churches".

Vatican forced to defend itself over abuse cases

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8559514.stm

10 Mar 2010

After recent revelations of widespread abuse in Ireland, and claims of similar mistreatment of children by priests in Austria and Germany. Catholic bishops in the Netherlands have now set up an independent inquiry to look into allegations there. The allegations from Germany are particularly sensitive, because the Pope was born in the country, and because they include a choir led by his brother Georg. Reports surfaced last month that Catholic priests had sexually abused more than 170 children at Jesuit schools in Germany. Those have been followed by fresh allegations of abuse at three Catholic schools in Bavaria, and within a boys' choir that was directed for 30 years by Monsignor Georg Ratzinger. In Austria the head of a Benedictine monastery in Salzburg has resigned after admitting to sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy more than four decades ago.

Surveillance Series

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, 2019, Excerpts

Propaganda and advertising have always been designed to appeal to unacknowledged fears and yearnings. This is not the first time that the unconscious mind has been targeted as an instrument of others’ aims. (Public Opinion Series) These have relied more on art than science, using gross data or professional intuition for the purpose of mass communication. Those operations cannot be compared to the scientific application of today’s historic computational power to the micro-measured, continuous rendition of your more-or-less actual feelings.

Surveillance capitalists declare their right to modify others’ behavior for profit according to methods that bypass human awareness, individual decision rights, and the entire complex of self-regulatory processes that we summarize with terms such as autonomy and self-determination. The new toolmakers do not intend to rob you of your inner life, only to surveil and exploit it. All they ask is to know more about you than you know about yourself.

At no other time in history have private corporations of unprecedented wealth and power enjoyed the free exercise of economies of action supported by a pervasive global architecture of ubiquitous computational knowledge and control constructed and maintained by all the advanced scientific know-how that money can buy.

Under surveillance capitalism, the means of production serves the means of behavioral modification. Machine processes replace human relationships so that certainty can replace trust.

Social Media

Behavioral Modification Theorists

Herding Societal Distrust

Big Other

Facebook Likes

Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

Computerized Emotion Detection

Affectiva Emotion AI

Realeyes

Stealth Wear

Public Opinion Series

New York tenants fight as landlords embrace facial recognition cameras

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/may/29/new-york-facial-recognition-cameras-apartment-complex

30 May 2019

More than 130 residents at a Brooklyn apartment complex oppose plan to use the cameras, whose use is quietly expanding in cities. At Atlantic Plaza Towers in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the landlord, Nelson Management Group, is moving to install a new system to control entry into the buildings. It would use facial recognition to open the front door for recognized tenants rather than traditional keys or electronic key fobs. “We do not want to be tagged like animals,” said Icemae Downes, who has lived at Atlantic Plaza Towers since it opened 51 years ago. “We are not animals. We should be able to freely come in and out of our development without you tracking every movement.”

The row, which the tenants believe could become an important test case, comes as concern about the spread of facial recognition systems has grown across the US and globally, with law enforcement agencies increasingly relying on the tool. San Francisco this month became the first US city to ban city police and government agencies from using it. Private firms are also increasingly keen on the technology.

Residents fear the move reflects the spreading pressures of gentrification further into the east of Brooklyn, and a desire to attract white, higher-income residents in the buildings, whose tenants are mostly black. They say there is already a culture of surveillance and that if they are suspected of breaking one of the building’s rules, they might find an image of themselves pushed under their doors. Facial recognition algorithms are less accurate when used on black people and women, as compared with white people and men.

San Francisco is first US city to ban police use of facial recognition tech

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/14/san-francisco-facial-recognition-police-ban

14 May 2019

San Francisco supervisors have voted to make the city the first in the United States to ban police and other government agencies from using facial recognition technology. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who championed the legislation, said: ‘We can have security without being a security state. We can have good policing without being a police state.’ And part of that is building trust with the community based on good community information, not on Big Brother technology.” Critics argued that police need all the help they can get, especially in a city with high rates of property crime. .

China's Xinjiang citizens monitored with police app, says rights group

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48130048

02 May 2019

Chinese police are using a mobile app to keep data on millions of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang province. The app is used to closely monitor behaviors, including lack of socializing, using too much electricity or having acquaintances abroad. In particular, it targets "36 person types" that authorities should pay attention to. These include people who seldom use their front door, use an abnormal amount of electricity and those that have gone on Hajj - an Islamic pilgrimage - without state authorization. China has 170 million CCTV cameras in place across the country and by the end of 2020, an estimated 400 million new ones will be installed. All this is part of China's aim to build what it calls "the world's biggest camera surveillance network". China's also setting up a "social credit" system that is meant to keep score of the conduct and public interactions of all its citizens. The aim is that by 2020, everyone in China will be enrolled in a vast national database that compiles fiscal and government information, including minor traffic violations, and distils it into a single number - ranking each citizen.

Testimony of Abigail E. Disney

Wealth Gap Series

Speaking before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee: Proposals to Strengthen the Rights and Protections for Workers

https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hhrg-116-ba16-wstate-disneyphda-20190515.pdf

15 May 2019

I am here to help shed light on the problem of excessive executive compensation and the injustice of the contrast between that compensation and the low wages and poor conditions of those that work at the bottom of the pay scale. These problems have been growing over the decades and will continue to worsen and have deeply negative consequences for our great nation.

I know a little something about the dynamics of money. I believe that there is such a thing as too much money. And, to be yet more heretical, I believe it is possible to say no to more. As an heiress with a famous last name I’ve been granted a free pass into the places where wealth is unapologetically flaunted. I’ve watched as, over the last few decades, the wealthy have steadily self-segregated into ever more restrictive and lavish spaces. In those spaces, even as they discuss the scourge of poverty, they guarantee that they will never have to look a gross inequity in the eye. In so shielding themselves, they have lost the ability to tolerate discomfort, and so work ever harder to keep their delicate sensibilities out of harm’s way.

I’ve seen what excess looks like in the form of the private planes parked chock a block at posh conferences about global warming, where no one so much as nods at the grotesque irony of such a thing. I’ve lain in the unnecessary queen size bed of a 737 big enough to carry hundreds but designed to accommodate no more than a dozen. I have seen it in 85 million-dollar mansions dotting the Hamptons—empty— I have watched children decked out in designer outfits expensive enough to fund a whole family’s healthcare for a year. It is time to pull back the curtain on this garish life and ask ourselves how high a handful should soar as the rest of us watch the American Dream collapse for a large majority of working people?

I have spoken up because I am uniquely placed. As an heir to Disney’s legacy and yes, no small share of its money, I feel a special responsibility to speak. I am also uniquely placed because I am not just any heir, and because Disney is not just any company. Disney is not US Steel. Nor is it Procter and Gamble, or Apple, or Chevrolet or any other iconic American brand. The Disney brand is an emotional one, a moral one, I would even say it is a brand that suggests love.

And when I call out the problem presented by any man, however brilliant, walking away with 65 million dollars after only grudgingly offering his own employees a wage that cannot support a single person much less a family, I know it will get a lot of attention, and hopefully jar a lot of sleepwalkers into consciousness.

I spoke out about Disney in spite of the fact that I am well aware that Bob Iger is by far not the worst offender as far as excessive compensation goes, but because I want to bring attention to the issue of inequality more broadly and to shine a light on all that we have gradually allowed ourselves to become accustomed to in the name of this fundamentalist version of capitalism we currently practice.

We need to change the way we understand and practice capitalism. We need to put people ahead of profits once and for all. Yes, leadership has a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. But they also have a legal and moral responsibility to deliver returns to shareholders without trampling on the dignity and rights of their employees and other stakeholders.

It is time to say, “enough is enough.” It is time to bring a moral and ethical framework back to the way we discuss business. It is time for business leaders to recognize that they have altered the nature of this communal project we call the United States of America, and that now they must hold themselves accountable to their fellow citizens.

The Socially Superior

Public Opinion Series

Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann, 1921, Excerpts

The social set is not a mere economic class, but something which more nearly resembles a biological clan. Each social set has a fairly clear picture of its relative position in the hierarchy of social sets. Between sets at the same level, association is easy, individuals are quickly accepted, and hospitality is normal and unembarrassed. But in contact between sets that are “higher” or “lower,” there is always a reciprocal hesitation, a faint malaise, and a consciousness of difference. The social superior is likely to be imitated by the social inferior; the holder of power is imitated by subordinates, the more successful by the less successful, the rich by the poor, the city by the country.

The highest social set consists of those who embody the leadership of the Great Society. In this Highest Society the big decisions of war and peace, of social strategy and the ultimate distribution of political power, are intimate experiences within a circle of personal acquaintances. The powerful, socially superior, successful, rich, urban social set is fundamentally international throughout the western hemisphere. It counts among its membership the most influential people in the world.

Photograph: Jimmy Sime, 1937

Five boys who came to illustrate the class divide

1960s Acetic Anhydride: Opium to Heroin

 

Opium Series

The Last Phoenix by Carl Douglass, 1997, Excerpts
(Vietnam War)

Acetic anhydride: the chemical use to convert opium to heroin, shipped in military holds that were as untouchable as the diplomatic pouch. The bags were discretely labeled and handled. The chemical was transported in flour sacks marked with the large lettered logo C.A.R.E., and accompanied by a statement “Gift of the Generous American People.” In the course of their business arrangement, the generous American people shipped in thousands of pounds of the valuable chemical which was then transported by US Army trucks over GVN highways without VC attack and transshipped across the borders of Viet Nam, Laos, and Burma without Pathet Lao, police or customs agent impediment. A considerable amount of money changed hands; large profits were realized; and triumph of international relations of sorts resulted when a common language and purpose [money] was involved.