Having read Mooney's Storm World last week, I can't be too disturbed by this bit of news: the pizza man who is fanatically devoted to the pope, Tom Monaghan, is opening his new planned town dedicated to Catholic values next Saturday. There will be no porn or contraceptives available in town, but I hear there will be a whole clinic dedicated to pediatric proctology on Main Street.
Anyway, the town is Ave Maria, Florida. Mooney's book points out that one of the looming problems from catastrophic storms and global warming is man-made, the growing investment in valuable infrastructure and population in precisely those areas at risk from natural disaster. This gives me an idea: I think the southern coastal states ought to give incentives to religious organizations to build along the shores. Pull back all those merely material and economic developed resources farther inland, and construct wall-to-wall religious enclaves everywhere that we worry about hurricanes instead, as a bulwark against acts of god.
We can't lose. If they're right, their prayers and purity will stave off disaster. If they're wrong, well, no loss to the country if ten thousand churches get inundated.
It also puts a nefarious twist on the closing quote in the story.
Monaghan has said his goal is to help as many people as possible get to Heaven. And he hopes these homeowners will have a head start.
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Depressingly I live in the same county as Ave Maria is being built in. Their social management is pretty extreme, I know this because the county library is in negotiations with them over putting a branch there. Negotiations which have stalled over the town's demand that they be allowed a veto over material to be included in the library and the library system's unwillingness to allow that.
No Internet? Shocking.
"...Until we build the New Jerusalem in our green and fair...swamp."
Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Still - think of the business opportunity the place creates.
The guy who opens a porn store in the neighbouring town is going to make a fortune, not to mention his neighbours, the pharmacist, the VD clinic and the shrink (Freud's true genius was realising how to use guilt to put the theory that time = money into practice).
Talk about hell on earth.
. . . I hear there will be a whole clinic dedicated to pediatric proctology on Main Street.
Zing!
Funny how those new proctologists wear robes instead of a doctor's coat. Nonetheless, your idea of wall-to-wall religious institutions on the coastlines is novel. The only problem will be the inevitable falling of one particular church, leading the others to condemn that faith as obviously not being the right one. Also, inevitably, a single church will be standing, giving their followers hope in their belief.
Well, PZ, I often cheer you on. But your idea of encouraging the fundies to populate the gulf coast -- or any coast! -- is nuts. For that matter, letting anyone build wall to wall condos along the coast is environmentally nuts. Let the fundies settle in the vast inland deserts and plains, and leave the coastal areas be for those of us who love nature.
I have a much better proposal for the gulf coast: as a matter of national environmental conservation, let's ban air conditioning within three miles of the gulf shore. If the sea breezes are not enough for you, then move inland! That will improve nearby architecture, lower population density, and preserve the coastal environment. And generally make the gulf coast more enjoyable for those of us who really enjoy it. ;-)
Wine, sodomy, and the lash?
In a way, PZ, you're in luck.
Clearwater, Fla., is one of the largest centers for Scientology in the world.
(I'm shameless. I already posted this, but I think it deserves to be posted again.)
Here's a link to get you frothing at the mouth:
Questions Answered on Catholic Sex Abuse Settlement
By Father Jonathan Morris
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289828,00.html?sPage=fnc.foxfan/blo…
See- abusing children is a win-win situation for the Catholic church and God.
Really? Wow...
Keep those fundies away from Louisiana. We have a bad enough problem with racism. The last thing needed is Bible-throwing nonsense.
We could balloon over the town and drop atheist pamphlets down upon the townspeople.
Or hold a siege and starve them out.
No more pizza deliveries to campus until the student folk renounce their idiot pope.
Great article about it here:
http://thestubborncurmudgeon.blogspot.com
That proctology line was disgraceful crude stereotyping. Almost as bad as suggesting that priest stands for paedophile resident in every small town.
Russell: Just sit back and let the coast come to you. *whistles*
I agree with Peter. Implying that all Catholic priests are kiddy-fiddlers is very unfair on the 23% who aren't.
I wonder what kind of seedy debauchery will be located just on the outskirts of town. There's got to be some place for dad to stop by on one of those long trips to the grocery store after work to pick up some milk.
AveMaria is going to be ringed with Town Line Pharmacy, Town Line Liquors, Town Line Adult Book Store, Town Line Nightclub with live entertainment, Town Line Motel with hourly rates, etc.
Your "Sea Wall of Churches" idea would, I'm afraid, be a terrible idea, PZ. Faith-based initiatives are to laugh...do you realize how much MORE taxpayer money they'd start sucking down through the NFIP? And if they have any money left over after the claim, they'll build the church bigger than it was before, so of course the next storm surge will cause even more damage, pulling down more money, etc.
Stereotyping? Where? Where is it stated that all priests engage(d) in pederasty?
Sure, a crack like that, which keeps the floodlight trained on priestly rape and molestation of children and on the wretchedly irresponsible way in which the Church "responded" may be crude, but it's about as far from disgraceful as one can get.
Disgraceful is the apathy of those who knew about it and did nothing. Disgraceful is the enabling acts of those in high places who knew about it and provided an escape hatch for the perpetrators. Disgraceful is the rationlizing apologetic babbling of those who minimize the importance of all these acts. All who engage in these behaviors are complicit in the perpetuation of a culture of child abuse.
Cardinal Law, a man once respected by many, a man who for years drove the biggest getaway car for child molesters in modern memory, now as a cushy job in Vatican City.
Disgraceful? Yes. From the very, very top, right on down.
Ummm .... the real figures are slightly different (this from a RC source, but confirmed in secular sources elsewhere). 96% of clergy serving in the last 50 years have never been accused of sexual abuse. Sure, some of that 96% have certainly committed offenses that have never been laid against them. But I have to say it is sheer bigotry to slander an entire group of people, most of whom have lived exemplary lives, with the false claim that 77% of them are child molesters.
I have little fondness for the Roman Catholic church as an institution. But I know several priests whom I consider to be extraordinary human beings, even though I disagree with them intellectually (a distinction some here seem to find difficult to make). They have had to labor under an entirely unjustified suspicion that they engage in these horrible activities - a suspicion encouraged by remarks like the one quoted here, as well as by PZ's quip about "pediatric proctology." If 4% of rabbis had been charged with sexual abuse, would you now be making jokes about Jews buggering little boys at every opportunity?
We're supposed to be the reality-based community here. This is beneath us.
On the substance of the post: Ave Maria will indeed be hell on earth, but Monahan is finding it harder than he imagined to impose his idiosyncratic version of "Catholic values" onto the town, and still more onto the university that will be built there. The ban on contraceptives and porn (on cable TV and in bookstores (supposing that there are any)) was floated by him, and sank. And even the conservative Catholics who originally supported Ave Maria University are now among its (and his) fiercest critics. Rather belatedly, they've recognized that academic freedom and tenure are there to protect not just evil liberal faculty. Take a look at the recent articles in the Chronicle and elsewhere on the fiasco of the Law School - and things aren't going much better in other faculties, either.
Seriously, #21
can't you take a joke?
And this is why I no longer order from Dominos.
Monaghan's plan to not permit the selling of condoms and pornography in Ave Maria reminds me of the bootlegger and baptist coalitions you used to get in the South. Purveyors of whiskey and liquor in one county would fund preachers in a neighboring county to agitate on behalf making the neighboring county dry. This would result in more business for the counties that remained wet, as the residents of the dry counties would need to travel to the wet counties for a drink.
Altabin (#21), in a real sense, in the sense that religion is mind-altering, reason-destroying nonsense, ALL priests are abusing children.
I've hated this guy for a long time. He's from my neck of the woods, and his insanity went over...um...didn't go over well in The People's Republic of Ann Arbor. Thankfully, cults planned communities usually drink the Kool Aid don't work out well in the long run.
I'd love to be the one selling OCPs and condoms just outside that town.
Banning contraceptives seems silly. Every study I've seen indicates that contraceptive use among US catholics, catholic birth rates, and family sizes are about the same as the US national average.
In other words, most catholics just shrug their shoulders, tell the pope mentally to mind his own business, and plan their lives like everyone else.
Ummm... ok, 4% of priests having been so accused, and a presumably small, but unknown percentage remaining unaccused but guilty is a HUGE percentage, probably about 2-4 times the estimate of pedophiles in the general population ( http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&re… ), ( http://www.performersandprograms.com/program.cfm?id=3130®ion=9 ), ( http://pedophileophobia.com/myth-facts.htm )
I'd call that pretty significant. In my life, I've met 25 priests. To think that the odds are pretty good that at least one of them was looking at my arse in *THAT* way is pretty creepy.
Thanks Evolving Squid, I was just wondering how that compared to the number of pederasses in the general community.
Thanks Nathan ... dusting himself off from rolling on the floor laughing ...
We had one in my old (catholic) school. in France back in the 80s:
Q: What's a virgin at Institution St Remi?
A: An 11 y.o. girl running faster than Padre G.
(Well, we WERE kids, you know!)
Thankyou PZ, that last statement you quoted had me laughing out loud for about half a minute. Quite the funniest thing I have read in quite a while.
#21 can't take a joke, but he's also not counting those in the hierarchy who knew there were child molesting priests and did nothing, or worse, put up a smokescreen or hid evidence or threatened victims or shuttled the pediatric proctologists to another parish so they could do it again and again and again all over the country without reprisal.
And that's even before we get to the psychological abuse that is the concept of Hell/eternal torment.
As far as I'm concerned, the stereotype can continue until the clergy stops protecting the molesters in their ranks. Until then, they deserve every sneering remark that comes their way. See Kseniya's comment.
"If 4% of rabbis had been charged with sexual abuse, would you now be making jokes about Jews buggering little boys at every opportunity? "
If their hierarchy provided shelter for said buggerers, then yes. And not Jews as a whole, mind you, but their official organization.
#25
Sure sign that hyperbole follows...
... and there it is. So is all fiction, and novelists are, in a very real sense, child abusers. Arrest J. K. Rowling now!
For goodness' sake, in a "real" sense? A "real" child-abuser is someone we send to jail for his/her actions. What you mean is the exact opposite: in a metaphorical sense.
This is not a million miles from the "seduction is a kind of rape" rhetoric that I remember from when I was an undergraduate in the late 80s/early 90s. Such statements belittle the suffering of those have really (you know, in reality, not metaphorically) been raped, or abused as a child.
#22: Yes, I certainly can take a joke. I'm very happy to laugh my #ss off at the idiocies of the religious right, the Catholic Church establishment, Tom Monahan, creationists etc. etc. Keep it all coming - that's why I enjoy this and other blogs. But I don't find crude stereotyping very funny. History shows, I think, that it is dangerous to make broad statements about the criminality of a whole class of people just to get a laugh. Sorry if that makes me a wuss.
Here's a somewhat entertaining phone call to Catholic Town
NSFW audio on this link FYI
#28: I don't discount at all the larger number of priests who abused children, nor the complicity of the Catholic Church hierarchy. I would go so far as to say that the Church itself, as an institution and particularly at the episcopal level, is one of the most thoroughly poisonous establishments around. I'm not being a concern troll here. But I do stand by my original statement that the broadly-sweeping accusations, which cast suspicions on all Catholic priests, are dangerous hysteria.
You don't quite get it. The basis for the joke is not that all Catholic priests are pedophiles, but that the Catholic hierarchy has a history of tolerating and enabling the activities of priestly pedophiles. You don't rebut that by telling me the majority of priests are decent people -- I agree with that. What would make the joke go away is if the Catholic church changed their tradition of closing their eyes to abuse within their ranks.
You seem to have missed the very important distinction that Rowling isn't claiming that magic is real and founding institutions to pound this idea into children's brains before they are old enough to know better.
I still worry about this kind of planned community inevitably becoming a cult. It's really quite scary.
"becoming"?
I wonder if we can convince these folks the Earth is about to be eaten by a giant mutant space goat.
I'm thinking that since we can't prove it doesn't exist, it should be a shoe-in.
There's also the small point that the Harry Potter universe does not involve Muggles (or dissenters from Dumbledorism or whatever) being tortured for eternity as the result of their misbelief and/or misbehavior. So even if children were thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that Potterism was fact, that practice still wouldn't inflict the suffering that the doctrine of Hell (as routinely forced upon children within traditional Christian and Muslim sects) does.
Anyway, it is obviously not the mere fictional nature of Catholic religious education that is the primary problem here.
At least they aren't taking over a whole state. Yet. I'm looking at you, Utah!
The only thing scarier than this cult moving into its own town in florida is moving into its own town in DC.
On the substance of the post: Ave Maria will indeed be hell on earth, but Monahan is finding it harder than he imagined to impose his idiosyncratic version of "Catholic values" onto the town, and still more onto the university that will be built there. The ban on contraceptives and porn (on cable TV and in bookstores (supposing that there are any)) was floated by him, and sank. And even the conservative Catholics who originally supported Ave Maria University are now among its (and his) fiercest critics. Rather belatedly, they've recognized that academic freedom and tenure are there to protect not just evil liberal faculty. Take a look at the recent articles in the Chronicle and elsewhere on the fiasco of the Law School - and things aren't going much better in other faculties, either.
Not entirely true. I can attest to the fact that they are demanding editorial control over any branch public library there, and that the academic library is staffed by people who are signatory to a 'statement of faith'. It's hardley intellectual freedom.
OK maybe deadpanning doesn't make it through the internet.
The proctology line was a tea-down-the-nose moment.
Whew, Peter. It went over MY head, apparently. :-p
I stand by my comments otherwise, though.
The joke was clearly about unrestricted access to, and the condoning of the behavior symbolized by, the "clinic" - not about implying that all priests make use of the clinic. Others (including PZ) have made that pretty clear already, I think but I wanted to voice my support of that notion. Thank you.
Carry on!
I wonder why they want a library at all.
But cheer up, Hypatia. Sit back and watch corruption take this town, as it does all small towns were the young people are bored and looking for excitement. It will probably be those old standbys, drugs, drinking, and sex. Remember Poe's story "The Masque of the Red Death"? I thought of it immediately.
Oh. And vandalism.
Won't someone sell me an advance ticket to the Ave Maria/Clearwater high school football game?
For the book burnings of course. I wonder whether they will censor the local newspaper. Big blank squares always lend that authentic Orwellian touch.
Book burnings are always one of a cults more entertaining rituals. Anyone heard of anymore Harry Potter book burnings? There were a few here and there a while ago.
"Oh. And vandalism."
Why? Does Ave Maria have Incan temples to be plundered and destroyed?
Absolutely true.
It's just a bit ironic that one of the biggest offenders in the official cover-up was Boston's Cardinal Law. What an inappropriate name! Law, by the way, is how holed up in the Vatican with some bureaucratic job, hustled out of Boston one step ahead of a criminal indictment.
As for Domino Pizza's Monaghan, he's also involved in the Ave Maria Mutual Funds, which specialize in "moral" investments. That stance is walling them off from Fortune 500 investments. [Link]
Give it a few decades and Ave Maria will go the way of all "utopian" communities. The minute people start living there is the minute that some will start subverting Monaghan's aims and there will be nothing he can do about it other than scream. Both state and Federal courts will almost certainly toss his covenants and restrictions as unconstitutional restraints on individual liberties and commercial activities.
I really don't follow who the leading guy is for the various religious sects, but I have to admit to being surprised to hear that Tom Monaghan is now the pope of the Catholics. Surprising...thought it was some German guy.
The great new business opportunities will likely be in Immokallee, the nearest real town, six miles due north and a straight shot up the highway. There's already a tribal casino there, ready and waiting for Bill Bennett.
Your Pizza Delivered in 30 Minutes or Less, or the Delivery Boy Burns in Hell!
Oddly, given that municipal home rule is quite a bit stronger up here, Monaghan might have had more luck with his porn ban in New England... assuming, that is, that he could find enough room to do it, as the only place there's any significant amount of unincorporated area is inland Maine, which is pretty much unbuildable wilderness with little or no road access (there's patches of it in VT and NH, but I think they're likely to stay unbuilt).
It'd be really fun seeing him try to build it in Massachusetts... Benny and the Jets are supposed to be on their way to Boston soon, which strikes me as being absolutely the last place in the US (well, LA, too) a Pope should want to visit. As it is, well, Florida is pretty much a lightning rod for the odd and corrupt anyway, isn't it?