Sorry, I'm going to have to ruin your breakfast again. The Stranger has a revealing article on pedophile priests — in particular, it focuses on the native populations of Alaska and Canada, which were used as a nice, obscure dumping ground for the very worst sexual predators the Catholic Church could provide. Small children were raped, entire villages are decimated by mental health trauma and suicides brought on by these monsters, and in one particularly appalling instance, a priest was caught raping a dying woman he was supposed to give the last rites. There's also an interview with a former priest who was a "cleaner" (yes, he actually calls himself that), brought in to tidy up the messes these evil men brought into a community…before they got shipped off to another community.
The sheer concentration of known sex offenders in these isolated communities begins to look less like an accident than a plan. Their institutional protection looks less like an embarrassed cover-up than aiding and abetting. And the way the church has settled case after case across the country, refusing to let most of them go to trial for a public airing, is starting to look like an admission of guilt.
Here's the reason why the church covers up for rapist priests.
Why does the church keep sending these priests, who have come to be such a major liability, back into ministry? "It's all about keeping the stores open, keeping the revenue rolling," Wall says. The Alaskan provinces in particular, Wall says, were a source of revenue--not from the Native population living there, but from parishioners in the lower 48 who were encouraged to donate for the Native ministry up north. "You could raise thousands to fund a mission that cost very little to run," Wall says. "The profit margin is huge."
The story makes 1950s Ireland look like a paradise of blissful religious sanctity. It is not for the squeamish.
If you'd rather read something a little more encouraging, read Katha Politt on priestly pedophilia. She nails the priesthood on their sanctimony and hypocrisy, and their pretense to a moral superiority that is so patently betrayed. She also mentions this surprising story:
In February, Bishop Margot Kaessmann, the first woman to head the German Protestant Church and a much-admired public figure, was caught running a red light while intoxicated. There was a lot of sympathy for her, even in the conservative media, which disagreed with her liberal and anti-war views, and she received the support of the church's governing body. Nonetheless, within four days Kaessmann resigned, saying her moral authority had been so compromised she could no longer do right by her high office. Maybe Pope Benedict and his bishops could learn something from her example.
What? A Protestant bishop resigns for the crime of running a red light under the influence? She got a traffic ticket and felt her moral authority was compromised? I mean, that's a bit excessive, but OK, at least she's taking religion's claims of morality extremely seriously.
Meanwhile, the Pope heads a Catholic office that was sheltering child-rapers, and the entire Catholic hierarchy is busily claiming the martyrdom of Christ for itself because people have started to complain about their intrusive little penises. They aren't even trying for the moral flood plain, let alone the moral high ground. It's more like they're taking a dive in the Marianas Trench of turpitude while pretending to climb the Everest of propriety.
While we can't expect the church to expire in shame, at least we should start regarding Catholicism as a Mafia-like criminal organization…and maybe our governments should stop treating with them.
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On the flipside, if we can find out where the church's dumping grounds are, we can organize raids to get these bastards into custody.
RICO applies
Just more evidence that religion rots from the inside.
Well, when Mrs. Kässmann was stopped by the police, she was found to have an alcohol level well above the point indicating an unfitness to drive, so that incident wasn't just a slight misstep, but a pretty serious irresponsible behaviour on her part. But of course, it totally pales in comparison to what the Vatican's been up to.
Tax 'em and give the money to the abused.
Can't say more without taking my meds; seeing too much red...
Thanks for mentioning that, PZ. I live in Alaska and we've been angry about it for years. The really horrible thing about it is that in most AK Native cultures respect for your elders is among the highest virtues, so the children were even less likely to tell anyone about the abuse than most kids. And when they did, they were often flat-out ignored because they were kids and the priests were honored guests.
The villages have enough problems without being the dumping grounds for child molesters. I just...argh.
Obviously, it goes without saying that this is awful and makes for harrowing reading.
But I'm not sure it's fair to refer to the child molesters as "monsters". Very few human beings are monsters. In general, abusers are profoundly psychologically-disturbed people who act under a compulsion which they can't control. Most abusers were themselves abused in childhood. In the case of Catholic priests, the celibacy, and consequent lack of a sexual outlet, probably doesn't help much either; neither does the guilt and self-loathing that so often comes with devout Catholicism. So while the priests in question certainly committed monstrous acts, and should never have been allowed near children, it doesn't follow that they themselves are "monsters". They really needed psychiatric treatment more than anything else.
The people who really deserve condemnation are, of course, the Vatican authorities, and the bureaucratic system which let abusers keep on abusing. Sadly, the Vatican, like most authoritarian bureaucracies, has always been more concerned with protecting itself and its interests than with doing the right thing. It has no claim whatsoever to moral superiority. And I certainly agree that secular political leaders and authorities need to stop coddling the RCC.
I beg to differ on the characterization of Kassmann's offense as just a traffic ticket. Drunk drivers kill an awful lot of people, and she certainly had lost her moral authority (not that I suppose she really had any to begin with) when she put other people's lives at risk in that manner.
Of course, that certainly doesn't compare to covering up and enabling decades of abuse, but it's not just a traffic ticket either.
And these evil, sick perverts have the fucking gall to compare themselves to the jews in the holocaust.
I will trust the hierarchy of the Catholic Church when it fires every single bishop involved in this world-wide coverup. Benedict, as the man who had the job of knowing where every body was buried for the last quarter of a century, knows who to fire. Cardinal Law should be the first bishop fired. His brother should be the second. When another couple hundred are fired, he needs to resign. Nothing else will every persuade anyone that the Catholic hierarchy can be trusted about anything. Mass resignations/firings of those who hid these crimes for decades might help.
@Walton, #3: "Monsters" works for me, and this saves about 190 words as compared to your post.
fta:
Petty gossip, indeed.
blockquote fail :(
So you think there's no difference between "monster", and "mentally ill person who commits acts of abuse under compulsion and needs secure psychiatric treatment"?
Paedophilia is a psychiatric illness. People do not choose to have a compulsion to molest children, any more than they choose to suffer any other form of mental illness. Yes, obviously we need to keep paedophiles away from children. But they need to be treated in a secure environment, not demonised. Words like "monster", which demonise and dehumanise the person at whom they are targeted, are profoundly unhelpful.
I guess it's something along the lines of "Little artists borrow, great artists steal", and "If yer gonna tell a lie, tell a big one".
The ms bishop made the mistake of just doing a bit of run of the mill crime that anyone in her flock might do to. Not nearly ambitious enough.
Pedophilia is an illness.
Raping children is the act of a monster.
A non-monstrous person with that illness would either be able to control it on his own, or find a way to be sure he wasn't exposed to temptation. So, a priest might ask to be assigned to a monastery where he would be seeing only other adults. Anyone, priest or not, could check into a mental hospital. Or move to an isolated cabin and put up signs saying "No children allowed" and "Dangerous dog." Better to get a reputation as a child-hater, true or not, than to rape a child. That should be obvious to anyone with a working conscience.
Walton @ #14: "Monsters" well describes those who abuse children, sexually or otherwise, and also those who knowingly put these dangerous people in charge of vulnerable children.
The mental illness, if any, of the perps might figure into a judge's sentencing once they are convicted, and that's about it.
I'd love to see the pope make a papal decree that the church is no longer legitimate and shall be abolished. He can tell them whatever he wants about Jesus being the real deal, but that they should worship him on their own and should not believe any organization is so infallible that it shouldn't be subjected to scrutiny. I don't know how the church works, but it would definitely put the screw to them. Do the cardinals admit they made a mistake with this guy and replace him so they can keep their scam up, or do they follow through with it? Do I even have to ask?
I've been using the Mafia comparison a lot recently, too. We can't even get the Catholic church on tax evasion, since they're legally allowed to evade taxes.
The reaction I'm seeing is jaw-dropping (to me, at least): Catholic families with young children rallying around the poor beleaguered priests and hierarchy instead of joining the protest. Stockholm Syndrome, writ large.
Walton's concern is noted.
"Monster" to be reserved for acts more egregious than serial child rape aided and abetted by teh Holy Institution.
like...
like what?
From The Onion:
Pope Vows To Get Church Pedophilia Down To Acceptable Levels
http://www.theonion.com/articles/pope-vows-to-get-church-pedophilia-dow…
As others have pointed out, it wasn't just a traffic ticket she was intoxicated while driving. In Canada this is a criminal offense and you do receive a criminal record and a second conviction lands you in jail. Putting people's lives at risk is bad morals though I could understand having a few drinks probably helps when spreading fairy tales.
Being attracted to children is a mental illness. Acting upon such attraction is a moral failing.
Pinched from Greta Christina.
I have a 7 month old son and a 4 year old son; if anyone touches them in any way whatsoever that is sexual, they are a monster, I don't care if it's a mental illness that they can't help or not, they become a monster when they act on those urges. And trust me, if anyone did touch my boys, there would be much more going on that a demand for a settlement, if you get my drift. Those boys mean more to me than life itself; Yahweh help whoever so much as thinks about touching them, because when I get a hold on them, they will know hell, and no amount of money will save them from me.
Am I the only one who thinks that if the bishop who was caught driving drunk and running a red light had been male, he'd have said he was sorry, promised not to do it again, and still be in charge of that church?
Drink-driving kills, PZ. The culture in which a senior figure of moral authority (like it or not) is widely forgiven for running a red light while intoxicated is the culture which enables a tanker-lorry driver to feel it's ok to have a couple beers at the wheel on an overnight run.
Pedophilia is an illness.
Raping children is the act of a monster.
A non-monstrous person with that illness would either be able to control it on his own, or find a way to be sure he wasn't exposed to temptation. - v.rosenzweig
The mental illness, if any, of the perps might figure into a judge's sentencing once they are convicted, and that's about it. - Ray Moscow
QFT
Also, not only are some pedophiles not child abusers, some child sexual abusers are not paedophiles, in the sense of being only or primarily sexually drawn to children.
Walton, think of it like this:
Would you consider an adult rapist a monster? If they had thoughts of doing something awful but didn't act on them, they could have a mental disorder but they still haven't acted out anything monstrous yet. It's going across the moral boundary that makes them vile.
How the hell is this cover-up not criminal?
Pedophilia or child-rape, it makes little difference. Once you touch a child that way, you should be removed from general society. I don't like the one-strike rule for most cases. Even some murderers can be rehabilitated. But child molesters, hell no. I don't want to pay higher taxes to keep potheads and prostitutes lock up, but I would gladly pay more to keep these numbnuts behind pars for the rest of their lives.
As for the bastard who covered it up, they are far worse. There was no mental illness involved. These people made cold calculating choices. The whole damn system should be shut down, and Vatican III should be held in Leavenworth. I would like to see the pope's hat in prisoner orange.
General question for everyone who believes these "monsters" should not be helped:
Do you want to reduce numbers of future victims or get revenge, even if you know if will create more suffering in the future*?
Call paedophiles monsters if it makes you feel better but bear in mind that by creating such an atmosphere of hate you are probably stopping some people who might otherwise come forward for help from doing so. When you do that, their future victims must be partially on your conscience too.
I expect that provocative comment will result in a flaming. People generally do not cope well with being told a group they prefer to think of as "other" are in fact just human beings and that, under similar circumstances, they too might have turned out the same way.
Everyone should have to study psychology until they are 18; the world would be a better place.
I would post this without this last para, but if I do someone will wrongly equate a wish to see paedophiles helped as meaning I have no sympathy for their victims. I do, so if that (or anything like that) was going to be your response, please don't bother.
*I'm afraid revenge AND reducing future rates of offending have been proven over and over again to be mutually incompatible in every aspect of criminology. You cannot have your penological cake and eat it. Your choice is this: be a wishy-washy liberal criminal lover and see offending go down, or convince yourself they are somehow different to you and evil and deserve the harshest of punishment and see crime rates stay up.
Well if you are an Anglican Bishop and get caught sleeping in the back of someone else's car you blame it on the fact you had been to a party at the Irish Embassy.
Oh, and when asked by the owner of the car why you are asleep on the back seat, your proclaim that your are the Bishop of Southwark and it is what you do.
Those who commit monstrous acts are monsters.
They can also be human beings, and deserving of compassion, and the circumstances of their motivation may have bearing amount of compassion they deserve. But as human beings they also have the responsibility that those who aspire to that title must assume.
None of this changes the fact that they are also monsters.
We need to start protesting in front of churches.
Italian atheists need to take it all the way to the Vatican.
Speak the fuck up, everybody.
Good signs:
"PAY YOUR TAXES", "YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE FROM CIVIL JUSTICE", "JAIL PEDOPHILE PRIESTS", "RENDER UNTO CAESAR OR ELSE", etc.
Yes, they should be helped if they come forward and ask for it; if they act on those urges, they are monsters, I don't give a damn about their problems to be honest after they act on those urges. Yes, try and find them, try to get them to come forward and yes, try and help them suppress those urges.
I don't see your post that way, but what you need to understand is that the victim is more important. I want to see them helped as well, but if they act on those urges, they can be helped while sitting in a cell for the rest of their lives. There is no excuse for harming a child, period, I don't care if they have a mental illness or not. If they had TB it wouldn't be their fault, but I wouldn't let them cough on me.
Look here ->
http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/christopher-hitchens/the-pope-is-not-a…
Hitchens has been on the news and Bill Mahers show with the same message, the secular goverments should condemn and sanction Ratzi.. I paraphrase obviously but does PZ think in reality that europe, US, and canada will condemn the
pedo-pirate state of the catholic church.
Check out this article at the Stranger.
That to me is the biggest question. Surely these actions reach the level of conspiracy, if not aiding and abetting felony acts. Why aren't the people who re-assigned the pedophiles being arrested?
If it is fitting for a bishop driving under the influence to resign (arguably yes), then a child molesting priest should at the very least be defrocked.
(All this in addition to the appropriate secular criminal penalties, of course)
But then what is appropriate for the pope who covers up, aids, and abets thousands of child molestations?
I agree with you, Ellie. Simply writing people off as "monsters," whatever they've done, is an abdication of any responsibility for dealing with them or trying to figure out how they got that way. This is not a useful attitude. As Hannah Arendt so famously stated, the really terrifying thing about Nazis in general and Adolf Eichmann in particular is not that they were inhuman monsters – they weren't. It's that they were, in so many ways, perfectly ordinary. And that's what we've got to face: you can't deny that "average people" are quite capable of seemingly inhuman acts. That's true whether we're talking about priestly pedophiles or, like yesterday, American soldiers thirsting for blood.
Not sure how many people here qualify. The whole "monster or not" argument started because Walton was concerned people were using the word to describe child rapists. It doesn't follow that nobody that considers them monsters believes they do not deserve help/rehabilitation (along with a long prison sentence). It does follow that we don't want to go along with wishy washy "they're not monsters because they may be psychologically disturbed".
I need to be another person agreeing with 16. Many people have urges or desires for things that are patently immoral. They may be due to brain damage, psychological trauma, childhood issues, whatever. But what makes the people in question monsters is actually acting on them. One can pity a monster. One can want to help them, or make them better (although that one is generally not related to the people that were harmed). But that doesn't mean the term is being improperly used.
Not many here are calling for "revenge". They are calling for proper application of the criminal law. Most people describing revenge do so in the "if x did y to my kids, I'd want/get revenge". But I don't see anyone calling for overturning the legal system and going for vigilante justice, nor making the legal penalties harsher. What we would do if our own family was affected is not good legal policy, generally, and people understand that.
Ooops. Just realized that (at #36) I was referencing the same article as PZ. Oh well.
To put this in context, Germany's legal penalties for DUI are hardcore, more serious than you'll find in the US, even after penalties were toughened in the US in the 80s.
We may not be calling here for revenge, Paul, but a lot of people are. I just don't want to give them more ammunition. If you take a random gathering of people, say a dozen or so, and the talk turns to a sexual-abuse case of any sort, I'll bet any amount that at least one person will swiftly bark out "Jail's too good for 'em; just take 'em out and string 'em up/shoot 'em in the face/skin 'em alive!" followed by another three or four approving grunts. I just hate encouraging that satisfying-feeling but ultimately counterproductive reaction.
There are no such things as monsters.
Hitler (Godwin alert!) wasn't a monster, he was a human.
Monsters don't kill, rape, torture, commit genocide, have wars. Humans do.
Other humans label these acts monstrous and their perpetrators as monsters so as to dehumanize them, to separate themselves from it.
Easier that way. Lazier that way. They're "monsters," it's out of human control, we don't have to face the idea that these are human behaviors, features of our species that we as a species have to grapple with collectively and individually.
("no true human," IOW)
I second PZ's recommendation that the US government should refuse to deal with the Vatican. Sanctions that hurt the Vatican financially are the only thing that they will understand. Financial considerations drive all their actions, as in the fund-raising for missions that serve natives. Financial and power considerations lie just under the surface of all the holier-than-thou talk. Hit them where they live.
For starters, the State of Alaska can refuse to deal with the sovereign country of the Vatican, and Alaskans can start pressuring the US government to do likewise.
To add to the discussion above about avoiding hate and "revenge" -- don't misconstrue "justice" as "revenge". Catholic church leaders are systematically avoiding justice. Pressure needs to be brought to bear, pressure that will force them to consider the possibility that seeing justice done will be less painful, financially speaking, than avoiding sanctions. We cannot expect church leaders to act ethically simply because it is right to do so.
Along the same lines, check out
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/
Wait for the new bumper sticker:
"Catholics Priests Aren't Perfect -- Just Forgiven"
A monstrous state of affairs...
They truly are human.
They are also monsters.
This reminds me: http://www.molleindustria.org/en/operation-pedopriest
Ontological arguments don't impress; yes, the term dehumanizes them because what we consider to be humane behavior does not include raping children. No one said don't help them, not a single person has said so, but their acts are monstrous and I will not put their mental health above the needs of the victim.
You know what's really sickening? The Catholic apologists.
While sexual abuse is obviously grotesque, the number of occurrences in the Catholic Church is neither higher nor lower than any other denomination or religion and the same as those in education, sports and any other institution that involves a power dynamic between adults and youth. This is proven in numerous studies by objective authors. Yet if we are to believe the media, abuse is almost exclusively Catholic and — here we go again — all because of celibacy and an all-male clergy.
Myers warned us about that excuse earlier.
There's another excuse they'll use. "Everyone does it". You'll find no more repulsive example than this article by a Catholic archbishop — his excuse is to list examples of doctors, judges, and teachers abusing children. See? Catholics probably aren't any worse than other professionals! Except, of course, that medicine, law, and education aren't closed institutions that go out of their way to protect molesters from exposure. And most of all, they aren't institutions that insist, over and over, that they are society's repository of moral wisdom.
or
"Catholics Priests Aren't Perfect -- Just Gossiped About"
Well, she was caught driving with 1.54 g/l (3 times the limit).
That means she put herself in a situation where she was a real danger to other people's lives and this does tend to seriously compromise one's moral authority.
Normal people do not rape children, ever. Normal people do not rape people. Sorry, but I don't call them monsters to dehumanize them in this case, I call them monsters for being anti-social, for destroying human health and civilization.
They are not normal social creatures, they are failures, aberrations, and they need to be controlled from doing damage. I'm sick of rapists being released back into the fold to hurt more people over and over again. Why are their lives so much more valuable than the people they hurt?
Yes, I recognize this would be hate speech if I was talking about gay people, but gay people don't destroy society. You have to demonstrate the destruction and homophobes can't because really there isn't any.
Child raping priests do destroy society and it is in societies best interests to keep them away from anyone they can hurt.
I think prison, comfortable, and isolated is a good idea. This is not consensual sex that falls out of the norm. It is no different than some one who robs houses for a living, or hijacks cars, robs people. These are criminals who have shown that they will continue injure human beings with no regard for the well being of others.
Yes, I know it is cruel but I would get rid of one raping priest to spare the suffering of 100 children. Yeah, flame me for that. Whatever.
How about "Catholic Priests Aren't Perfect – Just Not Prosecuted."
How perfectly Internetian - a thread about institutionalized child abuse derails into an argument about the semantics of "monster".
(Just to prove I'm no better, I'll add that I remain somewhat perplexed at the notion that pointing out that someone is a "human being" should make me more sympathetic towards them. Inhuman objects have caused me a lot of pain over the years, but human beings have a near-monopoly on intentionally hurting me.)
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for any RICO or conspiracy charges. The Obama administration has already made it quite clear that it will not pursue criminal charges when it might be politically unpopular to do so, no matter how strong the evidence.
This "monsters" issue appears to me to be the continuing saga of dualism, particularly among those who have rejected dualism intellectually.
We want to separate people into "physical" and "mental" -- even though no such separation is warranted. So we have "responsible mentally ill" and "irresponsible mentally ill" -- those whose spirit struggles with the depraved body, and those who follow the depraved body. Shadows of Christianity, anybody? You can't get away from the world-view even when you try, still playing games of free-will and such.
All of that is beside the point. Yes, we can analyze pedophiles from a mental health perspective. We can judge them broken to one extent or another, separating those who are "on the verge of" raping, and those who actually do rape. We can research to find out if it's possible to change them.
But they are monsters. They are "broken" people, deeply maladjusted, and dangerous to one extent or another. We aren't ALL like that -- for whatever genetic, contingent, historical, cultural or developmental reason. For whatever reason (which is a question for research), they've become dangerous entities, preying or wishing to prey on children.
And we judge that monstrous. Screw their "choices" -- that's besides the point. Screw the question of "moral responsibility" -- that's just a tool that may or may not work to demonstrify them.
There are many monsters. Some of us who are not now monsters may become monsters, and some who are monsters may stop being monsters.
But quit with all the Christian headgames, all the dualistic nonsense from the Iron Age.
I think a lot of this goes back to a fundamental schizophrenia in American criminal justice. What's the justice system supposed to do: rehabilitate or punish? Both? Neither, but something else entirely, such as simply get criminals out of sight and mind?
We've never been able to decide that, and in mixing all of those ideas the current system does none of them well. Even asking that question leads to more questions, such as whether some (or any) people can be "rehabilitated," and what that means in terms of various crimes. It's an impossibly emotionally-charged issue, and unbiased data on recidivism and the effectiveness of various penal policies is very hard to come by.
Heck, just think of the word "penitentiary" and all it implies. It's a lockup, a prison, but the word inherently includes ideas of remorse and, hopefully, reform – with a few religious overtones thrown in just to make it more confusing. I don't think we can make much headway in discussing appropriate fates for monsters/humans until we figure out exactly what we'd be sentencing them to anyway.
Is facilitating child abuse and covering up for it also a "mental illness"?
Regarding the "monsters vs. mental health disorder" discussion and the related questions surrounding what should be done with pedophiles, one church denomination -- the Unitarian Universalist Association -- has an excellent resource for religious communities and child sexual abuse prevention. Here's the title and the link for this resource:
"Balancing Acts - Keeping Children Safe in Congregations" by Rev. Debra W. Haffner
http://www.uua.org/leaders/safecongregations/balancingacts/index.shtml
Debra Haffner's professional background before attending seminary was public health and sexuality education. She has an MPH and was the head of SIECUS - Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States - before becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister.
She was asked to author the "Balancing Acts" to serve as a resource to assist congregations in preventing child sexual abuse and to assist in safely integrating a registered sex offender into adult congregational life.
There are some surprising facts about child sexual abuse in this resource that I will paste into this reply:
==================================
Girls are primarily touched by men, while the boys are touched more often by women but also by men.
The risk to girls is greatest from adult men (63%), followed by adolescent males (28%).
The risk to boys is greatest from adolescent women (45%), followed by adolescent men (25%) and then older men (38%).
Forty percent of the offenders of children under the age of six were other juveniles under the age of 18. Sixteen percent of juvenile offenders were under the age of twelve.
There is a generally held perception that sex offenders are untreatable. Indeed, when I conducted interviews with congregations about their experience with this issue, I heard repeatedly that the majority of sex offenders will re-offend. And in several cases, congregations voted to completely exclude the offender from the faith community based on this incorrect assumption.
The problem is that it isn't true. The review of the literature for this monograph actually shows that with treatment, the majority of sex offenders will not recommit a sexual offense.
There are also other factors besides completing treatment that are believed to reduce the risk of re-offending. These include "realizing the enormity of what they have done, admitting their responsibility and the harm their sexual violence has caused; support from family and friends on release; establishment of a social network; avoidance of situations involving contact with children; and participation in ongoing treatment and agreement to monitoring."
A high-quality sexuality education program, such as Our Whole Lives (OWL), is one of the best methods for sexual abuse prevention (NOTE: OWL was jointly developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ in partnership with secular agencies like Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, and SIECUS).
Children who learn that their bodies are good, that their sexuality is a gift, how to make good decisions, and the language to communicate accurately and effectively about sexuality are also being prepared to respond appropriately when faced with abusive behaviors, to assert their right to control their own bodies, and to tell an adult if such behaviors occur.
==================================
Comprehensive age-appropriate sexuality education is one of the best preventive measures a congregation or community group can offer their children and youth. And a program like OWL can be taught with or without religious content (something to think about for the "Atheist Sunday School" programs that were in the news a few years ago and perhaps for programs like "Camp Quest" too).
More Catholic apologetics. Look at the number of people who try to handwave the whole thing away by "pointing out" that others do it, too.
This particular interaction with Poole during a deposition was particularly illuminating:
Those are the words of a monster. He may be a monster that needs help, but he's obviously a monster who does not want help. He's also still a free monster.
I found an interesting article about the Archdiocese of Portland's archbishop. What a clueless asshat.
I do not know of anyone here who is arguing that child molestation is somehow OK. I'm certainly not. Child rape and sexual abuse are horrific, they traumatise their victims for life, and they are absolutely not things we can tolerate in a civilised society. And we should do everything we possibly can to prevent this awful saga from ever happening again.
Nor am I in any way defending the Vatican. The bishops and church officials, who knew that some priests were molesting children yet decided to leave those priests in positions of power over children, are the real monsters here; and the real moral atrocity is the authoritarian system that allowed the rape and physical abuse of children to continue unchecked. The Vatican must be forced to change, and Ratzinger, along with the bishops who are known to have ordered cover-ups, should accept personal responsibility and resign immediately.
All I am saying is that the child-molesting priests are not "monsters". Yes, I understand that there is a difference between having an impulse and acting on that impulse. But not everyone has the same level of volitional control over their behaviour. Obviously, we need to keep known child-molesters in custody and away from children; no one is arguing with that. But we need to recognise that sex offending is, very often, a compulsion borne out of serious psychological disorders. And as some people have highlighted above, the evidence suggests that a high proportion of sex offenders can be treated. So I am simply suggesting that penal regimes for sex offenders should involve treatment, rather than a punitive approach, and that it is counterproductive to label them as "monsters".
Clerical pedophilia is aggravated by their very existence by allowing pedophilia by their general non-consequence of reaction.
We all recognize that pedophilia happens in any culture, in any socioeconomic level, in any place on planet Earth. Pedophilia happens. Period. It happens. Pedophilia happens across all lines. Again, it happens.
The basic struggle should be, "Why does this happen?" in order to understand how to prevent it. Labeling one "mentally ill" does not provide an excuse. Labeling anyone automatically takes the ultimate responsibility out of that individual's hands. "I did 'this' because of 'this', automatically implying that their "illness" is out of their personal control.
This is where the mind versus body argument really takes heat. We have a mind, we can think, we can reason. Unless we have a mind that is physically demonstrably deficient, i.e., through tangible CT scans or MRI scans or simple x-rays.
Our deficiency in being able to physically demonstrate a subjective (from both the examiner and the patient) aberrant behavior is in its infancy. Dr. Sam Harris has been trying to further this study, as evidenced through his interest in fMRI. While fMRI is still in its infancy, there is a field being developed with sincerely truly "scientific methods" being developed.
And all we're asking is for you to actually justify that. You still haven't.
How is one that commits monstrous acts not a monster? Is a thief not one who commits thievery? You yourself have said they have commited monstrous acts.
I also think you should read frog, Inc.'s post closely. If you want to be taken seriously, it would help to actually address the counter-arguments instead of just repeating your premise.
Cleaner?
"You ain't got no problem, Jules. I'm on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill them altar boys out and wait for Father Wolf who should be coming directly. "
Walton, sorry have to disagree, I don't see that there is anything counterproductive in calling anyone who has actively molested a child, rather than just feeling the compulsion to molest a child, a monster. If anything doing so reinforces that molesting kids is wrong, particularly to those who feel the compulsion but have not yet acted upon it. There's already a society based around this exact mindset, it's called the Catholic Church. It's not a good thing.
The moment anyone steps over the line between wanting to molest kids, and actively molesting kids, they're a monster. Plain and simple. Perhaps they can be treated, perhaps they can go back to only wanting to commit the act and not commiting it, the fact remains that they've commited a monsterous act, they're a monster, and in my mind they remain a monster.
Frankly if you lack the ability to not act upon compulsions then you should be locked away to protect society at large, and unless there is some magic guarantee that treatment actually works you should be treated with a high degree of suspicion indefinitely.
The RCC's credibility is nonexistent these days.
Does anyone still take them seriously?
One of my relatives is a Catholic. These days he is also a lay official in a Protestant church. Not going to even bother asking him how all that happened.
Cardinal Cormac has some thoughts on atheists. Atheism is the "greatest of evils" and atheists are subhuman. Cormac is also involved with the RCC's child rape problems.
He might have got all that a bit backwards.
There is something that is often missed in these discussions. More accurately, two somethings. One: the majority of pedophiles are decent enough people to stay the hell away from kids and not act on their urges. Two: most of the priests involved in this are not strictly pedophiles; they were predators who happened to pick on people who were powerless in relation to them. Some of them were into teenage boys, but mostly it was about abusing power imbalances to get their rocks off. That is the behavior of a flat-out monster.
Walton,
What do you think monster means? It seems to be something different from what I think it means.
Monsters are freaks. It is generally not a monster's own fault that he/she is a monster. They're typically born that way, or victims of circumstance. (Think of Frankenstein's monster or Quasimodo.)
You can and should pity a monster. That doesn't make a monster not a monster.
When it comes to psychological monsters, like sociopaths, the same applies. Something is generally organically wrong with their brains, and often they are victims of horrible upbringings.
It's clear that many of these abusive priests are basically sociopaths. They are freaks, and they are moral monsters, and the Catholic Church has systematically loosed them on unsuspecting and trusting people. That's just monstrous.
Not believing in Catholic-style free will, I gotta pity them. I even have to pity the Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes who have institutionalized and perpetuated monstrous abuses. They're generally a bunch of profoundly fucked up people.
That doesn't mean I won't call them monsters, because that is what they are. They are deranged, dangerous people.
I agree that the term is problematic, and can be dehumanizing. On the other hand, avoiding loaded language is not the right thing to do either---we should not use namby-pamby language about this sort of monstrous system. We should use the language of moral outrage because the continuing coverup and apologetics is itself monstrous.
If anything is monstrous---and some things are---this has to count. We should not let the Catholic Church off the hook for its monstrous behavior, at least until it shows that it's not monstrous by taking responsibility and showing believable remorse.
If this behaviour doesn't give the lie to salvation by faith, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, the saving grace of God, what does? What has catholic faith done to change the lives of these people: these sexual opportunists, these hypocritical authoritarians covering up dirty deeds? Christianity hasn't saved them from themselves, it hasn't saved their victims. All it has done is encourage them to lie to themselves.
Someone once said "After this manner therefore pray ye: '...And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil' ". Doesn't work, does it? We should be asking, "to the extent that people insist that they are guided by faith is it possible to regard them as responsible?"
If a paranoid schizophrenic commits a horrific murder while in the grip of a delusion and unable to control his or her actions, is he or she a "monster"? If a driver with an undiagnosed medical condition, such as narcolepsy, blanks out at the wheel and causes a horrible car accident in which innocent people die, is that driver a "monster"? There is a difference between committing monstrous acts, and being a monster.
Obviously, I'm not suggesting that the child-molesting priests were completely unable to control their behaviour: there's no evidence for that. As far as we know, none of them were insane (within the narrow legal definition of "insane" used by English and American courts) or unaware of what they were doing. But the difference is one of degree, not of kind. The desire to molest children is, in itself, a symptom of mental illness or psychiatric abnormality. And if, as a society, we paid more attention to mental health treatment, and gave mental healthcare the same level of priority that we give physical healthcare, I imagine that there would be far fewer instances of child molestation and other sex offences.
I see the Swedish Catholic bishop is dismissing the notion that celibacy increases the propensity for child abuse by noting that most abuse is done by non-(supposed)-celibates. Hand me the tinfoil hat, but the statistics fail seems awfully convenient - annoyingly but unsurprisingly the journo didn't call him on it.
He (the bishop) also says that near as he can tell, the scandal hasn't eroded Swedes' trust in the RCC. He, possibly unintentionally, suggests that the reason for this is that there hasn't been much trust to erode since the Reformation.
If someone is in the grip of a delusion that it's OK to rape children, and his boss knows about it, and his boss' boss ...
Re monsters:
The priests who can't (or won't) control themselves are Chaotic Evil. The ones who organise the cover-ups and apologetics for them are Lawful Evil.
The chicagotribune.com version of Katha Pollitt's column omits several sentences (naming names of pro-Church politicians and pro-choice/reform activists and groups, mostly) from the original text at The Nation.
Then the boss who knowingly tolerates it, and lets it carry on, is, indeed, a monster. I have consistently and clearly said on this thread that words like "monster", and similar language of condemnation, are richly deserved by the bishops and Vatican officials who knew that some of the priests under their command had a compulsion to molest children, yet allowed those priests to remain in positions of power over children. Those people are the real monsters here. I'm not arguing with that.
Walton - I wouldnt categorize the narcoleptic driver as having commited a monstrous act (If they knew they were narcoleptic I'd categorize them as morons, if they didn't then clearly the accident is horrific, but not monstrous)
The desire to molest children doesn't make the priests monsterous.
The act of molesting children makes them so.
As far as I have seen, it is not that difficult to get mental healthcare of some form or another if you go out and seek it, switching the blame to society for not providing healthcare seems a lot more repellant to me than labelling child molestors as monsters.
beechnut wrote:
Nothing.
Unfalsifiability is a feature not a bug where dogma is concerned.
But how can they be monsters, clearly they have an ingrained compulsion to protect the church (probably put there by countless years of institutionalized brainwashing). They're just mentally ill, not monsters. Although what they did was monsterous.
Right?
Sorry, PZ. No irrelevant details car ruin my wafers!
Sorry if this isn't the most lucid thing I've ever written, but I'm dealing with a cold today.
I'm divided on the "mentally ill vs. monster" issue. As a victim of childhood physical and mental abuse at the hands of a parent, I find the use of the term 'monster' to institute a false dichotomy. Many of the acts my father committed against my mother and my sisters and I could easily be called 'monstrous'. But is he a monster? I guess that would make my grandfather and grandmother, and their parents, all the way back to whoever started the cycle.
But where does that leave me? As a victim who carries the scars and thus the seeds of such behaviour, I used to fear that I'd also become monstrous. Now, I've never been physically violent, but regular readers here know how well I can be verbally cruel, and that's something I'm still working on. And I've taken concrete steps over the course of my life to identify my psychological issues so as to reduce the likelihood that I'll act out on them. (And for the record, I think most, if not all, of my friends, family, and partners would describe me as a pretty nice, normal, non-abusive guy in RL.) But I've lapsed on occasion and hurt people in ways I'm not proud of. So if I'm not a monster then the line of demarcation is one of systemic behaviour. I've had lapses, but my dad's behaviour was systemic (or at least more than mine).
Nonetheless, I've described my father and his behaviour in terms far worse than 'monster' or 'monstrous', and I understand the utility in venting. (I think it's honest and accurate to think of him as cowardly, in some respects.) But overall I find it much more useful for me personally to view him at one point on a spectrum, myself on another, and this theoretical mentally-healthy ideal human at the end. But as for some magical line, like the skunk line on a cribbage board, that separates the monsters from the normal people, I don't know where that is. Perhaps, like Justice Potter Stewart, I can't define it but "I know it when I see it."
*As far as my sisters and I can consciously recall, there was no sexual abuse, although there were/are signs that something wasn't quite right in that regard either. So, he wasn't a monster that way. But as for the mental/physical stuff, yeah. That was some bad shit, alright.
I suggested reading frog Inc.'s #59. You should also read Paul W.*'s 74. They are highly relevant. My answer is yes. This doesn't mean I do not pity them, or think they deserve help. But they are a "monster".
If a driver with an undiagnosed medical condition, such as narcolepsy, blanks out at the wheel and causes a horrible car accident in which innocent people die, is that driver a "monster"?
No. Losing control of one's car is not "monstrous" by any stretch. If it was negligence that led to the event, there would be an argument to call it monstrous I suppose. But the "monstrous event" would be negligently driving under conditions where you could reasonably expect to lose consciousness and cause an accident, not causing the accident itself. But since you specify an undiagnosed condition, I don't think it's a good example.
There is a difference between committing monstrous acts, and being a monster.
Please, demonstrate.
I don't understand how you can't classify them as monsters, surely if you were aware that you are a pedophile or sexually attracted to children then the priesthood is not a good job for you. If you didn't know that you were a pedophile and you become a priest and then molest a child then surely the moral thing to do is to come forward. What I want to know is how people can still hold the church as some kind of moral authority after it has been complicit in the cover up?
Just another facet of the massive hypocrisy that is religion.
Walton,
Maybe. It depends.
No.
When we talk about mentally fucked-up people as monsters, we generally mean that they're morally fucked up---their moral sense is dangerously deranged.
So, for example, we're very likely to call a psychopath like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy a monster, while we wouldn't call a schizoid a monster for killing people because she thinks people are trying to kill her. Jeffrey and Ted are monsters, and she's merely crazy.
But we might call a paranoid schizophrenic a monster, if for example she's deluded into thinking that she's a wrathful God who has the moral right to smite people, and goes around doing that sort of thing.
In that case, we'd say that her psychotic illness caused or contributed to her monstrousness. Maybe she can't help it, and it's all down to bad genetics and resulting brain mis-wiring, but she's a monster. That just explains how she came to be a monster.
IMHO of the abusive priests and their superiors who institutionalized child rape are monsters in much the same sense.
The Catholic Church has been very dysfunctional, and has selected an undue proportion of dysfunctional people for the priesthood, and done things that made them even more dysfunctional, to the point that a bunch of them have done monstrous things and been unable to recognize and admit that they are monstrous.
We can explore the causes of that, and show how it all boils down to genetics, emergent social dysfunction, and bad potty training, but that doesn't make the result not monstrous, or the people involved not monsters.
The Pope and most of the bishops are monsters. They knowingly committed great moral evils, fostering child-raping monsters, and mostly rationalized it away. They're still doing it, rather than taking serious moral responsibility and showing real remorse.
Monster is a great word for these dangerous and destructive sick fucks.
As requested in the Endless Thread:
Walton,
fuck off and get back to work.
heh :-)
A monster is someone who commits monstruous acts. Those are acts that are so harmful that no sane person would consider them tolerable.
I think there is no doubt that child rape is sufficiently harmful to the child to be considered monstruous.
I don't want to mix this with pedophilia. A pedophile who hasn't committed any monstruous act, no child rape, isn't a monster. A child rapist is a monster.
Well, the thing about the Käßmann resignation was not only her well above limit drunk driving through a red light, but also that some time before she had called for more responsibility while operating a vehicle, because many people have no idea what kind of power they're dealing with, especially when driving drunk or under the influence of other drugs. And she had also proclaimed that she gave up alcohol for Lent and she was caught on 20 February which was during Lent. So, possibly, if she had not made those two statements before, she might have gotten away with an apology but as it is, her credibility was undermined and she did the only thing she could have done if she wanted to avoid becoming the butt of a zillion jokes.
BTW, I just saw that she was sentenced to 30 Tagessätze (which means a financial punishment based on income, 30 would approximate a whole month's income) and her driver's license was revoked with a 9 months ban on re-applying for one.
The worst thing for me was how the Protestant Church said they stood firmly behind Käßmann as if nothing potentially life-threatening had happened. And also how the issue suddenly became a sexist problem. Not that I have any reverence for the church in any case, but I don't think that a man could have kept his moral authority and credibility intact after a similar incident with the statements about driving responsibly and no alcohol during Lent. It makes no difference to me which gender the culpable party has.
Call paedophiles monsters if it makes you feel better but bear in mind that by creating such an atmosphere of hate you are probably stopping some people who might otherwise come forward for help from doing so.
But if we-as-a-society don't call out people as "monsters", doesn't that make it easier for them to justify monstrous behavior?
If we say that paedophiles are just victims of a compulsion, then what's to stop one from saying, "Eh, I'm a child molester, but Jack is an alcoholic, and Bob's wife left him because he went bowling every single night. I'm no worse than either of them, and they're both semi-respected members of the community."
So society has an obligation to say, "Well, compulsively harmful behavior is always bad. But there are degrees of badness: We can tolerate excessive bowling, but we strongly condemn excessive drinking, and we say that molesting children is one of maybe a half-dozen crimes that are completely beyond-the-pale."
"Monster" is just shorthand for "someone who commits or knowingly enables one of those half-dozen crimes." I don't have a problem with that, but would you like us to use a different word instead?
There are lots of people calling for withdrawal of recognition of the Vatican's status as a nation-state, the Pope's status as head of state, etc.
Wouldn't it be better to maintain that recognition - and to require the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the bishops themselves, and all other politically-active Church personnel to register themselves as foreign agents and submit regular reports on their political undertakings, as legally required?
Then we could start negotiations for a treaty facilitating the extradition of Cardinal (Out)Law.
negentropyeater:
I'd qualify this a bit. Relatively normal people do monstrous things occasionally, under weird circumstances, but eventually understand that they were monstrous, regret them, and don't do them again.
Somebody who never regrets doing monstrous things, and keeps doing them, is more of a monster. (Rather than being a more or less normal person who did something monstrous during a temporary lapse. But arguably, the person was a monster during that lapse, and is a former monster once they've reformed. )
And that's why the word "monster" is the right word for a lot of these priests, and for their superiors all the way up to the Popes, who covered up and knowingly perpetuated their behavior.
They kept doing it. They're still doing it---they're still minimizing their monstrous behavior, and pretending to be the moral leaders of a billion people.
That's just monstrous, and we should keep saying so as long as those dangerous sick fucks are still pretending not to be dangerous sick fucks, and holding onto their positions of power and authority.
Agreed, except that I believe in temporary insanity---that somebody might do something monstrous once and change, such that it's rather less appropriate to call them a monster than if it's an enduring trait. (E.g., somebody who rapes once but exhibits real remorse and would never do it again is literally "a rapist," but not in the same very strong sense as somebody who doesn't feel remorse and would do it again.) That's a grey area, though---somebody may be a monster in the sense of having a horrible compulsion, but not a monster in the sense of recognizing that it's wrong, and taking steps to avoid temptation.
Many of the people we're talking about are just not in the gray area---they've shown over decades that they're enduringly fucked up. That includes the Pope, who still Doesn't Get It, or cynically pretends not to and tries to talk it away.
(Calling it "petty gossip", and vowing to bravely fight on? That's just monstrous.)
Yes. "Offender" and "criminal" are perfectly adequate functional terms to describe people in that category. I agree with the rest of your post, and I agree that child molestation is one of the worst crimes that any human being can commit. But why do we need to describe them as "monsters"?
Walton, another voice hear for "take your concern elsewhere". These people are indeed (literally, "in deed") monsters. "Monstrous acts" are committed by monsters, by definition. Examples of terrible accidents could be "horrific" but if the same is committed willfully become "monstrous". And the "unable to control their impulses" is not acceptable either; that too is an aspect of a "monster". Humanity is controlling our impulses.
Also, calling them monsters is not exclusive of wanting them to receive the medical treatment they require.
Also worth looking at:
"Eyewitness to Murder: Irene Favel, survivor of Muscowequan Catholic residential school in Lestock, Saskatchewan, describes seeing a newborn baby thrown alive into a furnace at that school by a priest in 1944."
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CReISnQDbBE&feature=player_embedded
Anyone who disagrees with the term "monster" for a pedophile is grossly mistaken.
I found an easy definition on dictionary.com which follows:
monster - 8 dictionary results
mon·ster [mon-ster] Show IPA
–noun
1.a legendary animal combining features of animal and human form or having the forms of various animals in combination, as a centaur, griffin, or sphinx.
2.any creature so ugly or monstrous as to frighten people.
3.any animal or human grotesquely deviating from the normal shape, behavior, or character.
4.a person who excites horror by wickedness, cruelty, etc.
5.any animal or thing huge in size.
6.Biology.
a.an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure, as from marked malformation or the absence of certain parts or organs.
b.a grossly anomalous fetus or infant, esp. one that is not viable.
7.anything unnatural or monstrous.
Ok. Take a look at number 4. Please. Read it. The horrors a pedophile create in a child's life cannot be ignored.
Any person can be a monster. And any human being who has experienced pain from said monster would agree. I find solace in stories that show abused children becoming strong, and not succumbing to the pain... if these men were abused themselves, then even more shame on them. It is not an acceptable excuse. Nothing is. We should all grow from misfortune and strengthen ourselves from things that are out of our control.
The post from : Walton, Liberal Extremist Dumpling of Awesome... I am aiming this post at you.
Walton:
Because that's what we call people who aren't just "offenders," e.g., habitual loiterers, or "criminals" (e.g., pickpockets).
Just calling them "offenders" or "criminals" grossly understates the gravity of what they've done, and the kind of enduring moral warpedness they've exhibited, which is simply monstrous.
We don't have to call Hitler and his especially warped henchmen monsters, but we should, because they were.
Likewise we shouldn't understate the seriousness of child rape, especially if it's habitual.
And we really shouldn't understate the monstrousness of an international conspiracy that knowingly fostered child rape on a massive scale for decades, and is still covering it up and rationalizing it, to this day.
Yes. "Offender" and "criminal" are perfectly adequate functional terms to describe people in that category.
Those don't work for me; they're too broad. "Criminal" encompasses garden-variety stuff like shoplifting and vandalism. "Felon" is a lot better, but it still doesn't quite work for this sort of crime. We're looking for a word that means something like "the very worst kind of felon".
I wonder how many of these priests are the products of Catholic schools/children's homes in which child abuse was so commonplace as to constitute "normal" behaviour by authority figures?
Pope
I worry that it's the opposite. There's something safe about calling someone else a monster when they take some behaviour, thought process, ideology, etc. to an extreme. It's distancing; you and I clearly aren't monsters, only monsters are monsters, like some other species. Like the Nazis. They were monsters, whereas you and I might merely dislike Jews, blacks, fans of the rival football team, members of that other frat, or people who shop at Walmart rather than Target. "I mean, yeah, I hassled homos and ethnics with the rest of the team throughout high school, but I'm no Nazi. Sure, we punched up a few kids once in awhile, but who didn't? We didn't mean no harm. We weren't monsters."
I worry that there's no opportunity for learning from the behaviour of 'monsters'. It makes it harder for us to identify with the perpetrators and learn how we can prevent ourselves from becoming like them.
As I noted above, it creates a false dichotomy, that of 'us' and 'them'.
Impossible. I mean, if they were raised by us flakey liberals without an objective, unchanging, God-given sense of right and wrong, then I could see how abuse might become so systematic as to be habituated.
But these are religious people we're talking about. The kind whose morality hasn't changed since 4004 BC.
You people making excuses for people take small children away to secluded cabins and forcing your dick into their bleeding assholes then threaten and abuse them into years of silence blaming them the whole way need STFU. Lying about it, moving to another area, and preying on people again and again.
Oh the poor rapists, he just can't *control* himself. Have some mercy on him!!!
GDIAF rape apologists.
Comparing them to schizophrenics is disgusting. These are not acts of passion, these are premeditated predation on victims.
Fucking idiots.
Who needs terms for these people other than "child-rapists" and "child-molestors"?
Anything else, such as "monster","criminal" etc just obscures the horror.
Ol'Greg, I am certainly not a "rape apologist". I hope you know by now, from my comments in other previous threads, that I totally condemn rape, in all circumstances, and would never make excuses for it. I'm sorry that I evidently created the wrong impression on that point.
And I absolutely didn't intend to compare rapists to schizophrenics. I only mentioned schizophrenia in the context of illustrating the distinction between "committing monstrous acts" and "being a monster". Looking back, I realise I didn't communicate this very well, though, and I take full responsibility for that.
All I can do is apologise for my insensitive comments, and hope that you understand that I am not a rape apologist and that I completely oppose and condemn rape in all circumstances.
I checked in to find out what prople were saying about this - and because as a Canadian, I feel the associative guilt from the actions of others.
I encountered Walton. and the rest of the responses to him. Walton, you have become captain of apologetics. Yes, I looked it up. You have been doing it on purpose. It's an attention getting device. Stop it.
And to all other posters - perhaps if Walton were ignored he would run out of things to say.
On the main topic - while the abusers may be ill rather than monstrous, their actions were indeed monstrous - and I find the covering up more monstrous yet.
The child raping horror of the Catholic Church (I do not wish to pick on the Catholics unfairly; I do not doubt that all Churches, and indeed all religions, have equally grotesque skeltons in their repective closets) is further compounded by hearing Pope Palpatine and his lackeys consistantly decrying the accounts of the church's innumerable victims as 'idle chatter', and going on to say that the church will not be 'intimidated' by such.
This provides further proof that the church concerns itself only with protecting its own status, wealth and power in society and cares not a whit for the suffering of the children whose rape it has directly facilitated.
The entire, rotten edifice makes me sick to the pit of my stomach.
'Skeltons'? Sorry, that should be 'skeletons'.
Canuck, you know nothing about me or my history here, and yet you come in and make a sweeping, hurtful statement.
Then at that moment, when they were committing those acts, they were monsters. Certainly to whoever was on the receiving end of those monstrous acts, they were monsters.
"Human" and "monster" are not exclusive categories. Being one does not imply that you can not be the other.
Ring Tailed Lemurian wrote:
We're not talking about just the rapists and molestators, but also about the aiders and abetters.
That said, I studiously avoid commenting on the appropriateness of the "M" word.
Ugh, Walton... just go do your work already. I don't hate you, I just have a very low tolerance for discursive abstraction and the poor moral equivalence it enables.
I just can't believe people are quibbling over the appropriateness of a fucking word.
Well, all I can say, again, is that I'm really sorry. Sometimes I can be an insensitive ass, and I think this was one of those times.
I'll stop posting on this thread, and this topic, now.
Really?
Well, for an example of how the use of an emotion-laden word provided justification for apologists, see the discussion as to whether or not waterboarding constitutes 'torture'. See, 'waterboarding' is just a way of getting information from recalcitrant prisoners. But 'torture', well, torture is monstrous. We don't do that.
Even more CatholicTM news:
http://www.france24.com/en/20100405-vatican-deputy-led-cover-us-abuse-c…
lol. While you're at it make me a sandwich.
If there were a god and he gave a damn for his creation, he'd stop this shit.
I had a low opinion of the Catholic church and it got much lower.
I'd like to repeat something that BrianX says in #73:
This seems very likely to me: they're men who, suffering already from a twisted, perverse idea of sex, have got drunk on power. But with so much obfuscation and lies going on, who's going to do a real study?
I grew up Catholic in Spain. Sometimes, when I read comments here from non Catholics, it seems to me that there are a few things they don't grasp (as it undoubtedly happens to me with, for instance, Mormons). I'm not referring now to bizarre points of dogma, but to the aura, prestige, and reverence that Catholic priests are used to getting.
No wonder the hierarchy acts all offended and petulant now. For example: these days, it seemed that many Catholics were expectant to see what the pope would say on Easter. Well, he didn't say anything about pedophilia (he rambled about abortion, I believe -- the nerve!). People sighed as if the oracle had failed to deliver this time, but maybe later he'll deign to…
(Horrible, evil man, you owe so many people an explanation, your mouth should be dry with apologising! Not to mention that you probably ought to appear before a jury!)
This atmosphere intensifies the foulness of the crimes. The case of the poor kid that opens the article of The Stranger is atrocious. She must have been so vulnerable, it hurts. (And yet victims like her will be called "post-pubescent" or "seducers" by these criminals and their abetters.)
Sorry for mangling italics.
I've read the entire thread and I do have an objection to describing priestly child-rapists as "monsters".
As someone who has worked with abused people, accurate, non-metaphorical language is an integral part of the best therapy AND the best prevention for and of abuse.
I'll bring up one anecdote: a seven-year-old boy for over a year complained that his grandfather was always "playing with my toy"; he was laughed at and ignored until someone cottoned on to the fact that his parents had taught him to refer to his penis as his "toy." The boy tried over and over again to report the abuse, but could not due to the limitations of the language his parents had given him.
This connects to priestly (and teacherly, and scoutmasterly, ad infinitum) abuse, when, in the course of treatment, victims say, "But he didn't look or act like a 'monster'!" Priests, scoutmasters, and schoolteachers are often good-looking, well-dressed, and well-spoken; the sobriquet "monster" brings to mind hairy, slobbering, filthy, deformed, frightening figures. As much as it makes people feel righteous and provides an outlet for anger, such language as "monster" actually obscures the crimes.
Children need to know 1) the names of all parts of the male and female body, 2) the specific actions or activities appropriate for each part, and 3) the names of forbidden actions.
I have no problem calling these people what they are: child rapists. And that is the most appropriate, exact, non-arguable, and EFFECTIVE name for them. Note please the long, long argument about the use of "monster", and how that has diluted the discussion of the actual rape of children.
Personally, I feel that the "monster" term applies far more to the Catholic hierarchy who by their actions had an active part in THOUSANDS of child-rapes over decades, far more rapes than any one of the child-raping priests could actually commit.
I've skimmed the monster argument, and I'm struggling with what I see as a complexity that the very visceral nature of the subject makes it difficult to get at.
First, let me be crystal clear: The rape of a child is inexcusably horrific, in each and every case. It's worth noting that not everything that falls under the broad umbrella of sexual abuse is quite as viscerally horrific as the scenario Ol' Greg alludes to (@106), but even the "mildest" forms of sexual exploitation of children by adults are fundamentally indefensible (and I doubt there's really any disagreement here about that, however it might appear otherwise).
Individuals may commit these acts because they are simply evil people, or they may be suffering from a mental defect that renders them incapable of behaving otherwise; that distinction affects how the law treats them, and may affect how some people react to them, but nothing mitigates the nature of their acts. If anyone wants to call them monsters, I don't see how I can argue the point.
However... when we look beyond the individual horrific acts to the pattern of child sexual abuse, we see more than simply evil acts that can be sufficiently responded to by horror and outrage; we see a social problem that demands, beyond a visceral response, solutions... and here's where saying monster! might get in the way:
This. As Brownian goes on to say (if I'm understanding correctly), there's a real risk that monsterizing the perpetrators makes us think of them as something entirely separate from ourselves, rather than part of a fabric of society that needs repair. I worry that simply writing off abusers and the organization that harbors and enables them as evil is too easy: It preempts the larger search for root causes, and takes the whole problem out of the realm of problem solving.
Whatever the perpetrators are, they're not Martians. They are, in some sense, a part of the whole that is us; along with unequivocally denouncing their acts, we need also to be brave enough to look at human society and think about what makes whole patterns of such acts possible in the first place. I fear that "those people over there are just bad" isn't a sufficient answer, however true it may be.
Thank you #121.
People who seek power in order to abuse it. Who lord their position of authority over others in order to find weak victims to prey on. Who are considered, despite it, closer to God.
Fuck that noise.
Are they humans? Yes, but they suck at it a lot worse than most and human.
Get rid of them? Get rid of unquestioned power. That's the social problem they're suffering from. They're suffering from privilege, power, authority and too much respect.
Haven't read all the posts yet, so I hope I'm not repeating something, but I'd like to point out that the US has ignored the "head of state" immunity concept in recent history -- Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega to name a couple. Not that I agree with either of those attacks, but there is no lack of historical precedent for using force against a head of state who has gone beyond the pale in our government's estimation.
That said, the chances are virtually nil that the US would prosecute the pope. I would like to see some countries bar him from entry, or threaten arrest if he does enter. I could see that happening. There is also nothing to prevent the prosecution of any of his underlings, which has occurred, but not nearly on the scale we and the victims need.
I'd love to see Italy storm the Vatican, but we will most probably have to settle for civil suits and prosecution of people who were not the ringleaders. It's politically sensitive, doncha know. It's also rage-inducing that we seem to be having a (mostly) civilized dialog with people who, at the very least, enable child-rape.
Yes we can, and yes we should.
Catholics all over the world, right now, if they had a shred of morality in them should be rushing out of the Catholic church in a stampede.
I'm not suggesting they become atheists, although that would be nice. They should, however, stop supporting the Catholic hierarchy by their continued patronage. They could join any of a zillion other denominations. They could start a new Catholic church. There's plenty they could do.
Whatever they do, it should lead directly to the demise of what we now call the Catholic church, because that organization really does deserve to shrivel up in shame.
pistoreyu #121
Having been raised as a Catholic I know what pistoreyu is referring to. We had a priest at my parish who was as gay as the 1890s.* I knew him in the 1950s and 1960s and, while there was casual but strong homophobia evident among most parishioners nobody said much if anything about this priest's homosexuality. It just wasn't done to ridicule, mock or condemn a priest. He was god's spokesman, deriding a priest was deriding god.
It's because of that attitude that priests were able to get away with child rape for years. It wasn't just the bishops protecting the priests, but the laity as well. Everyone knew priests didn't do that sort of thing. It wasn't until fairly recently that people realized that some priests did do that sort of thing.
*I strongly suspect he became a priest because the Church condemned homosexual acts as sinful and, as a celibate, he would not be led into temptation. Certainly there were no rumors that he was anything but celibate.
IIRC, such a study was commissioned by the Catholic Church itself years ago, and they mostly ignored the review panel's conclusions and blamed everything on Those Evil Homosexuals. (Also IIRC, the study was restricted to the U.S., and the Church made it sound like a uniquely American problem, although the report didn't say that, and it should have been obvious that similar concerns would likely apply elsewhere.)
The report said that the problem wasn't particularly about homosexuals, but about sex and power, and in particular about a bunch of Mama's boys from generations past, some gay, some more or less asexual, and many confused about their identities in multiple way. (And about a lack of openness and a tendency to cover things up rather than fix them.)
Decades ago, many of the guys who went into the priesthood had mothers who wanted fervently to have a son who was a priest, and they either internalized that or gave in to pressure from their mothers. (In those days, lots of people really did respect priests as though they were super-special people. Women couldn't become priests, but their sons could.)
The celibate priesthood was particularly appealing to guys who were gay but the closet or in denial, or asexual, or scared of women, or for some other reason pessimistic about having normal romantic and sexual relationships with women. It gives cover to guys who don't make it with women, or don't expect to, or whatever. (Many of whom find out that they really do want sex after they become priests, and find some way to get it.)
Given that sort of bias on the inputs, it's not surprising that you'd end up with a significant percentage of priests who are insecure and/or narcissistic, and haven't worked through their identity sexuality issues, and end up abusing their positions to extract sex from whoever's powerless and available---often boys, e.g., altar boys, young seminarians, etc.
But of course the Church blames it on anything and everything except the priestly celibacy requirement, or gays being closeted, or the Church's authoritarianism, or its emphasis on secrecy and protecting its image at all costs. Rather than institute real checks and balances, they'll just have a witch hunt for gays in seminaries, blame it all on secular culture, etc.
My emotional reaction is the same as everyone else(maybe more vehement--I was molested when I was a child), but the above is quoted for TRUTH. Not monsters. Humans. Very fucked up humans.
Sympathize? No. My sympathy is for their victims. But demonize, pretend they aren't human? No.
@ 107. Actually, I think adding 'criminal' to the phrase 'child-molesting priest' would be a good thing.
Phrases like 'convicted child-rapist priest' or 'convicted accessory-to-rape archbishop' would be even better to read.
The attitude that these people are out of reach of the criminal court system needs to be changed. We have to keep working away at this cloak of automatic deference and respect.
Paul W, that blame-shifting report sounds reminiscent of the Soviet Union's long denial of any AIDS problem, because homosexuality (and only gays get AIDS, don'tcha know) was dismissed as only being a "problem" of degenerate capitalist society. It wouldn't surprise me if the church was taking its p.r. tips from the Politburo.
Ol'Greg:
Indeed. They are intoxicated with those. I was speaking before about reverence. We can see it whenever the pope or another religious authority appears in a photo with other people; most of these look awestruck and starry-eyed. Bishops get their rings routinely kissed. I remember having foamed at the mouth a few years ago when a certain minister of the Interior (a very big position in Spanish cabinets) went to the Vatican in a black lacy mantilla and insinuated the gesture of kneeling before the pope. Argh.
But I forgot another crucial emotion -- fear. Maybe I did so because Spain has changed quite a lot during the last few years, at least outwardly, but of course a lot of the power of the Church has been built on terror. They wielded their power scaring people either with the afterlife or with dire social consequences. This last threat is not serious in my country any more.
Yet I don't think we should be confident. I tend to remind myself or my friends, whenever anybody waxes lyrical about Catholic artistry or history, or the really good Catholics that do exist, about the current situation in Latin America or the Philippines, historically so linked to us. If the Church hierarchy is somewhat meeker in Spain nowadays, is because they can't crush us as they used to. Wherever they can, they certainly do.
From The Stranger as well, Dan Savage on pedophiles.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=3347526
Thanks Hairhead @ #123, and Bill Dauphin, @ #124. And yes, Bill, you interpreted me correctly.
And I hope that nothing I've written is taken to mean that people shouldn't be angry at both the perpetrators or their abettors for their crimes.
But I think Ol'Greg hints at the answer:
When the Pope can stand there in his gilded robes and decry material greed and is not immediately pelted with every sub-standard tomato in Rome, then we have a problem.
#114
I was posting in reference to the tangental topic started by Walton* (which has, unfortunately, dominated this thread since). He was specifically speaking of whether it is proper/helpful/whatever to refer to the perpetrators (not the aiders and abetters) as monsters, or not.
Monsters make me think of something like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or something. Every time I write, speak, or think, about the perpetrators I'd rather do it by refering to the actual crime. It keeps it clear in my head exactly what they are - child-rapists. What could be worse? Any other term obscures the foulness of their behaviour.
PZ used the word monster only once, every other time he described them by their crimes. It seemed to me we had gone on a pointless digression.
More importantly, we have the Aider And Abetter In Chief gracing England's green and pleasant land later this year, and I'm now definitely going to do my bit to spoil his visit. Sign petitions, protest, whatever. This deliberate targeting of isolated native communities is the last straw.
* Walton, you are so going to regret making yourself a hostage to fortune by asking people, whenever they see you posting, to tell you to fuck off and get back to work. I doubt that people will ever stop doing it.
FU&GBTW!
What we need is a fat old pope-sized condom that he can be wrapped in. I hope he's not allergic to latex.
If I thought Freud was anything but a fraud I'd say that "FU&GBTW" must have been a Freudian slip.
FY&GBTW, of course.
steve (@134):
Thanks for that link. I saw that same Dan Savage column in our local alternative weekly paper a few weeks ago, and even referred to it in another thread here recently. I didn't link it, though (I was posting from work, and didn't want to be Googling "pedophile"), so I'm glad you did.
I have a sub-subconcious
FO%GBTW
:)
RTL (@136 & 138):
FO&GBTW, maybe? ;^)
Unfortunately, it seems to actually thrive on shame.
Bill, wait till you see 140.... :)
I have also mislaid my reading glasses.
Ring Tailed Lemurian wrote:
That'd depend on how your personal outrageometer is configured, but do you really want me to try and think up examples?
I remember, as a child, thinking that there were good guys and then there were bad guys. Black and white thinking. It was the sheriff's job to go out and bring the bad guys back to the jail, or shoot them. Cowboy movies might have had something to do with it.
This is simplistic thinking, where we define away the problem so that we are in the favourable part of 'us' and 'them'. Nobody is pure white. At various times and in various places, each of us is tempted to put ourselves first and take advantage, to the detriment of others. It helps, I find, to think of the consequences to the other people, to empathise with them.
If the Golden Rule works so well for atheists, shouldn't it work better for Believers and even better for Priests?
I understand that pedophilia is a sickness - doesn't excuse it but I do understand that. But what word besides "monster" applies to otherwise presumably sane people who cover up for and enable pedophiles?
The essence of "monster" is recognizable humanity twisted into a brutal, evil form. A wolf isn't a monster, but the Wolfman is. And there's no rule that says a monster can't be a tortured soul; the pedophile priests are monstrous in that sense as their bishops and cardinals are in every sense.
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I live in Japan and I've been asleep.
amphiox @32 and everyone following involved in the semantic debate:
I am invloved in fighting for prison reform, not because of excessive sympathy for people who do bad things but because I want to do whatever it takes to reduce the numbers of future victims. Evidence has shown time and time again that the only way to do that is with kindness and, as far as possible, help. It is very difficult to get support for that attitude in the general populace because people see all criminals as somehow different to themsleves and therefore not deserving of mercy (fantastic blog post from a serving British lifer on why that is wrong headed).
Names have power and, while you may be able to hold in your head the idea that someone can be both a human being deserving of compassion and a monster, the vast majority seem unable to perform such mental gymnastics. Such labels become exceedingly unhelpful when they reinforce the idea that paedophiles are "other" and prevent us doing the things that would really change the situation for the better.
Semantics are important.
Richard Wolford @34 &51
Don't you see how contradictory that all is? First, if you withdraw compassion and mercy once someone acts on their urge, you withdraw help from everyone who only realized they had a problem after they lost control - this may well be almost everyone. Second, paedophilia is such a taboo subject and people who admit to it are so reviled that those fighting it will never admit to it because of fear of reprisals; the only way to show them that is not the case is to show we are capable of acting with compassion towards people like them who have abused children, however repellent we may find their acts. Third, would you withdraw treatment from a schizoohrenic who, because of their dillusions, has killed a person? If not, why would you withdraw treatment from a paedophile? You don't get to accept it is a mental illness untill they loose control of their urges and then claim that somehow they should have been able to stop themselves. In illness is an illness or it isn't.
Past victims must be given all the support, care and treatment we can possibly manage as a society but, if their wishes put others at risk of future harm, then society must have the stones to stand up and say no to them. It isn't THE victim that is more important; it is ALL victims. Sometimes treating the abuser well against the wishes of their victim is the right thing to do.
Paul @40
See above RE: use of the term "monster" and why the did act upon it/did not is an unhelpful distinction.
My bad. I consider our (I'm from the UK, but the US system is just as bad and perhaps worse) justice system to be based solely on revenge and so I use it as a short cut for "justice" and forget that I need to explain that position. There is absolutley no meaningful rehabilitation in prisons, we lock people up for a bit to soothe their victims and the ravening Daily Mail-reading, Fox news-watching masses, and then we cut them loose again. While they are inside they are teated disgracefully (and if you are one of the many who believe the press when they say prison is cushy: do some research), become convinced (rightly so) that society has no interest in, or use for them and then they are introduced to all the people already caught in the system. Then wonder why they no longer feel any responsibility to society and reoffend! If we actually provided them with the tools to improve themselves, recidivism for all crimes would plummet, but that's a very hard sell to the rest of society because of the aforementioned view of all criminals as different in some way.
All that said, paedophilia is a different case, and I tend to think there are poeple who cannot be helped. However, locking up those who can be for the rest of their lives because of something they did when they were mentally ill is, in my view, morally wrong. It is also unhelpful in the long term because their is no motivation to engage in the process of change if it isn't going to get you released anyway and there is no motivation to admit to your urges if it's just going to get you locked up for the rest of your life with no hope of release. It is actually better for everyone if we engage with these people and try to get them back into society, although that may not be possible for all. Quaker circles of support and accountability do a wonderful job providing released sex offenders with a network of people availble 24/7 for support if they feel like they are slipping. It is a far better solution for everyone than locking them up for ever.
For those who cannot be helped, punishment isn't the solution either. If we have accepted they cannot be helped then there is no justification for punishing them and if we do, it can ONLY be for reasons of revenge. Under those circumstances, a secure but comfortable hospital seems the best place.
Ol'Greg @55
I agree, releasing them back into society untreated and unsupported results in more victims and is the worst possible solution. That doesn't stop them being normal people (as if there is any such thing as normal), and if you want to reduce the number of future victims you say are so important, then mercy and compassion is the only way. As I said above, locking them up forever doesn't solve the problem, it just pushes the currently undiscovered abusers futher underground.
If you could present me with evidence that excecuting paedophiles reduced the occurence of child rape, I'd support you. Unfortunately (or fortunately), all the evidence shows that is not the case.
I think that will do for now! I haven't read all the way down, but I doubt many of the other comments answering mine raise any new points, I'm sorry if I'm repeating answers made by others later on.
I see some of the point's Ellie is making.
However, my concern is just how institutionalised this behaviour looks. Not just covering it up, but allowing these individuals to decimate successive communities.
Surely, the thing to do would be to defrock the offenders at the time, and thus ridding the Church of these perpetrators. However, it would appear the Church was more concerned with safeguarding it's own image.
The acts these men committed where evil. That the Church turn away from these crimes is as much an evil.
Y.B. Yeats come to mind:
"...The best lack all conviction, while the worst,
Are full of passionate intensity."
The passion of Christ indeed.
The Church sets itself up as moral arbiter for the human species. And yet, passively condones the abuse of thousands of men, women and children across the world over decades.
If a global corporation allowed it's employee's to act in such a manner the various law enforcement authorities and governments would act to shut them down. The outrage and horror would be universal.
Why give the Church such a privileged position? Time for the secular authorities to step in, clearly "self regulation" has failed and has down for decades.
Tangential, but I just saw a press report* to the effect that the Catholic ex-bishop of Trondheim, Norway, has admitted to sexual abuse of a choirboy. Apparently the higher ups learnt of this last year and forced him to resign, citing "difficulties of cooperation".
* http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/fler-overgrepp-inom-katolska-kyrkan-i-… - no link in English I'm afraid
First of all we're talking about calling them a name that describes one's emotional contempt for monstrous actions.
Secondly, I disagree that child-rapist describes that contempt. Child-rapist is not a pejorative. It is simply a statement of fact.
Third, you will never have full cooperation from sociopaths. Quit pretending all child rapists are the same. They are not.
Fourth, you are the one making the claim that hugs and candy will make all the child rapists go away and be real sorry. You provide the evidence dipshit.
Oh and one more thing Ellie.
These men aren't "underground" at all. They are right above ground flagrantly knowing they will not be punished!
You're just making fucking excuses to be offended by a word. It's quite pathetic.
I'm beginning to think of some words for you, but you know, I don't want to dehumanize you.
While I doubt hugs and candy (or as Ellie writes "mercy and compassion") is going to make all child rapists go away, I also doubt that, as you write, getting rid of one will spare the suffering of 100 children.
I don't approve of the death penalty, even for child rapists. But these people need to be punished for the horrid crimes they commit (ie minimum 10 to 20 years in jail) and only relaxed after this time and after all the necessary measures have been taken to guarantee that they won't be capable nor willing to commit them again.
I never said killing.
Andreas Johansson:
Here's an AP story in English:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100407/ap_on_re_eu/church_abuse_26
The Catholic Church in Norway makes it sound like they've only had two other sex abuse cases, both dating back to the 50's. Color me skeptical. (Although I wouldn't expect a huge number; there aren't a lot of Catholics there.)
The article also mentions that the Danish are looking into 17 cases, mostly going back to the 60's and 70's.
SEF@79 said:
LOL.
And the remaining Catholics that still support the Church are neutral evil.
Doubtless quite a few people will react with astonishment, not to mention revulsion, as the details of both the horrific levels of abuse, and the level of scheming and conspiring to protect those responsible, emerge into the public domain. But should we really be surprised, or revolted, by knowledge that the Catholic Church has been engaged in such activities? We are, after all, dealing with an organisation that has been shot through with galactic levels of hubris for the best part of one and a half millennia. We are dealing with an organisation that claims, with monumental arrogance, to be the sole arbiter of 'truth', and to be in a position to dictate what every other human being on the planet should think. We are dealing with an organisation that, moreover, acted with brutality and ruthlessness during those dark centuries when it held sway politically over the European continent, and enforced conformity to doctrine with torture instruments. This is an organisation that regarded the Pear and the Judas Cradle as justifiable means to an end, namely forcing people to think in a proscribed manner. This is an organisation that regarded itself as entitled to set fire to people who failed to conform to whatever doctrine it chose to enforce. This is an organisation that previously considered itself in a position to dictate how reality itself behaved - it insisted that reality necessarily behaved in conformity with its doctrine - and when scientists dared to say otherwise, its response was to threaten them with dungeons, and subject them to the sort of repression now associated with military juntas in places such as Myanmar. We are dealing with an organisation that presumes its own infallibility and unerring correctness, and claims a so-called 'divine' mandate for such presumption. On the basis of nothing more than its own blind assertions, that an invisible magic man in the sky sanctions its activities, this organisation purports to be in a position to tell the rest of us to shut up and conform. In the past, that message was "shut up and conform - or else".
In the light of the above, is anyone really surprised, that its minions and acolytes are exhibiting callous indifference toward the victims of other minions and acolytes of the same organisation? Or that its mouthpieces are vomiting forth exquisitely crafted sophistical bureaucratic elisions, aimed at maintaining the organisation's fatuous pretences with respect to its so-called "infallibility"? The polished veneer of self-justification in the face of the utterly inhuman, is an art that this organisation has spent 1,500 years honing to perfection.
[meta]
calilasseia, your eloquence is impressive; perhaps not wasted on blog comments, but I do wish you could get a wider audience.
Kudos.
P Z needs to fix the first link on the blog entry. I tried it several time and it goes nowhere.