Month: March 2010

Goldblog reports: get Netanyahu into an alliance with Kadima, rather than the Israeli right-wing crazies.

Must-read.

A priest is discovered to have been actively molesting children. His superior is notified in 1980. One of the things he is told of is the priest's forcing an 11 year old boy to perform oral sex on him. The superior does not contact the police. He approves a transfer of the priest to a different city, where the priest is required to undergo therapy but is also subsequently able to resume his work with access to children. Six years later, the priest is again found guilty of abusing children. This time, he serves a sentence, but he is subsequently allowed to resume work as a priest, with the church authorities hiding his past from future parishes, and is only removed from his position three days ago.

Joseph Ratzinger was the superior, he reviewed the man's files in 1980, and he was subsequently in charge of reviewing all sex abuse cases as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine Of The Faith in Rome. He was integral to the policy of hushing up as much of this as possible. Money quote:

Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction.

Benedict not only served as the archbishop of the diocese where the priest worked, but also later as the cardinal in charge of reviewing sexual abuse cases for the Vatican. Yet until the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising announced that Father Hullermann had been suspended on Monday, he continued to serve in a series of Bavarian parishes.

In 1980, the future pope reviewed the case of Father Hullermann, who was accused of sexually abusing boys in the Diocese of Essen, including forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The future pope approved his transfer to Munich.

We don't know what lies ahead in Germany but if the story follows the pattern in the US, Australia and Ireland, the number of victims will grow, and the church hierarchy will at first blame anti-Catholic media for attacking the church, and at some point, the whole grisly truth will come out. Except this time, the current Pope himself will be – and already is – at the center of the storm.

If this person headed a secular organization, or if he were a politician, he would be forced to resign. Why are the standards for the Catholic church so much lower on tolerance of child abuse than the rest of society? On what grounds can this Pope reprimand bishops and priests in Ireland or the US when he seems deeply entangled in the same kind of cover-ups himself?

When, in other words, will the real victims come first? And moral responsibility meaningfully taken?

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI by Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty.)

"Here we have a major split between the U.S. and Israel, with key American military and political leaders explaining … that Israeli actions are directly harming U.S. interests and jeopardizing American lives.  And what is the reflexive, unambiguous response of virtually every American Israel-centric neocon?  To side with Israel over the U.S.  AIPAC, the ADL, Elliott Abrams, AIPAC-loyal Democrats in the House, Marty Peretz, Commentary, etc. etc. all quickly castigated the U.S. Government and defended Israel, notwithstanding the dangers to Americans posed by Israeli conduct and the massive price paid by the U.S. in so many ways for this relationship (by contrast, J Street called the administration's anger towards Israel both "understandable and appropriate"). 

There's nothing wrong with taking Israel's side per se — one is and should be free to criticize one's own government in its foreign policy — but incidents like this make it increasingly futile to try to suppress what is glaringly visible:  that (as is true for numerous groups in the U.S.) a significant segment of the neoconservative Right (which includes some evangelical Christians and some American Jews) are guided in their political advocacy by their emotional, religious, and cultural attachment to another country, and want U.S. policy shaped to advance that devotion.

On a related note:  there has been a long-standing effort to equate those who make this observation with anti-Israel hatred or even anti-Semitism.  Two widely-cited reports did exactly that with regard to me recently:  this pseudo-scholarly report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and this post on the blog of the American Jewish Committee, both of which hurl all sorts of ugly though trite accusations at me for daring to suggest that some American Jews are guided in their political advocacy by allegiance to Israel.  I'll just note that the author of both "reports" is someone named Adam Levick, who — with extreme, unintended irony — lists this as his biography on his Twitter account:

I'm an American who just made Aliyah (moved to Israel), and love America and my new country,"

– Glenn Greenwald.

A reader writes:

Perhaps there is a reason why political commentators should refrain from, or perhaps even stay fully clear of, theological speculation.  They suck at it.  When Glenn Beck does it, I struggle to be surprised.  When you do, I cringe.  You define “social justice” from a political perspective, and miss the point entirely.  A Christian (Biblical) understanding of social justice is EXACTLY about redistribution of wealth. 

Read Isaiah at any length, and notice the wrath against the wealthy simply because they dare to be rich while others are poor.  When Jesus quotes Isaiah in his first sermon in Luke 4, the “day of the Lord’s favor” he highlights (aka the Old Testament law of Jubilee) is all about taking from the wealthy and returning to society.  It is not about providing a “safety net” for the poor, no more than warm feelings of doing good brought on by the occasional (but not too hurtful) work of charity.  It is about creating on Earth a shadow of the freedom from greed that defines heaven. That these concepts do not fit in with classic definitions of good capitalism is precisely what makes them a witness to the God who judges not by works but by Grace.

There is lots of chatter this morning about "the slaughter rule," "deem and pass," and reconciliation. Ezra Klein sums up the very inside the beltway controversy:

The conservative case against "Deem and Pass" is getting very complex, very fast. Yesterday, the argument was that it was flatly unconstitutional. But it turns out that Republicans used Deem and Pass dozens of times while they were in power. So today's furor is that Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter joined Public Citizen in a lawsuit arguing that a bill that George W. Bush signed was invalid because Deem and Pass is unconstitutional. But the court ruled against Public Citizen, Pelosi and Slaughter. Deem and Pass, well, passed. And now Democrats are using it, too.

Joshua Tucker's reading of the above graph:

As a political scientist, I was less interested in the overall support levels (which apparently have already shifted a bit in favor of passing reforms since these polls were taken), but rather in the difference between the two graphs. According to Gallup, respondents were first asked if they favored passing the health care bill, and then asked if they favored passing it using reconcilliation. The “process” in this case apparently cost about 3% points of support. So it is not irrelevant, but hardly a game changer in terms of public opinion

From Military.com:

Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden?

That's one suggestion the Pentagon has received from someone who noted, quite correctly, that a bear's sense of smell is much more powerful than a bloodhound's.

"Overnight, Parachute some bears into areas [bin Laden] might be," the innovator wrote. "Attempt to train bears to take off parachutes after landing, or use parachutes that self-destruct after landing."

The bears-in-the-air idea, and scores of others, came from people who clicked on the "contact us" button on the Defense Department's Web site, which allows the general public to ask questions or make suggestions.

Not that the Pentagon needs any particular help in the idea department. Not long ago, for example, the agency spent $2 million to find out whether honey bees could be relied upon to sniff out roadside bombs.

The Big Picture provides plenty of opportunity for caption fun. Wonkette has a little.

A reader writes:

As a young boy I attended a Catholic elementary school.  In the confessional I struggled with my sexual urges and same-sex attractions.   When I asked my priest why this was happening to me, I was told that God gives all of us challenges in life and this was my cross to bear.  The path to salvation for boys like me, was to pledge my life to God by becoming a celibate priest.   He recommended that I attend a pre-seminary for my high school education. 

I attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago for my freshman year.  Struggling with same sex attractions, I was thrust into an all-male environment.  As part of our physical education, we took swimming lessons in the school’s pool where none of us wore swimsuits.  The coach told us that it was against school policy.  The pool was barely large enough for a class of 40 boys to fit.  Can you imagine a school today putting 40 naked boys in a pool?

Even at the age of 14 I realized that the church’s stance on celibacy was either a lie or insane.  When I raised that question with my confessor, he suggested that maybe I didn’t have the true calling.  Wisely, I dropped out and enrolled in public school the following year. 

The point is, the Catholic Church targeted young gay boys as potential priests.  The policy of recruiting 14-year-old boys stunted the young boy’s psycho-sexual development, and now they are shocked when adult priests behave like they are 14 year old boys.  They deserve all the criticism.

Scientists have discovered a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish in a place thought uninhabitable:

The video is likely to inspire experts to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments. And it has scientists musing that if shrimp-like creatures can frolic below 600 feet of Antarctic ice in subfreezing dark water, what about other hostile places? What about Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter?

"You can’t have rapprochement with Muslims while condoning the steady Israeli appropriation of the physical space for Palestine. You can’t have that rapprochement if U.S. policy is susceptible to the whims of Shas, the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party in Netanyahu’s coalition that runs the Interior Ministry and announced the Biden-baiting measure.

The Israeli right, whether religious or secular, has no interest in a two-state peace.

I had lunch the other day with Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, one of the largest West Bank settlements. He told me breezily that there “can be no Palestinian state,” and that “Israel and Jordan should divide the land.” I liked his frankness. It clarifies things.

It’s time for equal frankness from Netanyahu. Do “the vital interests of the state of Israel” include continued building in East Jerusalem and the steady takeover of the West Bank, or does his embrace of the airy phrase, “two states for two peoples,” have more than camouflage meaning?" – Roger Cohen, clarifying things.