Primitive Prehuman Ancestor's Newly Constructed Face "Mesmerizing" - But Does It Indicate Emergence Of a "Soul"? No

The first relatively reliable "human like" face of one of our primitive primate ancestors (cf. WSJ, 'Human Ancestor's Face Is Found', August 29, p. A3) is a remarkable milestone.  It's even been described as "mesmerizing"  by  one paleo-anthropologist. This is given that the reconstructed face (left side of image) is incredibly lifelike yet derived from a skull (right side)  of a creature nearly 3.8 million years old "that stood on the cusp of apes and humans."

As the cited WSJ article points out (ibid.):

"The fossilized head bones reveal for the first time the blunt snout, broad cheeks and narrow forehead of a distant human relation called Australopithecus anamensis, who may have vied for survival in the primeval scrub of East Africa at the same time as the iconic human ancestor 'Lucy' and her kin".

According to paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile- Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who led the international team that uncovered the nearly complete cranium in Ethiopia::

"What we see is a very primitive face."

Added William Kimbel, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University:

"It helps fill out a picture of the earliest human skull in a period that until now has been almost vacant in the fossil record.  It provides a baseline from which we can eventually see the emergence of the human face."

Some religionists, of course, may also see this as the biological cue for the emergence of the human soul.  As I wrote in my recent published  letter to Physics Today,  e.g.

Readers' thoughts on science and religion: Physics Today: Vol 71, No 6

on science and religion and why they are so mutually antagonistic:

"Pope Francis, while he acknowledges Darwinian evolution, is still not prepared to accept the wholly naturalistic process dependent on natural selection—mutation. Instead we read, “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve,” and “He [God] created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws [emphasis added] that He gave to each one so they would reach fulfillment.”

In other words, Francis accepted Darwinian evolution, but with a proviso: that a deity had to allow humans to develop according to "internal laws He gave each one...to reach fulfillment" .  In other words the attachment of an essential "individuality" meant there had to be an interjection of a "soul" at some point. As I went on to write: 

"if the role of random evolutionary forces is neglected and the creation of “souls” is given prominence, then the door of inquiry is left open to supernatural agents."

But of course this was precisely the Pope's intention. Because minus  an individual "soul" there is no meaning or basis for an afterlife and without an afterlife the hold of mainstream religion collapses. Declaring "sins", advancing dogmas and so on then becomes an irrelevant pastime for the clergy of whatever religion.

Frank Zindler, in a piece in The American Atheist ('Spirits, Souls and Clones') wrote:

"Catholics must believe that only a scheming deity can make a human soul. They must believe that it is this soul that makes a body human.... If it be admitted that our bodies evolved from the bodies of animals possessed of neither souls nor spirits, and that injections of souls or spirits are unitary acts of a god operating within the limits of space and time, embarrassing questions leap to mind.

It is certain that we are descended, generation after generation, from ancestors who are less human-like as the line of descent is traced back to Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Australopithecus, or even more primitive primates. Nevertheless, it is also clear that no particular generation in this line differed any more from its parent generation than do we from our parents. So how did god decide which generation had become just human enough to warrant the infusion of souls?"

As I also wrote in a blog post last month (July 12):

"As we all know, and can be grown-up enough to say, neither the descendants of apes, or apes themselves possess "souls". There is only a brain, but it is ample to generate consciousness as I already showed in my 'Materialist Model of Consciousness'. Thus, when a human (or ape) dies, that's it. He is gone and there is nothing left - nothing to "punish" and nothing to go on. This hard fact may be why so many evangelicals refuse to accept evolution: they don't want to accept: a) they have no souls, and b) when they're dead, that's it, finito.....

So the most primitive hominid ancestor (Ardipithecus Kadabba) depicted at the lower left, from 6 million years ago - possessed no soul - nor did the evolutionary continuum following onward, i.e. to Homo Habilis and Homo Sapiens (upper right). Hence, when either died there would be nothing to go on, to survive in any afterlife.  Nor would there be some unexpected, magical "break out" point in between,  at which a soul suddenly manifests. "

The quotes  above highlight issues Mr. Zindler also  brought up in a previous American Atheist article, 'Spirit, Souls and Mind', i.e.  that the word "soul" like so many others ("demon", "ghost") was invented  but "refers to nothing in reality".    The central point made later in that article was (ibid.):

"The fact that nearly all words now meaning 'soul', 'spirit',  'life' etc. trace their origins to words meaning 'breath' or 'wind' leads me to conclude the derived meanings were an outgrowth of primitive people to solve a basic biological puzzle, namely, what constitutes the difference between a live body and a dead one?"

At a more fundamental level the answer is neural activity.  Live bodies have this, but dead ones don't.  If we then agree neural activity is mistaken for the presence of what had formerly been called "soul" we are getting somewhere. As this neural basis is more central than taking breaths or inhaling.   Did our prehuman ancestor display neural activity? Of course, at least while alive.  Did that mean it had a "soul" even given its more humanesque face (as opposed to ape face).? No.

Flash now to the announcement in today;'s WSJ ('Neural Activity Similar To Babies Observed In Engineered Models', p. A3)  that "miniature engineered reconstructions of the developing brain" have been made in a lab by which "patterns of neural activity" imitating very young brains, have been recorded.  This from "roughly half pea-sized balls of brain cells known as cerebral organoids"

Basically, "lab-grown human brain models"

These lab grown entities were extracted from human stem cells. Did they possess a "soul"? Well, no more than a human zygote in utero - which the RC Church raises Cain about in reaction to any abortion procedure - precisely became a soul is believed to exist therein.

We also learn:

"The work raises ethical concerns about eventually re-creating brain functions like pain perception and consciousness in the lab."

Raise ethical concerns though it may, the work gets closer to the Materialist Model of Mind I had posited nearly 9 years ago,  e.g.

A Materialist Model of Consciousness (III)

In which I proposed - as I had in my first book, The Atheist's Handbook To Modern Materialism, that :"soul' was rendered totally redundant and consciousness emerged from quantum considerations, in relation to certain molecular transport, for example of Ca ++ ions.   (Physicist Henry Stapp ('Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics') showed that application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to Ca+2 ions -involved in neural transmissions at body temperature- disclosed the associated wave packet dimension increases to many times the size of the ion itself.)   In other words, there was a role for quantum mechanics.

The takeaway from the cerebral organoid  lab experiments is that electrical- neural activity can be artificially induced in engineered model cells.  Though yes, it might be too early to ascertain whether these organoids resemble an actual developing brain, the experiments do solve one issue: that it is in fact feasible to imitate neural activity from rudimentary brain cells and which has no "soul" component to it. 

What - If Anything - Will Come Of The RC Sex Abuse Conference In Rome? Not Much

Pope Francis makes his appearance Friday at the Vatican conference on Church sex abuse.

The conference on Church sex abuse opened four days ago at the Vatican with great fanfare.  The first two days focused on the responsibility of church leaders in tending to their flocks and how the padres, bishops must be held accountable if they fail to properly protect young people from predators. Saturday, meanwhile, was dedicated to issues of transparency and "breaking the code of silence" that enables so many padre predators to escape punishment or any accountability.

On the final day (yesterday), it appeared the convened prelates had finally gotten serious with the pederast filth running amuck, at least from the rhetoric. The Pope, for example, called the guilty priests "tools of Satan" and the sex abuse itself  "an abominable crime that must be erased from the face of the Earth."  Even a single case was referred to as "an atrocity".  Stirring words and sentiments but does he (or the Curia) really mean it?  

Not according to a former nun (Mary Dispensa) from Seattle who was raped by a padre at age seven. Asked last night (on the ABC News) what was missing from the Pope's speech,  she told ABC reporter, Ann Thompson, :

"Action. Quick, swift action!"

Adding:

"Not one more child is safer after four days, because talking doesn't do it."   

That seemed to be the consensus view of many victims, interviewed in the wake of the confab, either on assorted news shows or in the print media (like the WSJ, Financial Times). Indeed, quoted in today's WSJ ('Pope's Abuse Stance Disappoints Some', p. A6) we behold this reaction from Francesco Cesareo, chairman of the National Review Board, an organization that advises Bishops on child protection:

"I didn't see any concrete actions in the text. It's a lot of words that have been spoken over and over again."

Indeed, and  Francis didn't help his case by trotting out the usual tropes to attempt to make the issue more diffuse instead of centered on the Church, i.e. "the abuse is a problem in the wider society beyond the Church"  and  "we must not be provoked into overreaction by guilt for past errors or the media".

Serously?

Many victims - among at least 19,000 recorded and reported (there could be ten times more)-   even held out hopes they'd be invited to address the convened Church dignitaries (mainly cardinals, archbishops) personally, but it was not to be. Only one actual victim was permitted into the conference to address the prelates and he was then quickly given a violin to play.  The others had to be content with pre-edited video appearances, not much more.

Take from that what you will, the Vatican's "sex abuse summit" has generally been interpreted in the media as the pope's most high profile initiative ever to address the Catholic Church's long running sexual abuse crisis.  Also, the announcement of the summit back in September followed a strong of major scandals in the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Australia. So basically neither the pope or the cardinals cold ignore it much longer.

But that doesn't mean there is any consensus on how to deal with the thousands of pedophile priests that committed these vile crimes on the young innocent. Indeed, we've since learned the perfidy extends beyond the padres to sexual predator nuns as well.  See e.g.

Web results

Catholic nun abuse stories: As the Vatican addresses priest abuse ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sexual-abuse-by-nuns-reports-growing/

 Look, sensible, intelligent people have been told over and over again by the Church's prelates and popes (and nuns)  that they had the moral answers and authority to all and sundry manner of moral turpitude as "mortal sins".   But in the next breath these arbiters of morality were busy either raping children, abusing them or hiding the rapists and serial abusers. So how can one claim any moral authority from this?   

What really unnerves is how the Church conveniently adopts legalistic tropes and norms when it's expeditious to do so to avoid the hard work.  For example, Francis emphasizing the "traditional principle of proportionality of punishment in penalizing abusers"  (WSJ, 'Pope Decries Sexual Abuse in the Church', Feb. 22, p. A6)  and connecting this to the "presumption of innocence" - A U.S. legal concept.   (I.e. "presumed innocent until proven guilty").  

The problem is that the accounts of survivors are mostly anecdotal and most will never be proven in courts of law. Hence, the perps - the predator padres- will always be presumed innocent.  The Pope confirmed this take when declaring (ibid.) this fabulist "principle" he invokes means there must be prohibition of any publication of the offenders' names unless there is "definitive conviction" - which is nonsense. There will almost never be such conviction because: a) the statute of limitations has allowed most of the perps to escape, and b) most claims will lack first hand evidence (other than the victims' accounts) to make a legal trial compelling.

All of this malarkey aroused the ire of Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org, a group that tracks clerical abuse around the world.  According to her (ibid.):

"I think they've set the bar so low that I think they want us to be pleasantly surprised."

However,  most victims' have been rudely disappointed by the sham show going on at the Vatican, hardly "pleasantly surprised".  One of those outraged by the Vatican's PR dog and pony show was Sister Veronica Openibo.  She was among the few women invited to the conference and used her time at the podium to shame the church leadership for their silence in the face of odious, indeed horrendous, sexual crimes.  She said (cf. Sunday Denver Post, Feb. 24,  p. 2A) :

"How could the clerical church have kept silent, covering up these atrocities? We must acknowledge that our mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency have brought us to this disgraceful and scandalous place we find ourselves as a church."

Sister Openibo has good reason for her outrage and the victims have even more in the face of  more excuses, rationalizations and stone walling. And right at the top of the tactics is victim blaming, such as used by one Polish predator (WSJ, Feb. 23-24, p. A9) who laid the blame on "fifteen year old girls who dress like women".  Seriously?

But the truth and accumulated facts belie this glib distraction M.O. Let's recall here that back in August, when a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a sweeping report that the church had covered up the abuse of more than 1,000 minors by some 300 priests over 70 years. At the time, as many other reports surfaced, Francis acknowledged the global scale of the problem when he issued a rare letter to Catholics worldwide condemning such “atrocities.”

But the pope offered no specific remedies, though he professed that all lay members ought to partake in efforts at change. What change? He didn't indicate but many outraged laity are now considering the draconian solution of withholding any and all money contributions, e.g. collected at Masses. As one put it: "We don't even know where this money goes?"  Analogous empty bollocks recently appeared in a WSJ piece ('Everyday Catholics Can Fight Sex Abuse', Feb. 22, p. A15), wherein author Tim Busch offers nothing but the same old platitudes and worn out "remedies" i.e.

"The laity could work within the Church to promote accountability, repentance, and holiness at every level of the priesthood."

But this implies the priesthood has a core of "holiness" and is not merely the last redoubt and refuge  for child sex predators, i.e. to find victims.

Ironically also, back in August Francis laid much of the blame for the sex abuse crisis on "excessive deference to the church' hierarchy."   In other words, laying the blame on the "faithful" (laity)  for being too respectful and gullible of padres' (and bishops')  moral authority. .But I've always made clear - especially since the sex abuse crisis first erupted- that this moral authority has always been tentative and dependent - never absolute.  In fact, we now know papal "infallibility" is itself a myth, a fable - passed on to the gullible to confer some special moral order on the papacy which it doesn't merit.  To fix ideas we can turn to Hans Kung who writes on p. 143 of his book Infallible?: 

"No one, neither Vatican 1 or Vatican II, nor the textbook theologians, has shown that the Church - its leadership or its theology - is able to put forward propositions which inherently cannot be erroneous."

In other words, NO pope can make error- free pronouncements.   What this means is that if  RC followers take Kung's words to heart - and they should-   then the Vatican has forfeited any moral credibility. More importantly,  to the vast constellation of outside observers-   such forfeiture applies  especially to its catalog of "sexual transgressions", e.g. artificial birth control,  masturbation, etc. In other words, the "pelvic crimes"-   in the words of one priest Ethics professor I knew at Loyola.

Without that moral credibility - and authority -  i.e.  to pass judgments on moral issues ranging from artificial contraception, to abortion, to masturbation, to homosexuality - the Catholic church emerges as an anachronism out of touch and out of its moral depth.  This is the new moral perspective which needs to be endorsed by Catholics themselves, as opposed to showing "deference" to its moral pronouncements.  

But there is only one logical way this retrenchment of deference can occur:  That is, to finally acknowledge the doctrine of papal infallibility is a myth, or at least an anachronism that no longer serves the Church's modern mission or helps sustain any moral credibility.

Further, if the abusive priests are really "tools of Satan" what does this say about the Church's sacraments overall?  If they were or are tools of Satan how did that happen given they had to have received Holy Orders? Did Holy Orders not work? Did Satan "hide himself" while the sacrament was bestowed?  These are questions the Church needs to ask and answer before if talks about distributing new manuals and instructions to Bishops to halt the abuse.

Oh, and that also implies no longer blaming the victims and also posting the names of the priestly perpetrators on every Church door and in every bulletin.  In the meantime, "zero tolerance", including permanently removing all clerical abusers from ministry, appears to have gone by the backboards in place of twaddle and vacuous bromides.

In  the words of Peter Saunders, an abuse victim who resigned from the Pope's child protection commission in 2017:

"He's the supreme head of the Church, he has the power to do that (enact zero tolerance).  If he doesn't do that then we're all wasting our time."

I fear that is exactly what the Pope and Vatican want to do, waste time by churning out excuses, bromides and bollocks.  But the inescapable, logical fact remains that if the abusive clergy are indeed "tools of Satan" and have received Holy Orders, we must question the entire RC Church claim to holiness and moral superiority.  Especially if "Satan" may be concealed within the Church's institutions and claimed moral fabric.

See also:

The Catholic Church’s ‘Ravenous Wolves’

If Roman Catholics Aren't In A Crisis Of Faith They're Not Paying Attention

Roman Catholics can read and understand the scriptures on their own without having to  depend on priests, bishops or even popes.  By invoking a more independent stance on teachings, dogma, etc. Catholics are less likely to display excessive deference and thereby become victims.


The interviews  4 days ago on CBS News of  four of the Fortney sisters were almost too painful to see or hear.   Carolyn Fortney - seated at the far left, pain etched on her fair features-    was younger than 2 years old when she was first sexually abused by a priest in the Harrisburg diocese.  Her sisters were also abused.  Patty said she was 13 when the abuse started. Lara was 10. Teresa was in first grade. Carolyn was barely a toddler.  Sometimes, they were abused in front of each other

All five Fortney sisters were sexually abused in the 1980s by the Rev. Augustine Giella, who served at St. John the Evangelist church in Swatara Township, Dauphin County.   One of the 4 sisters appearing in the segment talked of "soul murder", that was how she experienced what happened to her.

Their parents, Ed and Patty Fortney, reported the abuse to the diocese in 1992 after another child in the family found a box that contained nude photos of Carolyn. Another sister called child services and the abuse was reported to the police.   Giella was arrested on charges of sexual assault and child pornography. He died before the trial.   The family settled two civil lawsuits with the diocese, but the four sisters said they never received a direct apology

What happened to the Fortney sisters is among tens of thousands of similar crimes perpetrated across decades  on children by RC sexual predator padres, from Chile, to Honduras, to Australia, the UK, Germany, Ireland, the U.S. and likely many other nations.  In the case of the Fortney sisters, their perp also emerged when a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a sweeping report that the church had covered up the abuse of more than 1,000 minors by some 300 priests over 70 years

 Pope Francis himself acknowledged the global scale of the problem when he issued a rare letter to Catholics worldwide  in which he laid much of the blame for the sex abuse crisis on "excessive deference to the church' hierarchy."   In other words, laying the blame on the "faithful" for being too respectful and gullible of padres' (and bishops')  moral authority

Given the odious, perverted nature of these crimes it was almost inevitable that there would be pushback on some levels, and indeed, wrong -headed ethicists even claiming there is no "crisis of faith". This, though they do admit to  "ecclesiastical corrunption".   In one recent write -up ('A Crisis -  But Not Of Faith', WSJ Review, Sept. 1-2, p. C3),   George Weigel * made such reference and also  wrote:

"In this summer of nightmare, with the bad news by no means all out, the gag reflex of many Catholics is understandable.  But that doesn't or shouldn't make it a crisis of faith".

Why on earth not?

"Friendship with Jesus Christ is where Christianity begins...To learn from Christ and to be fed by him in holy communion is the primary reason for Catholic worship.  If Catholics lose sight of that, the awfulness that has come to light about some of the people of the Church, can cause what might seem at first blush a crisis of faith."

Well, I beg to differ.   First, if "learning from Christ" is a primary reason for RC membership, then that in itself is redundant because one can "learn from"  Christ independent of any intermediary (priests, bishops, etc.)   That was the whole putative basis for Martin Luther’s 95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences which skewered the unsavory and cynical Church racket of  selling  "indulgences" but at the same time mocked  the theology and undermined the business model built upon it .  That is, that a whole hierarchy of intermediate clergy were required for a member of the faithful to gain salvation.  The intermediaries organized the indulgence racket, just as they organized the doctrinal infrastructure embedded in the Church's Canon Law, deciding what offenses merited eternal punishment, and which did not.

But again, one can obtain such "friendship" independent of padres and popes. That is the subtext of Luther's 95 Theses.

Luther basically posited that the whole indulgence business was an unseemly scam, given the pope himself could tweak offenses and punishments. In the end, the faithful didn't need priests, bishops or popes any more than they needed indulgences.  They could gain access directly to  spiritual insights in scriptures if they so desired, and thereby to God. Priests and other clergy were unnecessary middle men, expendable.

 Given it is the intermediaries (no matter how many or how few) who are the problem with the ongoing sex abuse, then the clear solution is to do an end run around them, i.e. to ditch them entirely.  If you accept the existence of a divine entity go to that entity directly! You don't need a frickin' padre to provide a special back channel, no matter how pious he seems!

That, I submit, is the core of the problem.  The placing of padres and other members of the Church hierarchy on some kind of pedestal, and thereby placing too much stock in what they say or preach. In so doing, people sacrifice their brains and gonads and render themselves more susceptible to being victims. Not just of sexual abuse, but also emotional and what I'd call religious exploitation and indoctrination. No surprise philosopher Daniel Dennett has compared the effects of religion to that of a parasite invasion of a human brain - altering its behavior, e.g.

This brings us to Weigel's ambiguous reference to "some people in the Church" when it is in fact the clergy, the padres, the bishops etc who are the "some people."  In other words,  we're talking about the intermediaries.  For any number of reasons Weigel is unable to see that if a severe betrayal of trust is evident in even a subset of these intermediaries the resulting crisis of faith - which is really a crisis of trust - must affect all. How can that young person of whatever age trust that smiling priest again, no matter how noble or pure he appears? He cannot.  The crisis of faith then inheres in misplaced faith in the intermediary establishment of the Church, specifically the ability of that hierarchy to convey truth.  In Weigel's words:

"It is important to refocus on the basis of Catholic faith, which is trust in Jesus Christ."

But he fails to make clear or elucidate that it is the intermediaries, the priests etc. who are supposedly the "representatives of Christ on Earth"..  But if one cannot trust the priests, how can he extend that trust to Christ?  The only way possible is to divest from the intermediary entirely as a useful or needed representative and approach Christ directly -  which means trusting Christ directly- absent of priests. Only in this way can  the criminal, perverted doings of the padres be prevented from contaminating the believer's trust in Christ.

In his dodge, Weigel attempts to divert the faith issue to one of scriptural basis and accepting Christ.  For example, writing at one point:

"Catholics were reminded at Mass on Aug. 26 of a very old scripture story they heard.   Although it was prescribed for that Sunday by an accident of the Church's triennial cycle of scripture readings."

He then cites a passage in the 6th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, i.e. with Christ declaring himself the "bread of life" on which disciples must feed.  Being too hard for many accept they left whereupon Christ asks Peter if he will leave too and he responds "Master to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life."

But then  conflating this with the basis of Catholicism, i.e.  "That conviction is the reason to be a Catholic to stay a Catholic, to make every effort to redeem the Church as an institution."

To which I say, hogwash.    There is in fact zero reason to "redeem" or preserve the institution at all because it has shown itself incapable of protecting the weakest and most vulnerable - like the Fortney sisters.  If it cannot protect these most vulnerable, subjecting them instead to  "soul murder" on what viable basis should this structure exist? There isn't any, not one.  As for scriptural citations, in the current context how about this one from Matthew 18:6?

"If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

Indeed, Weigel toward the end of the piece admits a large element of blame redounds to the fact that "keeping the institutional Catholic  machinery ticking as smoothly as possible, by compromises with truth...was deemed more important than offering friendship with Jesus Christ."

Thereby,  again,  offering every reason to ditch the institution and its intermediaries. Trust in Yeshua? Do that on your own, you don't need padres or popes.   Reading scriptures?  You don't need to attend Masses to wait for the specific "triennial" cycle of a specific passage to appear, you can get a bible and freaking read it on your own, as a conscious, thinking and responsible adult. 

The sad fact, contrary to Weigel's apologia, is that the Church has ceased to be a credible moral authority as well as a credible witness "to the Lord".   Point of fact, the faithful on their own can be credible witnesses to the "Lord' without depending on priests, on Masses or any aspect of the institutional Church with its dogmas and papal encyclicals. . It is purely a matter of will, the will to be an authentic adult -  a critically thinking person  - as opposed to a parrot or puppet for the popes and priests.

Confession? You don't need a padre! You can confess directly to the Almighty from your own heart,  if you believe in an ultimate power.   Confession, when you strip away the nonsense, is merely one more artifact or device for control, to prevent the believer from breaking out of a manipulative cycle of sin and forgiveness.  Indeed, the cynical process was first exposed by former priest, Emmet McLoughlin in his book 'Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church' (Lyle Stuart Books, 1962) .

McLoughlin gives numerous examples of pre-Confession sin recollection for  Catholic youths, most based on the RC proscriptions against sexual fantasizing (especially those instances which produced hard-ons).  Thereby hyper -sensitive and devout youths were led  to no end of torment via  morbid preoccupations.   E.g. "If I kept this nude Playmate image in my mind for a minute and became excited,  was it a mortal sin? If I don't confess will I face the tortures of Hell, say if I die in my sleep tonight? " The result was millions of kids - mainly young RC males-   sent into precarious and unstable mental states - and always ensuring they were minutes from a confessional.   Just in case.

Pathetic!

No, this sad and sorry institution isn't needed, not one bit.  If my Catholic friends want words to live by, I offer Joseph Campbell's:

“Heaven is everlasting, not eternal, and you find it in the here and now, the present”

----------------------------
*  Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC,  and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

Francis' Moment of Truth - And Morality- Awaits Him This Weekend In Ireland

 
Sr. Liz Murphy  - offered a blunt perspective on the padre crimes in the RC Church and that they are "systemic" and "a virus".

Pope Francis' visit to Ireland this weekend is bound to be fraught with controversy and more than a little rebellion, not only from the "faithful" but also from Ireland's resident ex-Catholics. Both might be said to form a de facto coalition as opponents of the RC Church's presumed absolute moral authority, i.e.  now that the rats inside have been exposed. See e.g.
'Say Nope to the Pope': Irish group snaps up papal mass tickets with ...

 This will also call for a moment of truth and considered moral salience.  In the case of the latter, how important really is morality- especially sexual -  if its values are disrespected and ignored by the clergy?  As we learned in the main story in The Financial Times this morning. the Irish PM Leo Varadkar has "called on Francis to use his power to ensure justice for those who were seriously mistreated" in the wave of clerical sex abuse.  But the use of such power would mean the pontiff recognizes how the widespread sex abuse crimes have delimited his church's moral authority.  This is the truth he will need to appreciate before he can decide on the "power to ensure justice".

 Leaving aside that this will be the first visit by a pope to the Emerald Isle since John Paul II in 1979 — let's grasp the vastly more ominous  pall cast over this  trip. Namely, that it will remind millions of the church’s long history of protecting pedophile priests. In Ireland's case the most notorious padre predator - maybe the poster boy for all such vermin  - is the Rev. Eugene Greene, who served nine years in prison for raping and molesting 26 boys between 1965 and 1982  It is cases like this that enrage many Irish faithful - and even no longer faithful -  who insist the vile deeds exposed make it incumbent on Francis to give them not just words, but action.

That is true not only in Ireland, but also in the United States, where last week a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a sweeping report that the church had covered up the abuse of more than 1,000 minors by some 300 priests over 70 years. Francis himself acknowledged the global scale of the problem this week, when he issued a rare letter to Catholics worldwide condemning such “atrocities.”

In the Irish case, the atrocity was protecting a padre lowlife who committed his crimes with impunity, though the real figure may be far higher - perhaps in the hundreds. Who knows? Yet this year, when Pope Francis needed someone to head a neighboring diocese, he chose Bishop Philip Boyce, who had been heavily criticized for refusing to defrock Greene when the loathsome padre was under his management in the late 1990s

According to a watchdog group that monitors the Catholic Church in Ireland, 14 priests have been accused in recent years, four of whom were convicted.  This may well be but a tiny subset of the total priestly predators.

Francis himself acknowledged the global scale of the problem this week, when he issued a rare letter to Catholics worldwide condemning such “atrocities.”

But the pope offered no specific remedies, though he professed that all lay members ought to partake in efforts at change. What change? He didn't indicate but many outraged laity are now considering the draconian solution of withholding any and all money contributions, e.g. collected at Masses. As one put it: "We don't even know where this money goes?"

 Incredibly, Francis also laid much of the blame for the sex abuse crisis on "excessive deference to the church' hierarchy."   In other words, laying the blame on the "faithful" for being too respectful and gullible of padres' (and bishops')  moral authority. But I've always made it clear - especially since the sex abuse crisis first erupted- that this moral authority has always been tentative and dependent - never absolute.  In fact, we now know papal "infallibility" is itself a myth, a fable - passed on to the gullible to confer some special moral order on the papacy which it doesn't merit.  To fix ideas we can turn to Hans Kung who writes on p. 143 of his book Infallible?: 

"No one, neither Vatican 1 or Vatican II, nor the textbook theologians, has shown that the Church - its leadership or its theology - is able to put forward propositions which inherently cannot be erroneous."

In other words, NO pope can make error- free pronouncements.   What this means is that if  RC followers take Kung's words to heart - and they should-   then the Vatican has forfeited any moral credibility. More importantly,  to the vast constellation of outside observers-   such forfeiture applies  especially to its catalog of "sexual transgressions", e.g. artificial birth control,  masturbation, etc. In other words, the "pelvic crimes"-   in the words of one priest Ethics professor I knew at Loyola.

Without that moral credibility - and authority -  i.e.  to pass judgments on moral issues ranging from artificial contraception, to abortion, to masturbation, to homosexuality - the Catholic church emerges as an anachronism out of touch and out of its moral depth.  This is the new moral perspective which needs to be endorsed by Catholics themselves, as opposed to showing "deference" to its moral pronouncements. If Francis is demanding the laity step up and cease to be deferential then this is arguably the best way to show it. Give him 180 degrees opposite!  

Meanwhile, one Irish nun, Sister Liz Murphy - was outspoken three days ago on CBS Early Show when confronting another pie-eyed padre  (Cardinal Blase Cupich)   who tried to minimize the magnitude of change needed in this anachronistic church, by first insisting any significant changes "will lead to chaos".  Cupich further claimed that a "series of reforms adopted in 2002 have dramatically reduced abuse cases in the church".  To which I'd reply, 'Total balderdash!'   That's an egregious guess since we really don't know how many parishes are still hiding or shuttling off these predators.  Past is prologue,  after all, and there haven't been any systematic changes to negate or even abate this  continuing evil. 

Sister Murphy, who leads one of the largest religious organizations in Ireland, wasn't having any of it and replied:

"This is a really dark time a darkness within the darkness. I think there's much more needed than just naming individuals".

Adding:

"This is a virus and this is not going to be healed over these coming days. TO expect the pope to come up with the strategic plan for the Catholic Church over the weekend is quite daft."

Many Irish say they are waiting not only for recognition of their suffering, but also for Francis to announce concrete measures to combat and punish such abuses.  Well, they will have a long, long wait! It is obvious the abuses won't end until Catholics themselves attain the mental maturity to depend on their own moral consciences as opposed to relying on degraded, deformed and error -prone intermediaries (and fossils)  in robes.  That will be their moment of moral truth!

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/05/moral-absolutism-is-trumped-by-moral.html

Pope Denies Existence Of "Hell" - Why The Big Fuss?

As reported in the weekend WSJ ('Shifting Lines: Pope's Uncertainty Principle'  p. A9, Mar. 31- April 1) Pope Francis evidently denied the existence of a cornerstone of Roman Catholic "boogeyman" doctrine in a recent interview. We read:

"For Pope Francis the unconventional has become routine. Still, the news Thursday morning was startling. Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, a friend and frequent interviewer of the pope, reported that the pontiff had denied the existence of hell.  Sinners who die without  achieving eternal salvation 'are not punished' the pope said, according to an article by Mr. Scalfari in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica"

The Pope added for clarity:

"There is no hell. There is the disappearance of sinful souls."

Of course, as the author (Francis X. Rocca) points out, the Vatican's fossils quickly went into panic PR mode, trying to spin the account away from core doctrinal denial.. After all, what good would it do if nearly a billion Catholics weren't kept quaking in their boots by the threat of hell?  So, the Vatican did the only thing they could, short of denying the pope denied hell - they insisted Scalfari's article was a "reconstruction" - as opposed to a transcript of his conversation with Francis.

In truth, one wonders why the big kerfuffle erupted given simple, consistent but rigorous exercise of logic would disclose hell is a confection, a fiction.  The pope's denial of hell in this context is merely a manifestation of his invoking critical thinking and logic as opposed to blind adherence to an archaic doctrine..  The  basic logical contradiction inherent in the hell concept can be encapsulated by the diagram shown below:

This presumes a "punishment partition" in infinite Being leading to the Hell-Infinite -God paradox. The claimed "infinitude" (or omnipresence), e.g.  of an infinite deity is contradictory to the acceptance of a Hell.  This is provided one grants that "infinite"literally  means everywhere or pervading all of Being.

In such a case there is literally no place left where - whatever it is- doesn't exist. Hence, if applied to "God" it means all inclusive of reality. Including ALL transcendent reality, assuming such exists.

The diagram shown illustrates the point. The whole vast field defined as "Omega" (Greek symbol) is taken to be one unitary Being or "God". It is taken to be literally infinite, meaning occupying all Being, all there is. (I am assuming Catholics, like most Christians, take "infinite" literally not as "occupying most regions" but not all.  If the latter, then the Being is not infinite but finite - and hence a finite deity.

If one appends a Hell, as say a "punishment partition",  then this infinite Being is now delimited. In other words, it ceases to be infinite (or omnipresent)  since its Being is foreclosed where Hell exists, unless one would argue that Hell is part of God. Most Catholics I know don't wish to "go there".

Thus, if Hell is asserted to exist and is claimed to be "eternal" then God cannot be infinite. If God is maintained to be infinite - meaning all inclusive of Being- the only conclusions possible are that either a) Hell doesn't exist, or b) Hell must be a part of God's Being!

By this exercise in logic, Pope Francis would be perfectly justified in denying the existence of Hell because it is logically contradictory to the concept of God as infinite unitary Being. Up to now, I've not seen or heard any religionist able to refute this logic, even by resort to the most twisted semantic somersaults.

But what about the pope's claim that the sinners just "disappear" - as in wink out of existence? This really isn't that much of  stretch and most atheists already believe this applies to everyone, not just them.  Think of it like a general anesthesia from which you never wake up.

Under general anesthesia - as I've been, three times in the past two years- there is no consciousness of any temporal passage. You are knocked out one second, then after the operation or procedure, you come back to consciousness. It is as if no time has elapsed - even hours - between going under and re-surfacing in the hospital recovery room.

If  you died while under general anesthesia - say if the operation went  badly wrong - would you notice it? I doubt it. It would simply be a case that you never transition back to consciousness.  It would be as if you never "woke up". This is the form of extinction the pope is referencing for "sinners",  but again which most atheists take to be the final end to shuffling this mortal coil anyway. (Atheists do not subscribe, at least most of them, to the 'natural afterlife' idea which requires accepting a subjective time whereby a  final "dream state" can transform into an eternal state of afterlife, independent of consciousness.)

WSJ author Rocca cites Brit correspondent Christopher Lamb who sees the pope's anti-doctrinal stance as consistent with 'a move away from the institutional and doctrinal and toward a greater focus on personal conscience" which is good.   In addition, under Francis the Vatican's doctrinal office has more or less backed off on issuing judgments including on controversial questions of sexual and medical ethics.  This also comports with Francis' efforts to liberalize moral teachings, including on divorce, and artificial contraception.

My take is that Francis sees this liberalization as essential especially after the Church lost vast moral capital in the wake of the priest sexual abuse crisis.  Thus, for the Vatican's doctrinal obsessives to double down on their moral dicta - say to do with any number of behaviors, especially sexual - would simply drive more reflective Catholics away..

Francis then, at least has the  sense to acknowledge he's playing on a losing wicket, and to make the most of it instead of pretending the opposite.

Zika Virus Pathology Will Require Even More Use Of Birth Control - Possible Abortions

The news that Barbados has now been named one of 17 nations in Latin America and the Caribbean with severe outbreaks of Zika virus has prompted serious cause for concern especially among tourists thinking of visiting. Though the incidence of illness has not reached the levels reported in Brazil, authorities are taking no chances and have instituted dawn to dusk spraying for the Aedes Aegypti mosquito (above left)


This mosquito carries dengue fever as well as Zika and is specifically being targeted for extermination- despite the fact these little beasts have been known to find hiding places almost impervious to the insecticide (malathion) which often wreaks more havoc on humans.

Meanwhile abortion clinics and family planning services are working overtime to inform younger women of the risks. As I noted in a previous blog, Pope Francis has now given special dispensation for at risk females to use artificial contraception to reduce the risk of infection and hence impregnation leading to infants exhibiting microcephaly.  Francis intimated also that artificial contraception may be morally acceptable to avoid spreading the Zika virus.

This microcephaly condition is now linked to Zika by  "numerous lines of evidence" according to a recent WHO report.  Microcephaly leads to shrunken heads and brains that render the person almost totally cognitively impaired - and with an abbreviated life span.


In one study carried out at FSU, Johns Hopkins and Emory University several types of stem cells, including "parental" (which give rise to brain neurons), were exposed to a strain of Zika. The results showed that the virus infected and "hijacked" the cells driving them to generate more copies of the virus at the expense of healthy cells. Essentially the pre-neural cells became a non-stop Zika virus factory. This was according to Guo li-Ming one of the study authors and a professor at Hopkins.

Meanwhile, many of the already infected cells died while others showed gene disruptions that made it impossible to generate new cells effectively, according to Guo. Thereby the infected cells themselves become the vehicles for the destruction of the fetal brain -causing the massive shrinkage, and also of the still plastic skull that holds it




The forlorn victims often don't survive to adulthood but those that do are either warehoused in sanatariums at enormous cost because they cannot care for themselves, OR  (if minimally functional) they end up as circus freaks (such as the several depicted in Tod Browning's 1932 flick 'Freaks', e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJVXTKkjsxA)

Others suffer in continual pain and agony and indeed, it would be better if they'd never been born, Hence, the need for the abortion option as well, say if an at risk female still becomes pregnant despite using contraception and tests show a microcephalic fetus. We have already seen in the news  several months ago that a young Slovenian woman - returning from Brazil (and after having sexual relation there),  did a test for microcephaly - and found it to be positive.  Unwilling and unable to bear the costs of future care, she had the fetus aborted.

Many women in Barbados are now gearing up for such hard choices as well. Given the island nation's extraordinarily low mean income level, high unemployment level (22%)  and lack of health resources, it is about the only practical option left to many in the working class (85 % of the population). As Zika spreads, including to the U.S. by this summer, these are  choices American women will have to make as well

As for the general pattern of infection, the incubation period  is likely to be a few days. The symptoms are similar to other arbovirus infections such as dengue, and include fever, skin rashes, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, malaise, and headache. These symptoms are usually mild and last for 2-7 days.  The worst outcome for an adult is the neurological condition called Guillain- Barre syndrome in which the immune system attacks the nervous system causing temporary but sometimes severe paralysis as well as inability to speak. It is not known how many such cases are in the Caribbean islands right now but estimates range from 15- 100.

One hopes that as the information of Zika's depredations - especially on fetal brain tissue - is more widely disseminated, the  Pope will allow exceptions for Zika -based abortions as well. Such a move would follow the original Church canons that allowed them to be performed up until the third trimester (at least until 1869. when the rule was changed)

The larger point here is the fact the Church has already changed its doctrine on abortion thereby showing its moral positions are malleable and not set in stone. In this case, it is much better to prevent added suffering in the world - by ushering in thousands of babies with malformed brains-   than to enable its spread.