So Charles Scicluna is now the Bishop of Malta

It is almost 1:30 in the am and I had one of those "wide awake-up" after about 2.5 hours sleep - thought it was morning. However, the brain is only partially awake & I decided to start going through my "google alerts" (I am way behind in my reading), and ran across this one.

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2012-11-19/news/full-interview-bishop-elect-speaks-on-sexual-abuse-by-priests-402915330/

I wonder if he really believes what he says - Bishop of Malta does sound like being put out to pasture.

Have nothing brilliant to say except that I did make a few comments in "Fear and Denial at the Crossroads" about his article on the history of the Catholic Church and its pronouncements since the earliest days on the issue.

Fanfest August 2012: Thanks to the DiveMistress for the picture

And a good time was had by all!

For horror fans: The DiveMistress can be found at http://www.zombots.net/

I Knew It

Just wasn't as willing to commit to my gut instinct 3 and a half years ago as I am today.

Here is the Richard Dawkins' post:
http://richarddawkins.net/foundation_articles/2012/12/22/physical-versus-mental-child-abuse#.UOAsYW_AeJo. I did post a version of this blog as a comment on the Dawkins' blog.

Here is my post from May 20th, 2009:
http://whatsanatheisttodo.blogspot.ca/search?q=dawkins

This is an update on the comments that I made then. I had/have no problem with "religion is child abuse" but took exception to his dismissal of the impact of sexual abuse on the child. Here are some further thoughts:


It is true that the mild form of sexual abuse that Dawkins describes is probably less damaging than believing, truly believing in hell. However, he had the advantage of being able to talk with his fellow classmates about it - solidarity is a great healer/dismisser. However, has he ever considered what might have happened had he reported this man to the superiors at the school? (Just asking)

I remember how we used to all talk about staying away from "legs" Hooper, the physics teacher & the French teacher in high school. These incidents are not the stuff of long term psychological destruction (unless one got caught in the web). I just still have this sneaking suspicion that it had more of an impact on his psyche than Dawkins is willing to admit - he does remember it and the feelings that the incident engendered - they apparently have not disappeared. I am pleased to hear him say finally that this too was part of his life-experience. I always use that "hermeneutics of suspicion" approach when people are as angry as he is about religion - that anger does not come from a vacuum or other people's experiences - the personal is still political. It is what we do with that anger that will change the world over the long run.

However, this doesn't give Dawkins the right to dismiss the destructive power of the kind of sexual abuse many of us endured within the Christian system. It feels like I have spent a lifetime talking and writing about the damaging doctrines of Christianity - the subtle and not-so-subtle ones. My contention is that the doctrines make it even more difficult to cope with any kind sexual abuse. A number of commentators on this blog have pointed this out.

The combination (Christian teachings and sexual abuse) is lethal for many, and a lifetime psychological drain for most of us. And I agree with Dawkins that we would be better off without these horrible religious systems.

This is the last paragraph from my 1993 dissertation. Twenty years later (I finished it in August 1992 - defended in '93) and nothing much has changed - I could update the footnotes and the examples in the dissertation but why bother? I am still addressing the same issues but there are new players on the block and the arguments for "Christian virtues" are more nuanced than they were. Oh well, so goes academia!

"Theologians have failed to address child development issues and have underestimated the impact of Christian stories on the developing minds of children. These stories, even when stripped of their most virulent content, are still stories of violence. The stories of Ishmael's banishment, Cain and Abel, Abraham's intention to sacrifice Isaac, David and Goliath, Herod's murder of the infants, John the Baptist's death, the stoning of Stephen, the death of Ananias and Sapphira, the blinding of Paul are all violent stories at the behest of a greater good. Nowhere is that made clearer than in the passion narrative of Christianity. From the agony in Gethsemane to the betrayal by Peter, from the scourging of Jesus to the final crucifixion, the resurrection story of Jesus, the central glorifying image of Christianity, is imbued through and through with violence. These stories and many others are burned into the minds of Christian children forever. Supposedly, they are the stories about a loving god and how he cares for his children. What they are, in reality, are stories about a god who does not accept disobedience, requires that his children suffer, and punishes them when they fail. Furthermore, he is not above sacrificing one of them when he thinks it is necessary, whether it is his own son or an eleven-year-old girl. These are not abstract issues like questions of intentionality over which many a theologian has written many a page, but concrete issues concerning the lessons Christians are teaching their children about how life is to be lived. I was once asked, after delivering a paper at the American Academy of Religion on this topic, whether there would be anything left of Christianity if the 'virtues' I was discussing were dropped from the Christian theological agenda. My flippant response was, "Let's drop them and find out". My more serious response was that forty years from now we would have a group of people calling themselves Christians, but whose Christianity would bear little resemblance to what exists in the present. After finishing the research for this thesis and writing the dissertation, I now end with a more dire prediction. If Christianity does not reinvent itself, does not renounce the rationale for the necessity of the crucifixion, it will not only help to maintain child sexual assault as a continuing social problem, but it will also be a major factor in its continuing recreation, and the cycle of abuse will not end."


Thanks to Marie Celeste Hale for posting the following: http://mirandaceleste.net/2012/12/30/child-abuse-and-catholic-indoctrination-on-being-kindling-wood-for-hell/

it is a another black day

Just one more horrible, horrible story. I grieve for all those families. The most terrifying thing that I can think of - to lose a child is bad enough - to lose a child this way is always irreconciliable.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/12/14/connecticut-school-shooting.html?cmp=rss

No wonder people want to believe in demons, possession, and the world of Supernatural.

The ecumenical religion of patriarchy (atheists included!)

An eye-opening read for everyone

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/12/11/the-ecumenical-religion-of-patriarchy/

Have fun

This article is for crocodile hunters

Barbara Hughes, "Where was God?" Sewanee Theological Review 48:1(2004), 87-108.


This is quite a good article if you want to understand the theological journey of one victim and the structure of her healing within the Christian system. I think that it will be an eye-opener to many people and it is a truly necessary addition to these two volumes on children and Christianity.


The dilemmas that I noted in my article, "Birth of an Anthropologian" are easily identifiable in my own reading of this article. It strongly points out how all of our experiences and ways of learning to survive are so diverse. I had once more my own dilemma in how to construct a blog on this article. I chose not to make a critical analysis of the article for a number of reasons.

However, just about everything that I argued in my dissertation is evident in this article, and I have major issues with most of the theological constructions that are evident in the construction of Ms. Hughes spiritual journey. Her journey was not my journey, nor is it the journey of many, many survivors. She is well aware of this and tries to allow for that fact at the end of the article.

In the end, we can only understand that, in order to survive, one believes what one has to and one finds the community.

NOTE:
This may be hard to find. I couldn't find it on any of the university's databases and had to order it. It was a special two part series in the journal called Children and the Kingdom (Vol 1: Theological Reflections on Childhood and Vol. 2: Education and Formation). Two volumes for $14 USD - well worth the price. While I may have issues with the theology at times, these volumes are a fascinating look at children in Christianity. It also contains some beautiful art work (in colour) by children. It is published by the School of Theology at the The University of the South Sewanee, Tennessee. Anglican/Episcopalian in affiliation.

A Day of Mourning

Church of England Rejects Women Bishops In Vote

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/church-of-england-rejects-women-bishops_n_2167039.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

Lost the 2/3 majority by 4 votes - power to the people, I guess - it was the laity who brought about the rejection, not the hierarchy, not the bishops and the clergy

Doesn't affect me personally, but is still such a loss to the church.

The Birth of an Anthropologian

I just uploaded another paper to my academic room site. It doesn't have a lot of footnotes but is my reflections on my years as a counsellor and the issues that I have encountered while walking with my clients. It mostly raises issues and questions about the difficulties of working within the Christian belief system while believing that most of its core beliefs are destructive to recovery from child sexual abuse. It was a reflection of my understanding of my accountability to my clients and to myself. It is interesting to go back and see what I said eight years ago. There is nothing to change. Read it if you wish.

http://www.academicroom.com/conferencepaper/accountability-trauma-therapy-adult-survivors-raised-christian-belief-system-birth-anthropologian

Now for a game of Plants vs. Zombies!

Vessels of Terror - revised

I have been meaning to write a comment in response to the blog Atonement, Cycles of Abuse, and Virtue/Atonement [this blog post is no longer available so I have removed the link] ever since I read it in the spring. It is gratifying to see how seriously students took the conundrums posed by mine and Brown & Parker’s articles in Patriarchy, Christianity and Abuse: A Feminist Critique.

What struck me the most was the reference to M.Shawn Copeland’s concept of “vessels of terror”. This is a powerful way of explaining the problem that people like myself have with Christian theology to those whose faith has never been destroyed by the very core values of their belief system.

A good example to explain how something seemingly innocuous can become a “vessel of terror”: I was explaining this concept to a friend of mine and he asked me whether the following story would be a good explanation of what I was talking about. A particular painting by Otto Donald Rogers of a prairie field with a leather belt on the ground was part of an installation in an Ottawa office building. A woman who would have had to face the painting every day from her cubicle said that she couldn't live with it. It reminded her of the beatings that she had had as a child. The installers took the piece out of the installation. This painting of Otto Rogers was a “vessel of terror” for this woman.

I tend to try and stay away from using the formal structures of theology, however, it appears that what I tend to do is called “a Hermeneutics of Critical Evaluation”: a bottom-up or ethnographic form of analysis (I discovered that this is the formal way to describe what I do in Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways, 77). And this form of hermeneutics or biblical/theological interpretation if heard by “traditional (read malestream) hermeneutics” can only lead to serious questions about the received wisdom of the last two thousand years of Christianity.

There is an attachment to these beliefs (or virtues) that are at the core of Christianity. For so many people, they work to explain the world. However, just because people use the identified virtues of the system to find some way to ameliorate their position, that doesn't undo the damage that they have already caused. In fact, they serve to maintain the status quo. There are examples in the discussion on the atonement blog of women who use these beliefs to “get them through the night”. While it is understandable, I would argue that all this does is keep them in a place where they can be damaged again and again by these “vessels of terror”. Suffering, for example, can be accepted because this is part of the travails of this world, and you will be rewarded in the next life if you just "keep your chin up" ("God doesn't give you a mountain that you can't climb" - ask This time Lord, you gave me a mountain this time). It keeps the abused in their place and reproduces the structures that will allow the next generation to be abused once more. In the long term, it changes nothing, which is why I couldn't stay within the confines of the Christian belief system. In the final analysis, the structures/virtues are so embedded in the core belief system that there is no way to make any kind of compromise with it. And Lord knows I tried!

I do understand why people try so hard to find some way to make the belief system work. If they can’t make it work at some level, then where do they go? Is there any way around them? What do you replace them with? How much time will people actually spend trying to mitigate the impact of these "vessels of terror”?

I can only say, “Go watch Deliver Us From Evil, then tell me that these “vessels of terror” are worth keeping.” If you have already watched it, then go watch it again. 

ADDENDUM:
I looked to see if I could find the Otto Rogers' painting that I talked about. I didn't. However, I really like this one. It is called Marching Trees and is apparently currently on sale at the Paul Kuhn Gallery, although I couldn't find it on the gallery's website. 

Fear and Denial at the Crossroads.

So I decided that I might as well put up the other paper that I delivered this year. This is the document that will be published in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Church History 2012. It is unedited so any problems with editing issues are solely my responsibility and will be fixed for the final version. However, I just thought that it might as well be out there. My 1993 paper has already had 234 views since I uploaded it in May. It will be interesting to see if this one is viewed as well.

http://www.academicroom.com/conferencepaper/fear-and-denial-crossroads-where-history-%E2%80%9Cchild-abuse-scandal%E2%80%9D-within-roman-catholic-church

The Personal is Still Political

I just uploaded the speaking document for the paper that I delivered in Amsterdam this summer at the SBL International Meeting in Amsterdam. It is a position paper.I cleaned it up, added a few footnotes.

I had tasked myself the job for the weekend and it's done!! Now to relax with a glass of red wine and an episode of Beauty and the Beast (actually it's not a bad remake!)

It is available at the following: The Personal is Still Political: What else did you expect, or have we forgotten just how radical feminist exegesis can be?