Nick Kristof should probably go back to freeing sex workers (or whatever it is he really does with them) if he’s going to write garbage like this:
It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS. But what about Father Michael Barton, a Catholic priest from Indianapolis? I met Father Michael in the remote village of Nyamlell, 150 miles from any paved road here in southern Sudan. He runs four schools for children who would otherwise go without an education, and his graduates score at the top of statewide examinations.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph — how can he not see that what is so deeply wrong about the chauvinism, homophobia, and sexual abuse is that it takes place, in effect, in the name of decent, courageous, selfless people who have devoted their lives to what they thought was a worthy institution?
The sex scandal in the Catholic Church is, first and foremost, a crime against the children who were abused. But it is also a crime against the priest who has devoted his life to helping the poor but is ashamed to wear his collar in public because he doesn’t want to be seen as a pedophile. The insanity about condoms is stupid and murderous, not only because it kills but because it makes fools of the African clergy who truly believe they can make the world a better place by giving their lives to the Catholic Church.
I sniff derisively at the hierarchy of the Catholic Church but I have nothing but the highest respect for the nun who teaches at a poor, city school and the priest who stayed in Rwanda to try to save lives. I suspect that most of you feel the same way.
I’m sure that Kristof sincerely believes he is doing good with his rich-boy-slumming-it-in-Africa-shtick. Maybe that would be true if he’d pull his head out of his ass long enough to understand what criticism of the Catholic Church is really about.
DougJ +5
Quiddity
Anagram of NICK KRISTOF:
STICK FORK IN
aimai
I only wish I could be plus five reading anything by Kristoff. He was a classmate of mine and seems to have always been just this puerile and pompous. The thing that pisses me off is that the Catholic Church has betrayed *all of these people*–not just the children and their families in the first world, but the children and their families all over the world. And all the members of the priesthood and the female religious organizations. Every member of the Catholic Church who took seriously Jesus’s message of love and service has been betrayed by this and all the previous popes, cardinals, and priests who abused their position and the trust of the children and families.
The recent story in The Stranger (google Wall, Alaska, and priest sexual abuse and you’ll turn it up) ought to have warned Kristoff that priests often end up doing “good works” in distant outposts of forgotten empires because
a) the church raises tons of money for these missions which are then not actually spent in the needy community.
b) the priest himself is frequently in exile there, where his crimes will not be investigated by an aggressive and secular media or legal system.
If I hear one more time about selfless religious figures who dedicate their lives to reliving the suffering caused by Catholic anti-contraceptive dogma I think I’ll puke.
aimai
gbear
Knuckles have memories.
Quiddity
Kristof:
In his “pay less attention to the church leadership” essay, Kristof fails to mention the low-level Catholic priests and nuns that participated in the massacres.
arguingwithsignposts
Perhaps he needs to hear about the Fixers.
DougJ
@aimai:
I honestly believe there are good people working within the Catholic Church. I think that I know such people. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it will turn out that they are all child molesters.
But the good works that they do don’t say anything about the scumbags at the top who allowed the Legion of Christ (for example) to flourish.
Liberty60(Veteran, Great war of Yankee Aggression)
Speaking as a lifelong Catholic, who still loves the theology of the Gospels-
I am quoting this to every fellow Catholic I know, and twice to the defensive fuckwad Bill Donohoe types.
I think it is doubly outrageous to shield pedophiles and their enablers behind the courage and good works of the priest mentioned.
Joel
As a friend of mine liked to tell;
The Catholic church didn’t hesitate one second before screwing over all the elderly ladies who volunteered their lives to their parish, only to see them get shut down so that the archdiocese could pay hush money to victims of sexual abuse.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Totally OT, but my wife caught a line from Obama at the dinner, it went something like: “McCain couldn’t be here tonight. It seems that he’s been pointing out that he’s been mislabeled as a Maverick. And you know what happens if you don’t have proper identification in Arizona.”
patrickT
I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic grade school and was an altar boy from sixth through eighth grade. The priests who worked in our parish were all fine, honorable men who did nothing but try to teach us to lead a good life according to their best light.
Not long ago my mother, who is eighty-eight years old now, asked me in a worried voice if any of the priests had bothered me. I felt terrible that she would have to worry about our priests who were such good men. So, DougJ, I agree with your point completely.
DougJ
@patrickT:
I feel the same way about the priest at my parish. It’s crazy — even to repeat “he took us on some field trips” sounds like a euphemism for something, but he was a good, decent man from everything that I saw.
John Cole
@DougJ: Of course there are. Go anywhere in the world and look for people living in mud and muck and filth and poverty, and you will find nuns, mormons, evangelicals, and deeply religious people of every kind.
It’s the assholes who run things here at home who give these churches the bad names.
de stijl
BO is kind of killing at the WH-journo comedy whatchmacallit. The Eric Massa tickle joke was an out of left field gem. His herky-jerky delivery sold it; I did not see him going there until he went. Well played!
fourlegsgood
I’m with you on this. I’m not religious, but 2 of my best friends are catholic, and I’ve known many very fine priests who are truly dedicated to serving their communities.
The asshole pope and his cadre of jackass cardinals are an insult to those priests.
fourlegsgood
@patrickT: that’s just sad.
My experience with priests is like yours – I was often at my best friend’s church and there were always priests at their family gatherings. Two of them are friends of mine to this day.
They never once behaved badly – I am ashamed of the church on their behalf.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole: Not to deny your point, but some, out in shitty parts of the world, were exiled there. I would like to think that the majority of people doing the hard work in any organization built on the idea of service are good, decent people who are doing their best, but I know that there are assholes of various stripes within as well.
Mike Kay
Predictably, Jay Leno is bombing.
I have seen such bombin’ since Operation Niagara
rootless-e
“Nick Kristof is a pompous, clueless windbag” but he’s a combination of Liebling, I.F. Stone and Hunter Thompson compared to Richard Cohen.
Comrade Luke
Perhaps this priest is one of the priests in Africa who “live openly with wives and children, in defiance of the Vatican’s celibacy requirement”.
Even if not, it sure would solve a lot of problems.
jl
Back from walk and decided to check in before I start the evening here on the pacific coast.
I am not sure what DougJ’s point is about this column.
The thing that puzzled me about the Kristoff column was this quote:
“It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS.”
Is the point of this column to rebut what some arrogant and supposedly ‘liberal’ people say at NY cocktail parties? Who gives anything about what a group of ridiculously vaguely characterized people say at NY cocktail parties?
It is a commonplace among most reasonable mainline religious establishments that earthly churches are corrupt earthly institutions that are very often corrupt and do bad things and can be lead by bad people.
The Catholic church had to face this issue since the time of the ‘bad popes’.
Zen Buddhism is conventionally supposed to be a pacifist institution, but I think at least half of the official Japanese Buddhist priesthood got very enthusiastically behind the war effort in WWII. The head priest of the Japanese Zen Buddhist church got uppity and started spouting against any aggressive military actions at the start of the war and he got jailed for it, and I think only a few of his official underlings dared say anything in protest.
I know a number of conservative evangelical Protestants who do very brave work in poor countries around the world. Some of them, for example, do very brave work in defending women’s and childrens’ legal rights at a grassroots level that would be considered very lefty and ‘anti-family’ in conservative Protestant circles if done in the US.
So, what is interesting about this column. Unless it is interesting to hear Kristoff utter a commonplace dressed up as a brave personal statement.
Was this column directly mainly at arrogant liberal people who go to NY cocktail parties?
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I dunno DougJ and aimai; being too hard on Nick Kristof is sort of like kicking a puppy. I haven’t seen him voice any extended defenses of the Catholic hierarchy, and his third-world advocacy may not help all that much, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Yeah, he’s sort of a gasbag, but he’s not very self-aggrandizing, and compared to other columnists who’re constantly beating the war drum/defending republicans he practically lives a life of virtue. Chill out a bit.
rootless-e
if we are up for stupid, self-referential, pompous columnists there’s always
Glen
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/30/obama/index.html
with a stunner in which he reveals Obama’s disdain for Thurgood Marshall and opposition to Brown v. Board of Education.
[rolls eyes]
Mark S.
The Church is very predictable once you understand its hierarchy of needs:
1. Protect the organization.
2. Protect its very warped view of sexual mores (which is why priest-diddling had to be covered up, see #1)
3. Doing that other shit Jesus talked about in the Bible.
That’s why the Father Michaels and Sister Cathys never become popes.
JG
@rootless-e:
What did GG say that wasn’t true? He’s criticizing Obama’s adoption of mindless right-wing memes like rampant liberal judicial activism in the 60’s and 70’s. Meaning, as usual, he’s criticizing Obama from the left. Which I guess is a grave crime to some on this site.
John O
At least one of us does.
I just don’t get club membership. They’re almost inevitably creepy on some level.
jl
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Yeah, I kind of agree. Kristoff has done some good work.
I think main problem with this column is that the point is silly. Maybe Kristoff doesn’t think so because he is at some level a prisoner of NY cocktail parties and media and power broker social circles, and feels he needs to make some sort of statement that, once you think about it, most reasonable people in the US (you know, some of the great unwashed and unsophisicated that Kristoff cares about) understand very well already.
I would think examples like Krugman, and at a more mundane level Herbet, would cause other NY Times columnist think about increasing the quality of their columns. But even Kristoff has been turning out a number of silly columns.
Mike Kay
@JG: now, now. if you criticize glen from the left for glen’s full-throated support for the recent corporatist-activist Citizen’s United decision, some people react as if a crime was committed against glen.
Mark S.
@rootless-e:
Read GG’s second update:
I, for one, would like to know which Warren and Burger Court decisions Obama thinks were terrible.
rootless-e
@JG: As usual with Glenn, he draws silly conclusions from the failure to phrase things the way he wants them phrased. In Glenn world, there is a correct way to talk about everything and that way is Glenn’s way.
He’s never understood what Obama was up to appropriating Republican framing, but this is dumber than ever. Aside from the bizarre theory that a black liberal President who once did civil rights litigation can be considered to be rejecting Brown v Board from his failure to talk about “activism” in Glenn’s terms, you might wonder whether he has any idea who Kagan is. Of course, she’s just a girl and Glenn seems to have trouble taking women seriously.
r€nato
So, if NAMBLA engaged in charity work, they’d be acceptable to society???
jl
@JG:
I agree with what GG wrote about Obama’s statement on the SCOTUS.
I disagree with GG that it is at all likely there is some substantive point behind Obama’s statement. Otherwise, why would the WH issue bafflegab in response to reasonable questions about what the heck Obama meant?
I think these kinds of statements by Obama are part of an ineffectual and misguided political schtick, or a kind of mindless kneejerk bipartisan mindset (that is, Obama has a very deep seated inner Broder that he cannot kick).
This kind of odd and superficial talk is the most disappointing aspect of Obama’s political leadership to me.
Leadership and using the Bully Pulpit is not about just pounding the table and or making high minded statements that one imagines will sound reasonable, even the statements don’t make a lot of sense. They are about finding ways to change public attitudes through argument and facts. I think Obama has been not been consistenlty strong on this aspect of leadership.
rootless-e
@Mark S.: ah, so he backs off in the updates. If Glenn doesn’t think Obama has the civil rights or choice decisions in mind, what decisions is he defending? Because if Obama was accepting winger framing, then those are exactly the “activist” decisions the wingers mean.
DougJ
@jl:
Yes, I agree. But, even so, in fairness to those cocktail party people, they’re not laughing at some priest in Zimbabwe ministering to those with AIDs, they’re laughing at the hypocrisy of the hierarchy. So why would he even bring them up?
jl
@DougJ: If that is your point, I agree. But I am gladly so far away from the NY cocktail party trail, that I have no idea what they think and do not care what they say.
mcd410x
Speaking of pompous asshats, if someone says the following on Twitter is it ok to set him straight about the history of the song?
“I’ve been to two Derby races live. It’s an amazing event. If you don’t cry during ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ then you need to get out more.”
General Egali Tarian Stuck
LOL. I can see why you like GG. Obama simply stated that liberal courts “might have” employed judicial activism in the sense of usurping the legislature domain. This has happened on both sides, and usually is done when the court is faced with a decision, or problem, that the legislature either has not done it’s job of solving through lawmaking, or has done so with too much ambiguity.
You are attributing GG;s words to Obama for stating the obvious. The SCOTUS does “judicial activism” all the time, and always has, left and right. Just because the wingnuts have turned it into another liberal boogeyman, doesn’t mean we quit telling the truth. Like with the word “liberal” that peeps on the left are afraid of using, so they assign themselves being progressives when they are actually liberal ideologues running scared of wingers success of trashing that term. Mouthbreathing is all mr. Greenwald is doing here, stirring up shit because he can.
Mike Kay
the president did a brilliant job in turning the decades old meme about judicial activism on it’s head, and anchoring it around John Roberts neck.
Why just look at the headline it generated in Huff Po.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/28/obama-supreme-court-warni_n_556317.html
And when you go through the details, Obama is repeating the same argument FDR made against the wingnut Hughes court when they gutted the WPA, that is: laws produced by the House and Senate and state legislatures should get “some deference as long as core constitutional values are observed.”
But no, some people are still stuck, fighting over the 60s, rather than facing today’s wingers.
rootless-e
@jl:
“I think these kinds of statements by Obama are part of an ineffectual and misguided political schtick, or a kind of mindless kneejerk bipartisan mindset (that is, Obama has a very deep seated inner Broder that he cannot kick).”
What I love about these kind of statements is how exactly analogous they are to drunk guys in a sports bar explaining how for example why Lebron’s shot mechanics are lame. Obama is the effective MVP in the world’s toughest league. He may miss some tricks or fuck up, but his “ineffectual” schtick seems to get him some points.
jl
One aspect of GG’s discussion of United decision seemed very wrong to me.
GG said you could not rank free speech rights of different associations without getting into intractable and dangerous areas.
I think that is nonsense.
A corporate, spending money as an artificial entity with legal personhood is bound by legal and fiduciary responsibilities, particularly to shareholders. The shareholders of the corporation are also granted special rights, one of the most important is limited liability.
So, how can any speech uttered, or paid for, in the name of the corporation be free in the same sense of an individual who has no such special responsibilities or rights? I think it is very easy to rank free speech rights of different types of associations of individuals.
All speech uttered or paid for by the standard for-profit corporation itself is commercial speech in the name of an association of individuals that have been granted special rights.
Any legal people here see a flaw in my position?
Though I am late and will have to check for the devastating critiques tomorrow.
rootless-e
FYI
“I chose TM because he was the best lawyer of the 20th century — an absolutely sterling advocate who did more to advance justice in our country (prior to becoming a Justice!) than anyone else I can think of,” ______ said in an e-mail, when we first inquired about her office art. “On top of all that, I worked for him, and he was a great boss and mentor. It will be wonderful to have him looking down at me as I try to do this job.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I fail to see the difference between Kristof’s gibberish and all of those articles that begin: “Sure Goldman Sachs has fucked up the economy, but what about the poor workers who are a-scared someone will be mean to them because they work for Goldman Sachs?!”
Utter fucking bullshit that doesn’t even try to make sense.
jl
@Mike Kay: thanks, I will check that link when I have a chance. I hope that Obama is not just spouting Broder boilerplate to sound reasonable and really has a specific argument.
If so, though, he needs to make it in a way that reaches the average voter in a more effective way.
rootless-e
@jl: i think you are totally correct.
kay
Obama had some problems with the litigation-based strategy for civil rights. He believes it was too court-focused (as opposed to legislative). He has a good argument.
This is from a publ;ic radio interview in 2001. The lunatics on the Right used it during the campaign to portray him as wanting the court to redistribute wealth, but that isn’t his point. His point is that he believes there is real value to a legislative solution versus a court-imposed solution, to benefit the dispossessed and disenfranchised.
He’s consistent on this. He thinks electoral-legislative victories are the long haul solution, the better solution.
OBAMA: You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote. I would be able to sit at a lunch counter and order, and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay.
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.
And one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still stuffer from that.
Mike Kay
@jl: bully pulpit = populist bromide.
It doesn’t take into account the supine media, the corporate media, the wingnut propaganda apparatus (fixxed news/hate radio/think tanks/fake grassroots), and the instant news cycle (twitter).
If only obama pounded the table, murdoch would crumble. if only obama pounded the table, politico would start covering policy, and not the horse race. if only obama pounded the table, WaPo would fire their editorial board and dana milbank. if only obama pounded the table, sally quinn and tweety would apologize for the vacuous views. if only obama pounded the table, the Today show would cover news and not style and entertainment.
And the funniest part of this bromide: it is usually made by john edwards supporters, who always find a way to forget that edwards championed the invasion of iraq, while obama opposed the invasion.
arguingwithsignposts
Here is my take on Glenn Greenwald. He’s not the only lawyer in the room. Not even the only civil libertarian. And last I checked, the POTUS was both a lawyer and a constitutional professor at the University of Chicago. You can disagree with his administration’s arguments, but that’s why we have judges, and other lawyers for plaintiff and defense.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: Telling the truth. Best mythbuster on the planet.
Schmegma
I neither live in New York nor frequent cocktail parties. But I still disapprove of the Cathlolic Church. Someone alert Kristof!
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What about him? What about all the charities that happen to have an association with Hamas? I’d be more impressed with the principle he’s standing for if I thought it was being applied in even a remotely consistent fashion.
Actually, Doug, the vapidity of this column starts right from the opening sentences, not just the bit you quote:
The Gospel of John quotes Jesus pontificating before Pilate.
There is no such thing as a “Paleolithic edict”. If he means Bronze Age edicts, Jesus fully endorsed these.
He protected an adultress, who had committed a capital offense according to the Law which Jesus endorsed. One would presume from various episodes attributed to Jesus that any offense, save for blaspheming the Holy Ghost, is forgivable. So yes, a clergyman who had raped children but was remorseful would have been “protected” by Jesus.
“If”? Has Kristof even read the fucking Bible?
I’m not even four full sentences into the thing and it’s patently obvious Kristof has no clue what he’s talking about. You’d think that someone mustering a defense of organized Christianity would have some vague idea about, you know, Christianity.
Karen in GA
It may also be easy in rural Georgia in a cheaply-furnished living room with carpet that needed replacement five years ago, over beer bought at the QuikTrip before midnight when the blue laws kick in, in front of some seriously mind-numbing TV.
We don’t sniff derisively, though, so much as curse openly.
kay
He always goes back to the legislature on civil rights, and I think he makes the distinction clear: courts for basic protections, legislatures and citizen action for long term solutions. Here he’s talking about economic progress, for newly enfranchised people (court action necessary!) so he’s talking about forming alliances and organizations on the ground, rather than litigating, but this general idea is a familiar Obama theme:
OBAMA: You know, maybe I’m showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but, you know, I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.
You just look at very rare examples where, during the desegregation era, the court was willing, for example, order changes that cost money to local school districts. And the court was very uncomfortable with it, it was hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues. You know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.
You know, the court’s just not very good at it and politically it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from court in that regard. So I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally. You know, I think you could…any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts…”
burnspbesq
@jl:
Yes, I see the flaw in your position. The flaw in your position is that it is utterly incoherent. Which part of “Congress shall make no law” are you having difficulty understanding?
Schmegma
@rootless-e:
Ahhh…the firebaggers have arrived. With logic only their transpartisen brother Grover Norquist could love, they find a nut where even squirrels fear to tread.
Obama was obviously making the point that the GOP trope of “activist judges” is complete nonsense, when the record shows conservative judges overturn more legislation than liberal judges.
But of course, if you’re a firebagger Obama is “worse than Bush”, “public option”, “Rahm is the devil”, etc…so on..”public option”, “Greenwald! Greenwald!”, bully puplit, public option…..etc…..(oh, and “Corporatist! Corporatist!”)
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
He’s a weird POTUS because he still thinks like a legislator. He clearly thinks the legislative branch is just…a…little….BETTER :) He’s got a point.
Anyway, this isn’t a new spat.
“Should civil and other basic rights be pursued and strengthened through elections-grass roots organizing or courts?” is an old, old fight. Thurgood Marshall was battling it out at the time, with other Lefties, who may have favored the Obama approach.
It’s a big issue. It’s bigger than this or that court, or this or that decision.
rootless-e
@Schmegma: you missed a turn in the argument.
rootless-e
And speaking of Rahm, POTUS says
rootless-e
@burnspbesq: if you think that the intent of the framers was to, for example, safeguard the rights of the East India Company, you are smoking the wrong kind of tea leaves.
Mike Kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
is there any evidence that he was ever an effective lawyer? He quit after only 10 years, citing boredom; not the measurement of a successful, active litagator (“i’m bored”).
Mike Kay
Attica!
KRK
@rootless-e:
That’s fabulous.
Schmegma
@arguingwithsignposts:
I
respectused to respect Greenwald. But it’s become pretty obvious of late that Greenwald relies on the funding of certain groups who thrive on his quasi-professional wrestling-like review of the news of the day.That’s how you get someone who is a fairly bright bulb pandering to the Firebagging left by inferring something from Obama’s speech that the typical none-too-bright 9 year old would be smart enough to know is crapola.
But I guess we all gotta serve a master, right?
Earn that money, Greenwald! Yeah, shake that moneymaker. Yeah..pay dem’ bills, G-money….
burnspbesq
@rootless-e:
Nice strawman.
Where did I say that?
Fuck off.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I watched Jay Leno at the Press Prom and I don’t ever watch him, he’s just not on my radar, and he was completely unfunny. I’m shocked. I thought he would be somewhat funny. Jesus. Is he always that bad?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay:
Yes.
Liberty60(Veteran, Great war of Yankee Aggression)
Re: Greenwald, and firebagging-
Maybe its the nature of message threads, that criticism tends to devolve into vicious fights, into separating everyone into “Enemies Who Must Be Vanquished” and “Idols Who Must Not Be Questioned”
I mean, could Greenwald – and those who criticise Greenwald- put Obama and others into the camp of “Those Who We Disagree With But Generally Support”
This isn’t a kumbaya plea- its that we make some sort of distinction between those who are genuinely worthy of implacable resistance- like, say, the Cheneys- and those like Glenn, Obama, Sullivan, and others who even at their worst are still a mile better than the least worst of the Bush regime.
Without disagreeing with the substance of the Greenwald criticism, I just don’t have much appetite to tear into him, while so many more worthy targets are still at large.
lacp
Anybody here see the move The Mission? I’ll never be a fan of Catholicism (or probably any other religion), but that was a heartbreaker.
Cat Lady
@lacp:
Yeah. Jeremy Irons was great, but it was just a movie.
Brien Jackson
@Liberty60(Veteran, Great war of Yankee Aggression):
In a word; no. Because, to be blunt, the deeper we get down this rabbit hole, the more convinced I am that Greenwald’s schtick is solely about his persona, and that he knows he’s selling his readers a bag of goods. Much as I suspect that, at least on some level, Hamsher knows she’s totally full of shit.
Mark S.
@burnspbesq:
That’s right. That’s why kiddie porn is legal in this country.
Oh, wait, no it’s not. The Court has never ruled that the First Amendment is absolute.
Andy K
@Mark S.:
AFAIK, the SCOTUS has only ever ruled against types of speech, not types of speakers. But I could be wrong.
Mark S.
@Andy K:
I don’t think so. The case overruled by Citizens United, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, seemed to say that you could discriminate against corps (and probably unions, I don’t remember) in this regard.
I think the problem is equating money with speech. But this is a very difficult subject and I don’t have much of an answer for it.
electricgrendel
Yeah. Basically. When people of faith practice the tennets of their faith, I find that generally inspiring. When they use it to wear fancy shoes and as a reason to send confused people to go and blow up a political opponent, then they’re pretty much despicable.
The fact that the latter gain legitimacy because of the work of the former is just fuel for the rage.
tc125231
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Sly
There is no point to this statement other than to protect an institution by denigrating one minor faction of its critics. You know who hates the Church? Those decadent limousine liberals on the Upper West Side. The Church must be doing something good then, no? Because nothing limousine liberals on the Upper West Side do or say can be taken seriously.
I generally like Kristof, comparatively speaking, but this was unconscionably cheap.
You know who would probably make a really good pope? The altar boy who was raped by the priest who got transferred to Uganda.
Fuckin’ dickhead.
Kobie
I don’t think it could be said better, DougJ.
Kobie +I have no idea
Kobie
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Fair enough, but the day laborers at Goldman Sachs aren’t doing “God’s work.” They’re not working at orphanages or ministering to the sick and needy. They’re simply another cog in a money-making machine.
Let’s not try to equate the truly devout Christian who is legitimately trying to help people in need with some pencil pusher at an investment firm in terms of who is working toward the greater good.
Kobie
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Amen.
Kobie
@r€nato: If they cut out the child-molestation shit, but I guess that would go against their mission statement.
NAMBLA’s ENTIRE EXISTENCE is devoted to buggering kids. The Catholic Church’s is not. Now, while the CC is rotten to the core, there are people who believe in its actual ideals (as misguided as some of them may be) and ACT ON THEM. It’s not the innocent, pious priest in El Salvador’s fault that the Pope basically gave license to buttfuck altar boys.
To equate a rank-and-file pederast in NAMBLA with a true servant of the Catholic Church is weapons-grade horseshit. And this is coming from someone who DETESTS the Catholic Church.
Grow up, asshole.
Kobie
@jl: I think it started out that way, but got redirected toward Catholics as a whole, and those who dare criticize the Emperor. I’ll have to give it another read, though. I need to get another barf bag.
Kobie
@de stijl: It’s a sad state of affairs when the POTUS is FAR funnier than the so-called King of Late-Night TV.
A sad state of affairs for late-night TV.
Kobie
@DougJ: The priest at the parish I grew up in was a complete asshole, but to my knowledge he never diddled anyone. He was accused, but the accusations turned out to be wholly baseless — basically came from a family trying to piggyback on the earlier scandals. Essentially destroyed his career, though.
My stepfather was raised Methodist but was never religious at all, and even by the time I was 12 or 13 we were basically only going to church on Hypocrite’s Day (Christmas and Easter). So it’s probably 1992, and we’re in church on Easter Sunday, listening to this shitball tell us (ON EASTER SUNDAY) that we shouldn’t give money to the United fucking Way, because Planned Parenthood is one of the eleventy thousand charities they help support.
Needless to say, we never went back to that church. Tried out another, but it didn’t take, and then the priest there got caught embezzling money from the diocese. By this point, I was long out of the house and had gotten to the “weddings-and-funerals” stage of churchgoing, so I unfortunately missed all that fun.
Kobie
BTW, DougJ, you’re from my neck of the woods, so you might have heard of at least one of these fiascos.
aimai
@Sly:
Sly and several others have said what I wanted to say about Kristoff. He pulls this shtick all the time–Dougj correctly identified it as “rich boy slumming…” For years he’s done it to feminists–they play the role assigned here to sniffy NY liberals. You’d think, to read Kristoff’s early columns on sex slavery and women’s rights that he was the first person in the first world to ever notice third world women. He was always excoriating some feminist initiative he’d tripped over at home. Its always a zero sum game, for him, with every feminist initiative (title 9 or what eventually became lily ledbetter) found wanting because it wasn’t, at that very second, about “girl X in forgotten Africa.” He completely ignored the work women were doing, and had been doing for years, all around the world because his self appointed role was to be lecturer to the NY Times effete liberal masses.
Here, too, his whole focus is, as Sly points out, on the imaginary cocktail party circuit. Its easy to sneer at criminal priests? Yes, yes it is. Does that mean that the Catholic church needs little nikki Kristoff to run to its rescue? Well, no.
You know who likes to sneer, at cocktail parties and other places? Other Catholics. Kristoff’s implication is that the NY liberals who are drinking and yukking it up aren’t also Catholic, or haven’t also donated to various missions and good works around the world. That’s false and, in any event, uninteresting. If these cocktail weenies aren’t Catholic, they are still entitled to their opinions. And if they are, all the more so.
aimai
DougJ
@Kobie:
I think I remember the crazy anti-United Way one, yes.
toujoursdan
If only the ongoing and similar paedophile scandal in the Boy Scouts got this kind of attention: OC Register: Sex abuse case will cost Boy Scouts $18.5 million: dated April 24th, 2010
and all the others…
Wikipedia: Scouting Sex abuse cases around the world
No doubt the RCC needs to have its feet held to the fire, but this is a widespread problem found in organizations without celibacy requirements or even religious beliefs too.
Kobie
@toujoursdan: A better job needs to be done of policing sexual predators (especially those who enjoy kids) worldwide in all walks of life, not just the Catholic Church.
Shit, I hate to seem like I’m sticking up for the followers of Cathol.
aimai
But surely its not one thing or another? It can’t be said too many times–its not the crime, its the coverup. The Catholic church has a problem with *abuse of authority* by its own authority figures. The only people who don’t think that is a problem are the authority figures currently running the show. That’s the problem. There are always going to be predators in every kind of community and they are always going to prey on the weak. That’s the nature of abuse. That’s what makes it wrong. In the case of the Catholic Church, a Prison, or any other total social institution the problem isn’t that there are some bad actors, and the problem isn’t that their bad actions can be traced to some aspect of the institutions’s dogma or theology, but that those in charge of the whole shebang don’t take the crime seriously enough to expel the perpetrators.
The Catholic church isn’t uniquely at fault–the boyscouts, nunneries, chasidic jews, evangelical churches, gym classes–they all have their abusive actors. But the Catholic Church is uniquely organized to punish some transgressions and to forgive others. It arrogates to itself the right to move criminals out of jurisdictions where they can be deposed or convicted. It financially supports individuals who other organizations would at once fire. And this indulgence extends only to fairly important members of the hierarchy: those who are male or who are ordained preists. Loudmouthed nuns, women who get abortions, women and doctors who faciliate medical care for the desperate are *routinely condemned* by the Church for what most sane people would regard as the minor crime of choosing to act independently in a matter of conscience. While important male priests are excused for the actual real world secular crime of raping children. How is it not necessary for the rest of the world to demand some accountability where the church touches the secular world. The rights of the children to bodily integrity, the right of their families to accountability for the monies raised for “charity” that are actually going to pay off the church’s civil fines–these are all places that all of us as tax paying citizens of countries in which these crimes are committed are entitled to view and comment on.
My question for Kristoff would be: who is at fault in underfunding or undersupporting the work of X brave nuns or X brave priests in some forgotten backwater of the third world? Its not the sniffy New York Liberals. Its the Vatican. There’s a whole lot of money on the Pope’s prada shoes, or invested in Cardinal Law’s sinecure. Money raised in the US to be spent on the poor and needy elsewhere. If NY liberals started “admitting all the good works” that some buddy of Kristoff’s had done how would it change the status quo? Not a whit. The struggle for the soul of the church is going to happen internally, in cocktail parties for men in robes that Kristoff will never gain access to.
aimai
sparky
@aimai: these two comments are only thoughtful ones in this thread. incidentally i concur with you about Kristof, though i disagree that it’s wrong to remind the people on the UES that not all members of the church are evil self-preservation-driven hacks. after all, their entree is to the cardinals, not the folks in the third world.
i confess i don’t share the political views of most of the commenters here, but at least in the past there was an effort at thinking rather than the knee-jerk witlessness here this year. some of these threads approach the inanity of red state threads over parsing or tarring “firebaggers.” substitute “liberal” for “firebagger” and see what happens.
worse is the misreading of what is being commented on. i have no idea whether the problem is hackery (you know who you are, relentless Obama defenders) or ineptitude, or laziness, or just groupthink. but it’s become depressing to click on a link here and find that the words there don’t resemble what they are claimed to say here. even media criticism can go awry if all it does is seize upon a poorly thought out but otherwise inoffensive paragraph to doom an entire effort. or did i miss the memo and BJ is now the media thought police: if it’s not said exactly the right way (whatever that is), it’s to be derided? or has everyone here decided if you can’t beat the Palin train to use the same methods?
incidentally, can someone tell me what the difference is between people here making fun of the NYT and people of a conservative bent making fun of the NYT when the paper aims its words towards its local upper-class readers?
ps: if anyone is still reading this far down, i realize it’s a bit unfair of me to get ranty about a saturday night thread, but the same thing happened the other day with Larison.
toujoursdan
I’m not saying it’s one or the other. I’m saying that the focus on the RCC’s paedophile scandal seems as motivated by anti-religious attitudes and a critique of the RCC’s doctrines, particularly on sexuality (which I mostly share) as anything.
The level of abuse and the coverup in other organizations is just as great, if not more. The BSOA had “perversion files” it kept on molesters but allowed them to keep molesting.
I think it’s important to hold all these groups’ feet to the fire, but it’s also important to separate critiques of religion and the doctrines/policies of the RCC in particular from true concern over the victims of abuse and what can be done to hold abusers and their enablers accountable.
I’m not Catholic. I have never been Catholic. Frankly, as a lifelong Episcopalian I don’t understand the hold the RCC has over people – whether they love it or hate it – or the oft-floated assumption that all religion is in any way like the RCC. But I think it honours those who were abused to focus on them and their needs, and what to do to stop it from happening again, and save the other critiques for their appropriate time.
aimai
toujoursdan,
I don’t know, what’s the “appropriate time” for a critique of the very theology to which the criminal resorts as a defense? The Catholic Church is a factor in my daily life as an American Citizen. It has intruded on every aspect of my political and social life since I was very small–I don’t think that “not being a member” or not being a voluntary member of this organization has ever affected the ways in which the Church has proposed to affect my life, my pocketbook, my education. Other religions are more modest in their demands. I’m a jew, technically, but the orthodox jews have left me and my city and my education alone. We didn’t eat fish every friday in my public school because of the jews. And we don’t have this recurring fight over sex ed, contraception, and the right of refusal because the Catholic owned hospitals are keeping their theology to themselves.
One of the problems the laity and the ordinary (non catholic) person has with the Church specifically is that it has used its peculiar (and by that I mean specific) understanding of its ritual/theology of sin to exculpate and protect actual abusers while it has, similarly, used the same language of sin and of excommunication to police much more minor infractions–such as laity speaking up, laity who use contraception, divorced people, etc… That’s all well and good but I don’t see how outsiders can *avoid* a critique of a theology and a culture which on the one hand is used a a shield for criminality and on the other as a sword against dissent. I don’t see how we can respect and protect the abused–which includes all the religious who struggle to do good work under the umbrella of shame and scandal–without looking pretty hard at the theology and the institutional structures which are enabling abuse to continue. There is zero evidence that abuse is not continuing, just outside of the public eye, btw.
aimai
liberal
@toujoursdan:
That’s not the question. You can always find another organization with property X (in this case, covering up sexual abuse of children). The question is, rather, how typical is this? For example, how does the Church compare to, say, American public schools when it comes to turning in perps? I’ll wager the schools are much better.
Not to mention that the Boy Scouts, like the Church, is a right-wing organization.
Wrong. The RCC holds itself up as having the authority to make moral pronouncements on many, many social issues. This makes them distinct from other organizations.
liberal
@aimai:
This.
If the Church wants us to stay out of their religion, they can stay out of our politics.
toujoursdan
Well there IS abuse continuing to happen: in the RCC, the Boy Scouts, the Episcopal Church, amongst daycare centres, Jewish groups, at summer camps, public schools and elsewhere. There is no way you can 100% stamp it out. It’s a terrible fact of life. Other than keeping all children out of contact with all adults, especially family members who are responsible for vast vast majority of child molestation, it’s going to happen. The question is whether institutions are taking responsible measures to prevent it, catch abusers and prosecute them. Other than lots of RCC and religion bashing (as if they’re all the same) there hasn’t been much discussion about what institutions, including the RCC, need to do, or about what they have done.
You’re missing my point. I never said that people shouldn’t critique the RCC’s doctrines and policies, but how does RCC or religion bashing (as if they’re all the same) help the victims here?
aimai
toujoursdan,
Well, who is supposed to “help the victims here?” And what does looking hard at church practices *then and now* have to do with helping or not helping the victims? People were victimized by a few bad apples, I suppose you mean? But those bad apples weren’t culled from the barrel by the men in charge. And there is zero evidence that they are taking victims complaints any more seriously today. That’s the problem.
I mean, here in Boston we tried to “help the victims” and the Church flew Cardinal Law to a sinecure in the vatican. Some people, and I am among them, think we “help the victims” by
a) preventing future abuses and
b) punishing past ones.
But the chances of either of these things happening without a full and open investigation of the punitive structures of the vatican with respect to offenders is zero. We don’t even have to inquire into theology, if that bugs you–we can just look at the church as a large corporation with corporate practices and bylaws and rules which oddly enough prevent it from co-operating with civil and criminal law in the states in which it operates.
The fact of the matter is that all the other groups you are talking about, all of which have abusers, are not considered untouchable–not the jews, not the teachers, not hospitals, not the boy scouts. Ordinary law suits, ordinary discovery, rules regarding reporting of suspicious acts–all of these have come into being and are protecting kids because people refused to be intimidated by any organization arrogating to itself the right to discover and punish its own membership.
The problem in Ireland *right now* is that the Church hierarchy has known there were specific criminal acts and has used its internal methods, based on its specific theology of sin, to silence victims. That’s precisely what got the current Archbishop in trouble. He participated in a *religiously mandated act* of taking testimony from victims and then swearing them to secrecy. You tell me how we can “help the victims” without any kind of critique of these practices? The Catholic Church wants to throw the secrecy of the confessional and the balm of forgiveness over *criminal acts* and yet doesn’t want its theology questioned? That’s absurd.
I think what you are trying to argue is that despite the abuse there’s lots of nice stuff about catholicism and some how some unknown person, somewhere on the internet or on tv or at Kristoff’s cocktail party is discounting that and that hurts the victims further. Well, why don’t you take that perspective up with SNAP or any of the other Catholics who are livid at the way their traditions and their beloved Church has been traduced. Its not late night comics or random internet commenters who are “not helping the victims” its the Catholic hierarchy. The blame lies squarely with them if the Catholic brand is damaged.
aimai
DougJ
@sparky:
None. And it’s a valid criticism when conservatives make it too. I’m not ashamed to agree with something just because conservatives sometimes say it too.
asiangrrlMN
I like him for the most part, but I was completely put off by this editorial. I am a ‘fan’ of his on FaceBook, and I posted response to him that was pretty similar to the one you give here, DougJ. I made the analogy that during the W. regime, there were good politicians in the US. However, given the rampant lawlessness of the W. regime, the world rightly excoriated us for the way we did…well, pretty much everything. This was a really poorly-written editorial.