Equally as degrading to the social conversation, Berstein believed, was the desperation of media outlets to be first to break a story, rather than making a solid investment in “real” investigative journalism of the kind he had been so lauded for. “The greatest felony in the news business today…is to be behind, or to miss, a major story; or more precisely, to seem behind, or to seem in danger of missing, a major story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. The pressure to compete, the fear that somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised; and even in those fortunate instances in which such questions are raised…no one has done the weeks and months of work to sort it all out and to answer them properly.”

Reading this essay 20 years later one can only despair at how terrifyingly relevant it remains, and beyond references to certain individuals (and maybe the lack of a reference to social media) I would challenge anyone unfamiliar with the piece to accurately date it. While there is undoubtedly some amazing investigative journalism still being done in this country, we live in a society with an increasingly relentless 24 hour reporting cycle driven by the frenzied energies of the news machine and the outrage of the masses. This is a society where an innocent women like Amanda Knox can be trashed by the mainstream media because it makes for a good story and painfully obvious advertising stunts are widely disseminated as fact. As for the “worship of celebrity”, one need only cast an eye over the side bar of the Daily Mail website or the glossy metres of magazines dedicated to nothing but a global bitch-fest, with headlines screaming the apparent failings of mildly famous people.

So far so standard. However it has recently become increasingly clear that over the last decades certain elements of the UK media have waged a not-so-covert operation of systematic privacy abuses beyond the ken of the average citizen. Revelations of the so called “dark arts”- phone-hacking, binology, stalking and other deeply shady methods of gathering any sniff of a story on those deemed worthy of public scrutiny- have shocked and revulsed the public. The irony is that these invasions of privacy were often used to furnish fluff pieces of staggering unimportance that at best had a fleeting dalliance with truth. While one might consider it much easier for the hacks to stay at home inventing stories from scratch (although they did that too) than rummaging through peoples bins at 4 o’clock in the morning, far be it for ease or ethics to stand in the way of a good story.

David Allen Green suggests that this scandal is the result a full system breakdown, where the enforcement bodies charged with holding the media to account, namely the Metropolitan Police, the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Press Complaints Commission, all failed spectacularly. There is really no argument that the media turned its back on self-regulation and the authorities who were then meant to step in failed to do so. It’s quite possible that if the Royal Family had not realised their voicemails were being intercepted this whole process of examination would not have been set in motion.

However in our rush up the ivory towers of indignation we are in danger of losing sight of a vital truth; specifically the societal context which enabled these abuses to occur. That is to say, this information was being collected in order to generate stories that would sell papers and drive page views. And to this end it certainly seems to have succeeded. The Mail Online is the most visited news website in the UK, with approximately 3 million people visiting it daily. Tabloid papers in the UK have a daily circulation of 20 million.

The Leveson Inquiry, set up to investigate the practices and ethics of the British press, witnessed a truly stunning performance from Paul MacMullan, previously the deputy features editor of the News of The World. One of his most telling riffs amidst a litany of shocking frankness was his belief in the audience as the final judge of what was reported. “[What was in the paper] was decided by the reader. We simply mirrored back what they wanted to read. I mean, the whole point of chasing circulation and nothing else, and to be the best paper you can be to achieve the number one circulation, is you have to appeal to what the reader wants to read, and that’s it. They are the judge and the jury of what is in the paper and if they don’t like it…then they’ll simply stop buying the product. But the reality was it was bought in its millions. This is what the people of Britain want. I was simply serving their need, what they wanted to read.”

Of course this was easily brushed aside as the desperate self-justification of a man who has long lost sight of the limits of acceptable behaviour. The public never asked for people to be besieged in their own homes. The public never asked for people to be caught up in dangerous games of cat and mouse with paparazzi. The public never asked for long-lense photos of grieving families. Indeed they did not. However the public never questioned what they were shown, either.

“We give the people what they want” is often dismissed as a childish attempt by those who pump out celebrity tat to justify their lies and invasions of privacy. And indeed it completely overlooks the position of power the media is in and the responsibility a free press has to its society. “We do not serve our readers and viewers, we pander to them. And we condescend to them, giving them what we think they want and what we calculate will sell and boost ratings and readership. Many of them, sadly, seem to justify our condescension, and to kindle at the trash. Still, it is the role of journalists to challenge people, not merely to amuse them. We are in the process of creating, in sum, what deserves to be called the idiot culture” condemned Berstein.

However it is far too easy to cry foul at how the media spoon-fed us decades after we’ve grown fat on its excretions. “The reason why News of the World sold 5 million copies is that there were 5 million thinking people and that’s what they wanted to read” said MacMullan. The simple fact is that in a world where people would refuse to pay for such garbage it would rapidly dwindle to the increasingly embarrassing annals of human history. Some rage against the power capitalism has over our ever globalised world but it is we as customers that grant it this power and it is we as customers that can take this power away.

In a more recent blog Berstein commented on the unfolding hacking scandal that “[w]orst of all Murdoch and his hack handmaidens wrought their havoc with the tacit approval of tens of millions of Britons whom he understood better than the politicians, comprehending that readers of his tabloids would revel in the amusement of trash “news” while he bought up ever-more respectable journalistic properties to consolidate his power.” Day after day, for year after year, the public went out and purchased the papers that were “reporting” what barely even qualified as gossip. And much as an avid carnivore may not particular want to witness the grisly birth of a sausage so the consumer of tabloid gruel was happy enough not thinking too deeply on the source of the blurry photos or the nameless quotes. And all it took to snap us out of this happy trance was the hacking of a dead school-girls mobile; apparently that was the step too far for society.

So we find ourselves reaping a bitter harvest. The public dares to be outraged, now that the fetid details of what was done to feed our appetite for titillation have been revealed. A human face has been put on those affected, and we shuffle our feet and mumble at the horror. Writes Fintan O’Toole “[t]he shock of the testimony at the Leveson Inquiry is the rehumanisation of these ciphers, the vivid sense of what it’s actually like to be on the receiving end of feral journalism. That this should be shocking is itself the mark of how removed we are from the people who are the subjects of commodified gossip”.

So who is to blame for where our Idiot Culture has left us? Most certainly, those individuals who actually partook in or allowed the dark-arts to happen unchallenged carry the vast burden of responsibility. But a healthy society needs to look beyond individual blame to understand the bigger system in which the crimes, both legal and ethical, took place. A complex interaction of the primitive human desire for gossip combined with the medias refusal or inability to stand up and educate its readers for fear of losing money has lead us inexorably to this place. Consumed in an orgy of tattle we have driven deeper and deeper into whispery kink, only for someone to suddenly turn on the lights leaving us shocked and embarrassed at how far we let things go. No one forced us here; we happily slept-walked into an ethical mire and we are now desperately trying to finger-point our way out.

One can but hope that this marks a turning point in the relationship between the public and its media, the start of a recognition of the wider context behind these “harmless” stories of celebrity gossip we are relentlessly exposed to and happily consume on a daily basis. However with the outrage at the revelation of the Milly Dowler hacking already a distant and fading memory one fears it shouldn’t take too long for the latest celebrity scoop to return to its rightful place as the most important part of our otherwise empty day.

Confession allows one to admit to anything that weighs heavily on ones soul, from the most fleeting of impure thoughts to genocide. The priest, as God’s most holy representative on Earth, will then forgive you your sins, wiping your tarnished soul back to its gleaming virginity and doling out a suitable punishment, usually in the form of a handful of prayers.

Having been born and educated in Ireland in the 80’s and 90’s, every 6 months or so the school would arrange for a team of priests to come in and tackle our hormone soaked sins. No doubt these were in devotion to some major event (probably Easter, for one) but the specifics escape me. What will never escape me is the actual act of confessing, as it was absolutely terrifying. Not for any spiritual reasons, but for the simple fact that my family was blessedly laid back when it came to religion and thus the only time I actually went to confession was when I was made do so at school.

The traditional setting for confession involves the dark mahogany shadows of a confessional. These incense and polish soaked boxes held endless mystery for me as a child, and I still find the symbolism and functionality fascinating. The disembodied priest, separated from sinner; protecting who from whom? Lacking such imposing furniture, however, our school took the far trendier and modern approach of setting up two seats opposite each other in a quiet corner of the hall. Except, in what I can only assume was a fervent desire to maintain the anonymity of the confessional, the priest would never actually look at you. He would always sit slightly sideways and stare very intently at the floor, for all the world as if considering a stain that reminded him of someone’s face but whose name he just couldn’t quite bring to mind at that moment. Thus one was left to deliver ones deeply held sins to a thick, black, dandruff strewn shoulder.

As with most things in Catholicism the process proceeded with a reassuring formality. “Bless me Father for I have sinned” you would say, for the natural course of things in a Catholic world is that the very act of living leads immediately to a state of sinful being. The priest would nod deeply as this most wise of utterances and you would continue with “It has been [however long] since my last confession”.

Now, here is where things got tricky for my poor, childish conscience, for the last time I would have been to confession was the last time the school made us go, at a minimum 6 months ago. And that seemed like far too long to my mind, not at all what I assumed the priest would want to hear. How to overcome this? Well, very simply actually -

“It has been 7 weeks since my last confession.”

“And what would you like to confess, my child?” the priest would ask.

“I often lie” – and just like that I’ve saved face in front of the priest and immediately been forgiven for it in the eyes of the Lord. Such verbal trickery delighted me and I never once considered the implication it might have on my eternal soul. It was with small surprise I turned out to be an atheist.

I tell this tale to illustrate a few points. Firstly, the importance of confession to Catholic worship. It was a big event in the schools calendar and it was made clear to us that this was how we saved our souls, which were soiled with the dirt of existence from the very moment we entered this world (thanks, Eve) and only confiding in the Lord could wipe it clean for a limited period. Seeking absolution of sin is a vital part of a good Catholic death.

Secondly, my disrespect for the whole process might go some way to explaining my surprise at the uproar in Ireland over the suggestion of lifting the seal of the confessional, which rules that there are absolutely no circumstances under which a priest may reveal anything told to him in confession. No exceptions, no grey areas, they simply can’t. (It should be noted that the confessional doesn’t seem to have the same protection in the UK, where only legal advice obtained from a professional adviser is protected in this way).

This controversy arose due to a proposal from the Irish government to introduce mandatory reporting of child abuse. Currently you’re under no legal obligation to tell anyone if you happen to know that someone has abused a child. This applies (pdf) throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and also Ireland (though the situation is slightly different in Northern Ireland where it is a crime not to report an arrestable offense, which would include child abuse). Ministers made it clear that the seal of the confessional would not be exempt from this law; if someone confessed to child abuse then the priest would be forced to tell the authorities. This has been taken as an attack on a fundamental form of Catholic worship, akin, I would imagine, to outlawing the act of communion, and has been roundly denounced as an attack on religious freedom by clergy and lay Catholics alike.

I admit that initially I was all for lifting the seal. Why would you not want to immediately tell someone if you knew about a child being abused? And the proposed change in law wouldn’t prevent people from going to confession; there was now just the caveat that if you told the priest you had abused a child you would probably face a visit from the authorities. With the system as it currently stands, no matter how much a priest might want to report a crime (not solely abuse but any crime) they are currently limited by the constraints of their religious beliefs.

Further, there is no indication that priests particularly feel they should be involving the authorities in these crimes when they do hear them in confession. The case of Michael Joseph McArdle, who claims to have confessed to abuse more than 1,500 times over a 25 year period and found himself repeatedly told to pray it better, provides a particularly extreme example of the potential dangers in such a secretive system. Dr Marie Keenan suggests that the act of confession can be a salve to the conscience of abusers that allows them to continue in their crimes, quoting one of the abusive priests she interviewed as saying “In a strange way the sacramental Confession let us off the hook rather lightly, and perhaps allowed us to minimise what was actually happening . . . Not confronted adequately, we experienced only a short duration of guilt and no sense of responsibility for how we hurt others, only the alleviation of our own guilt and shame.”

However I now find myself moving more towards agreement with those that say the seal should not be broken. Not, I hasten to add, for any religious freedom reasons, but for the simple, evidence based fact that mandatory reporting does not seem to make children any safer from abuse.

A number of psychologist and social workers raised concerns about the effectiveness of the proposed system in Ireland. Experience in Australia seems to suggest that mandatory reporting leads to a flood of false positives, as people report anything that might be construed as abuse for fear of breaking the law themselves for not reporting it. This obviously has an impact on the child protection services as each report has to be investigated, with potential knock-on effects on the time and resources given over to actually helping children. A review of the evidence of various mandatory reporting systems from around the world suggested that while “extremely difficult to isolate the direct impact mandatory reporting legislation has, the available information suggests that mandatory reporting is unlikely [to] lead to improvements in the protection of children and young people.”

If the evidence suggests it doesn’t work there’s no reason to impinge on people’s behaviour and customs, religious or otherwise.

An “attack on religious freedom” is a cry that has lost a lot of its power in Western Europe in modern times, mainly because it is now made so often. Ireland knows the true meaning of losing religious freedom, when priests had to live like fugitives and mass was delivered in secret. And certainly France is doing its best to give meaning back to the statement by outlawing certain forms of clothing. But generally the cry seems to go up every time someone is prevented from discriminating against an innocent third party on “religious grounds”, or as an emotive and inaccurate summary of a more complex issue.

Religious freedom, and freedom of thought in general, is something that is enshrined in humanities key rights documents. However these rights come with limitations, which at first glance might sit badly with us; the limiting of human rights is something that happens on the news, not in these green and pleasant lands. There is a logic to these limitations, though. Our rights, at least when it comes to religion and thought, only stretch as far as the next person. When your rights start impinging on them, limits need to be put in place.

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion…” Article 29 (2) adds the caveat – “In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others…” This point is hammered home in Article 30  – “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”

The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is even more explicit, with Article 9 stating – “1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion… 2. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society…for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

In other words, believe and worship as you please, just don’t negatively impact other people. Of course as with most things in life it’s not as simple as that, is it? Because how do you define negatively impacting someone else? What about the significant impact on quality of life caused by those damnable noisy Christians being summoned to their places of worship every Sunday by the rousing strike of metal upon metal? Or the Buddhists, preaching love and acceptance, undermining the prodigious and expensive work the arms trade has put into building up its ever burgeoning empire of destruction? And those agnostics, with their smug, holier than thou, assured-uncertainty, forcing others to question their dearly held beliefs?

And then what of the negative impact on those we prevent negatively impacting people? And then? And then? And then? And the world spins madly on…

If one is so inclined to look, typically in the more Daily Mail-esque scented expulsions, it is easy to find numerous tracts lambasting the apparent rise of “anti-Christian sentiment”. The usual stuff about Christmas being banned (FALSE), the Christian calendar being banned (FALSE), Islahomoterrorimmigrants being more important than this Christian Nation (I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT ANY MORE). Christianity is not being attacked, any more than my desire to freely poke people right in the eye with pointy sticks is being attacked. If it makes you feel any better I could set up a whole religion based around the idea of poking people right in the eye with pointy sticks, with particular poking zealotry reserved for those not amongst the ocularly enlightened. Would you support my religious freedom then?

I doubt it. It’s interesting that often those who are most vocal about religious freedom for their particular brand of worship seem a lot less open to the idea of other religions being allowed an equal share of that freedom. For an extreme example see the idea of introducing Sharia law. Not many in Western Europe are shouting for that particular religious freedom, oddly. They can understand the impact such a ruling would have on others, including themselves. What they seem incapable of doing is extending this understanding to their own (admittedly less sweeping) religious desires.

Suggesting the seal of confession be lifted in an attempt to keep children safe from abuse is not an attack on religious freedom. An ill thought out and knee-jerk political move, perhaps, but not an attack on religious freedom. No one (at least no one worth listening to) wants to stop people practicing their religion, publicly and as they see fit. Religions in all their stunningly varied forms make up a truly wonderful and vitally important part of the mad tapestry that is humankind. The issue is that in this ever crowded world we live in we need to make room for everyone, both physically and ideologically. Or, at least, we need to make room for everyone willing to make room for everyone. Intolerant of intolerance, and all that.

The simple answer is that there are no simple answers, and anyone or anything that claims to offer them should be considered with the utmost suspicion. Apparently we’re adults, with a grown-up brain and a grown-up ability to make grown-up decisions. This means trying to understand things from the other person’s perspective and seeking a compromise. Freedom of thought and freedom of religion are not the freedom to do as you please. It’s very easy to feel picked on when your particular brand of madness is targeted, but until the day humanity is reduced to a grey sludge of homogeneous thought, concessions will have to be made to ensure this existence is more than just bearable.

The open access “movement” has existed for decades, but with the coming of the digital age in the 90′s it truly bloomed as the distribution cost of electronic media dropped to essentially nothing. Some groups completely embraced the paradigm-shifting potential of the internet; open-source software and piracy being the main examples which come to mind. And while individual scientific disciplines took advantage of the new, more efficient way of searching for and distributing information, the science community as a whole has still not seemed to have tapped into the full potential offered by the near limitlessly connected world in which we now live.

I am personally a big fan of the concept of a truly open scientific community that shares findings and raw data via the internet within and across disciplines in a melting-pot of consilience. I’m aware that such a vision is extremely naive, not least because of the strangle-hold the big journals currently hold on what is perceived as “proper publishing” and the financial motivators so often required to secure funding for good science. None the less, websites such as ReasearchGATE demonstrate the possibilities which can be unlocked by simply linking together people and ideas. And open access journals do exist and can be made to work. However what impact does making a research paper open access actually have?

A 2008 paper, “Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial” took a suitably scientific approach to this question by randomly assigning 247 articles published in 11 journals of the American Physiological Society to open access status between January and April 2007. The control group of 1372 articles was articles available via subscription, the traditional access model for the American Physiological Society’s journals for the first year of an articles life. The researchers looked at a number of related variables- the number of abstract and full article downloads, and the number of times a given article was cited in the year following its publication.

Unsurprisingly removing subscription restriction lead to a significant increase in full text downloads (89% higher for open access articles compared to subscription articles). Interestingly, however, despite the increased number of downloads this did not translate into an increased level of citation. While 59% of the open access articles were cited a year later, 63% of the subscription articles were cited (a non-significant difference). The authors concluded that compared to subscription articles “open access increases the readership of articles but has no effect on the number of citations in the first year after publication.”

The main issues with these findings, however, is that the researchers made the articles open access at random, when in fact there is nothing random about the articles made available in the real world. Indeed a number of studies have shown that open access articles are consistently cited more often than subscription ones (an interesting look at the issue is offered here (pdf)), with the suggestion being that it is this very non-random nature of article availability which drives the perceived benefit of making a paper open access. In other words, there is self-selection bias in open access papers, in that only the “best” (or most interesting) papers are made available this way, and hence they inevitably will be cited more.

However a paper from the start of 2010, “Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research” questions this very assumption, by comparing the impact of self-selective self-archiving (i.e. researchers choosing to make their articles freely available), with that of mandated open access (i.e. research institutions forcing their staff to make all research freely available as it is produced) for 27,197 articles published between 2002-2006 in 1,984 journals. The findings reinforced that idea that, when controlling for a number of other variables linked to citation, open access articles are cited significantly more than non-open access articles.

Most interesting however was the finding that it didn’t matter whether the article had been chosen to be made open access or was merely made available due to institution policy, the open access citation advantage was still found. The authors concluded that it is “highly unlikely that the OA advantage is either entirely or mostly the result of an author bias toward selectively self-archiving higher quality – hence higher citeability – articles.” Higher quality articles were cited more, but this was independent of whether the author had chosen to make the article available themselves.

Making your research open access gets it read and cited more. What else could a scientist ask for? The dissemination of knowledge is one of the core tenets of science and should be, in my opinion, one of the core principles of any society. As an added bonus, with original research freely available anyone making dodgy claims, media, politicians and charlatans alike, could be easily fact checked. It’s a win-win situation.

Tweets from the gaily be-haired @KrystalSim a few weeks back reminded me of some twaddle I penned many moons ago about the unexpected existence of the Tea Advisory Panel and the UK Tea Council. For some reason it got lost in my labyrinthine files, so below is an updated and edited version…

Back at the end of 2009 I noted the Mail, Express and Telegraph had once again fired up their “[Random Item] {Helps/Hinders/Cures/Causes} [Aspect of Health]” automatic headline generators. The journalists had turned their mighty intellect to that most beloved of tonics, tea, claiming that a report showed eight cups a day could help fight heart disease, reduce the risk of stroke, positively impact mental functioning and increase life span. The author of the report, dietitian Dr Carrie Ruxton, was quoted as saying “People who cut out caffeinated drinks may miss out on the potential health benefits of the compounds they contain”.

Being the media-cynical human being that I am I immediately assumed the journalists had misinterpreted and massively over-blown the whole report. Nothing makes for an easy page filler like the generic “Something we like is actually good for us LOL!!” article. So I went looking for the research, only to find myself stumbling down the rabbit hole of the dark and bizarre world of the Tea Pushers.

Behold, humble reader, the Tea Advisory Panel. TAP’s three-fold aims are to “provide independent and objective information about the latest health benefits regarding black tea, answer all of your nutrition and hydration questions about black tea and to set the record straight on ‘science’ myths associated with black tea”. Ok…

Even better, TAP is supported by the UK Tea Council, who manage to turn the simple act of afternoon tea into an erotically tension-filled adventure on the front  page of their website. The Tea Council is “dedicated to promoting tea & its unique story for the benefit of those who produce, sell & enjoy tea”.

Possibly I’m missing something here, and I know the UK is devoted to its tea, but is there really a need for an advisory panel and a council supporting it? It’s not like tea is some magical cure-all that has just been a bit misunderstood. Dr Ruxton’s own review (pdf) from 2009 concluded that “the evidence indicates a positive role for tea in human health, although the final proof from intervention studies remains elusive”. Quite how this translated into the near panacea like qualities of tea outlined in the Mail, Express and Telegraph is unclear.

I was delighted to see Dr Ruxton popping up again recently, heralding the wonderful hydrating properties of tea compared to the unflavoured, opaque muck we call “water” (pdf of study). It was particularly interesting that the trial was described as “high-quality” in a large number of reports (e.g. The Mail, The Times of India), yet the press release from the TAP doesn’t make any mention of this (see this google search for just how many different media sources described it as such). One wonders where this description came from. Further, it’s rather telling just how much of the press-release text shows up in the various articles online; 70% of the text in the Mail article is pasted straight from the press-release, for example. Nice work there Jenny Hope, churnalism at its very best.

Surely the estimated £647 million pound annual UK tea market couldn’t have anything to do with these stories appearing again and again? Perchance Dr Ruxton’s consultancy company could offer us some insight. Nutrition Communications is involved in helping companies to “develop healthy, innovative food and beverage products”. They especially offer advise on product development “using functional ingredients”.

Apparently Nutrition Communcation’s communiqués include bigging-up (pdf) the consumption of soft drinks for Coca-Cola and producing a frankly awful “study” (pdf) investigating the weight loss benefits of herbal supplement Zotrim, funded by Natures Remedy Ltd.

So using my Columbo-like skills to jump to conclusions, could it be that the good doctor is, in fact, in the pocket of Big Tea?

Well, yes, she’s a member of the TAP, something she (rightly) makes no secret of.

Obviously there’s nothing wrong, per se, with the existence of these promotional groups, even if they are driven more by profit than any particular belief in the product they are hawking. However it serves as a timely reminder, as if any was needed, of the ongoing advertisation of our media, with articles on even the most benign of topics being driven by press-releases rather than any public interest or real story. It also demonstrates the never ending high-jacking of science in the name of pushing an agenda. Politicalisation of science, or, perhaps more correctly, the politicalisation of the interpretation of science, is as old as science itself and is happily supported by a media that revels in partisan black and white, rather than the subtler and much more complex shades of grey that tend to make up reality.

Possibly one can seek some comfort from the fact that the public perception of science is such that obviously there is still some power to be found in a Milgram-esque concept of The Scientist (or The Boffin if you’re a Sun reader). The idea of something been “proven scientifically” holds such sway over the general public that advertisers still see worth in having their products apparently being endorsed by science. If it didn’t work, and hence didn’t make them money, they simply wouldn’t do it.

“Here comes the science”? Possibly, but the more advertisers try to wring from that particular approach the more diluted becomes the public perception of what science actually is and does. And the media helps no-one but themselves and their sponsors with the mindless regurgitation of press releases which serve no other purpose than to garner a bit of free advertising.
]]> http://brothernex.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/the-murky-world-of-the-tea-pushers/feed/ 0 Brother Nex http://brothernex.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/the-wondrous-inconsequentiality-of-i/ http://brothernex.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/the-wondrous-inconsequentiality-of-i/#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:13:11 +0000 Brother Nex http://brothernex.wordpress.com/?p=78 Continue reading →]]> I am not a creature of cosmic scale, though you would not know it if one considered my ego alone. I am one of the universes most important entities, so I(t) might have you believe. Having spent millennia evolving to the point of self awareness, my consciousness is loathe to give up its apparently privileged position. It considers itself unique; unique and above average amongst billions. The world lies at my feet, though I have not yet risen to take my rightful place. There is a universe of possibilities which could be mine, should I choose to apply myself. If I was not so crippled with procrastination I would be potential unbounded.

The most minor of inconveniences; a spilt beverage; a missed bus; renders me a-flutter with impotent anger. Worse still if I find another consciousness to blame for said indignities, for nothing makes a fragile ego feel safer than putting another in its place. Failing actual evidence of blame I can while away hours ruminating on the perceived transgressions of others.

I am weighed down with the unimportance of everyday life. What does it matter if the materials I wear upon the meaty frame that houses my nervous system do not impress the other consciousnesses who stumble across the face of this planet by my side? What impact on the universe will my choice of career, of partner, of breakfast, actually have? None, though I dally all the same.

I choose to spend my time penning self-indulgent prose rather than furthering the wellbeing of my fellow travelers on this trip around the sun. Though what ultimate end, when all is said and done, does helping others achieve, but to sooth my egos worry at its own powerlessness and lack of worth?

Indeed, I am not a creature of cosmic scale, though you would not know it if one considered my ego alone.

Such is the bizarre nature of the wonder of consciousness that makes us us. The human brain is oft described as the most complex object in the known universe. At the risk of falling into a recursive black hole of chickens and eggs it is certainly the most significant object we’ve encountered to date, and in a geographical blink of an eye has had more of an impact on this planet than the sum total of its vertebrated cousins. It is engaged in the constant modification of its environment to make it easier and more conductive to its ongoing existence, it is continually developing and expanding a framework of deep understanding for the world it inhabits, and it produces shapes and noises of such trembling beauty that entire buildings are given over to contain them.

Yet the brain is riddled through with mental tics of such stunning unimportance as to render the whole thing comical. Having reached the dizzying heights of self-awareness, having subverted Mother Nature herself and outgrown the fumbling hands of the blind watchmaker, it spends its time distressing over hairstyles. Our empathy, which allows us to see beyond the physical being before us to the unique consciousness of another, independent human, spectacularly fails us when we separate into arbitrary tribes of “us” and “them”. Truly, the spandrels of our minds are hung with the rotting clothes of inconsequentiality.

These foibles of our nature may be ‘what makes us human’, but this does not mean they are required to be what keeps us human. One must learn the rules before one can break them, and we have spent centuries learning the rules that dictate our nature. Darwin’s beautiful thought put us in our place, in so many ways. The realisation we were apes rising amongst common ancestors made the world a much smaller and less abstract place, yet also set us apart as the only creatures aware of the state of their own situation.

Your brain that you are so proud of, that is, in fact, so proud of itself, is an evolutionary accident of such ridiculous chance that we have spent most of our existence creating more humanly acceptable tales of creators and gods. Atoms forged in the hearts of dying stars and flung into the darkness of deep space found themselves on a fledgling planet which would one day be most unoriginally named Earth. And through the chance interactions of trillions of these basic units of matter, in a process guided by the fuzziness of statistics alone, life abounded. Life, consisting of nothing more than atoms doing what atoms do.

And yet again these atoms formed more complex systems still, and on, and on, eventually creating cells that, while frighteningly complex, simply obey the laws of physics. Which, when considered in isolation, is of limited excitement. However, join 100,000,000,000 of these cells together and suddenly they can do something deeply astounding- they can realise their own existence. The cells, working as a distributed one, can understands their whole and its parts. A simplistic neuron can aid in understanding its own structure, where it came from, how it works, how it develops and, remarkably, is also cursed with an awareness of its own demise.

Such a thing is unique, as far as we know. Possibly a handful of other animals have some concept of their own existence, and the existence of others. Only humans seem to have taken it to the extent that we can while-away lifetimes, countless PhD’s and blog posts, examining our own introspective abilities.

But perchance we are too smart for our own good. The blazing light of self-awareness seems to blind us to the fundamental nature of our existence. Perhaps we’re so overwhelmed with the rightful celebration of simply being that we have no time to ponder upon the fact we are adrift in an indifferent infinity of space, lacking any meaning but that which we invent for ourselves? Maybe the overwhelming consequences of the binary situation we find ourselves in – of being utterly alone in the universe, or not – leaves us stunned to ineptitude?

If only it were so; for not only do we humans have an amazing ability to deny the self evident nature of the world around us, but we are also inexcusably short-sighted to the true wonder of it all. By rights we should be struck senseless with slack-jawed awe that there is anything rather than nothing.

Granted, the fact we can get through the day without grinding to a halt at the amazing complexity of the most mundane and simplistic of objects is testament to the power of evolution to focus our minds on what is important in keeping us alive in the here and now. I personally have found myself overwhelmed by the wonder of…everything. I’ve been mentally knocked asunder by the life coursing through a simple leaf waving in the early summer sun; the colossal timescale mapped out in the most mundane of landscapes has left me humbled; the unimaginably furious quantum dance which allows something as simple as wine to sit so satisfactorily within a glass is enough to blow my fragile little mind.

But the luxury of such cognitive wanderings are only granted to me by the countless chance events which happened to bestow me a life lived well within the upper levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. This is the joyous potential contained within the lump of jellied matter we carry atop our fragile frames. Cast free from the shackles of simply keeping us alive the minds eye can gaze from our personally created hells to the far-distant heavens. We have developed explanations for things that are, descriptions of things we cannot see, and stories of things that can never be. The sciences have given understanding to our experiences, while the arts have given song to our souls.

And we all contain within ourselves an entire universe, running on nothing but the chaotic cells of the nervous system and whatever junk we choose to fuel ourselves with. Our brains host a world of infinite size, and a landscape of infinite variability. Though physically bound within a skull mere inches ‘round, the minds boundaries reach to the very stars. This endlessly malleable virtual playground allowed us the space to develop an unreasonably effective language for describing the apparent nature of the world around us. Mathematical expressions helped us capture between sheets of paper the shadows of such humanly alien concepts as higher dimensions and the distances involved in an endless universe.

Yet despite the breathtaking abilities of the brain the irony is the human mind cannot actually comprehend the true concept of infinity. We still struggle to understand distances much further than the next village, never mind the next planet or galaxy. We as a species are hamstrung by our evolutionary imperatives. A firm grasp of the proportions of interstellar space did little to feed ones family.

So indeed, humans are as microbes, adrift on a mote of dust in the echoing depths of a vast cathedral, unable to comprehend of anything beyond what seems to be the infinitely limiting ceiling, unaware of the star-studded heavens beyond. For, much as we struggle to understand that of the very small, so the temporal and spatial constraints our evolutionary brains place upon our experiences limit the degree to which we can develop a true understanding of the scale of the universe.

However is it not enough that we have looked upon it, though our eyes be rheumied by the blinkers of human perspective? Looked upon it and appreciated the incomprehensible vastness, before beating a hasty retreat to the comfort of those cosmically insignificant though humanly vital relationships and routines which we expend such energy on. For I have thrown my head back under a jewelled vault of clear night sky, to gaze up at the stars so far distant in space and time as to be mere concepts to me. And while awash in the dazzling darkness, for the briefest of moments, my soul has quaked ‘neath the towering infinity of a universe, and I have known, just for that second, what it means to be a creature of the cosmos.

Further, we’re told in the author introduction section of the report that “The story of how her father and step mother fought to keep alive her brother, struck with a rare neurological disorder at the age of seven, was turned into the 1992 film, Lorenzo’s Oil.” So perhaps we can forgive the dismissive title, as obviously Ms Odone has had first hand experience of the painful struggle of a loved one suffering from a crippling disease (Adrenoleukodystrophy, in this case).

Unfortunately Ms Odone gets her argument off to a frankly bizarre start-

“A painless and speedy death, resulting from a hygienic medical procedure that leaves no mess: assisted suicide is the final consumer fantasy. Although illegal in Britain, it is already available to the determined and comfortably-off, who can buy (at £10,000 a shot) an appointment with death at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Here, completely legally, a physician will inject them with a fatal poison. Why can’t, argue the distinguished and articulate advocates of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, this choice be available to all?”

One paragraph in and I’m already perplexed. Ignoring the fact that she appears to have simply made up the “£10,000 a shot” figure (a bit of googling suggests Dignitas probably charge less than £5,000 for an assisted suicide) , she seems to be framing assisted suicide as some kind of fashion statement for those with more money than sense. But no, it gets better! For the very next paragraph makes it clear-

“The simple answer is that, if we legalise assisted suicide, we risk having a strident élite condemning the less fortunate to a premature death. For it is the marginalised, the disabled, the less articulate and the poor who are most likely to be under pressure to accelerate their death.”

Ah, of course, so it shall be those aforementioned ‘lots of money, less so sense’ who will be doling death out left right and centre to those not fortunate enough to be in their gang?

“Above all, the disadvantaged, fearful of authorities and lost in bureaucracy, may not know how to manipulate the system and may, in comparison to the confident members of the choice-obsessed consumerist élite, be more subject to manipulation by others.”

Wait, now, so not only are they rich, but they are also confident and choice-obsessed (negative attributes, apparently)? And these people will be forcing the disadvantaged to kill themselves? This is starting to take on tones of some of the more entertaining Tea Party diatribes. This isn’t a policy report, it’s a dystopian short story where death squads of the rich stride confidently through a grey urban landscape, the speakers set in their silver-skulled helmets blaring “YOU MUST CHOOSE, CITIZEN”, before gunning down the oppressed masses with diamond encrusted  bullets costing £10,000 a piece…

*cough*

On to paragraph 3…

Thankfully Ms Odone veers wildly back onto slightly more sensible grounds, suggesting that the very people who are campaigning strongest for the legalisation of assisted suicide, such as Terry Pratchett, A.N. Wilson and Patricia Hewitt, are not those vulnerable people who might be coerced into taking their own lives by selfish relatives or out of some sense of obligation. And, pleasingly, Ms Odone spells out the fact that religion has no place in this debate, stating “If this is to be resolved, it should be on the basis of facts, not faith”. Though it should be noted that further on she does blame secularism for placing “the all-powerful self at the centre of the universe”. As opposed to religion, I assume, which places a powerless self at the centre of an omnipotent creators universe.

Unfortunately thus ends the sensibleness, as she then lists the four categories of horror awaiting a society legalising euthanasia. Ms Odone has somewhat stolen my thunder here as I would like to have listed the categories for you with an ironic twist, thus pointing out the inherent flaws in her arguments in a subtly witty manner which would allow me to chuckle into my latté with a wonderful sense of superiority. However apparently lacking any sense of irony she’s gone and done this herself. So we have “Second class human beings!”, “Doctor Death!!”, “The death squad!!!”, and “Slippery slope!!!!!!”. I may have added some !’s for comedic effect, but apparently Ms Odone really thought these were the best titles with which to categorise her arguments. And this bizarre naming scheme doesn’t end there, as chapter 3 is rather wonderfully titled “Be afraid”.

Ms Odone’s remaining arguments, stretched across a good 60 pages, can be unfairly summarised as follows:

• Chapter 2- Notions of “choice” and “control” appeal to our consumer culture, like the crazy fools that we are, but dying isn’t an individual act as it involves other people and society and stuff.
• Chapter 3-  Everyone’s getting older, the world is running out of money, persuading people to top themselves ASAP might free up some much needed funds (be afraid!).
• Chapter 4- These three countries/states have legalised assisted suicide in different ways. Here are some uninformative stats and the occasional tangential horror story. Let this be a lesson to you.
• Chapter 5- Assisted suicide is illegal. And bad, as I have clearly pointed out above. But we don’t prosecute people for doing it, which is good. So that’s all fine then…
• Chapter 6- I met someone who was dying because of cancer once and it was a very nice experience. However most of us are going to end up dying horribly in hospital because palliative care in the UK sucks. You’ll be uncomfortable, alone, probably lying in a puddle, and for some reason this should persuade you that assisted suicide is wrong.
• Chapter 7- Helping someone die is morally difficult. So much so that doctors heads might literally explode. And then where would we be?
• Chapter 8- Helping someone dies is morally difficult. So much so that regulators heads might literally explode. And then where would we be?
• Chapter 9- Sometimes people change their mind. Therefore assisted suicide is bad.
• Chapter 10- We should be improving things (end of life care, communication, support) so that patients don’t feel they want to take their own lives…

Actually that last point is a really good one. And simply goes to highlight that Ms Odone does not understand the issue. Her entire argument boils down to a fear that legalising assisted suicide will “normalise” death to such an extent that it’s a mere nothing, as common place as prescribing an antibiotic and barely as controversial. And once that zeitgeist permeates society the weak, burdensome and vulnerable will come under increased pressure, even implicitly, to end their lives against their will. Her entire argument boils down to the fear of the slippery slope.

The trouble being, such thinking is just plain illogical. She actually believes that “Once assisted suicide becomes legal, it will slide into voluntary euthanasia which in turn will lead to involuntary euthanasia.” While I think society could do with a decent existential crisis, the legalisation of assisted suicide would not suddenly lead to a blasé “let them eat poison” attitude towards the disabled and infirm. We are talking about the annihilation of our loved ones here; no matter how comfortable you are with death, the ending of a life, whether our own or someone elses, is still the biggest thing any of us will face in the cosmic eye blink of consciousness we find ourselves with.

Death isn’t easy, and assisted suicide isn’t trying to make it so. It raises huge moral issues, and indeed forces us to face what it means to be an individual, and specifically an individual who is part of a society. But that’s the joy of it; we are part of a maturing society and hard moral questions are what comes with that. There are no easy answers to the difficult questions in life, that’s why they’re, well, difficult, and they should lead to passionate, well thought out and respectful debate.

Unfortunately, that’s not what Christina Odone has done here. The fact that she, and even more surprisingly the CPS, feel that this document is suitably pitched as a policy report shocks me. While she does lay out some very valid concerns (which I happily admit I haven’t addressed. If Ms Odone happens to be using a pseudonym and is one of my *checks online* yup, 17 twitter followers and she’d like to discuss further, I’d only be too delighted) the tone in which she pitches the debate is disgraceful.

She sets it up from the get-go with an insulting title which frames anyone who disagrees with her as one of the “chattering masses”, and goes on to paint a picture of fear, with some ill defined cadre of the rich elite forcing death on the vulnerable. Her final sentence sums up her mildly paranoid and deeply disrespectful mind-set perfectly- “A society cleansed of the feeble, the infirm, the imperfect: it is a template others, in history, have sought. We should remember at what cost.” The fact Ms Odone views proponents of legalised assisted suicide in such light strikes me as profoundly sad, and leaves me hoping with all of my being that this report has absolutely zero impact on any policy a hopefully more rational society may develop.

Lord Justice Law pulled absolutely no punches in his ruling in demolishing Lord Carey’s badly thought-through statement, and Heresy Corner gives a great break down of the carnage. However I will just highlight one passage, where Lord Law writes-

“In the eye of everyone save the believer religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence. It may of course be true; but the ascertainment of such a truth lies beyond the means by which laws are made in a reasonable society. Therefore it lies only in the heart of the believer, who is alone bound by it. No one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims.”

Here, in a mere 83 words, is a concept you could build a society on.

[I wasn't going to comment more on the negative press this case had generated until I read this truly idiotic piece on the Telegraph website by Gerard Warner, who demonstrates a keen grasp of biology when he writes that "homosexuals share the same physiology as everyone else", and thus their homosexuality is entirely subjective, before going on to suggest that Christian "rights" (one assumes he means the right to discriminate at will) should take precedence over gay rights because practicing male homosexuals only account for 2.6 per cent of the population. Mind = boggled.]

In a related incident, Comedy Central recently decided that they were most definitely not the right people to champion freedom of expression when they caved to a pitiful “warning” aimed at one of the channels biggest shows, South Park. The posting on Revolutionmuslim.com (guess what they talk about there. Hint: it’s not a ground breaking new weight-loss product called Mu-Slim…) made it clear that South Park’s depiction of a bear costume, within which it was implied the prophet Muhammad was encased, could result in the cartoons creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone dying violently. Comedy Central responded, against the creators wishes, by censoring any depiction or mention of Muhammad, as well as most of the monologue at the end of the show in which one of the characters discusses intimidation and fear.

I could be wrong but I imagine Mr McFarlane the sex therapist would not lump himself in with Revolution Muslim the potential murders. However they come from the same mindset; “I believe this, therefore it should be so”. Down such a road madness lies, for who’s “truth” is absolute? Who is the final judge of us all? Humans, with our amazing story telling abilities, could provide a near infinite number of answers to that question. So we have to make do with the answer that best fits the evidence we have. Such are the joys of living in what claims to be a  progressive society- to ensure room for everyone we have to tuck our metaphysical elbows in a bit and cease trying to impose our will on the masses. What all the people fretting about the erosion of freedom of religious expression fail to comprehend is that you can believe whatever the hell you want, just don’t expect a happy reaction when those beliefs start impacting on other people who don’t follow your particular flavour of madness.

Of course, as with everything in life, it’s ever so slightly more complicated than that. Belgium is resolutely on it’s way to banning the wearing of the burka in public, ostensibly due to it’s impact on society. This is a move I’m uncomfortable with. I can’t see how the clothes someone chooses to wear is any of my (and hence the governments) business, and as I’ve said before it feels like this is more a “security” measure than anything else. Yet people argue it’s a reaction against the imposition of the Muslim way of life on a non-Muslim society.

But then the world would be a boring place, and I’d have very little to whinge about, if everything was a clear cut case of “good” and “bad”. Thus humanity will continue to muddle along, hopefully doing more good than bad, with only the rocking power ballads of Meat Loaf to guide us.

“We cannot allow someone to claim the right to look at others without being seen. It is necessary that the law forbids the wearing of clothes that totally mask and enclose an individual. Wearing the burqa in public is not compatible with an open, liberal, tolerant society.”

This is not an issue of whether the burqa is “good” or “bad”; it’s a simple case of Mr Bacquelaine not wanting people to be able to cover their faces in public. Disturbingly the bill states-

“…that anyone in a public place “with face covered or disguised in whole or in part to the extent that she cannot be identified” is liable to incur the penalties.”

Pray say farewell to anonymous protest.

So claim 110 posters (reproduced in miniature below) on bus shelters scattered around Dublin this Easter period. Delivering a message that, if nothing else, is sure to crease a number of foreheads in ironic confusion, the ad campaign has been organised by conservative Catholic think tank the Iona Institute. Their website states it-

“…promotes the place of marriage and religion in society. We defend the continued existence of publicly-funded denominational schools. We also promote freedom of conscience and religion.”

The Institute has come under fire in years gone by for it’s questionable interpretation of survey data relating to parents attitudes to denominational schooling, and it’s negative views on civil partnership. This current campaign has, however, taken what to my eyes is the rather unusual tactic of promoting religion by claiming it is scientifically proven to be good for you. Much like yogurt drinks and breakfast cereal, the suggestion is presumably that one should partake of religion for the host of life improving benefits, including, according to their press release-

- Lower levels of depression
- Lower levels of marital breakdown
- Lower levels of alcohol and drug abuse
- Lower levels of pregnancy among teenagers
- Faster recovery from bereavement
- Faster recovery from illness
- Longer life expectancy, etc.

Remarkable claims indeed; they should be putting this religion stuff in the drinking water. Surely Big Pharma will attempt to suppress it once they get wind? The side effects are a bit of a bitch though- risk of unnecessary guilt, false hope, and an eternity of hell fire. (Ok I’ll stop now…)

Funded by what appears to be a €9,000 grant from the St. Stephens Green Trust under a “Christian Values and Social Change Scheme”, the campaign is based on a 2009 report commissioned and published by the Iona Institute under the title “The Psycho-Social Benefits of Religious Practice (PDF).” Compiled by Prof. Patricia Casey, this document takes a broad look at the literature relating to the impact of religion on various life outcomes, and comes to a very positive conclusion.

I admit I approached this paper relishing the prospect of getting my teeth into some pseudo-scientific religious propaganda dressed up as objective science. But I was sadly disappointed. Prof. Casey takes a very restrained and self aware approach to reporting the research and while I may question how unbiased her focus was I have no reason to doubt her interpretation of the papers she reviewed.

She does somewhat undermine the whole basis of the Iona Institute’s ad campaign however when she describes her own research by saying-

“This current paper is not fully comprehensive due to the large number of scientific publications in this area…”

and then without a hint of irony goes on to criticise this very approach, a narrative review, by claiming that-

“They are written as a narrative and so provide an overview of the topic of interest. Not surprisingly, these narrative reviews are subject to selection bias. Since the mid-1980s they have been replaced, although not exclusively, by [systematic reviews] SRs as superior in comprehensiveness and, arguably, freedom from bias.”

A good over-view of the research supporting the thesis that religious practice positively influences some life outcomes, perhaps, but an objective review of the literature this is not. So rather a reach for the Institute to go on and claim that it’s “science” that religious practice is good for you.

I must say despite the bizarre logic of their approach and the shaky nature of their central claim, I respect what they are trying to do with this campaign. Prof. Casey writes in the conclusion of her report that while she may have demonstrated the positive impact of religion-

“…[t]his paper is not suggesting that religious beliefs can or should be ‘prescribed’ like a medicine – this would be unconscionable and impossible. However, in a society which often sees few benefits deriving from organised religion, it may stimulate a reappraisal, especially among those who still adhere to core religious beliefs but without engaging in the rigors of regular public practice.”

Iona Institute director, David Quinn said-

“Religion has a very negative image at present. The campaign was first conceived four years ago when books like The God Delusion were best-sellers. We wanted to counter this negativity by pointing to the evidence that, on the whole, religious practice is beneficial both for individuals and for society.”

I may disagree with their message but if someone shivering in a bus shelter in the coming weeks stops to ponder on the role of religion and its relationship to science in today’s society, then I guess that’s a plus. I only wish their marketing involved less, well, marketing. Squashing the science to fit your message, no matter how well meant, is wrong.

I’ve attempted to set aside my innate distrust of the Catholic Church and read the letter as an objective outsider, but I happily admit I’m coming from a non-theistic point of view, a point of view in which I truly believes the Catholic Church has been a blight on modern Irish society. So, with that said…

Rather wonderfully it takes a mere four paragraphs for the Pope to remind people that “it’s not only us who are doing it!” (neatly harking back to the churches dismissal of claims they were ignoring the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child), and further to lay the blame squarely away from the Vatican, stating:

“It is true, as many in your country have pointed out, that the problem of child abuse is peculiar neither to Ireland nor to the Church. Nevertheless, the task you now face is to address the problem of abuse that has occurred within the Irish Catholic community, and to do so with courage and determination.”

The task you now face?! Now, don’t get me wrong Benedict, there surely are a lot of Irish Catholics with blood on their hands, but this is meant to be about the Church facing up to its responsibility, not passing the blame. The Pope then goes on to reminisce about the good old days, when people used to die for their religion and joining the priesthood was one of the greatest thing an Irish boy could do. But then secularisation came to Ireland, and it all went horribly wrong.

“In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.”

Those dirty heathen, making our priests touch children like that!

Then, however, Pope Benedict gives (to my mind) a somewhat accurate breakdown of the reasons that could give rise to an environment where abuse could be so rampant. Amongst the contributing factors he include:

“inadequate procedures for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life; insufficient human, moral, intellectual and spiritual formation in seminaries and novitiates; a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures; and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal.”

While I question the logic that paedophile priests could be weeded out or “trained” differently, the last two points ring very true. The Church was all in the Ireland of the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s. What the priest said was law, and bringing the wrath of the local clergy upon you could spell the end of your standing in the community. Further, the Church looked after its own; no scandal was too large to be ignored for fear of damaging the Church’s reputation.

We then get to arguably the most important part of the whole letter, where the Pope directly addresses victims of abuse and their families. He is surprisingly forthright, stating straight-off:

“You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen.”

He goes on to say he understands why victims of abuse might have found it impossible to have any kind of faith in the church, but makes a seemingly impassioned plea for them to consider the comfort they might find in a repentant church.

It is not for me to judge the right or wrong in these words, only those for whom they were intended can make that decision. According to the mainstream media some felt it was not enough, while others thought there were positives to be taken.

The Pope then directly addresses the priests and religious who have abused children. And he pulls no punches, in a christian sense, warning that they will have to answer to Almighty God, and that they have done great harm to victims, the Church, and public perception of religion. And what should they do about it?

“By offering prayers and penances for those you have wronged, you should seek to atone personally for your actions. Christ’s redeeming sacrifice has the power to forgive even the gravest of sins, and to bring forth good from even the most terrible evil.”

Indeed, forgiveness through the Church will save you Brothers! No need to involve the Gardaí or the lawyers in this; as long as you’re really truly sorry and say some prayers you should be OK. While he does suggest that the guilty submit themselves to “the demands of justice” he fails to specify whether this simply means Canon justice, rather than the more important (and, you know, real) legal justice.

Further vague words of comfort are offered to parents, children and young people of Ireland, and assorted priests and religious. Interestingly he goes on to give quite the smack down to the bishops of Ireland, plainly stating that-

“…it must be admitted that grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness…Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence.”

While acknowledging the failure of those in a position of power, once again no mention of the Vatican’s role is made. “It’s your fault, nothing to do with us”. And forgive my shriveled, cynical heart, but “continue to cooperate with the civil authorities” just sounds to me like so many empty weasel words. In an organisation who encouraged  the concept of “mental reservation” to lie to people, including the authorities, while fully justifying it to themselves, I’ll take with a pinch of salt any idea of senior church officials “continuing” to cooperate.

Finally, though, we get down to some “concrete initiatives” to deal with the whole sorry situation; to wipe clean decades of rape and abuse and lying and distortion. The Popes answer? Praying. And lots of it. A whole year of Friday penances in fact, with a particular focus on Eucharistic adoration. Now, I’m not very knowledgeable on the penancial league table so maybe this is a really big deal for a devout Catholic- the popular culture equivalent of a cheating celebrity giving a “heartfelt” interview to some tabloid rag. But in response to an incomprehensible litany of horror stories, you suggest praying?

“I am confident that this programme will lead to a rebirth of the Church in Ireland in the fullness of God’s own truth, for it is the truth that sets us free (cf. Jn 8:32).”

And with that statement alone the Pope demonstrates to me that he just doesn’t get it. Pray if you need to, I am not here to tell you how to seek comfort in this occasionally soul sappingly dark world. But to suggest that a “concrete initiative” for cleansing the evil from within your house is, well, more of the same? I just find that insulting. He goes on to say he is planning on holding an Apostolic Visitation of some dioceses in Ireland- basically an in-house audit of the goings on in a diocese. Again, no suggestion of throwing it open to an outside authority.

And, to finish, another prayer, specifically for the Church in Ireland.

It was almost a good letter. It was better than I thought it was going to be. He apologised to the abused and their families, which I think was vital. And he pointed out many of the short-comings of others. But he didn’t go nearly far enough. There was no acknowledgment of the role the Vatican played in protecting the paedophiles in its ranks. He seemed to imply that the increasingly secular nature of Ireland had something to do with the decades of abuse, when in fact it was the associated waning of the Church’s power which accompanied this secularisation which allowed people to speak out against the Church and bring the abuse to light. And his suggested method of righting so many wrongs is prayer and further insular navel gazing. The Church wants to hide behind the soiled curtains of Canon law when, as Jack of Kent concisely puts it-

“…the police should walk straight in, and deal with those involved as normal criminal suspects.”

As is often the case when a powerful organisation is seen to be faltering, the media has laid into the Vatican in a big way (although some feel it’s all a bit unfair on the poor Pope). With further revelations of abuse pouring forth from Germany, America, Italy, and elsewhere, and Pope Benedict seemingly unsettlingly close to some of the cases, the Catholic Church finds itself under a kind of pressure which must be entirely alien to it in modern times. Naturally they have hit back at such “petty gossip” and claim it is all a media conspiracy, but one does sense that things have forever changed for the Catholic Church, that they will never again be regarded as beyond reproach.

While the worlds media is currently focused on the Vatican, it is anyone’s guess how long this will last. If they’re really lucky someone famous will drop dead tomorrow and mainstream media will forget all about them, allowing the Church to quietly retreat from the spotlight and let this all die down. But maybe, this time, the attention won’t simply go away. Maybe, this time, the Church will actually be forced to face that which they’ve done, and be forced to do something meaningful about it. Maybe, just maybe, we’re witnessing the start of the death of the Catholic Church as we know it.