Secular Right

Strange New Respect

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

BBC:

Cuban President Raul Castro has said he was so impressed by a Vatican audience with Pope Francis that he might return to the faith he was born into.

Mr Castro praised the pontiff’s wisdom, adding: “I will resume praying and turn to the Church again if the Pope continues in this vein.”

He thanked the Pope for brokering a rapprochement between Cuba and the US.

The communist leader had stopped at the Vatican after attending Russia’s World War Two Victory Day in Moscow.

The Catholic Church has maintained ties with Havana since the 1959 revolution. The Pope will visit Cuba on his way to the US in September.

For Pope Francis, the restoration of relations between the US and Cuba – agreed during secret talks at the Vatican – has been a major diplomatic achievement, says the BBC’s David Willey in Rome.

The US had imposed a trade embargo after Cuba’s revolution, which it began to lift late last year.

After the 50-minute private audience on Sunday, Mr Castro told reporters: “The pontiff is a Jesuit, and I, in some way, am too. I studied at Jesuit schools.”

After suggesting he might turn again to the Church, he added: “I mean what I say.”

Both Mr Castro and his brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, were baptised as Roman Catholics, but most Church activities were suppressed after the revolution.

Francis will be the third Pope to travel to Cuba, following visits there by John Paul II in 1998 and Benedict XVI in 2012.

Contrary to what his fiercer critics like to claim, Pope Francis is not a Marxist. He is more of Peronist (without the anti-clericalism!) a movement that saw itself as representing a ‘third way’ between conmmunism and capitalism. Under the circumstances it is no surprise that there may be quite a bit of the pope’s “wisdom” that the Cuban dictator can find to like.

Posted in politics | Tagged Cuba, Peronism, Pope Francis, Raul Castro, Religious Left | Comments Off

From Carthage (Tennessee) to Rome

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

Posted earlier this week on the Corner:

Al Gore, speaking recently at Berkeley:

I think Pope Francis is quite an inspiring figure really. A phenomena. I’ve been startled with the clarity of the moral force that he embodies…

Well I’ve said publicly in the last year, I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, I could become a Catholic because of this Pope. He is that inspiring to me. And I know the vast majority of my Catholic friends are just thrilled to the marrow of their bones that he is inspiring this kind of spiritual leadership.

I would like to give credit to his immediate three predecessors, as Holy Father, who also had very powerful statements on Global Warming. But Pope Francis is going beyond them with this encyclical which, evidently, is expected around the middle of June, and of course there was a preliminary document which just came out yesterday, is likely to have a very powerful impact.

There are, I hear, wicked folk who like to argue that, for some, a belief in CAGW is akin to a religious faith. I cannot think where they get such ideas.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Al Gore, Climate Change, Pope Francis | Comments Off

About that Encyclical

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

$Pope against fracking$ Posted on the Corner last week:

The Economist clearly cannot wait to see the forthcoming encyclical on the environment:

Could Pope Francis become the world’s foremost campaigner on global warming? That is certainly the fondest hope (or in a few cases the darkest fear) of a lot of people who are closely involved in deliberations over the planet’s future. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, met the pontiff today and shared his mounting concern over the outcome of the Paris summit on climate change in December which is widely seen as the last opportunity for a global deal to manage carbon emissions and set some limit to rising temperatures.

Immediately afterwards, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, an important part of the Vatican’s intellectual armoury, convened a brainstorming session with the UN secretariat and a gaggle of NGOs, including the New-York based Earth Institute, a study centre which advises the UN on sustainable development: at the Vatican’s behest, the agenda included not just climate change but forced migration and human trafficking, a scourge which has been exacerbated by desertification.

Elsewhere in the Italian capital, some strident climate-change sceptics from the Heartland Institute, a right-wing American organisation devoted to spreading climate-change scepticism, were urging the Pope not to believe in man-made global warming; the institute insists that claims of a human contribution to heating the planet are unfounded, and that proposals to mitigate climate change amount to “shutting down” the world economy.

This offers a hint of the flak that Pope Francis can expect from the religious right, including many Catholics, when he visits America later this year…

In keeping with the tone of what is a cleverly one-sided article, it is, I notice, only skeptics who earn that adjective “strident”.

Over at Breitbart, James Delingpole, who seems to have traveled to Rome in, well, “strident” company, describes a somewhat stage-managed press conference held at the Vatican with Ban-Ki Moon, but perhaps the most interesting item in his report are these comments from the UN Secretary-General:

I don’t think faith leaders should be scientists…What I want is their moral authority. Business leaders and all civil society is on board [with the mission to combat climate change]. Now we want faith leaders. Then we can make it happen.

All civil society? That may not be strident, but it’s certainly an exaggeration and, when you stop to think about it, just a little bit sinister.

Meanwhile this document has come out of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Here’s just one sentence that caught my eye:

The problem is not one of how well our children and grandchildren will fare in the world of the future, but whether civilization as we know it can be extended beyond the next 100 years.

Strident?

And the beginning of another sentence:

Our problems have been exacerbated by the current economic obsession that measures human progress solely in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth…

Solely?

Strident much? But take the time to read the whole thing.

As you do so, remember that, for all the scientific discussion (which concerns not only what may or may not be going on, but what should be done about it) and the religious ‘frame’ within which the argument is set out, this is also a profoundly political document and, as such, it must, at least partly, be judged.

Posted in culture, politics, Religion | Tagged Climate Change, Pope Francis, Religious Left | Comments Off

PEN and Sword

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

Cross-posted on the Corner

Pen International is an association of writers intended both to promote literature and to defend it.

In May, PEN America will be holding its annual gala, an event set to include the award to Charlie Hebdo of PEN America’s annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award, citing the French magazine’s “dauntlessness in the face of one of the most noxious assaults on expression in recent memory.”

PEN America added:

The day after the attack, the surviving staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine vowed to continue publication, releasing their next edition on time with a print run expanded from 40,000 to over eight million under the mantra ‘All is Forgiven,’ donating all proceeds to the families of the victims. The Charlie Hebdo attacks dealt a blow to the bedrock principle that no act of expression, no matter how provocative or offensive, can justify violence.

Indeed it did. PEN America also made the obvious point that it was not necessarily endorsing the cartoons, merely the right to publish them (without, it had no need to add, being murdered).

But, the Guardian reports:

Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi announced on Sunday that they had withdrawn from next month’s PEN American Center gala, citing objections to the literary and human rights organisation’s honouring of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo…. [Francine] Prose told the Associated Press that… she was in favour of “freedom of speech without limitations” and “deplored” the shootings at Charlie Hebdo…

But….

…the award signified “admiration and respect” for its work and “I couldn’t imagine being in the audience when they have a standing ovation for Charlie Hebdo”.

Peter Carey (AFP reports) conceded that “A hideous crime was committed….

But

“All this is complicated by PEN’s seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation, which does not recognize its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.”

Salman Rushdie made the obvious point:

If PEN as a free-speech organisation can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organisation is not worth the name.

I’ll just take the opportunity to quote yet again from an article published in Jyllands-Posten in the aftermath of its publication of the original Mohammed cartoons, an article which included this phrase: “Ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed. Der er intet men.”

The translation? “Free speech is free speech is free speech. There is no but.”

Indeed there should not be.

Jyllands-Posten is singing a different tune these days, made all the bleaker by its bluntness.

As I noted in a post earlier this year, the newspaper declined to republish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons after the Paris murders, saying this:

“We have lived with the fear of a terrorist attack for nine years, and yes, that is the explanation why we do not reprint the cartoons, whether it be our own or Charlie Hebdo’s,” Jyllands-Posten said. “We are also aware that we therefore bow to violence and intimidation.”

That sad surrender makes it all the more important that PEN America took the stand that it has, and that it has stuck with it. As for authors actually attacking PEN America for standing up for the, yes, sometimes uncomfortable principle of free expression, well…

Posted in culture, politics | Tagged blasphemy and defamation of religion, cartoons, Charlie Hebdo | 2 Comments

A View of the US (from the Vatican)

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

Crux has a piece on the planned canonization of Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Spanish Franciscan celebrated as the founder of the Church on the West Coast of the United States.

This caught my eye:

Uruguayan layman Guzman Carriquiry, secretary of the Vatican’s Commission for Latin America, said that as a saint, Serra will help the Latino community in the US not to feel like “barely tolerated foreigners,” but to recognize themselves in continuity with Hispanics who have lived in the country for centuries.

“Barely tolerated foreigners”?

Carriquiry was appointed to this job by Pope Francis who hails, of course, from neighboring Argentina, and wrote the preface to one of Carriquiry’s books.

Posted in culture, politics | Tagged Pope Francis, Religious Left, Vatican | Comments Off

Quote for the Day

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

I don’t often quote old Karl, but this (from the Communist Manifesto) isn’t bad:

“Christian socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.”

Posted in politics, Religion | Tagged Religious Left | Comments Off

Atheists: Not So Angry After All

Posted on April 21, 2015 by mupetblast

You mad, bro?

According to a new study, it’s a myth that atheists are an especially angry bunch. (Grumpy? Maybe.)

Atheists are often portrayed in the media and elsewhere as angry individuals. Although atheists disagree with the pillar of many religions, namely the existence of a God, it may not necessarily be the case that they are angry individuals. The prevalence and accuracy of angry-atheist perceptions were examined in 7 studies with 1,677 participants from multiple institutions and locations in the United States. None of these studies supported the idea that atheists are particularly angry individuals. Rather, these results support the idea that people believe atheists are angry individuals, but they do not appear to be angrier than other individuals in reality.

So I guess atheists are a bit more Stephen Fry than Christopher Hitchens.

HT hbd chick.

Posted in culture, data | Tagged atheism | 1 Comment

If I Were a Believing Man…

Posted on April 10, 2015 by mupetblast

…I’d think God was angry with Ohioans. See this amusing story about a lightning strike that pushed gas prices to high heaven:

The price of regular gasoline at the station, located in the 2000 block of Shiloh Springs Road, is $2.24 per gallon. However, the sign now reads $9.94 per gallon for regular and $9.92 per gallon for diesel after being struck by lightning. A store representative confirmed a lightning strike caused the elevated price on the sign, but the pump is [thankfully] still charging customers $2.24.

HT Fark.

Posted in Odds & Ends | Tagged humor | 1 Comment

Happy Easter!

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

Posted in culture, Religion | Tagged Christmas and other holidays | Comments Off

John Fisher, Again

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Andrew Stuttaford

Writing in The American Conservative, Rod Dreher refers, by implication approvingly, to St. John Fisher, “the English Catholic bishop who went to his death rather than conform to the king’s dictates.”

Say what you will, but Fisher was no defender of religious liberty. I posted about this sinister fanatic (a man who played an important role in the trial and execution of Thomas Hitton, the man often described as England’s first protestant martyr) a few years ago.

Let’s return to Wikipedia (in this case, why not?):

Hitton was a priest who had joined William Tyndale and the English exiles in the Low Countries. He returned to England on a brief visit in 1529 to contact the supporters of Tyndale and to arrange for the distribution of smuggled books such as the first English Psalter translated by George Joye. He was seized near Gravesend on his way to the coast to take a ship,and found to be in possession of letters from the English exiles. He was then arrested on the grounds of heresy, interrogated and probably tortured. He was condemned by Archbishop William Warham and by Bishop John Fisher and burnt at the stake at Maidstone on 23 February 1530.

As I noted in my earlier post, Fisher was no defender of freedom of conscience. What he was defender of his conscience, and, indeed, an enforcer of it on others. As for his fate, well, biter bit.

Posted in Church & State, history | Tagged John Fisher, Religious Liberty | 1 Comment