It’s become a ritual. Desperately aggrieved, bereaved, shocked, enraged, relatives and friends attend in the courtroom, equipped with Victim Impact Statements which they have worked out over the weeks of the trial, full of purple prose -- and with photos and mementos, complete with teddy bears.
The media lovingly report the juicier bits of these statements, the ferocity of the delivery, the eyeballing of the accused, and the visible reactions, if any, of the accused. Judges seem to have become astonishingly tolerant of all this. Sometimes, but very rarely, one of these statements might speak of understanding and forgiveness, of decisions to avoid bitterness and hatred, rancour and revenge.
Then inevitably, the sentence imposed turns out to be less than the eternity of torture they believe appropriate, so they convene outside the courtroom and say how disgusted, or “gutted”, they are, how they have lost faith in the justice system (why would anyone think that an intelligent assessment?), and what they would do to the offender if they had access.
Of course these people are feeling desperate and helpless, powerless. But the country’s justice system can’t save them from the facts of life. Life includes tragic events. The world is a perilous place. Living is dangerous. There is grief and loss, and huge injustice all the time.
Typically the victim’s families say, as in a case this week, “So eleven and a half years was all my daughter’s life was worth…” Well, lady, that’s not what anyone thinks, not the judge, not the counsel, not the jury. The victim’s life is incalculable. The judge dares to believe that the offender’s life is worth something too. So do most of us in our better moments.
Then, behold, it turns out that the victim’s family have suddenly become experts on criminology and penology. The silly media start to hang on to their every word as they prescribe what they think should now happen in law, in police action, in prison administration, in parole guidelines.
A lot of this has been gathered up in a lobby called the Sensible Sentencing Trust, whose representatives are wheeled out every time there is the slightest public perception that some judge has “got it wrong”. The head guru in sensible sentencing is Garth McVicar. Garth sees the world in black and white.
“Sensible” sentences are apparently those governed by the central rubric of these people, that “The punishment should fit the crime.” So what they really think, although they rarely say so, is that we should reinstate capital punishment, and possibly also corporal punishment. “An eye for an eye…” They never seem to grasp that (a) the bible does not teach an eye for an eye; or that (b) another name for it is the Law of the Jungle.
In a civilized society, accused people are protected from the rage and revenge of others. Justice, to be just, does have to include a solid component of wisdom and mercy -- otherwise we are back in the jungle, subject to the law of the lynch mob. We have judges precisely so that we are protected from people such as Garth.
And all of this is without venturing into the question whether our prisons are doing any good anyway. Obviously some people have to be detained, perhaps for life. Otherwise our prisons seem to be simply assembly belts of crime.
(Postscript: It costs five times more to keep a convicted youth offender in prison in the UK, than it would cost to keep him at Eton. Eton might work better.)
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Priestly Paedophilia
It seems unlikely that Pope Benedict XVI will read and pay close attention to what I write here. But the main function of blogs, as ever, is to make the writer feel better.
I wish the Pope had not apologised, as he did at inordinate length, to the RC church and people of Ireland, for the many instances of priestly paedophilia which are being revealed almost daily. Benedict’s apology is at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7069664.ece
I can’t bring myself to read it closely.
Of course the media have also decided, from their once-over-lightly reading of history, that a papal apology is unprecedented -- popes simply don’t say sorry -- and therefore this one highlights the severity of the crisis.
Well, crisis indeed it is. Ireland has long been famous for clergy abuse, including sustained brutality of children, girls and women, the handicapped and helpless, in its schools and orphanages and other “Christian and charitable” institutions. But Ireland has never had any monopoly on this human disease. The latest is from Bavaria, the Pope’s own Heimat, where the Pope’s own brother, Father Georg, used to slap around the boys in the prestigious choir of Ravensburg Cathedral, the Domspazen, the Cathedral Sparrows. Stories of abuse are flooding in from almost everywhere. The USA, some years ago, was only the start, probably because it has more people aware of the possibilities of litigation and compensation.
But this is now beyond apology. The Pope should have made a simple address from his position of awesome power and prestige in the church, and said: It is a crisis. I intend to deal with it. These activities, whatever their cause, are intolerable. They are an abuse of power inconsistent with the way of Christ. Priests and others in the church who abuse children will be expelled, and I am instructing the bishops accordingly. The church will no longer make arrangements for monetary compensation -- that is a matter for the civil courts.
Apologies have become a pastime in our culture, and they are largely worthless. I dealt with this in my own way some time ago, in my blog http://rosssmoment.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
Of course, the media have now decided that the real problem is not the abuse itself, but the historic unwillingness of bishops to deal with the offending priests decisively. The bishops have been simply transferring them elsewhere. Crimes have been getting concealed from the police. There has been, and remains, a ecclesiastical culture of coverup. Thus, the church has been and is complicit in crime.
Well, it’s quite simple. All this has to cease. The Pope could instruct the bishops accordingly. The coverup has been disgusting. The expectation of the priests that mother church would protect them has to give way to the manifest right of children and others to protection from predatory priests, users, bullies, sadists, nohopers…
Obviously there are many contributory causes. The insistence on celibacy is one of them, but only one. Compulsory vocational celibacy outside monasteries is a silly, unnecessary and false doctrine.
Also, there is the malignant culture of power in the church. Hierarchy. Nothing could be less consonant with the way of Christ. Priests living apart and wielding power over the flock. Bishops poncing around in medieval gear and issuing orders. The miracle is that, within this structure, there have been so many christlike, scholarly, wise and thoughtful people, so many non-abusive and horrified by all this.
When John XXIII said he wanted the windows thrown open, one wonders now if he was thinking also of this whole area of clergy abuse and misuse of power.
Then there is the issue of vocation. Who becomes a priest, or a nun, or a minister or pastor? Who knows? There are complex admission procedures, tests, assessments. But it remains a human issue, and no one understands the echoes of personal loneliness or resentment, the subterranean areas where decisions may get made. Only a wise and developed theology of human fallenness and redemption can cope with this.
The victims…? It’s sad, profoundly sad. But victimhood is a chosen state. No one has to be a victim. I realise how unpolitical this statement is -- but it is possible to get over it, to get on with life. That may be the main and heroic task.
Meanwhile, it is utterly tragic that all this continues now to be dealt with on the level of who should pay for what happened.
I wish the Pope had not apologised, as he did at inordinate length, to the RC church and people of Ireland, for the many instances of priestly paedophilia which are being revealed almost daily. Benedict’s apology is at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7069664.ece
I can’t bring myself to read it closely.
Of course the media have also decided, from their once-over-lightly reading of history, that a papal apology is unprecedented -- popes simply don’t say sorry -- and therefore this one highlights the severity of the crisis.
Well, crisis indeed it is. Ireland has long been famous for clergy abuse, including sustained brutality of children, girls and women, the handicapped and helpless, in its schools and orphanages and other “Christian and charitable” institutions. But Ireland has never had any monopoly on this human disease. The latest is from Bavaria, the Pope’s own Heimat, where the Pope’s own brother, Father Georg, used to slap around the boys in the prestigious choir of Ravensburg Cathedral, the Domspazen, the Cathedral Sparrows. Stories of abuse are flooding in from almost everywhere. The USA, some years ago, was only the start, probably because it has more people aware of the possibilities of litigation and compensation.
But this is now beyond apology. The Pope should have made a simple address from his position of awesome power and prestige in the church, and said: It is a crisis. I intend to deal with it. These activities, whatever their cause, are intolerable. They are an abuse of power inconsistent with the way of Christ. Priests and others in the church who abuse children will be expelled, and I am instructing the bishops accordingly. The church will no longer make arrangements for monetary compensation -- that is a matter for the civil courts.
Apologies have become a pastime in our culture, and they are largely worthless. I dealt with this in my own way some time ago, in my blog http://rosssmoment.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
Of course, the media have now decided that the real problem is not the abuse itself, but the historic unwillingness of bishops to deal with the offending priests decisively. The bishops have been simply transferring them elsewhere. Crimes have been getting concealed from the police. There has been, and remains, a ecclesiastical culture of coverup. Thus, the church has been and is complicit in crime.
Well, it’s quite simple. All this has to cease. The Pope could instruct the bishops accordingly. The coverup has been disgusting. The expectation of the priests that mother church would protect them has to give way to the manifest right of children and others to protection from predatory priests, users, bullies, sadists, nohopers…
Obviously there are many contributory causes. The insistence on celibacy is one of them, but only one. Compulsory vocational celibacy outside monasteries is a silly, unnecessary and false doctrine.
Also, there is the malignant culture of power in the church. Hierarchy. Nothing could be less consonant with the way of Christ. Priests living apart and wielding power over the flock. Bishops poncing around in medieval gear and issuing orders. The miracle is that, within this structure, there have been so many christlike, scholarly, wise and thoughtful people, so many non-abusive and horrified by all this.
When John XXIII said he wanted the windows thrown open, one wonders now if he was thinking also of this whole area of clergy abuse and misuse of power.
Then there is the issue of vocation. Who becomes a priest, or a nun, or a minister or pastor? Who knows? There are complex admission procedures, tests, assessments. But it remains a human issue, and no one understands the echoes of personal loneliness or resentment, the subterranean areas where decisions may get made. Only a wise and developed theology of human fallenness and redemption can cope with this.
The victims…? It’s sad, profoundly sad. But victimhood is a chosen state. No one has to be a victim. I realise how unpolitical this statement is -- but it is possible to get over it, to get on with life. That may be the main and heroic task.
Meanwhile, it is utterly tragic that all this continues now to be dealt with on the level of who should pay for what happened.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Ethanol
Inside the Rover’s Return, in Coronation Street, is where most of the action happens, episode by episode. Over the 50 years since the series began in 1960, we have seen this corner pub renovated, crashed into, burnt out, rebuilt, remodelled – yet it remains the focal venue of just about every plot and sub-plot.
I do understand that the “local”, in England at any rate, has long been an important social institution. And it’s easy to see how convenient it must have been to the producers of Coronation Street to have so much of the action in one place. Right from the start, when Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst sat and swapped their venomous gossip in the Snug over their milk stouts, nicely insulated by frosted glass from the raunchier and riskier world of the public bar, it has been possible to concentrate on faces and moods and dialogue, with only the occasional irruption of action and flying fists. The Rover’s is where they daily oil the social mechanism, bonding, abusing each other, reassuring each other, planning one-upmanship, checking their defences and nourishing their antipathies. You can’t do any of that alone at home, really; it’s social, it requires others to listen and respond.
But how much week by week do these people spend on their alcohol? The “girls” who sew garments in Underworld routinely adjourn to the Rovers for their lunch. Sure, there they have Betty’s ‘Otpot, which presumably would give them some sensible protein. Come to think, does the Rover’s ever serve tea/coffee? I have never, ever, heard of it. Typically, day or night, the locals require ale, wine or spirits, or some fruit drink if you’re pregnant. Mike Baldwin normally asked for “my usual, please, and whatever she’s having”. His usual was a double whisky. He died. These people drink. A pot of tea, on the other hand, “a brew”, is what you have at home. “I could murder a brew...”
Perhaps the normal level of salaries/wages in the UK takes account of the money one spends on buying alcohol for oneself and on purchasing rounds for others. I doubt it. It must be considerable. It would be bad enough here in NZ... It says something about the place alcohol has come to assume in the lives of so many, as though it were indispensable as a social lubricant.
We too have the beer culture, and the profoundly silly wine culture... There is a NZ talkback host who thinks it sophisticated to inform us that he would never buy a bottle of wine under NZ$25.00. We have wine “experts”, and some radio chap who is wheeled on to advise us which wines to choose with which foods. People are making money from telling us which wine they personally prefer, as though it matters or is even remotely interesting. We now have “Masters of Wine”, whatever they are. Wine, however ancient, is simply another slightly more sophisticated vehicle for shunting alcohol into our brain cells. You like a particular wine or you don’t, I would have thought.
The beer culture has drunken obnoxious Britons fouling the streets of Europe and elsewhere following rugby or soccer or league. They threaten to come here for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, as useless and abhorrent an event as I ever imagined. Vulgar yobboes with their tinnies and over-strained livers.
The wine culture, more pervasive, has otherwise sensible people thinking they can be connoisseurs of taste/smell/whatnot... They have their own wine literature about redolence of apricot and lavender, slightly... ye gods, who invented this humbug...?
But the real social damage is in simply drinking. Alcohol is an addictive drug, for many. Teenagers are getting paralytic at parties, and are falling about on the streets. Beer boozers in rugby clubs and at home are beating up their womenfolk and their kids, sometimes with fatal consequences. Alcohol moreover potentiates the effect of other more serious drugs. It is behind many of society’s tragedies and horrors.
I don’t drink. I decided some time ago to put alcohol out of my life. It was a good decision. No one needs that stuff. And I have recently decided it is not wowserism or puritanism to advocate really strong restrictions on the availability of beer, wine and spirits – it is simply to take seriously a serious social disease. I believe alcohol is unnecessary. For me the best social and personal remedy is abstinence. Most people don’t believe that, of course. But they have to come up with some remedies likely to work.
I do understand that the “local”, in England at any rate, has long been an important social institution. And it’s easy to see how convenient it must have been to the producers of Coronation Street to have so much of the action in one place. Right from the start, when Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst sat and swapped their venomous gossip in the Snug over their milk stouts, nicely insulated by frosted glass from the raunchier and riskier world of the public bar, it has been possible to concentrate on faces and moods and dialogue, with only the occasional irruption of action and flying fists. The Rover’s is where they daily oil the social mechanism, bonding, abusing each other, reassuring each other, planning one-upmanship, checking their defences and nourishing their antipathies. You can’t do any of that alone at home, really; it’s social, it requires others to listen and respond.
But how much week by week do these people spend on their alcohol? The “girls” who sew garments in Underworld routinely adjourn to the Rovers for their lunch. Sure, there they have Betty’s ‘Otpot, which presumably would give them some sensible protein. Come to think, does the Rover’s ever serve tea/coffee? I have never, ever, heard of it. Typically, day or night, the locals require ale, wine or spirits, or some fruit drink if you’re pregnant. Mike Baldwin normally asked for “my usual, please, and whatever she’s having”. His usual was a double whisky. He died. These people drink. A pot of tea, on the other hand, “a brew”, is what you have at home. “I could murder a brew...”
Perhaps the normal level of salaries/wages in the UK takes account of the money one spends on buying alcohol for oneself and on purchasing rounds for others. I doubt it. It must be considerable. It would be bad enough here in NZ... It says something about the place alcohol has come to assume in the lives of so many, as though it were indispensable as a social lubricant.
We too have the beer culture, and the profoundly silly wine culture... There is a NZ talkback host who thinks it sophisticated to inform us that he would never buy a bottle of wine under NZ$25.00. We have wine “experts”, and some radio chap who is wheeled on to advise us which wines to choose with which foods. People are making money from telling us which wine they personally prefer, as though it matters or is even remotely interesting. We now have “Masters of Wine”, whatever they are. Wine, however ancient, is simply another slightly more sophisticated vehicle for shunting alcohol into our brain cells. You like a particular wine or you don’t, I would have thought.
The beer culture has drunken obnoxious Britons fouling the streets of Europe and elsewhere following rugby or soccer or league. They threaten to come here for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, as useless and abhorrent an event as I ever imagined. Vulgar yobboes with their tinnies and over-strained livers.
The wine culture, more pervasive, has otherwise sensible people thinking they can be connoisseurs of taste/smell/whatnot... They have their own wine literature about redolence of apricot and lavender, slightly... ye gods, who invented this humbug...?
But the real social damage is in simply drinking. Alcohol is an addictive drug, for many. Teenagers are getting paralytic at parties, and are falling about on the streets. Beer boozers in rugby clubs and at home are beating up their womenfolk and their kids, sometimes with fatal consequences. Alcohol moreover potentiates the effect of other more serious drugs. It is behind many of society’s tragedies and horrors.
I don’t drink. I decided some time ago to put alcohol out of my life. It was a good decision. No one needs that stuff. And I have recently decided it is not wowserism or puritanism to advocate really strong restrictions on the availability of beer, wine and spirits – it is simply to take seriously a serious social disease. I believe alcohol is unnecessary. For me the best social and personal remedy is abstinence. Most people don’t believe that, of course. But they have to come up with some remedies likely to work.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Awaiting Women
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 12:24 PM
Subject: Stephen
Hi all,
Stephen has learned to be patient. He has had to. I explained to Stephen that he'll spend a good portion of his life waiting for women, so I'm helping him get used to it.
Gran was amused to find Stephen reading while he waited for someone to get him up.
A couple of days ago Simon had a mug of coffee on the coffee table. He warned Stephen it was very hot. So Stephen dipped his finger in it. He then felt the mug to see whether that was hot, and then dipped his finger into the coffee one more time to confirm that the coffee was definitely hot.
Stephen is a sensate.
Hope all is well with you guys.
Love,
Rachel
.................................
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Ross Miller wrote:
Listen Magoo...
This business of Stephen spending all his life waiting for women... I am the one to educate him about this phenomenon, not you. I simply know more about it. And the trick is not to be patient, or "get used to it". That's only what girls think. Girls think men are performing some proper function by waiting around patiently.
The trick is to learn strategies, which not only make better use of the time, but also alter the future. Read a book, for instance, is a good strategy. Always have a book with you. I have got through War and Peace, Vanity Fair, and quite a lot of the Bible, while waiting for your mother. (And for you, incidentally...) Other possible strategies include getting real mad (but that one is ultimately too costly... it just helps sometimes to lay a real good guilt trip on them...) I do not really advise getting mad. It is also a good time to recalibrate the clock in your car, do your fingernails, make difficult or boring phone calls -- best of all, make one or two phone calls which really annoy someone. You can check your tyre pressures or even clean the car, inside or out, or both, that's entirely up to you. If you are waiting in some public place there are endless possibilities. Mentally write short stories about the weirdos you see. All of this and much more we could call the creative use of time spent waiting for females. But Stephen needs proper instruction in this at the right time... not some boring old advice to be patient.
Much love and shalom,
Ross
...........................
On 01 March Lex Miller wrote:
There are various grades of being made to wait:
1. No waiting required. This is only theoretically possible.
2. Being made to wait a period of time for which patience is possible for the normal bloke.
3. Being made to wait a period of time for which patience is possible for the normal saint.
4. Being made to wait a period which renders the eventual departure meaningless.
5. Suffering 4 and then being blamed for it.
Getting used to it only takes you as far as about 2.5.
Reading a book may take you to 3.
Number 4 probably required some sort of preemptive action.
If anyone knows how to deal with 5, please let me know.
Lex
..........................
On 02.03.10, Rhys Miller wrote:
Stoicism works for the 2 to 4.5 range.
Rhys
Subject: Stephen
Hi all,
Stephen has learned to be patient. He has had to. I explained to Stephen that he'll spend a good portion of his life waiting for women, so I'm helping him get used to it.
Gran was amused to find Stephen reading while he waited for someone to get him up.
A couple of days ago Simon had a mug of coffee on the coffee table. He warned Stephen it was very hot. So Stephen dipped his finger in it. He then felt the mug to see whether that was hot, and then dipped his finger into the coffee one more time to confirm that the coffee was definitely hot.
Stephen is a sensate.
Hope all is well with you guys.
Love,
Rachel
.................................
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Ross Miller wrote:
Listen Magoo...
This business of Stephen spending all his life waiting for women... I am the one to educate him about this phenomenon, not you. I simply know more about it. And the trick is not to be patient, or "get used to it". That's only what girls think. Girls think men are performing some proper function by waiting around patiently.
The trick is to learn strategies, which not only make better use of the time, but also alter the future. Read a book, for instance, is a good strategy. Always have a book with you. I have got through War and Peace, Vanity Fair, and quite a lot of the Bible, while waiting for your mother. (And for you, incidentally...) Other possible strategies include getting real mad (but that one is ultimately too costly... it just helps sometimes to lay a real good guilt trip on them...) I do not really advise getting mad. It is also a good time to recalibrate the clock in your car, do your fingernails, make difficult or boring phone calls -- best of all, make one or two phone calls which really annoy someone. You can check your tyre pressures or even clean the car, inside or out, or both, that's entirely up to you. If you are waiting in some public place there are endless possibilities. Mentally write short stories about the weirdos you see. All of this and much more we could call the creative use of time spent waiting for females. But Stephen needs proper instruction in this at the right time... not some boring old advice to be patient.
Much love and shalom,
Ross
...........................
On 01 March Lex Miller wrote:
There are various grades of being made to wait:
1. No waiting required. This is only theoretically possible.
2. Being made to wait a period of time for which patience is possible for the normal bloke.
3. Being made to wait a period of time for which patience is possible for the normal saint.
4. Being made to wait a period which renders the eventual departure meaningless.
5. Suffering 4 and then being blamed for it.
Getting used to it only takes you as far as about 2.5.
Reading a book may take you to 3.
Number 4 probably required some sort of preemptive action.
If anyone knows how to deal with 5, please let me know.
Lex
..........................
On 02.03.10, Rhys Miller wrote:
Stoicism works for the 2 to 4.5 range.
Rhys
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