Archives for September 2005

September 27, 2005

dover blog + points of note

The ACLU of Pennsylvania is tracking the Dover courtroom action pretty closely on its blog.

Day One seemed to go great from where I sit - Keith Miller, author of one of the most widely distributed high school biology textbooks, got in some really important points...

Intelligent design is not science, has no support from any major American scientific organization and does not belong in a public school science classroom[.] - NY Times

And from the York Daily Record,, Miller gets right to the religious purpose, even though he's a expert witness on the topic of :

Rather, “it’s the first movement to try to drive a wedge between students and the scientific process,” he said.

Miller called intelligent design “an argument of ignorance,” in that it’s based on the premise that if we don’t understand everything, we will never understand it, so we must seek supernatural causes.

He called it “special creationism.”

Also from the YDR, here's Miller on cross, neatly and cleanly dismantling the two biggest and lamest rhetorical con jobs promulgated incessently by the ID crowd:

During cross-examination, Robert Muise, an attorney representing the district with the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan, asked Miller numerous questions about the validity of Darwin’s theory.

“Is it not true evolution is a theory not fact?”

Miller agreed that was true because no scientific theories are facts. Rather, a scientific theory is well-supported, testable explanation that connects facts.

“Would you agree that Darwin’s theory is not the absolute truth?” Muise asked.

“We don’t regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth,” Miller said.

In Day Two, AP tells us that the plaintiffs called witnesses to testify that the school board first targetted evolution for elimination. This is interesting and shows that the ACLU and AU are taking pages from the Cobb County playbook, where the district court found a religious purpose merely by the focused attack on evolution to the exclusion of other scientific subjects.

posted by scott pilutik at September 27, 2005 09:15 PM

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September 25, 2005

Dover on Deck

Since the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case starts up today, I ambled around the interthing and found a host of original articles, hinting that this case, expected to last about 6 weeks, is going to be heavily covered.

York Daily Record, NY Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, LA Times, Independent UK, MSNBC, New Scientist, People's Daily Online (China). Deeper background can be found at Panda's Thumb.

Good luck to the Dover Eleven

posted by scott pilutik at September 25, 2005 11:48 PM

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September 21, 2005

some things will never change

In the new system that Christ introduced, man belonged to the State by only a part of himself. Such a duality, however, bore within it the seeds of inevitable and recurring conflict. Two imperious forces shared the innermost loyalties of one and the same human being who had to work out his other-worldly salvation while at the same time fulfilling his earthly tasks as a member of the civic community.

Robert A. Graham, S.J., Vatican Diplomacy: A Study of Church and State on the International Plane (Princeton University Press, 1959)

posted by scott pilutik at September 21, 2005 01:51 PM

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September 15, 2005

Vatican Gaydar 1.0

I'm going to fair use this entire article by slipping in some needed commentary

Vatican to Check U.S. Seminaries on Gay Presence By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Investigators appointed by the Vatican have been instructed to review each of the 229 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States for "evidence of homosexuality" and for faculty members who dissent from church teaching, according to a document prepared to guide the process.

Begging the question, of course: What constitutes evidence? Will investigators forensically dust the pillows for bite marks? Will they check Tivo accounts against a Judy Garland threshold? As the Vatican tends to be decades behind the cultural times at any given moment, I can only assume that they will be relying on equally archaic methods to determine one's gayness.

The Vatican document, given to The New York Times yesterday by a priest, surfaces as Catholics await a Vatican ruling on whether homosexuals should be barred from the priesthood.

Please send me this document.

In a possible indication of the ruling's contents, the American archbishop who is supervising the seminary review said last week that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations," should not be admitted to a seminary.

Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the United States military, told The National Catholic Register that the restriction should apply even to those who have not been sexually active for a decade or more.

American seminaries are under Vatican review as a result of the sexual abuse scandal that swept the priesthood in 2002. Church officials in the United States and Rome agreed that they wanted to take a closer look at how seminary candidates were screened for admission, and whether they were being prepared for lives of chastity and celibacy.

Aha.. there we go. This is only an American Problem. Priests are only gay in America because America tempts them so.

The issue of gay seminarians and priests has been in the spotlight because a study commissioned by the church found last year that about 80 percent of the young people victimized by priests were boys.

This is like commissioning a test to find out that 99% of prison rapes are between men and deciding that the problem is homosexuality. Given that priests spend most of their time around boys, it's clearly a matter of access. I'm surprised the figure isn't even higher. Numerous studies have also found that pedophelia more about power than sexual preference.

Experts in human sexuality have cautioned that homosexuality and attraction to children are different, and that a disproportionate percentage of boys may have been abused because priests were more likely to have access to male targets - like altar boys or junior seminarians - than to girls.

I probably should've read this paragraph first before commenting above.

But some church officials in the United States and in Rome, including some bishops and many conservatives, attributed the abuse to gay priests and called for an overhaul of the seminaries. Expectation for such a move rose this year with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, who has spoken of the need to "purify" the church.

The word 'purify' can never mean anything good when it comes to regulating human behavior.

It is unknown how many Catholic priests are gay. Estimates range widely, from 10 percent to 60 percent.

But luckily we'll have an exact number soon, since the experts are now on the case.

The catechism of the Catholic Church says people with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies must live in chastity because "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."

The Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, a former seminary rector who set off a controversy five years ago when he published a book asserting that "the priesthood is or is becoming a gay profession," said in an interview yesterday that many in the church had come to accept his observation.

But he said he was concerned that the seminary review would lead the church to ask celibate faculty members and seminarians to withdraw.

"That would be a major mistake from my perspective," said Father Cozzens, who teaches in the religious studies department at John Carroll University in Cleveland. "First, I think it's unfair if not unjust for committed gay seminarians and faculty who are leading chaste lives. And secondly, I don't know how you can really enforce that."

Well, they can start firing the priests, but then what will they do? If their 10%-60% figure lies somewhere in the middle, the American priest shortage will become epidemic.

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a sociologist who resigned in May as editor of the Jesuit magazine America under pressure from the Vatican, said that with the shortage of priests, the church can hardly afford to dismiss gay seminarians.

I really have to stop skimming articles before I post about them. But yeah... Reese is a hero and was one of the few sane figures depicted in Vows of Silence, by Jason Berry and Gerald Renner.

"You could have somebody who's been in the seminary for five or six years and is planning to be ordained and the rector knows they're a homosexual," said Father Reese, now a visiting scholar at Santa Clara University in California. "What are they going to do, throw them out?

"It's much healthier if a seminarian can talk about their sexuality with a spiritual director, but this kind of policy is going to force it all underground."

How much further underground can it go? Not being in this position myself I really don't know, but if I were a gay priest in America I'd be pretty quiet about it. Maybe some dioceses know how to look away better than others.

Archbishop O'Brien, who is supervising the seminary review, did not respond to requests for interviews made to his office in Washington. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said the Vatican document was being reviewed by the pope and could be released this year.

The seminary review, called an apostolic visitation, will send teams appointed by the Vatican to the 229 seminaries, which have more than 4,500 students. The last such review began about 25 years ago and took six years to complete.

The modern day inquistion.

At each seminary, the visitors are to conduct confidential interviews with every faculty member and seminarian, as well as everyone who graduated in the last three years.

A 12-page document with instructions for the review is now being distributed to seminarians and faculty members. It asks whether the doctrine on the priesthood presented by the seminary is "solidly based on the church's Magisterium," or teaching, and whether teachers and seminarians "accept this teaching." Among the other questions are these:

¶"Is there a clear process for removing from the seminary faculty members who dissent from the authoritative teaching of the church or whose conduct does not provide good example to future priests?"

¶"Is the seminary free from the influences of New Age and eclectic spirituality?"

Oh, this one is great and shows you just how in the dark they really are. Putting aside that we have no way in hell of determining what they mean by "New Age" (notice the proper caps), didn't that term sort of run its course about 10 years ago? Who calls anything "New Age" anymore?

¶"Do the seminarians or faculty members have concerns about the moral life of those living in the institution? (This question must be answered)."

¶"Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary? (This question must be answered)."

The questionnaire also asks whether faculty members "watch out for signs of particular friendships."

This is creepily Orwellian. Even if you were heterosexual, would you join an organization that was rabidly paranoid about your friendships?

The Rev. Thomas Baima, provost of the largest seminary in the United States, St. Mary of the Lake, in Chicago, where the Vatican is sending nine interviewers, said such questions were no surprise.

"The reason we're having an apostolic visitation now is precisely in the aftermath of the clerical sexual-abuse scandal," Father Baima said. "Issues about screening our candidates, about formation for celibacy, about how we teach moral theology are going to get more attention than how we teach church history."

But one gay priest, who said he would not give his name because he has been told by his order not to speak out, said the seminary review would demoralize gay priests.

"It says to gay priests, many of whom are hard-working, faithful men who live their promises of celibacy with integrity, that you should never have been ordained," he said.

Good for you, whoever you are.

posted by scott pilutik at September 15, 2005 05:33 PM

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