Month: May 2013

‘Openly Catholic’

Yesterday on Twitter saw a Catholic GP being forced to close down his Twitter account following an episode of online bullying which resulted in his being reported to the NHS as well as the GMC, for the heinous crime of referring to the number of abortions in the UK as ‘the slaughter of babies’.

I witnessed the whole incident, having previously blocked those responsible – there is a posse of Irish pro-abortion advocates on Twitter, who swoop on every single Tweeter who dares to express an opinion upon the current state of affairs in Ireland. Over the past few weeks every single time I have said anything about abortion and Ireland in the same 140 characters, a persistent gang has appeared from out of the blue to attack with insult and invective. Yesterday’s ‘debate’ saw them swooping in with the same discredited narrative regarding the death of Savita Halappanavar, and then going on to attack me, a non Irish national for daring to defend the rights of the unborn in another country.

There’s nothing more of a disincentive in terms of engaging on Twitter to scroll down one’s mentions column and see numerous rants on the same subject, by the same few determined people, chock full of angry and impassioned hypberbole, together with personal insult. Besides which those who seek to discredit an international symposium of gynaecologists as being ‘liars’ on the basis that one disagrees with their conclusions and who decry Ireland’s outstanding maternal death rates as being ‘lies’, don’t really incline one to do anything other than block. One should note, nonetheless, that these are the same people who repeatedly attacked those who they deemed to be not medically qualified and therefore unable to comment, but who repeatedly seized on the subjective opinion of openly pro-choice expert Dr Boylan as being definitive medical fact in the Savita inquest, despite the fact that 11 other experts publicly disassociated themselves from his stance. Clearly they were obviously lying too.

I tweeted a few responses, realised this was a futile exchange, hit the block button repeatedly, switched off the phone and trundled off to the park with the children to make the most of the Bank Holiday sunshine. Yet another day, yet another Twitter spat?

Not quite. Later on that evening I discovered that one of my followers, a Catholic GP had joined in the fray, referring to UK interest in the Ireland abortion debate, as having seen almost 200,000 babies slaughtered here on an annual basis and not wanting Ireland to go down the same route. Here’s what he said.

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The pro-aborts took issue with the fact he had referred to unborn children as babies and went for the jugular, causing him some considerable concern. (Apologies for the blurry images, I’ve deliberately obscured identities).

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The pro-aborts reported him both to his employers at the NHS and the GMC, because they determined that referring to the unborn as ‘babies’ and by the almost 200,000 abortions that occur in the UK on an annual basis, he was in fact taunting women who had abortions as being ‘baby slaughterers’, and there was thus legitimate cause for concern that he could be taunting women patients.

What these so-called advocates of science and reason could not cope with was the presence of a medic, undermining their rhetoric about the unborn, hence they threw their toys out of the pram and decided to put his job in jeopardy or at least attempt to. On seeing that he had deleted his account, one therefore relented slightly and said that she had withdrawn all her tweets to the NHS. How very generous.

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Job done. Serves him right. Hopefully he’ll think twice about expressing the fact that as a doctor he opposes abortion in public ever again. That’s another one closed down. These people need to be an example of.

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Of course let’s remember that at least two of these tweeters were those who had expressed apoplexy that a UK tweeter might engage with the political situation in Ireland, yet had no compunction reporting an UK doctor to his professional body on the basis of a firmly expressed view, which was by the way, perfectly in accordance with the GMC guidelines on how medics should use social media. These guidelines specifically encourage doctors to take part in public health and policy decisions as well saying that doctors should identify themselves.

All of which went above the heads of the pro-aborts who said that he was fair game. He had no right expressing his own opinion, which was clearly religiously based.

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But all of this was his own fault.

Another Tweeter joined in the fray to defend said GP. So enraged were these advocates that someone else dared to disagree with them, that they then felt compelled to hunt down this interlocutor, believing it to be the GP’s wife. I mean. How dare she go on Twitter to defend her husband who is having his professional competence and employment threatened on the basis of expressing a point of view and for stating that he was a Catholic GP in his bio. Oh the audacity, let’s find out all about her too, shall we. Let’s track down her Facebook profile.

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At which point I begin to call out their behaviour.

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Because this sort of probing into one’s family life and personal details is the behaviour of a reasonable and rational person.

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Ben has written about this and it would seem he is right. Catholics need to be increasingly prepared to defend themselves from these sort of threats and attacks if they expound their views on a public forum and particularly if they are perceived to be in a position of influence.

These people are unrepentant this morning, claiming that this GP deserved to be reported for taunting women as being ‘baby slaughterers’ and telling others, such as @battlementclare that they would not hesitate to report her too, if she were still a practicing midwife, or indeed anyone who was involved in medicine and vocalised pro-life views.

I don’t generally like to go down the whole ‘persecuted Christians’ schtick. But not once in this entire debate, did either myself or the GP allude to God, yet it was the pro-aborts who kept bringing Him into the discussion as being a reason why we must not be taken seriously or listened to. Our arguments were wholly secular, though both of us are openly Catholic and proud to profess ourselves as such.

Losing one’s job may not seem to be in the same league as being thrown to the lions or physically tortured, beaten and killed as a result of one’s beliefs and faith. But being disbarred from a particular profession unless one agrees never ever to voice one’s own views, being sacked and unable to support one’s family, being ostracised and having one’s family targeted as a result, brings us a step closer.

Let us hope that the GP and his family take comfort from the recent words of Pope Francis. They need our prayers.

“[The apostles’] faith was based on so powerful and personal an experience of Christ crucified and risen, that they were not afraid of anything or anyone, and even saw their persecution as a badge of honor, that made them capable of following in the footsteps of Jesus and to be like Him, bearing witness with their lives,”

“… and in these times, there are many Christians who suffer persecution, a great many, in many countries: let us pray for them from our heart, with love, that they might feel the living and comforting presence of the Risen Lord.”

This is how it starts.

Dirty Protest

Joseph Amodeo

Cardinal Dolan’s officials refused entry  into St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York to a group of LGBT protestors who had deliberately dirtied their hands in protest at a recent blogpost of his, in which he shared an anecdote from his childhood to do with his delight when his best friend was allowed to join them for dinner, but was told that first he would need to wash his hands:

I was so proud and happy.  Freddie was welcome in our house, at our table.  We both rushed in and sat down.

“Freddie, glad you’re here,” dad remarked, “but . . . looks like you and Tim better go wash your hands before you eat.”

Simple enough . . . common sense . . . you are a most welcome and respected member now of our table, our household, dad was saying, but, there are a few very natural expectations this family has.  Like, wash your hands!…

So it is with the supernatural family we call the Church:  all are welcome!

But, welcome to what?  To a community that will love and respect you, but which has rather clear expectations defining it, revealed by God in the Bible, through His Son, Jesus, instilled in the human heart, and taught by His Church.

Surely the point is clear enough? Everybody is welcome, rich, poor, young, old, black, white, gay, straight, married, single, but the Church has the same expectations of everyone regardless. One couldn’t ask for a greater definition of equality.

But no, in an overblown statement of victim rhetoric, Joseph Amodeo writing for the Huffington Post says, that the Cathedral is his home from which he has now been evicted and that now he is spiritually homeless. In colourful prose, he describes the ‘cold hard steel and the means by which the doors closed’ (what on earth does he mean by that, I’d never thought of door hinges as being particularly loaded with menacing metaphor and if he’s referring to the doors needing to be pushed shut, isn’t that exactly how they were designed?) capturing the sentiment that they were not welcome.

Actually all of the activists were more than welcome, but were requested to wash their hands first. Quite right. In a Mass, especially if one receives communion, we encounter Christ. Why would anyone deliberately make themselves filthy to meet their King and Redeemer. It’s a deliberate act of blasphemy. Whilst it makes for another good argument for receiving communion on the tongue, making oneself dirty in order to use a church to make a political protest is highly offensive. And what about shaking hands during the sign of peace? Would they have deliberately and ostentatiously rubbed their mucky paws and transferred grime onto other peoples’ hands who might be receiving communion. Even had they exercised courtesy and respect to fellow Mass-goers it still makes a mockery of the Holy Spirit, restricting sharing the peace with a small select clique.

A protest of this type has no place within a religious setting. I’d like to see them attempt to enter a mosque with their shoes still on. Like Lisa Graas, I cannot get my head around anyone who would intentionally make themselves dirty before receiving Christ in the Eucharist. Christ loves us and meets us where we are, but as Cardinal Dolan says, this encounter always involves a recognition on our part that we need to clean up first. The Eucharist is a meal, of course we should make every effort to be spotless, internally and externally before receiving of the body of Christ.

This protest or ‘silent witness’ subverted the Christian message to being about love of self. The Lord loves us in spite of our dirt and filth, He can certainly see beyond it, but that doesn’t preclude us trying to rid ourselves of it. Dirt or sin, matters, it keeps us from having the close relationship which we need.  Whilst Christ welcomed the poor, the outcast, the dispossessed, he touched those who were deemed unclean, none of those who came before him had deliberately put themselves in this state in the first place and certainly none were celebrating it and demanding that they should be healed, or that it was their right.

Filth is no barrier to encountering Christ. It makes it all the harder when we deliberately wallow in and celebrate it nonetheless. My children are prone to some absolutely physically disgusting behaviour. When one of  my daughters comes to me covered in sticky chocolate, sudacreme, liquid soap, caked in mud or worse, I’ll still love them as fiercely as before, but will literally hold them at arm’s length until I’ve dumped them in the bath. I don’t pander to temper tantrums about not wanting to clean up and being fine as they are. Particularly, when like the organiser of this vigil, they have a history of throwing their toys out of the pram and hurting other people when they don’t get their own way.

Christ always extends a welcome. But on His terms, not ours.

State cooked relationships

home cooking

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I am becoming increasingly unnerved by the clamour being made by those in the business of sex education, such as assembled ‘experts’ who are repeatedly calling for better state sex education in schools, including teaching pupils that ‘not all porn is bad’.

No doubt these are the same advocates who bitterly complain about the ‘indoctrination’ of pupils in faith school, who seem to be utterly blind to the irony that even espousing a so-called neutral view, is an ideology in and of itself. I am boggling at how the notion ‘not all porn is bad’ can be seen as anything other than subjective opinion.

As for becoming porn literate (and I cannot bear that particular neologism), what does that really mean? As in the sense of computer literate, i.e. having competence or knowledge? Or more likely, being able to think critically about porn, able to discern between what is good and what is bad? And who on earth makes those decisions? What constitutes good or bad pornography or erotica is entirely dependent upon the subjective lens of the recipient and their personal tastes. Not to mention Aristotle, under whose definition all pornography is good. Those who complain vociferously about the role of the nanny state when any changes to the law regarding the accessing of internet porn are mooted, ought to think about long and hard about whether or not our children should be taught that xyz makes for ‘bad’ porn, whereas something else is deemed as ‘good’ as well as the acceptable context in which to use porn.

And let’s face it, in order for children to be taught how to become discerning viewers of porn, they are going to need to be exposed to a fair few different genres and the whole point of porn is that it is not designed to be rational. Responses to pornography are never rational or cerebral they are always visceral, instantaneous and physical which is why it is so hugely popular and addictive. Habitual users of porn are well aware that rationally and intellectually, it isn’t realistic, addicts are often well aware that a porn addiction is psychologically unhealthy and impede real-life relationships, but it’s never that easy to wean oneself off, especially when the next hit is only a click away. And let’s not kid ourselves about the purpose of porn either. It really isn’t rocket-science to note that the release of the various neuro-chemicals and hormones involved in reaching climax are an intoxicating and heady mix, as this secular site, designed to help young men beat a pornography addiction, explains. Whilst there are several other Catholic resources designed to help people spiritually, such as for example porn no more, reading about the science behind the effects of porn upon the brain, is both compelling and terrifying.

Exposing children to porn, even with good intentions, borders on the abusive. It normalises and contextualises something that should be a taboo, as being a perfectly harmless habit. Thirty years ago, if men wanted to see porn, it would involve a fair bit of effort, such as shuffling off to the newsagent when no-one else was around or attending a grubby and squalid peep show in the backstreets of Soho. The internet enabled burgeoning of the porn industry has been every male pervert’s dream, no longer are they seen as sordid, seedy, sleazeballs but as sophisticated consumers of a product. And women have been co-opted in their own sexual objectification to a degree that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago.

Children, especially teenagers faced with fluctuating levels of hormones, are not intellectually equipped to make decisions about sex, whilst not lacking intelligence, they lack the requisite wisdom that comes with experience. Exposure to porn at this age is especially harmful, whetting their appetites and forming neural pathways and associations with pleasure that will inevitably require rewiring. Most men of my generation admit that their first exposure to porn was via some mucky magazines found in their father’s bedroom or study, or surreptitiously sneaked into school. They also admit that these early experiences seem to have shaped various ideas and preferences, again, one doesn’t need to be an expert on Freud or psychology to understand that early feelings of sexual arousal and the accompanying associations, can prove enormously powerful. It’s stupefying naivety and ignorance to believe that by discussing and attempting to rationalise pornography with children, that they will then be able to control their physical responses to it. It could well backfire in that by deeming certain porn ‘bad’ it becomes ever more alluring.

A school classroom made up of thirty pupils of differing stages of sexual and emotional development is not the appropriate place for discussions of this nature. The schoolteacher is not responsible for the sexual formation of a young adult.

Which is also why the classroom is not the place to teach about what the state regards as ‘good relationships’. Why does the state believe that it has the monopoly on defining and teaching about such deeply personal matters. Most of us are able to recognise an innately dysfunctional relationship, even if we were brought up in such an environment ourselves. Whilst we might need help in identifying and overcoming issues that may have occurred as a result, even those in abusive relationships realise on one level that what is happening is not the ideal state of affairs. There are many complex factors that are involved in why people may end up in abusive relationships, that they were not taught how to recognise them at school seems to be an insignificant factor, generally people find themselves trapped for a variety of reasons, relationships that turn toxic, usually do so gradually.

As for teaching primary school children about adult sexual relationships, instead of ‘placing too much emphasis on friendships’, speaking as a parent of a 9 year old who will soon approach puberty, this is unbelievable stuff. A child’s world is made up of their friendships, when something goes wrong in the playground it can have devastating consequences. Of course the emphasis must be on friendships and how to get along with others, how to be kind, generous and respectful. Priming children as to what healthy adult sexual relationships should look like, is akin to grooming and leaves them very vulnerable to predatory adults.

Whilst of course, any PSHE element should help children to recognise and ask for help in terms of unwanted sexual behaviours or advances, there is a danger in placing emphasis upon a good quality sexual relationship, almost as if this should be a given in a romantic relationship or is indeed a necessary part of a fulfilling life. By teaching children a subjective definition of good and bad relationships, they also encourage a tendency to discard anything that falls short of the ideal standard, or when things become difficult, when very often problems and difficulties can be rectified.

Relationships are not always ideal and perfect, from the Catholic point of view we know that the graces conferred upon us by the sacrament will reinforce us, but ultimately even the best marriages go through the odd sticky stage. Which is why the marriage vows include a promise to love, which sometimes requires an act of will, it is not simply a confirmation of being romantically in love, but a promise to love the other person, even when they are being at their worst.

What seems apparent is that the state is trying to package up, homogenise and clinicalise every single sexual relationship and impose this utopian vision upon our children. This is the type of sex you should be having, here’s the type of relationship that you should have and here’s the pornography that is okay to look at and here’s how you should use it. It feels deeply unpleasant and intrusive.

I read earlier that the pornography industry is becoming safer than the food industry when it comes to health and safety standards. Which really says it all. Do we really want our sexual relationships monitored, regulated and served up to us like a tasteless, plastic, microwave meal. Or do we want something home-made, free of artificial ingredients, wholesome, comforting, heart-warming, authentic, nutritious and made with human love and care. It might not look as perfect or uniform as the mass produced product you take out of the packet, or be made conforming to the same stringent standards of health and safety. It may often be harder to produce. But it sure tastes and feels infinitely better.

Do we really want children sold a state-sanctioned convenience-meal version of sex and relationships?