Pope Benedict XVI’s outrageous attack on "atheist extremism" and "aggressive secularism" in Britain has the virtue of providing clear alternatives. We can either shape our own destiny or, as the Vatican and other religions desire, leave our future to divine intervention.
And as there are absolutely no signs of the Almighty stepping in to deal with the economic and financial crisis, global warming or world poverty, we’d better just get on with it ourselves.
In the end, organised religion is about passivity, fatalism, turning the other cheek and a kind of waiting for Godot – all obscured by dogma and teachings that have their origins in humanity’s early strivings. In the 21st century, we can and must do better than that.
That the Pope and his cardinals feel it necessary to go on the attack even before they set foot in Britain, is a sure sign that all is not well. Increasing numbers of people here and around the world understand that humanity’s problems are nothing to do with a lack of “faith” in God.
In fact, a faith in a secular “God” – the inherent drive for capitalism to Grow Or Die – is more easily shown as the primary cause of the financial and economic disaster that is overwhelming the United States where 43.6m people are now living below the poverty, the highest number for 50 years.
The massive public spending cuts coming up the line in Britain like an express train owe nothing to supposed secularism and everything to the worship of Mammon by the ruling classes for whom religion has always been a convenient cover for their activities and a way of fooling the masses.
As for the Pope’s most despicable remarks associating the rise of Nazi Germany and the subsequent Holocaust with atheism, this is a distortion of history with few parallels. It’s not as if the Vatican has clean hands when it comes to fascism and the persecution of the Jews.
The Catholic Church stood four square with General Franco in the Spanish Civil War and had the friendliest of relations with Benito Mussolini in Italy. A treaty was signed between Pope Pius XI and Mussolini, and the Vatican condoned Italy’s genocidal war in Ethiopia. During World War II, Pope Pius XII was on friendly terms with Berlin and the Vatican never spoke out or acted against the murder of 6 million Jews.
The papacy is also on the defensive as scientists continue to deliver blows against divine creation in favour of a materialist explanation of the origins of the universe. Physicist Stephen Hawking insists in his new book that God was not responsible for creating the universe.
In Grand Design, Hawking says: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
But Hawking and other scientists like Richard Dawkins tend to undermine themselves by rejecting philosophy in favour of science as a way of explaining social phenomena. It is a profound mistake to assert that the two are identical.
A grounded materialist philosophy that starts from the external world as the source of development and consciousness (including the idea of a God) is absolutely key to the future. It can reveal the contradictions within capitalism that create the conditions for another Big Bang – on this occasion the formation of a society based on co-operation and self-determination in place of competition, profit and despair.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Vatican. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vatican. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Biting back against God's Rottweiler
The Pope’s visit to Britain, costing the taxpayer up to £20m, is stirring up a whirlwind of protest. Lest anyone thinks this is a storm in a tea cup, it would be wise to look at the man and the crisis-ridden institution he represents.
Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict, took part in the liberal reformist movement within the Catholic church during the early 1960s. But after students invaded his lecture theatre in 1968, he headed in the opposite political direction.
Ratzinger became head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) previously known as the Inquisition. The Inquisition, dating back to 1542, notoriously persecuted “heretics” such as Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei, usually sending them to be burnt at the stake.
Pope Benedict is not the first to repent his more radical youth and reinforce the ranks of reaction nor will he be the last. But as the arguments about the impending beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman show, he ranks amongst the more sophisticated and wily.
Moving Newman along the road to sainthood is the stated purpose of the Papal visit. But the 19th century English cardinal – who began his religious life as a Church of England priest - insisted that a Catholic should follow his or her conscience rather than the edicts of the Pope – exactly the opposite of Vatican dogma. Thus his appropriation by today’s Vatican is a Machiavellian move to encourage further dissent by conservatives in the Church of England’s ranks in the hope they will find their way to Rome.
The charges against Benedict are many and serious. A new book by Geoffrey Robertson QC, The Case of the Pope, presents a body of evidence showing how Ratzinger as head of the CDF between 1981 and 2005 protected up to 100,000 Catholic priests who sexually molested children and refused to help the victims. Far from supporting victims, Ratzinger and the then Pope John Paul II, insisted that all cases of sexual abuse referred to the CDF were to be dealt with by in total secrecy.
The Vatican uses the system of Canon law, the church’s own legal machinery, to hide its scandals and protect abusers instead of removing them from their posts. Anyone who refers such matters to the police or other authorities can be threatened with excommunication. Small wonder then that the Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors organisation and many others want cases of child abuse to be handed over the secular law-enforcers.
Ratzinger’s cover-up of sexual abuse goes side by side with his notorious hostility towards homosexuality and opposition to gay marriage. As part of its dogma that sex must only be for procreation, the Vatican opposes any kind of contraception under any circumstances. As gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell explained last night on Channel Four, for the millions of poor Catholics in countries like the Philippines, this means a life of back-breaking misery. The Church’s opposition to condoms condemns millions more die from AIDs and STDs.
Benedict’s hypocrisy is equally monstrous in respect to the mass murder of Jewish people by the German Nazi regime. Whilst piously mouthing that holocaust denial is wrong, Ratzinger rehabilitated British priest Richard Williamson just days after he had shocked Swedish television viewers by denying that millions were killed in Nazi camps.
Far from being “in denial” as Tatchell suggests, God’s Rottweiler is only too aware of the problems faced by the Catholic Church in the present era, losing its grip on society in countries like Ireland, for example. The Vatican is full of cunning ideological strategists, however. As Benedict’s 2007 Encyclical about “Modernity” proves, his Vatican is capable even of trying to appropriate Marx in support.
The Pope is aware of the need to steal as much fire from enemies, with the aim of using a reactionary outlook based on mystique and medievalism to shore up a society riven by deep economic and ideological crisis. Blair, Cameron, Clegg, Harman and other members of the political establishment will be having audiences with him this week. It won’t solve their problems.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict, took part in the liberal reformist movement within the Catholic church during the early 1960s. But after students invaded his lecture theatre in 1968, he headed in the opposite political direction.
Ratzinger became head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) previously known as the Inquisition. The Inquisition, dating back to 1542, notoriously persecuted “heretics” such as Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei, usually sending them to be burnt at the stake.
Pope Benedict is not the first to repent his more radical youth and reinforce the ranks of reaction nor will he be the last. But as the arguments about the impending beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman show, he ranks amongst the more sophisticated and wily.
Moving Newman along the road to sainthood is the stated purpose of the Papal visit. But the 19th century English cardinal – who began his religious life as a Church of England priest - insisted that a Catholic should follow his or her conscience rather than the edicts of the Pope – exactly the opposite of Vatican dogma. Thus his appropriation by today’s Vatican is a Machiavellian move to encourage further dissent by conservatives in the Church of England’s ranks in the hope they will find their way to Rome.
The charges against Benedict are many and serious. A new book by Geoffrey Robertson QC, The Case of the Pope, presents a body of evidence showing how Ratzinger as head of the CDF between 1981 and 2005 protected up to 100,000 Catholic priests who sexually molested children and refused to help the victims. Far from supporting victims, Ratzinger and the then Pope John Paul II, insisted that all cases of sexual abuse referred to the CDF were to be dealt with by in total secrecy.
The Vatican uses the system of Canon law, the church’s own legal machinery, to hide its scandals and protect abusers instead of removing them from their posts. Anyone who refers such matters to the police or other authorities can be threatened with excommunication. Small wonder then that the Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors organisation and many others want cases of child abuse to be handed over the secular law-enforcers.
Ratzinger’s cover-up of sexual abuse goes side by side with his notorious hostility towards homosexuality and opposition to gay marriage. As part of its dogma that sex must only be for procreation, the Vatican opposes any kind of contraception under any circumstances. As gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell explained last night on Channel Four, for the millions of poor Catholics in countries like the Philippines, this means a life of back-breaking misery. The Church’s opposition to condoms condemns millions more die from AIDs and STDs.
Benedict’s hypocrisy is equally monstrous in respect to the mass murder of Jewish people by the German Nazi regime. Whilst piously mouthing that holocaust denial is wrong, Ratzinger rehabilitated British priest Richard Williamson just days after he had shocked Swedish television viewers by denying that millions were killed in Nazi camps.
Far from being “in denial” as Tatchell suggests, God’s Rottweiler is only too aware of the problems faced by the Catholic Church in the present era, losing its grip on society in countries like Ireland, for example. The Vatican is full of cunning ideological strategists, however. As Benedict’s 2007 Encyclical about “Modernity” proves, his Vatican is capable even of trying to appropriate Marx in support.
The Pope is aware of the need to steal as much fire from enemies, with the aim of using a reactionary outlook based on mystique and medievalism to shore up a society riven by deep economic and ideological crisis. Blair, Cameron, Clegg, Harman and other members of the political establishment will be having audiences with him this week. It won’t solve their problems.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
A global 'twilight of the elites'
The spectacle of former Cabinet ministers Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon peddling their services to a fictional US company for rates of between £3,000 and £5,000 per day has brought Parliament into even greater disrepute – if that is indeed possible.
Last year’s expenses’ scandal revealed that this unlimited greed in the corridors of power is not confined to a few individuals. In the wake of the Channel 4 exposé of the former Blairite ministers, a BBC investigation found that 20 MPs had failed to declare free overseas trips on more than 400 occasions. Andrew Dismore, who is actually on the committee that is supposed to oversee the behaviour of MPs, breached the rules no fewer than 90 times.
But looking at the global picture, Britain’s parliament is not unique when it comes to evidence of abuse of power and trust. The crisis in the Catholic church has forced even God’s Rottweiler, Pope Benedict XVI, to apologise for priests who sexually abused children in Ireland.
One experienced Vatican watcher comments that “during four decades of reporting from the Vatican, I have never seen a graver crisis affecting the very credibility of the leadership of the world's longest surviving international organisation, the Roman Catholic Church”.
And, in the United States, Nation editor Christopher Hayes, writing in Time magazine, uses the phrase “twilight of the elites” in his depiction of the corruption and incompetence of “nearly every pillar institution in American society whether it’s General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media”.
In what he calls “the implosion of nearly all sources of American authority”, trust in Congress has dropped to only 12% of people expressing confidence in it in the last Gallup poll. Naturally Hayes does not describe this failure as a crisis of the capitalist system. Instead he blames the elites themselves – “the people who run the institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order”.
But in reality, a widespread feeling of malaise and distrust has become a truly international phenomenon in response to what is being revealed as the internal corrosion of the capitalist system and its institutions.
The Conservative party is now moving in to seize the ground opened up by New Labour’s promotion of bleak corporate power with talk of local democracy, parent-run schools and community-run local shops. On Saturday we had nothing less than the sight of former Thatcherite Michael Portillo’s television programme called “power to the people”, where he asked how politics could “engage” with local people.
Thus New Labour’s authoritarian state has opened the door for equally reactionary populists of the Right. They do this under the cover of encouraging “people’s power”. Naturally, the Tories’ strategies will lead to nothing of the kind, but they reveal yet again the hollowing out and implosion of the political system.
A hung parliament and possible national government could see authoritarians of the far right seizing their chance, posing as cleaners-up of corruption. Something along these lines facilitated Berlusconi’s rise to power in Italy.
It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the political fall-out of this widespread awareness - on a multitude of levels - that the existing state institutions are corrupt and unfit for purpose.
The notion that we should prop up this collapsing structure by casting a vote for existing parties at the general election is thus revealed not as an exercise in democracy but a futile effort to preserve the status quo at any expense. The crisis of the institutions and their leaders opens up an unprecedented opportunity to advance new and truly democratic alternatives.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Last year’s expenses’ scandal revealed that this unlimited greed in the corridors of power is not confined to a few individuals. In the wake of the Channel 4 exposé of the former Blairite ministers, a BBC investigation found that 20 MPs had failed to declare free overseas trips on more than 400 occasions. Andrew Dismore, who is actually on the committee that is supposed to oversee the behaviour of MPs, breached the rules no fewer than 90 times.
But looking at the global picture, Britain’s parliament is not unique when it comes to evidence of abuse of power and trust. The crisis in the Catholic church has forced even God’s Rottweiler, Pope Benedict XVI, to apologise for priests who sexually abused children in Ireland.
One experienced Vatican watcher comments that “during four decades of reporting from the Vatican, I have never seen a graver crisis affecting the very credibility of the leadership of the world's longest surviving international organisation, the Roman Catholic Church”.
And, in the United States, Nation editor Christopher Hayes, writing in Time magazine, uses the phrase “twilight of the elites” in his depiction of the corruption and incompetence of “nearly every pillar institution in American society whether it’s General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media”.
In what he calls “the implosion of nearly all sources of American authority”, trust in Congress has dropped to only 12% of people expressing confidence in it in the last Gallup poll. Naturally Hayes does not describe this failure as a crisis of the capitalist system. Instead he blames the elites themselves – “the people who run the institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order”.
But in reality, a widespread feeling of malaise and distrust has become a truly international phenomenon in response to what is being revealed as the internal corrosion of the capitalist system and its institutions.
The Conservative party is now moving in to seize the ground opened up by New Labour’s promotion of bleak corporate power with talk of local democracy, parent-run schools and community-run local shops. On Saturday we had nothing less than the sight of former Thatcherite Michael Portillo’s television programme called “power to the people”, where he asked how politics could “engage” with local people.
Thus New Labour’s authoritarian state has opened the door for equally reactionary populists of the Right. They do this under the cover of encouraging “people’s power”. Naturally, the Tories’ strategies will lead to nothing of the kind, but they reveal yet again the hollowing out and implosion of the political system.
A hung parliament and possible national government could see authoritarians of the far right seizing their chance, posing as cleaners-up of corruption. Something along these lines facilitated Berlusconi’s rise to power in Italy.
It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the political fall-out of this widespread awareness - on a multitude of levels - that the existing state institutions are corrupt and unfit for purpose.
The notion that we should prop up this collapsing structure by casting a vote for existing parties at the general election is thus revealed not as an exercise in democracy but a futile effort to preserve the status quo at any expense. The crisis of the institutions and their leaders opens up an unprecedented opportunity to advance new and truly democratic alternatives.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
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