Why Little Will Happen to Mahony

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I once asked a patristics scholar how Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin, ever got canonized. He was a nasty, cruel man. The scholar replied that in those days Saint meant “someone important in the Church.” And not only in those days.

John Paul grievously mishandled the cases of sexual abuse in the Church. Priests and at least one cardinal (Schoenborn) pleaded with him to do something, and he refused. Children committed suicide because of abuse that John Paul’s failures and willful blindness allowed to continue. And now he is Blessed John Paul and soon will be Saint John Paul.

Why?

Poland.

Poland is the last Catholic country in Europe and what John Paul did to help bring down Communism eclipses for the Poles everything else he did or failed to do.

Little will happen to Cardinal Mahony.

Why?

The New York Times today explains:

Cardinal Mahony, who served from 1985 until 2011, when he reached mandatory retirement, has faced calls for his defrocking over his handling of the abuse cases for years. But the cardinal, a vocal champion of immigrant rights, remained hugely popular with Latinos here, who make up 40 percent of the four million parishioners in the archdiocese.

Catholics of European descent are leaving the Catholic Church in the U.S. About a third have left, at the same rate as the dying Episcopal Church is experiencing. But Latinos are replenishing the ranks of Catholics, and Mahony because of his politics is still a hero to them. Therefore the Vatican will do nothing to Mahony. Prosecutors in Los Angeles also take politics into account, and I doubt they will go after Mahony.

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The Tangled Web

in clergy sex abuse scandal 17 Comments Tags: , ,

The decades of lies and cover-ups that Cardinal Mahoney participated in are finally ending.

One important fact has been overlooked. Roger Mahoney was a licensed social worker and was legally bound to report sexual abuse.

To avoid having to do that, he surrendered his license in 1980. He knew he would be covering-up sexual abuse and tried to escape the legal consequences.

His sole punishment so far: he can’t do confirmations. And he is still an elector of the pope.

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Boys Scouts and Gays

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The national headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America has announced it discussing ending the national exclusion of homosexuals from the Boy Scouts.

Some corporations have discontinued donations to the national scouts because of the ban on homosexuals.

The national office claims that it would never require local units to accept gays; it would be entirely a matter for local decisions.

I think lifting the ban is a bad idea; but more importantly the national office of the Boys Scouts is being very dishonest and, dare we say, Jesuitical.

My four sons were in scouts; three are Eagle Scouts. I was a scoutmaster for many years and a member of the Baltimore Area Council. My family helped endow a position for Special Needs scouts.

My substantive objections:

There may be no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia, but there is strong historical evidence that there is a connection between homosexuality and pederasty. There may be many types of homosexuals, but at least one type fits Freud’s analysis of homosexuality as a form of narcissism. This homosexual is in love with a younger, idealized version of himself.

As part of our training we leaders were constantly cautioned not to forget that the scouts were children. They might be six feet tall and look like adults, but they were children, and could not assume adult responsibilities. When a leader saw a scout who looked like a young man, he would be tempted to give him responsibilities that should be limited to adults. Puberty comes earlier for boys than it to, and may are fully sexually mature at an early age.

A homosexual scout leader would be like a male Girl Scout leader – not a good idea.

Scouting, specially camping, necessarily involves physical intimacy, even if everyone is trying to be modest. Did you know that ticks love to go to the pubic area? We had to remove ticks from extremely delicate positions. When climbing there cannot be the slightest hesitancy about grabbing someone who is slipping. A homosexual leader’s actions could easily be misconstrued.

And some churches do not think that a homosexual is a good role model.

But turning to the national office:

When the Supreme Court decided 5-4 that the Boy Scouts could exclude homosexuals, it was based on the BSA’s contention that the exclusion was part of its core mission.

If the national office announces that the exclusion of homosexuals is not part of its core mission, that defense is rendered invalid, not only for the national office but for all subdivisions and troops.

No, the national office would never require troops to accept homosexual leaders – it wouldn’t have to. Lawyers will go after any division of the scouts that still excludes gays, and the division will have not have the defense that the exclusion is part of the BSA central mission, nor will the local units have the  financial and legal resources of the national office.

I disagree with the national office, but I am even more disappointed in their dishonesty in  pretending that they are not in effect requiring all troops to accept homosexual leaders, no matter what moral, religious, or practical  objections the troop may have.

And all this for the sake of corporate donations.

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Enabling Bishops and Hispanics

in clergy sex abuse scandal 29 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Hispanics have not turned against bishops who have enabled sexual abusers the way other Catholics have.

At the start of the crisis, the Globe reported:

Law has been hounded by the media and Catholics around the world, but his strongest defenders have been local minorities. Last month, dozens of Hispanic supporters chanting in support of Law on the front steps of the cathedral faced harsh words from protesters.

After Law resigned, Hispanics still supported him:

”It hurts me so much,” Sanchez said yesterday afternoon while sitting in a pew in the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in East Boston. ”I was never in favor of him stepping down.”

Like many immigrants, especially those from Latin America, Sanchez remained supportive of Law even as the clergy sexual abuse scandal triggered a tidal wave of demands for his resignation.

He knows Law made grave mistakes, and he’s sickened by the thought of priests sexually abusing children, but he said he can’t allow himself to be angry at Law. He said that only through forgiveness can people really heal. Above that, though, he said it’s impossible to dislike a man who has done so much good for others – especially Latinos.

For them, ”el cardenal,” holds a special place in their hearts.

When Hurricane Mitch pummeled Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998, Law raised more than $1.5 million to help families there. When earthquakes ravaged El Salvador and Colombia in 2001, ”el cardenal” again went into action.

In fluent Spanish, Law has consoled Latino parishioners when they needed it. The cardinal speaks lovingly of his birthplace: Mexico City.

While some people may question the strong support expressed by many immigrants, the Rev. Robert Hennessey, pastor of Most Holy Redeemer, said it makes perfect sense.

”They have great capacity to forgive,” Hennessey said. ”They have a different view.”

He likens that view to how families handle a crisis at home: ”When you have a loving father that did something wrong, he’s still your loving father.”

Cardinal Mahoney has been revealed as an enabler and protector of pedophiles. He has long been a champion of Hispanics.

In his long tenure in the nation’s largest archdiocese, Cardinal Mahony, now 76, distinguished himself as a keen politician in both civic and church circles. He was an early champion of Hispanic immigrants, marching with César Chávez, the founder of the United Farm Workers of America, and is beloved by many Hispanics, who make up 70 percent of the four million Catholics in the archdiocese.

Los Angeles Hispanics are conflicted but still supportive:

“Roger Mahony will continue to be my friend. But reading all this stuff, it breaks my heart,” said Antonia Hernandez, an immigrant rights activist who’s worked with Mahony since he was a bishop in Stockton in the late 1970s. “Here are these people he spent his whole life protecting from abuse and when he could do something about it, he didn’t.”

But Hernandez, the president and chief executive of the California Community Foundation, a leading philanthropic organization, said Mahony did too much for immigrants for his achievements to be dismissed, saying: “His affinity for the immigrant community, the farmworker, is genuine and real.”

To me this looks like a large-scale version of the Stockholm Syndrome.

Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy, sympathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.[1][2] The FBI‘s Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly 27% of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome.[3]

Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.”[4] One commonly used hypothesis to explain the effect of Stockholm syndrome is based on Freudian theory. It suggests that the bonding is the individual’s response to trauma in becoming a victim. Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they no longer become a threat. [5]

The abuser keeps the victim off guard by acts of kindness mixed with acts of abuse. Mahoney championed farm workers as he let his priests rape their children. Hispanics are conflicted and uncertain how to respond.

I know there are some Hispanics who read this blog. What do you think?

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The Vineyard of the Lord of Hosts?

in homosexuality, Popular religion, Protestantism, Women in Church 19 Comments Tags: , , , ,

From A Vineyard Church website

Rod Dreher has had interesting blogs Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back here and here. The book was also reviewed in the NYT

I am not a staretz, so I will make no judgment about the prayer practices and experiences of the members of the Vineyard Church. Some of it is very familiar and seems on the whole to be well within the bounds of Christian tradition, although at times it seems a little too therapeutic and one misses the hard calls of the Gospel to repentance.

Luhrmann noticed that erotic overtones of some of these practices

Of the Vineyard’s  music, Luhrmann observes:

“God is intensely human in this music, and the singer wants him so badly that the lyrics sound like a teenage fan’s crazed longing for a teen idol she can touch.” p. 5

and

“Some songs are almost sexual, with a touch so might that teh suggestion could slip past. Here is the megahit “Dwell”: “Dwell in the midst of us/ Come and have your way.” p. 5

Women have “dates” with God.

“That was particularly striking  in the way people spoke about “date night” with God.  Date night was a term only women used. (Men would talk about evenings with “quiet time” with God. The women would set aside the night, and they imagined it romantically; it was a “date.”  They might pick up dinner or set out a plate at the table, and they imagined their way through the evening talking to God, cuddling with God, and basking in God’s attention.” p. 82

Such approaches leave men cold- at least heterosexual men.

Perhaps connected with this, perhaps not, are the sexual irregularities, especially the homosexual ones, that occur in Pentecostal/charismatic communities.

One of the flamboyant founders of the Vineyard Church, Lonnie Frisbee, was a married but was also having homosexual affairs. He eventually died of AIDS.

I was involved with the charismatic prayer group at Catholic University; It turned out that one of the key leaders was an active homosexual who died of AIDS. A renowned liberal theologian at CU was his spiritual director.

In Charlottesville I also attended a charismatic prayer group at an estate outside town. Years later I learned that the married man who was the minister was an active bisexual.

Is there a connection between a eroticized religion and sexual irregularities? I suspect that there is a connection, at least in some cases, and perhaps Pentecostalism is especially susceptible to it

Such phenomenon caused Msgr. Knox to suspect the presence of the erotic element in enthusiasm, but of course it is not confined to emotional movements. Bridal mysticism is a recurrent theme in both Catholicism and Protestantism; very few heterosexual men like to play the role of the blushing bride.

BTW

I believe that tongues is a real and legitimate form of prayer. I don’t know what it is, or why it fell into desuetude after the Apostolic era. Decades ago I started praying in tongues spontaneously one night when I was alone. I recently had an operation and was under anesthesia. The doctor reported that I was praying in tongues during the operation. What part of the brain is praying? I don’t know – but it seems to be real and helpful to many Christians to pray with both the rational part of the mind and with whatever part is praying in tongues.

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More Christian Perhaps, but Effective?

in crime 5 Comments

John Schwekler has a blog over at Dotcommonweal about restorative justice in a murder case.

This was also the medieval model: the reconciliation of the family of the victim with the murder was the desired outcome, the state took little role the process.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishop recommends this type of justice.

Restorative justice focuses first on the victim and the community harmed by the crime, rather than on the dominant state-against-the-perpetrator model. This shift in focus affirms the hurt and loss of the victim, as well as the harm and fear of the community, and insists that offenders come to grips with the consequences of their actions. These approaches are not “soft on crime” because they specifically call the offender to face victims and the communities. This experience offers victims a much greater sense of peace and accountability. Offenders who are willing to face the human consequences of their actions are more ready to accept responsibility, make reparations, and rebuild their lives.

However, it did not work in the Middle Ages to deter homicide, although it may have prevented feuds from starting; only a determined palliation by the state of capital punishment seems to have  made a big dent in the homicide rate.

Paul recognizes the role of the state in enforcing justice, even through capital punishment through the sword. Catholics seem to have a prejudice against the state fulfilling this function. Mercy and forgiveness are proper to the Christian, but can a state really be Christian?

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Church and State vs. Young Men

in crime, Masculinity 4 Comments Tags: , ,

Although homicide statistics show that the United States is going off the murder binge that began in the 1960s and returning to the more peaceful levels of 1950 (still high by European standards), there is plenty of violence in the United States, and much of it done by young black and Hispanic men. Rod Dreher has a discuss on his blog of the situation at a mall in Baton Rouge. Baltimore has also seen shootings at upscale malls in Towson as one black thug attacks another black thug.

I have been struck at the resemblance between the violent culture of inner-city blacks and the violent culture of medieval European villages. In both situations young men feel they have to maintain their reputations by avenging any slight with violence, which often resulted in death.

For a long while homicides was not regarded as a serious criminal matter. It was an affair between two families (think Romeo and Juliet) and  the state did not take a serious interest in ending homicide until after the Renaissance. It then began executing killers to tell young men: you kill, you die.

A slow civilizing process also lessened opportunities for violence; but the duel did not end until the twentieth century in France and Germany.

The church was an important part of the civilizing process because the priest or minister was often the only official in a village. The clergy tried to end male homicide and rape by discouraging anything that might excite young men: sports, dancing, village festivals. This also helped alienate European men from church.

The growth of both religious and secular patriarchy after the Reformation also helped end male violence. A father did not like violence around his family and did not want young men tampering with his daughters. Also the role of head of household gave young men a clear masculine role at which to aim: keep your nose clean, young man, and you too can be recognized as a patriarch.

Patriarchy correlates strongly with lack of violence. The least violent groups in North America are the Amish, the Hutterites, and the Orthodox Jews, who have a homicide rate at just about zero.

How to subject the black and Hispanic underclass to the civilizing process? A concerted application of the death penalty is not politically possible. The coarse and violent popular culture may simply be a game for most white kids, but for too many blacks and Hispanics it is a way of life. A middies class white single mother may be able to raise a son in a community in which almost all families are intact, but the black single mother who lives in a neighborhood in which over 90% of the households have no resident father hasn’t a chance.

Resuming the cooperation of church and state, the police in Baltimore and other cities are turning to the churches for help in the civilizing process. Justin George reports in the Baltimore Sun:

When drug dealers and prostitutes camped outside Eastern United Methodist Church last fall, the Rev. Lena Marie Dennis met with Baltimore police Maj. Melvin Russell and other faith leaders and came up with a unique plan.

The congregation would march around the church seven times, carrying banners, praying and proclaiming that they were taking back the block. It worked, Dennis said. Soon the dealers and hookers moved on.

On Friday, Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts and Russell announced an effort to build faith-based partnerships across the city, which organizers hope will embolden worshipers to reach out beyond their walls. Police believe the initiative will also help improve relationships in communities that sometimes see them as a foreign and threatening presence.

“Most of our churches have a tremendous amount of credibility,” Batts said.

n East Baltimore, Russell said he learned years ago that police can also help churches build community rapport.

An assistant pastor himself, Russell said he was taken aback by a drug dealer he spoke with who told him that many saw churches as no better than crack or heroin peddlers. The perception was that churches sucked up the community’s money through tithes and offerings but gave nothing back.

As relations between residents, religious leaders and police improved, Russell said, the difference was clear.

Home to 47 homicides in 2007, the Eastern District has historically been recognized as one of the city’s most violent. Russell took command of the district in 2008, and the homicide count dropped to 38. In 2011, it was down to 28.

Last year, Russell said, the total number of shootings declined for the third consecutive year, but the district saw 37 killings. That was the most in any city police district, a reminder of the difficulties that the new unit will face, even with successful community cooperation.

The Rev. Rodney Hudson, pastor of Ames Memorial United Methodist Church in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, is hoping for positive results citywide. He already works closely with Western District officers, sharing information and holding joint community meetings.

“As a faith leader, I view police as having special God-ordered authority to keep peace and order,” he said.

That’s crucial in a neighborhood such as Sandtown, he said, where he’s seen the effects of violent family disputes spill into his church. On one occasion, he ministered to the families of a murder suspect and victim in the same crime — a tough situation.

Just as police can help him, he said, he can help officers and detectives understand neighborhood and family dynamics.

This strategy has had some success in other cities, especially in damping down gang violence.. It would have even more success if black men were not so alienated from their churches, which they view as preserves for a greedy mister and his female flock. Black men have about the same attitude to their churches as Andalusian rural day workers have to the Catholic church: their anti-clericalism is almost identical.

How to convince young black men that religion does not destroy but affirms their true masculinity? Black ministers might study the Amish and Orthodox Jews for clues, and look at the success that Evangelicals in Latin America have had in weaning men away from machismo.

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Unimportant People are Always Expendable

in sexual abuse 12 Comments Tags: , ,

Yeshiva University in New York has been caught up in the sexual abuse scandal.

Back in the 1970s students and their parents alleged to the administration, including the then-president Norman Lamm, that they had been molested by a rabbis on the faculty.

As Vivian Yee reports in the NYT,

Yet administrators of Yeshiva University, the prestigious Modern Orthodox institution in Washington Heights that runs the high school, allowed each man to simply leave.

The university president from 1976 to 2003, Norman Lamm, who is now its chancellor, told The Forward that he never notified the police.

Dr. Lamm told the paper that when the school received complaints of sexual activity involving the staff, “if it was an open-and-shut case,” he would just let the staff member “go quietly.”

“It was not our intention or position to destroy a person without further inquiry,” he said.

“This was before things of this sort had attained a certain notoriety,” he added. “There was a great deal of confusion.”

In 1995, after administrators confronted Rabbi Finkelstein about the wrestling, the rabbi “decided to leave because he knew we were going to ask him to leave,” Dr. Lamm told the newspaper. The rabbi became the dean of Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School in North Miami Beach, Fla. Yeshiva did not notify the school about the accusations, Dr. Lamm told The Forward, and the school never asked.

The victims were unhappy with the way the matter was handled:

Mr. Twersky, now a journalist in Jerusalem, says he threatened to sue in 2000 unless Dr. Lamm publicly apologized or offered compensation, but was rebuffed. A Yeshiva official had said Rabbi Finkelstein’s “condition” would be treated, but nobody at Yeshiva reached out to victims, Mr. Twersky said.

“It dawned upon me that I had not merely been wrestled with and violated, but knowingly abandoned by the high school leadership,” he said Thursday.

Bishops, rabbis, ministers, all sacrificed children to preserve their institutions.

Mark Oppenheimer, also in the NYT, has some of the best reflections so far on the whole crisis:

Every religion has evildoers stalking its corridors. They just survive, and thrive, with different strategies.

Even Zen Buddhism is not immune:

Take Zen Buddhism, the paragon of open, nonhierarchical spirituality. Anyone may practice Zen meditation; you do not have to convert, be baptized or renounce your old religion. Yet leaders of major Zen centers in Los Angeles and New York have recently been accused, on strong evidence, of exploiting followers for sex. This weekend, Zen teachers ordained by Joshu Sasaki, the semiretired abbot of the Rinzai-ji Zen Center in Los Angeles, are holding a retreat to discuss sexual harassment accusations against Mr. Sasaki. The Zen Studies Society, in New York, is under new leadership after its longtime abbot, Eido Shimano, was forced out after he was accused of inappropriate sexual liaisons with students and other women.

Maintaining reputation is more important than helping victims:

Then there is the fear of bringing shame on the community, particularly prevalent in minority groups. “When I started in 1982,” said Phil Jacobs, the editor of Washington Jewish Week, “there was an 11th commandment — ‘Thou shalt not air thy dirty laundry.’ ” He learned that commandment in Baltimore, writing about the high percentage of Jews in a treatment program for compulsive gambling. “When I started calling people, they said, ‘You’re not going to put this in the paper, are you?’ So I found out Jews didn’t get AIDS, didn’t get divorced, didn’t abuse their wives or children.”

That fear of embarrassment may be why Dr. Lamm — who is still at Yeshiva and declined to be interviewed — stayed quiet about the abusive rabbis at Yeshiva. Perhaps he loathed what they had done, and wept for their victims. But, he also may have thought that people shouldn’t hear bad things about Jews. People shouldn’t know, in other words, that Jews are just like everyone else.

That is everyone else, not just religious people. The Satmar Hasidim may have wanted to protect a beloved member, the Modern Orthodox administrators probably worried about their community’s reputation — and the Penn State loyalists enabled Jerry Sandusky. Somehow, the victims never seem as important as the rabbi, the Zen master, the coach. In the words of a once-revered rabbi, Norman Lamm, may as well let the perpetrators “go quietly.”

Abusers are sociopaths who can so easily commit their crimes because they lack the empathy necessary to feel the pain that they cause in their victims. Abusers also manipulate the weaknesses of people and institutions. Each person, each institution, has its peculiar strengths and weaknesses. Abusers even manipulate the imperative of forgiveness.

I have noticed in my work as an investigator for the government and my private work in documenting sexual abuse, and in lesser matters as well, that almost always when asked to help, even by just giving information, almost everyone says “I don’t want to get involved.” They fear difficulties, inconveniences, retribution by the criminals. People far too often lack the virtue of fortitude.

Fortitude, courage, is not the highest virtue, but is a virtue without which it is impossible to have any other virtue.

Opposing evil will always cause us some trouble or inconvenience. Some people have to die because of their opposition to evil. Most people won’t even risk receiving bad publicity. Better that the innocent suffer, especially if they are unimportant people,  than anyone else, especially a VIP, be inconvenienced in the slightest.

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Some Good News from New York

in crime 2 Comments

The Wall Street Journal has some good news about New York:

New York City is on track to end the year with the lowest number of homicides in half a century—with 414 recorded as of this past weekend—but the overall crime rate is expected to be higher for the first time in a generation.

As of Sunday, there were 94 fewer homicides this year, compared with the same period last year, marking an 18.5% drop, according to data released Tuesday by the New York Police Department. During all of 2011, there were 515 murders, a 20.6% decline since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in January 2002.

Prior to 2002, the city hadn’t recorded fewer than 600 homicides in decades. In 2009, the city recorded 471 homicides, the lowest number in any year since comparable records were kept beginning in 1963.

Overall crime in the five boroughs is up 3% so far this year, driven by the thefts of Apple products, Paul Browne, the department’s top spokesman, confirmed. If Apple thefts had remained the same, “we would be experiencing a slight decline in crime citywide,” Mr. Browne said.

Apple has become the forbidden and irresistible fruit.

Crime declines during periods of economic downturn. I suspect that in boom times some poor people feel resentful and feel they have the right to grab their share of the wealth, but if everyone is going downhill, there is less motive for envy and resentment.

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Things We Don’t Like Thinking About

in sexual abuse 10 Comments

Peggy Noonan commented on the massacre in Connecticut on her blog at the Wall Street Journal:

Something else about this story. I know so many people who in past tragedies were glued to the TV. They wanted to hear the facts of Columbine, Aurora, Tucson. They wanted to hear what happened so they could understand and comprehend. After Newtown, I’d mention some aspect of the story and they didn’t know, because they weren’t watching. And they’re not going to watch anymore. “Too depressing” they say, softly.

Even journalists who by nature and training want to know the latest fact aren’t, unless they’re working the story, closely following it. Because it’s too painful now, because they’re not sure anything can be done to turn it around and make better the era we’re in. This new fatalism is . . . well, new. And I understand it, but there’s something so defeated in turning away, in not listening to or hearing the stories of the parents and the responders and the teachers.

Noonan has observed in this case how people respond when something truly horrible happens: people don’t want to know what really happened. Victims of torture who try to tell people what they have been through find that people turn away their faces and stop their ears. When escapees from Nazi murder camps tried to warn people, even fellow Jews, they were not believed. I sold 10,000 copies of my first book, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, but only a few hundred copies of my second and far more important book Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. The publisher who had commissioned the book walked away and said it was too horrible to publish. The editor at Oxford said she would not touch it with a hundred-foot pole. Even my friends, even psychiatrists, who began reading the book said they couldn’t continue, it was too horrible.

This reaction is something the worst criminals count on: people won’t do anything about the crimes because they don’t want to think about them, they don’t want to believe that such things occur. Alas, they do.

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Murder on the Wane

in crime, Masculinity, Uncategorized 7 Comments Tags: ,

The massacre in Connecticut and other similar massacres have obscured in the public mind long-range trends: a recent decline in homicides and other violent crime, and a centuries-long decline in homicide and (possibly) in military violence.

First, the most horrifying crimes: the murder of children. These have declined, as this chart indicates.

Each death is a tragedy, but society is, overall, becoming less, not more, violent.

After rising in the 1960s and peaking around 1990, homicides in the United States have returned to the level of 1950. Moreover, these declines continue long-term declines in American homicide rates.

One reason  (but only a partial reason, is the increasing incarceration of criminals. Other reasons are better policing and the decline of crack cocaine; but no one is really sure why there has been such a sudden and massive decline.

There are also long-term declines in European homicide rates.

Stephen Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature documents these declines and also, more speculatively, he sees millennia-long decline in military violence. That is less certain, but it is clear that in many pre-modern societies, a major portion of males meet a violent death.

The decline in homicides in Europe since the Middle Ages is part of the civilizing process, in which the violence and unruliness of young males is disciplined and restrained.

As to Lanza in Connecticut and other mass murderers: They certainly lack empathy, and the absence of affectionate fathers during childhood seems to be a major factor in the failure of males to develop empathy, so single-parent families do no bode well for the future. Males also feel they have to establish their identity, to prove they are somebody, and a few of them choose mass murder as a way of proving this – in vain, because almost no one remembers the names of the mass murderers.

One law about guns that might help is to require all gun owners to keep their guns, especially rifles, in a locked gun safe. If they do not, and someone uses the gun to commit a crime, the gun owner should also be criminally liable. This would help stop adolescents in a sudden passion from grabbing a gun and killing people. But restraining intelligent psychopaths like Breivik in Norway is very, very difficult, without creating a surveillance state that would bring its own problems.

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Are men or women more irrational?

in conspiracy theories, sex differences, Women in Church 29 Comments Tags: , , ,

While researching my new book, I came across studies that showed that not only were women more religious than men, they were more superstitious when it came to believing in New Age stuff, mediums, astrology, communicating with the dead, etc. However, men were more likely to believe in UFOs and aliens.

I mentioned this to my wife, and she said that she bet men were more likely to fall for nutty conspiracy theories.

She was right.

The Sidney Morning Herald reported on the research of Kylie Sturgess, who tested 1243 Australians  on a variety of beliefs;

“Women are more likely to be at the ‘social’ end of paranormal beliefs,” Sturgess says. “They’re more likely to believe in things like mediums, astrology, psychic healing, and ghosts.


“Men, for instance, are more likely than women to believe in the alien astronaut theories of Erich von Daniken, and more cryptozoological things like the Loch Ness monster.”

Studies have also shown that men are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, creationism and the notions of historical revisionists, while women are more likely to believe in telepathy and New Age theories.

I am puzzled; perhaps the sexes are equally irrational. However female goofiness is generally harmless, while conspiracy theories (which always end up blaming the Jews) lead to the gas chambers.

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Preview of Book

in Meek or Macho 32 Comments Tags:

I am in the last stages of writing my new book, Meek or Macho: Men and Religion.

This is my current thesis statement:

Because of the influence of Aristotle, theologians thought the feminine was receptive and obedient, and that these qualities should also characterize the Christian, especially the laity, who therefore should be feminine, brides of God who submitted to God – and to the clergy. Men were often unruly and destructive, and they were told that not only did they have to obey laws that restricted their activities; these laws were designed to make them feminine, or at least behave like women. In addition, there was a strong voluntarist attitude: the laws of God were arbitrary and had to be submitted to without question.

Men rebelled. They did not want to sacrifice their hard-earned and precarious masculinity and their independence in order to be made feminine; they might obey rules and follow discipline that purported to make them masculine, such as military discipline, but would reject discipline designed to make them feminine. Men stayed away from church because the church told them to stop behaving like men and to start behaving like women.  Women therefore have outnumbered men in Christian churches for centuries.

Any reactions?

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