Category Archives: Human Dignity

Are there any religious experts? “Religion experts” on euthansia

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This post is now available in Polish translation over at Racjonalista. Thanks again go to Malgorzata.

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The Ottawa Citizen has an advice column which puts questions to so-called “religion experts,” who give answers on crucial issues facing individuals and society. There is a big problem with this, because religion experts are, almost by definition, not religion experts at all. What is there to be expert about? They might be experts in their own religion, but there is no such thing as a religion expert who is qualified to give religion’s answer to any question. A recent column in the Citizen’s “Ask the Religion Experts” column, for 31 January 2012 — thanks to Veronica Abbass for the link – asks the two questions: “Is euthanasia right? Would God want us to suffer?” And then the religion experts weigh in on the side of their favourite god. The nonsense that this makes of the questions should be clear right from the outset. We ask the experts their opinion, and all they can do is refer to the “experts” of their religion. According to Z, this is the way it is; according to Y, the truth is such-and-such, and so on. And, around the edges, a little lie or two will take you over the hump when reason fails.

The first one is perhaps the funniest. It’s by a Bahá’í scholar, Jack McLean. Seeing him described as a scholar reminds me of the day I took my M.Div. degree diploma and cut it to shreds. I no longer consider that to be a degree at all. It qualified me as an Anglican priest, but it no longer seems to me that there was anything to know, except, of course, historically, for the church does have a history (or perhaps I should say the churches have a history, for there is no point, during the whole history of Christianity, where there was an unquestioned unity within Christianity), but it is impossible to be a scholar of religion itself, for religion has no subject matter. The “theo” part of theology (the word ‘theology’ meaning, roughly, the logos of theos, or the reason, knowledge of god) is simply UA (on unauthorised absence), having departed his post, or, rather, never having been there in the first place, for all the confident pretence of religious believers, especially its officer class, to which, largely, the Ottawa Citizen has appealed for enlightenment upon a subject which has no object.

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A Closer Reading of Certain Aspects of the Pope’s Christmas and New Year’s Messages

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A few days ago I took Pope Ratzinger to task for some things he said in his address to the cardinals and the curia, seated in an over-decorated hall somewhere in the depths of the church headquarters these aged virgins consider to be a state. However, there were two speeches, and I originally mistook one for the other in my earlier post entitled “If it is so important to live according to one’s nature: Castrate the lot of them, I say!” His Christmas message to the Roman Curia is not the same as his message on New Year’s Day — “for the celebration of the World Day of Peace”. Together, the two speeches raise some serious questions that deserve closer reading, for they are, jointly, a clear indication that the Roman Catholic Church intends to interfere in the internal affairs of nations by prescribing moral legislation pertaining to matters now in dispute: specifically, matters concerning the marriage of homosexuals, abortion and assisted dying. Given the Vatican’s apparent status as a state, although, as Geoffrey Robertson points out, “[n]either the Vatican nor the Holy See, or [sic] both together, satisfy the legal definition of statehood” (The Case of the Pope, 65), these claims are intrusive and dangerous. That the leader of a religion, occupying a few acres of Italian soil, should have diplomatic representatives around the world would be laughable if it weren’t actually happening. States should recognise that for a nation to have diplomatic relationships with a church to which some of its citizens belong is already to have blurred the edges of the separation of church and state, and, as I shall mention later, the pope’s Christmas message makes it clear how dangerous an obfuscation this is. While I am no organiser of protests, this is something that should be protested and defeated.

Here are the reasons, clearly set forth by Geoffrey Robertson. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) provides that:

(1) Without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state. They also have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that state. [my italics; quoted in The Case of the Pope, 86]

Robertson points out that for many years the Vatican has done precisely that. It has reserved for itself and its own law, cases concerning clergy sexual abuse of children, and has refused, and often required silence on the part of the offended person or persons, until statutory limitations had expired, on pain of excommunication, to inform the appropriate civil authorities of the felonious actions of its employees. Besides this, the church has interfered in the internal affairs of countries to which it sends papal representatives, by the ‘spiritual blackmail’ of Catholic politicians, threatening excommunication if they do not, in relationship to legislation such as that concerning abortion and homosexual marriage, vote in accordance with orthodox Catholic moral principles. Robertson’s conclusion is clear:

The reality is that the Holy See has, by exerting its Canon Law jurisdiction over crime, and by making spiritual threats to democratically elected politicians, fundamentally ignored the Convention obligations of a state under Article 41 of the Vienna Convention, and should no longer be treated as if it is one. [86-87]

This is important, in view of what the pope, in his address to the Curia, has to say. It is my view also that we should cease to pay attention to the elaborate fiction of the papacy, by using the titles and names associated with the office claimed by the pope. The man’s a man for a’ that. He was given names by his mother and father, and used those names for most of his life. Now that he is the octogenarian totalitarian ruler of an effete collection of old cronies pretending to be a state, the name that he has so narcissistically chosen for himself, and which is imagined by some of the faithful to raise him above the common lot of humankind, should be reserved for intra-church occasions — they may, of course, call each other whatever they like — but we who dissent from the pretence of holiness and spiritual jurisdiction should not accord him the respect attaching to the customs of these few acres of Italy, whose presumed ”statehood” depends upon that scoundrel Mussolini, which was simply a fascistic con, just like all the rest of that man’s pretended power and glory.

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If it is so important to live according to one’s nature: Castrate the lot of them, I say!

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Available in Polish translation here. Thanks again to Malgorzata!

Here’s a picture of the Clown of the Vatican giving Christmas greetings to a room full of celibate fundamentalists who have made a new year’s resolution to oppose gay marriage with all the power supposedly vested in them by the Ruler of the Universe. Indeed, Christmas, for the pope and his henchmen has become the occasion of the most virulent anti-gay campaign ever to emanate from the frowsty halls of the Vatican. Instead of peace and joy, and the sentimentality of cribs and cowsheds and a sacred baby, we have the pope in attack mode. The overly ornate hall is meant to intimidate us, but don’t let the pictures of angels dupe you. These guys know all about realpolitik.

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To be quite frank, it now simply makes me angry, that a bunch of celibate men should gather together and tell the rest of the world what sexuality is for, and how people should act with respect to their nature, as though human nature were a fixed datum which cannot be varied or further defined. If the Jesus they pretend to worship were to walk into this hall, they’d have him arrested and sent packing. But the thing is that here is a room full of contradictions, every man jack of them acting contrary to his nature (or at least pretending to do so). And yet they have the unmitigated gall to define how the rest of us are to live. According to a Reuters report, the pope (along with his gang of overdressed “virgins”) is forming a coalition of religions to defend “real” marriage and to oppose the legalisation of gay marriage, and it’s high time we told this geriatric failure of a human being that we don’t think this gathering of men sworn to celibacy has anything to teach the world about sexuality or the family. About love, clearly, they have nothing to teach, the pope’s hateful “Christmas” message having gone out to all the world. You know the pope thinks he’s in trouble when the substitutes gay marriage for the manger and the holy mother and child.

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Required Reading

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Update, 16:37, Atlantic Daylight Time, Monday, 20th August 2012: “Required Reading” is now available in Polish translation at Racjonalista. Thanks again to Malgorzata for taking an interest in my occasional thoughts.

Update, 10:40 Atlantic Daylight Time, Friday, 17th August 2012: The Tony Nicklinson judgement is now in, and is downloadable as a pdf file here. I have not read it yet, but the judgement does not rule in his favour. According to the Telegraph:

Tony Nicklinson, the “locked-in syndrome” sufferer, broke down in tears on live television as it was confirmed that he had lost his legal battle to be allowed to die.

The judgement says that it is not up to the courts to decide the issue, but is a matter for Parliament to decide. However, it is clear that, in cases where Parliament fails to act to uphold people’s rights, the courts should make it clear that Parliamentary failure will not be upheld by the courts. While it is true that a judgement in favour of Tony Nicklinson might have had implications far beyond his case, the judgement could have made those implications conditional only upon Parliament’s failure to act. There is not a necessary or logical connexion between a favourable judgement in the Nicklinson case, and an immediate extension of that judgement to other similar cases. The cruelty of the judgement is the direct outcome of years of campaigning by religious entities which will continue to oppose assistance in dying no matter what the outcome. This case however shows how wrong Tallis is in the article linked below, to confine assisted dying to the terminally ill alone. Being trapped in your body, as Nicklinson is, and may be for many years, provides a lack of quality of life which may, in individual cases, be seen to be a great harm.

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The following two articles are, for those who are concerned about assisted dying, required reading. The first is an article, published in the British Medical Journal, of the misery in dying of Ann McPherson, founder of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying. Tess McPherson, Ann’s daughter, is also a physician, a specialist in dermatology, practicing in Oxford, and she writes a hair-raising account of her mother’s death which should put an end to the absurd spectacle of palliative care physicians like José Pereira claiming that palliative medicine can control all the pain, distress and indignity of dying. You can access Tess McPherson’s account as a pdf here.

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The insidious reach of Roman Catholic Church and the inhumanity, cruelty and intransigence of its ethical dogma

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Update: Saturday, 11 August 2012. I was unhappy with the title of this post, so I have renamed it, though it still does not capture the heart of my concerns. It is hard to find a title that sums up what I want to say. I do think that Roman Catholic ethical priorities tend in practice towards barbaric immorality, in respect of its completely unacceptable intrusion into the lives of women with respect to their reproductive freedom, as well as in its truly vile belief that people must suffer whatever pains may come from their disease when they are dying, or living with completely debilitating degenerative conditions (very often neurological). The Roman Catholic Church’s ability to reach into society with its numerous associations and alliances has made Roman Catholic intrusion into public morality more insidious than that of other religious groups. The power and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as its international network of diplomatic representatives makes this church a great threat to human freedom, and it is in the interests of exploring this that this post was originally written, although unhelpfully titled.

I know that many Roman Catholics do not share the moral priorities of their church, and I do not want to suggest that Roman Catholics, as individuals, are less moral or humane than others, but the institutional Roman Catholic Church and its tentacles in practically every aspect of public life is a great danger to freedom and must, in my view, be recognised as such. A good sign that many Roman Catholics are unhappy with the hard line being taken by the Vatican is indicated by the fact that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — a group representing 80% of the nuns in the United States, according to a National Post report – may claim independence from the Vatican for its association. Expressing their concern at the Vatican’s doctrinal assessment of women religious in the United States, Sister Pat Farrell is reported to have said the following in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter:

“We have never considered ourselves in any way unfaithful to the Church, but if questioning is interpreted as defiance, that puts us in a very difficult position,” Sister Pat Farrell said in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter on Monday. “Together with people around the country who have been supportive of us, our desire is to do what we can, for their sake and for ours, to help create a safe and respectful environment, where together with church leaders we can raise questions openly and search for truth freely, addressing some of the complex issues of our times.” As a caveat, Sister Farrell added that such questioning “can only take place in a climate of mutual trust.”

It is important to note that not all Catholics are prepared, supinely, to accept Vatican dictates without question. This desire for a more open, respectful environment is clearly shared by many Catholics, and is to be encouraged and applauded.

UPDATE — Email just in from Richard N. Côté, author of In Search of Gentle Death, whose interview with Bill Thompson, of the CharlestonPost Courier, was the basis for the article “Are our lives our own? ” highlighted in a recent post here at choiceindying.com: “Charleston “Post and Courier” publishes remarkably insightful, sane and thoughtful piece on “elective death”.” I thank Mr. Côté for his kindness, and add his comment on my post here, because it is so apt to the subject of this post (I have italicised and bolded the last sentence, which is precisely what I am saying about the barbarity of the Roman Catholic Church, for it does, indeed preach the forced suffering of people as they die):

Thank you for the fine analysis of Bill Thompson’s article, which was based on my recent book, In Search of Gentle Death: The Fight for Your Right to Die With Dignity ( www.corinthianbooks.com). Gentle elective death — and how to achieve it — was the subject of my five-year study, which resulted in a book with two conjoined conclusions. The first is that only the rational adult person suffering intolerable, uncontrollable pain, or who is or soon will be incurably or terminally ill has the right to make the choice of when, where, and how to die. The second is that no other person, state, or religion has a right to forbid it.  To force another to live in agony against his or her will is an obscene act; to have it preached by an organized religion is equally vile.

You can order In Search of Gentle Death here – or by clicking on the Corinthian Books address in the quote above.

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I am going to continue to press this issue — what I consider to be the barbaric immorality of the Roman Catholic Church — because new links to Roman Catholic associations continue to be brought to my attention. I have mentioned before my concern that the Roman Catholic Church is a hydra-headed association of associations, think tanks, policy centres, lobbyist groups, political action groups, etc., many of which are not recognised for what they are: Roman Catholic propaganda organisations. Just this week my daughter, who is presently writing her doctoral dissertation on an issue in bioethics, reported that she had received an email invitation to attend a bioethics conference sponsored by the Centre for Clinical Ethics. Having a professional interest in bioethics she investigated further to see if this conference was one that would be worthwhile attending, only to find that the Centre for Clinical Ethics, despite its innocuous sounding name, is really just an arm of the Roman Catholic Church. On its home page it describes itself and its origins as follows:

In  1982 the Sisters of St. Joseph established a Clinical Ethics Service  which is jointly sponsored by Providence Healthcare, St. Joseph’s  Health Centre and St. Michael’s Hospital, three Catholic institutions  which serve the Toronto area. The first ethics service of its kind in  Canada, this service has grown over the years and today is known as the Centre for Clinical Ethics.

The mission of the Centre for Clinical Ethics is to enable members of  the health care community to identify and resolve ethical issues which  arise in the clinical setting. We do this through education, case  consultations, policy development, and research. As a faith based Centre we are committed to the core values of our three supporting  institutions and to broadening the understanding of the role that faith  plays in the questions which confront people in their search for healing.

Instead of saying that they are bound by Vatican directives concerning bioethics, the Centre for Clinical Ethics misleadingly says that they “are committed to the core values of our three supporting institutions,” all of which, are, of course, Roman Catholic institutions, and accept the dictates of the Vatican, which is represented in Canada and many other nations by a diplomatic representative called a papal nuncio, and thus has direct links to government ministers and departments.

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Misrepresenting Religion

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Over the last few months both the Archbishop of Canterbury, episcopal head of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of Westminster, as well as Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the senior Roman Catholic cleric in Britain, have come out in strong opposition to gay marriage. Keith O’Brien, according to the Daily Mail, went so far as to suggest that “same sex unions were the ‘thin end of the wedge’ and would lead to the ‘further degeneration of society into immorality’.” (I cannot forbear remarking that this always seems to be the Roman Catholic reaction to moral change. Accordiing to its bishops and archbishops and its moral ”experts”, the seem to see every moral change as a decline into immorality and sheer chaos. They seem unable to see that many of the changes they deplore have improved life for many who were once excluded and unjustly victimised by what the religious guardians of morality think of as the moral law.) According to Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, in a letter to be read in every church in the archdiocese:

Changing the legal definition of marriage would be a profoundly radical step. Its consequences should be taken seriously now. The law helps to shape and form social and cultural values.

A change in the law would gradually and inevitably transform society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage. It would reduce it just to the commitment of the two people involved. There would be no recognition of the complementarity of male and female or that marriage is intended for the procreation and education of children.

This was reported in the Guardian. The Archbishop of Canterbury, on the other hand, holding, as he does, a post in the national church, said that the government had no mandate to change the definition of marriage, not having included this in its party manifesto. There were some members of the church, however, who felt it was high time for the church to desist in its opposition to gay marriage: a priest from Derbyshire sent a petition to the archbishops of York and Canterbury, signed by 4,000 church members, objecting to the church’s refusal to endorse same-sex marriage.

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The Catholic Idea of Dignity and the Fantasy of Perfection

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Cardinal Cahal B. Daly — we come to his exaggerations and absurdities later. You can dress them up in red, and give them exalted titles, but they still know little or nothing of the art of being human, especially about love and family values that they so frequently invoke in defence of their fantasies and superstitions — and who then, with brazen effrontery, seek to be protected against derision! See the demands of Bishop Schick in Germany.

The Roman Catholic Church has a bizarre notion of human dignity, which it uses systematically to suppress every progressive movement, and to violate human rights. Dignity, for the Roman Catholic Church, is to live life solely in terms of its moral principles, principles which have no foundation other than dogmatic assertion. This is evident wherever Roman Catholic authorities make public statements about some act or other that they deplore. It is important to note that the Roman Catholic use of the idea of human dignity is not based on evidence, or even on rational argument. It is simply an article of faith. The failure to observe the Catholic ideal of human dignity is immediately to put oneself in the ranks of those who not only trespass against the church’s moral code, but it is — we are told again and again — to put humanity itself at risk. Take as an example of this a statement by the Catholic Bishops of Kenya, objecting to Melinda Gates’ drive to make family planning information and materials available to as many women as possible. Just to put this in perspective, here are the benefits of family planning, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

Through family planning:

  • Maternal mortality is reduced. Family planning could prevent up to one third of all maternal deaths by empowering women to decide when to have a child and avoid unintended pregnancies and abortions.
  • Deaths and illness among young women are reduced. Pregnancy is the leading cause of death for women under 19, with complications of childbirth and abortion being the major factors. Adolescents aged 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die in childbirth as those in their 20s, and girls under 15 are five times as likely to die as those in their 20s.
  • Child health and survival is improved. Reducing the number of births less than two years apart, births to very young and older women, and higher-order births, family planning lowers child and infant mortality. For example, if women spaced their births at least 36 months apart, almost 3 million deaths to children under age 5 could be averted.

To most reasonable people aims like these seem, not only morally unproblematic, but morally laudable. Reducing maternal mortality, the improvement of child health and survival, and, though not mentioned, control over an already unsustainably large human population: all these seem to be worthy aims, and most people of goodwill would praise the Gates Foundation for supporting and furthering these aims.

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Roman Catholicism is a threat to freedom

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The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops is making a play for limiting the freedom of non-Catholic Canadians in the name of religious freedom. In a Pastoral Letter issued yesterday (14th April 2012), the bishops tell us that religious freedom is, in the words of Pope Karol Józef Wojtyła, “the litmus test for the respect of all other human rights.” (§ 3) This is surely wrong. The freedom to think and to express one’s thoughts is far more important than freedom of religion. Indeed, without freedom of expression even freedom of religious belief and practice would be subverted. By making freedom of religion the litmus test, they are already skewing the notion of freedom in such a way as to ensure that, in the end, other freedoms will be able, in the name of all that is holy, to be abrogated in favour of religion and its priorities.

This becomes even more clear when, in the next section, the bishops state:

The right to freedom of conscience and religion derive from the unique dignity of the human person created in the image of God (cf. Gen 1: 26-27) and endowed with reason and free will. [§ 4]

This is totally wrong-headed. Our human rights cannot be dependent on the religious beliefs of a few, no matter how many. Rights must be morally prior to religious belief, and freedom of religion derives from such prior rights, rather than the other way about. Making the right to freedom of conscience depend on the idea of the dignity of the human person created in the image of God — even if, which I doubt, this makes any sense — is to put the whole regime of human rights into the thrall of religion, and subservient to it.  In fact, when the pastoral letter immediately goes on to say that human beings are the only creatures who can be in conscious relationship with God, and that to enter such a relationship freely “is essential to their dignity,” then we know that we have passed through the religious looking-glass, and everything is topsy-turvy.

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Neither the singer nor the song

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In his “progress of heathenism” series over at the Guardian Julian Baggini has gone from pillar to post and back again without once acknowledging that he’s got the whole thing wrong from the beginning. He just has to be right. The new atheists are a bunch of football hooligans, and by the Lord Harry, he’s going to persevere with this view no matter what the truth is. A few weeks ago he had all but acknowledged that religion really is about belief, and that those beliefs really had no foundation in reality. But now he’s claiming that, regardless of their contentlessness, like some song lyrics, it’s really the music (the tone) that matters, not the words at all. So, when the archbishop of Canterbury says — as he apparently did last night in his debate at the Sheldonian with Richard Dawkins (as the Independent reports) – that while he accepts the findings of science, he reserves the right to consult the Bible over other matters having to do with human meaning and purpose, he was talking about content, not tone. As the archbishop said:

“The writers of the Bible, inspired as I believe they were, were not inspired to do 21st-century physics; they were inspired to pass on to their readers what God wanted them to know,” Williams argued. “In the first book of the Bible is the basic information – the universe depends on God, humanity has a very distinctive role in that universe, and humanity has made rather a mess of it.”

Speaking about tone in this context, I’m afraid, just won’t do. The inspired writers, we are to suppose, passed “on to their readers what God wanted them to know.” The problem here, as the problem always is when it comes to religious belief, is that others choose other books that are held to contain the revelation of what God wanted people to know, and, to use the expression from the Passion narratives, “their testimony did not agree.” The basis for claiming a revelation of what God wants us to know simply doesn’t work, and it really doesn’t matter what tone of voice you say it in. The pretence that speaking about tone at this point will make some kind of substantial difference is just a way of avoiding the issue, not of responding to questions that must be asked. The Bible is not a song lyric, where, in fact, let it be acknowledged, the tone may make all the difference. The Bible is a work which purportedly contains the revelation of a god, and this makes all the difference, we are supposed to think, with how we are required to live our lives.

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W5 on Euthansia: A Second (or is it a Third?) Look

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Until now I haven’t been able to grab clips from the CTV W5 programme with Victor Malarek which would allow me to go through my argument step by step. However, I just managed it, so this will take a number of clips from the programme and comment, briefly, upon them.

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This is simply false. The Dutch euthanasia law does not require written consent. According to the “due care” criteria (Chapter II: Due Care Criteria), written consent is not required. The criteria for “due care” are as follows:

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