Jeff Anderson mouthpiece: The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein
Background
- After the New York Times published three articles suggesting that Cardinal Dolan committed wrongdoing – possibly even criminal wrongdoing – as Archbishop of Milwaukee, the Times did not publish even a single story of a federal judge's later decision completely vindicating Dolan;
- Weeks later, however, the Times' Laurie Goodstein published a story about Church-suing contingency lawyers filing an unimportant motion to disqualify the federal judge who had rendered the very same decision that the Times had completely ignored.
As we reported back in July, the New York Times published three different articles aggressively attacking its local bishop, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, for merely transferring diocesan monies in 2007, when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee, to a cemetery trust fund to ensure that the monies were going to be used as intended by the original donors: for the future care and maintenance of Catholic cemeteries.
The Times and other professional anti-Catholics, such as those at SNAP, claimed that the $55 million transfer to the trust fund was a part of a diabolical plot by Dolan to "protect the assets from victims of clergy sexual abuse who were demanding compensation" by moving the money away.
"Suing the sh&@ out of the Church":
contingency lawyer Jeff Anderson
A few weeks later, a federal judge vindicated Cardinal Dolan and declared that Dolan's transfer was completely proper.
Yet the Times did not publish a single article about the judge's decision and the huge victory for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and Cardinal Dolan.
End of story? Not quite. It turns out that the main Church-suing lawyer in this case is the notorious Jeff Anderson, who has an extensive record of theatrics and questionable behavior in his self-described pursuit of "suing the sh#^" out of the Catholic Church.
In his typical bombastic fashion, the losing Anderson filed a meritless motion to reverse the judge's decision, claiming that because the ruling judge happened to have some deceased family members in some of the 100+ archdiocesan cemeteries, the judge somehow had a conflict of interest in the case.
The NYT carrying water for the usual suspects – again
Professional anti-Catholic:
lawyer Marci Hamilton
And, not surprisingly, the author of the Times' story was none other than the predictable Laurie Goodstein, who always appears at the ready to lend the Times' reputation to advance Jeff Anderson's legal career and raise money for SNAP.
To lend credibility to Anderson's silly, attention-getting motion, Goodstein turns to none other than lawyer Marci Hamilton, a well-known anti-Catholic bigot, who also happens to be financially involved with Anderson in the case.
Goodstein waits until the very end of her article to quote Prof. Stephen Gillers of New York University School of Law, who trashes Hamilton's legal analysis of Anderson's nonsensical motion to disqualify the judge:
"An appellate court is going to say, if you could learn these facts after the ruling, why couldn't you do it before the ruling? Why all of a sudden did you become interested in whether this judge could sit, other than the fact that you lost. That's something they have to explain."
Bingo.
Goodstein as Jeff Anderson's and SNAP's unpaid PR machine
Yet the most troubling aspect of Goodstein's article is that it was published at all.
Goodstein's never-ending obsession with old abuse claims in the Catholic Church makes it quite clear that she is nothing but a mouthpiece for Church-suing lawyers like Jeff Anderson and anti-Catholic groups such as SNAP.
In 2010, when Goodstein published a high-profile series of articles about a Wisconsin priest who abused boys over a half a century earlier, it was no secret that Anderson funneled court and Church documents to Goodstein, which she then dutifully published. There is no doubt that her reporting resulted in the value of Anderson's cases being increased greatly.
In 2012, when a judge ordered SNAP president David Clohessy to merely sit for a deposition involving a lawsuit in Missouri, Goodstein naturally leaped to the defense of Clohessy with a front-page story decrying that Clohessy was being unfairly persecuted for simply being asked to testify truthfully about his relevant knowledge.
It is well known that the New York Times' editorial policies stand in heated opposition to the Catholic Church on nearly every "hot-button" social issue, whether it be gay "marriage," abortion, or birth control.
And with every successive article, Goodstein – the Times' purported "National Religion Correspondent" – only makes it more evident that her main role at the Times is to endlessly recount old stories of sex abuse occurring in a single institution – the Catholic Church – in order to advance the agendas of contingency lawyers like Jeff Anderson and other Church haters.
Why don't you trot out the victimized priests? Take them on a speaking tour around the country. Have them talk about this "stampede". Really, Take your act on the road. I've suggested this before to you.
Do it .
You know why you won't and so do I. It would focus such outrage; not for you but against you and would be a magnet for victims who would meet up possibly, to fight you (verbally). With out having to go through the church's counterintelligence effort " The Project" also known as SNAP and the somehow ever present Jeffery Anderson..And if those 2 aren't running the show then the church (or at least a part of it )will be very very very unhappy indeed.
My post may get lost in the nonsense that gets in the way here.
Go to bigtrial.net for complete coverage of the Msgr Lynn appeals hearing today (Philly paper is not a good source of news unfortunately)..
So much in the recent JR crop (1044, 1057, 1111) is mostly unsupported rant. But there are a couple of useful points for the Notebook on the Playbook.
In the 1057 entry, we see the interesting effort to slyly avoid the real problem: trying to move readers to wondering whether my “standard” of judgment was the scientific (Einstein) or the philosophical (Wittgenstein) or the ludicrous (Shirley Temple). When actually – of course – the “standard” is based on sanity and accuracy and honesty, which by amazing coincidence are the three categories and “standards” JR doesn’t go near. Yet it should have been clear from just my comments on this thread that my major concerns were in those areas.
JR would be well advised not to waste what abilities he has in trying to “pretend” about me at all (he is, after all, “not that good at pretending”) and simply concern himself – to the extent he can – with the questions and substantive issues that are raised about his material. That would, I would say, be a much better use of his time and available resources. And actually, I think the not-good-at-pretending bit is – to put it nicely – a very hefty case of false modesty.
The muddy pig wallow (I could live with ‘hog’ wallow if that would be more acceptable) is my assessment, based on – as JR so often notes – my voluminous observations and explanations of those observations. I stand by it.
But now to the 1044 comment.
If we subtract the epithets and un-supported claims (some of which are clearly impossible to rationally posit since they are impossible for JR to demonstrate) we have … almost nothing here.
Unless we ask ourselves: when JR makes assertions about what I think and what I know about my material, does he do it deliberately or is it that he just can’t help himself? Nor do I have a “job” in connection with this site. I do have – as I have often stated – a desire and objective to cut through the various irrational or unsupported assertions since both a) their content and b) their method of deployment have both contributed heavily to the Stampede. The interesting consequence of this has been that the more the claims and allegations have been examined, the clearer it has become that the allegations – and, from what we have seen in comments on this site, the allegants – are not able to withstand very much analysis at all. And – I won’t be saying anything new to note this here – the various Abuseniks here do not impress, at least not in any positive sense.
Of course – and from the ridiculous to the sublime – the same goes for JR delivering assessments as to who is or is not “religious”. And also – more interestingly – that he derives this from his personal logic that truly religious people would buy the Abusenik bits hook-line-and-sinker, with sympathetic ooohs, ahhhhhs, awwwws, and clucks. And thus anybody who doesn’t do that must clearly not be “religious” (as JR defines the term – and good luck with that). To say nothing of the fact that yet again for the umpteenth time we are slyly moved to accept as a fact that we have genuine victims posting here, as opposed to allegants otherwise classifiable.
And this is not the first time – even on this thread – that I again ask JR to put up (with accurate quotations) any “outrageous lies” about “victims” that I have written. Still no answer. Just the Wiggy repetition of the assertion.
JR knows how much time I spend writing my comments, does he? For all he knows, these are all first-drafts that go straight from the word-processor first time around and onto the site. (They are, actually.) This is not because I am Einstein but simply because the material I find myself dealing with is so bemusingly obvious. I say this again: if the mainstream media had done even a fraction of the work it should have done in examining these allegations and the types that made them (as we have seen them here) then this Stampede would never have gotten off the ground. Dealing with these types and their material isn’t rocket science – and I make no pretense at being a rocket scientist.
Thus JR once again pins the tail on himself by then trying to mimic an ultimate and decisive conclusion: “there’s no other explanation for your lies and your overly-complicated rationalizations”. That assertion wouldn’t be accurate even if we factor-out the “lies” and “overly-complicated rationalizations”. But I’ve dealt with the “lies” bit above and “overly-complicated” is how my material may appear to poor JR, but that’s because of problems it’s not my business to do anything about.
But if JR would care to demonstrate that he actually can handle material beyond the fry-fly level, then let him put up (accurately quoted, of course) some examples of “rationalizations” – he can do it while he’s also putting up some of the “outrageous lies” quotations.
Also: something can’t really be simultaneously a “job” and an “avocation”.
And what does and does-not have to do with “your christ” is hardly a topic area where JR can expect to be taken as a reliable judge. As I have said before, when it came to truth and honesty and going after their opposites, Christ could be remarkably assertive. None of the Abuseniks here have established any creds as truthful and honest (and we are actually now further back, to the level of wondering about sanity).
But having already silly-putty’d his ‘facts’ – at least to his own mind’s satisfaction – JR then sets up the question: “how do we connect your behavior here to the religion you pretend your defending?” [sic]
Well, I for one am interested to see that we are only ‘pretending’ to defend the Catholic religion. I think that once again JR has lost control of his material and his own words are taking him where he doesn’t want to go.
Let me give a try and answer the question, though: we are trying here to separate demonstrable truth from stuff that is not demonstrable truth, so that in finding that truth (and rather unavoidably identifying the fomenters of untruth in the process) we can get a better picture of what needs to be done and what is the best way to proceed. If JR sees that as somehow un-Christian or not ‘religious’ (however that word is defined in his mind) then he can explain himself. There’s some more constructive homework for him.
But in his own mind he has already formed his conclusion (because he has already set up his toy-block ideas to fall over in just the way he wants them to fall over): “We can not.” Yah, well we can, actually, simply be putting JR’s silly-putty play-dough blocks aside and working with the actual realities that both he and ‘dennis ecker’ seem confusedly convinced exist only inside their own heads.
Then JR offers us his best shot on who’s going to heaven. That seems a whacky thing even for him to try, all things considered. But then we see why: in an uncharacteristically literary move, the ‘heaven’ bit is merely the contrasting set-up for the real money-shot, which is that we are “too busy creating hell” and so forth.
Neat. Nice rhetorical balance. Not JR’s demonstrated level of competence though.
But these Abuseniks – and atheist or at least ‘non-religious’ types – sure do like to deliver hellfire-and-brimstone sermons and declamations, don’t they? They do like to strut the Wig of Papal Authority (the actual Pope having, in their mind, forfeited his right to the Authority and the Wig being handy in its hatbox). If only they liked to deliver rational and coherent material as much. But fundamentally they’re in showbiz, and have been for quite some time.
SOS from P. SOS from D. SOS from me.
Like both sides in WWI, we are immobilized in our trenches. With nary a game of football played between us in no man's land on a christmas day. Continual war, the standard of our times repeated here.
edited by moderator] In the big picture, you're losing. Please show me where you're not.
"I'm sure you know lots about witch hunting. Your church fathers created it."
Perfect example above of the absolute wanton ignorance (or is it willing lies?) of the opposition.
This isn't hard work, a simple internet search could have ensured you weren't making a total ass of yourself, but, oh well, if you feel the need to be easily humiliated (which in some subculture circles is central to their "love" lives), you're certainly welcome to it.
To lower the research standards to a Wiki reference/citation solely for the benefit of TMRs remedial audience of 'opposers' and 'posers' (aka chronic whiners and storytellers), see below. Do some homework before you waste our time and bore us with the usual bigoted antiCatholic tripe.
There actually are innocent lives at risk which are central to this debate (take it easy Fire Marshall Bill, you're 'retired' from 'something').
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt
I followed your link to wikipedia. Thank you.
According to what was posted there. You in large part are correct about your church fathers. Most of the witch burning was done by protestants. That does not excuse the executions of "witches" in Spain or Portugal or Germany or Austria.;or the executuions of people for heresy.St Joan was executed by English catholics in catholic France.
Murder by anyother name, (executions; wars) is still murder.
Where else, but here, has anyone taken your arguements seriously? No where that's where.
How are you intending to create your own counter-"stampede" if no one takes your arguements seriously?
Could you possibly answer just that question?
May I ask any fair minded reader here to simply count the number of paragraphs I've written in this thread and Dennis has written here; and compare that to the number Pelican..pardon Publicon and Delphinium have written here. If you're right, why so many words to attempt to defeat us?
As a bit of comic relief here, I note that the Wig of Southern Manliness has suddenly found time in an (allegedly) busy week and schedule to get right back to commenting.
But the effects of that Wig are now substantially undermined by what I suspect is something much closer to the actual ‘dennis ecker’: a juvenile myah-myah with a particular enthusiasm for his newly-deployed (or discovered) ‘Bazinga’ bit (exaggerated formatting omitted).
Which goes to show that it’s hard – in the long run – for a fry-fly to keep up appearances, no matter how elaborate and varied the Wigs pulled from the numerous hat-boxes.
Of course – and while this may be a useful addition for the Notebook on the Playbook it is also a gambit to anybody familiar with raising kiddies – the new come-back here is: Oh, I was just giving the (evil, dumb, dunce-like) readers what they evilly and dumbly and dunce-likey expect, so myah-myah to you all.
Even a Wig needs some sort of personality underneath it if it’s really going to work. And now we see.
And once again: I really can’t see a personality like this working-well over the long term in an urban firehouse setting.
bazinga
TMR probably has this, already, here ya go anyway.
As though we really needed more proof of what we all know to be true.
http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/british-petroleum-shows-catholic-leaders-how-to-use-the-f-word/
Fr. Gordon is kind in his "F" word analogy. Three other "Fs", not nearly so genteel, come to mind.
And, the insanity continues….
http://www.catholicregister.org/news/canada/item/16889-ottawa-archdiocese-sued-over-abuse-of-man-by-a-priest-who-was-his-uncle
I wonder if the day is coming that if you are an accused abuser and ever even stepped inside of, or walked past a Catholic Church, you can sue an Archdiocese?
A criticism I do have of the Church is their profound inability to fight or defend themselves and our clergy.
"edited by moderator] In the big picture, you're losing. Please show me where you're not."
In the Athiests ever-shrinking only here and only now 'small picture' world, it's a draw, for now.
In the faithful Catholic's limitless universe, in Eternity-.
Now that is greed. You want it all. What greedy guts you are.
However,the fact that the universe from every fact found so far is not bent to your mythology is a pity for you.
Are only faithful catholics entitled to eternity and faithful catholics limitless universe. Is there a day pass for Mormons or Muslims or Jews?You know they believe their religion is the center of the universe also.
If this keeps up some might suspect that I pay JR and ‘dennis ecker’ to follow-up some of my comments with such pitch-perfect and spot-on examples of precisely what I was saying.
I can only offer the readership my assurances that I do not.
The on-word “bazinga” comment by ‘dennis ecker’ simply deserves to stay up there out on the limb on which it was put.
At 1128 JR is now trying another interesting bit from the Playbook: we are all equals here and thus our equally-valid and worthwhile positions (and – but of course – material) are … equal. Thus also a few sugar roses on this lardy frosting: we are all just like the Central and Allied Powers staring across no-man’s land at each other from our respective trench-systems on the Western Front.
Neat but no. To dignify the conglomeration of distractions, incoherences, inaccuracies, diversions, epithets and all the rest of their trick-boxes and hat-boxes with substantive discussion or deliberation is the same as equating the ketchup-splattered chit-chat down in the cafeteria with the exchanges taking place in the seminar rooms over in a classroom building. But – to borrow their own trope – I think that without these self-consoling and self-flattering delusions, these two (and others like them) would have nothing.
“In the big picture you’re losing. Please show me where you’re not.” First, it’s these two who have brought their own self-flattering ‘war’ imagery to the site (for lack of anything more substantive).
Second, I’d note the documented sharp drop-off in allegations (especially ‘current’ ones as opposed to ‘historical’ ones as documented by the Jay Studies; the utter failure of the war-crimes Complaint brought to the ICC in the Hague; the very recent curious tic in the NYT article mentioned on this very TMR thread whereby it appears Goodstein had to include material other than her usual hatchet-job; the remarkable reporting of the BigTrial site (which reflects a substantive change in the reporting approach); the failure of all the touted document-cache releases to stand up to examination on this site and the concomitant reduction in mainstream media coverage and discussion of those releases; the questioning of the DA’s office by the appellate judges in the Msgr. Lynn case (which is only the first of the cases pending appeal); and I point out that the CA state senate passed the new Statute of Limitation bill by only one vote, with many of the senators abstaining.
Whereas – he can add this to the list of questions he has not answered – JR offers us … his crack-dreams (supported by “Dennis”). What indicators does JR present – from real life, please, and not merely from the little screen behind his eyeballs – to support his claims to the contrary?
And in regard to the crack-dreams or delusions, at 1140 JR then asserts that nobody has “taken your arguments seriously”. How in any universe except the lunatic can JR demonstrate that? Ditto his brassily whackulent conclusion: “No where that’s where” [sic].
I certainly am not “intending to create your own counter-‘stampede’”. The whole idea of a Stampede is that it sidesteps honest and rational and accurate assessment and that is precisely the dynamic I oppose. But it reveals a great deal about the mentality of JR’s ilk that the only alternative to the Abusenik Stampede that he can conceive is an anti-Abusenik Stampede. Down in the cafeteria, among the fry-flies, it all comes down to who’s throwing the most ketchup at whom else. That’s why they don’t bring books home, but merely their day’s empty ketchup bottles to re-fill for next day.
And, but of course and marvelously so, JR then demonstrates his self-flattering presumption that what he thinks (so to speak) is what the world thinks.
So there’s my answer to that question. And I am still waiting for answers to all of my questions, put up in comments on this thread.
And then at 1233 JR proposes that the “number of paragraphs” of the comments is somehow relevant. From the fact that he and “Dennis” have written comparatively few (to say nothing of the quality of their content and the mentation behind them) JR – with this Thinking Wig on – comes up with the idea that they must be doing something right because it has taken so many “words” “to attempt to defeat us”. But as I have often said, it takes a great many “words” to rationally counter the whackeries they put up. And the record shows that they have rarely – if ever at all – come up with substantive responses-to, let alone refutations-of, the many “words” (which is all that ideas and trains of thought and concepts mean to them) that I and others have put up here.
But I say again: their value here is in serving as vivid and sometimes florid (even with the expletives deleted) examples of the Abusenik mind and character and Playbook. And they have served and are serving in that cause very very usefully and well.
With the material these two – among others – put up here, I think we can see even more clearly what a colossal media-failure (or treachery) was involved in creating the Stampede: when mentalities and material such as this – deployed in all the modalities we know as the Playbook – are not only taken seriously but accepted without examination, then we are a school where the cafeteria is considered as useful a source of thinking as the seminar and class-rooms.
But to beat us It does take, you in particular, buckets full of words. Truth is much easier to say.
You actually did post today about some adult /underage person sex not being harmful. You actually wrote that today. References please. Scientific studies please. Let's see your documentation for that lie.
To save us all some time here, let me point out another of the come-back plays in the Playbook: you toss up whacky (as well as untruthful and incoherent and unsupported) material; then if somebody points that out, you simply claim you have been ‘victimized’ all over again by having your material characterized (or revealed) as whacky; and thus you simply then claim that since you were ‘insulted’ or ‘attacked’ then you are under no obligation to explain anything to anybody. (Then: rinse and repeat, as often as necessary.)
What material would you like from me? Something that I can give you that would end this war between the opposite sides here.What is it victims can do for you?
In regard to JR’s two quickies of 231AM and 235AM today:
First, we note the continuation of the “war” imagery. And once again we see the presumption that what is being carried out here on this site’s commentary is a “war”; the concept of careful deliberation and the examination of concepts, claims and assertions and the exchange of the resulting ideas is apparently beyond his comprehension or beyond what he wishes to achieve with the material he has put up here.
What I am against is inaccuracy, untruthfulness, shoddy thinking or – worse – the type of emotional manipulation that seeks to move people beyond rational deliberation in the first place; these are the elements of Stampedes.
Thus I am not in a “war” against anybody. The fact is that JR and similar others so fully embody those problems, and continually seek to deploy them; so in demonstrating inaccuracy, untruthfulness, shoddy thinking and emotional manipulation in the material they submit here I am simply required to focus on them because they are the sources (on this site) of all of those things.
But character and the quality-of-mind is inextricably intertwined with the material one produces. And yet that goes to the issue of exploring whether the Stampede in the Catholic Abuse Matter was fomented by truthful, rational, honest and – at this point it has to be considered – sane persons to begin with.
Because the gambits deployed here, in being exposed, cannot help but reveal the quality of character and mentation in the persons who have deployed them.
It may be in some queasily weird way ‘consoling’ to some types here that they are waging a “war” but that simply reveals the level of mentation and psychological need at which they appear bound to operate. This is – as I have said several times before on this site – a difficult boundary to deal-with: it is necessary to demonstrate the character and mentation of persons who put up this material because a) that character and mentation are bound up with the material itself and b) because those same types claim to be (genuine) victims and yet those types of claims are themselves cast into question by the material (and its revelations about character and mentation) they put up here. This site is not the place to conduct actual psychological diagnosis and treatment, but it is the place to note when the material submitted indicates the quality of the material submitted as comments and the veracity-challenging characteristics of those same persons in their capacity as self-proclaimed (genuine) victims.
Then in that 231AM comment JR asserts that “you actually did post today about some adult/underage person sex not being harmful”. I actually never did any such thing. (Accurate) quotation for this assertion? Once again we see an assertion from JR that reflects either i) a basic inability to actually read what others have written or b) a willful attempt to misread what they have written for his own purposes. So here’s the homework: read what I wrote, and then formulate the question you would like answered – the question that will be based on the accurate reading of what I wrote “today”.
It can be no wonder that JR sees so many “lies” all around him: he may well be unable to read accurately the material that is in front of him. And perhaps – having engaged in so much other-than-honest plop-tossing himself – he is now locked-into imagining that everybody else does it too.
The aphoristic “truth is much easier to say” is cute, but inaccurate (and in this case, self-serving): i) many people don’t seem able to tell the truth and it is indeed very difficult for them to bring themselves either to do so or to recognize it; ii) this little bit serves to bolster JR’s effort to insist that his one-liners are more than adequate for the task of examining complex issues, and that all the “words” other commenters put up are unnecessary and distracting. Neat.
Then at 235AM he plaints “what material would you like from me?”. Once again we have either a) an inability to read or b) a deliberate effort to distract from that fact that he has answered none of the questions put to him (if he needs his memory refreshed, he need only re-read the comments I made on this thread).
Then a repetition of the “war” bit that I have dealt with above.
Then the whine “what is it victims can do for you?”. To which I would respond: I would require some evidence or at least high-plausibility that a) their claims are true and that they are consequently genuine victims; and b) that – again for the umpteenth time – we have no evidence that JR is a genuine victim and – as I have put the problem in numerous comments now – we even have substantial material leading to the high plausibility that he is not a reliable truth-teller generally. I would also add that none of what I have just written in this paragraph is “new” but instead merely repeats points I have often made, frequently in comments about JR’s material itself. So either he can’t remember from one day to the next or he doesn’t want to.
The request for scientific studies and documentation is – as I noted above – dependent upon the question JR has posed, which in this case does not reflect anything I actually wrote. Also, I am highly dubious that JR can or will read and then engage rationally the material in any study that is recommended to him.
However, in the general area of accurately assessing damage from sexual experience (which is not the same as JR’s claim about “sex” – which clearly can imply overt genital sex, which is the difference, in my actual comment, reflecting the appellate judge’s distinction between “fondling” and “rape”) I can recommend for openers:
“The impact of child sexual abuse” by Angela Brown and David Finkelhor. Published in the Psychological Bulletin, Vol 99 (1), January 1986. This is a review of studies that have been done, and notes that studies have tried to “confirm the effects of child sexual abuse” and that the uneven results don’t allow any substantive generalizations. I also note that many of the studies rely on “reports” by the individuals themselves (as child or as adult); this brings us back to a) the entire “spectral evidence” problem (how can an an observer establish that the “report” is a true and accurate depiction of what is going on in the ‘reporter’ and b) the causality problem: how can one establish with reasonable certainty that the reported issues were caused by the abuse (which also raises the problem of uniformity of definition in the term “abuse”). The study also discusses the professional and scientific “controversy” as to the “impact of child sexual abuse” (although again, the definition problem is at play here). (See first link at the end of this comment.)
This study raises and examines (but, of course, cannot resolve) the key difficulties in reasonably and reliably determining a generalized and comprehensive understanding of the effects of child sexual abuse. Those key difficulties are – to use my terms from the preceding paragraph here – i) the Reporting Problem, ii) the Causality Problem, and iii) the Definition Problem. Together, I would say, these Problems create a profoundly and formidably complicated triad for any honest and objective study.
Various studies can try to get around these confounding difficulties by only focusing on one of them or by simply making prior-presumptions that serve to simplify (but at the cost of undermining their veracity and accuracy) their research and their conclusions by that presumptive elimination of one or two or all of these difficulties.
Additionally, ‘interested’ or ‘advocacy’-motivated researchers can confuse the issue by simply making conclusory declarations and claims that are either a) not justified by their actual research results or b) ignore in some way the original and fundamental Three Problems.
The bottom line: there is actually very very little scientific evidence as to any well-established and solidly-grounded generalized vision of the effects of ‘child sexual abuse’. And lay persons (including the media) who are honestly under a different impression must deal with this reality. Persons who seek to dragoon ‘science’ for their own purposes (and this will include some researchers who for one or several reasons wish to do the same) are still faced with the problem of somehow avoiding the Three Problems (in their many forms and manifestations) in order to produce the appearance of a ‘scientific answer’ (again, for whatever purposes they might have).
So there’s more homework for JR. Perhaps he can put it on a yellow sticky over his computer, along with the questions I have previously put to him.
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/99/1/66/
The appellate hearing on the Lynn conviction is discussed on the BigTrial site. I would like to make several points in the piece and the comments (link to the BigTrial piece at the bottom of this comment).
A pre-note observation: Mr. Cipriano follows the back and forth of the actual exchanges between the appellate bench and the respective Counsel. And as it turns out, the actual exchange between the actual participants does not come out too well for the DA and the Abuseniks.
Some commenting then tries to characterize Mr. Cipriano’s reporting as ‘biased’ – and this is a revelatory bit. Because it reveals that to the Abuseniks, anything reported which does not make them look good must automatically be biased even if it is accurate. Whereas then, anything that does make them look good is ‘good’, even if it is inaccurate. This is the type of play-dough game that has been going on and going un-challenged and un-checked for decades now, even in the mainstream media.
First, and as Mr. Cipriano pretty much predicted, the appellate judges did indeed demonstrate concern over the vital question of Ex Post Facto: i.e. that Lynn was prosecuted for violating a law that was not in effect when he committed the actions for which he was Charged. My thought is that the willingness of any law-school trained District Attorney to try and circumvent this vital Western jurisprudential principle reveals either serious deficiencies in that official’s legal training and/or serious pressure being brought upon that official. I don’t see any other sufficiently plausible explanations for such an action.
Second, the appellate judges, unlike the Abuseniks and some of the public (and too much of the mainstream media) are well aware that Grand Jury Reports are – essentially and dynamically – products of whatever the originating DA’s Office wants them to be. And that they are primarily ‘prosecution theater’ and are not themselves constitutive of legal judgment.
This confusion in the popular mind is not helped by the use of the term “jury” to denote both the activity of trial (or “petit”) juries and Grand Juries; the grammar would lead the untrained mind to think that the Grand Jury – being Grand – actually does what trial juries (civil or criminal) do, only more so. Which is not at all the case. Rather, the Grand Jury simply looks at the material selected and presented to it – with no opposition from any source; then the Grand Jury merely decides – on the basis of the information fed to it by the DA – whether an indictment is warranted and whether it wishes to make some recommendations – again, on the basis merely of what the DA selected and presented to the Grand Jury. But it remains for the “petit” jury – through the workings of an actual trial – to sift and consider evidence and deliberate on a Verdict, which it (and only it; Grand Juries don’t deliver Verdicts) then determines.
(And, of course, appeals of the Verdict on any number of possible grounds are always an option.)
So the appellate judges realize what too many people do not realize: a Grand Jury can be shaped – through the material selected and presented to it – to reach almost any conclusions a presenting-prosecutor would like to see.
Third, the appellate level has to be concerned with whether or not the relevant law and the relevant jurisprudential requirements (which are the duty of the trial judge to oversee) were properly recognized and followed in the trial phase. Thus, if a particular trial-judge were to have failed in his/her responsibilities in this regard, then the appellate level would have to deal with that. Clearly, several issues in that regard arose in the appellate hearing exchanges.
A commenter wondered how any law-school trained attorney could – as a DA – commit such an overt violation of fundamental Western and American legal principles as to undertake an Ex Post Facto-flawed prosecution in the first place. One possibility is simply that the DA here is hugely incompetent. But that explanation does not cover all the bases: why would an incompetent want to call attention to himself by undertaking such a flawed prosecution and then calling-further attention to the case (and making himself a target)?
I would propose that what we see here are the consequences of what I have called Victimism in recent American culture and law. Thus a) law-schools now teach the (very accused-averse) doctrine that any elements of ‘traditional’ American or Western law that in any way result in making it harder for a ‘victim’ (presumed, not proven) to get ‘justice’ have to be ‘reformed’ (meaning: weakened or removed).
This approach is easier for a prosecutor to follow when the public-mind has been Stampeded (with media help) along Victimist lines (i.e. that anyone claiming to be a victim must presumed to be truthful and accurate and ii) that the consequences of almost any crime can be ‘traumatic’ (a term that was once more carefully boundaried, as in a hospital’s ‘Trauma Room’ or ‘Trauma Team’). Which dynamics are then supported by a robust media focus on the vivid and ‘traumatizing’ and ‘outrageous’ aspects of a crime, to the exclusion of any sustained concern over whether an accused actually committed it.
If then we add to this lethal mix a) a prosecutor’s ambitions politically and/or b) various political pressures placed-upon the prosecutor, then we can see where a Perfect Storm in the legal arena, fed by derangements in the cultural arena, can occur.
This line of thought is further reinforced by the prosecution’s efforts to focus not on the legal principles involved in this case, but rather on the concern for which the derangements of law and principle have been committed. In this case “the welfare of a child”. Thus the prosecution’s basic pitch and spin to the appellate judges is: if we just concentrate on what we want to achieve, then we don’t need to worry much about how we have deranged legal principles in order to do it. But any tyranny of the early-20th century made much the same type of argument: our glorious ends justify our bloody and extralegal means; in order to ensure the welfare and glory of the (fill in the blank: Russian, Italian, German) people then nothing can be allowed to stand in the way or obstruct our glorious Cause.
In Victimism, this precise same argument and dynamic are propounded seductively, not in the service of a particular national ‘people’ (as in the early 20th century) but rather in the service of ‘The Victim’. (In an oddly skewed symmetry, concern for the ‘victim’ in international law in the late 1940s was developed out of the Nationalistic focus on a nation’s ‘people’ by internationalist-minded folks who thought that they could neutralize divisive Nationalism by creating a sort of unitive ‘international People’ based on the shared experience of being Victims.)
Lastly, an appellate judge noted that the early behavior of Fr. Avery (who was supervised by Lynn and who had earlier been accused of “fondling” boys - which Lynn had allegedly not done enough to stop) “was not so bad”. The judge here was speaking in the context of “rape”, besides which “fondling” is – comparatively – “not so bad”. (Let me save us some time here: versus Abusenik dogma, there is a spectrum; if you were a parent (and granted you would prefer never to have to face any instance on the sex spectrum) you would probably rather have your daughter/son come home and say ‘I was fondled’ rather than ‘I was raped’. Neither is pleasant, but only to some reality-challenged mind could the two possibilities be deemed equal.)
Now as a Catholic I don’t want to see priests doing any “fondling” either (presuming that term is defined as some physical contact done for the purpose of sexual-pleasure and not simply patting some munchkin on the head for saving the Paschal Candle from tipping over onto the casket at a funeral Mass).
But as a Citizen, I don’t want to see the old-school dynamics of totalitarian police states of yore imported into American culture and jurisprudence as a matter of ‘reforming’ them. Because the legal consequences of that Abusenik dogma that all sexual-contact is equally traumatic and assaultive works out in the legal forum to i) mean that all levels of physical contact must be maximally treated and that then ii) opens the door to the old-school totalitarian dynamic that any derangements of law and principle are worth it in light of the putative maximal awfulness of the ‘evil which must be obliterated and/or avenged. And things inevitably go downhill from there.
http://www.bigtrial.net/2013/09/appellate-judges-in-msgr-lynn-case-ask.html#more
Excellent post, Publion.
P here is a link to a Boson Globe story on the life long effects on a victim of child abuse. read it please http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/09/12/new-report-finds-effects-child-abuse-and-neglect-untreated-can-last-lifetime/WO2KlU8iEyBn6hORXT2gsN/story.html
In connection with the issue of the damage of child sex abuse, I am advised by JR to read – waitttt for ittttt – a newspaper article … and one from the Boston Globe. For which he provides a link.
So I note first that JR’s level of informing-himself about matters is to consult the media. No studies apparently come to mind for him. (My own comment responding to his demand for “scientific studies please” did not go up until 947PM but it includes a Study and my assessment of the Study – but apparently while JR can mimic competent investigation by tossing on the combined Wigs of Assertive Outrage and Scientific Chops by demanding “scientific studies please” yet there is a double-standard since the rule doesn’t apply to him. Neat.)
Second, the article is about a Study to which the Globe does not provide a link (so we have to take the Globe’s word for it on what the Study says).
Third, the article itself is entitled “Effects of child abuse can carry over, study finds”. We note two points immediately: a) this Study is concerned with “child abuse” and not ‘child sex abuse’ (which is the gravamen of the comment I made about the appellate judge’s statement) and b) there is the use of the subjunctive rather than the indicative in the verb of the title: can, rather than does.
Which points also immediately raise the question: Before asking me to “read it please” did JR read it himself?
Now to the article itself.
“The damaging consequences of abuse can not only reshape a child’s brain but can last a lifetime”. Fair enough. But does the Study examine long-term patterns of physical and emotional abuse or a single incident (or several) of (low-on-the-spectrum) sex-abuse? It focuses on “child abuse and neglect”, as the article persistently repeats. So the topic of this Study is not limited to child sex abuse, let alone the discrete and mostly individual instances of it that constitute the largest part of the allegations lodged against priests, as the Jay Reports set forth in both words and graphs/charts.
“The consequences can last into adulthood” says the article.[Italics mine] Yes. Especially, I would imagine, if there was an extended and pervasive patterned experience of it, and especially if there were a) deprivation of essential nutrients and other vital experiences necessary to healthy child-development and b) actual physical abuse either in a sustained pattern or in specific instances of assault that resulted in physical trauma to the head and brain. Yes indeed. But none of these are involved in the allegations of sex-abuse lodged in the Catholic Abuse Matter and most of all of this concern is focused on the family or parental-substitute child-raising as the site for this “child abuse and neglect”.
Indeed, the government researchers find that “while rates of physical and sexual abuse have declined in the past 20 years, rates of emotional and psychological abuse, the kind that can produce the most serious long-lasting effects, have increased.” [Italics mine]
So what is JR’s point in recommending this Study in connection to the material we are working with on this thread?
I advise everyone however to be on the lookout for a fresh crop of excited claims that ‘child sex abuse’ or even Catholic sex-abuse have caused – using the articles numbers – $80 billion in health and related costs, and have resulted in 3 million cases being reported, involving 6 million children and that researchers expect that the actual number is much higher. The Study also notes that 75 percent of all US cases are Neglect and only 25 percent are Abuse.
The article says that the Study discusses “parental” causes, either in parental depression and other internal difficulties or else mortgage and unemployment issues.
So while this is an important problem, it is not directly and substantially relevant to the issue under discussion here.
The article quotes the researchers as saying that they still can’t get a handle on the complexity of the issues and that much more research is needed. I can recommend that heartily. Even to some commenters here. And they might even want to read this Study itself. I include a link to start them on their way.
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/New-Directions-in-Child-Abuse-and-Neglect-Research.aspx
You know when I was abused my perpetrators had no interest in my "quality of mind." They just abused me. But now and here my "quality of mind" becomes important to you. interesting.
"You do have to defend your religion if your religion is offering "holy eternal damnation" as a universal truth for all including the rest of us who think that's edited by moderator]."
Here's the first lie; Catholicism does not teach eternal damnation for non-believers. Pope Francis just recently provided a firm restatement to non-believers on this teaching. Read the Catechism- its in there in plain English (which could be your problem).
"You "believe" it. Why not prove it?
No one has to 'prove' their faith to anyone else, it is a ridiculous, typical Atheist fall-back debate position that doesn't work, logically. Look up the word Faith, then, have an adult explain the concept to you. It is interesting that your devotion (worship?) to claimed victims 'hearsay' is based upon your Faith, your Religion. Do you worship Danny Gallagher, is he your god?
"If you use such nonsense in your rebutal to real victims."
'Real' victims can only attest to what they claim happened to them. And, even then, evidence is required (regardless of the current suspension of all sanity to persecute the Church) to prosecute a man. No one can attest to conspiracies or anything else outside of their own individual experience, or involving others claims. Your own relaying of others claimed experiences are no exception. You know no more about whatever it is they claim happened to them than we do. Objective evidence is required.
"Show us how you know this as "truth" rather than hearsay? You can not."
I am as sure of the Truth of God, His Son and the Holy Spirit and their Love for me as I am that my parents Love me. I can't prove either, but, it is true according to my own experience (not others), and Faith.
[edited by moderator]
You've had an "experience" with the trinity? Okay I believe you. because you believe you. When I was 5, I "saw" Santa arrive with his reindeer on my front yard on christmas eve. Did it happen? No. Were there reindeer droppings on the grass? No. There was no evidence Santa was ever there. Evidence is the key The human imagination can be breath taking in it's range.
When victims or their lawyers present the evidence they have to the church through it's lawyers and to the insurors through their lawyers; there has to be a range of believability that the accusation made is true or not. They are the one's, the people on your side working rightfully to avoid fraudulent claims, who become the judge and jury. They know that the majority of claims are true and they also know that if a seated jury saw the truth of victims' claims in a court room; both the church and it's insuror would have to deal with very high jury awards. They settle leaving the air unclean and themselves "technically" off the hook.
Our first experience after seeing a lawyer and signing with her/him. You are sent to a psyciatrist, who asses the validity of your claims. If you pass her/his assesment you are then subject to an 8 hour( more or less) written test designed to catch fradulent efforts. You are questioned again and again having to repeat what happened.
This was all done to me even though i had a letter and a visit by the head of the marianist order in California both saying they believed me.
Prior to that, I went to the church's lawyer and psychiatrist with no lawyer. The shrink said he believed me in front of the church's lawyer. (the church's lawyer sure didn't like that.)
So anyone who thinks that it's an easy process to behave fradulently and walk away with a pile of dough needs to think again. They will be found out. There is a functioning system in place tocathch fakers.
Here's another point: The majority of victims are male and since the majority of males are heterosexual, the majority of victims are heterosexual males. Heterosexual males on the whole( even if they experimented as kids with their peers) never Never want to appear gay ever. So it's very hard for them to come forward and speak about what happened to them. Some are still faithful catholics and parents themselves. They don't want the world to know about what happened to them but still they have every right to seek justce for their injuries. They too have to go through their lawyers, a psyciatrist's evaluation and tests just as we all have..
If perhaps a fraud got through that gauntlet? That's terrible and very rare. I remember going to SNAP "meetings, where we did not share details about our cases ; I saw (and I was looking for them. Real victims do not want to be around liars either) no false accusations. Just injured people. Truely injured people.
Now to Fr. "These Stone Walls": a D.A. believed he was quilty of a crime and a jury found him guilty of that crime. He can say he was innocent but the system says otherwise. I find it hard to believe that someone would testify to put an innocent man in prison for 50 years so they could get 200,00 dollars. !40,000 dollars really after a contingency lawyer get's his cut. Just MHO.
And purgatory has gone bye bye. So what happens to those who don't believe as you? Your version of god does what with the majority of mankind when they die?
Hey D, I admitted when I was wrong about church fathers and witch burnings.( But who invented the " devil" in the first place?) When will you admit you were wrong about my Dennis Ecker link and apologize for your lying about that ?
What 'he' claims I said:
"When will you admit you were wrong about my Dennis Ecker link and apologize for your lying about that ?"
What I actually said:
"Publion: "… that ‘dennis ecker’ communicated a draft to JR through off-site means which (with perhaps a few additions of his own) JR then put up here as his own."
Jim Robertson: "The reason I posted for Dennis was because he'd written what I posted and when he tried to post it here. he could not. He'd get "403 forbidden message" and he didn't want his hard work attempting to communicate with you lost." And, then: "…46 paragraphs of… attacks and lies…"
Looks like Publion solidly 'nailed it', so to speak.
The "wigs" are alive!"
So, exactly what is IT you think I need to 'admit to"? You and your cheerleader are obviously collaborating and corrsesponding 'off-line', and you obviously posted under another posters name without providing the proper context.
And, if 'they' can get these facts so incredibly worng, how well do we think they're doing on aged claims of being abused (or was it just an accidental brush, touch or glance or anything else incredibly misunderstood or misinterpreted or intentionally criminally portrayed for financial gain)?
And, this is why hard evidence is required to convict a man of any, but, particularly a heinous crime. There was a good reason 'he said, he said' was inadmissable in any US court of [sane] law; it was to protect the innocent defendent from the guilty plaintiff, whether it be the state – or your average criminal and bigot.
This must be a farce. Posting a link is not posting under someone elses name. i.e. lie.
"…However,the fact that the universe from every fact found so far is not bent to your mythology is a pity for you.
Which 'facts' do you want to go by; the ones from thousands of years ago when we thought we knew everything, or now, when we think we know everything? What the human brain is capable of 'knowing' is estimated to be less than 10% of its full capability. So, what is it, exactly, that you think you 'know'?
Are only faithful catholics entitled to eternity and faithful catholics limitless universe.
You are entitled to whatever your beliefs or your 'facts' tell you, to what, you are entitled. I only speak to my beliefs.
Is there a day pass for Mormons or Muslims or Jews?You know they believe their religion is the center of the universe also."
My religion is the center of my universe. I dont speak for others, never have, never will. Again, my religion leaves the door to salvation (and all the rewards that come with it) open to all. If you have questions about Judaism or Mormonism or Atheism (your religion), I suggest that you probe their adherents for answers.
What is it I know, you ask?. I know original sin is bull. Why? because we evolved to human beings en mass. There was no one to commit the original sin that Jesus came to die for.
No Adam; no Eve. No snake; no tree; no fruit,; no sin = no god. That's one thing I know.
And I also know that any god that handed down the sin of 2 people to almost 7 billion of the original 2's decendants for eternity, is not just.
Innocent billions of human beings paying for the sins of 2. is deeply unjust.
Excuse me, aren't you obeying mandates that are 2000+ years old? Is the earth flat in your belief system?
"The human imagination can be breath taking in it's range"
Yes, like making the body and a corrupt/weak/susceptible mind believe it was molested/abused/observed/oggled/? by a priest for financial gain, and/or, out of pure hatred for Catholics, when it really wasn't….
[edited by moderator]
Was fr Rattigan just "observing" when he took his picture of babies genatalia? Those photos just landed his butt a 50 year sentence in prison.
what's the oggling part?
How do you know what really happened? You don't. Ask your hierarchs to show you what really happened. They have all the histories of the victims who've claimed abuse plus all the abusers histories.
"…Orwell was an athiest, you know."
Even a dead atheist can be right twice in a lifetime ("broken clock' analogy); once about the prospect of a Big Brother government, which thanks to the leftist-socialist-despot agenda Obama has implemented has become a reality, and also about the Truth, as has been, and is being expressed via the persecution of the Catholic Church.
Persecution is redefined by you to mean no masacres of catholics? No rules against catholics? Exercising your religious beliefs with no one stopping you, that's persecution?
Orwell was also a socialist.
"What is it I know, you ask?. I know original sin is bull. Why? because we evolved to human beings en mass"
Your faith in the theory of evolution is far less 'knowing' than my faith in God. There is scant evidence (data) of interspecies evolution. You know nothing; you hope and wager that you're right. That is belief.
Abrahamic religion believers have personal relationships and/or experiences with God, regardless of your opinion or acceptance of their beliefs. Do Atheists have a personal relationship or experiences with evolution? Of course not.
What's in it for you (Atheists) if you are right? That's rhetorical, we all know, absolutely nothing. Nothing before, nothing much good in the here and now (except materialism for the few self-aggrandizing 'idols'), and nothing hereafter.
It does appear that 'something' is affecting the proportion of Atheists to believers, worldwide- they are on the decline. It is estimated that Atheists will comprise only 1.8% of the population in 2020 as compared with 4.5% in 1970 (Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, Mass. 2013).
Perhaps your 'evolution', more likely intelligent design, is finally resolving that little Atheist problem that has so plagued the world, especially the 20th century.
No I don't hope and wager anythig. But you do if you're betting on intelligent design as a scientific fact. It's not. We humans are not the center of the universe. If we were don't you think we'd live longer healthier lives? Lives longer that 80 or 90 yrars at best. And those years fly by. We are the center of nothing. We need fortitude to deal with the fact that we are like microbs to the universe, completely incidental. Yet to ourselves we are unbelievably important. And therin lies the tale. Cursed with rampant self importance man kind projected it's own narcissisn into space or mountain tops or woods or streams: god.
We are not his image and likeness. He is ours. We made him in all his permutations like a child makes a toy out of anying handy. If you ask your kid to draw a picture of god; they'll comeback with something. We imagined it all and yet it has used us for ill on the whole.
Faith against faith has left tons of dead real people. Your old testements ,parchments vs your other faiths parchments
. You see it here in D with her anti-islam biggotry. Try and remember we have bases. America has military bases in their holyland. Imagine if they had bases here? How would you feel? We've bombed our neigbors to smithereens. Hundreds of thousans dead, for what?
How is our fellow man not made in the image of god just as you were according to your faith? Yet he is destroyed. His children destroyed. While yours and mine are not. All on us; all due to us. America's carried the flag of jesus through many foreign lands leaving many dead on both sides and we are the best at it. We're number 1! YAY! Go team!
Don't be stupid of course "athiests have personal relationships and experiences with and to evolution" we are those experiences. Our very existence is that evolutionary experience.
"Persecution is redefined by you to mean no masacres of catholics? No rules against catholics? Exercising your religious beliefs with no one stopping you, that's persecution?"
Just as there are degrees/stages/spectrum regarding what constitutes 'abuse', there is a similar range of stages regarding religious persecuton. See below, we are clearly at/beyond Stage 4-
http://blog.adw.org/2012/11/some-thoughts-on-the-five-stages-of-religious-persecution/
"Excuse me, aren't you obeying mandates that are 2000+ years old? Is the earth flat in your belief system?"
The Truth, such as living things need air, water and food to survive is an ancient 'mandate', age is immaterial. The Truth transcends time.
No Christian thought the earth was flat. The Truth about Christian philsophers and Church Fathers was distorted for political gains as we entered the so-called Rennaissance period- sound familiar? Ironically, only non-Christians were ever in the "Dark Ages".
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/renaissance.html
Make sure you read Aquinas' own words in Summa Theologica (imbedded in links in Prof. Franklin's article).
And, before you go there, the whole Galileo 'affair' was antiChristian hype, as well.
You know, you would do much better to get your Catholic formation via RCIA , or a parish priest. You seem to require a very basic re-education, from the lies and distortions you learned (or pursued), to the Truth. A decision as important as one that will greatly affect your remaining life on earth and beyond should be made in faith, with historical facts and real science as your guides.
There are several points in the JR comment of the 19th at 246PM that seem useful.
First, I doubt that JR’s personal experience as a participating-allegant extends beyond the 500-plus plaintiff case that – as we recall – turned out to be his own piñata. Therefore to the extent that he now claims (or implies) that he is telling us about how ‘all’ of these cases and procedures go, then we have to keep in mind JR’s particular reportorial and story-telling ‘tics’ (and enough said about that).
Second, is there actually some established Protocol that universally (in the US anyway) governs the procedures for allegants’ participation in formal pre-trial activity? There are legal requirements for the attorneys to huddle, but that the allegant has to be deeply involved in that strikes me as implausible (to say nothing of the fact that tort attorneys would most likely have some difficulty with it).
I can see the allegant being deposed under oath, of course. (And here wouldn’t it be something to see that deposition?)
But the 500-plus case is – as I have said before – not a reliable demonstration of how things work in these matters, even if it is reliably reported.
Because the case is – over and above its fundamental whackness as a ‘historical’ sex-abuse case – so very unusually large in terms of the number of plaintiffs, thanks to Anderson’s acute strategizing. (This was not a class-action case, by the way, where – to save us some time here – some might wish to claim that there have been far larger numbers of ‘plaintiffs’.)
As I have said before here, the classic Anderson strategy (as demonstrated in its fullness in the 500-plus case) was precisely designed to logistically overwhelm any usual pre-trial fact-finding and credibility efforts. Specifically, it would tip the balance of the calculus made by the Insurers as to whether they would fund a trial or a settlement. And, of course, few if any Dioceses or Archdioceses could contemplate its own funding of the usual tort-case-defense procedures when faced with (Anderson’s shrewdly-assembled) 500-plus allegants.
Therefore, a) I am not sure that all of the usual procedures were followed in the 500-plus case as they would have been in a smaller case (to the extent – we recall – that any abuse-claim against priests can be defended in this time of Stampede). But even if they more or less were, then b) the size of the allegant/plaintiff pool most likely created a gravitationally deranging pull to the effect that the Archdiocesan or Church side simply ‘went through the motions’ in going-through the usual legal procedures for tort cases. (Because I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing was deranged almost from the outset: the Insurers took one look at the size of the allegant/plaintiff-pool and simply and quietly told the Parties Defendant at the outset that this whole case was going to be ‘settled’ if the Insurers were going to be paying for it; nor would that very probable outcome have escaped Anderson’s savvy calculations in bringing his ‘bundled’ lawsuit in the first place.)
Thus: having been advised that the case was going to be ‘settled’ even before they began interviewing the 500-plus allegant/plaintiffs, I doubt seriously that defense counsel were interested in actually establishing ‘credibility’ (which would only be necessary for a possible trial) at all, and merely went through the motions legally required. This is – again – a reflection of the brassy brilliance of Anderson’s strategy as it was deployed in this case.
I can’t help comparing Anderson’s strategizing to the German Sichelschnitt strategy of Manstein’s by which they invaded and conquered all of France: cutting straight through the upper center of France heading for the Channel coast, they completely cut off the Allied forces in the north of France who themselves had been heading further north into Belgium – and thus the battle was for all practical purposes lost by the Allies before it ever actually began.
Concerning the psychiatric elements here (and the idea of JR facing a genuine and comprehensive psychiatric evaluation certainly do give pause) I am therefore also dubious. From a tactical stand-point, what would be the purpose of painstakingly establishing the ‘credibility’ of an allegant who was never going to face a trial anyway?
And from a clinical viewpoint, there is no way any psychiatric examination can establish the causal-link between the allegant/interviewee’s present damaged condition and the actual tort which the allegant has claimed under oath. (See on this thread my comment of the 19th stamped 937PM.) The clinician may well be able to put forward a diagnostic picture of the patient’s various present derangements, but the clinician could not establish the causal-link between the present derangements and the (alleged) past abusive incident.
And this is of course one of the simmering pots still to be uncovered on the Stampede stove: when you have, say, a characterologically or mentally or emotionally or behaviorally deranged patient, how can you clearly distinguish between i) a more or less ‘normal’ victim who was suddenly (and seriously) deranged by an abusive incident and ii) a patient who was deranged long before the allegation and whose allegation is actually a product of the derangements rather than a result of any actual substantive damage caused by the alleged abuse …? This is the Causality Problem. And – as you may imagine – it is a very difficult area that Anderson or any competent tort-attorney would dearly love to avoid altogether (which the Anderson Strategy enabled them to do). We saw all this in the second (Billy Doe) Philly case with its multiple conflicting stories and its drug-abuse and so on.
And – but of course – JR’s spin (we’ve seen it before; it constitutes his immutable Talking Points, as in standard Press-Release strategy) that “they know that the majority of claims are true” and so is simply his personal crack-dream, although shared by others of his ilk.
And again, the brilliance of the Anderson Strategy is that it would move the Parties-Defendant and their Insurers toward a settlement – which is the ultimate goal of all torties; their ultimate goal is absolutely not to abstractly establish truth of their Plaintiff’s claim and credibility – simply on the basis of how much money it would take to contest 500-plus allegations (or plaintiffs; some had multiple allegations) regardless of how the juries might rule (although in a time of Stampede as we have in the Catholic Abuse Matter, there is no small chance of major expenditures there too).
Thus, before we even get to the Abuseniks’ cherished bits – that their allegations clearly must have been true since the Church didn’t take them to court and fight them because the Church knew it was guilty as sin and the allegants were purity and innocence and honesty and virtue personified – we see that the legal-strategy dynamics Anderson set in train at the outset pretty much could have (and probably did) determined that he was going to get his settlements and would never have to put his collection of allegants on the stand anyway. (An awareness which, if shared with any allegant(s), would have done nothing to improve the veracity of the allegations and claims, and may well have had precisely the opposite effect.)
I would also point out that if “you” are sent to see a psychiatrist after ‘signing’ (it is like signing a big-pay movie or ballgame contract, isn’t it?) then the psychiatrist is no doubt chosen by the tortie precisely because s/he can reliably be counted-upon to put his/her professional seal of approval on the clinical ‘proof’ of the client’s claims – by (but of course) avoiding the Causality Problem completely. That’s how it’s done. Same as when torties ‘go shopping’ for ‘experts’ whom they know will deliver an opinion favorable to their case and client(s).
And think of yet another fine bit of Anderson’s work: his ‘bundling’ strategy is supported by his Axis strategy with the media: i.e. the public is already Stampeded to be pro-‘Victim’ and anti-priest or Church – because ‘everybody knows’ that priests are pedophiles and so on and so forth.
Now we are then informed that JR “had a letter and a visit by the head of the marianist order in California both saying they believed me”. Was that the letter that was sent after the Settlement and – I expect – as part of the terms of the Settlement? And did that letter actually say something clearly along the lines of ‘we believe you’? (And we do recall the utter blandness of the cache of personnel documents released in regard to JR’s “perp”.)
And now – presuming of course the basic veracity of JR’s telling of the story here – he went to see a Church psychiatrist. If that psychiatrist (like the tortie psychiatrist, if there were two of them) were simply to catalog JR’s derangements, then that would be well within the scope of professional clinical assessment. However, once again the Causality Problem comes inexorably into play: that clinician could not establish the causal-link between JR’s present derangements and the alleged sexual-abuse (an arm across the groin; although there was something else, apparently, involving underwear).
And on top of the fundamental dynamic of the Causality Problem, there is the inescapable fact that Victimist dogma – amplified by the Stampede – had made it a gross ‘injustice’ and ‘outrage’ to attempt to question any claims or assertions by those who had proclaimed themselves ‘victims’. So – as Anderson also would have known – there was really nothing defense-counsel could have done with anything that they or their clinical assessor might have found that would tend to cast any claim or ‘story’ into doubt. Neat again.
Thus – and again and again and again – there is utterly no way that JR or anybody else of such a mind and purpose can demonstrably ground the claim that “anyone who thinks that it’s an easy process to behave fraudulently with a pile of dough needs to think again” – No, I would say that it doesn’t take too much thinking to realize that it was very very easy indeed.
Ditto that the instances of a “fraud” thus “getting through the gauntlet” are “very rare”. I think it would be remarkably easy, and that’s why the Catholic Abuse Matter has assumed the decades-long proportions it has assumed. Under the pressures and circumstances of the dynamics I have outlined above here, there is no such “system in place to catch fakers”; indeed, the Anderson strategies are precisely designed to maximize the possibility that any allegant can pull-off what JR is trying to say is an almost impossible scam.
And we also note that JR uses his attendance at “SNAP meetings” – although one of his hallmark claims is that SNAP is an agent of the Church (and it appears that few ‘victims’ have agreed with JR’s assessment of SNAP since – as he has claimed on this site – they have never gotten together to agree with him).So marvelous, no?
And once again we are informed by JR about what “real victims” want and think. He can prove that he has accurate knowledge (as opposed to personal belief – two very different things) of that, can he? Then let him demonstrate that, if he can.
And in regard to his rhetorical characterization of “truley injured people” [sic]: as I have said, we may well be dealing with damaged and deranged people here, but the key is whether that damage and derangement has been caused by the (most often) single and non-rape experiences that they claim. Or, in the unhappy but ominous alternative: have their pre-existing damages and derangements actually lubricated their allegations and claims?
Then we are treated to JR’s accumulated wisdom in the matter of what “heterosexual males” want and don’t want. In light of his own claims about himself on this site, then how does he imagine he can be a reliable source of that? And who on this planet actually ‘knows’ what all heterosexual males always and ever ‘want’ in such instances? How would one even go about trying to prove such assertions?
And and and and: if i) you “don’t want the world to know what happened to you” and yet still expect ii) to go to public organs of justice in order to “seek justice for” your “injuries” – then you have put yourself and the justice system in an impossible position: public justice requires – not to put too fine a point on it – public examination. And this is precisely where the wholesale fundamental derangement of Western and American legal principles had to be carried out in order to somehow make (ii) easy for (i). It must be laid at the door of pols and the media and legal professionals that such derangements have been carried out in the past few decades. (Although that may be changing-back: as I said the California SOL window passed that State’s Senate by only one vote, with many Senators abstaining, and now it has to be signed into the law by the Governor – who also has the option of not-signing it.)
So I will say that what we see in JR’s material – and have consistently seen over the course of numerous comments during the past year and more – is simply the repetition of what are essentially PR Talking Points, the refusal to engage any material that doesn’t fall within the pre-programmed parameters of his Talking Points (and his Cartoons), and no development in the material (such as it is, with or without expletives deleted) whatsoever. So what we see here is what we often see in political press-conferences where the PR person doesn’t want to have to face serious questions: just keep tossing your Talking Points at everybody (and – if you have a Wig handy – then claim that you don’t understand why you are being ‘victimized’ by questioners for not-answering the actual questions and for not-dealing with the problems in the material you are trying to put-over on them). So very neat.
And in regard to the These Stone Walls reference, I note that JR neatly relies merely on the trial, and not the appellate hearing. Which is hardly an adequate basis for assessment of the matter at this point. And if JR actually believes that there are not damaged and deranged people in this world who would “testify to put an innocent man in prison for 50 years so they could get 200,000 dollars” (correction of typo is mine) or 140,000 dollars then JR truly is living in a Cartoon universe.
If everything you say is true. Everything; then why are you talking about it? You're telling the scam artist, come forward. You can win here. It's you saying it's so easy to do and it simply isn't. Percentile the frauds are miniscule but if the word gets out you'll be bamkrupted because ",well, people are just like that. the vast majority are thieves." Is that what your saying? I don't believe that at all. People aren't like that just the opposite. I don't believe any victims are making this stuff up. I sincerely don't.
Also before settlement we were all lined up and prepared to go to trial, immediately. All was ready to go by our attornies. The first trial with 19 defendents against fr. Hagenbach was to begin in a week.
What monies I recieved; I was owed. For injuries incurred. I wasn't invited to a piniata party and was then blind folded and took a swing at crepe paper and cardboard. I was deeply harmed as were the vast majority of claiments. Such stupid insults.
Since when has bad spelling equated to anything other than bad spelling? Grow the f up ;and quit dismissing people. The only person here worth dismissing is you. Shut up!
"And purgatory has gone bye bye. So what happens to those who don't believe as you? Your version of god does what with the majority of mankind when they die?"
Good grief, man, what in the world are you talking about? http://www.catholic.com/tracts/purgatory
How is it you insist on attacking and criticizing a religion you clearly know nothing about?
Pope Francis just also issued a very clear restatement of Catholic doctrine on what happens to good people when they die. Heaven (salvation) is available to all believing and unbelieving repentent people of good will. It's strongly advised that you follow Catholic doctrine (the Narrow Road/Path/Gate), that which Jesus, the Son of God, established.
Please, read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, you've been attributing Protestant and other anti/nonCatholic doctrine to Catholicism.
I'm sorry , you could be right. I thought purgatory had gone the way of st. christopher. It hasn't. It hasn 't. Yay, I get to be wrong. I never knew purgatory was a doctrine????
. P.S. I looked up the apostles creed. Which I always thoght laid out the majority of catholic tenants. There was no mention of purgatory there. Could you please give me a reference as to the "doctrine" of purgatory? Thank you.
"Was fr Rattigan just "observing" when he took his picture of babies genatalia? Those photos just landed his butt a 50 year sentence in prison."
There was apparently some hard evidence against this pig, and as so disposed, he deserves to be in prison, and also spend the rest of his days on earth repenting for his sins; perhaps converting and helping other lost (and perhaps some innocent) souls in hell on earth with him.
Did you really think that anyone here, or TMR, would defend guilty priests, or guilty 'anybodies'? No special dispensation for priests or anyone else (teachers, athletic coaches, fathers, actors/artists, lawyers, judges, etc.) that truly (proof, evidence) harms a child!
And I'm not attacking your religion I'm critquing it. You don't get that enough. I'm no longer tugging the old forlock here. You are, that's your business.
"No I don't hope and wager anythig. But you do if you're betting on intelligent design as a scientific fact. It's not." There is more scientific evidence for this theory than the theory of evolution. If totally at odds about which path to pursue, the best wager one can make is Pascals.
"We humans are not the center of the universe. If we were don't you think we'd live longer healthier lives? Lives longer that 80 or 90 yrars at best. And those years fly by. We are the center of nothing. We need fortitude to deal with the fact that we are like microbs to the universe, completely incidental. Yet to ourselves we are unbelievably important. And therin lies the tale. Cursed with rampant self importance man kind projected it's own narcissisn into space or mountain tops or woods or streams: god." This statement is only true if you are an Atheist. Catholic faithful believe that God is the center of the universe. We are the epitome of his creation, but, only creatures, after all. Christians do not fear death; they welcome it as their reward for a good holy life well-lived. Length of life is immaterial to us, quality, not quantity rules.
"We are not his image and likeness. He is ours. We made him in all his permutations like a child makes a toy out of anying handy. If you ask your kid to draw a picture of god; they'll comeback with something. We imagined it all and yet it has used us for ill on the whole." This is the Atheists view/belief, you are projecting your beliefs onto those of Catholicism. Just as you think you can create and worship your own earthly gods/idols (materialism).
"Faith against faith has left tons of dead real people. Your old testements ,parchments vs your other faiths parchments" Atheism and paganism has caused more sinful death to humanity than all the 'religious' wars combined.
". You see it here in D with her anti-islam biggotry." Direct quote in context required. This is a lie.
"Try and remember we have bases. America has military bases in their holyland. Imagine if they had bases here? How would you feel? The US has bases on those lands and in those nations of the middle east (nations whose boundaries were established by western nations) where we have been invited or begged to establish such.
"We've bombed our neigbors to smithereens. Hundreds of thousans dead, for what?" What 'neighbors' have we bombed to 'smithereens"…Canada, Mexico? If you are referring to middle east nations, hundreds of thousands and millions were being enslaved, oppressed, tortured, raped, and murdered by their own despotic regimes. We saved more lives in the long run with our military interventions than had we not intervened. Ask Clinton, Kerry and Obama, they can explain how it all works to you.
"How is our fellow man not made in the image of god just as you were according to your faith? Yet he is destroyed. His children destroyed. While yours and mine are not. All on us; all due to us. America's carried the flag of jesus through many foreign lands leaving many dead on both sides nd we are the best at it. All man is made in the image of God according to Catholic dogma. Man killing man is sin, an absolute mortal sin, not caused by God, but by mans sinful nature. America never waged a holy war in any land, domestic or foreign- that is a lie. America lost many sons and daughters fighting injustice around the world, much more so in her brief history than any other nation.
We're number 1! YAY! Go team!" We are number one, but, not due to our military might or our wealth, but, due to our faith, hope and charity as expressed in our compassion and generosity for the poor and oppressed throughout the world. Have more respect for the American blood that has been shed in the name of freedom.
You truely live on fantasy island. You know nothing about American foreign policy since WW2. We set up Hussein in Iraq and paid him from the get go including manufacturing the gas he killed his Kurdish population with.. We ousted Mossadek in Iran, and overthrew his democratically elected government. We overthrew Allende in Chile and Lumumba in the Congo. We entered Viet Nam illegally first by funding the French there and then we created the puppet government and country called South Viet Nam. We then faked a non existant "incedent" in the Gulf of Tonkien and created a rapacious 10 year war costing millions of lives. we are now in 2 wars started over a self engendered 9/11. No other steel enforced buildings have ever collappsed due to fire. Those building stood for 50 years yet fell at free fall speed offering no ressistance as they collapsed; including building 7 that had two small fires and was not hit by a plane at all. It too fell at free fall speed. More miracles against the laws of physics happened that day than ever before in history. An inside U.S. job in order to create an endless war on "terrorism" ,when if you judge a people by their actions, the U.S. has brought more terror than most into innocent families' lives.
[edited by moderator]
Pascals wager only proves your god false. Any god who would accept an immoral idiotic hedge like Pascals", isn't worth zip morally and therefore cannot be god.IMO.
Do you know that both the day of 9/11 and the day the British were attacked on the bus and in the train in London both those days both countries were conducting tests of their defense system against terror capabilities. Pretty amazing don't you think that both attacks should occur on such days? What are the odds? Beyond belief? It strains belief to breaking.
There is absolutely no evidence for intelligent design. Absolutely none.
In regard to the JR comment of 855PM on the 21st: I can’t make sense of the first bits at all. As I read the text of it, he is asking that if I believe everything that I have said is true, then why am I talking about it – which makes no sense at all. And on top of that, surely, the very same question could be asked of him (if the question made any sense at all to begin with).
Nor can it be accepted that all of this simply boils down to something like ‘differing beliefs’. JR offers nothing to support his claimed beliefs and there has been a sizable amount of material put up that works against the probability of what he has chosen to believe.
Factoring in a) the dynamics involved as I enumerated them, b) the stated strategies of Anderson and the general tort attorney principles and objectives, c) the clinical principles involved, d) the demonstrated queasiness of presentations in all the Abuseniks on this site plus the (non-)material in the document-cache releases plus what we have seen in the Billy-Doe trial, e) the trajectory of Victimist legislative changes, and f) what we have discussed about the Stampede … we are asked instead to credit JR’s mere assertion that “the frauds are miniscule”.
And to do so because he “doesn’t believe any victims are making this up”. Which is then frosted with the follow-up “I sincerely don’t”.
About which the only thing to be said is: whatever he ‘sincerely believes’ is no basis for assertions that he ‘knows’. (And was this clear conceptual confusion between ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’, between ‘belief’ and ‘fact’, operative in his own allegations and claims? Such that he can conceive of (as he once wrote here) something called “my truth” as distinct from ‘the truth’?
If “people aren’t like that just the opposite” [sic] then why do we have police and courts and law-codes in the first place? And if “people aren’t like that just the opposite” then wouldn’t that include clergy? Or is “people” actually intended to have some extra limitations that the word itself does not carry?
Dots don’t connect here at all in this comment. Regardless of whether his assertions and claims involve sincere belief or otherwise, nothing holds together rationally and coherently in the comment.
The vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Certainly not fraud. Those who do and are caught go to jail. So what does any of that have to do with when the vast majority of your victims are not fraudulent either. That's the corner you've painted yourself into. You've no proof, again.
"And I'm not attacking your religion I'm critquing it. You don't get that enough. I'm no longer tugging the old forlock here. You are, that's your business."
What does "your [any] religion" have to do with minors being abused? My religion didn't abuse minors, evil men did. My religion (unlike others) teaches the direct opposite of what happened to those abuse victims. Catholicism is the most maligned and critiqued religion on earth, and Christians are the most persecuted, worldwide. Apparently, we do get quite enough of 'that'.
Nobody is 'forelock tugging'; the faithful are served by the Church's heirarchy, not the opposite. The Pope serves the Church's and is Jesus' ultimate servant on earth; he serves us all, even you, and we worship only God.
You have a very distorted/warped view of Catholicism, and God. You allowed yourself to believe the lies. You may continue to do so, but, you do need to be corrected when you submit erroneous statements.
All you have to do to find the Truth is read the Bible and the Catholic Catechism. What's the point of fighting ghosts?
Wasn't it you who brought god and the devil into the conversation as real in the first place? You use them, particularly the devil, in our dialog as an excuse for your hierarchy, the devil made them do it? Their behavior is satan's attack on the religion , is that what your saying? Or is it us victims who've spoken up or is it any media outlet that mentions it? Are we all a part of your imaginary satan's plan? And is this plan and our participation in the "plan" amusing; sorrowfull or just plain boring to god? Or is he watching American Idol?
Exactly how are the hierarchs serving you more than you are serving them? I am watching Pope Francis's attempt to drag you're reactionary asses into the 21st century. And though he's changing nothing. Dogamatism with a happy face. If he tells you all jump. You will fall all over yourselves to say: " how high?" Or go join Mel Gibson and his Dad's church.
I told you I became an athiest by reading the bible and noticing the contradictions. Jehrico for starters. God says thou shalt not kill. Then he tells Josuha to kill every man; woman and child and rip the unborn from the wombs and kill those. I mean that is one Mother of a contradiction.
"…the vast majority are thieves." Is that what your saying? I don't believe that at all. People aren't like that just the opposite. I don't believe any victims are making this stuff up. I sincerely don't."
…Unless, they happen to be priests proclaiming their innocence.
The Law of Probability says otherwise regarding victim claimants (sans evidence). It is as likely they are lying, as they are telling the truth (50:50), only, if there is no reward for a particular behavior to tilt the odds ('weighting', 'handicapping'). Add a benefit of reward for either side of that behavior and you tilt the odds in favor of a particular outcome, which leads to dishonesty.
Once the deliberation and discernment process was soiled by money and intentions fueled by hatred for Catholics, truth and honesty and how we should receive and perceive any claims went out the window. All claims must be viewed through a prism distorted by hate and money, the gods of many on earth.
.
And where's your proof for these assertions of falsehood on the part of claiments? Scientific studies? Even scientific claims written in a newspaper? Any thing? Or did god just "tell" you?
I come from an America very different from yours. I come from an America that honors it's word. Where the vast majority of people try real hard to do the correct thing by everyone they meet. I come from where debts are paid as a matter of honor and personal selfworth. The majority of people are pretty decent people. That in part has changed since Reagan (Daddy said do what you want and the country did it. Screw them commies). And look what the Chicago School and Ayn Rand hath wrought. Paradise with no virgins. just hysteria and arrogance being emphasized over brotherhood. We are all in the same life boat. Must we steal loot and pillage each other while we're here?
A few thoughts.
First, I include at the bottom of this comment a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on Purgatory. This reference site will also give an opportunity to anyone interested to peruse a reliable source of information about Catholic teaching and doctrine and dogma.
Second, in regard to the (22nd, 1057AM) 500-plus allegant/plaintiff case of half a decade or so ago, the readership is welcome to weigh the probability of the settlement process authentically coming down to a dramatic last-minute affair. Whether JR is sufficiently reliably informed as a legal observer to distinguish between i) whatever posturing went on between counsel and ii) the authentic dynamics that took place (especially on the part of the Parties Defendant and their counsel and Insurers) is also up to the readership to weigh. He is certainly not a disinterested observer, nor probably a competently informed one.
Third, (22nd, 1120AM) it is up to the readership to weigh the probability of the assertion that JR was “owed” his settlement “for injuries incurred” from the arm-across-the-groin and whatever involved “underwear” (as he mentioned during this past summer’s consideration of the document-cache release of personnel files of his “perp”). As I mentioned here previously on this thread: it is precisely the challenge posed by the Causality Problem that third-party observers (clinical professionals or laypersons) must distinguish between i) a damaged person whose damages can be shown to have stemmed from the (allegated) incident(s) and ii) a damaged person whose damages or derangements pre-existed the (allegated) incident(s).
And a corollary issue is to weigh the probability that comprehensive and/or profound damage in a personality or personal functioning can be effected i) a) in such a relative short time by b) the (allegated) incident(s) or whether instead ii) the damages are so comprehensive and/or profound that the probability is stronger – perhaps much stronger – that the allegant’s derangements and damages had been long-present in the self.
And then that if (ii) there doesn’t then also exist the possibility/probability that the allegant’s own pre-existing issues (cognitive, emotional, behavioral, characterological) did/do not actually play a causative role in the lodging of the allegation itself in the first place.
As can be seen, no tort attorney is going to be happy to have these very real probative difficulties raised and hashed-out in open court. But the overall Anderson strategizing neatly neutralized this whole set of difficulties neatly and – with the media’s prior help – effectively.
Now when I stay on this topic I am not so much interested in JR’s particular case and getting into his business as I am using the case as a useful example of all Catholic Abuse Matter and Stampede cases.
And as I have also said and as is clear from my careful wording in all of my comments on this particular issue, the best anybody can do – especially on the internet – at this point is to weigh the possibilities/probabilities according to the best logic and common-sense that can be brought to bear.
Nor, of course, can JR’s assertion that he was “deeply harmed” by what he alleges happened to him simply presume its own accuracy and veracity. Nor can the further assertion about the accuracy and veracity of “the vast majority of claiments” [sic] And as I believe has been demonstrated by the material I have put up on this thread and the many I have put up on prior threads, there is nothing of the “stupid insults” in these considerations whatsoever. And that characterization itself merely raises the question as to whether we are dealing here with typical fry-fly epithets in lieu of substantial material or whether we are dealing with a basically primitive level of dealing-with complexity and challenge. And that’s as far as I am going to go with that thought here.
Fourth, (22nd, 141PM) I point out that I do not ‘dismiss’ commenters – or, more accurately, their material – simply for poor spelling. I do take issue with the rationality, coherence, and other such qualities of the material. And there arises here yet another set of possibilities: is JR actually as poor a speller as his material would suggest, or is the poor spelling simply a deliberate effort to convey some impression to the reader of somebody too simple and ‘innocent’ to spell well (as opposed to the putatively educated sharpies who can spell better but that only indicates that they are using their education in the service of Complex Evil against JR’s putative Unlettered Innocence). As if – being uneducated and putatively ‘innocent’ – such a poor-speller would be incapable of coming up with a false allegation. That sort of thing.
Lastly, of course, I am not going to “shut up!”. What we have a chance to do here on this site is look at material that up until now has largely been given a free-pass by the media, in order to try and get a better grasp of what is and has-been going on in the Catholic Abuse Matter and the Stampede. This type of analysis was not ever supposed to happen: the Anderson strategizing did its very best to prevent this sort of analysis and I have no doubt that torties following that strategy gave their allegant/clients the impression that it never would happen. But that was then.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm
JR has (22nd, 1100AM) opened up an opportunity that I would like to take: “There is absolutely no evidence for intelligent design. Absolutely none”.
We had seen this issue raised in some of my exchanges some months ago with (the not-real-name commenter) ‘Boston Survivor/Learned Counsel’. I’d like to go into the matter at some greater depth here, since it seems useful to do so in order to a) correct some mis-impressions and b) demonstrate the depth and range of complexity involved in this and similar subjects.
First, the issue of the Origin of Life (as distinct from the Process of Life) is not a purely religious one and enjoys valid status as a Scientific Question. Darwin’s theory of Evolution as it has itself evolved, proposes an Answer to this Question (and, indeed, is widely held to constitute The Answer to the Question and has enjoyed that status among its proponents (Evolutionists and Neo-Evolutionists) pretty much since Darwin proposed his theory in 1859). And for most of that period of time it has been embraced by many who were and are happy to see Darwin’s theory as supporting a ‘modern’ and ‘scientific’ and ‘secular’ approach to human life and affairs.
But as I said, we have to distinguish between i) the ongoing development of Life and ii) the Origin of Life. Darwin himself, and in conversations with his contemporary fellow-scientist Louis Agassiz, acknowledged that his theory (he did no experiments in formulating it, relying on observations and his own speculation and theorizing) did not account for the Origin of Life and – rather – only (merely, one might wish to say) proposed a theory of how some pre-existing Life and biological matter (as in ‘material’) developed over time, through the mechanisms of Natural Selection acting purely Randomly on that pre-existing bio-matter.
But what remained unanswered was the question: Where did that pre-existing matter come from in the first place?
Especially as the biological sciences have advanced in the past 150 or so years, the Question can now be even more specifically put: Given that it is now and ever-increasingly established through accepted scientific research how vastly complicated is the directing ‘information’ encoded in DNA, the Question of the Origin of Life comes into a much sharper and more acute focus: Where did all this directing ‘information’ come from, by which the cells are given instructions as how to form themselves to achieve even the most basic organic life-forms?
And the problem is not made any easier when – as the fossil record reveals – there was a veritable ‘explosion’ of complex (though hardly yet human) life forms in the Cambrian period. Darwin’s theory would call for very long periods of time over which his required Random Mutation would operate through Natural Selection, slowly working its way through unimaginably vast possible combinations (in some cases up to 10 to the 41,000th power) simply to achieve the most basic viable organisms.
Proteins are the building blocks of the DNA, but where did the directing ‘information’ come from to form even the most basic proteins which would then have to arrange themselves precisely and specifically and functionally in order to form the DNA that would then direct the formation of the cells?
Such complex and specified information – to be pulled out of that unimaginably vast pool of possible combinations – cannot with any degree of mathematical probability be presumed to be the result of any random mutation because there simply isn’t a) enough time (even in the entire history of the known universe since the Big Bang) in order to b) hit randomly upon even the simplest accurately encoded directions necessary to form the proteins that would form the DNA that would direct the formation of the cells. (For that matter: which came first, the information necessary to form the proteins or the proteins necessary to carry the encoded information?)
A few examples.
You are in a strange city and have forgotten the phone number of the person you are supposed to meet in a few hours. You know that all phone numbers must consist of a sequence of 10 numbers each from the range of digits 0 through 9. But the challenge facing you is not simply to i) put 10 digits together – you might get a sequence of numbers that does not correspond to any working area-code and individual phone number. So you must also ii) hit upon a working sequence of digits that constitutes an actual working phone number. But that’s not enough either, because you need iii) the specific sequence of digits that constitute a working phone number that is also the specific phone number of the person you need to call. As you can see, if you simply decide to randomly work through all the various possible combinations of digits for each number in the sequence it is very very very unlikely that you are going to come upon the specified and complex set of precisely the sequence of digits that constitute the working phone number that connects you to your person.
And since we are working with bio-matter, then there is another complication: imagine you are in Las Vegas and you have to roll the number 7 for 777 consecutive throws (the number is not pulled out of thin air but is related to that vast complexity necessary to create even the simplest proteins that create the DNA that directs the development of even a single cell) but also you are given a set of dice made of white chocolate with milk-chocolate constituting the dots (chocolate capturing the biological nature of the thing here). You now have to work your way through the possibilities to get to your goal while the very matter you are using is degrading every time you touch the dice. Thus the time element. The chances are very very very good that you are going to suffer the degrading of the very instruments or matter you are using long long long before you ever throw the necessary sequence (already hugely improbable) of 777 ‘7s’.
Thus, as one scientist put it: to imagine that Random Mutation acting on Natural Selection can account for the Origin of (biological) Life is about as probable as a tornado momentarily passing through a Kansas junkyard assembling a fully operational 747. (And – I would add – a fully capable flight crew as well.)
The math required to account for the complex and specific functional ‘information’ necessary to achieve even the simplest strings of 150 or so proteins necessary for the simplest cells is simply beyond the probabilistic resources of the known universe since the Big Bang. (Presuming that matter cannot move faster than the speed of light, and other factors, the mathematical field of possibilities contained in the entire known universe is only 10 to the 139th power, while the range of possibilities required to achieve in a simple single 150-protein string is 10 to the 164th power – and, again, that is for merely a single sequence for a very very basic protein … we haven’t even gotten to multi-cellular and 400-plus protein sequence strings necessary for basic but complete living creatures, let alone for the more complex forms going up the bio-ladder from mono-cellular organisms through mammals and to humans.
The math simply won’t work for Evolution.
Nor – as I mentioned – can Evolution answer the Questions: b) where did the ‘bio-matter’ to be evolved come from in the first place and a) where did the necessary complex and specific functional encoded directions to form that matter in the first place come from?
And as we now know, that very encoding is now seen to be very similar to the coding in computer software. (And computer software does not evolve; it is designed by some directing and purposeful intelligence, as we know.) Even Richard The-God-Delusion Dawkins acknowledges that. Nor – as we have seen above – is there nor has there ever been enough time in the universe’s existence to achieve the complexity of bio-life forms we now have simply through random and undirected processes. It is mathematically very very very improbable. (In fact, when you get up to probabilities like 10 to the 41,000th power, you are pretty much for all practical purposes approaching Zero probability … the wonders of math and science.)
Which leaves – from only mathematical and biologically-established scientific information as it currently stands – the logical possibility (perhaps probability) that there might very well be some designing intelligence that operated (and perhaps operates still) in order to pull just the right necessary sequence of combinations out of those unimaginably vast fields of possible combinations.
For example: if you and a bunch of friends given a problem the solution of which will net you a prize of one million dollars, and are given a padlock with 4 settings, each of which consists of a digit frin 0 through 9, and told to try and find the one combination that is going to open the lock, and while you’re trying one of the other persons hits upon the right combination within ten seconds … would you figure that was random chance or luck? Or would you figure that s/he somehow had gotten the combination from somewhere beforehand? You would not be paranoid to make such an intuitive inference, given what you rightly sense (even if you can’t do the precise math) must be a huge range of possible combinations.
There is a distinction to be made between the scientific theory of Intelligent Design and what is popularly known as ‘Creationism’: the latter is a religiously-based effort to insist that the Biblical imagery must govern any scientific findings. Whereas the former, Intelligent Design, is a scientifically-grounded theory some of the basic elements of which I have tried to sketch here.
We also recall that there is actually no ‘proof’ or ‘evidence’ of a) Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Life or b) Darwin’s theory of Evolution or any of the later efforts of Neo-Darwinists to plaster over their basic theory’s problems (some of which I have sketched above).
Lastly, I would say that this is all hugely relevant for religion and for Catholics (the Church has for 150 and more years been roundly abused for not getting on-board-with ‘modernity’ in its hallmark form of materialistic evolution (i.e. that all life on earth is the result of mere material processes, undirected and purely random, and that thus this ‘proves’ that there is no ‘need’ for a God and thus that there isn’t really a God).
Because if Intelligent Design is accurate – and the probability of that, especially in light of the vast and profound improbability of Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian Evolution as valid explanations of the Origin and the Process of life, is hardly inconsiderable – then a) a vital fundament of modern secularist (and atheist) thought is undermined and b) the scientifically-established probability of some Designing Intelligence (which is not to be equated, admittedly, with any particular religion’s concept of God) becomes the most plausible and probable explanation we have as to the Origin and Process of Life. (Which is what the Greeks and all subsequent philosophical and even scientific thinkers had been saying right up until the late 18th and the 19th centuries.)
The wonder of it all.
To readers wishing to read further I can strongly recommend as an informative starting point two of Stephen C. Meyer’s recent books: Signature in the Cell and (2009) and Darwin’s Doubt (2013). It is some of his ideas that I have sketched and summarized here.
Completely untrue.
Please explain what is "completely untrue" and why. Thanks.
"There is absolutely no evidence for intelligent design. Absolutely none."
Well, he is finally right about something- not in his neighborhood, LA, is there any evidence of intelligent design…absolutely none.
Jim Robertson says: Sept 22 2013 @10:10 am
Cited post is the typical leftist antiAmerican rant wrought with propoganda which deteriorates into the usual conspiracy laden bunk.
And, this is also exactly how they depict the Church abuse matter. All fluff, bluster and insanity; no bones or meat.
Maybe you know nothing about American government history. That included giving syphilis to blackmen in Tuskegee. And letting them die horribly of the disease when they could have easily been cured.
JR asserts (the 23rd, 627PM) – and with nothing to support it – that “the vast majority of people do not commit crimes”. The noted defense and civil-liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate said recently that the Federal codes are now so pervasive in their scope that the average citizen probably commits three Federal crimes a day and doesn’t realize it.
I point out again: for quite a long time now on this site it has been pointed out to JR that groundless assertions that he tosses-off are not going to get an approving reception. But instead of changing, he continues to do so – the only change we see is an effort to mimic competent and useful commentary by claiming that he gets on “proof” from others.
And (23rd, 620PM) we also see what is either a Wig or a fantasy Cartoon of this country (and perhaps human society generally) or both: he “comes from an America … that honors it’s word” [sic] Puh-leeeeze. In the first place, why then do we have criminal and civil codes, courts, and police? In the second place, does JR actually imagine that the record he has amassed here supports his claims of reliability and accuracy, veracity and honesty?
Whether he actually thinks the readership is whacked-out enough to accept his claims, or whether we are simply dragooned into being the audience for his personal soap-opera … is for the readership to consider.
And if he wants to bring Ayn Rand (for whom I hold no brief whatsoever) into this, then I will bring in Monoplanar Secularism: look what has happened in the almost five decades since the government and the various elites embraced this cultural approach with all its power and authority.
I certainly do agree that “we are all in the same lifeboat”. But I note that his final point is not asserted as fact but rather – undermining his initial assertion – a plaintive exhortation not “to steal loot and pillage each other”. Which leads the train-of-thought to the inference that a great deal of all that does go on.
Nor can we avoid the thought that in all the material presented by the Abuseniks here we have hardly seen clear and compelling examples of honesty and integrity and veracity, let alone rationality and coherence and plausible accuracy.
And the Wig of Disappointed But Sturdy Integrity - well, we haven’t seen that one trotted out onto the stage too often. And plopped firmly on top of the Wig of Exhortatory Goodness. Where does he find room for all those hat-boxes?
Is that it ? That's all you got? you call me a few names; question my veracity and sanity. Yet you believe two human beings floated up to heaven, As dogma. The first like a very slow rocket the second as if gently sucked up by a heavenly vacum.
And my sanity is questioned?
If heaven really isn't in outer-space. Why did they both go up? If this was pitching in baseball wouldn't that be a balk?
When you have no answers for real questions raised by 9/11 and how after an hours burn time three buildings collapsed . One of which was not hit by a plane. You say another conspiracy theory and poo-poo it. Yet you believe in virgin births; resurected dead and eternal life. Facts don't seem to interest you.
JR (23rd, 607PM) addresses a question (to whom it is not clear): “where’s your proof for these assertions of falsehood on the parts of the claiments?” [sic] Given the amount of material that I have put up discussing rational possibilities and probabilities and explaining at length, and that I have often said that it is impossible to prove anything on the internet … then can he not read? Or is there some deliberate refusal to read what is actually in front of him? (I would say the latter, since to do so would make it obvious to him that has to respond to the material – which he has just about never done substantively; instead the reach for the one-liner assertion if not also the ketchup bottle (and the expletives-deleted and the orders to “shut up!”).
Then he slyly sneaks in this bit: “even scientific claims written in a newspaper”. But as we saw on this thread just a few days ago, he hadn’t even read – or had not at all comprehended – such “scientific claims written in a newspaper” which he himself had recommended.
Nor has he come back to that topic. Bringing us once again to the whacky M.O. here: do the plop-tossing and then move on and don’t look back. This is a PR strategy, not an effort to engage in deliberation (or even debate) but simply to keep repeating the (very few and primitive) Talking Points on one’s agenda and nothing else.
The swamps of PR and the swamps and wallows of primitive mentation are, of course, very real. But what happened in the Stampede was that various interests actually mixed these two techy chemicals in the lab for their own purposes, and turned the resulting gas loose on the internet and on the public.
Such that we now have here basically an effort to conduct some sober and serious inquiry, while having to humor the rants of somebody who is – at best – not ‘altogether well’ (as the Brits would tactfully put it) yet who consistently demonstrates a queasy habit of trying to manipulate us by whatever means possible (Wigs, ketchup, the various gambits of the Playbook, and so on).
It is what it is. I don’t object because there is at times useful material to be gleaned (JR trolls and reveals regions where many would not otherwise go). But at the risk of bursting what I think is a very deeply-rooted delusional bubble – shared by Uber Power Wig Ecker – these two are not conceptual superheroes and paragons of acute insight, accurate information, and basic honest dealing. And that’s OK. But it is what it is – and nothing more.
I have no idea to which preceding comment his comment of the 24th at 1206AM refers. It would be delicious to imagine that in response to the scientific and mathematical material put up in my comment that went up on the 23rd at 1102PM, JR had nothing to say except that stunning one-liner “completely untrue”. But I can’t indulge that thought because I am not sure mine was up when he composed his own. Still, it’s hardly impossible and would not surprise if it were actually the case.
Whatever betide, let us proceed.
Now i'm supposed to pretend that constantly rationalizing my perspectives as wigs hasn't been insulting; that you were never intending to be demeaning by such descriptions. Pull the other one.
"You say another conspiracy theory and poo-poo it. Yet you believe in virgin births; resurected dead and eternal life. Facts don't seem to interest you."
A not-so-cute attempt at conflating faith with 'man-made disasters' and whacko conspiracy theories. Not exactly analogous for the sane.
So, you're a 'truther'; are you a 'birther' and an 'Area 51' guy, too – did the aliens (not the ones running through your backyard out there is LaLa land) kidnap you and molest you? Perhaps they were wearing vestments?
Yet, we're implored to believe the whacko-birds conspiracy theories surrounding the Church abuse matter.
Not likely.
Here's a deal; let your life continue to be guided by your faith in evil and pure insanity (and evolution, perhaps if you live long enough you will revert back to an amoeba?), and I'll let my life continue to be guided by my faith in God.
We likely won't have to worry about crossing paths outside of TMR-
"We likely won't have to worry about crossing paths outside of TMR"
Thank Ya Jesus
Delf ,you are ,to put it a gently as possible , no one to be judging other's sanity.
I'm no birther and no area fifty one'er either.. Nor do i believe in heaven or hell or purgatory or a free lunch Nor did I forfiet my right to believe any f'ing thing I want and still be compensated for my injuries.. As usual with you sunshine Nobody cares what you think about victims. The church and you are desperate to find a number of false cases. But there aren't enough to be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The mechanics of posting have put JR’s comment of the 25th at 1051AM right after mine of
the 24th at 405PMthe 24th at 936AM. Since he is unable or unwilling to identify which comment it is to which he is responding, then I will go with the conclusion that he is responding to mine.I point out first then when I describe the Wig-dynamics I am not calling-names; I am describing the actual dynamics that I am convinced are operative here, in the several Abusenik commenters. I have gone to great lengths to explain those dynamics captured in the ‘Wig’ imagery: that persons – either knowingly or pre-consciously (due to long-standing habit) – assume various ‘poses’ that are simultaneously revelations of interior dynamics as well as being ‘shows’ put on to manipulate others.
It is my assessment that when a ‘Wig is put-on’, this sequence involves going into a particular ‘gear’ within the individual, wherein a welter of presumptions about a) the self (I am an innocent and genuine victim here; I hold the moral and conceptual high-ground here; I am the hero here) and about b) others (they are victimizing me by not believing me; they are evil as well as dumb – because they refuse ‘my truth’ even though is as clear as day that I am honest and accurate and right here), leading thus and then to c) actions (telling stories and making mere claims and assertions, attempting to manipulate and control the responses to their material by others) while simultaneously d) deploying various rationalizing justifications to themselves (I am in a good cause so whatever I do or say here is OK; I am victimized so I cannot possibly lie; they are evil and can have no other motivation for doubting and questioning me except that they are evil; whatever I can do to make them look bad and myself good is therefore in a good cause and is a good thing).
I also note that this sequence can also work in describing what addicts of various types engage-in when (or if) they have to explain themselves or justify themselves, either to others or in their own mind. (Ever directly asked an alcoholic or drug-addict what’s-up with his/her behavior?)
I also note that torties would have every reason to encourage this whole skein because a) it’s always good to have allegant/plaintiffs who actually believe in the rightness and goodness of what they are doing; b) especially if the actual truthfulness of their specific allegation(s) is a little mushy (because their ‘good cause’ and its good purpose will thus redeem – so to speak – the mushy and perhaps untruthy means by which they intend to achieve their ostensibly ‘good’ purposes); and – but of course – c) there is a whole lotta cash to be made if everyone is on the same page and everyone is agreed as to the overall rightness and goodness of the whole skein and scheme.
So – yes – I question, in some cases here, on the basis of the substantial among of material I have seen over time – both the ‘sanity’ and the ‘integrity’ of the persons posting that material, as well as the rationality and coherence and accuracy and veracity of the material itself. All of which I have explained at length and repeatedly.
As to the ‘sanity’ of certain widely and historically-established religious beliefs: it all hinges on the initial ‘universe’ which the assessor-of-sanity inhabits: if that assessor does not accept in any way i) the existence of a Multiplanar human existence wherein other Planes of Existence a) exist and b) are capable of interacting with the Plane of Existence we might call ‘this world’ or – in my terminology – the Monoplane, and if the assessor thus does not accept in any way ii) the possibility of any reality (and thus any ‘explanations’) that are not limited to the materialist and secular Monoplane … then any expression of religious belief will appear other-than-sane.
However, the insistence upon the merely Monoplanar is itself a presumption of belief (i.e. that there is no Multiplane) for which there is no convincing proof. From the viewpoint of scientific and historical research, one would have to say that the existence of a Multiplane is – at the very least – a possibility or a hypothesis for which there is no material proof one way or the other. (Although given what I have mentioned about some of the otherwise-inexplicable events at places like Lourdes, I would say that there is indeed actual historical and material evidence of events that cannot be explained by any other thesis except that there actually is an active and interactive Multiplane.)
I will go further. One might say then that a person who comes to the clinical or scientific interview claiming to talk to rabbits named Harvey has as valid a ‘belief’ as any religious belief. And this raises the point about the discipline of doctrine that has especially characterized the Church and the centralizing or centripetal pressure of the hierarchy and the Vatican (precisely the influence modern ‘liberalizing’ and ‘secularizing’ interests would like to see weakened in Catholicism as it has been weakened – deliberately self-weakened, actually – by mainstream liberal Protestantism in the past two centuries, but also going way way back to the early Christian community’s various theological and doctrinal and dogmatic debates and on up through the Reformation).
And the point is this: once the existence of an active and interactive Multiplane is accepted, then ‘religious belief’ is confronted with the challenge of untamed human imagination. Why not have rabbits named Harvey as equally valid representatives of that Other (or Higher) Plane of Existence as the saints and the God of the Old Testament and the God revealed by Christ? Why not the gods of the pagans (who were certainly not atheistic) and the various beings of the wood and forest and sea and stream and air?
This was, I would say, the great challenge to the Church: how i) retain a focus on the revelation-through and relational experience-with Christ and ii) avoid the utter dissipation of the human imagination and humans’spiritual coherence and integrity through a wholesale raising-up of pixies, elves, leprechauns, nymphs, demigods, demi-urges and – a problem which still bethumps in an ancient way – demons? And to all this has to be added the question of ‘magic’: what about the effort-to and belief-in harnessing some form of Multiplanar power for human purposes through various magical and sometimes ‘witchy’ (no gender specificity intended here) means?
And – contrary to popular misconceptions – I point out that in many locations in Europe and Asia-Minor and other places, various local peoples refused to completely accept Catholicism and instead accepted it but layered it over their own prior pagan or naturalist or animist beliefs. As late as the 19th century the Sicilians, for example, had such a belief system still so strongly in place that they could take their local saint’s statue and beat it or kick it or toss it into the river if the saint did not produce sufficient responses to the requests they made. (Far different from the Irish approach and – when the Southern Italians arrived here in great numbers during the Great Immigration of the 1880-1920 – it was one of the reasons why the already-established Irish-American Church hierarchy here was suspicious not only of the laypeople in that great surge, but even of the clerics who accompanied them: the Southern Italians and Sicilians were simply not the docile and go-along types when push came to shove in the existential challenges of life, nor did they have a great yet simple trust in ‘organizations’ or governments, trusting instead to their own personal networks and their own local saints – whom, as I just said, they ‘believed-in’ in a highly idiosyncratic and distinctly hands-on way.)
History is a hugely complex affair; and especially so in matters of belief.
So, then, is there essentially any difference between – say – a belief in rabbits named Harvey and a belief in the Christ and God preached by the Church? I would say Yes: because ‘Harvey’ may ‘go away’ as one goes on through life and in any case will hardly provide much of a structure or reliable relationship upon which one – and many – can Shape and conduct a life and understand the world and the life-experience; Harvey will at best function like Linus’s blanket in the old Peanuts cartoons.
Whereas the Church is based not on some individual’s own imagination responding to his/her personal need for a security-blanket and perhaps an ‘imaginary friend’ but rather on the lived-experience of the Apostles with Christ (all of whom were actual historical persons) and the sustained reflection-on and relationship-with Christ as the centuries have gone on.
And the hierarchical element in the Church functioned as a keel in a ship, to hold the basic vessel together as a distinct (and thus life-preserving) entity capable of sustaining Shape (as opposed, say, to a slap-dash raft-like collections of odd bits of wood and stalks lashed-together, which would not long be able to withstand the long voyages on the open ocean and would then lose its Shape and dissolve under the very persons relying on it as a vessel.)
So JR’s personal version of the old Monoplanar belief that there is no Multiplane reveals itself to be merely a belief that cannot itself be ‘proven’ (and – given the Lourdes events and similar – cannot even explain the full range of actual historical and scientifically-validated events in human history and experience).
The particular images he uses in his comment simply (if in a rather uncharacteristically imaginative way) make more colorful what is essentially a Cartoon.
As for the equally silly bit about the geography of the whole thing (“if heaven really isn’t in outer-space”): “heaven” is, I would say, another dimension (or Plane of Existence). The imagery of going “up” is the best people could come up with to explain – or depict in art – the departure from this dimension and into that other (or Other) dimension. Perhaps nowadays we might imagine them as doing a shimmery disappearance as is seen when one is being ‘transported’ on Star Trek.
But while the imagery is difficult to depict artistically, the reality of what happened in the Ascension and the Assumption remains the stunning and awe-inspiring propositions that they always have been: a) that there is indeed a Multiplane, b) that it is indeed a Higher Plane of Existence, c) that it is presided over by a God revealed ultimately in Christ, and d) that as we (like Mary) can conform our lives and selves to the call of that God then humans too can participate in that reality (or Reality) and receive help on their journey toward that reality (or Reality).
Lastly, I would draw a connection here between what I have said in this comment and the material I related in my comment on Meyer’s work and theorizing of Intelligent Design: whereas one Neo-Evolutionist scientist once burbled that Darwin had finally made it intellectually respectable to be an atheist, now those same persons have to face the mathematical and variously-other scientific discoveries of the past decades that – as I tried to explain Meyer in my comment – have now cast profound mathematical and scientific doubt on the very viability of the Darwinian theory … thus equally casting into doubt the ‘intellectual respectability’ of atheism.
Perhaps Darwin is going to be joining the rabbit named Harvey. Thus human history evolves.
Proof please for a "multiplane"?…Creating facts in order to bolster your faith, is specious.
Sky hooks, as in I wish I had a hook in the sky to hold this paint bucket so i can use both my hands to paint, aren't real. But I can describe them to you; I just did. Are they real no they are not. Is your god real? No just like sky hooks, he can be described, and very sorely needed by some, but real? Hardly.
How i only wish that a "shimmery disappearence" ala Star Trek were available for a few posters here. "Shimmery disappearence",like in Star Trek! LOL!
Maybe those tinkeling chimes they use in fantasy films were also present, just as a nice finishing effect.
My last response to the astoundingly failed tactic that repeatedly attempts to compare faith in God (supernatural), with what the natural world, which actually abides by the laws of both physics and nature, reveals per the "Is that it ? That's all you got?" 'contribution' to the now-exhausted dialogue follows:
Yep, that's all your contribution is worth (and, that's being generous).
Go way back to the top of this articles' thread (and all the previous) and reread the substantive responses by others (eg. those that contain such foolish things as focus, content, context, logic, substance, sentences [including efforts at grammar out of respect for the readership] and those 'facty-thingies') to you and your sidekicks drive-by and thoroughly thoughtless and baseless (and often garbled and disjointed] comments, and let us know how that works out for you.
Your lack of quality submittals may [should] cause embarassment, unless, your sole intent is to consistently fail in ever defending your chronically outrageous (radical, hostile, bigoted, illogical, delusional) positions on just about every topic covered.
Now, that's all I got, thank God.
So I lack content and logic compared to you? Ha! And you're not calling people names and thereby degrading them? Referring to things that you and your cohorts say: as " substantive" and, as ever, bitching amout my spelling. I don't care what you "think". As far as I'm concerned; you don't. This is you: "Oh the Catholics are being attacked" for having to reimburse raped people for their serious injuries. There's a world wide conspiracy to get the church . Nonsense! There's an attempt, in places, to get to the truth of your corporation's behaviors. If your god is so powerful why doesn't he stop it all. Everything you say he's against: Fraudulent cases that don't exist to abortions and war and homosexuality? Why doesn't he just stop it? If he can't he's not all powerful. If he won't he's evil.
Since when are logic and reason failed tactics? Fact based arguements beat out imaginary multiplanes everyday of the week. Fact can always be proven scientifically through the empirical method. Your beliefs can never be proven and have never been proven, ever. So we have empiricism vs. faith and you say one can not prove matters of faith. O.K. why not? Why when everything else in nature shows reason the most "burning" issues are left to imaginings, to faith? Even Aquinas attempts to use "reason" in his faiuled attempts to prove a created universe i.e. every thing has it's "maker". What is Lourdes but another failed attempt to make your god: reasonable and kind. All the while, given the woeful lack of miracles compared to the woeful number of those in need of healing. Your god isn't working. Not even for his devotees.
"Now, that's all I got, thank God."
"So let it be written. So let it be done." To quote Yul Brynner in "The 10 Commandments".
"Delf ,you are ,to put it a gently as possible , no one to be judging other's sanity."
I make no Judgments, I make assessments.
But, to your point, why am I not 'one to be judging others sanity'? I am as qualified to make an assessment of commenters mental and intellectual capabilities, as expressed and evidenced here in comment submittals to TMR, as anyone else here at TMR (and other places); but, most certainly, more qualified and capable than you.
You will need to explain, with documentation (accurate quotes in context, please), aka, proof, of why I am not qualified to make these basic human character assessments (within the context of assessing risk, danger, good, bad and every other assessment or judgement that humans make on a reguar basis as a matter of survival) on others abilities, including their mental health status, as evidenced by their writings- that which include their musings, rantings, logic, integrity, rationale, reasoning, emotional outbursts, critical thinking/problem-solving abilities, linguistics, and any and all other metrics used to determine an individuals mental and intellectual faculties and capabilities.
No one here is interested in making a medical diagnosis; but, everyone has an obligation to make on-the-hoof determinations on the potential risks to oneself and their family that may eminate from others; a subset of which is making determinations on the veracity/ validity/integrity of one's comments. We do this every minute of every day of our lives (if we want to thrive and survive).
I don't need to see the mental health record (or medical diagnosis) of the obviously deranged and/or mentally ill homeless guy living on the street that is dirty, talking to himself, over-animated, and verbally and physically attacking passersby (perhaps throwing his feces at victims, or up on the wall?) to make the assessment that he is dangerous by virtue of his obvious [identified via one or more of the five senses] mental illness, as expressed by his behavior, a subset of which are his words. Do you? Some health and capability deficiencies are obvious to all observers, such as the man in the wheel chair is likely crippled.
Did you really not know that your 'contributions' to TMR would not be critically assessed and analyzed – even judged (small "j") within this context? We may not condemn (Judge), but, we are obligated to judge (discern, evaluate, assess) on a regular basis, in order to live according to and within nature, and to moderate, as required, our own sinful human nature, and most of all, to ensure obedience to God (which for Catholics, includes evangilization).
So, in response to your rhetoric, if you didn't want TMR contributors to think you might have mental health issues, why did you create just that impression with your long written record of submitting clearly mentally unhealthy and intellectually deficient material to TMR? Did you intentionally mislead us?
If you act and look like a predator, don't be surprised or dismayed when the herd startles and scatters at the onset of your appearance.
To my ' mental health diagnosis' point; regarding mental health professionals vs. the rest of society which relied on common sense and God-given laws and instincts - society was far, far better off before we created a 'special class' of so-called professionals (sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists) to make such "judgements" . The cataloguing of the thousands of cases of systemically misdiagnosed and mismanaged mentally ill patients, according to APA guidelines, and the innocent victims trail of blood, likely unprecedented in modern times, resulting from the notoriously erroneous APA guidelines, obviously leaves much (as in a universe-load) to be desired from both the mental health and legal perspective (not to mention the Good Society structure).
You cannot politicize a health or legal institution and expect anything but incompetency and corruption.
We should all remember that fact when we must continuously bear the Administrations [self] trumpeting of the onset of implementation of Obamacare (well, unless your Congress, a union or one of thousands of exempted Obamaphiles).
"…Nor did I forfiet my right to believe any f'ing thing I want and still be compensated for my injuries..".
As so eloquently evidenced by your too-numerous to cite indecipherable and profanity-laden contributions. We wonder, in your own words, 'if you also believe any f'ing thing you want' as pertains to your increasingly dubious claims of sexual abuse by a priest'? Given the unreliability of your contributions here, we'd be 'crazy' not to wonder.
It may not be possible given the 17T dollar deficit the progressives have burdened the US taxpayer with to ever compensate you for injuries caused to you by virtue of your very birth, rearing, development and existence, apparently.
Your emotional problems run so deep and are so extreme and evident to all with eyes to see and ears to hear, there is no way on Gods earth that your emotional (mental and intellectual)injuries occurred from your claimed priest 'abuse' experience.
Victims of prolonged, repeated, horrendous physical and emotional abuse (eg. female children kidnapped into white slavery or otherwise horrifically and regularly abused since birth by family members) manage to fare better in the emotional stability department than do you.
Your problems are obviously not solely attributable to whatever happened to a 16 year old gay male who was more-likely-than-not already quite sexually active (if not outright promiscuous, as typically hormonally dictated by both gender and sexuality).
Sooner or later, whether here, there or anywhere, you'll be needing to admit to some Truths.
"Please explain what is "completely untrue" and why. Thanks"
He clearly cannot, Josie, that is why he jumps around like an institutionalized patient [which is a distinct possibility] with red ants in his pants ('pants on fire') everytime he is confronted with Facts, and Logic, and References (that the submitter actually read and understands), and the Truth. He is left with no option but to either man-up with the truth, or bail out.
He bails every time.
You and Josie should dress up your all American Barbie doll "minds" and shout, " U.S.A. We're number one!" to the rest of the planet. Oh how they will love you for it. (deep irony)
One day your chickens will come home to roost.
As a breather from the relative non-issue of the Church abuse matter; here is another non-issue matter created by the progressives and their lackeys in the media strictly for political reasons (one of which is that they despise the success enjoyed by Americans as compared with the world, and particularly, the success enjoyed by hard-working Americans – as pertains to perceived 'income inequality'):
"The panel will try to explain why global temperatures, while still increasing, have risen more slowly since about 1998 even though greenhouse gas concentrations have hit repeated record highs in that time, led by industrial emissions by China and other emerging nations."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/16/us-climate-report-idINBRE97F0KM20130816
Should be fun to watch the lefty media's contortions over this debacle.
LOL! America's "success" as compared with the world is idiocy. We stole the land from the indians and the labor from everyone, most particiularly black people, who were ther only designated slaves. The vast majority of whites were no better than wage slaves our selves. Then through imperialism, the Monroe doctrine; we roped off Central and South America as "ours" to exploit. All historic fact .
You may capitalize the words fact and truth but that doesn't mean you have those things on your side. It's Orwellian "newspeak". Lies declared truth with no proof. Do the words "weapons of mass destruction" ring any trillion dollar bells?
You get to question my sanity? I know your's is beyond question. You are out there: as in outerspace, where your diety and all the good dead are.
It's nuts to deny fact for: wishing it were so or for praying something to be true. You do those things all the time ipso facto: you're nuts.
As I mentioned in a prior comment, not-running-into Abuseniks in the actual world is especially true in the case of 'dennis ecker', who – we may recall from BigTrial comments – apparently failed to show up for an appointment he made with another commenter (for possible reasons I discussed in that prior comment). At any rate, I agree with everyone who is happy that such events need not be contemplated as imminent possibilities.
You talk real bold for an anonymous poster P. [edited by moderator]
Maybe you wear a wig of anonymity to hide a guilty face?
"Fact can always be proven scientifically through the empirical method."
Not true. The empiricist view can be easily challenged by the rationalist view. Both methods are based upon observation. Kuhn documented investigator biases inherent in empiricism.
Suffice it to say, any thing a human created is subject to error.
Stick to the asphalt in your own neighborhood, you'll likely get very lost, very fast, in this thicket of woods.
"Proof please for a "multiplane"?…"
Not to step on Publion's toes (more humanely, this is more an attempt to provide a break from the relentless peppering by the perpetually disgruntled juvenile in the TMR 'room")….
…. perhaps its time to send the inquisitive little bunny down the rabbit-hole once and for all:
String Theory.
It's got more cred in the lab than does your oh-so passe‛ theory of evolution.
Bye-bye, now. Come back when you can 'string' together a declarative or, God willing, coherent statement on it within the context of Publion's numerous thoughtful submittals.
Let's try to shoot for a bit mo' than, 'that's completely untrue', shall 'we'?
Once again, JR turns in a pitch-perfect performance. (Although one that is – alas again – just too wordy to give the impression that is primarily from him.)
As to his comment of the 26th at 1132AM: JR is not “supposed to pretend” anything whatsoever. His material is what it is. I am not “rationalizing” his “perspectives” (hardly the word for all the assertions and claims, unexplained and ungrounded); I am “characterizing” his material (as I wrote). So before we even get to any questions of differences and disagreements, we are confronted with the problem of basic reading-comprehension. If my characterizations “demean” the material (and JR chooses to personalize that) then the answer would be to put up better material. But then we are faced with the problem of whether JR will not or whether JR cannot or whether both elements are in play with his material.
The plop-tossing of comments at 1119AM and 1132AM are what they are and let them remain in the record.
JR’s material does indeed – as I have gone at great length and frequently to explain – “lack content and logic”. If that constitutes “calling people names” then we are confronted with a serious misuse or incomprehension of the language by JR. (And if that observation constitutes “calling people names” then we are back at square-one again.)
JR doesn’t “care what you ‘think’”; and yet if it is said that it isn’t really much cared-about what he “thinks”, then that constitutes calling him names. This is a nifty dynamic and I have pointed it out before; put up poor material, then – if that fact is pointed out – he claims he is somehow being victimized by being called-names – and therefore he doesn’t have to pay any attention to the objections at all and – neatly – can (at least in his own mind) feel free to keep plop-tossing. Nifty. But now it’s obvious.
And again and again and again: we precisely do not have any evidence – nor even any material that would point to a significant probability – of rape (unless we buy ‘dennis ecker’s bit that anything and everything is rape). And on the contrary we have significant amounts of material leading to the probability that there was very little rape at all: not the least of which evidence is the actual tallying done by the Jay Reports from the actual allegations formally lodged, and even in JR’s case the arm-across-the-groin bit (which, again, is not rape); and the glaring evidence of the Billy Doe multi-story case.
And if there is such an effort “world-wide” to “get to the truth of” the Church’s behaviors, then JR and other similar types here have hardly demonstrated that they are the types to conduct that effort – since from what we have seen here even as recently as the authorship of the JR-dennis ecker posting, these commenters don’t seem quite adept-at, or committed-to, truth at all.
I have no idea who “he” is toward the end of the comment; perhaps JR has once again lost control of his material or his mental process.
Then at 1058 he tries to connect “fact-based arguments” and “imaginary multiplanes”. I could first point out to him that I have been speaking about probabilities based on available information, and not about “proof” – and once again he has failed to comprehend the material I have put up and he has (allegedly) read and to which he is now trying to respond.
Second, it can just as easily be asserted that “fact-based arguements” [sic] beat out imaginary Darwinian theorizing, as I have just spent quite a bit of space pointing-out in a recent comment on this thread. And what does JR think about the issues raised in that material?
And – unfortunately for him – his “reading” education has not led him to the distinction between the realm of (non-material) religious-belief and the realm of scientific (material) fact (even Darwin himself couldn’t quite keep all that straight) nor has he absorbed the idea that when you are dealing with the non-material or spiritual you are beyond the range of material ‘facts’ and have to rely on more nuanced methods. But even at this juncture, I note that he has not (ever) dared to grapple with the scientifically and medically established historical facts in the Lourdes records. And – as with other commenters of his ilk – if even one of these cures is true, then his entire position deflates.
I’m also waiting to see what this brassy atheist thinks of the mathematical and scientific (molecular biology, communications theory, computer science) facts that now pose a profound and immediate challenge to the entire Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian position. There’s a hefty chunk of “empiricism” that doesn’t work for him at all. Thus the trusty old “empiricisim vs. faith” conundrum has been bypassed now by scientific and mathematical advances themselves. As I have said – and as we can now see here – the entire Framing of the Problem since 1859 is now re-arranged if not actually undermined.
The issue is not to try to “prove matters of faith”. The issue is in trying to sift all the available information from what is ‘seen’ in order to consider what might be the most valid inferences as to what might be ‘unseen’. Much like detectives have to work-backwards from an incident they did not see in order to gain as accurate a picture as possible of what might have happened. (And – once again – we actually have ‘seen’ the empirically validated cures at Lourdes and how does JR and his ilk deal with that?)
Nor did Aquinas (this bit is very improbably from the mind of JR) use what is often translated into modern English as “proofs” for the existence of God in the sense that later centuries used “proof” in scientific and legal senses. Aquinas proposed five arguments-for the existence of God; meaning that rational persons could consider what is seen and known and infer to what is unseen and unknown.
(Nicely, several of those five Aquinian ‘Ways’ - the five are: the Unmoved Mover, the First Cause, Contingency, Degree, and Teleology – actually are still active in the Evolution issue: as I noted in a prior comment, a) where does the bio-material first come from upon which Darwin’s hypothetical random selection acts and b) which came first: i) the bio-material that carries the highly complex and specified encoded directions for the proteins that will from DNA or ii) the information necessary to form that very bio-material in the first place?)
And – this is apparently news to him – “faith” is not “in nature”; the two domains are fundamentally different. That’s the whole point behind Aquinas’s efforts in this regard. Nature can be seen; the realm of faith cannot be seen and as a different domain poses different challenges to knowledge (although – again – we have seen those empirically examined and verified Lourdes events that clearly cannot be accounted-for by any conventionally ‘scientific’ explanations).
Thus too, Lourdes is hardly characterizable as a “failed” attempt at anything, until JR can effectively deal with the challenges posed by the empirically verified events there and demonstrate his dismissal of them as rationally justifiable. Once again – as with all the rest of this self-serving Cartoon he has constructed – he simply tries to assert-away and dismiss the glaring realities i) for which his ruminations cannot account and ii) that undermine his entire position by their very existence as empirically verified realities.
Lastly, JR then apparently tries either a) to dismiss all the Lourdes events (“woeful lack”) or else – his writing is one again not clear here – b) he admits that there are some miracles but not very many and then he tries to build some plop-pile for his comment from that bit. But no matter which way he turns here – either (a) or (b) – he faces profound explanatory problems. (At which point, but of course, the Playbook will call for ketchup-throwing and distractions.)
Thus his effort at a neat summation – “Your god isn’t working. Not even for his devotees” – is i) undermined by his own problematic material here as well as ii) reveals an utter failure to comprehend the significance of Christ’s revelation (i.e. there is going to be suffering because the world is both incomplete and deeply flawed by the consequences of both actual sin and original-sinfulness).
Which leaves us confronted with a rather grossly inaccurately-posed Problem, based on a rather grossly-inaccurately conceived Assessment of the Situation, for which he (and his ilk) have then gone and constructed their self-serving Cartoon of what we are dealing with in the first place (i.e. a) the probability of there being or not-being a Multiplane and b) the validity of the specifically Christian and Catholic Vision of that Multiplane and the evidence of that Multiplane’s activity in the world or the material that will strongly lead to the inference that that Christian God is the constitutive element in the Multiplane).
And so I think it is clear that the issues and challenges to be dealt with in this whole matter are hardly likely to be well-handled by ketchup-tossing, plop-tossing, the various Playbook ploys, and the usual one-liner inaccuracies that seem to be pretty much all JR brings to the table.
So who can disagree with him when he asserts (the 26th at 1138AM) that “that’s all I got”? And I note that despite all of his (alleged) “reading” JR can come up with nothing more here than a quote from Yul Brynner in a movie – which is probably where JR gets so much of his religious and theological material to begin-with. (Hint: Hollywood movies are not reliably to be taken as accurate doctrinal expositions of the Church’s positions and Vision. Except perhaps to the mentality of an adolescent.)
the case of 'dennis ecker', who – we may recall from BigTrial comments – apparently failed to show up for an appointment he made with another commenter.
GET IT RIGHT. Get all your facts correct before posting. No one believes what you have to say only because TMR posts your ramblings. You are a truly "confused" catholic as Chaput states.
Now since I'm here anyway. These are the happenings coming out of Pennsylvania.
First, we have the Archbishop Chaput of the AOP make a public statement saying "catholics are confused". He made that comment after Pope Francis's latest comments. I would ask him though what catholics is he speaking of ? Is it the Josie Bailey's and Delphins of the world or is it of all catholics ?
I have spoken to many catholics who have taken offense to his statement and the majority believe Pope Francis maybe a very small light at the end of the tunnel in bringing the catholic church into the 21st century. In so many words the Pope has said if the church is not willing to change they will be left behind. The subjects that the Pope spoke of was homosexuality, abortion and contraception. However, nothing of sexual abuse by his clergy.
In the end Chaput states he would like catholics to read what the Pope said, pray over it, then reread it". I believe Chaput along with his title of Archbishop should add magician, he would like his followers to perform some type of parlor trick over the Pope's words i guess in hope the words will change. If that is not the case catholics can still call him a magician because he is making alot of money, followers and real estate disappear.
Second, Another priest was arrested for sexual abuse of a minor in Scranton Pennsylvania. (Information still coming in)
Third, A Philadelphia priest was arrested yesterday at a private home in Maryland for raping a child. Fr. Robert Brennan (no relation to the other Fr. Brennan who will go on trial next month) at last report will not fight extradition back to Philadelphia. Brennan may have abused over 20 children while being transferred from church to church after a hospital (St. John Vianney) psychological evaluation diagnosed him as a pedophile. (Another child hurt by Fr. Lynn's inactions)
Fr. Brennan is 75 years old and if convicted I think it would be safe to say he will receive a life sentence.
I also wonder what the three judge panel is thinking ? Since there is now more cases coming to light because of Lynn's inactions.
" 'dennis ecker', who – …apparently failed to show up…"
The 'side-kick' has been MIA at TMR since he was thoroughly called out on the multiple discrepancies in his stories about his "abuse", his job, and his flaming antiCatholic bigotry (aka self-destructed).
He's probably holed up in the fetal position in one of those nasty south Philly tenement basements [he never got to experience as the 'hero firefighter'] -
Dennis Ecker is here and on bigtrial.net misquoting the Pope and the Philadelphia Archbishop-making the stupid remarks he is famous for. Pure waste of time to respond to him.
Wrong again child.
Why do you fear me so much ? Why do you wish to be more like me ?