Catholic church advises Belfast school to disband Amnesty branch
The rift between the Catholic church and Amnesty International over the organisation’s new policy on sexual and reproductive rights appears to be growing, and it’s taking on a local dimension too. Henry McDonald reports in the Guardian, and Patsy McGarry confirms in the Irish Times [subs req], that a Belfast grammar school in the Down and Connor diocese has been advised by the church to disband its Amnesty group. The issue appears to be due for discussion at next month’s general meeting of the Irish Bishops’ Conference. From the Guardian report
In relation to the banning of school Amnesty groups, a church spokesman told the Guardian: “An inquiry did come from a school principal, on behalf of the teacher who is in charge of the school Amnesty group, asking for guidance on the future of the Amnesty group in the school. The advice to the school is that it would be inappropriate for the school branch to continue in existence in the context of Amnesty International’s new position regarding abortion.”
Adds While there’s no confirmation of which school is referred to in the reports, here’s an example of a well established and active Amnesty International Group within a voluntary grammar school in the diocese, in the Catholic Maintained Schools sector, which could be affected by any general directive from the Irish Bishops’ Conference.
Dread
Likewise I’m neither saying that it is right nor fair but I am pointing to other areas of the topic that are being ignored for an all too predictable argument that is full of heat, but brings little light.
The two are linked, which is why my initial post refers backwards to the earlier thread.
But we’d get more light if the cause, and its ripples, was debated there and the effect, and its ripples, here.
Frank Little: “It’s remarkably easy for the Catholic Church, whose history in Ireland is full more of carrying out human rights abuses than opposing them, to complain about this from its ivory tower in the Vatican.”
A gross exaggeration and a slur to the tens of thousands of Irish catholics who were and still can be found providing aid and comfort wherever in the world there is suffering and despair.
Pounder,
You don’t think this has more to do with a policy decision taken by the Catholic church at the very top, rather than some annoyance over a few Belfast pride banners. Seems to me that’s a case of paranoia.
Update to your post noted Pete – it seems to emphasize my original point. The RC Church is using doctrine as a basis for exclusion. It does this while in receipt of public funds to perform a public good; i.e., the education of the young.
The young have the bad habit of growing up. Once free from the institutional ‘protection’ of the RC Church they’ll encounter reality and the choices humans find they have to make. It is in this environment that true morality is tested and it is in this environment that the public funds provided the RC Church will have failed their pupils.
Why? Well simple – because they can. If the RC Church chooses to use its capacity to poorly educate, to prohibit rather than engage and ignore rather than equip its pupils to understand the challenges life will throw up simply because it can – it will have articulated a more persuasive argument for secular education than any of its opponents.
I’ve returned here to find the debate has moved on to a third page, so a little late for me to catch up. Two responses then to my critics:
Garibaldy,
If you say so. I wasn’t in Ireland at the time. But are you saying that Amnesty should have been campaigning for everything, everywhere in the world, all at once? No one else to share the burden?
Again, you believe Amnesty ought to be doing more? Care to join them in that case, help out?
This is why they have think tanks worldwide and frequent conferences to seriously discuss, er, human rights? Here’s one in Birmingham you can attend on 13 October: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=467
No doubt. But Amnesty does bother. That’s the crucial difference.
Dread Cthulhu,
And this is a reason for the RC Church to put its spoke in as well? What is the point of your straw man?
Again, what’s your point? The issue is Amnesty’s involvement, which the RC Church objects to.
Now you’ve gone and lost me completely. The one imagines that abortion is a form of contraception. Are you agreeing with this idiocy? What the fuck is “ex post facto contraception?” Either a woman conceives or she doesn’t. If she does, contraception can’t take place, not unless you’ve a time machine handy.
It does emphasise your original point, Rubicon.
But, if you don’t mind, I’ll pick that point to be this advice to commenters
..rather than jump up upon the nearest hobby-horse, that is. And, yes, I’m looking at you Dawkins.
To repeat a point which you failed to catch up with
>And do you honestly think that opening a “Planned Parenthood†clinic in the refugee camps is going to help the scenario?<
Dread as you pointed out earlier it’s not good manners to respond to a question with another question? Can you please answer? What are the women of Darfur supposed to do? Lie back and take it?
Regarding your repeated use of the word triage, obviously a term you’ve recently come across and are keen to use at every opportunity, one would have thought that a pregnancy brought about by rape would have been the problem that had to be sorted out first.
Thanks for the hypocrisy definition. I would have thought a church that preaches about the sanctity of the human body would find abortion and paedophilia equally distasteful. Obviously not. I call that hipocrisy.
Dawkins,
I was suggesting that Amnesty often has its priorities all wrong, the Kosovo case being the best example. There were people being killed in large numbers by the dominant power in the world and its allies, and huge numbers of refugees being created by the bombing, and Amnesty ignored this. Wife beating in Russia is a violation of rights, but I suggest that it was not the most important one at the time.
As I see it, Amnesty buys constantly into the dominant neo-liberal vision of politics; a vision that all but ignores social rights. This is a highly circumscribed vision that ignores many of the most crucial violations of human rights as defined in the UN Declaration. People are encouraged to see Amnesty as the NGO equivalent of Mother Theresea, and so in supporting it they neglect to think beyond, to the social elements of rights.
I won’t be joining Amnesty as it quite often acts as a prop to neo-liberal, neo-colonial policies and actions. I’d rather solve the problem of human rights by addressing the system that deprives billions of the full range of their rights.
Garibaldy,
I respectfully suggest you visit an Amnesty site. Seems to me you’re a little unclear about the true extent of their work.
And you should also know they’re apolitical. They have to be, so they can agitate against rightwing and leftwing abuses. If you or any other critic have a better idea about how to tackle human rights abuses, please don’t keep it to yourself.
Dawkins: “And you should also know they’re apolitical. They have to be, so they can agitate against rightwing and leftwing abuses. If you or any other critic have a better idea about how to tackle human rights abuses, please don’t keep it to yourself. ”
And if you believe *THAT*, I have a collection of rolex watches, slightly irregular, to sell you.
Dawkins: “Now you’ve gone and lost me completely. The one imagines that abortion is a form of contraception. Are you agreeing with this idiocy? What the fuck is “ex post facto contraception?†Either a woman conceives or she doesn’t. If she does, contraception can’t take place, not unless you’ve a time machine handy. ”
ex post facto = after the fact.
Gram: “Dread as you pointed out earlier it’s not good manners to respond to a question with another question?”
Ah, but courtesy is a two way street. You have set the mark, I merely meet the standard you set.
Gram: “Regarding your repeated use of the word triage, obviously a term you’ve recently come across and are keen to use at every opportunity, one would have thought that a pregnancy brought about by rape would have been the problem that had to be sorted out first. ”
Hardly. The central problem are the janjaweed. The rapes are simply a symptom of the disease. The more resources you waste accomdating the symptoms with palliative responses, the less resources are available for dealing with the disease.
Likewise, your response, as noted elsewhere, is not going to be embraced by the culture you seek to provide it to. You may worry about raising social consciousness, but the Darfarian are far more concerned by the butchers on horseback.
Dread Cthulhu,
Believe what you wish. But when I see criticism of Amnesty coming from all political positions it suggests to me they don’t play favourites. This is good to know when you have to choose the regime that imprisons you unjustly.
Thanks for the Latin lesson. But it’s still nonsense to say that abortion is ex post facto contraception since that which one sought to prevent clearly has already taken place, hence the abortion. (This is also why it’s unusually difficult to make an omelette without first breaking eggs.)
You’re probably confusing “contraception” with “birth control”, a somewhat different concept.
As the great Gay Byrne used to say; “Folks, ya join the army ya wear the boots!”
You want to partake in the excellent education provided by a Catholic grammar school? Fine, please join us, but be warned we are a Catholic institution and all members will be expected to abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church as outlined by the Pope. If you feel you cannot comply with these rules then please feel free to join any of the other very many non-denomination, state or integrated schools which will be very happy to provide a non-Catholic education for you, otherwise get with the programe.
The public funding element is a red herring, the government sees fit to help Catholic schools on the the clear understanding that Catholic teaching will be provided. Should the government decide in its wisdom to withdraw its funding then so be it, the Catholic church will still continue to promote Catholic teaching as it sees fit.
It’s not really complicated you know.
As an aside and somewhat relevant to the Catholic church and education can we be a bit clear about who the greatest offenders in paedophilia have been in the past decades, in statistical terms teachers far outweigh Catholic priests as sexual predators of children. For all of those who attack the Church for its failings with regard to this issue it is worth bearing in mind that those bastions of left wing ideology, the teachers’ unions, always protected, assisted and defended members who were accused of sexual abuse of children and unlike the Catholic church they still do.
Yes, i think teachers are the largest offenders after farmers. That of course it not to deny the overwhelming number of both that are respectable contributing members to society, and do a lot of good and should of course be respected and thanked.
But then that might be an all too obvious comment to make.
Lets admit the obvious, there are lots of people here on slugger who don’t like the Catholic Church and will attack it any chance they get.
That includes when it advises one of it’s own schools on the inappropriateness of a small group who now fall under an organisation that espouses a policy, of what it would call, murder.
Of course if you really do agree with widespread abortion, or the more limited numbers in places like Dafur, you could make your case to the local Catholic Bishop.
If you don’t like the church then you can work with Amnesty to lobby the church.
Or you can instead, repeat your own bigoted comments yet again under the latest flag of the church commenting that such a group is “inappropriate” (shock horror) within the Catholic schools system.
Pretty sad people.
It is short sighted of the church and is indeed redolent of the church of the 1950s, the church that was afraid of and stifled debate, the church that ultimately drove many of its members away and now seems intent in alienating a fresh generation of young minds with whom it should be engaging.
We all make compromises in life, we vote for political parties some of whose policies we support, we work with people for shared aims but disagree with them on other things.
The church is entitled to its view on abortion, Amnesty is entitled to its view, they both share enough other values and concerns to merit continued working together for these other important aims, and the young pupils of Northern Ireland deserve the chance to work for Social Justice and to debate both the “easy” shared aims and the controversial ones with their peers, their teachers and with Amnesty.
When the church adopts this tone it makes itself seem dictatorial, proud and yet afraid to debate or justify its position and it ultimately suffers.
Can we get real about the notion of “stifling debate”. If the Church tried to ban a debate in a school, that would be stifling debate (and might still be justified cos to debate an issue suggests doubt and there is no doubt on the Catholic position on abortion). Forming a student Amnesty International group in a Catholic school isn’t a debate, it’s an institutional action. I was a member of Amnesty for years and I stuck with it even when I disagreed with some of its actions (like its then neutral stance on abortion and its increasingly anti-American stance and its general failure to address Islamic dictatorships and persecution of Christians) but campaigning for decriminalisation of abortion is a bridge to far. It may have started with Darfur and rape, but its policy is now for complete decriminalisation and that means AI thinks the Republic and Northern Ireland are in breach of international human rights law. It is impossible for the Catholic Church to be a partner or to continue to allow its facilities to be used by AI. The only scandal at the moment is the delay by the Irish Bishops in giving proper guidance on this matter.
>Lets admit the obvious, there are lots of people here on slugger who don’t like the Catholic Church and will attack it any chance they get.< <
It's important to expose hipocrisy where it exists.
>>You want to partake in the excellent education provided by a Catholic grammar school? Fine, please join us, but be warned we are a Catholic institution and all members will be expected to abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church as outlined by the Pope. <<
Wrong. Catholic Schools teach about contraception. Is that not against the teachings of the Pope? They are also pretty quiet on the subject of creation. I remember getting lesson in Darwinism. They are also expected to encourage independent thought. This policy attempts to curb these freedoms.
Gram, please pass on the names of these supposed Catholic schools that are teaching about contraception, unless of course when you say “teaching about contraception” you mean teaching why it is wrong.
We really need to root these teachers out of Catholic schools.
Gram, please pass on the names of these supposed Catholic schools that are teaching about contraception, unless of course when you say “teaching about contraception†you mean teaching why it is wrong.<<
I think you’ll find all Catholic Grammer schools now teach on the subject of contraception.
Would you prefer that not to be the case?
“Wrong. Catholic Schools teach about contraception. Is that not against the teachings of the Pope? They are also pretty quiet on the subject of creation. I remember getting lesson in Darwinism. They are also expected to encourage independent thought. This policy attempts to curb these freedoms.”
Never had to go through any “How to use contraception” classes at a Catholic Grammar. Did debate with a priest why Church policy was stupid, though.
Also, Darwinism is not incompatible with Catholicism. You merely have to believe that God had a hand in guiding the process.
Gram,
I believe you’re right about the teaching of contraception. My Catholic teacher friends certainly do.
What I sometimes wonder is: with all this information that their mothers never had access to, how come so many schoolgirls are getting pregnant? Maybe they share Splurge’s abhorrence of contraception.
Never had to go through any “How to use contraception†classes at a Catholic Grammar. Did debate with a priest why Church policy was stupid, though.<<
Maybe you were sick that day.
I had teaching on contraception. Post 20 confirms it takes place.
Are we now agreed that the church are a bunch of hipocrites?
Just wanted to challenge a point made earlier which makes such a sweeping generalisation that it can only incite religious ill-feeling.
Dread cthulu said:
“Rape, under the Islamic beliefs, is a right of a conqueorer, which given the women-folk of the conquored to the victors”
No doubt you could find one crazy muslim who says this in the same way you could find one crazy christian who tortures children to chastise them.
However, it is disingenuous in the extreme to characterise “rape is fine” as an islamic belief.
I think this merely confirms that Catholic schools have been infiltrated by by dissenting liberals. it doesn’t make the Church hypocritical, just weak at managing its own schools.
As to why so many get pregnant – because they are told about contraception and that’s its okay to have sex before you’re married but because they’re only kids they remember part of the message, the having sex part. It’s like teaching joyriders to wear seat belts when they steal cars.
“….. can we all agree the church is a bunch of hypocrites”.
Not more than any other large organisation gram.
Unfortunately it appears to be human nature.
One of the powers of the church is that it is always a call to be non hypocritical.
The being and the call are two different things.
The call shouldn’t be discarded because the being is not always perfect.
In fact they should intensify their call. In the same way that secular school teachers are one of the biggest perpetrators of sex crimes on the young, that doesn’t mean secular education should stop teaching sex education. Perhaps they have a moral responsibility to do more ?
To change the topic a bit Dawkins (although you didn’t actually say it) i would say that the church is not so much abhorring contraception but calling people to treat eachother on a spiritual level, rather than on a material level for something so special and important as human relationships.
Of course sexual relationships and families are an important part of societies. If it goes wrong on a massive scale you are talking about lots of sad lonely and bitter people, massive welfare intervention and argueably an increase in a more disfunctional (on average) next generation.
The church also thinks it is bad for society for members to be under the delusion that they can treat eachother as objects of matter rather than spiritual beings.
Of course you can argue there is no such thing as spirit, or alternatively you can argue that contraception doesn’t stop people from treating eachother well spiritually as the main focus of relationships.
The churches teaching on contraception is simply that, in the end, it promotes a dangerous way of looking at our relationships, is bad for society and creates a society that makes it more difficult for people to experience the fullness of a loving, trusting and respectful marriage of two people.
You can of course disagree with some or all of that, but they are free to make that case.
The thinking behind it is not so simple as a quick soundbite of ‘abhorance to contraception’.
As i mentioned above, i realise you didn’t actually accuse the church of that specifically.
Just on a technical point on the first post – I’m not sure a school can be both a voluntary grammar AND in the Catholic Maintained sector, as stated – it’s one or the other.
It’s a voluntary grammar school or it isn’t?
Regarding the Catholic Church’s threat to close down Amnesty support groups in its schools, why should these schools continue to be the recipient of public funding? Imagine the outcry if a state-supported Muslem school in Bradford or Luton was found to be encouraging violence against or ostracisation of the Kuffar (i.e. non-believer). Parent governors of these schools should resist the Bishops in this matter.
Barry Gilheany
C’mon Barry, hardly the same thing
“Imagine the outcry if a state-supported Muslem school in Bradford or Luton was found to be encouraging violence against or ostracisation of the Kuffar (i.e. non-believer)”
not supporting a branch of an organization within a school and encouraging violence.
But if the church persists in this form of extremism it will drive people away and end up as an extremist runt of what it could be.
The church has always compromised, and yes catholic primary and secondary schools do have sex education, taught within the catholic ethos but at secondary level, covering the practicalities of contraception. The governors and the teachers knew that it was essential and the bishops either agreed or just chose not to object.
This would appear to be another example of the legacy of JP2 and Benedict, the swing back to an older, less engaged more dogmatic and conservative church regardless of what its members (who are the church) think or do. A reaction to “a la carte catholicism”, I suppose.
This will drive people away and if pursued could lead to legitimate questionning of state funding, but not on the basis of this sad little piece of petulance.
Amnesty International , is not the totally saintly impartial body it likes to portray itself as. Like any group or body of people it, has members who are of different political persuasion, from the extreme right wing, to the extreme left , all working quietly in the background to promote their agenda. Whilst some will highlight and give prominence to alleged human right abuses in China, or Cuba or other out of favour nation of the West, and ignore the same alleged violations in western states and their puppet states. There is now doubt that a groups like Amnesty with it huge media profile and influence has not been infiltrated at various levels, by the various western intelligence agencies, CIA, MI5, etc, and use it when it can to promote their agenda. We must not get carried away by what Amnesty think about this or that issue and always look at the bigger picture of who or what in Amnesty is really behind the various campaigns and agendas of this diverse body.