The video Host Hostage on YouTube shows a man taking a sacred host "hostage", it then shows the Blessed Sacrament next to a condom. The host was sent to Dr. P.Z. Myers at the University of Minnesota at Morris. Dr. Myers has since desecrated the host. An account of its treatment can be found at Myers' post: The Great Desecration (he pierced the sacred host with a rusty nail and threw it into the rubbish bin.)If you have a subscription to YouTube, please flag this video under the heading "hateful or abusive content".
Myers' justification of his action is fatuous: "it's just a cracker". Even if Catholics regarded the sacred host as a mere symbol, this would be an inadequate justification for showing it disrespect. Remember the episode of Sharp when he realised that he could not describe a flag simply as a "dirty rag"? You simply do not take the sacred symbols of other people and vilify them if you have an ounce of civilised blood in you.
Of course, we believe the "cracker" to be the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He will judge Myers mercifully for his sacrilege.
Such an incident should prompt us to consider the wisdom of continuing the practice of giving Communion in the hand.
40 comments:
While the subject of Communion in the hand is one validly up for criticism, I would point out that the incident that precipitated Myers actions was the result of a student in Florida, who after receiving Communion on the tongue removed the sacred Body from his mouth, keeping it for a week before retuning it to the Church.
The point here being that, should someone have intent to steal a consecrated host, banning Communion in the hand will not in itself prohibit that.
This is appalling, I am reminded of an incident from Anglican history; during the Anglican ritual controversies of the nineteenth century a consecrated host was spirited away from the altar rail of (I think) S. Alban’s Holborn. The host was produced in court as evidence that the Church used wafer bread, thought by some at that time to be illegal in the Church of England. On hearing of this display in a court of law the Archbishop of Canterbury contacted the Lord Chancellor and requested custody of the host, it was, at once, sent to him by cab, the Archbishop and his chaplain took the host at once to the Chapel at Lambeth Palace where it was reverently consumed.
Apropos terryc's comment, we had a period when parishioners were finding semi-consumed hosts stuck between the pages of their hymnals. After alerting the clergy and Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion to be extra- vigilant, it was discovered that the culprit was a mentally unstable woman who, after receiving on the tongue, would return to her seat and take the consecrated host from her mouth.
Msgr. Michael J. Alliegro, Rector
Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi
Metuchen, NJ
Such despicable incidents as these revolt me so much that I feel physically sick. We should ask the intercession of Our Blessed Lady, conceived without sin to eradicate the evil one from our midst.
It will make it more difficult, however. Personally, I am paranoid when it comes to people stealing the host. If I note a stranger in my parish (and we get a lot of those), and I am sitting close enough to the front of the Church, I can't help but watch and make sure that they consume the host; several years ago I saw a very young boy not consume and had to catch him and his parents before they left. He had evidently consumed when he got back to the pew, but my mind still panicked: "What if he left the Lord in the pew? What if his parents are lying and have the worst of intentions?"
Furthermore, I can say as an altar server, everyone receiving on the tongue, on their knees, at an altar rail, is much preferred. It makes it much easier to have the paten at a reasonable height in the occasion of a dropped Host.
Of course, we believe the "cracker" to be the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Is there any evidence for this belief? If not, is there any reason it should be accorded more respect than claims of alien abduction, or that the moon landings were faked?
History knows many Eucharistic miracles, where Consecrated hosts have been stolen from the curch and then hidden in some place, where then they have bled or some mysterious light has issued etc.
It seems that nowadays we have so little faith that without much trouble, stolen Consecrated hosts can be desecrated in a youtube video, and -externally-nothing happens. God have mercy on us all!
Arensb - our evidence is in the gospels and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you do not accept these, it behoves you at least to treat believers with respect and courtesy.
If a group believes that the moon landings were faked, I would take issue with them and argue with them. I would not spit on their computers or put their papers in the dustbin.
Is there any room for basic human decency among unbelievers?
And people say we no longer need excorcists in The Church.
Any wonder this is happening.
This is dispicable and SURELY must come under the heading of a HATE CRIME. Not only is this demented and very sad person desecrating what the Catholic World truely believes to be the body, blood, soul and divinity of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, but he is then putting this out into the public domain on YOU TUBE video, thereby promoting what he has done.
Can you just imagine the headlines and uproar among the politically correct if this were any number of incidents we can all think of involving other religions or groups. BUT, because this is the Catholic faith that is being mocked again, nothing happens.
Surely the polics authorities should be allerted to this 'crime' by the local Bishop - is this maniac going to stop with one host. Having done it once perhaps he now has the 'bravado' to plan something on a grander scale. He MUST be brought to account. Maybe a local peition can be started up on teh internet and published throughout the blogosphere. I'm sure millions of Catholics would gladly sign. Let's not let this slip under the carpet. How can they do this to my Lord Jesus, who died for me, so that I may be saved.
The devil never sleeps.
I agree with terryc's observation. If you look at the video, you can also see that the thief also received on his knees from a priest - so I don't want this action to be used as an argument for forbidding reception in the hand. If some evil person wants it, they will find a way.
When I had seen this video several days ago my first impulse was to flag it. But then I did send a letter to a news organization, the president of that "university" and to the archdiocese of Minneapolis St. Paul because I want as much evidence to be around as possible for any sort of prosecution possible either for academic discipline or even preferably firing.
And civilly I seriously wonder if the person who took the Eucharist for express purpose of desecrating might not fall under some state hate crimes statues. He's protected by first amendment rights to say what he wants....but he has INCITED another party to violate OUR 1st amendment rights to worship God as we see fit.
I want copies of that video to remain somewhere so they could be used in any actionable civil suits that may apply.
Karen
Unless we want to have many more desecrations, the less we make of this the better.
Keeping this in the headlines will put desecration front and center in the imaginations of our foes as a way to display their hatred toward us...and in this age we have plenty of foes.
Reparation, fine, but that is always for past deeds.
To me it seems well within the bounds of charity and prudence to pray that the Lord by awesome displays of his power put an end to what seems likely to develop into a monstrous fad.
Amen to issues around Communion in the hand. I certainly think that intinction is a far better practice.
The whole situation with PZ is sad and pathetic.
May God have mercy on this man and lead him to conversion.
In ICXC,
Fr. Deacon Daniel
In England I think it is still the case that were a member of a faculty to show such disrespect towards religious sensibilities he would face disciplinary action and possible expulsion.
I'm surprised it's not so in the US. We are, after all, dealing with someone who sets about deliberately and publicly offending Catholics. He sells himself as a university professor - has anyone in the US been in touch with his employers?
The university in this case has refused to act:
as Fr. Z reports.
George:
This is dispicable and SURELY must come under the heading of a HATE CRIME.
Several people have already said this, including the Catholic League and a representative of the Orlando diocese.
However, as I understand it, for an action to be prosecuted as a hate crime, it first must be a crime (e.g., breaking the windows at a synagogue is vandalism in any case; but it may also be a hate crime on top of that). As far as I know, Myers has committed no crime to which "hate crime" could be added.
Stephen:
In England I think it is still the case that were a member of a faculty to show such disrespect towards religious sensibilities he would face disciplinary action and possible expulsion.
Bill Donohue has already found a similar rule in the University of Minnesota's code of conduct. I agree that if Myers had done what he did in class, that would be unprofessional and deserving of disciplinary action. What he does on his own time, however, is another matter.
For what it's worth, the university did take action: they removed the link to Pharyngula from the faculty web pages.
Fr. Stephen, there is indeed a great hue and outcry in the US and the president of that institution is aware of it and claims to find it reprehensible. It will have to go through a lot of machinery but if Catholics and others bring pressure to bear a good case can be made that he has certainly violated the university's own code of standards by creating a hostile environment and lack of respect. He may be able to get away with his own hateful statements on a private blog of his (although even that is under debate because he is a public employee, given the university is funded by public monies) but even there there are limits by terms of his contract in that he is not to bring disrepute onto the institution. Certainly by agitating others to obtain a Host under false pretenses he is crossing the line. He has a first amendment right to free speech, but we have a right to free exercise of our religion under that same first amendment, and what he has done by agitating turmoil is interfering with our rights to exercise our faith without harassment.
He has tenure, and that does make it harder to get rid of him -- BUT although the machinery takes a while if pressed, other professors for different things (obnoxious, but not in this category) have been removed. Ward Churchill was a notorius case not long ago.
The student in Florida who started the whole thing in the first place has been impeached from his student office.
If you do a bit of googling on line, you can easily find out that this "man" is a very militant atheist and has raised his children to be so. Indeed a while back he defended his own daughter from drawing the logical conclusion that according to the standards of atheism there is no need for laws against bestiality. We all know what God thinks of those who lead children astray.
I have met atheists who *wanted* to believe, but intellectually couldn't. I can easily pray for them. I am not as successful with the militant variety as they are pure evil. And this is pure evil. Is there hope for this man and his family? There is always hope. But there wouldn't be both a heaven and a hell if they both weren't populated.
Lee Gilbert:
Unless we want to have many more desecrations, the less we make of this the better.
Heartily agreed. Right now, those who are calling for Cook's expulsion or Myers's termination, those who have sent them death threats, those who have dared Myers to desecrate the Quran (a phenomenon dubbed "fatwa envy"), are making Catholics look bad, like...
Well, the best analogy I can come up with is Voodoo. Imagine that your next-door neighbor is a voodoo practitioner. He seems like a nice enough guy, and the business about talking to Baron Samedi and the spirits of the dead seems a bit odd, but okay, we're all eccentrics in our way. And then one day it turns out that he really thinks that if you stick a pin into a doll, it'll hurt someone. Not symbolically, but physically.
It's easy to imagine neighborhood kids tormenting this person by sticking pins in dolls just to watch him squirm. But as soon as he realizes that the voodoo dolls don't actually work the way he imagines, the kids' behavior won't bother him anymore, and they'll get bored and stop taunting him.
Forgot to add - 'Creep'!
There's nothing new in this. Those who hate the Church have often sought to desecrate Our Lord physically, as in the famous story of the Miracle of Santarém, when a "sorceress" conspired with a foolish Christian woman to steal the Blessed Sacrament.
I think what this might indicate though is the end of the present age of religious tolerance. Formerly in this country we've had a live-and-let-live attitude to religion. Atheism is a religion just like any other, which is why the National Secular Society are trying to take the Birmingham City Council to court for violating the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. (If atheism just meant not having a religion then what would the fuss be about?) The NSS are also in favour of very anti-Christian religions, such as witchcraft. Unfortunately atheism is also the most intolerant religion of all.
Personally I think atheism is just an extreme form of Protestantism. Now that the Protestant/Atheist agenda is failing, with a terrible breakdown in social order and civil society, the Atheists especially are using Christianity (and Catholicism especially) as a scapegoat.
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania, July 29 /Christian Newswire/
The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy (a national association of 600 priests & deacons) respond to the sacrilegious and blasphemous desecration of the Holy Eucharist by asking for public reparation. We ask all Catholics of Minnesota and of the entire nation to join in a day of prayer and fasting that such offenses never happen again.
We find the actions of University of Minnesota (Morris) Professor Paul Myers reprehensible, inexcusable, and unconstitutional. His flagrant display of irreverence by profaning a consecrated Host from a Catholic church goes beyond the limit of academic freedom and free speech.
The same Bill of Rights which protect freedom of speech also protect freedom of religion. The Founding Fathers did not envision a freedom FROM religion, rather a freedom OF religion. In other words, our nation's constitution protects the rights of ALL religions, not one and not just a few. Attacking the most sacred elements of a religion is not free speech anymore than would be perjury in a court or libel in a newspaper.
Lies and hate speech which incite contempt or violence are not protected under the law. Hence, inscribing Swastikas on Jewish synagogues or publicly burning copies of the Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran, especially by a faculty member of a public university, are just as heinous and just as unconstitutional. Individual freedoms are limited by the boundaries created by the inalienable rights of others. The freedom of religion means that no one has the right to attack, malign or grossly offend a faith tradition they personally do not have membership or ascribe allegiance.
The Chancellor of the University refused to reprimand or censure the teacher, who ironically is a Biology Professor. One fails to see the relevance of the desecration of a Catholic sacrament to the science of Biology. Were Myers a Professor of Theology, there would have been at least a presumption of competency to express religious opinions in a classroom. Yet, for a scientist to ridicule and show utter contempt for the most sacred and precious article of a major world religion, is inappropriate, unprofessional, unconstitutional and disingenuous.
A biologist has no business 'dissing' any religion, rather, they should be busy teaching the scientific discipline they were hired to teach. Tolerating such behavior by university officials is equally repugnant as it lends credibility to the act of religious hatred. We also pray that Professor Myers contritely repent and apologize.
The last legal form of discriminatio that is left is being Anti-Catholic. This is why the most that's most that is likely to be done is the taking off of the link on his page or what not. It's events like this that affirm that the Catholic Church is the True Church, no one gets mocked anywhere near as much as Catholics do.
That being said, Communion on the tougue wouldn't be an absolute guarentee against sacreligess such as this, but it would bring them down. As has been said previously, if someone REALLY wants to get the Host, it can be done. But Kneeling and getting up involves extra steps which can be noticed easier by the Faithful which can not be done with CITH.
If we can change the interior attitude towards the Eucharist, we can change the world and prevent much of this. I wouldn't go so far as to make sure that only known members were admitted for Communion as in the early Church, but a definate promotion of Traditional practices and devotions will help the interior belief. The exterior should always reflect the interior.
Maria Undique:
Atheism is a religion just like any other
No, atheism is simply the absence of belief in any gods. That's all it means. As the saying goes, if atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.
which is why the National Secular Society are trying to take the Birmingham City Council to court for violating the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.
I'm not familiar with UK law, but in the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that atheism is a religion as far as freedom of religion is concerned. This is purely a legal definition.
It makes sense, too: if there's a law that says that you can't discriminate against a person based on their favorite football team, then it follows that you can't discriminate against a person who doesn't watch football.
As far as I can tell from the link you gave, that's the issue in Birmingham: whether freedom of religion means you get to pick any religion you like so long as you choose one, or whether it also includes the right not to choose a religion at all.
That sacreligious communion happened in the Brompton Oratory, I recognise the pictures on the left of the sanctuary. I hope someone lets them know!
Lord Have mercy on us all!
Arensb: You can argue that atheism is *only* a reject in the belief in God.
HOWEVER, it is also easy for one to come to a conclusion that although atheists don't believe in God, they DO have a belief system that is hierarchical in morals.
I think it safe to say that if someone were to snatch Myer's wife or kids and use them for a science experiment to, oh, say, rip the flesh off their bodies and see how long it takes them to die, then he would object more than if someone did it to a pig. (Even if both were anesthetized not to feel anything.) In other words, you people claim not to believe in such things as souls (and why would a pig have more of a soul than a person -- if you follow your argument to its logical conclusion.)
But the mere fact that you WOULD complain if someone with even a less developed sense of right and wrong than you have snatched one of your relatives for purposes of "science."
(remember there's NO reason without a belief in God or some higher power to put anyone you value less than yourself on equal footing with you -- since there's no God and no afterlife)
The actions of most atheists belie what they claim to believe. I.E you DO know there is a hierarchy of values and you'd be the first to seek protection (or clamor just as much as the God believer) should someone trample on what you see as your human rights.
Your own adherence to varying degrees of natural law smoke you all out to be somewhat phoney in your assertions.
At any rate we have:
1) a bunch of BELIEVING Catholic students attending their own worship service. MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS, exercising their 1st Amendment rights.
2) An interloper NO LONGER BELIEVING former Catholic who went to Mass for purposes of obtaining a consecrated Host to show to his friend. He obtained the Host under false pretenses because all Catholics know that the Host *is* to be consumed *IMMEDIATELY.*
3) Said student keeping the Host for a week before returning. At least he came to his senses enough to return it, rather than desecrate.
and
4) A clueless, grown man who is a militant atheist who has openly admitted on his blog to trying to deliberately insult Catholics by holding their beliefs up to ridicule.
He has also
5) incited others to do anti-Catholic acts such as obtain a consecrated Host, that which he KNOWS Catholics believe to be God Himself, in order that he may denigrate It and document for all the world to see what a bigot he is.
and lastly,
6) we have you, defending what this cretin did.
Do you honestly think we are going to find your arguments the least bit convincing?
gemoftheocean:
remember there's NO reason without a belief in God or some higher power to put anyone you value less than yourself on equal footing with you -- since there's no God and no afterlife
Are you seriously saying that the only reason you do good things and refrain from doing bad things is so that you can go to heaven when you die? If that's the case, then I want you in church every day and twice on Sunday. I don't want to be anywhere near you if you ever stop believing; there's no telling what you might do.
As for me, I'll continue using empathy and reason to try as best I can to figure out how to live a good life.
deliberately insult Catholics by holding their beliefs up to ridicule.
Why shouldn't ridiculous beliefs be ridiculed? Is there a law somewhere that says you have the right not to be offended?
Also, remember that the whole Crackergate incident is a reaction to Webster Cook being assaulted for wanting to show the host to a friend.
a consecrated Host, that which he KNOWS Catholics believe to be God Himself
So? Do you refrain from eating beef because Hindus consider cows sacred? Do you refrain from worshiping Jesus because Muslims consider that blasphemous?
I'll ask you the same question I've asked above and on other fora, and which has yet to be substantially addressed: where's your evidence that a consecrated host really is a god? Or, to put it another way: if you were wrong, and a eucharist is just a piece of bread with symbolic value, how would you be able to tell?
Are you seriously saying that the only reason you do good things and refrain from doing bad things is so that you can go to heaven when you die?
No, we have discussed these questions for centuries. The question of heaven and hell is a motivation but the question of good and evil is concerned with just that - what is good and what is evil. But you have to have a basis on which to judge. "My feeling" is not enough.
Is there a law somewhere that says you have the right not to be offended?
Yes, plenty of them. The BBC works on this principle. But I disagree with it as much as you. It is not a matter of whether people are offended or not but whether what is being desecrated or attacked is itself a good or an evil thing.
As to your "evidence" question, there is plenty of evidence that miracles have occurred, that people's lives have changed for the better as a result of religious conversion, that Christians are generous to charities, that Christian principles do more to prevent AIDS etc.
But what is really important in this discussion is the first principle of how order can come from chaos, or - as Christians would say, how an ordered universe, with fundamental laws and constants, can arise from nowhere without any intelligent creator.
Tim Finigan:
Yes, plenty of them.
Really? That's surprising, since such a law would seem to be in fundamental opposition to free speech. Can you please point me to some of them?
Does that mean that this comedy bit on Radio 4 (the first thing that popped to mind when I read what you wrote) was illegal?
It is not a matter of whether people are offended or not but whether what is being desecrated or attacked is itself a good or an evil thing.
In this case, depending on how you look at it, its either a piece of bread, which is neither good nor evil; or the idea that one should believe silly things without evidence, which is at best tolerable, but certainly not good.
there is plenty of evidence that miracles have occurred
Such as...?
that people's lives have changed for the better as a result of religious conversion, that Christians are generous to charities,
You're confusing belief in a thing, with the thing itself. There is no doubt that religion can affect a person's life, often for the better. This is true for Islam, Shintoism, Scientology, Jainism, as well as your own particular brand of Christianity. But just because people's beliefs lead them to do good things does not mean that said beliefs are true.
that Christian principles do more to prevent AIDS etc.
...than what? Right now, in the United States, people are pushing "abstinence-only" sex education, which has been shown not to work, and to do nothing to prevent the spread of STDs. And in Africa, millions of people are being discouraged from using condoms, or even denied them, by Christians on religious grounds, resulting in thousands of easily-preventable AIDS cases.
But what is really important in this discussion is the first principle of how order can come from chaos, or - as Christians would say, how an ordered universe, with fundamental laws and constants, can arise from nowhere without any intelligent creator.
I smell an argument from personal incredulity: "I can't imagine how such-and-such could have happened, therefore it didn't."
In any case, a lot of work has been done on the origin of the universe by physicists and cosmologists. Have you looked into what they've found so far? If not, may I suggest Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"?
Chaos theory and complexity theory study order and chaos, and how the former arises from the latter. (Natural selection is the classical example of a mindless process producing order from randomness.) Have you looked into what these disciplines have revealed?
And at any rate, the origin of the universe isn't the central question in this discussion. Rather, it's the question of whether a consecrated host is really Jesus or not.
I propose an experiment: take 50 hosts, and consecrate 25 of them. One person mixes them up and notes which ones are consecrated and which ones aren't; she then gives them to another person, who shows them to you (or a committee, or whoever). Your task is then to identify which ones are consecrated and which ones aren't. I don't care how you do it: you can use a mass spectrometer, or pray for guidance, or flip a coin; whatever you like, short of peeking at the experimenters' notes. If you can correctly categorize 40 of the 50, I'll be impressed, since it'll constitute prima facie evidence that you're onto something, even if I don't know how you did it.
Laws against "hate crime" are framed on the basis of how people are offended. This applies to laws against racist speech which I would broadly agree with, as well as those against "religious hatred" which I would generally disagree with.
Evidence for miracles? Lourdes: medical bureau.
Traditional Catholic teaching on transubstantiation is that the substance is changed but not the appearances. So no, you could not do an experiment such as the one you suggest.
The question of the existence of God is, of course crucial. I don't agree with "God of the gaps" arguments but would rather argue "we can explain the universe - therefore there must be a God". The question is why we can explain the universe. Why should it be something capable of a scientific explanation rather than simply chaos. This is the central question that Richard Dawkins flunked in "The God Delusion".
Tim Finigan:
Evidence for miracles? Lourdes: medical bureau.
Did you mean to include a link that got mangled? What about Lourdes, and its medical bureau constitutes evidence for miracles?
Are you talking about the miraculous cures that allegedly happen there? If so, what evidence do you have that any of them were in fact miraculous, and not caused by some ordinary, albeit unknown cause? Many diseases, such as cancer, sometimes go into spontaneous remission. How have you established that this isn't the case here?
For instance, this acccount of the latest Lourdes cure recognized as a miracle by the Catholic church makes no claims beyond the fact that the woman was sick, and got better. Even if we assume that the article is entirely truthful, there is nothing there to indicate that a miracle occurred. This seems to be a classic god of the gaps: "we don't know how she was cured, so it must have been God."
Also, according to Wikipedia, 200 million people have visited the shrine in Lourdes since 1860. Assuming that only one person in a thousand went to be cured, that works out to a 67/20,000 = 0.03% remission rate. How does that compare to spontaneous remission rates among the general population?
I'm sure you're familiar with the dictum (originating with David Hume, if memory serves) that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You're claiming something more extraordinary than that the moon landings were faked, or that extraterrestrials crashed in Roswell, or even that 9/11 was an inside job. But you haven't even presented as much evidence as the proponents of those ideas have.
Traditional Catholic teaching on transubstantiation is that the substance is changed but not the appearances. So no, you could not do an experiment such as the one you suggest.
So you're saying that you can't ask Jesus whether host #39 is his flesh, and get a yes or no answer?
Besides, who cares what traditional Catholic teaching is? People make mistakes. How are you going to correct those mistakes if you don't examine people's claims and try to find errors? It seems you're just making an argument from authority.
I'll ask you the same question I asked gemoftheocean, above: if you were wrong, and a consecrated eucharist were just a piece of bread with symbolic value, and not the body of Christ, how would you be able to tell?
I don't agree with "God of the gaps" arguments but would rather argue "we can explain the universe - therefore there must be a God". The question is why we can explain the universe.
Either there are a lot of steps missing between your premise and your conclusion, or else you're making another god-of-the-gaps argument.
Anyway, your question is easily answered by the weak anthropic principle: if the universe were not ordered enough to allow for the formation of stars and planets, and the evolution of intelligent beings, there would be no intelligent beings to wonder why the universe is ordered.
ARENSB you seem to have an awful lot to say, but you are clearly not informing yourself fully on the issues you seem to be such an expert in - for example in one of your rather typically terse retorts to Fr Tim Finnigan on the AIDS issue you say '...than what? Right now, in the United States, people are pushing "abstinence-only" sex education, which has been shown not to work, and to do nothing to prevent the spread of STDs. And in Africa, millions of people are being discouraged from using condoms, or even denied them, by Christians on religious grounds, resulting in thousands of easily-preventable AIDS cases'.
I suggest you read and digest the following example of what really goes on but we hear so little about in our unbiased and fair minded NEWS media.
World's Most Successful AIDS Prevention Programme in Uganda "Sabotaged" by Western "Experts".
Western advisors used their control of international funding to force a change in direction to condoms and casual sex.
By Hilary White
KAMPALA, Uganda, July 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - While the US Senate considers a proposal to allocate US$50 million more for AIDS prevention programmes, one Ugandan expert says it will be wasted money if the attitudes of the Western AIDS prevention community towards AIDS transmission do not change. In a column appearing in the Washington Post on June 30, one of Uganda's leading AIDS prevention experts called on the Western "experts" to "Let my people go."
"We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us. Listen to African wisdom, and we will show you how to prevent AIDS."
Sam L. Ruteikara wrote in the Washington Post that efforts to maintain the world's most successful AIDS prevention programme was "sabotaged" by precisely those Western "experts" who insisted that only condoms would work.
Ruteikara is the co-chair of Uganda's National AIDS-Prevention Committee. He wrote in a column in the Washington Post on June 30, "AIDS epidemics in Africa are driven by people having sex regularly with more than one person." The Western experts, dedicated to the exclusive promotion of condoms, were incensed when Ugandan AIDS rates plummeted with this "ABC" method that left condoms as a "last resort".
The success of the Ugandan programme, Ruteikara said, did not sit well with those international experts and advisors, sent to Uganda to oversee the spending of international relief funds, who are devoted to the condom as the first and last answer to the AIDS epidemic.
Despite the official line that Western "advisors" were to work within local programmes, these experts, Ruteikara asserted, actively stonewalled the Ugandan committee's recommendations. The Western advisors objected that the programme was an attempt "to limit people's sexual freedom" and they used their control of the international funding to force a change in direction.
"Repeatedly, our 25-member prevention committee put faithfulness and abstinence into the National Strategic Plan that guides how PEPFAR [President's Emergency Plan for HIV-AIDS Relief] money for our country will be spent. Repeatedly, foreign advisers erased our recommendations. When the document draft was published, fidelity and abstinence were missing."
More insidiously, Ruteikara says that a "suspicious" statistic appeared in reports that claimed a significant increase in rates of AIDS among married couples. The claim was that 42 per cent of married couples were infected, a rate twice that of prostitutes. Repeated requests for the origin of this statistic were ignored. Domestic surveys done by Ugandan health officials found that only 6.3 per cent of married couples are infected, lower even than rates among widowed and divorced Ugandans.
Since the Ugandans were forced to change their programmes, surveys have shown that the percentage of sexually active men with multiple partners has more than doubled, undoing earlier declines, and the AIDS rate has begun to climb again.
The Ugandan success story is one of the most impressive in the fight against AIDS. Between 1989 and 1995, the number of men having three or more sexual partners in a year dropped from 15 to three per cent and HIV rates plunged from 21 percent in 1991 to 6 percent in 2002. At the same time, Western nations brought more than 2 billion condoms on Africa and the epidemic continued in nations that went along with the condoms-only approach.
The motive for opposing the Ugandan initiative, Ruteikara said, was financial as well as ideological. "In the fight against AIDS, profiteering has trumped prevention," he said. "AIDS is no longer simply a disease; it has become a multibillion-dollar industry."
Ruteikara's assertions are supported by Dr. James Chin, a former top AIDS epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, who said, "Easily preventable diseases are still killing millions of children each year, while billions of dollars are being squandered annually by AIDS programs."
Robert England, head of the charity Health Systems Workshop said in the British Medical Journal, "Although HIV causes 3.7 per cent of [worldwide] mortality, it receives 25 per cent of international health care aid."
Ruteikara concluded, "Telling men and women to keep sex sacred -- to save sex for marriage and then remain faithful -- is telling them to love one another deeply with their whole hearts. Most HIV infections in Africa are spread by sex outside of marriage: casual sex and infidelity. The solution is faithful love."
"We, the poor of Africa, remain silenced in the global dialogue. Our wisdom about our own culture is ignored."
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
UN Anger Over Uganda's Successful Abstinence Program Fuelled by Loss of Funds Says Researcher
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/oct/05101404.html
Ugandan Anti-AIDS Activist Demands UN Fire Lewis For Pushing Condoms
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05090701.html
Uganda AIDS Prevention Success Being Undermined by Infuriated UN Condom-Pushers
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/feb/05020408.html
AIDS a Glamorous Multi-Billion Dollar Industry - Sufferers Forgotten
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/aug/06081704.html ;
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arensb: Are you dumber than dirt? Is it completely over your head that we have never claimed to pick out any given wafer and tell whether it has been consecrated or not just by mere appearance?
You people set up straw men, knock them down and pat yourself on the back. Either you believe or you don't. Fine. Your call, skippy.
We just ask the common decency, which you have not as evidenced by your support for this bestiality supporting "man." We ask you to refrain from supporting those who would incite others to steal for them so they can desecrate.
Arensb, I don’t know whether anyone has actually answered your question regarding transubstantiation, which is what the ‘crux’ of the argument is about (no pun intended), or freedom of individual belief, which is the second half of the discussion.
There are three (perhaps four) ways of showing that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, these are (in no particular order) Scripture, Tradition, and the Church (that the Church is infallible and has defined it as such, notably the Orthodox Church holds the same belief for the first two proofs). Naturally the third leads into a discussion about the Church, and, ultimately God… The proof from scripture is found on many bible-Catholic websites, many of whom carry the proof from tradition as well, proof from tradition being that it was obviously believed by Christians from the earliest part of Christian history.
I cite here two websites which offer good scriptural-historical proofs:
http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/a.html
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/the_eucharist.html
I believe that the miracles that Tim is speaking about are the Eucharistic miracles, not the miracles of healing at Lourdes (a side note: belief in Lourdes is not necessary to the Catholic faith, and belief in the healing miracles thereof is not obligatory to belief in Lourdes itself). The Eucharistic miracles are those which occur when the ‘species of bread’ of a consecrated host, transforms into the species of flesh and blood. Information on those miracles can be found at the former site I listed above.
As regards the issue of ‘I don’t believe it so it doesn’t matter’, I don’t particularly feel the need to use law and hate-crimes to argue this, needless to say in the UK we have many laws that Americans find rather weird… including many the seriously curb free speech (free speech is not enshrined at all in UK law, we don’t have a constitution, I have looked for it). It is here ‘culturally’ perhaps thanks to the US.
I will use your analogy of the Voodoo doll to make my point, if a group of kids were playing with a Voodoo doll in order to make the man you speak of squirm, even if he stops believing it and the effect wares off, the kids, being kids, will likely start to pretend that the doll is one of their ‘friends’, and due to the psychology of auto-suggestion, that child, or group of children may begin to believe that that doll does in fact have an affect on them, the child using the doll may believe that he has ‘special powers’ because of what he is doing, thus even though the response is psychosomatic, it is dangerous, and any good parent would confiscate the doll!
Thus the private behaviour of the professor concerned is morally very objectionable, it is fair enough if he wants to argue about the real presence, or HIV in Africa, but to do what he did in private is a danger, even if only psychologically, to himself, and to make it public in no way helps the greater good of society, or encourages the Church and Catholics to rethink any part of their belief in the slightest, it can only therefore be, even in the eyes of any atheist (I have many atheist/agnostic friends, and many pagans too) morally reprehensible and insulting.
Concerning your statement about eating cows and Hindu’s. I personally do not eat beef if I am eating with a Hindu friend, however eating beef is a part of English culture, stabbing a host is not!
I was actually referring to the miracles that have happened at Lourdes. Very few are accepted by the Lourdes medical bureau. For those that are, the "before and after" medical records are there and can be consulted by any serious interested party.
Richard Dawkins, who proposed the "spontaneous cures" hypothesis did not bother to visit the bureau on his trip to Lourdes for the television.
Red Maria - really sorry: I'm dealing with comments in a bit of a hurry and accidentally deleted yours instead of publishing it. It was a very good comment so if you have a chance to repost even some of it, please feel free. Once again, my apologies.
Certainly Father, no problem. The thread is a bit dead now but here it is anyway.
I don't know what the point is of arensb's rehearsing some pretty pedestrian arguments against Theism. I think they're meant to demonstrate his superlative talents of logical reasoning compared to the congenital dumbness of Catholics, who really believe that a cracker is gawd and that crackers who eat these crackers every Sunday will get to live forever. Like, wackadoo stuff brother. Whatever. If they're meant as a defence of PZ Myers actions, they're, er, pretty hopeless (guess his superlative talents let him down there).
Cut away the undergraduate science flourishes and pub philosophy curlicues and his polemical technique boils down to a protacted sneer. He sneers at Catholics pointing out that Myers wouldn't do something similar to a Koran, deploying the fatuous term Fatwa Envy to describe it. He spectacularly misses the point. Catholics aren't suggesting that PZ Myers turn his malice on Moslems, they're just observing that Myers wouldn't do the same thing to a Koran. They know why he wouldn't and so does he. Big Badass Myers wouldn't dare.
Myers bills himself as a daring truthteller but he just an attention-seeking provocateur who chooses easy targets for his malice, knowing full well that the most he'll get in reaction are a few angry emails, which he drippily terms "hatemail". This is the man who declares that Catholics are over-reacting if they describe his desecration of a consecrated host as hate crimes. Not only a coward but an inconsistent one at that. This is the man who sticks a rusty nail into what he says is "just a cracker" to make a point about the stupidity of religious beliefs compared to the glories of rationalism but makes wild assertions - the RC Church has caused the deaths of thousands, or is it hundreds of thousands or even millions (the figure had been plucked out of the air) for AIDS - that he cannot hope to prove, still less tried to. He's a hyprocrite too, in other words.
Of course Roman Catholics are going to be distressed by Myers' actions. He's a spiteful little man who takes juvenile pleasure in upsetting people and is terribly excited by all the attention he's getting. Doing it in the name of Atheist Rationalism is just a cover for this. Quite unwittingly, however, Myers and to a lesser extent arensb have shown just what a mess Secularism is in. Reduced to spiteful theatrics of desecration which demonstrate nothing more than the fact that Myers has a lot of time on his hands, any well-adjusted politically conscious adult would be forgiven for asking what the hell is the point? There isn't one. People like Myers really do have nothing better to do, no radical social grievances to fight. Indeed the fact that he has expended so much energy on what he himself says is "just a cracker" rather than, say, class politics or the problems of racism in the US show just what a complacent and conservative individual he is.
arensb:
'No, atheism is simply the absence of belief in any gods. That's all it means. As the saying goes, if atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.'
'Atheism', for your information, does not mean a lack of religion, or, for that matter, a lack of religious beliefs. Abram was not an atheist before God revealed Himself to him. 'Atheism' means a belief that God does not exist. Merely not believing in God is commonly called 'agnosticism'. An agnostic is someone who is (theoretically) prepared to believe in God if he is shown some evidence - which is of course a fallacy, given that God is infinite and so would require an infinite amount of evidence for His existence to be "proved".
Atheism is of course, by definition, not based on any evidence.
No, not collecting stamps is not a hobby. But believing that stamps do not exist would be a belief, it would arguably be a religious belief (given that there's no evidence that stamps do not exist), and if one then went around trying to convince others, on the basis of one's belief, that stamps do not exist, then one would have the beginnings of the same sort of religion that clearly motivates the sorts of crazies who steal the Blessed Sacrament and desecrate Him.
I'm not familiar with UK law, but in the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that atheism is a religion as far as freedom of religion is concerned. This is purely a legal definition.
This is of course my old friend the "No True Scotsman"-fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
A: "No Scotsman puts salt on his porridge."
B: "My uncle is a Scotsman and he puts salt on his porridge."
A: "No true Scotsman puts salt on his porridge."
One might as well say that your definition is "purely for the sake of argument".
arensb: "All religions are false."
The Supreme Court: "Atheism is a religion."
arensb: "All religions as I define the term are false."
And so it goes on.
Ælfheah: in case you care, my response is
here.
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