Thought for the day: is it time to silence BBC preachers who keep women down? | Catherine Bennett -
And welcome to the amoral maze, where our dilemma of the week is: just how insufferable does a spiritual leader have to be before he or she becomes unqualified to preach at the general public? Or to put it another way, why should the church have a monopoly on excommunication?
The question is not, emphatically, restricted to the case of the ubiquitous prelate, blogger and speaker, Giles Fraser, although with his recent blog – chastising women who fail to stay near home for the future convenience of incontinent fathers – he has done more than most to focus attention on the sort of qualities that should, ideally, distinguish a Thought for the Day contributor from, say, Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Actually, since the latter Brexit supporter is hardly less ostentatiously devout, is yet more ostentatiously fertile, is also hired by the BBC to troll its audience and believes – conclusive indicator of divine approbation – that women are designed for bottom-wiping, it seems almost unfair that he is not, like Fraser, invited to provide “reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news”.
Partly because they are subject to editorial control, and no doubt because they would like to be invited back, TFTD contributors generally refrain, in this slot, from the overtly prescriptive, preferring to agree with their own recycled platitudes: sometimes bad things happen; money can’t buy happiness; it’s good to talk. Alternatively: I saw a nice film/sky/pair of shoes recently; it put me in mind of Jesus/the Prophet/Guru Nanak.
Traditionally, the Thoughts’ most resented quality was probably, as much as mistimed sanctimony, their banality. St Giles of the Changing Mat was not alone in saving more arresting observations for newspaper articles; fellow contributor “historian and writer for the Daily Telegraph”, Tim Stanley, knows similarly when to maunder about Alan Partridge and when to declare for martyrdom. Catholics, Stanley has written, “should go on and on about abortion until they lock us up for it, which they may well do. It’s the right thing for the faith. It’s the right thing for society.” Though possibly not for reciting on the Today programme. For his part, fellow contributor chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has yet, I think, to share with Today listeners his opposition to female ordination.
Render unto the Catholic Herald, the Telegraph – or Twitter – what is unsayable to a secular audience at 12 minutes to eight on what is advertised as a news and current affairs programme.
Fraser’s latest expressions of enthusiasm for patriarchal arrangements, whether it’s his support for censorship in a girls’ faith school or tweeted nostalgia for pre-feminist times (“Don’t say stuck in the past. The past was better. Much better”), suggest that the principal problem with TFTD may be less, today, that it tests listeners’ endurance, more that its Thinkers insult their values. There was probably a time when much of his UK audience would have agreed, quite happily, with Fraser, that career women neglect their families, or with TFTD colleague, the bishop of Norwich, that marriage is for men and women only. But these, along with other cherished religious prejudices, have become ever more irreconcilable – when they are not transparently discriminatory – with evolving secular thinking, in a country where more than half have no faith.
And whatever they might have to offer on topical issues, the very source of their speaking credentials surely renders many of these clerics if not actually unworthy of popular deference, no more obviously deserving than, say, the last black-cab operative who offered you his thoughts on women drivers. Accredited Anglican speakers still derive their authority, and thus their access to diverse, BBC audiences, from a church that remains split on women’s ordination, and opposed to same sex marriages.
Catholics, when lecturing the masses on niceness, now do so between headlines about their own church’s staggering moral failures. Notwithstanding the advance of virtuous journalists and spiritual randomers from the life-coach end of the TFTD talent pool, promotion within an established faith hierarchy remains the most reliable route to freelance preaching work, whether it’s in the House of Lords, on an independent commission or in defiance of the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, on late-night news programmes.
…Sounds much more like black magic than spirituality.
(Source: theguardian.com, via merelygifted)
How to set up an anti-fascist group -
Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws -
Once again, more Scheißberg than Zuckerberg
(Source: theguardian.com, via merelygifted)
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“The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man’s world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man’s, so that they cannot both be right. People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.” — Bertrand Russell, The Art of Philosophizing (via philosophybits)
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“Also characteristic of the rational soul: Affection for its neighbors. Truthfulness. Humility. Not to place anything above itself.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
the VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970)
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Infants as young as 5 months old are being detained by ICE, groups claim -
At least nine infants younger than a year old, including one who is just 5 months old, are being held in ICE custody at a rural Texas detention center without care that’s legally required.
That’s what three immigration advocacy groups claimed in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General and Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on Thursday afternoon. The groups said there has been “an alarming increase in the number of infants” being held in ICE custody, and urged the department to “intervene immediately” at the Dilley, Texas, facility.
“We have grave concerns about the lack of specialized medical care available in Dilley for this vulnerable population,” said the letter from the three groups — the American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Catholic Immigration Network, Inc.
The advocacy groups alleged the infants have been subject to “lengthy delays in receiving medical attention and lack of appropriate follow-up treatment.” They said one infant has been detained for over 20 days.
“ICE is required to meet basic standards of care for minor non-citizens in its custody,” the letter said, citing the Supreme Court case Flores v. Reno. “It repeatedly has demonstrated an inability to do so.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email from CBS News requesting comment on the letter. The department’s Office of the Inspector General also not did immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The infants and their mothers are being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, a rural town with a population of less than 4,000 people. The facility is “located over one hour by car from San Antonio, the nearest major metropolitan center with facilities equipped to provide specialized medical services,” according to the letter.
our national shame
(Source: cbsnews.com, via merelygifted)