The Atlantic: Abolish the Priesthood

The Church’s maleness and misogyny became inseparable from its structure. The conceptual underpinnings of clericalism can be laid out simply: Women were subservient to men. Laypeople were subservient to priests, who were defined as having been made “ontologically” superior by the sacrament of holy orders. Removed by celibacy from competing bonds of family and obligation, priests were slotted into a clerical hierarchy that replicated the medieval feudal order. When I became a priest, I placed my hands between the hands of the bishop ordaining me—a feudal gesture derived from the homage of a vassal to his lord. In my case, the bishop was Terence Cooke, the archbishop of New York. Following this rubric of the sacrament, I gave my loyalty to him, not to a set of principles or ideals, or even to the Church. Should we be surprised that men invited to think of themselves on such a scale of power—even as an alter Christus, “another Christ”—might get lost in a wilderness of self-centeredness? Or that they might find it hard to break from the feudal order that provides community and preferment, not to mention an elevated status the unordained will never enjoy? Or that Church law provides for the excommunication of any woman who attempts to say the Mass, but mandates no such penalty for a pedophile priest? Clericalism is self-fulfilling and self-sustaining. It thrives on secrecy, and it looks after itself. [...]

Events in subsequent months only magnified the scale of the Church’s failure. With maddening equilibrium, Pope Francis acknowledged, in response to a reporter’s question early this year, that the rape of nuns by priests and bishops remains a mostly unaddressed Catholic problem. In Africa, once AIDS became common, priests began coercing nuns into becoming sexual servants, because, as virgins, they would likely not carry the HIV virus. It was reportedly common for such priests to sponsor abortions when the nuns became pregnant. “It’s true,” Francis said calmly. “There are priests and bishops who have done that.” Nuns have come forward in India to charge priests with rape. In April, a bishop was charged with the rape and illegal confinement of a nun, whom he allegedly assaulted regularly over two years, in the southern state of Kerala. (The bishop has denied the charges.) The nun said she reported the bishop to the police only after appealing to Church authorities repeatedly—and being ignored. [...]

Pope Francis expresses “shame and sorrow” over the sexual abuse of children by priests, yet he instinctively defends perpetrators against their accusers. He has called clericalism “a perversion of the Church.” But what does he actually mean by that? He denounces the clerical culture in which abuse has found its niche but does nothing to dismantle it. In his responses, he embodies that culture. I was never surprised when his papal predecessors behaved this way—when, for instance, Cardinal Ratzinger, before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, prohibited bishops from referring cases of predator priests to civil authorities, binding them under what he called the “pontifical secret.” Even now, as a supposedly sidelined pope emeritus, Ratzinger is still defending the old order. In April he published, in a Bavarian periodical, a diatribe that was extraordinary as much for its vanity as for its ignorance. Benedict blamed sex abuse by priests on the moral laxity of the 1960s, the godlessness of contemporary culture, the existence of homosexual cliques in seminaries—and the way his own writings have been ignored. His complaint offered a barely veiled rebuttal to the pontificate of his successor, and is sure to reenergize the present pope’s right-wing critics. But alas, the pope emeritus and his allies may not have real cause for worry. That an otherwise revolutionary pope like Francis demonstrates personally the indestructibility of clericalism is the revelation. [...]

The model of potential transformation for this or any pope remains the radical post-Holocaust revision of Catholic teachings about Jews—the high point of Vatican II. The formal renunciation of the “Christ killer” slander by a solemn Church council, together with the affirmation of the integrity of Judaism, reaches far more deeply into Catholic doctrine and tradition than anything having to do with the overthrow of clericalism, whether that involves women’s ordination, married priests, or other questions of sexuality. The recasting of the Church’s relationship with the Jewish people, as I see it, was the single largest revision of Christian theology ever accomplished. The habit of Catholic (or Christian) anti-Judaism is not fully broken, but its theological justification has been expunged. Under the assertive leadership of a pope, profound change can occur, and it can occur quickly. This is what must happen now.

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The New Yorker: John Bolton on the Warpath

A former American official who worked closely with Bolton suggested that Yale had inspired Bolton’s lifelong contempt for “élites,” whom he regularly lambastes in his writing and on Fox News: “I think John looked around at Yale and said to himself, ‘This is the soft élite. They’ve always had it easy. Mommy and Daddy took care of them. These guys are weak. They’re always looking down on me.’ He has a chip on his shoulder.” His classmates went to hear Muhammad Ali speak about resisting the draft; they argued that the Black Panthers were being unfairly persecuted and inveighed against Richard Nixon. Bolton spent a summer as an intern for Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, whom he later described as “a kind and humorous man, a real Middle American.” (Agnew, after years of corruption allegations, resigned in 1973 and pleaded no contest to tax evasion.) [...]

Bolton’s immersion in the arcana of weapons of mass destruction encouraged an absolutist view. “The first thing he thinks about in the morning is protecting Americans from nuclear weapons,” Sarah Tinsley, who has worked as an aide to Bolton since the eighties, told me. In 2003, as he prepared testimony for an appearance before Congress, he described Syria’s efforts to produce nuclear and biological weapons as an urgent threat—an assessment that intelligence agencies thought was exaggerated. A bitter internal debate ensued; the accusations endangered the Syrian government’s coöperation in hunting suspected terrorists. “We were getting some of our best, if not our best, intelligence on Al Qaeda from Damascus,” Lawrence Wilkerson told me. Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State, took Bolton aside and “told him to shut up,” Wilkerson said. Before Bolton testified to Congress, much of his language was diluted. Armitage reached out to a team of intelligence officers who vetted public statements made by State Department officials, and asked them to give special scrutiny to Bolton’s. “Nothing Bolton said could leave the building until I O.K.’d it,” Thomas Fingar, who led the team at the time, told me. [...]

In March, 2005, Bush nominated Bolton to be the Ambassador to the United Nations, a move that was widely seen as an expression of contempt for the institution. Bolton had a history of deriding the U.N., once saying that if the headquarters “lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Still, Democrats in the Senate anticipated a routine hearing; they were the minority party and could do little to resist. Tony Blinken, who was the staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told me that the members began to reconsider as they examined Bolton’s work in the State Department. “We saw a pattern of Mr. Bolton trying to manipulate intelligence to justify his views,” Blinken told me. “If it had happened once, maybe. But it came up multiple times, and always it was the same underlying issue: he would stake out a position, and then, if the intelligence didn’t support it, he would try to exaggerate the intelligence and marginalize the officials who had produced it.” After several days of testimony, Senator George Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio, declared, “John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be.” [...]

Colleagues from other countries struggled to accommodate him. “On a personal basis, you can joke with him,” the Western diplomat who knows Bolton told me. Working with him was a different story: “Coöperation was possible, but very much on his conditions.” Bolton had spent decades refining an argument that multilateral institutions and international agreements often did more harm than good—that each one represented a loss of American sovereignty. “Bolton has a Hobbesian view of the universe—life is nasty, brutish, and short,” the former American official who worked with Bolton told me. “There are a lot of nasty people out there who want to do us harm. If our country’s interests align with another’s, it’s a fleeting phenomenon, and the moment our interests diverge they will sell us down the river.” Bolton doesn’t ordinarily concern himself with the internal affairs of other nations, or with trying to democratize them, the former official said: “The U.S. has values domestically, but he doesn’t give a shit about the values of others. If it advances your interests to work with another country, then do it.”

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Social Europe: Understanding the far-right populists: focus on their political message

On the contrary, to understand the rise of far-right populism we must recognise the importance of supply—the ways in which the populists themselves attempt to make their message more appealing to broader sectors of the population. The implications are of paramount importance: instead of co-opting or imitating far-right populists under the false assumption that their success simply mirrors the ‘will of the people’, we should understand how the parties themselves are shaping popular demand. At the same time, we must also recognise their weaknesses—their ideological diversity and constraining nationalism, which in many ways account for their fluctuating electoral support and difficulty in forging successful transnational alliances. [...]

What makes far-right populist parties successful is precisely their nationalist message—more specifically, the ways in which they justify the exclusion of the outgroup. This is no longer in terms of ascriptive or organic criteria (as deployed by fascist or conventional extreme-right parties) but rather is done through civic distinctions—seeking to exclude those who supposedly do not espouse ‘our’ values of democracy and tolerance. Through this civic-nationalist narrative, far-right populists normalise exclusion: they offer solutions to voters’ multiple insecurities by using a rhetoric that excludes a variety of population groups on the basis that they are a purported threat to society’s value consensus, and hence to stability and prosperity. [...]

Despite the publicity which Salvini’s new alliance has attracted, unity in the European Parliament is thus not a straightforward endeavour. Currently far-right populists are spread across three groupings—Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, European Conservatives and Reformists and Europe of Nations and Freedom—and some are unaffiliated. A number of the latter are likely to remain so because of their extremism, such as the Greek Golden Dawn, a blatantly Nazi organisation. Others belonging to the more moderate conservative groups won’t want to join Salvini’s coalition because they don’t want to be branded as far-right. Despite, therefore, the strategic necessity to unite, at core the ideologically nationalist predisposition of far-right populists makes international alliances difficult by definition. [...]

The problem is not only these parties’ electoral gains—which vary across country and time—but also the increasing consensus that to defeat them we must imitate them. This is deeply problematic. Those opposed to far-right populists need to understand this new winning formula and recognise their own ability, as well as responsibility, to frame an effective alternative political narrative, rather than sanitise the populists.

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Quartz: Given the chance to ask anything about sex, Colombian teens had three big questions

Teens in Bogotá have questions. Around 1.5 million have logged on and asked an average of three queries since the program was launched in February 2017. The platform is part of a wider initiative to combat teen pregnancy which seems to be working: in the past three years, teen pregnancy rates in the city have dropped 22.2%, with the steepest drop last year. Sexperto is in talks to roll the program out nationally, and one multilateral organization is looking at expanding it to the entire Andean region. [...]

The problem was very real. In 2015, 43 girls under 19 became mothers in Bogotá every day. The city ministry decided any program had to cross sectors, be properly funded, and be ready to deal with the backlash of a Catholic society which does not always welcome talk about sex and sexuality. Indeed, Amelia Rey, head of community health services in the Ministry of Health says Peñalosa became the target of 100 formal inquiries from opposing political parties about the city’s teen pregnancy efforts, including Sexperto, and heavily criticized for installing 300 condom vending machines in public spaces. [...]

Something is working. In 2014, the teen pregnancy rate was 16.4%; in 2018 it was 12.2%. The median age of new mothers, in that time, has moved from 22 to 23. That is clearly not all the work of Sexperto, which is part of a larger strategy which has included condom machines, the appointment of youth leaders who are trained and work with their peers, revamped sex education in 398 public schools, and increased birth control coverage. But Rey says it’s played a big role. “Sexperto.co has definitely been part of this city-wide effort and has been the ‘brand’ and novelty item we have used to speak about this important issue within the health sector and to non-health sector interest groups.”

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UnHerd: What Blairism shares with populism

I’m not going to argue that Blairism and 21st-century populism are much of a muchness. Obviously, they’re not. They represent either end of the open-versus-closed spectrum. And yet there are echoes: in their own way, the Blairites embraced patriotism (“Cool Britannia”), law and order (“tough on the causes of crime”) and a performative disrespect for the establishment (“the forces of conservatism”).[...]

The War on Terror would also derail Blairism in the UK. The micromanaging Brownite tendency of New Labour took over, leaving little room for community empowerment. Then the Financial Crisis erupted followed by the Great Recession followed by austerity. Economic matters reasserted their supremacy over social concerns and communitarianism was forgotten.[...]

What Buttigieg understands is that progressive politics absolutely depends on a shared sense of identity and values – because people don’t vote for redistributive policies that benefit people they feel no connection to. He also understands that a decline in the theory and practice of the common good opens the way for divisive identity politics and political polarisation.

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Vox: The House just passed a sweeping LGBTQ rights bill

The bill would address a remaining gap in civil rights laws: While there are already federal laws protecting people from discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and disability, there are no such federal laws explicitly protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination.

The Democratic-controlled House passed the legislation, but it faces tough odds in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans who generally oppose expanding LGBTQ rights — making the bill very unlikely to become law. [...]

Under federal and most states’ laws, LGBTQ people aren’t explicitly protected from discrimination in the workplace, housing, or public accommodations (like restaurants, hotels, and other places that serve the public).

So someone can be fired from a job, evicted from a home, or kicked out of a business just because an employer, landlord, or business owner doesn’t approve of the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. [...]

LGBTQ advocates, citing legal precedent, say that what the original laws’ authors believed or intended is irrelevant. Joshua Block, an attorney with the ACLU LGBT and HIV Project, cited a 1998 Supreme Court case, Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services Inc., in which the Court unanimously agreed that bans on sex discrimination prohibit same-sex sexual harassment. Same-sex sexual harassment was not something the authors of federal civil rights laws considered, but it’s something, the Supreme Court said, that a plain reading of the law protects.

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The Guardian: Goodbye to Gomorrah: the end of Italy's most notorious housing estate

In 2004, the tower blocks were seared into the popular imagination when a feud exploded between the ruling Di Lauro Camorra clan and a breakaway faction, the Secessionists. Their fight for control of the drug trade raged for almost a year. At its zenith it saw more than a murder per day, and more syringes per square mile in northern Naples than in all of Italy combined. [...]

But the demolition also marks the symbolic failure of Italy’s postwar dream of social housing. Built between 1965 and 1980 by the Neapolitan architect Franz di Salvo, Le Vele was meant to replace the slums and squalor of the medieval city centre. Di Salvo, inspired by Le Corbusier, was operating in the spirit of the case per tutti, or houses for everyone. The seven blocks (three have since been demolished), each to house between 210 and 240 families, were to fulfil the role of the traditional neighbourhood, with a central backbone walkway running through the heart of each tower to encourage community relations. [...]

When finished, the corridors were narrower than planned, the tower blocks closer together and the proposed transport links and social spaces non-existent. The effect was to isolate hundreds of the city’s most destitute families without access to work in a vast concrete slum. [...]

Meanwhile, in the absence of services – the maintenance company contracted to look after the blocks never showed up to do any work, and was eventually indicted for embezzling state funds – it was the Comitato that became a de facto state. It documented the residents, mediated relationships between them and helped the unemployed find work.

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The Guardian: Venezuela’s dead revolution shows the limitations of the crowd

The greatest of historical fallacies is to confuse crowds with power. Venezuela has disappeared from the headlines, because its headlines were about crowds, not about the realities of power. The trouble with crowds is that, sooner or later, they go home. The Arab spring of 2011 was about what took place in the streets of various capital cities. Crowds were reputedly drawn by the much-vaunted rallying cry of social media, but they dissolved in many places into nothingness. [...]

Mercifully, power in a democracy emanates from the ballot box. Probably the biggest crowd in London’s history, against the Iraq war of 2003, had zero impact on the elected government of Tony Blair. Today, no remain rally can reverse the 2016 referendum, just as no leave rally is entitled to claim crowd authority for a no-deal Brexit. That is the problem with crowds. They don’t do subtlety.[...]

We warm instinctively to crowds. They offer comfort and reassurance to us in our opinions. They mobilise emotion among the like-minded, and smother argument in fellow feeling. We sometimes forget that crowds can cut two ways. They can also be harnessed as an aid to leadership, as by the fascist movement, or as rabble to be suppressed as a totem of power. Maduro was able to stage an apparently sizeable rally in his own support. [...]

I believe that where the crowd can be most effective is when deployed tactically against a specific, winnable goal. In the climate change argument, local crowds in the north of England have all but stopped fracking. Anti-GM food campaigners won their war in Europe. Demonstrators against the Sackler family in New York are wrecking its reputation and cutting arts funding. Where power is shamed by publicity, it can concede ground without too much inconvenience. I would love to be a “crowd consultant”.

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The Guardian: Taiwan becomes first in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage

Lawmakers on Friday comfortably passed part of a bill that would allow gay couples to enter into “exclusive permanent unions” and apply for marriage registration with government agencies.

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who campaigned on a platform of marriage equality, tweeted after the vote: “We took a big step towards true equality, and made Taiwan a better country.” [...]

“What we have achieved is not easy,” said Victoria Hsu, the founder and executive director of the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights. “The law will not be 100% perfect, but this is a good start and this is a major step to end discrimination based on sexual orientation. Now the law says everyone should be treated equally no matter who you are, who you love.” [...]

“We hope this landmark vote will generate waves across Asia and offer a much-needed boost in the struggle for equality for LGBTI people in the region,” said Annie Huang, the acting director of Amnesty International Taiwan. “This is a moment to cherish and celebrate, but it has been a long and arduous campaign for Taiwan.”

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