Feeding The Fish

In the midst of the Anglican confudal about how much they really feel like appeasing the bigots amongst them the Catholic church lept in to demonstrate that their position was very clear: “Homosexuality is a disordered behaviour. The activity must be condemned”.

On a selfish level, I’ll confess to a little satisfaction when a religion takes an unambiguously stupid and harmful stance because it makes the argument that they’re an anachronism far easier, but that is a profoundly selfish take because it ignores the fact that the flat out evil policies and doctrine of the church make real people’s lives worse (and often shorter). Ignoring for a second the whole “condoms will kill you” thing; the Catholic Church has an official position that Homosexuality is wrong and should be condemned - They also run schools with gay children in them. Why on earth is this tolerated?

There is a problem pretty much everywhere in the British school system with homophobic bullying (I’ve always felt that terms a little misleading, it’s not so much fear as it is hate) with 2/3 of gay students reporting problem but it can’t be coincidence that in faith schools this goes up to 3/4. Whilst a leap from one high figure to another may not be that impressive an indictment it’s more worryingly that significantly fewer pupils (23%) feel able to report abuse in faith schools and it’s hard to see how doctrine like this is in any way conductive to an environment where pupils feel comfortable trusting schools to react and deal appropriately. The issue isn’t that it’s the staff are doing the bullying (although this does happen) but that they won’t step in in the same way they would with other kinds of bullying and don’t address the issue with their students. Think: Is this kind of stance more or less likely when the heads of your religion say you should be condemning these young freaks?

The Stonewall report on the matter has some examples of how this plays out outside the magical world of percentages:

“It’s a Catholic school…and we are told ‘gay people will go to hell because the Bible condemns it’… It’s horrid, you just want to go and cry at some of the remarks made by the teachers. It’s just not fair.” - Matthew, 18, single sex Catholic school (South East)

“PSHE was about AIDS – the teacher didn’t contradict that it was a ‘gay disease’ and implied what gay men did in bed was disgusting.” - Rachel, 18,independent secondary school (Greater London)

“The response from friends was supportive, but the school teachers did absolutely nothing about it.” - Paul, 16, Catholic secondary school (North West)

“As I was in a Catholic school, part of my R.E. GCSE, we had a topic about homosexuality and the Catholic church. We were basically told that being gay or bisexual isn’t a sin, but the sexual act is. Thankfully our teacher was young and pretty much only saying what she was told to say. She allowed us some debate on the subject because it seemed that she didn’t agree with the Vatican’s view even though she was a devout Catholic herself.” - Ruth, 18, Catholic Secondary School (West Midlands)

There’s some hope in that last one (and there are other quotes that show good handling of the issue by schools in the report) but it’s a tad depressing the official party line seems to be a variation on ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin” - the idea that being gay is fine, but gay acts are bad seems to pass for enlightened and kind thinking in some circles - “Well, they’re not doomed from the get-go per se, they just have to resist their sinful urges because…um…they’re sinful and our loving god will punish them for it.” And they call us the immoral ones. A theme recurring in religion is to create imaginary crimes which it can then forgive and fix (I can’t help but feel because it’s answers to real problems tend to be so deeply unsatisfiying) and that’s all this is: An imaginary crime we let our ‘moral guardians’ punish children for.

I’m a fan of Damian Thompson’s counterknowledge concept (’misinformation packaged to look like fact’) and it’s blog- I’m less of a fan of his Holy Smoke blog, if only because it’s a tad depressing to watch him skim over abuses of facts by Catholics that he’d tear apart as counterknowledge if anyone else had made them.

Case in point: He had a post the other day on the unjust ‘heckling’ of Catholic Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue (who I mentioned last week) in a select committee. Now I have no idea if it was an unjustly harsh grilling, but personally I think that someone who can say that teaching safe sex is part of a “deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids” and writes policy for sex education in schools probably should be questioned harshly. Now, I’m not really expecting high-ranking church officials to come out against their insane approach to sex education; I do ask that they don’t lie about the facts. Telling people condoms are wrong is one thing, telling them that condoms don’t work or, this can’t be brought up enough, are actually infected with HIV is another thing altogether. Its counterknowledge, pure and simple, being used to scare people who don’t know better by people who have no excuse not to know better.

In the article he also venerates Tory MP Douglas Carswell for saying that the bishop had a harsh reception:

Mr Carswell told this week’s Catholic Herald: “I think the bishop was slightly taken aback, and I felt slightly embarrassed. I give people a hard time, but only if they are on the public payroll, a recipient of public money, in the civil service or quangos – they’re fair game. But otherwise, if they’re members of civic society, they’re kind of guests. He wouldn’t have got that sort of treatment if he were an imam.”

Now, I think all people are entitled to a basic amount of respect, but Mr Carswell misses the basic point here: We’re talking about Catholic tax-payer funded schools; he IS a recipient of public money! Why wasn’t Mr Carswell giving him a hard time? Why, because he happens to be a bishop, should he not get held to account?

People who deal in counterknowledge like the ineffectiveness of condoms in preventing STDs should be chased out of anything relating to education policy, and if it were anyone other than a Catholic bishop who’s using counterknowledge to advance a moral view that Thompson happens to agree with, I’m sure he’d be leading the charge.

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And so I can get all my Catholic Church related anger out in one post (and I blame rhetorically speaking for bringing this to my attention), here’s what Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s response was to the idea of meeting with scientists so they explain their work with hybrid embryos:

” have been approached by MPs and asked by others in the media to consider meeting with leading scientists who are currently involved in this area. I would be only too happy to agree to such a meeting and I am sure other Church representatives and leaders of other faiths would also agree…….In agreeing to such a meeting my only condition would be that the scientists were also willing to accept instruction from our Churches and peoples of faith on basic morality, on what human life really is, on the purpose of our life on earth”

These scientists want to come and meet with the church leaders in the perhaps naive hope that they’re simply ill-informed rather than actively shit-stirring, and their response? Ok, sure, I’d do that; I’m a reasonable man after all! My only condition, and it’s not really a biggie, is that they acknowledge that we’re really the most moralist people EVER and defer to us in all moral judgements from now on. Note the way it’s phrased, it’s these scientists who are willing to come and explain themselves rather than the cardinal, who’s been viciously lying about what their work involves, who lack basic morality!

And to round off with some Daily Mail moralising:

The orchestrated attacks on the Roman Catholic church by ministers, scientists and medical charities have done nothing to advance the debate over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

In sneering language, they have portrayed the Church as rooted in the Dark Ages - wilfully blocking research which could help millions who suffer from such dreadful ailments as Alzheimer’s, muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s. Bishops and cardinals have been accused by fertility expert Lord Winston of lying to the public, by health minister Ben Bradshaw of being intemperate, emotive and plain wrong, and by other Labour MPs of “scaremongering”.

What, an attack on the Church? Totally unprovoked I might add? And crude as well, pointing out the other side is lying (even if they are) is just unsporting!

The Bishop of Lancaster Patrick O’Donoghue wants to start banning books critical of the faith in Catholic schools.

Asked if that applied to works by authors such as Karl Marx and Albert Camus, he told the Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee: “Suppose you went into a school and found in the library material that said the Holocaust never took place?”

That’s right, he compares books that are critical of the church to Holocaust denial. I’ll add this to my collection of Official Catholic Facts: “The Catholic Church has never done anything wrong ever. I mean if it had, it’d be in one of these books, right kids?”

If that wasn’t enough, he gives us this wisdom:

“So-called” safe sex was based on the “deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids”.

This man is responsible for schools. I don’t think I can say anything snarky enough to take the horror out of that.

MPs are investigating Catholic Schools to investigate if their approach to education is perhaps a little too driven by the church’s insane, counter-productive and murderous attitude to sex:

The move comes after a 66-page circular from the Bishop of Lancaster, Patrick O’Donoghue, instructed Catholic schools in the North-west to stop “safe sex” education and place crucifixes in every classroom.

Schools were also told not to support charities that promote or fund pro-choice policies, singling out Amnesty International – which is in favour of abortion for women who have been raped in war zones. Barry Sheerman, the Labour chairman of the committee, said there was evidence from other areas of the country of Catholic schools being told to adopt a more fundamentalist line.

In his document, Fit for Mission, Bishop O’Donoghue wrote: “The secular view on sex outside marriage, artificial contraception, sexually transmitted disease, including HIV and Aids, and abortion, may not be presented as neutral information.”

You have to admit the man talks a lot of sense. Obviously teaching “Safe Sex” is just going to lead to those poor children having pre-marital hanky-panky in classrooms (Hence the crucifixes to remind them that they are always being watched). I think it’s a completely unfair comparison where people say it’s like giving kids a gun, telling them nothing about the safety catch and trusting them not to use it. What’s that? Studies say all this approach will do is create a generation of children who have no idea what the risks are or how to prevent then but yet will have sex at some point anyway? You’ve obviously forgotten the first rule of the game, if ’secular’ science or so-called ‘facts’ contradict what the church would like to be true then that’s obviously not ‘neutral’ infomation and shouldn’t be taken in to consideration. Only Official Catholic Facts™ should be used. These include useful tips like Condoms don’t prevent AIDS and Condoms are made deliberately to kill you.

What people keep on forgetting is that so-called “Safe Sex” is an oxymoron, you may be less less likely to get pregnant (and potentially die because abortion is immoral) or catch an STD (and die) if you use a condom but in doing so you’re messing up God’s plan and putting your immortal soul in jeapody. Obviously Catholic Schools should be more concerned with these young ones’ souls than their short, pathetic moral lives. By not teaching children about this potential path to Hell, they’re doing them a favour! In fact I can exclusively reveal a future policy to stop teaching ’safe road-crossing’ so their pure, young souls can be swept into heaven before this evil world has a chance to corrupt them further.

It’s quite literally the least they can do for them.

Well that seems like a good idea!

I can see a case for independent inspectorates for schools where there is a need for different methods of education because of the special needs of the pupils. It makes sense for schools for the deaf, blind or those with learning disabilities to be vetted independently of the rest of the school system, but I don’t see why this is the case for these faith schools. Children of Muslim or Christian parents do not inherently require a different approach to education in the same way deaf children do, there is no reason faith schools shouldn’t be judged by the same body and held to the same standard as non-faith schools.

A head-teacher trying to remove the religious requirements placed on all schools has been told that it’s ‘politically impossible’. The UK has this archaic law that schools must take part in a daily act of worship of a ‘mostly Christian’ nature and when they don’t, they lose points with the Ofsted inspectors.

Is God really impressed with compulsory worship? I’m of the opinion it does a disservice to everyone. Prayer is quite literally something sacred for believers and to go through the motions of something believers find of huge importance seems to me to do a huge disservice to them. I don’t believe God exists, I don’t believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection, I deny the existence of miracles - Surely it makes every believer’s prayers hollower when I said ‘amen’?

A spokesman for the Church of England said: ‘If he is arguing for a way for individual schools to opt out of those bits of the act he does not like that is not something we would support. Either overtly or by default, this country is still a Christian one.’

We don’t want to opt out of the act; we want to CHANGE the act. These are schools with no religious charter being forced to worship when there’s no guarantee the schools or parents (let alone the pupils) agree with it, and why? Because this is a ‘Christian’ country. But who’s Christianity? Certainly not the CoE’s anymore, the Catholic Church surpassed them a little while ago. Every single religious group out there is a minority, and whilst Christians together make up 56%, that’s not a case for a ‘Christian’ country. ‘As a group we loosely share a similar set of beliefs, therefore our slim majority gives us the right to set the agenda’, really?

Dr Kelley says it quite well ‘I feel that children have a right to not having a particular point of view, they should not be promoted to a political party, nor should they to a religion. The daily act of worship is, I think, inappropriate at school.’ The political party analogue I’ve always felt is quite apt, there is a difference between learning about the Labour Party and singing ‘The Red Flag’ in assemblies. If the party in government created a law saying schools must venerate its ideals, there’d be outrage but if the established religion does the same, almost no-one seems notice.

For freedom of conscience to be preserved for all our official religion must be no religion. A secular state discriminates against no religious or not-religious group. The more political the church becomes, the better it makes the case for its disestablishment.

James Graham points out the hypocrisy of Rabbi Sacks fronting a BBC program on the virtues of a faith school with a diverse religious community, whilst at the same time opposing legislation that would force all schools to have 25% of students from outside their faith.

So, here we have a man lauding the power of faith schools to bring people together, while actively fighting legislation that would actually mean it happened. On a programme about a religious festival; some would call that politicisation. And he uses license fee payers’ money to indulge in this wanton hypocrisy. Doncha just love it?

And whilst I may like the idea of RE in theory, Philip Beadle shows us that the curriculum at the moment is hardly neutral.

The aim of this scheme of work is that children “understand that historians of science now view the conflict account as misleading”. Let me unpack this disgracefully disingenuous phrase for you: the government’s desired final outcome of religious studies teaching in British schools is that children realise there is no conflict between religious belief and the evidence of science. This is a lie, the extent of which hits the three criteria for a mortal sin: it is grave, committed in full knowledge of the sin and deliberate.

Francis Beckett shows that absolutely the last organisation to trust to run schools is the Catholic Church:

This summer, the Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien had the brass nerve to say that sex education in schools was akin to “state-sponsored sexual abuse” of children. And the Catholic Church knows a thing or two about sexual abuse of children; have a look at the dreadful story of Graham Wilmer.

Scotland has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe and yet Cardinal O’Brien sees sex education as an evil. I think it’s fairly obvious if the church is part of the problem or the solution here.

And let’s close with something from the NSS with polls saying people don’t want religious schools.

The NSS’s Executive Director, Keith Porteous Wood, said: “The Government is arguing against all the evidence. Schools based on religion are divisive, they create injustice in their admissions procedures and they cause parents to lie and cheat to get places in publicly funded schools. The academic success of church schools has been shown repeatedly to be because of their ability to select  which they do in many instances quite ruthlessly, and this is why they are popular with some parents. A poll in the latest edition of Readers’ Digest shows that the majority of parents do no agree with the existence of faith schools and yet the Government - known for its high proportion of believers - is about to create more. Parents want good schools, not religious schools.

Here’s a link to the actual report on faith schools using their ability to select.

The Catholic Church in Ireland looks set to abolish Amnesty groups in schools as a result of its recent pro-choice stance. I doubt there’s ever been such a potent example of the danger of giving religious groups the authority to impose their sometimes limited sense of morality on students. Perhaps Amnesty should start a new campaign for freedom of conscience in those schools where students are prohibited from taking part in groups that oppose the moral stance of those that run them.

What’s even more infuriating is that there are plenty of middle paths here. Amnesty operates under a campaign structure where groups can take up campaigns on choice. Very little of its activities in school are about fundraising for the general organisation, its campaigns tend to be about education on human rights issues and promoting direct action like letter writing. There is absolutely nothing stopping these schools from refraining in campaigns that conflict with their stance on abortion and still allow students to take part in some of the most important work that exists in the world today.

The Vatican has said Amnesty has “has betrayed its mission” but I think it’d be more fair to call this an example of mission creep; Amnesty’s original mission to free prisoners of conscience has over time evolved into an all pervasive human rights movement which, while laudable, inevitable bring a confrontation between those who hold the freedom for a women to choose to be a fundamental right and those who don’t.

Much as I hate the idea of this great human rights movement being held hostage by groups whose objection is grounded not in objective reason but faith based assumptions on pre-birth human nature, it must be weighed up if taking a stand on these issues is worth the lose of support for it’s core missions. For the women this helps it absolutely is, but does it harm its future effectiveness across all areas? One Amnesty’s greatest strengths is it’s authority and support from all areas of free society, by taking a stance on a subject that still brings division in our society it reduces that strength. Is this a significant hindrance? Only time will tell.

‘The government is lining up with religious groups to assert that faith schools make a positive contribution to community cohesion in England.’

Wow, that’s a scary sentence.

I’ve sat here and thought really hard about this and I’m confused, how can this possibly be true? I went to a mild faith school that certainly had a community, but was this because of its faith? The issue here isn’t that faith schools aren’t capable of brining community cohesion; they’re saying that they’re actually better at it than a secular ‘community’ school would be. I’m stumped; do communities bond more watching the nativity than any other kind of play? Does collectively closing our eyes and mumbling to a deity (especially bearing in mind how unlikely it is everyone present agrees which one) bring us closer together than actually talking to each other?

As always there’s an appeal to multiculturalism here but this is missing the point of being multicultural, surely true multiculturalism would involve making culture and religion an increasingly private affair and not an issue for the state? We’re obviously stepping away from the idea that schools should teach truth here by allowing multiple faiths in on the act; by definition a maximum of one can be right. If pressed on this, they’d probably respond that this gives everyone the opportunity to ‘find their own path to truth’, but then why I am funding someone to inflict their point of view on a child? If the religion is true surely these children would find their own way to it, is God’s message really so pitiful these days it needs the state to provide a captive audience?

There are of course practical issues, some faith schools require proofs of the child and their parents’ faith to let them in, how can that possibly be positive to community cohesion? Why should local parents have to prove to their tax funded school that they attend church x times in order to secure a good education for their child? Whilst Nick Gibb says faith schools promote ‘choice’, do they really? If there’s a choice of a few schools in an area and one requires your 11 year old child to prove they’re a practicing Christian, is that more or less choice? Faiths schools have also been known to use their ability to select on religious grounds to practice social selection by looking at parents’ marriage certificates and occupations. Some ask kids to write accounts of themselves and their home lives under the guise of examining their commitment to their faith but really this allows the schools to skim off the more articulate ones, giving the impression that faith schools have a special knack for education, when really it’s good ol’ fashioned selection.

Perhaps as worrying is what this suggests about the thinking behind it. This is the government saying that religion is essential for young people in education, an assertion I’d flat out deny. Which is more beneficial: religious teachings or being taught how to think? Which is more effective for teaching morality to a child; someone telling you one of the Ten Commandments is not to steal, or a discussion where it’s discussed exactly why stealing is wrong? Far better than imposing an authoritative morality is building up a moral framework inside the child to allow them to evaluate new situations and understand what’s right and wrong in any given circumstance. What’s more, there’s evidence for this. In schools where philosophy is taught at a young age, there are less playground fights, better behaved kids with greater confidence and self-esteem and believe it or not, children become measurably smarter than those control groups that are not taught it. This really is a no-brainer.

Nothing stops faith schools benefiting from these secular methods and I know from personal experience that not all faith schools are like Vardy’s, but I’ve still yet to find an benefit to faith in school. Religious Education may give benefits in understanding, but teaching religious morality does not when teaching philosophy does. Ignoring the actively anti-community selection methods of some schools I still can’t see how faith schools (which while being perhaps being accepting of other faiths cannot help but promote a singular faith)can be better for multi-faith communities that schools that don’t take sides and teach what can actually be known.

So the question remains: What can faith schools do better?