The Vatican Rag, or Selling Indulgences to the English

The Church of England is upset by the Pope's sneaky inivitation to English protestants to switch to catholicism. 

The bone of contention within the Anglican Church seems to be the imminent decision to allow women bishops in the Church. It may seem ridiculous to non-religious people, but the protestant drift towards common sense and common decency, still stirs emotions among the hard-liners who, this is my opinion now, are simply too scared to talk to God themselves and rather have the Pope and a few other robed celibate men to do that for them.

I was a little boy when I lived with my parents in New York in the 60-s and I am not sure if they really took me to Tom Lehrer's concerts. What I do remember clearly from those days is his Vatican Rag. Many years, scandals and a Dan Brown book, which outsells the Bible, later I would like to republish here a remastered video of Tom Lehrer performing the Vatican Rag. 

The Catholic Church has no authority to speak on moral issues

Anthony Beevor, The Battle for Spain

I was reading Anthony Beevor's mighty account of the Spanish Civil war 1936-1939 just as Pope Benedict was preaching to Americans about the value of human life and protecting children.

I respect the right of men and women to hold religious beliefs. But I reject the Church's pretension to moral authority when it clearly has none. It is not just such bygone curiosities as the Inquisition or the persecution of Jews, or the blessing of fascists during WWII, or today's responsibility for continued spread of AIDS epidemic in Africa.

The evidence is also in sheer numbers.

We often think of Spain as a Catholic country. Beevor quotes figures that show that it is far from true. The following passage refers to 1931 when the young Spanish Republic debated the first draft of the constitution.

'The Church faced an acute problem. For the first time it found itself dealing with an administration which rejected the traditional idea that the Church was synonymous with Spain. The fact that religious attendance in Spain was the lowest of any Christian country did not stop Cardinal Segura from declaring that in Spain one was 'either a Catholic, or nothing at all'. Less than 20 percent of Spain's total population went to mass. In most areas south of the Guadarrama mountains the figure was under 5 per cent. Such statistics did nothing to lessen the Church hierarchy's view, both in Spain and in Rome, that the Republic was determined to persecute it.'

And, here, a description of public atmosphere in Spain at the time:

'The fanatical mysticism of the Church provoked much of the anti-clericalism in Spain, especially the 'miracles', which in the 1930s often involved a 'red' supposedly committing a sacrilegious act and dropping dead on the spot. The novelist Ramon Sender attributed the left's vandalism against churches, such as the desecration of mummies, to the Church's obsession with the kissing of saints' bones and limbs. Anything, however ridiculous, was believed by the beatas, the black-clothed women who obeyed their priests' every word like the devotees of a cult leader. In Spain there were more psychological disorders arising from religious delusions than all other kinds. This atmosphere influenced even unbelievers in a strange way. Workers formed gruesome ideas of torture in convents, and many natural catastrophes were attributed to the Jesuits in the same way as the Church blamed Freemasons, Jews and communists.'

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
La guerre d'Espagne

Embryo Bill and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Frankenstein is often evoked in the heated debate on allowing the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos.

I have just re-read Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and was absolutely amazed to note how little thought - or none at all - the young determined scientist Victor Frankenstein had given to the moral side of his work. And not just that, but also to its practical implications.

He was driven by desire to achieve success in creating a living thing from dead elements. Whether that life would have a meaning, how it would affect him and others and, most importantly, could it be reversed, stopped or contained to laboratory walls did not even enter into his thinking - at least while he was working on the project.

Victor runs away from his creation horrified at its monstrosity - and lets him freely roam... until he is hurt by his own monster.

I think, Shelley successfully captured a deficiency in scientific attitudes. Too often scientists are so excited with a new idea and a prospect of achieving the seemingly impossible that their drive leaves out wider considerations of safety, morality and general impact.

The current row in Britain over the Government's embryo research Bill focuses on the Roman Catholic Church opposition to the Bill. Whether the Catholic Church has any authority to argue against this Bill is a different matter.

What matters, I think, is not so much the religious principle, but the 'Red Button' principle: any machinery, any new substance or medication and any new idea must have a stop mechanism.

Especially when we are dealing with living nature where what is done cannot be undone.