Subject Classification: mapdot-xg2-p9c-q3z-bioethics-of-controlling-human-maturation-[cybernetics]-[sardonic-satirical]

~CONTENTS: Terms of Reference  | Human Zoos, Taliban  | Questions young women ask  | Engineering Celibate Vocation, a GST-Cybernetics Approach | Process System Cybernetics: Defined | Sub-Process Sequence, Australian Humanist Autumn 1972 | Pandas' Lib | Remarks | Give and Take, Church and State | Quotes 'struth | Quoistian rape fantasy | Larrikin Limericks | Oh Kylie! | Submission to Senate IT Committee | Developmental Disorder Problematics | History, "Concerned" Folk Fear Change | toxic zoos | I Told Them So in 1971 | Pandas' Complaint | The Invisible Pink Unicorn | The Exorcist "Possession" | Spirituality Masquerade |
Conclusions: "Celibate" AND "Abuse" after Revisiting May Day 2002 | Petition to Pope 1973 | Envoy |  
Postscripts:   Church School Goes Hetero;   "Apology" Church Zoo-Keepers;   Church Sexual Abuse was Systemic;   Child Sexual Abuse in Decline;   Exploiting Sexual or Maternal IRMs;   bioethical judgment;   Pope Feels Sad;   Seminarians with Altar Boys;   In the Name of Science;   Helping Them Grow;   Past Tense;   Future Challenges  | (for soapbox8.htm) Terms of Reference
Discussion Paper: You can download Celibate_Bioethics.pdf(159Kb) version for A4 pages from this link

Animal Husbandry in Human Zoos
They called themselves "good shepherds",
yet they mucked-up sex-life and morals

I'm for discussion from diverse viewpoints, for democratic action and for checks and balances. A case in point are Taliban. I have been sent an email chain letter (28/9/01) which reports many instances of oppression against women by these religious extremists -- although unsourced, the stories were consistent with newspaper reports. I submit that Taliban behaviour is an example of "bad animal husbandry" which should worry those in Australia who have similar responsibilities to train young humans -- and who have to make value judgements to manage and control maturation processes for "higher" purposes.

[ The author of Veiled Courage, Cheryl Benard, was interviewed on Book Talk (National Radio, 22/6/02). Her report of Taliban behaviour is consistent with the chain letter; her theory of the consequences of Taliban boy-rearing practices is consistent with my theory. See also: Terror in the Name of God, Jessica Stern; A Fury for God, Malise Ruthven; "The Age of Horrorism", Martin Amis, The Guardian (However, the phenomenon of home-grown suicide-murderer jihadis points to more than one path for their formation and recruitment).]

Maybe those tragic hard-core Taliban lads are the outcome of a repressive clerical-managed schooling, and angry economic and sexual frustration. Moreover, many were displaced persons, including war orphans, raised in refugee camps and madrasahs in Pakistan. Are they co-educationally deprived? Do they hate women, or just fear them?

One is reminded of Fred Schepsi's sympathetic film, The Devil's Playground and Peter Mullan's, harsh The Magdalene Sisters; and of some Christian Brothers and some Sisters of the Good Shepherd back in the fifties. Hypothesis: Statistically, is there a "Haitch Factor" causal pathway from past social history? [Was the Archdiocese of Boston such a case? See: Boston Globe. Boston is an official "sister-city" of Melbourne.] To put it moderately crudely, did traditional Irish religious orders frequently pervert the sexuality of the young? For good or ill is there Australian legacy? Appreciating Irish heritage to be richer than that co-opted by religion. And admiring the Irish Tiger's plans for a high-tech future.


Sold from Church Pamphlet Rack, Brunswick, Australia

In a Catholic Truth Society of Ireland pamphlet, the girls own: Questions young women ask, 1967, Thomas Finnegan, a priest and specialist in conducting retreats for teenagers, cites:-

  • Into Their Company "Dedicating oneself to God doesn't mean killing off the mother instinct and the home-making instinct and starving one's heart ... Your Maker is your husband."
  • Pope Pius XII "Every woman is made to be a mother; a mother in the physical sense, or in the more spiritual ... but not less real sense."
  • A photo of a smiling white nun clasping a black infant to her bosom illustrates the "vocation to be a nun".
Nevertheless, Fr Finnegan explains, "passionate kissing and embracing ... is a mortal sin for an unmarried girl", because it "stimulates the powers of generation".

FRIAR LAURENCE: Each part, deprived of subtle government
Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death --Romeo and Juliet

Was there an ancient tradition for pastoral patriarchs and warlords to exploit women and children like cattle, which is now dysfunctional in the post-industrial age? Is there a conflict between rural peasant and city bourgeois aspiration? Do fundamentalists reduce faith to good versus evil; are they still in a struggle with modernism, while the world has gone "post-modern"?

An archbishop of Brisbane, like a Taliban or Wahhabi mullah, would see himself as having noble intentions. Crozier in hand, he could represent himself as a "good shepherd" serving "Higher Purposes" -- purposes, which might violate the rights of the "sheep". However, without wishing to throw out all clerics with the bath water, we must subject social or biological control practices to public, scientific and sceptical scrutiny. At least religious bullying should be kept on the bioethical agenda. Should the burqua, foot-binding, or genital mutilation -- or honour-killings of sisters thought to have had sexual relations before, or outside, marriage -- be excused to protect culture-specific family-values? Or trading-in-women-values? Should women, who have babies out of wedlock, be stoned to death? Should adults be prevented from falling in love and choosing to marry-out? Is use, abuse or exploitation, commonsense?

The Winds of Change have been blowing through the theology colleges and are now inspiring congregations in the main churches, and active Christians in society and politics. Bugger-you-Jack-I'm-Saved, prosperity preachers, with sexual obsessions are loosing support. Jesus and other prophets in the Bible had more to say about poverty and love.

Clergy, including mullahs, in prophetic mode, are treasured reminders to civil society to wrestle with moral questions. Dangerously, dogmatic religion claims exclusive power to interpret scripture or what is pleasing to God, then to pontificate. On the other hand, mainstream churches, these days, seem to speak more in terms of ethics and "socially responsible morality" than of "sin" and disobedience -- that piety is insufficient to serve justice. (This was examined in Plato's Euthyphro. Compare to Abraham's obedience (Ge 22:2) ) A healthy community needs checks and balances -- responding to moderated scientific change and valid feedback. Governance is cybernetic.



Engineering Celibate Vocation: A Cybernetics Approach

Evolution has equipped the human animal with an integrated network of organs, response systems and behaviour patterns, which determine what can be learned and at which stages of the life cycle. When shielded from appropriate input in "human zoos", is there a greater risk of biological disorientation, malimprinting, fetishism and displacement activity? Ironically, that would inadvertently thwart, distort or abort life processes. There is a clinical opinion that childhood trauma can retard brain-growth or cause "borderline personality disorder". It would be scandalously tragic if a harsh and abusive religious training turned the immature into so-designated "perverts", or unhappy victims of "saintly" mortification of the flesh, self-harm, obsession and compulsion, then punished them for it. What would Critical Path Analysis suggest, in respect of the con-sequence of life-cycle and maturational sub-processes, or of "windows of opportunity" and "just-in-time"?

General Systems Theory might help an understanding of the problematic and aid any proposed Commission into Sexual Abuse, Use, Exploitation or Such. In 1974, I submitted this thought to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships. The Most Reverend Felix Arnott, Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, was the commissioner to whom I made a presentation. Archbishop Arnott was noted for inter-church dialogue, so would have been politic to avoid threatening disclosure, there being reactionary moral panic with behind-the-scenes diplomacy. With greater community education, openness and maturity, is the time now ripe to revisit?

Is this a challenge to illiberal-wing Christians; or to Vatican teaching on "intrinsically disordered" acts, including contraception, masturbation, homosexual and pre-marital acts [see: Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Vatican City 1975; also Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons, same author, 2003]; or to the right-to-life, anti-abortion, camp? Does openness seem a threat to the "Purple Economy", the avoidance of tax by churches and charities, and the attracting of gifts, raffle-ticket sales, bequests and grants? In this context, are "religious formation" and indoctrination biotechnological industrial processes with hazards?

An ex-seminarian member of parliament asserted that experimenting on embryonic stem cells is pursuing knowledge “by wrong and unworthy means”; could it be that the means of procuring celibate vocations at another stage of the life-cycle can be “wrong and unworthy”? Is it biosemiotically "disordered" for missionaries to separate the young human animal from its kin and aboriginal culture (say), for its own good, and to gratify displaced maternal drives? Hare Krishnas developed gurukulas (boarding schools) for child-parent detachment.

Could they upgrade their paradigm to a more holistic meaning of "human life", and love? For those theologians who employ the "essentially disordered" formula to human behaviour, I submit that a cybernetics approach is similar but more scientific. But beyond our observation, figuratively speaking, Mother Nature has purposes, processes and systems unappreciated by us; however, it's delusional to personify and ascribe intentionality to "her".

All very paradoxical... One has to laugh, perhaps sardonically... The joke's on me... I once had occasion to form the opinion that there was natural aetiology for randy religious vocation. That it can be artificially induced. "Oh, how could I ever marry, feeling about Him as I do!" "The Language of Love is the only way to speak about Him!"

Ancient world myths had gods who became sexually aroused, then copulated with humans; the Bible (Ge 6:4) has a story of angels who interbred with human females and begat giants. Superstition of the Dark Age told of the incubus and the succubus; as the Space Age of alien abduction. Whether or not Jesus or God becomes physically aroused should be a problem for theologians -- or whether the Brides of Christ cultus is a blasphemy, or in Vatican terms is an "essentially disordered" sexual perversion? Wendy Bacon bravely proclaimed thus; the art of the cartoonist can better illustrate this -- self-censorship prevents me from telling where I found an example on the Web.

One could suspect the suicide-martyrdom Islamist cultus is confused displaced biological behavior: the indignity of rejection by females, better educated for the economy; the repressed homosexual gun-fetish; the penetrative dive of the fuel-ejaculating airliner; the fantasy of the ultimate orgasm; the email plea of a suicide-bomber underling “to marry as soon as possible”! The kinky promise of virgins in Paradise. A "Higher Calling"?

[Professional Australian peace-keeping soldiers, men and women of the SAS in Afghanistan, are tolerant of local customs. There are world-wide reports in many reputable newspapers of gay celebrations, relationships and also of boy-paedophilia by tribal war-lords. In the, gender-segregated, human zoo of patriarchal Afghanistan "a lot of men.. have the same philosophy as ancient Greeks: 'a woman for babies, a man for pleasure'."(Chris Stephen The Scotsman Edinburgh, 24/05/02). One imagines: a male suicide-bomber is rewarded in Paradise with seven virgins; a female suicide-bomber rewarded by producing many sons as favourite to a tribal war-lord? Oh, Divine Comedy]

Perhaps time removes causes and explanations? I don't foresee "the clash of civilizations", but the development of a variety of democratic states in a global information era. And when will mainstream Aussie Muslim sub-communities feel secure enough to participate in creative give-and-take? Then will Melbournians work towards an even more educated, tolerant metropolis -- in a spirit as of Moorish Córdoba.

Through the ages there have been different game-strategies for maintaining the gene-pool and rearing the next generation -- think of the Spartans -- think of the Seraglio. Are males becoming redundant? Is civilization "artificial"? It may be utilitarian, yet, in my opinion, both celibate and other queer love, when not destructive and reclaimed with pride, can satisfy the needs of the individual and serve civilization -- and even help evolve and maintain the human gene-pool. Maiden aunts, like auxiliary birds and worker bees, protect young relatives with passion. Maybe the label "sexuality" could be deconstructed: Mother Nature evolves diverse functions for "it" other than for combining male and female gametes to the maximum quantity. My perspective is technological (PDF, 188Kb), co-operative evolutionist humanist. I ask, are there improved methods? I submit that cybernetics can yield insight also for other world views and value priorities, such as for creationist intelligent design, papist Humanae Vitae, "social prosthetics" or even post-human performance art.

Bill Helem

A Definition of "Process": "a flow of interrelated events moving toward some goal, purpose, or end."

A Definition of "System": "a particular linking of components which has a facilitating effect, or an intended facilitating effect, on the carrying out of a process."

Wendell French, A Process-Systems Approach to Personnel Management (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1964) pp. 45-46.

A Definition of "Cybernetics": "Science concerned with how systems organize, regulate, and reproduce themselves, and also how they evolve and learn."

Hutchinson Encyclopedia 2002 CD

A Definition of "Biosemiotics": "An interdisciplinary science that studies communication and signification in living systems."

Alexi Sharov 1998

A Definition of "Malimprinted": "(of an animal or person) suffering from a defect in the behavioural process of imprinting, resulting in attraction to members of other species, fetishism, etc.."

The Collins English Dictionary, wordreference.com

A Definition of "Biotechnology": "The exploitation of biological processes for industrial and other purposes..."

New Oxford Dictionary of English CD

Quote "Human Zoo": "The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo." The Human Zoo Introduction, Desmond Morris


Sub-Process Sequence by Bill Helem The Australian Humanist Autumn 1972

Beatrice Faust ( The Australian Humanist Summer 1972) pointed out that Gebhard with the Kinsey team found three factors frequent in the histories of male homosexuals: early physical development; adolescent segregation; and introduction to homosexual activity by an adult. [ The study was confined to sex offenders in prison and may not be reliable.]

These are what one would expect if one adopts a cybernetics-systems approach to the natural process of socio-sexual maturation: at different stages in the program, systems are “go” for relating inter-personally, for orienting heterosexually, and for pair-bonding (i.e. falling in love).

Of course, with humans, culture, and social conditioning and expectation are important components - - or integrated sub-systems.

When deprived of the right opportunity, or when fed incorrect information, there is the risk of malimprinting, inappropriate bond-formation and sometimes “hang-up” [dysphoria] compounded through ignorance, fear, superstition, guilt and repression.

With early physical development - - and puberty comes earlier these days - - and with prolonged schooling cut off from the real world, the period of risk may become extended. As ever the oppressed and gullible are susceptible to being manipulated, this way or that, by such vested interests as of commerce, ideology or religion.

Therefore coeducational deprivation, both at school and extramurally, may have its dangers. These are in addition to the desirability of learning to live and work together as people free from sexist chauvinism.

Pandas’ Liberation has for a year now [ since 1970 ] been clownish by encouraging many people to think about segregation - - including sexual segregation in celibate-run schools and institutions. For the irreversibly uptight or malimprinted has been provided the face-saving rationalization that Pandas’ Lib. Is prankdom or crankdom.

Pandas’ Liberation - - stated broadly and briefly - - is a struggle of moral persuasion for social and sexual integration against class and sexist apartheid to remove the walls of human zoos - - after the celebrated case of Chi-Chi the malimprinted panda at London Zoo, who became fixed in “Higher Love” upon human beings!

- - Bill Helem The Australian Humanist Autumn 1972

[Remarks: **Homosexual activists like to claim that orientation is fixed at an early stage; they may be correct, a cybernetics-systems model suggests orientation could occur at any time before pair-bonding -- not necessarily just-in-time. **Some sub-processes may be concurrent, rather than in linear sequence. **If a configuration of genes is associated with sexual preference, it might be associated with "spiritual sensitivity" or fetish susceptibility or hair-triggered response system / IRM or biological clock difference from age-segregated peers. Try: vmat2. **No instrument has been devised, or human organ discovered, to detect supernatural "vibes". Try: meditator brain imaging. **If "sexuality formation" is relatively fluid... **If some young ladies can be recruited for "Jesus-Preference", could similar be recruited for Lesbian-Preference? At sensitive or critical stages of maturation? **If not critical, can homosexual preference be changed through artificial processing? Would "reparative therapy" require that "prescribed straightness" be fetishism? **One wonders if, and how, prehistory ancestors segregated: paleo-psychology?]


Give and Take: Church and State
    by Bill Helem, Eureka Street May 2000

The Pope showed moral courage to admit the church makes mistakes.

It would be difficult to quantify -- in Purgatory Units, say -- the suffering caused by the church, or compute whether it has done more good than harm throughout history, or balance this against deeds of its rivals. Yet here we all are, and can say: thank you, for the good stuff the church has given the civilisation we share.

As citizens, we can hope churches will co-operate to change the human condition for a better future. Organised religions, like other agents, do function for the public good, such as for welfare, health or education. In this era of outsourcing and public funding, does it matter if the cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice? It does require transparency, scrutiny, dialogue and the occasional "sorry".

Neil Ormerod (Eureka Street, March 2000) discusses whether government funding for job-search programs will silence the church on government policy or compromise the church's mission. I hope not; I hope there will be creative synthesis.

In an integrated multicultural society, sub-communities need space to flourish. However, Australians outside the Catholic community are reciprocally concerned for what goes on in the church. And funding isn't government money, or even tax-payers' money: it's voters' money. Church institutions are accountable to the public.

So, welcome to the give-and-take of fallible civil society!

Bill Helem, Eureka Street May 2000 p. 8


SOME QUOTES TO SUPPORT THE PANDAS' LIB. THEORY
(THAT THE COEDUCATIONALLY DEPRIVED AND SEGREGATED ARE AT RISK OF SEXUAL DISORIENTATION, LOVE-BOND CONFUSION AND DISPLACED MATING BEHAVIOUR LEADING TO A GROSS EXPLOITATION)

[This gross header was on leaflet handed out uninvited at Melb.Town Hall public meet run by “Human Life Foundation”, where a drunk threatened to kill me, a superintendent of police asked me to move on and a group from Women's Electoral Lobby complimented me. Seated next to a row of nuns, I heckled, "Fertilisation is nature! Conception is myth!". The speaker, using slides to prove the "moment of conception" retorted, "...Where did you come from!".]

". . . She inflicted cruel sufferings on herself. . ."
Margaret herself was eighteen, her mother looked forward to a good marriage for her. It was a new trial of a different kind. The love of pleasure, so long suppressed, revealed itself once more. The world began to smile on Margaret, and she quickly responded. She began to pay more attention to dress. She mixed more in society. Eligible young men were encouraged to come to the Alacoque house. The girl felt she was being unfaithful to God's call and a struggle raged in her soul. She had made a vow of chastity; but then she had not understood what she was doing. She had desired to become a nun; but now she felt that she could not persevere. True, she had made a promise to the Blessed Virgin during her illness, but her mother was ill now and wanted her to settle in the world. Could she break her mother's heart? Then she tried to compromise. She increased her mortifications, but at the same time she did not give up the round of pleasure. She inflicted cruel sufferings on herself, but she would not give Our Lord what He wanted. His grace pursued her, however, and just when she seemed likely to yield to her mother's wishes, and agree to be married, He spoke so strongly to her one day after Communion, representing how unworthy it would be if, after all His favours, she would turn her back on Him and give herself to another, that she was finally conquered. It was like the snapping of a chain, like the dawning of the day after a troubled night. [see, "self harm"]
". . . she gives her young heart to Him. . ."
The story of the struggle between God and the world in the heart of St Margaret Mary during the early part of her life has its counterpart in the heart of many a young girl at the present time here in our own country. God is near her in childhood, and she gives her young heart to Him. She passes to a convent school, and opportunities for frequent Communion lead to a more intimate friendship with Our Lord. Vacations sometimes bring forgetfulness and carelessness, but Our Lord wins her heart once more to Himself. Fifteen or sixteen comes, and the beauty and worth of a religious life make a strong appeal. She becomes conscious, with a little surprise and perhaps fear, that she has a vocation, that Our Lord is calling her to follow Him. But the dangerous years are at hand She begins to feel more strongly the attraction of pleasure and amusement. Admiration and flattery bring new and exhilarating sensations. The Voice of God is not heard so clearly. . . Intercourse with the world does the rest.

-- From a pamphlet St Margaret Mary Rev. H. A. Johnston, S. J., Australian Catholic Truth Society

". . . a prisoner of your love. . ."
Guileless novices throughout Christendom are perving over Quoistian rape fantasy:-
" Lord you seized me and I could not resist you. I ran. . . you followed me. . . I struggled. You won. Here I am, Lord, out of breath, no fight Left in me, and I've said "yes" almost unwillingly. I stand there trembling. . . defeated. . . Your look of love fell on me. In a moment you conquered me. . . the fire of your love. . . You are there close to me. . . I work. . . Your loving gaze. Suddenly you seize me as the lover clasps his beloved in his arms. . . I am helpless. . . I hold my breath, the world fades away, you suspend time. I wish that these minutes were hours. . . When you withdraw, leaving me afire and overwhelmed with profound joy, You have reached new depths in me, The wound has widened and I am more than ever a prisoner of your love."

-- From "Lord, you have seized me" Prayers of Life by Abbé Michel Quoist, Nihil Obstat

Guileless brothers throughout Christendom are perving over Quoistian S-M fantasy:-
" I have been stretching my hand towards this young crushed brother. Eagerly he seizes that hand, caresses it, kisses it. . . I know his secret. . . I wanted him. . . To give it to me to bear with him. . . I want to draw him gently closer, he backs away. . . Lord, he hurts me. . . We both suffer. . . He did not cry, but I wiped off big drops of perspiration beading his forehead."

-- From "The Delinquent" Prayers of Life by Abbé Michel Quoist, Nihil Obstat [Delinquent juvenile? Delinquent priest?]

Permissive Society: The Director of the Catholic Central Library Book Shop, John Phillips, S. J., told me it was "channelling sex drives for higher purposes". Fr Phillips, Jesuit lecturer in "moral theology", had been a letters to the editor advocate of the general theory that sexual opportunity is directly related to national decline, as it was -- he claimed -- to the fall of ancient Rome, and to Swedish suicides.

Larrikin Limericks



A confused old mullah of Blight,

Whose regard for women was slight,

Said, "Co-education

Would ruin the nation."

Said that Taliban chap of Blight.



A celibate hierarchy of Cant,

Whose experience with women was scant,

Said, "Co-education

Would ruin the nation."

Said those closet homos of Cant.



A growing young lad called Mike

Was aroused by riding his bike.

His confessor said: "Peddle faster.

You'll be seized by your Master.

And be loved by your Lord on your bike!"

[ Paraphrase of notes to "Lord, you have seized me" by Michel Quoist -- "known for his work as chaplain to .. youth clubs .. around Le Havre".]



A girl at the Genazzan Zoo

Did all she was told to do

'Til they said, "Be a nun!".

She snorted, "Like fun!!

I seek real love!" Then she shot through.

[ Written and read over radio, 1976. More elaborate, a former-pupil of Genazzano FCJ College, Kew, has now written her memoir God’s Callgirl: one woman’s life journey from convent to sex worker, 2004]



Malvern Star Struck -- Parody of Erotic Devotional Literature

Oh Kylie! Yes! Yes!

I was on my bike listening to your MP3.

Suddenly you seized me.

Overcome with such sweetness, I had to dismount.

Ravished.

Why choose me? I'm not worthy.

Big, bold, Kylie,

Imprinted on you; bonded forever.

Joy! Joy! Tears of joy!

["Lord Jesus" or "Madonna" can replace Kylie Minogue to suit your predisposition or church-induced spiritual preference. ]



Pandas' Complaint -- Ottava Rima

A loving bond is formed for babe and dam,

  As they imprint through nursling and suckling;

But sure, natural response systems jam,

  When maternal balloon adopts a duckling.

Girl boy, bride mate, relate like ewe to ram

  By respectively mixling and phuckling;

Meanwhile, the randy nuns in convent-zoo

Obediently lust for their "Love So True".

[ Dedicated to a suppressed mystical text by Wendy Bacon. ]



"Haitch" Factor | | | Stolen Generators

Free-ranged humans
need not
too harshly judge
the obsessions of
battery-reared
Senators

| | Christian Brothers and Taliban
| | Whack! Whack!
| | Miserable boys
| | for talking to girls
| | Whack! Whack!
| | Aversion treatment

| | | White brides stolen
| | | once mothered
| | | in mission dormitories
| | | black children stolen
| | | They grieve
| | | in tragic shame



| | | | | | Research and Development
| | | | | | Your taxes at work
| | | | | | in AI Laboratory
| | | | | | for manufacture of
| | | | | | Cyborg Nuns
| | | | | | synchronized for group joy

Malicious old men
rewire the
immature brains of
stroppy young males
awash with
angry hormones

Bill Helem
Revisiting a little campaign I ran back in the 1960s
"I told you so!!" "Pandas' Liberation"


Randy Religious Fantasy Online: a Bio-Ethical Problem?

Submission to the Senate Select Committee on Information Technologies (April 1999) -- Now Public Domain

I accessed the bulletin board Good News Australia. It was an online tract propagating a message "about God's plan for this earth". It rules who is, and who is not, "saved", and asks sixty-five thought-provoking questions, including: "Is the Bible total truth?"; "Do souls burn forever in Hell?"; "Is evolution fact and right?"; "Is the Catholic 'faith' and religion right?"; "Does Christ accept Lodges?"; "Is 'Allah' God?". The response permitted can only be a simple "Y" or "N". It also condemns homosecksuality. I don't agree with the dogma, but applaud this project and would defend system operator Ken Walker's right to free speech. Though wouldn't it be ironic if religious practice causes homosecksuality, then makes it sinful.

I ask: Could a regulatory framework for online services ban fundamentalist opinions from public, because childish adults find them offensive? Could bigotry be driven into separatist ghettos by thought police? Or should government legislate to filter out the idea that the earth orbits the sun, or protect us from the theory of evolution. Burn the books!

On the other hand, I speculate: Could religions with non-text-based artistic traditions exploit broadband multi-media for devotional purposes? Into the flight simulator cockpit! On with the virtual reality helmet! Be ravished by a phantom errotik Lord Jesus experience! Perhaps churches might artificially orient adolescent secksuality for Higher Love. Old-fashioned, repressive, zoo-like church schools did this, yet sublimation enriched our civilisation, through missionaries, empire builders and celibates "called" by God. However, there may have been some unintended spin-off: displacement activity, fetishism or biological confusions, even leading to secksual abuses, or to beneficial comedic and magnificent obsessions of Germaine Greer's generation. Maybe the deontological Senator Harradines of our nation should investigate scientifically if church institutions and schools have resulted in fewer, or more, cases of "intrinsically disordered behavior", to use Vatican-speak. That tradition is a treasured part of our nation and civilization; it is appropriate in a civil democratic society that both achievements and mistakes of good-citizen, nongovernment, agencies be transparent to public scrutiny. Discuss on www. Forgive clergy after their public "sorries", then trust them with public money. When clucky white missionaries take brown babies from kin, is it charity or displaced animal behaviour?

The human animal is reared neither in a perfect Garden of Eden nor in the "natural" environment in which it evolved. We are civilized! We have to live in "human zoos", which should be designed to be reasonably natural habitats. So we must continue to experiment and evolve and adapt to new technology. Consider the human organism an integrated network of subsystems in on-going process! As a good shepherd, draw a flowchart to process young ladies into nuns. [7nuns:2priests:1brother, according to a 1960's almanac] [Update(2002): 15nuns:7priests:1brother:51non-professed/lay-workers] [It has been reported that in 2008 the total members of religious orders has dipped below one million]

Developmental Disorder Problematics

Will the Divine, somehow "in a wonderful way", intervene supernaturally on the Internet and thence in the human life cycle? Does the metaphysical notion "moment of conception" require a Special Act of Creation, and the "moment of death" an Act of God? As I see it, the fertilization of ova is a flow of events -- not a discrete point in time -- it merges with other sub-processes for reproduction and the maintenance of society. Mother Nature has no fixed labels for aspects of the innate ongoing processes and behaviour patterns our culture calls "secksual" or "maternal"; system parts can be multi-functional. Natural? Supernatural? Artificial? Good or bad? Is the problematic one of systems-process theory (PERT), GST/cybernetics (feedback), biology (evolution), bio-ethics (social responsibility), theology (tabu, sin and piety), ethology (mal-imprinting), psychology/sexology (paraphilia) or sociology (power)? Each approach has merits and limitations. Who gains from managed input of messages? Is the relationship exploitation, or win-win justice? Is love relative to paradigm? Is tap-dance or track-athletics, disorderly movement behaviour? Deconstruct..

These thoughts originated from pondering the phenomenon of artificially induced randy religious vocation. The camp against abortion and contraception has its own techniques of aborting, distorting or mutilating the life cycle. General Systems Theory (GST) and critical path analysis yield paradoxes. However, I don't seek absolute answers; the clownish laughter is sardonic. [ If Jesus seems a more satisfactory bridegroom, the joke's on me. "How could I ever marry, feeling about Him as I do?" As Fr Walter Silvester, Pallottine recruiter of missionaries to care for aborigines, seductively gushed: "I look forward to this time and reality where all lovers are one in the never-ending and all-embracing vital love affair with the Infinite Lover."]

"Concerned" Folk Fear Tech Change; Who Benefits?

Many well-meaning citizens feel "concerned" about change and the future. The Jews of Jerusalem were "concerned" about Hellenistic statues and the Olympics following Alexander's conquests. Roman masters were "concerned" when Christian slaves taught each other to read and write. Some iconoclast factions of Byzantium were "concerned" about religious paintings. Clerics were "concerned" about translating the Bible into vulgar languages and later about literacy and printing. Yet glorious cathedrals manifest the multi-media technology of their age, although of "concern" to opponents of lurid graven images. Ban from electronic transmission secksually implicit nihil obstat devotional fantasy, such as Lord, you have seized me by Michel Quoist? Oh, no! So, why withhold from the laity the mystic text of Wendy Bacon? Bad taste? Or permit whatever turns you on -- spiritually? Is there a genetic predisposition, or sense organ, for supernatural joy? Is a holy spirit a factor for evolution?

Information systems can be designed and managed to exclude and control the information poor. Will gatekeeper tools to censor "undesirable" material be used to enrich media barons, and transnational corporations, and help turn a creative country into a banana republic of rich and poor? Totalitarian or liberal IT? Ruling-class or democratic IT? I recall how they shut down the ABC community access radio station, 3ZZ, in fear of dissident opinions, such as mine.

Respectfully Submitted: Bill Helem

A Fine Specimen: Germaine Greer failed to adapt to life in the "toxic zoo" of Celebrity Big Brother. Civilisation requires that humans mature and live in human zoos, some of which are greater violators of species dignity than others. Greer is a magnificent animal, reared in Australian 1940s-1950s zoos, under a different "animal husbandry". --Bill Helem, Pascoe Vale (Letters The Age 17/01/05)
Recruitment and Mortification in Religious Orders: "The Committee received evidence from people who had entered religious orders as young people aged 14 or 15 years. Some had entered orders straight from school or after attending religious institutions such as schools or hostels. Their graphic stories of a harsh and repressive regime that destroyed self-esteem, typically through humiliation, and the longer term impact on their lives, often after much traumatic struggle to leave the order, provide another perspective into institutional care." (Australian Senate Community Affairs References Committee Protecting vulnerable children: A national challenge second report on the inquiry into children in institutional or out-of-home care, March 2005)
Mortification of the Flesh: "Josemaría Escrivá [Opus Dei founder] practiced self-flagellation and encouraged all Opus Dei members to follow his lead. It is said that the walls of his private bathroom were speckled with blood from his almost daily mortification... Members wear a cilice for two hours a day and beat themselves on the back and buttocks once a week." (The real history behind The Da Vinci Code, Sharan Newman 2004) [see, "self-harm"]

Church Causes Sexual Confusion: I Told Them So in 1971
    in The Australian Humanist, Dec 1973

I submit that the same traditional attitudes and practices of Catholic education which have tended to induce celibate "vocations", might have also led to other forms of confused sexuality and hang-ups which they now try to inflict on the whole community."Vocation" is depicted as a call from a god who has chosen young people to become "His" brides, to be seized in His loving arms -- Oh joy! Humanists could not swallow this supernaturalistic explanation, any more than the claim that Cupid's Arrow causes people to fall in love, or that divine intervention breaks droughts.

I have had occasion to form the opinion that there is a natural causation for celibate "vocation" in the repressed and coeducationally deprived. At least, as manifest in the cult of attempting to relate nuptially to God, along with its sexy religious fantasy and devotional fetishism.

John Chandler (Australian Humanist 26) writes: 'genetic [innate] mechanisms determine what things will be learnt, and at what periods in growth. We can think of an animal as programmed to behave in certain ways given a certain input of information. It can only process certain information, which is related to its species' way of life, and only at certain critical periods. If the input does not occur, the behaviour will not occur or will be distorted. This is a [con]sequential program, in which earlier stages are the basis for later ones, so there is set up a complex interaction between program and environment.'

John Chandler's model fits into what I have called a cybernetics-systems approach to the human life cycle and to such sub-processes as "socio-sexual maturation" and "reproduction" (Australian Humanist 11 p. 24, 19 p. 38 and 21 p. 36).

Cybernetics studies control and communication in living and non-living systems -- how they regulate and reproduce themselves, evolve and learn -- a useful concept for Humanist reformers and designers of Utopian systems for space-ship earth! The approach might yield insights into other developmental problems, e.g., attachment disorders, autism, specific learning disability, maternal/paternal deprivation, breast feeding, baby bashing, acculturation, anorexia, married love, grief, rape.

So I ask: Is religious "vocation" really displaced mating behaviour? Are the coeducationally deprived at risk?

It so happens I have spoken up for state aid for underprivileged Catholic schools. But I would like the money to be spent building bridges, not walls, for segregated sexist zoos. I would not think it improper for a member of the public to express concern were church schools found to be still castrating choirboys for "Higher Purposes". ( Church schools originated from choir schools. ) [Check out: Angels Against Their Will, Hubert Ortkemper; MP3 (1.6Mb) of castrato, Alessandro Moreschi Ave Maria (1904)]

I hold it a duty and a right to question the claustrating of schoolkids and inadvertently(?) thwarting their natural growth for purposes of religious exploitation. Yes, convent schools even look like zoos [for caged animals].

B. A. Santamaria (Age 9/8/73) wrote: ". . . the Catholic schools, and the bishops and religious orders who ultimately run them . . ." I observe that all three tend to be sexually exclusive and that the "palace eunuchs" who hold the power do have a vested interest in recruiting to their number.

Could it be that a proportion of these manipulating clerics would be homosexually oriented -- albeit repressed and unliberated -- or be invulnerable to person-to-person sexual love? Can novices be procured by acting out courtship/seduction behaviour? Also I note, without comment, that for every two priests there are seven nuns and one brother.

If one cares to think it through, all this exposes a lot of doublethink, if not hypocrisy, in the casuistry underpinning the anti-abortion-anti-contraception camp. And, one can't but help laughing, these tragicomic ironies could provide grist for the proposed Federal inquiry into sexual relationships! [ In 1974, a submission was made to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships. The Most Reverend Felix Arnott, Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, was the commissioner to whom I made a presentation. ]

I believe many progressive Catholics are thinking about the matters of coeducation, de-segregation and celibate emancipation (of and from). There is less loss of face if reforms can come from within.

I sincerely hope, that through the "clown power" of the Pandas' Liberation campaign a little has been done to foment change. Pandas' Lib. Is named after Chi-Chi who was reared in segregation and had problems learning to relate to her own species.

Pandas' Lib. Has appeared dressed like a panda or carrying a toy panda. Pandas' Lib. Scattered leaflets over the heads of the Catholic Education Board's 1971 seminar. Bishop-Elect E. Perkins opening a welfare conference during the Eucharistic Congress was verbally petitioned "to press for sexual desegregation of Catholic schools and institutions". He replied: "We know about you!" The principal speaker, Sister Louis Marie Bryan, whose theme was institutional racism, was asked ". . . What about institutional sexism in the Church itself?" [ The question was before its time! The radical nun was photographed at the airport arrival giving a black-power salute, but retracted it at the conference.] The question was repeated in an ad. in The Age on the same day as appeared a photo of the parade of all-male-celibate-priest-bishops. [ Not strictly correct: the parade included a married prelate of a Uniat tradition.]

To epitomize, here is a version of my satirical ottava rima issued "underground" during that conference and which the chairman, the Victorian Minister for Social Welfare, announced as being "peddled without the authority of the organisers" [The Catholic Family Welfare Bureau]:

Pandas' Complaint

A loving bond is formed for babe and dam,

  As they imprint through nurseling and suckling;

But sure, natural response systems jam,

  When maternal balloon adopts a duckling.

Girl boy, bride mate, relate like ewe to ram

  By respectively mixling and fuckling;

Meanwhile, the randy nuns in convent-zoo

Obediently yearn for "God-Knows-Who".

B.H. for Pandas' Lib.

The Australian Humanist, Dec 1973

Icon of The Invisible Pink Unicorn Is supernatural explanation for The Invisible Pink Unicorn or other God Bunkum??

"A Natural Possession" or "A Supernatural Possession"?
...or "An Unnatural Possession"?

Sir -- The Exorcist is, of course, fiction.

But Dean Chamberlin [Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral] mentions in his lucid and level-headed review (Sunday Press, March 3) that the film had its origins in a case of demoniac possession of a 14-year-old boy.

I observe that this supernatural "possession" occurred at, or about, the age of puberty -- when a maturing girl or lad is at risk of confusions of one sort or another.

For instance, in Prayers of Life, a much-used book of meditations by the Abbé Michel Quoist, a "possession" of another kind is reported and encouraged.

I quote (p. 110): "The Lord gives him the joy of possessing him and of being possessed by him. Words are inadequate to describe this loving embrace of God. The boy who is "seized" by his Master right in the middle of the traffic, and has to dismount from his bicycle -- suddenly unable to go on safely -- will understand. So will the young girl who has to leave the workroom abruptly to hide from her companions her transfigured face. Also the boy who innocently confesses that he has to beg God to 'leave him for a while' . . ."

I am of the opinion that such so-called "possessions" can be explained in natural terms -- especially in the coeducationally deprived.

Bill Helem, Melbourne Sunday Press, March 10 c.1970

Spirituality Masquerade
Triggering Innate Releasing Mechanisms (IRMs)
Whatever Turns Them On . . . Biosemiotically

A review of Prayers of Life in The Australian Humanist, July 1968 commenced:

One man's pornography is another man's perversion so it may be presumptuous to moralize about this lurid exercise in sexual fantasy. . .

The danger with extended sexual metaphor is that the symbol becomes the referent. It mucks up both theology and sex life. Sexual excitation is identified as mystical experience and orgasm as ecstacy. . .

Soon after, Nial Brennan in The Age (26/7/68) presented a different view: he reported that teenagers seem to love the book and that a convent librarian had told him that six paperback copies had been ruined by over-use. The book, republished as Prayers, inspired to song, Troubadour Jacquelyn Brown.

Psychologist, Thomas Janetius ocd [sic, in-joke of Phychol/Carmelite?], has misgivings about the fad of compulsory catharsis sessions for postulants of religious congregations ("Misuse of Psychology in Catholic Religious Formation", Web-posted, 23/9/02). PSI (Psycho-Spiritual Integration) with RCW (Re-Parenting the Child Within) seemed "inhuman" and "real weird" to him. [cf. bastardization of military recruits]

[For official, more balanced, explanations of the mystery look for "Theology of the Body"; or Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI , 25/01/07.] [Perhaps mystic meaning was behind Archbishop Ian George of Adelaide who resigned because he "loved the body of Christ".]



"Celibate" AND "Abuse": Conclusions After Revisiting (May Day 2002)

Admittedly, I do feel a bit gleeful that the media is at last reporting sexual abuses in the Catholic Church and I'm pleased that the top hierarchy in the US has been called to Rome to fix the problem. Yet I think it wrong to "put in the boot"; it's better to encourage them to reform and self-regulate. Catholics with their church are a people of conscience, yet of robust diversity, and should continue to challenge and inspire the rest of our civilization. As other concerned citizens should reciprocate.

I'm also prompted by an email reporting alleged oppression of women by Taliban lads who, it occurred to me, are also victims of "bad animal husbandry" in schools managed by power-hungry finger-wagging clerics who represent themselves as "good shepherds".

Back in the mid sixties I had occasion to form the opinion that there could be a natural causation, rather than a supernatural intervention by God, for "randy religious vocation" -- especially in the celibate cult of attempting to relate nuptially to Jesus, along with its devotional fetishes and 'nihil obstat' erotica. I predicted that the traditional repressive environment, "coeducational deprivation" and practices of the church might also inadvertently put the immature at risk of other biological confusions and abuses. Was it exploitation of adolescents for "Higher Purposes"? If celibate vocation can be "artificially induced", is that, paradoxically, "abortifacient" or "intrinsically disordered" to use Vatican-speak? Was there violation of Human Rights? I ran a little clownish "Pandas' Liberation" campaign to put the issue on the "bioethical agenda" for "concerned Catholics" to think about.

Rationalists, Freethinkers and Secular Humanists were more interested. (Multicultural, post-denominational, tolerant freethought is my disposition -- I put "Humanist plus All Above Religions" on my census form -- putting persons into boxes is for graveyards or databases.) I wound up with a presentation to Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Felix Arnott, Commissioner to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974. I submitted that a "process-systems-cybernetics" approach could help an understanding of human maturation. I had studied Personnel Admin and also Work Study at RMIT; psychology, methods study, PERT etc impressed me; techniques from ICI and from US military, industry and NASA projects impressed the management world. One spin-off could be a popular relative understanding of the space-age term "abortion". And I did manage to do a reading of satirical verses over 3ZZ Access Radio, ABC (April 9 and 10, 1976).

Today, for inspiration, one might turn to Felix Geyer; to What are Cybernetics and Systems Science? by F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn, V. Turchin; to "biosemiotics"; to "zoosemiotics"; or to Instititute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

On revisiting those somewhat obsessive rants of mine back in the late sixties -- especially some roneoed leaflets I kept -- I read some unfashionable expressions I would not use more than thirty years on. Anyway, emotional "facts-of-life" issues do evoke code words and much terminological slippage as discourses of faith, profession, vested interest, group solidarity and personal identity jostle in the forum. Religion, sex, politics and science.

I may be wrong, but It seems to me that tribal church zealots, committed to conflicting religious, theological and scriptural understandings, are now colonizing the fields of philosophy, ethics, bioethics and public policy, and persons flying the bioethics flag are embedded in church institutions. Have they lost their nerve for faith in supernatural authority, and are converting to the secular humanist mode? Is it for the greater good, or is a turf-war being fought? Should we rejoice, be apprehensive or both?

Yes, it’s easy to stir the possum, to jest, because I don’t carry the same burdens as do corporate heads of organised religion. [ Painful to watch, was the tragedy of Peter Hollingsworth acting in the roles of professing social worker, professing archbishop, then professing Governor-General of Australia. He did the right thing, as a gentleman, to resign (29/5/03). Popular opinion now puts the welfare of the child and underage person before the welfare of the institution. Yet it is understandable that a loyal establishment figure, in the past, would have not done other than applied Band-Aids and papered over cracks.]

If the clergy are to blame for coverup; so are the church employees in social work and public relations; so are the press. Even Graham Perkin, celebrated editor of The Age, noted for investigative journalism, would not touch the subject -- he intimated so in a Fact and Opinion radio interview. In those times: all one could get away with, to quote an archbishop, was "snide secular humanist innuendo". If scandal means, permitting circumstance which snares others into sin, then we are all sinners.

I predicted that there was a causal relationship between traditional Catholic adolescent rearing and sexual "biological confusion", paraphilia or dysphoria. That is, to hypothesise that, although celibacy may not directly cause paedophilia, both can have the same causation. I opined that the problem was systemic, rather than originating from sexual violators the church had failed to weed out. Many cases are at last exposed via the media. [ Broken Rites Newsletter Jan 2003, was sent to me, besides much else, it details 50 priests and 32 religious brothers it knows of who have been sentenced in Australian courts since 1993 for sexual crimes.] I now ask, was not the incidence there before?

Perhaps: religious institutional environment has changed; zoos are a more natural habitat, and are not sexually segregated; laity teach in and run church schools; there is access to mass-media person-to-person relationship examples [as in Dolly magazine, or Neighbours TV serial]; school curricula with content in human development and sexual relationship have progressed; sophisticated youth is less vulnerable; the cult of innocence or purity and the mushroom strategy (Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.) are harder to enforce, so is repressive censorship; a cohort of violators is dying out [RIP Cardinal Gröer of Vienna]; the worst of the clerical crime wave may be past, although is currently conjured up by journalists and lawyers. Chuches, like living organisms, respond to feedback and evolve to adapt to changing environments.

Perhaps, perhaps: A downloadable pamphlet, HYPOCRITES -- Evidence and Statistics on Child Sexual Abuse Amongst Church Clergy,1990-2000, Eros Foundation, claims: "The statistics and the evidence that we have on hand suggests that the problem is getting worse rather than better." I remain open-minded yet skeptical on either conclusion. Don’t think of me as adversarial: I merely tried to put the issue on the agenda for discussion. I feel it bad faith to accuse the clergy of hypocrisy: I’m more comfortable to suggest doublethink of self-deception. And I have a wry, tolerant smile for adult, responsible, informed consenting females, males, nuns or priests. For example of a young divorced mother-of-two lusting after a priest, I thought, "good luck to them". Overriding indoctrination there is, apparently, free will and, hopefully, love. Power of choice for them, female or male!

Good luck to the church, I say [sarcastically], if it takes on general systems theory for animal husbandry, and exploits teleological mechanisms for its own ends -- after suitable spin by the bought philosopher, bioethicist or other servitor engaged in apologetics instead of ethics -- though I’d be perplexed if Sistine Chapel hi-fi buffs resumed castrating choirboys for higher purposes. Similarly, how should an Australian feel about the way Mongolian children are painfully trained to become contortionists -- for the glory of the circus and the party? And of alleged delayed puberty of Soviet girl gymnasts? And of growth-hormone forced ability of a Chinese swim team? Are there universal adolescent rights? What of prior rights of parents or loss of patriarchal God-given mandate of the "good shepherds" to exploit a human resource -- their "owned" human flock -- for higher purposes?

Were my protests folly then; are they all folly now? A generation later! However, I submit that the logic and ideas generated by the "cybernetics-process-systems" approach still deserve attention; if cybernetics isn't your bag, you might find an alternative vogue paradigm from dynamic systems theory. I was provocative but not dogmatic; I humbly raised embarrassing questions. . . starting from artificially induced "randy celibate vocation" as a problem for the bioethics of controlling human maturation.
--Bill Helem May Day 2002


Petition to Pope re Celibate Vocation and Confusion (1973)


Anticipating a welcome to Melbourne (February, 1973) of the Holy Father, a petition was sent to the Pope.
[ Catholic spiritual guides call the process "religious vocation discernment".]


Your Holiness, the undersigned respectfully sheweth:-

That the coeducationally deprived and segregated are at risk, such as:

of sexual malimprinting of innate response systems;

of bond confusion with displaced mating behaviour -- which can be mistaken for "vocation";

of ABORTED socio-sexual maturation and sexist alienation.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that you exercise your influence:-

  • TO ENCOURAGE COEDUCATION
  • TO PHASE-OUT ENFORCED CELIBACY
  • TO REAPPRAISE PIOUS EROTIC FANTASY AND FETISH
  • TO PULL DOWN THE WALLS OF HUMAN ZOOS


Signed . . . . . .


Envoy

Even if you don't like my jesting tone, you can yet find the "cybernetics-systems" approach helpful to support your own objectives (whatever) for the management of maturation "processes". But I feel it wrong to use other humans, when not for mutual good, or when it is a violation. I don't claim to have the final moral answers or expert scientific understanding of the sub-system mechanics, such as the hormonal and neural, or the “lower” levels of life-organization, such as the genetic. Nor am I a sexology buff. I try to ask: What is the function of the system? Who/what benefits? Can an improved method be developed? My viewpoint is technological, humanist: I prefer natural explanations rather than supernatural interventions. Believers in miracles or magic have a problem to explain the "natural-supernatural interface" and the cross-realm cybernetics. [Some put faith in: ectoplasm; aether; weeping statues; mumbo-jumbo therapy; ... or whatever works for you.]

[From July 2005, Australia ceased incarcerating children of asylum seekers.]

Puzzle: Algebra teaches that - - Prayers of Islamic compassion - - orbit over the victims - - of rogue males at the zoo - - which is Pitcairn Island - - yet holy scripture describes the world as flat

Pious parents - - maim children - - to serve as beggars - - to gratify the spiritual demands - - of rich visitors to the Hindu temple

Before feminism - - the sacred role of woman - - was as servant - - to wait upon men and boys - - hand and foot.

Maternal abuse - - white stolen brides - - once mothered - - in missionary dormitories - - black stolen children - - they now grieve - - in tragic shame

Should Vatican declare that - - artificially induced - - celibate vocations - - and attendant biological confusions - - are "intrinsically disordered"?

Excuse me - - Your Holiness - - might it be wiser - - to recruit nuns and priests - - at later stages - - of the human life-cycle?

The modest "clown-power" aim - - of Pandas’ Lib - - was to submit - - the phenomenon - - of randy religious vocation - - to the discussion agenda - - as a bioethical problem.

-- Bill Helem May Day, 2002

Post Scripts: [For a more extensive chronicle with links, check-out "References (2) -- Clergy Child Molesters". It has more ecclesiastical and scriptural insights than my naturalistic slant.]

P.S.0: Lonely Heart in Cyberspace

I did an 'I'm Feeling Lucky' Google-search (June 01, 2003) for "malimprinted nun", result: zilch. I then tried for "malimprinted", result: a definition, "malimprinted [mælim'printid] adjective (of an animal or person) suffering from a defect in the behavioural process of imprinting, resulting in attraction to members of other species, fetishism, etc. "malim'printing noun" (Source: The Collins English Dictionary, wordreference.com ).

P.S.1: Church School Goes Hetero

A card arrived in my letter-box (May 30, 2002) "Next year Wesley busses will run from Strathmore. . . to our Prahran campus. Wesley is a coeducational college because life's like that. Boys and girls learn together and play together. When they leave school gender is simply not an issue." [State aid for, and segregation by, inherited wealth, is another story. Except the lower classes can not longer say that snob-schools turn kids into perverts. We have the prison system.] [USA's "Gulag Archipelago" inmates now top two million; Australia follows the trend.]

P.S.2: "Apology" Church Zoo-Keepers

Catholic Archbishops of Melbourne and Sydney paid for space in Australian newspapers (June 8, 2002). The statement was issued "in the light of publicity this week". They again acknowledge "with deep sadness and regret the evil of sexual abuse and other betrayals of trust ...committed by a small minority of Catholic clergy." And they assert the "majority of priests and religious is beyond question."; and they state that good protocols for complaints, counseling and financial compensation -- which they claim is never to buy silence -- have been established for six years ( "Independent Commissioner", Melbourne; "Professional Standards Office", Sydney ). They tell the victims and the Australian community to "Be assured that [their] goal is to assist people who have been abused to move 'towards healing'."

Church Sexual Abuse was Systemic: I applaud most of the statement of the Archbishops, except where it is an apologia for the correctness of the institution: they say, "Regrettably, the Catholic Church has taken a long time to come to grips effectively with the sexual abuse issue", yet they largely blame the "small minority", the criminal abusers. However, I submit, blame should also fall on those unwholesome, dysphoric, aspects of teachings, power structures, practices and attitudes of the church which reared them and inadvertently led to, and facilitated, biological confusion.

Atavistic tribal reaction to scandal can be a stumbling-block to seeking the truth. My hope is that in a more open society -- with which the hierarchy now cooperates -- responsible, skeptical, democratic and better educated youth and public will hold no authority-figures "beyond question".

I surmise that the incidence of abuse was greater before it became a public "issue". This crime-wave may be something of a media artifact; it may be more a fact of history. I try to be fair-minded! But permit me to cynically ask: is the hierarchy more concerned for the standing of the church, than it was for the welfare of victims, because the issue is now public?

On the day of the "Apology", The Age also published a little rung-in quip from me: "It would be wiser for churches to recruit priests from women and men at the senior stage of life."

P.S.3: Child Sexual Abuse in Decline

Evidence of a dramatic decline in the incidence of child sexual abuse in Australia over the past 50 years, was presented at the "Sexuality, Families and Forms of Intimacy" session of the XV World Congress of Sociology (July 11, 2002).

Dr Michael Dunne of the School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology, with Prof. Jake Najman et al., studied almost 1800 men and women around Australia aged 18 to 59. He reported that: women under 30 were about 20 per cent less likely to have been sexually abused before the age of 16 than those aged 30 to 59; and that men in their 20s were 50 per cent less likely to have been sexually abused as children than had been men now in their 50s.

"We are living in increasingly sexualised societies and children are less innocent than before", Dr Dunne said. "Although loss of innocence is sad, in this case it may mean that children are better equipped to avoid abuse, and are less vulnerable."

Bio-semiotic Problem: Exploiting Sexual or Maternal Innate Releasing Mechanisms for Higher Purposes: I surmised that it is increasingly difficult for religious "shepherds" to shield the young from sexualised input and to displace it. For example, it is harder to seduce young ladies with courtship mimicry to become clucky nuns. Zoosemiotics!!
A bioethical problem: When does child overprotection become child abuse?
A bioethical judgment: How much manipulating, thwarting and distorting of maturation-processes can be justified to serve civilization or church or cult or sports, especially tennis, or arts, especially the ballet, or commerce or tribe or family or institution or national glory or. . The House of Windsor? Do royalists condone cruelty to children?
An ethical judgment: Should a system which produces extremes -- elite performers at one end of the continuum, and emotional or physical cripples at the other -- be rewarded more than a system which produces fitness for safe, mediocre, activity? What is the ideal distribution? Of virtuousness to wickedness?
A bioethical paradox:Should GABRIELA, and similar feminist activist organizations, focus some attention to the ethical problem of the international trafficking in nuns? Is the exploitation of win-win benefit? Or is it sexual slavery?
Problems of perception and creative spin: Does each nun active for ACRATH (Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans) have a "heart of gold" to serve humanity and Jesus? Probably.
A scientific opinion: Should James Randi, and similar skeptical activist organizations, focus some attention to the scientific problem of claims of paranormal sexual arousal: the incubus, the succubus, the phantom pregnancy, the loving embrace of God? The artificially induced randy religious vocation?
An ethical question: Was it "for their own good", or was it biologically disordered, that thousands of so-called orphans were shipped to far parts of the British Empire? Can it be compared to child soldiers, Children's Crusade, or boy camel-jockeys?
Moral perspective or tribal mores: Should table-top dancing in a Sydney Rd night club be banned? Is it life-affirming? A petitioner to the Moreland Council, was a nun, Sr Daad Azzi, principal of the nearby Antonine Sisters Trinity Maronote College. She claimed it put students "at risk"; she wants to "encourage our students to follow certain paths"(Coburg Moreland Leader 27/1/03).
Group mores: Should patriarchs of polygamy cults marry under-age girls to old men? Is it good to keep wives uneducated, barefoot and pregnant?
An ecclesiastical ruling: Should divorced Anglican and Orthodox priests who remarry be defrocked?
A philosophical conundrum: Should basic animal rights of humans be recognized? Such as the "freedom to express normal behaviour by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal's own kind" as promulgated by the RSPCA?
A spirituality discernment: Is it a "Higher Orientation of Love" when your pet attempts to copulate with your trousers leg?

P.S.4: We Feel Sad; Yet Most Priests Wish to Do Good: Says Pope

At the World Youth Day Mass, Toronto (July 29, 2002), the Pope told about 500,000 young pilgrims encamped on a former airfield that, "the harm done by some priests and religious to the young and vulnerable. . . fills us all with a deep sense of sadness and shame. . . But: [spoken with emphasis] Think of the vast majority of dedicated priests and religious whose only wish is to serve and do good."

P.S.5: Seminarians, Pheromonal Incense and Altar Boys

New claims of biologically inappropriate behaviours between altar boys and seminarians or young priests and a “church worker” have been published in Australian newspapers (August 22, 2002). One of the former altar boys estimated that about 20 would have been sexually abused by two men in particular. Abuse occurred, it is alleged, at Fawkner parish and at church camps for altar boys on Phillip Island.

There has also been an allegation that a trainee priest molested a 12-year-old boy at the camp. That trainee priest is now a high-ranking prelate. He says the story is a lie; he has stepped aside for a church-initiated inquiry; at this stage, I place my bet for the prelate. The alleged incident was 41 years ago. Remembering usually distorts. Perhaps someone could have misread an intention to induce surrender to supernatural arousal.

[ Breaking BBC News Report, 14/10/02: The inquiry dismissed the complaint because of the long delay in reporting and lack of forensic evidence. ] [The prelate, Dr George Pell, resumed duties as Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, and an "unofficial" biography was published. On 31/10/03, Archbishop Pell will be installed as a cardinal.] [Since then, Dr Pell snubbed his second cousin, Monica Hingston, and her life-partner, Peg Moran, both former nuns. They are now to be installed as chiefs-of-parade for the 2004 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. "It's about justice", said Ms Hingston.]

Hypothetical: In the Name of Pure Scientific Observation: What if a proposal were submitted to replicate a camp for ignorant superstitious 1960s-style altar boys and repressed battery-reared 1950s-style young priests? Would it now pass an ethics committee? Yet would it exemplify the so-called “Catholic atmosphere” which 1950s patriarchal champions for state aid demanded as a prior right for “our own children”? Back in 1954, a certain young man, newly matriculated from Christian Brothers St Patrick's College, had been taught, and firmly believed, that during rites in Masonic halls around Ballarat, The Devil Himself appeared personally and visibly.

In my opinion, the potency of those cloistered environments is becoming past history. Anti-clerical fabulators must not flip into witch-hunt mode; the faithful must not seek scapegoats for all the blame. Yet I still believe it for the greater good that sub-cultures have space to develop, moderated by reciprocal evaluative feedback with society at large. And young humans will always need confidence to steer themselves to safety through the dynamic complexity of sexy charismatic operators such as of pop-stardom, sport, politics or religion. The seemingly "good shepherds": Taliban mullahs; specialists in conducting retreats; confessors; chaplains to youth clubs; procurers of missionaries; spiritual directors; mysticism devotees; cultist creeps; fundamentalist fanatics; gurus; false messiahs. . .

P.S.6: Helping Them Grow

"Seventeen women and one man have lodged cases for vile sexual abuse, torture and mistreatment by Sisters of Nazareth nuns at a Brisbane orphanage over three decades, ending in the 1970s." (The Age, August 29, 2002)

There are stories of alleged penetrating with broomsticks "to get The Devil out of them” and rubbing of Vicks into private parts "to get their puberty hair to grow".

Mitigation: Perhaps the “caring” violators were not intending to do harm but were operating under a superceded paradigm. Three centuries before, Miguel de Molinos, Spanish priest, sometime friend of the pope, and author of a mystical handbook, Spiritual Guide, was convicted by the Church of "heresy". He "defended sexual aberrations committed by himself and his followers as sinless, purifying acts caused by the devil. He claimed they were passively allowed in order to deepen a quiet repose in God." "The exact nature of [ his immorality ] remains locked in the files of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith." (Britannica CD) He died in prison in 1696.

It is problematic to decide the best codes to investigate and judge the sexual exploitations by clergy and religious now being revealed at last. Is it a matter of criminal, civil or church law? Or self-regulation and staff discipline? Or human rights? Or what? Which path would get to the truth? Then enable beneficial changes for the future? That is how I think on "justice". I think due weight should be given to social science. Some people have called for a Royal Commission, eg, Clare Pascoe Henderson.

Meanwhile, I urge researchers to glean what they can from submissions to the 1974 Royal Commission on Human Relationships. That was closer to when the alleged phenomena were more frequent; and when the risk, I suggest, was greater.

P.S.7: Now Out

Vows of Silence. "Australian cases of abuse in the church (Doubleday catalogue, May/June 2004) Two journalists examine the effect of the Church's culture of secrecy and male-dominated power structures on the growing problem of child abuse." The careers of two priests are contrasted: American Thomas Doyle, a whistle-blower; and Mexican Marcial Maciel, founder of the sex-scandal prone Legionaries of Christ. Sources in the US, Ireland, Canada, Australia and the Vatican expose a hierarchy directly in conflict with its followers.

Moved by the Holy Spirit: Church governance becomes more responsive to feedback, if not formally democratic, as we keep up the struggle. Harbingers: The National Council of Priests (Australia) has written to a Vatican enquiry asking that priests be allowed to marry; Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has authored Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church (Aug 2007; Introduction text-file as big graphic pdf, 382Kb).

P.S.8: Past Tense

The Commonwealth Senate has set up an inquiry by the Community Affairs References Committee, due to report in December 2003, into the scale and legacy of child maltreatment in Australian orphanages and foster homes last century in "less enlightened times". Democrat Senator Murray pointed out (The Age 8/3/03) that many former wards of the state had been excluded from the previous Aboriginal stolen generation [Bringing them Home 1997] and child migrant [Lost Innocents: Righting the Record 2001] inquiries. This cohort of up to 80,000 plus their current relatives would be "about 2 million Australians. . . touched by these events". Former children's home resident and sociologist, Dr Joanna Penglase, said many institutions systematically dehumanized children. The Vicar-General of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Monsignor Christopher Prowse, warned against imposing the insights of the present in judging the past.

The author of this satirical discussion-paper hopes a "process-systems-cybernetics" approach might help the senators gain useful insights into human maturation and relationships -- and also into risks of child care practices of the past.
[Link to my submission (PDF, 15Kb)] I changed the headline into the past tense: "Animal Husbandry in Human Zoos -- They tried to be good keepers, yet they mucked-up maturation processes".

P.S.9: On Navigating Future Challenges

My ears pricked up to the words of Paul Monk, co-founder Austhink Consulting. He was reading on Radio National (Perspectives, May 15, 2007), a version of his "Fantasy, paranoia, enthusiasm and reality" essay in Unintended Consequences, Griffith Review 16. I downloaded it as MP3. He posits: we are ourselves - complex adaptive systems, within which intentionality ("free will", if you like) plays a very limited and indirect role in how things work out... there is no controlling mind [evil conspiracy or Divine Plan] behind the course of world events. History may be beyond human capacity to predict or control; we need "good shepherd" leaders who can navigate diplomacy, public policy, science and economics in a non-linear process of incremental, creative resilience. To me this sounded like a cybernetics model.


Terms of Reference:- (for soapbox8.htm)

  • Could a "process-systems-cybernetics" approach help an understanding of human maturation and relationship?
  • Can celibate vocation be artificially induced?
  • Did traditional church attitudes, practices and power structures inadvertently put the immature at risk of other biological confusions and abuses?
  • Is this a bioethical issue for "concerned Catholics", ethicists and the general public to share?
  • Are the risks of "human zoos" relevant to the Australian Senate Community Affairs References Committee?
I invite: experiences, observations, opinions on the above: Church Zoos Revisited
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