Bartholomew's Notes

After weeks of controversy, Jerusalem Greek Patriarch Irenaios (various spellings) is apparently on the way out. From the BBC:

Greek Orthodox Church leaders in Jerusalem have broken off contact with their local leader, Patriarch Irineos, and say they regard him as dismissed.

The move stems from a dispute over the sale of church land in East Jerusalem, which has angered Palestinians.

…The land at the heart of the dispute was allegedly sold to a group linked to Jewish settlers, sparking outrage among Palestinians.

Given that Palestinian Christians already have to deal with Protestant Christian Zionists regularly roaming the streets of Jerusalem and proclaiming that Christianity teaches that Palestinian dispossession is part of God’s plan, this was pretty embarrassing. And it’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened, either – in 1990 an Armenian businessmen sold his tenancy at a Greek Orthodox-owned hospice in Jerusalem’s Old City to Israeli settlers, leading to long legal dispute. And in 2001 Christianity Today noted that

Under the previous patriarch [Diodoros I], Israel bought and leased significant areas of land from the Greek Orthodox Church, including affluent neighborhoods of the city and the land which the official residences of the Israeli President and Prime Minister stand on.

Those lands were in Israel proper, so are perhaps less controversial – but it’s probably more than a bit off to be doing business with your own military occupier.

Back in March Athens News reported on the latest fiasco thus:

The revelation mobilised Palestinian and Jordanian Orthodox faithful against the patriarchate as never before.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) discussed the land sales at a special meeting on March 22 and pledged that it will “work through legal, political and religious means to Arabise the Orthodox Church and all other churches and will insist on their Arab features”. It also insisted that the Greek flag and any other foreign flags be removed from churches and shrines in the Holy Land and “that the Palestinian flag will be the only one raised on all churches”.

Palestinian MP, Hanan Ashrawi, also called for the Arab faithful to take control of the Orthodox patriarchate. That a politician of her stature had taken such an extreme position rang alarm bells in Greek diplomatic circles.

Greek diplomatic sources told the Athens News that such a move is legally and ecclesiologically impossible and that a move to Arabise the patriarchate would “destroy our house and theirs”.

Ashrawi herself is Anglican, and the local clergy in her church are already mostly Palestinian. The same is true of the Roman Catholic (“Latin”) church. But the call for an Arab-led Orthodoxy is actually a very old one. Here’s a quote from a paper that touches on the subject by anthropologist Glenn Bowman (who taught me when I was an undergrad):

One of the consequences of the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox church’s attempts to extend its influence in Ottoman Palestine was that it systematically fomented dissatisfaction within Greek Orthodox Palestinian communities…Increased awareness of discrimination led to the lay creation of the Arab Orthodox Movement, an organization dedicated to wresting control of the church and its substantial properties from what it defined as a ‘foreign ‘ priesthood. After the Russian church’s intervention was abruptly ended by the revolution, the Movement was strongly supported by the British mandate government…and, after British withdrawal in 1948, by the Jordanian government which then appropriated the West Bank and Jerusalem. After the Israeli government took control of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli state came to work closely with the Greek church…in an attempt to subvert the Greek government’s opposition to the Israeli occupation. As a result, the Movement became in large part quiescent since the church-state alliance made it evident to many Arab Orthodox activists that any gains that might be made by the Christian Palestinians would only be made after the Israeli occupation was ended (interview with Arab Orthodox Movement member, Bethlehem, March 1987). Nonetheless, one of the outstanding legacies of the Movement is the awareness among Christian Palestinians that the interests of the hierarchy of the Orthodox church are foreign and antagonistic to their own.

But the weird thing is that Irenaios was originally blocked by Israel, which feared he was too pro-Palestinian. As the same Christianity Today piece noted:

Under a law dating back to the sixth century emperor Justinian, the government of the Holy Land has the right to approve or disqualify candidates for the office of the patriarch.

The list of candidates was submitted to the governments of Israel and Jordan, as well as to the Palestinian Authority. While Jordan and the Palestinian Authority approved all nominees, Israel rejected five. Their objection was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel.

…Israel was apparently wary of the Church coming under the rule of a pro-Palestinian patriarch; for fear that this could result in land disputes when long-term leases begin to expire.

So what happened? Irenaios blames his treasurer Nicholas Papadimas, who has disappeared; the Patriarch accuses him of making the deals without his knowledge. There’s also the murky role of Apostolos Vavilis, a drug dealer who is alleged to have unfairly influenced Irenaios’ 2001 election in some mysterious way.

We also need to keep in mind Atallah Hanna, a Palestinian Orthodox cleric and long-time enemy of Irenaios. Back in 2002 Reuters reported that

Father Hanna’s name has been put forward by Palestinian lay members of the Church who are lobbying to have the Greek leaders replaced with an Arab patriarch.

As an open supporter of the PLO, he initiated a power struggle with the Church to overthrow Patriarch Irineos, 63, who is of Greek origin and was enthroned last year.

This appears to have influenced the actions of the Patriarch, who was seen by Israel until recently as a supporter of the PLO and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Irineos has taken to making what many see as anti-Palestinian statements in order to appease the Israeli Government, which has yet to officially give its blessing to his appointment.

Around this time Hanna was already controversial, due in part to this quote made in Abu Dhabi and reported in the Gulf News:

Some freedom fighters adopt martyrdom or suicide bombing, while others opt for other measures. But all these struggles serve the continued intifada for freedom. Therefore, we support all these causes”.

In the ensuing media storm, the Patriarch condemned this sentiment and announced that Hanna was not an official spokesman for the church (a position that Hanna claims was his; some reports describe him as having been “fired”). However, in an interview in Haaretz (preserved for public access by Miftah) Hanna denied the accusations of pro-terrorist rhetoric:

What I said there is what I am saying now – I support the struggle of the Palestinian people against the occupation, until its independent state is established. A national struggle against occupation is a legitimate and permissible thing, and it is even the duty of a people under occupation. I spoke in Qatar about resistance, muqawama in Arabic, and not as my statements were represented in the media in Israel…I am against suicide bombings that harm civilians, and I am against the killing of any person, without differentiation for ethnic group or religion. In Christianity, human life is holy and of supreme value. But the main problem starts with the Israeli occupation, from which the Palestinian people are suffering. You have to understand that it – the occupation – is the main cause of violence.

Hanna claimed that the accusations were part of a “crusade” against him by people close to Irenaios. Hanna maintains a website where he still presents himself as the church’s spokesman (complete with a neutral-looking biog of the Patriarch). But in 2003 Islam Online reported (approvingly) some more quotes at odds with the moderate Haaretz interview:

“They [the “martyrs”] are not suicide bombers as some claim and they are not terrorists, rather, they resist occupation and we support martyrdom operations without any kind of reservations no matter what objectors and doubt-casters say about such a heroic kinds of resistance,” he said.

…In an exclusive interview with IslamOnline, Attallah asserted his support for the operations, averring that “if the struggle for freedom of peoples is regarded as terrorism, then I am a terrorist.”

Hanna called these statements “fabricated and untrue”, and even the virulently Christian Zionist International Christian Embassy withdrew the accusation, citing the unreliability of “Palestinian and Islamic media outlets”. But just why would such outlets want to portray Hanna as a terrorist supporter if he’s not? That’s murky in itself.

So, has Irenaios been set up? Or did he turn excessively pro-Israeli (an accusation carried in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, following Haaretz) because of Hanna or some other reason? Nobody knows for sure; but whatever the truth of it, it does look just possible that current events are leading towards the establishment, at long last, of a Palestinian Orthodox Church. One hopes that such a church would offer a robust alternative to Islamist terror within the context of Palestinian resistance; it would be depressing to see it instead competing with the basest delusions of Islamic fundamentalism.

(Some links via Christianity Today weblog)

UPDATE: More today.

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The Morning News (Arkansas) reports on a new creation science museum (links added):

EUREKA SPRINGS — Visitors quickly forgot the sharp smell of fresh paint as they turned a corner in the new Museum of Earth History and got their first glimpse of dinosaurs.

…G. Thomas Sharp, president and founder of the Creation Truth Foundation, welcomed a large crowd seated under and standing around a large awning on the sunny, cool morning. The joint venture between his Oklahoma-based foundation and the Elna M. Smith Foundation — which operates the [Great] Passion Play — moved from concept to application in about six months with the help of donors, friends and “prayer warriors,” he said.

The museum is the first of its kind in the United States, Sharp said, telling the biblical story with the inclusion of dinosaurs represented by skeletal replicas — highly detailed casts of the original fossils.

This is part of a trend: Answers in Genesis plans to open The Creation Museum in Cincinnati (featuring a dinosaur reportedly wearing a saddle) in 2007, and Kent Hovind has already cobbled together a Creationist theme park (called Dinosaur Adventure Land) in his back yard. Back to the Morning News:

…Scientists have dumbed down biblical reality, [Sharp] said, arguing that Genesis isn’t an accurate, historical account. Now, people can leave the museum and walk over to the Passion Play to experience the passion of Christ in a new way, Sharp said.

“Scientists have dumbed down biblical reality”? Is this serious? But one has to laugh at this:

Sharp described the replicas [on display] as the greatest collection of dinosaur fossils, skulls and skeletons that exists in Arkansas, referring to them as “God’s gospel lizards.”

I’ve kept an eye on various high-profile Creationists before, but G. Thomas Sharp is a new one to me. According to his bio, he was inspired to find the reasons for church membership decline:

Dedicating most of the 1980’s to this search, he became convinced that evolutionism, with its implications influencing the family, the church and the culture, was the bottom line for this unspeakable waste of our youth.

In the process, Dr. Sharp successfully completed a M.S. from the University of Oklahoma and a Ph. D. from the South Florida Bible College and Seminary, with emphasis in the philosophy of religion and science (he already had earned a B.S. from Purdue University in 1964).

But what’s more interesting is the Elna M. Smith Foundation and its “Great Passion Play“, although this angle is totally ignored by the Morning News hack (maybe it’s common knowledge in their part of the world):

A non-denominational ministry founded in 1967, the Great Passion Play is dedicated to providing opportunities for people to deepen their knowledge of the heritage, teachings and inspirations of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith.

Founded in 1965 by Gerald L. K. and Elna M. Smith, the Elna M. Smith Foundation commissioned the development of the Christ of the Ozark statue, the first of the projects to be constructed.

Whoa! That would be another kind of “gospel lizard”: Gerald L.K. Smith was the founder of the Christian Nationalist Crusade and until his death was the USA’s most notorious anti-Semite. Here’s a site about Passion Plays that discusses Smith and the “Great Passion Play” (its information is a bit old: the Charles Robertson mentioned below has since died):

The Great Passion Play, founded in 1968 by the late Gerald L.K. Smith, is the one major American Passion Play which is deliberately and maliciously anti- Semitic. The production is managed by the Elna Smith [Foundation and is] staged five times per week from May through October. Performances are held in an enormous amphitheatre on an (Ozark) mountain near Eureka Springs.

Gerald L.K. Smith, the founder of the Great Passion Play, was a pillar of the extreme religious right for decades…when asked in 1955 by a Congressional committee for his views on immigration, he cited Albert Einstein as the sort of foreigner federal laws should bar.

Charles Robertson, who succeeded Smith after the latter’s death in 1976, is the current coordinator of the Smith Foundation…”One of the biggest lies of our times,” he claimed, “is that six million Jews were slaughtered.” Later, in the same conversation, he remarked: “Let’s face it. The Negroes are fresh from the jungle, and they have brought with them many of the same characteristics.”

Naturally, the play reflected Smith’s and Robertson’s bigotry:

(a) The narration and the action stress the perfidy, evil, hypocrisy and cunning of the Sanhedrin…

(b) Herod and Pilate come off as innocents and dumps, unwilling accomplices in satisfying the blood lust of the Jews. Again and again Pilate, a good clean American boy, points out to the Jews that Jesus is innocent of any crime…

(c) The theme of the culpability and damnation of “the whole Jewish people” permeated the play but it is made loudly and stereophonically clear in Pilate’s execution order the anti-Christ’s are always the “Jews.”

Apparently Smith organised a number of projects in the neighbourhood: as well as the play, there is a giant statue (the “Christ of the Ozarks”) and a Holy Land theme park (needed because the original Holy Land is in the hands of “the enemies of Christ”). This fascinating article has all the details, but to be fair it also notes that:

Shortly after the death of Charles F. Robertson, the Sacred Projects team undertook to revamp the Great Passion Play. The script has been revised, a new sound track recorded, and it’s been restaged and there’s a new technical design. So there’s no way I can see the old production to judge for myself whether or not it was anti semitic.

So eventually Smith’s successors realised that backing anti-Semitism was a complete loser and that they’d better change their ways. Obviously, promoting pseudo-science is a far better way to make a buck in the modern USA. Progress?

(Tipped from Cult News Network)

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Hal Lindsey drinks from the well of paleo-wingnuttery, in a tirade against international bankers:

I am not an economist, nor a banking expert.

Since when has the small matter of “expertise” ever been known to keep Hal quiet?

But I believe there are certain things that are driving our world economy today that can be understood by some simple logic. One thing I do know – where Bible prophecy predicts the economy is headed. And it’s right on course.

So what’s the problem?

The entire economy is built on an illusion. I realize that sounds like the rantings of a lunatic – especially when it is written out in words – but it is nonetheless true.

Well, if you want me to be honest…

…Legislation tends to expose how the economy works and, most importantly, whom it benefits – the bankers who run it.

All that being said, it is still the only game in town. Those who would expose the Money Trust don’t really want to break the banker’s [sic] stranglehold – that would launch a global economic depression that would make the 1930s look like an economic boom. The Money Trust has set up a system that is so insidious, that once in place, it cannot be removed without bringing the whole global economy down.

“The Money Trust”? Time for a quick history lesson, courtesy of The Columbia Electronic Encylopedia:

Pujo, Arsène Paulin , 1861–1939, U.S. congressman…He became chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1911, and, dissatisfied with the monetary commission’s report, he obtained congressional authorization in 1912 to investigate the “money trust.” The hearings of the Pujo committee…uncovered evidence that a few financial leaders had achieved an unhealthy control of the nation’s money and credit. The committee’s disclosures helped create a climate of public opinion that led to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

But that wasn’t enough for one man, who saw the 1913 Federal Reserve Act as itself a tool of the mysterious “Money Trust”: Congressman Charles Lindbergh Senior, who wrote a book called Banking and Currency and the Money Trust. This was in 1918; today, Lindbergh’s thoughts on the subject of the “Money Trust” appear pretty well confined to crank conspiracy sites (a fair few of which are anti-Semitic, although, based on a few searches within the text, Lindbergh’s book does not appear to be aimed against Jews).

However, Lindsey himself is probably drawing on Cliff Ford’s 1998 book Blood, Money, & Greed: The Money Trust Conspiracy. According to the blurb:

For more than 200 years an international banking cartel has literally bought the world. Conspiracy Theory? No! Conspiracy Fact! Author Cliff Ford draws upon his extensive background in international finance to document how this group’s plan to control the world’s monetary system has progressed and how near they are to achieving their diabolical objective. Discover why a group of men whose combined assets represented one sixth of the world’s wealth met secretly on Jeckyll Island, South Carolina in 1910 and how that meeting affected the course of history. Discover how the most powerful men in government during World War I were part of the same banking firm controlling both the German Secret Service and British Intelligence while on opposite sides. Discover who financed Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and how they later became highly placed officials in the US Government. Discover what the Federal Reserve is – and what is not. And last, discover what inflation really is (hint: it’s not what you think it is).

Sounds like Pat Robertson’s infamous New World Order book – lots of rhetoric about international bankers and shadowy 200-year conspiracies, with no acknowledgement of the pedigree of this kind of paranoid conspiracy-mongering (i.e., in anti-Semitism). Once again, so much for Christian Zionism.

As noted above, Ford touts himself as being an expert in international finance; he and Lindsey co-hosted a show called the International Intelligence Briefing. They also once wrote a book together; here’s our pair of experts back in 1999:

FACING MILLENNIAL MIDNIGHT

The Y2K Crisis Confronting America and the World

There is less than one year to prepare for what will be the technological and social equivalent of a worldwide earthquake. The exact date and time of this earthquake are already known-the stroke of midnight December 31, 1999.

World-renowned prophecy author Hal Lindsey and international economics expert Cliff Ford present the whole Y2K scenario in non-computer nerd language. they explain the potential magnitude and scope of the year 2000 crisis and its impact on federal, state and local governments; the banking and finance industries; public utilities; and the personal computer. In addition, they offer practical advice to prepare for the year 2000 crisis as well as specific actions that you can take now to protect youself and your family from crisis.

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The Guardian reports on a new study that apparently shows the benefits of Transcendental Meditation:

A new study shows that transcendental meditation, a relaxation technique developed by the Indian guru and made famous when the fab four dabbled with it in the late 60s, can reduce death rates by nearly a quarter.

Robert Schneider, who led the research, said: “The study found that in older people with mild high blood pressure, those practising transcendental meditation had a 23% lower risk of death from all causes.”

…The transcendental meditation group had 30% fewer deaths from heart disease and 49% fewer from cancer [than the control group].

“Although the sample [size] was relatively modest, these preliminary results suggest that an effective stress reducing intervention may decrease mortality,” researchers said.

Of course, one cannot judge how dramatic this difference is based purely on comparative percentages, but those who know a bit more about statistics than I might glean a bit more from the abstract here. The article appears in the American Journal of Cardiology, and is only the latest of many from Schneider, who heads the Centre for Natural Medicine and Prevention (CNMP) at the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa (e.g. see reports here and here). Despite many sites that take issue with the rather more extravagant claims of TM proponents (e.g. the effects of “yogic flying” on crime rates), I haven’t been able to find any articles that criticise his work.

The research was funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. According to a US Medicine report from 2000, the NIH has been providing funds to the CNMP since 1988.

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Agape Press crows over the advance of Bible classes in American schools:

Much to the chagrin of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, Bible curriculum classes are being taught in more than a thousand public high schools across the United States.

Yes, nothing annoys the ACLU more than children knowing the content of the Bible!

…Some school districts are frightened off by the specter of lawsuits; nevertheless, Bible curriculum classes are now being taught in some 1,100 high schools in 300 school districts in 35 states across the nation — and this is going on during school hours, for credit, with the Bible as the textbook.

Quite right, too, what with it being a foundational piece of literature that still guides millions of people and all. But what’s this?:

That is because those 300 school districts are currently offering a course called “The Bible as History and Literature,” a course curriculum from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS).

Now alarm bells start to go off:

…the cutting edge curriculum from NCBCPS has been endorsed by a number of illustrious, pro-family celebrities, including actors Chuck Norris and Dean Jones, and sports star Tony Dorsett, and the word has been spreading.

I didn’t know Chuck Norris was a Biblical scholar on the side. I wonder what his views are on Markan priority or the existence of the Q document?

But I’m being a bit unfair. The site for the NCBCPS also contains endorsements from a number of PhDs, although that list is not encouraging: the top place goes to a motivational speaker called Joel A Freeman; under him we find J Randall Price, “P.h.D. in Middle Eastern and Asian Studies”. Price is in fact a Christian Zionist fundamentalist most noted for an absurd book called The Coming Last Days Temple. In fact, all the PhDs listed with Bible-related qualifications actually relate to Biblical studies the way Ken Ham does to science: there’s Robert G Cornuke, a crank who spends his time looking for the lost Ark of the Covenant; Roy E Knuteson is an obscure figure associated with the fundamentalist Dallas Theological Seminary.

The advisory committee is also rather alarming and completely devoid of serious Biblical scholars: instead, we find conservative politicians and the likes of D. James Kennedy (plus Rabbi Daniel Lapin as token Jew). Particularly disturbing, but not surprising, is the presence of pseudo-historian David Barton; the course claims to teach schoolchildren about how the Bible was understood by the US Founding Fathers.

The site boasts that:

The Bible course curriculum has been voted into 292 school districts in 35 states. 92% of school boards that have been approached with this to date, have voted to implement it. It is not just in the Bible belt, but it has been voted into school districts from Alaska and California, straight across the board to Pennsylvania and Florida. 170,000 students have already taken our course.

An overview of the curriculum can be seen here. The “Other Resources” page includes a poster that promotes Young Earth Creationism.

The NCBCPS is run by Elizabeth Ridenour. According her site bio:

…Ridenour attended East Carolina University and later became a commercial real estate broker and a certified paralegal interested in students’ rights…Ridenour is a passionate communicator, who, with her team of lawyers and high-profile endorsers, has appeared on many radio and television broadcasts, including American Family Radio Network, KKLA’s Live In LA with Warren Duffy, Truths That Transform, Focus on the Family, USA Radio Network, Concerned Women Today, The 700 Club, and Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Sunday telecast…Ridenour is a member of the Council For National Policy, and she currently resides in Greensboro, NC.

Someone wanting a bookend for Of Pandas and People in a library memorializing religious fundamentalist attacks on US public education can buy the book and CD-ROM.

UPDATE: A full report on the NCBCPS by Biblical scholar Mark A Chancey can be seen here, and bit more is available from the website of People For the American Way (via GreeneSpace).

And for an alternative Bible curriculum, see the Bible Literacy Project, a far more serious effort which can boast the participation of some real scholars.

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Did I jump the gun in mocking Psychological Reports for its author charges? Commentator Lance Gritton thinks so:

Actually most journals charge the author a per page fee

That hasn’t been my experience in the humanities, but a bit of digging around on the net has brought up some other examples. For example, The Office of Scholarly Communication at the University of California charges for its open access journals; in 2001 science publisher Jan Velterop argued that “Author Charges are the Future“. I also found journals that have submission fees, but that’s a bit different. There is, though, a sense that academic publishing is in financial crisis, as articles in the journal Learned Publishing suggest.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who knows a bit more about charges for scholarly publications.

(Not that this does anything for Paul Cameron. Lance goes on:

…the stats brought up are totally bogus. It appears that the author calls any abuse by the same sex parent “homosexuality”, when it should say “pedophilia”. When you look at child abusers the official FBI profile is white middle aged heterosexual men. The author substitutes his own terms and definitions to match his own prejudices. The scary thing is that this was supposed to be peer reviewed. Another reason that I think psychology is more pseudo science than substance.

And of course, even with the terms used by Cameron we’re still looking at a tiny fraction of foster carers overall. There’s also a comprehensive article on the topic in the latest Wall Street Journal; see the update to my entry for yesterday.)

Of course, in relation to general publishing, self-publishing makes more sense than it did a few years ago: an individual can distriubute his or her work on-line, and we all know that thanks to Murdoch and other media consolidation forces it can no longer be assumed that a decent book must get picked up by a “normal” publisher.

UPDATE: By coincidence, Terry Krepel is currently investigating a dodgy conservative science journal over at ConWebWatch.

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Christian news source Agape Press asks us to “please think of the children” as it celebrates an amendment in Texas that bans child-fostering by homosexuals:

According to Cathie Adams of the Texas Eagle Forum, a study done in Illinois provided good reasons for that amendment.

While opponents of the bill might try to question the relevance of the out-of-state study, its findings are clearly pertinent since the research indicates that children “are eleven times more likely to be sexually abused if they are in homosexual foster-parent homes,” Adams says. “So we’re talking about the same situation here — apples and apples. Homosexual homes in Texas we don’t think are probably very different.”

This is typical Agape Press journalism: never question anything your conservative source gives you, and never look for an opposing view (hence the impression the site gives that evolutionists have all been struck dumb by the brilliance of Ken Ham).

So, what is this study? No details are given, but it must be the same one that was noted by WorldNetDaily last month (hyperlink added):

An article in the March issue of the peer-reviewed publication Psychological Reports presented data analyzed by Dr. Paul Cameron, chairman of the Colorado-based Family Research Institute.

…The study found 966 foster parents violated their charges. Of those who engaged in both physical and sexual abuse, eight of the 15 abused children of their own sex.

Is that it? Unfortunately, the report itself does not appear to be available on-line, although the “peer-reviewed” Psychological Reports has published plenty of other stuff by Cameron. The journal has a curious way of conducting its business, according to its “Publication Arrangement” page:

…There are three publication arrangements.

(1) Regular articles. These are articles which require from 2 through 20 printed pages. Charges are $27.50 per page in multiples of four pages, plus special fees for composition (e.g., tables, figures).

…(2) One-page articles and notes…The author submits a one-page summary of a study accompanied by the full report for filing with the Archive for Psychological Data. Charge is $27.50.

…(3) Monograph supplements…Charges are $27.50 per page in multiples of four pages, plus special fees for composition (e.g., tables, figures).

An academic journal that charges for publication? Is this a joke? However, there does appear to be some real academics on the list of associate editors.

But I’m hardly breaking new ground here. Various gay rights groups and other concerned individuals have been tracking Cameron for some time. Critiques can be found here and here, and there’s this piece from Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Was I wrong to mock the journal’s author charges? See today.

UPDATE 2: The Wall Street Journal, of all places, has an article on the topic by Carl Bialik. Salient paragraphs:

Besides his lack of data about same-sex couples in Illinois, researchers pointed out Dr. Cameron’s flawed assumption that the gender of pedophiles’ victims correlates to adult sexual attraction; that he applied nationwide data on homosexuality to a predominantly Chicago-based population of foster homes; and that he cited many of his own studies, including two previous ones that attempted to calculate the proportion of sexual abuse that is same-sex based on small sample sizes of six and 25 cases of abuse, respectively.

…I also interviewed Douglas Ammons, co-editor of Psychological Reports, the Missoula, Mont.-based journal that published Dr. Cameron. He said that the journal uses more reviewers than usual for Dr. Cameron’s submissions — from four up to as many as 21 — but ultimately, “We don’t put limits on people’s creativity on how they may or may not interpret stuff.” Dr. Ammons added, “We try to come down on the side of one of the basic tenets of science — free speech for the author.” He said the importance of the issue and lack of competing data merited publication. “When you are in a difficult situation without much data, it’s OK to use data that’s…not as exact or exacting as we would like it to be,” he said. Dr. Ammons invited Cameron critics to submit rebuttals to the journal and said he has published rebuttals of Dr. Cameron’s prior work.

…The best available study I could find on this subject, led over a decade ago by Brown University pediatrics professor Carole Jenny at a Denver hospital, found that only two of 269 cases of sexual abuse over a year’s time could be traced to a perpetrator who was identifiably gay…But her study itself is hampered by several factors, including its age and limited geographical scope, and that the overall proportion of same-sex households in Denver wasn’t known.

As Dr. Jenny and her co-authors wrote, a better study would track a randomly selected, large group of either children or of adults and measure incidence of sexual abuse. I asked her if she thought it would be worth conducting such a study. She replied, “Would a big, expensive research project convince folks that gay people are not an unusual threat to children? I don’t know, but research hasn’t done much to inform the debate on evolution.”

(WSJ tipped from World O’Crap)

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The Connecticut Journal Inquirer reports on a possible case of academic persecution:

MANCHESTER – A professor who claims he was unjustly removed from teaching a non-credit class titled “Understanding Militant Islamic Fundamentalism” at Manchester Community College said Friday that the American Civil Liberties Union has taken up his cause.

Michael Abdelmessih taught only one class before the college assigned another instructor to teach it.

MCC officials are not commenting on his removal, but Abdelmessih claims he was replaced because two of his students, who are both Muslim and MCC faculty members, disagreed with his definition of “jihad.”

The story was first broken by Michael Meunier‘s US Copts Association; it has since been picked up by Frontpage, which declines to mention the ACLU connection. According to the Journal report, Abdelmessih gives two reasons for his firing:

in a handout to students, he said the Muslim religion does not forgive but seeks revenge, and that there were grammatical errors in the handouts.

Abdelmessih also alleges that Fatma Antar, a faculty member who took his class

threatened him during the first class, saying she would work to ensure he did not continue teaching the course. Abdelmessih said Antar, who also is Egyptian, threatened to contact authorities in Egypt to report him.

Frontpage, as expected, tries to find further evidence against Antar:

According to Jerry Gordon, a pro-Israel activist with several Connecticut Jewish organizations, the Antars were involved in 2002 in a dispute with the local Jewish community.

What precipitated the feud was the Antars’ insistence on using anti-Israeli literature as part of a 2002 seminar called the Teachers’ Institute on Middle Eastern Studies. The seminar, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Connecticut Humanities Council, was intended to teach Connecticut public school teachers about the history, culture, and religions of the Middle East. Jewish groups charged that the accounts of the Middle East provided by Antar singled out Israel for opprobrium while maintaining a comparative silence on the faults of other Middle Eastern countries.

Gordon is also himself a contributor to Frontpage and CampusWatch; the Journal mentions him in passing as a friend of Abdelmessih. A Columbia alumnus, his name also pops up on sites in connection with attacks on Joseph Massad and Edward Said. Meanwhile, Antar’s position on Israel/Palestine is hardly extremist. In 2001 she co-wrote a piece for Common Dreams, arguing that:

We believe that a peaceful, long-term and just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires security for both Israelis and Palestinians. This should include the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state, the removal of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, a negotiated resolution of the status of Jerusalem in which all alternatives are open for discussion, and an equitable resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem. We also believe that most people are yearning for such a peace and are ready to accept its terms.

Israel as a nation must be rooted in fundamental principles of justice and democracy. To continue its policies of occupation, retaliation and collective punishment will not only undermine the genuine security of Israel, but also poison it from within. Rather than inflame the war, now is the time to use every instrument of law, diplomacy and negotiation to find a way to peace. The Palestinian Authority must do its job to prevent violence. The United States should support negotiations, as an impartial party, and not encourage military escalation.

I look forward to seeing how Antar will respond to Abdelmassih accusations (if they are false, I’d be heading for a lawyer). And, if Abdelmassih really has a case, I hope the ACLU will pursue it vigorously. Certainly, he will be better off being championed by them than by hypocritical ideologues whose idea of academic freedom is to persecute critics of Israel.

(Tipped by Agape Press)

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The Sunday Times reports on an objection to Ridley Scott’s new film about the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven:

Many of the resulting reviews have been poor. Bob Waliszewski, director of Plugged In Film Review, a programme heard on 300 US radio stations, said the film depicted Christians as “mean-spirited”, while Saladin, the Muslim leader, was shown as a chivalrous knight.

“The Bishop of Jerusalem is a coward who deserts his flock, and most of the crusaders are driven by greed rather than piety,” he said. “This is not how Christians I know see each other, nor will we want to see this film.”

So which bishop would that be? The cast list doesn’t make clear, but given the other characters, I suspect that it is supposed to be the Roman Catholic Patriarch Heraclius. That would be historically unfair, assuming Wikipedia to be accurate (I’m currently short on access to authoritative sources on the subject). Although a hostile source paints Heraclius as worldly and corrupt, he did defend the city from Saladin (hyperlinks in original):

Heraclius returned to Jerusalem in 1185 and supported the accession [to the Kingship of Jerusalem] of Guy of Lusignan, a relative newcomer to the kingdom. In 1187, Saladin invaded the kingdom, and when Guy marched out to meet him, he asked Heraclius to march along with him at the head of the army with the relic of the True Cross (Heraclius, however, was ill, and the bishop of Acre took his place). The relic did not save them, as Saladin inflicted a crippling defeat on them at the Battle of Hattin on July 4. In Jerusalem Heraclius helped lead the defense of the city against Saladin, but it was finally forced to capitulate on October 2. Heraclius personally negotiated the surrender with Saladin, who allowed him and the other Christians to leave the city unharmed; Heraclius stripped the gold from the churches and was said to carry away cartloads of treasure with him.

On the other hand, patriarchs “deserting their flocks” is not an unknown phenomenon. Here’s a bit from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia (an old public domain work). Remember, when the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem, there were indigenous Orthodox Christians as well as Muslims. This was just a few decades after the Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking churches had fallen out:

The crusaders naturally refused to recognize the claims of the old, now schismatical, patriarchal lines [i.e. the Greek Orthodox and other Oriental Orthodox Patriarchs of Jerusalem and elsewhere], whose representatives moreover in most cases fled; so they set up Latin [i.e. Roman Catholic] patriarchs in their place. The first Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem was Dagobert of Pisa (1099-1107); the Orthodox rival (Simon II) had fled to Cyprus in 1099 and died there the same year (for the list of his successors see Le Quien, III, 1241-68). It was not till 1142 that the Orthodox continued their broken line by electing Arsenios II, who like most Orthodox patriarchs at that time lived at Constantinople. At Antioch, too, the crusaders had a scruple against two patriarchs of the same place. They took the city in 1098, but as long as the Orthodox patriarch (John IV) remained there they tried to make him a Catholic instead of appointing a rival. However, when at last he fled to Constantinople they considered the see vacant, and Bernard, Bishop of Arthesia, a Frenchman, was elected to it (the succession in Le Quien, III, 1154-84).

Note that these patriarchs are actually fleeing the murderous Roman Catholic Crusaders, not the Muslims – not that I blame them. And, the way things are going, we might get to see a fleeing Patriarch again before too long, albeit for a different reason. From the AP:

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, dozens of Palestinians heckled the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in the Holy Land, Eireneos, as he led the Palm Sunday procession, demanding his resignation and holding up signs reading “Shame on you.” Police said protesters also threw empty water bottles.

The protesters, many of them Christians, want the patriarch to step down because of allegations that he was involved in the sale of church property in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem to Jewish organizations.

But I digress. Meanwhile, Muslim News reports:

WASHINGTON, D.C., CAIR – A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group said today that the new 20th Century Fox epic “Kingdom of Heaven” is a “balanced” portrayal of the Crusades, despite earlier concerns that the film might offer stereotypical portrayals of Islam or Muslims.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) based its judgment on a private screening of the Sir Ridley Scott film at Fox studios in Los Angeles. “Kingdom” is scheduled to open in theaters nationwide May 6th.

I remember that Terry Jones made a very entertaining documentary series about the Crusades a few years back for the BBC. The jocular style annoyed some, but I recall that many of the series’ contentions – that the Crusader leaders were often younger sons looking for new domains, or that the whole thing was a barbarian invasion by the west of the higher Muslim and Byzantine cultures of the east (although there was also a real religious motivation among many who took off to kill the infidel) – was hardly controversial (although Catholic historian Thomas Madden offers a revisionist view). But that was back in the 90s, before Christian conservative lobbies had fully realised the power of resentment…

UPDATE: Alt.Muslim has more.

(Tipped from MediaWatchWatch)

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When Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday I was surprised, but on reflection I realised it probably had to be. Ratzinger has been running the show for the past few years anyway, so it would be odd to continue “John Paul’s legacy” by ditching his closest adviser. And, I thought, as a Vatican bureaucrat he was unlikely to have made poor pastoral decisions about child-abusing priests that might come back to haunt him. But was I mistaken on the latter point? From today’s Observer:

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

Erm…that would be the “confidential letter” that has been available on-line since at least the end of 2003 here. But back to the Observer:

It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II’s successor last week.

…It orders that ‘preliminary investigations’ into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger’s office, which has the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the ‘functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests’.

The letter was passed to the Observer by lawyer Daniel Shea, who previously revealed a 1962 Vatican instruction on the subject to the newspaper.

For those of us unversed in canon legalise, the 2001 letter is a dense and difficult read. The relevant passages seem to be:

The more grave delicts [“wilful wrongs”] both in the celebration of the sacraments and against morals reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are…

A list follows, ending with:

…A delict against morals, namely: the delict committed by a cleric against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue [the commandment against adultery, here meant I suppose to encompass sexual sin more generally] with a minor below the age of 18 years.

Only these delicts, which are indicated above with their definition, are reserved to the apostolic tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

As often as an ordinary [i.e. a church official] or hierarch [e.g. bishop] has at least probable knowledge of a reserved delict, after he has carried out the preliminary investigation he is to indicate it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which unless it calls the case to itself because of special circumstances of things, after transmitting appropriate norms, orders the ordinary or hierarch to proceed ahead through his own tribunal.

Of course, nothing here excludes the “ordinary or hierarch” from co-operating with local police forces in his “preliminary investigation”. No doubt the letter’s defenders will say that the procedure it lays out is merely for the purposes of church discipline: it is not meant to be a substitute for a secular criminal investigation and prosecution [UPDATE: Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza of Houston makes this defence today]. But nothing commends the investigators to work with law enforcement agencies either, and the facts of the church scandals speak for themselves. The Observer also carries an unhappy old quote from Ratzinger’s co-author, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone:

In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offence of paedophilia is unfounded.

Bertone argued that putting such an obligation on bishops would undermine the “professional secrecy” of the priesthood, and would prevent priests from “confiding” in their bishops. Why these concerns trump the need for justice to be done and to be seen to be done is not explained; but I’ll bear them in mind the next time I hear (literal!) pontifications on the evils of relativism. The 2001 letter also has this passage (numbers in brackets refer to footnotes):

It must be noted that the criminal action on delicts reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is extinguished by a prescription of 10 years.(11) The prescription runs according to the universal and common law;(12) however, in the delict perpetrated with a minor by a cleric, the prescription begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age.

According to the Observer:

Daniel Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: ‘It speaks for itself. You have to ask: why do you not start the clock ticking until the kid turns 18? It’s an obstruction of justice.’

Father John Beal, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, gave an oral deposition under oath on 8 April last year in which he admitted to Shea that the letter extended the church’s jurisdiction and control over sexual assault crimes.

Ratzinger was also responsible for shelving a sex abuse investigation into Marcial Maciel Degollado, who founded Legionaries of Christ in Mexico. That church investigation (the allegations are too old to interest the Mexican police) was recently reopened. The NY Times reports:

It remains unclear why Cardinal Ratzinger changed his mind and reopened the investigation. He has never commented on the matter. Among those who have raised the complaints and others who are closely following the case, one theory suggests that he knew he would be a candidate for pope and did not want the matter hanging over his head when the conclave was held. Another suggests that Cardinal Ratzinger did not want Pope John Paul II’s reputation to be tarnished by allegations that the pope had done nothing to pursue charges against a friend. It is also possible that Cardinal Ratzinger received new information.

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