The idea that non-believers in God lack morality has been disputed by new research, experts said.
A common supposition – that of the purposeless disbeliever, lacking anything to ascribe ultimate meaning to the universe – does not bear scrutiny, a university study said.
Most endorse objective moral values and human dignity at similar rates to the general populations in their countries, the report presented at the Vatican said.
One of the authors, University of Kent sociologist Dr Lois Lee, said: “These findings show once and for all that the public image of the atheist is a simplification at best, and a gross caricature at worst.
“Instead of relying on assumptions about what it means to be an atheist, we can now work with a real understanding of the many different world views that the atheist population includes.
“The implications for public and social policy are substantial, and this study also stands to impact on more everyday interactions in religiously diverse societies.”
The research is supported by a £2.3 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation and is led by the University of Kent in collaboration with Queen’s University Belfast, St Mary’s University Twickenham, and Coventry University.
The global Understanding Unbelief programme to advance the scientific understanding of atheism and non-religion will present the results from its research at the Vatican in Rome.
The multidisciplinary research programme maps the nature and diversity of “unbelief” across six countries: Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, the UK and US.
PAT SAYS
There are a lot of church going people who are hypocrites.
There are a lot of atheists and agnostics who have very fine principles and morals.
For some, their morals come from religion.
For others their principles and morals come their innate human goodness.
All good people desire to do as much good as they can and as little harm as they can.
When we were in school we were told that there that there were two kinds of sorrow for sin – PERFECT CONTRITION and IMPERFECT CONTRITION.
Perfect contrition was that you were sorry for your sins becausenthey hurt God.
Imperfect contrition was that you were sorry for you were sorry for your sins because you were afraid you would go to hell.
Religion is not the origin of morality.
Morality is the innate conscience of man that helps him to know whst is right and what is wrong.
My Jack Russell, Buzz, looks guilty when he does something wrong.
SOME PRIESTS ARE CLAIMING THAT FINTAN “LUGS” MONAHAN IS A BIT OF A DICTATOR IN KILLALOE?
They also say he compares very badly with their former beloved bishop, Willie Walsh.
THE DAVID DYSKY CASE
David Dysky was a Killaloe seminarian in Maynooth who was on the teceiving end of an injury under “strange” circumstances.
He is a member of the local Polish community.
Some people and priests feel that this incident was not well handled and that ot was all handled in great secrecy and lack of transparency?
I am told that the Polish Community are unhappy with how Monahan handled this situation. I am told that their displeasure was communicated to Monahan by the local Polish chaplain.
FATHER ANTHONY MC MAHON
Father McMahon, a priest of Killaloe, received Bishop Willie Walsh’s permission to be a British Army chaplain. That permission was extended by the next bishop Ciaran O’Reilly.
Fintan Monahan, according to reports wants to bring this chaplaincy to an end. Father McMahon has only one year left to do to qualify for his army pension. However, word is that Monahan is not allowing this last year and many are very upset.
FATHER FERGAL O NEILL
Father Fergal O’Neill is also a priest of Killaloe.
A parish property was in dire need of renovation of repair.
According to reports he was blocked by his parish council from doing the work.
The case went to Monahan and he told the priest to do what the committee told him.
Again a very upsetting situation.
The Killaloe priests need to come together and organise and let Monahan know that he presides with their permission.
Australian cardinal won’t fight sentence if he loses appeal
Trevor Marshallsea
May 27, 2019 ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Feb. 26, 2019, file photo, Cardinal George Pell arrives at the County Court in Melbourne,
Australia. An Australian court spokesman says Pell will not fight for a reduced jail sentence if he fails in his appeal of his conviction for molesting two choirboys in the 1990s. (Credit: Andy Brownbill/AP.)
SYDNEY, Australia – Disgraced Australian Catholic cardinal George Pell will not fight for a reduced jail sentence if he fails in his appeal of his conviction for molesting two choirboys in the 1990s, a court spokesman said Monday.
The 77-year-old Pell – the most senior Catholic official convicted of sex abuse – was sentenced in a Melbourne court in March to six years in prison. He must serve at least three years and eight months of the term.
Pell will appeal his conviction next month. His lawyers have filed an application arguing it should be overturned on three grounds.
But the application does not include an appeal of the length of the sentence, Andre Awadalla, a spokesman for the Court of Appeal in Victoria state, told the Associated Press.
“The only appeal application filed on the matter is an appeal against conviction,” Awadalla said. “His lawyers haven’t filed an appeal in relation to sentence.”
In sentencing Pell in March, Victorian County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd acknowledged that there was a real chance that Pope Francis’s former finance minister could die in jail. Pell was convicted by a unanimous jury verdict in December on one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four charges of committing an indecent act with or in the presence of a child.
He was found guilty of raping a 13-year-old choirboy and sexually molesting his 13-year-old friend in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in 1996, months after he became archbishop of the city. He molested the first boy again about a month later. One of his victims later died of a heroin overdose at the age of 31.
Pell’s appeal application is set down for hearing on June 5 and 6, with three judges to first decide whether he should be granted leave to appeal. His legal team will first argue that the verdicts were “unreasonable” since the jury could not have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Pell was guilty based on the word of the surviving victim against
“unchallenged exculpatory evidence” of more than 20 prosecution witnesses.
Pell’s lawyers are also expected to argue that Judge Kidd erred in not allowing them to use a video graphic in their closing arguments, which they said would demonstrate the offending that was alleged would have been impossible.
The third ground details an alleged “fundamental irregularity” in the trial in that Pell was not arraigned – asked if he pleaded guilty or not guilty – in front of the chosen jury.
If the judges accept the first ground, Pell’s conviction will be overturned and he will be released.
A new trial could be ordered if they accept the second or third grounds. While Pell remains Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic, the Vatican has launched its own investigation into his convictions.
PAT SAYS
George Pell has spent three months in prison.
If he appeal fails he will spend another three years and five months in his cell?
He had always upheld his innocence.
Having watched the long TV programme about his time in Ballarat I was convinced of his guilt.
Of course I could be very wrong.
There are lots of famous and ordinary people who believe he is innocent.
Its interesting that his lawyers are not appealing his sentence.
The reason for that I imagine is that if he did appeal his sentence the appeal court could increase his sentence.
A three year, eight month sentence was very light for offences including child rape.
THIS IS A MESSAGE THAT CHRISTINA GALLAGHER SAID OUR LADY GAVE TO HER ON FEBRUARY 28TH 2019.
House Of Prayer Achill
Like This Page · 3 March ·
From a message of Our Blessed Lady to Christina Gallagher on February 28, 2019; “The knowledge My priest-son, Cardinal George Pell possessed of financial wrongdoing and sexual misbehaviour which he desired to correct for the good of the Church and for the sake of Truth was the reason the power of darkness overshadowed him with false accusations. I desire the world to know of his innocence and I desire the man of sin who brought this about to be aware that his iniquity will be shown up in the light of God’s Justice. I held My mantle over my dear priest-son and My Heart wept at what has been brought upon him in the endurance of this terrible injustice and deception”.
PRIESTS – ESPECIALLY IN DOWN AND CONNOR – WHO DO NOT LIKE ME FOR EXPOSING THE TRUTHS ABOUT THEM ALWAYS TRY AND DEMEAN THE TIME I SPENT IN DIVIS FLATS WORKING AMONG THE PEOPLE.
Today I am writing a brief account of that time and I challenge anyone to come forward with EVIDENCE to contradict my account.
MC KINLEY
I went to Divis in the summer of 1978. The administrator Fr. Vincent McKinley was off on the sick and the senior Fr. Joe Mc Gurnaghan was On holidays.
MC GURNAGHAN
I was met and welcomed in by the curate – a Derry man named Jimmy McCabe. McCabe was a holy and spiritual man who prayed and spent his time visiting homes. He was a chain smoker.
I discovered that McKinley and McCabe – even though they had three meals a day together – had not spoken for 14 years!
The other curate was a Salesian called Jimmy Burns who did great work with the young people.
The lifestyle in the presbytery was at least 4 *
Four course lunch everyday with soup laced with sherry, meat main course with red wine, desert and coffee laced with brandy.
Even though McKinley was the chairman of St Louise’s girls school he was was banned by the principal Sr. Genieve for feeling up the girls and lady teachers.
McKinley said a private Mass in the Tridentine Rite every morning dressed in black vestments.
He looked after the money and admin but did very little pastoral work.
McGurnaghan did absolutely nothing except saying one Mass a day. He only left his room for meals and spent all his time listening to classical music and sipping Remy Martin VSOP cognac.
Soon after I arrived McKinley did his knee serious damage on the golf course. I visited him in hospital, drove him about and every evening I gently massaged his injured knee with oil.
We were quite close and he admired my preaching. He used to invite older diocesan priests to come and here me preaching.
At the end of my first year McKinley sent for me and told me that the senior curate McGurnaghan was jealous of our close working relationship and we would need to be more remote with each other. I had no problem accepting that.
About the same time I was thing very hard about how I could transform Divis Flats in some way to give the people hope. I was already chairman of the Divis Residents Association which was resented by my fellow clergy and indeed by the paramilitaries.
I decided that we would clean up the flats, approached the Housing Executive and was given loads of free paint, brushes, shovels and pain brushes.
Up to 500 people, mainly women and children, joined me and in a few weeks we had the whole area transformed into a very respectable looking neighbourhood.
I then organised a week long Divis Festival to celebrate our success with bands, various acts and all kinds of food and drink.
Things inside the presbytery became unbearable because of the resentment of McKinley and McGurnaghan and I was banned from the priest’s dining room and ate with the housekeepers.
One night McKinley knocked me to the floor and gave me a severe kicking.
He and McGurnaghan used to kick my bedroom door late at night and sing obscene rugby songs.
All the time Bishop Philbin expressed no disapproval but actually encouraged me to keep the young people out of the hands of the paramilitaries.
Then Cahal Daly came in 1982. McKinley and McGurnaghan reported me to him for causing disruption.
Daly listened to them, transferred me to Kilkeel and then to Larne and in 1998 told me I had to leave the diocese.
I refused and still live in the church house in Larne. I am in Larne for 35 years now.
McKinley and McGurnaghan were out and out clericalists who resented the pastoral work and social work I was doing.
They made my life hell.
In the RC church if you are at all different and want to work among the ordinary people they accuse you of promoting yourself, disobedience, letting the side down etc.
Thankfully I have had great pastoral and spiritual freedom for the past 33 years.
“The closer you are to the church the further away from God you are”.
Ireland should do more to support marriage, instead of making it easier to get a divorce, says Bishop Denis Nulty. The bishop of Kildare and Leighlin was speaking ahead of a May 24 referendum in the Republic of Ireland to change the Irish constitution which requires couples to have lived apart for four of the past five years before being able to dissolve their marriage. The referendum is supported by every major party in Ireland and is expected to pass easily. For most of its history, divorce was prohibited in the Republic of Ireland. In 1995, the constitutional ban on marriage dissolution was repealed in a referendum with just 50.28 percent of the vote. The new constitutional language required a waiting period before a divorce, and also regulated which foreign divorces would be recognized by the Irish state. The new referendum would remove both provisions, although the present government has said it would legislate a two-year minimum for divorce if the Yes vote wins. “The referendum is not really about reducing the waiting time from four years to two. It is about giving the Oireachtas [Irish parliament] full power to decide what the waiting time should be in the future. It could later reduce the waiting time further still,” said a statement from the Iona Institute, a pro-family think tank. Nulty, the chair of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Council for Marriage and Family, said the objective of the proposed referendum is “not to support marriage, rather to liberalize divorce.” “For this reason, it is important to reflect deeply on the implications of this referendum which seeks to expedite the dissolution of marriage,” the bishop said. “The common good would be better served by supporting and resourcing couples and families in preparation for, and during marriage.” According to the latest available statistics, Ireland has a divorce rate of just over 0.8 percent, one of the lowest in the European Union. For comparison, the rate in Britain is 1.9 percent, and the United States is 3.2 percent. However, Ireland has seen an increase from 2015, when it was 0.6 percent. Also, fewer people are getting married in Ireland, and the rate of cohabitation has increased five-fold since 1995. Currently, 37 percent of children in Ireland are born out of wedlock. Nulty encouraged the government to fund policies which would help people stay married.
“We believe that the incidence of marriage breakdown and divorce could be reduced through the introduction of socio-economic policies which support the family and through long-term education strategies which promote values such as fidelity and commitment. While this would cost money, the human and economic cost of breakdown and divorce, both for the couple and for their children, is a far greater cost,” the bishop said. Once the most Catholic country in Western Europe, decades of revelations about clerical sexual abuse and appalling conditions in Church-run care facilities have greatly damaged the image of the Church. Over the past few years, a series of votes has chipped away at the Catholic foundations of Ireland. Last year, the people of the Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to remove pro-life protections for the unborn from the country’s constitution. A few months later, they voted to remove the crime of blasphemy from the document. In 2015, another referendum legalized same-sex marriage.
PAT SAYS
What makes a sill man like Denis Nulty think that the RC bishops in Ireland have any moral standing left to pronounce on social issues.
He should use his energy on his church’s paedophile priests, Grindr priests, gay sauna priests and cover up bishops.
The Irish Catholic bishops have absolutely no moral authority left.
They are a bunch of moral and social gangsters who have ben exposed for what they are.
The Irish people are not willing to be guided by morally bankrupt Pharisees.
The Irish people are modern secular, pluralist citizens of the world and Europeans.
They are finished with medievalist thinking and the Irish bishops are the peddlers of that thinking.
James Carroll was a Catholic priest from 1969 to 1974. He was raised in a Catholic family and was proud of that… until he could no longer be. The sex abuse scandals were the tipping point, but the fundamental Catholic beliefs didn’t help either.
Carroll says the exclusion of women from leadership, the requirement for celibacy among priests, and the opposition to LGBTQ rights have helped him realize the Church’s problems are far too large to overcome.
Now, in a cover story for the June issue of The Atlantic, Carroll says the Church should “abolish the priesthood.” In other words, the Church should eliminate the tradition that has arguably been the root cause for most of its biggest problems.
What Vatican II did not do, or was unable to do, except symbolically, was take up the issue of clericalism — the vesting of power in an all-male and celibate clergy. My five years in the priesthood, even in its most liberal wing, gave me a fetid taste of this caste system. Clericalism, with its cult of secrecy, its theological misogyny, its sexual repressiveness, and its hierarchical power based on threats of a doom-laden afterlife, is at the root of Roman Catholic dysfunction. The clerical system’s obsession with status thwarts even the merits of otherwise good priests and distorts the Gospels’ message of selfless love, which the Church was established to proclaim. Clericalism is both the underlying cause and the ongoing enabler of the present Catholic catastrophe. I left the priesthood 45 years ago, before knowing fully what had soured me, but clericalism was the reason.
I heard the confessions of young people wracked with guilt not because of authentic sinfulness but because of a Church-imposed sexual repressiveness that I was expected to affirm. Just by celebrating the Mass, I helped enforce the unjust exclusion of women from equal membership in the Church. I valued the community life I shared with fellow priests, but I also sensed the crippling loneliness that could result from a life that lacked the deep personal intimacy other human beings enjoy. My relationship with God was so tied up with being a priest that I feared a total loss of faith if I left. That very fear revealed a denigration of the laity and illustrated the essential problem. If I had stayed a priest, I see now, my faith, such as it was, would have been corrupted.
Carroll also sheds light on how “good” priests aren’t enough to save the institution in part because of the oppressive doctrine:
While a relatively small number of priests are pedophiles, it is by now clear that a far larger number have looked the other away. In part, that may be because many priests have themselves found it impossible to keep their vows of celibacy, whether intermittently or consistently. Such men are profoundly compromised. Gay or straight, many sexually active priests uphold a structure of secret unfaithfulness, a conspiracy of imperfection that inevitably undercuts their moral grit.
He adds that this outlook has been adopted by Catholics, who routinely ignore Church rules when it suits them. After all, why do so many practicing Catholics support birth control and marriage equality? Because, says Carroll, “Catholics in general have perfected the art of looking the other way.”
Getting rid of the priesthood isn’t the same as getting rid of the Church itself. Carroll writes that practicing Catholics would have to pick up the pieces by doing good works in the community, “taking on injustice,” and empowering lay leaders who aren’t bound by the rigidity of the priesthood. That may sound fine, but plenty of activist groups have done all of those things entirely without the Catholic Church.
The institution itself isn’t worth saving. That means Carroll’s short-term fix of eliminating priests would still leave the most problematic doctrinal issues in place. It’s not like the Catholic Church would be so damn attractive if not for all the pedophile priests.
Until the beliefs change, Catholicism will continue to be a problem. And if the beliefs change, Catholicism may as well cease to exist. Just look at how Catholic-run hospitals are putting patients in harm’s way. That’s not a priest problem. That’s a problem with doctrine. Unless that changes, Carroll’s argument amounts to nothing more than a bandage. Still, it’s a powerful piece because the author is someone who loves the Catholic Church and wants to save it. If the Catholic Church can’t convince a guy like that to keep supporting the institution, what hope is there for anyone else?
PAT SAYS
The priesthood does not need to be abolished.
But it does need to be reformed?
We need to go back to the NT and early church model of priesthood – working, self financing priests not depending on the community but financially independent.
Powerless priests, SERVANTS of the community, not power weilding bosses.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 