Wednesday 14 April 2010

So Nasty

... pederasty,
Father, why do these words sound so nasty?


The man who wrote those lines, James Rado, was not asked about them on Midweek, presented by Libby Purves, who wrote yesterday in support of arresting the Pope when he visits Britain.

The campaign for that arrest is being spearheaded by Richard Dawkins, in whose most celebrated book, published as recently as 2006, we read this:

"Priestly abuse of children is nowadays taken to mean sexual abuse, and I feel obliged, at the outset, to get the whole matter of sexual abuse into proportion and out of the way. Others have noted that we live in a time of hysteria about paedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witch-hunts of 1692… All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affections for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless, if, fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defence, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).

The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective opprobrium. For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can’t help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America… We should be aware of the remarkable power of the mind to concoct false memories, especially when abetted by unscrupulous therapists and mercenary lawyers. The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown great courage, in the face of spiteful vested interests, in demonstrating how easy it is for people to concoct memories that are entirely false but which seem, to the victim, every bit as real as true memories. This is so counter-intuitive that juries are easily swayed by sincere but false testimony from witnesses."

The God Delusion, pp. 315-16

4 comments:

  1. What do you think of Primark withdrawing the peado-bra?

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  2. Why were they ever selling it in the first place? Who designed it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Only slightly off topic ...

    I noticed that Libby Purves had a former member of the Hitler Youth on her radio programme today.

    Admirable chap, he was. It might be useful to remember Libby's tolerant attitude to his youthful activities.

    ReplyDelete