Month: March 2005

The Woman At The Well

A reader writes:

Yesterday, I attended my sister’s parish.  For the Gospel reading (Jacob’s Well), a "play" format was used with the priest saying the words of Jesus and parishoners reading other parts.  Is this in accord with the rubrics of the mass?
It wasn’t terribly distracting, but I’m not sure of the reason for it. I have seen this done at Good Friday, but not with this reading.
It’s not allowed.
There are only two days of the year on which such dialogue readings of the gospel are permitted: Palm Sunday and Good Friday.
I have seen the same thing happen, though, and I have a suspicion why it’s being done: Aside from general touchie-feelie, "Let’s shake up the liturgy"-ness, I think it’s because the text involves Jesus interacting with a woman, and it’s just too tempting for some liturgists to have the chance to get a woman reading the part of a woman character from the gospel, as this otherwise doesn’t occur. I think it’s done as some kind of advancement of women/Jesus’ compassion for women thing.
That’s just speculation, though. You’d have to ask the folks who did it in any given parish for the real story on their motives. In many cases, it may have simply been that they’d seen it done elsewhere and didn’t realize it wasn’t allowed.

FLASH! WaPo Covers Phony Science To Harm Abstinence Agenda!

The Washington Post is carrying a story about the Ugandan decline in AIDS (WARNING! Evil registration requirement!).

Excerpts:

Abstinence and sexual fidelity have played virtually no role in the much-heralded decline of AIDS rates in the most closely studied region of Uganda, two researchers told a gathering of AIDS scientists here.

The findings, not yet published, contradict earlier evidence that attributed Uganda’s success in AIDS prevention largely to campaigns promoting abstinence and faithfulness to sex partners. Much of the prevention work in the Bush administration’s $15 billion global AIDS plan is built around those two themes, and Uganda is frequently cited as evidence that the strategy works.

If the report here stands up to scrutiny — and, more important, is borne out by surveys elsewhere in Uganda — it will deflate one of the few supposed triumphs to come out of AIDS-battered Africa in the last decade [Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this].

Okay, so WaPo is willing to report on a dramatic claim regarding scientific results that haven’t been published in an academic journal and thus presumably haven’t been peer-reviewed yet. They aren’t willing to sign off on the results ("If the report here stands up to scrutiny") but they are willing to report them based on a speech given by to opportunistic individuals who can’t be troubled to run their "results" through the peer-review process before announcing them to the world.

I’m sorry, but this is not the way real science is done.

Neither is it the way real journalism is done.

WaPo has been in the business long enough to know that the story that gets out there first tends to dominate the discussion. By covering an unscientific report, WaPo is using its influence to get an anti-abstinence story out there seeking to undermine Uganda’s (and the Bush administration’s) abstinence-based approach to fighting AIDS.

The fact that WaPo admits that the report may not stand up to scrutiny shows that they know enough to know that they shouldn’t be reporting on this.

Suppose the report doesn’t stand up to scrutiny (as is likely). What then?

Well, how ’bout this:

  1. A myth becomes entrenched that abstinence-based programs don’t work.
  2. It becomes harder for the U.S. to fund such programs.
  3. Less funding is available for them.
  4. More people get HIV.
  5. More people die from AIDS.
  6. The Washington Post and reporter David Brown have blood on their hands.

That’s what they’re risking by reporting on the opportunistic spoutings of a couple of individuals who can’t be "bothered" to run their findings through the peer-review process before announcing them to the world.

By taking that risk, the Washington Post and reporter David Brown already share in bloodguilt.

Animal Emotions

HERE’S AN ARTICLE ARGUING THAT ANIMALS HAVE EMOTIONS AND A SENSE OF SELF.

What I want to know is: What planet have the authors and interviewees of the article been living on?

Is it a planet where they don’t have animals and so these folks are just discovering what animals are like?

It’s perfectly obvious that animals have emotions and a sense of self. Okay, maybe beetles and eyelash mites don’t, but anything with fur or feathers does. All it takes is thinking back to one’s own experience for a few moments to come up with all kinds of examples of animals displaying emotion:

  • As a boy I remember being on the family ranch and having to round up a bull that had gotten over the barbwire fence. Getting it back in the pasture was a game of mutual intimidation, with the bull trying to scare us off and us trying to scare the bull back where it needed to be–without making it so mad that it would charge.
  • In college, one of my old girlfriends had a baby duck that she kept in her dorm room and would take outside for a while every day. One day I helped her and the duckling exploded with joy as soon as it was outside and could see the grass and the sky. While my girlfriend and I sat on the grass, the duckling marched about quacking deliriously. It was clearly experiencing an emotion.
  • Later, after my wife passed on, my sister moved in with me for a while and brought her dog–a high-maintenance Siberian huskie/wolf blend that was so people-friendly that whenever anyone would come over to my house the dog would lose control of itself with joy and move frenetically from person to person trying to lick them in the face. If put outside to keep it from doing this, it would sit outside the back door and whine to be let in again so it could interact with people.
  • Once I was riding a horse through an obstacle course that the horse wasn’t wanting to get right (it was being lazy). When I finally got it through without making any mistakes, I hopped off the horse and gave it positive feedback by cheering it and slapping it on the withers (that’s the high part of a horse’s back, at the base of its neck). The horse was so pleased to have done the course successfully and to receive praise that it began nuzzling me so forcefully that it actually started to pick me up off the ground with its head.

All of these animals were experiencing emotion, sometimes very strongly so. They also had a sense of self. That’s presupposed by the kind of you-me standoff I was in with the bull, or the dog’s desire to relate to you by licking your face.

I’m sure that you can think of examples from your own experience. Every time a cat arches its back and hisses, or every time a dog can’t wait to play with you when you come home, it’s an animal experiencing an emotion. Every time animals get in fights over food or territory or mates, they display a sense of self.

Animals (at least the higher animals) simply have these things, and it’s perfectly obvious. We don’t need scientists to tell us that they do.

What’s really going on in the article, and in the "science" behind the article, is that animal rights folks are trying to soften up the public to their view by getting them to think of animals as more like us than they are.

Sure, they have emotions and a sense of self, but the absence of these has never been a condition for animal husbandry or eating them. The fact is, they may be similar to us in some ways, but they are vastly different in others. No animal will ever write a sonnet or compose a symphony or understand Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem or contemplate God.

Whatever marvellous attributes they may have (including a degree of intelligence), animals do not have reason. They are not moral subjects, and they do not have rights. It may be an abuse of human nature to be deliberately cruel to animals, because it is contrary to our nature to enjoy inflicting pain for its own sake, but it is not contrary to our nature to eat meat, raise livestock, or go hunting.

Thus the Catechism states:

2417 God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice, if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.

2418 It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.