Mike Mulhern's Open Salon Blog

Secularism dogs Pope in England and beyond

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:09:47 -0400

Pope Benedict’s visit to England has done more to shine a light on secularism than to enhance the fading brand of Catholicism.

The Pope arrived in London carrying the baggage of clergy abuse which seems to have been everywhere. He expressed his deep sorrow for “unspeakable crimes” but it means nothing to the increasing numbers who see religions - all religions - as bogus or, at best, flawed so deeply as to be ruled out of their lives.

Expressing the renewal of the church’s “age old” commitment to the education and care of young people doesn’t make up for the abuses we are aware of. Nor does it begin to speak to the abuses that must have been committed by all ranks of the clergy over the centuries. If they could get away with it in 1950, imagine the freedom they must have had in 1850? But physical and sexual abuse are just a short stretch along the church’s crooked path.

The Roman Catholic Church’s refusal to put one foot inside the modern world has led millions of Catholics to turn away, either because of an absolute loss of faith or the realization that the church does not meet their spiritual needs. While some have turned away because of the physical and sexual abuses visited on children by the clergy, most have left because the church does not speak to them, It has never spoken to women, except in a condescending way, and now it has lost even the attention of men who in former times would have embraced the priesthood, most of them for noble reasons.

Now that we can speak our minds without fear of being burned at the stake or shunned with effect by the deeply devout, we are hearing and seeing more objections to the institution of the church. If you don’t believe, or if you object to the church’s stand on birth control or abortion or celibacy or the treatment of women, you can say so. You might even be able to put up a billboard along the Pope’s motor route touting the wisdom of using condoms. While the Pope and his church oppose condoms, and the clergy has no need of them if they are following the rules, he and his cronies are no longer shielded from the beliefs of others.

The media can and does put the Pope and his church under a very harsh and probing light. They criticize the church’s handling of abuse by priests, of course, but they also give voice to people who just find the whole institution a load of old rubbish. Some of those speakers are eloquent and their arguments reasonable. They will doubtless awaken feelings in others who will come to agree with them. The faith in non-faith will grow. The voices of so-called secularists will become louder and churches, unless they are taken over by clubs of atheists, will empty, close and either be torn down to put to some other use.

The Pope and his college of cardinals are aware that there is a shortage of priests, a hole they are trying to plug by using deacons to do a bit of church management or bringing priests out from Poland or Africa who still tow the party line. While there have been some successful transplants, many just annoy their parishioners and drive them away.

Wherever the Pope goes in the future, he will be faced with the sorts of realities he and his top managers have hitherto been sheilded from. If the church was a private corporation, the board would be thrown out and the new board would alter their brand to suit an evolving spiritual marketplace and do their shareholders proud.

Instead, they are trapped in a web of rules, regulations and myth stitched together over the centuries to shore up their grip on the Catholic version of reality. The suit no longer fits, the fabric is full of holes, but they continue to wear it hoping, perhaps, for a miracle.

Possible MS Cure Doesn’t Thrill MS Societies

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:11:23 -0500

Now that an Italian doctor seems to have unraveled the mystery of multiple sclerosis, you’d think the Canadian and US multiple sclerosis societies would be jumping for joy. Oddly, they’re not.

Here’s the background. In 1995, Elena Ravalli, wife of Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara in Italy, came down with MS symptoms. Her husband did some research and what he found showed that MS is not an autoimmune condition, but a vascular disease possibly caused by an excess of iron in the blood. In more than 90 per cent of people with multiple sclerosis, including Dr. Zamboni’s wife, the veins draining blood from the brain were malformed or blocked. In people without MS, they were not.

The experimental surgery he performed on his wife offers hope that MS, which afflicts 2.5 million people worldwide, can be cured and/or largely prevented just by clearing the arteries that lead to the brain.

While medical researchers in Canada and the US are trying to determine how effective the artery clearing therapy is, the MS societies in both countries are strangely aloof.

Canada’s Globe and Mail reports that the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada says, “There is insufficient evidence to suggest that this phenomenon is the cause of MS.”

SINCE THIS WAS POSTED, THE CANADIAN MS SOCIETY HAS MOVED TO INVESTIGATE THE VASCULAR APPROACH TO MS TREATMENT.

The US society even discourages patients from getting tested or seeking surgical treatment. Rather, it continues to promote drug treatments used to alleviate symptoms, which include corticosteroids, chemotherapy agents and pain medication. Its web site does, however, discuss Dr. Zamboni’s findings in the research section and refers to (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2009; 80:392-399) where his findings were published.

Who knows what’s behind this lack of joy from the MS societies, but if I had a family member afflicted with MS, I wouldn’t be supporting MS societies. I’d be spending the money on a ticket to Italy.

For Dr. Zamboni's wife, Elena, and many others who have had the surgery, scans and neurological tests show the multiple sclerosis is, for all intents and purposes, gone. The results may not yet be enough for those in the medical research community, but they represent a very strong argument for those of us in the medical reality community.

Afghan Aid The Food of Corruption

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:11:16 -0500

While the US grapples with corruption in Afghanistan, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates says international donors must do more to ensure their aid goes to the right people. He is spitting in the wind. The right people always turn out to be the first at the cash box and that always turns out to be the country’s leadership.

Afghanistan is a deepening pit. It won’t be easy to climb out and no one will want us to leave as long as we’re standing on a large pile of cash we call aid. NGOs can’t safely operate in Afghanistan so the money has to go to the government. It’s the wrong pocket, but it’s the only pocket available. Given that, maybe it’s time to close the cash box and go home. We can leave misery in our wake today or we can spend more billions and lose more lives and leave misery in our wake tomorrow. Not much of choice but that’s probably all that’s on the table; all that’s ever been on the table.

Close the cash box, go home. Let the beast starve.

Huffington Post The Future

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:11:23 -0500

I have seen the future of newspapers and it is the Huffington Post. We live our lives online now and through sports, entertainment and politics. We don’t want the read any more, we want the action on video and in pictures and from the horse’s mouth, not the mouths of reporters assessing the truth.

The Huffington Post is a virtual product with very few staffers that gathers material from a number of sources. Hundreds of writers contribute to the Huff Post and they apparently do it for free. What a coup!

What Adrianna Huffington has done for newspapers is to prove newspapers have developed a format we like and content we like, it’s just that we like it more dramatic, more opinionated, with more nudity. Instead of reading late night jokes, we get to see them. They post Celebes in see-through shirts, panties, shirtless, topless and on camera saying ridiculous things. It’s real life as we now imagine it: live, on camera, all the time. The rest of the time it’s news we get from faces and names we recognize.

I love reading Maureen Dowd in the New York Times twice a week but I look forward to the day when her column is available on Huff Post, not just the words, but some video too and maybe a clip of her and Sarah Palin pulling hair. You know it will happen!

The days of inky paper being dropped off on curbs or delivered to front doors or into mail boxes is not over but those days are numbered. It will be sad for those of us who have winter fires to start, but we’ll cope. As long as the lights on are, we’ll have all we can handle right here online and in living, breathing, heaving color. Hu hah!

Lawyers Get Kids Out of Homework

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:11:44 -0500

Objecting to what they called the “double shift” of class work and homework, a Calgary couple, both lawyers, has worked out a deal that their school-age children - ages 10 and 11 - don’t have to do homework. They can only be marked on what they achieve in class. This is a step forward for harried parents and students who can’t enjoy family or community life because they are saddled with ridiculous amounts of homework that sometimes occupies the child all the way from dinner to bedtime. Sense at last.