Religious Crackpot Of The Month: January 2008

The first Religious Crackpot Of The Month this year goes to Patrick O’Donoghue. There are those who would prefer I call him “the Right Reverence Patrick O’Donoghue”, but I won’t be doing that. I think that people’s relative reverence and honourability is something they earn by their actions and not something they’re granted by their job titles. And, since this doesn’t appear to be 1992, I won’t be using the word “right” as an intensifier. Patrick O’Donoghue is shockingly ignorant, not least of the rules of chess: despite being Bishop of Lancaster, he is moving decidedly backwards.

He has earned this dubious honour by sending what the Guardian called “a 66-page document” to all the Catholic schools in his diocese, though I’ve found it and it is in fact a 68-page document with two blank pages at the end. (It’s a PDF; they recommend Foxit to read it. I don’t know what’s wrong with Acrobat Reader; possibly Adobe refuse to condemn abortion or something.)

He is by no means the only crackpot mentioned in the article – the Vatican body who endorsed his document must be at least as stupid as its author – but he is the most vocally insane of them all. So let’s be explicit about why he in particular is getting this award. (It is perhaps worth noting that if I had my way, this letter would never have existed as there would be no faith schools to receive it, although if I really had my way there would be no bishop to send it either.)

Normally I’d be saying that he, like most other winners of the prize, is placing religious teachings above basic safety advice, but in this case that would be being far, far too kind. The teachings he’s advocating are barely even religious – there’s not a single word in the Bible about condoms. This isn’t religion. Religion is when someone writes a book which, centuries later, is found and taken far, far too seriously. What we have here is a large organisation deciding that something is bad and dictating that all their followers will believe it too. This isn’t religion: this is cult behaviour (though there’s less difference than most people would care to admit).

Worse still, he doesn’t consider that he is putting it above basic safety advice because he disputes that condoms can prevent AIDS.

Parents must insist on continence outside marriage and fidelity in marriage as the only true and secure education for the prevention of AIDS. Parents, schools, and colleges must also reject the promotion of so-called ‘safe sex’ or ‘safer sex’, a dangerous and immoral policy based on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against AIDS.

Exactly why he thinks this is unclear. At no point does he bother to explain how a 120 nanometre wide retrovirus can penetrate seventy thousand nanometres of rubber in only a few minutes. This paragraph cites a book called The Truth And Meaning Of Human Sexuality as its only source, so I did a quick Google search and discovered that the book in question was published by The Catholic Library, and its full text is available on their website. To save you the bother of looking, the paragraph is a direct quote from the book (paragraph 139; as we know, Catholics believe that any sentence with a number is true) and the book doesn’t justify it any further either. Presumably they just believe unquestioningly whatever would best serve their agenda if it were true. (That, one might argue, is very much the idea of religion in any case.)

He also repeats the Vatican’s anti-Amnesty International stance:

Schools and colleges must not support charities or groups that promote or fund anti-life policies, such as Red Nose Day and Amnesty International, which now advocates abortion.

To be fair to him, he also suggests some non-abortion-condoning alternative organisations, but I can’t imagine any of them have the resources Amnesty do, and in any case, Amnesty International do not advocate abortion! He goes further, though (and I should mention for the sake of integrity that the ellipsis below represents a 38-page break, much of which I didn’t read):

Anything that evokes wonder and reflection about the fundamental questions of human existence in Science, English, or Art, for example, is an opportunity to teach the truths of the faith. ... Under no circumstances should any outside authority or agency that is not fully qualified to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church ever be allowed to speak to pupils or individuals on sexual or any other matter involving faith and morals. Nor should a Catholic school or college ever refer a pupil to an outside agency for advice or counselling; such is the prerogative only of the parent.

That’s nothing more or less than indoctrination: under his system, a pupil in a Catholic school is not allowed to talk to anybody except Catholic representatives about any aspect of religion or emotion (or, probably anything except mathematics, and even then the distinction between the numbers three and one is probably taboo). This will lead to them being effectively brainwashed, exposed to only one ideology every day for 15 of their most formative years. He says in the Guardian that this is “absolute rubbish”, but then he would say that, because apparently he’s a total bastard who will say anything if he thinks it will get people on his side.

Like most religious crackpots, O’Donoghue utterly fails to understand the meaning of the word “secular”. Like the current incumbent Specifically Mormon Crackpot of The Year, he seems to think that it is itself a religion. He demonstrates this very neatly when he says “the secular view … may not be presented as neutral information”. The whole point of secularism is that it is completely neutral. It considers all ideas purely on their own merits, affording none any special treatment regardless of what various religions may say about them. O’Donoghue would presumably prefer the “woo” version of neutrality, where all ideas are given equal credit regardless of their relative merit. This system is in reality as neutral as giving poorer entrants in a competition a proportional head start so that all players have an equal chance of winning: clearly it benefits the worst and removes any incentive to improve, and only a really stupid sport would do that.

In fact, he appears to be falling into another brain-trap more commonly associated with quacks than crackpots: he’s adopted an Us And Them mentality. Creationists do this, by describing anything that contradicts creationism as “evolutionist”, including the Big Bang theory, geology and abiogenesis, which have nothing at all to do with evolution. Homeopaths call anything that contradicts homeopathy “allopathic”, including vaccines, chemistry, epidemiology and basic scientific methodology. Here, O’Donoghue would appear to be saying that anything which contradicts the Vatican’s random assertions is part of some “secular” conspiracy. Let me let you in on a little secret: there is no secular conspiracy. It just wouldn’t work. It’d be like herding cats. There is no “secular view”: secularism is not a religion, or an ideology or a political affiliation; it’s just a single idea (that religious teachings should be ignored wherever possible) with a name. Most secularists agree on other things too, but that’s largely because great – or at least, non-awful – minds are known to think alike.

He wants teachers to discuss “the ‘sacrament of marriage’” and to “insist that contraception [is] wrong”, all while criticising secularism for being insufficiently “neutral”.

I’ve not read the whole thing. I don’t think I could do that to myself. Luckily, the document (called “Fit For Mission? A Guide”) ends with a summarised list of “actions” for schools. Here are a few of them (word for word):

It should be noted at this point that Jesus, being long dead by the time it was established, has never publicly endorsed the Catholic church and would in all probability loathe it as much as I do.

What the fuck? How will that help? Does he think God is going to personally reply and say “yeah, it’s not a bad document but I didn’t like the font”?

…whatever that is; Google doesn’t know.

He actually considers liturgy a basic human need, presumably alongside oxygen and nutrition (assuming he doesn’t think those are “deluded theories” too.

(It’s not mentioned whether this devotion should be weekly or not.)

Honestly, those last dozen read like some kind of scary cult handbook. Because that is precisely what this document is. It is a guide to how to effectively hijack a child’s state-funded education and use it to brainwash them into your religion, thus ensuring a nice supply of minds (and money) in the future. That people would do such a thing is still shocking to me, and that they would then be widely thought of as good people is almost as bad.

You can email the team behind the report at Mission.Review@LancasterRcDiocese.org.uk. I intend to. (I will of course blog any and all relevant correspondence.)

Edit:

They also have something they call a “blog”, but is in fact just a boring newsletter powered by WordPress. The skin they’ve chosen for it was designed by a girl who “at an early age [decided for herself] that there are no gods or supernatural forces”. Presumably they will take more care than this when “scrutinising” those Year Planners.