DREADRADIO: John Heard On Triple J Radio 'Hack' 'The Shake Up' News Analysis Program - Executive Salaries, Ethics Of Giving & QLD Age Of Consent

[UPDATE] Complete audio from the broadcast is available for download here (Friday February 27, 2009).

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT appeared as a special guest on a current affairs / weekly news analysis program on Friday. Issues discussed:

- Executive salaries, morality of reward / remuneration, solidarity, justice, global financial crisis, capitalism, financial services, salary caps, shareholder activism, long-term indicators of company performance, brain drain, hard work, rewarding poor performance, bonus pay-outs for the leaders of failing businesses;

- Poverty, charity work, humanitarian aid, NGOs, the ethics of giving, Peter Singer, anecdotes about unseemly excess at marquee NGOs in Laos, inefficiencies in charity disbursements / services, transparency, Catholic charities, the Catholic Church as the largest provider of charitable services on earth, religious vows of poverty, solidarity in the service of the poor; and

- Gay adoption in NSW, parenting, lesbian motherhood, promiscuity, stable child-rearing environments, Queensland age of consent discrepancies between vaginal sex and anal sex, a claimed lack of political will, protection of children, homoactivist history with NAMBLA on the one hand, and the dangers of consent laws being used to set-up blackmail on the other, no link between paedophilia and homosexuality, issues around the sexualisation of children, interrogation of the issue of sex / childhood, sex as a gift, the integrated human person, marriage, sexual nature as an expression of love, mismanagement of child sex abuse by some leaders of the Catholic Church, questions of repression / oppression, empowerment of girls.

:: Details ::

"The Shake Up" on Hack was hosted by Kate O'Toole, and it ran on the radio station Triple J (part of the ABC network). Also featured, award-winning playwright Tommy Murphy (Holding The Man), a listener in the studio, and some others by telephone and pre-recording. Hack is broadcast live nationally in Australia between 5:30PM and 6:00PM weekdays, and the Friday slot is billed as a week-in-review survey of current events.

:: The Upshot ::

To clarify:

- the age of consent (sodomy) laws in the Australian State of Queensland do apply across the board (i.e., regardless of sexual orientation) as I claimed on-air; and

- my comments on failures of the market are tempered by what might be called a Burkean "sense of epistemological modesty", and I view the dysfunctional behaviour that has caused such widespread outrage through a virtue ethics lens, which compels me to hope for prudence, honesty, and modesty in business dealings.

DREADNOUGHT thanks Kate O'Toole, James West, the ABC production team, and the other guests.

:: Resources ::

- DREADNOUGHT's previous appearance as a guest on the Hack program.

DREADPUBLISHING: John Heard In 'Issues In Society' On Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens & Atheist Arguments

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's much-debated opinion editorial God Is Not Responsible For War And Suffering (June 7, 2007) has been selected for re-publication. The article is included in the latest Issues In Society collection: "Religious Beliefs", published by The Spinney Press.

:: The Upshot ::

The collection will be available from April, 2009. Order a copy, or purchase online.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - 'Mercy' Father Marcial Maciel, Legionaries Of Christ, Homosexual / Sexual Misconduct & Double Lives

[UPDATE] Prof. Germain Grisez advises Legionaries of Christ priests and Regnum Christi cooperators.

[UPDATE] George Weigel in FIRST THINGS on what should happen next.

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on scandal, and hypocrisy. It was prompted by revelations concerning the secret double life of Legionaries of Christ founder Father Marcial Maciel. It will be published in The Record newspaper next week.

:: Being Heard - 'Mercy' ::

John Heard

What takes away your peace of soul cannot come from God – St Josemaria Escriva

The news that Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi founder Father Marcial Maciel lived a “double life…not appropriate for a Catholic priest” shocked me. Of course, the details of Father Maciel’s crimes – at least one child, a mistress, multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against seminarians - floored Catholics all over the world, not least those thousands who found in Father Maciel’s spirituality and witness something worthy, and true.

I have had next to nothing to do with Father Maciel’s movements, but they have touched my life. The respected newspaper National Catholic Register is published in the United States by individual members of the Legionaries of Christ, and its editorial board has endorsed my online outreach to other same sex attracted Catholics.

There are also many other good, holy men and women who operate under the banner of the groups Father Maciel founded. Today, their grief must be great indeed.

The Legionaries, however, will try to go on, and they must have our prayers during this time of trial. The details of the reckoning, cleansing, and re-ordering they face will become clear in the years ahead. There is an opportunity for institutional reform, and there will be a time for personal and public accounting.

In the meantime, however, I want to echo and explore the sentiments of Father Owen Kearns L.C., the publisher of the National Catholic Register, who wrote that he was “saddened and humbled” by the revelations.

Saddened, sure, but why humbled?

That word, the very idea that someone associated with Father Maciel, but otherwise unaware of his failings, would be humbled nonetheless, is important. I might submit that it is extremely important, for it tells us something about Christianity.

Indeed, to go further, I might even reveal that I was deeply humbled by this news. Not, of course, because I had spent time – like Father Kearns – defending Father Maciel against the mounting accusations. Rather because - again like Kearns, I’m guessing - I must recognise in Father Maciel’s failings something like the mystery of evil (mysterium iniqutatis) that Pope John Paul the Great discussed in 2002.

I am humbled because that recognition cannot save me from a linked understanding. This is the Christian’s acknowledgement that he is always a flawed servant of Christ, and that my sins are as real and terrible as any other man’s. G-d help me, indeed, they might be worse.

Certainly, those who defend the Church and work for her good have need for caution, and we must cultivate prudence. A revelation like this gives all of us cause to re-interrogate ourselves.

For, even laymen can come to think that as long as our public statements are doctrinally correct, and our witness is appropriately Catholic, it doesn’t matter so much what we do “off the record”. The truth is, of course, that our private actions, and our personal lives – while not properly the focus of prurient public interest – obviously will count for or against us when the general account of our lives is rendered before G-d.

In my line of work, face-to-face with my same sex attracted brothers and sisters, the requisite disclaimers – “of course, I am no saint”; “we are all sinners”; “I am no better than anyone else” – can come too easily to hand. What begins as an honest acknowledgement of personal weakness, a necessary reckoning with one’s failures and sinfulness - what was solidarity and love – too often becomes a near-impenetrable shield.

I am guilty of using this shield to delay, suppress, or otherwise thwart a more profound personal reconversion to the standard of the Gospel.

Worse, I am guilty of using this shield to dismiss, silence, and pre-empt those who would call me to a more enlightened discipleship.

I am guilty, my friends, of some variation of Father Maciel’s sin,* if only entertaining the idea that a Christian’s life can be compartmentalized - for Christ here, and for something else there - as though He has not come to save us totally, as if He doesn’t demand our whole lives, for Him.

:: The Upshot ::

In this time of reckoning, experienced across the Catholic world, may we come to the peace that St Josemaria Escriva (the leader of another recent Catholic movement – albeit a mercifully untainted one) extolled. May we have right relations with a jealous God.

In death, may Father Maciel come to that same peace.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion and politics online, and on Facebook, join the DREADNOUGHTERS group.

* (The comparison is, of course, audacious and literary. The Legionaries of Christ is a global movement, and DREADNOUGHT's column cannot take in all of the good of Father Maciel's works, especially the good he inspired - despite his weaknesses - in others).