However, in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due,
I want to give credit to Pope John-Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI for NOT
carrying on a crusade against evolutionary theory, as we have seen certain
Protestant fundamentalists in the
I should also mention that Matthew Fox is most famous for
promoting what he terms creation spirituality, in which he stresses the state
of original blessing in the Garden of Eden, instead of stressing the story of
the Fall of Adam and Eve and the Christian interpretation of so-called original
sin. Centuries before
In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, perhaps we should also give Benedict credit for recognizing that the priest sex-abuse scandal is a problem, even though he has chosen to see it exclusively as a problem involving the priest-perpetrators, ignoring the role of bishops in compounding the problems occasioned by the priest-perpetrators. But in contrast, John-Paul II basically stone-walled the problem during his long reign as pope.
Psychotherapists and others who have interviewed abusive
priests report that they usually show no remorse for what they have done to
their victims. In his new book THE SCIENCE OF EVIL: ON EMPATHY AND THE ORIGINS
OF CRUELTY (2011), Simon Baron-Cohen of the
In any event, Fox details the numerous crusades that the Polish pope and his German henchman and successor have carried on in different parts of the world. In an appendix, Fox lists the names of ninety-two individual theologians and pastoral leaders who have been silenced, expelled, or banished under Ratzinger/Benedict, including about twenty Americans. In my view, as long as there is an institutional church, there will probably be a church authority that will determine who is in and who is not in the church group. But Fox urges us to consider carefully what the people who have been silenced and/or expelled have said or done to deserve their punishment. When we do consider the alleged offenses, we should note how Baron-Cohen's discussion of empathy can shed light on the alleged offenses. In brief, many of the alleged offenders seem to be guilty of showing too much empathy for the poor and the disenfranchised people of the world.
Another point from Baron-Cohen's book strikes me as worth mentioning in connection with the issues that Fox discusses. Baron-Cohen points out that many people are not cruel to other people because of their sense of empathy for the other people. However, certain people who do not have a strong sense of empathy but an empathy deficit may also be strong systematizers, in Baron-Cohen's terminology. Strong systematizers may follow a strong code of behavior that prevents them from cruelty toward others, despite their empathy deficit.
So how does this connect with anything Fox discusses? Strong systematizers tend to adhere strongly to their systematizations. Catholic moral theology would surely qualify as an example of strong systematization based on so-called natural-law theory. But natural-law is not based on a strong sense of empathy. However, deontological moral theory growing out of Kant's thought is arguably based on a strong sense of empathy, as is Martin Buber's critique of I-it interactions.
Granted, somebody always has to bring up the rear. The
Polish pope and his German henchman and successor represent the rearguard in
the Roman Catholic Church, along with the bishops. But Protestant
fundamentalists in the
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