Dominatio Per Malum

How Your Views Compare With the Court
Answer six questions to see how your views align with those of the Roberts court and all Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/07/25/us/scotus-quiz.html

According to the quiz, i am 6 for 6 in agreement with the “Liberal” Wing of the SCOTUS. I agree with Justice John Paul Stevens 100% of the time and disagree with Justice Clarence Thomas 100% of the time. In addition, i manage to disagree with the majority of the American population most of the time. Fun Factoid: I as surprised to find that opposition to gun ownership was considered a “liberal” position.

Related Reading: New York Times, 24 July 2010: Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative in Decades

Inception (2010) 8/10

Like a fevered dream, Inception presents audacious ideas and surrealistic dreamscapes, but once you wake up, it feels so whimsical. Inception is a film which is best seen without knowing the plot, so this review will remain spoiler free and deliberately vague. The plot mirrors that of a traditional heist flick, complete with the protaganist, Leonardo DiCaprio, assembling his cast of thieves, but the biggest con may well be on the audience who might feel that have been sucked deep into Christopher Nolan’s rabbit hole.

The plot does not really matter, and once you have time to think about it, you realise it is a rather flimsy plot. But much like dreams, when you are dreaming, you don’t sense the incongruity. It is only after you wake up that you see the flaws in the dream. And this is where Inception succeeds. It runs for about 2 and a half hours, but you barely notice. The film starts, as dreams often do, in the thick of the action. It then becomes a thrilling, frenetic and thoughtful piece of moviemaking.

Inception is the rare, intellectual sci-fi-heist movie. It is complicated, but as long as you pay attention, it is surprisingly easy to follow. There is some kind of internal logic, which may not necessary make sense, but like a dream, you only realise it when the movie is over. It makes you think, which is always a great thing, and in a film industry populated by remakes and sequels, Inception is a refreshing breath of fresh air. There are beautiful, mesmeric scenes: a folded cityscape, an inspired fight sequence in the corridors which is nicely complemented by the excellent cinematography.

But even in the most compelling dreams, there are cracks. Something which breaks the illusion of perfection. And Inception, while a very, very good piece of filmaking, falls short of greatness. Inception engages the mind, but not so much the heart. This is an inevitable effect of the nature of the film. Christopher Nolan has assembled an A rate cast, but does not have the time to let them flesh out their roles. Still, with arguably limited roles, the stellar cast shines. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy and the excellent Marion Cotillard make full use of their roles. Although I was disappointed that Michael Caine did not get much screen time. The weakest part in the film is perhaps that there is too much action, too much of the “James Bond” style scenes, the most egregious of which involves a snow fortress.

The film keeps you wondering constantly, what is real and what is not. There is always the niggling suspicion that the film is one big deus ex machina. To the credit of Nolan, he ends with perhaps the most beautifully ambiguous ending.

The film unfolds in many layers, but it is a masterful feat of editing that Nolan keeps the whole film together without letting it collapse under the weight of its complexity. While dense, the film never threatens to overwhelm, and while the film packs in alot of ideas, it is managed within the confines of an entertaining summer blockbuster. Inception is a film that can be appreciated on many levels, and while it has its flaws, this is a film that will keep you thinking about it long after it has ended. The characters may not be memorable, but the idea of the movie is. Inception has taken an audacious idea and planted it in the audience’s mind. This is one movie which will entertain, enthrall and most importantly, make you think. It may not be Christopher Nolan’s best film- it is not quite Memento or The Dark Knight, but Inception is still a very good film and definately one of the year’s best.

Although it was a totally expected decision, i remain rather disappointed with the Court of Appeal decision in Yong Vui Kong. It is a timid, disappointing decision.

Jeremy Irons expresses most eloquently the reasons why i find the Court of Appeal decision cowardly and insular.

Some 12 year old kid sings Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi”, delivers a stunning performance, becomes an instant web sensation, gets invited to the Ellen show and the rest, as they say, is history.

This is so pathetic, it might well be a Monty Python farce.

The Public Editor - Censored in Singapore - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

LAST month, on the same day The New York Times praised Google for standing up to censorship in China, a sister newspaper, The International Herald Tribune, apologized to Singapore’s rulers and agreed to pay damages because it broke a 1994 legal agreement and referred to them in a way they did not like.

The rulers had sued for defamation 16 years ago, saying a Herald Tribune Op-Ed column had implied that they got their jobs through nepotism. The paper wound up paying $678,000 and promising not to do it again. But in February, it named Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister, and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister now, in an Op-Ed article about Asian political dynasties.

After the Lees objected, the paper said its language “may have been understood by readers to infer that the younger Mr. Lee did not achieve his position through merit. We wish to state clearly that this inference was not intended.” The Herald Tribune, wholly owned by The New York Times Company, apologized for “any distress or embarrassment” suffered by the Lees. The statement was published in the paper and on the Web site it shares with The Times.

Some readers were astonished that a news organization with a long history of standing up for First Amendment values would appear to bow obsequiously to an authoritarian regime that makes no secret of its determination to cow critics, including Western news organizations, through aggressive libel actions. Singapore’s leaders use a local court system in which, according to Stuart Karle, a former general counsel of The Wall Street Journal, they have never lost a libel suit.

The notion that it could be defamatory to call a political family a dynasty seems ludicrous in the United States, where The Times has routinely applied the label to the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Clintons. But Singapore is a different story.

Agora (2009) 7/10

A thinking man’s historical epic which features a fine charismatic turn by Rachel Weisz.

I loved how the scope and feel of an empire crumbling under the weight of fundamentalism was portrayed, but the individual characters of the story inevitably was not given enough depth. It is also the rare film which places as a lead character a strong, intelligent female character who does not need a male romantic interest. It is not often one finds a period epic where fights and battles are downplayed while intellectualism is glorified.

Sometimes, the twists and turns of an absurd saga can take on farcical turns. You know that you have really jumped the shark, when you start using antisemitism as a response to valid criticism. In a remarkable turn, a “Vatican preacher said Friday that criticism of the Roman Catholic Church over paedophilia scandals was similar to anti-Semitism, citing a letter of solidarity from a “Jewish friend” during a Good Friday observance.” Like hello, the victims of antisemitism get discriminated, attacked and in some cases killed, not because they have done something wrong but because of their identity as Jews. In this case, the Church has hardly been assaulted or physically attacked. Instead they have been excoriated by words, and by criticism which is legitimate and can be attributed to the flaws and failings of the Church and its most senior members over the last few decades.

Like, OMG this is so ridiculous it makes you really wonder how Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the Papal Household at the Vatican can make such a leap of logic. “The stereotyping, the transfer of personal responsibility and blame to a collective blame reminds me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,” the friend wrote, according to Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the Papal Household at the Vatican.

Which is ironic now that you think about it since alot of the flak has been directed at the Pope himself, rather than at the collective. But in addition to having a really bad grasp of history, the very idea that the church sees fit to equate legitimate criticism with antisemitism is really pathetic. Jews were personally persecuted, and in some cases murdered as a direct result of Antisemitism. And it was possible only because good men stood by and allowed it to happen. As Edmund Burke might say “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” (loose attribution).

If anything, it is the collective, startling silence of the Church over the past decade that has resulted in the current mess. And, caught flat footed by an increasingly educated populace, the Church is finding its feeble apologies and attempts at deflection to be painfully inadequate. That even senior Vatican officials see fit to issue such a manifestly weak defence against the criticisms is a reflection of how much the Church is still so detached from reality and how it does not yet grasp the severe ramifications of the scandal.

Imagine, every time politicians, governments, ministries, Lehman Brothers/Enron/Worldcom screwed up, and got criticized, and they used the “you can’t criticize me because its antisemitism” defense. How ridiculous this would be. For the longest time, religion has been insulated from direct criticism, simply because it is religion and people tend to handle religion with kid gloves. But this outpouring of anger has taken away the veil of protection, since the very basis of its moral legitimacy has been shaken. And now that it is directly under such strong criticism, in the new age of the Internet, the Church simply does not know how to respond and is digging a bigger and bigger grave for itself. It reveals, in stark terms, the disconnect between the church and reality.

And now, the article about Father Raniero Cantalamessa’s remarkable WTF defence of the Church. If this was posted on 1 April, i might well have taken it to be an April Fool’s Joke but its a 3 April article. BTW, this Father Raniero Cantalamessa preaches to the Pope. Somehow, its all starting to make sense.

On Good Friday, criticism of pope likened to anti-Semitism

ROME (AFP) - – The Vatican preacher said Friday that criticism of the Roman Catholic Church over paedophilia scandals was similar to anti-Semitism, citing a letter of solidarity from a “Jewish friend” during a Good Friday observance.

“The stereotyping, the transfer of personal responsibility and blame to a collective blame reminds me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,” the friend wrote, according to Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the Papal Household at the Vatican.

“I have followed with disgust the violent attack… against the Church (and) the pope,” said the letter read out by Cantalamessa during the ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica as Pope Benedict XVI looked on.

Speaking on the theme of violence, Cantalamessa — by tradition the only person allowed to preach to the pope — said he would not refer to that “inflicted on children, with which a consequential number of clergy have been tarnished (because) it is being discussed enough elsewhere.”

Several Catholic prelates have rallied around the pope ahead of the Easter weekend observances.

The child abuse scandal has engulfed much of Europe and the United States, prompting harsh criticism of the Vatican’s handling of the scourge.

With new cases being reported almost daily, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope’s vicar for Rome, told Vatican Radio that it was a “moment of suffering” for the Church.

Benedict, 82, presided over a traditional procession later Friday at Rome’s Colosseum re-enacting Jesus Christ’s final hours and crucifixion.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims holding candles attended the ceremony outside the imposing monument, which was dramatically lit up, as the pope looked on from a stage on the Palatine hill overlooking the site.

The pope faces allegations that, as archbishop of Munich and later as the Vatican’s chief morals enforcer, he helped to protect predator priests.

The head of the Catholic Church in the pope’s native Germany, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, said Good Friday must “mark a new departure which we so badly need.”

Dozens of people have come forward in Germany alleging they were abused as minors by priests. Most cases date back years if not decades.

Zollitsch said the abuse cases filled Catholics’ heart with “pain, fear, and shame,” lamenting that many victims had been “unable to express their pain in words for decades.”

In his own archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau, the Church said a special prayer for victims during Good Friday services.

“Pray for the children and the young who, in the middle of the people of God and in the Church community, were wronged, abused and wounded in their body and soul,” the prayer said.

France has become the latest European country to implicate paedophile priests.

A lawyer for Father Jacques Gaimard, director of a Christian radio station in northern France, said he had admitted sexually assaulting a boy in the early 1990s and saw his arrest as a “deliverance” after years of private torment.

In another case, a parish priest near the French city of Rouen, Father Philippe Richir, is suspected of possessing paedophile pornography. Related article: French priest admits child abuse

An Austrian victim support group said Friday it has received reports of 174 more cases of maltreatment and sexual abuse in Catholic institutions since creating a hotline two weeks ago.

“We are learning daily about the methods of education in Catholic institutions in Austria during the 1960s and 1970s,” said Holger Eich, a psychologist from the Platform for Victims of Violence by the Church.

Vatican expert Bruno Bartoloni said the Church was going through its “hardest period since the publication (in 1968) of the ‘Humanae Vitae’ (Of Human Life)” — a papal encyclical by pope Paul VI that attacked use of the birth control pill as a mortal sin.

“At that time the crisis was as deep, with personal attacks against the pope and the Church in general,” Bartoloni told AFP.

On Saturday, Benedict will hold an Easter vigil in St Peter’s Square, where he will also celebrate Easter mass on Sunday to be followed by his “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing.

Unsurprisingly, this has stirred outrage, and rightly so:

Outrage at anti-Semitism comparison by Pope preacher

Jewish groups and victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests have condemned the Pope’s preacher for comparing criticism of the pontiff to anti-Semitism.

US-based abuse victims’ group Snap said the remarks were "morally wrong".

The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews described the Easter sermon as unprecedented "insolence".

The Catholic Church has been rocked by a wave of sex abuse scandals this year. The Vatican said Raniero Cantalamessa’s did not represent its official view.

Drawing such parallels could "lead to misunderstandings", spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi told the Associated Press.

‘Repulsive and offensive’

However, Fr Cantalamessa’s sermon was printed in full on the front page of the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

At a Good Friday service in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household compared criticism of the Church over abuse allegations to "the collective violence suffered by the Jews".

Fr Cantalamessa said he had been inspired by a letter from a Jewish friend who had been upset by the "attacks" against the Pope.

He then read part of the letter, in which his friend said he was following "with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope and all the faithful of the whole world".

"The use of stereotypes and the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he quoted the letter as saying, as the Pope listened.

The comments swiftly provoked angry reactions both from Jewish groups and those representing abuse victims.

The secretary general of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Stephan Kramer, told the Associated Press news agency the remarks were "repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive towards all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust".

David Goldberg, of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London, told the BBC the comparison between criticism of the Pope and anti-Semitism was an inept analogy, but he did not think it was ill-intentioned.

"It rather struck me how out of touch so many people in the Vatican are in terms of either understanding the Jewish psyche or in actually dealing with the outrage that so many people, Catholic or otherwise, throughout the world feel," he said.

A spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) said the sermon had been "reckless and irresponsible".

"They’re sitting in the papal palace, they’re experiencing a little discomfort, and they’re going to compare themselves to being rounded up or lined up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz?" said Peter Isely. "You cannot be serious."

‘Failure to act’

Later, Pope Benedict attended a traditional candlelit Good Friday prayer service at the Colosseum in Rome - the Way of the Cross procession, which commemorates Christ’s crucifixion.

In a short homily, he made no reference to the abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in recent weeks, but prayed for divine help for Catholics who carry their own crosses every day of their lives.

Then he blessed the crowd, prompting applause and some shouts of "Long live the Pope".

On Saturday, he is to lead an Easter vigil service in St Peter’s and on Sunday he is due to deliver his traditional Urbi et Orbi - "for the city and the world" - message and blessing.

The pontiff has been accused personally of failing to take action against a suspected abuser during his tenure as archbishop of Munich - a claim the Vatican strongly denies.

Critics also say that when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, he did not act against a US priest who is thought to have abused some 200 deaf boys.

On Friday, the Associated Press reported that the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had also allowed a case against a priest in Arizona to languish at the Vatican for years, despite repeated pleas from a local bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.

Documents showed that in 1990, members of a Church tribunal found that Rev Michael Teta had molested children as far back as the late 1970s, it said.

The panel referred the case to Cardinal Ratzinger. But it took 12 years from the time the future Pope assumed control of the case in a signed letter until Rev Teta was removed from the ministry, it was alleged.

The Catholic Church has been engulfed this year by sex abuse scandals, many dating back decades, in Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, the Pope’s native Germany and the US.

Revanche (2009) 8/10

Revanche, which means “Revenge” in English, is an Austrian film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2009 Oscars, and it marks a startling debut by director Götz Spielmann as he crafts a thriller that is more about the characters than the plot itself. The film proceeds on a slow, deliberate pace, or what one might expect from an arthouse movie. But the inner tension crafted in part by its beautiful slow shots makes Revanche a haunting deliberation of morality, forgiveness and of course, revenge. This is one of those films where the less you know of the plot, the better. The cast is uniformly solid, but special praise needs to be given to young ingenue Irina Potapenko, whose fearless performance adds to the emotional force of the film.

“Revanche explores psychological terrain, revealing how people relate to one another, and to their God, if they believe in one. There’s real biblical tragedy, and redemption, in Spielmann’s fine, sad, suspenseful film.”- Stephen Rea

“How often, after seeing a thriller, do you continue to think about the lives of its characters? If you open up most of them, it’s like looking inside a wristwatch. Opening this one is like heart surgery.”- Roger Ebert

“On one level an operatic-sounding meditation on love, violence and the meaning of revenge, “Revanche” ends up being something quite different, a moral tale about conscience, responsibility and regret, about characters attempting to come to terms with the implications of the actions they’ve taken.”- LA Times

So i read this article which explains to me why i can have such a good command of English whilst i totally, utterly suck in Chinese. It’s called Chinese dyslexia:

Dyslexia has a language barrier

Readers of Chinese use different parts of the brain from readers of English, write Brian Butterworth and Joey Tang

Alan’s parents are English, but he was born and grew up in Japan. He would pass as a native speaker of either language. What brought Alan to the notice of Taeko Wydell, an expert on Japanese reading, and Brian Butterworth, was that he was severely dyslexic, but only in one language. In the other, he was probably in the top 10% of readers of his age.

New research by US and Chinese scientists challenges our interpretation of how it is possible to be dyslexic in one language but not another. It shows that readers of Chinese use a different part of their brains to readers of English.

The study, led by Li Hai Tan and reported in Nature, may unexpectedly tell us some key things about how dyslexia affects the brain. Brain functioning, and indeed structure, is moulded by experience. Learning a regular spelling system such as Italian creates differences in brain organisation compared to learning highly irregular English. Italian has 26 rules to learn, which takes about six months; English takes longer because there are many irregularities (and several hundred rules). In Chinese 3,500 characters are needed to read the equivalent of the Daily Mail and about 6,000 characters to read books.

The second main difference is that in English each linguistically distinct sound, or phoneme, maps to a single letter. For example, the three phonemes in “bat” map on to three letters. If one letter is changed it makes a new word. A Chinese character maps to a whole syllable. In Putonghua, the national language of China, there are about 1,800 distinguishable syllables; each syllable can have several meanings and each meaning is typically represented by a distinct character.

How will these differences be reflected in brain organisation? Learning Chinese creates specific demands on the areas for remembering visual patterns. English readers make more use of areas for phoneme processing.

This ability to analyse syllables into phonemes is the key problem in dyslexia. Dyslexics have difficulty segmenting the word “that” into three separate sounds - so fare much worse in learning English than Chinese.

Reported prevalence of dyslexia is much higher in English (about 5-6%) than Chinese. I surveyed 8,000 schoolchildren in the Beijing region, with Yin Wengang of the Chinese Academy of Science, and found that about 1.5% were dyslexic.

This kind of evidence suggests that a single underlying deficit of the ability to analyse words into phonemes can cause dyslexia for any reader, but will be more severe where phonemes are involved. A European team led by Uta Frith of UCL reported in Science a few years ago that English, French and Italian dyslexics all showed the same abnormal activity involving the brain system underlying phonemic analysis.

In Alan, this theory predicts accurately that the affected language will be English, since Japanese does not require analysis into phonemes.

Research by Frith’s team shows that small variations in brain organisation are due to orthography, with Italian making more demands on the phonemic system, because it is regular, and English making more demands on the naming system because words cannot be read correctly using phonic rules and have to be named - for example: colonel, yacht, pint. We assume the part of Alan’s brain that deals with phonemic analysis is not working efficiently, which causes a problem reading English, compared to Japanese.

The first surprise in Tan’s study was that a key peak in brain activity in Chinese readers fell outside the network typically used by European readers. The second surprise was that dyslexics showed lower activation in several key reading areas compared with normal Chinese readers, but this was in a very different brain area from Frith’s European dyslexics.

Both Frith and I have argued that dyslexia has a universal basis in the brain that affects phonemic analysis. Tan and his colleagues, by contrast, conclude that “the biological abnormality of impaired reading is dependent on culture”. If we are right, Alan uses the same brain network for English and Japanese, and the malfunction only affects English reading. If Tan is right, Alan has separate networks for English and Japanese, and only the former is affected.

A lot will turn on which of us is right. Dyslexia frequently runs in families, and there has been much research trying to identify the genes responsible. If dyslexia is governed by culture, then Chinese dyslexia may be caused by a different genetic anomaly than English dyslexia.

· Brian Butterworth and Joey Tang are in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London

There is a remarkable op-ed piece on the New York Times by JOHN L. ALLEN Jr. where the author issues a startling defence of the Pope’s track record in light of the scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church. It is a remarkable piece of apologist propaganda because the article in short says that, for all of the Pope’s failings, he is actually the person within the Church who is doing the most to deal with the abuse. It is really, really sad if the strongest defence you can mount for someone who is so clearly negligent is to say that he is less negligent than the rest of the people who have been twiddling their thumbs and ignoring reality for much of the last few decades. Unsurprisingly the author is described as: John L. Allen Jr. is the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter and the author of “The Rise of Benedict XVI.” It figures.

The buck should stop somewhere. As the Pope and someone who, during the period the abuse took place, had the actual power to do something to stop the abuse but did not and today still remains too cowardly to issue a proper, sincere and unequivocal apology (as opposed to a half-hearted one the Church issued), the Pope is a reflection of the anachronism of yesteryear. It is not entirely his fault, but he reflect that deep and troubling malaise that has plagued and continues to plague the church and religion generally. Just a piece of food for thought on this Good Friday.

John Allen’s article below:

A Papal Conversion

IN light of recent revelations, Pope Benedict XVI now seems to symbolize the tremendous failure by the Catholic Church to crack down on the sexual abuse of children. Both the pope’s brief stint as a bishop in Germany 30 years ago and his quarter-century as a top Vatican official are being scoured for records of abusive priests whom he failed to stop, and each case seems to strengthen the indictment.

For example, considerable skepticism surrounds the Vatican’s insistence that in 1980 the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, was unaware of a decision to transfer a known pedophile priest to his diocese and give him duties in a parish. In some ways, the question of what he knew at the time is almost secondary, since it happened on his watch and ultimately he has to bear the responsibility. However, all the criticism is obscuring something equally important: For anyone who knows the Vatican’s history on this issue, Benedict XVI isn’t just part of the problem. He’s also a major chapter in the solution.

To understand that, it’s necessary to wind the clock back a decade. Before then, no Vatican office had clear responsibility for cases of priests accused of sexual abuse, which instead were usually handled — and often ignored — at the diocesan level. In 2001, however, Pope John Paul II assigned responsibility to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s all-important doctrinal office, which was headed by Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal.

As a result, bishops were required to send their case files to Cardinal Ratzinger’s office. By all accounts, he studied them with care, making him one of the few churchmen anywhere in the world to have read the documentation on virtually every Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse. The experience gave him a familiarity with the pervasiveness of the problem that virtually no other figure in the Catholic Church can claim. And driven by that encounter with what he would later refer to as “filth” in the church, Cardinal Ratzinger seems to have undergone a transformation. From that point forward, he and his staff were determined to get something done.

One crucial issue Cardinal Ratzinger had to resolve was how to handle the church’s internal disciplinary procedures for abusive priests. Early on, reformers worried that Rome would insist on full trials in church courts before a priest could be removed from ministry or defrocked. Those trials were widely seen as slow, cumbersome and uncertain, yet many in the Vatican thought they were needed to protect the due process rights of the accused.

In the end, Cardinal Ratzinger and his team approved direct administrative action in roughly 60 percent of the cases. Having sorted through the evidence, they concluded that in most cases swift action was more important than preserving the church’s legal formalities.

Among Vatican insiders, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith became the primary force pushing for a tough response to the crisis. Other departments sometimes regarded the “zero tolerance” policy as an over-reaction, not to mention a distortion of the church’s centuries-long legal tradition, in which punishments are supposed to fit the crime, and in which bishops and other superiors have great leeway in meting out discipline.

After being elected pope, Benedict made the abuse cases a priority. One of his first acts was to discipline two high-profile clerics against whom sex abuse allegations had been hanging around for decades, but had previously been protected at the highest levels.

He is also the first pope ever to meet with victims of abuse, which he did in the United States and Australia in 2008. He spoke openly about the crisis some five times during his 2008 visit to the United States. And he became the first pope to devote an entire document to the sex-abuse crisis, his pastoral letter to Ireland.

What we are left with are two distinct views of the scandal. The outside world is outraged, rightly, at the church’s decades of ignoring the problem. But those who understand the glacial pace at which change occurs in the Vatican understand that Benedict, admittedly late in the game but more than any other high-ranking official, saw the gravity of the situation and tried to steer a new course.

Be that as it may, Benedict now faces a difficult situation inside the church. From the beginning, the sexual abuse crisis has been composed of two interlocking but distinct scandals: the priests who abused, and the bishops who failed to clean it up. The impact of Benedict’s post-2001 conversion has been felt mostly at that first level, and he hasn’t done nearly as much to enforce new accountability measures for bishops.

That, in turn, is what makes revelations about his past so potentially explosive. Can Benedict credibly ride herd on other bishops if his own record, at least before 2001, is no better? The church’s legitimacy rests in large part on that question.

Yet to paint Benedict XVI as uniquely villainous doesn’t do justice to his record. The pope may still have much ground to cover, but he deserves credit for how far he’s come.

John L. Allen Jr. is the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter and the author of “The Rise of Benedict XVI.”

It is not surprising that this feeble piece of apologist writing has attracted robust responses from others. Consider the responses of the following article with 3 criticizing the article and 1 defending the Pope. Which strikes you as convincing. Why, or why not?

Letters The Pope and the Abuse Scandal

To the Editor:

John L. Allen Jr.’s defense of Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of sexual abuse cases (“A Papal Conversion,” Op-Ed, March 28) perfectly reflects the insular, narrow mind-set of the Vatican as described in “At the Vatican, Up Against the World” (Week in Review, March 28).

Mr. Allen thinks Pope Benedict resolved the problem appropriately by taking more papal control over the punishment of the abusive priests. After decades of abuse and cover-up, it is strange that neither Mr. Allen nor Pope Benedict has realized that open secular institutions — courts of law, police departments, prosecutors’ offices and a free press — are necessary to protect the innocent and punish wrongdoers.

In Mr. Allen’s essay we see at work the defend-the-Vatican-at-any-cost mentality described in your Week in Review article.

Leslie Griffin
Houston, March 29, 2010

The writer is a professor of constitutional law, University of Houston Law Center.

•

To the Editor:

In “A Papal Conversion,” John L. Allen Jr. doesn’t mention the most fundamental issue. Pedophilia is a crime. When a citizen becomes aware of evidence that it has been committed, the first responsibility is to notify the authorities. Any potential disciplinary action taken within an organization is secondary.

It may be laudable that the current pope, when he was a cardinal, tried to move the church toward better due process, but the crimes occurred within the province of the relevant local authorities, and not reporting them was a sin of omission.

János Wimpffen
Langley, Wash., March 28, 2010

•

To the Editor:

I would agree that nobody at the Vatican did more to confront abuse than Pope Benedict XVI, because everyone appears to have done even less. Why should we be satisfied with the “glacial pace at which change occurs in the Vatican”? John L. Allen Jr.’s column is a bold apology for an appalling record.

Kerry Grombacher
New Orleans, March 28, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Cries for Pope Benedict XVI to step down over the priest abuse scandal are not about righting wrongs, but about silencing a man and a church.

Though a non-Catholic, I have met Pope Benedict XVI and marvel at his faith and conviction. He has valiantly defended a biblical understanding of sexuality, marriage and the family from the onslaught of secular society. In his recent letter to Irish Catholics, the pope makes it clear that he is ashamed of his church’s failings and has taken concrete steps to address the abuses.

Jesus condemns sin, but points to forgiveness. Compassion for victims includes helping them forgive offenders so that they can move on with their lives. Without this forgiveness, healing can never take place.

Instead of targeting the pope, we should address the root causes of sexual abuse in a society and culture that will cross any ethical boundary for the sake of pleasure and making money.

Johann Christoph Arnold
Rifton, N.Y., March 28, 2010

The writer is senior pastor, Church Communities International.

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To the Editor:

Re “A Nope for Pope” (column, March 28):

Maureen Dowd is correct. The Catholic Church needs to allow women to become priests. But unless the church redefines its policies regarding celibacy, simply allowing women to become priests will not correct the human tendency to act out in a sexually oppressive manner, for sexual repression often leads to sexual oppression. In this realm of cause and effect, this is the case no matter the subject or gender.

Christopher C. Colt
Miami, March 28, 2010

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To the Editor:

I agree that women at high levels in the church, and married priests, would be a positive move. But I know of many children who were abused by nuns, if not sexually then physically and emotionally. These things cannot fail to happen in a culture where sin is assumed, guilt is encouraged, a rigid hierarchy is present, power is misused, secrecy abounds and unquestioning obedience is required.

Until the culture of the church changes for both women and men, abuse will continue.

Susan A. McGregor
North Kingstown, R.I., March 28, 2010

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Despite not watching many of the Oscar nominated movies, I have watched both Avatar (in 3D, no less) and The Hurt Locker and i feel eminently qualified to proclaim that The Hurt Locker rightfully won for both Best Picture and Best Director (although i would have been most glad if Tarantino somehow won a major award for Inglourious Basterds.)

Adam (2009) 8/10

Partly because I identify strongly with the main character, the film Adam spoke to me directly. Its the sort of connection that, once made, allows you to see pass the flaws of the film. Despite some very predictable plots and stock characters (eg, stereotypical disproving father) the film is illuminated by the performance of Hugh Dancy and Rose Bryne, two very engaging actors who transcend the screenplay to give a genuine and heartfelt performance. The film portrays Aspergers without sensationalizing or being condescending and the final product is a beautifully filmed love story. And the soundtrack was beautiful.

As I went home today, my mind was an utter blank. I was so tired by work that I realized that my mind could not even think. Today, truly, i have crossed over to the dark side.

I want to thank the unknown stranger for telling me the truth that i needed to hear. You may have been harsh, but your words were true. For that, I thank you.