fter receiving a sermon from a minister on the west coast and another from an east coast minister that they had delivered to their congregations around Memorial Day, I put them in touch with each other. Both sermons utilized some concepts in The Lucifer Effect to illustrate vital themes in religious scriptures. From that synchrony emerged the idea of sharing their views on the relationships between aspects of theology and social science in a blog format on this web site. Reverend Curtis Webster and Reverend Jennifer Brooks will start these dialogues, leading off with copies of those sermons, and then opening the venue to consider issues that they are dealing with, as well as responding to input from viewers of this site. Their brief bios follow the sermons. Our hope is to expand the range of theological perspectives presented here. We start with “Lucifer Goes to Church" and we invite input from all interested parties so that soon Lucifer can also go to Synagogue, Mosque, and Temple. - Phil Zimbardo

Rev. Jennifer J.S. Brooks Minister of the Unitarian Church on Nantucket Island The Lucifer Effect: A Sermon for Memorial Day President Dwight David Eisenhower, who understood war as a participant and as a national leader, said in 1953: “No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.” Eisenhower was reflecting painfully on the disruption to peace that followed the end of World War II: the formation of opposing power blocs each armed with nuclear weapons...

Rev. Curtis Webster Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Encino, CA To End All Evil Back in August of 1971, a Stanford University professor by the name of Philip Zimbardo wanted to do some research on the psychological effects of imprisonment and he needed to do some first-hand observations of prisoner behavior in a controlled environment. After some psychological screening to weed out obvious pathologies, Dr. Zimbardo randomly chose one group of volunteers to be “prisoners” and another group to be “guards...”

Standing Between
		April 28, 2008 11:05 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	Sometimes heroes are people who stand between. In 1859 a young Swiss entrepreneur named Henri Dunant witnessed the battle of Solfertino, where the French and Italians were fighting to drive Austrians out of Italy. Three years later he published a book about the experience, A Memory of Solfertino. Dunant's book tells about the bloody battle, but its focus is on the aftermath—the fruitless attempt to help the wounded and dying. The book concludes with a proposal that all nations form volunteer committees of non-combatants to help care for soldiers injured in battle. Two years after A Memory of Solfertino was published, twelve nations met in Geneva to sign a treaty, the first “Geneva Convention.” They agreed to form national committees of the “Red Cross” and to respect the battlefield neutrality of Red Cross volunteers. It was the first step to a new way for the global community to think about war. Today everyone knows about the International Red Cross. They go to places where terrible things have happened and they bring first aid, food, blankets. They stand between people and disaster; they hand out bottles of water and when they can they set up field kitchens so people can have a hot meal. In wartime they bring balm to the injured, make the wounded whole; and they visit prisoners held by opposing armies. Today there are many additional Geneva Conventions. In addition to battlefield neutrality for armband-wearing volunteers, the newer Conventions lay out a plan for humane treatment of non-combatants and prisoners of war. The Red Cross has expanded from 12 nations to 181, and its symbol from the red cross to (in Arabic countries) a red crescent, and (in countries that wish to adopt neither cross nor crescent) a red crystal. The current challenge for the International Red Cross is the detention of people who are not prisoners of war but persons named as unlawful enemy combatants. A 10-year-old Afghani boy named Esrarullah saw his father for the first time in 8 months—not in person, because families of detainees are not allowed to visit—but by an internet video conference arranged by the Red Cross. I cannot imagine how difficut it must have been for the Red Cross to arrange an internet video conferencing in Kabul, Afghanistan between a father detained at an American air base outside Kabul, when for months the authorities had allowed no contact. Read More...
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THEOLOGY, IDEOLOGY AND GENOCIDE - PART III
		April 7, 2008 5:19 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	The acts of genocide, which have no statute of limitations, mean any acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:      *     killing members of the group;      *     causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;      *     deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;      *     imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;      *     forcibly transferring children from one group to another group.      --     From Chapter I, Article 4 of the Law on the Establishment of Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea.      The terms “Khmer Rouge” and “genocide” seem to fit together, hand in glove. For those not versed in the intricacies and subtleties of international law, the deaths of nearly two million people through governmentally sanctioned programs of extermination, abuse, overwork, and deliberate neglect obviously constitute genocide. If that isn’t genocide, one might understandably ask, then what is?      Well, as is so often true when dealing with the realities of the Khmer Rouge, the answer may not be quite that simple. Read More...
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THEOLOGY, IDEOLOGY AND GENOCIDE - PART II
		March 3, 2008 2:58 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	“Revolution’s victory over imperialism is not about inviting guests to a dinner party, not about writing a text, not about embroidering flowers, not about having the right education, not about being soft, not about being well-mannered and polite, not about fearing the enemy; the revolution is about seething with anger against one class, about striking and destroying that class” “We, the Communist Party, follow the correct and clear-sighted line.” “For the Angkar, there is no god, no ghosts, no beliefs, no supernatural.”      Throughout the reign of the Khmer Rouge, a propaganda machine in Phnom Penh spewed out a lengthy series of official slogans that were then distributed to the general population through radio broadcasts and political education meetings held in local villages and labor camps.      Short and simple, the Khmer Rouge slogans were masterworks of ideological indoctrination. Although many sound clumsy when translated into English, they conveyed clear and unambiguous messages easily absorbed by the largely illiterate rural population that had been the base of the Khmer Rouge’s support from its earliest days.      French Cambodia-watcher Henri Locard has done a huge service to all who seek to understand the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by translating a large collection of these slogans and publishing them in “Pol Pot’s Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar” (2004: Silkworm Books).      To study Locard’s translations is to step into a nightmarish world ruled by black-and-white, either-or thinking. Angkar, the Khmer Rouge regime’s self-label, knows all and is perfect in its ideology and governance. Anyone who questions Angkar is an enemy, and enemies are everywhere. Eternal vigilance against enemies and tirelessly self-sacrificing devotion to Angkar are small prices to pay for the privilege of living in Cambodia’s collectivist paradise. Read More...
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THEOLOGY, IDEOLOGY AND GENOCIDE
		January 14, 2008 5:37 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	Samuel said to Saul: “The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”                                         1 SAMUEL 15:1-3 (NRSV)      For Christians and Jews who stand in opposition to genocide and oppression, the verses quoted above from the First Book of Samuel in the Old Testament are something of an embarrassment. There’s just no way to interpret around it: God is commanding Saul, the first king of Israel, to commit genocide upon a people known as the Amalekites.      And this passage is not unique in the Old Testament. God repeatedly commands the Israelites to wipe out one indigenous people or another on the way to a complete conquest of Canaan, the Promised Land.      To lay such verses such as these alongside Jesus’ teachings on love and forgiveness is to engage in an exercise of theological dissonance. And, the Old Testament itself also contains passages that proclaim a more universal vision of humanity in which war has no place. At Isaiah 66:18-19a, for example, God declares: “For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see my glory, and I will set a sign among them.”      How can God seemingly countenance genocide in one place and then command love, forgiveness, and forbearance in another? Read More...
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Taming the Lions
		December 13, 2007 11:24 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	The story of Daniel in the lion’s den is the perfect Sunday School thriller. There is the good guy, the hero, Daniel; the bad guy, the Evil King of Babylonia, Darius, who orders Daniel thrown among the lions simply for practicing his faith; and the lions, scary and dangerous, who mysteriously do no harm to Daniel. Children come away from this story, no doubt, impressed with the idea that if they, too, faithfully honor their religious teachings, they will be protected from danger. That lesson is actually not the real story, the truth of the story. The real story of Daniel is far more nuanced than the Sunday School moral lesson, and as a result it tells us much more about good and evil, and how we figure out which is which. The truth of Daniel's story involves the Lucifer Effect. Read More...
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BEHOLDING THE BANALITY OF EVIL - PART III
		December 3, 2007 3:48 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done. Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the LORD that he expelled them from his presence.                          --     2 Kings 24:18-20 (NRSV)      Now here’s a passage that doesn’t get much play in your average Sunday School curriculum. I’ve not heard a sermon preached on this passage and I doubt seriously that I myself will ever preach such a sermon.      In the Biblical books of 1 and 2 Kings, there are many such passages. King after king after king ascends to the throne only to prove himself to be unworthy by practicing evil (which usually entailed the worship of a polytheistic phalanx of ancient Canaanite gods). After the death of the legendary King Solomon we see only a handful of faithful and competent kings. The vast majority, according to the Bible, are scoundrels and weaklings.      This long sad tale of monarchical sloth eventually culminates a few hundred years later in the seizure and sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army and the exile of Jerusalem’s best and brightest to Babylon. Indeed, the miserable Zedekiah’s faithlessness appears to have been the last straw that broke the camel’s back of divine patience. Zedekiah’s last royal act is an ignominious flight from a burning Jerusalem, climaxing in the capture of Zedekiah’s entourage, the painful death of Zedekiah’s sons, and the gouging out of Zedekiah’s eyes. Read More...
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BEHOLDING THE BANALITY OF EVIL - PART II
		October 30, 2007 12:05 am By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	Thirty years ago, Nhem En worked as a cog in a machine of evil.      Assigned to the Khmer Rouge’s infamous Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture center in Phnom Penh, Nhem En stood at the center of the firestorm of torture, brutality, and murder that swept over Cambodia in the late Seventies.      What exactly did Nhem En do at Tuol Sleng? Was he an interrogator, inflicting unspeakable torture? Was he a guard, imposing severe punishment for minor infractions of arbitrary rules? Was he an executioner, bashing in the skulls of those condemned without trial or evidence?      Nhem En played none of these roles.      Nhem En was a photographer. He took pictures.      Nhem En’s photos are on display at the museum that now occupies the Tuol Sleng facility. Each is a black-and-white of a face, essentially a mug shot. In the case of mothers with children, there are multiple faces.      As each new truckload of recent detainees arrived, Nhem En and the photographers whom he supervised would set up their cameras at Tuol Sleng’s intake building. Before being delivered to holding cells that were little better than human kennels, each prisoner had his or her picture taken. By the time Phnom Penh fell to the Vietnamese in January 1979, thousands of these photos had been taken.      Today, these photos constitute powerful physical evidence of the horrors that the Khmer Rouge inflicted upon fellow Cambodians. Read More...
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Beholding The Banality Of Evil - Part I
		October 22, 2007 8:36 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	There is nothing obviously remarkable about Him Huy.      Him Huy, like most of his neighbors, toils in the rice fields near his tiny village in Cambodia’s Kandal province. As he comes in from the fields, he bears an odd resemblance to Charles Bronson, but without the American actor’s trademark scowl.      His home is little more than the characteristic Cambodian shack on stilts, and consists of two rooms. The walls are adorned with photos of Him Huy’s large extended family.      Him Huy graciously offers his American guests hot tea and engages in friendly small talk with the Khmer translator who accompanies them.      If you knew nothing of Him Huy’s past, you would never guess that he is the same man whom Vann Nath, perhaps the most prominent survivor of the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture center in Phnom Penh, has described as a “butcher.” Read More...
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Credibility
		September 14, 2007 4:44 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Domestic Violence
	“It’s all fabrication,” the social worker said when I relayed what the children had told me. And the judge refused to admit into evidence the psychologist’s report on the emotional harm they have suffered. “Hearsay!” How can we prevent domestic violence if our society refuses to listen to children? Allan G. Johnson’s fascinating study The Gender Knot tackles the complexity of male “privilege” embedded in our society’s culture. "Privilege" is any unearned advantage available to members of one social category but systemically denied to others. Because of this embedded privilege, Johnson explains, what a man says has greater credibility than what a woman says, even when they’re making the same point. If a man and woman disagree, embedded privilege causes the man’s position to seem more “reasonable,” especially to someone who doesn’t have all the facts. The idea of embedded privilege as a systemic influence on credibility ties into the Lucifer Effect: even good people may do bad things if the “system” supports and encourages the evil. So if greater credibility is an unearned advantage available to men but systemically denied to women and children, people tend to believe the man if there are no witnesses to his violence and emotional abuse (no witnesses, of course, except the victims of his violence). It was not until I encountered these children that I fully understood how male privilege affects credibility and perpetuates the evil of domestic violence in our society. Read More...
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IT'S GOOD TO BE KING
		September 10, 2007 6:05 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	When investigating criminal activity, I think most law enforcement agencies would concur that it is best to consider all who may have been involved in an illegal enterprise and assess their potential liability. This is especially true when dealing with major crimes requiring coordination among many different players.      In the case of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, however, that principle apparently does not apply.      Under Article I of the 2003 Agreement between the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia to prosecute crimes committed during the period that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, only “senior leaders” and “those who were most responsible” for Khmer Rouge crimes may be prosecuted.      Article I represented a compromise between the U.N. and the Cambodian government whose genesis is far too complex to develop here. Let it suffice to say that internal political considerations on the Cambodian side weighed more heavily on the process than broad notions of justice.      In the eyes of most observers, Article I drastically limited the pool of potential defendants, leaving the Tribunal primarily with the “big name” surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders. Read More...
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What Bob Learned In Wichita
		September 1, 2007 12:59 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Corporate Responsibility
	Back in the year 2000, a really fine little film, deceptively entitled “The Big Kahuna,” was quietly released.      Even with the star power combo of Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito in the lead roles, “The Big Kahuna” died a fast death at the box office. According to the National Association of Theatre Owners, “The Big Kahuna” grossed only a miserly little sum of $3.1 million.      And that is unfortunate. This is a film that needs to be seen.      Based upon the stage play “Hospitality Suite” by Roger Rueff, “The Big Kahuna” posed some fascinating questions about the uneasy intersection between faith and commerce in our culture, and it posed them in a way that really touched home for those of us who have stood at that intersection. Read More...
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Growing Heroes
		August 30, 2007 3:52 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	The names of individuals have been changed but the stories are true. When a group of six teenagers heads out into the wilderness for two weeks, their twenty-something trail guide has his or her hands full. YMCA Camp Menogyn, in northern Minnesota on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area, has an 86-year tradition of taking girls and boys out “on trail” for challenging experiences that test their characters and help them grow. The six boys have been out with trail guide Charlie for several days, long enough to know each other pretty well and to respect Charlie’s low-key guidance. Honesty is one of the basic character traits this program seeks to develop—not only because of the importance of honesty and authenticity in relationships, but also because the kids need to learn to be honest with themselves. “Hey, dude, tell the truth.” This is 14-year-old Zeb’s admonition to Roy, also 14, whose inclination to avoid his share of canoe-carrying over portages has begun to frustrate his group. Read More...
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Voice of the People
		August 17, 2007 10:46 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	Kimmie Weeks, one of many children victimized by Liberia’s nearly 30 years of intermittent civil war, almost died at the age of nine from untreated diseases for which there are treatments and vaccines. The grave was ready; he was wrapped in a shroud; he opened his eyes just before they laid him in the ground. And that's when he decided to be a hero. I’m sure he didn’t think about it in those terms. But Kimmie did think, in the way young children do, that it “wasn’t right” that adults governing his country were so caught up in their power struggles that they allowed children to suffer and die from diseases that no longer need be fatal. It wasn't fair. Kimmie thought there must be something he could do to make things better. So at the age of 10 he began volunteering in a local health clinic. Sometimes he just held the babies, comforting them. One day an infant died in his arms, and he began to say out loud that what was happening was wrong. The downside of the Lucifer Effect is that people accept the morality prevalent around them. The upside of the Lucifer Effect is that determined people can challenge and change the moral climate. Anyone who sets out to make this kind of difference is a hero. Kimmie Weeks is a hero. By age 13 Kimmie had formed a national organization to advocate for Liberia’s children. At 16 he was so vocal an opponent of the practice of enlisting children as soldiers that the repressive and violent Taylor government put him on a deathlist. Thanks to UNICEF, Kimmie escaped and came to America to finish his education. His heroic stance brought international attention to the issue of child soldiers. And now Kimmie has returned to his native land. Read More...
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My Days With Lucifer - Confessions Of A Former Corporate Lawyer
		August 15, 2007 8:14 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Corporate Responsibility
	Back in the mid-to-late-eighties, I was off in a whole different professional world, pursuing a career as a young corporate lawyer. How I got there is a long story, and how I got from there to ordination as a Presbyterian pastor is an even longer story, neither of which will be told in this post.      The essential point is that, after serving the customary apprenticeship slaving away for a few years in a large national law firm, I had made my way to the legal department of a major financial institution, which I will refer to here by the fictitious name, “Anonymous Savings and Loan Association.”      I went to work for Anonymous Savings because it was truly out on what was then the cutting edge. Seizing upon a recent re-tooling of federal financial regulations that permitted federally-insured savings and loan associations a much wider range of investment options, my new employer was leaving the competition in the dust.      Upon my arrival, I was impressed not only by the sense of vision but also by the very high caliber of the people working at the senior and middle management levels. The Finance Department boasted a number of accountants from “Big Eight” (as they were then known) accounting firms. The Investment Department had lured some top-notch analysts from big Wall Street houses. My fellow lawyers had all come from reputable law firms.      And these people were not just smart and extraordinarily competent. They were also highly ethical, very much aware of the obligations that came with the privilege of federal deposit insurance. We were indeed riding the cutting edge, but we were determined to ride it responsibly and within the boundaries of the relevant federal and state regulatory schemes. Read More...
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IS THERE HEALING IN JUSTICE? - PART III - ACCOUNTABILITY AND RECONCILIATION
		August 6, 2007 3:06 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	What do the surviving victims of the Khmer Rouge holocaust think about the prospects of a trial of the senior leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity?      Prime Minister Hun Sen has proclaimed that Cambodians should “dig a hole and bury the past.” Reports have routinely circulated in the Western media declaring that most Cambodians want to put the Khmer Rouge years behind them and move on.      Getting a handle on the pulse of public opinion in Cambodia is a tricky exercise. Much of the population lives in rural areas without telephone service. Low literacy rates and an understandably cautious attitude toward strangers who come asking political or ideological questions also hamper the quest for reasonably accurate opinion polls.      Cambodian culture defies generalizations and categorizations. Assumptions that might be valid in assessing the tide of public opinion in America will lead researchers far off the path in Cambodia. Read More...
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Former Khmer Rouge Torture Chief Formally Charged
		July 31, 2007 12:35 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	The joint U.N.-Royal Government of Cambodia Khmer Rouge Tribunal made its first formal charge against a former Khmer Rouge leader on July 31, citing Kang Kek Ieu, otherwise known by his revolutionary name "Duch," for crimes against humanity. Duch, who has been held in detention by the Cambodian government, has been transferred to the custody of the Tribunal. Duch was the head of the infamous S-21 detention and torture center at the former Tuol Sleng high school in Phnom Penh during the Khmer Rouge regime in the Seventies. At least 14,000 men, women, and children were held at S-21 and eventually executed at the Choeung Ek killing field outside of Phnom Penh. Documentary evidence seized at Tuol Sleng after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge by Vietnam in 1979 provides overwhelming evidence of Duch's role in directing torture and ordering executions. Duch, a born-again Christian, was discovered living near the Thai border by journalist Nic Dunlop in 1999 under an assumed name and working in refugee camps. Further indictments are expected in the coming weeks, most likely against the three most senior Khmer Rouge leaders still living, Noun Chea, Khieu Samphan, and Ieng Sary.
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Is There Healing In Justice? - Part II - A Land Without Forgiveness?
		July 28, 2007 12:28 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	Cambodia was once described to me as “a land without forgiveness.”      While that description is neither literally true nor entirely fair, it does illuminate the cultural reality of “disproportionate revenge” identified by Alexander Hinton and explored in Part I of this series. In Cambodia, a grudge may be held and nurtured for decades before the aggrieved party strikes back.      Buddhism teaches that forgiveness and forbearance are virtues, but the anthropological and cultural evidence suggests that these teachings are disregarded with an alarming frequency in Cambodia.      And that reality perhaps helps to explain why so many former senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge are so resolute in their denial of personal responsibility for the Cambodian holocaust of the 1970's. If forgiveness is not a realistic possibility, then why should anyone risk an admission of culpability for acts likely to provoke revenge? Read More...
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Is There Healing In Justice? - Part I - The Day of Anger
		July 21, 2007 12:39 pm By Rev. Curtis Webster Category: Khmer Rouge Tribunal
	On Sunday, May 20, 2007, somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand Cambodians gathered at a place called Choeung Ek (rough pronunciation: “Joing Ike”), which lies about 13 kilometers to the south of Phnom Penh.      The crowd looked on as a group of actors presented a disturbing drama based on gruesome events from Choeung Ek’s recent past.      In the shadow of a huge glass tower containing hundreds of skulls of the victims of Khmer Rouge genocide victims, actors portraying political prisoners with their hands securely tied were led to a broad expanse of grass and forced to kneel.      Young men wearing the simple black uniforms associated with the Khmer Rouge then approached each prisoner and, using sturdy bamboo sticks, pantomimed executions inflicted by blows to the back of the prisoners’ skulls.      As each prisoner slumped to the ground, bodies began to accumulate visibly, simulating a vast “killing field.”      May 20.      Known benignly as the “Day of Remembrance,” but more popularly called the “Day of Anger” or “Day of Hatred,” each May 20 since 1984 has been a sort of dark holiday in Cambodia.      The Day of Anger is a day when Cambodians make grim pilgrimages to Choeung Ek and to many, many other sites of Khmer Rouge genocide around the country. It is a day when survivors of the Cambodian holocaust mourn lost family members and friends and to re-kindle feelings of anger toward the Khmer Rouge.      May 20 was chosen as the date for the Day of Anger because it was on May 20, 1976, that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea decided to transform all of Cambodia into one vast agrarian collective. Many mark that day as the beginning of the nightmare that led to the killing fields. Read More...
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Suffer the Children
		July 19, 2007 8:51 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Sexual Abuse
	“I apologize to anyone who has been offended,” said Cardinal Roger Mahoney as he announced a $660 million settlement of claims by more than 500 victims of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests. It is hard to imagine that there is anyone not “offended” by the astonishing record of the repeated and long-tolerated abuse by parish priests in the American Catholic Church. This latest settlement brings the total—so far—to more than two billiondollars. Adults who as youngsters suffered the misery of sexual assault by trusted religious leaders have only recently found a social climate in which the truth of their experience is accepted. The most horrifying aspect of this sordid history is that some in the Church hierarchy who knew of this un-priestly conduct kept silent and simply transferred the problem priests to other churches, and so by their silence were complicit in the continuing devastation of children whose souls they were enjoined to save. Don’t get me wrong. Child sex-abusers are not limited to any denomination or to any profession. But there is now a well-documented record of sexual abuse in Catholic parishes: unholy acts that were all-too-common and all-too-actively concealed. Why? How could a priest do something like that? Hurt a child like that? A priest! Read More...
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Lucifer and Domestic Violence
		July 3, 2007 5:32 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Domestic Violence
	Nantucket, Massachusetts has just witnessed a 3-week murder trial. Thomas Toolan was found guilty of killing Beth Lochtefeld, the girlfriend who rejected him. Toolan was so “in love” with her that two days after she broke up with him he tracked her down and stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. My heart goes out to Beth’s family, whose wise and compassionate public statement at the trial’s end is an exemplar of lovingkindness. Sensational trials like Toolan’s shock the public, but it’s too easy to write Toolan off as a sick, unstable man. Using the analytical framework of The Lucifer Effect, domestic violence is not merely a problem of individuals with a “disposition” for control by violence. Extreme acts like Toolan’s, which receive wide media attention, mask the underlying social systems that support and sustain domestic violence. Especially hidden, and therefore especially insidious, are the theological systems that reinforce the abuser’s sense of righteousness. My phone rang late one evening and when I answered, a man’s angry voice shocked me to attention. He was the husband of a woman I’d been encouraging as she struggled to prepare for a court appearance in the divorce she’d sought, which had dragged on for three years. “Why are you helping her?” he demanded. “Don’t you know that it’s all her fault?” Read More...
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©2006-2008, Philip G. Zimbardo