Zeal, Suspicion And The Hermeneutic Of Prejudice

 

The whole area of child protection is an absolute maze.  Given failures in the past, people are now hypersensitive in some areas (I say "some" for a reason), and procedures have been put in place to protect children from abuse, and rightly so, but sometimes you wonder: who will protect the children (and their families) from the 'protectors'?

 

In the last week or so we have had a media frenzy over Roma gypsies and their "supposed" children.  In Greece there is a case in which a child, not biologically related to her supposed parents, is being investigated.  The little girl has blond hair and blue eyes and so, we are told, could not be a Roma child.  We do not know what happened, we should keep an open mind.  The investigation continues.

 

On the back of this, however, we had two cases here in Ireland: one in Dublin and one in the midlands, where two children, blond hair and blue eyes, were taken from Roma parents as it was thought these children were in the same situation as the Greek girl.  However both accusations were found to be untrue.  The little boy at the heart of the midlands case was returned after a day to the Roma couple who are his real parents, and last night, after investigations and DNA tests, the little girl in Dublin was returned to the gypsy couple because, despite her "Aryan" looks, the child is their daughter. 

 

The Minister for Justice has ordered an investigation.  It seems that despite assurances at the beginning that a sound investigation had taken place before the State intervened, simple questions were not asked like: when the woman had the child in the Rotunda maternity hospital, as she claimed, might she be recorded under her maiden name rather than her married name?  If that question had been asked and investigated this sorry mess would not have happened. 

 

People are now upset.  The liberal faction of Irish society tut-tutted as the children were being taken into care, and rightly so, but let us not forget it was the same faction and their political representatives who, over the last couple of decades, have sought to increase the State's powers over the family to enable even draconian measures be taken to 'protect' children.  I do not condone abuse or maltreatment of children, and yes there are times when the State must intervene, but I do ask the question: who will protect the innocent from the protectors, from false allegations, from crazy suspicions?  I fear the answer to that is: no one, and we shall many more cases like these in the coming years, and more innocent people will suffer; more innocent children will suffer as they are needlessly taken from loving parents.

 

In the first paragraph I wrote that "people are now hypersensitive in some areas", emphasis on the some.  Why are some in modern Western society held in suspicion and others not?  Do the above cases have anything to do with the fact that we are dealing with Roma gypsies?  If a middle class, left-wing couple with dark hair and features have a blond haired child, are suspicions raised, alarm bells ringing all over child protection offices?  Usually no, we just think it may be a genetic throwback to an ancestor who had those features and it usually is - or, if not, perhaps the child is legally adopted or one spouse wandered into other pastures at some point in time.  We never think initially that this child might be abducted.  Perhaps child protection officers might actually advise us to be more suspicious as a norm and actually consider abduction as a possibility whenever we see children with genetic traits at variance with their parents.  But where would that continual hermeneutic of suspicion lead us and lead society?

 

But I wonder if these recent events are not just another manifestation of the old fears about gypsies - they steal your children etc etc?  Whether we like to admit it or not old prejudices do not die because we now think we are sophisticated, we just dress them up in language and attitudes we think are enlightened, reasonable and modern.  Secular ideology rarely if ever exorcises prejudice, it usually affirms and normalises it as we saw in 1930s Germany and today in the secular west as, for example, people of Orthodox Christian faith are now the pariahs.  We might think we love the gays now, but walk down a street in Dublin, London or any other European city and see the righteous indignation at the Roma ladies selling the Big Issue.  Yes, professional begging is one thing, and we can discuss alleged petty crime another time, but none these serve as reasons to turn our noses up at the Roma nor suspect that they have abducted children.

 

I found this interesting article on the Roma, it is worth reading.

UPDATES: 

The Minister for Justice defends the actions of the Gardaí.  Catholicus Nua disagrees and parses the actual legislation. He also raises the issue of the recent children's referendum which gave the State even more power over the family. 

And apparently the Greek case is not as simple as it seems.  Recent developments appear to suggest that this is more a case of informal adoption with money changing hands rather than abduction.                     

In Memory Of The Lost

You may have seen this article on Zenit, if not, read it - it is very important.  For years IVF has been hailed as a great move forward in treating infertility - thousands of children have been born to childless couples, bringing them great joy and easing the burden and stigma of childlessness. 

The Church, however, has its difficulties with the procedure, and rightly so - it fulfills the prophecy Pope Paul VI uttered in Humane Vitae.  This article shows why the Church has her issues with the procedure.

Some interesting facts:  since 1991 100,000 children have been born of the procedure, out of 3 million children conceived.  Of these children 1.5 million have be discarded during treatment - think about that - 1.5 million children have been thrown out, destroyed by doctors and scientists.  The abuse crisis pales in comparison with that!   And many, many more remain frozen in IVF centres, most of them destined to be destroyed also.  These are human beings we are talking about.

Other interesting facts: one man has fathered 150 children so far through the process.  There are cases of other men fathering 50 or more children.   This means incest is going become an issue in the years ahead, and when siblings marry there are genetic consequences.    As regards those born of so called "sperm donors", while there is no definite figures, there are estimates that there could be as many as 60,000. 

And all of this costs money - people are getting rich through these processes, and that, my friends, seems to make children a commodity - a "product" which is desired and then "made.  As we see now, if the "product" does not fit the bill, then it can be discarded (aka abortion) and another made. 

I have no desire to offend anyone, and certainly not those burdened with infertility, but life is precious, it is a gift, it cannot be made and discarded, subject to the will and whim of another human being.  IVF might seem to solve problems, but it creates even more, and while it may seek to bring the joy of a new life into the lives of loving couples, it does so by killing hundreds of thousands of other lives. 

Here is a very disturbing fact - when you see a child born of IVF, 30 other children were "created" in the procedure that brought this one to birth: where are they?  Dead?  Discarded?  Experimented on?  Frozen?  Do not forget that they too are children. 

If we are supposed to be putting children first, and as the great mantra "Best Practice" is repeated over and over again like a Eastern chant, is it not time to really put children first -  not just install and sign register books in sacristies and hoard forms filled by everything that moves within a mile of a church property??   For years the Church has been silent about IVF for fear of offending those who avail of it - God forbid we catechise!    Time to stop being selective - time to think of children - all children, particularly those who fall victim to the culture of death.

That Letter

Other issues and work have kept me from commenting on "That Letter" which RTE and the media have been trying to use to crucify the Church again.  I did not see the documentary on television, but I have heard all about it and have read alot of the commentary since. 

To an open mind it is obvious that RTE is trying to make hay where there is little grass, and their bias against Christianity is blinkering their objectivity leading them to make claims which do not stand up either logically or in justice, but then what is new?

You have probably read excellent articles on the situation: Jimmy Aiken, as always, hits the nail on the head, and John Allen has a very good, objective piece.   But there is also an excellent blog posting by Fr Gabriel Burke which is well worth reading, particularly for my Irish readers.  Reading his piece it I am reminded that the media's concern for the abuse of children seems to be limited as they appear fairly unconcerned about the deaths of 200 children in state care in the last ten years, and as Fr Burke points out, no resignations, no demonstrations on the streets and no great stunts by victims' groups to highlight it.  Of course as many know the real spectre of abuse in Ireland is hidden beneath a veneer of respectability and ideology and it will be extremely difficult to scratch the surface of the problem - and that problem has nothing to do with the Church.   

The Church is now doing what it can to deal with the problem - in fact we now have the strictest Child Protection policy, and that policy is the number one issue in the Church (sometimes leaving other vital issues of Church life and catechises on the back burner).   However, having listening to alot of commentary on the issue of the Vatican letter, I hope some in the Church in Ireland are not using it to get at the Apostolic Visitation, as a means to undermine it and force it in a particular direction.  There is talk that, like the media, some mischevious persons in the Church are also trying to make hay where there is little grass in order to keep a certain ideological status quo in place.  Tisk, tisk, tisk....