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Showing posts with label The Guardian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Guardian. Show all posts
The Guardian 📰 Written by Robert Mackey. Recommended by Jim Monaghan.


Manhattan church led by Norman Vincent Peale was known for opposing presidency of JFK – and Catholics in general

Somewhat overlooked in the furore over Donald Trump’s attacks this week on Pope Leo, for his criticism of the US attack on Iran, and the US president’s decision to post an image portraying himself as Jesus Christ on social media, is the fact that Trump attended services as a young man at the Protestant Marble Collegiate church in Manhattan, which was led at the time by an anti-Catholic pastor.

That church’s pastor in Trump’s youth, Norman Vincent Peale, who would later officiate at Trump’s first wedding, is best-known today as the author of the Christian self-help book The Power of Positive Thinking, but when Trump was 14, Peale made national headlines as the leader of a group of Protestant churchmen who loudly objected to the presidential candidacy of John F Kennedy, on the grounds that he was a Catholic.

As Time magazine reported in September 1960, Peale, “a longstanding Republican whose Protestant following rivals Billy Graham’s as the largest in the US”, was one of the most prominent leaders of a group of “150 Protestant clergymen and laymen, calling themselves the Citizens for Religious Freedom” . . . 

Continue @ Guardian

Trump’s Antipathy For Pope May Have Roots In Childhood Protestant Church

The Guardian ★ Written by . Recommended by Tony Roche.


The brutalisation of global norms by figures like Pete Hegseth must be seen as an ethical issue. It’s a fight against chaos, and all major religions must play a role.

That combative old hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers, is not much heard these days, though it was once a favourite with church congregations and school assemblies. Written in 1865 by Sabine Baring-Gould, an English clergyman and religious scholar, its belligerent refrain urges the faithful on to battle, victory and conquest: “Onward, Christian soldiers / Marching as to war / With the cross of Jesus / Going on before!” 

Its martial tone suited the Victorian zeitgeist but it made succeeding generations uneasy (though it was still sung in my primary school in the early 1960s). Nowadays, this sort of triumphalism gives religion a bad name.

Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, and a leading Christian soldier, would certainly disagree. He probably hums it on his way to work. 

At a recent Christian worship service in the Pentagon – an irregular event, given the constitution’s dislike of anything smacking of state religion – Hegseth, referencing Iran, prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. 

Continue @ Guardian.

As Team Trump Wage Unceasing War On Iran, Evangelical Nationalists Are Destroying Any Moral World Order We Once Had

The Guardian ★ Written by Matthew Weaver.

A Christian camp leader who sexually abused young boys after lacing sweets with tranquillisers has been jailed for 23 years and 10 months.

Jon Ruben, 76, a retired vet and church youth volunteer, used the “cloak of Christianity” to carry out sexual assaults on vulnerable children, Leicester crown court heard.

As he was sentencing Ruben, Judge Spencer told him he would serve a further period on licence, bringing his total sentence to 31 years and eight months.

Ruben, from Ruddington in Nottinghamshire, previously pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child under 13, assault of a child under 13 by penetration, eight counts of child cruelty, three counts of making indecent images of children and four drugs charges.

Leicester police said they were continuing to investigate Ruben’s involvement with children across more than 20 years.

The judge told him:

Ultimately, this case is about you achieving sexual gratification by carrying out your sexual fantasies focused upon young boys through careful, cynical, chilling preparation and by manipulation.

Before abusing the boys Ruben laced sweets with tranquilising drugs in “a sweet game” at a summer camp, Stathern Lodge, that he ran in Stathern, Leicestershire.

Continue @ Guardian

Camp Leader Who Drugged And Sexually Abused Boys Jailed For More Than 23 Years

Guardian 📺 Written by Lucy Mangan. 

This delicate documentary about an Anglican’s child abuse is deeply harrowing.

It’s humbling to witness the eloquence and dignity of these survivors as they talk about their experiences with John Smyth – possibly the most prolific serial abuser ever associated with the Church of England

John Smyth was a sadistic predator who used to groom the boys in his care then beat them with such viciousness that he would have to provide adult nappies for them to wear afterwards lest they leave blood on the chairs in his home when he brought them back from his shed. He upgraded the shed at one point, to make it soundproof. 

One of the men who suffered at Smyth’s hands as a boy remembers bleeding for weeks after. Another says: “I honestly thought I was going to die.” Another says that despite the pain the worst part was afterwards, when Smyth would cover the boy’s bloodied body with his and nuzzle his sweaty face into the boy’s neck and give him butterfly kisses. In his nightmares it is “that draping” he relives.

Smyth, who died in 2018, was also a husband, a father of three children, a respected barrister, a prominent Christian evangelist, a moral campaigner . . .

Continue @ Guardian.

See No Evil

The Guardian ★ Written by Jamie Grierson. Recommended by Cam Ogie.

An immigration barrister was found by a judge to be using AI to do his work for a tribunal hearing after citing cases that were “entirely fictitious” or “wholly irrelevant”.

Chowdhury Rahman was discovered using ChatGPT-like software to prepare his legal research, a tribunal heard. Rahman was found not only to have used AI to prepare his work, but “failed thereafter to undertake any proper checks on the accuracy”.

The upper tribunal judge Mark Blundell said Rahman had even tried to hide the fact he had used AI and “wasted” the tribunal’s time. Blundell said he was considering reporting Rahman to the Bar Standards Board. The Guardian has contacted Rahman’s firm for comment.

The matter came to light in the case of two Honduran sisters who claimed asylum on the basis that they were being targeted by a criminal gang in their home country. Rahman represented the sisters, aged 29 and 35. The case escalated to the upper tribunal.

Blundell rejected Rahman’s arguments, adding that “nothing said by Mr Rahman orally or in writing establishes an error of law on the part of the judge and the appeal must be dismissed”.

Then, in a rare ruling, Blundell went on to say in a postscript that there were “significant problems” within the grounds of appeal put before him.

He said that 12 authorities were cited in the paperwork by Rahman, but when he came to read the grounds, he noticed that “some of those authorities did not exist and that others did not support the propositions of law for which they were cited in the grounds”.

In his judgment, he listed 10 of these cases and set out “what was said by Mr Rahman about those actual or fictitious cases”.

Blundell said: “Mr Rahman appeared to know nothing about any of the authorities he had cited in the grounds of appeal he had supposedly settled in July this year. He had apparently not intended to take me to any of those decisions in his submissions.

Continue @ The Guardian.

Barrister Found To Have Used AI To Prepare For Hearing After Citing ‘Fictitious’ Cases

The Guardian ✏ written by J Oliver Conroy. Recommended by Christy Walsh.

Conservative US Catholics like Steve Bannon look to win ‘war that lasts decades’ with pope antithetical to Francis.

Once the papal conclave starts, the cardinals choosing Pope Francis’s successor will be strictly shut off from the world until a new pope is named. But the coming days before the conclave begins on 7 May will see competing factions of Catholics, including many laypeople, campaigning in the Vatican and the US to influence the church’s future – none with more urgency than those discontented with Francis’s liberal reign.

American Catholics will fight to play a central role. Soon after the news of Francis’s death reached faithful the world over, the American counter-revolution mobilized, Vatican watchers say. Red-eyes to Rome were booked. Long-distance phone calls were made. Various cardinals likely received sudden dinner invitations.

No one involved calls it “lobbying” – that would be untoward, and it’s “subtler than what you see in DC”, Philip Lawler, a conservative Catholic writer and the author of a book critical of Francis, said. “But representatives of all points of view, from across the spectrum, will be doing their best to ensure that the cardinals understand their concerns.”

Continue @ The Guardian.

‘Maga Catholics’ Are Gaining Ground In The US. Now Their Sight Is Set On The Vatican

The Guardian ✐ Written by Patrick Wintour. Recommended by Barry Gilheany.

28-October-2023

Speakers at event call for commitment to a two-state solution and urge Labour government to do more.

Criticism of the Israeli government and calls for tolerance and a commitment to a two-state solution were the major themes of an event in London on Sunday organised by the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The conference, titled Israel After October 7th: Allied or Alone?, featured speakers from across Israeli and UK politics, academia and media. It served in part to show the extent to which some members of the Jewish diaspora have been traumatised not just by the horrors of 7 October but also the response of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Haaretz’s publisher, Amos Schocken, opened the event by saying the Israeli government was so disastrous and had so distorted Zionism that the only recourse lay in the international community applying sanctions, just as it had done to change apartheid South Africa.

David Davidi-Brown, the chief executive of the New Israel Fund, one of the event’s other organisers, said: “We can support Israel and stand against the extremism of Israel’s government.”

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

London Conference Hears UK And Israeli Criticism Of Conduct Of Gaza War

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