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Post by Paul Doherty on May 1, 2021 12:04:52 GMT
A particularly annoying, clichéd statement is that issued by a business, employer, or school whenever something goes wrong and someone is hurt or killed: ‘The wellbeing and safety of our staff/students/customers is our number-one priority and we take any such concerns seriously. We regret this situation occurred and any concern and distress it has caused to the people involved.’ Oh yes, so true. The politicians apology: "I regret any distress I may have caused". Why not "regret" (or, even better, apologise for) your actions that caused the distress? Also resigning after a scandal because you have become "a distraction" is another favourite: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56882496She has a bit more to "regret" than just becoming a distraction: www.computerweekly.com/news/252493199/Post-Office-IT-scandal-CEO-Paula-Vennells-jumps-NHS-ship-as-pressure-mounts |
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Post by Paul Doherty on May 1, 2021 12:16:39 GMT
Ah yes, thank you VV. Seems I'm getting my Americans confused. And why is Jesus nearly always shown as while, and God Almighty (or "God the Father") as male and human? What's the Christian equivalent of "hetero-normal"? |
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Post by Verbivore on May 1, 2021 20:13:52 GMT
[…] why is Jesus nearly always shown as while, and God Almighty (or "God the Father") as male and human? White patriarchy? (I have seen attempts to portray a non-Aryan JC – unconvincing ones at that – but don't recall ever seeing a portrait of GA where he wasn't white-skinned and white-bearded, and never as a woman. Humans create their gods in their own image. Perhaps this mythical creature is actually a trans-man.) What's the Christian equivalent of "hetero-normal"? Perhaps "Christ-centred"? |
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Post by Verbivore on May 1, 2021 20:37:53 GMT
That Ms Vennells certainly caused a distraction. Far more than did the CEO of Australia Post, who recently “resigned” after a scandal. She had gifted four Cartier watches, worth about $5K each and paid for by AusPost, as performance rewards. It now seems that she was within her rights and the government was wrong – the PM had a knee-jerk reaction and has had to back down, not an easy task for our “Scotty from Marketing”. Of course, Morrison apologised for “the language used” by him, but not the actual act. I notice that Vennells also “stepped back with immediate effect from regular [Anglican] parish ministry”. Now that’s an unusual move; I thought the clerical collar and related dirty habits were among the greatest hiding places of scoundrels. |
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Post by Twoddle on May 2, 2021 10:36:10 GMT
I once had an brief but interesting conversation with a devout, religiously unquestioning, Roman Catholic colleague from Dublin, and I think the discussion demonstrates the power of heavy and constant indoctrination on the mind.
She had a small bust of the Virgin Mary positioned on her desk.
"Why does your Mary have blue eyes?", I asked.
"Why shouldn't she have blue eyes?"
"Because she was a Middle-Eastern Jewess, so she'd have had brown eyes."
"Some of them have blue eyes out there. And anyway, Mary wasn't Jewish."
I ought to add that this devoutly Christian colleague was possibly the most deceitfully mendacious and duplicitous (apologies for the tautology) person I've ever encountered, but that was OK because once a week her priest made her say a few Hail Marys and play with her rosary, and all was forgiven.
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Post by Paul Doherty on May 2, 2021 12:06:25 GMT
I ought to add that this devoutly Christian colleague was possibly the most deceitfully mendacious and duplicitous (apologies for the tautology) person I've ever encountered, but that was OK because once a week her priest made her say a few Hail Marys and play with her rosary, and all was forgiven. I notice that Vennells also “stepped back with immediate effect from regular [Anglican] parish ministry”. Now that’s an unusual move; I thought the clerical collar and related dirty habits were among the greatest hiding places of scoundrels. I wonder whether there's something about (some) very religious people that makes them feel that - as their character has been approved by a higher power - their actions must be correct, must not be questioned and need not be explained or justified. Because (as they see it) they are a good person, what they do is invariably good? The rest of us have not been blessed (sic) with their moral certainty and therefore are somehow less than them? Not sure how many Anglican or Methodist ministers run top companies, but two have come to grief in the last five years. Surely that's a higher number than a statistical average? Not to mention the extraordinary number of revelations involving children's homes, "Magdalen laundries", child sex abuse, cruelly, deaths and rampant self-righteous dishonesty involving religious groups. But maybe it's just that well-meaning and kind religions are unable to conceive of the fact that they are too gullible and are giving the "benefit of the doubt" to too many terrible people who are using religiosity as a cover? |
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Post by Paul Doherty on May 2, 2021 12:26:00 GMT
And just to offer some balance, I used to work at the local (non-religious) community centre here. It was set up and run with tremendous vigour and effectiveness by a woman who turned out to be a Methodist minister, although she never mentioned it unless specifically asked and wore normal clothes (perhaps all Methodists do, I don't know). We agreed she would not try to convert me to Methodism and I wouldn't try to convert her to atheism!
What I saw as luck, or a positive attitude, or the innate generosity of most people, she saw as the hand of God. We agreed to differ, but it was fun to discuss it sometimes. Got to say she did really good work for people who desperately needed it. Whatever the opposite of "self-righteous" is, she was it.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 2, 2021 17:22:17 GMT
I am struggling to connect the behaviour of individuals with whether or not they claim adherence to a particular, or any, religion. I suspect that the media enjoy the apparent hypocrisy of clergy who are accused of offences. I have never known the news item mention that a person found guilty of an offence had no religious conviction.
When I was a social worker, my colleagues and I well aware that a social worker who abused a child would, rightly, be publicly censured but no mention was made of the thousands of children protected by social workers from abusive parents.
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Post by Verbivore on May 2, 2021 21:13:47 GMT
[...] When I was a social worker, my colleagues and I well aware that a social worker who abused a child would, rightly, be publicly censured but no mention was made of the thousands of children protected by social workers from abusive parents. When I worked with troubled youth in the late '70s (I was one of Australia's first youth workers – a different animal from social workers) the majority of those reporting / dealing with / running away from abuse, whether sexual, physical, or psychological, were abused within the family: parents, step-parents, uncles/aunts, siblings, cousins … . It seemed that the Anglican church's motto of the time, "The Family that Plays Together Stays Together", was only half true: the kids ran away. In my 20+ years in the human services I knew of only two miscreant colleagues, and those were, rightly, dealt with (dismissal, prosecution, etc.). But among my 300+ client youth over a three-year period at least 70 per cent had been abused – either by family members, teachers, group leaders (e.g. Scouts), or clergy. Family-member miscreants far outnumbered all the others, even clergy. It's true that there was little in the way of public acknowledgment of our work – until it became a scandal in the press that a human-services worker had misbehaved toward a client, and then our entire profession was cast similarly. Only bad news – or news presented negatively – sells papers, it seems. Rupert Murdoch well knows that. Among my numerous colleagues were a few clergy who refused to hide behind their habits / collars and worked in civvies; those were the trustworthy ones, it turned out. The dog-collars were less to be trusted as they paraded their righteousness and sanctimony while fiddling kiddies on the sly. |
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