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RE: [xmca] Church Report Cites social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and '70s to blame in Priest Scandals



Andy said:
> And ironcially one could answer : "Woodstock"! That is, the social 
> movements of the 1960s did not create conditions for sexual abuse 
> (that belongs to the mediaeval structures of the Church), but they 
> created the conditions for people who were abused to come out in public
and denounce their tormentors.

Karl E. Weick burst upon my consciousness, oh, maybe around 1998 with
_Sensemaking in Organization_.  Because of Weick I got my start with Lave
and Wenger _Situated Learning_
And this is how these things go, working backwards -- finally I had to meet
and fall in love with Erving Goffman. (and Goffman takes us back to
Bateson.)

Weick detailed in Sensemaking the process of describing, articulating,
acting upon evidence, and finally the delicate processes of rescuing
children from child abuse.  (just extrapolating here, but this reminds me of
that effective scene in _Jaws_ when Richard Dreyfuss was walking around the
table bearing the remains of a victim and describing the details of her
horrendous wounds in medical terminology. Uh, and we say to the authorities,
"Are you trying to say "nothing to look at here?  Move along"? 

"We" are becoming more aware in a world which is increasingly (this is a
scary moment for someone writing on the verge of committing a solipsism or
worse) aware of record, abuses of power, of "national integrity" and some
sense of human rights (i.e. Amnesty International, etc.) I mean, it's not,
like, we can fix things at once, but things are getting better gradually.
The point is, let's keep talking and talking to power, and recounting what
happened ... 

The attractions of wealth, power, and influence raise some to
policy-defining levels permanently! To their children's children's children.
Apropos of the state of the world: Jennifer Westley-Mills, a British lady of
60, randomly attacked and decapitated on May 13.  Behind this horrendous
story is a messed up person, crunched around by the system.  One glance, by
whom?  Who will tell this story fairly.  We don't have Howard Zinn bringing
a lucid perspective to the situation, or not yet.  Because this situation
cannot be covered by one glance.  But at least, let's say that we can detect
willful lack of accountability in the public handling of a person known be
dangerously unstable.

So, back to child abuse, whether the history is embedded in a place
dominated by an all-powerful religious institution, or a religiously
mandated class or gender domination of women and children, and the
physically or mentally feeble or yet by an elite domination of the common
people by wealth and privilege, if we continue to record, articulate, and
archive, advances can still be registered and built upon.

We've spoken of Aristotle, the empiricist, and Plato, the idealist,  here
recently.  And Larry (see [xmca] Finding common ground across sociocultural
frameworks, Sat 5/21/2011 5:27 AM) by inviting Anna Stetsenko to the table,
is arguing for a dynamic activation of the third framework (the 3 major
frameworks of the 20th century, Piaget, Dewey, and Vygotsky).  

I also want to invite Karl Weick to the table.  His "loose coupling" [Loose
coupling in Weick's sense is a term intended to capture the necessary degree
of flex between an organization's internal abstraction of reality, its
theory of the world, on the one hand, and the concrete material actuality
within which it finally acts, on the other. A loose coupling is what makes
it possible for these ontologically incompatible entities to exist and act
on each other, without shattering (akin to Castoriadis's idea of
'articulation'). Orton and Weick argue in favour of uses of the term which
consciously preserve the dialectic it captures between the subjective and
the objective, and against uses of the term which 'resolve' the dialectic by
folding it into one side or the other. (cited from Wikipedia)]  

A rough edged conclusion to my ramble here, this forum is a place where we
can remember, record, and articulate what happened.  Somebody nails it,
nails it again, then we know it collectively and work towards opening the
field to improvement.  Sometimes it seems as though the situation of the
poor and disenfranchised is only getting worse.  Sometimes rhetoric is to
blame.  But I'll quote it again: There is only the fight to recover what has
been lost and found and lost again and again: and now under conditions that
seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us there is only
the trying.  The rest is not our business.  (T.S Eliot East Coker V)
Valerie Wilkinson


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Victor Friedlander
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 6:35 PM
To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Church Report Cites social and sexual turmoil of the
1960s and '70s to blame in Priest Scandals

On 20 May 2011 05:32, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> A supplementary to what I said ... the real societal question is why did
> all this sexual exploitation stuff start coming out in the 70s and 80s?
> After generations of abuse, suddenly Ireland is full of horror stories
about
> what the priests and nuns do with the children in their care? And
ironcially
> one could answer : "Woodstock"! That is, the social movements of the 1960s
> did not create conditions for sexual abuse (that belongs to the mediaeval
> structures of the Church), but they created the conditions for people who
> were absued to come out in public and denounce their tormentors.
>
> Andy
>
> Andy Blunden wrote:
>
>> Yes, this was an astounding claim. The Church has studied all the sexual
>> abuse of children over the decades and decided that the cause was not
>> celebacy, or homosexuality but Woodstock (all their words). They claim
that
>> the Church was simply a part of a social problem which affected the
larger
>> social body, viz,. the 1960s Free Love movement. This is how the report
has
>> been reported here in Australia.
>>
>> I don't accept this at all. It is crazy. Abuse of small children by adult
>> priests is nothing to do with free love, or love of any kind. Also
nothing
>> to do with celebacy or homosexuality. I believe it is an issue to which
>> Activity Theory gives us an effective lens though because it was not only
>> the Catholic Church and its celebate priests who are implicated, but all
>> hierarchical organisations, especially those built around a doctrine
and/or
>> demanding tight loyalty. It affects the even IMF actually. Where you have
a
>> situation where one person has absolute power over another (a relation
which
>> can be estabished by doctrine, but to an extent also by economic
relations)
>> then this kind of sexual subordination and exploitation occurs. It occurs
in
>> families, too. The question is the quality of the person to person
relations
>> on which a large social formation is based.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>
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>
> How ironic.  The Bishops' report manages to deflect criticism of the
> consequences of authoritarian relations between ecclesiastical officials
and
> their clientele by reassertion of absolutist doctrinaire criticisms of the
> sexual practices of the public at large. A similar, and perhaps less
> well-publicized phenomenon can be found within the Orthodox Jewish
> community.
>

 By the way, several observations of the report suggest that the sexual
transgressions of the clergy resemble more the abuse characteristic of
prison sub-cultures than they do of those of gays and pedophiles.  There
too, sexual abuse has more to do about the exercise of unrestrained
authority than about strictly sexual mores.

-- 
Victor Friedlander
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