Habeas Corpus and all that!
July 12th 2007 03:12
I'm a great believer in the separation of Church and state, as well as Habeas Corpus. I have a vested interest in not being locked up indefinitely without charge in an archiepiscopal or convetual dungeon. Believe me when I say that due process in the church is pretty much non-existent. In this respect the "children of darkness" outshine the "children of light" in their concern for natural justice.
It is hard to keep a wry smile away from one's lips when ecclesiastics rabbit on about justice - they have no conception of what that might mean in practise. The standard of church investigations has probably declined since the demise of the Inquisition - leaving aside racks and things. These days, of course, psychiatry is used as an alternative. "All lies and jest till the man hears what he wants to hear then he disregards the rest".
I imagine it is only a matter of time before the Catholic bishops have another attempt at making themselves sexy and progressive looking, not by ditching the grey cardigan as a de facto pontifical, but by buying into the debate on the detention without charge of terror suspects.
I ask you to consider the conduct of a terror investigation by the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference. It's difficult to guess whether incompetence or nepotism would gain the upper hand. While the nuns and friends from central office were still debating the precise weave of the purple hessian for the liturgical installation Town Hall station, and presumably Clover's office, would have been reduced to a smoking, probably radioactive, crater.
In the meantime they would have rounded up any seminarians who ever went to a Latin Mass and subjected them to intensive "therapy", hoping to wean them away from their "fundamentalist" theology. It's well known that praying in Latin is much worse than jihad.
My view of detention without charge is that of the majority of Australlians, apart from, I imagine, the Episcopal Conference. If you have been in recent telephonic contact with a bomber, just for example, then the security services ought to detain you until you can explain yourself. It ought to go without saying that we don't believe in torture and that justice must be as speedy as possible - keeping an eye on those issues is what the lawyers ought to be doing.
It is hard to keep a wry smile away from one's lips when ecclesiastics rabbit on about justice - they have no conception of what that might mean in practise. The standard of church investigations has probably declined since the demise of the Inquisition - leaving aside racks and things. These days, of course, psychiatry is used as an alternative. "All lies and jest till the man hears what he wants to hear then he disregards the rest".
I imagine it is only a matter of time before the Catholic bishops have another attempt at making themselves sexy and progressive looking, not by ditching the grey cardigan as a de facto pontifical, but by buying into the debate on the detention without charge of terror suspects.
I ask you to consider the conduct of a terror investigation by the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference. It's difficult to guess whether incompetence or nepotism would gain the upper hand. While the nuns and friends from central office were still debating the precise weave of the purple hessian for the liturgical installation Town Hall station, and presumably Clover's office, would have been reduced to a smoking, probably radioactive, crater.
In the meantime they would have rounded up any seminarians who ever went to a Latin Mass and subjected them to intensive "therapy", hoping to wean them away from their "fundamentalist" theology. It's well known that praying in Latin is much worse than jihad.
My view of detention without charge is that of the majority of Australlians, apart from, I imagine, the Episcopal Conference. If you have been in recent telephonic contact with a bomber, just for example, then the security services ought to detain you until you can explain yourself. It ought to go without saying that we don't believe in torture and that justice must be as speedy as possible - keeping an eye on those issues is what the lawyers ought to be doing.
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Comment by Louise
Bit of a "log and splinter" situation, then!
It would be good if we Christians (and Catholics in particular) could actually live up to Church teaching, wouldn't it?