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American historian Rob Zarestsky says (the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, which killed an estimated 100,000 people) is the moment God was exiled from public affairs.

Portugal’s prime minister responded to the quake by saying “we will bury the dead and take care of the living”. We have largely followed his example -we no longer turn inward in awe and turn outward with questions.

Instead we turn to computer mod­els for practical solutions, and to the television for narrative resolutions.We mourn the thousands of lives lost.We also wonder if something has been lost in the technological gains that show us human torment in full and unremitting colour.

The term “acts of God” entered the language of insurance not long after Lisbon.According to Reuben Aitchison, corporate affairs manager of insurance giant AAMI, the first ref­erence was in The Times of London in July 1803, reporting the judgement in a court case:“By common law, owners are insured against any loss of property entrusted to their care except losses arising from the act of God or the king’s enemies.”

Although the concept survives in some countries,“acts of God” have disappeared from the insurance indus­try in Australia, which now covers many natural disasters it once did not.

But, as leading Australian philoso­pher Tony Coady points out, talking about “acts of God” this way is inde­pendent of belief in God. He says it is a shorthand way of suggesting no human caused a particular disaster, such as an earthquake, so no one can be blamed.The only result is that God gets a bad press: he gets blamed for tsunamis, but no one calls a mar­vellous growing season for farmers an act of God.

The Saturday Age April 22-23

The attacks, in the main, were fuelled by the clergy sex abuse scandals.The media message was that sex abuse by clergy and subsequent covering up by some bishops meant that the Church had forfeited her right to comment on any topic of morality or, for that matter, any topic concerning the common good.

Of course, the sexual abuse of minors is a criminal act and it, and other forms of abuse of persons, is rightly abhorred.We know that some bishops and other authorities in the Church have let down victims by their failure to take effective action.

All this has left some lay Catholics, religious, priests, and I’m sure a few bishops, confused and wondering what to do. Should the Church tough it out, or should she refrain from public comment, adopt a low profile and go underground?

I suggest that it is none of those things. It cannot be business as usual because in addition to the pain of the victims, other Catholics feel that their trust has been betrayed and many priests who strive daily to lead lives worthy of their vocation also feel betrayed by priest perpetrators.

The Church is shamed and humbled. But a humble Church can preach the Gospel more convincingly than one in whose halls abuse has been overlooked.

The Church is charged with preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that is why she cannot keep silent. She has a duty to teach doctrine to Catholics and to nurture their sacra­mental and liturgical life.The Gospel does not permit silence in the face of global injustice nor ‘no comment’ in the beginning and end of life issues where the sanctity of human life is under threat.

Published on Cathblog 10/11/10

Such forms of confinement are unquestionably torture, but they are torture of a very specific kind – a sort of paradoxical torture. If the aim of torture per se is to make the prisoner’s body rebel against their soul – have animal pain and terror fill the con­sciousness until any principle, belief, or commitment is undermined – then the “supermax” regime is the opposite-it dissolves subjectivity by removing all that is most basically human, from diversion to human connection.

This is the point made most famously by Foucault: that the notion that neat antiseptic prison regimes are more humane than physical pun­ishment is the founding conceit of modernity. In many ways they can be worse.

Solitary confinement and the microcontrol of a prisoner’s behaviour are designed as a form of total anni­hilation, because they exert enormous energies in ensuring that the prisoner goes on existing, while depriving him of anything resembling life.That divi­sion of existence from purposeful life is effectively a standardised and routi­nised way of producing despair.

Not surprisingly, it is a particularly American form of human annihila­tion.The “supermax” prisons, and such total regimes, are the descendants of the first modern prison schemes, the penitentiaries established by the Quakers in Pennsylvania in the 1830s.

Where other prisons housed pris­oners collectively in squalor as part of their punishment, the Quakers believed that this merely bred criminality.The object was to make a prisoner repent (as the name suggests) by developing a relationship with God

-and the only way to do that was to deprive a prisoner of a relationship with anyone else.

Thus, prisoners in the penitentiary were ideally utterly isolated from any­one else – they even had separate cor­ridors so they couldn’t see each other. Eventually through their screaming isolation they would seek and find God.

The gentle and peaceful Quakers thought that this invention was a force for good; many of those who observed it, such as Charles Dickens, thought it was a horrifying nightmare.

But someone who never saw a problem with it was Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America was based on the trip he took to the US to report on this marvellous new prison system, for the French government.

Much of Democracy in America was devoted to trying work out what the problems of the new American society might be. He never realised that the answer was the very thing he was sent to study – the penitentiary was the other side of American dep­thlessness, an indifference to the full humanity of others hidden from one­self by following correct procedure and affirming goodness of heart.

The penitentiary is bad enough when it’s part of a God-centred culture; when part of one – even the US – where God is a shaky notion, then it’s a literal Hell. Its deeply anti­human nature does achieve what the Quakers sought, since many prisoners become believers out of the sheer need for someone to talk to, but it’s a counterfeit conversion, won through psychological warfare.

An Elders’ delegation has completed a two-day visit to Côte d’Ivoire to encourage reconciliation and healing. Their visit follows four months of post-election violence in which an estimated 3,000 people were killed and one million displaced.

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan led the delegation -joined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson.

Their discussions with the govern­ment covered a range of important issues for Côte d’Ivoire including security and disarmament, account­ability and justice, the revival of the economy, youth unemployment and the empowerment of women.

President Ouattara and the Elders discussed the government’s plans to establish a truth and reconciliation commission in Côte d’Ivoire.

Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said:

“One of the lessons we learned in South Africa is that people must trust the reconciliation process and feel a sense of ownership of it. Issues that are overlooked today can become chal­lenges later.

“A successful truth and reconcilia­tion process requires wide consultation and ideally the commission plan should be approved by parliament.

“It is positive that the President has announced plans for a commission, but we urge him not to rush.”

2/5/11 www.theelders.org

A new book by former federal minister Lindsay Tanner has come under scrutiny by Greg Callaghan of The Australian who asked the politician a leading question:

Callaghan:“With politician facing a daily media scrum, and getting caught up in constant micro-arguments, are the main political issues being lost?” Tanner:“What’s happening is that the real information process is slowly diminishing, replaced by a mount­ing desire for entertainment. Put on a funny hat, compare someone with Colonel Gadaffi, make big accusations, behave outrageously in Parliament: these have become the bread and but­ter of the media and politicians have respnded to this. Being frank and open doesn’t serve.” The Weekend Australian 7-8/5/11 Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy

(Scribe, $32.95) is out now.