'We've Been Treated Like Monsters' - Sisters of Charity in fear of media and bewildered by negative coverage

 

NUNS OUT OR ELSE GOVERNMENT'S OUT!

(A) INTRODUCTION

Michael Kelly, editor of The Irish Catholic writes on 19 May 2022: 

The Religious Sisters of Charity, who agreed to hand over their hospital and the site of the new National maternity Hospital, are fearful of the media and feel bewildered that they have been so badly portrayed in the public eye since deciding to transfer ownership of St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. The Government this week signed off on the deal.

"You would think we were evil", a source close to the Sisters told the The Irish Catholic this week on on condition of anonymity. "We've been treated like monsters. In no way do they want the Church involved in any way [in the running of healthcare].  Yet many, many people experienced the care and work that the Sisters had done - many in the Irish population experienced care and concern and compassion. Yes there were some exceptions but for the most part the good that was done was amazing," the source said

The Religious Sisters of Charity began caring for cholera victims in Ireland in 1832 and in 1834 set up St Vincent's Hospital and since then have been "dedicated to providing the best possible healthcare in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and in the homes of the sick. The nuns are also known for their work among prisoners and the homeless as well as in education, counselling and emigration. It is distressing that people would think so badly of us. I'm more concerned for the people who are saying these things than for us," [!] continued the source.

"The Sisters are absolutely terrified of the media and the way they have been portrayed. The notion that a young person listening to this, what idea of Christianity do they go away with?" she said.

My Own Suggested Answer: Is this "source" Sister Stanislaus Kennedy by any chance? I have posted previous articles about the Sisters of Charity and Sister Stan - the latest being "The Folly of the Sisters of Charity (and other Nuns)" However the most relevant response to this question is contained in the Introduction and in part D ("Eloi and Morlocks") of my article "The Decadence of the Sisters of Mercy" 

What idea of Christianity do young people go away with? the Sister asks. One of two things: (i) either they believe the atrocity stories published by the media about the Sisters OR (ii) they regard you as cowardly fools who practise a decadent kind of religion that prevents you from defending yourselves!

(B) Why are Sisters of Charity "Treated like Monsters" by Media and Politicians?

The leaders of the Religious Sisters of Charity (like their Sister of Mercy colleagues and other nuns' leaders) have spent many years trying to ingratiate themselves with our new secular overlords - and made themselves ridiculous in the process. They now find themselves spurned by Traditionalists and Liberals alike! Consider the following:

• "The nuns are annoyed and they consider some of the comments that have been made as being defamatory. I think their attitude now is ‘let the State go off and build their hospital on their own land’." (Valerie Hanley, Mail on Sunday, 23 April 2017) 
  The leaders of the Sisters of Charity should have done this and allowed the the anti-clerical mob of politicians and media to experience the fruits of their own bigotry. Instead they caved in to the mob, handed over property worth hundreds of millions of euro for the new National Maternity Hospital and announced they were withdrawing from their own St. Vincent's Hospital!

• Also in 2017, the Sisters were libelled by journalists and politicians who claimed that they owed €3 million to the State - when the State actually owed the nuns €2 million! As per the same article in The Mail on Sunday: "the claim that the Sisters owed €3 million, had been repeatedly cited by politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats and the media as justification for outraged comments about the agreement brokered by Kieran Mulvey." 
  Did the Sisters complain or sue for libel? No they told the State it could keep the €2 million it owed them - that will teach the liars about the joys of Christian Charity!

• I have no inside information about the Sisters of Charity but I was told there was a conflict within the Sisters of Mercy about how to treat false accusations. I was told that the dispute pitted older Traditionalist Sisters against "Liberal" colleagues - and the Liberal ones won! I suspect that the same applies to the Religious Sisters of Charity'.

• In 2015 the Sisters' most prominent representative Sr Stanislaus Kennedy announced that was going to vote in favour of same-sex marriage in the forthcoming referendum. She was, of course, "bravely" repudiating Catholic moral teaching and defying the Hierarchy in favour of a group whose cause was supported by every main political party and by the mass media. 

• In 2017 the same Sr Stan reacted to the storm of anti-clerical hatred and lies directed at the nuns by describing it as "Elder Abuse"! [See Depiction of Sisters of Charity like ‘Elder Abuse’, says Sr Stan ] In my article "The Folly of the Sisters of Charity" I wrote that "No Jewish woman face to face with anti-Semites would make that kind of "mistake" and the VERY Charitable Sisters thereby demonstrated their unfitness to survive in the modern world!" 

However- see APPENDIX at end of this article!

(C) Civil War within the Pro-Choice Lobby - an Opportunity for Church??

I think it was Iona Institute Director David Quinn who described the Maternity Hospital debacle as a "civil war within the abortion lobby". Public figures who are strong supporters of abortion rights (plus those who normally take no part in the debate) have found themselves obliged to state that the allegations against the Sisters of Charity and claims of a Catholic Plot to influence the ethos of the NMH are rubbish. Is it too much to hope that this gives an opportunity to the Sisters of Charity (and other female Religious) to restore their reputation in the eyes of the public? 

Well yes I think it is too much to hope! Irish nuns have gutted their morale and their self-respect by decades of grovelling before the Secular Power. Now that the latest outbreak of anti-clerical hysteria is disappearing from the front pages, the Sisters will likely retire into their shells - until the next wave of media hysteria forces them out again! However it may be possible for other parts of the Catholic Church to take advantage of the current opportunity to make the truth known!

Some Unusual "Supporters" of the Catholic Church

(i) In an article in Irish Independent on 5 May 2022 Health Minister Stephen Donnelly (Fianna Fail) said some people had been making "false claims" about the National Maternity Hospital project. "There are people who are making really serious claims that are really worrying people. These claims are false and in many cases they have been told repeatedly that these claims are false." Mr Donnelly said that the Catholic Church was not involved in the project and there would be no religious interference at the hospital....."The Vatican has nothing to do with this. What the Vatican thinks about our national maternity hospital is irrelevant." [NOTE 1]

(ii) In Irish Independent article "Five-year row over maternity hospital now looks like time wasted on someone’s culture war"  Ellen Coyne writes: "Many people are asking why the land the hospital is being built on can’t just be given to the State. Wouldn’t that make things much easier? [Prime Minister] Micheál Martin argued in the Dáil that the hospital land is in public ownership in all but name, as it is being leased for the negligible rate of €10 a year for 299 years. It is worth explaining that what many regard as the best maternity hospitals in Ireland are built on land that the State doesn’t own. These hospitals – like the Coombe, the Rotunda and the existing NMH – are voluntary hospitals. This means that while they get most of their funding from the State, they are run by private bodies....Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said nobody is trying to use a compulsory purchase order on the Rotunda or the Coombe, which operate on land the State doesn’t own."

(iii) However Ivana Bacik, leader of the Labour Party claims “There are concerns about the lingering ethos of the Sisters of Charity". But according to Ellen Coyne: This is a common claim, but one that is described as a “red rag” to those at St Vincent’s who are “seething” over the way the hospital is being portrayed. A senior source at Holles Street [the current National Maternity Hospital] said they believed that claims of religious interference at the new hospital were part of “the biggest misinformation campaign in Irish medicine”.

(iv) Mary Brosnan, director of midwifery and nursing, says. “Because we don’t have strong politicians, we have weak, fearful politicians who are afraid of losing their seats and of women’s opprobrium.” Staff at Holles Street are dismayed, feeling they are fighting a tide of misinformation about the new hospital. Campaigners tweeted pictures from a protest outside an NMH board meeting this week, holding posters declaring that “nuns who sold babies” are to be “gifted” a hospital. This is false not only because the Sisters of Charity will have zero involvement in the new hospital, but also because the hospital will not be “gifted” to anybody. The State will own the hospital building. [ ‘We have a fortnight to get the truth out there’: As Holles Street creaks at the seams, staff battle ‘myths’ by Ellen Coyne]

(v) Younger female staff [at the existing National Maternity Hospital, Holles St] are horrified by the rhetoric in their WhatsApp groups, where friends ask if the nuns are trying to “steal” a hospital. Walking this reporter [Ellen Coyne] through the hospital Brosnan will sometimes pull a midwife aside at random and ask her if she has “any concerns about religious interference at St Vincent’s?” Some look askance. A few cast an incredulous look at the Irish Independent, as though to confirm such a question is genuinely being asked. Emma, a midwife working on the infamous Unit 3, laughs with derision. “No,” she says, “I’m not worried about nuns.” [Above article by Ellen Coyne]

(vi) Professor Shane Higgins, Master of National Maternity Hospital: Higgins is dismayed by politicians who he says are “not doing due diligence” before making claims about the hospital. “They’re willing to just repeat whatever has been said to them by the loudest voice, which is typically and usually Peter Boylan’s,” Dr Higgins says. “I don’t understand why Peter Boylan is continuing to peddle the narrative that he’s been peddling for years about ‘the nuns’, knowing that they’re gone, knowing that they won’t have any influence on anything … he’s out there, he has a very large soapbox upon which to stand...

I assure you, if this is derailed every single member of staff in this hospital and I’d say the vast majority of St Vincent’s will hold him wholly responsible for damaging women’s health for the next 20 years,” Prof Higgins said. [Above article by Ellen Coyne] [NOTE 2]

 (vii) Fifty-two doctors, including Higgins and three other former masters as well as many staff who currently work at Holles Street, signed a letter pleading for the project to go ahead. [Above article by Ellen Coyne] An article in Irish Independent on 6 May 2022 "What the Row is All About - and Who Says What" gives further details. It listed the more than 50 doctors who signed a letter in support of the new Hospital stating that it was "manifestly false" to claim that full State ownership was the only way to avoid religious interference in the new National Maternity Hospital. They included "Professor Shane Higgins, current Master of the NMH; Dr Michael Robson and Prof Declan Keane former Masters of the NMH". The article also quotes Dr Rhona Mahony, former Master of the NMH "Let it be said absolutely today, every procedure that is permissible under Irish law will be performed at the new maternity hospital on St Vincent's campus." 

My Comment

Many people who have no allegiance to the Catholic Church (or would not normally involve themselves in a public dispute concerning religion) now feel compelled to speak out against anti-clerical fanatics whose antics are delaying  the establishment of the new hospital. This is something that our Church should build on!

(D) Against the Hospital 

(according to Irish Independent article, 6 May 2022 "What the Row Is All About"  

Dr Peter Boylan - former Master of the National Maternity Hospital

"If it's to be independent, it should not be owned by another entity." According to David Quinn (in "No Reason to fear Nuns Under the Hospital Bed" 15 May 2022): 

Boylan told the [Oireachtas Health] Committee last Thursday: "It's about time we stood up for ourselves as a people, faced down the church, and said "We need that land thank you". In this case, however there is no church to stand up to; it has already gone. [See also NOTE 3]

Roisin Shortall - Leader of the Social Democrats

"What is known about the new company, St Vincent's Holdings, to which the Government is handing over control of a €1 billion publicly funded hospital?

"Our Maternity Hospital"

A grassroots campaign group that says it is "against Church ownership of women's healthcare."

PLUS: All other opposition parties including Labour and Sinn Fein. HOWEVER the Irish Independent article also points out that while the coalition Government of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party support the project, this is "with the exception of a number of government TDs who are still raising concerns about the project." This is a reference to the Green Party and indeed two Green Party TDs Neasa Hourigan and  Patrick Costello were suspended from the Green Party for six months because they supported a Sinn Fein motion  calling for the new NMH  to be built on land owned by the State. 

(E) CONCLUSION - Sinn Fein and Opponents of Hospital and Church

A few comments about these opponents. 

David Quinn's abovementioned article "No Need to Fear Nuns Under the Hospital Bed" is subtitled "Concerns about a caring, religious ethos at the new national maternity campus resemble the furore of McCarthyite America". He  writes: "Like Senator Joseph McCarthy seeing Communist plots everywhere in the 1950s, we are now being led to believe that sinister nuns will one day succeed in dragging Ireland back to the past, all because the naive refused to heed the warnings." 

The Political Parties opposing the project are almost identical to those who in 2017 accused the Sisters of Charity of owing €3 million to the State - at a time the State owed €2 million to them! See Part B above - "the claim that the Sisters owed €3 million, had been repeatedly cited by politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats and the media as justification for outraged comments about the agreement.." We are talking about people who utterly reckless as to the truth of their allegations - and who made no apologies once their lie was exposed. 

These are the parties that are most likely to form a coalition with Sinn Fein if and when that party wins our next General Election. OK Fianna Fail is an exception BUT Sinn Fein is well on its way to replacing FF as THE "Republican Party" in the State. Moreover Fianna Fail's willingness to participate in a reckless anti-clerical lie, is a potent symbol of its decline. [NOTE 4]

Regarding my reference to "lie": I suppose that an Honest Bigot - a  left-wing or 'liberal' equivalent of Rev Ian Paisley - could believe in a Catholic Plot to control the ethos of the New National Maternity Hospital. But how is it possible to believe that the nuns owed millions to the State when the reverse was true?? Anti-clerical hatred is similar to the anti-Semitic variety. I doubt if an anti-Semite says to himself: "I know this story about Jews is false, but I'll publish it anyway." Self-deceit and believing what one wants to believe, are more complicated than that. But the description "liar" is still valid and I apply it to the afore-mentioned politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats.

NOTES

[1] But perhaps Stephen Donnelly is a secret admirer of the Catholic Church? He has neither thanked the nuns for their gift of hugely valuable land for the new NMH nor for their two centuries of service to Irish women. However - as noted in the article by Ellen Coyne, Philip Ryan and Eilish O'Regan - "more than €50 million  has already been spent in preparing the site of the new hospital building."  In the eyes of the State, our anti-clerical fanatics have become a serious nuisance who must now be discredited!

[2] The current master of the NMH at Holles Street, Dr Shane Higgins, told the [Oireachtas Health] committee: “It has been difficult to hear claims both in the media and in this room that my fervent support for the proposed move to Elm Park is some kind surrender to the church. Legitimate concerns are welcome and deserve every consideration, but we must also deal in facts, and I am alarmed by the combination of emotive misinformation and misunderstanding that prevails.” From article by Eilish O'Regan: Release ‘Vatican papers’ on New NMH, Former Master Demands

[3] In her article Maternity Hospital Debate Hijacked by Fear and Loathing, Irish Times journalist Kathy Sheridan wrote on 18 May 2022: 

"On Monday, while the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group was declaring itself “a secular organisation”, Dr Peter Boylan tweeted pictures of Catholic paraphernalia – a wooden crucifix, a Zambian mission hospital collection box, a notice about the streaming of Sunday Mass, apparently in a corridor – which he said were taken an hour before in the “fully secular” (his quotes) St Vincent’s Hospital.

Among the inevitable angry responses calling for a shutdown of all religious iconography and chaplains etc, a staff member calmly noted that the picture selection was from the private hospital where she often uses the oratory for some peace and quiet. Meanwhile the SVHG chair was assuring people that all religious iconography at St Vincent’s public hospital will be removed in the coming months."

Something other than "misunderstanding" lor even "normal" bias is on display here!

[4] In Part D ("Bethany Mother and Baby Home - a PROTESTANT Institution") of article Deaths of Children in Mother and Baby Care Homes (did they die of starvation?) I wrote: 

I was slightly surprised to see that the Protestant Bethany Home was also the subject of false allegations of starving children - coming mainly (of course) from Sinn Fein but Deputy Niall Collins of Fianna Fail makes a contribution as well by referring to Marasmus as "a form of malnutrition". This seems to be the sole Fianna Fail contribution to this brand of hysteria. It does indicate that irrational attacks on the Catholic Church have a way of spreading.- and corrupting the entire society.

Are Fianna Fail now trying to match the Sinn Fein/Labour/Far Left brand of anti-clerical hatred? If so they will lose some core supporters and likely fail to impress the haters anyway!

APPENDIX regarding History of Sisters of Charity & Voluntary Sector

In part B above, I refer to the folly and cowardice of the current leadership of the Religious Sisters of Charity. However, it is only fair to recall their very different history. In his article Nun Better for Generosity, Charity and Care in the Sunday Times on 8 May 2022, David Quinn wrote:

For most of the last 300 years the voluntary [i.e. non-State] sector has been run by religious organisations both Protestant and Catholic. The Religious Sisters of Charity founded St. Vincent's Hospital on its original St Stephen's Green site in 1835. It was run by women, for women. From a feminist point of view, you would think this is a good thing, but not when those in charge are nuns apparently. 

The congregation was established in 1815  by Mary Aikenhead. It played a leading role in the fight against a terrible cholera outbreak in Dublin in 1832. The nuns were asked by a group of laypeople to take over the running of the Temple Street Children's Hospital in 1876. Three years later they set up the country's first Hospice for the Dying, Our Lady's in Harold's Cross, Dublin.  

To this day they are involved in prison ministry, education, assisting the homeless, helping immigrants, offering mental health support and fighting sex trafficking...

David Quinn also quotes Sam Coulter-Smith, a former Master of the Rotunda Hospital (and a Protestant) in praising the role of the voluntary hospitals in the Irish health-care system. Professor Coulter-Smith said: "Pretty much everything good that has come out of the health service in Ireland in the past 300 years, has come out of the voluntary service." He expands on the theme in a new book: Delivering the Future: Reflections of a Rotunda Master. The Rotunda [founded 1745] is the world's oldest maternity hospital in continuous operation, and traditionally has had a Protestant ethos. Several Church of Ireland clergy are on the board of governors.

According to David Quinn, Coulter-Smith thinks it is a good thing that the relocated NMH will still be a voluntary hospital because he believes these institutions are generally better than their HSE-run counterparts. He argues they are faster to react, less tied up in red tape, and can respond to emergencies better than the HSE system. 

Indeed, in Part C above I quoted Health Minister Stephen Donnelly (Fianna Fail) saying that "nobody is trying to use a compulsory purchase order on the Rotunda or the Coombe, which operate on land the State doesn’t own." But will that last, if and when, Sinn Fein comes to power?? [See also NOTE 4 above]

Ukraine and the Decadence of the West

 

US Soldiers at Grafenwoehr Army Base, Bavaria, Germany 

(A) Some Introductory Remarks

[1] Grafenwoehr army base, Bavaria - the largest US base outside America. Male soldiers parade in women's shoes with signs "We Are ALL hurt by Rape", "LOVE Should NOT Hurt", "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes".

This MIGHT make sense if it was a "cunning plan" by Joe Biden (AKA Baldrick) to trick Putin into (A) believing that US soldiers are decadent wimps (B) thus encouraging Putin to attack the West and be annihilated. The problem is that only (A) is likely to be valid!

[2] Tweet by Richard Moore who apparently is really the Chief of British spy agency MI6 and this is not a Parody Account!

Richard Moore @ChiefMI6 · Feb 25 With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022

[Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans+ History Month 2022]

[3] And of course Ireland - trying hard not to be left behind in the slide towards self-destruction: Target of 35pc female involvement in military is ‘ambitious’

The Defence Forces have described a target of 35pc overall female participation within the organisation as “ambitious”. The target was recently recommended in a report by the Commission into the Defence Forces which also cited a “masculine” culture in the military.... The Commission was established by Defence Minister Simon Coveney in late 2020 in response to concerns about the capabilities of the military and an ongoing retention crisis. [ Note (i) ]

:

[4] On the other hand we have the Catholic Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown.:

“The horrible events in Ukraine ask our western states what is it that they stand for. Amongst the threats to our society is not just a rampant Russian war in Central Europe, but the fact that liberal democracies look like little more than economic or industrial entities. Does Europe have any pretence at virtue or at generosity that goes beyond self-interest?...

" A widespread emphasis on entitlement and on victimhood generates a corrosive blame culture. It is unhealthy when we demand that something impersonal called the ‘State’ should pick up the pieces of every mess that we make. A dependency culture weakens us individually and communally. Virtue and responsibility will build hope and healing"......

"If western countries are unable to offer the world more than consumer goods and mind-numbing entertainment then we have nothing to boast of except our hollow economic power which struggles to drown out our nightmares."

[5]  Major General Jonathan Shaw former Director of Special Forces in the British Army shares the concerns of Bishop McKeown

"The West will only truly win when the Russian people reject the current regime and its ideology. My fear now, however, is that whatever happens in Ukraine, the West will lack the moral staying power to see down the threat posed by Putin....

" Meanwhile the curse of the 24-hour news cycle is that we can obsess over the dramatic and the visual at the expense of the important. This focus on what is happening on the ground distracts us from the real battle: that of values. Putin believes that the West is morally degenerate, that its support for democratic values is weak, and that its populations are more interested in their quality of life than Ukraine."

(B) The Decadence of the USA - and NATO

On January 26th 2022 the Irish Independent published an article by conservative Catholic, columnist and author Sohrab Ahmari that originally appeared in the Washington Post: Biden is Correct to Ignore War Hawks over Ukraine. I actually disagree with his conclusion regarding Ukraine but he provides a wealth of information - including (remarkably) some issues that Left and Right in the USA agree on!

"Left and right agree on very little these days, but they share a sense that something has gone profoundly wrong with America – internally. The two camps disagree over the diagnosis, whether it’s structural racism or elite liberalism that’s to blame, but the symptoms are apparent to both: the decrepit infrastructure, the loneliness that haunted young Americans long before social distancing, widespread job and health precarity, addiction and homelessness.

"Then there’s the cultural incohesion, an inability to agree on the most basic facts about US history and identity...... Biden’s [original] posture was perfectly sensible, given the political mood in Europe and especially its pivotal power, Germany. It also reflected a deeper wisdom, in continuity with his two immediate predecessors, that US power is over-stretched, exhausted and battered by domestic polarisation and decay."

Ahrami believes that the "war hawks" are asking the US President to be more zealous for European security than are Europeans themselves. He states that a majority of Europeans are ambivalent, at best, when it comes to America, Nato and the Russian threat.

"A 2020 Pew Research Centre survey of populations in 16 key Nato states found a majority opposes using force to defend a fellow member state in a conflict with Russia.

"In France, 53pc oppose fulfilling the Western Alliance’s Article 5 obligations under such a scenario, compared with 41pc who would back military action. More startling still, 60pc of Germans oppose using force to defend a fellow member state. [!] Ukraine isn’t even a Nato member.".

Ahrami believes Western Europe’s has no real commitment to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and points to our lackadaisical response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and "stealth invasion" of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine:

At various points since, Paris and Berlin resisted economic sanctions against Moscow, on occasion even calling for existing sanctions to be lifted. Meanwhile, Germany has remained determined to push ahead with Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, thus bypassing Ukraine and Poland and tightening Moscow’s energy stranglehold on the continent. 

Successive US administrations of both parties begged for a rethink, to no avail, until Biden dropped the issue last year. Lately, Berlin has signaled it might abandon the project if Russia invades Ukraine – maybe!

Sohrab Ahrami believes it's crazy for the USA to try to police Europe’s borders when Europeans have been this indifferent, this long. I disagree with his conclusion while recognising that the premises of his argument are largely correct!

On similar lines Ian O'Doherty writes in "The Divided States of America – Now a Country Ripping Itself Apart in Self-Loathing"

On the foreign fields, the shambolic and shameful abandonment of Afghanistan will go down in the history books as one of the most craven acts by any US leader. It also rang the dinner bell for Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian invasion. After all, when news emerged that Mr Putin had watched the live footage of the evacuation and laughed throughout, the die was cast. He already had the idea of invading Ukraine, but the American performance in Afghanistan told him that now was the time to make that idea a reality. [ Note (ii) ]

 (C) The Decadence of Germany

[ 60pc of Germans oppose using force to defend a fellow NATO member state!]

On 29 January Ambrose Evans-Pritchard the international business editor of the Daily Telegraph wrote Markets Remain Calm despite Talk of Imminent War yet Putin knows he has a Narrow Window and a Strong Hand

It is now or never for Mr Putin. The stars are unusually well-aligned for the overthrow of the post-Cold War settlement....

The Kremlin enjoys the same partial advantage on the politico-military front. European Nato disarmed through the austerity years and is now near rock-bottom, while Russia has been re-arming for a decade. The White House is perceived to be a pushover after waving its objections to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in a shabby deal with Germany....

Mr Putin does not have to worry about serious economic retaliation. Germany has effectively vetoed use of the financial “nuclear option”, which would to expel Russia from the SWIFT system of international payments. Berlin’s argument is that such sanctions have asymmetric blowback. The US has little direct exposure and would suffer modest loss. German and European companies with large interests in Russia would take the brunt... “I don’t see anything on the economic front that would seriously frighten Putin,” said Ian Bond, former ambassador and British security planner now at the Centre for European Reform......

Energy dependence has turned core Europe into an accomplice by default.... Top figures in the German Social Democratic Party are not even willing to take Nord Stream 2 off the table if Mr Putin annihilates Ukraine. Defence minister Christine Lambrecht said there is “no connection” between the two issues. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has belatedly agreed to demands from Washington and his Green coalition partners that there should be some linkage but the commitment is too vague and half-hearted to have much deterrent value. He still insists that the pipeline is a purely “commercial” matter. Germany has not only refused to sell vital weapons to Ukraine but is actively preventing its Nato allies from doing so.

Regarding this point British journalist (and Berlin resident) Justin Huggler described an encounter between the mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko and German foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at a Security Conference meeting in Munich (!)

"We need defensive weapons. We face one of the strongest armies in the world. We are ready to fight, to defend our families,” Mr Klitschko told Ms Baerbock. “Thank you for the 5,000 helmets,” he went on, referring to a shipment of helmets Germany sent instead of weapons. “But we can’t defend our state with them, it’s not enough.”

The emotional outburst laid bare divisions that remain within the Western alliance. Germany claims it has a longstanding policy of not sending arms to conflict zones because of its Nazi past. [ Note (iii) ]

 See also Reuters article dated 21 January Germany blocks Estonia from Exporting German-origin Weapons to Ukraine 

Germany is blocking NATO ally Estonia from giving military support to Ukraine by refusing to issue permits for German-origin weapons to be exported to Kyiv as it braces for a potential Russian invasion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday...[The USA and] Many other NATO allies, including Britain and Poland, also agreed to export weapons directly to Ukraine, but the German government declined to do so.

“Germany has not supported the export of lethal weapons in recent years,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a news conference on Friday. In the case of Estonia, Berlin is refusing to allow a third country to send artillery to Ukraine because the weaponry originated in Germany, the Journal cited Estonian and German officials as saying. 

Germany has had a belated change of heart as described by Telegraph journalists in

Germany to Ramp up Military Spend in Major €100bn Defence Policy Shift but

Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has reduced its troop strength from 500,000 to about 200,000 today. On the day Mr Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, Alfons Mais, the chief of the German land army, admitted that the Bundeswehr was in a desperate state and was “more or less bare”. “The options we can offer to politicians to support [Nato] are extremely limited,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

(D) Conclusions 

60 per cent of Germans oppose using force to defend a fellow NATO member state! How many would refuse to defend their own country and collaborate with any enemy for a peaceful life? [ Note (iv) ]

At a Conference in Munich (!) Germany claimed it has a longstanding policy of not sending arms to conflict zones because of its Nazi past. For the same reason it banned Estonia from sending German-manufactured weapons to the Ukraine to help it defend itself. Germany has a degraded and perverse attitude to its Nazi past - more akin to Self-Hatred than Repentance. (Catholic confessors used to be good at distinguishing between the two.) One example is the case of the 93 year old "Nazi Grandma" Ursula Haverbeck convicted several times for the crime of Holocaust Denial, released from prison at the end of 2020, quickly charged again and due to face a new trial about now. The German authorities have been pursuing her since 2004 as their armed forces decayed, they made themselves dependent on Russian energy supplies and resolved not to assist a non-NATO member attacked by Russia - because of Germany's Nazi past! This is the kind of Weimar Decadence that helped Hitler to power in the first place and is now empowering Putin! [ Note (v) ]

BUT Germany has reversed course, has agreed to major sanctions against Russia and is sending arms to Ukraine and beefing up its military forces - so all is now OK! Forgive my cynicism but I agree wioth the Telegraph's Jeremy Warner that West Totally Unready for Sacrifices Needed to Really Hurt Putin

Are western electorates even remotely prepared for the economic deprivations this latter course of action – a war with Russia in all but name – is likely to entail? The already near hysterical political reaction to the cost of living squeeze suggests strongly they are not. Without wishing to trivialise today’s hardships, they are as nothing compared with what would come. “Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2,000 for 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas,” said Putin’s sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, rubbing it in over Europe’s unfortunate dependence on Russian gas.

We have grown so complacent and lazy on the fruits of globalisation that the idea of anything more than a temporary interruption in the onward march of economic progress is so far beyond any recent experience as to be thought almost impossible.....So forgive my scepticism when the West promises to put up a meaningful fight against Putin’s power play. Even ignoring the threat of nuclear annihilation, the price of defiance will be high. It is not clear that mollycoddled western voters have the stomach for it. By all means, Europe must scramble to wean itself off dependence on Russian gas, but exactly the same thing was said in 2014 after Crimea. Small wonder Putin thinks he can get away with it.

"Mollycoddled western voters" indeed. Long before the Welfare State was even thought of, the main functions of the State were supposed to be defense against external aggression and maintenance of internal order. In part A above, I quote Bishop Donal McKeown regarding our "dependency culture", "emphasis on entitlement and on victimhood" and "demand that something impersonal called the ‘State’ should pick up the pieces of every mess that we make". These attitudes are now rotting the foundations of the State especially in Germany where the chief of the German land army, admitted that the Bundeswehr was in a desperate state, was “more or less bare” and unable to contribute to NATO's response to Putin.

If this crisis continues and impacts seriously on the State's ability to supply voters with goodies, I predict that our sympathy with the people of the Ukraine and refugees will evaporate with extreme speed. Western voters will start denouncing President Volodymyr Zelensky for 'intransigence' and demand he conclude a "peace at any price" with Russia!

NOTES

(i) I recall reading about an Irish guy who joined the British army during the Second World War and became one of its highest decorated veterans. After the war he left the army and led a troubled unhappy life until dying in a car crash about 1950 - a time when there were few cars on Irish roads. A country needs people like that in times of War (although they can be trouble in peacetime). Our current Defence Minister and his "Commission" are doing their best to alienate such men and ensure they will never join the army. "Masculine Culture" indeed!

(ii) It's likely that Putin's advisers showed him the photo at the head of this article. If so he undoubtedly laughed a lot!

(iii) Another nice illustration of the link between Barbarism on one side and Decadence on the other! And it also happened at a Conference in Munich!

(iv) For Irish equivalent see "Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Simpsons and Our Insect Overlords"

(v) Another example of the corruption of Germany's attempts to face up to its Nazi past dates from 1970 when the Red Army Faction (or 'Baeder Meinhoff Gang') started a terrorist campaign that lasted until 1998. As per Wikipedia "the group was motivated by leftist political concerns and the perceived failure of their parents' generation to confront Germany's Nazi past, and received support from Stasi and other Eastern Bloc security services." (On meetings with KGB in Dresden the group was also met by Vladimir Putin, then KGB resident in East Germany!) In 1977 Jillian Becker published "Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang" a study of the 'first generation' of the RAF that pointed out that the terrorists were more akin to Nazi Stormtroopers than to the forces of the German Federal Republic that opposed them. In addition German journalist Stefan Aust wrote in 1985 "The Baader-Meinhof Gang drew a measure of support that violent leftists in the United States, like the Weather Underground, never enjoyed. A poll at the time showed that a quarter of West Germans under forty felt sympathy for the gang and one-tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police. Prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang's righteousness (as) Germany even into the 1970s was still a guilt-ridden society." As per Wikipedia: "Horst Mahler, a founding RAF member, is now a vocal Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier. In 2005, he was sentenced to six years in prison for incitement to racial hatred against Jews. He is on record as saying that his beliefs have not changed: Der Feind ist der Gleiche (The enemy is the same)."

China's Grey Eminence and the Future of America and of Christianity

 

Professor Wang Huning - China's Grey Eminence

China's Grey Eminence and 'America against America'

François Leclerc du Tremblay, also known as Père Joseph, was a 17th Century French Capuchin friar, confidant and agent of Cardinal Richelieu. He was the original éminence grise ("grey eminence") the term for a powerful advisor or decision-maker who operates secretly or unofficially. His historical successors include Talleyrand, Metternich, Kissinger, Vladimir Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov - and today Chinese academic Wang Huning, the very influential adviser of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Wang Huning was never a dissident but appears to have been an admirer of the United States and its achievements. This could have translated into good news for both countries and assisted reformers who wanted to liberalise the political regime in China. Unfortunately after a 6 months stay in the USA  in 1988 he concluded that the country had bred a  "younger generation [that] is ignorant of traditional Western values” and actively rejects its cultural inheritance and that "nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit". .

According to an article on Bloomberg News on 13 January 2021 "A $2,500 Book on U.S. Decline Is Suddenly a Must-Read in China" 

After chaos engulfed the U.S. Capitol last week, some Chinese intellectuals found themselves searching for copies of an out-of-print book to make sense of events. “America Against America” forecast the U.S.’s decline due to domestic conflicts more than 30 years ago. [1]

Among the things driving demand was the author: Wang Huning, the Communist Party’s No. 5 leader and top political theorist to three Chinese presidents. Some copies have surged to more than 16,600 yuan ($2,500) on Kungfuzi, an online marketplace for antiques. That’s more than 3,000 times its original asking price in 1991, when Japan was more widely seen as America’s big economic rival.

“The interest in the book is the result of a renewed desire to understand a U.S. that is in the midst of a civil cold war,” said Wang Wen, executive dean of Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. “China’s doubts about the U.S. will certainly increase in light of recent events.”

Wang Huning and America - A Dark Vision

[Much of the following is taken directly from two articles (A) by N. S. Lyons The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning in Palladium Magazine on 11 October 2021 and (B) book review by Habi Zhang The Chinese Communist Who Understands America in Law and Liberty, 15 November 2021]

In 1988, Wang—having risen with unprecedented speed to become Fudan’s youngest full professor at age 30—won a coveted scholarship  to spend six months in the United States as a visiting scholar. Profoundly curious about America, Wang took full advantage, wandering about the country like a sort of latter-day Chinese Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting more than 30 cities and nearly 20 universities.

What he found deeply disturbed him, permanently shifting his view of the West and the consequences of its ideas.

Wang recorded his observations in a memoir that would become his most famous work: the 1991 book 'America Against America'. In it, he marvels at homeless encampments in the streets of Washington DC, out-of-control drug crime in poor black neighborhoods in New York and San Francisco, and corporations that seemed to have fused themselves to and taken over responsibilities of government. Eventually, he concludes that America faces an “unstoppable undercurrent of crisis” produced by its societal contradictions, including between rich and poor, white and black, democratic and oligarchic power, egalitarianism and class privilege, individual rights and collective responsibilities, cultural traditions and the solvent of liquid modernity.

But while Americans can, he says, perceive that they are faced with “intricate social and cultural problems,” they “tend to think of them as scientific and technological problems” to be solved separately. This gets them nowhere, he argues, because their problems are in fact all inextricably interlinked and have the same root cause: a radical, nihilistic individualism at the heart of modern American liberalism.

“The real cell of society in the United States is the individual,” he finds. This is so because the cell most foundational (per Aristotle) to society, “the family, has disintegrated.” Meanwhile, in the American system, “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification.” This “commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems.” In the end, “the American economic system has created human loneliness” as its foremost product, along with spectacular inequality. As a result, “nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit”.

Moreover, he says that the “American spirit is facing serious challenges” from new ideational competitors. Reflecting on the universities he visited and quoting approvingly from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, [2] he notes a growing tension between Enlightenment liberal rationalism and a “younger generation [that] is ignorant of traditional Western values” and actively rejects its cultural inheritance. “If the value system collapses,” he wonders, “how can the social system be sustained?”[3]

Ultimately, he argues, when faced with critical social issues like drug addiction, [4] America’s atomized, deracinated, and dispirited society has found itself with “an insurmountable problem” because it no longer has any coherent conceptual grounds from which to mount any resistance.

"Civil Religion" and Christianity

Wang concludes, “political customs” and “political traditions” sometimes are more powerful than laws because “laws are written on paper whereas the former are engraved in hearts and minds.” Hence, Wang argues that it is Americans’ sacralization, as he calls it, of the Constitution that makes it transcend those pieces of yellowed papers to be vibrant and everlasting.

Sacralization is a unique feature that Wang identifies in America’s “colorful national character.” Wang writes, “The American nation does not have a disposition for mystification or deification, but it has a special nature that I call ‘sacralization.’” Wang noticed that Americans tended to sacralize certain qualities or phenomena they saw in politicians, athletes, businessmen, film stars, singers, technology innovators, as well as football games, national ceremonies, the military, and the space shuttle.

“It is of a cultic nature, but it is not a religious cult,” Wang writes, “pragmatic Americans find it hard to worship abstract, legendary, and invisible objects, but they can worship success, bravery, adventure, and wisdom in their own surroundings.” This sacralization of a spirit for Wang is what Rousseau means by “civil religion.” Wang’s following words are particularly illuminating: “The process of sacralization has a fundamental social function, which is to maintain and transmit the core values of society . . . It is here that people’s sentiments, ideas, beliefs, pursuits come into some kind of agreement . . . In such an individualistic, self-centered society, sacralization is the best mechanism for spreading core values.”

Wang did not overlook the religious side of the American mind, though. In a section called God on Earth, Wang discussed another paradox about America. Varied religious organizations and vivacious religious activities play a cohesive role in public life. They are what he called “Soft Administration.” Wang noticed that religion both maintained social order and promoted freedom of society. He concluded that what made religion work in America was its secularization, separation from politics, and non-superstitious nature. [5]

Return to China and End of Idealism

Once idealistic about America, at the start of 1989 the young Wang returned to China and, promoted to Dean of Fudan’s International Politics Department, became a leading opponent of liberalization. When Wang won national acclaim by leading a university debate team to victory in an international competition in Singapore in 1993, he caught the attention of Jiang Zemin, who had become party leader after Tiananmen. Wang, having defeated National Taiwan University by arguing that human nature is inherently evil, foreshadowed that, “While Western modern civilization can bring material prosperity, it doesn’t necessarily lead to improvement in character."

Many Chinese are Pleased with Wang's View of the USA!

From the smug point of view of millions who now inhabit the Chinese internet, Wang’s dark vision of American dissolution was nothing less than prophetic. When they look to the U.S., they no longer see a beacon of liberal democracy standing as an admired symbol of a better future. That was the impression of those who created the famous “Goddess of Democracy,” with her paper-mâché torch held aloft before the Gate of Heavenly Peace on Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Instead, they see Wang’s America: deindustrialization, rural decay, over-financialization, out of control asset prices, and the emergence of a self-perpetuating rentier elite; powerful tech monopolies able to crush any upstart competitors operating effectively beyond the scope of government; immense economic inequality, chronic unemployment, addiction, homelessness, and crime; cultural chaos, historical nihilism, family breakdown, and plunging fertility rates; societal despair, spiritual malaise, social isolation, and skyrocketing rates of mental health issues; a loss of national unity and purpose in the face of decadence and barely concealed self-loathing; vast internal divisions, racial tensions, riots, political violence, and a country that increasingly seems close to coming apart.

As a tumultuous 2020 roiled American politics, Chinese people began turning to Wang’s America Against America for answers. And when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, the book flew off the shelves. Out-of-print copies began selling for as much as $2,500 on Chinese e-commerce sites.

Wang's Nightmare as China Encounters Same Problems! 

But Wang is unlikely to be savoring the acclaim, because his worst fear has become reality: the “unstoppable undercurrent of crisis” he identified in America seems to have successfully jumped the Pacific. Despite all his and President Xi Jinping’s success in draconian suppression of political liberalism, many of the same problems Wang observed in America have nonetheless emerged to ravage China over the last decade as the country progressively embraced a more neoliberal capitalist economic model.

“Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” has rapidly transformed China into one of the most economically unequal societies on earth - more so than the USA. Meanwhile, Chinese tech giants have established monopoly positions even more robust than their U.S. counterparts.  Corporate employment frequently features an exhausting “996” (9am to 9pm, 6 days a week) schedule. Others labor among struggling legions trapped by up-front debts in the vast system of modern-day indentured servitude that is the Chinese “gig economy.” Up to 400 million Chinese are forecast to enjoy the liberation of such “self-employment” by 2036, according to Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.

The job market for China’s ever-expanding pool of university graduates is so competitive that “graduation equals unemployment” is a societal meme. And as young people have flocked to urban metropoles to search for employment, rural regions have been drained and left to decay, while centuries of communal extended family life have been upended in a generation, leaving the elderly to rely on the state for marginal care. In the cities, young people have been priced out of the property market by a red-hot asset bubble.

Meanwhile, contrary to trite Western assumptions of an inherently communal Chinese culture, the sense of atomization and low social trust in China has become so acute that it’s led to periodic bouts of anguished societal soul-searching after oddly regular instances in which injured individuals have been left to die on the street by passers-by habitually distrustful of being scammed.

Feeling alone and unable to get ahead in a ruthlessly consumerist society, Chinese youth increasingly describe existing in a state of nihilistic despair encapsulated by the online slang term neijuan (“involution”), which describes a “turning inward” by individuals and society due to a prevalent sense of being stuck in a draining rat race where everyone inevitably loses. This despair has manifested itself in a movement known as tangping, or “lying flat,” in which people attempt to escape that rat race by doing the absolute bare minimum amount of work required to live, becoming modern ascetics.

In this environment, China’s fertility rate has collapsed to 1.3 children per woman as of 2020—below Japan and above only South Korea as the lowest in the world—plunging its economic future into crisis. Ending family size limits and government attempts to persuade families to have more children have been met with incredulity and ridicule by Chinese young people as being “totally out of touch” with economic and social reality. “Do they not yet know that most young people are exhausted just supporting themselves?” asked one typically viral post on social media. 

But even those Chinese youth who could afford to have kids have found they enjoy a new lifestyle: the coveted DINK (“Double Income, No Kids”) life, in which well-educated young couples (married or not) spend all that extra cash on themselves. As one thoroughly liberated 27-year-old man with a vasectomy once explained to The New York Times: “For our generation, children aren’t a necessity…Now we can live without any burdens. So why not invest our spiritual and economic resources on our own lives?”

"Liberalism" in China and in the West

So while Americans have today given up the old dream of liberalizing China, they should maybe look a little closer. It’s true that China never remotely liberalized—if you consider liberalism to be all about democratic elections, a free press, and respect for human rights. But many political thinkers would argue there is more to a comprehensive definition of modern liberalism than that. Instead, they would identify liberalism’s essential endpoint as being the liberation of the individual from all limiting ties of place, tradition, religion, associations, and relationships, along with all the material limits of nature, in pursuit of the radical autonomy of the modern “consumer.”

From this perspective, China has been thoroughly liberalized, and the picture of what’s happening to Chinese society begins to look far more like Wang’s nightmare of a liberal culture consumed by nihilistic individualism and commodification.

NOTES:

[1] "It is worth noting that though it is Wang’s most famous book, copies are no longer available on Amazon or China’s counterparts such as Taobao, JD.com, or Dangdang. No official English translation is offered. Indeed, the book is as mysterious as its author. One can, however, find an electronic scanned pdf version online." [Book Review in Law and Liberty: "The Chinese Communist Who Understands America"]

[2] As per Wikipedia "Bloom titles the second part of the book "Nihilism, American Style". He introduces in further detail the concept of "value relativism", mentioned previously only in the introduction. Value relativism, he says, plagues most elite institutions of higher learning. For Bloom, this dissolved into nihilism. He notices that students follow the path of least resistance when developing their values. For students, he writes, "values are not discovered by reason, and it is fruitless to seek them, to find the truth or the good life." Ironically, when traveling this path without reason, Bloom writes, students still "adopt strong poses and fanatic resolutions".

[3] From a book review America Against America: the Chinese de Tocqueville by Scott Locklin

Spiritual crisis: Mr. Wang was very concerned that even elite university students knew little to nothing about the history and culture of the society to which they belonged. His heart was at least somewhat with the neocons of the day; mentioning Alan Bloom and his best selling 1987 jeremiad against the ignorance of contemporary university students. Mind you: the morons described by Bloom and Wang are now professors in the universities and high officials in government. They’re still ignorant pustules, now responsible for creating ever more callow gelded toads to infest the crumbling halls of American power. He identified the cultural nihilism of the baizuo all the way back in 1988; the upcoming tribe of people who would run the country into the ditch didn’t understand it, and didn’t much care for most of its inhabitants either.

[4] An update: "In 2019 alone, nearly 50,000 people in the United States died from opioid-involved overdoses, according to CDC statistics. The misuse of and addiction to opioids – including prescription pain relievers, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and heroin — has been described as “a serious national crisis” that impacts public health as well as social and economic welfare across America, according to The National Institute on Drug Abuse."  (from Gript article U.S. Judge Throws Out $4.5bn Settlement Protecting Sacklers From Opioid Lawsuits)

[5] This reminds me of George Orwell's remark in "Notes on Nationalism" (1945 essay): "If one follows up this train of thought, one is in danger of being led into a species of Conservatism, or into political quietism. It can be plausibly argued, for instance – it is even probably true – that patriotism is an inoculation against nationalism, that monarchy is a guard against dictatorship, and that organized religion is a guard against superstition."