85
" How often do we hear from the local diocesan people—the bishop, the communications director, the victim assistance coordinator, and others—that this abuse is not restricted to clergy, but, rather, it is a societal problem? It does occur outside in the public realm. When was the last time you heard of a sex offender not being held accountable for his actions once caught? The Church treated the abuse as a sin only and nothing more. Out in society, sex offenders are not moved to another community quietly. “But protest that priests are 'no worse' than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although the extent of the problem will continue to be debated, sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a fact. The reason why priests, publicly dedicated to celibate service, abuse is a question that cries out for explanation. Sexual activity of any adult with a minor is a criminal offense. By virtue of the requirement of celibacy, sexual activity with anyone is proscribed for priests. These factors have been constant and well-known by all Church authorities” (Sipe 227−228). "
― , In the Shadow of the Cross
86
" Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis...In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, " The Wild Swans," the banished sister can only disenchant her eleven brothers -- who are swans all day look but turn human at night -- by gathering stinging nettles barehanded from churchyard graves, making them into flax, spinning them and knitting eleven long-sleeved shirts while remaining silent the whole time. If she speaks, they'll remain birds forever. In her silence, she cannot protest the crimes she accused of and nearly burned as a witch.Hauled off to a pyre as she knits the last of the shirts, she is rescued by the swans, who fly in at the last moment. As they swoop down, she throws the nettle shirts over them so that they turn into men again, all but the youngest brother, whose shirt is missing a sleeve so that he's left with one arm and one wing, eternally a swan-man. Why shirts made of graveyard nettles by bleeding fingers and silence should disenchant men turned into birds by their step-mother is a question the story doesn't need to answer. It just needs to give us compelling images of exile, loneliness, affection, and metamorphosis -- and of a heroine who nearly dies of being unable to tell her own story. "
88
" Derian pulled the blanket snug around himself. “This is my added assurance.” Eena’s nose wrinkled. “It’s your what?” “If you recall the last time we were here standing in this very spot, you pelted me with neumberries.” He held up a single berry before popping it into his mouth. “I doubt you would risk soiling your blanket, so I figure wrapping it around me this way I’m pretty much assured safety from any potential attack.” He winked playfully, and she laughed out loud. “I’m afraid you don’t know me half as well as you think,” she announced. Aiming low, she flung a sizable berry at his calve. It hit its mark.“Whoa, whoa!” He lowered the blanket to cover his legs. “You can’t hide yourself entirely, Derian,” she said, aiming for his face. He ducked, raising the blanket like a shield in the process.Another round of ammunition pelted his ankles before he decided it was time to fight back. Eena found herself bound up in her own blanket, arms wrapped securely at her sides. She laughed nonstop, unable to move within his strong hold. Derian leaned forward until their noses touched, and then he kissed her giggles silent. He kept her in the blanket, snug and close to him, but Eena managed to wriggle an arm free and drape it around his neck, holding his lips in reach. She uttered a quick count in between kisses.“Seven,” she breathed.Derian paused, his mouth a whisper away from hers. It tickled when he spoke. “No, no, Eena.”“No what?”“No counting. Not today. No ground rules.”She barely uttered a partial “’kay” before his mouth covered hers again. His hot breath tasted like breakfast. He fixed his hands on each side of her face, and the blanket fell to the ground. As the intensity of their kisses grew hungry, he gripped her cheeks more securely. Eena could feel the air electrifying around them. Her heartbeat drummed—excited and anxious. “Derian…” she breathed. But he didn’t stop. She felt his hand move to support her neck while the other slid down her back, urging her closer. She brought her arms together and pressed against his chest, somewhat objecting to the intimacy.“Derian…” she tried again. But he covered her mouth with his own.She pushed more firmly against him without success. Her protest weakened as his kisses softened. The fervor subsided, and she could feel her wild pulse even out. Amidst a string of supple kisses, Derian’s breathing slowed. He planted his lips on her forehead for a moment before squeezing her tenderly. She snuggled up against his warm chest. “One ground rule,” he whispered in her ear. “We stop when you say ‘when.’”“When,” she uttered.“Okay,” he agreed.Then, as if the thought had just occurred to her, she stepped back to look up questioningly at the captain. “Wasn’t there a leftover sandwich in that basket from last night?”His lips formed a guilty smile as he confessed, “Yes—and it was delicious. "
92
" Some people believe labor-saving technological change is bad for the workers because it throws them out of work. This is the Luddite fallacy, one of the silliest ideas to ever come along in the long tradition of silly ideas in economics. Seeing why it's silly is a good way to illustrate further Solow's logic.The original Luddites were hosiery and lace workers in Nottingham, England, in 1811. They smashed knitting machines that embodied new labor-saving technology as a protest against unemployment (theirs), publicizing their actions in circulars mysteriously signed " King Ludd." Smashing machines was understandable protection of self-interest for the hosiery workers. They had skills specific to the old technology and knew their skills would not be worth much with the new technology. English government officials, after careful study, addressed the Luddites' concern by hanging fourteen of them in January 1813.The intellectual silliness came later, when some thinkers generalized the Luddites' plight into the Luddite fallacy: that an economy-wide technical breakthrough enabling production of the same amount of goods with fewer workers will result in an economy with - fewer workers. Somehow it never occurs to believers in Luddism that there's another alternative: produce more goods with the same number of workers. Labor-saving technology is another term for output-per-worker-increasing technology. All of the incentives of a market economy point toward increasing investment and output rather than decreasing employment; otherwise some extremely dumb factory owners are foregoing profit opportunities. With more output for the same number of workers, there is more income for each worker.Of course, there could very well be some unemployment of workers who know only the old technology - like the original Luddites - and this unemployment will be excruciating to its victims. But workers as a whole are better off with more powerful output-producing technology available to them. Luddites confuse the shift of employment from old to new technologies with an overall decline in employment. The former happens; the latter doesn't. Economies experiencing technical progress, like Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, do not show any long-run trend toward increasing unemployment; they do show a long-run trend toward increasing income per worker.Solow's logic had made clear that labor-saving technical advance was the only way that output per worker could keep increasing in the long run. The neo-Luddites, with unintentional irony, denigrate the only way that workers' incomes can keep increasing in the long-run: labor-saving technological progress.The Luddite fallacy is very much alive today. Just check out such a respectable document as the annual Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program. The 1996 Human Development Report frets about " jobless growth" in many countries. The authors say " jobless growth" happens whenever the rate of employment growth is not as high as the rate of output growth, which leads to " very low incomes" for millions of workers. The 1993 Human Development Report expressed the same concern about this " problem" of jobless growth, which was especially severe in developing countries between 1960 and 1973: " GDP growth rates were fairly high, but employment growth rates were less than half this." Similarly, a study of Vietnam in 2000 lamented the slow growth of manufacturing employment relative to manufacturing output. The authors of all these reports forget that having GDP rise faster than employment is called growth of income per worker, which happens to be the only way that workers " very low incomes" can increase. "
97
" It is easy to take a stand about a remote issue, but speciesists, like racists, reveal their true nature when the issue comes nearer home. To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada, while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, or the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks. "
― Peter Singer , Animal Liberation
