Ingrid Betancourt on Woman's Hour

Ingrid Betancourt was held hostage in the Colombian jungle for a period of six years. She was captured by the FARC guerrillas whilst campaigning as a candidate in a presidential election. I posted in July 2008 (links from this post to the Lourdes blog no longer work - but the video of Ingrid Betancourt's visit to the grotto can be seen here on the main Lourdes website - look out for the exchange of looks between Ingrid and her mother to which I refer in my July 2008 post) about the visit that Ingrid Betancourt made to Lourdes, with her mother and other family members, following her release. Ingrid has now written a book about her experience of captivity, which has just been published. Her interview on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour this week is in connection with the promotion of the book.

You can find the interview at this link. I think that this is a permanent link, so am expecting that it will remain available.

There are two particularly interesting sections in the interview. The first is where Ingrid talks about what she felt made her captors brutal towards her and her fellow hostages. She identified three factors which she felt, in combination, made their brutality possible, and suggested that these factors could apply in any organisation. They were in very exceptional situation which brought out the worst in human beings, making her captors cruel, sadistic and humiliating. In a manner reminiscent of Catholic teaching on original sin, Ingrid observes that there is something like this in all of us. The factors Ingrid identified are: the power her captors had over their captives (represented by their possession of weapons and strength); a hierarchy which allowed them to have a lack of responsibility for their own actions (manifested in the explanation that they were just obeying orders from others); and a lack of witnesses due to the isolation of the jungle (so that their captors could do what they wished without any accountability to others).

One can think of any number of situations in our own country where the explanation that "we are following Government policy" or "this is what the guidance says" is used to avoid taking a personal responsibility for a course of action.

The second very interesting section is where Ingrid answers the question about how she was able to cope with the hardship of her prolonged captivity.  She talks about love. Firstly, she cherished the moments of love she had spent with her parents and her children in the past, and these moments gave her a desire to get back to that life. Love because she had the sensation that God was there, that the situation was not the chaos it appeared, that her situation was something that she must go through for it to have a meaning. And finally she speaks of the love of her fellow captives, who she describes as being her "heroes".

UPDATE: There is an an article based on an interview with Ingrid Betancourt in the Guardian, which gives some wider background to her experiences as a hostage.

Meetings

.... can have some delight added to them by the venue.

The Schools Forum on Tuesday was engaged in some study of the rules by which the local authority allocates funding to individual schools; all of this being overshadowed by 20th October (announcement of those bits of the cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review that have not been unveiled ahead of time to soften up the populace), after which there will no doubt be rather less to be allocated. Believe it or not, Eastbury Manor House is tucked away in a square just a stone's throw from the (very busy) A13 and a three or four minute drive from Barking town centre. It's location couldn't really be much more "East End", but you wouldn't think so from the photograph.

My trade union has an annual two day residential Branch Secretaries Conference (this year also overshadowed by 20th October). Again, the venue, Crewe Hall (history here), was everything.

And the inside of the old building, including a chapel (the venue is used for weddings):

The morning after the night before (the house had hosted our dinner, a wedding reception and another dinner on the Friday evening):

We were, of course, far too busy to have time to make use of the leisure and spa facilities. And, in case you think we were wasting our members subscriptions on unnecessary expense, I am sure our conference organiser negotiated us an economic deal with the hotel.

Responsible parenthood? "Choice" and the "role of the state"

In a follow up to the announcement at the Conservative Party Conference that a "cap" (with some qualifications) will be introduced, I think in 2013, to the amount that a family might receive in benefit payments, the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt gave an interview in which he commented on how this might apply in the case of large families. It is worth looking at exactly what he did say, and noting that what he did say was very carefully worded and does not in itself constitute an "attack on large families":

"The number of children that you have is a choice and what we're saying is that if people are living on benefits then they make choices but they also have to have responsibility for those choices," he said.


"It's not going to be the role of the state to finance those choices."

Mr Hunt added: "You can have children but if you are going to ask for support that is more than the average wage that people earn then we're saying no, the state shouldn't support that.

"That's not fair on working people who have to pay the taxes to pay those benefits."

I offer reflections on these remarks under three headings, and a concluding remark.

1. Perceptions of large families

I can't find it at the moment, but a little while ago another blogger posted on the reaction of people in the street or around and about when they encounter a family with lots of children. I have some experience of this when taking my sister's children out to the park for an afternoon - if any of them are still at home, I have sometimes taken great delight in pointing out that there are "two more at home". More than once I have taken them into a cafe for ice cream or cake, and found the staff having a more positive and supportive attitude. In one case, the staff remembered us from when I had taken the children in during the previous summer holiday. I saw the less positive reaction again just a couple of weeks ago, stood as a marshal for LIFE's "Ten Bridges Walk" near the lift on one of the Jubilee Bridges across the Thames, when a family group with several children across a range of ages emerged from the lift.

One part of today's news story is the perception of children, particularly children in families that have more than two children, as being a burden or a cost to society. Jeremy Hunt's observation about it "[not being] fair on working people who have to pay the taxes to pay those benefits" cannot but contribute to this perception, and is unfortunate for that reason.

2. "Choices" or responsible parenthood

When the Culture Secretary spoke about choice with regard to the number of children that parents' have, I do not think that he had in mind the teaching of Humanae Vitae. However, the situation of a family whose circumstances mean that they are reliant on benefits might well be a situation included within the teaching of the following paragraph from Humanae Vitae n.10:

With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.

There is, however, clear water between the teaching of Humanae Vitae and the words of the Jeremy Hunt in two respects. The teaching of Humanae Vitae is clear that it is the parents who have responsibility for the decision making, and that they should have the freedom to make those decisions, and that parenthood is equally responsible if it chooses in favour of more children. Whilst Jeremy Hunt is careful to respect this in the first paragraph quoted above, the import of the benefits cap is to provide an element of external coercion in this decision making. I also suspect that the "methods" involved in the choice of family size in the minds of many listening to Jeremy Hunt's words will be methods of contraception, sterilisation or, even, abortion, all of which are incompatible with the teaching of Humanae Vitae.

3. The role of the state

My reflection here returns to the idea that children are seen as a cost or burden to society. Fundamentally, children should not be seen in this way. As future adult citizens, children are a good for society. One aspect of this being a good for society is economic. The children who are supported by benefits now are those who, in the majoirty of cases, will pay taxes in the future that contribute to the common good of the nation. But the economic is not the only aspect of the way in which children are a good for society. Children can already, as children, contribute to the social capital of society; and, as adults, they will in many cases make an even bigger contribution to the good of society expressed in its non-economic aspects. So, even in cases where the support given in benefits now will not be repaid in taxation revenue in the future, there will be a repayment in terms of social capital. Expressed in one way, those who are needy in society are just as much members of society as those who are wealthy and talented. Society has a duty to share with them its financial benefits.

"It is not going to be the role of the state to finance those choices". It can be very much the role of the state, acting through a system of financial benefits, to be the mechanism by which society meets obligations to its members, obligations that would otherwise not be met at lower levels in society (cf an idea of subsidiarity). It should not be the role of the state to provide a coercive preference for one choice over another. What Jeremy Hunt's observation here does not do justice to is the right balance between how "the state" relates to society as a whole.

4. A concluding remark

From a Catholic point of view, there is another consideration to the question of how many children one might have in one's family. This is that children are viewed, and welcomed, as a gift to a married couple and to wider society. This introduces a more theological and explicitly religious dimension to the question of family size, a theological and religious dimension that will inform a Catholic reaction to Jeremy Hunt's remarks.

Nobel Prize for Medicine 2010 - more coverage

The World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (website not up-to-date) have issued a statement in response to the award of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Medicine to Dr Robert Edwards.

"Although IVF has brought happiness to the many couples who have conceived through this process, it has done so at an enormous cost," a statement from the federation (FIAMC) affirmed. "That cost is the undermining of the dignity of the human person. Many millions of embryos have been created and discarded during the IVF process...

Nobel Prize for Medicine 2010 - further coverage

ZENIT are reporting a statement by the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life in response to the award of the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Dr Robert Edwards.

The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life is acknowledging that the winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine is a scientist to be recognized, but he says he would have voted for other candidates.

Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula released a statement in response to Robert Edwards, the doctor who invented in vitro fertilization, winning today the 2010 Nobel for medicine.

The bishop observed that giving the Nobel to Edwards caused "a lot of support and not a little perplexity, as was to be expected."

"Personally," the prelate added, "I would have voted for other candidates, such as [Earnest] McCulloch and [James] Till, who discovered stem cells, or [Shinya] Yamanaka, who was the first to create an induced pluripotent cell (iPS)."

I note with interest the way in which the other candidates for whom Bishop de Paula would have voted are scientists whose work follows the approach I suggested at the end of my previous post on this subject, referring to the work of Professor Jerome Lejeune.

At the moment I can't find the full text of this statement, but I will link to it when I have found it.

Bridges and Tangents makes an interesting comment on the leader article in today's Times: The power of language in ethical argument.

Nobel Prize for Medicine 2010

Today has seen the announcement that the 2010 Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to Dr Robert Edwards, in recognition of his work in developing IVF techniques for the treatment of human infertility. This prompts a number of reflections that arise from the implications of this award in terms of the ethics and culture of the practice of medicine.

Firstly, one might take the point of view that this award can be seen as a recognition of the scientific work undertaken by Dr Edwards and his colleagues, and that it prescinds from any ethical judgement in favour of or against that work. This point of view would hold that one can separate a recognition of the scientific work from its ethical evaluation. I think there is some validity in this point of view, but only in so far as one might wish to respect the autonomy of the scientific enterprise with respect to the religious sphere, and therefore might wish to refrain from imposing onto the "secular" (in the best sense of that term) scientific world the ethical point of view of one particular religion. On the other hand, though, if by taking this point of view we mean that scientific activity is intrinsically neutral from a moral point of view, and that the evaluation of scientific activity has no ethical component; then I would not consider it valid. Perhaps the most famous discussion of this idea of moral neutrality in science - and rejection of it - is that of C P Snow.

The second thought follows from this first. IVF treatment is subject to different ethical evaluations, as is recognised at least implicitly, if not explicitly, in one sentence of the announcement of the award to Dr Edwards. It might, therefore, have been possible for the Nobel Committee, in making the award, to remain itself neutral with regard to the different ethical evaluations of IVF treatment and therefore of Dr Edwards work. This would not be to suggest that Dr Edwards' work has no ethical "content"; but it would be a reciprocal stance to that of not wishing to impose onto the scientific world the ethical point of view of one particular religion, a reciprocal stance that refrains from imposing onto the wider world of politics, ethics, religion and human culture a single ethical stance from within the scientific community.

I do believe that this kind of respect by science for a kind-of-autonomy of the wider culture represented a real possibility for the Nobel Committee. A careful reading of the press release of the announcement, and a careful listen to the video of the presentation of the award (it is in English!), will reveal no explicit ethical endorsement of IVF. One can, however, read in to the announcement an implicit ethical endorsement, and this arises from three aspects of the announcement. The first is the unqualified description of Dr Edwards contribution as being a "milestone in the development of modern medicine"; the second is the recognition in the announcement that IVF is now an "established therapy throughout the world"; and the third is the way in which the announcement refers to the "joy" that IVF has brought to couples who would otherwise have been childless. The following comment, from the BBC news report carries this implicit ethical endorsement further:

Professor Basil Tarlatzis, past-president of the International Federation of Fertility Societies, said: "This is a well deserved honour.

"IVF has opened new avenues of hope for millions of couples throughout the world.

"Edwards and Steptoe were real pioneers, and the award of the Nobel Prize honours not just their work, but the whole field of reproductive science...

One might do well to notice the implicit nature of the ethical endorsement of IVF expressed in this award; and to notice that it is implicit and not explicit. One could make a case that the award of the Nobel Prize does not, in itself, represent an ethical endorsement of IVF but, more than anything else, is a recognition of a widespread use of IVF in medicine. Whilst that implies an ethical endorsement, that is all that it does; and one can challenge the implication without denying the legitimacy of the Prize.

The Nobel Prize announcement does suggest a very positive view of the experience of IVF treatment by couples who undergo that treatment. Others will have better experience than I have to comment on the experience of repeat IVF cycles, which may constitute a less positive experience.

I think it was about the year 1972 that a French physician committed himself to working in defence of pre-born children, particularly those suffering from trisomy. This followed a television programme in his country that first suggested that those diagnosed within the womb as suffering from a disability might be aborted. That eminent physician's daughter relates how Professor Jerome Lejeune had already spoken at the United Nations in defence of the life of the unborn child. And the evening that he had done that, writing to his wife, he noted:

This afternoon I lost my Nobel Prize

Professor Lejeune discovered the particular genetic abnormality that gives rise to Down's Syndrome. It was the first ever identification of a connection between one particular genetic fault and the illness or disability that it caused. It is the discovery that lies at the beginning of the search for genetic treatments for illnesses, a search that is now expressed in different forms of stem cell research, some that Professor Lejeune would not have considered ethically just and others that he would have supported.

I wonder if, when that research comes to its fruition, and medical treatment undergoes the revolutionary change to genetically based treatments; I wonder if at that point the work of Professor Lejeune will be considered worthy of a Nobel Prize, in the same way that Dr Edwards has been awarded his prize as the results of his work have become an everyday experience in the medical world? Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, so no prize could actually be awarded; but it would be nice to think that Professor Lejeune's contribution to the field were recognised in some way. It would represent a genuine "secularity" of the world of science in respect to a particular ethic of science itself.

"Allegedly"

Allegedly (as at July 2008):

Nowadays in Britain and elsewhere, the Government is "imposing" the use of birth control, including abortion, on families; and the Catholic Church authorities in England and Wales are co-operating with the government in imposing it in England - by welcoming into its schools Connexions whose job it is to make abortion and contraception available to children, without parental knowledge or consent..

Now, if one looks at the reader co-written by the Catholic Education Service which appears to have been available in 2004 and can currently be accessed from the Catholic Education Service website, commissioned by Connexions, one will find the following paragraph on page 27:

Section C 15 – Working within School Policies

In a Catholic school or college there are likely to be the same number of policies as in other schools and colleges but they will be significantly different because of the very nature of the school. All policy statements are rooted in the mission statement and ethos statement which is incorporated in the Instrument of Government. It specifies that:

‘The school/college is to be conducted as a Catholic school in accordance with canon law and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and in accordance with the Trust Deed.


The Headteacher and Foundation Governors have responsibilities for the Catholic character of the school. Accordingly, Governors have greater responsibilities in law for the curriculum in Catholic schools’.

There may be occasions when external agencies (including the Connexions service) will need to take account of the unique policy framework when working within the Catholic sector. For example materials or activities may need to be modified before Governors may adopt them for use in a school; or the normal follow-up activities may not be possible because of the catchment area served by the school as defined in the admissions policy.

Whilst one might have hoped that the cautions expressed in this paragraph on page 27 were highlighted in the introduction or an executive summary -

We warmly commend to you this reader, which has been produced by the DfES in collaboration with the Catholic Education Service and the Catholic Youth Service. The joint working which has produced this reader reflects the close collaboration which we hope to see grow increasingly between the Connexions service and Catholic schools, colleges and youth organisations. This collaboration should be based on the common view we hold of the inherent dignity and worth of every young person and our wish to support them in fulfilling their potential.

 - the cautions are nevertheless present in the document, and could not really be stated much more clearly. The caution that they indicate to governors and staff in Catholic schools is very clear - any arrangements with Connexions must be undertaken in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic Church. The idea of joint working/collaboration expressed in the introduction to the reader can be seen, at least in principle, as an attempt at the dialogue between "secular rationality" and "religious belief" of which Pope Benedict XVI spoke in Westminster Hall; there is not, prima facie, any reason why the Catholic Education Service should not have collaborated with other agencies, including government, in this sort of way. The allegation that Church authorities are co-operating in the imposition of contraception and abortion by welcoming Connexions into its schools is not justified on the basis of this evidence.

Of course, at the level of each school, it all depends on what the governors and staff, and representatives of other agencies, make of the guidance offered in this "reader". All the episcopal direction in the world will not replace that part in the living of Catholic life that is the responsibility of the lay faithful in their particular place in the world, an observation that I think I made in the context of the closure or transfer out of Catholic trusteeship of formerly Catholic adoption agencies.

 

There is a saying about not believing everything you read in the newspapers. A modern version might be about not believing everything you read in the blogosphere. The problem of the "domino effect", though, is much more pronounced with the blogosphere than it is with the print media. A blog that is seen by some to be above criticism is always taken as a reliable source, it's material is uncritically reproduced or linked by others, the first blog repeats the story again and again, the other blogs run it again and again, and, from one first domino of doubtful perspicacity,  a story runs round in its own circle gaining a quite unjustified volume as it goes.

Which is by way of explanation as to why I do not link to some blogs that, previously, I used to link to.