This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” (E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909)

“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometres an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.” (Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954)

“Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.” (Confucius)

“Sorry, a machine can’t forgive your mistakes.” (Anon.)

“Books don’t need batteries.” (Nadine Gordimer)

"Now, a machine however subtle does not feel love, does not pray, does not have a sense of the sacred, a sense of awe and wonder. To me these are human qualities that no machine, however elaborate, would be able to reproduce. You may love your computer but your computer does not love you." (Kallistos Ware)

Source: https://twitter.com/nasahistory/status/951861340557234177

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me. Not that it might one day determine what I might eat or drink, or whether I can drink or eat at all, but that it will not hear my cries. That it will know nothing of physical thirst or of gut-wrenching despair. How can ‘they’ not understand this? It will have no comprehension of forgiveness. It will never wipe the slate clean. There is no delete. No such thing as absolution. It will deny to give me a fresh start [another more terrible dimension to DoS attack]. Mercy does not run through its microcircuitry. Don’t rush to embrace it too soon, this Trojan Horse which comes as a peace offering to the gods. The Creator has mercy for us, “[t]hough your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Is. 1:18). The ‘Machine’ which is ‘spirited’ by power to apply force and control, is unmoved to our petitions, “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye” (2001: A Space Odyssey). This is the elephant in the living room. Something holds us back, a foreboding, a premonition perhaps, that keeps us from directly addressing this subject.

It really is difficult to see people broken, humiliated, and in some instances to have their lives taken away from them because of something they might have said five, ten, twenty or more years previously. For someone, for whatever reason, to dredge up ‘sins’ of the past in order to hurt, or more concisely, to cause irreparable damage to the other. Who among us hasn’t said something which they haven’t later regretted, or where our words and sentiments can be elicited to carry a meaning or an attitude not originally intended? These can be errors of speech, peer group pressure, or the result of youth and immaturity. Yet it is there, it has been recorded. It is ‘played back’ oblivious to the context. Context is that which “throws light on meaning”.[1] We all make stupid mistakes. It takes time for wisdom and life experience to meld. And in other instances we get to a certain age and become anachronistic dinosaurs. The ‘Machine’ [input-process-output] is calculating and efficient. To ‘terminate’ these people is to simultaneously terminate ourselves. It is to do to another, that which can be done back to us. The ‘Machine’ defines us by our mistakes. It groups us in categories and dumps us in information silos. Is this the fate of the human spirit, to be “born into this?”[2] Imprisoned inside the “big iron” mainframes… like Ted Hughes’ proud Jaguar in “prison darkness” in its cage?

To forgive is an expression of one of our highest elevations as human beings. It is nobler than our finest literature, our greatest art, our most beautiful music. It is greater than all these when practised with a true heart for it takes us into the realms of the deepest mysteries of our combined representations of the Divine. In our religious experience we do not awe at the Creator’s ability with the harp or the writing of celestial sonnets, but rather we are amazed at the expression of God’s mercy and forgiveness. To the extent that we ourselves do the same with our fellow human, that is, to extend our grace towards those who we perceive to have wronged us, we are in the “image and likeness” of the Creator (Gen. 1:26).  We forgive that we could enter more genuinely into the space of compassion, that we might go on loving. The root of “forgive” is the Latin word “perdonare,” meaning “to give completely, without “reservation.” (“perdonare” is also the source of our English “pardon”).  We give up the desire or the power to punish.[3] The ‘Machine’ knows nothing of compassion. It will not forgive because it cannot love. Algorithms don’t have soul; they are devoid of incorporeal essence:

“You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush.” (Maya Angelou)

In life not all acts of fellowship are received well or reciprocated. When the grace we give is not accepted and is returned it can be brutal. It is a place of heavy tears. We are living increasingly in a world which keeps us isolated one from the other, and where we might be called-out or cancelled as swiftly as the swatting of an irritating fly. This is not because people are wicked, on the contrary, most people are generous and kind-hearted. We are all fragile vessels on an oftentimes bumpy journey. We can crack. And this is the tragedy, the irony, that this very fragility draws us into systems and networks and ‘mobs’ where we do things so that we, ourselves, might not be hurt. It is increasingly becoming a survival technique. The online world especially has hurt and devastated people by its millions, either by their own hand [addictive behaviours] or cyber-attacks [bullying, misinformation]. “As rapidly as technology advanced,” writes Joseph Carvalko in his prescient novel Death by Internet, “goodness declined…”. Communication technologies are not exempt. They are the voice of ‘the Machine’. The apparatus has no spiritual knowledge of humility and so it cannot practise repentance. Computational empathy or affective computing, is mimicry at worst, and simulation at best. The ‘Machine’ possesses no natural ontology, knowledge representation and reasoning, does not automatically equate to higher consciousness. It cannot possess “human memory”. And therefore it does not know what it is like to be human. I dread to think, if the present-day capabilities of our 21st century technology were available to past totalitarian regimes [especially Advanced LBS and monitoring systems], how enormously more multiplied and innovative their crimes would have been.[4]

To meet likeminded spirits along the way means so very much. It could make all the difference in the world, to have the strength, to hold onto the courage, to keep pushing apart that impalpable space between the light and the darkness. How good to have a friend who is real and co-substantial. To receive an encouraging message to remind you of your humanity, to have sympathy for you precisely because of your flesh and blood. To be accepted for all your faults and list of misdemeanours. And if need be, as it sometimes will be, for one or the other to say “I am sorry”, and to hear those marvellous words in reply, “All is good, I understand.” Not just a graphical control element, or a voice on the other side of an interface, or a recorded message with push button instructions. A machine could be programmed to ‘speak’ all the good things in the realm of metaphysics, but we will always have the perspicacity, that penetrating discernment, that it is artificial, and synthetic. Those words, the programming languages [even if they should ever become distinctly compositional], will never, cannot ever come from the heart [“the blood-beat” of the poets], the place of will and intention. Technology, of course, in and of itself, is not the problem, but our connection to it needs to be kept under constant vigilance, that is, we must keep awake as to how it infiltrates and attempts to redefine our very existence as human beings. When we are in need of some light and succour all the artificial intelligence and interconnectivity in the world will mean nothing. It is like being trapped in a vault of bullion of an unlimited value with no means of escape or communication. What then the benefit of all that precious metal? What good if we are building towards this terrible prediction:

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” (George Orwell)

We give our technology compelling names and dress it up with the most dazzling colours and logos. Many of these technologies, ultimately the most potentially dangerous, we make anthropomorphic. We dress up for example, and give large adorable eyes to the robots. We make-believe that we are understood and can even be loved by ‘the Machine’, that its cold intelligence will keep us warm at night. ‘It’ will seek those divine attributes which we ordinarily attribute to Deity: omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnificence. But being created in the image and likeness of the creation itself it cannot by definition ever achieve them. And so it will incrementally grow to become commensurately desirous and aggressive. The monster built by Victor Frankenstein eventually turns on his creator in murderous rage for making him hideous and incapable of fulfilling its integrated dynamism [5] . The singularity will not breathe new life into us to make us immortal. It could one day make you the ‘undead’, but never immortal. We would do good, as well, to not quickly forget the lesson of the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Technology gone awry on account of the hubris of the builders and the resultant breakdown of communication.

We know ourselves better than those who might be wanting to hurt us and much better than ‘the Machine’ which wants to imprison us in its central repositories and data warehouses. Their efforts to cause us pain, to potentially bring us to some humiliation, pale in comparison to our own battles, the fight against our compulsions, and those myriad fetishes within. We know much better than our real-life adversaries and the ‘electronic eye’ of the darkness fighting, assailing our souls, as we try to limit its impact on our lives and on the lives of others. If only they [both the adversaries and the ‘comptrollers’] knew the whole truth, had some insight of the context, they would be ashamed and terrified at the same time. Big Brother and uberveillance as much they might try to get inside the head, to get to the “whole truth” with their own particular strains of watching techniques, can only endlessly fall short of the mark. Our life is a mystery infinitely inexhaustible. We are so much more, much more than our search history and CCTV captures. It is weight enough to grasp what those words below from Miłosz mean for each one of us, before even ‘the Machine’ goes after our self-discovery to take away that private space where away from prying eyes we do our living and our dying: 

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labour for one human life.” (Czesław Miłosz)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/context

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQJengH58ow

[3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/forgive

[4] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1716&context=infopapers

[5] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/frankenstein

On uncovering a wicked evil

Very near to a decade ago I penned the letter which you are about to read, and which I present here without edit or additional comment, at an hour similar to the one we have only recently witnessed. That is the latest royal commission [1] into child abuse in which Cardinal George Pell has revealed a shocking lack of discernment.[2] How many more of these ‘commissions’ will we need? Wilful ignorance in this instance is no excuse and clergy who remain silent are in one way or another complicit in the crimes.

Given my increasing anguish at the situation I also wrote the letter because at the time I had become a first time father to a baby boy. This open letter was posted to major media outlets, relevant policing authorities, and clergy not only at some considerable risk to me, but also to my family.[3] The response was disheartening, maybe if memory serves me right, one or two private responses at best and an encouraging note from a paper in Western Australia. However, what really intrigued me was that during the evening broadcast of an SBS News presentation, an item appeared connected to the ongoing investigations at the time making direct reference to a number of points in my letter.[4] So somewhere at least, someone was listening and had found the fundamental positions of my letter in some way useful.

Right away I must add, that no religious group however lofty its claims or high profile in our community is “clean” and none are transparent on this most vile of all crimes. At the same time, to lay the blame squarely on the Church herself [if we are in this instance dealing with the Christian community] without any qualification is to make a serious error. The militant church unlike the triumphant church is neither spotless nor blameless.[5] It is made up of both clergy and lay members of various type and character [both saintly and wicked and ‘in-betweeners’] and is a microcosm of our world and society at large [as too are the legal and policing institutions]. We are living and moving and breathing not in an ideal world, but in a broken and corrupt world. Neither religion nor justice is to be condemned wholesale here. It would be like diminishing and doing away with the glory and honor of parenthood because some parents have committed crimes against their young. A ‘diseased’ mind which is prone to such dreadful and violent behaviors belongs to a sick person in whatever place or space you might find him or her. And yet they too need our help and a chance at the healing of this illness. Any form of vigilantism is wrong and it benefits no one. No social institutions, whether they be secular or sacred, are immune from treachery and corruption. “Social trust” is not an infallible thing.[6]

What I wrote during those difficult days was not a legal paper, and no doubt there are plenty of legal holes. It is one man’s simple deposition and small effort to contribute a practical footnote to this awful subject. It is depressingly sad that the document which follows is as unconditionally relevant today, as it was all those years ago when it was mostly ignored. More recently, a discriminating article (in the context of Cardinal George Pell’s latest testimony) appeared in one of our major newspapers where amongst other things, the author made two telling points which have been central to my own position: (I) The mandatory reporting of child abuse by the clergy to the relevant authorities, and (II) A change or an amendment to canon law to reflect this mandatory reporting.[7]

“On the most heinous of crimes and why some good people choose to remain silent”

By (Dr) M. G. Michael

Should we scratch beneath the surface, under that show of indignation which most of us would feel obliged to express in respectable company, many of us would rather not think about the subject too much. We might even allow for ourselves to be duped into thinking that the problem is not as widespread as some might reckon or that those in elected or responsible positions are seriously engaged in eradicating this wicked evil. I am speaking of child sexual abuse. It is a horrible, sickening topic. The facts are that this crime is widespread and that those in ‘high places’ cannot or will not face up to the reality. In this essay I am principally concerned with the church, though the template which follows would, in fact, match most organized institutions.

As individuals and as a community we are capable of both heroic and magnificent deeds. We are equally capable of terrible violence and unspeakable atrocities. Some people come close to the ideals of the heroic, whilst others nearer to the violent. In the absolute, however, both of these conditions are exceptional. Constrained by our natural abilities and opportunities, we amble at different rates somewhere in-between these moral states, “neither cold nor hot.” We struggle to do our best, having also to contend with compromise and diplomacy which play a vital part in the quest to reach our goal. According to how desperate we are to become the ‘top dog’ we might give up ethical ground and walk over others who refuse to go along or whose purpose has been served. Many of us should we be honest enough to admit it, have sold out, convincing ourselves that we have done the right thing at a time when more was required.

During this process of advancement, leagues or networks are established and woe and betide any member of these groups who does not fall into line or who does not follow the rules. Worse still, if for any ‘disloyal’ reason they go outside the select group, they are persona non grata and are to be summarily destroyed. There are resourceful ways, nowadays, both public and legally recognized, of going about this dastardly act of bloodless execution. These exclusive groups network by design and with intent, so we have the establishment of powerful and well-regarded brotherhoods where the rewards and stakes for the members become even higher. Outside well known criminal fraternities, we find this ancient and social phenomenon of the ‘brotherhood’ especially active in the religious, legal, and political establishments. Some of the world’s most horrifying evils have been hatched, fostered, and passed down from within these fraternal environments. It is true that the more access you have, the less likely you are to reveal.

It is in this atmosphere of fraternization and of pragmatic alliances that appalling crimes can be concealed, where even the perpetrators themselves might be lionized as citizens who are above suspicion and awarded grand honours. Authority and power beget even more authority and power. This promotes and fosters institutionalism, prestige, and influence. Almost, if not totally impregnable, these three foundation blocks behind authority and power are invariably supported and magnified by propaganda and by some docile sections of the media. To become the ‘prince’, we must serve the ‘prince’. History is weighed down with tragic examples of this ‘blinker’ loyalty.  It is true that even heroes may well envy the power of crass and venal men.

I am not speaking here of the everyday foibles and weaknesses common to most. We are fragile. We do crack under pressure. An elemental part of being a human being is to make mistakes. We hope to learn from these mistakes and to correct them, and where possible to ask forgiveness and to make restitution. At the end of the day, we pray to have walked closer to nobility of spirit than nearer to base animalism. All that has been said to this point has to do with ‘us’, the mature adults who have come of age and who are able to reason and to discern between what is obviously right and blatantly wrong. That is, men and women, of whatever station or rank, who possess the cognizance of consent. For the better part, as free thinking and responsible adults we ‘deserve’ each other, and must be prepared to suffer the consequences of our decisions.

There are some things however, that cannot be justified, which are outside this developmental process of our private and collective growth which the moral law, innate in most healthy human beings, has from the beginning testified against. One of these is the wilful killing of another human being. Not even manslaughter, but ‘wilful’. The other is the sexual abuse of a child. Both acts are abhorrent to the spirit of most people irrespective of culture, education, or religion. It is the second subject that I wish to address here in this abridged essay. I speak about this now, a little time after the matter again made the headlines, to make the point that we cannot simply move on to consider it the news of yesterday. We must deal with it immediately. We must do something real and precise to make sure that we come close to entirely eradicating this evil from within our society, beginning with the Church. Neither the various ecclesiastical confessions nor the State have appeared to be serious minded about meeting this awful wickedness head on. And so it is imperative to ask “why”? What is it that stops these two most powerful institutions from acting with all the due force available to them to fight this most heinous crime against children?

To what extent do the network and the loyalty code of the brotherhood come into force here? How do these strong, in effect intoxicating dynamics of ‘loyalty’ and ‘secrecy’ shape and determine the process of our private, public, and political decision making? Why would a royal commission into this monstrous evil -the sexual abuse of children in whatever institution or context- not be considered as the most urgent of all priorities when we would spend hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on firecracker displays, political advertisements, and ticket tape parades. What are we to believe then? That we cannot afford to hold a royal commission? Or that the problem is not sufficiently serious enough to warrant such high level investigation? The political, or rather the electoral expediency of throwing token money at the problem will, of course, not solve anything. Am I wrong, but is there not something dreadfully inconsistent and plainly rotten going on here? In the first instance, as it relates to the church, the only people who can put a stop to this crime are the religious ministers themselves. Clergymen, who are well intentioned and suffer with the knowledge that there are those from within their own ranks who are child abusers, normally cannot or will not come forward for two very specific reasons.

The first reason should be quite obvious. Religious understandably fear the terrible consequences, both to themselves and to their families, of their becoming publicly ‘executed’. The established ecclesiastical system in its corporate and bureaucratic incarnations (like most of the other established organizational systems) can be entirely pitiless. When it wants to it is fast, systematic, and always well-connected. The ‘defector’, nowadays ‘the whistle-blower’, is slandered himself through the ‘reputable’ channels of the network. Accusations of “betraying the faith,” psychological warfare, threat of income loss (in other examples churches, themselves, have become de facto ‘lending’ institutions to their ministers) and a host of other well tested and successful strategies are increasingly becoming commonplace. These high-level sponsored tactics –effectively shutting us up- have crushed and marginalized many individuals, both religious and secular.

The second reason, more often than not sensationally caricatured in novels and films, is less well known, and much more complex. Clergymen and most of the religious themselves, who belong to the historic churches, either confess to their superiors in what is known as the ‘sacrament of confession,’ or if they belong to the protestant evangelical tradition they will ‘share’ in counsel to an elder or to a senior pastor. Confession is no simple matter. For some zealous and sensitive souls it is not only a question of reconciliation with God, but also indispensable for their eternal salvation. So one can only begin to imagine the control that a confessor can exercise over a penitent, especially a priest who opens his heart and literally, one by one, numbers both perceived and actual sins (whether venial ormortal). And what if it is ‘sexual’ transgression? The exercise of power is more often than not, linked to information, which invariably translates to control.

Few religious have led completely holy and blameless lives, and those that have, will usually arrive at their sanctity through a tangled, and occasionally scandalous private history. Would the priest be willing to risk the wrath of his superior and potentially have his confessions made municipal if he himself should go public about something as ‘damaging’ to the militant church as child sexual abuse? It is nothing new, sad to say, to break the ‘seal’ of confession in an effort to ‘discredit’ and silence the messenger. There are a number of underhand ways in which this act of betrayal can be carried out in order to ‘protect’ the actual identity of the aforesaid confessor (who would under normal circumstances face defrockment and universal censure for breaking the seal of trust). Should the religious confessions be made public, there is his reputation and good name to think of, the pain and grief to his family by association, the ‘divine’ vengeance of his concelebrates who remain faithful to the ‘prince’, the agonizing and lonely process of his societal destruction. And the stinging accusation from within that he has betrayed the church which should at all costs be presented as being without “spot or blame.” Centuries of codified traditions are not easily broken. So in the history of the church, it is one of two types of men and women who have taken the risk and have gone public for a range of ‘unspeakable’ issues. The religious who comes forward is either exceptionally courageous or plain stupid.

A possible solution or at least a practical approach to the problem of the ‘confessional’ does exist. There is a way that we can help these men and women who want to speak out but who for one reason or another cannot. For if these religious do not come forward the problem will not go away; in our increasingly amoral and networked society (which includes the ‘online’ community) it will get worse. Let us as a community provide these individuals with the absolute guarantee of anonymity. Set up a royal commission. Make each of the churches in Australia publicly accountable by asking their ecclesiastical hierarchy to openly and legally support the establishment of such a commission. And if they do not, let them be condemned through their own inaction and be penalized on the levels of repute and financial support. The modern church, too, in the high places, is for the most part oiled by prestige and hard currency. At the conclusion of such a commission and after the presentation of the findings, let there be established an independent, properly constituted, and ongoing board of adjudication with a nationally respected figure as its head.

This select board would have special powers, recognized and approved by the Federal Government, to hear and consider incidents or suspected incidents of child sexual abuse and then to recommend to the appropriate authorities whether there are, in fact, grounds for further investigation. The recommendations themselves, however, should not be made public. Anonymity of potential witnesses would be a critical factor, to protect both the child, and in some instances, an innocent church minister who might have been wrongfully accused. There are, to be sure, such cases in point as well. The innocence of these individuals who are erroneously or maliciously accused for whatever reason must be protected with equal force. I am not a legal expert, I am simply, and perhaps naively for some, presenting a rough draft of what is theoretically possible if courage and goodwill existed. This model could be made universal, that is, the select board could be mandated to consider all cases of child abuse from all institutions and levels of the community.

There is perhaps a running contradiction in my terms. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?: Who will guard the guards themselves? Is not a royal commission just another “network” or “fraternity”? Perhaps it is, but for the present there is nothing more superior or more reliable as a body of inquiry with statutory power. At least the channels of corruption would be severely minimized; nevertheless, this would require a leap of faith in itself. The religious, political, and legal fraternities have become so enmeshed in the machinations and finances of the other (in some instances the same players stride across all three institutions) that it is becoming increasingly difficult to demarcate where the influence of the one ends and where the other begins. At the same time I certainly do not wish to give the impression that I am saying “all” networks are inherently wicked or corrupt. That would be a broad sweep and plainly wrong. The first of many positive support networks that most of us will be introduced into is our extended family. At the same time neither is this a blanket condemnation of all those in religious orders, on the contrary. For the greater part, these are individuals of unimpeachable character and of inspiring presence. They are faithful ministers of the Word who can be trusted with both our confessions and our alms. Nor do I wish to insinuate that every religious has to inevitably have knowledge of concelebrants engaged in this monstrous transgression of trust; nor that they remained silent if they did, in fact, possess such information.

It is a wise admonition, indeed, to let those who are without sin “cast the first stone.” Most of us, including this present essayist, live in a glass house. Each individual has a private history to consider, a biography which includes both high triumphs and unmitigated disasters. However, this is not the case here. It can never be the case here. We must not let it be the case here. We are dealing with children. Adults who harm even one hair from the heads of these little ones must have the full force of both the church and the law to reckon with. We must, therefore, not only throw stones at the crime in this instance, but boulders, and even mountains. There is no higher virtue than the protection of our children, and to the extent that we are prepared to protect these innocents whatever the personal or collective cost, we put every other virtue to the test. This might also account for the inescapable harsh words of Christ Himself in (Matthew 18:6) against those who would harm “one of these little ones.”

Finally, should anyone imagine that the author of this present essay is stealthily presenting himself as one of the “courageous” few, they would alas, be very much mistaken. If that, indeed, were the case, he would have written this essay long ago. Neither is he stupid. The truth of the matter rests elsewhere. Not least that he is the proud and protecting father of a three-year old son. It is to him that I dedicate this essay, and to every other child in need of a voice; rough and imperfect my own grown-up voice might be.

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/royal-commission-to-consider-george-pell-ronald-mulkearns-appearances-20151223-glu3gw.html

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-03/cardinal-george-pell-key-moments-in-abuse-inquiry-testimony/7216742

[3] Nowadays, as a great poet has somewhere written, there a lots of different ways to “execute” somebody, it is no longer mandatory to set them up against a wall.

[4] Though my memory in recent years is nowhere near what it used to be, some things of long ago still remain clear. In this instance, I distinctly remember the news reader that night was Mary Kostakidis. A number of the things she read out during that news item mirrored opinions from my letter.

[5]  John Chryssavgis’ Soul Mending: The Art of Spiritual Direction (2000) is a seriously thoughtful and confronting reflection on where the church as a community can get it wrong and how that can be possible in a sanctified space which preaches both the vital importance of holiness and the unqualified dimension of trust. Ultimately, it will invariably be as a terrible consequence of “The Misuse of Spiritual Authority” (VIII). In one of his other chapters (IX) he deals directly and openly with child abuse in the Church.

[6] An article published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (2007) which reviews the difference between “trustworthiness” and “trust propensity” and considers the measure of our willingness to vulnerability is useful reading: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~reetaban/triple%20helix/trust%20and%20decision%20making.pdf

[7] Canon Law [or ‘ecclesiastical law’] in contradistinction to divine revelation can and has changed many times during the centuries. It is akin to civil law in secular society.