They were returning for the first time since the #MeToo movement started making headlines and marking the first time the event was held outside Asia.

Since its inception in 1987, Sakyadhita has pushed against the injustices affecting lay and ordained women from around the world.

They organise biennial summits where women and men from diverse Buddhist traditions meet to present papers, dharma talks, workshops, meditation and chanting sessions, and roundtable discussions.

In the past, Sakyadhita has hosted its conferences in Asia (the previous four took place in Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, and Thailand). This was partly intended to ensure that the meetings were accessible to as many nuns and laywomen as possible—the majority of whom live in Asian countries. Read more

The protests happened in waves, with workers walking out of their offices, carrying signs and chanting, as the clock struck 11 in Singapore, Hyderabad, Berlin, Dublin, and finally in New York and at Google's corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California.

The walkouts were the culmination of months of employee discontent over immoral choices by Google leadership, including a project called Dragonfly, a prototype of a censored search engine that could be deployed in China, where the state restricts its people's access to information, and Project Maven, an artificial intelligence service developed for the US Department of Defense.

But the walkouts themselves were spurred on by a recent New York Times report that found that the company had tolerated alleged sexual harassment among its executives.

Andy Rubin, one of the creators of Google's Android mobile service, was given a $90m exit package and a fond farewell from Google leadership after an internal investigation found disturbing allegations of sexual harassment against him to be credible.

The company also gave a multimillion-dollar exit package to another executive, and retained a third after allegations against him came to light.

In all three cases, the company covered up the allegations, aided by the mandatory arbitration clauses in employee contracts that mandate that internal complaints against the company must be kept secret.

The revelation of the payouts to abusive executives is not the first time that Google has come under fire for its allegedly sexist internal culture.

In 2017, the Google engineer James Damore ignited controversy by publishing a manifesto in which he claimed that women are less intelligent than men.

Google has also faced lawsuits over its gender pay gap brought by former employees and the US Department of Labor. And in one embarrassing recent incident, Google founder Sergey Brin was asked at a staff meeting if he had any female role models.

Brin responded that he had recently met a woman at a Google event who impressed him, but could not remember her name.

The woman was Gloria Steinem.

There are dangers in overstating the significance of the Google walkout.

The employees, after all, are among the more comfortable and powerful voices of the #MeToo movement; they are white-collar workers in major cities protesting against the actions of a powerful company that is subject to media scrutiny and thus more likely than others to be shamed into doing the right thing.

In any social movement, there are pitfalls to overemphasising the voices of the powerful; it can begin to seem that theirs are the only voices there are.

But the Google walkout also demonstrates #MeToo's versatility, and its potential to mobilise women around other, intersecting issues. Continue reading

Image: The Guardian

He is the president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, a member on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and a consultor to the Congregation for the Clergy.

What follows is an interview with Hans Zollner.

What is your reaction to what we've seen in the United States and elsewhere over the last month?

The strongest impression I have is that it has now reached another level.

The discussion and the awareness and the intensity, especially in the United States, is very surprising because you have gone through this for many years already.

And it brings out the American [social and political] divisions that are visible in the country and in the church.

But why is it so shocking for so many, left and right of the divide?

It is because the extent of the cover-up by church leaders in the past and their co-responsibility for it (no matter what their ideological persuasion) are becoming clearer now.

And then the question is how people deal today with all these issues.

The McCarrick issue I also see somehow linked to the #MeToo movement insofar as #MeToo gave people permission to really confront the untouchables, to get at those persons you never dared to talk about or accuse.

Those who were once attributed with "divine personalities" are now within reach—close enough to be questioned and criticized.

And when it comes to the church, the main focus is no longer on abusive priests but on bishops who covered up. That is something very new, very recent.

It has been there, yes, but the intensity now shows there is another level of sensitivity and another level of need for transparency and authenticity.

It is interesting to hear you talk about how the untouchables have become altogether approachable now. The attacks on the pope would seem like the ultimate expression of that.

Yes, the pope is no longer untouchable.

And I think that is a result, first, of Pope Benedict's resignation, which has shown as clear as daylight that a pope is a human being.

He has demystified the papacy by stepping down; then Pope Francis' being so real, so accessible, is certainly also one of the factors that allow people to feel entitled to attack the popes, very personally (and without, I would say, the necessary respect).

And I believe this is precisely in the line of Francis' understanding of the papacy, of the episcopacy and of ordination—sacrosanct priests are now a thing of the past.

Just as you can criticize politicians and other officials if they don't do what they're supposed to do, you can openly speak about the hierarchy's failings.

What do you think are the next concrete steps the church in the United States has to take?

I would say the bishops need to commit to a code of conduct, and procedures need to be put in place in case there are more allegations of cover-up.

It could be a model for the whole church, if they committed themselves to a process.

For example, there is a bishop that is accused.

Okay, we will call together a jury, or whatever you might call it, of people, a mixed commission, and they will sort out things; they will test the allegation and if there is a confirmed allegation, okay, we report to Rome.

A consequence of such a proposal could also be that they determine procedures in Rome.

Pope Francis, with his motu proprio "Like a Living Mother," has made a start, but we don't know whether that was followed through and what kind of process is in place in case an allegation comes up.

What do you mean by "a mixed commission"?

Laypeople, priests, bishops—all experts who are capable of taking evidence.

One of the problems that we have is that in canon law we don't have a detailed and clearly defined list of punishments for clearly defined crimes, so we will need that.

We will need to know what will be the concrete measure of punishment for a bishop who has covered up abuses.

Also, let's say you're at a Catholic school and it is "Brother Brown" who abuses.

To whom do you write? It is not the Congregation for Clergy. It is not the Congregation for Doctrine.

It's the Congregation for Religious because we're talking about a brother, not a priest.

But again, until now the punishments for a non-cleric who has abused a minor are not specified. T

here is no church-specified punishment for any layperson either. That is also something that I would say we need to revise. Continue reading

• Image: America

With all due respect to Herr Doktor, some moments are so transparently situated at a cultural crossroad that they illuminate history even in real time.

Improbably enough, the #MeToo movement seems to be one.

As anyone following events can see, the ongoing sex scandals that gave rise to #MeToo are more than just placeholders in the news cycle.

They reveal a shift in the cultural plates of the last half-century and demonstrate the many ways in which that shift has changed American families, workplaces, romances (and lack thereof), politics, and culture.

Unlike our forerunners in 1968, those of us living today have access to something they didn't: 50 years of sociological, psychological, medical, and other evidence about the sexual revolution and its fallout.

Thanks to the #MeToo movement, the time has come to examine some of that evidence.

Such an examination is not theological or religious or even necessarily philosophical.

It is empirical, based on objectively derived evidence and data.

Over a hundred years ago, a Russian writer was sent to report on the facts of what transpired inside a slaughterhouse.

After setting them down in detail, he added this immortal line: "We cannot pretend that we do not know this." The meaning of what Leo Tolstoy wrote then is plain.

Once the facts of any event are admitted to the record, to pretend we do not see them is to sin by omission and, figuratively speaking, against truth itself.

And so it is with the sexual revolution.

Following are five facts about the revolution's impact that are by now empirically incontestable—five truths that the record of the past half-century has established beyond reasonable doubt.

Artificial contraception

First, the destigmatization and mass adoption of artificial contraception, beginning in the 1960s, followed by widespread legalization of abortion, has radically changed the world in which we now find ourselves.

This is an important countercultural point.

Over the years, a great many people have claimed that sex is merely a private act between individuals.

They've been wrong.

We know now that private acts have cumulative public effects. Individual choices, such as having children out of wedlock, have ended up expanding the modern welfare state, for example, as the government has stepped in to support children who lack fathers.

The explosion of sexual activity thanks to contraception has been accompanied by levels of divorce, cohabitation, and abortion never before seen in history.

And as the #MeToo movement shows, the same shift has contributed to a world in which on-demand sex is assumed to be the norm, to the detriment of those who resist any advance, for any reason.

Sexual revolution consequences

Second, the revolution is having deleterious consequences—and not only on the young—in the form of broken families and the attendant disadvantages conferred by fatherless homes, as has been excruciatingly well-documented by social scientists for many decades.

Over half a century into the sexual revolution, the human damages at the end of life's telescope are now also visible.

Today, for example, one of the most pressing, and growing, issues for researchers is the plight of the elderly, who face the challenges of aging amid shrunken, broken, and truncated families.

Google "loneliness studies" and you will find a sociological cottage industry in every supposedly advanced country in the world—France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Portugal. Many social scientists now call this phenomenon an "epidemic."

To mention just one example, toward the end of last year, the New York Times published a harrowing story about what the so-called "birth dearth" looks like in old age: "4,000 lonely deaths a week. . . . Each year, some of [Japan's elderly] died without anyone knowing, only to be discovered after their neighbors caught the smell."

It is critical that we not avert our eyes from this tragic picture and what it tells us about the impact of the sexual revolution. Fifty years after the embrace of that revolution's principles—undeniably because of that embrace—atomization and severely reduced human contact is spreading across the planet.

Libertarian conceit

Third, the libertarian conceit often embraced by the sexual revolution's supporters, that pornography is a harmless activity, is no longer viable.

The damages caused by pornography are legion: Pornography use is frequently cited as a factor in divorce cases; therapists report increased demand for treatment for pornography addiction, including for children.

Is it any surprise that many of the stories to emerge from the #MeToo moment seem drawn directly from the narratives of pornography? Continue reading

• Image: Crisis Magazine
• Mary Eberstadt is a senior research fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute.

According to the Associated Press, cases of abused nuns have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia.

These cases demonstrate the problem is global and pervasive, thanks to the sisters' second-class status in the church and their ingrained subservience to the men who run it, Associated Press says.

Sisters are now going public, partly to denounce years of inaction by church leaders.

They say major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s.

One nun says she no longer goes to confession regularly after an Italian priest forced himself on her while she was recounting her sins to him in a university classroom.

At the time of the incident 20 years ago, the sister said she told only her provincial superior and her spiritual director.

She felt silenced by the Church's culture of secrecy, her vows of obedience and her own fear, repulsion and shame.

"It [the abuse] opened a great wound inside of me," she says. "I pretended it didn't happen."

Although the extent of priests' abuse of nuns is unknown, this week five former nuns of the Congregation of the Good Samaritan in Chile made a public statement about their abuse.

They say they reported a series of sexual abuses committed by priests visiting their community, which is dedicated to caring for the sick.

The former nuns say both sexual abuse and the abuse of authority occurred inside their congregation and they were mistreated when they reported the incidents to their superior.

Experts say the victims are reluctant to report the abuse because of well-founded fears they won't be believed.

Source

• The Week
• CruxNow
• Daily Mail
• Tribune India
• Boston Globe
• Image: Daily Mail

Australian archbishop Mark Coleridge says the Church is facing the same challenge that has brought a reckoning to those who used their authority to abuse or silence victims. Read more

One interpretation of the #MeToo phenomenon is that sexual harassment is not about sex at all but only power.

There is truth in this view.

The power dynamics in film producer Harvey Weinstein's room, for example, clearly made all the difference in determining how women responded to his unwanted advances.

Interestingly, the view that sexual harassment is not primarily about sex is put forward more often by women than by men.

Male commentators, such as the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, often see things differently.

In a conversation with Rebecca Traister of New York magazine, he paraphrases Tony Montana from "Scarface": "First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women."

As Mr Douthat puts it, a certain kind of "male sexual brain understands power" to be "a means to sex."

And if the behavior of men like Mr Weinstein is about sex as well as power—and it certainly seems to be—we will not get out of this mess without asking some hard questions about contemporary sexual desire.

Sometimes we resent the relationship or, at least, we resent that it waylays us—though with those whom we love it is difficult to admit, for it seems so shamefully selfish.

Yet we cannot help but wonder why God has asked this of us.

Why has our life been waylaid?

What is the Lord trying to accomplish here? And how long will my life be like this?

The ethical conversations sparked by the recent revelations, however, rarely get past debating whether or not the encounters were consensual.

Yet mere consent is necessary but not sufficient because it is entirely too thin to support the weight of a sexual encounter.

The Problem With Consent

First, a reliance on consent overlooks the power dynamics that pressure women to consent to sex.

Consent is not the magic bullet that prevents women from getting involved with abusive men.

This is a truth many feminists have grasped, especially recently, as "sex-positive feminism" has come under fire.

Sex positivity is defined by Allena Gabosch as "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable."

But this seemingly neutral approach quickly becomes prescriptive.

As one young woman writes at the online magazine Everyday Feminism, "The sex-positive feminist circles I traveled in taught me that you should have sex whenever you feel the physical desire to do so, and if you don't, it's because of internalized societal pressures."

The concrete result is reverse pressure on women to engage in casual sexual encounters—in other words, to act just the way the Mr Weinsteins of the world want them to.

Further, the obsession with consent keeps all the focus on the people (especially the women) while conveniently ignoring the sex.

Is consent really so powerful that it can make any kind of sex non-exploitative?

What about women acting out male pornography fantasies, no matter how bizarre? Isn't there such a thing as bad, consensual sex? Continue reading

Mary Magdalene's image gets a new look in the modern age, now seen as a strong, independent woman.

If there's a feminist figure from the Bible for the #MeToo era, it could very well be Mary Magdalene.

The major character in the life of Jesus was long maligned in the West and portrayed as a reformed former prostitute.

But scholars have adopted a different approach more recently, viewing her as a strong, independent woman who supported Jesus financially and spiritually.

The New Testament tells how Jesus cast demons out of her.

She then accompanied Jesus in his ministry around the Galilee, before witnessing his crucifixion, burial and resurrection in Jerusalem, which is being commemorated by Christians this week and next.

The Roman Catholic Church and Western Christian churches observe Easter on Sunday, Eastern Orthodox Christians a week later.

Pope Francis took the biggest step yet to rehabilitate Mary Magdalene's image by declaring a major feast day in her honor, July 22.

His 2016 decree put the woman who first proclaimed Jesus' resurrection on par with the liturgical celebrations of the male apostles.

"By doing this, he established the absolute equality of Mary Magdalene to the apostles, something that has never been done before and is also a point of no return" for women in the church, said Lucetta Scarrafia, editor of the Vatican-published Women Church World monthly magazine.

For centuries, Western Christianity depicted Mary Magdalene as a former prostitute, a narrative that began in the sixth century.

Pope Gregory the Great conflated Magdalene with an anonymous sinful woman mentioned in the chapter before she's introduced in the Gospel of Luke.

Only in 1969 did the Catholic Church roll back centuries of labeling Mary Magdalene as such, stating she was distinct from the sinful woman mentioned in Luke.

Eastern Orthodox Christians never depicted her as a prostitute.

Mary Magdalene was from a thriving fishing village on the Sea of Galilee named Magdala, which has been excavated extensively by archaeologists in recent decades.

The site is home to the oldest known synagogue in the Galilee, where a stone bearing the likeness of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was found, as well as a marketplace, ritual baths and fishing harbor. Marcela Zapata-Meza, the lead archaeologist at the site, has called it "the Israeli Pompeii."

Modern scholars have adopted a different understanding of Mary Magdalene, and regard her as one of Jesus' most prominent disciples, who stood by him to the end while his most devoted apostles did not.

"Historical tradition says she was a prostitute from Magdala," said Jennifer Ristine, director of the Magdalena Institute at Magdala.

"Reanalyzing that reputation that she had we can see she was probably a woman of greater social status, higher social status, a woman of wealth who accompanied Jesus as we see in Luke 8:2, helping Jesus and his disciples with her own resources."

Nonetheless, the image of Mary Magdalene as a licentious, sexualized woman has persisted in Western culture, including in "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "The Da Vinci Code."

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, said Mary Magdalene's reputation was sullied by her depiction in art over the centuries.

"Art history made her become a prostitute, which is something that is not present in the Gospels," he said, adding that she also has been portrayed as Jesus' wife.

"It is important to find the real face of Mary Magdalene, who is a woman who represents the importance of the female aspect on the side of Christ," he told The Associated Press at the Vatican.

The Gospel of Mary, an early Christian text, depicted her as a visionary who received secret revelations and knowledge from Jesus. Continue reading

This is such a common occurrence in the lives of women that few were startled at the sheer numbers of #MeToo postings.

Live long enough while being female and it will happen to you.

#NotMe is a movement that will never catch on.

What is different this time is that more men are listening, that accused men who were protected by their prominence are nonetheless being shamed and getting fired, and that the white-hot spotlight is trained on the entertainment industry.

Time magazine's persons of the year for 2017 were the Silence Breakers, women who "finally" blew the whistle on men who abused women who worked for them.

"Finally," because in nearly every case, the offensive behavior had long been discussed in certain circles, just not told to all of America.

The titillation of those perpetrator names also being household names drove the movement, which would not have taken off at all had the names been those of guys who lived down the street.

But here's the thing.

Statistically, sexual harassment is probably no more prevalent in film studios than it is in politicians' offices and national sports league locker rooms and newsrooms and restaurant kitchens, and no more prevalent among famous, powerful men than among the men working where you work.

A 2015 survey by Cosmopolitan magazine found that 1 in 3 women is sexually harassed at work.

An October 2017 ABC News-Washington Post poll reports sexual harassment at epidemic proportions, happening to more than half of all women.

That's 33 million American women, and 95 percent of them report that the perpetrators go unpunished.

Most harassers are coworkers, clients, customers, and managers, in that order.

Harassment is most common in food service and hospitality, retail, and arts and entertainment in a tie with STEM industries (science, technology, engineering, and math).

It's bad in entertainment because it's bad everywhere.

All those numbers are far too low, claims the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), estimating that what's reported is only one fourth of the reality.

Harassment is bad business, costing companies millions in job turnover, sick leave, and decreased productivity.

And, adds the EEOC, sexual harassment seminars are colossally ineffective.

The reason seminars don't work is the reason women speaking up doesn't typically work. Continue reading

• Pamela Hill Nettleton is an assistant professor at Marquette University, where she teaches media studies and journalism and researches domestic violence coverage in media as well as masculinity and gender in media.
• Image: St Lawrence University