The Moral Arguments against The Proposal
Leaving aside the
Scientific Arguments concerning the proposed base station, there are several moral arguments as to why this technology should not be placed in a Church.
The Church is only in this for the money - they stand to receive around £5,000 for every operator who decides to use the mast - which could amount to as much as £30,000.
QS4 is owned by QuintiQ - an defence company formally known as the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). This was the British Government's secret military laboratories, since privatised and floated on the London Stock Exchange in February 2006. At the time there was considerable concern that the floatation undervalued the organisation.
It is strange that the Church should have chosen an arms manufacturer as a partner for mast installations.
The base station will be utilising the new 3G technology, which requires far more masts than the standard 2G mobile phone technology. However, 3G companies are in desperate trouble. Having paid the UK Government an incredible £22.5 billion pounds for these licences back in April 2000, the companies are desperate to recoup their investment. Having taken the money - equivilent to 2.5% of GDP, the UK Government have inevitably compromised their independance with regards to the safety of this technology.
After buying the 3G licences, the licence owners realised there was not actually much service content in place to deliver on 3G services. So desperate are the 3G licence holders that they have collectively appealed to the pornography industry to fill their coffers. In a report entitled
Pornography's next digital crusade could well be 3G published by the 3G Newsroom and drawing upon Strand Consults report "How to make money on mobile services", the article goes on to extol the virtues of the porn industry in developing the internet and reports that
"more and more people in the mobile sector are secretly hoping that adult entertainment can help push the mobile industry forward in the same way."
The article goes on to point out that "some of the major adult entertainment players like Private.com and Playboy have signed their first mobile content agreements" with the clear implication that others will follow. The article also gives useful tips on how pornographers could best utilise the technology.
Since the report was published
a number of new companies like PocketJoy, Porn Bible, Wap Sex and Erotigo have emerged specialising in mobile phone pornography. Operators claim that their systems ring fence 'adult content' so that children can't access it.
But should the Church really be facilitating access to pornography for anyone - child or adult?
A report by the children's charity NCH (formally National Children's Homes) also raises other concerns about pornography and children in a
report by John Carr. Not only does the report highlight the ease with which children could gain access to pornography, it also raises the spectre of paedophilia. The BBC reported concerns raised by Mr Carr that the new technology could
"make it easier for paedophiles to take and share images of children with others - or even to encourage children to take and send images of themselves."
The Guardian also reported that
"Child welfare professionals are worried that paedophiles will use the third generation mobile technology to access child sex sites, take pictures of sex with children and trade in images of abuse. Prepaid phones cannot be traced as there is no record of who owns the handset". An O2 spokesman reportedly told The Guardian ""We can do our bit educating parents but they have got to be aware of the downside - there has to be some degree of responsibility on the part of parents or guardians". The flaw in this argument is unlike the typical use of the internet on computers - where parents can monitor what their children view, 3G mobile phones can be used anywhere.
At St Margaret's Church in Hawes, and Holy Trinity Church in Knaresborough, the Chancellor of the Diocese of Ripon and Leeds, His Honour Judge Simon Grenfell granted permission for phone masts to be erected provided the company concerned (in this case Vodaphone) did not allow pornography to be transmitted, which the Judge acknowledged "would be inconsistent with the role of the church". He added "So long as a telecommunications company does not promote.....indecent traffic over its network, it cannot be said to be responsible for such traffic". As noted above the mobile phone industry has specifically targetted pornographers and therefore
are promoting indecent traffic of the very sort that is "inconsistent with the role of the church".
The
Judge claimed that Vodaphone has come up with a "possible formula for a condition that could be imposed on the faculties, which could, so far as practicable, minimise the use of the network for inappropriate traffic." He goes on to say "I have assumed that this is technically feasible." This assumption got so many IT professionals sniggering that it was featured on the IT industries news site
The Register
.
The simple fact is that there is NO AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY that can distinguish a pornographic image or video from an innocent one. If Judge Grenfell had asked for a demonstration of this technology he would have realised that he had been misled. The only way that Vodophone could comply with the Judge's request would be to have each and every image and video intercepted and the contents analysed by a real person who would decide on whether the data could be trasnmitted by the Church masts or not. Do not be fooled by companies who try to blind you with talk of algorithms and intelligent software - simply ask for a demonstration. A computer cannot distinguish between an innocent video of children playing on the beach, and a sinister paedophile image without human intervention.
In allowing phone masts and base stations into Churches, the Church has become a facilitator to the spread of pornography, and is therefore complicitly involved with the problems associated with it.
Many Christians are theologically opposed to the installation of masts and base stations in Churches
As previously mentioned the Church stands to make a rental income of between £5,000 and £30,000 from the installation (presumably annually).Such greed is outrightly condemned by Christ:
Matthew 21:12-13
'Then Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those who were selling and buying in the temple courts, and turned over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. And he said to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are turning it into a den of robbers!'
Mark 10:25
'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God'
Matthew 6:24
'No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money'
Outside of the Gospels much wisdom is spoken about money - notably in the words attributed to St Paul:
1 Timothy 6:9-10
'Those who long to be rich, however, stumble into temptation and a trap and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains'
It is not possible for the Church to theologically justify taking money for imposing a risk on their neighbours. Judging by Jesus' behaviour as detailed above in Matthew 21:12-13 it is a safe assumption that Jesus would have fought the erection of a mast in the strongest possible terms.
The Catholic Church have reacted quite differently - according to the
Christian Ecology Link
"Church towers in Italy cannot be used to host mobile-telephone masts, according to a ruling in March 2001 by the Italian Bishops' Conference, the organization that governs the Roman Catholic Church. A circular signed by Bishop Ennio Antonelli, its secretary general, said that use of church buildings for purposes unconnected with worship would violate church law.....The document has been circulated to parish priests throughout the country. The circular said that it would be imprudent to compromise the univocality and visibility of Christian symbols in an increasingly multicultural society and described mobile phone masts as "alien to the sanctity" of churches. Access rights for maintenance men and the dangers of electromagnetic pollution were also cited as reasons for the ban."
This proposal is essentially un-Christian, placing the greed of the Parochial Council before the potential well-being of the local community, placing mammon above God, and poisoning rather than loving your neighbours.
The Parochial Council must reject this immoral proposal as a first step to repairing relations with their neighbours, which your greed for this tainted money has severely damaged.
Scientific Arguments
The flawed 'Consultation' Process
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