Excuse me sir
What a brilliant idea. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens
have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998. The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the [Inquisition]… Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is categorised as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.
The mills of the lord grind slowly…
So Ratzinger will be beatifying John Henry Newman.
He must be somewhat conflicted given Newmans alleged homosexual relationship with Ambrose St John and the (morally absolute) stance the rcc has on homosexuality.
Not that homosexual relationships are anything new in the vatican, but please let’s be discrete (and hypocritical) about it. No long lasting, loving, stable relationships of this sort for the rcc, better to order out using the in house vatican homosexual prostitution ring.
Found this article by Geoffrey Robertson in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, which is one of the few things I’ve seen that examines some of the possible legal mechanisms for dealing with all this.
I can’t wait to see how far this gets.
It’s a good suggestion. Too bad that, coming from atheists, it will result in more cries of persecution. It seems the article was already trying to fan the flames a bit, with a headline like “Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI” and an opening line like “RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush…”.
By the way, if you announce it ahead of time, it’s not much of an ambush, is it?
Seen this yet? Even Michael Ruse thinks the Catholic Church in its current form should be eradicated.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ruse/the-catholic-church-why-r_b_532987.html
Turns out the article is even more sensationalist than I already thought, and it’s not even Dawkins’ initiative in the first place (see his reaction on richarddawkins.net).
Fantastic! I may start liking Hitchens again.
Tangentially related to this topic, Maureen Dowd has an unusually (for her!) perceptive and substantive column in the New York Times, discussing how Catholic and Saudi women alike make excuses for their all-male hierarchies. I am not usually a fan of Ms. Dowd’s writing but this is worth checking out.
I am so stunned to read news in this post – it was also on the radio this morning. Alas, the terrible Polish tragedy is obviously taking precedence – otherwise Richard Dawkins, would have gotten more attention, I surmise. The Irish people are so bound up with their Catholicism that it would break their hearts to think not good of the pope who is put up on a pedestal. They are so brainwashed and no matter what happens in the church they will not cave in. The media is showing programmes about the zealous missionaries and the good works of the religious as it has to give balance to all the child abuse stuff.
“Vows of Silence” has just this minute started on the television – you can guess – it is about clerical child abuse.
I made a small comment on huffingtonpost.
A young Italian boy was asked to relieve the pain of a priest at a school. When the boy went to his bed afterwards he was so devastated at what he had done that he could not sleep for hours on end. The next morning the anxious boy went to confession to the same priest as he was terribly frightened of having committed a sin. The priest told him not to worry – that he had not committed a sin – but quite the opposite he had helped the priest – who was in terrible pain. In other words – he was very charitable – for helping a suffering priest. Nevertheless, the priest granted him absolution for a sin he never committed. “Vows of Silence.”
Oh that old story! The priest had been reading his Boccaccio then.
The second tale in the Decameron is also apt, in which a jew visits Rome and converts to catholicism, reasoning that only a religion supported by god could flourish despite the depravity of its hierarchy.
Aha.