RELIGION:
RICHARD DAWKINS WANTS TO ARREST THE POPE:



The famous atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has launched a rather absurdist "public conspiracy" to arrest the Pope during his upcoming visit to Britain. Dawkins believes ( or maybe not) that the Pope can be charged under the same sort of international law that led to the arrest of ex-dictator of Chile Augusto Pinochet when he visited Britain. Personally I think this is a publicity grab. Not that I don't think that Pope Rottweiler is guilty, guilty, guilty,guilty beyond measure. It would strain credibility to imagine that in all his years as head of the Holy Inquisition where all such charges end up that he was not involved in dozens and dozens of cover-ups. Still, from a purely legalistic point of view, the sort of crimes that Ratzinger is guilty of have never figured in any international court proceeding before. Thus I have my doubts. Still this is one more drop of vinegar in Ratzinger's upcoming visit. Here's the story from the Times of London.
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Richard Dawkins:
I will arrest Pope Benedict
RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.

Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, 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 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.

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.

They have commissioned the barrister Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, a solicitor, to present a justification for legal action.

The lawyers believe they can ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against him or refer his case to the International Criminal Court.

Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence.”

Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, said: “This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment."

Last year pro-Palestinian activists persuaded a British judge to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the Israeli politician, for offences allegedly committed during the 2008-09 conflict in Gaza. The warrant was withdrawn after Livni cancelled her planned trip to the UK.

“There is every possibility of legal action against the Pope occurring,” said Stephens. “Geoffrey and I have both come to the view that the Vatican is not actually a state in international law. It is not recognised by the UN, it does not have borders that are policed and its relations are not of a full diplomatic nature.”

CURRENT EVENTS:

THE POPE AND THE SEX SCANDALS:

"The big Vatican summit wrapped up, closing ceremonies were Harry Connick Jr. The Vatican is taking a tough stand now, three strikes and you're transferred"

-David Letterman

You know when a story is developing fast when Wikipedia can't keep up with it. Wikipedia entries such as 'Catholic Sex Abuse Cases' and 'Roman Catholic Sex Abuse Cases By Country' become outdated by the day. Allegations of clerical sex abuse which have been simmering for some time in Europe and Latin America have, in the last few days, reached the same level of public scandal that they have long had in North America and Ireland. Hundreds of victims are coming forward. This is not surprising as it would beggar the imagination to think that the problem was restricted to only a few countries.

A few things should be noted. One is that this is hardly "news". It was common knowledge and a standing joke when I was a kid. According to my dearly departed father it was the subject of jokes when he was young. My father, by the way, was born in 1895. The difference was that it was never published in those days. Trying to do so would have meant serious consequences. I have little doubt that the problem extends as far back as there have been celibate priests. Blame the "reforms" of the Middle Ages that got rid of the priestly "housekeepers".

Another thing is that the problem is hardly restricted to the Catholic clergy, as defenders of same have noted-over and over and over and over. It existed and exists in other religious denominations and in any work situation where adults are given excessive power over children. In actual fact I suspect that the greatest incidence of such things, when all the furore has died down and all the prosecutions have been completed, will be found to have been not just in the Church "orphanages" but also in state run "kid jails". There have certainly been such cases in Canada,a nd there will be others. All this doesn't excuse the Catholic Church, but it does put the scandal in its proper perspective ie where adults have excessive control of children. Beware the "helping professions" and what they help themselves to.

The final thing to note is that the obsession with sexual abuse tends to deflect attention from the much more prevalent problem of physical violence. Trust me, I grew up Catholic, leaving the Church at age 15. Sometimes the violence was indeed associated with sex of the sadistic bent, but I suspect that the will to power rather than the will to pecker had a lot more to do with it. There are lots of personal anecdotes that I could relate such as actually outlasting the sadistic vice principal of the Catholic high school that I attended, as he whipped my hands until they were covered with blood from the deep cuts. To my credit I never flinched and looked at him with hatred the whole time. His hard on faded (yes he was a sexual sadist) and it became a simple power struggle. I won, at the cost of the wounds as he gave up first. The priest who sent me to the office because I was an asshole was all over himself with apologies because he knew damn well what his "brother" was. he thought that I was going to meet the intelligent fascist Principal. Ooops. Father Daniel later left the Jesuits and married the nun who used to meet him in the dead of night in the field between the boys and girls school for decent sex. One of the few decent priests I ever met. There were other incidents, but rather than be personal any more I'll merely note that some of the "techniques" that they used on us were things I later read about as military torture methods.

What has to be noted here is that I was a "white boy" with parents with which I lived and leftist parents at that. Here in Canada there is controversy about how many Indian children were actually "murdered" via the physical abuse that they suffered. So...you can perhaps see why the fixation on "sex" makes me a bit uneasy. Speaking of the Natives (and probably kids in Newfoundland) I think that murder is a greater crime than buggery.

Back to the present. As the revelations, late coming as they may be, sweep across Europe the present Pope Benedict is feeling the heat. His own brother has been linked to at least one abuse case. In his own term as Archbishop of Munich (1977-1981) Ratzinger was himself involved in at least one case of transferring rather than either reporting or disciplining a molester priest. His aide at the time, Gerhard Gruber, "took the rap" for him, claiming that Ratzinger was unaware of the case in question.

That's all fair and good. Maybe true. Maybe not true. What is incontestable is that Ratzinger, before he became Pope, was for many years the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (old name the 'Holy Inquisition'). In that capacity pretty well every case of clerical sexual abuse would pass into his notice as the administrator of Canon Law. His response was pretty plain. In 2001 he sent a circular admonishing the Catholic bishops to "observe Papal secrecy" in relation to sexual abuse allegations against Catholic clergy. This was backed up by the treat of "ecclesiastical sanctions" should the bishops report the cases to civil authorities or make them public in any way. Nothing could be plainer. If there was one person who was most responsible for the cover up it was Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

Here's what dissident Catholic theologian Hans Kung has to say about Ratzinger's responsibility:

"Arens’s criticism echoes an attack on the church leadership by dissident Swiss theologian Hans Küng.

In an interview published in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday, Küng said the pope should apologise personally, as "no other person within the church had seen so many cases of abuse pass through their office”.

Joseph Ratzinger [the pope] was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for 24 years – an office that has authority over church doctrine and jurisdiction for various matters including sexual misconduct of clergy.

“Protecting their priests seems to have counted more for the bishops than protecting children,” said Küng.

After the scandals in Ireland last month, more reports have emerged over recent months of abuse at church-run schools and institutions in Germany, including one linked to the Regensburg choir run by the pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 to 1994. Some 300 victims have come forward since January.

Could anything be plainer ? By the way, go over to our sister site Molly's Polls to express your opinion about whether ratzinger will be "caught" in the court of public opinion on this matter and how much it will affact his Papacy.