Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI

Seriously, the headline is funny enough on its own.

But that picture of Dawkins is just overkill.

  Quote

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.

 

...

 

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.

 

...

 

“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.”

This should be fun.

Dawkins is annoying but i like his style here.

.......

LOL , i'm so fucking high , don't know what the fuck i'm doing.

lloool

IM ON ACID

i dont get the dawkins hate, did the pope not basically try to illegally cover up the raping of innocent children? I think this is the beginning of the end for religion, seriously. I think Dawkins may have the church by the balls.

all things must pass

--

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...rd-strike.html

This is signed by Ratzinger himself. It reveals several key things.

It is a document designed to prevent dismissing a priest as young as 38. Perhaps the fast-aging priesthood was a concern and dismissing such a young priest was to be avoided. But it's clear that the age of the priest is of far more importance to Ratzinger than the age of the minors he raped. All the sympathy and concern is with the rapist, not the raped. This is a document about protecting the powerful even when they rape the powerless.

Ratzinger also seems to believe that there would be more outrage among the faithful about defrocking such a young priest than about keeping a known child-rapist in the employ of the church. It seems clear that this is not a routine dismissal letter, as the Vatican is trying to spin this morning. It specifically acknowledges the "grave significance" of the charges. Not even the most reactionary of Vatican apologists can muster a coherent defense on this one.

My only lingering question is why this case went to Ratzinger before he assumed formal responsibility for all these abuse cases in 2001. But it reveals his - and the Vatican's mindset - in the early 1980s.

The Pope cannot blame the local bishops this time - they desperately tried to get the priest fired.

He cannot claim he was out of the loop: his signature is on the letter.

He cannot get an underling to take the fall: it's his name and his office behind the unconscionable delay and behind the actual, despicably callous and self-serving reasons to protect a man who tied children up and raped them.

It's over now.

When we look at this Pope we see a man who knew that one of the priests he had authority to fire had restrained and raped children. Yet he did nothing for years, and finally sided with the priest. He had more sympathy for the relatively young age of the rapist, rather than the innocence and trauma of the raped children.

We see a man utterly corrupted by power and institutional loyalty.

So when does he resign?

I think a sensible way to resolve this is to take a page from watmm's playbook and get everything out in the open. Ratzinger should quit trying to sweep these incidents under the carpet, and set up a special wing of the vatican for the pedophiles, a "subforum" if you will. Only then will the wound be cleansed, and healing can begin.

LOL

I'd love to see somebody do a "citizen arrest" on the Pope.

Dawkins is brilliant, a great popsci writer. The Selfish Gene made me cry.

  On 4/11/2010 at 8:50 AM, karmakramer said:

i dont get the dawkins hate, did the pope not basically try to illegally cover up the raping of innocent children? I think this is the beginning of the end for religion, seriously. I think Dawkins may have the church by the balls.

The human race will not be around to witness the end of religion.

some dude will make future predictions

I predict my trousers will descend in 3....2....1....

oh my lol

i hope this happens

  On 4/11/2010 at 8:50 AM, karmakramer said:

i dont get the dawkins hate, did the pope not basically try to illegally cover up the raping of innocent children? I think this is the beginning of the end for religion, seriously. I think Dawkins may have the church by the balls.

yep. plus the Catholic Church's general hatred of contraception making the problem of STIs far worse than it needs to be

the Pope is a twat and the Catholic establishment scares me, but Dawkins isn't the person to do this. or maybe he is and i'm just being to sensitive. while i commend his fight against creationism and general fundamentalist religion, Dawkins' more general antitheism does piss me off.

  On 4/11/2010 at 2:16 PM, 277: 930-933 said:

The human race will not be around to witness the end of religion.

this, bitches

This could get very interesting/entertaining!

There's this really hot polish girl I'm trying to have it of with right now so I'm not gonna say anything terrible about the pope but

*MJ eating popcorn*

the current pope is German, dude.

  On 4/11/2010 at 7:08 PM, dr lopez said:

There's this really hot polish girl I'm trying to have it of with right now so I'm not gonna say anything terrible about the pope but

*MJ eating popcorn*

I'm going to go make some popcorn!

  On 4/11/2010 at 7:14 PM, phling said:

the current pope is German, dude.

poles are kathliks though