Posts Tagged ‘ Pope ’

Power ≠ exemption: arrest the Pope (& the corrupt politicians)


Power should ≠ (not equal) exemption, but overall it appears it does. I read an interesting article on the Huffington Post yesterday which lead with this:

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, two of the world’s most prominent atheist intellectuals, are seeking means to try the pope for crimes against humanity.

Sounds appealing and ‘just’, right? After all, the pontiff has been reported as heavily involved in the cover-up of sexual abuse within the Catholic church. In lay terms that would be aiding and abetting, a serious offence. The Pope, however, seems immune on the grounds that he is a head of state. Heads of state cannot be tried for crimes? Call me sceptical/uninformed, but that seems a bit bent.

Intellectuals Dawkins and Hitchens, both ardent atheists, evidently feel the same and are attempting to do something about it. Hitchens is quoted as saying:

“This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalized 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.”

But as a fellow student, Craig Spence, noted:

[It’s] never going to happen, can you imagine the uproar it would cause in mainland Europe? particularly Italy, not to mention all the so called “Irish Catholics” in the states. What the UK should do is ban him from entering the country, make it clear that we don’t agree with his conduct.

Now, I like that idea, but I am holding out hope that he gets arrested — it might give my faith in ‘justice’ a much needed pep. In truth, however, I seriously doubt either action will be taken. There’s too much pressure on the government as it is and in the run up to elections I very much doubt that the government is going to alienate all the Catholic voters. Convenient timing really.

The point is this: conduct such as his (and that of other priests) should not remain unpunished and he should not be exempt just because he’s the Pope, just as politicians should not be exempt from fraud charges over the expense scandal. In any other business, theft on such a scale would have had serious repercussions.

People in positions of power should be as culpable as anyone else.

2010
04/13
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crime
politics
religion
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Equality Bill beeswax & Pope Benedict


In response to the BBC News article on Pope Benedict’s attack of the UK government over Equality Bill…

Just a few things,

1) “The taxpayer in this country is going to be faced with a bill of some £20m for the visit of the Pope – a visit in which he has already indicated he will attack equal rights and promote discrimination.”

Fantastic! Who agreed to pay for this hate peddler? Do only Catholics have to pay for this visit?

2) Religious leaders have voiced concern that the Equality Bill could force churches to employ sexually active gay people and transsexuals when hiring staff other than priests or ministers.

The question here is why would actively gay people want to be employed by organisations that don’t agree with them?

3) Peter Tatchell said the Pope’s comments were a “coded attack on the legal rights granted to women and gay people… His ill-informed claim that our equality laws undermine religious freedom suggests that he supports the right of churches to discriminate in accordance with their religious ethos… He seems to be defending discrimination by religious institutions and demanding that they should be above the law.”

But Catholic MP Ann Widdecombe said: “This isn’t a debate about homosexuality, this is a debate about religious freedom.”

Now, if this was coming from a Islāmic voice, how would we feel about that?

4) Widdecombe goes on to say  “If a faith teaches, as major faiths do, that something is wrong, then quite clearly you cannot have somebody who believes that it’s right actually occupying a very senior position… That we have accepted as natural justice for a very long time.”

The counter here is threefold:

the first is as above in point 2)

the second is a disagreement with the ‘inclusive ‘we” of her statement (although it’s acknowledged that this may have been taken out of context)

the third is ‘natural justice’ – what is this natural justice? Darwinism? God’s Law? Accepted for a long time? Hmm, the Luddites spring to mind. That said, faith is faith, you believe or you don’t. Surely there are enough fragments and divisions of the church by now to accommodate all – gays included. Perhaps gays shouldn’t attempt to force the ‘anti-gay’ divisions of the church to accept them and find a division that does and the Pope who is “not getting into party politics” –or the running of a(nother) country?– should do as he claims.

2010
02/02
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religion
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