Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are planning on arresting the pope. Here is the article.Good!
He should be arrested. Anyone else doing what he's done would be charged with conspiring, and aiding and enabling criminal activity. Oh, but because he's religious, he's beyond justice. *cough, cough* Bullshit!
2 comments:
Do some people really think that residing over a "religious" body exempts you from justice?
I'm interested to know what role the "sanctity of the sacrament of confession" (or whatever the right language is) plays in all this.
As far as I can tell, if I have any reasonable suspicion that a child is being sexually abused, I'm bound by Canadian law to report it.
But, as far as I can tell, RC priests are bound by cannon law to keep confessions absolutely confidential.
I suppose that pedophile priests eventually find occasion to confess to other priests. Are these priests then bound by cannon law to keep the confession confidential? I'm really speculating in ignorance, I guess.
BTW, is it really accurate to call these priests pedophiles? I read recently, that the majority of cases are with post-pubescent boys, which is technically not pedophilia. Seems more like homosexuals preying on the vulnerable and breaking their vows of chastity. That's bad enough, of course.
Ed,
"Do some people really think that residing over a "religious" body exempts you from justice?"
It seems that way, doesn't it?
"I'm interested to know what role the "sanctity of the sacrament of confession" (or whatever the right language is) plays in all this."
I can't speak to the rites of Catholic confession, but I suspect it's identical or very similar to the confidentiality (or 1/2 sacrament[!] of confession) that Lutheran ministers swear to when being ordained: all things confessed to a minister are held under the strictest quiet, unless that which is confessed is directly related to heinous crimes such as rape, murder, molestation, treason, et al. At that point, the minister is bound by law to report such crimes.
"But, as far as I can tell, RC priests are bound by cannon law to keep confessions absolutely confidential."
I think you are right that that is the way things are for RC priests and bishops. Tell that to a headstrong Catholic, however, and you'll be told that you don't know what you're talking about, you're illiterate, you don't know Canon Law, you can't understand because you're not Catholic (gnosticism!), blah blah blah.
Catholics really are masters at evasion. The pope won't be arrested because Catholics have 2000 years of practice at cover-ups, lies, manipulation, bandwagons, evasion, bribery, and rhetoric/sophistry. They're too good at their game.
"BTW, is it really accurate to call these priests pedophiles? I read recently, that the majority of cases are with post-pubescent boys, which is technically not pedophilia."
Whatever it's called -- and you are technically right: it's not all paedophilia -- it essentially amounts to the rape and torture of children.
"Seems more like homosexuals preying on the vulnerable and breaking their vows of chastity. That's bad enough, of course."
I'm going to have to call you on this one. It would be ignorant to suggest (as Ratzinger's 2nd in command did) that there is a link between homosexuality and child-rape. The fact is the it is unknown just how many of the hebephile and ephebiphile priests are homosexuals. It is known, however, that estimates suggest that between 10 - 48% of priests are homosexually oriented.
In any case, if priests were not forbidden from sexual congress, I'm sure the incidence rate of abuse would decline quite drastically. As a sociologist in the documentary Deliver Us From Evil notes, there is a direct link between priestly celibacy and abuse. Simply stated, most priests have dramatically under-developed psycho-sexual inclinations that are reinforced by each other and with each other as they progress through seminary during their sexual peaks. Then to further distort their psycho-sexual development, they are sworn to never engage it. Thus they live a life of extreme denial on an emotional, intellectual, and instinctual level and sometimes end up doing things that are tragically damaging to others with similarly under-developed psycho-sexual instincts (i.e., children).
It's horrifying. But it's also a plausible link between celibacy and priestly abuse of minors.
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