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Óttar
04-12-2010, 09:06 PM
From: http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/big-name-british-atheists-hellbent-on-arresting-pope/19435859


LONDON (April 12) -- Declaring that the pope is "not above the law," two of the world's most famous atheist activists are calling for the arrest of Pope Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity when he visits Britain later this year.

Biologist Richard Dawkins, author of best-selling anti-religious tracts like "The God Delusion," and essayist Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," are consulting with their lawyers in an attempt to build a case against the pope, whom they accuse of deliberately hiding evidence of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

Last week, The Associated Press published a 1985 letter signed by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in which he dismissed pleas to defrock Stephen Kiesle, a Californian pedophile priest, citing "the good of the universal church."



Elisabetta Villa, Getty Images
Pope Benedict XVI plans to visit Britain in September. Atheist activists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have called for his arrest during the trip."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," Dawkins told the U.K.'s Sunday Times.

The Vatican has previously claimed that, as a head of state, the pope is immune from prosecution. However, the two atheists' lawyers have advised them that the pontiff is not the head of a state with full United Nations membership, meaning he could be arrested on British soil.

"I'm convinced we can get over the threshold of immunity," the pair's solicitor, Mark Stephens, told The Guardian. "The Vatican is not recognized as a state in international law. ... It was a construct of Mussolini, and when the Vatican first applied to become a member of the U.N., the U.S. said no. So as a sop they were given the status of permanent observers rather than full members."

The pope "is not above or outside the law," Hitchens told the Sunday Times. "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."

Case history suggests that Hitchens and Dawkins' legal maneuvers could cause trouble for the pope, who plans to visit the U.K. Sept. 16 to 19. In 1998, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested while on a trip to Britain. And last year pro-Palestinian campaigners successfully persuaded a British judge to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister, for war crimes allegedly committed during the 2008-09 conflict in Gaza. (Livni subsequently canceled her planned trip to the U.K., and the warrant was dropped.)

Even if the pair's application for an arrest warrant is rejected, Pope Benedict's trip will likely be marred by noisy street demonstrations. The Protest the Pope campaign -- a coalition of gay rights groups, pro-choice organizations, feminists and the National Secular Society -- is planning rallies to challenge the Vatican's "reactionary" views and highlight the fact that the pontiff's visit is costing British taxpayers some $30 million.

"We believe that there is a case for Joseph Ratzinger to answer personally," campaign spokesman Gerard Phillips told AOL News. "We think that the pope should not be above the law, and support the actions of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins."

The move to arrest the pope capped another miserable week for the Vatican. On April 9, soon after the Kiesle letter emerged, a retired Italian bishop was quoted on the Italian Catholic Web site Pontifex accusing Jews of being behind the wave of sex-abuse allegations now crashing against the church.

Monsignor Giacomo Babini, bishop emeritus of Grossetto, Italy, told the site he believed "Zionists" were behind the attack because the criticism of the pope was "powerful and refined" in nature. (Neither Hitchens nor Dawkins is Jewish.)

"They do not want the church. They are its natural enemies," the 81-year-old Babini reportedly said. "Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."

Babini later denied making anti-Semitic remarks "about our Jewish brothers," but Pontifex has said it will release the audiotape of the interview as proof.

Babini previously has been quoted on the Web site accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.

Murphy
04-12-2010, 09:08 PM
I've said it on about a dozen other forums.. but hell, one more time.

The bastard will need to get through me first :D!

Beorn
04-12-2010, 09:31 PM
Dawkins and Hitchens. Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-Dee.

http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alicepic/disney-movie/tweedledee-tweedledum-2.jpg

http://schreiwire.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/christopher-hitchens.jpg


:rotfl:

RoyBatty
04-12-2010, 09:35 PM
I've said it on about a dozen other forums.. but hell, one more time.

The bastard will need to get through me first :D!

Well, you may remember I'm no fan of the pope but I tend to agree with you on this one. I mistrust these "atheists" and their bizarre agendas even more than I mistrust the Catholic Church.

These idiots are becoming too big for their boots. :thumb001:

Murphy
04-12-2010, 09:37 PM
Well, you may remember I'm no fan of the pope but I tend to agree with you on this one. I mistrust these "atheists" and their bizarre agendas even more than I mistrust the Catholic Church.

These idiots are becoming too big for their boots. :thumb001:

“Once, in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, as horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing up the child Catholic in the first place...”
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 317

Mr Dawkin's is a sick man. The children have been raped once already, why must he rape them as well? That is exactly what he is doing when he exploits them for his anti-Catholic agenda.

RoyBatty
04-12-2010, 09:41 PM
Yep, have to agree there. Dawkins and his ilk don't sound like a particularly "healthy" alternative.

Loki
04-12-2010, 10:05 PM
So ... I guess he didn't end up behind bars after all then. ;)

Saruman
04-12-2010, 11:07 PM
I don't like Hitchens too much, I respect Dawkins, but Richard you better think thrice, you're way over your head in this.:icon_cheesygrin:

http://x7a.xanga.com/279e9b422623277905528/z12163341.jpg

http://a771.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/26/l_e73bb73c903cd93e930ab6cce0da22da.jpg

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5264/9974724b0808f5695o5mc.jpg

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs11/i/2006/171/5/7/Emperor_Ratzinger_by_Danvin.jpg

http://lustich.de/bilder/menschen/papa-ratzi/

http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/e/e1/Darth_Benedict.jpg

Cato
04-12-2010, 11:20 PM
It's clownish behaviorisms and childish demands like this that make many people, who might otherwise be more favorably inclined towards secularism (such as myself), view atheistdom as being a ship of fools.

http://i524.photobucket.com/albums/cc328/AxelordFTW/Atheists.jpg

RoyBatty
04-12-2010, 11:27 PM
I don't think that these particular "atheists" are "fools". They're ppl with an agenda. I'm not sure exactly what it is though. They're too well-funded and influential (as shown by the amount of media coverage they get) to be an "incidental" bunch of "eccentrics".

Something's at play here.

Cato
04-12-2010, 11:31 PM
I don't think that these particular "atheists" are "fools". They're ppl with an agenda. I'm not sure exactly what it is though. They're too well-funded and influential (as shown by the amount of media coverage they get) to be an "incidental" bunch of "eccentrics".

Something's at play here.

Fifth column agitators, agents of the would-be globalist monarchs that want to whittle away traditional western culture to make way for their new world order.

RoyBatty
04-12-2010, 11:35 PM
Fifth column agitators, agents of the would-be globalist monarchs that want to whittle away traditional western culture to make way for their new world order.

Yes i suspect it's something along those lines... they want a society with no morals or values (except the ones taught by these "atheists" of course).

People without roots / culture / heritage / religion etc are people who can be controlled and moulded according to the wishes of the masters.

That's why this lot are so noisy about pushing and promoting their "values" and "cause".

A true atheist would have simply minded his / her own business. This lot are too keen to promote "their way of life". Something's fishy.

Murphy
04-12-2010, 11:41 PM
Yes i suspect it's something along those lines... they want a society with no morals or values (except the ones taught by these "atheists" of course).

People without roots / culture / heritage / religion etc are people who can be controlled and moulded according to the wishes of the masters.

That's why this lot are so noisy about pushing and promoting their "values" and "cause".

A true atheist would have simply minded his / her own business. This lot are too keen to promote "their way of life". Something's fishy.

The actual tactics for achieving this is quite obvious.

They are first of all, trying to establish a female role in the priesthood. I have seen several agruments from so-called journalists claiming that female clergy would not have let such abuse happen. So this has set the seed down for people to brood upon. This will be a the second wave of the attack no doubt.

Secondly, they have tried to establish celibacy is to blame as well. This is because celibacy is so counter-cultural in the sex-driven modern society that we live in.

In the end, it is all an obvious and glaringly cooirdinated assault on the Church and the Faith because it is the last instution in the West that still stands for moral integrity and values in the face of a materialist-consumerist dogmatically-atheist porgress-for-the-sake-of-progress society.

Cato
04-12-2010, 11:41 PM
Yes i suspect it's something along those lines... they want a society with no morals or values (except the ones taught by these "atheists" of course).

People without roots / culture / heritage / religion etc are people who can be controlled and moulded according to the wishes of the masters.

That's why this lot are so noisy about pushing and promoting their "values" and "cause".

A true atheist would have simply minded his / her own business. This lot are too keen to promote "their way of life". Something's fishy.

It's pretty clear to me that's what all of these atheists are all about, wanting to shove their worldview down the throats of the rest of mankind- just as certain Christian zealots have attempted in the past (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority). A very transparent bunch but a dangerously transparent bunch because their sort of world is bereft of culture, heritage, history, religion, tradition- in other words some of the main factors that differentiate human groups from each other. These things are old-fashioned and out-of-place, especially that most hated of all words (God), and they're just cooperating with, or are among, the acolytes of the Marx.

Cato
04-12-2010, 11:45 PM
The actual tactics for achieving this is quite obvious.

They are first of all, trying to establish a female role in the priesthood. I have seen several agruments from so-called journalists claiming that female clergy would not have let such abuse happen. So this has set the seed down for people to brood upon. This will be a the second wave of the attack no doubt.

Secondly, they have tried to establish celibacy is to blame as well. This is because celibacy is so counter-cultural in the sex-driven modern society that we live in.

In the end, it is all an obvious and glaringly cooirdinated assault on the Church and the Faith because it is the last instution in the West that still stands for moral integrity and values in the face of a materialist-consumerist dogmatically-atheist porgress-for-the-sake-of-progress society.

The RC church is one of the last great bastion of traditions in the west, with a legacy that goes back at least to Constantine. Felling the church has been the dream of revolutionist rabble since at least the French Revolution.

Murphy
04-12-2010, 11:46 PM
The RC church is one of the last great bastion of traditions in the west, with a legacy that goes back at least to Constantine. Felling the church has been the dream of revolutionist rabble since at least the French Revolution.

But they never win :).

One man with a rosary in his hand the Christ in his heart can defeat any one who would dare threaten Holy Mother Church.

Óttar
04-12-2010, 11:47 PM
Why all the hate against Hitch? Quite frankly, most people aren't fit to carry the jock strap of Christopher Hitchens.

:coffee:

Cato
04-12-2010, 11:53 PM
But they never win :).

One man with a rosary in his hand the Christ in his heart can defeat any one who would dare threaten Holy Mother Church.

While I don't agree with this theological statement, I do see that it's a form of devotional bravery that can make a person strong in heart and mind. :thumb001: