Massive turnout for Protest the Pope first event.

[PaulKing]

News item on Protest the Pope debate (Sept. 1st) in London.

First Protest the Pope event (a debate on the Papal visit at Conway Hall) sent a clear message to the Catholic apologists involved. The UK will not tolerate hate cults and does not easily forgive child abuse. The massive crowd exceeded all expectations and was in no mood to hear feeble excuses and hypocritical rhetoric.

A Catholic spokesman said: -

"The sobering fact is that Protest the Pope have whipped up and created an anti-Catholic mob which they plan to set loose on Pope Benedict and Catholics attending the papal events. The police are going to have their hands full protecting us."

No. It is your crimes not Protest the Pope which is responsible for the anger. You made your bed now lie in it.

With comments like this how do they expect people to react?

A leading adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster has blamed abortion and gay rights for turning Britain into a “selfish, hedonistic wasteland” which has become “the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death”.

AND
Mexico City Archdiocese spokesman Hugo Valdemar : -

He affirmed, “I do not know of any of you who would like to be adopted by a pair of lesbians or a pair of fags.”

The Vatican seems to think they can set them selves up above the law, can ignore public opinion, can flaunt their contempt for REAL morals and justice and the public will just sit still and do nothing.

PROTEST THE POPE is sending a clear message that those days are over.

[silentmist]

To be honest, I don't think the state of the UK has any more moral validity than the Catholic Church. This visit is just one bunch of immoral control freaks meeting another bunch of immoral control freaks. It'll be fun to see how this protest unfolds.

[DaveUK]

To be honest, I don't think the state of the UK has any more moral validity than the Catholic Church. This visit is just one bunch of immoral control freaks meeting another bunch of immoral control freaks. It'll be fun to see how this protest unfolds.

Nonsense. Name a British institution that covers up the rape and torture of children? The fact that the Church claims moral superority over everyone else, makes these crimes all the more sickening. And the pope is no ordinary cardinal or bishop, he is the head of a state with it's own laws and constitution. He should never again feel free to travel without fear of being arrested.

[soloman]

Nonsense. Name a British institution that covers up the rape and torture of children? The fact that the Church claims moral superority over everyone else, makes these crimes all the more sickening. And the pope is no ordinary cardinal or bishop, he is the head of a state with it's own laws and constitution. He should never again feel free to travel without fear of being arrested.

I am equally appalled by the misdeeds of people who are supposedly part of the hierarchy of the Catholic faith, and yet have done nothing in public to demonstrate that they have taken steps to deal with the miscreants, nor prevent a recurrence. How can they call themselves religious?

[DaveUK]

How can they call themselves religious?

Have you read the Bible? Just about every atrocity you can think of, and some you never would as a decent human being, are permitted and sanctioned by God, in fact many are commanded.

[soloman]

Have you read the Bible? Just about every atrocity you can think of, and some you never would as a decent human being, are permitted and sanctioned by God, in fact many are commanded.

You raise a good question DaveUK. I hav read parts of the Bible and maybe all of it, but I consider it a document which was spoken about person to person, and hence is unreliable and exaggerated. Furthermore anyone who expects me to run my life based upon its texts is a lunatic and best ignored!

But let the Pope come and speak; if he can or will answer our questions then maybe we will like him, otherwise we will reject him which is fine!

[PaulKing]

The Vatican believes it’s power and wealth puts it in a position above the law and that it need not answer to anyone for it’s actions.

This demonstration presents a once in a century chance to shatter that myth of Papal invincibility and demonstrate that no organization is above the laws of common decency and none can ignore the will of the people.

Only a massive and aggressive show of strength and outrage can effect any change and in that spirit I implore every moral person to make a super human effort to promote this monumental event.

Another chance like this may not occur in our lifetimes and the whole World is watching to see if we can really turn our words into action.

Don’t let them down.

[Midas]

An interesting new survey on the proposed visit -

Taxpayers should not fund Pope's visit, says survey

Some 77% of Britons think taxpayers should not help pay for Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Scotland and England, a survey suggests.

An online poll of 2,005 adults issued by think tank Theos also found 79% had "no personal interest" in his visit.

The Pope is due to arrive on 16 September, the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II's 1982 trip.

The cost of the trip to UK taxpayers, previously estimated at £8m, could rise to between £10m and £12m.

The Catholic Church is also expected to make a contribution of between £9m and £10m towards the costs, which do not include an expected multi-million pound bill for policing the visit.

In the Theos survey, some 76% also rejected taxpayer funding for the visit on the grounds that the Pope was a religious figure.

The full story available from here : BBC News - Taxpayers should not fund Pope's visit, says survey

[PaulKing]

Analysis: The Pope and Hitler Youth
The current Vatican crisis offers a teaching moment for this pope to directly address the enormity of the evils of Nazi Germany.

POPE WILLINGLY JOINED HITLER YOUTH

Pope Benedict XVI and his brother Georg Ratzinger stand in the baptistry where they were baptised, inside the Church of St. Oswald during the pope's visit to Marktl am Inn, Sept. 11, 2006. The pope spent part of the third day of his six-day tour in Bavaria at Marktl am Inn, a village where he spent the first two years of his life. (Andreas Gebert/Reuters) Click to enlarge photo

The mists of history swirl around Pope Benedict XVI's hometown in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps in Germany.

It was there that he came of age as Joseph Ratzinger and served in Hitler Youth during the rise of the Third Reich.

Shining a light on that history offers a glimpse of the context underpinning the Vatican's current crisis, which results from the pope's decision last month to rescind the excommunication of a renegade, ultra-conservative bishop who actively denies the Holocaust.

The decision unleashed a firestorm of controversy, with the German government weighing in last week, Israel's chief rabbinate severing ties with the Vatican, and Catholics and Jews worldwide feeling that decades of hard work and goodwill in improving relations between the two faiths had been undermined.

So can we draw a line from this oversight by the pope, this inability to see how much his decision would insult so many, back to his German past and a decision as a 14-year-old boy to join the Hitler Youth?

Most thoughtful Catholics and many Jewish historians I know would say, no, that is not a line that can be drawn, nor is it fair.

But one man who knows some of the hidden truths in the pope's hometown of Traunstein is Father Rupert Berger, and his story deserves telling.

Berger, now 81, was ordained a Catholic priest alongside Joseph Ratzinger and his brother, Georg, in 1951 in the beautiful church in the center of the town where they all grew up together.
But there was something that set their two families apart.

Berger's family sympathized with the Catholic resistance to Nazism in the town. Rupert was the same age as Joseph Ratzinger and at 14 years old he refused to join Hitler Youth. His family suffered as a result. He told me in an interview in 2005 that his father was sent to Dachau. He returned after the war and became the mayor.

Ratzinger's father was a policeman. The family was never affiliated with the Nazi party. But the Ratzingers chose to go with the vast majority of Germany and acquiesce to the regulations requiring 14 year olds to join Hitler Youth. They wanted to survive and allow their two sons to focus on academics in the seminary. So Ratzinger and his brother joined at 14 and went through with the parades and the salutes to the Fuehrer. Ratzinger also served briefly with a German army anti-aircraft unit just before the end of the war.

When I interviewed Berger in April 2005, just after Ratzinger had been elevated to the papacy, he spoke well of Ratzinger's intellect and discipline as a young man. But he said he couldn't understand why Ratzinger had insisted for so long in so many public statements that no one had a choice but to join Hitler Youth.

''It was a hard time to live, and there were hard choices to make," Berger said.

He was too modest or polite, or perhaps uncertain about what to tell a reporter who landed on his doorstep, to state his opinion about the new pope's choices any more clearly.

But what I took away from the interview and my research in the town was that the pope's repeated assertion that he had no choice but to join Hitler Youth was simply not true.

In fact, the statement is an insult to the memory and the lives of those who did resist Nazism and those who did refuse to join the organizations that were formed to perpetuate its power.
The pope's poorly-thought-out edict to reinstate the Holocaust-denying bishop — from which the Vatican is now vigorously back peddling — was also an insult to those who resisted Nazism and to Jews and Catholics alike around the world.

At the end of the day, it shouldn't surprise us that this pope overlooked — or failed to adequately investigate — the dangerous and virulent strains of anti-Semitism that ran through British Bishop Richard Williamson's research that denied the Holocaust.

Nor should it surprise us that the pope failed to give careful enough consideration to what lies behind the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, which refuses to adhere to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, including an important theological rejection of the idea of collective guilt on the part of Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus.

Pope John Paul II had excommunicated Williamson and three other bishops from the Society of St. Pius X in 1988. On Jan. 21, Pope Benedict rescinded that excommunication and later claimed he was not aware of Williamson's Holocaust denial.

It shouldn't surprise us that this pope rescinded the excommunication without sufficient attention to how such an act would be received, because it fits in with a lack of transparency and communication that is turning out to be a hallmark of Benedict's papacy.

Even Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, who worked closely with Ratzinger and who was a very strong supporter of the conclave that elected Benedict, said: "There must be also a certain criticism of the Vatican's staff practice, which obviously did not examine the matter carefully."

John Allen, a columnist for National Catholic Reporter and the author of a biography of the pope, said that Schonborn's statement was significant because "even papal loyalists are coming to see that the meltdown illustrates a twin failure in transparency: One within the Vatican itself, in the sense that the proper people were not consulted, and the other in communication with the outside world."

To deny the Holocaust is a crime in Germany, and yesterday German Chancelor Angela Merkel discussed the issue with the pope directly.

After the German government demanded on Feb. 3 that the Vatican reconsider its position, the Vatican issued a statement Feb. 4 that Williamson must recant his denial of the Holocaust before he can be admitted into the Roman Catholic Church as a bishop. Williamson has refused to do that and now remains in limbo and leaves the Vatican in a moral twilight on the issue.

Jason Berry, an author of several books on the Catholic church and the producer of the acclaimed documentary Vows of Silence, believes it is unfair to think Ratzinger as a young boy could have resisted joining the Hitler Youth.

He believes the current crisis points more to a lack of leadership, saying, "Ratzinger is not being true to his position as a moral fundamentalist; he should have excommunicated Williamson when this news broke. Instead this lame response of asking him to retract is a day late and a dollar short."

There's wide agreement that this much is true.

But there is still the larger question as to whether this failure of judgment on some level mirrors the way in which this pope as a young man and his family found a way to shut out the enormity of the evil of Nazism and instead focus on his own internal world of intellectual intensity and the passion that he holds for the well being of his church.

When I interviewed Father Berger in 2005, it was just days after the white puff of smoke emanated from the Vatican and confirmed that Ratzinger had been elevated to the papacy.

When he came to the door, he was holding a broom. Father Berger stood in the doorway and occasionally dragged the broom back and forth while we stood there talking. He remembered much of the detail of those early teenage years when he and Joseph Ratzinger were confirmed as Catholics and when he rejected Hitler Youth and he saw his classmate accept membership.

When I asked him why he thought Ratzinger obeyed the rules and joined the Hitler Youth, Berger replied: ''You could ask the majority of Germans this question. There was such high pressure on everyone. He was too young to do a conscious resistance."

That was certainly true then, but it is certainly not true now.

And for this German pope, a more clear act of "conscious resistance" to denying the Holocaust is now required. He should immediately excommunicate Williamson again and end the ambiguity.

This pope has a unique teaching moment in which he can openly discuss how he feels about his own moral failings as a young man in not challenging the enormity of evil that was Nazism. And he can speak out about the need to remember accurately just how evil Nazism and the Holocaust was, and remind us all of the need to reject anyone who wants to deny the historical record that documents that evil.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/w...09/ana...youth

[manrow]

An interesting new survey on the proposed visit -

Taxpayers should not fund Pope's visit, says survey

Some 77% of Britons think taxpayers should not help pay for Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Scotland and England, a survey suggests.

An online poll of 2,005 adults issued by think tank Theos also found 79% had "no personal interest" in his visit.

The Pope is due to arrive on 16 September, the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II's 1982 trip.

The cost of the trip to UK taxpayers, previously estimated at £8m, could rise to between £10m and £12m.

The Catholic Church is also expected to make a contribution of between £9m and £10m towards the costs, which do not include an expected multi-million pound bill for policing the visit.

In the Theos survey, some 76% also rejected taxpayer funding for the visit on the grounds that the Pope was a religious figure.

The full story available from here : BBC News - Taxpayers should not fund Pope's visit, says survey

I agree with that vote too.
Are we expected to fund all religious leaders visits in future?
Thay are springing up everywhere as I post so could be a non-stop flow from now on!

[DC]

Can I just point out that the point of not paying for the Pope's visit because he is a religious leader is moot, because he is actually the head of another Sovereign state, making him a political leader as well.

[DaveUK]

Can I just point out that the point of not paying for the Pope's visit because he is a religious leader is moot, because he is actually the head of another Sovereign state, making him a political leader as well.

Something that should be challenged by the UN, and which the Vatican should be stripped of.
The Vatican doesn't meet one single requirement for sovereign status. Why should sovereign status be granted to a religious institution or any other NGO? The vatican has no land territory to speak of, it stands in less than 1/4 of a sq mile. It has no perminent population. It's services are provided locally by Rome.
It's only claim to legitimacy as a state, is the Lateran Treaty of 1929. This document isn't actually a treaty that should be treated as such. It was simply a squalid deal between Mussolini and Pope PiusXI (basically an agreement between state and church), who described Mussolini as "a man sent by providence that will put an end to liberal democracy". The Vatican has quite a history of being involved with and supporting fascist dictators and regimes.

[Midas]

Something that should be challenged by the UN, and which the Vatican should be stripped of.

Whilst I quite agree with your sentiments, the Holy See does in fact meet all the requirements of an independent country - see The Vatican City is a Country for details.

[DaveUK]

Whilst I quite agree with your sentiments, the Holy See does in fact meet all the requirements of an independent country - see The Vatican City is a Country for details.

Thanks Midas, interesting stuff. I would still disagree though. Apart from one or two points, the same could be said for Buckingham Palace.

[Midas]

Thanks Midas, interesting stuff. I would still disagree though. Apart from one or two points, the same could be said for Buckingham Palace.

Ah, the trouble is that those "one or two points" make all the difference between what is and what isn't according to international law! The 'problem' is of course that historically the Vatican held such power over the Italian government that it got pretty much everything it wanted, including statehood, and once things like that have happened, it's virtually impossible to undo them.

[DaveUK]

Ah, the trouble is that those "one or two points" make all the difference between what is and what isn't according to international law! The 'problem' is of course that historically the Vatican held such power over the Italian government that it got pretty much everything it wanted, including statehood, and once things like that have happened, it's virtually impossible to undo them.

They're afforded a lot of defference and privilidge in the UN too. When attending the council, other member states are advised not to mention contreception, abortion, same sex marriage, unmarried couples etc.
It's both extraordinary and alarming that an international law making body like the UN has to make such considerations to a bunch hysterical old virgins with dark age mentalities.

[soloman]

They're afforded a lot of defference and privilidge in the UN too. When attending the council, other member states are advised not to mention contreception, abortion, same sex marriage, unmarried couples etc.
It's both extraordinary and alarming that an international law making body like the UN has to make such considerations to a bunch hysterical old virgins with dark age mentalities.

Who and when was he invited to Britain?

[Nicholas]

Nevermind trying to smear the entire catholic church with the actions of a few. I am no religious nut but the constant bashing of religious organisations by in particular members of the communist/socialist left wing thug alliance is becoming pretty tiresome. Fundamentally the teachings of christ are a very good thing for society , and most nations in the west base their heitage and laws upon them. We have a rich Judeo christian heritage in Britain. Who cares if we are paying for the pope to come and visit? i wonder how much the C of E get every year? or how much it costs to police football matches every week?

And btw i am not catholic.

[PaulKing]

Nevermind trying to smear the entire catholic church with the actions of a few. I am no religious nut but the constant bashing of religious organisations by in particular members of the communist/socialist left wing thug alliance is becoming pretty tiresome. Fundamentally the teachings of christ are a very good thing for society , and most nations in the west base their heitage and laws upon them. We have a rich Judeo christian heritage in Britain. Who cares if we are paying for the pope to come and visit? i wonder how much the C of E get every year? or how much it costs to police football matches every week?

And btw i am not catholic.

A few? Are you joking?



How many children have been victimized by priests?

As with the official numbers for accused priests, the sources are The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Priests and Deacons, by Karen Terry et al., prepared by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (Washington DC: USCCB, 2004), with the annual implementation reports issued by the USCCB for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 (chap. 4).


The U.S. bishops report receiving allegations from 15,235 victims
or 2.6 victims per priest


This count of victims is universally acknowledged to be low. Here are several estimates of the correct number.

25,383 – using the current USCCB rate of victims per priest (2.6) and the New Hampshire level of accused priests (8.9%)

46,125 – using the Boston archdiocesan count of victims and the Boston share of U.S. Catholics

100,000 – using Rev. Andrew Greeley's 1993 partial estimate of 2,500 accused priests and 50 victims per priest

280,000 – using the USCCB's current count of accused priests (5,600) and Greeley's estimate of 50 victims per priest

Accused U.S. clerics and religious
whose names have been made public

19 bishops
2,997 priests + 85 since July 2008
68 nuns + 3 since July 2008
178 brothers + 15 since July 2008
39 deacons
16 seminarians +1 since July 2008

3,317 total + 96 since July 2008

[DaveUK]

Nevermind trying to smear the entire catholic church with the actions of a few. I am no religious nut but the constant bashing of religious organisations by in particular members of the communist/socialist left wing thug alliance is becoming pretty tiresome. Fundamentally the teachings of christ are a very good thing for society , and most nations in the west base their heitage and laws upon them. We have a rich Judeo christian heritage in Britain. Who cares if we are paying for the pope to come and visit? i wonder how much the C of E get every year? or how much it costs to police football matches every week?

And btw i am not catholic.

What a load of drivel. Tens of thousands of victims have now come forward from all over the world. Thousands of these vile middle aged perverts are implicated. In almost every single case, the church has demanded that it be secretly investigated internally and dealt with under canon law, rather than turning these pariahs over to the police. And who do you think it was that was running this pedeophile ring cover up? Who was the head of the churches investigative body, responsible for invesigating and punishing these vile crimes? Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope. And what punishments were handed out to those found guilty by Ratzinger.........well, confession had to be made for a start, then of course there's penance, usually in the form or removal or canon privilidges for a period of time. How harsh it must have been for these perverts. Many of them were simply moved from one church to another, putting even more children in harms way.
And what do you thin was and is always at the center of all considerations in these scandalous cases? Protecting the church. Ratzinger has issued numerous edicts calling for "restraint" in these cases so as not to "damage the church". Not once has he or any of the deranged middle aged virgins that surround him ever said "we must protect inocent children and turn these pedeophiles over to the police".
Where is cardinal Law now? Was he prosecuted? Ex communicated? No. He was whisked away to Rome, and reappointed as Bishop of the Church of st Mary. And who personally appointed him? Joseph Ratzinger.
Don't even dare to try and defend this pedeophile ring in holy orders. This is the internet, the world can see anyone that tries to defend these pedeophiles and makes excuses for them.

List some of the teachings of the mad ranting rabi called Jesus, that are unique to him, that are beneficial to society, and while you're at it, tell us about some of the laws we have that are based on his teachings?

[DaveUK]

This article was posted on Slate by Christopher Hitchens yesterday (good to see he's still writing given his current state of health).

Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's extraordinary and limpid new work Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (a history informed by a general, if Anglican, sympathy for its subject), I came across the following passage from Cardinal John Henry Newman's classic statement of belief, his Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

The Catholic Church holds it better for the Sun and Moon to drop from Heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die from starvation in extremest agony … than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.

In a few days, Joseph Ratzinger will make one of the most portentous voyages of his papacy, landing in Britain to announce the beatification of the author of those remarkable words. I am not writing about Catholic dogma today, and in any case do not have the space to discuss the hysterical, totalitarian fanaticism of Newman's statement, coming as it does from a learned man celebrated for his relative "moderation." I thought I would simply ask how the church would emerge if anything remotely like Newman's criterion were to be applied to it.


As we have recently been forcibly reminded, the Roman Catholic Church holds it better for the cries of raped and violated children to be ignored, and for the excuses and alibis of their rapists and torturers indulged, and for a host of dirty and wilful untruths to be manufactured wholesale, and for the funds raised ostensibly for the poor to be paid out in hush money and shameful bribery, rather than that one tiny indignity or inconvenience be visited on the robed majesty of a man-made church or any limit set to its self-proclaimed right to be judge in its own cause.
Earlier this year, as Roman Catholic authorities from Ireland to Germany to Australia to Belgium to the United States were being confronted with the fallout of decades of sexual assault and subsequent denial, I asked a simple question in print. Why was this not considered a matter for the police and the courts? Why were we asking the church to "put its own house in order," an expression that was the exact definition of the problem to begin with? Why had almost no offending priest or bishop faced justice, and even then usually after a long period of protection from the church's own "courts"? I followed this up with a telephone call to Geoffrey Robertson, a British barrister with a second-to-none record in international human rights cases. (If it matters, the last time we had both cooperated was in a campaign against the British Act of Succession, an archaic piece of legislation that explicitly discriminates against Catholics.) This was one of the best dimes I have ever dropped. After a group of generous humanists and atheists agreed to pay his extremely modest fee, Robertson produced a detailed legal brief against the papacy and has made it widely available for the use of all interested or aggrieved parties. Titled The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, it has just been published in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books. (It will be available in the United States in October.)
As if almost timed to coincide with its publication, and with the impending arrival of Ratzinger on British soil, the recent disclosures of the putrid state of the church in Belgium have thrown the whole scandal into an even sharper relief. Consider: The now-resigned bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, stands revealed by his own eventual confession as being guilty of incest as well as rape, having regularly "abused" his male nephew between the ages of 5 and 18. The man's superior as head of the Belgian church, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, has been caught on tape urging the victim to keep quiet. A subsequent official report, commissioned by the country's secular authorities, has established that this level of morality was the rule throughout the hierarchy, with the church taking it upon itself to "forgive" the rapists and to lean upon their victims. Very belatedly, a few months ago, the Belgian police finally rose from their notorious torpor and raided some ecclesiastical offices in search of evidence that was being concealed. Joseph Ratzinger, who had not thus far found a voice in which to mention the doings of his Belgian underlings, promptly emitted a squeal of protest—at the intervention of the law.
Robertson's brief begins with a meticulous summary of the systematic fashion in which child-rape was covered up by collusion between local Catholic authorities and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, an office that under the last pope was run by Ratzinger himself. (So flagrant was this obstruction of justice that many senior Catholic apologists have now started to blame the deceased pontiff in an effort to excuse his deputy and successor, all the while continuing to put forward Pope John Paul II as a candidate for sainthood!) The brief continues with a close examination of the Vatican's claim to be a state, and its related claim that statehood confers legal immunity on the pope, even in gross cases of abuse of human rights. Without undue difficulty, Robertson shows both claims to be laughably void and based, furthermore, on a history of disgraceful collaboration with dictatorship and sheltering of wanted criminals.
Cardinal Newman himself was rather dubious about the late-19th-century proclamation of papal infallibility. He also asked to be buried in the same grave as his lifelong companion, Ambrose St. John. The Catholic authorities have now rudely disinterred the bodies, finding nothing that had survived decay or could serve as a relic. This is grotesque enough, but not as grotesque as the air of persecuted innocence that they wear when confronted with their obscene offenses. Now at last there is a careful guide to legal redress, which can be taken up either by a victim or by a prosecutor and used to bring a man-made outfit, and its chief executive, within the rule of law. The sun and moon don't need to fall and the species doesn't have to die in agony in order to expiate this sin—a little application of simple earthly justice is all that is required. Will it really continue to be withheld?