Human rights and the pope

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Leela said:
The articles I read about the attempt to raise a human rights case against Benedict don’t give any specifics. I assumed that the questions about the pope centered around his activity before he became pope. My understanding is that he was one of those bishops who shuffled offending priests to new parishes to offend again in Germany and also wrote some semi-secret document addressed to the world’s bishops instructing them to put the interests of the Church ahead of those of the victims while working for the Vatican. Do you have some reading to suggest on the issue?

Best,
Leela
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Well if you haven’t read any specifics, I strongly recommend not making some up! I don’t know if these will respond to the generalities that you have read, but hopefully they will be helpful:

online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052702304017404575165792228341212.html

cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/koch/entry/he_that_is_without_sin

americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=2746

firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/04/another-long-lent
 
Betterave said:
Here are some more, the first by an atheist, the second by Rex Murphy (always an entertaining read):

theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/the-pope-hunters-pathological-campaign/story-e6frg6zo-1225853773394

network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/20/rex-murphy-bluster-masquerading-as-reason.aspx

guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/15/pope-mob-benedict-misreading-abuse
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I finally got to read the first two, but these articles don’t seem to be what I’m looking for. Hitchens made some specific allegations, and rather than respon to those allegations, these writers have responded with a bunch of ad hominems toward Dawkins and Hitchens.

Can you point me to anything that answers Hitchen’s charges?

"There are two separate but related matters here: First, the individual responsibility of the Pope in one instance of this moral nightmare and, second, his more general and institutional responsibility for the wider lawbreaking and for the shame and disgrace that goes with it. The first story is easily told, and it is not denied by anybody. In 1979, an 11-year-old German boy identified as Wilfried F. was taken on a vacation trip to the mountains by a priest. After that, he was administered alcohol, locked in his bedroom, stripped naked and forced to suck the penis of his confessor. (Why do we limit ourselves to calling this sort of thing “abuse”?) The offending cleric was transferred from Essen to Munich for “therapy” by a decision of then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, and assurances were given that he would no longer have children in his care. But it took no time for Ratzinger’s deputy, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, to return him to “pastoral” work, where he soon enough resumed his career of sexual assault.

It is, of course, claimed, and it will no doubt later be partially un-claimed, that Ratzinger himself knew nothing of this second outrage. I quote, here, from the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a former employee of the Vatican Embassy in Washington and an early critic of the Catholic Church’s sloth in responding to child-rape allegations. “Nonsense,” he says. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the Pope.”

This is common or garden stuff, very familiar to American and Australian and Irish Catholics whose children’s rape and torture, and the cover-up of same by the tactic of moving rapists and torturers from parish to parish, has been painstakingly and comprehensively exposed. It’s on a level with the recent belated admission by the Pope’s brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, that while he knew nothing about sexual assault at the choir school he ran between 1964 and 1994, now that he remembers it, he is sorry for his practice of slapping the boys around.

Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church’s own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated “in the most secretive way … restrained by a perpetual silence … and everyone … is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication.” Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offence could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.)

Not content with shielding its own priests from the law, Ratzinger’s office even wrote its own private statute of limitations. The church’s jurisdiction, claimed Ratzinger, “begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age” and then lasts for 10 more years. Daniel Shea, the attorney for two victims who sued Ratzinger and a church in Texas, correctly describes that latter stipulation as an obstruction of justice. “You can’t investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10, the priest will get away with it.”
 
Look, gentlemen, if the Queen of England KNIGHTED ROBERT MUGABE THE BUTCHER OF RHODESIA … if they actual order some enforceable legal/diplomatic action or exclude our Holy Father’s visit, I will basically lose all respect for the United Kingdom in an instant.

Also, good luck trying to push this sham, though. Nick Griffin has a better chance of being elected with David Cameron as his Foreign Minister than Dawkitchens has of excluding our Holy Father from the Isles.
 
We’ve heard a lot from Bad Hitchens in this thread…

…here’s something from Good Hitchens:

"But there’s another point here.

Let’s go through the case as it stands in general.

Did Roman Catholic priests engage in abuse of children? Yes.

Were these crimes sometimes covered up? Yes.

Does the Church admit this? Yes.

Does anything in Roman Catholic theology or belief mandate or excuse such behaviour? No.

Is the RC Church the only institution in which such abuse has taken place? No.

Have the transgressors been punished and have steps been taken to prevent them having renewed opportunities to transgress? Yes, though not as swiftly as it should have been, some are now beyond the reach of the law, or dead.

Has the Church admitted that it was at fault? Yes, unequivocally and repeatedly.

Have steps been taken to prevent a repetition? Yes.

Has the current Pope in any way condoned the crimes? No.

Has he repeatedly and explicitly condemned them and those who failed to act against them? Yes.

So what I want to know, in detail, is what those who now call for the prosecution of the Pope specifically allege against him?

Then we can debate the strength of these charges.

But my point about pre-Christian societies and what we now call paedophilia remains. Some people will actively wish to misunderstand me here, so forgive me if I make this point in a rather heavy-handed way.

In some pre-Christian societies, activities which now rightly fill us with nauseated disgust, particularly the sexual exploitation of pubescent boys by older men, were once regarded as normal and acceptable. It was Christian sexual morality, with its belief that sexual acts should be confined to lifelong marriage between a man and a woman, which led to their being first made unacceptable and then made illegal. That morality has largely been discarded for heterosexual acts and our continuing taboos survive mainly because of public opinion (though as anyone over 50 can attest, public opinion on sexual matters can change immensely in a very short time)."

Peter Hitchen’s Blog (hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/)
 
So what I want to know, in detail, is what those who now call for the prosecution of the Pope specifically allege against him?
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Crimes against Humanity…which will fail because apart from the fact that the International Criminal Court is not likely to look into cases before it was established in July 2002, these lawyers will have to satisfy Article 7 of the Rome Statute which defines “Crimes against Humanity” as:

"For the purpose of this Statute, crime against humanity means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack"
 
Santi2 said:
Crimes against Humanity…which will fail because apart from the fact that the International Criminal Court is not likely to look into cases before it was established in July 2002, these lawyers will have to satisfy Article 7 of the Rome Statute which defines “Crimes against Humanity” as:

"For the purpose of this Statute, crime against humanity means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack"
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There was certainly no systematic attack, so I wonder what sort of case they are trying to make.
 
Leela said:
I finally got to read the first two, but these articles don’t seem to be what I’m looking for. Hitchens made some specific allegations, and rather than respon to those allegations, these writers have [quite rightly] responded with a bunch of [well-deserved] ad hominems toward Dawkins and Hitchens.

Can you point me to anything that answers Hitchen’s charges?
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Please read this detailed and specific response to Hitchens’ garbage. The author actually did some research:

catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0329.htm
 
Leela said:
Though the pope is considered to be infallible on matters of dogma, could the pope be guilty of human rights violations?

From the New York Times:
"Dawkins, a scientist and outspoken critic of religion, has asked human rights lawyers to examine whether charges could be brought against the pope.

The four-day trip, from September 16 to 19, will be the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II’s pastoral visit in 1982 and is the first official papal visit to Britain.

The Catholic church has rejected claims the pope helped to cover up abuse by priests and the Vatican has accused the media of waging a “despicable campaign of defamation” against him.

**Dawkins and the English journalist Christopher Hitchens have commissioned lawyers Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to explore ways of taking legal action against the pope. **

**In an email to Reuters, Stephens said there are three possible approaches: a complaint to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, a private or public prosecution “for crimes against humanity” or a civil case. **

**They will argue that the pope does not have diplomatic immunity from prosecution as a head of state because the Vatican has “permanent observer status” at the United Nations rather than full membership and voting rights. **

Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion” and “The Selfish Gene,” told the Sunday Times newspaper that he suspected child abuse by church members had been covered up.

Hitchens, who published a book in 2007 called “God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion,” said: “This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalized concealment of child abuse is a crime under any law.”

Critics have accused Benedict of negligence in handling abuse cases in previous roles as a cardinal in his native Germany, and in Rome.

The Vatican has denied any cover-up over the abuse of 200 deaf boys in the United States. The pope has not commented directly on the wave of sexual abuse allegations that has shaken the church around the world, including the United States, Ireland, Italy and Germany."

nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/11/world/international-us-britain-pope-arrest.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=dawkins%20pope&st=cse
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From the Catholic Union of Great Britain in response to the above:

catholicunion.org.uk/2010/04/16/features/318/catholic-organisations-question-the-judgment-of-those-seeking-to-indict-the-pope/#postcomment

The link to the Press Release:

thomasmorelegal.org/popearrest.pdf
 
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