Arrest and Trial of Benedict XVI

Richard Dawkins calls for arrest of Pope Benedict XVI

RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.

Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.

When I first saw this story a few days ago I was reluctant to comment. I think that a warrant or a bill of indictment should be prepared against the Holy See in some European or International Court. However, I would not think it prudent to pursue a trial for these recent felonies and cover-ups of felonies by the worldwide hierarchy of the RCC in general and the Vatican specifically, in the case of crimes against humanity – children.

I guess that being American I have come to accept the legal opinion of Obama that we cannot prosecute Dick Cheney and George Bush for war crimes and other crimes against humanity. Shame on us.

All crimes against humanity should be vigorously prosecuted no matter who commits them. It is the right and more importantly the moral thing to do. The secular global world has to take a stand on right and wrong as described in law and not be influenced by any mythical religious setting or context as in crimes committed in the Vatican

The fact that two well known atheists, Dawkins and Hitchens, are bellowing these charges against Benedict XVI and his thug bishops sounds a little too much like religious persecution. But then again over the centuries the RCC have burned enough atheists as heretics. Perhaps the Dawkins/Hitchens spiel is equal time and fair play.

Just imagine if only indictments were prepared in a legal court system in Europe. The pope would have to hide in his Vatican with protection of his armed guards in his palace in Rome like some Mafia Chieftain.

Dawkins/Hitchens claim that the Vatican is not a country. That Mussolini when he ceded political control to the Vatican in 1929 was merely respecting the turf of another warlord such as himself.

According to some opinion, the pope has no diplomatic immunity. The Vatican was denied official nation status at the U.N. in 1964 at the insistence of the U.S.. No doubt a crook like LBJ could smell another snake in the room with the Vatican trying to claim nationhood. As a permanent observer at the UN, the church has been able to wreck havoc on the planet with its medieval ideals of birth control forced onto a lot of UN programs.

But putting aside all the showmanship of Dawkins/Hitchens trying to sell more books etc, there is the base, the common little ordinary simple faithful that the RC hierarchy are totally unaware of and totally our of touch with. This base in the form of the Rev. James Scahill of St. Michael’s Parish in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts “called in a sermon last weekend for the pope to resign over the church's sexual abuse scandal.”

Priest calls for pope's resignation

Pope Benedict XVI has found himself tied to the crisis after news broke last month that 30 years ago, when he was an archbishop, he approved accommodations in his diocese for a priest accused of child sex abuse so the priest could undergo therapy.

The priest, who was not identified, was let go from church service in 2008, according to church officials in Germany.

"If he can't take the consequences of being truthful on this matter, his integrity should lead him, for the good of the church, to step down and to have the conclave of cardinals elect a pope with the understanding that the elected pope would be willing to take on this issue, not just in promise," Scahill said.

When you lose your base, you lose in politics. The papacy is – a political – and not a spiritual job position.

The scandal of failed CEO types running the Vatican continues.

ATHEIST - AGNOSTIC - ARELIGIONIST

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A T H E I S T

A G N O S T I C

A R E L I G I O N I S T

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(ar-e-lig-ion-ist)

The term Cultural Christian means a lot of things these days. Looking through a search of the subject on the Internet, I believe the fundamentalists have out blogged the day and anybody or anything that calls themselves a Cultural Christian is going to Hell with Richard Dawkins, the Brit, famous first for being an Atheist and second for being a scientist.

Anyway I have a fall back plan. Since I have written a lot about my quest for a new definition of God in this emerging Global culture that is increasingly less theistic and more materialistic or even humanistic, a new term for me is in order.

The title shows three terms, two of which already have definitions and are in the lexicon on the language.

Atheist is broken down into A and Theist, meaning without theism or denial of the traditional concept of God.

Agnosticism is broken down into A and Gnostic, meaning without knowledge and implies a doubt about the concept of God. Also means that there is no proof of God as in a modern scientific approach to any theory.

Areligionist is broken down into A and Religionist, meaning without religion. A religionist is one addicted to a need to have a rulebook on the side of the Theist issue.

Since I do not see anything in a dictionary yet, let me add my preferred pronunciation of the word as (ar-e-lig-ion-ist) as opposes the Atheist sounding pronunciation of (A- re-lig-ion-ist) – don’t want to get swept up anymore in the Dawkins heretic burning phenomenon from the right.

Being Areligionist means not believing in any man made rule book about the God thing, the definition of which I am still plotting.

Religionist fanatics like Saul of Tarsus are part of the present failure of Christianity along with the emperor god Constantine’s hijacking of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to help redecorate his palace, on a coffee table so to speak, in Constantinople. If he really was a Christian, which I doubt, would he not have named the greatest and newest city in his empire Jesusopolis or Christianopolis for his new found god and not for himself?

There are as many rule books and searches for spirituality and or God as there are people on the planet. We no longer have to be stuck with “sacred” writings written in tents or caves or Roman Empire army barracks.

Time for a change in the way humanity approaches the sacred as free individuals instead of as in shackled groups, tribes, clans, packs, as in the past.