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[chaoticag]

Wait, 1985? You do know that the Pope back then is different from the Pope now, right?

Clearly though, the priests should be arrested, and you need more solid evidence than just conjecture and testimony to convict people.

[Pathos]

Wait, 1985? You do know that the Pope back then is different from the Pope now, right?

Clearly though, the priests should be arrested, and you need more solid evidence than just conjecture and testimony to convict people.

  Did... Did you just read what I posted, or not? The current Pope was then leader of the main office of cover ups in the church. He was also called Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Search for his letters.

[fenrif]

Is this just something thats come out in the UK? I thought the whole pope/molestation thing was big news everywhere, but alot of people dont seem to know about it? :S

[chaoticag]

No, the last post you had was a little confusing.

Still, this is a serious accusation, and running at it head first without any perfectly solid evidence means that we cannot try him again due to double jepordy laws. (You can't be convicted of a crime you have been declaired innocent of.)

Whether his letters are easy to find on the internet has nothing to do with whether they are authentic. I'll still need to see those videos, but I'm in a hurry.

[Neonivek]

Also certain types of cover-ups are perfectly legal.

So it would need to be evidence that these cover ups are of the illegal kind.

[Godwin]

It's bloody obvious that the pope is directly involved in covering up these cases. We have multiple written accounts of him specifically saying to cover up cases of child abuse in order to protect the image of the church, in both general orders and correspondence to specific members of the church.


And people, if you're going to comment, read the thread. Don't come in and say "Hey now I don't think there's any evidence of the pope being involved! Also sorry I don't have time to read the evidence for the pope being involved that you posted but I'm really really sure he's not involved." That's just cheap.

[cowofdoom78963]

In conclusion, priestly celibacy is stupid and the Orthodox church has the right idea, the Catholics should get with the program; if you only allow men to be priests who can resist having sex, then you're going to end up with all the deviants in the priesthood, with no licit outlet for their sexual urges to boot. Plus there's a pretty high rate of priests carrying on secret heterosexual (adult) relationships according to some poll I heard

This.

[fenrif]

Ditto what Godwin said, the evidence he was involved isn't just heresy and conjecture, its well established, if you don't feel like reading it then fair doos to you, but it doesn't change it. He was directly involved in creating a culture of secrecy around priests molesting children, and moving them around so they could carry on and get away with it. This isn't just some crackpot internet theory, its like huge news all over the place.

And Neonivek, I'm not sure what you mean, are there certain kinds of covering up thousands of child molestation cases that are legal? Helping people get away with molesting kids? Or other kinds of coverups? I can't think of any situation where covering up a crime to allow the perpetrators to get away is legal.

[Pathos]

Also certain types of cover-ups are perfectly legal.

So it would need to be evidence that these cover ups are of the illegal kind.

Nah, this counts as a crime against humanity. The same as the Israeli politician Tzipi Livni, who has been accused of perpetuating war crimes. She would've been arrested if she'd've came to the UK, but she called it off at the last minute.

[chaoticag]

Still though, how the heck do you arrest the Pope anyway? What does that entail, and how will the Catholic church deal with it?

And still, on the issue of people saying they don't have time to watch the videos, there should at least be a summary of the videos on the first post. It helps move the discussion along.

[cowofdoom78963]

He's one sick fuck if he supports his priests having sex with kids.

Im suprised no one has tried to assasinate him for this.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Also certain types of cover-ups are perfectly legal.

So it would need to be evidence that these cover ups are of the illegal kind.

That's sort of the point, that covering up a crime is usually a second, additional crime in a lot of countries. So we don't need to work very hard to prove that the cover-up is criminal. All that's needed is to prove that the cover-up happened, and that the thing being covered-up is a crime, and that the country in which it happened has a law against covering up crimes.

I mean, sure, I can forget to set my watch and lie about it, and that's technically a cover-up. But forgetting to set your watch isn't a crime, so the cover-up isn't a crime either.

It's also possible that Vatican City has no law that applies to the Pope, and that the Cardinals or some other body makes decisions about whether the Pope did something wrong or not.

But let's say the Pope goes out and kicks a puppy in Italy where it is legal, but puppy-kicking is illegal in Switzerland. He travels to Switzerland. They don't arrest him in Switzerland, because he didn't kick a puppy in the jurisdiction of Switzerland.

Again, Interpol might have something to say in the matter, and any country can of course just seize whoever they want for whatever reason they give. But who is willing to put their political and physical neck on the line as the guy who arrested the Pope. You think the backlash was bad because of a couple political cartoons a couple years ago? Realistically, you won't see the Pope in jail unless he *redacted* a dozen *redacted* one after the other on the *redacted* lawn on Christmas morning in front of a bunch of reporters, until everyone was crying.

And maybe not even then.

[fenrif]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html

Link to the NYT article containing a summary of the whole affair.

I don't think anyone realistically expects the pope to get arrested. This is more about publicising the cover up, and the popes involvement... maybe with an eye to stopping the popes visit to the UK.

Allthough if someone does arrest him, all the better.

[Blacken]

Not the Pope, but certainly the priests in question.  For some reason they seem to be immune to the law.

The Pope organised the entire conspiracy, so I see no reason he shouldn't be arrested. The best way to kill a snake is to cut off it's head, after all.

This is not quite true. There's a fairly large amount of evidence (which is largely being ignored) that Ratzinger was one of relatively few who actually did anything to curtail the abuses. He participated in numerous cover-ups, that much is clear--but to call him the organizer is farfetched. Which is not to say he did everything, or even enough--but he was one of the only (three, I think?) cardinals to refuse actual monetary bribes to his order to look the other way, and he did push the issue through the Church hierarchy. (John Paul, for his many good qualities, was a very poor administrator, and allowed into his inner circle some of the vilest people to wear cardinals' robes in quite some time.)

Benedict is in no way perfect, but he's not really the man to be focusing on. Benedict does look like Palpatine, but he's probably the person most likely to uncircle the wagons as Pope. No, not everybody gets what they deserve, but he is among the most useful people who could be in his position for people who want to see any justice at all. Don't get me wrong: I'm dismayed by his archconservatism with regards to matters of faith (I am not a Catholic, but I follow Catholic news much more closely than most Catholics), but attacking the Pope is an excellent way to ensure that the wagons stay circled. The bishops, at least in America, are being directly ordered to participate with absolutely any investigation regarding sex abuse, and they are doing so. Justice will be slow, and it will be incomplete, but making a martyr of the Pope is the best way to make it hot happen.

All of this is moot, of course; nobody is going to arrest a head of state for something this minor--and despite the emotional implications of the crimes, this is very minor compared to what heads of states are actually arrested and incarcerated for.

He's one sick fuck if he supports his priests having sex with kids.

If you are capable of taking away that he supports these behaviors (as opposed to supporting the solidarity of his church--a position I neither hold nor respect, but the difference is there and substantial), your worldview is immature and lacks granularity.

Im suprised no one has tried to assasinate him for this.

He hasn't done anything that would provoke anyone with the means to successfully do it to actually make an attempt. I'm sure there are a few well-meaning but catastrophically retarded people who are hatching halfassed plans to do so, but they don't have much of a track record in the last few decades.

[Pathos]

Still though, how the heck do you arrest the Pope anyway? What does that entail, and how will the Catholic church deal with it?

And still, on the issue of people saying they don't have time to watch the videos, there should at least be a summary of the videos on the first post. It helps move the discussion along.

I've added a VERY basic summary.

And, who cares what it entails and how they deal with it? People getting away with things like this has gone on for long enough, it needs to be shown that there is one law for everyone.