Good morning, Mr Ratzinger, please come with us
No doubt it will just be filed and forgotten, but it’s good to see, all the same…
Two German lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity…
They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”.
They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”.
Well yes, he does, but…there’s a Special Dispensation for popes. No one else, just popes. So sorry.
They claim the Catholic Church “acquires its members through a compulsory act, namely, through the baptism of infants that do not yet have a will of their own”. This act was “irrevocable” and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and the fires of hell.
It was “a grave impairment of the personal freedom of development and of a person’s emotional and mental integrity”. The Pope was “responsible for its preservation and enforcement and, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his Church, he was jointly responsible” with Pope John Paul II.
That’s the ur-crime, of course. They’ll never make it stick, but it is the biggy. That expropriation of people’s minds at birth and continuation of it via threats is a truly horrible arrangement, which the world allows only because it’s so accustomed to it. Maybe this indictment will make people a little less accustomed to it. Maybe this Verfremdungseffekt will jostle the world out of its complacency. That would be something.
Even if it gets nowhere, it’s very nice to see. Very nice.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa and Wayne de Villiers, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Good morning, Mr Ratzinger, please come with us http://dlvr.it/HVzmw […]
“there’s a Special Dispensation for popes. No one else, just popes. So sorry.”
It includes cardinals, bishops, monsignors and priests. All the Rattenfaenger’s skirted minions get a special dispensation. Oh if only the Nuernberg rules still applied…..
Crime disappears the larger the number of people who subscribe to it.
I detect contempt.
Good radar you’ve got there, Rieux!
I wish it could be a movie. They could just re-write some history and pretend that’s what really happened. Hire a traditionally-pretty Hollywood actress to make herself plain, a British actor to act weary and a male lead losing/gaining weight as necessary for the role of the villain/the Pope, and it would be an Oscar contender.
Does the Vatican recognise the validity of the German court?
sailor1031:
Rattenfänger, huh? Interesting nickname!
The word literally means “rat-catcher,” and in that sense it seems exactly inappropriate, because the guy’s most prominent (non-)act has been not catching (indeed, ensuring the freedom of) child-molesting rats.
But (as sailor1031 might know well), Rattenfänger is almost solely understood as part of the title Der Rattenfänger von Hameln („eine der bekanntesten deutschen Sagen“), a fable that we Englischsprächer call “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” In the story, the Pied Piper billed himself as a rat-catcher, but in fact his game was child-stealing. Possibly that’s parallel to Ratzinger, though I wonder if it gives him too much credit for charisma. The guy seems like an obvious doof to me.
Nothing more than a million dollars worth of free publicity for a couple of Bavarian lawyers.
I can see the film posters now “The Man Who Sued The Pope”.
Give it 30 years and the guy who plays Voldemort will be old enough to play Ratzi.
It is very unlikely that this will ever come to anything, but it is certainly good to see that someone is prepared to hold the pope to account. Surely, one of the biggest problems with the Roman Catholic Church is that it operates freely as a state, and as a state, has enormous effects on the lives of people — especially in RC majority areas of the world, like Ireland, Chile, Guatemala, Poland, etc. It is good to see it pointed out that, not only is it possible for someone like the pope to have enormous influence in ways that work against the good of the people, but that he may also be simply morally as compromised as anyone else.
This needs to be stressed, because so many people seem to be prepared to treat him as a moral expert, and there is not one single reason for supposing him to be so. Just because he is a religious leader does not make him a moral expert, and if it takes holding him to account for immoral acts, for which he seems to have been at least partly responsible, to demonstrate this, then what these German lawyers are doing will be worthwhile. Are they just looking for headlines, as Russell W (rather predictably) alleges? I don’t know, but certainly Geoffrey Robertson thought there was some basis for making the charge. However, Robertson seems to suggest that only states could effectively bring charges of this kind. Failing that, perhaps headlining the matter will take us part of the way. Just ignoring the man and his inadequacies is scarcely an option.
Looking at the news this morning of the abuse of nuns by priests — and it is hard to believe that Ratzi didn’t know about this either — the moral standing of the Roman Catholic Church seems to be sinking to somewhere just south of the mafia. At least the mafioso, however perverted it is, seem to have a sense of honour which the church, claiming moral superiority, seems sadly unable to achieve. This is pretty squalid stuff. How does the man sleep at night?
@Rieux: his propensity for causing the downfall of children, in his capacity as CEO of RCC Inc., was one of the reasons for naming him so, yes! Also he has a large collection of tame rats who can be led wherever he chooses. And the Rattenfaenger himself led the rats away first. He came for the children when the city fathers refused to pay his fee….. wth rat catchers it’s the money, you see! It’s an allegory (on the banks of the Nile…..)
Are you an english speaker? I had rather the impression you are (also) francophone?
Sorry, but I can’t sympathise with this prosecution at all: it makes us look oppressive.
Religion has to be defeated through reason and persuasion, not illiberalism.
‘They claim the Catholic Church “acquires its members through a compulsory act, namely, through the baptism of infants that do not yet have a will of their own”.
I never chose to be British and I didn’t choose to speek English either.
‘This act was “irrevocable” and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and the fires of hell.’
Its obviously NOT irrecable otherwise so many people wouldn’t leave the church and the ‘fires of hell’ are only a threat if you believe in them – and if you believe in them you wouldn’t want to leave the Church because you’d actually be a Catholic.
This whole approach is infantilising: if you are an adult you are responsible for your own beliefs.
That was my thought as well. Every government decides they own you at birth, and will punish you if you don’t obey their rules, and indeed they’re much more aggressive about actual physical punishment than the modern RCC.
While it’s true that some of the charges seem to be stretching the point — which is why it would have been better had this matter been dealt with by some state agency — the notion that the pope should be beyond the reach of the law because he presides over a “state” is absurd, and since it is clear that he has been guilty of human rights violations, there is no reason why such things should not be brought to the attention of a court of law. Geoffrey Roberson (of The Case of the Pope) suggests that there is probably sufficient grounds in international law for such a case to be brought, so there is, rally, nothing infantilising about this at all.
I don’t think the Pope should be beyond the reach of the law WHERE HE ACTUALLY COMMITED A CRIME.
Covering up child abuse might qualify for that but not simply preaching bullshit – otherwise we’d be locking up economists who have arguably caused more damage, or climate change sceptics, etc.
And if you can charge the Pope why not bishops or priests? How about Catholic teachers? What about parents?
And once everyone responsible for preaching Catholicism is locked up or at least banned from preaching, how then do protest against oppression of Christians in China or in Islamist countries?
Once we decide what can or can’t be preached is a matter for the law to decide how do we campaign for the rights of atheists or secularists in theocratic societies?
Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but doesn’t catholic doctrine dictate that the pope is infallable? Be interesting to see how that works for him in court.
Hi again, sailor1031.
Heh! This suggests Ratzinger as a comic-book supervillain. Paging Russell Blackford….
Yes, but that’s a point of disanalogy, right? Ratzinger isn’t removing any rats (including himself).
Yes, I’m an English-speaking American.
No. Ich spreche annehmbar Deutsch, weil ich einmal Austauschschüler in Deutschland war (I speak passable German, because I was once an exchange student in Germany), but otherwise I’m as dopey about languages as most Americans of European descent. I can barely string a sentence together in French.
I took my pseudonym from the main character of my favorite novel, Albert Camus’s La Peste (The Plague); in the novel, Dr. Bernard Rieux is an outspoken atheist (and Camus’s own avatar in the story) who tries, and mostly fails, to stem the tide of a very allegorical bubonic plague epidemic. I like him.
Oh, those wacky Germans! First Martin Luther thought you could be a Christian without being Catholic. Now these guys think that Catholics can actually commit crimes. What will they think of next?
Locutus7, I’m not catholic but I think popes are only infallible under limited circumstances (speaking on doctrinal matters, wearing his extra special god amplifying hat, etc.).
Shatterface brings up an excellent point. One of the biggest problems with attacking the Pope with charges that his teachings are causing human suffering is that parents are also teaching this to their children. It’s a nasty chicken and egg problem.
Are parents teaching their children because of the Pope? Or is the pope teaching people because his parents taught him that way? If we begin to attach legal culpability for moral instruction, we open a can of worms we might better have left buried.
Having said that, I think it’s good to at least draw the connection publicly. While he might not be legally responsible for any deaths, or AIDS infections, he is not without responsibility, and more importantly — his teachings are DEMONSTRABLY FALSE. Condoms do not cause AIDS. They do not promote promiscuous sex. In most countries, people selling a product are responsible for accurately representing what it is and what it does. And by many accounts, Catholicism is a product.
For comparison, consider what would happen if a doctor sold a diet which encouraged you to eat as much processed sugar, carbohydrates, and fat as you wanted, and to confine exercise to two minutes a day. He’d be brought up on charges, right? All for prescribing how people ought to behave to achieve a desired result.
The difference — the only significant difference I can find — is that the Pope and his minions don’t directly sell Catholicism. It’s ostensibly entered into by free choice. (This isn’t quite as nutty when you consider that many Catholics believe a blastocyst to be equivalent to an adult human.) And money given to the church is a “gift,” not a subscription. (I’m reminded of a flier I got last time I was in Las Vegas, assuring me that my money would be for time and companionship only, and anything that happened beyond that was the free choice of consenting adults…)
Now… as to covering up an international ring of child and nun molestation…
Maybe a MD might have some trouble with the board, but quack diets are published every day of the year with minimal interference by the state (as well it should be from a free speech perspective)
I don’t think the RCC church claims they cause AIDS. The RCC claims they are immoral despite their prophylactic properties. Claims of such morality, while absurd, are hopefully outside the purview of the state as long as people can freely choose to be, or not be Catholic. Issues occur in areas where the RCC interferes with the availability of these items.
Once we start basing reasoning on things like ‘condoms don’t promote promiscuous sex’ we are setting up for this to be used against us. It is entirely possible, that under some contexts, people are more willing (or less unwilling) to engage in sex if condoms are available. That is their own decision and must not be the basis for our argument with the RCC