Christopher Hitchens talks on Fox about Pope Scandal

[Minimalist]

Hitchens with Bill Maher discussing the same thing a few days earlier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Wsm5LBe0w

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I did not think that Frodo was supporting pedophilia.


I thought he was supporting corrupt priests who engage in pedophilia or protect the ones who do.


Subtle distinction.



But he can defend himself.

[Eilonnwy]

I never once said Fr0d0 was defending pedophiles, I was objecting to his calling Hitchen's statement "sensationalized"

No one, not one person, has gone to jail for protecting rapists. It's appalling and more people need be outraged.

[fr0d0]

Calling the pope a rapist and torturer of children is salacious exaggeration. You step over the mark and you draw attention away from the issue which is what we want sorted here. We don't need agenda led diversions, but focussed outrage.

[tavarish]

Calling the pope a rapist and torturer of children is salacious exaggeration. You step over the mark and you draw attention away from the issue which is what we want sorted here. We don't need agenda led diversions, but focussed outrage.

Nobody called him a rapist or a torturer. He protected those that did rape and torture children. Donohue's best response was that the liberals influenced the therapy and that they weren't the only ones fucking little kids.

It's not an agenda, it's focused outrage exactly.

[fr0d0]

Go listen again then Tav

[tavarish]

Go listen again then Tav

Specify times please? I'm at work, no sound.

[fr0d0]

Right at the end - around 4.15~

[Tiberius]

"No, not curiouser and curiouser. Clearer and clearer that the head of the church is directly responsible for the rape and torture of children."

That isn't calling the Pope a rapist or a torturer, it is putting the blame on him because he was directly responsible, by covering up the abuse and moving the bishops who did the crimes into other positions where they were able to rape and torture again.

If your friend comes to you and says they have murdered people, and instead of turning them in, you make attempts to hide them, and in doing so allow them to murder people again, you are directly responsible, since you protected them in the first place.

Hitchens wasn't calling the Pope a rapist, nor was he saying the Pope was directly responsible for the actions of the priests who first raped children. What he is saying is that by protecting those priests, and putting them in a situation where they could rape again, the Pope is guilty and directly responsible for those rapes.

[fr0d0]

"Directly responsible" is doing it yourself. I've followed the stories a bit... take the blind kids - the community itself did the hiding initially, and still wanted to protect the priest many years later ...is this not true? If so, how is any indirect decision made by a very distant overseer making that overseer "directly responsible"?

[Tiberius]

Well now we are just arguing semantics. I'd say that anyone who protects rapists (and moves them so they can rape again) instead of reporting them is directly responsible for the rape. Likewise, people who tell others to commit crimes are directly responsible for the crimes.

Indirect responsibility as I see it is where the action had nothing to do with the crime or event. In other words, there isn't a distinct line you can draw to connect the two actions. To give an example, say the V.A.T tax is raised by 20% or something, and so all store prices rocket. Now some poor guy cannot buy his food, and so starves. The decision to make the raise in V.A.T is indirectly responsible, since that decision wasn't made with prior knowledge that this guy wouldn't be able to afford food.

With the example you give, it is irrelevant if the community did the hiding. They hold some of the blame because of that (and I never said the Pope is 100% responsible for everything). The fact still remains that the Pope protected these criminals, moved them about so they were free to abuse children again, and did not persecute or press charges on any of them. He is directly responsible for their crimes; he had prior knowledge of their crimes, he could have stopped them...he did not.