http://richarddawkins.net/articles/514268
Ultimately, it simply comes down to these guys being a bunch of power-hungry scumbags.
Quote:In March of this year expectations were rising. After years of denial, silence, inaction and apparent incomprehension of the anger felt by decent people around the world, Pope Benedict XVI was due to write a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland in which he would – at last – confront the issue of the child sex abuse scandal head-on. Would we finally hear him acknowledge, without excuses, the extent of the crimes committed? Would he finally insist that all credible accusations of child sex abuse must from now on be immediately reported to civil law enforcement agencies, rather than dealt with under the secretive and inadequate processes of Canon Law?
The answer, of course, is that we wouldn’t, and he didn’t.
Quote:Starting with the Lateran Treaty – the Faustian pact between Mussolini and the Vatican which handed over 1.2 square miles of Italy in exchange for church support for Mussolini’s policies (though who can say, in such a case, which of the parties was Faust, and which the devil?) – Robertson sets out the whole squalid background to the Holy See’s claims to statehood: its far-from-universal acceptance at the United Nations, its gatecrashing of various committees and conferences, and its ruthless and unscrupulous attempts to hijack UN policies on human rights in order to subvert attempts to control population growth or secure equal rights for women and homosexuals. We might mention here, too, the Holy See’s refusal to sign up to the UN’s Optional Protocol on the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which would have required all cases of child sex abuse to be reported to the police, arguing instead – and who can be in any doubt as to why? – that this obligation should apply only in cases of child sex abuse occurring within the family.
Ultimately, it simply comes down to these guys being a bunch of power-hungry scumbags.
