Hawt Arrest The Pope!

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Nov 11, 2008
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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.
The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.



Benedict will be in Britain between September 16 and 19, visiting London, Glasgow and Coventry, where he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th-century theologian.
Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is categorised as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.
They have commissioned the barrister Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, a solicitor, to present a justification for legal action.
The lawyers believe they can ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against him or refer his case to the International Criminal Court.
Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence.”
Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, said: “This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment."
Last year pro-Palestinian activists persuaded a British judge to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the Israeli politician, for offences allegedly committed during the 2008-09 conflict in Gaza. The warrant was withdrawn after Livni cancelled her planned trip to the UK.
“There is every possibility of legal action against the Pope occurring,” said Stephens. “Geoffrey and I have both come to the view that the Vatican is not actually a state in international law. It is not recognised by the UN, it does not have borders that are policed and its relations are not of a full diplomatic nature.”

I fucking wish! It will be interesting to see what transpires, but ultimately I do not expect any arrest of the pope, especially in England.
 
I would give it a lot more credence if it this action was being taken up by someone other than a vocal atheist. instead, I see this as nothing more than a publicity action.
 
Well he's not just some run of the mill joe blow atheist. He an extremely intelligent man, so is Hitchens.

It definitely has the possibility, but I just don't see England of all countries arresting the Pope. Hypothetically, that's like Obama arresting Nelson Mandela. If Mandela had committed the same crime.
 
Yeah right. No one is going to arrest the Pope. There would be an international outcry of butthurtedness the likes of which mankind has never seen before.
 
While it wouldn't be on the level of jihadistic craziness if the top imam of the Islamic religion were arrested, it would not be a quiet thing. Not at all.

Most definitely there will be people extremely disturbed if he is arrested. But ultimately, the guy did something very bad. Some people may just not want to touch this.
 
Most definitely there will be people extremely disturbed if he is arrested. But ultimately, the guy did something very bad. Some people may just not want to touch this.

If the allegations are true, and I'm going to say that some probably are, and some are probably grossly exaggerated, and he gets arrested for them, while the guys at the top levels of the various banks involved with pretty much the wholesale rape of the world economy not only walk scott free but are able to keep doing what they are doing, then I'm all for anyone who wants to start a global revolution and move us into a state of anarchy.
 
You think every Christian actually cares about the Pope?

Quite a bit do, however, I'd be willing to be that the American outcry would be the lowest of them since American Catholics have become more than a bit apathetic about the church in the past 30 years or so. No idea what the mindset is in Europe, but Central/South americans are freakin crazy about religion.

Don't even blaspheme within earshot of a catholic mexican mom... It's ugly what happens next.
 
I think every Catholic does, and untold millions of protestants.

Hitchens and Dawkins need to understand that while they don't care about religion, religious people don't care about them, either. They aren't doing this for posterity, they're doing it to further their own goals and beliefs. It's political.
 
I think every Catholic does, and untold millions of protestants.

Hitchens and Dawkins need to understand that while they don't care about religion, religious people don't care about them, either. They aren't doing this for posterity, they're doing it to further their own goals and beliefs. It's political.

All Chatholics do? lol, you're dreaming..
 
Quite a bit do, however, I'd be willing to be that the American outcry would be the lowest of them since American Catholics have become more than a bit apathetic about the church in the past 30 years or so. No idea what the mindset is in Europe, but Central/South americans are freakin crazy about religion.

Don't even blaspheme within earshot of a catholic mexican mom... It's ugly what happens next.

Central and South America may cry big indeed, but will anyone hear them?
 
Central and South America may cry big indeed, but will anyone hear them?

Good point. Overall, though, an action like this of arresting the pope, who, technically, is a state leader, would have farther reaching implications across the board. While catholics on the whole may not be as militant as Islamics, make no mistake that this kind of action, if followed through, could just as easily result in an explosion of protests and riots across the globe, or simply just become fodder for the blogosphere and nothing more. Neither result would surprise me.