In one of his series of lectures, Mark Steel tells of a 14th poll tax introduced by the monarchy of the day to pay for their ongoing wars with France.
The tax was levied on each person in England over the age of 14 but as the tax collectors didn't know how many people were in each household, a rule was passed so the tax collectors could decide if a person was over 14 by checking if they had pubic hair and to allay any fears, all checks carried out by the local Catholic priests.
Move on 650 years or so and it seems that the Priests are still doing it which is why the Catholic Church, and the Pope, finds itself under such attack today and rightly so.
Dismissed initially as petty gossip, a letter from Pope Benedict, then plain old Joseph Ratzinger and deputy at the Vatican doctrinal office, has emerged where he told Wisconsin Bishops to drop a Church trial for a priest with a record of molesting children to protect the reputation of the Church for which it would have grave significance if it become public.
Now Ratzinger has the top job and the pressure is on him to resign which of course he won't so i truly hope that the attempt by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to have the Pope arrested and put on trial for the covering-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church when he lands here in September succeeds.
The Vatican has already suggested the pope is immune from prosecution because he is a head of state but the duo are arguing that because he is not the head of a state with full United Nations membership (the Vatican has only observer status), he does not hold immunity and can be arrested.
As a German and former Nazi youth of the Third Reich, he should be fully aware that as an officer of state he is responsible for all actions carried out by those under his authority.
It should make it an entertaining September this year.
4 comments:
hanz,
good luck with arrresting the Pope. let us know how it goes...
q
ps - even hitler knew it was a mistake to mess with the Pope...
pss - i think close to 2 billion people call themselves catholic... oh yeah, twice as big as china...
I'm sure it will make the news if the Pope gets landed at her majestys pleasure q.
Q- an enabler of paedos is an enabler of paedos, no matter how popular he is. Sometimes even doomed endeavours are worth doing, simply because the effort is a noble one.
You Brits are too hard on ol' Ratzy for being a German. He was pressed into the Hitler Youth and he deserted basically as soon as he could.
I would agree that humans will be humans and humans tend to like sex. I don't know if the whole clerical celibacy thing was the most genius innovation. But I've heard somewhere (and I won't swear by it) that Protestant clergy are more profligate abusers of children than Catholic clergy. This doesn't excuse the Catholic church from its errors, but it may be that the Catholic Church is getting more heat than other institutions would from their few bad apples.
-Nog
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