Pope Bashing?

Well, I don't know about you, but back when I was 12 years old, I would NOT have known what I was consenting to with a predator priest, whom I would have trusted naturally, I suppose. That alone is terrible!

LaRocha said:

Whenever I see a priest I assume he's asexual or in fear of his sexuality. I didn't think there existed a priest who desired women until that one priest from Miami left the priesthood because he found a vagina that was that fucking good. Imagine if your vagina was good enough to make a priest quit his covenant to God? This guy wasn't going to hide it either, he was proud and pretty much declared: "This woman's vagina is too good. I can't possibly keep it a secret like my homo and pedo brethren."

Click to expand...

By long tradition, that's what the church organist is for - usually and older, unmarried women.

Back in those days, they understood that men - even priests - have needs.

I don't think anybody ever took the whole notion of celibacy seriously until the Nineteenth century - throw in this whole worship of innocence and you're just asking for trouble.

It's a statistical thing.

AllardChardon said:

The Brits are thinking about arresting the Pope when he visits there in September for crimes covered up by him before becoming the Pope...

Click to expand...

It is not "the Brits" but a pressure group. One of the anomalies of English Law is that anyone, even a single person, can make a complaint about crimes and cause the accused to be arrested IF ON BRITISH SOIL. The complaint has to have some form of apparent justification, but not much.

The current UK government was planning to change the law to allow some judicial review between the complaint and the arrest warrant - but they ran out of time.

Heads of State are supposedly immune but even that isn't wholly clear. Is the Pope a Head of State in English Law? The courts could argue for months.

Og

oggbashan said:

It is not "the Brits" but a pressure group. One of the anomalies of English Law is that anyone, even a single person, can make a complaint about crimes and cause the accused to be arrested IF ON BRITISH SOIL. The complaint has to have some form of apparent justification, but not much.

The current UK government was planning to change the law to allow some judicial review between the complaint and the arrest warrant - but they ran out of time.

Heads of State are supposedly immune but even that isn't wholly clear. Is the Pope a Head of State in English Law? The courts could argue for months.

Og

Click to expand...

Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo is the Head of State of Vatican City. The Pope holds no official political titles as far as I know. Still, there's a nation on Earth that's going to arrest the Pope?

In the first article I read about Britain and the Pope, it said it would cost Britain's taxpayers 6 million pounds for his visit. That's a lot of clams for a religious leader that was ejected by Henry VIII.

The Pope's visit is to repair the damage the Irish priests have done and console the victims with one of his masses of reparation. He did the same thing when he was here. Big Whoopee!

Wtf...???

Incidentally, the age of consent in the Vatican is 12.

I must admit I didn't believe this. Then I looked it up.

Vatican State

There is an equal age of consent set at 12 years of age in Art. 331 (1). When there is a relationship of dependence (like teacher/student, etc.) the age of consent is 15 years in Art. 331 (2).

So a priest who buggers a 14 year old alter boy is in trouble, if caught. By waiting a year, it's all good...

My head hurts.....

So what does the age 12 pertain to then with consent issues? If not the teacher, the relatives? I am so confused.

Some Brit bobby is going to arrest Joey Ratz on charges of accessory to stat rape, covering up a crime in Ireland and America? The Vatican's AOC would be irrelevant in Britain, Ireland, or the US. I think all three countries just go by their own laws when making arrests. When sick fucks go to Thailand to have sex with 12 year old boys and girls they get arrested upon their return to American soil. "But it's legal in Thailand, man!" Too bad, go to prison.

LaRocha said:

Some Brit bobby is going to arrest Joey Ratz on charges of accessory to stat rape, covering up a crime in Ireland and America? The Vatican's AOC would be irrelevant in Britain, Ireland, or the US. I think all three countries just go by their own laws when making arrests. When sick fucks go to Thailand to have sex with 12 year old boys and girls they get arrested upon their return to American soil. "But it's legal in Thailand, man!" Too bad, go to prison.

Click to expand...

The Pope is a Head of State. He would have diplomatic immunity from arrest.

he's also a Bavarian primate posing as an Italian Primate.

I hate to say it, but it is a lovely thought. The Pope, being responsible for the actions of his priests, gets arrested and has to stand trial. Of course, that will never happen, but it is such an interesting legal issue. Love those Brits!

Catholic editor joins Vatican's critics

Ah the laity "very troubled"

I was looking for an item I saw where some Italian Mayor thought the controversy was all a

"Zionist-Masonic Plot!"​

But, I couldn't find it.

note to stephen

seems to be your day for repeating scurrilous rumors.

see below. one poster, skepchick, dealt with this topic back in January.

since this Vatican state has a few hundred adults, only, guards, etc. as citizens, the law is of dubious relevance. it's inherited from Italy back in the 20s, and as you probably know, some US states at the time, had about the same rule. there is some argument as to whether the currently higher age in italy applies to the Vatican.

in any case, rules for priests and kids are not the subject of the law.

Hence this is false, perhaps maliciously so.

stephenSo a priest who buggers a 14 year old alter boy is in trouble, if caught. By waiting a year, it's all good...

your involvement and glee over sex scandals in another country, 30 years ago, is, i suspect rooted, in some personal agenda.



from the CBC news a few months back:

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/12/pope-cleric-sex-abuse.html


More clerical sex abuse dismays Pope

German church leaders met with pontiff on new prevention measures
Last Updated: Friday, March 12, 2010 | 8:26 PM ET
The Associated Press

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch listens to reporters' questions during a news conference following an audience with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Friday. (Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press)
Germany's top bishop briefed the Pope on the spiralling cases of clerical sex abuse in the pontiff's native Germany on Friday, and said Benedict encouraged him to pursue the truth and assist the victims.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said Friday the Pope was "greatly dismayed" and "deeply moved" as he was being briefed on the scandal during his 45-minute private audience in the Vatican.

Zollitsch said he briefed the Pope in particular on the measures being taken to confront the scandal.

"The Holy Father was very satisfied with our decisions," Zollitsch told a news conference after the meeting.

At least 170 former students from Catholic schools in Germany have come forward recently with claims of physical and sexual abuse, including at an all-boys choir once led by the Pope's brother.

Abuse suspect returned to work

Pope Benedict XVI's former German diocese said Friday it made a mistake when the pontiff was archbishop in allowing a priest suspected to have abused a child to return to pastoral work. However, it said Benedict wasn't involved in the decision.

The details came hours after Germany's top bishop briefed Pope Benedict XVI on the spiralling cases of clerical sex abuse in the pontiff's native Germany and said the pope encouraged him to pursue the truth and assist the victims.

In Germany, the Munich archdiocese said the chaplain was sent to Munich in 1980 for therapy. The diocese says it was made aware of the "serious errors" by the Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung which first reported on the case for its Saturday edition.

The man, identified only as H., was allowed to stay in a vicarage while undergoing therapy — a decision in which then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger was involved, the statement said.

It said officials believe it was known the therapy was related to suspected "sexual relations with boys."

However, it says a lower-ranking official — Vicar General Gerhard Gruber — then allowed him to help in pastoral work in Munich, a decision for which he takes "full responsibility."

The Vatican press office noted in a brief statement Friday evening that Gruber was assuming "full responsibility" for the transfer of the priest, after therapy, to pastoral duties. Without further comment, the statement included a link to the Munich archdiocese's statement in German.

The archdiocese says there were no accusations against the chaplain relating to his February 1980 to August 1982 spell in Munich. He then moved to nearby Grafing, but was suspended in early 1985 following accusations of sexual abuse — which the archdiocese didn't detail. The following year, he was convicted of sexually abusing minors.

The conviction resulted in an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 4,000 marks, the archdiocese said.

Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to early 1982.




===
stephen's original post



Incidentally, the age of consent in the Vatican is 12.

I must admit I didn't believe this. Then I looked it up.

Vatican State

There is an equal age of consent set at 12 years of age in Art. 331 (1). When there is a relationship of dependence (like teacher/student, etc.) the age of consent is 15 years in Art. 331 (2).

=====
detailed reply on the 'net, a few months back:




http://skepchick.org/blog/2010/01/emergency-de-bunking-vatican-city/

The Twitterverse is suddenly agog at the news that the age of sexual consent in Vatican City is 12. That’s because Catholic priests are all pedos, right?! And yet, how can such a thing possibly be the case without having already been exposed?

The problem started when this link started to get passed round: http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm?12
It says the law of consent for the Vatican is 12.

That’s misleading for several reasons, not least:
1) The law came from the old Italian Codic Penal code, a civil law that Vatican State inherited in 1929. At the time, Italian law stated at the age of consent was 12.

2) It is an arcane law and not enforceable today UPDATE: I called the Vatican Embassy to confirm it’s not enforceable, but they are not there til Monday morning.

3) Even if it was, the law only applies to citizens of Vatican State, which is 824 people.

4) All 824 citizens are prelates and guards. No children are citizens of Vatican State, and never have been. UPDATE: Thanks to @madgestar for pointing out that the citizenship can be extended to children. That does not mean you can legally have sex with them though! Here’s a list of all the current citizens.

UPDATE: 5) Still looking into this, but some sources (none primary, so far) say that the law may only have applied (still does apply?) to citizens of equal age.

UPDATE: 6) This page (odd NZ conservative website) says that Italian law still applies:

“From what I can determine, the source of this information comes from the Wikipedia page listing the age of consent for all countries around the world [ref]. It argues that once these laws came into existence in 1929, they were fixed from then on. This is not so. The pact allowed for the laws of Italy, as they changed, to continually apply to the Vatican. Currently, this age is 14/16. Specifically:
The age of consent in Italy is 14 years, with a close-in-age exception that allows those aged 13 to engage in sexual activity with partners who are less than 3 years older. The age of consent rises to 16 if one of the participants has some kind of influence on the other (e.g. teacher, tutor, biological or adoptive parent)”

UPDATE: 7) In trying to confirm the above, it seems that the 1929 treaty was updated in 1984, so that may help shed some light on whether general Italian law applies in this case rather than the archaic law. The original treaty “also allowed for the use of Italian law as well as provincial and municipal Roman law when they did not conflict with canon law, the rules of the Lateran Treaty (and, later, the 1984 Concordat), or divine law.” from here.

Further to point 6, this BBC article confirms that in 2009 the Vatican did indeed decide to divorce itself from general Italian law, so that new Italian laws would no longer automatically apply. They’re worried about new Italian laws like letting homosexuals marry, so they elected to opt out entirely. If ‘new’ Italian laws automatically apply to the Vatican, then that would include the updated age of consent laws, which are currently 14. Not much better than 12, but still.
This is what I was expecting the Embassy to confirm, but we’ll have to wait til Monday to know for sure.

Can we stop the OMGing now? Thanks.

EDIT: because this was an emergency debunking, I may update it as I get more info. I have read in a couple of places that the law was updated at some point to 14, but can’t find a decent source for that. Either way it’s still an arcane law.

Provincial Italia

The age of consent in Sicily and Calabria is what her parents say it is ... or is not.

From Yahoo News...

Pope 'has no UK arrest immunity'
Sunday, April 11 05:59 pm

Plans to have the Pope arrested when he visits the UK will succeed because he is not a head of state, a solicitor has said.

Atheist authors Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens proposed the action against the Pontiff for his handling of child abuse scandals in the Catholic church.

The writers' solicitor Mark Stephens said applications will be made to courts in the UK and the International Criminal Court for a warrant for Pope Benedict XVI's arrest.

His likely defence would be be that he is immune from prosecution during his visit to Britain in September, according to the lawyer.

Mr Stephens said: "The courts will examine the claim of immunity. I believe that an English court would reject it. If the Pope was here on a state visit, ordinarily a head of state would have sovereign immunity. What I believe is that because he's not a sovereign, not a head of state, he's not entitled to the defence."

He said that the Vatican was declared to be a state by Benito Mussolini, but this had no standing in international law.

The Pope faced criticism after it emerged that he signed a letter which delayed the punishment of a paedophile priest in the US for the "good of the universal church".

Writing in 1985, the future Pontiff said that he needed more time to consider the case.

Mr Stephens, who has represented abuse victims in the past said: "This will require the Pope to deal with the way in which he appears to have prioritised the reputation of the Catholic church over the welfare of children."

Potential charges against the Pope would be crimes against humanity.

oggbashan said:

Mr Stephens said: "The courts will examine the claim of immunity. I believe that an English court would reject it. If the Pope was here on a state visit, ordinarily a head of state would have sovereign immunity. What I believe is that because he's not a sovereign, not a head of state, he's not entitled to the defence."

Click to expand...

I suspect that Mr Stephens may be more than a tad optimistic but I suppose the courts took some interest in the late General Pinochet.

ishtat said:

I suspect that Mr Stephens may be more than a tad optimistic but I suppose the courts took some interest in the late General Pinochet.

Click to expand...

I would suspect, but I might be misjudging him, that Mr Stephens is probably more interested in his fees for such a high-profile case. He is a lawyer.

Og

Good morning All,

Lots to catch up on but I wanted to start with this quote from the article posted by Jack Luis. It addresses the reactions of American Catholics to the charge that homosexuals are the root or the pedophile problem;

"The Vatican tried, in a statement issued Wednesday, to clarify what Bertone meant.

But the statement added to the controversy by including a reference to a controversial Catholic church definition of pedophilia.

In the "strict sense," pedophilia only involves the sexual abuse of pre-adolescents, not children in their teens, the statement said.

Making that distinction was "like a bank robber minimizing his crimes by claiming he pointed a small pistol at the innocent patrons and took only 50-dollar bills, not 100-dollar bills," SNAP said."

SNAP is the abuse survivors' support group.

So, once a child becomes 13, they are fair game?

Okay, all caught up, now back to the Pope being arrested in Britain...

The Pope is NOT a head of state, no matter what Mussolini said or did, and is responsible for what he has knowingly allowed and covered up. IMO

allardch In the "strict sense," pedophilia only involves the sexual abuse of pre-adolescents, not children in their teens, the statement said.

Making that distinction was "like a bank robber minimizing his crimes by claiming he pointed a small pistol at the innocent patrons and took only 50-dollar bills, not 100-dollar bills," SNAP said."

SNAP is the abuse survivors' support group.
===

SNAP is being very silly. It's more like if you've been robbing the grocery store, you aren't charged with BANK robbery. get it?

pedo--kids
hebe--youth.

"Pope breaks silence on abuse, urges repentance" from yahoo.news

Latest breaking news and a quote:

"The main U.S. victims group immediately dismissed his comments, saying they are meaningless unless Benedict takes concrete steps to safeguard children from pedophile priests.

Benedict made the remarks during an off-the-cuff homily at a Mass inside the Vatican for members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

"I must say, we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'repent', which seemed too tough. But now under attack from the world, which has been telling us about our sins ... we realize that it's necessary to repent, in other words, recognize what is wrong in our lives," Benedict said.

"Open ourselves to forgiveness ... and let ourselves be transformed. The pain of repentance, which is a purification and transformation, is a grace because it is renewal and the work of divine mercy," he said.

Victims of clerical abuse have long demanded that Benedict take more personal responsibility for clerical abuse, charging that the Vatican orchestrated a culture of cover-up and secrecy that allowed priests to rape and molest children unchecked for decades.

Those demands have intensified in recent weeks as the Vatican and Benedict himself have been accused of negligence in handling some cases in Europe and the United States.

"Factual disclosures are not 'attacks' and 'penance' protects no one," said Mark Serrano, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the U.S. group. (SNAP)

"When the Pope can't bring himself to utter the words 'pedophile priest' or 'child sex crimes' or 'cover-ups' or 'complicit bishops,' it's hard to have faith that he is able to honestly and effectively deal with this growing crisis," Serrano said in a statement.

Benedict's comments were his fullest allusion yet to the scandal since he sent a letter to the Irish faithful March 20 concerning what Irish-government inquiries have concluded was decades of abuse and church-mandated cover-up in the country."


Yeah, repentance is gonna fix everything. Hogwash!

I know I would have felt like the Pope was taking some responsibility for the massive cover-ups if he had stated that HE needed to repent instead of every Catholic across the world.

He never will admit his mistakes, he is the POPE!

oggbashan said:

Pope 'has no UK arrest immunity'
Sunday, April 11 05:59 pm

Plans to have the Pope arrested when he visits the UK will succeed because he is not a head of state, a solicitor has said.

Atheist authors Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens proposed the action against the Pontiff for his handling of child abuse scandals in the Catholic church.

The writers' solicitor Mark Stephens said applications will be made to courts in the UK and the International Criminal Court for a warrant for Pope Benedict XVI's arrest.

His likely defence would be be that he is immune from prosecution during his visit to Britain in September, according to the lawyer.

Mr Stephens said: "The courts will examine the claim of immunity. I believe that an English court would reject it. If the Pope was here on a state visit, ordinarily a head of state would have sovereign immunity. What I believe is that because he's not a sovereign, not a head of state, he's not entitled to the defence."

He said that the Vatican was declared to be a state by Benito Mussolini, but this had no standing in international law.

The Pope faced criticism after it emerged that he signed a letter which delayed the punishment of a paedophile priest in the US for the "good of the universal church".

Writing in 1985, the future Pontiff said that he needed more time to consider the case.

Mr Stephens, who has represented abuse victims in the past said: "This will require the Pope to deal with the way in which he appears to have prioritised the reputation of the Catholic church over the welfare of children."

Potential charges against the Pope would be crimes against humanity.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the Pope will be tried for crimes against humanity in Britain once Henry Kissinger shows up to face his charges in The Hague. Christopher Hitchens Missionary Position.

AllardChardon said:

I know I would have felt like the Pope was taking some responsibility for the massive cover-ups if he had stated that HE needed to repent instead of every Catholic across the world.

He never will admit his mistakes, he is the POPE!

Click to expand...

The Pope doesn't have to ask for forgiveness from anyone, actually no one does. You don't ask for forgiveness from mankind, it's a personal appeal to God. Maybe Joey Ratz has already asked God for forgiveness for covering up abuse.

LaRocha said:

Maybe Joey Ratz has already asked God for forgiveness for covering up abuse.

Click to expand...

Well, yes, that's the root of the problem in the Catholic church. You sin, you repent and ask for forgiveness, you are forgiven and told how many Hail Mary's you'll need to do as penitence, you sin again, you . . .

It's a convenient circle.