I will arrest the Pope

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What do you think about this? Okay? Not okay?

A bit extreme but, even as a Christian directly under Catholic church, I find it okay. Crimes must be paid for, whether it's man's or God's rules.

You know i have always supported Dawkins ideas, but i find that his crusade (although at the beginning was epic) has just maybe over stepped a line.

By all means i'm not condoning child molestation/abuse and i honestly believe that if we had never found religion then we would be far more advanced. but alas religion is like cigarette's we thought it was cool at first but now it has become so ingrained in our culture that we cannot just send its leader to jail and remove it from the history books..

my question would be what does Dawkins and Hitchens think this will achieve?

Whilst at it, why not arrest Bush for the killing of innocent people? Both people are said to cover up a lot of stuff.
It's not like the pope should be all like "HEY GAIZ WE RAEP PEOPLE IN OUR CHURCH!", just like America doesn't go all like "Hey guys we killed some guys because we thought they were terrorists but their appearently not."
The only reason he's doing this is to try to convince people that religion is fake I guess. But if he succeeds there'll be some chaos and more fierce discussions between atheists and religious people.

I also wonder what - if it succeeds - kind of impact it has on the relations between England and other countries. I would see some countries taking some measures to make it harder for Brittain to trade or maybe even boycot things from Brittain.

Tl;dr: Not okay.

P.s. Sorry if this post goes against the rules, I accept it if I get a warning/ban/infaction.

BUT HE'S INFALLIBLE NOW!!

Should of nabbed him when he was regular old run of the mill Child Rape covering up Ratzinger. I'm no believer in organized religion, but I really would think you would at least in this case open yourself up to an external investigation for all things good. Yaknow, maybe it's time the Catholic church allowed female priests and maybe scrapping the "celibacy" thing. Not saying child abuse would go away but...couldn't hurt.

.. Religion is such a big part of the world these days.. well it always has really. People getting accused of Herecy and whatnot in the early days blah blah. It depends though will people get up in arms if the Pope gets arrested? From what I read there it sounds as if the Pope condoned the behaviour of sexual molestation..and that anyone caught will get a slap on the wrist. :f6: Or maybe I missed something..

I agree with what this Dawkin's person says, in some ways.. not all. Arresting the pope is bound to cause controversy, and alot of people will get up in arms without knowing the full story because he is the Pope...

Well lets just wait and see what happens.. shouldn't they be more concerned about the priest the Pope let go? Shouldn't they be more focussed on the fact that it wasn't the Pope that did the molestation but a priest.. In a way it seems they are forgetting about that priest.. Forget the person who is worried about the good of his church, and deal with the scum who did it in the first place.

Or does the Pope have such high authority that what he says the world follows?

Cummins, 82 and now retired, initially told the AP he did not recall writing to Ratzinger about Kiesle, but he remembered when shown the letter with his signature on Friday. He said things had changed over the past quarter century.

"When he (Ratzinger) took over I think he was following what was the practice of the time, that Pope John Paul was slowing these things down. You didn't just walk out of the priesthood then," Cummins said.

"These things were slow and their idea of thoroughness was a little more than ours. We were in a situation that was hands-on, with personal reaction."

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Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations.

He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.

Kiesle, now 63 and a registered sex offender, lives in a Walnut Creek gated community, according to his address listed on the Megan's Law sex registry. An AP reporter was turned away when attempting to reach him for comment.

William Gagen, an attorney who represented Kiesle in 2002, did not return a call for comment.

Pied Piper
More than a half-dozen victims reached a settlement in 2005 with the Oakland diocese alleging Kiesle had molested them as young children.

"He admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the Pied Piper and said he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap," said Lewis VanBlois, an attorney for six Kiesle victims who interviewed the former priest in prison. "When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he said 'tons.'"

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The diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.

The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed.

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.

As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.

In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.

"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.

While papers obtained by the AP include only one letter with Ratzinger's signature, correspondence and internal memos from the diocese refer to a letter dated Nov. 17, 1981, from the then-cardinal to the bishop. Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a week later.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36325154/ns/us_news-faith//

Unfortunately, the leaders of my religion have gotten themselves into a pickle. I know this may sound terrible, but maybe it's time something is done about everyone covering up. The pope is human and humans make mistakes...Perhaps arresting him will be a lesson learned.

I don't think I like that guy's motives, but I do support this somewhat. Covering up that stuff is no small thing, and why he would do that as the person in charge of that type of investigation is beyond me. I think someone should be held accountable, but I'm not sure this would even do anything. It would panic roman-Catholics the world over, and who knows if the Pope will actually learn anything. I doubt it.

Also, the Pope is only infallible when making a decree from Peter's chair -- which is only sat in on rare occasions. That was the chair Benedict sat in when he decreed that women couldn't hold any decent office within the church, so make of that what you will.

Or does the Pope have such high authority that what he says the world follows?

no, just within the 2.1 devout christens of the world.

As a Prostestant Christian, I beleive the pope is only human. He is a human being, and if he does anything illegal he should be punished for it. Richard Dawkins is probably doing this in an attempt to debunk christianity, however given that alot of emerging chruch movements view Jesus Christ himself as the main symbol of their faith, I doubt it will work. I never found him a really convincing Atheist, however I respect him for his defense of evolution.

When I think "militant atheism" I always picture atheists stooping to Westboro Baptist Church levels of jackassery. Which gets me down. But then I listen to Dawkins speak, and nearly everything he says seems lucid, reasonable, and necessary.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richar...heism.html

As for arresting the Pope? Why not. The institution will survive. If we get lucky they might even realize how necessary it is for them to adapt in modern times. I don't think a charge of crimes against humanity would stick, but it would be quite a spectacle to see Dawkins try. By extension Bush too? Why not. If someone has the balls to do it.

The Pope did nothing wrong. You're all just a bunch of cry-babies. Dawkins also needs to stop pretending he's on a moral crusade to save us from the inherent evils of religion. The history of priest raping boys has been known in the United States since the 1950s. The Catholic System is a religious bureaucracy and it's members are often faithful servants who don't want to create chaos within the order. If you're upset with the possibility that your priest could be raping your little boy, then change denominations or even religions for that matter. The person who molested the child was not the Pope. It was this scum-bag Kiesle. Ratzinger didn't appoint this man into service. He probably thought that the guy repented after admitting to his crimes in court. It's easy to blame people because hind-sight is always 20-20. But when you're on the hot-seat and you have the power to make someone's life miserable without knowing all the facts, it's easy to procrastinate and try to see if the matter gets resolved by itself. Dirty Priests are a problem but I don't understand how aiming at the Pope is the solution. Dawkins just wants to flaunt what he perceives to be a man-made religion fraught with corruption and deceit.

I read the Southperryan comments before the website, and I was thinking "Holy crap! Stephen Dawkins would do such a thing?!!??!" Thank god it's not him .

This Dawkins is an attention seeking brat. Swerve basically summed it up for me.

The Church itself isn't actually, believe or not, wanting to cause bad in the world. Its intentions are good. Humans all over the globe learn lessons from religion. There's just a bunch of fucking idiots in there.