For Justice

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8526/

Is the campaign to have Pope Benedict arrested an act of desperation by the secular movement?

“The New Atheist campaign to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested when he visits Britain later this year exposes the deeply disturbing, authoritarian and even Inquisitorial side to today’s campaigning secularism. There is nothing remotely positive in the demand that British cops lock up the pope and then drag him to some international court on charges of ‘crimes against humanity’. Instead it springs from an increasingly desperate and discombobulated secularism, one which, unable to assert itself positively through Enlightening society and celebrating the achievements of mankind, asserts itself negatively, even repressively, through ridiculing the religious.”

Please help me to figure this one out. How is demanding that a man who sought to cover up crimes committed by the people under is power be arrested an attempt to ridicule the religious. Libby Purves, who speaks of the “good bits of the world of Catholicism is for the campaign. (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8526/)

“It’s worth asking why otherwise fairly intelligent thinkers get so dementedly exercised over the pope and the Catholic Church. What exactly is their beef? What are they objecting to? Very few (if any) of the pope-hunters were raised Catholic, so this isn’t about personal vengeance for some perceived slight by a priest or nun.”
Atheists and theists are objecting to an institution which has abused the trust that people are supposed to have in it. Asking this is akin to asking why we would react angrily to any person who was known to cover up child rape, even if we were never personally affected.

“And despite their current lowdown, historically illiterate attempt to equate a priest fondling a child with a state’s attempt to obliterate an entire people – under the collective tag ‘crime against humanity’”

I will give him that one. Labeling this a ‘crime against humanity’ certainly comes across as a hyperbole though it doesn’t take from the fact that crimes were committed and that the Pope should be charged.

“Also, while of course one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many, it simply isn’t the case that the Catholic Church is a vast, institutionalised paedophile ring wrecking the lives of millions of children around the world. One pope-hunting columnist describes the Vatican as an ‘international criminal conspiracy to protect child rapists’, yet the facts and figures don’t bear that out. If these anti-pope crusaders really were interested in justice and equality, there are numerous other, even worse crimes and scandals that they might investigate and interrogate and try to alleviate.”

Again, the hyperbole aside, terrible crimes have been committed by an institution which is supposed to have the trust of its followers. True Catholics would support all efforts to bring any criminal in the Vatican to justice for the greater good of the Church. He mentions other crimes and scandals. I ask him though what other organization can be named that knowingly covers up child rape?

“No doubt some will accuse me of ‘defending paedophile priests’ in contrast to the New Atheist campaign on behalf of ‘powerless victims’. In truth, my only concern, as an atheistic libertarian, is with analysing the emergence of a new form of hysterical and repressive atheism. And the New Atheists are not the first group of people in history to pursue their own, deeply problematic, fearmongering, illiberal agenda under the guise of trying to win justice for ‘the powerless’.”

O’Neill shouldn’t be accused of defending paedophile priests though we should all ask ‘what the hell is he thinking by making a thinly veiled reference to the rise of the Nazis?’ Yet, “new atheists” are supposed to be the extremists. Congratulations, O’Neill! You went from a call for reasonable debate to crazy Nazi references in a single article.