Sadly, no.

34 replies on “Could The Pope Be Indicted, Arrested, Tried, Convicted and Imprisoned?”

  1. International law prevents prosecution of heads of state. The U.S. made an exception for Saddam, but that’s cause he tried to kill W’s Dad.

  2. This never stopped us from imprisoning people in GITMO and other secret prisons.

    I think you meant to say “Can the Pope LEGALLY be …”

    We can imprison him. Heck, Italy still has arrest warrants for more than 10 of our CIA agents who did that to someone in Italy …

  3. While gay bashing is verboten — to use Benedict’s native tongue — anti-Catholic bigotry is apparently still acceptable.

  4. @10 Not just Catholics but true Christians in general, to them it’s cool to bash an entire religion.

    And while I’m well aware that most of this is being driven by anti-Christian demagogues, I also believe that if the accusations are proven without a doubt to be true no one should be exempt from facing the law if they have been found to be involved or covered up such an atrocious and abominable act. Unlike the anti-Christian bigots who are quick to make exemptions for child molesters like Polanski ( just because they share their same ideology and worldview ), true people of faith do not accomodate monsters that have harmed and destroyed the lives of the most innocent amongst us.

  5. Maybe we will have to just settle for making the pope the target of scorn and ridicule for now. As more people learn that he saw reporting the rape of children by priests as a bigger sin than the actual rape it will be come clear that he is a horse’s ass with no redeeming qualities. Why anyone calls him “his holiness” is beyond me.

  6. @14, yes, we’ll all just wait quietly while you investigate whether the accusations of child rape are proven without a doubt. Lord knows, the convictions and endless series of major victim awards aren’t evidence enough.

  7. @14: Who the fuck is making exceptions for Polanski here? Some Hollywood wankers, sure, but who the fuck cares about them? And even they don’t forgive Polanski because he shares their worldview, they forgive him because he shares their lifestyle and social circles.

  8. As long as we consider the rights of nation-states to trump the rights of actual people, the crimes committed by the powerful – and their friends and cronies – can never be brought to justice.

  9. and @15: Are you seriously accepting Loveschildrapebutonlybypriests’s claim that we are bigots? Because I for one don’t discriminate on the basis of religion: I treat Christian homophobes with the same degree of contempt as secular homophobes, Christian torturer-worshippers (see: Hell) with the same degree of contempt as secular torturer-worshippers, etc.

  10. @22: Well, when you say use a phrase like “The bigot calling the bigots bigoted” [emphasis added] to describe LC’s actions, it gets a little hard to tell.

  11. If the majority of Catholics wanted it, they could force a change. Stop tithing. Stop donating to Catholic charities. Pull kids out of Catholic school. Stop attending Mass altogether and leave just the priests muttering sermons to themselves in empty buildings. But the reality is that most Catholics are perfectly happy to keep drinking the Kool-Aid, and are perfectly happy with the status quo.

  12. The pope is the holiest man alive, the direct representative of god on earth. The pope is infallible. If the pope covers up child rape, then clearly god intends for the raping of children by clergy to be covered up. (It’s less clear why he would allow word about it to get out, but I guess there’s that whole pesky free will thing, although surely god can just circumvent that if he wants).

  13. @14: So criticism = bigotry? Although from what I’ve always seen you post on here, Loveschild, you’ve long held that strange view.

    And I’d like to see that correlation you have between people who support Polanski raping a child and people who hate and discriminate against Christians.

    Also, being an atheist and/or calling out various church abuses doesn’t make one a bigot.

    (I am an atheist that works for a religious organization, by the way.)

  14. Why do we even recognize Vatican City as a country? I’m sure the Mormon Church would love to rule its own country, but we don’t allow Utah to secede. Nor does any other church on the planet have its own seat at the UN. What makes the Catholic Church so special that it should get special treatment and special rights?

    I guess we’ll know that Italy has gone fully and properly secular when it annexes that little ranch and subjects the owner to the rule of law.

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