Massive Protests Against the Pope in London: Are They Justified?

A massive wall of protest lashed out against Pope Benedict XVI in London. Tens of thousands of protesters marched and carried signs proclaiming: The Pope Is Mad; Nope to Pope; No Pedophiles; Benedict's Homophobia Costs Lives; Religion Is Stupid; The Vatican Is a Parasite on Italy; No Pedophiles and No Cover-Ups in Britain; as well as many other anti-papal slogans.

At Downing Street, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, delivered a stinging attack on papal hypocrisy and papal infallibility.

The Pope is on an official state visit to Britain, and the anti-Pope throng strongly protested the use of taxpayers' money to pay for the lavish trappings of this the first state visit to London by any pope.

Many in the protest were critical of Tony Blair as instrumental in what they described as an outrage. Blair is Britain's most prominent Catholic conversion. The Catholic community in London was aware of Blair's forthcoming conversion long before it was made public shortly after he resigned as Prime Minister.

Many of the protesters accused the Pope of homophobia, xenophobia and Islamophobia. The child sexual abuse scandal rocked Britain to the core, and the Pope is generally regarded as the leading conspirator in the cover-up of thousands of pedophile sexual attacks on Catholic children.

For 24 years prior to his election by the Conclave of Cardinals, Benedict XVI was in charge of the pedophile scandal that is finally engulfing the Roman Catholic Church in a flood of public revulsion. Against a looming backdrop of public protest and financial ruin for the foreseeable future, Benedict's papacy is drowning under the weight of his personal role in what many Catholics see as a revolting series of blunders emanating from the global proportions of the child sex abuse scandal.

Under the personal direction of Benedict XVI, the Church has paid out over one billion pounds in settlements to childhood victims of pedophile priests and their families. Lawsuits against the Church name Benedict XVI as a defendant, and the financial drain on the Church promises to continue unabated. Earlier this year, the world's leading Catholic theologian, Hans Kung, published an excoriating letter pointing to Josef Ratzinger's personal role in concealing and covering up the grave child abuse crisis that has stigmatized the Church.

Benedict has caused public outrage in other parts of the world. At Regensburg University, Benedict made Islamophobic remarks that led to a spike in public outrage throughout the Muslim world. Benedict has been critical of Buddhism and Christian fundamentalism as well as other faith traditions.

When he was Prefect to the Congregation on the Doctrine on the Faith, Benedict wrote a letter that many Americans believe caused John Kerry to lose the 2004 presidential election. Benedict's letter to Catholic Bishops condemned Catholic politicians, including John Kerry, who support abortion rights for women. Benedict's letter arrived in America when John Kerry was leading George Bush by double digits in June 2004. Shortly before the letter arrived in the USA, George W. Bush visited the Vatican, where he had an audience with the late John Paul II and met Cardinal Ratzinger who would become Benedict XVI less than one year later. Sidney Blumenthal called Ratzinger's letter attacking Kerry a deciding factor in the presidential election of 2004.

An omnipresent and darkening cloud hovers over the besieged papacy of Benedict XVI, just as it did over the troubling career of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger.

 

Follow Michael Carmichael on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alchemistoxford

Comments

[DeuxExMachina]

06:44 AM on 09/22/2010

From a reluctant media type commenting on an advertising/media blog saying that he thought the Pope's tour of Britain was a success:
http://blog.creamglobal.com/right_brain_left_brain/2010/09/pope-benedict-plays-a-blinder-for-brand-catholic.html

[MalleusMaleficarum]

08:00 AM on 09/22/2010

Letters from Londoners under the banner of: Crusades, Popes & Paedophilia--

I was concerned to read that the pope called "paedophilia", meaning the sexual abuse of children by priests, an "illness" whose "sufferers" had "lost their free will". This is the language of one of those "aggressive forms of secularism" he rightly deplores: psychologism, indeed psychobabble. Its absurdity is shown by His Holiness's also speaking of "penitence". What kind of "illness" calls for penitence?

Anthony Stadlen

London

• I was one of the thousands who "traipsed through London" to protest against the pope's visit. No one within my hearing chanted that the pope belonged in jail, and the event was remarkable for the wide range of protesters present. Your insinuation that this amounted to an anti-papist mob baying for blood is unworthy of a liberal newspaper.

Sue Todd

London

Benedict is a liability for the Roman Catholic Church. His international visits have become grotesque panoplies of manufactured adulation and public protests against his direct personal role in covering up hundreds of thousands of sordid cases of child rape, his reactionary theology and his blatantly atavistic ecclesiology. Your take on the Pope's ridiculous embassy to Britain for his one dinner with the Queen is selective and repetitive. In comments below, you merely cut and paste your own verbiage from point to point. Risible.

[DeuxExMachina]

10:06 AM on 09/22/2010

Well if you detractors keep coming up with the same lame attacks I respond with the same defence. You are trying to make out that his trip was a failure quoting a few comments to a newspaper and even then the second of those was subdued. Any objective person watching the TV coverage of his tour or reading the better British press can see that it was more of a joyous occasion than a defensive play. You're saying I'm risible, I think your anti-Catholic prejudices cloud your judgement.

[DeuxExMachina]

07:10 PM on 09/21/2010

There was some doubt about the wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI visiting a predominately secular Britain with the scandal of rogue clergy in the background. This has been turned on it's head with the Pope having a most successful 4-day visit and providing and, during that time, provided a much needed moral boost to the Catholic Church in both Scotland and England. In addition, his speeches have led to some among the leaders & the general British public to debate what type of society Britain is to have. The British Prime Minister even congratulated him and saw him off at the airport. See:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1313518/Pope-Benedict-XVI-frail-voice-resounding-message.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

[MalleusMaleficarum]

11:25 PM on 09/21/2010

Hardly. The Pope's painful sojourn in Britain was filled with protests, embarrassing press coverage and his exit was seared with financial scandal exploding on his departure. The current headlines proclaim: "Vatican Bank Probe Threatens New Scandal for Beleaguered Pope," and "'Vatican Bank' Under Investigation Again." The Daily Mail that you cited now headlines: "Vatican 'perplexed and amazed' as £19million money-laundering scandal is uncovered at its bank." This Pope has piloted the Vatican and the Roman Catholic church into a seemingly endless concatenation of scandal, controversy and now - money-laundering that has editors and journalists recounting the murder of Robert Calvi. The reality of the Ratzinger-Benedict collision with papal power is that he is destroying the Church more efficiently than the atheists of Britain.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1313974/Vatican-perplexed-amazed-19million-money-laundering-scandal-uncovered-bank.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz10E01dsog"

[DeuxExMachina]

11:43 PM on 09/21/2010

You are being disingenuous. I re-iterate, there were NEGLIGIBLE protestors in Edinburgh on Thursday, in London on Friday, and in Birmingham on Sunday. The Saturday where there was that 10,000 rent-a-mob mix of atheists, communists and libertines, their dedicaton and enthusiasm of those detractors wasn't even that high or they lacked stamina. The BBC reported that they started to drift away at around 5:45 PM on Saturday before the Pope's Hyde Park vigil.
That so-called "money laundering" scandal broke out after he returned to Rome, not on his departure from Britain. The headlines you quote are merely sensational desined to sell copy. And, to my support on this point, even a surprisingly milder labelled article on this website it is stated: "According to the reports, the Vatican bank had neglected to communicate to financial authorities where the money had come from. The reports stressed that Gotti Tedeschi WASN'T being investigated for laundering money himself but for a series of ALLEGED OMMISSIONS in financial transactions. See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/vatican-bank-facing-money_n_732947.html
There is a big difference in being accused of being careless with paperwork and being accused of money laundering.

[MalleusMaleficarum]

09:07 PM on 09/20/2010

Hans Kung said it well in his Open Letter linked above, "There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005)." This leaves little wonder at the massive size of the spontaneous protests hitting the Pope in London. While it took months of wheedling and cajoling to bring out crowds of loyal Catholics willing to greet the pope, tens of thousands of anti-Pope protestors prove the hostility of the public to the excessive hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of Benedict XVI.

[DeuxExMachina]

07:36 PM on 09/21/2010

The current Pope and Hans Kung have history. Years ago, the then Cardinal Ratzinger considered Hans Kung's interpretation of Catholic theology as suspect and the Vatican rescinded his authority to teach Catholic theology. The Church has NOT defrocked Hans Kung and he remains a priest in good standing. In addition, although he is not teaching Catholic theology he is currently a professor of ECUMENICAL theology at the same university.
On your second point, there were NEGLIGIBLE protestors in Edinburgh on Thursday, in London on Friday, and in Birmingham on Sunday. The Saturday where there was that 10,000 rent-a-mob mix of atheists, communists and libertines, their dedicaton and enthusiasm of those detractors wasn't even that high or they lacked stamina. The BBC reported that they started to drift away at around 5:45 PM on Saturday before the Pope's Hyde Park vigil.

[MalleusMaleficarum]

08:26 AM on 09/22/2010

In his Open Letter, Hans Kung wrote: And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous.

[TiberX]

07:42 PM on 09/20/2010

"A massive wall of protest ..", "... tens of thousands of protesters ...". Where on earth are you getting your information from?

According to the Metropolitan Police - who have some experience estimating crowd numbers - there were around 5,000 anti - Pope demonstrators in central London on Saturday and 200,000 waving and cheering him.

Having initially informed the British public that nobody was going to turn up to see the Pope and that his visit would be an unqualified disaster, our newspapers are now telling us what a success the visit was and how the majority of Brits have warmed to the Pope.

A pretty successful visit all-in-all.

[arabia]

07:23 PM on 09/20/2010

Massive protests?? You have to be kidding. If all the UK could come up with was 10-20 thousand protesters, that is hardly "massive" in a country of nearly 60 million! If anything, according to London papers today (read them!), there were huge crowds welcoming the pope -- hundreds of thousands if one includes all three cities covered. And the crowds at Hyde Park, London (85 thousand people) and the crowds five feet deep lining the main route to the Park were huge; and, more interestingly, jubilant.

No wonder David Cameron (prime minister) praised the pope's visit, saying it not only benefited the UK's 6 million Catholics, but also the country as a whole. If anything, the protest crowd and the supposed terrorists brought out many more people than expected -- to welcome the pope. That was the real irony. (Possibly thinking of Pope John Paul's close call with death in 1978, with an assassin's bullet, they wanted to give this pope more support.)

Read the British papers!