Dead Ratz

As we reel with the overwhelming hypocrisy today over the mourning of Pope Ratzinger, and the bizarre calls for him to be "made a saint" [for what, ffs?? following Hitler? lying about his knowledge of child-abusing priests? calling gay people an "intrinsic moral evil"?], I refer back with barely-restrained rage to the observations on this vile man by a far wiser and far more erudite scholar, Richard Dawkins, at the "Protest the Pope" rally back in 2010 - in which I was a proud participant:

The unfortunate little fact that Joseph Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth has been the subject of a widely observed moratorium. I’ve respected it myself, hitherto. But after the Pope ... blaming atheism for Hitler, one can’t help feeling that the gloves are off. At first I was annoyed by the Pope’s disgraceful attack on atheists and secularists, but then I saw it as reassuring. It suggests that we have rattled them so much that they have to resort to insulting us, in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the child rape scandal.

Even if Hitler had been an atheist – as Stalin more surely was – how dare Ratzinger suggest that atheism has any connection whatsoever with their horrific deeds? Any more than Hitler and Stalin’s non-belief in leprechauns or unicorns. Any more than their sporting of a moustache – along with Franco and Saddam Hussein. There is no logical pathway from atheism to wickedness. Unless, that is, you are steeped in the vile obscenity at the heart of Catholic theology. I refer to the doctrine of Original Sin. These people believe – and they teach this to tiny children, at the same time as they teach them the terrifying falsehood of hell – that every baby is “born in sin”. That would be Adam’s sin, by the way: Adam who, as they themselves now admit, never existed. Original sin means that, from the moment we are born, we are wicked, corrupt, damned. Unless we believe in their God. Or unless we fall for the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell. That, ladies and gentleman, is the disgusting theory that leads them to presume that it was godlessness that made Hitler and Stalin the monsters that they were. We are all monsters unless redeemed by Jesus. What a vile, depraved, inhuman theory to base your life on.

Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity.

He is an enemy of children, whose bodies he has allowed to be raped and whose minds he has encouraged to be infected with guilt. It is embarrassingly clear that the church is less concerned with saving child bodies from rapists than with saving priestly souls from hell: and most concerned with saving the long-term reputation of the church itself.

He is an enemy of gay people, bestowing on them the sort of bigotry that his church used to reserve for Jews.

He is an enemy of women – barring them from the priesthood as though a penis were an essential tool for pastoral duties. What other employer is allowed to discriminate on grounds of sex, when filling a job that manifestly doesn’t require physical strength or some other quality that only males might be thought to have?

He is an enemy of truth, promoting barefaced lies about condoms not protecting against AIDS, especially in Africa.

He is an enemy of science, obstructing vital stem-cell research, on grounds not of morality but of pre-scientific superstition.

He is an enemy of the poorest people on the planet, condemning them to inflated families that they cannot feed, and so keeping them in the bondage of perpetual poverty. A poverty that sits ill with the obscene riches of the Vatican.

[NOTE: "The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence ... is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe." - Avro Manhattan, The Vatican Billions]

A medieval aberration; The Vatican State was created by Mussolini to ensure Papal neutrality during the rise of the Fascists. The moral authority of the Catholic behemoth has been challenged time and again, and it was Ratzinger's own attempts to cover-up scandals of child sex abuse that poured oil on the fire.

Shame on the world media for giving this Papal pantomime any more airtime than it would to any other undemocratic dictatorship, let alone with the reverence of acres of coverage of the funeral of someone who was not head of any state, nor even the incumbent in any position of power.