| Is the RCC destroying itself? Jun 5th 2012, 07:31 Personally, I think what follows is wishful thinking. The RCC has managed to survive scandal after scandal and yet still the faithful flock to it. I got this via email. I'm not sure that the writer wants his name publicised at the moment, so I am putting it here as an anonymous contribution Quote:
The advantage is ours. The Catholic Church has never been more weak and vulnerable than it is right now. Ever in its entire history. If we seize the moment we can do much to finally and fully expose the Roman Church for the perfidious criminal dictatorship that it has been for the last two thousand years, and destroy much of the hold it still has over so many. And hopefully reduce the Vatican from a sovereign nation to church property in Rome.
As you presumably know, under the authority of Benedict the Vatican has arrested the Pope's butler – the Pope's BUTLER for deities' sake -- on charges that it is he who has been leaking documents that over the last few months been exposing the highest ranks of the Holy See as shady underhanded conspirators and conniving rivals so corrupt that JP Morgan announced it will no longer deal with the long notorious Vatican Bank on suspicions of nefarious money laundering (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...ntroversy.html, http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-account.html; that's after the Eurobanking system seized tens of millions of VB funds on similar suspicions, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/wo...22vatican.html). And there is the Mexico drug cartel story (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17445872). The butler affair has hit the international media big time, it made all the major US network news broadcasts Saturday evening and is becoming regular fare, which it will be years to come. Making the Dan Brown novels look tame by comparison, it's the story that will keep on giving forever.
Meanwhile in her best selling memoir Anna Quindlen announced she has at long last left the church. Meanwhile E. J. Dionne Jr goes on about how he is sticking with Rome despite the superb Washington Post ad requesting all decent Catholics abandon the institution – and with the controversy and attention garnered by the ad let's drop how such ads don't work.
And please, I beg of you all. As a person who has been researching this for years – I have read every damn NY Times, Wall St J and Washington Post article on the jaw dropping links between the Popes, the Vatican Bank, the Mob and other assorted criminal elements – please understand that the pedophile and related sex scandals as bad as they are trivial compared what the scoundrels at Rome have been up to.
The Mother Church is now in extreme danger, far more than it was when the pedophile scandal started to really break out in 2001 after simmering for decades. That's because the sex scandals do not threaten the core legal status of the Vatican/Holy See the way this disaster does. There is now an inside man who knows a lot of the goods and is threatening to spill the beans. The Pope hopes to try this man inside the Vatican where he can control the flow of information, and then turn him over to Italian authorities for imprisonment for turning Papal papers over to the press. Whether Paolo Gabrielle is a truly decent man trying to do the right thing, or is part of one of the competing power factions in the Vatican, he is a whistleblower, the man who once out of the Vatican can tell the media whatever he wants to. Being a legally narrow subject the sex scandals never provided the political and legal mechanisms for destroying the nation-church. This much broader situation provides the means. This at a time when western Christianity is weaker than ever (as I explained in the article I just sent this link to most of you [http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.c...nse-of-theism], sorry for all the emails I've sent some of you as events suddenly pile up).
Just as the tipping point for the press to feel free to really go over the Catholic Church over the cover up of priests buggering kids came in 2001, in 2012 the press is finally going to feel free to chase down Rome for its financial crimes. After all, the Butler did it! It's just too juicy for them not to play for all its worth. And it is the sort of thing that promises to strip the last of the aura of legitimacy from the damn church. What we need to do is do all we can on an emergency basis to help the process play out. Of course the Holy See is going to do all it can to downplay the Vatileaks and try to minimize the fallout, and much of the mainstream will be tempted to go along and continue the idea that the church is a moral force – a discussion of how the Holy See is trying to make the whistle blowing an act against god and the trial of the butler may be held in secret is at http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...stigation.html. We need to abort that. And that requires getting ahead of the game and being the first to set the bar high when it comes to the ground rules for the future investigation of the criminal Vatican mob. Here's how.
Separately and/or jointly the atheist-secular organizations need to this week if at all possible release declarations along the lines of the following (this is a quick, rough draft) –
-- Demand that the Pope cease persecuting the butler and any other whistleblowers, and immediately release him if he remains detained. (According to the Fundamental Law of Vatican City State 2000 "The Supreme Pontiff, Sovereign of Vatican City State, has the fullness of legislative, executive and judicial powers," he can do whatever he pleases.) Gabrielle has committed no actual crime, he is a classic whistleblower. Any trials secret or otherwise held within the dictatorial Vatican are automatically invalid and to be opposed as violating human rights. If any trials are held they must be through the Italian courts.
-- Demand that outside legal authorities investigate what the butler knows, and request that Paolo and others cooperate.
-- Demand full exposure, in particular that the Vatican abandon its chronic self serving secrecy and immediately open the files of the super secretive Vatican Bank and the Vatican itself to investigation by international law organizations and a neutral commission, as well as journalists and historians.
-- Demand that at least one of the following occur: that the currently lawless and untouchable Vatican surrender its sovereign status and become like all other churches -- simple property and personnel subject to the laws of the country within they reside; or that the international community pressure and if necessary by legal force compel the Vatican to surrender to Italian sovereignty (including a photograph of Mussolini posing with the Pope upon the signing of the 1929 accord that made the Vatican independent would help).
-- Demand that the Vatican Bank be disassembled – no church needs a bank.
-- Propose that nations and international courts issue warrants for the arrest of the Pope, making him a prisoner of the Vatican at least as long as it retains sovereignty.
-- Insist that mere resignation of the current Pope in favor of an alleged reformer and other similar moves is entirely insufficient, that the Vatican must be stripped of its national status.
-- Reinsist that all decent Catholcis abandon the church because its core doctrine requires that it be remain a dictatorship that will always be corrupt (and explain why this is true because of the direct link to Jesus and Peter, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely).
-- Back up these demands with the abundant documentation of decades of links between the Holy See and criminal elements, as well as its support for Fascism.
If the atheosecular community does not act very fast to set the bar high, the mainstream community and press will go along with the usual suggestions for mild reforms, including perhaps the resignation of Benedict, leaving the church little touched and ready for the further corruption a national dictatorship will invariably slip into.
As good as they were, the Freedom From Religion Foundation ads did not adequately explain why the Catholic Church cannot ever be reformed, and it focused on the sex scandals when far worse has been going on. This is an opportunity to fill in the gaps.
The need for documentation of the case against the church cannot be overemphasized. The lack of knowledge among atheists about the illicit activities of the church is itself an outrageous scandal. There is no excuse for all informed atheists to not know about Michelle (St. Peter's Banker) Sindona (aka The Shark & Godfather Banker, poisoned by cyanide after being convicted for murder after pouring ill gotten cash into the Vatican Bank by collapsing legitimate banks), Roberto (God's Banker) Calvi (murdered by hanging after being convicted for crimes that John Paul II then shelled out 200 million to buy off the creditors), Paul (the Gorilla) Marcinkus (who JP2 protected from arrest by US & Italian authorities for collaborating with Sindona and Calvi), and Martin Frankel (who conspired with top Vatican authorities to defraud US insurance companies leading to a RICO suit by six state insurance commissioners for 600 million dollars against the Holy See that I'll bet none of you has ever read, do so at www.thememoryhole.org/states-v-vatican). When I gave a talk at NYC Atheists a few weeks ago only a couple of folks in the audience knew about these crooks. It is imperative to make the public aware of how Paul 6, John Paul 2 and perhaps Benedict 16 have been involved in criminal activities.
Being a leading researcher on this fascinating subject in which truth is far stranger than anything Dan Brown cooked up, I have written a draft book (have submitted the proposal) and pertinent extracts are listed below. Based on articles in mainstream newspapers and periodicals, it is necessary for you all to read the text – aside from being most entertaining you cannot know how to address the press and media about the church unless you know the material. If you wish to show the material to the press of course direct them to me to respond to any queries.
If it is at all possible full page ads in the NY Times and/or WashPost need to be run. Perhaps via a coalition of groups to spread out the cost. As much as the expense is, failing to do so will be penny wise and pound foolish because it will miss a historical opportunity that may not come again. Such ads, and other notices, can include links to the documentation.
Another item to be considered is a petition including leading critics of the church, as well as all those who are concerned about the situation.
| See also this thread http://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=19900 | |
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