Ein Artikel zu Papst Ratzinger, den Missbrauchsthemen, aus den USA in englischer Sprache:
What can make tens of millions of people -- who are in their daily
lives peaceful and compassionate and caring -- suddenly want to
physically dismember a man for drawing a cartoon, or make excuses for an
international criminal conspiracy to protect child-rapists? Not reason.
Not evidence. No. But it can happen when people choose their polar
opposite -- religion. In the past week we have seen two examples of how
people can begin to behave in bizarre ways when they decide it is a good
thing to abandon any commitment to fact and instead act on faith. It
has led some to regard people accused of the attempted murders of the
Mohamed cartoonists as victims, and to demand "respect" for the Pope,
when he should be in a police station being quizzed about his role in
covering up and thereby enabling the rape of children.
In 2005, 12 men in a small secular European democracy decided to draw
a quasi-mythical figure who has been dead for 1400 years. They were
trying to make a point. They knew that in many Muslim cultures, it is
considered offensive to draw Mohamed. But they have a culture too -- a
European culture that believes it is important to be allowed to mock and
tease and ridicule religion. It is because Europeans have been doing
this for centuries now that we can no longer be tyrannized into feeling
bad about perfectly natural impulses, like masturbation, or pre-marital
sex, or homosexuality. When priests offer those old arguments, we now
laugh in their faces -- a great liberating moment. It will be a shining
day for Muslims when they can do the same.
Some of the cartoons were witty. Some were stupid. One seemed to
suggest Muslims are inherently violent -- an obnoxious and false idea.
If you disagree with the drawings, you should write a letter, or draw a
better cartoon, this time mocking the cartoonists. But some people did
not react this way. Instead, Islamist plots to hunt the artists down and
slaughter them began. Earlier this year, a man with an axe smashed into
one of their houses, and very nearly killed the cartoonist in front of
his small grand-daughter.
This week, another plot to murder them seems to have been exposed,
this time allegedly spanning Ireland and the United States, and many
people who consider themselves humanitarians or liberals have rushed
forward to offer condemnation -- of the cartoonists. One otherwise
liberal newspaper ran an article saying that since the cartoonists had
engaged in an "aggressive act" and shown "prejudice... against religion
per se", so it stated menacingly that no doubt "someone else is out
there waiting for an opportunity to strike again."
Let's state some principles that -- if religion wasn't involved --
would be so obvious it would seem ludicrous to have to say them out
loud. Drawing a cartoon is not an act of aggression. Trying to kill
somebody with an axe is. There is no moral equivalence between
peacefully expressing your disagreement with an idea -- any idea -- and
trying to kill somebody for it. Yet we have to say this because we have
allowed religious people to claim their ideas belong to a different,
exalted category, and it is abusive or violent merely to verbally
question them. Nobody says I should "respect" conservatism or communism
and keep my opposition to them to myself -- but that's exactly what is
routinely said about Islam or Christianity or Buddhism. What's the
difference?
This enforced "respect" is a creeping vine. It soon extends beyond
religious ideas to religious institutions -- even when they commit the
worst crimes imaginable. It is now an indisputable fact that the
Catholic Church systematically covered up the rape of children across
the globe, and knowingly, consciously put pedophiles in charge of more
kids. Joseph Ratzinger -- who claims to be "infallible" -- was at the
heart of this policy for decades.
Here's what we are sure of. By 1962, it was becoming clear to the
Vatican that a significant number of its priests were raping children.
Rather than root it out, they issued a secret order called "Crimen
Sollicitationis"' ordering bishops to swear the victims to secrecy and
move the offending priest on to another parish. This of course meant
they raped more children there, and on and on, in parish after parish.
Yes, these were different times, but the Vatican knew then that what it
was doing was terribly wrong: that's why it was done in the utmost
secrecy.
It has emerged this week that when Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich
in the 1980s, one of his pedophile priests was "reassigned" in this
way. He claims he didn't know. Yet a few years later he was put in
charge of the Vatican's response to this kind of abuse and demanded
every case had to be referred directly to him for 20 years. What
happened on his watch, with every case going to his desk? Precisely this
pattern, again and again. The BBC's Panorama studied one of many such
cases. Father Tarcisio Spricigo was first accused of child abuse in
1991, in Brazil. He was moved by the Vatican four times, wrecking the
lives of children at every stop. He was only caught in 2005 by the
police, before he could be moved on once more. He had written in his
diary about the kind of victims he sought: "Age: 7, 8, 9, 10. Social
condition: Poor. Family condition: preferably a son without a father.
How to attract them: guitar lessons, choir, altar boy." It happened all
over the world, wherever the Catholic Church had outposts.
Far from changing this pedophile-protecting model, Ratzinger
reinforced it. In 2001 he issued a strict secret order demanding that
charges of child-rape should be investigated by the Church "in the most
secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is
to observe the strictest secret." Since it was leaked, Ratzinger claims
-- bizarrely -- that these requirements didn't prevent bishops from
approaching the police. Even many people employed by the Vatican at the
time say this is wrong. Father Tom Doyle, who was a Vatican lawyer
working on these cases, says it "is an explicit written policy to cover
up cases of child sexual abuse and to punish those who would call
attention to these crimes... Nowhere in any of these documents does it
say anything about helping the victims. The only thing it does say is
they can impose fear on the victims, and punish [them], for disclosing
what happened." Doyle was soon fired.
Imagine if this happened at The Independent. Imagine I discovered
there was a pedophile ring running our crèche, and the Editor issued a
stern order that it should be investigated internally with "the
strictest secrecy". Imagine he merely shuffled the pedophiles to work in
another crèche at another newspaper, and I agreed, and made the kids
sign a pledge of secrecy. We would both - rightly - go to prison. Yet
because the word "religion" is whispered, the rules change. Suddenly,
otherwise good people who wouldn't dream of covering up a pedophile ring
in their workplace think it would be an insult to them to follow one
wherever it leads in their Church. They would find this behavior
unthinkable without the irrational barrier of faith standing between
them and reality.
Yes, I understand some people feel sad when they see a figure they
were taught as a child to revere -- whether Prophet or Pope -- being
subjected to rational examination, or mockery, or criminal
investigation. But everyone has ideas they hold precious. Only you, the
religious, demand to be protected from debate or scrutiny that might
discomfort you. The fact you believe an invisible supernatural being
approves of -- or even commands -- your behavior doesn't mean it
deserves more respect, or sensitive handling. It means it deserves less.
If you base your behavior on such a preposterous fantasy, you should
expect to be checked by criticism and mockery. You need it.
If you can't bear to hear your religious figures criticized -- if you
think Ratzinger is somehow above the law, or Mohamed should be defended
with an axe -- a sane society should have only one sentence for you.
Tell it to the judge.
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his
articles, click here or here.
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