By Ian Bryce, 29 April 2009.
The Protest Popemobile, as it participated in the Sydney Mardi Gras in March 2009, displayed some quotes from Popes, particularly the current Benedict XVI.
It was seen by 300,000 people live, plus many more on the Foxtel pay TV channel. A short video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uhZe1K1bhg
Still photos available on request.
As the Popemobile passed, it received great acclamation from the audience. We saw a sea of smiling and laughing faces as our live Pope tried to contact his “invisible friend” using a gold telephone and satellite dish.
Our Popemobile showed several signs listing the false claims and the harm done by the Church. Unlike religions, atheists and skeptics back up what they say, and we have been asked to give further details.
On the Inquisition:
“Remember, the Inquisition represented progress”
In the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834), innocent peasants who could not recite the latest Catholic liturgies were pulled apart on the rack. Those performing non-Catholic ceremonies, such as praying standing up, were likely to be burned at the stake. The detailed records scribed by Notaries still exist. Some of the Inquisitors were made Saints.
The Inquisitions were organised or approved by the Vatican’s Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, which in 1965 was renamed Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Its head for 24 years (1991-2005) was one Cardinal Ratzinger.
Did he close it down and apologise? Far from it. He defended it thus (SBS TV program 20/7/08 “The German Pope: Benedict”)
“We do have a certain continuity” and “Remember, the Inquisition represented progress - people could no longer be sentenced without an investigation”. Thus the current Pope defends the tearing of peasants on the Rack, the imprisonment of Galileo, and the burning of Bruno.
On torture instruments:
The police charges against the fake Popemobile at WYD referred to annoyance caused to pilgrims by the sign referring to the Inquisition and also showing a replica of a medieval torture instrument, ie a rack - similar to those used by the Church to encourage witnesses to assist them in their enquiries, during the Inquisition covering much of Europe, over many centuries. The police argue that this was “annoying” to the thousands of pilgrims conducting a “Stations of the Cross” march to St Leonards Park where Mr Bryce was apprehended.
There is a particular irony here. Most of the 300,000 pilgrims at WYD were wearing a replica of an earlier Roman torture instrument – the Cross. In fact the explicit purpose of those walking to the site and dragging a life-size replica of this device, was to re-enact the actual torture and death (crucifixion) of an innocent party. Are these Christians concerned about the extreme offence caused any thinking person?
On Family Planning and Population Growth:
The world is crumbling under overpopulation, which is still growing exponentially despite repeated warnings from scientists.
Yet at his March 18 1994 meeting with Nafis Sadik, executive director of the U.N. Fund for Population Activities, Pope John-Paul 2 said:
“All propaganda and misinformation directed at persuading couples that they must limit their family to one or two children must be steadfastly avoided.”
On condoms and AIDS:
Handing out condoms is not the solution for combating AIDS, Pope Benedict XVI has said while en route to Yaounde, Cameroon, for his first trip as pontiff to Africa.
AIDS “is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems,” the pontiff said.
Southern Africa bears a disproportionate share of the global HIV burden, with 35 per cent of the world’s new infections and 38 per cent of AIDS deaths in 2007.
Last year about 60 Catholic groups wrote an open letter to the pontiff urging him to reverse the Vatican’s opposition to contraception. The ban on condoms “exposes millions of people to the risk of contracting the AIDS virus,” they said.
- ABC News online, 17 March 2009
On Gays and Climate Change:
Pope Benedict XVI has suggested that homosexuality is as much of a threat to the survival of the human race as climate change.
This is the interpretation by experts of his end-of-year address in December 2008. It said that behaviour beyond traditional straight sex is a “destruction of God’s work”.
“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less. What’s needed is something like a ‘human ecology,’ understood in the right sense. It’s not simply an outdated metaphysics if the Church speaks of the nature of the human person as man and woman, and asks that this order of creation be respected.”
On the racial cleansing, Nazis and Holocausts:
The Church ran their own version of an anti-Jewish Holocaust in the Spanish Inquisition around 1480. They forced the Jews into ghettos, and made them wear distinctive clothing. Later, those that would not convert were deported, with their belongings confiscated. (Reference: SBS TV series the Inquisition.)
The current Pope defends this Inquisition – see above.
During the German holocaust, the Vatican strenuously avoided condemning it. On 28 October 1943, the German Embassy in the Vatican relayed this message to the Nazi Foreign Minister: “Even though urged on every side, the Pope has not expressed any demonstrative reprobation of the deportation of Jews from Rome…”
Catholic clergy in many countries actively supported the Nazis and the holocaust. German Jesuit Muckermann wrote a book of instructions, including “Catholic Action…must live in its heroic age…The new epoch can only be acquired for Christ only through the price of blood.” The Pope himself wrote the foreword.
In the US, Jesuit father Coughlin preached militant anti-Semitism on his radio program. In Yugoslavia, catholic terror organisations such as Oustachi tortured and massacred hundreds of thousands.
As the Nazis collapsed, holocaust criminals from many countries fled to Italy to be sheltered by the Church, and many were helped to escape to South America. (Reference: Not the Official Papal Souvenir, Rolf Heimann (ed), 1986.)
The current pontiff Benedict recently lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson in the UK. He later suggested that the Vatican was unaware of Williamson’s claims that no Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers.