"The Pope is The Enemy of Humanity"

Judging from Protest the Pope yesterday, there is much in what Michael Burleigh wrote in Sacred Causes with regards Richard Dawkins that he comes across a a 'hotter sort of seventeenth century English Protestant'. That was evident from much of Dawkin's rhetoric and when calling Pope Benedict XVI an "enemy of humanity"

Dawkins thundered like this back in March 2010 when calling for the Pope to be arrested and, even if this were not possible, that it would be useful as "consciousness raising".

Should the pope resign?" No. As the College of Cardinals must have recognized when they elected him, he is perfectly - ideally - qualified to lead the Roman Catholic Church. A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part; a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence: in short, exactly the right man for the job. He should not resign, moreover, because he is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization whose character he fits like a glove, and of which he is the absolute and historically appropriate monarch.

No, Pope Ratzinger should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice - the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution - while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

It is crude to suggest that the entire Catholic Church is institutionally given to child rape. Much of the loathing of maudlin kitsch can not be only the preserve of the Catholic Church in a consumerist age. Not all the Catholic Church is "evil" and "corrupt".

Indeed Geoffrey Robertson Q C started ranting about England being the land of the Levellers and who have always challenged Papal authority, there seemed at Protest the Pope to be a strong element of 'protestant' distaste at the nature of unjustified authority.

Robertson clearly must have known that the Levellers, as with all seventeenth century radicals whether Overton, Walwyn or Lilburne were trying to institute equality before the law as a Christian principle. Lilburne referred to 'the devil and the clergy and his agents' and the' black guard of Satan'.

The Protest to Pope ranters reaffirm what the Pope meant when he spoke of Britain as having "a history of anti-catholicism". Christopher Hitchens has termed himself a Protestant Atheist

Dawkins has the very protestant belief that by changing people's beliefs, that human behaviour can be changed and progress reaffirmed through destroying the Papacy as the worst embodiment of Christian dogma and faith.

His vision of the Roman Church crumbling to dust amidst the incense sounds akin to an apocalyptic vision in which deliverance from this Evil Yoke will free people from the burden of guilt and the centuries of oppression visited down upon those shackled to this decaying institution.

Yet the protesters do have a serious point beneath the rant. The Pope has not yet acted sufficiently with those accused of child abuse and it was a serious flaw that for years these priests were moved around from one parish to another. The accusations of a cover up will not go away.

It is not enough for the Church to talk about the vaguely metaphysical stain on The Church which is suffering the sins of those who committed crimes: the Church needs to hand over those who have committed these crimes to the civil courts.

It was also curious that the Pope referred to the child molestations as "unspeakable crimes". Well, precisely that has been the problem. Far from being unspeakable, the victims plight should not be unspeakable but redressed by these priests being put on trials.

As for the argument over Hitler and Nazism and Catholicism, that will be dealt with later. Clearly, the "aggressive atheism" mentioned by the Pope does not necessarily lead to Nazism, a political religion, any more than Catholicism is the logical pathway to Nazism.