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Skeptimedia is a commentary on mass media treatment of issues concerning science, the paranormal, and the supernatural.

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Is Benedict XVI the Antichrist?

22 March 2010. This is a follow-up to "The Great Catholic Cover-Up: The pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it" by Christopher Hitchens. Is Joseph Alois Ratzinger the Antichrist? Yes and no. He is not the Antichrist in the sense that he is the forerunner of the Second Coming because there can be no second coming if there wasn't a first. And there wasn't a first. There was a Jesus, though, and the Roman Catholic pope twisted another moral message attributed to him when he used the story of the adulterer to protect his fellow churchmen who have been raping children for centuries. According to Ratzinger, not stoning an adulterer is analogous to not judging and punishing a child rapist. In his weekly Vatican address yesterday, Ratzinger did not apologize for the rapes or the cover-ups by Church officials. Instead, he asked "Roman Catholics around the world to be "indulgent towards sinners [i.e., priests who rape children] and pray to God to ask for forgiveness for our failings." He used as an example the story from John's Gospel in which Jesus says to the people about to stone an adulteress: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

"While acknowledging her sin, he does not condemn her, but urges her to sin no more," Benedict said. This has been the Church's policy with priests who rape children: acknowledge the sin and then let the priest go back to sin some more while urging him not to.

If Benedict XVI doesn't understand the difference between an adult who has consensual sex and an adult who rapes children, then he is unfit to give moral instruction to anyone. Forgive and forget has been the way of the Church for too long with regard to the rape of children by priests and their confreres. Identify and isolate should be the rule for these monsters who hide behind God's alleged mercy and forgiveness.

His intransigence regarding priests who rape children would be enough to qualify Ratzinger for the Antichrist designation. It gets worse, however. In one of the most ironic statements ever made by a pious fraud, Benedict quoted from the gospel of Matthew.  He said Jesus taught people to "not judge and not condemn one's neighbor. Let us learn to be intransigent toward sin, starting with our own, and indulgent with people." The irony is that when Jesus gave his little "judge not lest ye be judged" lesson he was railing against hypocrites! What could be more hypocritical than pretending to apologize for a systemic evil within the Church while admonishing the flock to leave the evildoers alone? And to think that it was only yesterday that he told the Catholics of Ireland that he was "deeply disturbed by information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests...." In his letter to the Catholics of Ireland he wrote of "these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them."

Ratzinger may not be the Antichrist, but he makes a pretty good Antijesus.

further reading

new Pope accused of failing to act on sex abuse case Ratzinger has been accused of failing to act on complaints from two archbishops in the US about a priest who allegedly abused 200 deaf boys.

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