FWIW, this article (no longer linked to for the moment) stated that the UN only recognizes him as "an observer". Seems the US had blocked the vote to make him a head of state -- somewhere recently I read that
Vatican City was brought into existence by Mussolini (in 1929, as I just found out).
Of course, as I learned the hard way in the Boy Scouts religious discrimination cases, justice rarely prevails; politicians will do what they deem to be popular. Though, considering how unpopular Catholicism has traditionally been in the UK ... .
PS, FWIW
One of the news items tonight was the Vatican coming out with a policy to crack down on sex abuse.
Back when I was an adult leader in Boy Scouts (officially until 1991, at which time I fell victim to their religious discrimination thanks to their CompuServe spy -- they actually presented printouts of CompuServe postings as evidence in Federal Court -- and despite my minister, the only one whose word counted in these matters (according to officially published BSA policy) having testified in writing, twice, that I do indeed do my "duty to God" in accordance with my religion (Unitarian-Universalism) -- see why I have my attitude about justice?) , one of the really big and important training evolutions that an adult leader had to go through was the "Youth Protection Program" -- BTW, a
damned idea, even though it was obviously instituted for dubious reasons. Though the more experienced leaders referred to it as "getting yourself youth-protected" (also an extremely wise point), meaning that there are so many stupid mistakes you could make to compromise yourself that this training made you aware of so that you would know to avoid them. As a Chinese co-worker once told me: "Do not tie your shoes in a watermelon patch" -- if you are walking through somebody else's watermelon patch and you bend down to tie your shoes, then it will appear that you are stealing one of his melons -- final translation: Do not do anything, no matter how innocent, that could ever possibly been seen as guilty.
OK, the thing is that while BSA circa 1991 was being so "pro-active" in this regard, in reality they were just covering their butts. Their conduct before that program was to use their lawyers to protect the leaders being charged with child abuse. Their head attorney (whom I've had the personal displease of having seen twice, both in the Walsh and the Randall cases) even claimed that those abused boys "invited what was done to them", something that our "Youth Protection" training told us was a complete and utter lie. Furthermore, BSA had (as of 1991; I would assume that it's still true) refused to share their child-abuse information with any other agencies, such as Big Brothers.
IOW, the Vatican's "new policy" is obviously nothing more than CYA ("cover your actions/assets/whatever-else-you-hold-near-and-personally-dear")
PPS
In the program I had seen about the earlier BSA legal actions, the abusers told of how they were drawn back to the program in their desire to do right, to make up for what they had done wrong, only to fall to tempation yet again. Same thing as with the priests?
Edited by dwise1, : PS
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