In “The Pope’s War: How Ratzinger’s Crusade Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved”, Matthew Fox, a former Catholic priest, talks about the “devastation” wrought by Benedict and his predecessor and elaborates on the following points:

1. His silence for years about the notorious pedophile priest Father Maciel, who was so close to Pope John Paul II that he was often invited on his plane and his seminarians enjoyed a mass ordination by the pope in St Peter’s Square. This man, who sexually abused dozens of his seminarians, had two wives on the side and sexually abused his own children (though a priest with vows of celibacy), was not fully investigated until 2005 even though a New York bishop wrote Ratzinger’s office in 1995.

2. Benedict’s attacks when head of the CDF (formerly “Office of the Holy Inquisition”) on at least 105 theologians whom he denounced, fired, and hounded, not only from his chair of CDF but also as pope. He brought back the Inquisition, reducing theology to 1) a catechism and 2) Saying Yes to whatever the pope (or his curia) said.

3. His unrelenting attacks on base communities and Liberation Theology in Latin America, leaving a religious void, now being filled by Pentecostal (and right wing political) churches.

4. His (and the previous pope’s) promotion of neo-fascist sects, such as the new “religious orders” and shock troops of the pope, beginning with the secret “Opus Dei”, which is embedded in places of great power throughout the world. Benedict and his predecessor destroyed the process of canonization by fast-tracking the sainthood of the founder of Opus Dei, Fr. Escriva, a card-carrying fascist, who praised Hitler.

5. The cover-up of pedophile clergy in the US, in Ireland and elsewhere, putting an Institution ahead of the rights of young children.

6. The end of religious ecumenism. Ratzinger as pope managed to insult Islam, Judaism, and all Protestant churches (he says they are not churches).

7. The dumbing down of the church not only by condemning thinkers but by appointing Bishops and cardinals world-wide whose only qualification for the job is to be loyal Yes men.

8. A complete reaffirmation of a “morality” of Sexism (no women priests ever; Catholic sisters in America are now subject to investigations like theologians have been); and of homophobia.

9. Benedict stuck by his “no condoms even in an age of AIDS”, and in a time in a time of excessive human population on a crowded planet, he has rigidly maintained the church’s opposition to birth control.

10. Interference in the U.S presidential election of 2004, when Ratzinger instructed American bishops to read his declaration that any “catholic politician” (i.e. Kerry) who did not denounce gays and abortion could not receive communion.

This is a terrible indictment of organised religion. The so-called “nones” (those who have rejected all this flim-flam) are growing in number daily. Epicurianism is a humanist alternative that does not require you to behave as part of a tribe, doesn’t tell you what to think, and is a rational, decent philosophy, not a religion.