The Vatican should stop meddling in politics and misusing its power to oppose human rights. Just as importantly, it is time the Italian government ceased kow-towing to the pope's theocratic agenda. All of Europe should be secular, where people are free to practise their faith but where no religion has privileged legal status and unique access to political power and influence.
These are the demands of protesters, backed by the British Humanist Association, who will assemble in London this Saturday afternoon in support of a simultaneous protest taking place in Rome against the Vatican's manipulation of Italian, European and worldwide politics.
In celebration of Charles Darwin's debunking of the Biblical idea that the world was made by God in six days, the protesters will meet at the Natural History Museum. It is hosting the biggest-ever Charles Darwin exhibition to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of his book, On the Origin of Species. His theory of evolution was long rejected and denounced by successive popes.
Undeterred by church hostility, Darwin made his view of religion very clear: "Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity ... it is more humble and I believe truer to consider him created from animals."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/13/catholicism-humanrightsWhat a change in a short life time.
Forty some, or almost fifty years ago, catholic politicians were running with the saying that they were their own person. And not a word from the Vatican. Now a few short years of bush and his religious right, and bam. The religious right are emerging from everywhere.
One would think they never heard of blowback or separation of church and State.