Comment

Comment by Loren Miller on November 12, 2009 at 6:51pm

[sigh] It would seem that the Catholic Church is as petty and manipulative as the deity they worship.

Anyone really surprised at this? Didn't think so....

Comment by Niki Nomo on November 12, 2009 at 4:56pm

The church always argues that it must be treated as an institution separate from the sinners who make it up. When priests steal from the church or sexually assault parishioners they are acting according to their free will like any other individual ( of course when the hierarchy transfers pedophile priests or covers up their crimes, that is considered an isolated error never to be repeated - we are all sinners are we not?) The church has more defense mechanisms than a first year psychology course!

The fact is that there is a clerical arrogance that comes with the sacrament of holy orders and priests feel they are closer to god, they are the medium through whom the laity can approach god and they are the gatekeepers to heaven through the process of confession or extreme unction. Power corrupts spiritually as well as temporally.

The reason Hitler gave for targeting certain groups for murder was that he was an active christian. he didn't just read the bible, he followed through. when the bible said jews must be punished, he punished. when the bible said homosexuals were an abomination, he smote them and atheists as well. piux xii didn't sign the concordat with hitler because he thought hitler would win, as part of the agreement, pius dissolved the catholic political parties in germany clearing away any possible political opposition to the nazis from that quarter. at the end of the war, many nazis escaped from europe on vatican passports. All of this is known history, but for obvious reasons, church debaters can't use history as their defence.

I think the Hitchens side won the debate because the statement "the catholic church is a force for good in the world" is indefensible

Comment by R. Daneel Olivaw on November 11, 2009 at 1:25am

I was dissaponted in that there were lots of handwavind, anecdotes and personal stories and no actual data or statistics. The Catholic side should have use real data of investments in charity work instead of just saying "We are good, we do charity". And the anti-catholic side should have brought up actual numbers on people tortured and killed in the hands of the church and should have challenged them on the issue of abortion with the example of the Brazilian girl (apparently, being victim of rape and having to have an abortion deserves excommunication but raping your 9 year old daughter is just fine).

Comment by Free Thinker on November 11, 2009 at 1:09am

I agree, Loren. Pope Pious XII was well aware of the goings-on in the Third Reich. He hedged his bets, thinking the Germans could very well win the war. History shows him to be the coward he was. Even his own Catholics were slaughtered by the Germans.

Comment by Loren Miller on November 10, 2009 at 1:02pm

Any one who wants to compare a matter of a few thousand lives spared against the six million slaughtered with not one word from the Holy See condemning what was too well known to them at that time has their priorities so badly skewed as to not have any reasonable grasp of the reality of that day.

And as for the abuse of children, that story was covered on 60 Minutes at least 20 years before the church could develop the cojones to do something about it other than shuffle offending priests around in an effort to mask the problem. A coral reef has a faster reaction time than that!

Comment by Johnny on November 10, 2009 at 11:55am

@Duane:

These people were representatives of the Catholic church. They can not be there without the permission of the church to represent it. The church must have known that this would be a highly televised and scrutinized debate. It was the church's responsibility to pick good representatives. If those were the best they got, then you can't go on about how the debate wasn't fair. Both were clear authorities on the matter and their failure in the debate is a good enough representation of the failure of the Catholic church. The risk of losing face like they just did is just too great for the church to send amateurs.

I deem the debate fair, but wish it was more conclusive. They didn't finish the annihilation in my opinion and could have used more time.

Comment by Free Thinker on November 9, 2009 at 10:36pm

@Johnny,

They were wearing Depends.

Comment by Free Thinker on November 9, 2009 at 10:31pm

I thought that Hitchens fell on his face when he spoke of the Pope dying. The thing about infallibility is a bit exaggerated. The Pope is only (allegedly) infallible in official pronouncements of faith or moral matters. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about papal infallibility:

"Papal infallibility is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the universal Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation. It is also taught that the Holy Spirit works in the body of the Church, as sensus fidelium, to ensure that dogmatic teachings proclaimed to be infallible will be received by all Catholics. This dogma, however, does not state either that the Pope cannot commit sin in his own personal life or that he is necessarily free of error, even when speaking in his official capacity, outside the specific contexts in which the dogma applies."

Comment by Free Thinker on November 9, 2009 at 10:22pm

Oops . . . I replaced the video with one from YouTube. It works.

Comment by Free Thinker on November 9, 2009 at 10:20pm

I've been reviewing replies to the debate at news sites and, so far, haven't found anybody who's done the math. The stats reveal just how thoroughly the Catholics lost the debate.

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