Today, by a happy accident, I stumbled upon the most recent Intelligence Squared debate, concerning whether or not the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. If you would like to watch it, and I recommend it thoroughly, you can do so on YouTube or on the Intelligence Squared web site. Here you will also find a briefing for the event which makes for a very interesting read. It's a sizable document for casual reading, both as infuriating and illuminating as one would expect, and even as I type this I have not managed to marshal the required level of concentration for such an endeavour. A number of things attracted me to the debate and a timelessly heated dispute was not least among them, although I admit myself more prone to dedicating an hour of my life to it on the basis that, counted in the number of the participants, were Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchins and the implacable, formidable and downright frightening Anne Widdecombe. Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchins, eerily intelligent men both, are no strangers to the medium of the televised debate and Anne Widdecombe is far from a virgin only as far as being an unaffected medusa is concerned. “Where are you headed with all this?”I hear you ask. “Surely, Jamie, you prefer to remain in your own temperate climate of frolicsome subjects in bountiful supply?” True, within what is soon to form into a pleasing aquatic simile, I am as a gentle manatee when compared to the gnashing swarms of Blog-hosting piranhas out there in the perilous waterways of the Internet. While they, with their limitless opinions and incessant howls of derision, bitterly thrashing about in obscurity, fall upon such topics with a bloodlust both fearsome and cringe-worthy, I remain, as ever, inquisitive, with a propensity for producing hot gas, but ultimately harmless and, by and large, the bigger man (atee). It pains me then, to have prepared for your enjoyment and intellectual stimulation (my criteria for “stimulation” being somewhat forgiving), an entry dealing with such a troublesome subject. Next month, expect a four thousand word investigation into the colourful, but bloody, world of NOVELTY ICE CUBES.
The Catholic Church, in the words of the Archbishop John Onaiyekan, “means a great many things to a great many people”. This, I think, is where we must begin, with a statement so simple and so vague that it can be certified as a truth. This is naturally a subject difficult to tackle unless we are firmly grounded in truth and this statement seems as irrefutable as we are likely to encounter when discussing the Catholic Church (Empiricism beginning to show...). However, despite whatever notions of benign universality this phrase may conjure, it is undeniable that it can be interpreted conversely. The Catholic Church means a great many good and wonderful things to a great many people but it means also a great number of flawed and inhumane things to many others. Where do we go from here? Well, in keeping with the theme and, indeed, the inspiration for this entry, I will refer to some of the points in the Intelligence Squared briefing, predominantly those not touched upon in the original discussion. I intend to try and maintain an air of jocular detachment, but I apologise in advance should I drift into what might be considered too serious a tone.
Readers, I warn you that now is the time to grasp your rosary beads between whitened knuckles or to wrench from its shelf your Bible, ready for page-by-page dismemberment. I warn you also that I am about to offend a great many people...
We can thank the Church for much European culture, knowledge and technology... Can we?
A great deal of Renaissance patronage came from the Catholic Church. Perhaps most famously, Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Pope Julius II. All well and good, we might surmise, but what of the wider, and the deeper, circumstances? Julius II was known as “The Terrible Pope”. His reign was marked by exceptional levels of aggression and based largely on a forceful acquisition of Italian political control, under the Church and, consequently, under himself. He certainly had grand vision and was a great patron of the Renaissance, but remember that Julius’ reign falls in the very early sixteenth century; the situation in Europe is dire for many, their lives blighted by poverty, disease, poor harvests and famine. Where then was charitable Christian nature? It was smothered under the excess of a Church more concerned with the extent of its bejewelled grip than with any notion of shepherding mankind to spiritual peace and salvation. Michelangelo himself did not even want to paint the Sistine Chapel. He was far more concerned with his sculpting. But, of course, the Pope is the earthly conduit to God himself and that is a potent authority upon which to call. Let us not forget, also, that the premise of the Renaissance was a renewed embracing of classical artistic values. The Greeks, the Romans, were, for the most part, seen as Pagans by the Church. Much of the learning of the ancients was lost due to the intolerance of the Church. Vitruvius’ De Architectura was, at the time of the Renaissance, the only known treatise on Roman architecture. The Church pillaged the ruins of Rome for columns and stones with which to build their own structures. Even the recipe for concrete was lost for centuries. One cannot deny the importance of the Church in the restoration of artistic values in Europe, but simultaneously one must always remember that they were one of the primary reasons a revival was thought necessary.
The Bible, for many centuries, was only ever printed in Latin. Of course this is understandable before Gutenberg developed his printing press in the mid fifteenth century, as each copy of the Bible, and any publication for that matter, needed to be carefully handwritten by a dedicated scribe, normally a monk (allowing the Church an ample level of control over censorship). But after the Bible came to be (relative to the period at least) mass produced, it began to circulate in various languages. This did not please the Catholic Church. In 1517, seven people were burned at the stake for the crime of teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English. The punishment for owning a Bible in any language other than Latin was death. Thomas More, an infamous persecutor of “heretical” non-Latin Bible owners, was made patron saint of politicians as recently as 1935! Even before More’s time, in the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe (a man I have mentioned in my series of border-line amusing etymological Facebook status updates) had copied the Bible into English dozens of times. He believed that the organisation of the Church was against the Bible itself, a moral paradox he sought to balance. When the Pope at the time (I do not know who the Pope was at the time) discovered this, some years after Wycliffe’s death, he ordered the poor man’s bones dug up, grinded into dust and cast into the river. As a comical chaser to this shot of liturgical tyranny, I remind you that in his first manuscript, Wycliffe was forced to conceive new English words as replacements for certain Latin terms. My favourite is, understandably, the original English for “intestines”, which Wycliffe thought most sensible to name “arse-ropes”. John Wycliffe, everyone! A man whose hand I sorely wish I could shake... had it not been decomposed by the Almighty and pulverised by his chief gimp.
Can we thank the Church for “much European culture, knowledge and technology?” In fairly broad terms, my answer would be: certainly not. The Church were responsible for setting back the development of art, culture, learning, technology and everything modern society is based on, many, many years. Not to mention the fact that, for the Papal hierarchy, human decency and humanitarian education seems to have been a fairly low priority, sacrificed in favour of pomp and ceremony. For all his many faults, I am certainly grateful for Luther and his notions of Biblical self-study, and his belief in the necessity of legalising non-Latin manuscripts. Certainly a step forward for civilization, shackled as it had been by over-zealous spiritual subjugation.
Roman Catholicism delivers moral absolutes...
How comforting for common people to exist in the knowledge that they need not contemplate the morality of their actions. How secure we should all be in knowing that a set of absolute morals exists, and that we need only adhere to them to be happy. How wonderful. How splendid. How ridiculous.
Jesus taught mankind many things. He told us to “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, a wonderful, enlightened concept, and as relevant today as it was that day nearly two millennia ago when Christ stumped that group of hypocrites in their preparations for a good ol’ fashioned community stoning. Essentially, the teachings of Christ have, by and large, been an enormous force for good in the world. This I concede without hesitation or bitterness. I am in agreement with Christians the world over that Christ’s teachings are invaluable. Of course, his divinity is always in dispute, but regardless, his teachings remain integral to many peoples’ lives. They represent what I like to think (probably naively) are our social instincts: not to steal from one another, to treat each other kindly, tolerantly, to love and to forgive and, last but not least, not to kill one another. Please, please, please, please, please don’t let yourself become confused between the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ. Christ’s teachings should be taken on their own merit. Remember, of course, that Christ’s death was partly the doing of religious leaders who had followed the Ten Commandments for many centuries before the coming of Christ. These commandments, and every other moral absolute the Church has peddled for years, are highly suspect in my opinion. The Ten Commandments, as Christopher Hitchins pointed out in his argument, simultaneously demand love and fear. Christ never even entreated humanity to fear him, let alone demand it. God, however, flat-out, no-holds barred, demands simultaneous love and fear, or grants you damnation, free will or none. I needn’t point out how ludicrous this is and perhaps you have guessed how this section is panning out.
Moral absolutes are terrifying to us rational human beings. We live, in this day and age, lives lasting many decades. Last time I checked the average life expectancy for a Briton was somewhere in the seventies. Seventy years is a long time, and even in just under twenty, my ideas of morality have changed enormously, and continue to do so. The human brain does not respond well to moral absolutism, as its default state is one of inquiry and of curiosity. It is in our nature to question, to experiment, to analyse and to ascertain. Indeed, one of the most exciting, fascinating and socially productive endeavours undertaken by our species is that of probing the inestimable labyrinths of human morality. To exist in a state I can only describe as moral complacency is more dangerous than I can commit to words. When societies revert to unquestioning obedience of any set of codes of conduct, they surrender that which lends them not only the dignity of our species, but the safety of ourselves, our families, friends and everyone else: our free will and our quest for development and enlightenment.
Besides, how immutable are the morals of the Church? How absolute is absolute? Historically, about as absolute as my grandfather’s bladder control. What would the Church’s attitude to slavery be today, do you think? Most likely they would consider it inhumane, an appalling violation of morality. Yet, during the rapid increase in trade of African slaves in the wake of growing Imperialism and in part due to the rise of the mercantile classes, do you think the Church spoke out against it? Of course not. Scholars investigating the Papacy’s attitude towards slavery believe the first instance of a Pope speaking out against slavery was only as recently as 1890. Before then the Church adopted a stance of, at best, ambivalence and indecision. Certain saints are known to have purchased slaves with the intent of freeing them, but this does not exactly, or vaguely or in any way otherwise, reflect the actions of the Church.
Here, then, seems an appropriate place to make essentially the same statement I made last month. Individuals pursuing a spiritual life should feel in no way besmirched by the awful things I am writing about the Catholic Church. The Church is an organisation and therefore should be considered as entirely separate from those who follow its faith in their own lives. I have said it before, as long as they actively seek to denounce that which is in need of reassessment, acting against what I have described as moral absolutism, there is no reason for anyone to have the slightest suspicion of them, and I wish them all the happiness and contentment in the world.
But, to return to topic... That such a drastic alteration in morals is possible is evidence, if any was needed, that the Catholic Church is a human institution. It is an earthly organisation run by humans. The Pope himself, indisputable in many ways though his alleged closeness to God makes him, is human. He will die. He is in no way faultless or irrefutable. It makes sense then that the Church should adapt to the times, even though, in the briefing, it is put forward as a benefit that the Church does not adapt. It no longer persecutes individuals for reading English Bibles, or Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Greek or (Heaven forbid!) American-English Bibles, yet it steadfastly refuses to alter its archaic stance on homosexuality. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchins once more, homosexuality is not merely a form of sexuality, but a form of love. A church which actively promotes the spread of love ostracising from its ranks enormous numbers of people based on the fact that they spread their love to the “wrong” people, this is madness. It is an appalling paradox.
To go back to the subject of Papal censorship, the Catholic Church does try, at every opportunity, if not to burn, then at least to censor that which it finds heretical, such as the Harry Potter books. Pope Benedict XVI saw the series as being a terrible influence on children, and the Vatican’s official newspaper included the opinion that Harry “...proposes a wrong and malicious image of the hero, an unreligious one, which is even worse than an explicitly anti-religious proposition." BUT this very paper, L'Osservatore Romano, was, only four years later, to print that the Pope thought the sixth film was the best so far and that: "There is a clear line of demarcation between good and evil and [the film] makes clear that good is right. One understands as well that sometimes this requires hard work and sacrifice." If the Pope himself, in a modern world such as we inhabit, cannot deliver a moral absolute on something like a children’s story, what hope is there that it can provide any absolutes whatsoever? Those it does stand by, notoriously the prohibition of artificial contraception, cause untold levels of death and suffering. To quote directly from what I have just now realized is a rather excellent briefing:
The statistics are staggering. It may certainly be an absolute, but I would feel ill if I were to seriously consider calling it moral. These statistics, in my own opinion, render the argument for the Church’s positive impact on the world heartbreakingly empty, regardless of the supposed billions donated by Catholic charities the world over. As with the arts, the Church’s interference and widespread moral authoritarianism have done more to damage the human race than enrich it. I don’t feel I need really say any more on this subject, but Stephen Fry certainly makes a compelling argument on the video.
I fear I have become a little morose, but I don’t feel I can be blamed in the slightest. I’ve certainly learned a lot today, and that I have incorporated learnings from all of my three University courses into the mix is exceptionally rewarding. I would like, once again, to remind anyone reading this that my contempt for the organised Catholic Church is just that: contempt for the organised Catholic Church. In fact, I felt terribly sorry for the Archbishop John Onaiyekan throughout the debate. He seemed to me to be one of many religious individuals who have true faith in a benevolent God. However misplaced you see this trust, it can do a great deal of good. I have no doubt there are many individuals in Africa, in Britain, and the whole world over, who actively seek to turn their faith towards improving the world. Archbishop Onaiyekan’s arguments were based primarily on statistics regarding the billion strong membership of his faith and the very large sums donated to African humanitarian causes and, at least during his solo argument, he seemed a genuine believer in the individual benefits God can bring people. He defended his faith admirably, but crashed and burned when defending his Church and this failure encapsulates and solidifies the opinions of many...
The Catholic Church have an inestimable potential to do good, but don’t. If only it were within their ability, if only they had the courage, to make changes to their doctrine, many millions would be happier and safer. The facts and figures that defenders of the Church put forward are all well and good, that during Hitler’s final solution, many Jews were granted refuge in the Pope’s palace, that the Church funds the distribution of aid in struggling, war-torn countries, and many other facts besides, are rendered almost meaningless by the larger picture. These instances are exceptional. When defending an institution in which one believes, one will understandably seek to put forward the most considerable of its achievements, but an institution with the funds, the influence and over a BILLION adherents, the largest Church in the world, should be able to do so much more. I can scarcely imagine what such an enormous organisation could do with the right mindset. But, of course, the hierarchy of the Church is one of conservatism, of obsession, of intolerance, deflection and decrepitude. An awful lot of cobwebs need dusting before the Church will live up to anything even bordering on its full potential.
Jamie
The Catholic Church, in the words of the Archbishop John Onaiyekan, “means a great many things to a great many people”. This, I think, is where we must begin, with a statement so simple and so vague that it can be certified as a truth. This is naturally a subject difficult to tackle unless we are firmly grounded in truth and this statement seems as irrefutable as we are likely to encounter when discussing the Catholic Church (Empiricism beginning to show...). However, despite whatever notions of benign universality this phrase may conjure, it is undeniable that it can be interpreted conversely. The Catholic Church means a great many good and wonderful things to a great many people but it means also a great number of flawed and inhumane things to many others. Where do we go from here? Well, in keeping with the theme and, indeed, the inspiration for this entry, I will refer to some of the points in the Intelligence Squared briefing, predominantly those not touched upon in the original discussion. I intend to try and maintain an air of jocular detachment, but I apologise in advance should I drift into what might be considered too serious a tone.
Readers, I warn you that now is the time to grasp your rosary beads between whitened knuckles or to wrench from its shelf your Bible, ready for page-by-page dismemberment. I warn you also that I am about to offend a great many people...
We can thank the Church for much European culture, knowledge and technology... Can we?
A great deal of Renaissance patronage came from the Catholic Church. Perhaps most famously, Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Pope Julius II. All well and good, we might surmise, but what of the wider, and the deeper, circumstances? Julius II was known as “The Terrible Pope”. His reign was marked by exceptional levels of aggression and based largely on a forceful acquisition of Italian political control, under the Church and, consequently, under himself. He certainly had grand vision and was a great patron of the Renaissance, but remember that Julius’ reign falls in the very early sixteenth century; the situation in Europe is dire for many, their lives blighted by poverty, disease, poor harvests and famine. Where then was charitable Christian nature? It was smothered under the excess of a Church more concerned with the extent of its bejewelled grip than with any notion of shepherding mankind to spiritual peace and salvation. Michelangelo himself did not even want to paint the Sistine Chapel. He was far more concerned with his sculpting. But, of course, the Pope is the earthly conduit to God himself and that is a potent authority upon which to call. Let us not forget, also, that the premise of the Renaissance was a renewed embracing of classical artistic values. The Greeks, the Romans, were, for the most part, seen as Pagans by the Church. Much of the learning of the ancients was lost due to the intolerance of the Church. Vitruvius’ De Architectura was, at the time of the Renaissance, the only known treatise on Roman architecture. The Church pillaged the ruins of Rome for columns and stones with which to build their own structures. Even the recipe for concrete was lost for centuries. One cannot deny the importance of the Church in the restoration of artistic values in Europe, but simultaneously one must always remember that they were one of the primary reasons a revival was thought necessary.
The Bible, for many centuries, was only ever printed in Latin. Of course this is understandable before Gutenberg developed his printing press in the mid fifteenth century, as each copy of the Bible, and any publication for that matter, needed to be carefully handwritten by a dedicated scribe, normally a monk (allowing the Church an ample level of control over censorship). But after the Bible came to be (relative to the period at least) mass produced, it began to circulate in various languages. This did not please the Catholic Church. In 1517, seven people were burned at the stake for the crime of teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English. The punishment for owning a Bible in any language other than Latin was death. Thomas More, an infamous persecutor of “heretical” non-Latin Bible owners, was made patron saint of politicians as recently as 1935! Even before More’s time, in the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe (a man I have mentioned in my series of border-line amusing etymological Facebook status updates) had copied the Bible into English dozens of times. He believed that the organisation of the Church was against the Bible itself, a moral paradox he sought to balance. When the Pope at the time (I do not know who the Pope was at the time) discovered this, some years after Wycliffe’s death, he ordered the poor man’s bones dug up, grinded into dust and cast into the river. As a comical chaser to this shot of liturgical tyranny, I remind you that in his first manuscript, Wycliffe was forced to conceive new English words as replacements for certain Latin terms. My favourite is, understandably, the original English for “intestines”, which Wycliffe thought most sensible to name “arse-ropes”. John Wycliffe, everyone! A man whose hand I sorely wish I could shake... had it not been decomposed by the Almighty and pulverised by his chief gimp.
Can we thank the Church for “much European culture, knowledge and technology?” In fairly broad terms, my answer would be: certainly not. The Church were responsible for setting back the development of art, culture, learning, technology and everything modern society is based on, many, many years. Not to mention the fact that, for the Papal hierarchy, human decency and humanitarian education seems to have been a fairly low priority, sacrificed in favour of pomp and ceremony. For all his many faults, I am certainly grateful for Luther and his notions of Biblical self-study, and his belief in the necessity of legalising non-Latin manuscripts. Certainly a step forward for civilization, shackled as it had been by over-zealous spiritual subjugation.
Roman Catholicism delivers moral absolutes...
How comforting for common people to exist in the knowledge that they need not contemplate the morality of their actions. How secure we should all be in knowing that a set of absolute morals exists, and that we need only adhere to them to be happy. How wonderful. How splendid. How ridiculous.
Jesus taught mankind many things. He told us to “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, a wonderful, enlightened concept, and as relevant today as it was that day nearly two millennia ago when Christ stumped that group of hypocrites in their preparations for a good ol’ fashioned community stoning. Essentially, the teachings of Christ have, by and large, been an enormous force for good in the world. This I concede without hesitation or bitterness. I am in agreement with Christians the world over that Christ’s teachings are invaluable. Of course, his divinity is always in dispute, but regardless, his teachings remain integral to many peoples’ lives. They represent what I like to think (probably naively) are our social instincts: not to steal from one another, to treat each other kindly, tolerantly, to love and to forgive and, last but not least, not to kill one another. Please, please, please, please, please don’t let yourself become confused between the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ. Christ’s teachings should be taken on their own merit. Remember, of course, that Christ’s death was partly the doing of religious leaders who had followed the Ten Commandments for many centuries before the coming of Christ. These commandments, and every other moral absolute the Church has peddled for years, are highly suspect in my opinion. The Ten Commandments, as Christopher Hitchins pointed out in his argument, simultaneously demand love and fear. Christ never even entreated humanity to fear him, let alone demand it. God, however, flat-out, no-holds barred, demands simultaneous love and fear, or grants you damnation, free will or none. I needn’t point out how ludicrous this is and perhaps you have guessed how this section is panning out.
Moral absolutes are terrifying to us rational human beings. We live, in this day and age, lives lasting many decades. Last time I checked the average life expectancy for a Briton was somewhere in the seventies. Seventy years is a long time, and even in just under twenty, my ideas of morality have changed enormously, and continue to do so. The human brain does not respond well to moral absolutism, as its default state is one of inquiry and of curiosity. It is in our nature to question, to experiment, to analyse and to ascertain. Indeed, one of the most exciting, fascinating and socially productive endeavours undertaken by our species is that of probing the inestimable labyrinths of human morality. To exist in a state I can only describe as moral complacency is more dangerous than I can commit to words. When societies revert to unquestioning obedience of any set of codes of conduct, they surrender that which lends them not only the dignity of our species, but the safety of ourselves, our families, friends and everyone else: our free will and our quest for development and enlightenment.
Besides, how immutable are the morals of the Church? How absolute is absolute? Historically, about as absolute as my grandfather’s bladder control. What would the Church’s attitude to slavery be today, do you think? Most likely they would consider it inhumane, an appalling violation of morality. Yet, during the rapid increase in trade of African slaves in the wake of growing Imperialism and in part due to the rise of the mercantile classes, do you think the Church spoke out against it? Of course not. Scholars investigating the Papacy’s attitude towards slavery believe the first instance of a Pope speaking out against slavery was only as recently as 1890. Before then the Church adopted a stance of, at best, ambivalence and indecision. Certain saints are known to have purchased slaves with the intent of freeing them, but this does not exactly, or vaguely or in any way otherwise, reflect the actions of the Church.
Here, then, seems an appropriate place to make essentially the same statement I made last month. Individuals pursuing a spiritual life should feel in no way besmirched by the awful things I am writing about the Catholic Church. The Church is an organisation and therefore should be considered as entirely separate from those who follow its faith in their own lives. I have said it before, as long as they actively seek to denounce that which is in need of reassessment, acting against what I have described as moral absolutism, there is no reason for anyone to have the slightest suspicion of them, and I wish them all the happiness and contentment in the world.
But, to return to topic... That such a drastic alteration in morals is possible is evidence, if any was needed, that the Catholic Church is a human institution. It is an earthly organisation run by humans. The Pope himself, indisputable in many ways though his alleged closeness to God makes him, is human. He will die. He is in no way faultless or irrefutable. It makes sense then that the Church should adapt to the times, even though, in the briefing, it is put forward as a benefit that the Church does not adapt. It no longer persecutes individuals for reading English Bibles, or Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Greek or (Heaven forbid!) American-English Bibles, yet it steadfastly refuses to alter its archaic stance on homosexuality. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchins once more, homosexuality is not merely a form of sexuality, but a form of love. A church which actively promotes the spread of love ostracising from its ranks enormous numbers of people based on the fact that they spread their love to the “wrong” people, this is madness. It is an appalling paradox.
To go back to the subject of Papal censorship, the Catholic Church does try, at every opportunity, if not to burn, then at least to censor that which it finds heretical, such as the Harry Potter books. Pope Benedict XVI saw the series as being a terrible influence on children, and the Vatican’s official newspaper included the opinion that Harry “...proposes a wrong and malicious image of the hero, an unreligious one, which is even worse than an explicitly anti-religious proposition." BUT this very paper, L'Osservatore Romano, was, only four years later, to print that the Pope thought the sixth film was the best so far and that: "There is a clear line of demarcation between good and evil and [the film] makes clear that good is right. One understands as well that sometimes this requires hard work and sacrifice." If the Pope himself, in a modern world such as we inhabit, cannot deliver a moral absolute on something like a children’s story, what hope is there that it can provide any absolutes whatsoever? Those it does stand by, notoriously the prohibition of artificial contraception, cause untold levels of death and suffering. To quote directly from what I have just now realized is a rather excellent briefing:
“Each year, 600,000 women die needlessly during pregnancy and childbirth and thousands more die from botched illegal abortions. Each year, 5.8 million people become HIV positive and 2.5 million die from Aids. Today, more than 28% of African children have lost one or both parents to Aids. Yet the Church has consistently lobbied to block international policy decisions that would make condom education and use a major tool in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and in the battle against Aids. At a recent world conference on women and population development, it successfully led the effort to block the inclusion of safe, legal abortion on the list of basic reproductive rights for women. It has used its voice to limit access to family planning, safe abortion – even in countries where abortion is legal – and emergency contraception, even for women who have been raped in an act of war. The Church has had no hesitation in quoting specious scientific evidence to back its case. In Kenya a church pamphlet stated that HIV can pass through condoms and in 2003, the Vatican claimed that "serious scientific studies" backed this view. No scientists supported the claim. It was a lie.”
The statistics are staggering. It may certainly be an absolute, but I would feel ill if I were to seriously consider calling it moral. These statistics, in my own opinion, render the argument for the Church’s positive impact on the world heartbreakingly empty, regardless of the supposed billions donated by Catholic charities the world over. As with the arts, the Church’s interference and widespread moral authoritarianism have done more to damage the human race than enrich it. I don’t feel I need really say any more on this subject, but Stephen Fry certainly makes a compelling argument on the video.
I fear I have become a little morose, but I don’t feel I can be blamed in the slightest. I’ve certainly learned a lot today, and that I have incorporated learnings from all of my three University courses into the mix is exceptionally rewarding. I would like, once again, to remind anyone reading this that my contempt for the organised Catholic Church is just that: contempt for the organised Catholic Church. In fact, I felt terribly sorry for the Archbishop John Onaiyekan throughout the debate. He seemed to me to be one of many religious individuals who have true faith in a benevolent God. However misplaced you see this trust, it can do a great deal of good. I have no doubt there are many individuals in Africa, in Britain, and the whole world over, who actively seek to turn their faith towards improving the world. Archbishop Onaiyekan’s arguments were based primarily on statistics regarding the billion strong membership of his faith and the very large sums donated to African humanitarian causes and, at least during his solo argument, he seemed a genuine believer in the individual benefits God can bring people. He defended his faith admirably, but crashed and burned when defending his Church and this failure encapsulates and solidifies the opinions of many...
The Catholic Church have an inestimable potential to do good, but don’t. If only it were within their ability, if only they had the courage, to make changes to their doctrine, many millions would be happier and safer. The facts and figures that defenders of the Church put forward are all well and good, that during Hitler’s final solution, many Jews were granted refuge in the Pope’s palace, that the Church funds the distribution of aid in struggling, war-torn countries, and many other facts besides, are rendered almost meaningless by the larger picture. These instances are exceptional. When defending an institution in which one believes, one will understandably seek to put forward the most considerable of its achievements, but an institution with the funds, the influence and over a BILLION adherents, the largest Church in the world, should be able to do so much more. I can scarcely imagine what such an enormous organisation could do with the right mindset. But, of course, the hierarchy of the Church is one of conservatism, of obsession, of intolerance, deflection and decrepitude. An awful lot of cobwebs need dusting before the Church will live up to anything even bordering on its full potential.
Jamie
1 comment:
Re: Your tvitter post of Friday der13 2000 und 9.
I'm am very offended by der most recent posting on zis qvite frankly COMMUNIST und zerfore dangerous blog. Yust tink about ze small kiddy-vinkles who might read zis blog und grow to be VILE HEATHEN WRETCHES. Zis sort of ting vould never haf been allowed in der vaterland 60 yars ago.
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