Here is a link to the BBC’s The Intelligence Squared Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry and Catholics, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Anne Widdencombe MP debating: “Is the Catholic Church a Force for Good in the World?” Evidently, according to this report, it wasn’t so much a debate as a romp, Hitchens and Fry ran away with it:
The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don’t know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Don’t know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774. My friend Simon, who’s a season ticket holder, said it was the most decisive swing against a motion that he could remember.
Maybe the Catholics should have limited the debate to the last hundred years so they could have avoided the whole Inquisition thing. Of course that leaves them with other very difficult issues to defend but at least it removes torture and death from the debate.
If I were to defend the church (not just the Roman Catholic Church but the universal church) as being a force for good in the world, I would focus less on our actions (though, we do get it right more often than not) and more on our message: that Christ is a force for good in the world. He came to take away the sin of the world, to give eternal life to those who believe in himand reconcile us to the Father so that in Christ we may have peace and know the everlasting love of God. That’s a message that’s a force for good in the world, which is why it’s called the gospel 
posted November 9, 2009 at 5:18 pm
One of those linked to articles called for another Chesterton to appear … well, maybe one will.
posted November 9, 2009 at 7:19 pm
“If I were to defend the church …(not just the Roman Catholic Church but the universal church) as being a force for good in the world, I would focus less on our actions (though, we do get it right more often than not) and more on our message: that Christ is a force for good in the world”
Judge us on what we say, but don’t look at what we do. Could the problem be precisely that apart from the name, the Christian Church has little in common with Christ anymore?
posted November 9, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Michele, your defense depends upon accepting that Christianity is correct before it is convincing. Anyone of that mindset would already agree with you. People who don’t share that assumption would look at the church as another social institution and judge it by its behavior.
posted November 9, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Lofty ideals don’t hold a lot of water with me. The Khmer Rouge and Nazi Germany and socialism all had wonderful messages on paper. Actions speak louder than words, and the church’s actions are those of an organization which has been, on balance, a force of darkeness and repression.
posted November 10, 2009 at 3:39 am
Yo!
Not everyone was keen on handing an unreserved victory to the forces of Darkness.
Perhaps you should analyse the poor arguments Steven Fry and Chris Hitchen’s first:
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/2009/10/our-passions-forge-our-fetters-part-1.html
posted November 10, 2009 at 6:11 am
Hitchens didn’t do so well against Douglas Wilson in the movie Collision. He tried the argument that Jesus said that he would return before this generation passed away. (Hitchens reasoned Jesus didn’t return) And Mr. Wilson was able to explain Jesus was prophecying the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. To which Hitchens seemed unable to respond.
Love those Reformed debaters!
posted November 10, 2009 at 10:19 am
All the Catholics needed to do was to film the violence and vice of the secular world down the street from the debate. Or in anytown western-world.
Atheism is a moral cercinogen.
Religion is where the victims and perps of secularism go to escape it.
Oh . . . TODAY by the way.
posted November 10, 2009 at 10:22 am
Two things, I meant . . . atheism is a moral cArcinogen.
And,
Visit the morgue, look at the dead people there under the age of 30 and you’ll see what secularism does for society.
It thins the herd.
When’s the next debate?
posted November 10, 2009 at 1:11 pm
the institution of the catholic church, its history & its rulings have next to nothing to do with the millions of practicing catholics, just as the political & financial institutions of the world do not make those who are bound to participate in them complicit in genocide, slavery & third world debt.
Hitchens was asked if he felt the same about all religions…yet he would not be seen tearing into Judaism specifically in similar fashion, as he knows which institutions are fair game. criticism of the catholic church is not going to damage his image & no catholic can accuse him of “hate speech” or having an “agenda”.
Fry screamed “then what are you for?!” to catholics, based on his belief that all catholics amount to are apologists for aids, murder, the holocaust & paedophilia. It was a moronic & utterly one sided debate ( though it was not a debate at all, just two people daring an audience not to agree that all catholicism amounts to is a violent, hate filled institution, whose priests are unfit to be left with children ).
posted November 10, 2009 at 1:44 pm
He tried the argument that Jesus said that he would return before this generation passed away. (Hitchens reasoned Jesus didn’t return) And Mr. Wilson was able to explain Jesus was prophecying the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Love those Reformed debaters!
Yeah, love ‘em. Oh, goodness. If Wilson’s explanation works for you, God bless. But then, why are Peter and Paul explaining the delay in their epistles? (2 Peter 3:4,8-10; 1 Thess. 4:15-18, especially verse 18 – “Therefore encourage each other with these words.”)
The archbishop did a fine job in the clip I watched. And he even left out good stuff like education, culture (the arts).