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 :-)
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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!
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.
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?
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 ).
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).
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