Christopher hitchens youtube catholic

He has said, with that certainty that characterises his utterances, that the Catholic Church has had a history of anti-Semitism. Let us just look at the record of the Catholic Church, when the Jewish community was under the most serious threat that it has faced in recent centuries, and just look at the role that the Catholic Church played in the last World War.

Mr Hitchens ignores the thousands of Jews who were secreted and rescued in churches and monasteries throughout Europe. And coming nearer to our day, of course Christopher Hitchens is right, and who could possibly dispute with him, that the abuse of children, of innocent children, is one—in fact it is the—worst offence that anybody can commit.

Of that, no doubt. But again he seems to think that the Catholic Church should have had some unique insight, which demonstrably was lacking in society as a whole, do not expect the Catholic Church somehow, when that was the state of knowledge at the time, to have acted in a unique and completely different way. In retrospect, yes, of course.

In retrospect, yep. Imagine the developing world had been left without the input of the medicine and the education that was brought to it by the missions. Imagine the absence of those collections, Sunday upon Sunday, for famine relief. Imagine the absence of the church in the local community. We play a vital role. What is the church? It is its members: it is the nuns and the monks and the priests and the layworkers and the congregations.

It is not just the hierarchy of the Church. And I believe that the Church to which I belong is a massive, massive force for good. But, let us not just keep the debate at that level. And that message is one of hope, that message is one of salvation. And it is all very well for some people to say, in an intellectual arrogance, we can do without that, but actually billions of people across the world live by that message of hope and of salvation.

They try to live by the commandments and also by the interpretation of those commandments by Christ. Yea, sometimes they fail, sometimes their leaders fail—human beings do fail—but overwhelmingly, I say to you tonight with no apology whatever, that a world without the Catholic Church would be poorer, would be more hopeless, and would be a worse place in which to live.

Well thank you very much indeed, Ann Widdecombe. And our final speaker is against the motion: Stephen Fry, a bit of an all-rounder really, Stephen can turn his hand to many things. I genuinely believe that the Catholic Church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world, and therefore it is important for me to try and martial my facts as well I can to explain why I think that.

But I want first of all to say that I have no quarrel and no argument and I wish to express no contempt for individual devout and pious members of that church. It would be impertinent and wrong of me to express any antagonism towards any individual who wishes to find salvation in whatever form they wish to express it. That to me is sacrosanct as much as any article of faith is sacrosanct to anyone of any church or any faith in the world.

They are a belief in the Enlightenment, a belief in the eternal adventure of trying to discover moral truth in the world, and there is nothing, sadly, that the Catholic Church and its hierarchs likes to do more than to attack the Enlightenment. It did so at the time: reference was made to Galileo and the fact that he was tortured, for trying to explain the Copernican theory of the Universe.

Just imagine in this square mile how many people were burned for reading the Bible in English. And one of the principle burners and torturers of those who tried to read the Bible in English, here in London, was Thomas More. This is a man who put people on the wrack for daring to own a Bible in English: he tortured them for owning a Bible in their own language.

The idea that the Catholic Church exists to disseminate the word of the Lord is nonsense. It is the only owner of the Truth for the billions that it likes to boast about, because those billions are uneducated and poor, as again it likes to boast about. My particular love is the country of Uganda, it is one of the countries I love most in the world.

I have been to the hospital in Bwindi in the west of Uganda, where I do quite a lot of work, it is unbelievable the pain and suffering you see. Now yes, yes it is true abstinence will stop it. Now, they will say we with our permissive society and our rude jokes, we are obsessed. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.

Do you know who would be the last person ever to be accepted as a prince of the Church? The Galileean carpenter. That Jew. They would kick him out before he tried to cross the threshold. He would be so ill-at-ease in the Church. What would he think, what would he think of St. What would he think of the wealth, and the power, and the self-justification, and the wheedling apologies?

The Pope could decide that all this power, all this wealth, this hierarchy of princes and bishops and archbishops and priests and monks and nuns could be sent out in the world with money and art treasures, to put them back in the countries that they once raped and violated, they could give that money away, and they could concentrate on the apparent essence of their belief, and then, I would stand here and say the Catholic Church may well be a force for good in the world, but until that day, it is not.

Thank you. Well, Stephen Fry, thank you very much. The motion is: the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. In favour of the motion were Against the motion, that the Catholic church is a force for good, were Big difference. Now, put your hand up if you want to speak, a question, the lady with the spectacles. I would like to ask Mr Hutchens if he is only against the Catholic church or against all religions.

Hi there, this is a question for Christopher Hitchens. Now, if one thing that the Catholic church does do for good in my opinion, is give us the ten commandments, a very basic and obvious way of giving us some kind of moral guidance. Would you not agree with that? The lady in front began by asking me do I reserve this condemnation only for the Holy Roman church and not for Catholics, for example Byzantine Catholics and Protestants and so on.

I would have thought it quite obvious that the Ten Commandments set out a blueprint for a moral and successful society. The Ten Commandments are in the Bible, but my father know it before he became a Christian. All African religions recognised those basic norms of morality, everybody knows that. This is a very simple question for Ann Widdecombe.

Ann made a point about the billions that are poured into Africa. I respect your faith, I respect the message you give, but why to pass that message on do you need the finery you wear, do you need the palace of the Vatican? The billions of this world I think are not in the Vatican, we know where they are, and they are not coming to Africa, on the contrary, Africa is being sucked dry by those people, those multinationals, they are the ones who should be bringing our money back to us.

I think we are targeting the wrong place. I come from Africa, and the funds that come from church agencies for us are very important. And I have to say to you, that really does betray a vast ignorance. A Member of Parliament, male or female, does not stand in persona Christi at the point of consecration. Okay, thanks. Lots of hands up and I really do want to go around everybody, so panel, if you could keep your responses to the point as much as you can.

Up there, please. Hi, question for Ann Widdecombe actually. The Roman Catholic Church is the oldest institution in the western world and has had a pivotal influence on western civilisation, ranging from matters of state to cultural life and from personal morals to social values and ethics. Increasingly, though, it is being criticised as being a malign influence in debates about some of the most pressing issues of the modern world — overpopulation, Aids, global warming, human rights and so on.

Newsletter Receive regular updates about forthcoming events and other news from Intelligence Squared. Thanks You have been added to our mailing list and will now be among the first to hear about events. Play video How can I prove it? Where is he? Where is the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston, whose resignation was indignantly demanded finally by 50 members of the church and by the whole laity of Massachusetts, who also demanded his prosecution for the promotion and protection and covering up and apology for and defence of people whose crimes against children are too revolting to specify?

And it is the one thing the church has decided to excuse itself for under this papacy. They said some Christians fell into error, some Christians allowed themselves to be deceived in this way and to act against the gospel. Well, anti-Semitism was preached as an official doctrine of the church until How can this church say it has any moral superiority?

It is the unfettered intelligence, the method of free inquiry and philosophy and in science, and the refusal to admit that any one person can tell you not to do that. In other words, genocide, no. Deicide, yes. Is this not a crying scandal? Staying in Africa, I think it will one day be admitted with shame that it might have been in error to say that AIDS is as bad as a disease.

I say in the presence of His Grace and I say it to his face: the preachings of his church are responsible for the death, suffering, and misery of millions of his brother and sister Africans, and he should apologize for it. He should show some shame for condemning my friend Stephen Fry for his nature. Yeah, we hate the sin, only we love the sinner.

For shame, for shame. It may be temporary. This is the sale of indulgences, blatantly and openly. Sat Bismarck Christianity when they got to Constantinople and then went on to massacre the Arabs and Muslims. They were offered paradise if they died committing these terrible crimes against humanity. The impetus to crime, the belief in certainty, the belief that a divine warrant entails you to do whatever you like is the sin that must be canceled.

There must be an apology that must somehow be made. Maybe Cardinal Law will still be on it, so pick another Pope. And I think we should get on with it. Okay, thank you for having me. A post shared by Christopher Hitchens christopherhitchensantitheist. This is one such occasion. With my trusty Hitch by my side, I am very proud to be here, but also very nervous.

It matters to me greatly. I genuinely believe that the Catholic Church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world. Therefore, it is important for me to try and marshal my facts as well as I can to explain why I think that. But I want, first of all, to say that I have no quarrel, no argument, and I wish to express no contempt for individual devout and pious members of that church.

They are welcome to their sacraments, to their reliquaries, and to their Blessed Virgin Mary. All of that is absolutely fine by me. It would be impertinent and wrong of me to express any antagonism towards any individual who wishes to find salvation in whatever form they wish to express it. That, to me, is sacrosanct, as much as any article of faith is sacrosanct to anyone of any church or any faith in the world.

It did so at the time reference was made to Galileo and the fact that he was tortured for trying to explain the Copernican theory of the universe. History, as Miss Whiticam has reminded us, is irrelevant. All that matters now is that billions of pounds go out of this extraordinary institution to relieve the poor around the world and make the world a better place.

Christopher hitchens youtube catholic

History is of no importance whatsoever. Well, I beg to differ. History winces and quivers and vibrates in all of us in this hall, in this square mile. It seems so tedious and so silly, one of those little casuistic games that Thomists and others play. Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo both proposed this extraordinary idea that babies who were unbaptized would not know heaven.

However, what an extraordinary, brilliant coup to imagine such a thing as purgatory, that a soul needs to be prayed for in order to go to heaven, in order to turn left when he enters the aeroplane of heaven and get a first-class seat, that he needs to be prayed for. And if you were rich enough, you could have a chantry built, and monks would permanently sing prayers so that that existence in heaven for the child would go up and up and up until they were at the table of the Lord themselves.

Now, all this is in the past and is irrelevant. I concede to Anne Widicum how irrelevant it is, except for one thing.