Hitchens’ mother committed suicide when he was a boy...his rage reminds me of the rage of my oldest adopted son, who needed to project his anger at his mom’s death (from pneumonia) onto someone else. My son chose me as the victim, Hitchens projects his hate on religion and God’s saints...
Dawkins was abused as a child in boarding school (Not a Catholic one)...which should explain his rage.
They both need our prayers.
Turning to the crises in the Catholic Church: they come down to four deadly words: "Good doctrine, bad discipline."
Here's how it worked in practice:
Ordination of active homosexual males has always been forbidden in the Catholicism: as doctrine, this considered definitive and unchangeable (Link). But liberal doctrinal dissidents (like Hans Kung), weak bishops, subversive seminary rectors and admissions officers for years ignored or quietly sabotaged the practice of Catholic faith and morals.
The background? Try Michael Rose's book, "Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church" (Link)
The result? It's all over the papers.
The solution? Its also summarized in four words To restore Catholic discipline. Or even in three: Become more Catholic.
The bishops who transferred offenders around in the 1970s and 80s are now mostly retired or dead and gone, and during the Ratzinger years --- when Joseph Ratzinger was had of the Churchs doctrine office (CDF), or, as Benedict, Pope--- sexual abuse dropped dramatically. This chart from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (Link) shows how reported abuse in the U.S has plunged:
The overall statistics support George Weigels observation in Newsweek (Link) that today one of the safest places in the United States for children and young people is the Catholic Church.