Pope-bashing 'twits'

Toronto Sun ^ | 2010-04-17 | Michael Coren

[Clive]

Pope-bashing ‘twits’

Hitchens-Dawkins’ arresting idea to collar pontiff is seriously flawed

By Michael Coren, QMI Agency

Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Stalin and Mao. Some of the all-time great comedy duo acts.

Now we have Hitchens and Dawkins. The critics love them. This from The Daily Atheist: “Upper class twits with all of the arrogance and pomposity that years of in-bred privilege and expensive private education can provide, these two jokers are guaranteed to give you laugh after laugh, even when they’ve done the same routine for years.”

Richard Dawkins is the straight-man of the team. Wandering around like some aged uncle searching for lost marbles, he stares out into the distance as the plebs read his books and think them so terribly clever.

Unfortunately the serious reviewers, including those who support the old fellow’s views, think them embarrassingly facile, but the money still rolls in.

Christopher Hitchens is the comic relief. “I say, I say, I say”, he says to buddy Dawkins. “My dog’s got no nose.”

Really, replies Dick, that must be the fault of organized Christianity because we know that the Pope used to cut the noses off of dogs as a sacrifice to the Virgin Mary — and on and on and on.

“No, no,” shouts Hitchens, “You’re supposed to ask me how it smells and I say it smells awful.”

But the money also rolls in for Hitchens, who seems terribly concerned when young people are abused by Catholic priests, but oddly indifferent when Palestinian or Iraqi children are blown apart by rockets.

Now the guys have promised to arrest the Pope when he visits Britain because of his crimes against humanity. They mean the abuse scandal, in which between 1.5% and 4% of priests molested mostly adolescent boys three decades ago.

Pope Benedict has been tireless, in his words, in “cleansing the filth out of the church,” but why let truth and justice get in the way of another Hitchens and Dawkins show.

Higher standard

To apply their logic, we would need to do a lot of arresting. The vast majority of sexual abuse occurs in the family, generally by step-brothers and boyfriends of mothers.

The next highest amount comes from teachers. These two institutions and people account for more than 75% of all charges, compared to less than 2% for the church.

Next are sports coaches, with some horribly infamous cases in hockey.

Other sports are equally bad, with one swimming coach in the United States being moved from team to team even after he was revealed as a pedophile.

Secular youth groups such as Scouts also experience abuse, as do synagogues, mosques and Protestant churches, foster homes, youth clubs and pretty much anywhere else.

In fact, a Catholic Church today is arguably the safest place for a young person to be. But the church is held to a higher standard and that is entirely appropriate.

The reason that evangelical atheists and fundamentalist anti-Catholics like the Hitchens-and-Dawkins act won’t be consistent in their arresting fantasies is partly because they are hypocrites, but also because, whether they like it or not, they implicitly know that the church is special.

They expect more of it because it’s righteous, right and godly.

Well said boys, well said.

Read Michael Coren’s new blog here.

[Clive]

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[narses]

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[kinsman redeemer]

From Catholic.com

Vatican II explained the doctrine of infallibility as follows: "Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they can nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly. This is so, even when they are dispersed around the world, provided that while maintaining the bond of unity among themselves and with Peter’s successor, and while teaching authentically on a matter of faith or morals, they concur in a single viewpoint as the one which must be held conclusively. This authority is even more clearly verified when, gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church. Their definitions must then be adhered to with the submission of faith" (Lumen Gentium 25).

Infallibility belongs in a special way to the pope as head of the bishops (Matt. 16:17–19; John 21:15–17). As Vatican II remarked, it is a charism the pope "enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (Luke 22:32), he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals. Therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly held irreformable, for they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised to him in blessed Peter."

The infallibility of the pope is not a doctrine that suddenly appeared in Church teaching; rather, it is a doctrine which was implicit in the early Church. It is only our understanding of infallibility which has developed and been more clearly understood over time. In fact, the doctrine of infallibility is implicit in these Petrine texts: John 21:15–17 ("Feed my sheep . . . "), Luke 22:32 ("I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail"), and Matthew 16:18 ("You are Peter . . . ").

[LurkLongley]

You are Peter, and upon you as upon a rock will I build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Blessings and peace to his Holiness and all here!

[Dudoight]

Please, please, please tell me why Dawkins and Hitchens have not asked for the arrest of the mullahs who have inspired mass murder of innocents, beheading, etc.?

These deeds are actually performed in the NAME of religion and God.

The pedophiles may be wearing a cassock and a collar but they are acting on their own, not in God’s name.

[Cicero]

I think Dawkins just isn’t very bright. Hitchens is amusingly bright, but not quite in touch with reality.

There’s an amusing essay in the latest issue of First Things on the idiocies of the New Atheists, by David Hart, I presume derived from his recent book, Atheist Delusions.

As he points out, these folks—even the academic philosophers among them—wouldn’t know how to reason their way out of a paper bag.

[SaraJohnson]

Yep.

[LadyDoc]

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.

[Mrs. Don-o]

LadyDoc, I have often wondered if Hitch's rage actually stems from the circumstances of his mother's suicide. It seems plausible, and yet it obviously didn't affect his brother Peter the same way. We need to pray for him, seriously. And for your oldest adopted son, too. As I get older I see so much of the persistent anger of people who have been hurt deeply and reacted irrationally.

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? It’s also summarized in four words” “To restore Catholic discipline.” Or even in three: “Become more Catholic.”

The bishops who transferred offenders around in the 1970’s and ‘80’s are now mostly retired or dead and gone, and during the “Ratzinger years” --- when Joseph Ratzinger was had of the Church’s 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 Weigel’s observation in Newsweek (Link) that today one of the safest places in the United States for children and young people is the Catholic Church.

[LadyDoc]

Hitchens was older, so his mom’s death affected him more, just like my older but not my younger adopted son (his brother) was full of rage over their parent’s deaths.

As for the scandal: I lived in Boston when Law was there, and let his office do the work. We tried to get him to openly oppose the pushing of Euthanasia at Harvard and other medical schools, but we (myself and two professors) were ignored...he was too weak to go after Geohagan (the worst of the lot) because he was a popular left wing street priest, and if he tried to remove him, Law would have faced criticism...or maybe the gays in his office didn’t even bother to let him know about the problem.

All I know is that a priest taught my son and eighth graders in a Boston parochial school that masturbation was okay, and my son was shocked...

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think it was Paul Shanley who was the popular long-haired, jeans-wearing "street priest" who "worked with troubled youth" ---runaways and hustlers --- and was convicted on the basis of the "recovered memories" of a drug addict. Prosecutor Martha Coakley was involved in that. She was also involved in the bizarre "day care abuse" case that slammed innocent people into prison --- and the courts have now come to the conclusion that "recovered memories" should not be evidence to convict.

I'm not saying Shanley was innocent. Far from it. He did admit sex with both women and men, and older adolescents, but not with kids. But I am saying that the whole episode is tangled and perverted with plenty of corruption to go around including on the part of police and prosecutors.

Just digging into these cases is disturbing and --- how can I put it? --- contaminating. Polluting. I hate what happened to the victims, who continue to suffer. And Cardinal Law -- at Sta. Maria Maggiore in Rome? Gag me with a spoon.

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