Intelligence Squared - Roman Catholic church Flashcards
Matthew Paris
There should be no privlieged status for Christianity
The church in Britain has lost its perogative to boss us around
The effrontery of the Catholic church, an institution which for a thousand years has:
- Bullied its followers
- Abused its privileges
- Exploited the ignorances and fears of the weak
- Claimed to itself and its Pope a divine authority to enforce doctrine and persecute heresy
- Burned its critics at the stake
- Excommunicated intellectual and moral challenge
- Suppressed and perverted science itself
- Preyed on credulity
- Peddled superstition to enforce its grip
- Branded guilt deep into young lives.
Excommunictate - latin root is ‘excommunicare’ = to put out of the community.
Ask Galileo and Darwin about intolerance.
Geoffrey Robertson
The only people bashing Christians in this country are fellow Christians.
The General Synod has been convulsed for years with puerile debates about whether women should be excluded from the ministry, and whether the place of homosexuals is in the pulpit or in hell.
The pope has announced that ordaining a woman is as serious as raping a child.
As the Church of England is the established church it has this outrageous privilege of 26 bishops in the House of Lords.
The British Humanist Association said it was “unacceptable” that “the UK is the only Western democracy to give religious representatives the automatic right to sit in the legislature”
The Catholic Church is beyond redemption
Redeemable = capable of making worthwhile contributions to public debate. Recognition of the need to change.
Ability to channel enthusiasm for charitable giving in a superior way to secular institutions
1/ Excludes half the human race from its decision-making. It systematically excludes women. This shows a warped view of gender and humanity.
2/ Its traditional teachings give it a special insight into morality. This historical record does not bear this out. The Inquisition, the child rape scandal, anti-semitism, the Rwandan genocide.
3/ It hasn’t fully internalised the message that in a liberal democracy it is just one voice against many. It always claims the moral highground.
Being gay is a non-pathological minority variant (like left handedness). The Catholic church calls it an ‘objective disorder’. This position is indefensible.
The Catholic church cannot be trusted with political power.
Catholicism is historically and culturally entrenched in society. The Catholic church isn’t covering itself in glory in Uganda
The Vatican is a sovereign state - acting independently without outside interference.
