This is my Sun Media column from Saturday, which runs in eight daily newspapers. What I find most interesting is that most people who have spoken to me directly about it are interested, intelligent, normal and have often had their opinions changed. Most people who leave comments on blogs and the like, however, seem completely deranged. This seems to be the case for most columns, especially when religion and the Middle East are discussed. How odd.
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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.
