Martin posted a link to a debate here. The motion of the debate was "The Catholic church is a force for good in the world". In favour of the motion; Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop Onaiyekan. Against the motion; Christopher Hitchens and Steven Fry.
When you're up against Hitchens in a debate about religion, you can probably bet that he's going to be negative and robustly so. As such you would want to provide compelling evidence against him and in favour of your own stance. We shall see that, for Widdecombe and the Archbishop, this was not the case; they not only failed to rebut Hitchens and Fry, but they denied history, science and scripture along the way.
It's the people
Archbishop Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe are the staunch supporters of the Catholic church in this debate. To cement their position they both tried to shift focus away from the upper echelons of the church and onto the rank-and-file clergy and congregations
Widdecombe
What is the church? It is its members. It's the nuns and the monks and the priests and the layworkers and the congregations. It is not just the hierarchy of the church.
Archbishop
…that is not the essence of our church. We should go beyond institution - the church is first and foremost a community of believers.
In doing this it seems that Widdecombe and the Archbishop are attempting to give the church a more personal face; a face that is not shaped by doctrine, but by the piety and good deeds of believers. This is patently absurd. Just as soldiers receive orders from their superiors, so the Catholic church disseminates doctrine to their followers. The doctrine and members of the church are inextricably linked - this is, after all, a debate about Catholicism, not about Protestants, or Methodists, or any other stripe of Christian.
It seems that they have tried to dissociate the church from its followers in an attempt to play on the perceived virtues of the faithful, without having to acknowledge the foibles of the church. Charity, humility and morality are all very nice - murder, torture, conquest and rape less so.
History - what history?
Is there any problem with treating Catholics solely as a community of believers instead of as a highly organised institution? I believe that there is. This way of thinking foregoes the need to keep in mind that Catholic doctrine is carried out by the community, not just those who codify it. This has had perverse consequences in the past - consequences I'm sure you don't need reminding of - and continues to have horrific consequences today. Archbishop Onaiyekan seemed totally and blissfully unaware that his church is not just responsible for doling out aid within his own nation, but also for countless preventable deaths from AIDS.
Both Widdecombe and the Archbishop were guilty of neither addressing nor apologising for the spotted history of the Catholic church. They chose to focus on the good charitable works from the church, rather than - and surely they knew this was coming - the multiple criticisms of Hitchens and Fry. Since the motion of this debate centered on the church being a force for good they should have addressed the negatives and showed that they believe that the net force of the church was benefiting the whole world. Not facing up to and apologising profusely for their neutrality during the Final Solution, their violent nature in the past, and their current abhorrent stance on child abuse by clergy, is the saddest failure of the Catholic church.
Ann Widdecombe seemed positively alarmed that Hitchens and Fry had dared to mention these amongst certain other transgressions of the church
I knew somehow that when we were here tonight we would be discussing child abuse…and condoms!"
If that was the case, then why didn't she come armed with data? Why didn't she show that her opponents were wrong, that abstinence works, and that condoms really are useless in the fight against HIV? Why didn't she demonstrate that, even considering the banning of condoms, the Catholic church still has a net positive effect?
No apologies, no regrets
Because condom use really was the elephant in the room during this debate. Archbishop Onaiyekan will know as well as anyone that AIDS is an enormous and deadly problem in Africa - yet when asked by an audience member which particular Catholic policy he is most ashamed of he answered:
Catholic policies are not just dreamed overnight by the Pope…If it is a Catholic policy it is reasonable, it is based on our traditions and scriptures, and there's none about which I'm ashamed.
It seems a stretch to assume that the Archbishop does not know that abstinence only policies are utterly failing to make appreciable impacts on AIDS in African nations. The successful ABC programs (advocating Abstinence, Being faithful, and Condom use) arguably owe most of their success to persuading people to use condoms.
Continuing to advocate abstinence over contraception doesn't just fly in the face of the evidence - it also has no firm grounding in scripture. The bible has very little to say on the matter of contraception; About the closest it comes to discouraging it is in the story about God smiting Onan for practicing the withdrawal method. But God's anger here is not really reserved for the fact that Onan splashed his vinegar strokes on the dusty ground, but rather that he refused to fulfill his obligation to provide an heir for - and thus split his inheritance with - his dead brother.
I can't even begin to imagine why anyone would choose to promote the idea that contraception is a greater evil than HIV/AIDS. I could post a picture of a little rubber sack filled with jizz next to an AIDS patient in the late stages of the disease and ask you which is worse, but I don't think I need to insult your intelligence to make that point.
Conclusion
Throughout this debate Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop Onaiyekan failed to rebut the valid criticisms against their church. After all, this was a debate about whether the Catholic church is a force for good, not whether they do some good. The truly repugnant aspect of all this isn't that Widdecombe and the Archbishop believe the Catholic church to be a force for good, it is that they deny wholesale the suffering that the church has caused and is still visiting upon people today.
By cherry-picking, denying and twisting history, they aren't just hiding the murky past of the Catholic church from view - they are removing any hope of ever transcending that past and becoming a true force for good.
http://layscience.net/trackback/741
You are in good company, Andrew M Brown, a catholic journalist writing in the Telegraph recently stated:
"I have just witnessed a rout – tonight’s Intelligence Squared debate. It considered the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, opposing the motion, comprehensively trounced Archbishop Onaiyekan (of Abuja, Nigeria) and Ann Widdecombe, who spoke for it. The archbishop in particular was hopeless.
The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don’t know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Don’t know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774. My friend Simon, who’s a season ticket holder, said it was the most decisive swing against a motion that he could remember."
From here
It was almost as if Onaiyekan and Widdecombe were surprised that Hitchins and Fry raised the thorny issues of condoms, homosexuality, child abuse, etc and were therefore not fully prepared. What on earth did they think they were going to be tackled on? There again, even if they had been better prepared, what on earth would they have said in mitigation?
I'm always surprised when debates about the Catholic church comes up - and the reviews of the debates - that not much mention is made to the way the catholic church treats women. We're the majority of the population, and the Catholic church's stance on our basic human rights is lamentable; from witch-burnings to banning contraception and abortion, they have viewed the major half of the human race as unspeakably filthy channels for the devil. And yet, that's kind of a lady issue, isn't it - and not fashionable to mention.
Gotta say - harms them in my eyes!
Hitchens did mention the church's apology for their treatment of women, and even felt compelled to add "Well, that's half the population right there."
Widdecombe was also called upon to reconcile women in politics but not on the pulpit. Why would Hitchens and Fry need to say anything while the other side dug their own hole with their response?
In my mind, Fry's main argument was how obsessed the Catholic church is with sex and the pain that results from it. Focusing on the end result of their 'morality' (the suffering of millions) as opposed to the specifics of what they actually teach (sex is sin) was the best way to show Catholicism as Not a Force for Good. To argue against the teachings or to detail the attitudes against women would be to show Catholicism as Not Morally Right--not the debate.
@Rangaratnam -
I don't think it's possible to show that the RC church is a force for good without first addressing the bad. Equally it makes no sense to try and denigrate the church without acknowledging that they also do an enormous amount of good.
The main shortcoming of the pair on the side of the RC church is that they failed to begin to provide a compelling argument as to why, for example, their current chartiable activites counteract their attitude towards women, providing a net force for good.