Sam Harris takes on the Vatican

[Pope Bennie praying - for what?]

Sam Harris, the erstwhile atheist trying to bring reason to a demented world that continues to confuse faith with facts, has finally taken on the Vatican.

He can keep quiet no longer. Here's why:

"Just imagine a pious mother and father sending their beloved child to the Church of a Thousand Hands for spiritual instruction, only to have him raped and terrified into silence by threats of hell. And then imagine this occurring to tens of thousands of children in our own time -- and to children beyond reckoning for over a thousand years. The spectacle of faith so utter misplaced, and so fully betrayed, is simply too depressing to think about."

But Harris has decided to think about it anyway. Here's the way he sees it:

"The Catholic Church has spent two millennia demonizing human sexuality to a degree unmatched by any other institution, declaring the most basic, healthy, mature, and consensual behaviors taboo. Indeed, this organization still opposes the use of contraception, preferring, instead, that the poorest people on earth be blessed with the largest families and the shortest lives. As a consequence of this hallowed and incorrigible stupidity, the Church has condemned generations of decent people to shame and hypocrisy -- or to Neolithic fecundity, poverty, and death by AIDS. Add to this inhumanity the artifice of cloistered celibacy, and you now have an institution -- one of the wealthiest on earth -- that preferentially attracts pederasts, pedophiles, and sexual sadists into its ranks, promotes them to positions of authority, and grants them privileged access to children..."

Mr. Harris continues with a description of the sexual and physical abuse part and parcel of the Roman Church in Ireland as outlined in The Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), 2009. Horrifying is much too weak a word to categorize the abuses delineated.

As a result, Mr. Harris has joined with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins in an attempt to "end the 'diplomatic immunity' which the Vatican claims protects the Pope from any responsibility."

Personally, I think this is a good idea and a good first step in the right direction. The current pope, as we know, has been for years instrumental in covering up the dastardly abuses by clerical and other members of the Roman Church.

The pope is nothing more than a male human being who wears colorful dresses. And if he is guilty of hiding criminal behavior to protect other males who wear colorful dresses, he should be called to account.


For the full article by Sam Harris, click here.