The former Archbishop of Westminster lets us know that atheism is the greatest of all evils.

The evil we ask to be delivered from is not essentially the evil of sin, though that is clear, but in the mind of Jesus, it is more importantly a loss of faith. For Jesus, the inability to believe in God and to live by faith is the greatest of evils. You see the things that result from this are an affront to human dignity, destruction of trust between peoples, the rule of egoism and the loss of peace.

Oh really. Is that so. The things that result from the inability (and total lack of desire) to believe in God are an affront … Read the rest

I heard part of an old Wire Tap the other day, about a family of atheists deciding to have a religious funeral for an atheist relative (for a social reason). They find the church the late atheist relative had once occasionally attended, and talk to the preacher there, who seems very relaxed and human and understanding, including of their atheism – then at the funeral itself he confounds them by shouting about eternal torment and flames of hell. They were angry but too cowardly to confront him, but on Wire Tap the storyteller (Adam Davidson) phones him to ask some questions. They are important questions, which don’t get asked enough. He asked if he had it right – the preacher … Read the rest

The new archbishop of Westminster says it took ‘courage’ for clergy involved in child abuse to confront their actions.

I find that absolutely extraordinary. The vanity of it, the self-love and self-absorption, the misdirection, the narcissism, the callousness – it’s just staggering. Courage! Courage forsooth! What courage?! The subject here is six decades of gross abuse and exploitation of generation after generation of children by adult nuns and priests; what does that have to do with courage?! It doesn’t take courage for a grown-up well-fed strong adult to bully and starve and torture and shame a child. On the contrary, as we all know, or ought to, large strong people tormenting smaller weaker people is the very opposite of … Read the rest

The Commission into Child Abuse report is out. It found that children lived in ‘daily terror’ of being beaten in industrial schools (which weren’t really schools at all) from 1940 onwards.

It found that corporal punishment was “pervasive, severe, arbitrary and unpredictable” in the institutions where “children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.” The report said that the level of emotional abuse of disadvantaged, neglected and abandoned children by religious and lay staff was “disturbing” and that the Catholic Church was aware long-term sex offenders were repeatedly abusing children…the Commission found that “children were frequently hungry, food was inadequate, inedible and badly prepared in many schools.”…Accommodation in the institutions was