STEPPING UP

 I'm sorry to see that Robert has stepped back from being the leading religious blogger in this community and I hope that all is OK in his household.

Strange as it may seem, I miss reading of his church's Sunday sermons, his discovery of ever more weird and dysfunctional 'saints' and his exclamations, sorry, explanations of Catholic doctrine fabulous as they may be.

I see it to be my responsibility to fill the void if you like and post on something religious, indeed, something with a Catholic theme.

In 2009, Intelligence Squared hosted a debate between Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens against Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe over the motion “The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World”. You can see by the calibre of the debaters that this was going to be quite some event and it was. If ever you have an hour and a half or so this is well worth seeking out to watch in its entirety.

For this post, I've selected Stephen Fry's argument in the debate - against as you can well imagine - and it is 19 minutes of intelligent, sensible and heartfelt belief that is edgy because it is heartfelt and impassioned and the nervousness of this very clever and well educated man underlines how important it is to him, and others, to expose the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church. 

Please watch this regardless of which side of the debate you are on. I never had the opportunity to watch this with my mother who died in 2004 but I would love to hear that the Catholic Church 'has the balls' to screen this at Sunday Mass instead of the sermon.