Hitchens Hates
I tossed Christopher Hitchens out of the pool of those I respect some time ago, for his mean spirited hatchet jobs on Bob Hope and Sister Teresa. He’s done another, on Pope Benedict, whom he can only refer to by his give name and not his religious one.
Curiously, he does not follow the same naming convention with regard to Byzantine Emperor Manuel II.
First, he cheap shots the title “Pope” by comparing the head of the Roman Catholic Church to that of the Coptic Church. There are well over 1 billion Roman Catholics in the world, and about 225 million Orthodox. In that 220 million are 30 million Copts. Hardly a fair comparison.
Of course, Hitchens repeats the lie that the Catholic Church was spread by violence.
There would have been no established Byzantine or Roman Christianity if the faith had not been spread and maintained and enforced by every kind of violence and cruelty and coercion.
That would be a surprise to the founders of the Church, which in the first 300 years saw the Church spread throughout the Roman Empire despite the most vicious of persecutions. And it would be a surprise to the Crusaders of the first Three Crusades, who, despite Hitchen’s calumny, did not sack Christian Byzantium. It would also be a surprise to Sister Leonella, had she not been murdered for HER beliefs.
In fact, Hitchens accepts the Islamic polemic that the Crusades were about the victimization of Islam. He forgets, or never knew, that the Crusades were launched to recover the Christian territories in the Middle East including the Holy Land which had been conquered, violently, by Islamic invaders.
Hitchens climbs on his atheistic high horse, disparaging the Pope’s perspective that reason and religion are compatible. He criticizes the Pope’s choice of philosophers in his speech. And, in a bizarre statement claims the Church would have destroyed the Reformation without recognizing in the least that the Reformation was faith based. In other words, it appears that he views the Reformation as a good thing so long as it poked a stick in the eye of Rome. His hatred of things Catholic blinds him to the contradiction here.
Rather than address the Moslem reaction to the speech, or the notion that the use of violence to advance faith is wrong, Hitchens concentrates his venom on the Pope and the Church. He purposely ignores the violence happening everywhere Islam borders another set of beliefs. There is a ring of fire around Islam, which its believers have set, and around which the blood of non-believers pools.
Oh, yes, Hitchens is a hateful man and a hate filled man. I wonder if he ever sees goodness in his life, or in the world? Just what sorts of morals and ethics does he respect?
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My only hope is when they take over, Hitchens and Sullivan get their heads sawed off before they saw off mine so I can watch.
Chuck, why not use a Catholic source for the description of the Crusades: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04543c.htm (the Catholic encyclopedia)