I was at first as outraged as everybody else
by the pope's opening remarks as soon as he landed in Edinburgh,
blaming atheists
for the atrocities of Hitler and the others of the 20th century.
But then I took comfort from it, because it seemed to me that
in a way it was showing we had rattled them so much
[Cheering]
that he was forced to the ignominious expedient
of attacking us
so as to divert attention from the real crimes that have been committed in the name of the catholic church.
I can just imagine
I can just imagine the discussions
in the corridors of Vatican power: "How are we going to distract them from buggering boys?"
And the answer came:
"Why don't we attack secularists? Why don't we attack atheists?
Why don't we blame them for Hitlerism?"
Adolf Hitler was a Roman Catholic.
[Cheering]
He was baptised, he never renounced his baptism.
The figure of 5 million British Catholics is presumably obtained from baptismal figures.
I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe there are 5 or 6 million British Catholics.
There maybe 5 or 6 million who have been baptised,
but if the church wants to claim them as Catholics,
then they have to claim Hitler as a Catholic.
[Cheering]
At the very least, Hitler believed in a personified providence.
He often spoke of it,
and it was presumably the same providence which was invoked by the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich in 1939,
when Hitler escaped assassination and the cardinal ordered a special Te Deum in Munich Cathedral
quote: "To thank Divine Providence in the name of the Archdiocese for the Führer's fortunate escape."
I'm going to read a speech,
made in Munich - the heart of Catholic Bavaria - in 1922,
and I'll leave you to guess whose speech it is.
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter.
It points me to the man who once in loneliness surrounded by a few followers
recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who
God's truth was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage
which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might,
and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders.
How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.
Today after 2000 years,
with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before,
the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the cross."
That was one of numerous speeches by Adolf Hitler,
passages in Mein Kampf,
where Adolf Hitler invoked his own Roman Catholic Christianity.
No wonder he received such warm support from within the catholic hierarchy of Germany.
Even if Hitler had been an atheist - as Stalin surely was -
how dare Ratzinger suggest that atheism has any connection whatsoever with their horrific deeds!?
Any more than Hitler and Stalin's non-belief in leprechauns or unicorns?
Any more than their sporting of a moustache, along with Franco and Saddam Hussein?
There is no logical pathway from atheism to wickedness.
Unless, that is, you are steeped in the vile obscenity at the heart of catholic theology
- I refer to the doctrine of original sin -
these people believe and they teach this to tiny children at the same time as they teach them
the terrifying falsehood of hell;
that every baby is born in sin.
That would be Adam's sin by the way, Adam who as they themselves now admit never actually existed.
Original sin means that from the moment we are born we are wicked, corrupt, damned,
unless we believe in their god or unless we fall for the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the disgusting theory that leads them to presume
that it was godlessness that made Hitler and Stalin the monsters that they were.
'We are all monsters unless redeemed by Jesus.'
What a revolting, depraved, inhuman theory to base your life on!
[Cheering]
Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity.
[Cheering]
He is an enemy of children whose bodies he's allowed to be raped
and whose minds he has encouraged to be infected with guilt.
It's embarrassingly clear that the church is less concerned with
saving child's bodies from rapists than saving priestly souls from hell,
and most concerned with saving the long-time reputation of the church itself.
[Cheering]
He is an enemy of gay people, bestowing on them the bigotry that the church used to reserve for Jews before 1962.
He is an enemy of women, barring them from the priesthood, as though a penis were an essential tool for pastoral duties.
[Cheering]
He is an enemy of truth, promoting bare-faced lies about condoms
not protecting from Aids, especially in Africa.
[Cheering]
He is an enemy of the poorest people on the planet,
condemning them to inflated families that they cannot feed,
so keeping them in the bondage of perpetual poverty.
A poverty which sits ill beside the obscene wealth of the Vatican.
[Cheering]
He is an enemy of science, obstructing vital stem cell research
on grounds not of true morality but on pre-scientific superstition.
[Cheering]
Ratzinger is even an enemy -
he is even an enemy of the Queen's own church,
arrogantly dissing Anglican orders as quote: "absolutely null and utterly void"
while at the same time shamelessly trying to poach Anglican vicars
to shore up his own pitifully declining priesthood.
[Cheering]
Finally,
perhaps of most personal concern to me, Ratzinger is an enemy of education.
Quite apart from
quite apart from the lifelong psychological damage
caused by the guilt and fear that has made catholic education infamous throughout the world,
he and his church foster the educationally pernicious doctrine that evidence
is a less reliable basis for belief than faith
tradition
revelation and authority;
*his* authority!
Thank you very much, Richard Dawkins!