{"id":515,"date":"2009-11-20T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T11:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2009\/11\/20\/is-catholicism-a-force-for-good-christopher-hitchens-and-stephen-fry-vs-ann-widdecombe-and-bishop-1-of-5\/"},"modified":"2009-11-20T11:31:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T11:31:00","slug":"is-catholicism-a-force-for-good-christopher-hitchens-and-stephen-fry-vs-ann-widdecombe-and-bishop-1-of-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2009\/11\/20\/is-catholicism-a-force-for-good-christopher-hitchens-and-stephen-fry-vs-ann-widdecombe-and-bishop-1-of-5\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Is Catholicism a Force For Good?&#8221;: Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry vs. Ann Widdecombe and Bishop (1 of 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Blakeley Nixon for this link. Surprising vote at the end. To be fair to the Catholic side: as speakers, Widdecome and the Bishop were pretty awful and entirely outclassed. <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Postscript.<\/span> By the way, for anyone interested in this topic I would strongly recommend David Ranan&#8217;s <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Double Cross: The Code of the Catholic Church<\/span>, which is at least as exciting as <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The<\/span> <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Da Vinci Code<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The Catholic Herald wrote:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Speaking of how other people may see us, I have been reading a fascinating, if somewhat uncomfortable book called Double Cross by David Ranan (Theo Press). When I tell you that it devotes 350 pages to attacking the Church &#8230; you will understand why I would not recommend it to anyone who is not familiar with Church history and the general cut and thrust of apologetic debate. &#8230; whenever I was able to check references they proved satisfactory. Withal, I found the book salutary. It reminds me how the credibility of the Church has so often been endangered not only by bad individuals but by bad trends. <\/span>&#8212;  Catholic Herald, November 2007<\/p>\n<p>Also see my blog debate with commentators on<a href=\"http:\/\/stephenlaw.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Condoms%20Catholics%20and%20HIV\"> HIV, condoms and Catholicism<\/a> &#8211; check comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Blakeley Nixon for this link. Surprising vote at the end. To be fair to the Catholic side: as speakers, Widdecome and the Bishop were pretty awful and entirely outclassed. Postscript. By the way, for anyone interested in this topic I would strongly recommend David Ranan&#8217;s Double Cross: The Code of the Catholic Church, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-condoms-catholics-and-hiv","category-is-religion-dangerous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}