Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. (Christopher Hitchens, Author)Call me a fence sitter - neither a believer nor a full-fledged atheist, but something in between. Call me an agnostic - someone who has yet to attain the intellectual depth to understand the mysteries of God and determine with certainty that a he or she actually exists - that on the merits of my actions while alive I may work towards an ideal final destination. In my mind, anything is possible and the final revelation of truth has been deferred to a date in the future. If there is such a place, a final destination after we pass on, Christopher Hitchens is now in the midst of such a discovery. And if he stayed true to his character, he is in all probability trying to devise a plan to show us mortals what he is now observing and experiencing; to tell us whether his arguments have prevailed.
There were a number of events in my life that gave me cause to question my faith and ultimately abandon my religion. It wasn’t so much about Catholicism as it was about organized religion that I have rejected. It just so happened I was born into the Catholic faith and was a product of a Catholic education.
One summer, I went on a road trip and joined of group college students that sold books door to door. I was batched in with two atheists who showed me an entirely different perspective on religion and living. For me, the trip wasn’t a success financially. Yet, something valuable came out of it - the fruits of which I didn’t realize until some time after. It gave me freedom of religion, or rather, a freedom from a religion.
I came to realize that there was actually an option to leave my faith and not suffer painful consequences - some form of wrath in the hands of God. It was, up until that moment, my first interaction with non-believers. Odd though it seemed to me at the time because they were genuinely decent human beings, something my religion taught me was not possible.
The second event was the pedophile priest cases that raged across the country at the turn of the millennium. I was a parishioner at St. Edward the Confessor Parish Church in Dana Point California at the time the first complaints against the church was filed around 2002. One of the last times I was at the church, I personally met with one of the priests, John Lenihan. I paid him a visit at his office one afternoon hoping to engage him in a thoughtful conversation about matters of the faith but was rather abruptly and condescendingly sent off with a book. He instructed me to read it and return after I had done so. He probably sensed that I was on a mission to provoke him into a debate. We never had our follow-up meeting. It turned out he was one of the members of the congregation that was later charged with pedophilia and eventually defrocked by the church.
The sex-abuse cases that were later filed against the Catholic church rose to a stunning number worldwide. It’s difficult to know how many lawsuits have been filed to date. It is even the more impossible to determine how many children were sexually abused by church leaders and not reported. Even with the amounts of money being rewarded by juries or were offered through settlements, none of whom will have their lives whole again.
The pedophile priest cases were an affront to my sensibilities at every level, causing me to re-evaluate the man-made institutions of organized religion. So, by the time I saw a debate between Hitchens and the former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair about religion, I was open to new ideas. I was thirsting to be exposed to perspectives about religion devoid of political correctness. Without retelling what actually transpired in the debate that was aired in November 2010, a clip is made available below for you to view. You be the judge.
In the end, even the razor sharp mind of Hitchens could not outwit the diabolical habit of cigarette smoking and it’s evil twin - cancer. He died of esophageal cancer on the 15th of December 2011. Nonetheless, there’s really no middle ground when it comes to formulating an opinion about this man. His ideas will expose you to things that you may not have considered before. It will either impress you enough to study his works and create a deeper perspective on the subject, or, he will so utterly offend you. This explains why he is so intensely abhorred by some and yet revered by others. You will have good cause to take a position, in either case. And though a person-to-person conversation with him will never occur, he left a considerable volume of work for me to investigate, to immerse myself in and to learn from. I, in turn, will give it the scholarly respect it deserves; the commensurate amount of effort and time it demands. It is an undertaking I anticipate with great relish, indeed. I look forward to knowing you, Mr. Hitchens.
VIDEO: THE MUNK DEBATES
JOHN LENIHAN PEDO-PRIEST ARTICLE
