Catholicism scholar: ‘Religion has done more harm than good’
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Quote:“This is not to deny that religions have done and continue to do good things,” he wrote. “But that I even have to utter such a correction — and that we scholars of religion feel compelled to do so, always, right after we speak what we all agree is a simple truth — shows the power of the idea that, in the end, religions are essentially good. It is so powerful and deeply embedded that rarely do we — who ought to know better — pause to stare into the depths of the truth that religions have, over time, done more harm than good before we scramble up toward the warm sunlight of good religion.”
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Quote:“What I understand now is that the dark and troubled landscape of modern Catholic sexuality, and therefore of modern Catholicism itself, has been the normal, everyday life of modern Catholicism. This is not a crisis. It is the modern Catholic normal, finally disclosed for all to see clearly.
Do you think this is easy for me?” he asked rhetorically of his condemnation of Catholicism. “I needed to tell you what brought me to this horrible place. It is a defamation of the demand for justice by victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse and of its cover-up by Catholic authorities to attribute it to some passing reflex of modern anti-Catholic prejudice. It is also a defamation of my disgust.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/godzooks/2...olar-orsi/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
