"Is the Catholic Church a Force for Good?"

Stephen Fry:  "What what [Jesus] think of St. Peter's? What would he think of the wealth and the power and the self-justification and the wheedling apologists?"

"Limbo... the idea that babies that were unbaptized would not know heaven... Sometimes as little as 2/3 of a year's salary could ensure that a dead loved one would go to heaven. And money could ensure that your baby, your dead child... could go to heaven..."

"We must remember... that the church is very loose on moral evils because although they try to accuse people like me who believe in empiricsim and the Enlightenment of somehow what they call moral relativism - as if it's some appalling sin - where what it actually means is *thought.*  They, for example, thought that slavery was perfectly fine. Absolutely okay. And then, they didn't. They thought, until the year 2000, that a baby went to Limbo, causing unbelievable distress to parents whose child died, unbelievable distress, and then with a wave of hand and a stamp of a seal, it was no longer true. Something that had been eternally, or at least true for 2000 years, suddenly wasn't.

Because the truth is complicated.


It's hard.


And what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says:

'Oh, we couldn't have known better because nobody else did.' 

Then. What. Are. You. For?"