<a href="http://www.intelligencesquared.com/iq2-video/2009/catholic-church" source="Intelligence^2">The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world</a> is a debate between Archbishop Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe (for the Church) and Christoper Hitchens and Stephen Fry (against the Church). The link has all of the videos linked in from YouTube<fn> and it's worth watching all of it, especially since the audience gets to vote twice: once at the beginning and once at the end.<fn> It is interesting not because those supporting the Church actually argued well, but because those against the church did. Stephen Fry (video below), in particular, was absolutely brilliant in his writing, his diction and his conviction. The Archbishop is flat-out terrible, if not completely embarrassing. His argument is, essentially, <iq>if the Catholic Church were not a force for good, he would not have devoted his entire life to serving it.</iq> That was the sum total of the Archbishop's nuance; essentially arguing that people should simply take on faith that the Church is good. Objective evidence from throughout history doesn't enter into it if you just believe that the Church is good. Ann Widdecombe was more forceful, but hardly stronger. She was very spiteful and lit into Hitchens ad hominem rather than actually addressing any points either he or Fry made. She niggled about Fry's definition of purgatory---like, who gives a shit exactly what <i>kind</i> of fairy dust they use there?---but completely ignored his taking offense that it considers him an abomination because he's gay. In a similar vein, she attempts to countermand certain points (the Pope hid Jews in the Vatican during WWII) without addressing the overall trend that history suggests (the Church did not take an official stance against Nazi Germany out of fear). In a nutshell: <bq>Widdecombe insists that the actions of the Catholic Church in the past should be judged with a degree of historical relativism; they were not the only people to murder and torture those deemed guilty of wrongdoing.</bq> Fry counteracts this whole line of reasoning wonderfully in the debate portion: <bq>Well, if the Church can't be better than the rest of the human race at a given point in time, then <b>what in heaven's name are they good for?</b> (Emphasis in original.<fn>)</bq> If you don't watch the whole thing, at least invest twenty minutes to watch the two videos below, if not for his arguments, then simply to watch a master of the English language at work. <media source="YouTube" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_L-_cbi_nL0" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L-_cbi_nL0" caption="Stephen Fry -- The Catholic Church is not a force for good in the world -- part I" author="Stephen Fry" class="frame" align="center"> <media source="YouTube" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aBH3_78nitc" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBH3_78nitc" caption="The Catholic Church is not a force for good in the world -- part II" author="Stephen Fry" class="frame" align="center"> The debate is best summed up with a citation from the debate portion, in which Fry responds to Wittecombe's derisive defense of Church policy. <bq>I make no apology for apparently not understanding the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustus of Hippo ... or the council of Trent or the other extraordinary conventions and rules of Limbo. Don't tell me that there's some magisterial and mystical reason behind Limbo that I'm too stupid to understand. That's not good enough; it really isn't.</bq> <hr> <ft>High definition versions are also available at Daily Motion: <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbk46d_the-intelligence²-debate-christophe_shortfilms">Hitchens (20')</a> and <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbvr0m_the-intelligence²-debate-stephen-fr_shortfilms">Stephen Fry (19')</a></ft> <ft>The initial vote was <c>678 For, 1102 Against, Undecided 346</c>; the final vote was <c>268 For, 1876 Against, Undecided 34</c>. Though Fry and Hitchens clearly did good work, the massive change is wholly attributable to (A) how indefensible the Church's basic argument is and (B) what a bad job the Archbishop and Madame Widdecombe did of muddying those waters. Instead, they went balls out and mocked people for not understanding their fairy tales precisely enough or not simply taking the Church's goodness on faith. Well done.</ft> <ft>This portion is cited from memory because the author was too lazy to scrub his way through the video looking for the relevant citation. It's not like he didn't try; and the author is quite sure that the paraphrase is quite close enough.</ft>