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Why Hitchens is Great (Part 2): Catholic Bigots

Posted on August 17th, 2010 by Staks

In Jeffrey T. Kuhner’s article, Why God is Great, he makes the ridiculous claim that, “Mr. Hitchens is unable to restrain his anti-Catholic bigotry.” This is not a new claim that Catholic apologists make and I have probably even written about it before. But it is worth addressing again.

You can’t be a bigot against an idea. I know that people are indoctrinated into religious ideas to the point that many people seem to think that religion and race are the same, but they are not. Race is something you are born into and cannot change (Michael Jackson not withstanding). Religion is an idea which can be abandoned in light of better ideas.

In a resent article on The Daily Beast, Sam Harris wrote the following:

“It is not a form of bigotry or racism to observe that the specific tenets of the faith pose a special threat to civil society. Nor is it a sign of intolerance to notice when people are simply not being honest about what they and their co-religionists believe.”

Harris was actually talking about Islam here, but it just as easily applicable to any religion including Catholicism. Just as Islam is not a race, Catholicism is also not a race. So one cannot be racist against a religion nor can someone be bigoted toward a religion. Hitchens is very good at criticizing the Catholic belief system and he has no problem criticizing the behavior of particular members of the Catholic Church (i.e. pedophile priests, Vatican officials, and the Pope).

Criticizing an idea, belief, or belief system is not the same as hating people who hold those beliefs. In no instance that I am aware of has Christopher Hitchens stated or implied that he hates ALL Catholics. All Mr. Hitchens is guilty of is criticizing the beliefs that Catholics are supposed to hold (note that not all Catholics actually hold all those beliefs).

On the charge that Hitchens is a “Catholic Bigot,” Jeffrey T. Kuhner fails to prove his case. The idea is that the term “bigot” has a negative connotation and so Kuhner thinks that he can win points by labeling his opponent with such a term.

A good way to cement this point is to use the old Nazi analogy. It is important to note that whenever Nazis are used in an example people want to make the leap that a comparison is being made with the Nazis. This is not the case and I want that to be very clear. The Nazis are used in an example because they are universally despised (rightly so). Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here is the analogy:

If someone were to make a statement that the Nazis did lots of immoral things, few if anyone would consider this a bigoted statement against all Nazis. Surely, one isn’t suggesting that every single Nazi was immoral. But rather that the Nazi leadership did immoral things and/or that Nazis ideology is immoral. Like Catholicism, people aren’t born Nazis. It is an ideology. So when someone like Hitchens claims that Catholicism is immoral, he is not claiming that every individual Catholic is immoral, but rather the leadership and the doctrine are immoral. That is not a form a bigotry.