“Now it could be… that when religion is attacked in this country, that the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fare share. I may say, I've probably contributed somewhat to that, and I'm not ashamed of my part in it; but doesn't the Catholic Church make rather large claims for itself. The Catholic Church claims to hold the keys of Peter. The Holy Father claims to have that power and be the vicar of Christ upon earth. It is said that only through this means and this approach can redemption can be achieved. These are large claims for a human, and fallible, and political, and bureaucratic institution to be making for itself in the age of Hawking.”

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Now it could be… that when religion is attacked in this country, that the Catholic Church comes in for a little more th…" by Christopher Hitchens?
Christopher Hitchens photo
Christopher Hitchens 305
British American author and journalist 1949–2011

Related quotes

Houston Stewart Chamberlain photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“The Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its power.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: The people became convinced—being ignorant, stupid and credulous—that the church held the keys of heaven and hell. The foundation for the most terrible mental tyranny that has existed among men was in this way laid. The Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its power. It resorted to every possible form of fraud; it perverted every good instinct of the human heart; it rewarded every vice; it resorted to every artifice that ingenuity could devise, to reach the highest round of power. It tortured the accused to make them confess; it tortured witnesses to compel the commission of perjury; it tortured children for the purpose of making them convict their parents; it compelled men to establish their own innocence; it imprisoned without limit; it had the malicious patience to wait; it left the accused without trial, and left them in dungeons until released by death. There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not commit,—no cruelty that it did not practice,—no form of treachery that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. It did all that organization, cunning, piety, self-denial, heroism, treachery, zeal and brute force could do to enslave the children of men. It was the enemy of intelligence, the assassin of liberty, and the destroyer of progress.

Christopher Hitchens photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Mitt Romney photo
Adam Smith photo

“In England, and in all Roman Catholic countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part II, p. 155.

John Ribat photo

“While we are saying that the Catholic Church is the mother church, then we have to be true to our name and embrace all.”

John Ribat (1957) cardinal

Source: Cardinal Ribat of PNG: putting the peripheries at the centre http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2016/11/18/cardinal_ribat_of_png_putting_the_peripheries_at_the_centre/en-1273170 (2016)

Robert Jeffress photo
Ray Comfort photo

“It wasn't the Christian Church that arrested Gallileo, it was the Roman Catholic Church, which is a non-Christian religion based on tradition and not the Bible.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Related topics