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Stephen Fry Takes on the Catholic Church

In October last year, a debate was organised in London around the motion that 'The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world'. The pannel was made up of Anne Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan supporting the motion and Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry speaking against it.

I have only just come across Fry's contribution to the debate but it is absolutely superb and so I have decided to include it in those page. It lasts about 15 min and has been truncated in two by Youtube; see below:



For reference at the start of the debate the audience was asked to vote for or against the motion.

beforeafterchange
for678268-20%
against11021876+34
undecided34634-14%

The full debate including the other speakers, a Q&A bit and closing statements can be found on the Intelligence2 website.


Comments

  1. Stephen Fry is superb. I admit to generally having mixed feelings about him: overexposed, neurotic, ‘silly clever’, overbearing. But his contribution here is of the highest calibre and beautifully delivered.
    I felt two aspects were particularly powerful: his intellectual brilliance in examining the past and his heartfelt personal insight as a gay man.
    I wonder how many of us listened to the other three speakers?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for linking to this. I admire his eloquence on this subject.

    ReplyDelete

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