R-E-S-P-E-C-T

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me

Pat Condell is featured in a YouTube rant over at Small Dead Animals. In it, he waxes positively Steynsian in disrespecting radical Islam, then shakes himself out of it, and reverts to some banal A.C. Grayling bromides. Grayling, whose written an excellent history of philosophical logic, regularly waxes nostalgic in the UK’s Guardian for neo-classical 1940’s Oxbridge atheism, with a more up to date hairstyle. (I’m not sure about the glasses). Grayling is careful to observe the usual diplomatic atheist niceties, skipping over Pope Benedict’s vastly underrated Regensberg Lecture, and making sure to mention that: “there are nice and nasty Christians, nice and nasty Muslims, nice and nasty atheists.” No statistics are proferred on self-detonating religious protestors by monotheistic faith, but presumably he’ll get around to it.

Why the difference in tone? One writer appears, to me at least, to be safely esconced within the wrought iron gates of a tenured Oxford professorship, while the other is, well, I’ll let you read it, courtesy of his website:

I’ll also be poking fun at my own personal ball and chain, the Catholic Church, which over the years has consigned more infidels and heretics to the flames of hell on earth than all the Saudi-funded suicide bombers in Pakistan.More recently, the Church has been accused of anti-semitism because it collaborated with the nazis and ignored the Holocaust.

But we now know this was done primarily to stop the spread of communism. The fact that so many Jews were killed was purely a bonus.

Personally, I’m torn. Who do I believe about the involvement of the Catholic Church in one of the pivotal confrontations between Church and State of the 20th century? Sir Martin Gilbert in his American Spectator review of Rabbi David Dalin’s book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope or someone whose blog closes with:

“Alternatively, if you’re likely to be offended by jokes about religion, please seek psychiatric help.”?

If you have any insights, please drop a word into the comments.