Events

The New Anti-Catholicism: why it's fashionable, why it's gone too far


Speaker: Brendan O'Neill

Where: Davenport hotel, Dublin 2

  When: 8pm, Thursday, September 29

 

Our next talk will be on the topic: 'The New Anti-Catholicism; why it's fashionable, why it's gone too far'.
 
The speaker will be one of Britain's most provocative commentators, Brendan O'Neill of the online magazine, Spiked. 

Brendan is an atheist who disagrees with the Catholic Church and Christianity on many issues but is firmly of the view that anti-Catholicism, and anti-religious feeling generally, has become a fashion which owes little to reason and rationality.   Writing ahead of the Pope's visit to Britain last year he had this to say:

The New Atheist campaign to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested when he visits Britain later this year exposes the deeply disturbing, authoritarian and even Inquisitorial side to today’s campaigning secularism. There is nothing remotely positive in the demand that British cops lock up the pope and then drag him to some international court on charges of ‘crimes against humanity’. Instead it springs from an increasingly desperate and discombobulated secularism, one which, unable to assert itself positively through Enlightening society and celebrating the achievements of mankind, asserts itself negatively, even repressively, through ridiculing the religious.
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Brendan also believes the scandals are sometimes being exploited by people with other axes to grind against the Church. (Here is a link to Brendan's column from which the above quote is taken).

If you wish to attend the talk please let us know by emailing info@ionainstitute.ie or by phoning 01 6619 204.