Catholics throwing stones in a glasshouse

The evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has helped to establish a summer camp for children in Britain where they will be taught rational skepticism and receive lessons in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology.

Seems like a reasonable idea for those who wish to challenge the all pervading indoctrination of children by the main religions.

Catholic apologist, Mary Kenny, however, is scathing of the idea. Writing in the current issue of The Irish Catholic Kenny compares the camp to Hitler Youth and Soviet Youth camps where, among other things, children were taught to report their parents for anti state tendencies.

Meanwhile, in the same issue of The Irish Catholic there’s a two page spread outlining plans for a year of evangelisation in the Dublin Archdiocese.

This will be a major effort to convert new recruits to Catholicism and convince those who have fell by the wayside to return to the fold.

Evangelisation, of course, has a dark history. Christian missionaries spread like a cancer all over the world in past centuries ruthlessly converting ‘the heathen’ to the ‘one true religion’.

The peoples of South America, in particular, were the victims of a brutal regime similar to the Nazi and Soviet slave labour/genocide programmes.

No doubt Mary Kenny would claim it was all necessary to save their pagan souls.