This Charming Man

Con­sid­er the Catholic Church: an or­ga­ni­za­tion which ad­ver­tis­es it­self as the great­est force for good and as the on­ly true bul­wark against evil in the uni­verse. Even among non-​Catholics, its doc­trines are wide­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the con­cepts of “moral­ity” and “hu­man val­ues.” How­ev­er, the Vat­ican is an or­ga­ni­za­tion that ex­com­mu­ni­cates wom­en for at­tempt­ing to be­come priests but does not ex­com­mu­ni­cate male priests for rap­ing chil­dren. It ex­com­mu­ni­cates doc­tors who per­form abor­tions to save a moth­er’s life — even if the moth­er is a nine-​year-​old girl raped by her step­fa­ther and preg­nant with twins —but it did not ex­com­mu­ni­cate a sin­gle mem­ber of the Third Re­ich for com­mit­ting geno­cide. Are we re­al­ly obliged to con­sid­er such a di­abol­ical in­ver­sion of pri­or­ities to be ev­idence of an al­ter­na­tive “moral” frame­work? No. It seems clear that the Catholic Church is as mis­guid­ed in speak­ing about the “moral” per­il of con­tra­cep­tion, for in­stance, as it would be in speak­ing about the “physics” of Tran­sub­stan­ti­ation. In both do­mains, it is true to say that the Church is grotesque­ly con­fused about which things in this world are worth pay­ing at­ten­tion to.

Sam Harris