Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

On 4/28/07, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:
> From one of Ted's links, Dawkins is quoted:
>
>
>
> In a recent editorial for the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry,
> entitled 'Religion's Real Child Abuse', Richard Dawkins opined that: 'Odious
> as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that
> it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of having been
> brought up Catholic in the first place.'

What Dawkins said

<quote>
In the wake of the current scandal over child abuse by priests , I
have had a letter from an American woman in her mid forties who was
brought up Roman Catholic. She has two strong recollections from when
she was seven. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his
car. And around the same time a little schoolfriend of hers, who had
tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my
correspondent was led to believe by the then official doctrine of her
church. Her view now is that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic
child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by
far the worst. She writes:

"Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind
of a 7 year old) as 'yuchy' while the memory of my friend going to
hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of
the priest ? but I spent many a night being terrified that the people
I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares."
</quote>
Read the rest at
http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins

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Received on Sat Apr 28 13:25:40 2007