Wednesday July 14, 2010
Prominent Priest: People Should Pray for Christopher Hitchens
July 14, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Fr. Robert Barron, founder of WordOnFire.org, says that news of the well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens’ esophageal cancer should bring more people to pray for him – and that, despite Hitchens’ well-known hatred for Catholicism, the “vast, vast majority” of Catholics who have reported on his disease in the media have urged people to pray for him.
Christopher Hitchens is commonly seen as one of the four chief spokesmen for the so-called “new atheism.” His 2007 book “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” contends that organized religion is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.”
More recently, Christopher Hitchens and atheist Richard Dawkins have said that the pope ought to be arrested when he visits England next September. He has dubbed himself more of an “anti-theist” than an atheist, who not only thinks that all religion is false but also that all religion is harmful.
“I think it’s fair to say that Hitchens is playing today the role that another brilliant Englishman, Bertrand Russell, played nearly a century ago, namely that of religion’s public enemy No. 1,” writes Fr. Barron.
Fr. Barron points out, however, that two of Hitchens’ favorite literary figures are Bob Dylan and Evelyn Waugh, both of whose works “are inescapably religious.”
“In fact, I would argue that it is impossible to understand and appreciate their work apart from the deeply Biblical sensibility that they share,” he writes. This brought him to wonder whether, “despite his brassy atheism, Mr. Hitchens didn’t have a good deal of sensitivity to things religious.”
This leads Fr. Barron to speculate on the reasons why God would allow Hitchens to have esophageal cancer. Hitchens broke off the tour promoting new book “Hitch-22” in order to receive treatment for it.
Esophageal cancer is often fatal, because it frequently remains undiagnosed until the disease has spread.
“Might it be an occasion for the famous atheist to reconsider his position?” asked Fr. Barron. “Perhaps.”
“But what struck me with particular power as I surveyed the Catholic media was that the vast, vast majority of Catholics reported Hitchens’ disease and then, with transparent sincerity, urged people to pray for him.”
Christians are required to have such charity towards their enemies, wrote Fr. Barron.
“Hitchens seeks by means of specious argument, insinuation, and sometimes plain smear-tactics to undermine religion,” said Fr. Barron. “He ought to be opposed, vigorously, with counter-argument and clarification of fact. But all the while, he ought to be respected.”
The Catholic apologist and writer G.K. Chesterton, Fr. Barron continued, would debate the agnostic George Bernard Shaw through all England, but would afterwards drink and laugh with him. “That’s a model of how a Christian treats his intellectual opponents.”
“So read Christopher Hitchens; disagree with him and get angry with him; defend the faith against his attacks. And pray for him.”
Fr. Robert Barron’s entire column may be read here.