"I have just witnessed a rout – tonight’s Intelligence Squared debate. It considered the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, opposing the motion, comprehensively trounced Archbishop Onaiyekan (of Abuja, Nigeria) and Ann Widdecombe, who spoke for it. The archbishop in particular was hopeless." - Christopher A Carr from Bookmarklet

"It was a gripping evening’s entertainment but a little discouraging for those of us who are Catholics. I found myself wishing, one, that the Catholic debaters would for once not content themselves with offering pettifogging excuses but instead actually own up to some of the charges, and, two, I wished that there still existed a great Catholic apologist like Chesterton or Belloc, someone who was not only brave and prepared to square up to the Hitch, but was his intellectual equal. Surely there is someone today who could do that?" - Christopher A Carr

Sounds good, but I can't seem to find a video. - Tanath

I know...argh, I want to watch this. - Christopher A Carr

Me too. If you find one when it's up, be sure to post the link. :) - Tanath

I'll see what I can find out... - Christopher A Carr

Toward the end of the article, the author (Andrew M. Brown) says that the Catholic side would have put up much more of a fight had it put up the equivalent of early 20th-century pro-Catholic debaters G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. But even then, Hitchens would probably have outdebated them. Certainly H.G. Wells defeated Belloc in a "debate" in print when he answered Belloc's "Mr. Wells' Outline of History" (which argued against the theory of evolution) with his crushing retort, "Mr. Belloc Objects". - Dennis Jernberg

I'm at a loss to understand why Onaiyekan and Widdecombe thought this debate a good idea. - Christopher A Carr

Finally up: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Tanath