A man dressed as Jesus Christ carries a cross during a play on the eve of Good Friday in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. Australian Catholic bishops have used Easter to launch an attack on atheism. (Reuters Photo/Amit Dave)
Sydney. Australian Catholic bishops Friday used the Church’s holiest week to attack atheism, as they urged the faithful to remember the good work of the religious despite the global child sex abuse scandal.
In his Good Friday address, Anthony Fisher, the bishop of the New South Wales diocese of Parramatta, said Christianity was hardier than its enemies imagined.
“Last century we tried godlessness on a grand scale and the effects were devastating,” he said.
“Nazism, Stalinism, Pol-Pottery, mass murder, abortion and broken relationships: all promoted by state-imposed atheism or culture-insinuated secularism, the illusion that we can build a better life without God.”
Sydney’s archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, also criticised atheism, while acknowledging the pedophile priest scandals which have rocked the Church in the United States and across Europe in recent months.
“We often hear about Christian failures to live up to Christian standards, and there have been too many scandals and many victims, but the great majority of Christians continue to follow the commandments of love through regular service, tolerance, forgiveness and community building,” he said.
The city’s Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen also spoke on the theme, which drew public attention last month after a sell-out global convention on atheism in Melbourne.
“As we can see by the sheer passion and virulence of the atheist — they seem to hate the Christian God — we are not dealing here with cool philosophy up against faith without a brain,” Jensen told his congregation Friday.
Atheists said the comments were a sign Christian leaders were panicking as people turned away from established religion.
“We’re not forcing anything on anybody,” Atheist Foundation president David Nicholls told ABC Radio.
“Hitler, who was a Catholic, forced Nazism onto the German population,” he said. “Stalin forced his ideology onto the population. They didn’t do any of these things in the name of atheism, in fact Stalin was trained in a seminary.”
Agence France-Presse
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