The finest fury is the most controlled. - Christopher Hitchens

Humans should not worship other humans at all, but if they must do so it is better that the worshipped ones do not occupy any positions of political power.

As Mother Teresa has shown in her moments with John-Roger and Michèle Duvalier, and as her Church has shown in its alliance with mullahs and ayatollahs, there exists a sort of reverse ecumenicism which unites all versions of the “faithful” against any version of the dreaded “secular humanist” Enlightenment.

I don't have to begin, as I would have if I were speaking for the Church, with any apologies. We don't have a lot to apologize for. It wasn't we who framed Galileo, it wasn't we who said that God wanted the , it wasn't we who mounted the , it wasn't we who sponsored , Salazar, Mussolini, Dollfuss, Hitler, Vichy, Franco, and the rest of it; and it wasn't we who preached the Easter sermon saying who was responsible for the death of a mythical figure, and creating ludicrous pain to real people, in the real world. We don't have to begin by proving that our institutions and our beliefs are human, as all human institutions are; that we are only mammals, as his holiness the Pope is only a mammal. We don't make a mystery where none exists. We say that we face the heavens, and we find them empty; and that some of us, at any rate, are not alarmed to find this emptiness; and would be more alarmed to find the heavens full of permanent supervision and invigilation; and that an ethical life may be led by someone with no supernatural means of support, without the fear, if it is a fear, or the hope, if it is a hope, of celestial invigilation.