CH Skipping Prayer Day in His Honor

Vatican reaches out to atheists - but not to Dawkins or Hitchens.

The Vatican is planning a new initiative to reach out to atheists and agnostics in an attempt to improve the church's relationship with non-believers. Pope Benedict XVI has ordered officials to create a new foundation where atheists will be encouraged to meet and debate with some of the Catholic Church's top theologians. Read the article here.

The way I see it, they've watched the Intelligence square debate from last year and are scared shitless of Hitchens (and Dawkins). In an interview Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi says "Such atheists only view the truth with "irony and sarcasm" and tend to "read religious texts like fundamentalists".

Don't know whether to laugh or cry? I think I'll do the crying bit first and then have a good laugh.