Out of an audience of 2,178 people, 1,876, or 86%, said, "No!" - and that doesn't even include me who has been rejecting organised religion ever since I refused to attend the obligatory confirmation ceremony and instead went to a local function of the German Freethinkers.
That was in 1960 and I was fourteen years old at the time; a long time before I was able to listen to such eloquent debaters as Christopher Hitchens (who died in 2011 and presumably didn't go to Heaven) ...
... and Stephen Fry (who's still around and long may he live!) ...
... but long after the Catholic Church, through its very own Adolf Eichmann, an evil man by the name of Tomás de Torquemada OP (a Dominican friar, no less, and don't I know about them!), had killed thousands of people in the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th century.
I repeatedly reminded my teacher of Torquemada in the one-hour-a-week religious instructions at primary school which perhaps explains why "Religion" and "Naturlehre" (natural science) were the only two subjects in which I didn't receive a "sehr gut" top mark. In fact, I was surprised to receive a still respectable "gut" in "Religion" at all; perhaps my teacher, although not officially allowed, quietly agreed with my criticism. (And why the less-than-top-mark in "Naturlehre", I hear you ask? That's a good question and a good story but for another day!)
Of course, you can listen to the full length of the debate but I warn you, the arguments by the good archbishop are pretty pathetic - click here.
