Anyway, why I mentioned....

...the fuggin' Pope, and the reaction to religious criticism in general, is this.

There was a wonderful debate with Christopher Hitchens, and Stephen Fry where the sex abuse scandals, and the AIDS crisis in Africa, and their attitudes towards gays all came up, and it was sort of waved away in exactly the manner I described.

The Catholic debaters ( John Onaiyekan, Ann Widdecombe) played victim, and/or were like "oh, this again".

Click the link, you'll see.

(Thanks to Max for posting these on his excellent blog)

Well, one good thing, the audience didn't fall for it, lot of minds seemed to be changed at the end.
So, while a lot of people fall for bullshit, there is cause for hope.