“The Catholic Church makes a distinction between being human and being fully human, and it does not consider atheists to be fully human. It believes that being fully human requires a relationship with its imaginary God, and that by excluding this from our philosophy we are not fully human. Most of the time they phrase it subtly, by saying that you require religious faith to be fully human, and sometimes they let the mask slip and explicitly say that atheists are not fully human. And most worryingly, they teach this dangerous and arrogant theory of dehumanization to children through the ethos of Catholic schools….More disturbingly, this dangerous arrogance is embedded in the principles of Catholic education of children. The Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario says its Fully Alive program was created to help Catholic parents teach their children to be fully human…”
“…Whatever theological imaginings the Catholic Church chooses to believe, its spokesmen should not articulate those beliefs by suggesting that atheists are not fully human. They should try to think back about various other ideologies that proclaimed that certain humans were not fully human. That didn’t work out very well for human rights, did it? Or for the dignity of the human person? Or for anything good at all, for that matter. And we should highlight this dangerous arrogance every time that they articulate it. We should make clear that the Catholic Church must stop dehumanizing atheists by saying we are not fully human…”
