Bigotry on parade. This is the other barrell of the "religious freedom isn't worth protecting" shotgun, namely, although (Rule 1) "hate speech" laws trump religion, (Rule 2) "hate speech" against Catholicism isn't really "hate speech" under Rule 1. On the day that Mother Teresa is canonized, the Salt Lake Tribune publishes a New Atheist op-ed that hits all the tropes of anti-Catholicism. Thus we see: - Catholic priests raping altar boys? - Check. - God hates amputees? Check. - God could have stopped priests from committing sexual abuses? Check. - Mother Teresa didn't heal all the people who came to her in poverty? Check. This is just nasty ugliness on the part of Associate Professor Gregory Clark. In the face of comparable bigotry against Father Damien of Molokai, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote something that is worth considering in this context. After Father Damien died a Presbyterian Minister in Honolulu suggested that Damien caught leprosy by sleeping with the women lepers. Robert Louis Stevenson was outraged and published an open letter to that Minister: //But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow-men; and to bring it home to you, I will suppose your story to be true. I will suppose—and God forgive me for supposing it—that Damien faltered and stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose that, in the horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who was doing so much more than he had sworn, failed in the letter of his priestly oath—he, who was so much a better man than either you or me, who did what we have never dreamed of daring—he too tasted of our common frailty. “O, Iago, the pity of it!” The least tender should be moved to tears; the most incredulous to prayer. And all that you could do was to pen your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage! Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you have drawn of your own heart? I will try yet once again to make it clearer. You had a father: suppose this tale were about him, and some informant brought it to you, proof in hand: I am not making too high an estimate of your emotional nature when I suppose you would regret the circumstance? that you would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly since it shamed the author of your days? and that the last thing you would do would be to publish it in the religious press? Well, the man who tried to do what Damien did, is my father, and the father of the man in the Apia bar, and the father of all who love goodness; and he was your father too, if God had given you grace to see it.// : And, likewise, Mother Teresa was the mother of Associate Professor Gregory Clark, who besmears himself with filth in order to score a point or two.

Wow!  They don't write poison pen letters like that anymore.

Robert Louis Stevenson responds to the slander of Father Damien of Molokai by the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu:

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE REVEREND DR. HYDE OF HONOLULU


SYDNEY,

FEBRUARY 25, 1890.

Sir, - It may probably occur to you that we have met, and visited, and conversed; on my side, with interest. You may remember that you have done me several courtesies, for which I was prepared to be grateful. But there are duties which come before gratitude, and offences which justly divide friends, far more acquaintances. Your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage is a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with bread when I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds of gratitude. You know enough, doubtless, of the process of canonisation to be aware that, a hundred years after the death of Damien, there will appear a man charged with the painful office of the DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. After that noble brother of mine, and of all frail clay, shall have lain a century at rest, one shall accuse, one defend him. The circumstance is unusual that the devil's advocate should be a volunteer, should be a member of a sect immediately rival, and should make haste to take upon himself his ugly office ere the bones are cold; unusual, and of a taste which I shall leave my readers free to qualify; unusual, and to me inspiring. If I have at all learned the trade of using words to convey truth and to arouse emotion, you have at last furnished me with a subject. For it is in the interest of all mankind, and the cause of public decency in every quarter of the world, not only that Damien should be righted, but that you and your letter should be displayed at length, in their true colours, to the public eye.

And the next time you think about slandering your betters, consider this bit of prophecy:

Damien has been too much depicted with a conventional halo and conventional features; so drawn by men who perhaps had not the eye to remark or the pen to express the individual; or who perhaps were only blinded and silenced by generous admiration, such as I partly envy for myself - such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on your bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate, and leaves the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe you something, if your letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible likeness for a wax abstraction. For, if that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named a Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage.

As a bit of practical wisdom, and as guide on how to gracefully stick a literary knife into someone, the entire letter is worth reading.

Via Mark Shea.