Meanwhile: Dawkins backs religion?

Would morality collapse if people stopped believing in God? Today even bishops hesitate to suggest such a thing publicly, but the world’s best-known atheist suspects it might. Speaking at the Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, Richard Dawkins said: “People may feel free to do bad things because they feel God is no longer watching them.” If a society were to abolish religion, the author of The God Delusion fretted, it might “give people a licence to do really bad things”.

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Another shake-up at the Vatican – but it’s nothing to do with the new constitution. Rather, a literal tremor struck the Secretariat of State during last week’s visit of the New England bishops to Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. “Not sure if it was something we said,” tweeted Bishop Robert Reed, after the 4.6 magnitude earthquake.