Ross Douthat points out that Hitchens’s attacks on the Catholic Church have chiefly exposed his own ignorance, and I cannot disagree. But Hitchens has performed some small service to mankind by injecting a note of levity into a subject that is otherwise grim and depressing. When I read these lines in one of his columns I actually laughed out loud: “Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked” (emphasis added). He’s a real expert on matters Catholic, isn’t he?