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You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.

Research on child abuse suggests that religious beliefs can foster, encourage, and justify the abuse of children. When contempt for sex underlies teachings, this creates a breeding ground for abuse.

Child abuse is a heinous and personally damaging crime; it is therefore incumbent on the Church to treat such matters with the utmost seriousness.

As a pastor, I addressed the sorts of issues I see people struggling with most and the issues talked about most directly and most frequently in the New Testament. That leads us to recurring concerns with sexual immorality, relational sins, and vices associated with the breaking of the Ten Commandments.

Christians are increasingly being punished by the government for acting on their sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage that are based on the standard of Scripture.

At the time I perceived most religious men, particularly the pastors with all their talk about love, faith and relationship, as effeminate.

The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather, a Church of love; she must not punish. Thus, the awareness that punishment can be an act of love ceased to exist. This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people.

Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.

There were theoretical elements in the subjection of women and it is not possible to avoid the conclusion that a large contribution was made to them by the Church. In part this was a matter of its hostile stance towards sexuality.

It is not Christianity, but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her.