Archbishop of Canterbury, an ironic genius?

Is it just me or is there not something bizarre about Archbishop Dr. Williams' Christmas speech in which he bemoans "Children being robbed of their innocence"?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1238325/Children-robbed-innocence-Archbishop-Canterburys-Christmas-warning.html

He even commented that "...in our rush to make children become independent, we are robbing them of the ability to learn and grow...".

For this to come from the leader of an institution which, after all, encourages the indoctrination of children from a young age to believe in most-likely fictional entities with an entourage of superstition and prejudice, is beyond belief for me.

Children in some parts of the world will sadly never experience sufficient privilege to have a free-thinking, liberal education as that that children in the UK are entitled to. He mentioned something to do with children in Congo and Sri Lanka being exploited in civil wars etc, the relevance of which I am not quite sure. Children should not be denied a childhood, we all agree on this - but it's easy to say all that when you have the means and resources to afford the £11,000 a year private school at which his children were educated.

About children in the Congo and Sri Lanka he states- "Their suffering is an insult to the purpose of God and a a contemptuous refusal of the gift of God by those who keep them in their different kinds of slavery".

I fail to see how the motivations of civil wars with complex political and cultural backgrounds and the associated suffering and child abuse can be related abstractly to “the purpose of God”, whatever that even means. Perhaps God’s purpose is to inflict suffering for all we know? He insults the real reasons for their suffering by turning attention away from the real problems at their root cause by relating it somehow to ‘God’.

I would also argue that it is equally an insult to the freedom of our society,and the opportunities of scientific learning and philosophical extrospectiveness that our educational system allows and encourages, to allow our children to simultaneously be given blows to the head through religious indoctrination. We have the opportunities here, yet they can be lost or inadequately availed of when you enhance the profile and significance of religion to children.

His points , however badly made, I would wager, were probably meant to be that:-

A ) society is encouraging the over”independence” of children, and not allowing a proper childhood through over-exposure to various kinds of perceived negative social and environmental factors

B) There is lots of child exploitation and suffering around the world

It appears that rather than allow children to grow, explore, learn and establish independent views, Archbishop Williams would rather they were mentally subjugated into becoming “dependent on God” (and Christianity) in his words. Ridiculous. The hypocrisy of the bemoanment of child abuse hardly needs to be pointed out- members of the church have been involved in the sexual abuse of children itself in a number of high-profile incidents, and it is the exploitation of the natural dependency of children that leads them to be easy targets.

The lack of insight, hypocrisy and glib display of attention to real world suffering displayed in this Christmas sermon will be difficult to surpass for Dr. Williams.