Um, Bill, weren’t there a hell of a lot of Catholics complicit in Hitlers crimes? And isn’t it stretching the truth beyond recognition to call Hitler an “atheist”?
The pope cited Hitler today, asking everyone to “reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century.” Immediately, the British Humanist Association got its back up, accusing the pope of “a terrible libel against those who do not believe in God.”
The pope did not go far enough. Radical atheists like the British Humanist Association should apologize for Hitler. But they should not stop there. They also need to issue an apology for the 67 million innocent men, women and children murdered under Stalin, and the 77 million innocent Chinese killed by Mao. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all driven by a radical atheism, a militant and fundamentally dogmatic brand of secular extremism. It was this anti-religious impulse that allowed them to become mass murderers. By contrast, a grand total of 1,394 were killed during the 250 years of the Inquisition, most all of whom were murdered by secular authorities.
Why should atheists today apologize for the crimes of others? At one level, it makes no sense: apologies should only be given by the guilty. But on the other hand, since the fanatically anti-Catholic secularists in Britain, and elsewhere, demand that the pope—who is entirely innocent of any misconduct—apologize for the sins of others, let the atheists take some of their own medicine and start apologizing for all the crimes committed in their name. It might prove alembic.
Honestly, no sane person would claim that it was the “atheism” of Hitler, Stalin and Mao that drove them to their crimes against humanity.
Sounds to me like somebody’s pissed off that his Church has such a soiled name around the world these days, for so many reasons. A lot of it is the child rape problem, which isn’t going to go away.
Oh well, this has been another edition of Words With Bill Donohue.
UPDATE: I wasn’t going to go to the trouble of fact checking this crap, but Joe Jervis did, so here you go:
As Donohue knows, Hitler was in fact a Catholic JUST LIKE BILL DONOHUE and sang in the choir at the Benedictine monastery he attended as a child.
Hitler publicly denounced atheism as inherently communist. “For eight months we have been waging a heroic battle against the Communist threat to our Volk, the decomposition of our culture, the subversion of our art, and the poisoning of our public morality. We have put an end to denial of God and abuse of religion. We owe Providence humble gratitude for not allowing us to lose our battle against the misery of unemployment and for the salvation of the German peasant.”
The Catholic Hitler also denounced secular education. “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.”
Joe also adds this picture of Bill Donohue’s Pope, for everybody’s viewing:
According to Bill Donohue, gay sex is not abusive if it happens between a priest and an altar boy who’s almost a man anyway:
If a 17-year old guy has sex with an older guy for twenty years, and continues to have sex with him at the age of 38—while he is married with children—is there anyone who would believe his claim that he was sexually abused?
Bill says no. BUT! To clarify: Bill Donohue is completely not gay!
Let me be very clear about this: if some guy tried to kiss me when I was 17, I would have flattened him. I most certainly would not go on a retreat with the so-called abuser
Gotcha.
unless, of course, I liked it.
In which case, Bill Donohue woulda said “BRING IT, Father Bonerpants.” I can’t outdo the self-parody here, so I’m out.
From what I can tell, we’re dealing with a story of a Chilean priest who had a twenty year long affair with a guy, which started when the guy was 17 and under the priest’s authority. Donohue also (accidentally, of course) omits the fact that there are three other accusers for this priest.
So, to sum up, Bill Donohue is basically saying that the teenage boy probably liked it, because if Bill Donohue were gay, which he is super not, it would have been super hot, so quit yer cryin’.
Angry butt-rape apologist Bill Donohue wants you to know that a former abuse victim totally loved it and kept coming back for more so this means that the whole priesty-popey-rapey thing is totally overblown.
Q.E.D. Case closed. In your face. Suck it.
Heh. “Priesty-Popey-Rapey.” Filing that one way for later use.
Whether it’ groping by priests or greed on Wall Street — institutions that don’t change in the face of crisis and public indignation will eventually become irrelevant. If history has shown one truism, it is that nothing is too big to fail.
It seems the disintegration of the church is happening faster than I had imagined. Consider the following stories in the past two days:
A German man who says a priest sexually abused him as an altar boy is demanding an apology from Pope Benedict XVI and compensation “even if the church goes bankrupt.”
Wilfried Fesselmann said then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is ultimately to blame for allowing the priest to continue in his pastoral duties.
“It is an insolence that the Catholic Church was only busy with covering-up and moving the priest around for years instead of dismissing him,” Fesselmann said in an interview this week with The Associated Press.
Fesselmann claims a chaplain, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, forced him to sleep with him and practice oral sex when he was an 11-year-old boy in the western city of Essen.
The priest, convicted of tying up and abusing two young boys in a California church rectory, wanted to leave the ministry. But in 1985, four years after the priest and his bishop first asked that he be defrocked, the future Pope Benedict XVI, then a top Vatican official, signed a letter saying that the case needed more time and that “the good of the Universal Church” had to be considered in the final decision, according to church documents released through lawsuits.
What is important to consider is that these are not isolated incidents. The unrelenting faucet of facts keeps dripping and shows no signs of slowing. The more people speak out – the more other victims are emboldened to do so.
The Papacy of Benedict XVI is essentially over. He has lost his moral authority and the trust of Catholics and others worldwide. Each day he remains, the Pope strains the credibility of the Catholic Church and exacerbates the public relations nightmare. If Pope Benedict XVI loves his church, he will step down.
This is the type of disaster that can happen when hard-headed social conservatives run a church. They are so unwilling to compromise, change their ways or accept reality – that they continue to repeat the same devastating mistakes – even as they go through contortions to play the victim or blame others for their own personal failures.
Not even finger pointing at innocent gay people will work this time. The Pope is left swimming on his own in the middle of the ocean without a life-vest. As the sordid and tawdry headlines continue unabated, this most uninspiring pontiff is headed towards inglorious infamy.
The sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is similar, in some respects, to last year’ financial meltdown. In both cases, powerful, arrogant abusers were shielded from the consequences of their predatory behavior, while the victims were offered pain, platitudes and empty promises.
Like the gargantuan firms in lower Manhattan, the Vatican believes it is too big to fail and demands a bailout from the faithful. However, the overpaid bankers and the clergy banking on infinite forgiveness from their flock are in grave denial. Major religions come and go — whether it is worshipping the unbridled corporate casino or a church that does not protect its most vulnerable members.
Alarmingly, new rules and systematic restructuring to prevent future catastrophes from occurring have still not come to fruition. It is breathtaking to watch these behemoths act so contemptuous of the law and reckless in their responsibility to those that they were created to help.
The United States is wealthy enough, for the time being, to withstand the fiscal fiasco. However, the same tax code and lax regulations are still in place that encourage irrational marketplace speculation. Unless substantive changes are made, history is almost certain to repeat itself. And, if it does, the public will be in no mood to play Santa Claus to these very naughty children.
Likewise, the Catholic Church and its surrogates believe that spin and slander can distract the masses from impious priests defiling children. I suspect the Church may be correct and barely weather the scandal — at least temporarily. They will blame gays, play the victim card and pretend that significant changes have been made to stop future child abuse.
It doesn’t take a genius, however, to figure out that the grotesque scandals will continue. As soon as the current crisis subsides, a new crop of equally shocking sins will emerge. The tragic fact remains that the rules for priesthood encourage sexually dysfunctional and emotionally stunted human beings to apply at disproportionate rates.
There are certainly many wonderful priests who feel called to serve the church. These individuals should be commended for their heroic work, such as feeding the hungry, helping the poor and providing guidance for young people. But one can’t deny that the institution is uniquely set up as a magnet for unhealthy men who view the priesthood as an escape hatch. The collar provides an effective way for sexual reprobates to command respect from society.
What better cover than celibacy for a child molester or tormented homosexual than joining the Catholic clergy? It ensures the adulation of friends and relatives who no longer ask pesky questions about sexuality or relationships. By ending the celibacy stricture, the church would no longer serve as an oasis from those hiding from their inner-demons. Quite simply, the question, “who are you dating” would once again be asked, thus ending a sanctuary for sick minds.
Exacerbating matters is the “good ole boys” club that is the priesthood. This insular world would immediately end if the Vatican allowed female priests and heterosexual priests to marry. It would also behoove Rome to allow openly gay priests, who would end the incentive of using the vocation as a desperate, last ditch measure to suppress homosexuality. Until these concrete steps are taken, no one should expect different results.
Still, the pit bulls and the bullheaded living in their bubble continue to defend the Vatican’ bumbling response. For example, a New York Times ad by the Catholic League criticized that newspaper claiming, “The Times continues to editorialize about the “pedophilia crisis”, when all along it has been a homosexual crisis.”
But most people aren’t buying this smear campaign because the fondling and fiddling is occurring in church confessional booths — not predominantly gay neighborhoods, community centers or churches.
What amazes me the most is the incompetent efforts by the Vatican to mitigate the fallout. They have an exorcist blaming the devil, a priest comparing the church’ predicament to the historic plight of Jews and another holy man confusing “gossip” with playing “grab ass” with minors.
Another excuse is that these cases are old news from another era. But just this week we learned of a priest in India who is still working after allegedly sexually assaulting a 14-year old girl a few years ago in Minnesota.
A friend of mine e-mailed this week saying his traditionalist father was heartbroken after a neighborhood Catholic school had shut down. He said parents were afraid to send their children for matriculation because they feared priestly ejaculation. What kind of future does such a church hold?
The Vatican pretends to be serious about ending the crisis. But, how can this be if there are 400,000 priests and only 10 people working on the avalanche of abuse cases?
Whether it’ groping by priests or greed on Wall Street — institutions that don’t change in the face of crisis and public indignation will eventually become irrelevant. If history has shown one truism, it is that nothing is too big to fail.
I am no Maureen Dowd fan, but her op-ed today has me cheering:
The church gave up its credibility for Lent.
HA. And:
Canon 1404 states that “The First See is judged by no one.” But Jesus, Mary and Joseph, as my dad used to say. Somebody has to tell the First See when it’ blind ‚Äî and mute ‚Äî to deaf children in America and Italy.
And, number four in the Vatican’s playbook on handling the scandals:
Demonize gays, as Karl Rove did in 2004.
In an ad in The Times on Tuesday, Bill Donohue, the Catholic League president, offered this illumination: “The Times continues to editorialize about the “pedophilia crisis,’ when all along it’ been a homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay.”
Donohue is still talking about the problem as an indiscretion rather than a crime. If it mostly involves men and boys, that’ partly because priests for many years had unquestioned access to boys.
Larry King hosts the debate between Sinead O’Connor, the intellectually dishonest, anti-gay Bill Donohue, former CNN anchor Thomas Roberts, himself abused by a priest as a teenager. and a couple of priests. Bill Donohue basically continues his campaign of not caring about the victims and defending the Pope no matter what. He also continues his disgusting argument that raping minors isn’t so bad if they’ve hit puberty.
The only good thing about this scandal is that it’s exposing people like Bill Donohue for the rape apologists they truly are.
There’s an entertaining moment in this segment where Sinead O’Connor says something very sensible, and indeed, conciliatory — she is, after all, a committed Catholic — and Bill Donohue loses his mind. I’m going to guess he’s not accustomed to respecting a woman’s forthright opinion, but again, that’s just a guess.
In this third clip, Bill Donohue hilariously claims that he is “second to nobody” in fighting for victims of sexual abuse. Amazing. The self-aggrandizement is simply amazing:
The Catholic League’ Bill Donahue Is More Interested In Scapegoats Than Solutions, Says TWO
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out today harshly condemned the Catholic League and its President Bill Donohue for its full-page New York Times ad in which the organization served as an enabler for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and sought to deflect blame for the crisis by smearing the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
The offensive ad sought to exonerate the Pope and other priests of blame who are ensnared in a widening sexual abuse scandal that reaches across the globe. Instead of offering an apology for sinful behavior, the Catholic League served as apologists and used the ad to try to deflect the crisis by attacking gay priests.
“This was a disgraceful ad and an unconscionable attempt to smear gay and lesbian people,” said Truth Wins Out’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Clearly, the Catholic League is more interested in finding scapegoats than solutions.”
In today’ ad, entitled, “Going for the Vatican Jugular”, Donohue wrote, “The Times continues to editorialize about the “pedophilia crisis,’ when all along it has been a homosexual crisis.”
“We should remind Donohue that there is no child sexual abuse crisis in gay community centers, neighborhoods, churches or social organizations,” said TWO’ Besen. “This nightmare has to do with Catholic pedophile priests and those who served as their enablers. The Catholic League thinks it is mounting a defense, but it is only exacerbating the pain felt by the defenseless who were taken advantage of by authority figures in the church.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that defends the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community against anti-gay misinformation campaigns, counters the so-called “ex-gay” industry and educates about the lives of LGBT people. Our goal is to help individuals be true to themselves and lead genuine lives of honesty and integrity.
Oh, but of course. Bill Donohue took this ad out in The New York Times:
His unwillingness to lay responsibility at the feet of the Vatican is unsurprising, and grows ever more tiring. His argument that, because hey, other entities didn’t report the child rape either, is childish. His argument that because many of the victims were going through puberty is specious and disgusting, as it simultaneously says “Hey, this isn’t so bad because some of their voices had dropped and everything,” yet also allows him to scapegoat an entire community of people, most of whom aren’t even Catholic, for the egregious sins of the Roman Catholic Church leadership. His blame-the-victim mindset in the last paragraph is appalling, yet typical for the rape culture mindset of some conservative Catholic men.
This is what happens when a person’s entire worldview is based around the dictates of what some consider to be a criminal organization which claims infallibility and a direct line to the divine. It’s all meaningless, of course, but unfortunately, religious entities such as this are allowed to go relatively unchallenged in today’s world, and when they are challenged, they feign stigmata and cry “victim!” as loudly as they possibly can.
And sadly, this behavior is so common that millions merely roll their eyes and move on.
I wrote this morning about the new revelations in The New York Times that the man who now calls himself Pope was directly involved in, well, not really doing anything about a priest who had raped 200 handicapped children. Well, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League (of one) is vury vury angry, of course, at the Times for being so mean to the poor, poor downtrodden child rapists and their protectors in the Vatican hierarchy:
Media requests to deal with this subject make it difficult to provide an adequate response to today’s article by Laurie Goodstein. But the time has come to ask some serious questions about why the Times is working overtime with wholly discredited lawyers to uncover dirt in the Catholic Church that occurred a half-century ago. Those questions will be raised in an ad I am writing that will be published in next Tuesday’s New York Times; a rejoinder to the article will also be made. All I can say now is that this is the last straw.
I guess that in Bill’s mind, the act of a priest raping a child somehow expires after a certain number of years? “Oh, it was 1965, which means it didn’t happen! Cardinal Ratzinger? Never heard of him!”
Mean old New York Times!If they keep reporting on this stuff, the Vatican might actually start to feel a true sense of shame about what they’ve done,* and things could start to change in the Church! They might have to do something about their policies of celibacy, which encourage people whose sexual maturity is already stunted to pursue the priesthood, and they might have to do something about the patterns established by abusing priests recruiting abused boys into the priesthood, continuing the cycle, etc., ad infinitum, and without the child rape would it even be recognizable as the Catholic Church? What’s next, New York Times? Gonna ask them to get rid of Mary?
Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Web: www.TruthWinsOut.org
“We Refuse To Allow Anti-Gay Activists To Rewrite History and Pose As Beacons of Religious Tolerance,’ Says TWO
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out (TWO) unveiled a hard-hitting full-page ad today that will be published in The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, under the headline, “Lies in the Name of the Lord.” TWO’ provocative advertisement is in response to an ad by anti-gay activists in last Friday’ New York Times, that falsely portrayed protests against Proposition 8 – a ballot measure in California that prohibited same sex couples from marrying — as mob violence. The TWO ad also criticized the culture warriors who ran the Times ad under the name, “No Mob Veto,” for their disingenuous claim of religious tolerance and their posture as staunch defenders of the Mormon Church.
“These anti-gay activists are crying wolf on the Proposition 8 protests, but they actually are a wolf in sheep’ clothing that preaches religious tolerance while practicing the most defamatory form of religious bigotry,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “We refuse to permit this orchestrated campaign to rewrite history, nor will we allow some of the most notorious Mormon bashers in America to pose as friends of the Latter-day Saints.”
TWO exposes “No Mob Veto’” hypocrisy, after the group wrote in the Times, “Beginning today, we commit ourselves to opposing and publicly shaming anyone who resorts to the rhetoric of anti-religious bigotry, against any faith, on any side of the cause, for any reason.” In its ad, TWO agreed to take the signers of the “No Mob Veto” ad at their word, including convicted felon Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship; Rich Cizik, National Association of Evangelicals; and William Donohue, The Catholic League, and remind America of their past incendiary statements against other religions, particularly the Mormon church.
“Activists like Colson, Cizik and Donohue must decide if they are “people of faith’ or “people of fibs’ — they can’t be both,” TWO proclaimed in its ad. “Lying is wrong, especially when it’ done in the name of God.”
“There is a concerted and ongoing effort by anti-gay forces to portray peaceful marchers exercising their First Amendment rights as violent troublemakers,” said Besen. “We hope to set the record straight and refuse to let No Mob Veto get away with their blatant lies.”
Singer Pat Boone contributed to the “Big Lie” this week when he wrote a column in World Net Daily that compared nonviolent Proposition 8 protesters with the terrorists who wantonly murdered nearly 200 innocent people in Mumbai.
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters right wing propaganda, exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about gay life.
With a gift of $35 to Truth Wins Out, you can receive an autographed copy of "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."
(Weekly Column)
The Catholic League’ Bill Donahue Is More Interested In Scapegoats Than Solutions, Says TWO
