I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed the astonishing ad that ran in The New York Times defending the pope. Maureen Dowd picked it up in a nicely savage column that suggests the holy father undergo an inquisition. I agree that medieval practices are about what’s needed for the Vicar of Christ — but his supporters are even worse. Here’s Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who bought space on the Times oped page to spill a screed of mind-boggling ignorance and hate:
The Times continues to editorialize about the “pedophilia crisis,” when all along it’s 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.
Yes, this guy, who leads a major Catholic organization, is really arguing in public that the problem isn’t that abusive priests were protected by the church; it’s that there are (gasp) homosexuals in the priesthood.
This isn’t an April Fool’s joke. The guy really wrote that. It really ran in a major American newspaper in 2010. And unless I missed something, not one leading voice in the Catholic Church — not one bishop, or cardinal, or Vatican official, or even an intellectual leader in the Church — has stepped forward to publicly criticize Donohue.
Let’s bring back the Spanish Inquisition.