The Crucifixion of Christianity Phil Brennan
Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2002
If anyone has any doubt that Christianity is under
attack, they need go no further than the front pages of America's newspapers or
their TV screens to see the proof.
Christians, we are told, are no better than the
Taliban, and would readily adopt measures similar to those employed by the
ousted rulers of Afghanistan against the people of that nation should they gain
political power in America.
Many Christians, their critics say, tend to oppose
socially beneficial programs such as handing out condoms to teenagers and
Olympic athletes, are vehement in their condemnation of a woman's alleged right
to choose to butcher the baby in her womb, and fail to support so-called gay
rights measures.
Outright attacks that would never be condoned if
launched against any other group are regularly aimed at the Roman Catholic
Church, yet draw no condemnation from the liberal U.S. media, which in their
elitist mindset, view Catholicism as a creed whose adherents rank low on the
social and intellectual scale.
A recent example of this is a lengthy cover story
in the Jan. 21 issue of the leftist New Republic magazine: "What Would Jesus
Have Done? Pope Pius, the Vatican, and the Holocaust," by Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen.
Aside from misstating or distorting the facts
concerning Pope Pius XII's actions in helping Jews during World War II,
Goldhagen goes on the attack against Christianity itself.
As H.W. Crocker III, author of "Triumph: The Power
and the Glory of the Catholic Church, a 2,000-Year History," wrote in
NewsMax.com Feb. 5: "The New Republic article is especially important because it
shows that anti-Catholic hate is being 'mainstreamed.'"
Goldhagens piece, Crocker charges, "resurrects, in
essence, Voltaires old battle cry of 'crush the infamous thing' by which
Voltaire meant the Catholic Church. But unlike Voltaire, who had wit the
Jesuits educated him, after all Goldhagen, a professor with yet another
anti-Catholic book to sell, is a mere blunt instrument of abuse."
That same "mainstream media" can't wait to find
examples of misbehavior among the Roman Catholic priesthood, headlining every
instance of sexual abuse on the part of members of the clergy.
While it is certainly legitimate to expose such
criminal acts on the part of the Catholic clergy, it is not legitimate to fail
to emphasize that Catholic priests are no more apt to engage in sinful activity
than their Protestant or Jewish colleagues.
Sin is not the exclusive property of Catholic
priests. Yet it is the Catholic priesthood that gets the attention when one of
their number commits sexual crimes.
In recent weeks the media have had a field day
trumpeting the disgusting failure of the Catholic hierarchy in the Archdiocese
of Boston in concealing grievous instances of pedophilia among the priesthood,
moving known pedophile priests from parish to parish where they could continue
to molest youngsters in their charge instead of turning them over to the
authorities for punishment.
The failure of Cardinal Law and other members of
the diocesan hierarchy to deal with this cancer exposed countless numbers of
innocent youths to the horrors of sexual abuse at the hands of their priests.
It was inexcusable behavior, and the cardinal
should acknowledge his culpability by stepping down. The diocese should be
shaken up and all those who had a part in the outrage removed from their posts
and sent packing.
There are no excuses for this implicit condoning of
criminal and moral depravity on the part of priests none. A pedophile is a
pedophile whether or not he wears a Roman collar.
That having been said, the behavior of the media,
which have conspicuously drooled over the opportunity the scandal has presented
them to attack the Catholic church without fear of being charged with outright
bigotry, needs to be examined.
Keep in mind the fact that the overwhelming
majority of the media elite are proponents of gay rights and all other goals of
the homosexual activists. Just how often to you see media condemnations of
homosexual behavior in the mainstream media?
Now also keep in mind the fact that these pedophile
priests were molesting young boys not young girls. The pedophile priests were,
by definition and practice, homosexuals, or "gay," as members of the exquisite
community prefer to be called.
Yet there hasn't been so much as a whisper in the
mainstream media of this rather obvious fact. The homosexual aspects of the
scandal are carefully ignored.
A media that have, by and large, supported
punishing the Boy Scouts of America for daring to protect its members from being
preyed upon by homosexual pedophile scoutmasters are not rushing to defend the
Boston Catholic archdiocese for protecting the "gay rights" of pedophile
priests.
Another aspect of this story has been the rush to
blame clerical celibacy
