The too-often unfunny comedian Bill Maher’s comments about the pope deserve all the outrage and contempt that the self-righteous media could possibly dump on the man. But it is very unlikly that he will receive more than the most mild criticism.
You think of Don Imus getting dumped over his “nappy headed hoes” comment; you think of the media universe literally coming unglued over Senator George Allen’s use of a single word - “macaca” which I still have never actually heard defined. (Media narrative: “We don’t know what it means, but it just sounds racist to us, coming as it did from a Republican and all.”). Actor Isaiah Washington was fired from his role on Grey’s Anatomy over an anti-gay slur. But when Bill Maher viciously rips the pope and a billion-plus Catholics again and again, the media doesn’t seem to see any problems. It’s a matter of one of their own targeting one of their targets.
Christians - and Catholics, especially - are fair game. I guess when every other group has special protections, somebody has to remain on the “fair game” list. Every propaganda machine needs a villian, after all.
I’d like to say a few things about Bill Maher. But first let’s let the man speak for himself:
According to Newsmax:
“The comments were made on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, Apr. 11. Maher went into a long monologue on his program comparing the Catholic church to a polygamous cult — the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — which was raided on Apr. 3 and whose founder, Warren Jeffs, was convicted last year for being an accessory to the rape of a teenage girl. Bill Maher compared the Texas scandal and its latest alleged abuse with the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in the United States in 2002. http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Pope_bill_maher_/2008/04/15/88028.html
These are a few of Maher’s remarks:
“I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult,” Maher told his audience. “Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That’s right, the Pope is coming to America this week and, ladies, he’s single.”
And again:
“If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’ It’s like, if you can’t pay your mortgage, you’re a deadbeat. But if you can’t pay a million mortgages, you’re Bear Stearns and we bail you out. And that is who the Catholic Church is: the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia — too big, too fat.”
First of all the man is a documented liar. Pope Benedict XVI - like ALL German youth of the time - was conscripted against his will into a German youth organization, from which he fled as soon as he could. He was not a Nazi. He was never a Nazi. If anyone is a Nazi, it is Bill Maher for using Joseph Goebbels-like propaganda tactics to maliciously brand an innocent man with the most despicable charge.
Bill Maher clearly doesn’t mind telling vicious, hateful lies. So it isn’t surprising that he would also talk about the Catholic Church in this manner. I did a little reading on the subject, and discovered that one of the most reliable sources available - the February 2004 research study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice - found that 81% of the so-called abuse cases involved teen-age boys and up. Stephen Rubino, a lawyer who has represented over 300 alleged victims of priest abuse, estimated 85 percent of the victims have been teen-age boys. And Catholic psychiatrist Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, who has treated many victims and offending priests, agrees with that figure, noting that 90 percent of his patients are either abused teen-age males or their priest abusers. These were cases of evil abuse against young men who were taken advantage of by certain priests in the worst way, but they were NOT cases of “child molestation” and/or pedophilia. Rather, these cases were the result of a massive homosexual sub-culture within the Catholic Church taking advantage of their positions and the unequal-power-relationships they initiated to have homosexual intercourse with teens and young men.
It turns out that genuine cases of pedophila are MUCH more likely to occur in the public schools than in the Catholic Church. And that the culture of cover-ups, transfers, and
other protective schemes to conceal abusive teachers are likewise FAR more likely to occur in the public school system than in the Catholic Church - especially today. Public school abuses - including both the cases of sexual abuse by teachers and the covering up of such abuses by the administrators and unions - ought to be far more shocking and disturbing, because parents are forced to send their children to public schools whereas they are not so required to send their children to priests. Why doesn’t Bill Maher charicterize public school teachers as pedophiles? If you hate religion, don’t let facts get in the way of a good propaganda campaign. The Catholic League has documented the points I made at: http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.htm
Second, Bill Maher is a bigot.
That’s what he’d call him if he singled out ANY other group of people for such hateful remarks. If I go on a comedic rant about blacks, or Muslims, or gays, or most anyone else, and I’m sure going to hear that label applied to me. And from no less a personage than Bill Maher, to boot.
As a counterexample to Maher, I, along with the overwhelming majority of genuine Christians, would never use rhetoric like Maher’s to describe or ridicule homosexuals in spite of our beliefs about the nature of their lifestyles. We recognize that they are human beings who deserve compassion. So are the one billion Catholics that Maher calls deranged cultists.
Third, Bill Maher is a coward.
I’m sure in his little “yuk-it-up” elitist social gatherings, Maher is routinely praised for his “courage” in “taking on” the Catholic Church, Christianity, and organized religion. But this atheist wouldn’t dare attack and insult and lie about Islam the way he so cavalierly does about Catholicism and Christianity. why not? Because they will go after him and kill him, that’s why. And he won’t go after Jews or Judaism (or rabbis, who have about the same rate of sex-abuse as Catholic priests, by the way) the way he goes after Catholics and Christians, because that really would be “politically incorrect” (the title of his former show), and organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League would rightly make him pay.
Fourth, Bill Mayer is a bully.
Instead of taking on people and organizations that would go after him or undermine his popularity, Maher takes advantage of the fact that Christians believe in turning the other cheek. He takes advantage of their goodness, graciousness, and self-restraint to attack them and hurt them. He takes advantage of the fact that his core audience - which is as vile, as bitter, and as mean as he is - are the type of people who wouldn’t at all mind seeing Christians killed by the tens of thousands in the Coliseum just as they were in the Roman days. He’s no different than the ringleader of a group of thugs in a school yard who single out a particular kid for torment.
Fifth, Bill Maher is a hypocrite.
I mentioned that the overwhelming majority of Catholic priests’ sexual abuse cases were homosexual in nature rather than cases of pedophilia. Let me take a moment to document the homosexual subculture within the Catholic Church before I relate this to Bill Maher. I quote one paragraph from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_rcc1.htm). I am including the footnotes in order to better document the following statements, and maintain the numbering of the footnotes as they are found in the article:
* Father Donald Cozzens wrote that several studies have concluded that about 50% of priests and seminarians are gay. 5
* David France of Newsweek, referring to St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, CA, wrote:
“Depending on whom you ask, gay and bisexual men make up anywhere from 30 percent to 70 percent of the student body at the college and graduate levels.” 3
* Rt. Rev. Helmut Hefner, rector of St. Johns Seminary “accepts that his gay enrollment may be as high as 50 percent.” 3
* Gay journalist Rex Wockner commented: “When I was in the Catholic seminary in my early 20s (St. Meinrad College, St. Meinrad, Ind., 1982-1983; University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, Ill., 1983-1984), at least 50 percent of the students were gay….At St. Mary of the Lake, the straight students felt like a minority and felt excluded from some aspects of campus life to such an extent that the administration staged a seminar at which we discussed the problem of the straight students feeling left out of things…” 6
* Author and sociologist James G. Wolfe estimated that 55.1% of seminarians were gay. 7
3 David France, “Gays and the Seminary,” MSNBC, 2002-MAY-20, at: http://www.msnbc.com/
5 “Vatican threatens gay purge of priesthood,” The Data Lounge, 2002-MAR-6, at: http://www.datalounge.com/
6 Rex Wockner, “The end of Catholicism in America,” PlanetOut, at: http://www.planetout.com/
7 James G. Wolf, “Gay Priests,” Harper and Row, 1989, Pages 59-60. Cited in Father Donald Cozzens, “The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A reflection on the priest’s crisis of soul,” Liturgical Press, (2000), Page 99.
One of many supporting articles would be http://www.actupny.org/YELL/catholicpriests.html which begins, “Roman Catholic priests in the United States are dying from AIDS-related illnesses at a rate four times higher than the general population and the cause is often concealed on their death certificates, The Kansas City Star reported in a series of stories that started Sunday.” The article goes on to describe the homosexual subculture within the Catholic Church.
I don’t point out that the maliciously characterized “pedophile priests” have actually been homosexuals in order to attack homosexuals or homosexuality in this context. Most of these homosexual priests - the overwhelming majority of the time - seem to have faithfully practiced their vows of abstinence. The statistics demonstrate that a tiny minority of priests perpetuated all the abuses. Rather, I bring this up in order to reveal what a hypocrite Bill Maher is. This man, who has made so much of these abuse cases within the Catholic Church, is a hard-core liberal activist. Homosexuals are very much one of the groups of people that he and people like him have shielded. One of the main reasons people like Bill Maher have so vindictively attacked Christianity and Catholicism has been because Christians and Catholics have condemned homosexuality. And for Maher to lay at the feet of Catholicism what more deservedly lays at the feet of people whose rights he defends is the basest form of hypocrite.
The Catholic Church could have done a much better job of dealing with the abuse cases by aggressively purging homosexuals from its priesthood - which would have brought the ire of liberals like Bill Maher. Instead, they tolerated this massive homosexual presence within their midst for decades - and Bill Maher attacks the Catholic church for tolerating a group of people that he demand they tolerate!
Thus I conclude my case that Bill Maher - and quite frankly every one who agrees with him - is a lying, bigoted, hypocritical, bullying coward.
The Catholic Church is a flawed organization, without a doubt. But when I look at all the good that Catholics have done in the world, and then look at the fruits of people like Bill Maher, it is not the Catholic Church that looks bad.
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