Posted on 03/31/2010 10:39:45 AM PDT by NYer
It’s time to drive a stake through the heart of these libelous charges against the Holy Father.
The mainstream media has had their chance, made their great play, and came up short. Maureen Dowd did herself a disservice by joining the mob.
Sometimes she writes smart things (I think), this time she was a patsy for journalistic character-assassination. It’s one thing to be violently ideological, it’s another to propagate flimsy falsehoods to buttress that ideology.
I think the tide is turning against these critics of the Church (see my examples below), and we must help build momentum behind the pope’s innocence, while also making sure we understand why this attack on him was orchestrated in the first place. But now, some examples of the turning tide:
And now the question we must ask ourselves:
What was the point of this attack?
To discredit the public moral witness of the Church, that “inconvenient voice” of truth in our time.
George Weigel calls out professional pope-hater Sinead O’Connor for her malicious editorial (published in the Washington Post), and writes about how these attacks aren’t about the person of the pope, they are about what he teaches – and what the Church therefore teaches:
What Sinead O’Connor is not free to do is to misrepresent the teaching and law of the Catholic Church in the Post in order to buttress her claim that the Church is an “abusive organization” and that the Church threatens with excommunication those who would blow the whistle on clerical sexual abusers. That is utterly false. If Ms. O’Connor is aware of that falsehood, she has lied. What is more likely is that she picked up this arrant nonsense from those who are attempting to portray the Catholic Church as a global criminal conspiracy of sexual predators, in order to cripple the Church morally and financially and to drive it from the public square in shame.
Elizabeth Lev – daughter of the heroic Mary Ann Glendon – echoes Weigel when she reveals the possible motivation and deeper causes behind these attacks:
… What would Edmund Burke make of the headlines of the past few weeks, as stories of a clerical sex abuser in Germany a quarter century ago, made front page headlines and top TV stories in US news? What would he think of the insistent attempts to tie this sex abuser to the Roman pontiff himself through the most tenuous of links? In 1790, Burke answered his own question with these words: “It is not with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated when profit is looked for in their punishment.” As he wrote these words, the French revolutionaries were readying for the mass confiscation of Church lands.
… If Burke were alive today, he would perhaps discern another motive behind the selective assaults on Catholic clergy, besides designs on Church property: namely to destroy the credibility of a powerful moral voice in public debate. The most recent example concerns the heated battle over the health care reform bill. The vocal opposition of the United States Bishops’ conference (particularly in regard to tax-payer-funded abortion) has proved especially annoying to the proponents of the legislation. As the final vote approaches, the clerical sex abuse drumbeat has risen to a frenzy.
Even if the current attacks on the pope were not originally brought about by liberal anger at the Church’s opposition to their favorite piece of domestic legislation, it is completely reasonable to assume that they understand the public witness of the Church is a continuing, bothersome thorn in their side.
As I said, let’s take the thorn out of their side and stick it into the heart of their evil project to silence the pope, and thereby silence the Church.
Score!
THIS IS HOLY WEEK!
Not in Iowa and not in the msm.
Can't say it better myself.
Amen to that...Looks like the tide may be turning though...And that’s a good thing.
I didn’t notice until I became a Catholic but certainly since I became a Catholic every Lent has been a time to defame the Catholic Church in any way they can.
I am trying my best to read a book called “Autobiography by a Campaigner for Christ”, written in the early 1900s. The gist of it so far is, of course, how Socialism has to kill the Church and break up the family. The sad part is just seeing how much they have accomplished.
**I didn’t notice until I became a Catholic but certainly since I became a Catholic every Lent has been a time to defame the Catholic Church in any way they can.**
I guess the msm thinks they will disuade converts from joining the Catholic Church. LOL!
Didn’t work last year. Won’t work this year either!
I still find it hard to understand how Church-going Catholics still read the Anti-Catholic ny times.
The amount of positive threads about Pope Benedict XVI keep increasing by leaps and bounds!
Cardinal Levada to NY Times: Reconsider 'Attack Mode' Against Pope Benedict
Clearing Benedict's Good Name: The New York Times Must Retract Its False Reporting
Game Over: Benedict – 1. MSM – 0.
Milwaukee WI Archbishop defends Pope Benedict
[Milwaukee] Archbishop Listecki Apologizes For Priest's Sex Abuse
Defending the Pope against Hot Air
Catholic Caucus: Accusations that Pope Complicit in Abuse Cover-Up Fall Flat
Setting the record straight in the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Father Lawrence Murphy
Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland Admits He's Gay
Long Applause for New York Prelate Who Defends Pope
NYT UNFAIRLY CITES POPE'S ROLE [Catholic Caucus]
Scoundrel Time(s)
The Pope and the Murphy case: what the New York Times story didn't tell you
The irony is that there's a group of FReepers who don't believe ANYTHING the MSM reports, UNLESS it's about the Catholic Church and then they accept it without question and repeat it even after it's proven false.
Ah, David Goldstein. Now there was a Catholic man with GUTS!!! He must have been one terrific debater too. I enjoyed that book immensely. Times were so different then. Yes, there was lots of Anti-Catholicism, but people were more likely to be honest when they got their clock cleaned by a debater like Goldstein.
We could use a few more like him now (not to mention two or three Fulton Sheens as well).
I am still amazed that anyone woul dtake Sinead O’Connor seriously about ANYTHING other than cheap imitation folksy sounding Irish music. This is from the wikipedia page about her:
In a 2000 interview in Curve, O’Connor outed herself as a lesbian, “I’m a dyke ... although I haven’t been very open about that and throughout most of my life I’ve gone out with blokes because I haven’t necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a big lesbian mule. But I actually am a dyke.”[32] However, soon after in an interview in The Independent, she stated, “I believe it was overcompensating of me to declare myself a lesbian. It was not a publicity stunt. I was trying to make someone else feel better. And have subsequently caused pain for myself. I am not in a box of any description.” In a magazine article and in a programme on RTÉ (Ryan Confidential, broadcast on RTÉ on 29 May 2003), she stated that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she has had three relationships with women. In a May 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly, she stated, “I’m three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more towards the hairy blokes”.[33]
She has four children: a son, Jake Reynolds, by her first husband; a daughter, Brigidine Róisíne Waters, born early 1996, by The Irish Times columnist John Waters; another son, Shane, born 6 March 2004, whose father is Irish folk musician and record producer Dónal Lunny; and her fourth child, Yeshua Francis Neil, born on 19 December 2006 whose father is her former partner Frank Bonadio. O’Connor formally announced to Paul Martin in the Irish Daily Mirror that the two had broken up as of the weekend of 17 February 2007, citing difficulties between Bonadio and his former wife, singer Mary Coughlan.
On an 4 October 2007 broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show, O’Connor disclosed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years earlier, and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday.[31]
Okay, let’s recap:
Mentally ill? Check!
Lesbian? Check!
Rather confused about her sexuality? Check!
Four kids by four different men? Check!
Went through mock “ordination” as a “priest” Check!
Oh, clearly she’s cut out to be an expert on Christianity! Sheesh!
I’m happy that the national argument has morphed into: What kind of a guy is the Pope and what kind of people are the Teaparty members?
I think they stack up pretty well as a group especially compared to the liberals and I’m grateful that we are spending a lot of time in the MSM finding out about both.
That’s true. I don’t think the MSM is fooling as many people as they hoped to.
Know your enemy, maybe? Probably need antacids first.
Definitely not a good selection for Lent. Go with this one next year.
Filled with compassion and brilliant scholarship, Fulton Sheen's recounting of the Birth, Life, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ is as dramatic and moving as the subject Himself.
Captivating from page 1!
Lol!!! Winning post of the day.
Where is Pope Bill Donohue on this? Haven’t seen him on Fox & Friends lately. He take a swing at somebody? (Don’t sue me, Bill).
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