The Media's Vatican Coup

Our secular liberal media elites are never more poisonously insincere than when they recommend that conservatives should move closer to liberals, for their own good. Witnessing the relentless media attacks on the Catholic Church, no member of the flock should assume that the agitators at Newsweek or The New York Times know best how to steer the faithful — or even believe they want to help the faithful. Much like Ted Turner, who called Catholics "losers," his media colleagues see Catholics — and particularly Pope Benedict XVI — as loathsome political obstacles.

One can conclude from all the coverage of sexual-abuse charges that those charges aren't really the primary point for the "truth" seekers. These leftist media elites have hijacked those heinous actions for a much broader goal. Theirs is a very political crusade, with the goal of sacking Pope Benedict and "reforming" the ancient church in their hipster image, one that celebrates gay bishop Eugene Robinson's Episcopalian gospel of "tolerance," "inclusion" and "pluralism." That kind of church would pose zero threat to the global goals of the left. In that kind of church, there is no stained-glass ceiling to untrammeled abortion and unlimited "marriage" of everyone to everyone.

Secular liberals and liberal pseudo-Catholics alike have overtly compared the sex-abuse charges to Watergate, and the Holy Father to President Nixon. In this vision, what the Catholic Church truly needs are cardinals to go to the pontiff, like Barry Goldwater went to Nixon, and tell him he has to pack it in, for the good of his flock.

This is a stunning smear of Pope Benedict. Richard Nixon was heavily involved in plotting the petty crimes of Watergate, from break-in to cover-up. No media outlet has proven beyond their own jaded liberal assumptions that Cardinal Ratzinger or Pope Benedict had a similar involvement in plotting a cover-up — not to mention ordering sexual abuse by priests.

Forget proof, evidence … facts. This is all about character assassination.

Whether it's Sally Quinn of The Washington Post going on MSNBC or Timothy Shriver writing in The Washington Post, this march of the Holier Than Thou to the walls of Vatican City is a sickening spectacle.

Father Thomas Brundage, who was a judge in the church trial of deaf-child-molesting Father Lawrence Murphy in Milwaukee and is intimately familiar with the facts, is being ignored by the media.

After Cardinal Ratzinger assumed responsibility in 2001 for sex-abuse cases being investigated by the Vatican, Brundage found "in my observation as well as many of my canonical colleagues, sexual abuse cases were handled expeditiously, fairly, and with due regard to the rights of all the parties involved. I have no doubt that this was the work of then-Cardinal Ratzinger."

In addition, he wrote, "Pope Benedict has repeatedly apologized for the shame of the sexual abuse of children in various venues and to a worldwide audience. This has never happened before. He has met with victims ... He has been most reactive and proactive of any international church official in history with regard to the scourge of clergy sexual abuse of minors."

None of this mattered to the media. They will not allow this testimony to goodness to derail their religious revolution.

Newsweek even put a painting of the Virgin Mary on its cover with the words "What Would Mary Do? How Women Can Save the Catholic Church From Its Sins." According to Newsweek, Mary is now transformed into a radical feminist. They declared the Catholic scandal "is no mystery: insular groups of men often do bad things. So why not break up the all-male club?"

That is their goal, and it's political.

Men are pigs, according to the female religion editor of Newsweek, Lisa Miller, and celibate men who fail to accept women as professional equals are the biggest pigs of all.

This woman even attacked Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary in her crusade. Were the bishops responsive to mothers who warned of abusive priests? "In this case Jesus was wrong: the meek did not inherit the earth. They received pious and self-serving sermonizing. ... the women of today's church have found themselves marginalized and preached to amid the interminable revelations of the sexual-abuse scandals. Their prayers to the Virgin, protector of humanity, seem to have gone unanswered."

And as I write these words, the same spirit moves Rosie O'Donnell, as she just compared the Roman Catholic Church to ... the psychotic suicide cult at Jonestown.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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