ANTI-CATHOLIC DRAGONS BREATHED FIRE IN 1987

 

 

           ANNUAL CATHOLIC LEAGUE ROUNDUP

 

     ANTI-CATHOLIC DRAGONS BREATHED FIRE IN 1987

 

                   from

           Catholic League Newsletter

           December 1987 - vol. 14, no. 12

 

      Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

               1100 West Wells St.

              Milwaukee, WI  53233

                Annual Dues:  $20

 

          Reprinted on CIN with permission

 

 

    Last year at this time there was little doubt that the

coming year would bring another wave of anti-Catholicism.

The only question was which of the many forms of bigotry

would emerge from the shadows and take center stage.  Eleven

months after the new year began, the answer was clear.   The

theme for 1987 was "The Return of the Deputy Myth."

 

    On January 11, nationally-syndicated columnist George

Will appeared as a guest on the ABC television news show,

"This Week with David Brinkley."  The discussion turned to

Cardinal O'Connor's controversial visit to Israel.

Commenting on the Vatican's lack of diplomatic relations

with that nation, Will accused the Catholic Church of

"residual anti-Semitism" and described its behavior during

the Holocaust as "contemptible."

 

    A few days before, 53 Jewish organizations had issued

statements criticizing Cardinal O'Connor.  To their credit,

the editors of The New York Times defended the cardinal, but

in the next breath defamed one of the Church's greatest

modern popes.  In a January 14 editorial, they wrote:  "Pius

XII was shamefully silent about Nazi Germany's crime against

Jews and non-Jews."

 

    The charge that Pius XII was "silent" was first raised

in a work of fiction--Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play, "The

Deputy."  It is especially ironic that the Times should give

credence to this slander, since its editors wrote in 1942

that Pope Pius XII was "about the only leader left on the

Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all ...

against Hitlerism."

 

    While ABC was providing a forum for the Deputy Myth, CBS

was busy attacking the religious life.  On January 19, the

CBS Evening News "reported" the sensational story that a

Benedictine monk was not allowed to return to his order

because he had AIDS.  As it turned out, the "monk" was in

fact merely a candidate for admission to a Benedictine abbey

and left of his own accord.  The network refused to correct

the misleading story.

 

    Then, on January 28--in the middle of National Catholic

Vocations Week--CBS aired "Broken Vows," a made-for-TV movie

about a priest who became romantically involved with a woman

and abandoned the priesthood.  When the Catholic League

protested, CBS added insult to injury by falsely claiming

that Father Joseph Battaglia, an official of the Archdiocese

of Los Angeles, had approved the script.  Battaglia exposed

the CBS cover-up at a press conference set up by the League.

 

    After returning to "bigotry as usual" during the month

of February, the news media raised its anti-Catholicism to

fever pitch in March, when the Vatican released its

"Instruction" on artificial methods of procreation.  The

document questioned such practices as artificial

insemination, in vitro fertilization and surrogate

motherhood.  Dozens of viciously anti-Catholic cartoons,

editorials and columns--along with slanted "news" coverage--

appeared in newspapers across the country.

 

    The Church was accused of standing in the way of

progress, denying the value of modern science and imposing

its medieval morality on the American people.  Even more

offensive than such outrageous claims was a blasphemous

suggestion made by several cartoonists.  They implied that

the virginal conception of Christ in the womb of the Blessed

Mother was an "unnatural" method of procreation that the

Vatican would have condemned.

 

    Similarly, Garry Trudeau's popular cartoon strip

"Doonesbury," included a gratuitous assault on Catholic

belief.  One panel announced that district sales managers

for the "Dr. Whoopee" condom company would "train at the

respected Institute of Immaculate Contraception."  The

obvious allusion is to the Catholic doctrine that Mary was

conceived without sin.

 

    As indicated above, the Deputy Myth seems to have been

chosen as the anti-Catholic theme of the year.     On the cover

of its April 22 issue, the Jehovah's Witness magazine AWAKE!

showed a Catholic bishop shaking hands with Hitler.  Both

the cover and the lead story strongly implied that the

Catholic Church collaborated with the Nazi movement and its

persecution of the Jews.

 

    A week later, Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, a

Carmelite nun and convert from Judaism who was murdered by

the Nazis at Auschwitz.  Amazingly, several commentators in

the secular press twisted this event into proof of the

Church's anti-Semitism.  The beatification of Edith Stein,

wrote Lawrence Lowenthal in the Middlesex News, "is simply

an affront to Jewish sensibilities" and recalls Pope Pius

XII's "tragic silence" during the Holocaust.

 

    The real fireworks on the Holocaust issue, however,

began on June 17 when the Vatican announced a meeting

between the Pope and Kurt Waldheim.  The former Secretary-

General of the United Nations had been elected President of

Austria despite persistent, but unproven, accusations by

international Jewish organizations that he was involved in

Nazi war crimes.

 

    For three months after the announcement, the news media

hammered away at the "controversial" meeting.  Jewish

leaders were given practically unlimited coverage to voice

their criticism of John Paul II for meeting with Waldheim,

while Catholics were seldom allowed to say a word in his

defense.  Not only was the current pope accused of

"insensitivity to the Holocaust," but few commentators could

resist dredging up the myth about Pius XII.

 

    According to the anti-papal sentiments stirred up by the

Waldheim affair, were various protests against his September

visit to the United States.  Although arch-conservative

fundamentalists have little in common with militant

homosexuals, rabid feminists and secular humanists, they all

agreed that no one's life or liberty was safe as long as the

Bishop of Rome was on American soil.

 

    Meanwhile, the media's "angle" on the papal visit was

that the Pope had come to heal a "deeply divided" Church.

Reports, polls and interviews repeated ad nauseam the

blatant fiction that every other priest, nun and layman in

the Church is in open rebellion against its authority.   If

genuine rebels were so common, why did the same half-dozen

faces appear so frequently on all three networks?

 

    Of course, the examples cited above are only the tip of

the iceberg.  Throughout 1987, there has been--as Archbishop

John Quinn of San Francisco put it "a proliferation of

plays, movies, television and radio programs as well as

newspaper articles and cartoons all over the country which

do indeed ridicule priests, nuns, bishops, the pope,

Catholic beliefs and practices."

 

    In addition, professional anti-Catholics like Jack Chick

and Tony Alamo continue to distribute their hate-filled

propaganda.  Televangelist Jimmy Swaggert still broadcasts

his poisonous lies, distortions and half-truths about the

Catholic Church.  And the ACLU will once again do its best

to keep Christ out of Christmas.

 

    Let us brace ourselves for another year.