That's a joke, told by Pete Davidson on "SNL," quoted in
"Pete Davidson made a joke on SNL about the Catholic Church. Now officials are demanding an apology" (WaPo).
Definitely not amused was the Catholic Church’s Diocese of Brooklyn, which on Monday released a lengthy statement condemning the joke and seeking an “immediate public apology” from the sketch comedy show and from NBC, the network that airs it. “The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions,” the statement reads, in part. “The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.”
Here's the lengthy statement from the Diocese of Brooklyn. Excerpt:
Apparently, the only acceptable bias these days is against the Catholic Church.
Oh!
You're the victim.
The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions. The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.
It's the Era of That's Not Funny, but has the Catholic Church ever had a sense of humor? It's a "difficult time" for the Catholic Church because the
Church actively closed off our view of the problem. If you'd been open about it all these years, would our jokes about you have had a "purpose"? What is the general principle that the Diocese of Brooklyn is trying to state? It seems to be: It's wrong to react with jokes when we get
news about X because
the news is already hurting X — X is the victim and we, the jokesters, are the bullies. That's rich!
The clergy sex abuse crisis is shameful, and no one should ever get a laugh at the expense of the victims who have suffered irreparably....
And by "victims," you mean the Church? Because that's the only target of the joke. What's the general rule here? If X victimizes Y, it's wrong to joke about X, because it makes light of the entire situation and that hurts Y. Maybe, but if it's
X who invokes the rule, can we at least laugh about
that?
It is likely that no other institution has done more than the Catholic Church to combat and prevent sexual abuse.
Oh, now you're making your own joke? Or... the only way I can understand this is as a confession of the vast, horrific scale of the abuse. It's not that you've done so much in proportion to the problem, but that you've got such a huge problem.
The insensitivity of the writers, producers, and the cast of SNL around this painful subject is alarming.
Ridiculous. The reason SNL's joke hurt so much is that it directly provokes your adherents to get the hell out. I'm sure that is alarming.
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267 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 267 of 267Meanwhile there are reports that sexual assault on university campuses -- including law schools -- is at epidemic levels. However, the routine practice of these universities is NOT to report these crimes to law enforcement for criminal prosecution. Instead, the universities investigate themselves, with nearly all of it happening in the shadows.
In fact, the practice of university administrators and faculty -- including an awful lot of law professors -- has been to resist reporting sexual assaults on campus to law enforcement.
Show business and the Catholic Church have much in common. They wear ridiculous outfits for their ritual observances. They preach a public morality that is not evidenced in their private behavior. They show due deference to the hierarchy--i.e. they kiss the Bishop's ring and give Roman Polanski a standing ovation....... Where I would differentiate between the Church and Hollywood is on the matter of sexual predation. Sexual predation is incidental to the Church's mission, but it seems to be the whole point of show business.......SNL should do a funny skit about how people in show business sexually abuse their fans and each other.
J Farmer, Good points. I also think the celibacy lated as long as it did because the Church did not want parishes to have to support families and did not want resistance to moving priests around.
My understanding is that Orthodox priests who marry have far less trouble with such scandals.
Why feminism in this thread?
Because the Catholic and Mormons Churches are the only significant opposition left to Althouse’s Marxist feminism and gay worship.
The sexual abuse attack on the church is a selective attack intended to cripple the Church.
It’s been very effective. Demand moral perfection from the Church, but not from yourself.
This has always been all about feminism and Marxism.
J. Farmer:
One of my Jesuit high school teachers told me the reason for celibate priests was so that their primary focus would be on the flock rather than their wife and kids.
David Begley and Michael K: Aren't those examples like buying indulgences?
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.”
Bishop Sheen was also famous for his response to a woman who said she didn’t believe in hell:
“You will when you’re there madam”.
But one of my favorites, from Saint JPII, that I often used when teaching 8th grade Faith Formation:
“The problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little”.
Could spend the whole hour on that.
A high school classmate of mine who I keep up with on Facebook suggested that if the Catholic Church doesn't fix the problem, the government should padlock the doors on churches. I countered that instead of such a Draconian response, the membership of the churches should rise up and demand change. You know, kind of like a reformation or something.
SNL won't slam Islam because they don't want to end up Charlie Hebbdo-ed. And I guess I can't blame them. What is it worth to be courageous in late night comedy?
“The problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little”.
Andy Warhol, another Pole, once said he watched pornography for 15 minutes and wanted to have sex with everyone. Then he watched for an hour and never wanted to have sex again.
"I'm wondering why Althouse didn't discuss the poor analogy in the joke. Does she think it's a reasonable analogy, or did she just want to focus on the Catholic Church's response, ignoring the bad joke?"
I didn't analyze the joke at all. I was interested in the stupid response to it. The joke didn't interest me. I blog about what interests me. If there was something about the quality or the details of the joke that had something to do with what I wanted to say about the badness of the Brooklyn Diocese statement, I'd have put it in. It's a pretty lame joke, but the Brooklyn Diocese would have been better off saying nothing.
The first rule of Pedophile Club is, Don't talk about Pedophile Club.
The second rule of Pedophile Club is, Don't talk about Pedophile Club.
The third rule of Pedophile Club is...
It's a pretty lame joke, but the Brooklyn Diocese would have been better off saying nothing.
Seems undoubtedly true. The best response to a lame joke is to ignore it. Whatever happened to Bill Donohue's Catholic League? This would've been the perfect little pettiness he used to love to get involved with.
If you think the cover-up by the RCC hierarchy was among the worst thing that RCC did in its history, then you need to read more church history.
But, then, one must ask, evil as compared to whom? The established Protestant Churches of Europe are every bit as blood-soaked, with, e.g. the Lutheran Church starting out with Luther supporting the nobility against the peasantry in the Peasant's Rebellion, in which the nobility ends up killing an estimated 100 thousand German peasants.
And let's not even get started on governments, whose victims routinely number in the millions.
Kant said "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made". Mankind is nothing but sinners. We fuck up everything we touch. We even fuck up the Mystical Body of Christ. Maybe, just maybe, at the end, we will be redeemed & made whole. Maybe not. But, until that time, there's no escape from human evil, not even in the churches. There's just constant vigilance.
One of my Jesuit high school teachers told me the reason for celibate priests was so that their primary focus would be on the flock rather than their wife and kids.
I went ahead and pulled out Fukuayama's book. This is a relevant section, from Chapter 18:
"As Gregory VII, he made celibacy of the priesthood official church doctrine and forced already married priests to choose between their duties to the church and their duties to heir families. This challenged the entrenched practices of the priesthood and led to an enormous and often violent struggle within the church itself. Pope Gregory’s goal was to end corruption and rent seeking within the church by attacking the very source of patrimonialism, the ability of bishops and priests to have children. He was driven by the same logic that led the Chinese and Byzantines to rely on eunuchs, or the Ottomans to capture military slaves and tear them from their families: if given the choice between loyalty to the state and to one’s family, most people are driven biologically to the latter. The most direct way to reduce corruption was therefore to forbid officials to have families in the first place."
My lack of sexual depravity is starting to worry me. Perhaps I can get some counselling to get normal.
Lack of sexual depravity is the new sexual depravity. I call it The Paradox of Bag.
Meanwhile there are reports that sexual assault on university campuses -- including law schools -- is at epidemic levels.
I've been told that 25% of women who attend college are raped. Does that mean that universities are worse than the Catholic Church? What does it say about people who worked in the system for their whole career?
I am a cradle Catholic. In part, I do believe that the Church is being unfairly singled out due to anti-Christian bigotry. Note that very few media outlets even deigned to mention the massive, decades-long Rotheram sex abuse carried out by Muslims.
I do also believe that the good the Church does can be argued to outweigh the bad.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty much done with the Church. In large part, this stems from my increasing cynicism and untrusting pretty much all groups with any power; they will always abuse it. Always. It also results from going to Mass for 50 years and not being prepared at all for a very traumatic period in my life, and not helping me through any of it.
But the recent abuse scandal was the last straw. Not only did they cover it up, but then when it finally came out, what did the Vatican say? Literally, "Oh, that's bad but we have more important things to worry about like social justice and climate change."
I haven't lost my faith, per se; just in those who presume to speak for it.
The most direct way to reduce corruption was therefore to forbid officials to have families in the first place."
Nepotism was a term that described the favoritism shown, not to nieces and nephews, but to the illegitimate children of Church elders, like Pope Gregory VI, whose son Cesare Borgia and whose daughter Lucretia Borgia were used in the maneuvers of the Pope in 15th century Italy,
It didn't work at the high levels.
@Farmer,
As Gregory VII, he made celibacy of the priesthood official church doctrine and forced already married priests to choose between their duties to the church and their duties to heir families. This challenged the entrenched practices of the priesthood and led to an enormous and often violent struggle within the church itself. Pope Gregory’s goal was to end corruption and rent seeking within the church by attacking the very source of patrimonialism
No. I don't think Fukuyama, not a Church historian by training, has got that right. For one thing, it ignores the ecclesiastical differences between the Eastern & Western Churches, and it ignores the theological forces driving priestly celibacy in the West in favor of "political" forces. It's also wrong on a question of fact. By the time of Pope Gregory VII, the bishops had been coming only from the celibate clergy for hundreds of years both in the Western & Eastern Church.
If there is any group of people on the face of the earth who are less qualified to rail against the predations and hypocrisy of the Church it is people in show business. This just adds even more topspin to their hypocrisy......SNL produces a few good jokes annually, but that's about it for their positive effect on society. For the most part they're supportive and even adulatory of the predators in their midst. Every so often someone like Weiner or R. Kelly will reach critical mass and they'll lob a few jokes in their direction, but they're never out front on this or on any scandal that involves Democrats or the protected classes.
@YoungHegelian:
No. I don't think Fukuyama, not a Church historian by training, has got that right.
I certainly do not believe I know enough about the subject to make a qualified judgment. I should point out, of course, that I excerpted one paragraph from Fukuyama's much larger argument. There is also this from The Southern Cross, in South Africa:
"But there was an inherent problem. Among the powerful landowners were bishops and abbots who had accumulated wealth. They had vassals below them but they also were vassals to laymen overlords to whom they owed allegiance. This opened the way to abuse.
A lay overlord could nominate a favourite to be made bishop in a comfortably affluent position. A cleric could bribe a lay lord to be given a lucrative bishopric. In the process canon law was forgotten so that wealthy prelates took office without the necessary canonical procedures. If a cleric had a wife and children, these could inherit property that rightfully belonged to the Church.
This unedifying period of history called for reform. Pope Benedict VIII in 1022 prohibited children of the clergy from inheriting property, and canon law began to be reinforced from Rome. Theologians argued strongly in favour of celibacy of the clergy, pointing out how it had a solid and honourable history.
In 1074 Pope St Gregory VII decreed that clergy who had obtained their office uncanonically were to be deposed. Priests may not marry and bishops may not allow them to marry.
Pope Gregory was acting to enforce the requirements of canon law which, in the feudal system, had been very much overshadowed by civil law and even the whims of powerful men.
Unmarried priests were far more likely to be answerable to spiritual authority in those days, being untrammelled by the demands of family and property and the temptation to possess worldly goods, and this understanding spread across Europe.
Later popes carried on this reforming trend. Clerical marriages were declared null and void. At the general councils of the Lateran in 1123 and 1139 the matter was finalised and later reaffirmed at the Council of Trent in 1563."
To paraphrase Andy Warhol:
We will all be victims for 15 minutes.
I am Catholic; in my view the Church authorities would do well to hang their heads in shame rather than demand an apology from this guy, whoever he is. Making jokes about sexual abuse is so outre.
"Lack of sexual depravity is the new sexual depravity."
It's okay to not do it as long as the partner you don't have consents to not being done.
@Farmer,
The second quotation you just posted from The Southern Cross I don't have a problem with.
There was definitely a struggle over hundreds of years for the Western Church to enforce clerical celibacy on a sometimes violently resistant clergy. There definitely were issues on clergy, especially noble clergy, having property, and the questions of ownership of that property put the Church often in conflict with noble families, conflicts that the Church generally lost. All of that is settled, factual history.
What I'm trying to point out is that there is in the Western Church also a change in sacerdotal theology, brought about by the rise of the Orders (e.g. Benedictines, Dominicans, etc), which doesn't occur in the Eastern Church, a change which demands celibacy as part of the identity of "being in Orders". Also, the Western Church sees itself, in a way the Eastern Church doesn't, as being a missionary Church from its earliest days, & being a missionary is an inherently dangerous business, & not one to frag along the wife & kids to do.
2) As a general rule of thumb, I oppose offering apologies to people or groups demanding apologies.
I feel compelled to tell you how sorry I am to read this.
Mr. Boyd gets it/doesn't get it. It's like a Schrödinger’s cat Kama Sutra. Half dead/half alive, half there/half not there sex. In other words: Sexual Superpositions.
Catholics parishoners are the only victims. I respect them and like everyone I have ever gotten to know. They have a strong community ethos from their shared faith in Christ and really great educational institutions. The devil in the details is that their faith is too easily surrendered to Clerics who use it to demand loyalty in a cult cover up of Clerical misdeeds. The Clerics assert that will protect their Church.
But that cover up is actually ruining the Church's reputation.
If Roman Catholics don’t want to be ripped on for the sexual abuse in their Church, then they should convert to Islam.
I recently read a book about daily life in Elizabethan England. The average person, including aristocrats, would wash their face and hands, but that was it so far as bathing went. I think this probably had a profound effect on the sexual habits of the day. My guess is that oral sex, especially cunnilingus, was performed rarely and with less enthusiasm than in current times. There's a reason why our olfactory and reproductive organs are placed at such a distance apart. Sexual mores are not necessarily dependent on morality.......As with oral sex so with celibacy. In medieval times, your average sex partner was runty, foul smelling, and pock marked. Celibacy back then wasn't such a sacrifice. It was like giving up Indian food for lent. I think the nature of celibacy and who such a sacrifice appeals to has changed over time. The Church should reconsider its views on celibacy.
Omaha is the home of Boystown. It was founded by a Catholic priest to take care of orphaned and abandoned boys. Made famous in a movie. He is now on his way to sainthood.
I was just reminded at lunch that Boystown runs a nationwide suicide prevention line.
There was one civil case filed by a young man alleging some type of abuse. Jury found against him. He was a liar and after money.
Don't tell me the Catholic Church is evil.
It's only in the Latin Rite that celibacy is required. Eastern Rite clergy are not required to be celibate. However, married clergy has it's own set of problems. But, I think more married men should be ordained priests. I think it should start with ordaining older, financially stable men who are married permanent deacons. That way, both the man and his wife would have a very good idea of what they were getting themselves into.
J. Farmer:
Essentially the same reasoning.
mockturtle:
No.
1.) There are Catholics who do not support the Church Hierarchy. A saying among them is that they Keep the Faith in spite of the Church.
2.) Just like the entertainment industry has insider jokes about casting couch predation, those who did time in Catholic schools have theirs. One of my favorites was about priests going into the Church for the sex and nuns for the violence.
3.) Not familiar with R Kelly's oeuvre, but after forced time in a mass folk group (think Prayer Team, only with very little talent), I'd assume that the comedian is referring to Kelly's fan base as having better music taste?
The statement from the archdiocese feels like they are circling their wagons, due to the scope of their priest abuse problem and the realization that key players most likely aren't going to get whisked back to the Vatican like Cardinal Law did.
@Professional Lady,
Eastern Rite clergy are not required to be celibate.
Not quite. The "parish" clergy are not required to be celibate, but the monastic clergy are. The bishops come only from the monastic community & are thus celibate.
Remember your Dostoevsky, how the clergy in the novels were celibate? That was the monastic clergy.
For what it's worth, there's a long tradition in the Eastern Church of understanding that your standard married parish priest was spiritually, well, not really up to snuff. Once again, see the clergy in your average Russian novel. If yer lookin' for spiritual enlightenment, get yer tuchis off to a monastery, young man!
The media coverage of the abuse and cover-ups is widespread. The media coverage of the policies the local dioceses have put in place to prevent it ever happening again gets zero coverage from anyone.
I teach in a Catholic school. Every person who works with children or adolescents (so, basically, everyone) is required to take training in identifying and reporting grooming or other sexually abusive behavior. The training is harrowing, since it involves watching videos of convicted pedophiles describe how they select and groom their victims.
As others have said, the real problem with the "joke" is that it reduces a huge, multi-faceted institution to a bunch of sexual abusers and their facilitators. The percentage of abusers among the Catholic clergy is actually lower than in the overall male population.
Last, all the media coverage gives the impression that widespread abuse is on-going, which is false. There are HUGE problems with the current administration in the Vatican, including the Pope, and there will have to be a reckoning. But the congregration in the pews is faithful to Christ, not the Pope, and that's why we remain.
The bishops come only from the monastic community & are thus celibate.
Didn't know that. Do the parish clergy call it the Spouse Ceiling?
@Ralph,
Didn't know that. Do the parish clergy call it the Spouse Ceiling?
Don't know, but it's as good a name as any.
Also, the order in which things happen is very important. If a single man is ordained, whammo-blammo!, he is now required to be celibate. Thus, if an Eastern Orthodox man wants to be married & ordained, he must first be married & then be ordained. The other order no workee.
"In other words: Sexual Superpositions."
entangled and avoiding entanglement.
In the Catholic Herald -- "The true history of celibacy"; a bit of it:
You will sometimes hear people say that priests could be married up to the 12th century. Others say that celibacy was imposed on the clergy by Gregory VII or that celibacy was promoted “because they hated the body”. These are familiar statements, but they are all untrue. ...
St Peter boasted, “we have left our homes and followed you”, when Our Lord commended leaving house or wife (Luke 19:28-9), and St Paul says bishops must be “self-controlled” (Titus 1:8; in Greek “continent” or “abstinent”). But from the 4th century, legislation, and writings of popes and bishops, make it clear that they believed the discipline of clerical continence went back to the Apostles. ...
The early second millennium was a time of reform after the sad corruption of the papacy in the 10th century. Councils, bishops, and monarchs issued decrees on clerical continence...
I think that second paragraph is key.
@lydia,
St Peter boasted, “we have left our homes and followed you”, when Our Lord commended leaving house or wife (Luke 19:28-9), and St Paul says bishops must be “self-controlled” (Titus 1:8; in Greek “continent” or “abstinent”). But from the 4th century, legislation, and writings of popes and bishops, make it clear that they believed the discipline of clerical continence went back to the Apostles. ...
The ideal was clerical celibacy from the earliest times, it's true. But the reality on the ground was different. It took a long time in the West to impose clerical celibacy all up & down the chain. For obvious reasons, would-be clergy, who knew of married priests from generations back, were not happy to be told by these often foreign clerical interlopers "No Pussy For You!".
It was like giving up Indian food for lent.
Seriously, William? Indian food is my favorite cuisine.
Some more of that Catholic Herald article:
The history is complicated, but well documented in studies such as Stefan Heid’s Celibacy in the Early Church. Yes, indeed, during the first millennium it was perfectly regular for married men to be ordained deacon or priest, but they had to separate from their wives beforehand. Technically not celibacy, but continence: sexual abstinence by formerly married men. They never pretended they had not been married. Their wives enjoyed status, and their children often followed them into the ministry. The sons, incidentally, could be ordained to minor orders before their teens, up to acolyte.
It was never forbidden for acolytes to marry, and still be clerics, and they easily found employment as clerks. We seem to have forgotten that minor orders existed (they were reformed in 1972), but many “married clergy” were in minor orders, who often decided later to proceed to major orders – though only if their wives were happy about it.
@Lydia,
Yes, indeed, during the first millennium it was perfectly regular for married men to be ordained deacon or priest, but they had to separate from their wives beforehand. Technically not celibacy, but continence: sexual abstinence by formerly married men.
At the elevation of a priest to bishop? Sure. At the ordination of a high visibility clerical office in a major town like Milan or Paris? Sure. But, for a parish priest in some little village in Normandy in 9th C France? Nope, not buying it.
Catholic Church history written by the Catholic Church must always be believed, of course. Anything else is heresy.
@mockturtle,
Catholic Church history written by the Catholic Church must always be believed, of course. Anything else is heresy.
Oh, pish-posh!
The Church doesn't write its history. Historians write its history just like they write on any other subject. Church histories are not doctrine. They do not get Imprimaturs & Nihil Obstats before they are published. They are all the product of university presses and get the standard peer review that's given to any work of history.
Have you decided to move in with TradGuy, Mock, or what?
About Simon Bar Jonah, later called Peter -- although there is reference to his mother-in-law, never do we hear about his wife. She may very well have been dead by the time Jesus comes around. Certainly, it wasn't an issue for Peter to leave his home to go follow Jesus.
YH, you are obviously very devoted to your Church and I'm not here to disabuse you of your faith in it. My faith lies in Christ my Lord and not in the Church. He is my sole intercessor. Not Mary, not 'saints'. You are entitled to your beliefs but I am not obliged to accept them.
@mockturtle,
You are entitled to your beliefs but I am not obliged to accept them.
I'm not asking you to accept my faith. I'm asking you to stop believing in conspiracy theories out of a Dan Brown novel.
There are hundreds of books on history on my shelves. The ones not from a reputable university press can be counted on one hand. The idea that somehow the RCC "controls its press" on the scholarly or any other level is ludicrous.
And in this case, since I'm the one arguing that the "factual" RCC history on the issue of clerical celibacy is "messier" than we in the RCC would like to admit, I can't imagine why you're seeing me as somehow being its ardent defender of every jot & tittle. I'm calling it as I see it from readings admittedly skewed by the fact that I didn't make Church Historian my life's profession.
The truth as I see it is that history is a hard judge of the claims of the RCC & Eastern Churches. Unfortunately, that history is an even harder judge of the claims of the Protestant Reformers. And that really is the rub between us.
Dan Brown is a clown.
YH, I've never even heard of Dan Brown, much less read him.
@mockturtle,
I've never even heard of Dan Brown
Gurlll, you never heard of The DaVinci Code? And lots of others.
Not to mention movies. I mean, movies with Tom Hanks & everything!
YH, yes, I've heard of The DaVinci Code but not the author and have neither read nor seen it. I don't read much fiction. In theological matters I prefer the Bible.
@Meade - "Mr. Boyd gets it/doesn't get it. It's like a Schrödinger’s cat Kama Sutra. Half dead/half alive, half there/half not there sex. In other words: Sexual Superpositions."
I read this comment earlier today and then I ran right into this article: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613092/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/.
I will execute every last pedo the state gives me the power to execute, Catholic or not.
I might come to enjoy it actually, seeing as how I never read my Nietzsche.
If I have to use a gun I will charge a lot more because of the bloody brain bits and skull and stuff vaporized.
Of course, as Ricky Hardy has told us, there is no such thing as sex abuse on a mass scale, duh, only soap operas like, ironically, he stars in frequently here at the Althouse blog.
Does a soap by any other name not still exude fragrance?
The only real argument for abortion is "hey your shit is so fucked stop worrying about how fucked you think my shit is."
Since nobody's perfect, Some Like It Hot, some will always fall for it.
That is what the militant gays did to take down the Church, one Hell of a feat. Surprised there hasn't been more triumphant dancing in streets. I guess that would crown/crowd in on the next 2 minutes of hate targets.
And yes, SCOTUS is paramount. Just think of all those Catholics... just as Hitler and the KKK thought of Catholics. Because now that hatred is on the right arc of history or something maybe. And it feels GREAT!
“Why is feminism a big topic in this thread?
This post is about comedy, demands for apologies, victim bullshit, the abuse of children, and the Catholic Church.”
Because that dope Shouting Thomas is such a rabid misogynist he cannot comment on anything without bringing in his anti women, anti feminist attitudes. He’s obsessed by it.
Interesting how cruel neutrality goes out the window when Althouse is irritated. For example, the Brooklyn Diocese statement of acceptable bias against Catholics is correct. One needs only witness the zeal and comfort of Fienstein, Harris and other Senators attacking nominees for being Catholic to see that. Cruel neutrality demands the statements to taken at face value, but Althouse blogs right over that in her irritation.
The blog should use the tagline "Cruel neutrality is bullshit," because it is.
Logic is not ALthouse's long suit when she is irritated:
"What's the general rule here? If X victimizes Y, it's wrong to joke about X, because it makes light of the entire situation and that hurts Y."
X is an institution of about 1 billion people. Althouse's sarcastic remark fails in the first phrase.
Althouse's logic train can be applied to Islam:
If Muslims victimize innocent civilians, it's wrong to joke about Islam, because it makes light of the entire situation and that hurts innocent civilians.
Of course, not every Muslim is a terrorist and we are repeatedly told that it is a small percentage (about 2-10% of about a billion worldwide, depending upon who you believe) and it is wrong to blame the entire religion of Islam. And you can never joke about Islam and terrorists because it ends like Charlie Hebdo.
It's not irritation. It's malice.
And she's been called on it enough times that it is intentional.
And while I may at times be critical of the RCC I will always side with Christianity against the forces of darkness that rule our world today.
" being a missionary is an inherently dangerous business, & not one to drag along the wife & kids to do."
Oops! Nobody told me that...
mockturtle @ 9:19pm,
I had an easier time with the RCC when they had a Pope who "really know how to pope!"
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