Happy Sunday: WashPost Runs Nasty Cartoon of Foam-Flecked Catholic Cardinal

August 16th, 2015 8:37 AM

It’s Sunday, so it’s not shocking The Washington Post has found a way to bash religion. It came in announcing the new contest of “The Style Invitational,” a weekly reader humor contest. The new game was creating a limerick. Bizarrely, to illustrate the challenge, it selected a Catholic-bashing limerick from 2006 and then used a nasty caricature of a foam-flecked angry Cardinal.

Sorry to be humorless – as this cartoon suggests Catholic leaders are – but can anyone imagine the Post running this kind of a cartoon image of Muhammad, or of an Islamic religious authority? A Muslim-bashing limerick as an example?

This is the example from a regular Style Invivational entrant:

The cardinal hates spontaneity;
He castigates us for our gaiety:
“The Devil’s within
And your laughter’s a sin . . .”
That’s no way to be treating a laity!
(Chris Doyle, from Limerixicon 3, the contest for “ca-” words, 2006)

The challenge is “Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with “ga-,” as in the example above by the galumphingly gallant, galactically garrulous Chris Doyle.”

Which cardinal is known as a joke-hater who thinks laughter’s a sin? Or are they thinking of how Catholics aren’t keen on Pope-bashing “art” made of condoms? America’s most prominent bishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, is the jovial polar opposite of this limerick. But why rely on reality when you can publish an anti-Catholic cartoon?

This isn’t the only recent trashing of Catholic authority. Recall the Post’s daily commuter tabloid Express running a clearly anti-Catholic image from the leftist group calling themselves “Catholics for Choice.” The Post PR department never replied to our question: Would they take money to mock imams in this way?

The Post contestants may be in sync with the liberal paper on mocking the conservative Catholics. This is the winner they selected of the previous week's rhyming contest:

Antonin Scalia
Would very much like to see a
Return to the days when gentlemen wed only ladies;
In fact, he’d like time turned back to the 1780s.
(Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.)