Schieffer Cuts to Commercial When Guests Claim There Are Many Gay Priests

CBS’s Bob Schieffer was clearly uncomfortable Sunday when two of his perilously liberal guests claimed there are many gay priests.

At the end of a Face the Nation discussion about the pending selection of a new Pope, Schieffer pushed back when the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn brought up homosexuality in the priesthood, and then he cut quickly to a commercial when Vanity Fair’s Carl Bernstein supported her contention (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CARL BERNSTEIN, VANITY FAIR: The real question though is as the world watches this conclave, they are going to see in a different context than perhaps eight years ago or when John Paul II became Pope, this 100 and some males gathering together to choose yet another male to preside over with absolute authority and 120 other males under him the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. This is it seems to me is going to be on a world stage as an anomaly that has never quite been regarded as such an anomaly before.

SALLY QUINN, WASHINGTON POST: But it's on the way to irrelevancy if they don't start including women and certainly people of other color and ultimately homosexuals. And so, I mean, they're all against homosexuality even though so many priests are gay.

BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: You can't say that as a fact. I mean…

BERNSTEIN: If you have friends in the priesthood, as I do…

QUINN: Yes.

BERNSTEIN: …friends in the priesthood will tell you that they have other gay friends in the priesthood.

QUINN: Yes.

SCHIEFFER: Well, alright, we'll have to leave this for another day.

PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: We are roaming far afield.

SCHIEFFER: We’ll be back.

Was this a planned commercial break, or did Schieffer not like the accusations being made about Catholic priests?

That asked, you have to wonder what got into liberal media members this weekend for Andrew Sullivan on the Chris Matthews Show said many of the Cardinals electing the next Pope are gay.