Anti-Religious Bias

Leave it to the web site The Daily Beast to publish a lie-filled attack on the Catholic Church the day before Christmas. The author of the hate-filled piece is James Carroll, one of the country's foremost haters of the Catholic Church. He an anti-Catholic zealot. Period. (Is it any surprise that he also writes for the Boston Globe?)

Carroll's piece takes issue with Pope Benedict's decision earlier this week to declare World War II-era Pope Pius XII "venerable." In the Catholic Church, this declaration is a step toward sainthood.

First, a prayer offered by Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota at last week's so-called prayercast sponsored by conservative groups opposed to a government takeover of health care.

After the prayer, a spot quiz --

BACHMANN: Lord, as leaders of our country, Lord, I pray as a stand-in for myself, I pray as a stand-in for others, Lord, who may not have looked to you and all your ways, Father, as leaders. Father, we want to represent you in the way that we should and so, Lord, I ask for forgiveness for that and our own country ... Lord, we know that we have failed and we haven't done as we should. And so that's why now, Lord, we ask for your forgiveness and we repent and we turn from that. And we say, oh Lord, we deserve your wrath but would you yet get our nation mercy. We ask for your mercy, we cry out to you, oh God. This is our moment and this is our time. Lord, we are at the end of ourselves and now we need you.

Got an idealized notion of Christmas? A cherished memory, or a favorite carol or story? The simple smell of pine needles in your living room? Do you insist on celebrating the birth of the savior?

If so, you’re at war, like it or not.

The main war on Christmas – we’ll call it the conventional war – has been well-documented, and it goes on, with victories and defeats for both sides. In Loudoun County, Va. on Dec. 1, the Board of Supervisors reversed a ban on religious holiday displays on the courthouse lawn. (The one supervisor who voted “no” said, “I am concerned that this motion would turn the courthouse grounds into a public circus.”) Meanwhile, in Arizona, public school children remain unable to use Christmas themes when decorating ornaments for the Capitol Christmas tree.

There is plenty to report from the conventional front. But there are other fronts. There is the sexualization of the holiday, either in service to commercialism or out of the lefty arts community’s desire to be “transgressive” (read, vile and offensive). And there are the attempts squash the mysteries and magic that accompany even a traditional secular Christmas.

So from “living” lingerie mannequins to Frosty’s “porn collection,” and from the lies you tell about Santa to our president’s “non-religious” observance, here are some dispatches from the war on Christmas, 2009.

On the Thursday, December 3, The View, on ABC, co-host Joy Behar found Tiger Woods worthy of being partially defended over his adultery saga – according to her, at least he’s not a "hypocrite" like "these pro-marriage, right-wing, kind of guys who is anti-gay," like former Republican Senator Larry Craig. As the group discussed the latest news of women who have alleged having affairs with the golf star, Behar offer up her defense of Woods, with conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck struggling to rebut her while Behar sang, "La, la, la, la," as Hasselbeck spoke:

Just in time for the Christmas season, the Washington Post's "Book World" editor Ron Charles gave readers of the December 2 Style section front page a look at "Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter With the Gospels."

Of course the encounter in question is that of literary critic Mary Gordon, a "liberal, feminist intellectual" who happens to be Catholic, is not a trained scriptural scholar, and admits to having "never actually read the full Gospel" prior to undertaking her "Reading Jesus" project.

"But off she goes anyhow, girded only by her considerable intelligence and disarming sincerity, determined to look squarely at the Gospels, how she reads them and how she maintains what she calls her 'hopeful faith,'" Charles notes approvingly, adding that Gordon's professed disinterest in converting readers or making doctrinal claims is:

For several days NewsBusters has been chronicling media outrage over Catholic bishop Tom Tobin asking pro-choice Patrick Kennedy to refrain from the sacrament of communion.

In all of their indignation over a church being involved in politics, they must have forgotten about the recent past when President Obama asked churches to help him push government-mandated healthcare. When ministers stepped into the politicial discussion back then, media outlets were more than willing to celebrate it.

In late August of this year, President Obama held a meeting with left-leaning religious leaders to convince them that government mandated healthcare was a "moral imperative," and that ministers should be involved in educating their fold on the issue.

The media protrayed the meeting as a great idea and praised the ministers who attended. MSNBC ran an article from CQ writer Jane Norman that gushed with excitement over sermons laced with politics and prayer meetings aimed at congressional districts:

The Boston Globe predictably editorialized on Wednesday against Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin for "targeting" Rep. Patrick Kennedy ("Rhode Island bishop errs in targeting Patrick Kennedy.") They predictably cavil that bishops don’t punish politicians who support the death penalty and wars.

What sets this leaden chunk of argument apart is its boast the bishop's attention is "ironic" since the Kennedy family have long been a flock of terrific, devout Catholics that drew others into the church. They have been virtual magnets of holiness. Yes, you may pick up your jaw now:

Among Catholic politicians, Patrick Kennedy is both an obvious target, because of his prominence, and a deeply ironic one, because of the decades of loyalty and support the Kennedy family has given to the Catholic Church. Though they may not always have lived strictly by church teachings, Patrick’s father, uncles, aunts, and grandmother were all devout Catholics whose intensive commitment to worship drew others into the church. The Kennedys accorded priests and bishops an honored position in their lives. Edward Kennedy’s dying appeal to the pope proves that the church was never far from the late senator’s mind.

"For the record, our third story is neither ridiculing nor disputing [Sarah Palin's] religious beliefs. It is purely an attempt to discern exactly what those beliefs constitute, so that the voters of 2012 know exactly what they`re getting."

Such was amazingly uttered by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Tuesday night.

Bear in mind that we are almost three years away from Election Day 2012, and most political analysts on both sides of the aisle don't believe former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is going to run for President then.

Regardless, the "Countdown" host actually spent over five minutes examining -- and, contrary to his assertion -- ridiculing her religious beliefs.

In fact, the disparagement began right from the get-go with how Olbermann described the object of his disaffection (video embedded below the fold with full transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

"Don we now our gay apparel" took on a different meaning during Joy Behar's CNN Headline News program Nov. 24.

According to the panel Behar spoke with, the holidays are a great time for gay people to come out of the closet. They are also a good time to knock religion and push the gay agenda.

Actor Jeffrey Self, one of the three gay panelists, told Behar "I think also [coming out] is a nice distraction from all the other drama that's taking place in your house. Everybody's already mad at each other."

"I think it's the perfect time to do it," claimed comedienne and lesbian Judy Gold. "Because then you get it over with and everyone is already there. So they don't have to call each other and say, did you hear?"

Behar and her pals also managed to mock Christianity, insult the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, play the break-up of a marriage because of homosexuality for laughs, and proclaimed Adam Lambert a "genius" for his sexually explicit American Music Awards performance and denounced ABC as "cowardly" for pulling the plug on Lambert's live "Good Morning America" appearance. Behar further claimed her "philosophy" was "that a parent should say to the child, ‘are you gay' when they see them playing with dolls when they're boys."

Apparently MSNBC's Chris Matthews doesn't want Catholics involved in the political process at all - especially when it comes to abortion. Earlier this month the "Hardball" host declared "The clergy should stay off Capitol Hill." Last night, he accused Thomas Tobin, bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, of "telling public officials how to set public policy," "stepping beyond moral teaching," and "basically assuming an authority" because the bishop requested that Rhode Island Democrat Rep. Patrick Kennedy not take communion due to his support for abortion.

Matthews' based his accusations on a portion of a speech on religion delivered by then Sen. John F. Kennedy in which he stated:

I believe in an America that is official neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will, directly or indirectly, upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.

Bishop Tobin briefly responded that the Church does not want to "dictate what the public policy should be in the United States from a purely Catholic doctrinal point of view," but "what [it] is trying to do, most of all, is instill good human values but also have Catholics who are in political office be faithful to the dictates of the Church and the dictates of their conscience and the teachings of the Church."

This is the fifth year I have looked into how the media treats these two topics:

• The use of "Christmas shopping season" vs. "holiday shopping season" (note how the AP photo at right uses "holiday" and not "shopping," even though there is a C-C-, Chr-Chr-Christmas tree in the picture).
• The frequency of Christmas and holiday layoff references.

I have done three sets of simple Google News searches each year in late November, followed by identical searches roughly two and four weeks later.

The cumulative results of all three search sets during the past four years are in this graphic.

Year-to-year changes have often been subtle. That is anything but the case with the results of the first set of searches I did at roughly 10 a.m. ET. In the context of the current economy, they are stunning, and very revealing:

Blogger Amanda Hess of the Washington City Paper suggests a new story for The Washington Post on the gay left waging war on the Catholic Church over the city council's imposition of "gay marriage" rules without a referendum:

A new Web site hopes to use the oldest trick in the book to combat the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage: A good, old-fashioned forced outing!

At ChurchOuting.org, you’re invited to scroll through a list of every Achbishop, Bishop, and Reverend in the Archdiocese of Washington, zero in on one you know is gay, and then submit your “detailed account of how you know the priest in question is being hypocritical through his silence.”

As if we needed more proof that Christians are the only group left in America that it’s safe to make fun of. A popular YouTube video purports to be an ad for a Wii-like game system called “Mass: We Pray,” which will be available at Easter 2010. In reality, the anti-religious video is a commercial for a new video game.

In it, viewers see a family at home as a saccharine-voiced narrator reminiscent of the one from the old “Mr. Bill” skit on “Saturday Night Live,” says, “A family shouldn't have to wait until Sunday to worship the Lord. Now you can go to church every day without leaving your home.”

The family’s two children are then shown pantomiming the movements of priests and congregants during mass, using “the wireless cross controller,” a large white plastic cross with a rosary bead strap. “Every twist of the hand and nuance of a blessing is recreated onscreen,” says the narrator. The point, he explains, is to collect “grace points,” and move a number of pews toward the altar. “Then trade in your Grace points to unlock the Holy Mysteries. Add the kneeler accessory, and get off the couch and into the action.” Players can download the “seven sacraments and holy rituals expansion pack.”

Here is more proof there is a vast chasm between Fox News and Fox Entertainment in Hollywood. In Wednesday night’s episode of Glee, a heartless Christian dad character is – of course – a big Glenn Beck watcher. The biggest liberal joke on the series is the pregnant cheerleader Quinn who leads the "Celibacy Club," who is preparing for the chastity ball, but the secret of her pregnancy gets out at the dinner table.

I don’t have the precise Beck quote, but it was an "ooh, Glenn Beck’s on" moment. TV Squad summarizes: "But the whole thing brought to light a lot about Quinn's home life: her dad watches Glenn Beck, is a heartless loser, and her mom won't stand up for her. That's all the important stuff."

In fact, she is thrown out of the house, because that’s apparently what Beck-watching Christians do when their teens get pregnant. They’re uninvolved, clueless alcoholics who don’t really know their children.

Headline wording choice can set the tone for liberal bias, and a November 18 Washington Post Style front-pager is a classic example.

Profiling Pentecostal preacher Bishop Harry Jackson, the Post titled staffer Wil Haygood's story "Seeking to put asunder," an obvious allusion to Jesus's declaration about the holy nature of matrimony (Matthew 19:4-6 KJV):

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made [them] at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Of course, that scriptural passage succinctly illustrates Jackson's point: Christian doctrine regarding marriage is that "from the beginning" God's design was one man and one woman in a "one flesh" union, but the effect of the headline's allusion is the same. The paper is portraying Jackson as a man who aims to "put asunder" loving, committed gay couples who are "married."

Openly gay actor Ian McKellen recently told Details magazine that he proudly defaces Bibles left in hotel nightstands, ripping out pages containing verses which condemn homosexual behavior. USA Today's Leslie Miller picked up on this yesterday for the paper's "Faith & Reason" blog, after spying a blog post by colleague Barbara De Lollis in a November 16 post for her Hotel Check-In blog for USA Today.

For her part, De Lollis relayed the news item and wondered, "Could word of McKellen's habit spark a movement?" De Lollis went on to ask:

A petulant Washington Post columnist -- who two months ago insisted "Reality Makes Gay Marriage Debate Obsolete" -- took to her computer yesterday to hack out a screed against the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, painting the Church as "uncharitable and cruel" reactionaries, playing "political hardball with the District" and literally throwing the homeless out into the cold November rain.

Petula Dvorak's November 13 column preached that "Catholic officials shouldn't forsake D.C.'s poor in gay marriage fight," painting the Church as the heavy for standing on conscience in reaction to new legislation that could force its charitable outreaches to hire gays and extend employee benefits to same-sex partners:

In the gray rain -- where the only burst of color comes from the flash of an ambulance scooping up someone who is cold, sick and wet -- threatening to shut a door is the cruelest answer.

Allison Kilkenny, a self-styled “political humorist,” ripped the Catholic Church on the Huffington Post on Thursday for threatening to pull the plug in its social services in Washington, DC if same-sex “marriage” is legalized there. Kilkenny labeled the Church the “Inexplicably Evil Organization Most Disconnected From Real People,” and bashed Pope Benedict XVI as a “decrepit former Nazi youth.”

The “humorist” (pictured at right, courtesy of Wikimedia) began her screed, titled “Catholic Church Threatens to Stop Feeding Homeless Over Gay Marriage,” by comparing the Church to Goldman Sachs, and used her “evil” label only after three sentences (perhaps showing a bit of restraint on her part): “A few days ago, I wrote about Goldman Sachs’s transition from a bank holding company into a public relations disaster machine. I argued that Goldman’s CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, has been behaving like he wants to be attacked by a ferocious mob. Now, it appears the Catholic church is determined to unseat Blankfein in the ‘Inexplicably Evil Organization Most Disconnected From Real People’ category.”

Four paragraphs later, after spinning the content of the Archdiocese of Washington’s November 10 letter to the DC city council (which warned that the proposed legislation which would legalize same-sex “marriage” wouldn’t “permit Catholic Charities and other religious service organization to freely function as religious entities serving the needs of the District” and called for the expansion of “appropriate safeguards to protect religious freedom and to preserve the ability of...service providers to continue to serve the...unmet needs of the residents of the District”), Kilkenny used the tried-and-true priest sex abuse bludgeon against the Church (language warning):

Since Friday's massacre at Fort Hood, NewsBusters has been covering the efforts of several news outlets, including the New York Times, to warn of Muslim persecution in America.

This is quite a departure from the treatment offered other religious groups by the Times, particularly the paper's disgraceful coverage of Mormon persecution at the hands of rabid protestors in California.

Back on November 4, 2008, when gay marriage was outlawed for the second time by popular vote in the Golden State, angry protestors stormed the streets. Word quickly spread that Mormons had played a big role in getting the ban to pass prompting gay activists to attack Mormon citizens in fits of rage.

Unlike now, the Times wasn't worried about protecting a religious group from an angry backlash. Quite the contrary, when rumors of the Mormon influence on the proposition grew, the Times was more than willing to actively build the case against them.

On November 15 of that year, the paper used prominent space on its front page to print a hit piece titled "Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage." In the middle of a literal culture war on the streets of California, the Times thought it wise to convince gays and lesbians angered by the proposition's passage that Mormons were single-handedly responsible:

"The clergy should stay off Capitol Hill," MSNBC's Chris Matthews flatly declared on the November 10 "Hardball."  Matthews fumed with disgust as Politico's Jonathan Allen told him that Catholic bishops lobbied Democrats to pass the pro-life Stupak Amendment to the Democratic health care reform bill last week.

"I understand the [pro-life] argument" that the bishops brought to the table, Matthews added, but huffed that they should not "show up" on the Hill.

After the commercial break, Matthews took to the air again to clarify that it was not in fact bishops but staffers with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) who lobbied the Democrats. Such a distinction, he insisted, was important.

The relevant transcript follows [MP3 audio available here]:

On Friday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann suggested that Fox News is a racist organization that would hold race or religion against its employees in awarding promotions, as he used the show’s "Worst Person" segment to slam Fox and Friends co-hosts Brian Kilmeade, Gretchen Carlson, and Peter Johnson, for raising questions about whether Muslims serving in the military should be treated with more attention. While every show in MSNBC’s primetime and morning lineups has a host who is white and non-Muslim, Olbermann suggested that the Fox and Friends hosts would have trouble succeeding at FNC if they were Muslim or non-white. Olbermann: "Since we’re asking questions, I have one for Carlson, Johnson, and Kilmeade. You guys ever wonder if you all succeeded inside a company like Fox mostly because you’re not Muslim or black or Asian or Hispanic?"

Olbermann's allegation ignores FNC personalities like Geraldo Rivera and Julie Banderas, who have hosted their own shows; and Juan Williams and Michelle Malkin who have both guest hosted for The O'Reilly Factor in addition to their work as contributors. Even on Fox and Friends, Lauren Green used to read the show's news briefs.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the "Worst Person in the World" segment from the Friday, November 6, Countdown show on MSNBC:

Astronomers and physicists who feel motivated to rationalize their way out of the religious implications of  the “Big Bang,” typically conjure up unsubstantiated theories divorced from the scientific rigor they claim to champion.

This disconcerting assessment is forcefully presented in a series of essays published as part of  a new book authored by David Berlinski, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute and a noted mathematician. The same atheistic impulses at work within cosmology are evident throughout the scientific community, he argues.

Catholic News Agency reports The New York Times refused to publish an op-ed submitted by the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, that complained that Times news reports and opinion columns were anti-Catholic. Archbishop Dolan wrote the "most combustible example" was "an intemperate and scurrilous piece" on the opinion pages of the Times by Maureen Dowd.

"In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans."

The New York Times's Maureen Dowd spent some time in Catholic school as a youth, but judging from her latest rant/column, she didn't learn too much about actual Catholicism.

Dowd's anti-Catholic screed reveals that of someone who knows almost nothing about the Catholic faith. She also deceives her readers about a number of topics, including a 2004 letter issued by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI.

HBO's hit series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" has pushed the comedic envelope for many years, but what happened in Sunday's episode was so disgraceful it's already received comment from the Catholic League's Bill Donohue.

The set-up is the show's star and producer Larry David is taking some medication that is making him urinate quite forcefully.

It's so powerful that while urinating in his assistant's bathroom, he accidentally splashed some of it on a picture of Jesus Christ hanging on a nearby wall.

This prompted the following response from Donohue (video embedded below the fold h/t Big Hollywood):

The Los Angeles Times has joyfully discovered a way to keep the clergy misdeeds of the Catholic Church forever in the minds of its readers and the public: the obituary page.

Take a look at the obituary of former bishop G. Patrick Ziemann. At over 900 words, it's not so much an obituary as it is a gleeful relishing by Duke Helfand and the Times over the sins of a Catholic authority.

In a recent news article (Fri. 10/23/09) and a pea-brained editorial (Sat. 10/24/09) regarding Anglicans joining the Catholic Church, the Los Angeles Times again displays its utter ignorance of the Catholic faith.

The Times' editorial is yet another weak attempt to air the paper's position that homosexual acts and women priests should be fully embraced by the Catholic Church.

We'll have to wait and see if the so-called outside-the-box thinking once praised by some of liberal media elites will get the same reception with this latest edition.

In 2005, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner released the book "Freakonomics" that provided cover for the pro-abortion movement in America by suggesting legalized abortion lowered crime and had a positive impact on society.

However, in their new book "SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance," Levitt and Dubner blame what is generally accepted to be a liberal cause, women's liberation, for the rise of high-end prostitution in America and a failing public education system. The authors appeared on ABC's Oct. 23 "20/20" to elaborate on their theories.

If we’ve learned anything in recent months, it’s that if you’re a racist, a Marxist, a Maoist, a domestic terrorist or any other variety of anti-American nut, the safest place to be is in the company of Barack Obama. If you can stay off the radar of Fox News and don’t get caught on tape giving advice on running a brothel for fun and profit, you get to influence the most powerful executive in the world.

Case in point: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” Kevin Jennings. While nobody’s yet found out exactly what he knows about safe schools, we do know he’s an expert at pushing a gay agenda in public grammar schools. We know he’s praised the founder of the North American Man-Boy Love Association. And thanks to “the pro-family action center for Massachusetts,” Mass Resistance, now we know he’s an art maven. (Warning: site contains many offensive images from the installation. The site’s blog has also been flagged by Google as objectionable – which, given Google’s political leanings, may be a badge of honor.)

Two Republican chairmen in South Carolina have apologized for an op-ed article that made a clumsy comment about wealthy Jews being fiscally prudent. Reporter Robbie Brown and The New York Times's headline writers quickly let us know the two offenders were Republican: "2 South Carolina Republicans Apologize for Reference to Jews."

It made quite a contrast from how the Times treated a Democratic candidate for Congress who circulated truly scurrilous claims against her Jewish opponent in a 2008 primary election.

In Wednesday's story, both the online headline (the print edition headline is different) and a photo caption readily identified the offenders as members of the GOP, as did Brown in his first sentence:

Two Republican county chairmen in South Carolina have apologized for a newspaper op-ed article that stereotyped Jews as financial penny pinchers.