Bill Donohue Tries to Deflect Pope Furor by Insulting the German People and President Barack Obama

This last press release (below) from Bill Donohue called, "German Guilt Fuels Attack on Pope" is bizarre.

I kinda know that nobody in their right mind takes Catholic League president Bill Donohue seriously. And knowing that, I oughta ignore this latest press release. But shucks, it's just so very bad, I can't do that.

Mark these words. Unless the damage is controlled, this error made by the Pontiff - rehabilitating a Holocaust denier - will be written about for centuries as the beginning of the end of the modern Catholic church.

Donohue, and many other people who work for the Church, do not get how serious the situation is. He calls the scandal the "Bishop Williamson flap."

The press release: The tone in Donohue's invective reeks with sarcasm, employs the wounded bully approach and lashes out at the critics with no attempt at logic. It employs rhetoric that’s over the top.

Some of the stuff Donohue says is incomprehensible. I want to tell Donohue that he simply cannot think that telling us the Pope “condemned the Holocaust” is some special achievement in which the Pope takes pride. Lord knows, all civilization has condemned the Holocaust!

Donohue lashes out at German chancellor Merkel. Given the endorsement the Pope made of Williamson, Merkel correctly asked that the Pope make clear he opposes Holocaust denial – an obscene form of anti-Semitism, one that Williamson practices.

I'd like to tell Donohue that the Bishop in question was not forced to practice this obscenity during some distant youthful period when he had to join a "Holocaust Denial Youth Movement." He was in fact on TV a few days ago spouting off his disgusting Holocaust denial. Look at YouTube.

I want to tell Donahue that we need to hear the Pope say those words that Donohue said, “Williamson's denial of the Holocaust is obscene” – and yes, we need to see the Pope excommunicate Williamson, and if he then repents, the Pope can rehabilitate him.

I want to tell Donohue that the choices we common folk see before us are to believe that (1) either the Pope knew what he was doing or (2) he is a fool - and ask Donohue to please clarify which option I should choose.

Finally I want to tell Donohue not to insult President Obama and call his appointees thieves. That kind of nonsensical unrelated invective will not rescue the Church from its scandal.

So here is the offending press release, ugh!

GERMAN GUILT FUELS ATTACK ON POPE

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed the remarks of the pope’s biggest critics over the Bishop Williamson flap:

“No one has been worse than the Germans. Reeking with guilt over the Holocaust, we now have the spectacle of German Chancellor Angela Merkel telling the pope he needs to clarify his views on the Holocaust. Talk about hubris. This is a man who was forcibly conscripted at a young age into a Nazi group and saw his family suffer economically because he refused to attend the Hitler Youth meetings. This is a man who as Cardinal Ratzinger unequivocally condemned the Holocaust at a Jerusalem conference in 1994 and wrote about a book about it, Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church and the World. And he needs to ‘clarify’ his views to Merkel?

“Williamson’s denial of the Holocaust is obscene, but this doesn’t excuse the grand-standing of the Regensburg D.A. who is investigating whether the bishop broke their illiberal laws when he made his comments in Sweden. Then there is the German press which has exploited this issue beyond belief: one major story says the pope has previously offended ‘Muslims, women, native Indians, Poles, gays and scientists.’ Translated this means that the pope speaks the truth and some don’t like it. Perhaps most embarrassing is the left-wing Catholic theologian Hermann Haering who implored the pope to quit. What a disgrace this man is to Catholics everywhere.

“Today, the Vatican announced that Williamson must ‘unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah’ if he is to be reinstated (he is still not in full communion with the Church, and may never be). The pope, the Vatican statement said, was unaware of this bishop’s views when he lifted his excommunication.

“There will be those who won’t believe the pope didn’t know about Williamson. Yet these same people no doubt believe that President Obama didn’t know about the thieves he’s been appointing. Moreover, there are approximately 3,500 bishops spread throughout the world. The pope is smart, but he’s not a seer.”