Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an article by Alberto Cutie that appears today in the Huffington Post:
Alberto Cutie is known for breaking his priestly vows, quitting the Catholic Church, running off with his lover, and becoming an Episcopal priest. Since his public journey began in 2009, he has been parading himself on TV, most recently discussing a book about his exploits. Always the victim, he has now reached a new level: he is comparing his Catholic critics to Muslim terrorists.
Though Cutie’s article is allegedly about priestly celibacy—a subject he cannot walk away from—it soon becomes apparent what his real agenda is. He quickly launches into an invidious analogy. “All this has led me to confirm that religious extremists are not only a small group of people associated to [sic] Islam. Instead, intolerant views and verbal threats by some Roman Catholic extremists that I have received rival any monopoly by Muslim radicals.”
We are used to him playing fast and loose with the facts—he continues to float the myth that 100,000 Catholic priests left to marry (the real figure is considerably lower)—but this time he really crossed the line. Quite frankly, anyone who can’t distinguish between catcalls and calls for jihad is in trouble.
Those of us who are in the public eye are routinely maligned, oftentimes cruelly, but to compare hotheaded critics to machete-wielding terrorists is more than a stretch—it is despicable. We are used to Cutie’s lamentations, but this time he went beyond his usual sour-grapes oratory.
