Catholic League president William Donohue released the following remarks today:
“It’s time for non-Catholics to butt out. It’s one thing for them to be voyeurs—peering into the Catholic Church the way kids peer into candy stores—quite another when they become meddlers.
“Yesterday, the New York Daily News had the audacity to run two opinion pieces under the banner, ‘Agendas for the New Pope,’ both by non-Catholics and both hostile. SFGate.com writer Mark Morford offered the new pope 14 ‘thoughts and ideas,’ including the suggestion that he view a movie about a pervert called Kinsey. And the nation’s leading anti-Catholic, Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice, ‘laid out a schedule [for the pope] for the next one hundred days.’
“Tikkun editor Rabbi Michael Lerner ripped the new pope saying, ‘This guy is going to continue the Vatican’s authoritarian, hierarchical, antigay policies.’ But since when did this guy Lerner object to authoritarianism? Richard Cohen goes one better bemoaning the fact that as a Jew he feels locked out of the process of electing the new pope (maybe he can arrange for me to vote in the next Israeli election).
“CBS Evening News, contrary to reports that it has crashed, showed it is still alive: ‘In choosing Joseph Ratzinger, the cardinals picked the most polarizing figure in the Catholic Church.’ Dean Hoge, a non-Catholic who teaches at Catholic University, calls the pope a polarizing figure, saying that ‘dissident Catholics’—the only ones he would know—‘won’t go away’ and that indeed, ‘they’ll push harder.’ That makes sense. The head of United Church of Christ, Rev. John Thomas, blasted the pope for being ‘confrontational,’ an attribute obviously absent in him.
“And, of, course, from the Jewish Forward to People magazine, we have learned that the new pope previously governed a Catholic office once associated with the Inquisition. After listening to these people rant, the idea of bringing it back is awfully tempting.”
