Increasingly, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is less a defender of Catholicism and more a defender of the sycophantic whims of his patrons.
First was his shameful defense of the St. Patrick’s Gay Parade. Now his absurd moral equivalence with regard to yesterday’s Islamo-nazi shooting massacre at Charlie Hebdo.
Here is the key part of his statement.
Killing in response to insult, no matter how gross, must be unequivocally condemned. That is why what happened in Paris cannot be tolerated. But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction.
While he perfunctorily condemns the killing, he calls the cartoons a provocation for massacre.
Let’s get this straight. As Christians, we deplore mocking other people’s religious beliefs and Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon are understandably offensive. But to call such cartoons a provocation establishes a shameful moral equivalence between the act and the response.
An offensive cartoon may be a provocation for a sternly worded letter to the editor or even a boycott. But it is not a provocation to mass murder. A child’s bad behavior is not a provocation to abuse. A wife’s talkback is not a provocation to a broken nose. And an offensive cartoon is not a provocation to mass murder. To call it one is offensive to me. Maybe Bill Donohue just provoked me. Fortunately for Bill, I just write blog posts about such things.