Posted on 07/25/2007 7:17:20 AM PDT by NYer
In the past five weeks, the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” has ridiculed priests six times and the pope once; all of the priest jokes were sexual in nature and painted priests as molesters.
· June 18: Robin Williams gets into an extended diatribe about priests as pedophiles
· June 20: Leno cracks a joke about priests as pedophiles
· June 21: Leno makes a joke about a drunken pedophile priest
· July 12: Leno ridicules the pope for restating Catholic doctrine on salvation
· July 18: Leno portrays all priests as pedophiles
· July 23: Leno jokes about priests using the Harry Potter books as “bait” to lure kids
· July 23: Leno tells a story about a priest who pays to see a male stripper at a gay nightclub and jokes that the priest was cheating on his altar boy
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:
“Hypocritical priests make for good script, but in the world Jay Leno apparently lives in, priests have a monopoly on hypocrisy. This would seem to suggest that either he is clueless about other expressions of hypocrisy, or there is a strong animus against Catholicism at work. If it’s the former, the Catholic League can be of assistance—we track lots of hypocrites, many of whom live in Leno’s Hollywood backyard. If it’s the latter, we suggest he knock it off.”
However Alex, when all is said and done, the enemy of decency and modesty in America is not Bill Donohue. It's Hollywood.
Yes?
Amen to your thoughts.
In addition, although I do not like blasphemy or false accusations, the fact is that Leno’s jokes are based on wrongdoing by priests and bishops. Frankly, they should take the blame for givng free speech rights the ability to blast the priests and bishops with humor.
Never said that myself. But keep reading...
It's Hollywood.
I would disagree. It may be one of the enemies of decency and modesty, but it'd have no power if Americans didn't consume what it puts out. The problem isn't Hollywood. It's the sinfulness of mankind.
He's not what you want in a spokesperson, in my opinion.
I'm glad to hear you say that. If Donohue is that intemperate and prone to needless invective, I'd go even further.
Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man,
do not associate with one easily angered
or you may learn his ways
and get yourself ensnared.- Proverbs 22:24-25
It's not an either/or situation.
The problem is both.
Read what the Gospel has to say about those who put obstacles in the way of others and cause them to fall. Catholics call this "occasions of sin". It is not permissible to put "occasions of sin" in the way of others. Yes, the one who sins is guilty too, but each man has a responsibility to his brother to build him up in the Lord and not facilitate his downfall. Charity demands that man's fallen state and tendency to sin not be preyed upon for financial gain.
As to Donahue, I'll cut him some slack on this one because this needs to be put in context. He is discussing the negative reaction to Gibson's film The Passion which generated a lot of heat because of its portrayal of the Jews. Donahue is exasperated, justifiably in my opinion, that a film about Christ's Passion generates this amount of heat while the everyday Hollywood trash gets little or no comment. The ridiculous double, politically correct standard here clearly needed pointing out though not in the words Donohue used.
Consider the statistics: In accordance with a requirement of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.
Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.
“[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?” she said. “The physical sexual abuse of students in [public] schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
So, in order to better protect children, did media outlets start hounding the worse menace of the school systems, with headlines about a “Nationwide Teacher Molestation Cover-up” and by asking “Are Ed Schools Producing Pedophiles?”
No, they didn’t. That treatment was reserved for the Catholic Church, while the greater problem in the schools was ignored altogether.
As the National Catholic Register’s reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state’s entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000.
Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government’s discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools.
A writer for The New York Times lurked online at pedophile chat rooms, and reported this summer about the chilling way pedophiles convince themselves that children want to have sex with them and insinuate themselves into the lives of children.
The Times’ Kurt Eichenwald explained that pedophiles often discuss their personal lives. They come from all walks of life, but they like to speak about how close their jobs take them to children. “The most frequent job mentioned, however, was schoolteacher,” he wrote. “A number of self-described teachers shared detailed observations about children in their classes, including events they considered sexual, like a second-grade boy holding his crotch during class.”
The media have left many with the impression that sexual abuse is a Catholic problem — as if Catholic beliefs and customs make sex abuse inevitable. Church teaching for its part is clear: Sexual abuse of minors is always wrong. A more likely culprit would be a non-religious ambivalence about the pedophilia, as seen, for instance, in the media’s refusal to broaden its scope to include teachers when considering the issue.
In 1992, the National Victim Center estimated that 29 percent of all forcible rapes in America were against children under age 11. More than a decade later, an estimated 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys are victims of unwanted sexual acts.
The 2002 Department of Education report estimated that from 6 percent to 10 percent of all students in public schools would be victims of abuse before graduation — a staggering statistic.
Yet, outside the Catholic Church, the reaction is increasingly accommodation instead of outrage.
The April 17, 2002, issue of USA Today featured an article titled “Sex Between Adults and Children” — a euphemistic way of referring to child molestation. Under the headline was a ballot-like box suggesting possible opinions one might hold on the subject: “always harmful, usually harmful, sometimes harmful, rarely harmful.” The newspaper’s answer: “Child’s age and maturity make for gray areas.”
“secular Jews...[like] anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes....They like abortions....They believe in libertinism.”
Links?
Marshmallow printed the the quote in context. I provided a link in post #14 to both the entire transcript and to the video of him saying it.
Come to my work, the molestation jokes have been going on for years...one guy will share his story with you. Now that it’s in the news, the writer is mad at Leno?
This isn’t going to bring me back to the Catholic Church.
Well noted.
I just wonder when Leno will blast the Man Boy Love group, Planned Parenthood and the willful non-reporting of older sex offenders bringing minors to have abortions (and falsifying age info for said minors to get Medicaid in cases). If people knew how this facilitated sexual offenders... oh, and most of the time your taxes pay for it, they would be outraged. Why doesn’t he blast the sexualization of children in elementary schools by Planned Parenthood? Is anyone surprised the young births, abortion and AIDS/STDS stats are not being looked at?
So where is the outrage against public school teachers?
Yes, Leno’s in LA, but he was just as obsessed about this when the crisis was focused on Boston a few years ago. I think he must have had jokes about it virtually every night.
Even armatures know that saying a punch line a second time is no funnier than when it fails to get a laugh the first time.
His best joke is himself.
A Look at Abuse in Protestant Churches
No out rage here, either.
Outrage is the right word. There is NOTHING "funny" about the abuse of children, no matter who perpetrates it.
Leno is a sick bastard, and being paid well to be one.
I have issues, too. Same issues. That’s why it’s a league. Protestants, being sifted like wheat, don’t make good targets. :)
There is an attack on Christianity.
Yeah, like who runs to the RM to tattle tale most often. I could post their names but I'd get banned.
Actually I think this annoys me more than Catholic bashing. I dunno, I was taught to stand up for myself and work things and not to be a crybaby wuss.
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