'Newsnight' on BBC2 last week ran an interview with former Conservative politician, Chris Patten, who is helping to oversee the arrangements for the imminent visit of the Pope to Britain. The interviewer treated the strident objections to the visit as perfectly reasonable and understandable.
Patten did his considerable best to answer.
The very next item covered the objection of a majority of Americans to the building of a mosque near the site of Ground Zero in New York.
These objections were treated by the reporter as manifestations of 'Islamophobia'.
Notice the difference here. Criticisms of Catholicism, no matter how extreme, are now treated as mainstream and acceptable, but criticisms of Islam are seen as indications of bigotry.
There was understandable uproar this week over the plan of a lunatic pastor in Florida to burn copies of the Koran to mark the anniversary of September 11. Hillary Clinton got in on the condemnations, drawing more attention to his lunacy.
No such sensitivity towards Christians or Catholics, however. When David Soul played the lead role in 'Jerry Springer -- the Opera' in London five years ago, thousands of Christians protested loudly at its wildly anti-Christian content. But they were the ones condemned as bigots, not the people behind the show.
Similarly, when earlier this year, Atheist Ireland hosted PZ Myers, a biology lecturer at the University of Minnesota. Two years ago, Myers drove a rusty nail through a communion host and then boasted about it loudly. That is at least the equal of what our friend in Florida was up to.
But there was only a minor fuss about Myers and there is a huge, international outcry about Pastor Terry Jones. We don't care when Christian objects are desecrated. That's legitimate free speech. When you attack Islam it is bigotry.
After September 11, many commentators and politicians bent over backwards to insist that these attacks were in no way, shape or form characteristic of Islam, that they were aberrations instead. Politicians were rightly worried about inciting hatred against Muslims and against Islam generally.
On the other hand, many of those same commentators, and not a few politicians, insist that the clerical abuse scandals are not aberrations but the entirely predictable result of particular aspects of Catholicism -- celibacy for example, its teaching on sexual morality another example.
Therefore, Catholicism itself is the problem.
So, blaming the September 11 attacks on the nature of Islam is bigotry, but blaming the abuse scandals on the nature of Catholicism is not. Nor has anyone ever worried too much about inciting hatred of priests or of the Catholic Church.
This is the background to the Pope's visit to Britain next week. It is behind those incredibly silly calls to arrest him for crimes against humanity.
The man leading the charge on this one is lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who has even written a book on the subject. He was interviewed on 'Today with Pat Kenny' on Wednesday.
Robertson and others speak of a 30-year Vatican conspiracy to cover up the scandals and they blame it on the Pope. But prior to becoming Pope, Joseph Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and it did not take charge of the Vatican's handling of these cases until 2001. From that time on, the Vatican's response greatly improved, and Joseph Ratzinger was chiefly responsible for that.
For one thing, he fast-tracked the 'de-frocking' of priests, and he also ordered all dioceses to send all such cases to the Vatican for processing. Prior to that, the vast majority of dioceses were doing their own thing without any reference to Rome at all.
We hear a lot of nonsense to the effect that the Pope ordered that all such cases not be referred to the civil authorities and that internal canon law trials or proceedings take place under conditions of confidentiality. In other words, more cover-up.
In fact, these days those internal disciplinary proceedings run in parallel to investigations by the civil authorities. That is why, in the last nine years, Ferns Diocese -- to give just one example -- has referred 10 priests to the Vatican to be laicised and has also referred all 10 cases to the civil authorities. The two work in tandem, which is what the Pope wants.
In the next few days, and right through the Pope's visit, we're going to hear more about the scandals, and priestly celibacy, and the church's teaching on sex and marriage, and women priests, and Aids and condoms and all the rest of it.
The protestors will, in fact, make up only a small minority of Britons, because several polls have shown that a majority of Britons are barely aware of the visit, and among those who are, supporters out-number opponents by two-to-one.
But you wouldn't think so from the coverage. Instead, the church's vociferous critics will be given the limelight and they will be treated as reasonable and moderate people. If they were attacking Islam in the same way, they would be condemned as bigots.
Like all double standards, this one stinks.
SIC: II/IE