Last week Catholic readers of the Charlotte Observer's Viewpoint page got the word: standing up for your faith makes you a bigot.Associate Editor Mary Schulken penned a provocative column about John Edwards' presidential campaign and Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
Donohue was doing what he always does, standing up for the Catholic Church.
Schulken has confused the messenger with the message.
Here is a brief recap of the controversy. The Edwards campaign hired two bloggers to promote the Edwards message to the online world. Before joining the campaign, both bloggers had written virulent, sophomoric, hateful things about Catholics and the Church.
Enter Donohue, a cyberspace communicator himself. He reported the offensive quotes and immediately called for the firing of both women. Donohue was applying a journalistic standard: You are what you write. In a society that covets both a free press and free speech, writers of untrue and inflammatory statements can and should be held accountable.
Interestingly enough, Schulken wasn't on the side of Bill Donohue and journalistic integrity. Instead Donohue was described as "a bigot with warped views" and a "Big, Bad (Catholic) Wolf," whose harassment "forced NBC not to televise a concert where singer Madonna crucified herself on a mirrored cross." Schulken may not draw a line between blasphemy and art but many, if not most, of her readers do.
Christians don't find any entertainment value in the crucifixion of the Saviuor of the world. Ditto for the bloggers' blasphemy of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit.
Under a withering torrent of e-mails, faxes and interviews, Donohue prevailed and both women resigned from the campaign. This, by the way, says something spineless about Edwards who initially backed his foul-mouthed bloggers and declined to sack them.
Bigot is an "N" word. It is a flamethrower expression that burns everyone close to it, in this case Catholics, who are justifiably insulted to see someone who defends them described in such terms on the pages of the largest newspaper in the Carolinas.
If the Edwards bloggers had written derogatory statements about African Americans and the Rev. Jesse Jackson expressed offense, would she have called him a "bully"? What if members of the Jewish faith were treated with contempt? Yet for some reason Schulken categorizes Donohue with the "potty mouth" bloggers. She caps it off with a bizarre statement that would be a stretch for a high school essayist when she says Donohue is somehow short-circuiting the "fundamental right of free speech." Huh?
I don't agree with a lot of things Bill Donohue says. His anti-gay rhetoric has no foundation in Church teaching. I am glad he jumps on a soap box and gets attention when our faith and our Church are attacked. He uses plain language to make the John Edwards and Mary Schulkens of the world understand Catholics have rights, too.
We consider our faith to be precious. We don't appreciate gratuitous insults. We understand freedom of religion and free speech are not mutually exclusive.
And if a presidential campaign or a columnist unfairly paints a bull's-eye of bigotry on our backs, we are going to stand tall and say what we must while we worship as we choose.
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