BishopAccountability.org
	Catholics May Just Have to Sit out This Anti-Papal Media Frenzy By Damian Thompson Telegraph April 12, 2010 http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100033866/catholics-may-just-have-to-sit-out-this-anti-papal-media-frenzy/ I'm getting bored with this. Loopy Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens want to arrest the Pope for crimes he didn't commit or cover up; there's been a particularly clumsy attempt to link the blameless Archbishop Vincent Nichols to a paedophile scandal (Vin's a bad enemy to make, by the way); and now The Guardian is making a huge deal out of some ancient retired Italian bishop allegedly blaming Jews for the furore, though he says he didn't and frankly no one should ascribe too much importance to anything one of Italy's zillion octogenarian prelates says, other than to deplore any proven anti-Semitism. Don't get me wrong: if the old boy spouted this nonsense (which he denies) then the Vatican should take action; it made it very clear yesterday that it rejects anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. On the other hand, it could be forgiven for wondering why so many very badly researched anti-Benedict stories are surfacing at once. I wonder myself. As I've said before, bishops who were responsible for paedophile cover-ups – and there are plenty – can count themselves lucky that major newspapers have assigned reporters to these stories who know as much about the Catholic Church as I do about electrical engineering, and screw up accordingly. Listen, no one is going to arrest the Pope, so can we drop the fantasising, please? Update: Monstrously silly piece by Libby Purves in The Times in which she "rather thinks" that we should address paedophile crimes by arresting the one man who has done more than anyone else to root them out.
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