Dobbs slams Pope
Some priests did bad things so therefore the Church has no moral authority. Thus saith Lou Dobbs,
Pope Benedict XVI addressed the social context in which the scandal took place, asking, “What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?” On his CNN show last night, Lou Dobbs made the following comments about the pope:
“I don’t want to put you [addressing a guest] in jeopardy of either perdition or Hell itself. But, so I will gamble this, may I? The idea that the pope would come here and criticize the United States this way is, I think, first of all bad manners. I don’t care if you’re infallible [sarcastically] or not. So it’s bad manners. Number two, it is absolutely out of all proportion with the world scale. This is the most welcoming nation, the most generous nation on the face of the earth. And for this pope to have this attitude and to make these comments is, in my opinion, absolutely repugnant…. I’m on my way to Hell…. It seems to me that if one is going to reach to the level that he did, you have to have some moral standing for it. And what has been happening to this church…for the last decade, seems to leave open his standing, cleaning up his own house. I don’t know if there is a scriptural reference there, but it seems to me that, glass houses, stones. Whatever it may be, it’s just bad manners.”
To which Bill Donohue, of the Catholic League, responds:
“What the transcript doesn’t reveal is the tone of Dobbs’ remarks. He was sarcastic and insulting throughout. Dobbs can either apologize for his offensive remarks, or he can invite me on his show to debate him. Enough is enough—this guy has crossed the line big time.”
Thanks to contributor Tim for passing this story along!
Posted in Uncategorized | 
April 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I am not a Roman Catholic, but I think Mr. Dobbs is way out of line here. He villifies anyone who doesn’t agree with him absolutely. He is not a journalist, but a demogogue.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Well until every single one of those awful priests make reparation for their sins I don’t have to follow what the Church teaches. The Church needs a new hierarchy. If women were involved it would have never happened.
O wait that makes no sense!
April 20th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Does not Mr. Dobbs have the right to his own opinion? Why is free speech under attack in this ‘the free-est country in the world?
About the Comments:
The pope is completely out of touch when he compares pornography to child molestation, a disgrace on the highest order.
Bill Donohue is a sexcist idiot that is helping to dumb down our society.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
It looks like the Pope hit a hot button with Lou Dobbs? This is perhaps an insight to Lou Dobbs’ personal preferences.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Kyle, there’s a new concept all the kids are using, called “blogging.” When “blogging,” one expresses opinions about situations and issues important to them. To express an opinion dissenting with someone else’s opinion is not attacking their right to free speech. Just as Dobbs has the right to free speech, I have the right to disagree with him. So does bill Donohue.
I believe the Pope was simply questioning why sex and violence and freely shown as “entertainment” when the harsh reality of disordered sex and violence isn’t entertaining at all, examples include the Church’s scandal as well as all the other abuse that takes place in other denominations, schools, and so on. He didn’t compare them, he just questioned why we look at it as entertaining when it’s on TV if it’s so repulsive when it happens in real life.
I can’t find anything sexist about what Bill Donohue said…in his statement he never stated that one gender was superior to the other.
Good to know we have a few folks like you reading the blog, though. Entertaining for the rest of us.
April 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Chris, Lou should not have to apologize for his opinions, which is what Donuhue is asking him to do. What line is there to be crossed in free speech? That is what Donuhue is suggesting, and we see this all the time in the media, people demanding apolgies or reprimands for what they said. It is silly and gets us away from real issues.
The Pope seems to suggest that since we cannot protest our children form watching degrading television at home(which you can if you are a good parent), that we should not protect them from horny priests.
Donuhue’s comment in itself was not sexist. The fact that he is a member of religion that will not promote women to positions of power is what makes him a sexist.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Why is it not okay for Donohue to state that what Lou says is offensive and he should apologize for it? He used a disrespectful tone in how he said what he said - and regardless of any individual positions, everyone should afford a basic modicum of respect to the Holy Father.
I think more than anything the Pope was pointing out the irony of the situation outlined.
By your logic, all the happy Catholic women out there must be sexist against themselves. Perhaps you could ask my wife if I am sexist seeing as I’m a member of the Catholic Church. The simple fact is that your tired old argument about the Church being sexist is a load of garbage. It is simply impossible for the Church to ordain women to the priesthood. The Church highly regards and respects women and women certainly can have important leadership roles in parishes, dioceses, and holy orders. The word sexist is so misunderstood (sort of like the word racist is in our present day.) I am quite confident that Bill Donohue, myself, or your local parish priest believes any superiority of one gender over another. We all do acknowledge that God made man and woman different, to fulfill different roles. Women trying to be men won’t ever eliminate the innate differences and the different roles that result.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:54 am
[…] April 21, 2008 in News Tags: Catholicism, Child Protection, Lou Dobb vs. Pope, Porn, Religion From Catholic By Choice, Lou Dobbs perhaps reveals a personal preference?: Pope Benedict XVI addressed the social context in which the scandal took place, asking, “What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?” On his CNN show last night, Lou Dobbs made the following comments about the pope: […]
April 21st, 2008 at 2:08 pm
IT MAKES ME SICK WITH WHAT HE “DOBBBS” IS GETTING AWAY WITH. THIS HAPPENS IN EVERY RELIGION ONLY IT IS VERY HIDDEN AWAY MAYBE HE SHOULD INVETIGATE OTHER RELIGIONS AND FIND OUT HOW OFTEN IT HAPPENS. I WILL NEVER WATCH YOU AGAIN. WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE. AS FOR CNN I WILL NEVER WATCH IT AGAIN. I WILL BE WATCHING FOX NEW “FAIR AND BALANCED” FROM NOW ON.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Hard to tell whether JHidalgo is being serious or sarcastic. But as far as threatening never to watch Dobbs or never to watch CNN again, and only watching Fox, remember 2 things.
1: That’s what liberals do. and
2: The same Constitution that gives me the right to talk about whatever I want on this blog gives Lou Dobbs the right to talk about whatever he wants on his TV show. I may disagree with what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it, because as soon as free speech rights are abridged for some, the door is open for them to be abridged for others…and that scares me.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Donuhue can obviously say what he wants, it is just that what he said is banal and trivial. Apologizies are pointless. Why do Catholics need an apology at all, for that matter? Just turn the other cheek, I think Jesus said that(slight sarcasm). I truely do not mean to offend, I just get very annoyed in the face of ignorance.
You say that everyone should have a basic modicum of respect for the holy father, what about Muslims? Or molested children, for that matter.
According to Catholic historian Peter de Rosa in his book Vicars of Christ:
“Popes had mistresses as young as fifteen years of age, were guilty of incest and sexual perversions of every sort, had innumerable children, were murdered in the very act of adultery…In the old Catholic phrase, why be holier than the Pope?”
There is no irony involved with priests molesting altar boys, except that the people these children are supposed to trust with their soul are taking advantage of them. This has nothing to do with pornography or violence. The pope could have simply apolgized, but instead he tried to trivialize the molested kids by implying that it is somehow our ‘Godless society’s’ fault.
Can you please explain to me why it is impossible for the Church to ordain a female into priesthood?
I do beleive that woman and men are obviously different in their abilities, but i do not acknowledge that God made men and women, but maybe the ‘We’ you indicated in your statement, “We all do acknowledge that God made man and woman different, to fulfill different roles,” does not include myself.
Catholics, or any religious person in general, tend to be exclusionary, and also others not like them out to be infidels.
God didn’t make men, men made god.
If you know of any of your country’s history, you would know that free speech rights have already been negotiated many times in our past.
1. Eugene Debs and others were imprisoned by Woodrow Wilson for speaking out against World War 1.
2. No speech can be made that will result in chaos or inciting a mob.
3. These are only a two of the several examples, but I am getting bored making my point.
And please feel free to comment some more, because people like me love to be entertained by false logic and idiocracy, which is apparently what the rest of whoever the hell the ‘us’ that you refered to in your demeaning earlier statement believe.
“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
Kyle, you’re getting entertaining here.
To address your points: apologies are not pointless. The Catholic faith has as one of its major tenets the idea of reconciling with God for our sins; the sacrament of reconciliation includes a prayer of apology. Likewise, apologizing is how we reconcile with our fellow man when we have wronged or offended him. And it is offensive to someone when you insult their faith, regardless of what it is.
Mainstream Muslims should indeed and probably do have some level of respect for the Pope. Obviously, the ones who threatened him with violence when he quoted a very old piece of literature (which said there was violence associated with Islam, ironic, yes) want to subjugate the entire Christian faith and therefore don’t respect any of us. Molested children who are grown up and have moved on with their lives, and who have received the help they need recognize that a good faith effort is being made by the Church to reconcile (there’s that idea of apologizing again) and also recognize that the crime perpetrated against them was by a small group of people and not by the entire Church. The holy nature of the Church does not negate the fallen nature of some of the men in charge; there are no perfect humans. And just because of the fallen nature of the clergy, the sacraments are not negated - and the sacraments are the source and summit of the Christian life.
Again, you miss the point. The Pope was saying (in my estimation) that disordered sex is disordered sex, whether it be contraceptive sex, homosexual sex, heterosexual sex outside the marital embrace, or, for that matter, watching disordered sex on TV and considering it entertainment. And, that this is destructive. No, he’s not making excuses for the clergy involved in the evil of sexual abuse, and if you bothered to read any of the other stuff he said while he was here, you’d know that.
And honestly, once we open the door to the acceptance of disordered sex of one type, how can you objectively say that any other disordered sex is in fact disordered. You’ve taken sex outside the marital bond and made it “ok,” taken homosexual sex and made it “ok,” so how can you objectively say that having multiple wives is not “ok?” It’s disordered just like the former two, yet for some reason, it’s not “ok.” For that matter, how about incest and bestiality. After all, it’s just what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom. I know some say that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but for the last 100 years, we have experienced the slippery slope on these issues first hand. First, we accepted contraception, in fact it was even condoned by the Episcopal Church (Lambeth conference, 1935.) At that time, the predictions were that we would grow to accept all sorts of sexual perversion as a result of accepting this one disordered type of sex becoming acceptable. And like dominoes, so much more has become acceptable, I would argue, to the detriment of our society.
That’s not an excuse for the clergy, because the Catholic Church is one institution that still claims there’s right and wrong and that in many cases the two aren’t negotiable. The Church says that what those clergy did was wrong, and is now dealing with the repercussions.
The Church cannot ordain a woman to the priesthood because the priesthood was founded by Christ with male apostles, and every priest is a successor to the original 12, though his ordination by his bishop, back through earlier bishops, cardinals, and popes all the way back to the original 12. The Church does have leadership positions for women, but cannot ordain one as a priest.
Agreed, the right of free speech has been abridged in some cases. In cases where other people are endangered, it should be abridged. In all other cases, it shouldn’t be (i.e., political cases as you cited) and I pray that it won’t be…in Canada, you can go to jail for preaching Christianity at this point, and that’s too close for comfort.
In closing, I am so glad that I was able to provide you with entertainment, as you are clearly so much more intelligent, logical, and enlightened than I am. You’ll be glad to know that I put my gun down while I was sitting here writing about my religion, to which I cling. Your arrogant, elitist, demeaning comment betrayed your true colors as a liberal who looks down your nose at anyone with the slightest conservative views on faith or society; ironically, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you claim to be open-minded and tolerant…you have just proven you are neither.
The “us” I am referring to, by the way, is those of us in full Communion with the Catholic Church. Many of my readers are Catholic, but not all.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I am not Open-minded, I’m right-minded and intolerant, and I am not a liberal, either.
Is it not arrogant to believe in your own personal god? To believe that you are so special that god has to watch you every minute of the day?
I know what your gonna say, “He watches everybody.” I believe this to be arrogant as well.
How do you know how god operates? Because you believe in what was written in a book a couple thousand years ago.
I will admit this is completely pointless, Logic will not prevail over the indoctrinated, so I will leave you alone.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Ok, that’s reasonable…you admit your rude and elitist.
Is it arrogant to believe in your own personal God? I’m not sure, I don’t believe in my own personal God. I believe in one God who has accepted me. He’s not my personal God, I am His humble servant. I am not someone who tries to conform God to my liking; rather I conform myself to the Church His Son founded.
I believe in what was written in a book that, as I understand it, has more authentic manuscripts available than any other ancient writing.
If you bothered to read the rest of my blog, you’d know that I am in fact not indoctrinated. If you bothered to read the very first post, you would see that in fact I came from a different background and studied, researched, and prayed about where I should be; at the end of it all, I learned that the Catholic Church has received the fullness of the Truth.
I believe JPII himself said something to the effect that Logic is the completion of faith, and faith is the completion of logic. I see the two as inseparable.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
it’s pointless to argue with someone who doesn’t believe the Bible by quoting scripture, but this came to mind…
…the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men… 1 cor 1:25
i’ll be a fool for Him any day!