The Media Research Center regularly gives Catholic League leader Bill Donohue a platform to lie and mislead about untoward sexual matters regarding Catholic priests. It does so again in an Aug. 18 post in which Donohue desperately tries to distract from a Boston Globe story about children fathered by priests.
After trying to reframe the issue by claiming it’s really only “as little as one percent or less of priests having fathered a child,” Donohue really lets the spin fly:
So the question arises: Is the phenomenon of priests fathering children, then neglecting or abandoning them—while clearly sinful and morally wrong—so singularly egregious as to warrant such an exclusive exposé?
How do these speculative numbers and percentages compare with Protestant, Jewish or Muslim clergy illegitimately fathering children, then neglecting or abandoning them? We don’t know, because Rezendes and the Globe show no inclination to investigate any clergy other than Catholic priests. To do so might undermine what is clearly part of the agenda here: to attack the Catholic Church’s rule on priestly celibacy. Neglected children of priests, Rezendes writes, “are the unfortunate victims of a church that has, for nearly 900 years, forbidden priests to marry….”
And what of our secular culture? Citing the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Fatherhood Initiative reported recently that “24 million children, 1 out of 3, live without their biological father in the home.” And “millions more,” notes the National Center for Fathering, “have dads who are physically present, but emotionally absent.”
“If it were classified as a disease,” the National Center for Fathering observes, “fatherlessness would be an epidemic worthy of attention as a national emergency.”
But that is apparently not worthy of the attention of the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team. They would rather focus on the apparently tiny minority of Catholic priests worldwide who have fathered and neglected their children, than on the epidemic in our own country that has left fully one-third of American children growing up without fathers.
Donohue conveniently fails to mention that most of the religions he cites, unlike Catholicism, permit their priests to marry and do not make them take a vow of celibacy. And Donohue’s attempt to grouse about “secular culture” is simply an attempt to put up a smokescreen to hide the fact that Catholic priests are not supposed to be fathering children.
Meanwhile, the MRC once again failed to disclose an important conflict of interest: MRC chief Brent Bozell is on the board of advisers for Donohue’s Catholic League. Which just makes Donohue’s rant even more dishonest.