The perpetually outraged Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, has picked a rather nasty little fight with a rabbi who dared to criticize the Catholic Church for its opposition to the president’s contraception coverage policy. And he’s giving Jews a stern warning:
Catholic League president Bill Donohue, a vocal conservative voice who recently warred with The Daily Show over a “vagina manger,” has infuriated prominent Jewish leaders with a private email last week to Philadelphia Rabbi Arthur Waskow.
Waskow, a progressive rabbi involved in the Jewish Renewal movement, had criticized the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a Huffington Post op-ed for “attacking the religious freedom of millions of American women and the religious freedom of American nuns” over contraception.
Donohue responded with a note to Waskow that launched an email exchange that ended with a warning, forwarded to BuzzFeed by a source close to the rabbi, that “Jews had better not make enemies of their Catholic friends since they have so few of them” (Donohue writes that this is a saying of Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York). Donohue also includes a postscript saying, “I do not have a long nose.”
Donahue also raised a recent child abuse scandal in Orthodox Jewish communities.
“You need to do something about this epidemic right now,” he told Waskow, who is not Orthodox, suggesting that Jews follow the Catholic Church’s reforms in dealing with clerical abuse.
Let us count the levels of irony here. First of all, we’ve got a Catholic apologist claiming Jews shouldn’t alienate their “Catholic friends.” Friends? Shall we go into the long history of Catholic pogroms against the Jews over the centuries? We can start with the Edict of Milan and cite many popes along the way, including Innocent III, who said “the Jews, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord…As slaves rejected by God, in whose death they wickedly conspire, they shall by the effect of this very action, recognize themselves as the slaves of those whom Christ’s death set free.” With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Secondly, we have a man who has staunchly defended the Catholic church’s pedophilia scandals claiming that Jews should emulate that church’s barbaric policies to deal with their own. And then they should emulate Lindsay Lohan’s strategy for staying sober.
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Who Knows?
June 25, 2012 at 11:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What do you expect from people who at one time sincerly beleived they were doing people a favor by tying them to posts and lighting a bon-fire under them.
D. C. Sessions
June 25, 2012 at 11:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And this is apparently not ever going into the circumstances where Jewish law requires an abortion.
reverendrodney
June 25, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Donahue also includes a postscript saying, “I do not have a long nose.”
Donahue also raised a recent child abuse scandal in Orthodox Jewish communities.
“You need to do something about this epidemic right now,”
Whoa, bad! Long nose? He may as well repeat a few other slurs while he’s at it.
I have no idea if child abuse is extensive in Orthodox Jewish communities, but by referring to it, Donahue reveals that he is using the birth control issue as a smoke screen to divert attention from child molesting scandals rocking the Catholic church.
May the Jerry Sandusky tragedy lead to indicting higher-ups at Penn State, and may that serve as a model for going after any and all Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals that committed or condoned molesting children.
I am starting to think that Donahue himself is running scared. Hmm.
d cwilson
June 25, 2012 at 12:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Orthodox rabbis don’t have the orgainizational resources to shuffle abusive rabbis from temple to temple in order to keep things quiet, so I’m not sure they can adopt the RCC’s response.
d cwilson
June 25, 2012 at 12:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“I do not have a long nose.”
What are the chances he was muttering “money-grubbing Jews” while typing this letter?
Bill Donahue: The live action Eric Cartman.
TGAP Dad
June 25, 2012 at 12:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, goody!, my favorite reality show: Wingnut vs. Wingnut. I just want a good seat and a bowl of popcorn!
MikeMa
June 25, 2012 at 12:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Donohue is a perpetual object lesson on how to do bad PR.
Artor
June 25, 2012 at 1:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“…who recently warred with The Daily Show over a “vagina manger,”
Lol! That was quite the war, huh? Donahue getting his panties in a wad & calling for boycott & sanctions against Stewart, who gratefully took all the new material Donahue handed him and humiliated the moron some more. If only all our wars could be like that!
kosk11348
June 25, 2012 at 1:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I didn’t understand the “I don’t have a long nose” bit at first either. It sounded like some kind of backhanded Jewish slur, but I then I thought it could be a Pinocchio reference meaning “I am not lying.” I Googled the phrase and found this article: Does God have a long nose? Apparently a “long nose” is a biblical idiom meaning “slow to anger.” So by saying he doesn’t have a long nose, Donohue is saying that he’s a hot head… or something. I confess to still being confused.
Randomfactor
June 25, 2012 at 1:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Catholics need friends more than the Jews do. Despite Tom Lehrer’s observation I think more folks are hatin’ on the Catholics these days, for good reason.
Marcus Ranum
June 25, 2012 at 2:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What do you expect from people who at one time sincerly beleived they were doing people a favor by tying them to posts and lighting a bon-fire under them.
After all, if you make a fire for a person, you’ve kept them warm for one day. If you set them on fire, you’ve kept them warm for the rest of their life.
kassad
June 25, 2012 at 2:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be perfectly honest, the opposition of the Catholic church to Jews was not really all about religious differencies. They were even useful to the Church.
During the Middle-Ages for examples, moneylendering was forbidden by the Church (Time being the domain of god, it was considered blasphemous to make money on it. Really). The Jews were forbidden pretty much anything else, like owning land, being part of an artisan guild or enter a regiment. And since moneylendering was still economically necessary, the Jews could do it so the Christians did not have to. And when you did not have the money to pay the loans, you could throw the moneylender into a well, with not much fear of consequences. I mean, who’s gonna cry about the death of an heathen, right?
Maybe Donahue could have said to the rabbi “careful or it is the well for you”…
Ray Ingles
June 25, 2012 at 2:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I went through the new, updated Catholic child abuse prevention program late last year, “Protecting God’s Children”. (Two of my sons are in Scouting.) Believe it or not, it was actually pretty good. I was almost incredulous when they specifically pointed out that “homosexual” did not equal “pedophile” and vice versa, for example.
Decades (centuries?) late, of course. But at least some in the Catholic church are trying to deal with the problem. Interpreted in the most charitable possible light (charity which I’ve never seen Donohue extend), he could have been referring to those ‘reforms’.
'smee
June 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Marcus@11:
d cwilson
June 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, it was all about religious differences, especially with that blood libel nonsense (the ridiculous idea that every Jew ever born was responsible for Jeebus’ death). The fact that they found a reason to (grudgingly) tolerant a few of them did not mean that religious differences weren’t taken seriously.
harold
June 25, 2012 at 3:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I suspect this is the end of his career, but we shall see.
Since I don’t get a chance to defend medieval popes every day, I will point out that while some of them were virulent anti-Semites, there were also some who did condemn violence against the Jews.
And of course, they mainly tended to be quite tolerant of the Jews until after the pagans had been more or less wiped out. I’m sure that’s a coincidence though.
busterggi
June 25, 2012 at 4:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is it National Brotherhood Week already?
vmanis1
June 25, 2012 at 6:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just a minor correction. The Spanish Inquisition was not in the habit of burning people at the stake, or executing them in other ways. Instead, someone found guilty of extreme heresy was relaxed into the hands of the secular authorities, who performed the actual execution. This was because the Church was (and is) completely opposed to the death penalty, and saying `here, you kill him’ isn’t the same as killing him yourself. At least, that’s true in Catholicism.
Being Jewish, I don’t really understand Catholic notions of morality. The best guide I’ve seen is Tom Lehrer’s song The Irish Ballad, whose heroine commits murder happily, but confesses instantly, because `lying would be a sin’.
democommie
June 26, 2012 at 7:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“What do you expect from people who at one time sincerly beleived they were doing people a favor by tying them to posts and lighting a bon-fire under them.”
According to this, (http://redroom.com/member/frank-sanello/writing/medieval-torture-most-historians-are-too-squeamish-to-describe), it wasn’t always a bonfire.
Donahue’s rants serve one useful purpose. They help to convince inquisitive cath-o-lick youth that the RCC is morally bankrupt.
leftwingfox
June 26, 2012 at 11:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So, BillyD, tell us what else you think about the Jews?
Michael Heath
June 26, 2012 at 11:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
leftwingfox,
Got a link for your cite? I’m skeptical.
kosk11348
June 26, 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Michael, Google is your friend. http://mediamatters.org/research/200412210001
Michael Heath
June 26, 2012 at 12:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
kosk11348,
I’m perfectly cognizant of Google and how to use it, as well as cognizant of who has the obligation to provide cites for provocative assertions.
Michael Heath
June 26, 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks for the link kosk11348; Preview is also our friend.
harold
June 26, 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Micheal Heath –
I had confirmed the quote via Google myself (and it’s up there on multiple sites, including on that seems to be the site of the station the quote was made on).
So why was it ignored?
1) The “mainstream” media doesn’t report on what the extreme right says, no matter how extreme it is. There is a slight exception here – if a lower class white person says it while dressed in a Nazi uniform, or using vulgar epithets, then it might be reported. But as long as the person doing the spewing has money and/or religious credentials, and doesn’t use terms more vulgar than “blacks”, “homosexuals”, “Jews”, “Muslims”, “leftists”, etc, and applies a trivial amount of ambiguity, it will be given a pass. It’s a form of Wingnut Welfare. If you’re liberal, or designer forbid, Muslim, anything you say that can be twisted as advocating or apologizing for “terrorism” will be all over the media, but the extreme right gets a pass unless they insist on extreme vulgarity. Also, if you attack a figure like “Michael Moore”, “Barbara Streisand”, or “Jesse Jackson”, that makes you even more untouchable.
2) Okay, but even when they outright say “Jews”? Well, in this case, first of all, he said “secular”. That weasel word buys him a major pass. After all, any red-blooded right wing American despises anything “secular”. He also seems to have had a right wing nutjob rabbi as a fellow guest on the show. There are literally dozens of Jews who are eager to associate themselves with right wing anti-Semites, so you can always have one of them on your show to provide extra plausible deniability.
3) But Mel Gibson got covered for saying “Jews” (I think, correct me if Gibson used more vulgar terminology). Yes, but that’s because Mel Gibson was, at the time, a legitimate celebrity. It was news because it was about Mel Gibson.
democommie
June 26, 2012 at 1:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children.”
So it would all be okay if the Hollywood Nativity scenes had anal sex with the Holy Family?
shockna
June 26, 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ahhh, Bill Donahue. Back when I was a fundie Catholic, I saw him as someone to look up to. When I started to pay more attention to what he actually -said-, I found a vile little man more well-suited to the 14th century than the 21st century.
Personally, I think this statement from a few months ago pretty much sums him up as a person:
“He said bishops were also rethinking their approach of paying large settlements to groups of victims [of pedophile priests]. “The church has been too quick to write a check, and I think they’ve realized it would be a lot less expensive in the long run if we fought them one by one,” Mr. Donahue said.”
In his emails (I’m still on the Catholic League’s mailing list; some of the emails they send are too good for sardonic humor for me to remove myself), he often describes SNAP (A support resource for victims of priestly abuse) as a “hate group” out to “take down the Catholic Church. I can’t understand why -anybody- would continue to support a man who says that the Church should fight back against victims.
Noadi
June 26, 2012 at 8:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Donohue is a wingnut, Rabbi Waskow is NOT a wingnut. In fact he’s about as far from being a wingnut as it is possible for a religious person to be (and further than some athiests and skeptics). Why do I say this? He’s pro LGBT rights, including pro-marriage equality, performs same sex Jewish weddings, is pro-contraception, pro-choice, pro-separation of church and state, and I could go on. He’s one of the good guys. He may be wrong about the existence of God but that isn’t reason enough to call him a wingnut.