Ed Brayton's Blog
Posted on: April 10, 2008 9:16 AM, by Ed Brayton
Rodda Shreds Donohue
My friend Chris Rodda has a post at DailyKos responding to the Catholic League's Bill Donohue and his ridiculous attacks on Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. In a presentation at the Air Force Academy, Weinstein is to include a short clip from a movie called Constantine's Sword, which deals with the history of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church. Donohue throws a fit about that, claiming that this is an "outrageous assault on Catholicism."
The real irony of all this, as Rodda points out, is that Donohue represents the worst kind of Catholicism - as opposed to the many Catholic chaplains in the military who generally do a terrific job compared to many of their Protestant colleagues. Almost all of the problems the MRFF has pointed out in the military comes from Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist chaplains and officers, not from Catholics.
The Catholic League's portrayal of MRFF as anti-Catholic is ridiculous. Of the over 7,500 service members and veterans who have contacted MRFF for assistance, 96% have been Christians, and 1,800 have been Catholic. MRFF has received virtually no complaints about Catholic chaplains or unconstitutional activities by Catholic organizations within the military. Among the prominent members of MRFF's diverse Advisory Board is Gen. Robert T. Herres, USAF (ret.), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- and a Catholic.
And she points out that what Donohue calls "Catholic bashing" is actually an argument from Catholics themselves over two different strains of Catholic thought, one traditionalist and one more progressive. Naturally, Donohue seeks to portray any criticism of Catholic traditionalism, even from Catholics themselves, as being anti-Catholic:
Donohue's mischaracterizing "Constantine's Sword" as "Catholic-bashing" is absolutely absurd. In fact, the James Carroll book upon which the film is based explicitly illuminates examples of Catholic iconoclasts such as Peter Abelard, Nicolaus of Cusa and Pope John XXIII as ideal examples of how a more tolerant, Enlightened Catholic faith should be lived.
What Donohue is actually doing is quite simple. As is his tired old habit, he is casting any form of Catholic thought that loyally dissents from a traditionalist mindset as Catholic bashing. His modus operandi is no different from Medieval Neo-Platonist reactionaries who spurned the scholasticism and rational inquiry teachings of Thomas Aquinas.
And it's exactly the kind of shoddy, overly simplistic "thinking" we've all
come to expect from Bill Donohue, a man who would out of his depth
in a mud puddle.
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