Thousands of Catholics rioted in London today, burning cars and battling police while protesting what they called a “blasphemous” portrayal of Pope Benedict XVI in a Times of London cartoon.
Other Christian leaders called for the death of the cartoonist Peter Brooks for his appalling caricature of the Pope wearing a condom instead of his normal triregnum.
Oh, wait. We got our stories slightly confused. It was the Muslims who rioted over a cartoon of Allah. The Catholic response was a bit milder. They wrote letters.
“I was appalled at the tasteless cartoon depicting Pope Benedict XVI,” Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor wrote in a letter to the Times. “No newspaper should show such disrespect to a person who is held in high esteem by a large proportion of Christians in the world. To pillory the Pope in this way is totally unacceptable.
“We will not accept the Pope being made the object of mockery and offence, in the media or elsewhere,” said Angelo Bagnasco, an Italian Bishop. “He represents for everyone a moral authority, which this journey has made people appreciate even more.”
No word yet on whether cartoonist Brooks has gone into hiding to avoid a potential Catholic fatwah.
Source: MediaWatchWatch.org
This post was last modified on March 31, 2009
View Comments (5)
Not catholic not a fan of the Pope, etc and the next thing. first to admit the sins of the "church" (denomination) and so on and so forth that doesnt make it right to insult a religious figure. I am not down with making fun of Mohammed either, which is what the Danish (?) cartoon did, but that incident and this one showed the MARKED difference between one group of people and another group of people following their religions.
People expect Christians to give the other cheek and they expect them NOT to be violent which is what they rely on to do their cowardly insults... BUT the same cowards will not put their heads on the chopping block by insulting Mohammed.
Its ok for anyone to shall we say strongly objct to racial or religious cartooning. Except Europeans and Christians. We are expected to sit back, take it and behave ourselves. Maybe the Catholics SHOULD have rioted. I'm not Catholic, but this was way out of line, Show a little respect for the office, regardless of how you view the individual. For all its problems, the Catholic church maintained Chrisitanity through the middle ages, and should be respected for what it did right. Not wild about the Inquisition, but that was an individual fanaticism gone wild. Not the church as a whole. Trust me, I know Protestant conservatives who make the Catholics look like wild eyed left wing psychos.
I know you're joking, but Catholics DID have a riot. Or as Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame would say, a 'laugh riot'.
A liberal on Reddit.com, where this article was posted by someone and it now being down voted by the libs there, defends ridiculing Catholics:
By the way, you should go to that Reddit page and upvote it!
Good post. Shows the ignorance of the Islamofascists.