BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

From what I have read of her so far, blogger Cristina Odone, who was once editor of Catholic Herald, is generally acutely incisive, but this entry does not go far enough. Sure, it's easy to denounce the 'artists' and 'intellectuals' who have been near-unanimous in exulting that Roman Polanski is escaping justice once again, but what about the silent assent to Polanski's untouchable status by all the prominent news agencies and names - who have been relentless in denouncing the Pope and all the Catholic clergy as if they had personally committed the sex offenses of a few priests and have given Polanski a pass since this case was first revived last September?

Polanski and the Pope:
The lefties' odious and
obvious double standard
By Cristina Odone

July 12th, 2010

Here’s a maxim for Left-wing luvvies: let’s treat the Pope like a rapist, and treat a rapist like the Pope.

By the Pope, of course, I mean Benedict XVI, who has been at the helm of the Church during its darkest hour, when scandal upon scandal involving priests sexually abusing children has come to light.

By the rapist I mean Roman Polanski, the Polish film director who was convicted of raping an underage girl in America back in 1977.

Ah, but there is a difference between the two men, I hear you say: one has been convicted of a crime, while the other is in charge of a global Church at the moment when some of its members are being exposed as criminals.

That may be the difference in your eyes. But in the eyes of Lefty luvvies from Hollywood to Hampstead, the only real difference between the Pope and Polanski is that the latter is an artist. That, you see, erases a multitude of sins – yes, even the rape of a 13-year-old girl.

The same people who are viciously denouncing Benedict even though he has not been convicted of any crime defend Polanski despite his conviction because he’s “one of us”. In their eyes, directing The Pianist and Rosemary’s Baby has somehow cleansed the stain of shame from this repulsive little man.

Here is the bad news: the luvvies have won. Their man has been let off – to cries of relief from the arty set, the Swiss authorities have refused the United States request for extradition.

The Pope, meanwhile, continues to be publicly reviled by bohemians who think he should be arrested for crimes he neither committed nor concealed. And they dare attack the Church for hypocrisy!


Let me re-post here from the ISSUES thread an overview of the Polanski case and a comparison with the Catholix sex abuse 'scandal' through the very selective - and morally revolting and indefensible - prism of the MSM:


Would Polanski get a pass
if he were a pedophile priest?
Posted by Tom Heneghan



PARIS, Sept. 28 - It’s hard to watch France’s political and cultural elite rush to support filmmaker Roman Polanski against extradition to the United States on a decades-old sex charge and not wonder exactly how they interpret the national motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité.”

It’s tempting to ask whether they’re defending the liberty to break the law and skip town, respecting the equality of all before the law and championing a brotherhood of artists who can do no wrong.

Here in Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared the arrest was “a bit sinister … frankly, (arresting) a man of such talent recognised around the world, recognised in the country where he was arrested — that’s not very nice.” He and his Polish counterpart have written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the issue.

Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said “just as there is a generous America that we like, there’s also an America that scares us, and that’s the America that has just shown us its face.”

Directors, actors and intellectuals have been signing a petition demanding Polanski’s immediate release.

Almost all the focus is on the argument that Polanski is a brilliant director, the charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year old dates back to 1977, and the victim herself says she wants the whole issue to be forgotten.

Almost completely ignored is the fact that he fled the U.S. to escape sentencing, which added a crime to the original crime.

There is such a widespread assumption that all artists and intellectuals would automatically support Polanski that Paris papers today — both the left-of-centre Libération and the conservative Le Figaro — wrote with an air of surprise that Hollywood was not storming the barricades to back him.

The French Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit made headlines by bucking the trend and saying he was “ill at ease” with the rush to absolve Polanski of raping a minor and the culture minister should have been more cautious in his comments. [Belated P.S. to this: After the sex-abuse scandal' hit Germany earlier this year, it turns out that in the 1970s, Cohn-Bendit, recalling his experiences as a kindergarten teacher in a book, said that, on occasion, he had allowed small children to open his fly and caress him. He says now it was 'a foolish young man's provocation' - and the MSM lets him get away easy. And yet, in whipping up the Sexual Revolution in 1968 Paris, he advocated boys and girls sleeping together in school dormitories.]

Across the Atlantic, by contrast, Hollywood’s hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, reviewed the objections by Polanski’s supporters and concluded: “Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country … the Justice Department and L.A.’s district attorney are right to seek extradition.”

And almost nobody in the media here in France asks the tough questions that Fr. Tom Reese, S.J. did in his Washington Post blog post entitled “Father Polanski would go to jail”:

“Polanski’s defenders … argue that he should not be punished. They say that the girl was willing and sexually experienced and she has forgiven him (after receiving a settlement). They even cite his tragic childhood and life as an excuse. And besides, it is ancient history. Such arguments from paedophile priests would be laughed out of court and lambasted by everyone, and rightly so…

“The Catholic Church has rightly been put under a microscope when 4 percent of its priests were involved in abuse, but what about the film industry? The world has truly changed. Entertainment is the new religion with sex, violence and money the new Trinity. The directors and stars are worshipped and quickly forgiven for any infraction as long as the PR agent is as skilled as a saintly confessor. Entertainment, not religion, is the new opiate of the people and we don’t want our supply disturbed.

“Is there a double standard here? You bet.”

There’s a lot to say about the different ways Americans and French approach the law. But let’s go right to Tom Reese’s question. Do you think Polanski’s supporters cut him slack they wouldn’t think of permitting for a paedophile priest? Is the entertainment industry setting our values?

[That Heneghan would even pose those questions the way he does - rather than stating them as outright fact is just as worrisome as the shameless double standard!]

And an unexpected 'God bless...' to Fr. Reese for seeing the utter fallacy and moral unacceptability of the double standard.