UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on July 13, 2011
After 9/11, religious profiling in the war on terror was deemed unjust, yet many use sexual abuse by one high profile Catholic priest to imply the guilt of others.
Remember the Juan Williams fiasco at National Public Radio? I wrote about it last November in “At the Twilight’s Last Gleaming.” To refresh your memory, the story began when FOX News commentator Bill O’Reilly declared on “The View” that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001 were Muslims. This sparked a loud media fury about religious profiling and whether it is fair and just. The Bill O’Reilly episode culminated in Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar storming in protest off the set of “The View.”
The next evening, appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” on FOX News, National Public Radio news analyst Juan Williams expanded the fray. He said that he’s sometimes uncomfortable when he sees people in Muslim garb board a plane he is on. The next day, NPR fired Juan Williams for exhibiting a religious insensitivity that did not reflect NPR’s journalistic standards – standards which have apparently never applied to NPR’s treatment of Catholics.
Imagine, for a moment, what might have happened if the entire affair was about priests and sexual abuse. What if Bill O’Reilly had said on “The View” something like, “Not all Catholic priests are sexual abusers but too many sexual abusers have been Catholic priests.” It would have been blatantly unfair and irresponsible, but do you think Whoopi and Joy would have stormed off the set over it? What if Juan Williams had said something like, “Sometimes when I see a Catholic priest board a plane I’m on with my grandchildren I feel uncomfortable”? Would NPR have fired him for that?
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