UNITED STATES
American Thinker
By Raymond Ibrahim
While recently discussing how President Obama’s relationship to Islam is undermining U.S. security, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly offered up some strange analogies:
Barack Obama has deep emotional ties to Islam. Now to some extent I can identify with Barack Obama on the religious issue. As a Roman Catholic I was appalled when the priest pedophilia scandal broke. There’s absolutely no excuse for the Catholic Church covering up many horrendous crimes… However, like Barack Obama I do make the distinction between the faith and the people who abuse it. But here’s where I depart from the president. I went after the American Catholic leaders of the church with a vengeance… President Obama should do what I did. Aggressively call out those who abuse the Muslim faith, who commit atrocities under a religious banner.
O’Reilly’s claim that “I do make the distinction between the faith and the people who abuse it” presumably means that he distinguishes between Catholicism — which does not promote the molestation of children — and those who “abuse” it for such ends.
Yet how exactly did pedophilic priests “abuse” the teachings of Catholicism? Is there some biblical scripture or church mandate that is ambiguously worded enough for them to twist in a way that justifies the molestation of boys, the way intolerant and violent Muslims are supposedly always “twisting” the Koran?
No. Such priests were not “abusing” their religion. They were directly violating it in both spirit and letter. That’s why they did it in secret and hiding, in the dark, and not “under a religious banner.” That’s why, unlike the jihadis, they were unable to write and issue lengthy treatises littered with scriptural references justifying their behavior. And that’s why O’Reilly — and many other Catholics — were rightly “appalled” and vociferously condemned it.
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