Bill Donohue is unhappy today because some remarks by the Pope did not receive the widespread media coverage he thinks they deserve.
On June 16, Pope Francis spoke to an Italian family association, and following his scripted remarks, he made some unscripted comments. He denounced those couples who screen for abnormalities in the womb, likening the decision to a Nazi-like tactic. “Last century,” he said, “the whole world was scandalized by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves.”
The following media outlets covered this story:
AP, UPI, ABC Online, NBC NY, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Hartford Courant, New York Times, Orlando Sentinel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Portland Press Herald, Sentinel Sun, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
In the same spontaneous address, Pope Francis said only heterosexuals can form a family. “It is painful to say this today: People speak of varied families, of various kinds of family,” but “the family [as] man and woman in the image of God is the only one.”
With the exception of CNN and the Wall Street Journal, not one of the media outlets that covered the pope’s remarks on abortion had a word to say about this comment (CNN downplayed its significance).
[ … ]
Kudos to Pope Francis for speaking truth to power … [emphasis in original]
The fact in plain sight, of course, is that there are same-sex couples forming families all over the place, and their mutual devotion and care is real, heartfelt, and trustworthy; they are no less a family than the Cleavers. The truth is that Pope Francis, and Donohue, have a cramped view of family as a reproductive unit — for bookkeeping purposes, historically, so that the community knows whose children are whose and who owns the fruit of their labor and bears the cost of their maintenance.
And the inversion of the Pope and the Wicked Gay Conspiracy, such that it is the Pope who speaks truth to Power is delusional. Is it even possible that, after two unbroken millennia of abuse, Donohue is so out of touch with reality that he thinks it is the Pope who is disadvantaged in a confrontation?
Beam me up, Scotty. There is no intelligent life here.