Mel and Madonna

Yesterday, I ran across an article about an upcoming appearance by Madonna in Rome. It seems that the sophomoric pop star and Kabbalah faddist is going to star in a mock crucifixion. The Roman Catholic Church is not amused.

Cardinal Ersilio Tonino, speaking with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI said: "This time the limits have really been pushed too far.

"This concert is a blashphemous challenge to the faith and a profanation of the cross. She should be excommunicated."

This alone is no big deal. The Cardinal is merely doing his job -- and showing what adherence to religion is really all about. On that latter score, I urge him to keep it up: Most people merely pay lip service to religion and so don't appreciate what a threat it would pose to freedom if it ever were to gain real power again -- which is exactly what is also going on.

Before we continue, let's recall some recent history.

Quick. Which side did Pope Benedict XVI line up behind during the Cartoon Riots: (a) the Danish artists who received death threats over some drawings of Mohammed or (b) the smelly, unkempt barbarians who were delivering said threats even as they rioted, burned, and murdered worldwide? The answer was b, although Benedict had to say something about the bad behavior of the children so it wouldn't be too obvious he was catering to their tantrum.

"It is necessary and urgent that religions and their symbols are respected, and that believers are not the object of provocations that harm their progress and their religious feelings," he said.

"However, intolerance and violence can never be justified as responses to offences," he warned.

Note that it was respect for religion that he called "urgent"; not putting a stop to barbaric behavior, mayhem, and death threats.

And now, the Moslems are returning the favor, with some religious Jews getting into the act. (I am surprised by the Jews, who are frequently the target of religious-fueled hatred and really ought to know better. Perhaps this is natural selection at work....)

In an unusual show of religious solidarity, Muslim and Jewish leaders added their condemnation of the self-styled Queen of Pop, famous for peppering her concerts and videos with controversial religious and sexual imagery.

"I think her idea is in the worst taste and she'd do better to go home," Mario Scialoja, head of Italy's Muslim League said.

I normally don't give a tinker's dam about Madonna or her various mystical enthusiasms, but this story bears watching, as it looks like we may soon see the Church attempt to regain more of the secular authority it once had.

In the meantime, the Vatican has remained tellingly silent about the escapades of another famous non-mainstream Catholic entertainer: Mel Gibson, a traditionalist Catholic. I was originally thinking about blogging something about how the different treatments of Gibson and Madonna might reflect the true priorities of the Vatican, but there are too many confounding variables to make the point just yet, in part because the stories are both too young. Nevertheless, I did find an article at the Townhall web site that illustrates my point -- that the religious care more about silencing objections to their dicta than anything else -- better than I could have made it anyway.

Brent Bozell -- who champions censorship as the founder and president of the Parents Television Council -- has written a column in defense of Mel Gibson that attempts to blur the distinction between bigotry of the type that Mel Gibson famously gave voice to recently and remarks unfriendly to or even merely critical of religion.

How does he do this? First, he omits what Gibson said, which included: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." This is loony, completely without merit, and is the kind of excuse used throughout history to persecute the Jews. This is not a joke about Judaism. Nor is it an intellectual argument against or objection to the tenets of Judaism. Not even a poorly-crafted one.

Bozell's tack, after having conveniently passed over the above, is to play "gotcha" with Gibson's Hollywood detractors by calling them hypocrites -- for calling Gibson intolerant while being guilty of attacking Christianity (or even daring to point out valid criticisms of Christian institutions), which Bozell equates to what Gibson did.

An excerpt of his "counter argument" should be sufficient. [My comments are bracketted and in bold.]

The first thing Mel Gibson and everyone else should do is ignore people like these. They are hypocrites.

They were nowhere to be found when "Da Vinci Code" actor Ian McKellen publicly accused the Catholic Church of "perhaps misleading us all this time," and stated, "the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction." And what of the movie itself, a bigoted anti-Catholic screed if ever there was one? Any denouncements from them? [(1) Perhaps Mr. Bozell is privy to a proof of God's existence I am unaware of. If not, then perhaps the Church is misleading us. If he does, then we can move on to other points, which are based on this assumption. (2) I haven't seen this movie, but I have read the book. I wouldn't have found this offensive or "anti-Catholic" even when I was Catholic: It's a work of historical fiction which takes as its basis a fictional conspiracy by members of the Church.]

Where were they when Comedy Central's Dennis Leary aired his "Merry F*ing Christmas" special, publicly called the Christmas story "bull[bleep]" and said of the baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary, "I also believe that about nine months before he was born, somebody sure as [bleep] banged the hell out of his mom"? Any religious bigotry there, folks? [Tasteless humor. Yes. A joke at the expense of a myth -- or have you a shred of proof, Mr. Bozell? -- about parthenogenisis. But still, these are attacks against doctrines, and not accusations like, "Those Romans are behind all the wars."]

Have any of these people ever said a word about the "South Park" DVD featuring an episode called "Red Hot Catholic Love," in which almost every Catholic priest and cardinal in the world favors having sex with altar boys because supposedly it's been enshrined in Vatican law? ... [Satire, Mr. Bozell, and about a serious problem -- that the church YOU are defending -- has indisputably had and, as far as I can tell, is failing to address. For one thing, the fictional conspiracy in The Da Vinci Code is small potatoes compared to the real live one, to cover up for pedophiles, that you're doing your part to whitewash. Or was there another reason Cardinal Bernard Law wound up in Rome?]

Just as Bozell wants Mel Gibson to ignore his criticism, he wants his readers to ignore the difference between bigotry against human beings such as Gibson's -- which is morally repugnant -- and two entirely unrelated things: (1) intellectual objections concerning religion, and (2) discussions about real live scandals in religious institutions. He implicitly condemns the latter even when it means acqiescing to the trampling of the lives of young boys underfoot.

Thank you for sharing with us your sense of priorities, Mr. Bozell. You have made my point.

-- CAV