We live in strange times. Consider that in early June, a defrocked Catholic priest from Missouri was sentenced to nearly five years in prison on charges he possessed child pornography. In the latter part of the month, a former New York Law professor was sentenced to six months in jail for collecting 150,000 pictures of the most cruel and obscene portrayals of child pornography.
This last case gets more bizarre when one considers that the judge, Brenda Soloff, said she struggled over whether to send Professor Edward Samuels to jail. Adding to the controversy is the fact that the professor was kept on the payroll by New York Law School for nearly a year after he was turned in by two technical staff members; the two who reported Samuels were instantly fired.
Now juxtapose this with the reaction of secular elites to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of June 24. The high court ruled that if public libraries want to continue receiving federal funding, they must install filters on computer terminals that prevent children from accessing pornography. The American Library Association quickly denounced the decision for interfering with freedom of speech and so did the New York Times.
In a statement to the press, we said: “Is anyone noticing what’s going on here? Our cultural elites are outraged over priests who collect child porn but not when the guilty is one of their own. Furthermore, secular elites defend unlimited access to pornography of the worst sort and get exercised only when told they must restrict access to kids.
“This is one more example where those who are shouting the loudest that the Catholic Church has gone soft on abusing priests are playing politics.”a
