When Pope Benedict XVI gave his scholarly address before a learned audience at Regensburg University, he had no idea it would lead to a massive uproar among so many Muslims. Ever since giving his September 12 address, the pope has been bombarded with criticism, much of it patently unfair.

In the course of his lengthy remarks, Pope Benedict cited a 14th century Byzantine emperor: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The pope made it clear that these were not his words, and that he was using them only to highlight what has often happened in history when faith and reason are uncoupled. But it was to no avail: his most strident critics ripped his words out of context and vilified him.

In response, many Muslims erupted in violence. In Somalia, Muslims were urged by a cleric to “hunt down” the pope and kill him. “Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim,” said Sheik Abubakar Hassan Malin. His violent words bequeathed violence when a nun was shot outside a children’s hospital in the nation’s capital. Not to be outdone, a senior Turkish official compared the pope to Hitler.

The Mujahideen Shura Council referred to the pope as “the worshipper of the cross,” and pledged to “break the cross and spill the wine” in the “house of the dog from Rome.” The group, which posted its call to violence on the Internet, also said that God will enable Muslims “to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen.” Seven churches were firebombed in the West Bank and Gaza by gun-wielding Palestinians, using lighter fluid to burn the churches. And in many parts of the world, Muslims took to the streets chanting “Death to the Pope,” burning him in effigy.

The Muslim uproar did not die down quickly and is likely to reappear when the pope ventures to Turkey on November 28. Those who have been highly critical of Pope Benedict also include many non-Muslims, as well as devout secularists. He has also been lambasted by ex-Catholics like Rosie O’Donnell, and has been the subject of much abuse by pundits in the media. The Catholic League, of course, defended him non-stop.

NBC announced on October 19 that it would cut the “Mock Crucifixion” segment from its November 22 airing of Madonna’s “Confessions” concert.

NBC did the right thing, but the fact that it did not say why the offensive part of Madonna’s concert was cut showed cowardice. What NBC should have done is to admit that since it refused to air the Danish cartoons that Muslims objected to earlier in the year, it felt obliged not to treat Christians in a discriminatory manner. On September 20, Bill Donohue wrote to NBC chief Bob Wright making this point.

Pressure politics were at work, too. On September 29, another letter was sent to Bob Wright by Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, and Donohue, warning him that they would organize a boycott of one of the sponsors of the Madonna concert if the “Mock Crucifixion” part were not excised; a decision would be made via a conference call the following day on which sponsor would receive their Christmas present. In addition to the Catholic League and the Parents Television Council, the following groups said they would join the boycott: American Family Association, Morley Institute, Christian Film and Television Commission, Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, Traditional Values Coalition and Women Influencing the Nation.

This is a great victory, one that all our members should relish. To beat both NBC and Madonna is no small feat.

William A. Donohue

As a trained sociologist, my academic experience leans heavily towards nurture-based explanations of human behavior. But a lot of social science scholarship has evolved since I received my doctorate in sociology from New York University in 1980, and much of it shows that nature-based explanations have been too easily dismissed. No matter which side has the better argument, it is still considered impolitic to ask whether a given negative group characteristic is more a function of nature or nurture. So the tough questions never get asked.

It is indisputably true that when Catholics, Protestants and Jews are offended by something that they find disagreeable—even obscene—they almost never take to the streets killing innocent persons; nor do they make pledges of violence. To be sure, there are occasional nuts who blow up buildings in the name of God, but one is hard pressed to find examples where offensive speech is greeted with widespread violence. However, this is not true of Muslims, as every honest person knows.

Which raises the question: Why do so many Muslims react violently to non-violence? Is it in their genes? No, of course not: only someone who is totally deranged would believe Muslims are congenitally violent. So is it nurture? And if so, is it the religion—Islam—that is corrupt? Or is it the teachers who pervert the teachings of Islam and indoctrinate young people with false ideas? Or is it the students who for some reason cannot embrace the noble teachings of Islam?

I raised these questions with Imus, the iconic radio personality whose show is simulcast on MSNBC. Not being an Islamic scholar, it is hard for me to say whether there is something inherently wrong with the religion or whether those who teach it are the guilty party (the students can hardly be blamed for what they’re taught).

But two things are certain: on the one hand, sweeping generalizations that damn all Muslims as barbarians are expressions of bigotry; on the other hand, it is undeniably true that there is something really screwed up in the Muslim world about the way their religion is being received. It is up to Muslims to fix what’s wrong, and they had better move with dispatch. Regrettably, there are not enough signs that this is happening.

If there is one thing that cannot be tolerated, it’s this business of scapegoating people like the pope for the barbaric reaction of some Muslims. When people are upset about something they’ve heard about, the rational response is not violence, or pledges of violence, but discourse. Speech that is found offensive should not be tolerated, but it should be answered in kind and not occasion violence. This is so basic that it is embarrassing to even point it out, but that’s where we’re at today.

Almost as bad as machete-wielding Muslims are those non-Muslims who refuse to condemn Muslim incivility. At bottom, they’re cowards. Or, worse still, they’re bigots. Cowardice is at work when fear buries ethics, or when the understandable human impulse to protect oneself becomes absolute, squashing all competing values. Bad as this is, it is certainly preferable to the bigotry that allows well-educated Christians and Jews to focus on the “root causes” of Muslim violence, all the while remaining deadly silent during the onslaught.

There are plenty of educated white racists who never stop making excuses for miscreant blacks, and that’s because deep down these condescending whites think that blacks are incapable of doing better. Similarly, when violent Muslims are not held responsible for their behavior, it sends a “that’s the way they are” message that enables more misbehavior. In other words, failure gets a pass because those who fail are losers.

It is precisely this kind of uppity response that feeds the problem. Unless everyone is held to the same standards of accountability, we’ll never make any progress. Unfortunately, we’re so inebriated with multicultural moonshine that we can’t seem to think straight. We’d like to think that all cultures are equal, yet it is painfully obvious that those cultures grounded in the Judeo-Christian ethos do not put bad guys into human shredders or throw gays out of high-rise buildings.

Muslims say they take offense when someone mistreats their religion, yet when earlier this year the Saudi government bulldozed the house that Muhammad lived in for 28 years, where was the outcry among Muslims? Had a stray U.S. bomb hit the same target, there would have been mayhem. In short, what seems to matter is the identity of the transgressor, not the nature of the transgression.If Islam is not the problem, then we need to know why so many millions of Muslims the world over are acting as if it is. And if the problem lay in a profound misinterpretation of Islam, then we need to know why this bastardization of their religion has been allowed to take place and when the remedial education is going to begin.

Pat Oliphant, a popular syndicated cartoonist, took the occasions of the Pope’s remarks about Islam and Congressman Foley’s disgrace to bash the Catholic Church. What is particularly troubling about Oliphant’s cartoons is that he has previously spoken out against wantonly attacking a religion. Earlier this year, Oliphant deemed the Danish cartoons that so enraged Muslims “needless and useless provocation.” He then boasted that he is able to accomplish his aims “without resorting to gratuitous ridicule of their religion or the icons attached to it.”

Obviously he doesn’t hold himself to the same standard when it comes to the Catholic Church. Instead, he trots out the old canard that all priests are abusers and that Christian violence is responsible for the hostility shown by many Muslim extremists. Oliphant has repeatedly shown his anti-Catholic colors. Those mainstream newspapers who continue to publish him must not think highly of their Catholic readers.

On October 1, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) aired a documentary, “Sex Crimes and the Vatican,” that accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) of covering up priestly sexual abuse for 20 years. The show, which aired on the BBC’s flagship, Panorama, says that Cardinal Ratzinger had been in charge of enforcing a 1962 Vatican document that was allegedly written to cover up these crimes.

It is a tribute to American journalism that the lies told by the BBC have not been widely disseminated in the United States. The 1962 document that the BBC refers to had absolutely nothing to do with covering up priestly sexual abuse. Quite the contrary: it dealt specifically with solicitations that a priest might make in the confessional. In fact, it prescribed penalties for any priest who, “whether by words or signs or nods of the head” (our emphasis) might convey a sexual advance.

This was an ecclesiastical response to a possible offense that, given the priest-penitent privilege, lay outside the purview of civil authorities. Furthermore, if a priest were found guilty, he could be thrown out of the priesthood. To top if off, if the penitent were to tell someone about sexual solicitation by a priest in the confessional (perhaps another priest), he or she had 30 days to report the incident to the bishop or face excommunication. In other words, the Vatican document actually prescribed punishment for the penitent if he or she didn’t turn in the guilty priest. The 1962 document was superseded by the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the norms established in 2001 for dealing with serious crimes involving the sacraments. As for the sexual abuse scandal, it was not until 2002, after the scandal had exploded in the media, that Pope John Paul II appointed Cardinal Ratzinger to investigate these matters.

In short, the BBC’s hit job on the pope demands a quick and sincere apology.

Former congressman Mark Foley resigned from the House on September 29 following news that he sent sexually explicit e-mails to congressional pages. On October 3, his lawyer gave a news conference, during which he said Foley was abused by a clergyman when he was a teenager. Since Foley is a Catholic, the suggestion is that a priest abused him.

Foley’s lawyer says his client never molested anyone, which begs the question: why play the Catholic card? Together with his other maladies (alcoholism, mental illness), Foley is obviously seeking (despite what his attorney says) to exculpate his behavior. Foley knows that the public is prepared to believe the worst about priests—they can count on Jay Leno to bash priests one more time—even though only .02 percent of the 42,000 priests in the U.S. were credibly accused of sexual abuse in 2005. But Foley will stop at nothing to mitigate his actions.

 As for the alleged abuse, it’s time to ask some tough questions. First, there is a huge difference between being groped and being raped, so which was it Mr. Foley? Second, why didn’t you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?

We just had two bouts with left-wing extremists that we’d like to share with you.

Kirsten A. Powers is a former member of the Clinton administration and a New York-based consultant to the Democratic party. She recently wrote a piece for The American Prospect, an online left-wing outlet, that was so good we asked for permission to reprint it in Catalyst; it was on the pope’s speech and Muslim reaction to it. We were denied permission because we pleaded guilty to defending the teachings of the Catholic Church on abortion. By the way, we let Powers know about this and she was none too pleased with The American Prospect.

Bill Donohue was recently interviewed by Salon.com, another left-wing online source, about Mark Foley and all the hullabaloo about him being gay. Donohue took the position that whether he was gay, or whether he was abused as a teenager by a clergyman, shouldn’t be the issue: neither is exculpatory for what he did. When the article was published, Donohue wasn’t cited. However, evangelicals who made a critical comment about gays were mentioned.

It all fits so nicely. We can’t publish Powers because we’re pro-life—even though what she was writing about had nothing to do with abortion. And Donohue was shunned because he didn’t criticize gays. Par for the course when it comes to the left.

It’s interesting that the Catholic Church has been a major topic of discussion recently on the ABC-TV show “The View.” It’s unfortunate, however, that the discussion was nothing but ridicule and slander.

On the September 28 program, the four panelists held a glass of red wine while joking about its alcoholic effects. After Rosie O’Donnell made a crack about the way alcohol affects Mel Gibson—”you just start spouting anti-Semitic statements”—Joy Behar responded, “In vino veritas. Don’t you remember when you went to Communion? In vino veritas. The priests were all drunk, don’t you remember?” Here is what happened next.

     · O’Donnell: “No. I remember they would do Body of Christ. You’d have to say Amen and then sometime in the 70’s there was a big congregation and you were allowed to get it in your hand. Do you remember this?”

      · Behar: “No I think I dropped out by then.”

      · O’Donnell: “Oh, well it was big because my mother used to say when you have that Host in your mouth don’t let it touch your teeth because it was against [inaudible] so you know the pressure on the child getting it, you know the priest would put it right on your tongue and you’re [Rosie twists her face pretending to swallow it without having it touch her teeth]…Yeah, it was a lot. But anyways, cheers.”

The discussion of the Catholic Church on “The View” didn’t stop in late September. In the October 2 show, Rosie O’Donnell said that “the person who was in charge of investigating all the allegations of pedophiles in the Catholic Church from the eighties until just recently was guess who. The current pope.” She said her source was a new movie, “Deliver Us from Evil.”

There are several objections to this airing of “The View.” What started as a discussion on the problems facing the disgraced former congressman Mark Foley, quickly digressed into a lengthy conversation about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Given the fact that the exchange began and ended with brief comments about Foley, it is obvious that the real target was the Catholic Church.

According to one article on “Deliver Us from Evil,” it mentions that before Cardinal Ratzinger became pope, he wrote to all the bishops saying that “grave” crimes such as the sexual abuse of minors “would be handled by his congregation….” This is correct. He would be in charge. And when did he take command? After the scandal erupted in 2002. In other words, it is a lie to say that the pope, when cardinal, was “in charge of investigating all the allegations of pedophiles in the Catholic Church from the eighties until just recently.” Indeed, it was precisely because of Cardinal Ratzinger’s no-nonsense approach that Pope John Paul II put him in charge in 2002. It was on Good Friday, March 25, 2005, a week before Pope John Paul II died, that Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about the scandal, saying, “How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely” to God.

We wrote to Barbara Walters, who co-owns and co-produces the show, and co-producer Bill Geddie, and requested an on-air apology for smearing the pope.

Contact the executive producer of “The View,” Bill Geddie, at bill.geddie@abc.com.

When a TV show called for Bill Donohue to go on the air and discuss the movie, “Deliver Us From Evil,” he declined. He did so because he did not want to give the film free publicity; it opened October 13 in a small number of theaters in a few major cities. When it comes to big movies like “The Da Vinci Code,” we can’t ignore it, but when it comes to a limited-release documentary, we won’t take the bait.

The movie focuses on the predatory behavior of an ex-priest, Oliver O’Grady, who was under the leadership of now Cardinal Roger Mahony; O’Grady, who was one of the most notorious priest pedophiles, was not reined in until it was too late.

The secular media loved it. The New York Times called it “devastating”; Newsday said it was “chilling”; the New York Post labeled it “superb”; the New York Daily News found it “riveting”; USA Today dubbed it “indelible”; the Wall Street Journal branded it “stunning”; the Los Angeles Times said it was “wrenching”; and the Boston Herald called it “skin-crawling.”

We’re not here to defend the indefensible, and we don’t doubt that a movie about a monster molester isn’t moving. But enough of the feigned horror. As we’ve indicated many times before, anyone who is truly interested in protecting kids from sexual abusers needs to start by addressing the out-of-control problem that exists in the public school industry. That’s where the action really is, but don’t expect Amy Berg, who curiously got private financing to fund her little film, to make a movie about that.

Pope Benedict XVI’s speech on September 12 at the University of Regensburg in Germany elicited reactions from many critics, with some of them calling for the pope’s head. Here is the worst of the worst:

     · September 14, Ali Bardakoglu, head of Turkey’s Directorate General for Religious Affairs told NTV (Turkey): “The remarks reflect the hatred in his heart. It is a statement full of enmity and grudge. It is a prejudiced and biased approach.”

     · September 14, Aiman Mazyek, president of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims, quoted in Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany): “After the bloodstained conversions in South America, the crusades in the Muslim world, the coercion of the Church by Hitler’s regime, and even the coining of the phrase ‘holy war’ by Pope Urban II, I do not think the Church should point a finger at extremist activities in other religions.”

     · September 15, Kamal Habib, Islamic researcher quoted in the New York Post: “It looks as if the Vatican is providing the religious justification for the wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

    · September 15, Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami in a sermon broadcast on Iranian state radio: “Definitely, Muslims around the world have reacted and will react properly to these weak-minded remarks.”

    · September 16, Jaish al-Mujahedeen (the Mujahedeen’s Army) statement quoted by Agence France-Presse: “We swear that we will destroy their cross in the heart of Rome … and that their Vatican will be hit and wept over by the pope.” The statement lashed out at “Zionised Christians and loathsome crusaders” and featured six films showing attacks against US military targets in Iraq and which it said were “dedicated to the dog of the crusaders (an apparent reference to the pope) in retaliation for his remarks. We will not rest until your thrones and your crosses have been destroyed on your own territory.”

     · September 16, Professor Hans Kung in The Times (London): “He can of course quote what he wants, but he did this without saying the emperor was incorrect. This shows the limits of the theologian Joseph Ratzinger. He never studied the religions thoroughly and obviously has a unilateral view of Islam and the other religions.”

     · September 16, Imam Kadhim Mohamad quoted in the Daily News (New York): “He is declaring war by his words. He should either apologize or at least prove to the people that what he says is true. Otherwise, he should say nothing.”

   · September 16, Bash Pharoan, president, Baltimore chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, quoted in The Baltimore Sun: “By him spreading misinformation, it really is a green light for other people to discriminate or commit acts of hatred against Muslims.”

     · September 16, a statement from imprisoned Islamist leaders in Britain, quoted by Agence France-Presse: “… now the tyrant of Rome reveals his charlatanism and his calumny. Oh Muslims, rejoice in your victory. Your enemy has no more excuses against their destruction and ruin.”

     · September 17, Yasir Abu-Hilalah in Al-Dustur (Jordan): “Rather than preoccupying himself with differences with Muslims, the Pope should preoccupy himself with his community in the West, especially in Germany where his statements were made. The Nazis were Catholics, and those responsible for the holocaust, which became the only sacred and untouchable issue in the West, were not Muslims. Those who killed millions of people in two world wars were not Muslims. The sentiments of Nazism are growing in the West and there is nothing more ethical to deter it than religion.”

     · September 17, Al-Dustur editorial: “The Islamic rage is justified, and we support all invitations that call on the Pope to apologize immediately and unconditionally to erase the blazing Islamic anger and to protect the relationship of mutual respect between the Islamic and Christian religions, within the framework of dialogue and understanding among religions.”

     · September 17, Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya (League of Jihadists in Iraq) quoted by Agence France-Presse: “Know that the soldiers of Muhammed will come sooner or later to shake your throne and the foundations of your state.”

     · September 17, John Cornwell in the Sunday Times (London): “The church and the papacy in particular have long had problems with the existence of other religions, let alone tolerance of them. It started with the crusades in the early Middle Ages, continued with the Reformation (the memory dies hard that the Guy Fawkes plot was a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the establishment of Protestant England). Through the 19th century the popes set their faces against the notion of religious freedom and separation of church and state. A succession of pontiffs, notably Pope Pius IX (1846-1878), declared that respect for other religions was a form of ‘insanity.'”

     · September 17, Iranian cleric Ahmed Khatami quoted in the Turkish Daily News: “The pope should fall on his knees before a senior Muslim cleric and try to understand Islam…. Muslim outcries will continue until he fully regrets his remarks.”

     · September 18, militant group Ansar al-Sunnah (Partisans of the Precepts of the Prophet) quoted in Agence France-Presse: A statement from the group called the pope “Satan’s hellhound in the Vatican…. The day is coming when the armies of Islam will destroy the ramparts of Rome.”

     · September 18, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quoted by the Associated Press: “Those who take benefit from [the] pope’s comment and drive their own arrogant policies should be targeted [sic] of attack and protest.”

     · September 18, Christopher Hitchens on Slate.com: “…where Muslims believe that Mohammed went into a trance and took dictation from an archangel, Ratzinger accepts as true the equally preposterous legend that St. Paul was commanded to evangelize for Christ during the course of a vision experienced in a dream.”

     · September 19, Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America on CNN’s “Newsroom”: “Well, no doubt that there are fringe groups in the Muslim world who are fanatic and who are violent. I don’t deny that. As there are Christian groups. Hitler was Catholic, also.”

     · September 19, Huda Guidance Army Organization in a statement quoted in The Jerusalem Post: “We will target all Crusaders in the Gaza Strip until the pope issues an official apology. All centers belonging to Crusaders, including churches and institutions, will from now on be targeted. We will even attack the Crusaders as they sit intoxicated in their homes.” The group said preparations had been completed “to strike at every Crusader and infidel on the purified land of Palestine.”

     · September 19, Mohammad Qaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, quoted by Agence France-Presse: “If this person were really someone reasonable, he would not agree to remain at his post one minute but would convert to Islam immediately.”

     · September 19, The Sword of Islam quoted by WorldNetDaily: “We want to make it clear that if the pope does not appear on TV and apologize for his comments, we will blow up all of Gaza’s churches.”

     · September 20, Arnaud de Borchgrave in The Washington Times: “The pope was not defining a doctrine about faith and morals where infallibility reigns. But it was more than off the cuff and less than a papal bull. Benedict was also a little wide of the mark. Any foreign policy adviser could have informed the pope that what he planned to say would be seen by Muslims as a force multiplier for extremists…”

     · September 21, about 1,000 Muslim clerics and religious scholars in Pakistan, in a statement quoted by the Associated Press: The group says Benedict “should be removed from his position immediately for encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths” and “making insulting remarks” against Islam. The group added that the “pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). … If the west does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences.”

     · September 22, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) leader, quoted by the Associated Press: “If I get hold of the pope, I will hang him.”

     · September 22, Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza’s Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, quoted by WorldNetDaily: “The day will soon come when the green flag of La Illah Illah Allah (There is no god but Allah) and Muhammad Rasul Allah (Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah) will be raised upon the Vatican and all around the world and on the fortresses of those who want to destroy Islam, because they know that this religion obliges them to face the truth that Islam is Allah’s favorite religion. And until they join Islam, hell is their last station.”

     · September 23, Mujahedeen Army, in an online statement addressed to “you dog in Rome,” quoted in the Associated Press: “We swear to God to send you people who adore death as much as you adore life.”

     · September 25, James Carroll in The Boston Globe: “Pope Benedict XVI celebrated the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by citing, on the next day, a 14th-century slur that Mohammed brought ‘things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’ The patently false characterization of Mohammed’s teaching, displaying an ignorance of the Koran, of the magnificence of Islamic devotion, and of history was offered almost as an aside in the pope’s otherwise esoteric lecture about reason and faith.”

     · September 26, Alberty Yelda, Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See, quoted by Agence France-Presse: “Many Muslims around the world were offended. They expressed their feelings and they were right to do so. They demonstrated anger.”

     · September 27, Sheik Abu Saqer quoted by WorldNetDaily: “The call for so-called dialogue by this little racist pope is a Trojan horse with the main goal of reaching a new system in which the ideals [of Christianity] are a new ideology that will rule relations between nations and people. The dialogue he wants is dangerous.”

     · September 30, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaida’s second in command, in a video statement quoted by the Associated Press: “If Benedict attacked us, we will respond to his insults with good things. We will call upon him and all of the Christians to become Muslims who do not recognize the Trinity or the crucifixion.”

     · September 30, Imam Seyyed Hasan Ameli in a sermon quoted by Iranian Labor News Agency: “Their insolence has reached such a level that they are turning Mosques into Churches or even to sheds for keeping ritually unclean animals in order to defy Muslims.”