The Rittenhouse Review

A Philadelphia Journal of Politics, Finance, Ethics, and Culture


Friday, June 09, 2006  

GETTING IT WRONG AT THE INQUIRER AGAIN
Call Ignorance Bliss or Annette John-Hall

I held this post back for a while, in part because I wanted to give Annette John-Hall of the Philadelphia Inquirer an opportunity to respond to my inquiry about her May 31 piece, "An Unrighteous Attitude Toward Gays."

Ms. John-Hall, however, declined to respond to my June 6 e-mail, and so, here we are.

What bothered me about her otherwise interesting and insightful article was this remark:

For years, the Roman Catholic Church denied its gay-priest problem.

What the hell is she talking about? Or, what the hell does she think she's talking about?

I didn't realize the Roman Catholic Church had a "gay-priest problem," let alone one that needed to be "denied."

Inexplicably, John-Hall neither explained nor defended the phrase, preferring rather to leave it hanging there stupidly, apparently assuming every reader will understand her implication, baseless as it is.

I can only assume Ms. John-Hall, who, by the way, isn't known around these parts for her knowledge of, let alone intellectual sophistication regarding, matters relating to religion, generally, let alone Catholicism, specifically, was alluding, ineptly, to the crisis sparked by pedophilia and decided, offhandedly, casually, and ignorantly, to conflate that pathology with homosexuality.

That's her "gay-priest problem," not ours.

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