Double standard for Catholics and Muslims

There's been a lot of controversy over the building of a giant mosque next to Ground Zero, but something that constantly comes up is people qualifying terrorism by saying that most "moderate" Muslims are peaceful and condemn violence. They say only a tiny fraction of extremists are responsible for terrorism and that we shouldn't paint all Muslims with the same brush. In fact, many in the media are falling over each other to proclaim that most Muslims wouldn't ever commit a terrorist act and are in fact peace lovers.

This is all fine and dandy. But none of this of this has happened for the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Even though we know only about 1% of priests ever abused anyone and most of these involved post-pubescent males, every Catholic priest, and indeed the Catholic Church itself is painted with the same brush of pedophilia. There have been numerous attempts to implicate high church officials and the pope. People go to very unreasonable lengths to try to convince others that the entire Catholic Church supports sexual abuse of minors.

News agencies are willing to disregard normal journalistic standards by getting their information from plaintiffs' lawyers who are suing the Church. They disregard the obvious bias in favour of defaming the Church.

It's become commonplace for comedians to joke about "pedophile priests" and implicating all churchmen into this immoral behavior. I wonder, would you ever hear a standup routine calling every Muslim a terrorist? And would you hear it from the likes of Jay Leno? Of course not. There's obviously a huge double standard.

Just to give you an idea of the double standard, let's look at some back to back quotes from people concerning Muslims and Catholics:

Jay Leno on Catholic priests and bishops:
"As you've probably heard, the Pope has asked all the Cardinals to return to Rome. You know how they got them all to come back? They told them that there was going to be a performance by the Vienna Boys Choir."

"They say (the Pledge of Allegiance) violates the separation of church and state. How about the separation of church and altar boy? That's what I'm worried about."

Jon Stewart (the Daily Show) on Catholic priests:
"The Cardinals will be staying at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the new hotel at the Vatican, where turn down service means the bell boy isn't interested."

Over the last several nights on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart, when speaking on the mosque building controversy, will show clips of anyone opposed to the mosque and mock them or show how they are being ridiculous for even questioning it. He continually makes the point that only a tiny fraction of Muslims are violent.

David Letterman on Catholics and Muslims:
"There's a lot of tension in the world. Over the weekend, Pope Benedict apologized to the Muslims. Altar boys, on the other hand, are still waiting for their apology."

Joy Behar
When speaking on the Catholic Church, Behar said the Church has to do a "complete overhaul", that it should scrap celibacy, allow women priests, etc. She also has said she remembers when she was younger all the priests were drunk all the time. On top of this, she has declared her belief that saints were "crazy".

However, on her show on Headline News, she interrupted a guest who was against the building of the Ground Zero mosque saying, "You have to differentiate between Muslims and extremists". A few seconds later, she again stresses this point by saying they didn't run a Danish cartoon because "Islamic fundamentalists and jihadists are objecting to that, not Muslims." On this 3 vs. 1 show, Behar constantly reminds everyone that there is a huge gulf between extremists and Muslims. Why then doesn't she do the same when talking about the sex abuse scandal in the Church?


I could go on with this list for some time. We see over and over that bias against the Catholic Church is completely acceptable and even encouraged, while at the same time the greatest of care is taken to avoid offending other groups, such as Muslims. We must demand an end to this unfair discrimination.