Atheist Revolution

Posted: 23 May 2009 06:08 AM PDT

Idiocy this astounding deserves attention, and attention it shall receive! Right here in the weekly Idiot of the Week series. A new winner will be announced right here each Saturday.

I must admit that this is the first time since I started the Idiot of the Week series that there really hasn't been much competition. Well, that didn't come out exactly right. Of course there's competition - there's always way too much competition. What I mean is that this is the first time that I had such an obvious winner in mind before Saturday rolled around.

Following the release of a damning report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse in which pervasive child abuse by Irish Catholics and a conspiracy by the Catholic Church going back to the 1930s to conceal the pedophiles among them were revealed, Bill Donahue had the following to say:

Reuters is reporting that "Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children," yet the report does not justify this wild and irresponsible claim. . . . The Irish report suffers from conflating minor instances of abuse with serious ones, thus demeaning the latter. When most people hear of the term abuse, they do not think about being slapped, being chilly, being ignored or, for that matter, having someone stare at you in the shower. They think about rape.

By cheapening rape, the report demeans the big victims. But, of course, there is a huge market for such distortions, especially when the accused is the Catholic Church.

For more, see this post by outraged Catholic, Bitch Ph.D. And to give credit where credit is due, I'd like to point out that Bitch Ph.D. is precisely what many of us have been waiting for - a Catholic loudly and forcefully saying that Donahue in no way represents her:

Let's sum up.

Bill Donohue is defending a powerful institution, the Catholic Church, by minimizing and excusing the abuse and neglect of children, including deliberately overlooking oral rape, digital rape, rape with objects, or forced masturbation.

For some of our winner's "greatest hits," check out Media Matters' research on Bill Donahue.