Pages: 1 2 |
|
 Print This Post
|
Donohue praised Hagee for his candor: “The tone of Hagee’s letter is sincere. He wants reconciliation and he has achieved it. Indeed, the Catholic League welcomes his apology. What Hagee has done takes courage and quite frankly I never expected him to demonstrate such sensitivity to our concerns. But he has done just that.”
It is a tribute to Catholics such as Deal Hudson of InsideCatholic.com that they succeeded in sitting down with Pastor Hagee over a period of weeks trying to bring about reconciliation. Hagee was able to access books he never read before, e.g., works by Martin Gilbert and Rabbi David Dalin that detail the heroic role of Pope Pius XII in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. These were the kinds of things that moved Hagee to write his letter to Donohue.
After Walsh’s column published — with no mention of Hagee’s reformed views — she appeared as a guest on Chris Matthews’ Hardball along with Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist. Matthews barely acknowledged the apology by Hagee, characterizing it as disingenuous, and actually replayed the video from Hagee’s former comments in which he claimed the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon. With this, Matthews promoted ridicule of the Catholic Church.
Regardless of whether Matthews agrees or disagrees with Hagee’s former views on the Catholic Church (he clearly does not), the fact that he played the video for his viewers exposed them to these views which serves to tear down public opinion of Catholicism. What Matthews has done to his (and my) Church is akin to playing a video of the raping of his own bride, a deed which the perpetrator has truly reformed himself of, in order to take a cheap political shot at Glenn Beck and all those who attended his Restore Honor rally.
Matthews claims to have voted for Republicans in the past, including Michael Steele and George W. Bush, so surely Mr. “Thrill Factor” understands the concept of people radically changing their views about things. We may be able to chalk up Walsh’s article and her follow-up smears to incompetence, but Matthews, who at least acknowledged that an apology was made by Hagee, has no excuse. Matthews, Walsh and Shrum owe an apology to everyone whose character has been blackened by their actions. Rarely do we see such blatant treachery, even from MSNBC.
~~~
Follow Lisa Graas on Twitter and visit her blog at LisaGraas.com
