While Maureen Dowd is having a little fun with an 85-year old priest exorcist and his devilish comments, the far more serious danger here is the genuine anti-Semitism at the highest levels of the Vatican.

The more savvy Vatican press representative was quick to backtrack Friday on the papal preacher’s crude and unconscionable comparison between the bad press Benedict is getting and the horrific violence fueled by Christian anti-Semitism over the centuries.

The question is not why a Father Cantalamessa temporarily blew it before a packed St. Peter’s on Good Friday, but why someone with that cast of mind is even anywhere near the top echelons of the church.

His fellow travelers are apparently numerous around Rome, from Europe, Latin America and Africa --- among intelligent Catholic intellectuals. John Allen, a reporter in the Catholic press, wrote in 2002 about the wide prevalence of comments once the tape recorder goes off, to the effect that the clergy sex abuse coverage was fueled by a Jewish lobby in the media. Allen found “one cannot avoid the impression that at a deep, pre-conscious level, some degree of anti-Semitism is at work…that whenever a Christian is dealt a low blow, in the background must lurk a Jew.”

Allen though, whom many consider ever the Vatican apologist, found it perhaps had something to teach us, if intelligent, balanced observers held such views. Wasn’t the drumbeat of constant coverage of a “relatively small number of priests, with most accusations decades old” a skewed perspective compared to crises like AIDS, world hunger, and the war on terror? The church is deeply involved in these major issues and constantly highlighting its failures is “counterproductive.” Anti-Semitic canards are an “unfortunate” form of response to that imbalanced focus, he wrote.
See http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org...

There should be nothing to understand about anti-Semitism other than its repulsive character.

Another reference to prejudicial conspiracy by a high Vatican official is in Jason Berry’s book Vows of Silence – about the notorious abuser Marcial Maciel, founder of the hyperorthodox Legionaries of Christ.

Another reference to prejudicial conspiracy by a high Vatican official is in Jason Berry’s book Vows of Silence – about the notorious abuser Marcial Maciel, founder of the hyperorthodox Legionaries of Christ. Archbishop Luigi De Magistris, prefect of the Apostolic Penitentiary, told a victim of Maciel’s in Rome in 2002, “The scandal in the US is the work of Jews and Freemasons.” Who are these prejudiced folks cavorting in the elegant hallways?

Let’s expose this nasty underbelly in Vatican circles while we’re addressing the blindness and negligence in their handling of clergy sex abuse. Get out all the poison circulating in what Allen calls the “ecclesiastical bloodstream.” If anti-Semitism is now officially a sin in the Catholic church, then it appears the confessionals should be full.