This is how Time Magazine chooses to begin its coverage of Barack Obama's humiliating PR problem at Notre Dame. "At the rate things are going, Pope Benedict XVI may find his next trip to the U.S. dogged by airplanes overhead trailing banners with images of aborted fetuses."This grotesque purple flourish serves as the introduction to a thoroughly biased article by Amy Sullivan which dismisses the unprecedented Catholic opposition to Obama's commencement address as the work of, wouldn't you just know it, "a small but vocal group of conservative Catholics".
"Small but vocal group" is the the media's code for a protest that offends them. You rarely see small but vocal groups of liberals described thus. Then there's this gem: "Among those most eager to drive a wedge between the President and rank-and-file Catholics are Catholic Republicans."
Amy Sullivan isn't above a bit of wedge-driving herself, by the way. She implies that the Vatican is chilled about Notre Dame's decision, unlike Cardinals George, DiNardo, Stafford and Archbishop Dolan. No, it isn't. The Pope, for perfectly good reasons, is leaving the protests to the local Church rather than turn Fr John Jenkins's disastrous invitation into an international diplomatic incident.
But does anyone seriously doubt what Joseph Ratzinger thinks about the decision by a Catholic university to honour as a moral exemplar a man who has campaigned for partial-birth abortion?...
(Damian Thompson, Telegraph, May 17th)
