Is That Legal?

For a publisher to pay James Carroll and Daniel Goldhagen to write pieces against the Catholic church or the Pope would be like paying John Wilkes Booth and John Surrat to dine with Lincoln and then watch a play with the President at Ford's Theatre - together with the added allowance that Booth may feel free to bring a revolver with him to the theatre.

Carroll, for one, omits wider context (which he is surely knowledgeable of) such as can be found here, in the single reference to then Cardinal Ratzinger.

Lengthier replies, based upon some well documented scholarship and which reflect thoroughgoing critiques of the forced construals of Carroll, Goldhagen and several others who have evidenced a anti-Catholic animus and bigotries, together with a protracted agenda echoing those same refrains, can be found in Righteous Gentiles: How Pius XII And the Catholic Church Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis by Ronald Rychlak, also in (Rabbi) David Dalin's The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis. Though I have not read the latter, the reviews indicate a similar reliance upon sound and thoroughgoing scholarship.

The notes concerning Goldhagen's and Carroll's, among others, selective scholarship - to use a too kind term - are highly illuminating and acutely reveal ideological animus, arrogations and agendas in general as argued by Goldhagen, Carroll and others, or minimally of conveniently clouded and occluded research on their part.

ELM: What is it that leads you to conclude that Goldhagen was paid for his op/ed? That the Los Angeles Times approached him, rather than (as is customary) the other way around?

Eric,

This seems like an odd point to focus upon since the analogy, as hyperbole and therein more of a literary device, is primarily used to lead into the subject. Nonetheless, while I didn't indicate who approached whom (though I suppose that inference is there as well), I did, and admittedly, assume payment would be involved for the op-ed. On further reflection I can see that this type of op-ed (e.g., vs. the professional op-ed columnists at the NYT) is likely to be voluntary and unpaid; I have no inside knowledge and happily stand corrected on this point as such.

James Carroll finds the Pope's comments objectionable?!?!? Fire up the defibrillator! Elizabeth, I'm coming home!

James Carroll has made a career of bashing the Catholic Church - that is after he broke his vows as a priest. Until B16 is seen passing out condoms on Castro Street, I doubt you will find him with many kind words for the Holy Father.

This, of course, doesn't make him wrong, but he is anyway. I have always found his views on Anti-Semitism strange. To him, the Catholic Church is the great threat to the Jewish people, but he has precious little to say about Palestinian groups that not only advocate the killing of Jews, but actually does so. One might ask the average man on the street in Tel Aviv if he is more worried about Hamas or the Vatican.