Contact: Jeff Field, Director of Communications, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 212-371-3191, cl@catholicleague.org
NEW YORK, July 16, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- Catholic League president Bill Donohue (photo) comments on pop-star Madonna's latest anti-Catholic stunt:
Madonna is back in the news, this time for offending concert-goers in France. In her latest video that accompanies the song, "Nobody Knows Me," French National Front party leader Marine Le Pen is shown sporting a swastika on her head. After the video was played during Madonna's performance in Paris on Saturday, the National Front said it was going to sue her. Not attracting much attention is Madonna's vile attack on Pope Benedict XVI.
The full video of "Nobody Knows Me," which is part of Madonna's MDNA Tour, is replete with religious symbolism. The most offensive part for Catholics occurs when anti-gay protesters are shown just before Madonna's face morphs into that of the pope; at the point where the pope's face appears, protesters holding gay-bashing signs are shown on both sides of him. The accompanying lyrics, which include the refrain, "Won't let a stranger give me a social disease," ties the pope to hate speech directed at homosexuals. Moreover, photos of gay youths who recently committed suicide are also shown during this sequence.
What is particularly sick about this attack is that the protesters are not only not Catholic, they are anti-Catholic! Anyone who doubts this to be true only needs go to the website of the Westboro Baptist Church [click here] and find pictures of these church members holding signs that read "God Hates Fags"--the exact signs shown in the video. To demonstrate how relentlessly anti-Catholic these people are, they are going to picket St. Joseph Catholic Church in Shawnee, Kansas on July 22: the church is called a "whorehouse" and the priests are labeled "rapists."
Madonna not only libeled the pope, she attributed to Catholicism the hate speech of those who hate Catholics, as well as homosexuals. That the media are giving scant coverage to this part of her bigoted performance is also disturbing.
