I love songs about Jesus, for some reaso.

Jesus, etc. [Wilco cover] - Norah Jones (download)

It’s been a big week for Jesus. First he died, and then he came back to life, and then he painted some eggs, and then his good friend the Pope was accused of turning a blind eye towards child-molesting priests. Not necessarily in that order.

For those who haven’t been following, a quick recap: you know how priests are getting busted for touching kids like all the time, always? Well now there’s a paper trail going all the way up to the current Pope, indicating that he himself (when he was archbishop of Munich) allowed pedophile priests to keep priesting, and keep pedophiling. Hello? Infallible much?

On Friday, a spokesman for the Vatican compared the fierceness of criticism the church has received— you know, the criticism for condoning through inaction the molestation and/or rape thousands of children — he compared enduring that criticism to the suffering endured by Jews during the Holocaust, because ha ha, April Fool’s, Jews!

Granted, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa didn’t exactly mention the Holocaust by name, but that damn Jew-coddling media had no trouble connecting the dots;. What he actually said, according to the New York Times [and helpfully annotated by me] was this:

They [THE JEWS] know from experience [THE HOLOCAUST] what it means to be victims of collective violence [HOLOCAUST] and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms [MEDIA SCRUTINY OVER SUPPOSED ABUSES OF POWER].

He then read a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend— that’s right, he can say these things, because HE HAS A JEWISH FRIEND:

I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world… The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.

Let’s zoom in and enhance this statement:

the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt

I have a little trouble with this phrase. Clearly in the case of the Catholic Church, “the personal responsibility” referenced is that of the individual priests and church officials who did terrible terrible things to children, and the wrongfully projected “collective guilt” is the wildly inappropriate assumption that those priests’ direct superiors should have done something, anything, besides putting their fingers in their ears and saying “La la la la, I can’t hear you! The real problem here is the pill!” MAKES SENSE SO FAR.

And in the case of the Jews, the “collective guilt” is antisemitism as a whole, but what is the “personal responsibility” part of the equation in this case? What is the thing that one Jew did that people hate all Jews for? This can’t be a reference to the Judas’s betrayal, can it?

Is this “anonymous Jew” implying that the Pope is responsible for allowing a pedophile priest to return to ministry only in the same way that all Jews are responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus?

Um, because that’s kind of antisemitic.

HOLOCAUST MUCH?