Selective Campaigning and Cover-Ups
Over the weekend, I read an interesting article on Huffington Post by Roy Fitzgerald. The article was titled, “Should Richard Dawkins be Arrested for Covering up Atheist Crimes?” While there are many problems with this article, there is one issue in particular I want to talk about.
Fitzgerald’s main focus is on Dawkins’s “selective campaigning” against the crimes of the Pope and the Catholic Church. This argument has also been used by the Church itself when they attempted to deflect from their crimes by pointing out that guidance councilors, couches, and others also have sexually molest children.
In Fitzgerald’s article, his claim is that Dawkins is selectively focusing on the Catholic Church and not talking about the crimes of Hitler or Stalin. This Fitzgerald claims amounts to a cover-up. While Dawkins would obviously agree that Hitler and Stalin ought to also be arrested if they weren’t of course DEAD, it should be pointed out that Fitzgerald himself is selectively campaigning for Dawkins’s arrest while ignoring (according to Fitzgerald’s own logic covering up) the crimes of so many other criminals in the world.
The point I am trying to make is that everyone selectively focuses on issues and crimes that we feel particularly passionate about. That doesn’t mean that we think other criminals should not be held accountable for their crimes. However, when the entire justice system as a whole ignores a particular crime because of the power of the person or people committing the crime, then there is a real problem.
The fact is that it isn’t that the Pope is selectively campaigning against other things like condom use, the Beatles, and gays that is the problem. It is that he has actively and deliberately attempted to cover up these crimes. As spiritual leader of about a billion people, he seems to think he is above the law.
No one can focus on all crimes or all issues we disagree with and find immoral. We selectively focus on those issues which we feel passionate about. Just because Dawkins or someone else doesn’t talk about a particular issue doesn’t suggest or even imply that such an issue is morally acceptable.
Filed under: Catholics, culture war, journalism, logic, morality, Religion
