Simcha Fisher on the Odious Pewsitter Site

Simcha Fisher on the Odious Pewsitter Site July 15, 2014

In parts of the Islamic world, women can get horsewhipped and killed for the “crime” of getting raped.  That’s because, in certain barbarous parts of the world, all that matters is that the female organism underwent the act of coitus, forced or consensual, to incur ritual guilt with very real penalties.  It’s a mindset that comes from the Stone Age.  Even by the time of the Patriarchs (particularly Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar) some dim sense that the male in the relationship might have some teensy weensy bit of responsibility to bear in the maltreatment of women.  Yet here we are 4000 years later and not only are Muslim savages still torturing and butchering rape victims, but the Greatest Catholics of All Time over at Pewsitter are describing victims of Boko Haram’s multiple rapes as “admitting” they were raped–a telling word choice. As a general rule, you tell of something that happened. You admit to something you are guilty of. Simcha Fisher replies with both barrels–as they deserve.

Update: some of my more charitable readers insist that “admit” is patient of a reading that is not as unfeeling as it sounds to Simcha, me and rather a lot of female readers (particularly victims of sex crimes). Okay. Summoning “love believeth all things” to its summit, I will buy that and apologize for seeing red. But I also don’t think Simcha was particularly wrong to see red. Pewsitter has a long record of saying odious things. The fact that this may have only been semi-odious is nothing to write home about.

Moral: a website written by anonymous cowards who regularly go out of their way to put the darkest possible constructions on the pope’s words should perhaps consider a bit more circumspection about throwing stones from their glass house when they themselves speak so recklessly. The best that can be said for their wording was that it was, ahem, “poorly chosen” and (what’s is it that those guys love to hurl at Francis? Oh yeah!) “sends a confusing message”. And the rest of the site remains a clearinghouse for contempt for much of the Church’s magisterial teaching and this pope in particular. Take the log out of your own eyes, anonymous Pewsitter cowards.


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