Can't Pope Benedict XVI deliver a thoughtful and truthful Christmas message to the Roman Curia without getting the media and gays all worked up?

Leave it to one blogger named Diogenes to ridicule the media:

The Pope's speech that ran for several pages, and the reference to sexuality occupied a couple of sentences. That didn't matter. It is axiomatic, among critics of Catholicism, that the Church is obsessed with sex. So when a Catholic leader says something about sexuality, the media fixate on it. Never mind the other 3,500 words of the papal address; these 50 words are the important ones-- the only important ones-- because they're about sex.  

The Pope spoke to the Curia about the Synod of Bishops and the preaching of the Word of God. 

Oh, yeah, sure. I know. But what did he say about sex?

The Pope spoke about World Youth Day and the missionary impulse of the Pauline year.

Sure, sure. All that stuff. What'd he say about sex?

The Pope spoke about protecting the environment, and saving humans from inhuman ideologies.

See? See?! He's obsessed! He can't let it go!

Washington Times columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner hit the nail on the head when he said the following from his commentary:

Yet the real issue is not the pope's supposed homophobia. It is his critics' blatant Christophobia - their rabid hatred and fanatical intolerance of basic Christian teachings. The pope is not opening some new offensive against homosexuality; he is simply restating basic Catholic doctrine based on scripture and the church's vast, accumulated intellectual heritage.

Kuhner delivers the knockout blow:

Now the pope's enemies deliberately twist his words to demonize him. There is not a hateful bone in his body. To caricature him as a homophobe, never mind as calling for a jihad against gays and lesbians, is not only dishonest but pathetic. They cannot defeat him intellectually or morally and so must resort to ad hominem attacks.

Their efforts will fail. Pope Benedict is the spiritual titan of the West. He is right. His critics are wrong. And, in the end, he will be vindicated.

There's more from where they came from. To hear Damian Thompson tell it:

He's done it again. The Pope has reiterated unfashionable Catholic teaching on sexuality. And at Christmas! What poor taste. Moreover, he has dared to do so in the context of a discussion of (pause to genuflect) the environment. Is nothing sacred?

larger view

Thanks to my buddy Dave Hartline of The Catholic Report for the link to a blog that points out the hypocrisy by the mainstream media for brutalizing Sarah Palin and yet fawning over Caroline Kennedy as she stakes her claim to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat:

http://www.redstate.com/jos...

I'll leave it to Hartline to make sense of it all:

I just don't get it. As I have said before, this fascination with celebrity is beyond my comprehension. Has the U.S. Senate turned into the British House of Lords? What experience does Caroline Kennedy have besides DNA which, believe it or not, former NYC Mayor Ed Koch says is good enough for him? Hizzoner has appearently drank the Kool Aid as well. Reports have it that Caroline Kennedy rarely voted in the last 20 years and will soon come out for gay marriage as well. Will that really play in the Empire State beyond the NYC metro area? I don't think so.

larger view

Yep, for the first time in five years the event was publicly celebrated in the Iraqi capital, no thanks to the grinches who almost stole it by constantly sniping at and haranguing Bush to bring the troops home before the job was done and deeming the war effort a lost cause with their defeatist attitude. Instead the thanks go to the president (the current one, not the incoming one who would not admit the surge worked) for hanging in there.

Perhaps the Christmas celebration there isn't quite the way Americans celebrate it here; at least the spirit there is more hospitable than we are witnessing among certain American grinches, the ones who presumably would've gotten a coal in their stocking yesterday.