Catholic League’s E-Feud With Rabbi Waskow
Josh Nathan-Kazis June 20, 2012
The Catholic League has ideas about where one leftist rabbi’s nose should be.
“[Y]ou have stuck your nose in where you don’t belong,” Catholic League president Bill Donohue told Rabbi Arthur Waskow in a private email exchange leaked to Buzzfeed.
In particular, Donohue thinks Waskow should keep out of the controversies over a Vatican crackdown on U.S. nuns and whether insurance provided by Catholic institutions should cover birth control. Waskow weighed in on those issues in a recent Huffington Post column.
Donohue, a regular right-wing commentator on cable news, is the figurehead for the Catholic advocacy group. Waskow is a longtime political activist and a member of the Jewish Renewal movement.
Buzzfeed has the entire email exchange between the two, which Donohue began and ended. A few highlights:
Donohue: “Moreover, since when is it the business of any religious leader to condemn the strictures of another religion? You are not only clueless about the situation concerning nuns, you have stuck your nose in where you don’t belong.”
Waskow: “Would you also suggest I keep my long Jewish nose out of some Catholic priests’ rape of Catholic children and some Catholic bishops’ protection of those priests from the law, because I’m not a Catholic? Perhaps you would.”
Donohue: Ed Koch, my friend, once said that Jews had better not make enemies of their Catholic friends since they have so few of them. Think about that the next time you feel compelled to attack my religion.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
