Does Karl Rove Own Slate?

This morning, Slate (a magazine I respect) ran a piece entitled The Movie the Vatican Won't Want You To See. It goes on to take seriously the allegations of a documentary made by a group who wants to discredit Cardinal Mahony of Los Angelos. And it even accuses Pope Benedict of complicity in covering up pedophilia, which is exactly the opposite of what happened. Patrick Kenny in the Irish Examiner sets the record straight:

"In 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger reserved exclusive Church jurisdiction over such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, primarily with the aim of speeding up the defrocking of priests.... If ... this Pope is responsible for a massive cover-up of child abuse cases, he has a strange way of showing it in practice. On two separate occasions within the first 13 months of his papacy he imposed strict penalties on famous founders of religious orders accused of abuse. The first was Fr Gino Burresi, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary... Following an investigation into allegations of abuse, the Pope banned him practicing as a priest in any context whatsoever. For a priest, especially the founder of an order, this is a stunning Church penalty.... The same happened a year later in the case of 86-year-old Mexican Fr Marcial Maciel , the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Hugely influential in the Church, his order was one of the fastest growing worldwide and has an associated lay group with tens of thousands of members. As a cardinal, Ratzinger initiated an investigation into accusations against Maciel; as Pope he imposed a ban on public practice as a priest and a requirement to live a life of penance. Pope Benedict still took a consistently hard line even when there was only a question mark of suspicion."

Doesn't Slate realize that this kind of unthinking bias is exactly makes Catholic run into the arms of Republicans? The sad thing is, anti-Catholicism is still rampant in this country, as reflected in the current witchhunt (and it is a witchhunt).