Roland Martin is making a fool of himself, and CNN isn't helping

Earlier in the week I read up briefly on the controversy concerning Roland Martin's screed against Pope Benedict and the issuing of the CDF document clarifying what Lumen Gentium says about the nature of the Church.

Today NewsBusters does an excellent job of revealing Martin's offensive double-standards, and is right to peg CNN along with him:

Martin's column, as described by CNN, "are part of an occasional series of commentaries on CNN.com that offers a broad range of perspectives, thoughts, and points of view." CNN's own past indicates that they probably aren't going to make the "range of perspectives" very broad. When controversy erupted over the Danish Mohammed cartoons in 2006, they took the following stance: "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam." Apparently, the same kind of respect won't be shown to Catholics who might be offended by Roland Martin's column. In their own descriptive for the column, CNN summarizes Martin's viewpoint with the following: "This is evidence of [Pope Benedict's] ego being more important than work of Christ, columnist says."

Martin became a CNN contributor earlier this year, and besides his regular appearances on "American Morning," has written a couple of columns on religion and politics on CNN's website. In the first article on the subject, he criticized Christian conservatives' focus on abortion and homosexuality. In the second, he continued his criticism of pro-life Christians. In both of these articles, Martin identifies himself as a Christian.

I guess my bigger problem than Martin's own vituperation is CNN's endorsement of him. Crazies abound, but it's when news agencies like CNN give such folks a popular platform that things get bad.

Around St. Blog's, Carl Olson of Ignatius Press finds this "shameful and pathetic" (Go Carl) and Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers is seeing about writing a response editorial. Go Jimmy. I hope he does. Martin's comments go far beyond stating a difference of opinion and he should answer both for his false statements and accusations.

Also, I think Jordan Potter in Jimmy's combox makes a good point when he says:

"Another sign that Roland Martin is an anti-Catholic bigot is that he obviously did not read the new CDF document that he is mocking and derisively dismissing. Either that, or he read it and has chosen to deliberately lie about what it says. Take your pick -- but either way, he's a bigot, and lacking in intellectual honesty."

Martin has a blog and I'm happy to see that some Papists are making their voices heard. Maybe with a little charity and intellectual challenge Martin will reconsider his words.