Investigate Esquire – OpEd

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On the front page of the website of Esquire magazine, there is an article by its executive editor, Mark Warren, titled, “Investigate the Vatican” [click here].

Mark Warren’s article gives new meaning to the word “rant,” for it is the most turgid declamation on the Catholic Church in print. He begins by applauding the New Yorker for its critical piece on Scientology, founded by L. Ron Hubbard. But he is angry nonetheless. “Wouldn’t the resources and time of journalists be better directed at the finances, earthly corruption, and raw power of the Catholic Church, an institution that wields influence incalculably greater that L. Ron Hubbard’s itty-bitty religion?” Then the rant begins in earnest.

“I mean, I grew up believing that every breath I drew sent a god-made-man named Jesus Christ writhing on the cross to which he had been nailed…so that he might die for my sins so that I might live. And yet, I was born not innocent but complicit in this lynching, incomprehensibly having to apologize and atone for this barbarism for all my days and feel terrible about myself and all mankind.” Only an ex-Catholic would be capable of writing something like this. Then, of course, he laces into the pope blaming him for the homosexual scandal.

Having never heard of this guy, I quickly found out that Warren’s hero is poor Christopher Hitchens. More revealing is his characterization of Osama bin Laden as merely “ridiculous.” By contrast, he speaks of “the dashing Bill Donohue” in comparatively worse terms, provoking him to ask “what on earth have we done to deserve [him]?” Much, I would say.

The time has come to “Investigate Esquire.” You know it’s in trouble when it features screeds like this, and when it flags such penetrating articles as, “How to Sew a Button Easily” and “How to Hit a Softball.” Now we know why GQ has a circulation more than double that of Esquire’s.

Contact Mark Warren: [email protected]

William Donohue

William Donohue is the current president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in the United States, and has held that position since 1993.

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