Archbishop Mueller compares US attitude toward Catholic church to anti-Jewish pogroms

The story below from the Vatican Insider says CDF head Archbishop Mueller compares American criticisms of the Church in regards to handling the sexual abuse crisis to pogroms of Jews in Europe. Really! One wonders if the good archbishop has any idea of what a pogram actually is. Is the military showing up in the middle of the night to haul Catholics off to concentration camps in the New Mexico dessert?

There is plenty of real religious persecution in the world today. For example, see the recent report from Britain's Daily Mail : US Pastor sentenced to 8 years in Iranian prison for preaching Christianity. An excerpt follows:
An American pastor from Idaho has been sentenced to eight years in one of Iran's harshest prisons for preaching Christianity in Iranian homes, it was revealed today. Saeed Abedini, a U.S. citizen who was born in Iran, has been held since September and charged with 'threatening the national security of Iran. The 32-year-old father of two says he was in the country only to establish an orphanage and was not preaching Christianity.

Some people in Rome are way over-dramatic in playing the victim anytime the clerical structure is criticized.

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ALESSANDRO ALVIANI
BERLIN
Vatican Insider
Feb. 2,2013

The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mgr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has launched a biting attack of the mood toward the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Europe, comparing it to an anti-Jewish “pogrom” in German weekly Die Welt. “The campaigns which are specifically targeted at discrediting the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Europe have led to clerics in some sectors being publicly insulted in a vulgar way,” the former bishop of Regensburg said. “An artificially instigated anger is building, occasionally echoing the sentiment of the pogroms against Jews in Europe,” he added. Attacks against the Church are launched on many blogs and on television. The instruments adopted in these attacks “recall the struggles of totalitarian ideologies against Christianity.”

In his interview with Die Welt, the cardinal also criticises the process of dialogue that is currently underway between bishops and lay people in dioceses across Germany. The fact that there is dialogue is a positive thing but essential questions must be dealt with instead of “dredging up the same problems every time.”

Full article at the Vatican Insider