Protesting too much.

Item: The London opening of Corpus Christi last month was marked with protests as it was in New York and at the Edinburgh Festival.

The play, written by gay writer Terrence McNally, has Jesus born to a white trash Texan mother given to lewd language. Later, Christ is depicted in intimate embrace with his lover Judas Iscariot. Still later, he is called "king of the queers", blesses a gay marriage, and is crucified wearing a pair of Calvin Klein underpants.

No surprise that more than 100 protesters gathered outside the Pleasance Theatre for a prayer vigil that lasted three hours. No surprise either that tickets are sold out.

Item: New York mayor Rudy Guiliani was severely criticised earlier this fall for trying to close down the Britart exhibition Sensation at the Brooklyn Museum. Predictably, the liberal defenders of a show full of routine repugnance--including Chris Ofili's dung and porn-adorned Madonna, a portrait of child killer Myra Hindley made with children's handprints, Damien Hirst's rotting cow's head, and a bisected pig suspended in formaldehyde (try hanging that over your sofa!)--were out in full force to defend the right of artists to gross everybody out, never mind the smell.

Item: In his book about Pius XII, John Cornwell insists his research into the Pope's wartime activities was intended to exonerate the pontiff from the charge that he was culpably silent about the Holocaust. Unfortunately, Cornwell insists he tripped over some documents which revealed that he was...ohmygawd...Hitler's Pope! Never mind that Pius XII's aversion to Nazism was well known; that in the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender sorge (Pacelli was one of the drafters), the Vatican was one of the first to denounce the evils of Nazism; that behind the scenes Pius exerted intense diplomatic pressure to save the lives of Jews; that Jewish sources calculate that his efforts saved about 850,000 Jewish lives and that in many situations (such as in Belgium) countless lives were saved by silence rather than open denunciation which invariably triggered further slaughter (as in Holland). "Any propaganda attempt undertaken by the Catholic Church against Hitler's Reich would not only have been provoked suicide...but would ha ve hastened the execution of still more Jews and priests," said Robert Kempner, UN delegate to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. But hey, never let it be said that Cornwell allowed the truth to interfere with rocketing book sales.

Item: The film Cider House Rules starring Michael Caine and Toby Maguire premiered at the London Film Festival in early November to huge applause. Based on the novel by John Irving, the film is the story of a kind-hearted abortionist (Caine) who heads a large orphanage of adorable moppets in rural Maine in the early 1940s. A charming anti-Christian and ether addict, the doctor is portrayed as a wholesome, rugged individualist whose veins course with the milk of human kindness as he attempts to raise the young Homer Wells (Maguire) in his own image--a no-nonsense secular saint. (Not!) The film is gorgeous to look at with magnificent music; I could have been watching the Waltons. And if I hadn't been watching closely, I could've developed sugar diabetes that very afternoon.

So what do these items have in common?

Apart from being total frauds, each is a direct attack on Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.

With Corpus Christi, the message goes: Christ was an outsider; gays are outsiders; ergo, to be gay is to be Christlike. And its defenders will tell you this with a straight face! As if their play wasn't the most ridiculous production in London.

With Sensation, the attack is just as perverse. Its defenders say that any attack on 'art' is an attack on freedom and on the artist's 'right' to be offensive, blasphemous, obscene and idiotic. I guess nobody told them that great art isn't supposed to induce giggles.

With Hitler's Pope, the attack is more cunning. Given huge currency, with two lengthy articles in the Sunday Times (no friend of the Catholic Church), most readers would not be aware of how ill-founded Cornwell's allegations are.

With Cider House Rules, the attack is romantic, sentimental and seductive. Its message is that anyone opposed to abortion is a tight-lipped bigot and that goodness without God is possible, even heroic. In other words, secular humanism is the answer.

As to whether one should protest any of the above, there was a time when I thought so. Today, I am less certain.

Why? I am mindful of the aphorism that all that evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing, but I am reminded of Jesus's response to His enemies--which was to be silent and to advocate turning the other cheek.

Though many people might view such a response as hopelessly passive, even irresponsible, silence is often the strongest rebuke. It confers no legitimacy on false allegations. It also forces the slanderer or blasphemer to stand alone with his words and deeds.

Paula Adamick writes from London, England, where she publishes the National Post, a paper for Canadian expatriates.