Unwanted "satire" from Judy Rebick.

Toronto--Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL), has objected to a website featuring an animated cartoon showing the new Pope giving a statue of the Virgin Mary a Nazi salute and muttering, "Heil Mary" in a German accent.

The cartoon by Toronto artist Mike Constable is anti-Catholic and insulting--"a slam to Catholicism and the Pope," the CCRL states.

Feminist crusader Judy Rebick, a Jewish anti-life, anti-family agitator, who publishes the site on which the cartoon appears, contends that the cartoon is funny, that Canada has a long history of satire--sometimes very biting satire--and that Constable is their artist and has complete artistic freedom to do whatever he wants to do.

Constable seems to specialize in material which goes beyond what is acceptable in a civilized society. Last year he published an animated cartoon, Mel Brooks' The Passion, showing the Jewish comedian as a Christ figure with the crown of thorns spinning around his head.

Comment:

To depict the Pope as a Nazi is a gross insult; Rebick's refusal to offer an apology--and the implied notion that in present day Canada there is no public pressure for them to do so--speaks volumes about the country's state of mind. Rebick is a former Marxist, a former spokeswoman for Henry Morgentaler, presently engaged as a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Rebick repeated her allegations about the background of Pope Benedict as a Hitler Youth on CTV's Newsnet "countdown" show with Mike Duffy and considered that sufficient ground for the cartoon. Duffy never challenged her.

Judy Rebick just published her memoirs, Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution. For an excellent critical review of Rebick's life work, see Paula Adamick's column in C.I., May 2005, p.16.