When Bill Maher can make an offensive remark about the Pope equal to that of Don Imus’ remark about the women’s basketball team at Rutgers University and no one calls for him to be fired from HBO there is something wrong with our social justice in the United States.

Perhaps Christians need advocates to represent their rights, as blacks have in the Rev’s Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Last Friday on HBO Bill Maher insulted the Pope and called Catholicism a “cult” that promotes “organized pedophilia.”

Maher went into an extensive monologue on his program insulting Pope Benedict XVI prior to his visit to the US today saying, “I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That’s right, the Pope is coming to America this week and, ladies, he’s single.”

When Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed hoes” Sharpton and Jackson immediately called for his firing. ABC complied and he was off the air.

Maher, a political liberal, has made outlandish statements targeting religion in general and ridiculing Christians especially. His mother was Jewish but he says that he “was raised Catholic.”

Catholic League President Bill Donohue responded that Maher “lied when he said the Pope ‘used to be a Nazi.’ Like all young men in Germany at the time, he was conscripted into a German Youth organization (from which he fled as soon as he could). Every responsible Jewish leader has acknowledged this reality and has never sought to brand the Pope a Nazi. That job falls to Maher.”

Why should Maher be treated any differently than Imus?

Primarily because the Christians do not have rabble rousers the likes of Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson, who can turn on the main stream media.

Where is that media today? Silently silent! This includes Media Matters, The New York Times, NBC, ABC and CBS.

Maher further said, “If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader,. If you have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’ It’s like, if you can’t pay your mortgage, you’re a deadbeat. But if you can’t pay a million mortgages, you’re Bear Stearns and we bail you out. And that is who the Catholic Church is: the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia — too big too fat.”

Mary Ann Kreitzer, president of the Catholic Media Coalition, an umbrella group of Catholic organizations, called the comments, “a horrifying anti-Catholic diatribe.”

Kreitzer noted that one percent of priests were pedophiles, less than the number of pedophiles in US public schools and other institutions.

Maher frequently has well-known celebrities, politicians, and journalists on his program and they should refuse to come on his show after these comments and his audience should boycott the show.

Maher wouldn’t get away with such comments if they involved gays, Muslims, blacks or other religious groups. He too should be fired for his falsehoods and lack of respect for Christians and the Pope.