Time-Warner/HBO performer Bill Maher has apologized:

“My statements on the April 11th edition of Real Time with Bill Maher were intended solely as an indictment of the Catholic Church’s cavalier mishandling of the child abuse scandals over the years,” said Maher. “My comments did not in any way refer to the LGBT community, and I am sorry if they were misinterpreted that way.”

LGBT?  Wasn’t the issue his calling Benedict XVI a one-time Nazi and the church a “child-abusing religious cult”?  Why the apology to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transsexuals?  Here’s why:

In discussing the Pope and the church, he

misappropriated the historic slogan “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” leading some viewers to believe Maher was making a connection between gays and pedophilia.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), surprised to hear this from Maher, “a staunch supporter of LGBT equality,”

reached out to Maher to discuss the implications of his improper use of the slogan, and the host issued [the above-quoted] clarification and apology.

All right, that’s settled.  As for the pope as former Nazi and the church as cult, he

acknowledged that the Catholic League [for Religious and Civil Rights] was right when we said that Joseph Ratzinger was forced to join a German youth organization (from which he fled at the first instance),

Says the League in a release, adding, “Maher then said that if a CEO were in charge of an institution that housed molesters, he would be fired.”

Or as Blithe Spirit correspondent Bonnie recounted:

Bill sort of apologized.  he said his “opponents” were technically right, and that he will never make a “pope is a nazi” joke ever again… but he did say that if the pope was a CEO of a big company that runs day care centers and they found all the same sex abuse they’ve found, and covered it up, that the pope would be in jail.

He further defended himself as an equal-opportunity satirist, saying it’s unfair to say he only goes after catholics and describing a skit he did belittling muslims.

(A fuller treatment of all this is at Newsbusters, with a link there to MsUnderstimated.)

The church’s defensive coordinator in these matters, Catholic League director Bill Donohue, expatiated:

[T]o suggest that Pope Benedict XVI was in charge of policing molesters, and failed in doing so, is patently absurd.

As Pope John Paul II’s right-hand man, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s principal job was to make sure that theologians were faithfully presenting the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was, to some extent, the Church’s Academic Dean, someone who was charged with enforcing academic standards. He was not the Church’s Dean of Students, i.e., he was not discharged [sic] with enforcing codes of conduct.

Moreover:

Maher has to understand that no one person, including the pope, could possibly be held accountable for the behavior of its employees in a global institution. There are priests from Boston to Bosnia, and it is simply preposterous for any one person to know exactly what is going on everywhere at any given time. Maher would have been better advised to focus on those bishops who proved to be enablers—it is the bishop’s job to know what is going on in his diocese, not the pope’s.

That’s interesting: go after the bishops.  In any case, Donohue would like it if “Maher gave up his Catholic-bashing obsession once and for all.”

I would too.  There’s humor and there’s overkill, pricking balloons and blowing up buildings.  Ideally, the satirist comes up with something almost everybody can laugh at. 

The late Joel Wells, editor of The Critic magazine (Chicago-based, also late), had an almost Wodehousian touch, as in the 1960s cartoon with the priest announcing his resignation because of the church’s anti-human rights position in this or that in one pane and introducing his new wife in another.

My first book, What a Modern Catholic Believes About Prayer was a Thomas More Press publication.  Wells was its editor.  I signed a contract in his and Dan Herr’s offices on State Street, above their book store — Herr was the publisher — and Wells put out his hand and said, “Now hand over the keys to your car.”

Dry, perfect.