A newspaper cartoon satire of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, captioned "Celebration of Spring at St. Pedophilia's," has readers up in arms over what they say is an unfair and bigoted attack against the Catholic religion.
The parody, drawn by famed cartoonist Pat Oliphant, shows a gang of priests chasing a crowd of pre-teen altar boys down the steps of a church.
In the drawing one bystander comments, "I'll go tell the Bishop." Another responds, "The Bishop has first dibs." A third onlooker remarks, "If I was the Pope, I'd marry a few of them off."
The cartoon's full caption reads, "Celebration of Spring at St. Pedophilia's - the Annual Running of the Altar Boys."
The cartoon sparked outrage in Las Vegas, Nev., where it ran in the Wednesday print edition of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Las Vegas talk show host Mark Edwards devoted his entire Wednesday morning program on KDWN to the controversy.
"This is the most distasteful cartoon that I have ever, ever, ever seen!" the radio talker, who is Catholic, told NewsMax.com later in the day. "I'm very upset about this."
Curiously, the Oliphant cartoon does not appear on the Review-Journal's Web site - but is still available on the cartoonist's own Web site archives, where a complete compendium of his drawings can be accessed going back for months. "St. Pedophilia" first appeared on March 21.
Oliphant is one of the most widely syndicated cartoonists in the country. But it's unclear how many newspapers decided not to carry his "Spring at St. Pedophilia's" out of fear of offending Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike.
Edwards said he personally complained to editors at the Review-Journal, who defended their decision to run the cartoon by invoking freedom of the press.
One letter to the editor complained to the paper Thursday: "Your decision to run the Pat Oliphant editorial cartoon 'The Annual Running of The Altar Boys' was wrong. ... I just do not need the Review-Journal to make me feel like I am a part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy."