Cardinal and Abe

Reading Sean Cardinal O'Malley's blog is often difficult, because virtually everything makes him incredibly happy and pleased -- except, of course, human tragedy caused by natural disasters. You know, lines like, "The director there, Father Thomas Hoar, SSE, is doing a wonderful job." (But don't miss the beautiful, seaside pictures in that link!)

But this recent blog entry from 8/31/07 had a little zinger buried in it:

I also want to acknowledge the great work of both Abe Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, and Sister Celia Deutsch, a Sister of Sion, who has been very active in ADL as well.

For those people with short memories -- a list that usually wouldn't include Cardinal O'Malley -- Abe Foxman is the national head of the ADL that stuck by his story that the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey in 1915-9 was not genocide. Watertown pulled out of the ADL's No Place for Hate program, and Foxman also fired Andrew Tarsy, New England regional ADL's director for speaking out against ADL's national policy of genocide denial.

Under pressure, Foxman later acknowledged on 8/21/07 that Turkey's mass killings were "tantamount to genocide", which was not a 100% admission (but close enough for most people). I could imagine a lot of positive comments I might make if I were the Cardinal -- like "Abe Foxman has a long history of doing good and has survived recent events well" -- but I wouldn't characterize him, a couple of days after relenting on the Armenian genocide denial as doing "great work." He screwed up big time by playing politics (trying not to offend Turkey, thereby keeping it as a pro-Israel Muslim country) rather than calling a genocide what it really was.

Cardinal O'Malley's blog also contains a photo of Foxman appearing quite weary. It's hard to cover up anything there.