Newsweek loves atheists, and the atheist it loves best is Christopher Hitchens. Last week, it highlighted its publication of a Hitchens attack on the pope and the Catholic Church (but also a sustained, if dated, attack on Mel Gibson and his father) on its cover. The subject was the controversial decision to lift the excommunications of four bishops of the Lefebvre schism, one of whom made ridiculous Holocaust-denial remarks. Newsweek also asked conservative Catholic author George Weigel for an article on the controversy. But you can see which one editor Jon Meacham clearly favors: Hitchens was promoted on the cover and published in the printed magazine; Weigel got the “web exclusive” scraps.

Like many conservatives in the church, Weigel isn’t sure the pope’s attempts at reconciliation will work, but at least there can be a presumption of good will. You’d get nothing like that from Hitchens. The headline was “The Pope’s Denial Problem: By reconciling with extremist bishops, Benedict embraces the far-right fringe.” Keep looking for the words “far left” anywhere in Newsweek. It could take years.

The text box under a picture of Pope Benedict read: “Ask yourself, first, why it was the church took until 1965 to repudiate the charge of ‘deicide’ against the Jews.” Hitchens argued that a thoroughgoing anti-Semitism was a “return to traditional and old-established preachments.” That’s factually incorrect. Hitchens and his Newsweek fan club ignore documents like the Pope Gregory X’s 1272 declaration ordering protections for Jewish people against compelled baptisms and other persecutions, not to mention more recent documents, like Pius XI’s 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical.

Media liberals clearly see orthodox Christianity and Catholicism as an enormous obstacle to sexual liberation, and transparently enjoy demeaning its leaders.