On April 11th, Bill Maher made the following remarks on his HBO show, Real Time:

Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there’s going to be some child-fucking going on. In fact, whenever a cult leader sets himself up as “God’s infallible wing man” here on earth, lock away the kids.

Which is why 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! [laughter] Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Bill, you can’t be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy Texas cult! For one thing, altar boys can’t even get pregnant.”

But, really, what tripped up the “little cult on the prairie”—[laughter]—was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided. Religions get parades. How does the Catholic Church get away with all of their buggery? VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME!

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’s who the Catholic Church is, the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia. Too big to fail.

When the – when the current Pope was in his previous Vatican job as John Paul’s Dick Cheney—he wrote a letter instructing every Catholic bishop to keep the sex abuse of minors secret until the statute of limitations ran out. And that’s the Church’s attitude: “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.”

Which is fine. Far be it from me to criticize religion. But, just remember one thing: if the Pope was, instead of a religious figure, merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of daycare centers where thousands of employees had been caught molesting kids and then covering it up, he’d be arrested faster than you can say, “Who wants to touch Mister Wiggle?”

Shockingly, the Catholic League was up in arms about this (Maher's comments, not the pedophilia) and started a full-frontal attack on HBO, in attempt to get Bill Maher fired. This past weekend, he responded:

And I bring this up because last week I got into some trouble with the Catholic League – not the first time with the Catholic League--how many Catholic League members? Not my biggest fans – because I said in our little essay ending the show, I said, “The Pope” – and I looked at it again; I looked at the words carefully – “used to be a Nazi.”

Okay, now, first of all, it was a joke. Okay, we’re in a comedic context. I said he “used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats, and, ladies, he’s single.” [laughter] So, right away, we’re in the context of a joke. Okay, and “used to.” Now, but, you know what? You got me, okay. The Pope was not a Nazi. When he was a teenager, he was in the Hitler Youth. Which meant that he said the oath directly to Hitler and not to the Nazis. Which is sort of worse. Okay.

But, wait a second. The thing that argues for their side of this is that, you know what, he was coerced into that. He was a teenager. I wouldn’t blame any teen – he was a fourteen-year-old kid in Nazi Germany. Of course he’s going to do what they tell him to do.

So, on that score, you know what, my Catholic friends, I will never make the “Pope is a Nazi” joke again. Because, you’re technically right, okay, and also because it distracts from the main point. And the main point I was making was that if the Pope, instead of a religious figure, was the CEO of a chain of nationwide daycare centers who had thousands of employees who had been caught molesting children and then covering it up, he would have been in jail.