Is Bill Donohue Implicitly Encouraging Violence Against Bill Maher?

On the April 24 edition of his show, Bill Maher made a couple of jokes about Pope Francis (this one was a compliment) and Christianity more broadly.

The Catholic League reports:

While discussing the Armenian genocide, Maher said, “You know who said it’s a genocide? The pope. The pope was like f*** yeah it’s a genocide. The pope has huge balls. You would too if you were 78 and never had sex.”

Maher’s assault on the Eucharist was vile. He spoke about a toaster that can customize a burnt image of your face on it. When an image of Jesus was shown on the screen, Maher asked, “What kind of needy loner says, ‘hey look at that bread you’re eating, it’s really me.’”

Now, both of those jokes are incredibly innocuous. If you're offended by that, you're overly sensitive. But at least the silliness stops there.

Not, however, if you are Bill Donohue. Here's the action that he called for regarding Maher's jokes (emphasis added):

Maher does what he does because a) he is an unrelenting bigot b) HBO officials allow him to trash Catholicism with impunity and, c) Catholics will not threaten to kill him. Since neither the first nor the third reason is going to change, that leaves it to HBO to finally act responsibly.

The first two reasons on the list ("he is an unrelenting bigot" and "HBO officials allow him to trash Catholicism with impunity") are described negatively. It's obvious that Donohue wants them to change. Then, he includes a statement that Catholics won't kill Maher. If we follow the way of thinking that the other two reasons suggest, then we can reasonably infer that that Catholics won't kill Maher is unfortunate and should change.

Secondly, Donohue says that because this won't change, "that leaves it to HBO to finally act responsibly." This suggests that HBO acting is a last resort, and that it's unfortunate that it had to get to this point, as in "if only Catholics would kill him, we wouldn't have to go to HBO."

I don't really think that Donohue wants Maher to be killed. Nor does his stupid post explicitly state it. But a reasonable interpretation of it certainly suggests it. Of course, after his reaction to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, this post is not surprising.