Anti-Catholicism (An Op-Ed the NY Times refused to publish)

Archdiocese of NY ^ | October 29, 2009 | Archbishop Timothy Dolan

[NYer]

October 29, 2009

The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it.

 
FOUL BALL!
By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York
 
October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!
 
Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism. 
          
It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”
          
If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:
 

• On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.  

• On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

• Five days later, October 21, the Times gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.

• Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops, as mentioned in this blog on Monday.   Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will not receive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands – in some cases tens of thousands – of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALL school-children and their parents to be treated equally? 
 
The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.
 
I guess my own background in American history should caution me not to hold my breath.

Then again, yesterday was the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.

[NYer]

[netmilsmom]

We’re thin skinned.
(do I have to put a sarcasm tag on this?)

[khnyny]

The NY Times is scum. Liberals/communists/marxists really hate Catholics, btw. Targeted attacks against the Church have been on the left’s agenda for many years.

[Alex Murphy]

We’re thin skinned.

You'll get no argument from me.

[vladimir998]

And there are plenty of Freepers who ally themselves with that Leftist rag in that effort too.

I never forget the simple truth: all Protestants are Liberals.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

True enough, but the Church hierarchy needs to do a much better job of policing its own and promoting Catholic orthodoxy at Catholic colleges and universities where the anti-Catholicism going on is well within their jurisdiction. It's no good to cry foul at The New York Times when Notre Dame and Georgetown are harboring anti-Catholics and heretics.

[Alex Murphy]

I never forget the simple truth: all Protestants are Liberals.

And no Catholics voted for Obama. Right.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“And no Catholics voted for Obama. Right.”

Many Catholics think (really, feel) like Protestants. They are Liberals and Catholics-In-Name-Only. Liberalism is infectious.

[Coleus]

teachers and coaches are, by far, the biggest abusers out there.

[Salvation]

**The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.**

Bravo, Archbishop Dolan!

[Salvation]

You are right.

NO REAL Catholic voted for Obama.

Only CINOs did.

[netmilsmom]

>>You’ll get no argument from me<<

Yup, that sarcasm tag was needed.

[Alex Murphy]

You are right. NO REAL Catholic voted for Obama. Only CINOs did.

How many "real" Catholics would you say voted for McCain? Please use only scientifically provable numbers.

[boatbums]

I never forget the simple truth: all Protestants are Liberals.

By "all Protestants" do you mean any Christian not affiliated with the Catholic Church?

[Alex Murphy]

"I never forget the simple truth: all Protestants are Liberals."

By "all Protestants" do you mean any Christian not affiliated with the Catholic Church?

I wondered the same thing. The usual definition offered is that Protestant means "not Catholic and not Orthodox", which means we're actually getting this odd, frankly untenable argument:

"Only Catholics are Conservatives".

[kosta50]

It's simple: NYT didn’t publish his letter because it's too good and it's true. Liberals scream about tolerance and inclusiveness only when they want something; but don't ask them to be tolerant or inclusive, or to practice what they preach to others.

[netmilsmom]

>>I never forget the simple truth: all Protestants are Liberals.<<

Yikes! Did you forget the sarcasm tag there?
My sister is Baptist and more conservative than me.
My sister-in-law is Charismatic and militant conservative
My brother-in-law and his wife are Evangelical and conservative militant Pro-Life
My niece-in-law is from an independent “Bible Church” and conservative.

I would say that I know as many Protestant conservatives as Catholic conservatives.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“By “all Protestants” do you mean any Christian not affiliated with the Catholic Church?”

By Protestants I mean Protestants. The Eastern Orthodox are not Protestants. The Oriental Orthodox are not Protestants.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“I wondered the same thing. The usual definition offered is that Protestant means “not Catholic and not Orthodox”, which means we’re actually getting this odd, frankly untenable argument:”Only Catholics are Conservatives”.”

Liberalism is not a merely political issue. Read Liberalism is a Sin.