Archbishop Dolan takes on the New York Times

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York City is not happy with the New York Times. In a post from his personal blog yesterday, he bemoaned “the common, casual way [the paper] offends Catholic sensitivity, something they would never think of doing — rightly so — to the Jewish, Black, Islamic, or gay communities.”

He cites a couple of examples of what he means — the first a photo from a play reviewed as a “gleefully twisted tale of the secret lives of nuns,” complete with a man dressed as said nun; and then this review of a new art exhibition:

This glowingly reviewed not-to-be missed “art” exhibit comes to us from Harvard, and is a display of posters from ACT UP.  Remember them?  They invaded of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to disrupt prayer, trampled on the Holy Eucharist, insulted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was here for a conference, and yelled four letter words while exposing themselves to families and children leaving Mass at the Cathedral.  The man they most detested was Cardinal John O’Connor, who, by the way, spent many evenings caring quietly for AIDS patients, and, when everyone else ran from them, opened units for them at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center and St. Clare’s Hospital.  Too bad for him.  One of the posters in this “must see” exhibit is of Cardinal O’Connor, in the form of a condom, referred to as a “scumbag,” the “art” there in full view in the photograph above the gushing review in our city’s daily.

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I can completely understand Archbishop Dolan’s frustration. It seems every time you open a paper or scan the news, there is someone else misunderstanding or mocking the Catholic Church. Heck, the people at GetReligion have a full-time job pointing out the ways the mainstream media misses the boat on religion stories.

But in this case, I’m not sure we can lay the blame entirely at the Gray Lady’s feet. This kind of knee-jerk anti-Catholicism is in the culture, not just the paper — hence the plays and art exhibits that (oh-so originally) mock the Church. Yes, it’s true, the Times might not have so glowingly reviewed an exhibit that treated, say, Muslims the same way — and heaven knows that they have misrepresented the Church in plenty of news reports and opinion pieces before — but I’m afraid the problem goes beyond the pages of the Times.

What do readers think? Should the New York Times be singled out and held responsible for “anti-Catholicism” in its pages, or is it just reflecting our times?

Author

  • Margaret Cabaniss

    Margaret Cabaniss is the former managing editor of Crisis Magazine. She joined Crisis in 2002 after graduating from the University of the South with a degree in English Literature and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She now blogs at SlowMama.com.

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