Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has long enjoyed flaunting her Catholic schoolgirl pedigree like a badge of honor.
Still, the Pulitzer Prize winner took her game to another level in a recent column attacking Rome for its investigation of religious orders which shelter sisters who oppose many of the church's teachings.
Wait, is "investigation" the right word?
"The Vatican is now conducting two inquisitions into the 'quality of life' of American nuns, a dwindling group with an average age of about 70, hoping to herd them back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence," she wrote.
Dowd rolled on. Reference to the fact Pope Benedict XVI was once a "conscripted member of the Hitler Youth"? Check. Reference to his Serengeti sunglasses and trademark red loafers? Check. Strategic silence on the fact that many traditionalist orders are growing, while liberal orders are shrinking? Check.
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan fired back at Dowd and her editors, going much further than the low-key criticism that mainstream religious leaders usually crank out when they are mad at the press.
His "Foul Ball!" essay was as subtle as a whack with a baseball bat.
Anti-Catholicism is alive and well, he argued. Check out the New York Times.
"It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime," wrote Dolan. "Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as 'the deepest bias in the history of the American people.' ... '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.' "
A clash between the conservative archbishop and the Gray Lady was probably inevitable. After all, the newspaper is currently led by an editor who -- months after 9/11, when he was still a columnist -- accused Rome of fighting on the wrong side of a global struggle between the "forces of tolerance and absolutism."
Calling himself a "collapsed Catholic," well "beyond lapsed," Bill Keller said the liberal spirit of Vatican II died when it "ran smack-dab into the sexual revolution. Probably no institution run by a fraternity of aging celibates was going to reconcile easily with a movement that embraced the equality of women, abortion on demand and gay rights."
The archbishop offered his "Foul Ball!" commentary to the Times editors, who declined to publish it. Dolan then posted the essay on his own Web site, while also offering it to FoxNews.com -- which promptly ran it.
Dolan was, of course, livid about Dowd's broadside, calling it an "intemperate," "scurrilous ... diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish or African-American religious issue."
The archbishop also accused the newspaper of various sins of omission and commission, asking the editors if they were printing stronger attacks on the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church than on other groups -- religious and secular -- that have struggled with sexual abuse. The Times, he claimed, was guilty of "selective outrage."
For example, he noted a recent report on child sexual abuse in Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community that, after addressing the facts, "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."
Dolan also accused the Times, and other media, of downplaying public reports in 2004 and 2007 that documented the problem of sexual abuse of minors by educators in public schools. It seems, he said, that major newspapers "only seem to have priests in their crosshairs."
This prickly dialogue is sure to continue. After all, the 59-year-old Dolan was installed as New York's 13th Catholic archbishop last April so he isn't going anywhere. And while America's most powerful newspaper faces a stunning array of financial challenges, the New York Times is still the New York Times.
Stay tuned.
"The Catholic Church is not above criticism," stressed Dolan. "We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critiques 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."
Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Contact him at tmattingly(at)cccu.org or www.tmatt.net)
ON RELIGION
American Nuns.
In fact the "investigation" of Nuns in America has been described by the Church as just that.
Instituting an inquiry from the former office of the inquisition (Archbishop Levada's office) is certainly an investigation. In fact, certain serious prerequisites need to be met before such an "inquiry" (investigation) can be instituted.
Rather than criticizing Maureen Dowd, the new Archbishop of New York might better have read the April 15, 2008 article in Newsday that documented the fact that some retired nuns in New York were on welfare (not something new). It would seem this might be an issue that everyone could get behind and work to help to solve. Yet, as of last year apparently no one had.
It is interesting that no "inquiry" (investigation) by the Church has been instituted into the documented abuses that took place in Ireland by various Orders of Priests and Nuns, or the abuses by the head of the Legionaries of Christ, or even into the abuses by Priests in the Southwest of the United States on children. Maybe a full "inquiry" could be instituted into these occurrences before an "inquiry" is done about Nuns wearing habits or not.
Some Nuns and their Orders have recently offered intemperate statements (related to dogma) and they should be called out to answer for their statements. (As should Bishops of the Society of St. Pius X for their statements). But two investigations into the entire group of people who kept Catholicism alive through Catholic schools in America (for almost no pay) seems quite a bit over the top and seems to be targeting women.
I do offer praise to Archbishop Dolan for giving his cell phone number to the priests in the Archdiocese to promote communication and also for being open to different and new ideas.
Still, I am a bit troubled by his having the Feast day celebration for Mother Cabrini moved a week earlier this year in November to accomodate his schedule. I wonder what Mother Cabrini (the Nun and Saint) might have thought of that?
I can't answer for Maureen Dowd, who appears to be a staunch Irish Catholic to me, but as a daily communicant and Irish Catholic myself, I can attest that my own comments would never bridge any anti-catholicism, be it from outsiders, insiders or even Anglicans.
To discuss and or debate this issue is not anti-cathlolic, but rather a question of common sense and clear perspective in resolving abuses in the Church.
Imperative for all
It is imperative for all caring people of good conscience to keep up the pressure on the Catholic church.
Their power to obstruct justice, direct public opinion, influence elections and hide their criminal activity...these powers must be blunted.
-Support the various movements to tax the churches
-Never support the Catholic position; history demonstrates their continued deceit.
-Support prosecution to the full extent of the law
-Always Remember: The guilt for child sexual abuse lies equally on all Catholic clergy...they were all aware, silent and complicit.
Well, the Legionaries of
Well, the Legionaries of Christ and their lay group Regnum Christi are under intense investigation, following the forced retirement of the offending founder. At this point, then entire order may be disbanded, or re-founded under external supervision. If the Irish comment pertains to the Magdalen workhouses, the commenter should be reminded those events are a century or more in the past and the principles (like many of the accused American priests) are no longer alive to answer questions. Finally, the priests in the American southwest were investigated along with the rest of the country, so I don't see the point. It's true that because the "treatment center" to which most priests repaired was in New Mexico and thus that area had a serious concentration of sexual predators. Again, that's been addressed.
Now, as to the nuns, of course, their mode of dress is a media diversion; it's their theological habits, which consist of widespread doctrinal dissent being investigated. The problem is so bad that the nuns have split under two leadership groups, one liberal, one orthodox. Fortunately, liberal Catholicism, like all forms of liberal (actually "modernist" is a better descriptor, unless one subscribes to the "liberal facist" meme) is an aging, sterile movement with a limited shelf life.
And by the way, I thank owlafaye for illustrating Archbishop Dolan's (and Phillip Jenkins') points.
Post new comment