by Mike Morley
Angling for Anglicans and Other Papist Plots
One year ago Time Magazine, part of the nation’s largest ($36B) media conglomerate, introduced: “the next Archbishop of New York City, perhaps the nation’s most prominent pulpit… with 2.5 million Catholics in nearly 400 churches” praising him as “a beloved Milwaukee priest known for his jocular demeanor.” Recently another media biggie, the New York Times (3.2B) handed Archbishop Tim Dolan (and those 2.5 million other New Yorkers) a very personal snub, refusing to print a critical op-ed he had submitted. (We printed the Archbishop’s letter in the December issue: http://www.irishamericannews.com/index.php/opinion/mick/1080-mick--dec-2009)
Why the rejection? The Times editors said rather lamely that Dolan’s piece was more of a “letter to the editor” than an “op-ed.” (So, why not print it as a “letter” then? Is it a case of “Sorry, wrong window - Go to the end of that other line”?)
Dolan, deemed unfit by the paper with the lofty motto, “All the news that’s fit to print,” simply published the letter in “The Gospel in the Digital Age,” a little blog of his own started only a month before. Well, judging by the reaction of the Times and its acolytes, you’d have thought he ran it prime-time on CNN.
The editors were apparently caught off-guard by Dolan’s blog entry. That same day (Oct. 29th) the Times ran a piece about his new blog, noting: “Archbishop Dolan has drawn only one biting comment, scolding him for saying something nice about the United Nations…” Scarcely 5 days later the N.Y. Post reported Times’ editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal was fuming over Dolan calling his articles “anti-Catholic.”
Rosenthal had seen fit to print a column (Oct. 24th) by Maureen Dowd, the Times’ current Irish-Catholic icon, describing Benedict XVI as “the über-conservative pope,” “God’s Rottweiler,” and “a conscripted member of the Hitler Youth.” Dowd labeled the Vatican’s current apostolic visitations of US nuns “inquisitions,” a betrayal by a Church which “enabled rampant pedophilia.” She ended with an “attagirl” rehash of an Oct. 16th column by Religion Editor Laurie Goodstein, updating the lurid tale of a Wisconsin priest who had fathered a son. Declared Rosenthal to the Post: “There’s nothing remotely anti-Catholic about Maureen’s column.”
Kelly Fincham, Editor of Irish Central, the online arm of Naill O’Dowd’s Irish Voice also launched a rabid defense of Dowd in her Oct. 31st column “Kelly’s Corner:” “read Dowd’s column, and you wonder if the Archbishop hasn’t temporarily taken leave of his senses.” She scolds: “the church treats all women as second-class citizens… while a plague of pedophilia ran unchecked through the church.” She pleads: “Why can’t we become priests? Why can’t priests be married?”
WCBS-TV New York said Dolan’s letter: “certainly rubbed some folks in the Irish-American press the wrong way.” In a televised interview Nov. 3rd Fincham again defended Dowd: “I don’t think there’s any way Maureen Dowd could be described as anti-Catholic. She’s one of the most Catholic people I’ve ever met.” (Step aside, Mother Teresa, make way for Maureen.)
Dolan cited Gooodstein’s long and detailed front-page article on the Wisconsin priest and asked: “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 Catholicism ever seems to merit such attention.”
Why indeed. That story was followed Oct. 21 by another front-page Goodstein expose’, this time regarding what she termed the Vatican’s “extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse… a rare opportunity, audaciously executed, to capitalize on deep divisions in the Anglican Church…” Wow! After that breathless lead you might expect the Boyne or Kinsale had been avenged and the Reformation in serious peril. You had to follow the story inside to page 4 and down to the very last paragraph to read that Anglican Archbishop Williams of London actually “minimized the impact of the announcement” saying: “the routine relationships we enjoy as churches will continue.” But oh, two maps of the world inserted by the Times looked anything but routine. One titled “Where Catholics Live” sports big black blobs covering most of Western Europe and South America, with a big spot hovering somewhere over the western US. The biggest blob was labeled “Brazil, 140 million Catholics.” The map of “Where Anglicans Live” had only one small spot up in Canada and one on the edge of Europe labeled “England, 26 million Anglicans.”
(Scary stuff indeed… poor little United Kingdom. Apparently the fact that Anglicans live mainly in England is big news to the Times’ editors. These are the same people who would have you believe that while the Jewish Holocaust was caused by prejudice, its Irish counterpart was caused by a vegetable.) Goodstein continues ominously: “If entire parishes or even dioceses leave the Church of England for the Catholic Church, experts and church officials speculated, it could set off battles over ownership of church buildings and land.” And even more ominously: “Pope Benedict has said that he will travel to Britain in 2010.” (OMG… They’re coming Back!! “Bring me my spear! Bring me my bow of burning gold; my chariot of fire!”)
It’s instructive to follow the sequence of events in this religious ruction.
It began with a Times story by Paul Vitello on Oct 14: “New Abuse Tack for Jewish Sects” revealing that “For decades, prosecutors in Brooklyn routinely pursued child molesters from every major ethnic and religious segment of the borough’s diverse population. Except one.” They avoided charging child molesters who happened to be rabbis, teachers and school administrators in the Orthodox Jewish community.
This was an eye-opener, but not a Times exclusive. The Daily News had been reporting growing child sex abuse prosecutions in the Hasidic community for at least a year; The AP and ABC in NY had also covered it.
The faithful were forbidden under pain of sin or even death from informing on their religious leaders. One concerned father flew to Jerusalem to consult a prominent rabbi there before reporting another rabbi who had molested his 6 year-old son.
The term “pedophile” never appeared in the Times’ story. Nor did the paper follow up on this extraordinary tale. On the contrary, what followed was the series of stories which led Dolan to write in protest.
It’s not like those stories just leaped off the wires, or that a star reporter (ala the Hollywood fictional stereotype) came running in with a hot scoop. Stories are assigned by editors to writers who then write them and submit them back to the editors. When the editors are happy with the stories, they get printed- then the writers get paid. And if the owners of the paper, in this case the Ochs-Sulzbergers, are also happy with the stories, the editors get paid. That’s how it works.
The Times is considered America’s “newspaper of record.” That implies that because it publishes trustworthy descriptions of events, has independent editorial policies, and opinions distinct from those of its owners and the government, those opinions will be cited abroad and in scholarly journals. It also means the Times’ has the powerful luxury of “framing” how events and movements are perceived by the country and its lawmakers, and ultimately by history.
It appears the “man behind the curtain” at the Times, faced with a growing epidemic of Orthodox prosecutions, had to acknowledge the schanda, but didn’t care to fuel the fire with a follow-up. So he reached into his wizard’s bag for his most basic tool: misdirection. And it worked.
Having framed the story and its public agenda from the outset, the Times continues to ignore those two alarming reports Dolan cited on sexual abuse by public school officials: (one by the US Dept. of Education in 2004, the other by the Associated Press in 2007). The public debate on child abuse remains firmly focused on Catholicism.
