The Archbishops Blog, by Clark Hoyt, New York Times, November 7, 2009

The Archbishop’s Blog

By Clark Hoyt
New York Times
November 7, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08pubed.html?_r=1

LATE last month, Paul Vitello, who covers religion for The Times, wrote a lighthearted feature about a new blogger: Archbishop Timothy Dolan, installed this year to lead the 2.5 million Catholics of the Archdiocese of New York. Little did Vitello know that before the day was out, Dolan would turn his blog on the reporter and his paper, citing news articles and a column by Maureen Dowd as examples of anti-Catholicism.

Chuck Kennedy

"It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime," the archbishop wrote. He said that if you wanted examples of the church being treated unfairly, The Times had supplied four in a couple of weeks. They included Dowd's "intemperate and scurrilous" column about the treatment of nuns by the church hierarchy and a front-page article about a priest who had fathered a son in a long-term relationship with a parishioner.

Dolan originally submitted his blog post to The Times as an Op-Ed article, and I heard from readers wanting to know why it wasn't published. David Shipley, the Op-Ed editor, said that his page "has never been the forum for direct responses to articles." He suggested that the archbishop submit a letter to the editor, but Dolan declined. He told me he knew that a letter to the editor would have to be condensed and he feared that key points would be lost.

The result was the sharp blog attack on The Times from a man who was greeted in the paper six months earlier as warm, flexible and not given to confrontation. Dolan's criticism touched a nerve with other Catholics with whom I spoke, who feel their faith is under assault in the secular world, and it raised interesting questions about what is fair to report and criticize about the leadership of a religion that is in a unique position of influence: It is both a spiritual home to a quarter of the American population, and a major institution than runs school systems, provides social services and seeks to shape public policy.

Never far from such discussions is the media's coverage of the church's pedophilia scandal. One of the examples Dolan cited on his blog was a front-page article in The Times about child sexual abuse in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. He said it lacked the "outrage" that he said marked coverage of pedophilia in the Catholic Church.

"Why aren't other people under the same microscope we are?" Dolan asked me. He said child sexual abuse is a broad social problem, yet media coverage seems to focus most on Catholics.

Dolan himself has been under that microscope. The Times interviewed him months ago about his handling of sexual abuse cases in his previous posts in St. Louis and Milwaukee, and it continues to look into the subject. It is a natural inquiry given that advocates for abuse victims, while giving Dolan credit for transparency in Milwaukee, say he did not go far enough in resolving pedophilia cases there.

Times reporters defended the paper's coverage. Laurie Goodstein, the national religion correspondent, said The Times had reported about sex abuse by clergy of many faiths but that the Catholics' story was far bigger because there were more priests accused, more people making allegations, more legal wrangling and settlements, and a longer history. And Vitello said of his article about abuse in the Jewish community that his job was to provide information and let readers decide whether to be outraged.

Dolan seemed particularly offended by Dowd's column, in which she wrote that the Vatican was hoping to herd nuns "back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence." She said the "über-conservative" Pope Benedict XVI, while a cardinal, had urged women to be submissive partners. She brought up issues like the pope's conscription into the Hitler Youth, and his statement that condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.

Dolan wrote that Dowd dug "deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible." The subject she raised was legitimate, he said, but her language was more like the prejudice in Know-Nothing papers of the 1850s.

"Far from being anti-Catholic, my column was an expression of one Catholic's anger and anguish about the moral crisis in her church," Dowd told me. "It's not right to call legitimate — and widely shared — complaints about the church hierarchy anti-Catholic, any more than it's right to call opposition to the policies of a White House anti-American."

Dolan said he was not trying to stifle dissent. "We welcome criticism of the Catholic Church," he said. "We need it. What I'm talking about is the 'how' of it. Is it measured? Is it temperate?" He said Dowd was serving up "raw red meat."

Dowd said the issues she raised went to what she sees as the pope's extreme conservatism and his judgment. "Should I blandly express outrage at the church continuing to treat women as second-class citizens?" she asked. Bland is not what Dowd does. I thought she was well within a columnist's bounds.

Goodstein, who wrote the article about the priest with a son, said she was vexed by the criticism from Dolan, whom she once described in The Times as a "healer bishop." Dolan said the affair described in her story was a quarter-century old, and he wondered why it was more newsworthy than subjects like the war in Afghanistan, health care and genocide in Sudan — subjects that The Times, in fact, covers extensively. In a letter to Dolan, Goodstein said he had neglected to mention in his blog that the priest's son, now 22, was dying from brain cancer and believed the church had failed him, while his father remained a priest.

There is an inherent tension between journalism, which is supposed to be skeptical of authority, and a church that places great emphasis on it. James Martin, a priest and an editor of the Jesuit magazine America, said that, as someone with a foot in each camp, he believes reporters at The Times work hard to get stories right, though he sometimes questions the prominence and frequency of articles about the church's sex scandal.

Dowd's column? It was "over the top in mocking the pope," he said. "Then again, she did that to Bill Clinton." Martin said he didn't think most Catholics appreciated reporters' efforts to be accurate and fair. "On the other hand, I don't think editors realize how tired Catholics are of seeing the Church portrayed through the lens of sex abuse," he said.

I think it is hard to pick a handful of examples, as Dolan did, and make a case that The Times has been "anti-Catholic." Along with unblinking coverage of church controversies, the paper covered his selection as archbishop extensively and for the most part warmly. Goodstein is receiving an award this weekend from the American Academy of Religion for a touching front-page series on priests from abroad serving U.S. parishes.

Could the newspaper sometimes choose a better word in a story or pay more attention to transgressions in other parts of society? Yes. Has it been guilty of anti-Catholicism? I don't buy it.

The public editor can be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.