BishopAccountability.org
	A Still Acceptable Prejudice Lingers By Jay Ambrose The Trentonian November 9, 2009 http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2009/11/09/opinion/doc4af7a44fc4192595802464.txt Even though they may remind you of the worst racists you have known, bigoted bashers of religion often get away with it, no matter how nasty-minded or hostile their attitudes are. Every now and then, however, someone strikes back — such as Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York. On his Web site, he recently took a swing at anti-Catholicism, particularly as exhibited in The New York Times. "It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime," he wrote. "Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as 'the deepest bias in the history of the American people.' ... Prof. Philip Jenkins subtitles his book on the topic 'the last acceptable prejudice.'" The archbishop pointed out how the Times, in writing about the sexual abuse of children by Orthodox Jewish rabbis, applies standards different from those it exhibited in coverage of abuse by Catholic priests. He noted that the Times gave front-page play to a 25-year-old story of a Franciscan priest fathering a child. And then the archbishop had at a "scurrilous piece" by columnist Maureen Down, a woman whose ad hominem ferocity apparently makes some chuckle even as it makes Dolan and others of us wonder about journalistic judgment at an ever-less-outstanding newspaper. Dowd, said Dolan, "dips deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible." Dolan could have added that anti-religious bigotry is hardly confined to Catholicism. Bill Maher, a comedian with intellectual pretensions, flaunted his anti-religion obsession in a documentary making fun of a variety of faiths. Maher's strategy, as described by L.A. Times movie critic Kenneth Turan, was to take "his questions not to sober religious thinkers but to assorted fruits and nuts that populate the fringes of religion...." Did it not occur to Maher that you could do the same thing with any large group, and that focusing on the peculiar few is the age-old methodology of those stirring up hatred against the whole, not least of all against racial minorities? But step aside, Maher, because here comes Larry David of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm." An episode involved a scene in which he accidentally urinated on a picture of Jesus. Subsequently, two women believers saw the picture and thought they were witnessing an astonishing miracle — a tear from Jesus' eye. The reaction from Christians to such juvenilia seems to have been fairly mild. It led some bloggers to speculate on what the consequences would have been if the episode had involved, say, a picture of Mohammed or for that matter Barack Obama, instead of Jesus. Archibishop Dolan made clear he's not against thoughtful criticism of religion, and I'm not either. Nor am I against religious satire. But there are times when witless hostility adds up to anti-religious bigotry. And it seems to me it is important to say so occasionally. — Jay Ambrose (speaktojay@aol.com) is former director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers. He lives in Colorado.
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