Friday, October 30, 2009

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of NY has a blog and recently posted on Anti-Catholicism. He gives several good examples of bias in the New York Times including this one:

"On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times 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. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage."

My opinion is the opposite of Dolan's: Given the Catholic Church's own recent horrible experience I believe we Catholics are in a good position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors. There is a large problem of child abuse within orthodox Jewish communities and something needs to be done about it. No one recognized any religious sensitivities regarding the Church's handling of cases internally and rightfully so. The steps people took and wanted the state to take regarding the Church, such as rollbacks of statute of limitations is wrong, but if it is going to be done it should apply to everyone, including public school systems.

The other examples of bias are good ones, but I am not sure the issue of NY State not reimbursing Catholic schools as they do public schools for the special payroll tax should have been included. I don't think that is bias, or anti-Catholic, even if it is unfair.

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