After discussing the intense scrutiny the Pope and Catholic Church has faced during his Palm Sunday homily, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan continued to hammer home his talking points as he headed into the Easter Weekend. During an appearance on Good Day, NY yesterday, Dolan said that while he welcomed the reporting of abusive priests and hangs his head in shame about it, he said terrible abuse occurs in "every religion, every culture, every family, every family... it's a cultural, societal problem."
Dolan said that Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "has been "rigorous, prophetic" and "on the frontlines trying to purify and cleanse the Church of this horror... This guy, to use a term the Catholic people like to use, who gets it. He gets the heart of it. He gets the anger of it. He gets the injustice of it."
When asked whether the NY Times, which reported last week how the Vatican halted proceedings to defrock a priest who abused hundreds of deaf boys, had a bias against Catholics, Dolan said there could be some, "When the Catholic Church alone is in the crosshairs and when the reporting seems to be based on inaccuracies ... then you begin to wonder ,uh-oh is there an agenda of bias? Are they lopsided in inaccurate coverage?"
The Vatican criticized the NY Times yesterday, asking the paper "to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on."
Rebutting Dolan's point about the Catholic Church being singled out and questioning his comparison of Pope Benedict to Jesus, Katha Politt writes on CBS News, "The difference is, when other professionals who work with children are caught out, justice takes its course. People are fired. Licenses are lost. Reputations are ruined. Sometimes jail is involved. No human institution is perfect, and it would be foolish to suggest that incidents are always investigated and that abusers who don't happen to be priests are never protected by colleagues or superiors. Still, it's probably safe to say that if a principal was accused of overlooking a child molester in his classrooms or recycling him to other schools, nobody would compare his suffering to Christ's."
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SIC: Gothamist