The Catholic blogosphere is rallying around Archbishop Dolan’s recent attack on what he calls “anti-Catholicism” in the NYTimes, which I blogged about early in the week.

Many bloggers have been particularly buoyed by Dolan’s criticisms of columnist Maureen Dowd, who often writes about her (liberal) unhappiness with the state of her church.

On his blog, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., wrote: “All I can say, is right on, Archbishop Tim.”

Another blogger wrote that Dolan’s criticism means more because he’s a nice guy: “Harsh criticism from Dolan sounds like harsh criticism from Mother Teresa. When it occurs, you oughtta listen. If a cur accuses me of being a cur, I shrug. If the kindly older fellow at my church takes me aside and tells me I’m behaving poorly, I blush and want to crawl under a rock.

Maybe it’s time for Dowd to crawl under a rock.”

Yet another blogger focused on the Times’ unwillingness to run Dolan’s piece as an Op-ed: “New York Times readers will not see the Archbishop’s response, it was rejected for publication. His Grace should take solace, however, knowing that at least 98 percent of Times readers, when seeing his byline, would have skipped over it anyway.”

And another: “Like President Obama and other leftists, the Old Gray Lady cannot handle constructive criticism.”

Interestingly, Laurie Goodstein, the national religion correspondent for the NYT, who is mentioned by name in Dolan’s blog, wrote a lengthy response to Dolan as a comment following his blog. It is now about 20 comments down and was posted on Nov. 4 at 2:42 p.m.

Goodstein, who is a highly regarded reporter in the journalism world, sounds exasperated by Dolan’s blog: “You write as though the Catholic Church is some sort of special target, when in fact any institution that is accused of wrongdoing receives critical coverage and commentary. As you know, the Catholic Church is the largest religious institution in the world, and a quarter of Americans are adherents. The Catholic Church is a hierarchical church with a clear chain of accountability. It is only natural that it receives such scrutiny. As you acknowledged in your blog, there are recent developments in the Church that are “well-worth discussing and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning.” So when a newspaper undertakes this kind of coverage, it should not be seen as anti-Catholic.”

She also writes more personally: “Archbishop Dolan, you and I have known one another since we first met in Rome in 1998 when you were rector at the North American College. We met again years later when I was doing a story about you and several others whom I dubbed “Healer Bishops” who were trying to help the church recover from the scandal over sexual abuse by priests. I am pained that your blog selectively overlooked all the articles in the Times that you and other bishops in the church have praised over the years because you found them fair, and there are many (including some about your appointment to the Archdiocese of New York). This is why I cannot accept your characterization of the Times as “anti-Catholic.” ”

I was part of a show yesterday on The Catholic Channel on satellite radio about this debate. I offered that anti-Catholicism is a complicated charge that means very different things to different people. I know this because I have been accused of anti-Catholicism many times for simply writing about things Catholic.

I think that it is extremely tricky to make a case that anti-Catholicism runs through the “media” or even just the NYT—as some sort of philosophy that seeks to smear Catholic belief or tradition.

As I said on the Catholic Channel yesterday, we all know that the Catholic Church takes many positions that are odds with the direction in which American culture is heading. This fact produces tensions, conflicts and bad feelings.

It also raises the question: If someone takes public positions that oppose the beliefs of the Catholic Church—or reports those positions—at what point does it become anti-Catholic. I think people have very different interpretations of where this line should be drawn.

I addressed the question of anti-Catholicism in the media when I spoke at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers a couple of months back. I remember reminding seminarians that the Catholic Church, which represents 1 in 4 Americans, is a very big target. And a very big target will get hit more than smaller ones, sometimes accurately and sometimes not.

This is is a debate that is not going away. It also shows the sway that the Archbishop of NY continues to have with Catholics outside this archdiocese.

This is not a religion story, but on a morning when many New Yorkers are thinking about the Yankees, it’s worth noting:

Hoa Nguyen
hnguyen7@lohud.com

EASTCHESTER – On his way home from winning the World Series, Yankees Manager Joe Girardi stopped to help a woman who had lost control of her car on the Cross County Parkway and crashed into a wall.

“The guy wins the World Series, what does he do? He stops to help,” said Westchester County police officer Kathleen Cristiano, who was among the first to arrive at the accident scene. “It was totally surreal.”

The driver was stunned by the accident, but otherwise uninjured, police said.

The crash happened at 2:25 a.m. today on the eastbound lanes along a long blind curve where the Cross County meets the Hutchinson River Parkway prior to the New Rochelle Road exit, police said.

Police were in the area conducting a driving while intoxicated checkpoint on the parkway. In fact, about 15 minutes earlier, Girardi had passed through a driving while intoxicated checkpoint on the parkway. Cristiano, who was working the checkpoint, congratulated him on his first win as a manager and waved him through. He hadn’t been the only Yankees member to pass by the checkpoint. Pitcher Andy Pettitte also passed through earlier.

“He came through with a smile,” Cristiano said.

Cristiano, a self-described huge Yankees fan, said she hadn’t expect to see either one of then again. But then a 911 call came through about a car accident a short distance away, and so officers suspended the checkpoint and responded to the crash. As she came upon the accident scene, in an area where the parkway’s two lanes turn into three and cars speed by the curve that takes them to the Hutchinson Parkway, Cristiano spotted Girardi.

“He was jumping up and down, trying to flag me down,” she said. “You don’t expect him standing by a car accident trying to help.”

Cristiano said by the time she arrived, the driver, Marie Henry, 27, of Stratford, Conn., was able to get out of the crashed vehicle and declined to be taken to the hospital.

Girardi, who was dressed in a casual T-shirt and jeans, then told them he “had to get going.”

Cristiano and Henry both thanked him and watched as he ran across traffic again to reach his car.

“The driver didn’t know it was him until after I told her,” Cristiano said.

The area is notorious for its blind spots, and Girardi, who had parked his car along the right side of the parkway, and then run across the traffic to get to the injured motorist, put his life at risk, police said.

“He could have gotten killed,” county Sgt. Thomas McGurn said, adding that responding police units take extra precaution in that area because of the blind curve and speeding cars. “Traffic goes by at 80 mph.”

(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Last night’s victory for Rob Astorino in the race for Westchester County Executive is a loss for the Catholic Channel on SIRIUS and XM Satellite Radio.

Astorino has served as program director since the channel kicked off in December 2006, with its programming run by the Archdiocese of New York.

He’s been on leave since Labor Day while campaigning and will briefly return to the channel to wrap things up before beginning his new job.

Since the start, the Catholic Channel has aimed to be entertaining and educational, a modern alternative to EWTN.

“We tell the hosts: ‘Don’t talk shop,’” Astorino told me when I profiled the Channel in 2007. ”’Don’t assume people know what you’re talking about on the faith. Educate and re-educate.’”

In his role with the Catholic Channel, Astorino has had a rare level of access to the leaders of the Catholic Church.

He hosted a weekly show with Cardinal Egan and then Archbishop Dolan. He also traveled the country to interview bishops, archbishops and cardinals (since the Channel is national).

He even got to interview Pope Benedict XVI when the pontiff was in New York.

Astorino told me at the time: “I think he realized the importance of this trip, that people are getting to know him on a personal level. The throngs on Fifth Avenue and at the seminary were so vibrant, it was amazing. When I met him, he was very gentle, very happy.”

Now Astorino gets to try using his communication skills in a very different capacity.

In a completely unrelated Catholic Channel note…When I profiled the channel, I focused on a Westchester couple—Dave and Susan Konig—who hosted a very funny show on the Channel. Dave is a comedian and Susan a writer, and their show was smart and energetic.

At some point, maybe late last year, I read that the Konigs had decided to do other things and were leaving the Channel.

I was a tad surprised, but didn’t think anything of it.

But I recently got a mass email from Dave Konig promoting a show he’s doing. It said: “Jewboy or: How I Converted from Judaism to Catholicism and Back to Judaism AND Lost Those Stubborn Last 10 Pounds!”

Then I checked out the comedy club where he was performing and found this description of his show: “Three-time Emmy Award winning comedian Dave Konig goes fom being a Hebrew School dropout to a national spokesman for the Catholic Church and back again, with celebrity appearances by Marisa Tomei, Richard Simmons, and the entire Seacaucas Fire Department along the way.”

So I guess I now know why the Konigs left the Catholic Channel.

TWO UPDATES:

1. Dave Konig let me know that he and Susan did not leave the Catholic Channel because he left the Catholic faith. “Leaving the Catholic Channel precipitated my (reconversion) back to Judaism, not the other way around!” he writes.

2. I should have noted that Susan Konig just ran for a seat on the Westchester County Board of Legislators, but came up a bit short.

3. Archbishop Dolan is now offering congratulations to Astorino on his blog:

*****

Rob has served the Catholic Channel well, and I’ve very much enjoyed working with him.  A few years ago, he came to Milwaukee to interview me for The Catholic Channel, and back in February, on the day my appointment to New York was announced, Rob interviewed me and Cardinal Egan.  In April, we began our weekly program, Conversation with the Archbishop which I have immensely enjoyed.

Just a few weeks ago, Rob and his lovely wife, Sheila had their third child, a beautiful young girl named Ashlin who joins big brother Sean and big sister Kiley.  My prayers and best wishes are with Rob as he undertakes his new responsibilities as a father and County Executive.

If you read this blog, you’re probably aware that the question of priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church remains a hotly debated one.

I’ve heard people offer vastly different accounts of the history of celibacy and its meaning for today.

Well, tomorrow (Wed. Nov. 4), Father Joseph T. Lienhard, a Jesuit and professor of theology at Fordham University—and adjunct professor of dogmatic theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie—will present a lecture at the seminary about “Celibacy in the Early Church.”

It’s at 7:30 p.m. and is open to the public.

The seminary is offering several lectures this year related to the “Year for Priests.”

Lienhard is the author, editor or translator of 12 books and author of more than 50 scholarly articles. Since 1997, he has been the managing editor of TRADITION, a journalism of ancient an medieval thought, history and religion published by Fordham.

He is currently translating two works by St. Augustine into English for the first time.

My friend, Cathy Lynn Grossman, the religion writer at USA TODAY, is off for a few weeks. So I’m part of a small group that will be contributing to her blog, Faith & Reason, while she’s taking a breather.

I wrote up my first offering today, about a (typically) offensive storyline on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” last week.

It has to do with Jesus…and urine. And the very idea of the show will offend many who did not see it.

In fact, people who do not watch Curb will likely be far more offended than those who understand that Larry David goes after anyone and anything on his show, which is basically an R-rated, meaner Seinfeld.

Make that much meaner. Especially this season.

I think the show very much misses the regular presence of Cheryl Hines, who played Larry’s (now ex-) wife. She humanized David’s character, sort of.

(AP Photo/HBO, Doug Hyun)

There’s been a lot of buzz about Archbishop Dolan starting a blog.

There will be more buzz now that the Boss has posted a letter that he submitted to the NYTimes, which Dolan says the Times declined to publish.

In his letter/blog post, Dolan takes the Times to task for several examples of what he believes to be anti-Catholicism in its pages.

He starts off: “October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!

Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.”

He cites four problems:

1) A Times article about child sex abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community, about which he says “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.”

2) An article about a priest who fathered a child two decades ago and has had a strained relationship with the mother and child. Dolan writes: ”..one still has to wonder 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 Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.”

3) The Times’ lead story last week about the Vatican’s move to welcome disenchanted Anglicans. He writes: “Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.”

4) A column by Maureen Dowd, in which Dowd takes aim at the Catholic Church’s treatment of women, in particular nuns. Dolans writes: “In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible…”

Bishops and Catholic leaders often charge the mainstream media with anti-Catholicism. Dolan, though, is unusually precise about what he doesn’t like and why. That’s why the Catholic blogosphere is getting revved up about his piece.

I’m not a media critic—and I’ve always thought that it’s a bit unfair that every word in the Times gets dissected for hidden meanings and agendas—but I have a few thoughts.

About Brooklyn’s Orthodox (we’re really talking Hasidic) community, Dolans writes “there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone.” Tiny? Dolan is new in town, so he probably doesn’t know that we’re talking about a vast, fast-growing community.

The problem of sex abuse in the Hasidic community is only beginning to be grasped and understood by the outside world, so it might be a bit early to expect the Times or anyone else to know how to address it. It will have to be addressed, of course, and there is reason to think that the DA’s office has let things slide for too long.

By comparison, clerical sex abuse in the Catholic community is something we learned about piece-by-piece over at least two decades before the scandal of 2002 erupted.

Measuring the merits of one newspaper article is always a difficult exercise. The priest-fathered-a-child story was an interesting tale, but whether it merited its prominent play is probably in the eye of the beholder.

I agree that the Anglican conversion story was overplayed by the national media, not just the Times. A strong argument can be made—and is being made—that the Vatican was simply responding to convervative Anglicans who had reached out to Rome. We already knew about the Anglican Communion’s internal divisions and the potential for break-ups.

The clear implication of much of the media coverage is that the Vatican is seeking converts in some sort of aggressive new way.

Maureen Dowd was being Maureen Dowd. Right?

Doesn’t it seem like everyone is meditating these days?

Churches and synagogues host all sorts of meditation groups, and community-based meditation (and yoga) centers are opening all over.

I guess it’s no surprise given our stressed-out, racing-for-time, recession-weary culture.

A few years ago, I wrote about an in-depth, three-year class in Buddhism for meditators who want to go deeper in the traditions and beliefs behind…sitting (that’s what meditators call it). It was a terrific program offered at the Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel.

I recently heard that the monastery has started a new three-year cycle, and I bet there are a lot of suburbanites out there who would love it.

The website explains:

*****

The program is designed to give students an in-depth understanding of Buddhism and Buddhist practice in the three major traditions—Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana.

The first year of the program provides a broad overview of Buddhism. The second year focuses on Buddhist sutras. The third year focuses on Buddhist philosophy and applications such as science, psychology, and psychotherapy.

New students may enter the program in any of the three years and, having completed all three years in any order, are awarded a certificate. An optional fourth year (by invitation of the teacher) prepares students to become lay Dharma teachers. Those who complete the fourth year satisfactorily may be ordained in the Dharma Teacher Order.

*****

If you have questions, there are a bunch of answers on the website.

The teacher is The Ven. Dr. Thich Tri Hoang, who was ordained in Vietnam at the age of 24. He is a terrific sense of humor and seems to genuinely enjoy teaching Americans from diverse backgrounds.

I’m off to the World Series in a few hours to talk to fans and write about the excitment.

Don’t be too jealous: I can’t actually see the game. The press box is filled and supplementary reporters such as myself are relegated to an auxiliary press room where we can work while we watch on TV!

But I can hear the crowd cheering (and I try to sneak a peak of the action before I get chased away by Yankee staffers who don’t like us standing between the sections of the press box).

Anyway, here’s a press release I just got:

*****
Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, and Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, have placed a friendly wager on the outcome of the 2009 World Series.

These two long-time friends spoke on Tuesday evening to settle the terms of the bet.  If the Phillies win, Archbishop Dolan will ship a dozen bagels to the City of Brotherly Love; if the Yankees prevail, Cardinal Rigali will send a box of Tastykakes to the Big Apple.

Archbishop Dolan said, “Cardinal Rigali is one of my closest and dearest friends; for several years he even served as my Archbishop so I feel a particular loyalty to him.  I know he has exquisite taste in most matters. I just wish he had better taste in baseball teams.”

Cardinal Rigali said, “I have great esteem for Archbishop Dolan.  He is a gifted spiritual leader who has been a true friend for many years.  That is why I am so sorry he will be disappointed when the Phillies successfully defend their World Championship.  We have the cream cheese ready for the bagels that I know will be arriving shortly after the Repeat in the City of Brotherly and Sisterly love.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of the Orthodox Christian world, is visiting the U.S. and is spending the next few days in New York.

He arrived in New Orleans last Tuesday and has spent the last week talking about the environment, which has become the subject he is most identified with.

He came to New York on Sunday and last night presided over the Ninth Annual Orthodox Prayer Service for the United Nations Community at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Cathedral in Manhattan.

Tonight he will be honored by Fordham U at its Rose Hill campus in the Bronx.

Tomorrow, he’ll meet with Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, with Jewish leaders and with Bill Clinton, among others.

Then he’s off to Atlanta before a return to New York.

He was born Dimitrios Arhondonis in 1940 on the Island of Imvros (Gokceada) in Turkey and became ecumenical patriarch in 1991.

As EP, Bartholomew is considered the “first among equals” when it comes to the leaders of the various Orthodox churches. He is the symbolic head of Orthodox Christianity, but has little authority over any Orthodox church other than the Greek Orthodox Church.

I covered him when he came to New York in 1997 and spoke at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Yonkers. Even then, he focused on the world’s “ecological crisis” and urged religious leaders to unite to save the environment.

At the time, he said: “Ecological crisis does not know borders. Neither should there be borders in our cooperation. . . . In our era, when the planet Earth is becoming a single village, prejudices ought to be resolved.”

Last night he said:

*****

First, there is our fundamental conviction that it is our responsibility as human beings, as persons, to be stewards of God’s created order. The Greek term “oikonomos” –resonates beyond Orthodox Christianity. As “keepers/masters of our house—oikos”, we are all called to be sensitive to the greatest risk to the survival of our planet—namely, the dramatic changes in our climate, in our environment. Orthodox Christians understand the meaning of being stewards—oikonomoi—and we reach out our hands to you, diplomats and world leaders—to embrace the richness of this language, and to work together with all the Orthodox Christians around the world to set the example of respecting, nurturing, and preserving God’s created order.

*****

In the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, he wrote, in part:

*****

Last week, 200 leaders in the environmental movement gathered in New Orleans for the eighth ecological symposium organized by the Orthodox Christian Church. Participants included leading scientists and theologians, politicians and policy makers, business leaders and NGOs, environmentalists and journalists. Similar conferences have taken place on the Adriatic, Aegean, Baltic, and Black Seas, the Danube and Amazon Rivers, and the Arctic Ocean. This time we sailed the mighty Mississippi to consider its profound impact on the U.S. and its fate within the global environment.

It may seem out of character for a sacred institution to convene a conference on so secular an issue. After all, Jesus counseled us to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). Climate change, pollution and the exploitation of our natural resources are commonly seen as the domain not of priests but rather of politicians, scientists, technocrats or interest groups organized by concerned citizens. What does preserving the planet have to do with saving the soul?

A lot, as it turns out. For if life is sacred, so is the entire web that sustains it. Some of those connections—the effects of overharvesting on the fish populations of the North Atlantic, for example—we understand very well. Others, such as the long-term health impacts of industrialization, we understand less well. But no one doubts that there is a connection and balance among all things animate and inanimate on this third planet from the Sun, and that there is a cost or benefit whenever we tamper with that balance.

Someone asked me the other day if a new movie called Antichrist has something to do with the antichrist?

Does the film have religious overtones?

No, it doesn’t. It’s the latest work from a controversial, cutting-edge-type move-maker named Lars von Trier.

From what I’ve read, the film sounds pretty grim. It’s about chaos and sorrow—and there’s a talking fox.

But no antichrist.

At the same time, though, Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver has been called the antichrist—as in the antichrist.

Erie County (think Buffalo) Executive Chris Collins (that’s him) compared Silver, an Orthodox Jew, to the antichrist at a GOP dinner on Saturday.

From a description I read, it sounded like a joke. Maybe not a funny one.