New York City Archbishop Anthony Dolan offers scathing criticism of The New York Times for its positive reviews of a play and art exhibit that he says are offensive to Catholics.
The art exhibit, showing in Cambridge, Mass., includes a poster showing the late Cardinal John O'Connor next to a condom. The exhibit was created by AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. The play, "The Divine Sister," is a comedy about nuns that is playing in New York City.
O’Connor objects to the "gushing" reviews the Times doled out in its Oct. 15 reviews.
"The common, casual way The New York Times offends Catholic sensitivity is something they would never think of doing – rightly so – to the Jewish, Black, Islamic or gay communities," Dolan wrote in his blog, the New York Post reports.
"One of the posters in this 'must see' exhibit is of Cardinal O'Connor, in the form of a condom, referred to as a 'scumbag,'" Dolan points out.
That depiction is particularly loathsome given that O'Connor "spent many evenings caring quietly for AIDS patients" and opened two AIDS units at New York City hospitals, "when everyone else ran from them," Dolan explains in the blog cited by the Post.
As for the play about nuns, the Times was promoting "cheap laughs at the expense of a bigoted view of the most noble women around," Dolan writes. "These are nuns, mocked and held up for snickering."
The Times responded in a statement: “While Archbishop Dolan may not like the play or the art under consideration, The Times’ job is to report on and review such cultural events, even if some may disagree with the content of the art work.”
That didn’t please Dolan.
"If they're going to say, 'Oh, no, we do that all the time,' I'm going to say, 'Show me when you do it to the Islamic community, to the Jewish community, to the African-American community, to the gay community,'" he told CBS News.
"They don't do it because they know that's out of bounds."
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