Is The Post Anti-Catholic?

In the past six months, many readers have written to me to say that The Post is anti-Catholic. What led them to that conclusion?

It started with the annual March for Life anti-abortion rally in January, which readers said was inadequately covered. It accelerated with a front-page story in March about Barbara Johnson, a Catholic lesbian who was refused Communion at her mother’s funeral by the Rev. Marcel Guarnizo, a conservative priest in a Gaithersburg parish.

Later, readers were upset over The Post’s coverage of the federal government’s requiring employers such as Catholic University, Holy Cross Hospitaland Catholic Charities to provide insurance coverage that pays for contraception, morning-after pills and sterilization, even though the Catholic Church strongly opposes those practices.

The last straw for many Catholic readers was a full-page advertisementon May 8 from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a secular-atheist group, calling on “liberal and nominal” Catholics to leave the Church “en Mass” because Catholic bishops — “an avowedly antidemocratic Old Boys Club” — had launched “a ruthless political Inquisition” against the contraception mandate. Many Catholics saw it as hate speech, pure and simple.

As one reader put it, “If anyone paid money for an equally venomous and hateful tirade of lies against Islam, the Jewish faith, Buddhism or another religion, would you have published it as well? I sincerely doubt it.”

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Of course, they allowed a full page ad against the Catholic Church — just like the New York Slimes did.

I don’t know if a full page ad against Muslims was presented to the Post like it was to the New York Slimes — the Slimes refused that — verifying their bias against the Catholic Church.

There are deep divisions within the church that Post reporting should accurately reflect. But sometimes The Post’s reporting and even editorials fall short in conveying the passion with which many Catholics hold their views, whether they be against the contraception mandate, gay marriage, and abortion or in favor of aid to the poor. It doesn’t mean that Post reporters or editorialists have to embrace those views, but they should accurately explain them

Yes, Mr. Ombudsman, that would be a start. When, generally speaking, the Post's coverage is written from the viewpoint that the Catholic Church is akin to some old-fashioned golf club and therefore should get on with the times: ordain women, consider homosexual behavior wholesome, or whatever else your leftist pet dilemma du jour is, -- then you show ignorance of what the church is, or how it is run, or why. This lack of culture in you leads, in turn in your siding with the vandals of the society every time the Catholic Church is involved.

You may not be anti-Catholic in the sense that it is your editorial policy, or in that you cover anti-Catholic views of others, but you are anti-Catholic in the sense that your left-wing instincts make you the enemy of what is good in the Church and a friend of what is bad in her. You can't help it, I understand, but yours will be a better paper if you made at least a modest effort to understand -- not the "passion", as you ignorantly put it, but simply the nature and the purpose of the Church.

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