The sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has provoked a torrent of criticism, much of it fair. But there has also been an explosion of bigotry, some of which is coming from the ranks of radical feminists. Catholic League president William Donohue commented as follows:
“On March 20, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times went ballistic putting the Catholic Church in the same camp with the Taliban and Al Queda. Today, syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith says that Dowd deserves a Pulitzer Prize for those remarks. Smith added that Dowd’s ‘stunning column may have done more for the cause of women than the entire feminist attitude in the world.’
“In the March 25 edition of the Nation, Margaret Spillane accused the Boston hierarchy of ‘treating women as contaminants and children as invisible,’ maintaining that the ‘real goal’ of Boston Archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law is to ‘make a permanent move to Rome as the first American Pope.’
“Even in the asylum such voices would not be heard. But the fact that they are coming from mainstream journalists is revealing.
“Radical feminists have long hated the Catholic Church. Their agenda has never been the interests of housewives or working mothers. Their agenda has always been a lust for power coupled with an embrace of the most libertine conceptions of sexuality. Angry with nature and with nature’s God, they see the Catholic Church as the last bastion of traditional morality. Therefore, the Church must fall.
“The Catholic Church has weathered many storms in 2000 years. Some of its wounds have been self-inflicted and some have been the result of unrelieved bigotry. Dowd, Smith and Spillane are wrong, however, in thinking that they will end up on the winning side. Lay Catholics have got their number. In once sense they’ve done us a favor: they’ve cleared the battlefield of all camouflage.”
