Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a critic of Providence, Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin:
A screwball is loose at the Providence Journal, but she doesn’t work in the office. Indeed, she doesn’t live in Rhode Island. She splits her time between Florida and Italy. So why is she scribbling a monthly column for the newspaper?
The scribbler’s name is Mary Ann Sorrentino. We know her at the Catholic League for her hatred of the Catholic Church. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church knows her as well. To be more accurate, they once knew her: She was excommunicated in 1985. What for? For running a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic for nine years: approximately 9,000 children were killed under her watch.
Sorrentino had a column in the December 9 edition of the Providence Journal attacking Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin, a great defender of the children whom she thinks have no right to life. She accuses him of speaking with “ruthless cruelty, against anyone questioning his attacks on LGBTQ Catholics, progressive women, and lawmakers defending the Constitution.”
As is typical with Church haters, she doesn’t cite one example of Tobin’s alleged “ruthless cruelty” [Is there such a thing as non-ruthless cruelty?], or of his alleged attacks on alphabet homosexuals.
The best Sorrentino can do is to argue that Tobin was “surrounded” by priests named in the Pennsylvania grand jury report (many of whom were totally innocent), and that’s because he was neither contacted by the grand jury nor mentioned in the report. So she plays the “guilt by association” McCarthyite game.
Scribbling screwballs abound on the Internet—they have no legitimate role to play in any respectable newspaper. The real shame is the Providence Journal for carrying her vitriol.
Contact Executive Editor Alan Rosenberg: arosenberg@providencejournal.com
