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Related: About this forumMovie “Spotlight” opens, and a NYT columnist uses it to criticize religion’s privilege
WEIT, Jerry Coyne (Nov. 5, 2015)
I was quite heartened yesterday to see an established New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, go after Catholicismand faith in general. After all, the good gray Times isnt known for criticizing religion: its the home of Ross Douthat, of Tanya Luhrmann, and various others who osculate the rump of faith.
The lesson the paper and its writers seem to have learned is that you make no enemies (even among atheists) by coddling faith, but criticizing it brings you ostracism and hatred. I cant in fact remember ever seeing any NYT op-ed that goes after the unwarranted privileges, like tax breaks, that religion enjoys in the U.S.
But Brunis latest piece, The Catholic Churchs sins are ours, doesnt pull any punches.
The lesson the paper and its writers seem to have learned is that you make no enemies (even among atheists) by coddling faith, but criticizing it brings you ostracism and hatred. I cant in fact remember ever seeing any NYT op-ed that goes after the unwarranted privileges, like tax breaks, that religion enjoys in the U.S.
But Brunis latest piece, The Catholic Churchs sins are ours, doesnt pull any punches.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/movie-spotlight-opens-and-a-nyt-columnist-uses-it-to-criticizes-religions-privilege/
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Movie “Spotlight” opens, and a NYT columnist uses it to criticize religion’s privilege (Original Post)
onager
Dec 2015
OP
Here's the last line of the Op-Ed, followed by a clarification by the NYT editorial staff:
Act_of_Reparation
Dec 2015
#2
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)1. That was a great op-ed, here is an excerpt:
Spotlight is admirably blunt on this point, suggesting that the Globe staff which, in the end, did the definitive reporting on church leaders complicity in the abuse long ignored an epidemic right before their eyes.
Why? For some of the same reasons that others did. Many journalists, parents, police officers and lawyers didnt want to think ill of men of the cloth, or they werent eager to get on the bad side of the church, with its fearsome authority and supposed pipeline to God. (After the coverage of the Porter case, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston announced, We call down Gods power on the media, particularly the Globe.)
Spotlight lays out the many ways in which deference to religion protected abusers and their abettors. At one point in the movie, a man who was molested as a boy tells a Globe reporter about a visit his mother got from the bishop, who was asking her not to press charges.
What did your mother do? the reporter asks.
She put out freakin cookies, the man says.
When the cookies finally went away, many Catholic leaders insisted that the church was being persecuted, and the crimes of priests exaggerated, by spiteful secularists.
But if anything, the church had been coddled, benefiting from the American way of giving religion a free pass and excusing religious institutions not just from taxes but from rules that apply to other organizations.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/opinion/the-catholic-churchs-sins-are-ours.html?ref=opinion&_r=0&referer=
Why? For some of the same reasons that others did. Many journalists, parents, police officers and lawyers didnt want to think ill of men of the cloth, or they werent eager to get on the bad side of the church, with its fearsome authority and supposed pipeline to God. (After the coverage of the Porter case, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston announced, We call down Gods power on the media, particularly the Globe.)
Spotlight lays out the many ways in which deference to religion protected abusers and their abettors. At one point in the movie, a man who was molested as a boy tells a Globe reporter about a visit his mother got from the bishop, who was asking her not to press charges.
What did your mother do? the reporter asks.
She put out freakin cookies, the man says.
When the cookies finally went away, many Catholic leaders insisted that the church was being persecuted, and the crimes of priests exaggerated, by spiteful secularists.
But if anything, the church had been coddled, benefiting from the American way of giving religion a free pass and excusing religious institutions not just from taxes but from rules that apply to other organizations.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/opinion/the-catholic-churchs-sins-are-ours.html?ref=opinion&_r=0&referer=
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)8. At last
It's nice to read this:
But if anything, the church had been coddled, benefiting from the American way of giving religion a free pass
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)2. Here's the last line of the Op-Ed, followed by a clarification by the NYT editorial staff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/opinion/the-catholic-churchs-sins-are-ours.html?ref=opinion
Good thing Tom Friedman was "off" (an accurate descriptor of his life, come to think of it), otherwise we might not have seen this.
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one, says a character in Spotlight. Indeed it does: a village too cowed, and a village too credulous.
______________
Thomas L. Friedman is off today.
______________
Thomas L. Friedman is off today.
Good thing Tom Friedman was "off" (an accurate descriptor of his life, come to think of it), otherwise we might not have seen this.
rug
(82,333 posts)3. That link is much better than Jerry Coyne's usual predictable words.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)5. The one problem i have with that line
Is it gives people an excuse to displace the blame from where it belongs.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)4. I need to see that one
Glad it's being taken more seriously, not just swept under the carpet. And Mark Ruffalo is awesome.
onager
(9,356 posts)6. The same Boston story was covered...
...in a 2005 TV movie, "Our Fathers." Very well done. With Ted Danson, Christopher Plummer, Brian Dennehy etc. Directed by Dan Curtis, who also did the epic "Winds of War" mini-series.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421108/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)7. Well, if it has Ted Danson!
The fact that it's still a shocking film even though it's not the first one on the topic speaks volumes about the power and influence of the organization.