Mainstream corporate journalist bigots: Jenn White (1A, NPR),
David Folkenflik of NPR, and Alissa Wilkinson of the NY Times

It is a completely phony claim that refuses to die simply because it's about the hated Catholic Church.

In 2021, corporate media across the world tripped all over themselves to report a white-hot story that Catholic-operated schools for indigenous children in Canada had years ago dumped hundreds of dead children into "unmarked graves." So worked up by all of the media frenzy, people even torched and vandalized dozens of Catholic churches across Canada, which the media then tacitly acknowledged was somehow justified.

However, it soon surfaced that there was zero evidence of any such unmarked graves. None at all. The story was totally false. One Canadian professor even proclaimed that these phony tales of unmarked graves were "the biggest fake news story in Canadian history."

Cue the usual effete haters at National Public Radio (NPR) and the New York Times who are now quite unbelievably promoting a new documentary film called Sugarcane, an angry screed about the long-defunct indigenous schools in Canada and, in doing so, are again perpetuating the bigoted "unmarked graves" hoax.

A few snippets from the rogue's gallery of political activists posing as journalists as they peddle outright disinformation:

- On a radio show called 1A, which airs on NPR, host Jenn White began her episode about Sugarcane by claiming, "In May of 2021, archeologists discovered more than 200 unmarked graves at an indigenous residential school in British Columbia, Canada." False.

- On a weekend segment on NPR, "media critic" David Folkenflik broached the story of "unmarked graves" with Sugarcane's filmmakers, who then rehashed the bogus "announcement" of the graves in 2021 while Folkenflik stood silent.

- In a glowing review of Sugarcane, New York Times critic Alissa Wilkinson wrote that "unmarked graves were found on the grounds of a number of Indigenous Canadian residential schools." False.

To be precise: Exactly zero "unmarked graves" have been found at indigenous schools in Canada. None at all. There are no "missing children." The entire story is a hoax, and its purpose is simply to defame the Catholic Church.

If there is one hopeful sign in all of this it is that it only further evidences that the NYT and NPR as institutions have now gone fully rogue allowing the publishing of a phony story like this because it plays to its readership and drives revenue. We might have arrived at the day where the reporting of establishment journalists like these three bigots is viewed by the public with the same level of skepticism as the meanderings of anonymous postings on Twitter.

For more reading:

- "In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found" (The Dorchester Review, Jan. 11, 2022)

- "The year of the graves: How the world's media got it wrong on residential school graves" (National Post, May 26, 2022)

- "No evidence of 'mass graves' or 'genocide' in residential schools" (The Fraser Institute, Feb. 12, 2024)

- Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) (Amazon.com)

- Previously at TheMediaReport.com: "Another Anti-Catholic Media Hoax Exposed: News of 'Unmarked Graves' In Canada Revealed As a Fraud" (June 6, 2022)

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "The Great Shakedown Keeps A-Rollin': Phony Claims Continue at Epic Pace, Here Are The Facts" (January 2024)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)

Bringing the 1980s back to life: Elizabeth Bruenig of the New York Times

Writer Elizabeth Bruenig at the New York Times may have been born in 1990, but in an appearance on PBS NewsHour to promote a pair of articles she wrote for the Times about the much-hyped McCarrick Report, Bruenig spoke of Catholic Church sex abuse as if the year were 1985.

Unfortunately for Bruenig, however, a lot of has changed in the Church's handling of abuse cases since the 1980s. And as a result, Bruenig badly misinformed her audience.

Elizabeth's false facts

In her PBS appearance, Bruenig made the alarming claim that the "sex abuse crisis is still ongoing at this time." Not surprisingly, she provided zero examples to support her statement. In fact, Bruenig also added the bizarre and false claim that "we first heard about (sex abuse against priests) in 2002." "2002"?

As we have reported countless times before, it is an empirical fact that abuse in the Catholic Church today is now a rarity. In a body of 70 million people, an average less than 7 contempraneous allegations are deemed "substantiated" by the lenient standards of diocesan review boards each year.

On tee-vee: Elizabeth Bruenig

"As early as 1982, we saw policies and procedures coming to the attention of the USCCB (the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) regarding specific child molestation cases," Teresa Kettelkamp, former executive director of the Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection for the USCCB, has reported. "By 1983, 157 dioceses had policies in place."

These policies formulated the bishops' "Five Principles" in dealing with allegations of abuse. Bishops first articulated them in 1987 and then publicly pronounced them in 1992. (Note to Elizabeth: These were all long before 2002.)

And since 2002, the USCCB has been conducting and publishing annual audits to ensure that dioceses have complied with safeguarding and reporting policies.

It apparently would be breaking news to Bruenig that even though abuse has soiled every organization that works with children, no other organization on the planet even comes close in its efforts to rectify for its past and prevent future abuse.

Pretty embarrassing

In the end, it was quite a rough appearance for Bruenig. Bruenig also stated that "there needs to be more oversight from lay people." Well, folks like Dr. Francesco Cesareo (Chairman of the National Review Board), Teresa Kettelkamp, and the staffs of nearly every diocesan review board, chancery office, and parish in the country would surely tell you that it is indeed lay people – and largely women – who are overseeing nearly all of the day-to-day operations of the Church.

Bruenig also said that "there needs to be a way to report bishops," signaling that she was completey oblivious to the fact that Pope Francis himself, despite his faults, issued just last year a motu propio, "Vos Estis Lux Mundi" ("You are the light of the world"), to establish this very thing, new procedures for investigating accusations against bishops.

Quite simply, Bruenig is speaking from the platform of one of the most powerful media outlets on the planet, the New York Times, despite the fact that does not have even a fundamental knowledge of the Catholic sex abuse story.

We are pretty sure that if Bruenig had presented herself on worldwide television as uninformed on any other subject, her bosses would probably want to have a word with her afterwards. But despite this embarrassing appearance from Bruenig, we surmise nothing will happen in this case.

After all, as we have long chronicled, the Times has quite an extensive history of distorting the Catholic Church sex abuse story. So in this instance, it's Groundhog Day all over again.

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Read about the rampancy of false accusations against priests in the new book by David F. Pierre, Jr. of TheMediaReport.com, The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church … available at Amazon.com.

Bruenig's appearance on PBS:

Oops. All those priests were actually innocent.

In what has now become another eruption of outright media hysteria, let us pause for just a moment to revisit a very instructional episode from a few years back involving Pope Francis and some accused priests in Spain.

It was a front page story in the New York Times. In late 2014, responding to an emotional letter he had just received, Pope Francis personally telephoned a 25-year-old man from Spain going by the name of "Daniel." Daniel – whose real name turned out to be David Ramírez Castillo – had written to Francis claiming that he and others had been sexually abused repeatedly years earlier as children by a ring of pedophile priests.

Here were some of the headlines at the time:

• "Letter to Pope uncovers pedophile network in Spain" (Cruxnow.com, Nov. 18, 2014);
• "Ten Catholic priests are charged with sexually abusing four altar boys in Spain after one of the alleged victims wrote to the Pope" (Daily Mail, Jan. 28, 2015);
• "'I Am Father Jorge': Pope Phones A Sex-Abuse Victim and Causes a Stir in Spain" (Aleteia, Nov 20, 2014);
• "In Spanish Abuse Scandal, a More Open Vatican," (NYT (front page), Feb. 14, 2015).

Acting upon Francis's urging, Spanish law enforcement promptly launched a criminal investigation and soon claimed that it had "uncovered a criminal network of pedophiles that involves at least 12 people among priests and laity from different parishes in the Spanish city of Granada."

And if there were still any doubt about the veracity of the accusations, the Times made sure to report that Castillo's abuse was "supported by one other plaintiff as well as by several witnesses." Indeed, some ten priests were indicted for either abusing Castillo or "covering up" the priests' alleged crimes.

Then came the truth

In the end, however, Castillo's entire claim turned out to be completely bogus. None of the abuse that attracted the Pope's personal attention and international headlines was true. Nada. It was all a crock.

In 2017, three years after the original accusations, a Spanish court issued an exhaustive 81-page ruling exonerating all of the accused priests. The report explained that Castillo's accusations were not just false for a lack of evidence, but they also were "completely implausible" as well as "contradictory, hesitant and uncorroborated." The court's report also listed several events and details from the accuser that were proved to be outright false.

Remember: the New York Times had published the claim that there were "several witnesses" to the abuse. But there weren't any. It was complete bunk. The reputations of numerous Spanish priests were shattered by the Times and others. For a reason God only knows, the accuser made the whole story up.

Michael Cook, editor at MercatorNet, has an excellent article with the apt title, "Let's all take a chill pill." "Catholics need to get a grip and take a calmer look at the crisis in their Church," Cook writes. He is exactly right.

Are you listening, Catholic media? Maybe you should remember the case in Spain before mindlessly regurgitating wild claims from the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report about priests sodomizing kids with crucifixes and forcing oral sex. Maybe some of these events didn't happen.

NY Times National Catholic Abuse Correspondent Laurie Goodstein

Her gig may finally be up. It has now come to the point that every sentient being now agrees that Laurie Goodstein at the New York Times is something less than an objective reporter when it comes to reporting about decades-old episodes of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

A recent Times podcast by Goodstein asks the question, "Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church: Why Is It Still a Story?" Goodstein then disingenuously claims, "The answer lies with the victims."

However, it has become crystal clear that Goodstein is really only concerned about victims of one institution, the Catholic Church. As we have repeatedly chronicled, Goodstein has written nearly 100 articles this decade about sex abuse in the Catholic Church, but she has written exactly zero articles about sex abuse in any other religious institution.

Say what, Laurie?

So we were surprised when a reader of this site passed on an email exchange he had with Goodstein in which Goodstein made the following claim:

"I have written about sexual abuse among Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Scientologists and Hare Krishnas."

Really, Laurie? We scoured the archives at the Times searching desperately for these alleged articles about sex abuse "among Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Scientologists and Hare Krishnas." Here is what we found:

• Goodstein wrote a single article 11 years ago about sex abuse in the silly 1970s "Children of God" cult.
• She wrote another single article 15 years ago about sex abuse in the "United Church of Christ" in Massachusetts.
• Goodstein wrote another single article about sex abuse among Hare Krishnas 18 years ago.
• She wrote a couple of articles about sex abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses (1, 2) 14 years ago.
• In 2010, Goodstein wrote another single article about "abuse" in the Church of Scientology, but she made no mention of sexual abuse at all, only of an alleged "abusive environment" (social/emotional/mental).
• The closest Goodstein came to writing about abuse in the Jewish community was "contributing" to a 2012 article, "Ultra-Orthodox Jews Rally to Discuss Risks of Internet."

Notice that not one of these articles was even written in this decade, while Goodstein has penned nearly 100 articles about sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

And as we have repeatedly reported, Goodstein has been radio silent on abuse among Protestant groups. An eye-popping 2002 article in the Christian Science Monitor stunningly reported that in Protestant churches "the pace of child-abuse allegations against American churches has averaged 70 a week."

70 abuse allegations in Protestant churches … per … week.
Yet Goodstein has written exactly nothing about this. Nada. Zilch.

"All the news that's fit to print"? Not even close.

Always on message: Laurie Goodstein from the New York Times

Question: What does a good reporter do when a decades-old story line continues to get old and stale?
Answer: Nothing at all.

Despite nearly $3 billion in settlements, over $80 million in therapy payments, endless mea culpas, and countless apologies to accusers of priest sex abuse from decades ago, the New York Times' National Religion Correspondent Laurie Goodstein continues to trumpet the tired claims from the lawyer-funded attack group SNAP that the Catholic Church and Pope Francis have somehow "ignored" and "infuriated" victims of clergy abuse.

A sea of protesters

The twins: Ianni (l) and Dorris (r)
on the hunt for publicity

After Goodstein first cites Dorris' curious claim that Pope Francis has somehow "ignored" abuse victims, she then locates yet another befuddled SNAPper who claims that Pope Francis "doesn't get it" when it comes to clergy abuse from decades ago.

As we have reported before, no gathering or group is too tiny for Goodstein when it comes to bashing the Catholic Church. Last year, when a tiny fringe group of dissident priests, nuns, and other left-wing zealots formed a group to attack the Catholic Church over decades-old cases of abuse, Goodstein proudly trumpeted a front-page story about the effort, even though the fledgling gang was so unorganized that it did not even have a web site yet.

Keeping hope alive

But Goodstein is most unhinged in her article when she ambitiously claims that "the abuse scandal has hardly died down in the United States."

Goodstein conveniently fails to inform her readers that in the past decade contemporaneous accusations of abuse against Catholic priests have averaged a paltry 8 per year merely deemed "credible" by the lenient standards of diocesan review boards. (There are over 43,000 priests in the United States and nearly 70 million Catholics.)

So despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Goodstein nonetheless still claims that the abuse scandal is still white hot and raging. A triumph of hope over evidence if there ever was.

But for Goodstein and her never-ending animus for the Catholic Church, it is the same as it ever was.

World says, 'Pope Francis'; New York Times says, 'Sex abuse'

This month's historic trip of Pope Francis to the United States cannot halt the New York Times' relentless obsession with decades-old cases of sex abuse committed by Catholic priests.

Despite the Church's unprecedented corrective measures just in the past dozen years, not to mention nearly $3 billion in settlements and over $85 million in therapy to accusers, one would think it was 1992 all over again in reading the article from Vivian Yee at the New York Times.

Trotting out the tired parade

Yee's article brandishes a weary parade of well-known Church critics who have a long history of bashing the Catholic Church to rehash the story of abusive priests from many decades ago. Included in Yee's article are:

• a 72-year-old man who claims that a priest "groped" him 66 years ago at age 6;
• another man who claims who was abused in the "early 1970s";
• Barbara Blaine, president of the lawyer-funded attack group SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), who once wrote a letter of support on behalf of a child pornographer;
• Joelle Casteix, SNAP's Southwest Regional director; and
• Terence McKiernan, the cranky president of BishopAccountability.org.

Yee uses her sources to variously claim that the Church and/or Pope Francis have somehow "pummeled" and "intensified the suffering" of victims.

Only until nearly the end of the article does Yee find a single opposing voice to tell the truth. After Yee trumpets the bogus claim from accusers' lawyers that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has "[kept] under seal the names of at least 100 priests facing accusations," Archdiocese of Milwaukee spokesman Jerry Topczewski reminds readers that not only has his diocese, as most others have, already publicly released the names of all of its publicly accused priests, but "virtually all" of these priests are deceased.

Agenda journalism

As we have repeatedly stated before, it is well known that the New York Times editorial policies stand in heated opposition to the Catholic Church on nearly every hot-button social issue, whether it be gay "marriage," abortion, or birth control.

And in the end, the New York Times is a paper which proudly boasts of its animus for the Catholic Church. It simply uses the issue of decades-old cases of abuse to bludgeon it for not being sufficiently left-wing on issues of sexuality.

Yee's one-sided article on the eve of Pope Francis' visit only reinforces this fact.

On the Catholic Church old sex abuse beat: Laurie Goodstein from the New York Times

While the New York Times' travails are well known, it appears that the venerable old newspaper still has the resources to devote a reporter to cover a single story line if that story line happens to dovetail with the paper's political leanings.

As our nearby Scoreboard illustrates, the Times' National Religion Correspondent, Laurie Goodstein, seems to really only cover one story in the vast world of religion today: old sex abuse claims in the Catholic Church.

Now Goodstein is providing free p.r. for another lawsuit against the Church by Jeff Anderson and promoting a flimsy campaign among left-wing crazies to sack St. Paul – Minneapolis Archbishop John C. Nienstedt.

And, as it just so happens, the Times' editorial board later wrote an editorial calling for Nienstedt's resignation.

Calls for resignation: An army of one?

There he goes again:
Church-suing lawyer Jeff Anderson

Goodstein then goes on to recount a disparate litany of other archdiocesan alleged "scandals" – such as the wacky and discredited claim that Nienstedt somehow molested a boy at a public confirmation ceremony – and concludes that there was now a big public outcry for Nienstedt's resignation.

Goodstein claims that "calls for resignation" are now "mounting" against Archbishop Nienstedt, yet Goodstein cites exactly one person who has actually done so.

Ever heard of "Tom Horner"? We haven't either. But, according to Goodstein, Horner is a "prominent Catholic public relations consultant and former Independent Party candidate for governor," and he happens to think the archbishop should resign. Powerful stuff.

Goodstein's flaky sources

Not exactly Deep Throat:
The wild-eyed Jennifer Haselberger

As we reported months ago, Haselberger was the source behind an explosive story which received widespread media attention that a Minnesota priest possessed "images of pornography," some of which, in her view, "appear[ed] to show children."

However, after police spent months investigating the claim, not a single frame of child pornography was ever found. Zilch. Nada.

In the end, Haselberger's machination of child pornography was completely false, and the media firestorm over the case completely destroyed the reputation of an innocent priest. But, of course, Goodstein makes no mention of Haselberger's past propensity for hysteria and overstatement when it comes to her former employer.

Haselberger's new leftist bedfellows

Goodstein also makes no mention of the troubling fact that Haselberger is currently scheduled as a headline speaker at this week's annual conference for SNAP, the notorious anti-Catholic hate group. While Haselberger has claimed she is "pro-life," she is now embracing a group who last year celebrated at its conference one of the country's most radical abortion advocates and outspoken Church bashers, Eleanor Smeal. Go figure.

Indeed, Haselberger has not always been an exactly strong defender of Catholic teaching, despite her position as a canon lawyer. As the Catholic League recently noted, Haselberger has admitted that she is seemingly O.K. with a loopy dissident group called "Rent-a-Priest" using her work to claim that the group does not necessarily violate Church teaching by promoting married priests administering the Sacraments.

The not-so-hidden agenda

Goodstein also defames Nienstedt by repeating the crazy charge that he somehow molested a boy in broad daylight during a public confirmation ceremony back in 2009. Goodstein lends credence to the charge by merely saying police dropped charges against Nienstedt because of "insufficient evidence."

In truth, the claim against Nienstedt was far beyond ridiculous. The charge was so bogus that even the youth at the center of the episode said nothing had happened and told police as much. The investigation into Nienstedt was nothing short of a left-wing witch hunt.

Last year, Minnesota passed a so-called "window statute" permitting decades-old, stale claims of abuse, principally against the Catholic Church, to now be suddenly resurrected for a period of three years. This has naturally thrown contingency lawyers such as Anderson into a tizzy filing new lawsuits in the hunt for big bucks.

And ever at the ready to assist Anderson is Goodstein, especially when the target of Anderson's lawsuits just-so-happens to be a bishop such as Nienstedt best known for his politically incorrect positions such as opposition to homosexual "marriage."

Free publicist for Church malcontents: Laurie Goodstein from the New York Times

How do you get the attention of America's newspaper of record?

First, find a handful of others to form a group declaring yourself opposed to sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Second, put together a third-rate website (even if it is not even online) announcing your intention to solve the now largely nonexistent problem of sex abuse. Finally, phone the New York Times National Religion Correspondent Laurie Goodstein to obtain all the free public relations you want.

So appears the strategy of a fringe group of dissident priests, nuns, and other left-wing zealots called Catholic Whistleblowers, which Goodstein proudly promoted on the Times' front page just last year.

The premise of the group is simple but inane: the diabolical hierarchy of the Church is still covering up widespread abuse of minors by priests, and it is up to these select and valiant malcontents to blow the lid off the cover-up.

Goodstein: Always at the ready for Church malcontents

Lacking any real conspiracies to blow the lid off of, however, Catholic Whistleblowers recently decided to now petition Pope Francis to discipline Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn over his handling of a priest who was found to have child pornography on his computer a couple years ago.

Seizing upon overheated media coverage, the local prosecutor brought questionable misdemeanor charges against Bishop Finn for waiting too long to report the priest, to which Finn later pleaded to a suspended sentence.

And while Catholic Whistleblowers knows that their petition will likely go nowhere at the Vatican – as rightly it should – they know that it will go a long way in Manhattan, as they can always call on the reliable Goodstein for some free public relations.

And Goodstein always obliges, as she recently penned a high-profile article giving Times-like gravitas to the group's silly petition and once again rehashing the story of Bishop Finn's sentence.

The hidden agenda of Church cranks

Basking in the publicity: Church misanthropes meet the press in Missouri

In her article, Goodstein also quotes a local Missouri rabble-rouser named John Veal, who predictably wants Finn thrown out of Missouri. But Goodstein never reveals to her readers that Veal has already been using the episode about Bishop Finn as a vehicle to promote "women ordination" and having the Church abandon the celibacy requirement for priests.

In a wild-eyed piece for the Kansas City Star back in 2011, Veal illogically tried to connect the Bishop Finn episode to the Church's all-male and celibate priesthood, as if somehow there were a connection between the two issues. And since Veal's agenda aligns perfectly with that of the Times' editorial board, Goodstein is more than happy to promote Veal without revealing his agenda.

[By the way, any time someone feels the need to identify himself as a "devout Catholic" – as Veal does – it's a safe bet that the last thing they are "devout" to is the teachings of the Catholic Church.]

The Times' real agenda exposed – once again

As we have stated several times before, Laurie Goodstein is utterly obsessed with the Catholic Church sex abuse story. Nearly one out of every three articles she has authored or co-authored so far this decade for the Times has been solely about sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, Goodstein has authored exactly zero articles about sex abuse in any other religious organization during this same time period.

And the Times' never-ending fixation with decades-old scandals in the Church – while ignoring the scandals happening today in local public schools right in its own backyard – reveals that it is not really the sexual abuse of children that bothers the Times. What bothers the Times is that the Catholic Church offends the Times' collective ego, as it does not adhere to the paper's own radical, secularist worldview.

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[An additional note ... In her article, Goodstein also makes reference to a "a German bishop who spent tens of millions building his opulent quarters." Well, that has been a story that the mainstream media has proudly trumpeted in past months. But, yet again, the truth about this episode involving Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is another matter. Check out the must-read "The Real Scandal in Germany" over at Crisis magazine, which corrects the record about this story. It is written by Marie Meaney, who actually knows what she's talking about.]

Front and center in the attack on the Catholic Church: The NY Times' Laurie Goodstein

[This post is regularly *UPDATED* to reflect our
LAURIE GOODSTEIN SCOREBOARD on our home page]

TheMediaReport.com has surveyed every article that New York Times National Religion Correspondent Laurie Goodstein has written (or co-written) this decade and has found that while Goodstein has composed dozens of articles about sex abuse in the Catholic Church, she has authored only two articles on abuse elsewhere.

TheMediaReport.com has identified all articles written or co-written by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times between January 1, 2010, and September 1, 2018.

Imbalance at the Grey Lady

110 of those articles have specifically trumpeted the issue of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. 2 have addressed sex abuse in other religious institutions. (The two articles were simply a pair of articles Goodstein wrote about an evangelical pastor allegedly harassing another adult at his church.)

This decade Laurie Goodstein has almost completely ignored sex abuse in other religious organizations. Nothing from Goodstein about child abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community. Nothing about abuse in the Muslim community. Nothing about child abuse among Baptists.

In other words, being the "National Religion Correspondent" for the New York Times is really code for being the Times' principle obsessor – among the many there who obsess – about old cases of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

The disparity is glaring.

Ignoring other aspects of the abuse story

Also notably absent from Goodstein's recent coverage are other important aspects of the Catholic Church child abuse narrative:

• the widespread prevalence of false accusations and the fact that nearly half of those accused nowadays are dead;
• the troubling financial and operational relationship between Church-suing contingency lawyers and the anti-Catholic group SNAP;
• the injustice that accused priests find themselves in trying to defend against acts alleged to have been committed many decades ago;
• the sordid histories and hateful motivations of dissident priests and SNAP members who have attacked the Church; and
• the unprecedented measures that the Catholic Church in the United States has taken in the last two decades to make the Church the safest environment in the world for children today.

As we have often stated before, it is well known that the New York Times editorial policies stand in heated opposition to the Catholic Church on nearly every "hot-button" social issue, whether it be gay "marriage," abortion, or birth control.

And in the end, Laurie Goodstein is simply carrying the water for her struggling employer, which proudly boasts of its animus for the Catholic Church and is using the issue of decades-old cases of abuse to bludgeon it for not being sufficiently left-wing on issues of sexuality.

[Important note: There was an article published by Goodstein on March 7, 2010, entitled, "Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse." However, the "abuse" cited in the article has nothing to do with sex abuse. Sex abuse, rape, and molestation are not mentioned in the article at all. Instead, the article addresses the alleged "abusive environment" (social/emotional/mental) of the Church of Scientology.]

Jeff Anderson mouthpiece: The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein

Background

• After the New York Times published three articles suggesting that Cardinal Dolan committed wrongdoing – possibly even criminal wrongdoing – as Archbishop of Milwaukee, the Times did not publish even a single story of a federal judge's later decision completely vindicating Dolan;
• Weeks later, however, the Times' Laurie Goodstein published a story about Church-suing contingency lawyers filing an unimportant motion to disqualify the federal judge who had rendered the very same decision that the Times had completely ignored.

As we reported back in July, the New York Times published three different articles aggressively attacking its local bishop, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, for merely transferring diocesan monies in 2007, when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee, to a cemetery trust fund to ensure that the monies were going to be used as intended by the original donors: for the future care and maintenance of Catholic cemeteries.

The Times and other professional anti-Catholics, such as those at SNAP, claimed that the $55 million transfer to the trust fund was a part of a diabolical plot by Dolan to "protect the assets from victims of clergy sexual abuse who were demanding compensation" by moving the money away.

"Suing the sh&@ out of the Church":
contingency lawyer Jeff Anderson

A few weeks later, a federal judge vindicated Cardinal Dolan and declared that Dolan's transfer was completely proper.

Yet the Times did not publish a single article about the judge's decision and the huge victory for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and Cardinal Dolan.

End of story? Not quite. It turns out that the main Church-suing lawyer in this case is the notorious Jeff Anderson, who has an extensive record of theatrics and questionable behavior in his self-described pursuit of "suing the sh#^" out of the Catholic Church.

In his typical bombastic fashion, the losing Anderson filed a meritless motion to reverse the judge's decision, claiming that because the ruling judge happened to have some deceased family members in some of the 100+ archdiocesan cemeteries, the judge somehow had a conflict of interest in the case.

The NYT carrying water for the usual suspects – again

Professional anti-Catholic:
lawyer Marci Hamilton

And, not surprisingly, the author of the Times' story was none other than the predictable Laurie Goodstein, who always appears at the ready to lend the Times' reputation to advance Jeff Anderson's legal career and raise money for SNAP.

To lend credibility to Anderson's silly, attention-getting motion, Goodstein turns to none other than lawyer Marci Hamilton, a well-known anti-Catholic bigot, who also happens to be financially involved with Anderson in the case.

Goodstein waits until the very end of her article to quote Prof. Stephen Gillers of New York University School of Law, who trashes Hamilton's legal analysis of Anderson's nonsensical motion to disqualify the judge:

"An appellate court is going to say, if you could learn these facts after the ruling, why couldn't you do it before the ruling? Why all of a sudden did you become interested in whether this judge could sit, other than the fact that you lost. That's something they have to explain."

Bingo.

Goodstein as Jeff Anderson's and SNAP's unpaid PR machine

Yet the most troubling aspect of Goodstein's article is that it was published at all.

Goodstein's never-ending obsession with old abuse claims in the Catholic Church makes it quite clear that she is nothing but a mouthpiece for Church-suing lawyers like Jeff Anderson and anti-Catholic groups such as SNAP.

In 2010, when Goodstein published a high-profile series of articles about a Wisconsin priest who abused boys over a half a century earlier, it was no secret that Anderson funneled court and Church documents to Goodstein, which she then dutifully published. There is no doubt that her reporting resulted in the value of Anderson's cases being increased greatly.

In 2012, when a judge ordered SNAP president David Clohessy to merely sit for a deposition involving a lawsuit in Missouri, Goodstein naturally leaped to the defense of Clohessy with a front-page story decrying that Clohessy was being unfairly persecuted for simply being asked to testify truthfully about his relevant knowledge.

It is well known that the New York Times' editorial policies stand in heated opposition to the Catholic Church on nearly every "hot-button" social issue, whether it be gay "marriage," abortion, or birth control.

And with every successive article, Goodstein – the Times' purported "National Religion Correspondent" – only makes it more evident that her main role at the Times is to endlessly recount old stories of sex abuse occurring in a single institution – the Catholic Church – in order to advance the agendas of contingency lawyers like Jeff Anderson and other Church haters.