In a recent op-ed piece on the Catholic website Crux, Father Edward Beck, C.P., a noted television commentator on matters of religion, opined that he does not believe that there really is an anti-Catholic bias in the media.

In fact, according to Father Beck, the media is simply searching for a good story and often stories about the Catholic faith are fascinating to the public. He states that he has been treated with nothing but the greatest respect by the secular media.

However, the experience of the mainstream media by most priests and people of faith is not really in accord with his. We need only to look to the slanderous headlines in the New York Daily News last week about Bishop DiMarzio, and the relentless campaign of this paper in the past year or so against the Catholic Church in New York City.

New York Magazine, another local institution, not only goes after the Catholic Church but also after people of faith in general. Recent articles include “How Religion Can Help Explain the Wage Gap,” and several other pieces, all of which more or less argue that it is belief in a personal God and adherence to a organized religion that keeps the individual down.

We can’t blame the secular media for all our problems. We as a Church have failed in so many different ways and not lived up to all we needed to do for the protection of children, to give one example.

But is it ever, ever acknowledged that no one is doing more for the protection of children than the Roman Catholic Church? Is it ever acknowledged that the Church is serving, educating, helping the poorest of the poor locally, nationally and internationally?

We encourage our brothers and sisters in the secular media to report some of the great things that the Catholic Church is doing throughout the world, rather than always trying to operate on the attitude of suspicion of the Church.