Catholics engaging in personal attacks over politics, says Archbishop Flynn

America, October, 2004

The "fusillade of personal attacks" in the current presidential campaign is infecting the debate over issues among Catholics, said Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis. "One wonders why the Christian values of charity toward one another and the American value of fair play have been abandoned," he wrote in a column in The Catholic Spirit, the archdiocesan newspaper, on Sept. 23. "This uncharitable, biased and reckless substitute for what formerly was fair-minded commentary and fact-based dialogue has found its venomous way into our Catholic family," he wrote.

Archbishop Flynn specifically criticized Barbara Kralis, who writes for The Wanderer, an independent national Catholic weekly newspaper based in St. Paul, Minn., and posts columns on various Web...