Talk about trying to shoot the messenger!

The New York Times is being attacked from all sides over its coverage of the sex abuse scanadals in the Catholic Church.

As Public Editor Clark Hoyt noted Sunday, the Vatican says the Times “lacks fairness," an archbishop of Brooklyn said the paper was using the church as its “personal punching bag” and a columnist in Canada said the paper was publishing "falsehood upon falsehood."

Well all I can say is that the newspaper must be doing something right.

The Catholic Church has spent decades, if not centuries, covering up for the crimes of the pedophile priests and and nuns.

The main problem in the past has been the utter lack of transparency on this issue.

The utter silence in the media, particularly in Ireland.

In the 1940s, an American priest broke the code of silence and warned Ireland that there was something rotten in the Irish church.

"Boystown" priest, Fr Edward Flanagan, condemned Ireland’s industrial school system and he was viciously attacked for his efforts.

The media closed ranks round the leaders in the church and the cruel and inhumane treatment of children in those schools continued for another 50 years.

Fifty years of torture for any poor child swept into those truly God-forsaken places.

We could have done with an investigation by The New York Times anytime over the past 60 years.

As Hoyt says; "Painful though it may be, the paper has an obligation to follow the story where it leads, even to the pope’s door."