North Face Search: New York Times not frightened of Catholics .

First there`s the insulting photograph of the nun on page C20,this for yet another tiresome production making fun of Catholicconsecrated women.This "gleeful" tale is described as "fresh andfunny" in the caption beneath the quarter-page photo (not anadvertisement).Granted, prurient curiosity about the lives of Catholicsisters has been part of the nativist, "know-nothing" agenda since mobsburned the Ursuline convent in Boston in the 1840`s, and since thehuckster Rebecca Reed`s Awful Disclosures made the rounds in the 19thcentury.But even now cheap laughs at the expense of a bigoted view ofthe most noble women around?

Maybe I`m especially sensitive since Ijust came from the excellentexhibit on the contributions of Catholic nuns now out on Ellis Island.These are the women who tended to the homeless immigrants and refugees,who died nursing the derelict in the cholera epidemic, who ranhospitals and universities decades before women did so in thenon-Catholic sphere, who marched in Selma and today teach our poorest inour inner-city schools. These are the nuns mocked and held-up forsnickering in our city`s newspaper. Now go to C29.This glowingly reviewed not-to-be missed "art" exhibit comes to usfrom Harvard, and is a show of posters from ACT UP.Remember them?They invaded of St. Patrick`s Cathedral to disrupt prayer, trampled onthe Holy Eucharist, insulted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was herefor a conference, and yelled four letter words while exposing themselvesto families and children leaving Mass at the Cathedral.The man theymost detested was Cardinal John O`Connor,