Catholic League president William Donohue has written to the executive director of the New York Times requesting the removal of Chief Washington Correspondent Carl Hulse for his “astonishing” anti-Catholic animus.

Donohue’s letter, dated August 1, makes reference to a recent interview of Hulse conducted by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd concerning Hulse’s book Confirmation Bias: Inside Washington’s War Over the Supreme Court, From Scalia’s Death to Justice Kavanaugh.

The interview centered on the presence of Catholic justices on the Supreme Court, which Hulse referred to as “a serious Catholic sort of mafia.”

“There is a Catholic cabal” and a “real Catholic underground that is influencing this probably in an outsized way,” Hulse told Dowd.

In his letter, Donohue says that this is “the sort of paranoia we would expect from the tabloids at the checkout counter of a supermarket, not the New York Times.”

“That he felt so comfortable voicing his anti-Catholic bigotry in public is disturbing,” Donohue states, noting that it “speaks volumes about his mindset.”

Hulse is a nominal Catholic himself, but some of the most anti-Catholic people come from within the Church.

“This matters so much because there is hardly a nominee for the federal bench, as well as for the state courts, whose religious affiliation is not questioned by senators, the media, or activists,” Donohue notes in reference to the bigoted grilling of Catholic nominees Amy Coney Barrett and Brian C. Buescher, as well as many others.

While Hulse spouts his conspiracy theories of a Catholic mafia, Donohue notes, no one would suggest that the disproportionately high percentage of Jews on the Supreme Court represents any sort of “cabal.”

“Hulse’s paranoia is something that needs to be addressed,” Donohue states. “There is no Catholic conspiracy. There is no Catholic mafia. Those who think this way are so biased that they have no legitimate role to play in public discourse.”

“Please do not give Hulse any more assignments where his anti-Catholic thinking may come into play,” he concludes.