One of the more colorful and combative characters on the Catholic scene was profiled in the New York Times recently: the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue:

William A. Donohue, the perennially indignant president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, had no sooner finished a conference call with reporters Wednesday, in which he demanded the firing of a new White House aide, when CNN called.

“CNN wants you to do Rick Sanchez at 3:30 on the Notre Dame thing, and also Bill Cunningham wants you to come on about ‘Angels and Demons,’ ” said his assistant, Susan Fani, in the wood-paneled 34th-floor Midtown Manhattan office from which Mr. Donohue surveys the world — and more often than not finds it rife with anti-Catholic bias.

With urgency in his voice, he replied, “Now, I’ve got to see the movie before I can talk about it, but if he wants me to go on about the distortions and lies in Dan Brown’s book and Ron Howard’s hypocrisy,” he said, referring to the author of the book and director of the movie “Angels and Demons,” “I can do that.” He spoke fast, his words bunching up and spilling over their margins like the notations on the overcrowded desk calendar he was scribbling on.

“But, wait, so you told the people at ‘American Morning’ I can do the taping for them? And Bob Schieffer is tomorrow morning at 10.”

It has been a busy week for Mr. Donohue, a contentious and unofficial enforcer of Roman Catholic sensibilities who can grate on enemies and friends alike with his immense ability to be offended on behalf of his church.

In the 16 years since he took the reins of the Catholic League — an organization that claims to have 50,000 paying members nationwide but has no formal connection to the church and no spokesman except Mr. Donohue — he can recall few moments that have so thoroughly tapped his well of combativeness.

With the movie “Angels and Demons” opening on Friday, he has been issuing public broadsides and giving interviews on radio and television by the fistful, pounding at what he says are historical distortions about the church’s history in the book’s plot. “They even have a scene where rats eat a bunch of cardinals,” he said. “Can you imagine any other religion where this would not be viewed as rank religious bias?”

There’s much more at the Times link.

Meantime, Donohue wasted no time taking issue with several items in the Times article, and offering his own corrections to the record.

PHOTOS: by Tim Knox / New York Times