Clergy

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Thinking about religion-beat whistleblowers -- who are on the wrong side of history

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What can I say?

When GetReligion readers see a headline like this one, they send us the URL. In this case, we are talking about a Commentary Magazine piece by Sohrab Ahmari: "How the Media Fails Church Coverage -- Dissociation and projection."

When I receive URLs like that one, I fill them under "weekend think piece material."

So here we go. This one is really obvious, in terms of being something most GetReligion readers are going to want to see. Yes, it's about The Big Story, but not really. The overture begins:

The Catholic Church -- the religious body which I joined in 2016 and which I affirm to be Jesus Christ’s One True Fold -- is going through an ordeal. It is an ordeal, perhaps, of the kind that only comes about once every half a millennium or so. As a believer, my feelings seesaw between fear and joy. I fear for the future of the Church. I take joy in the long overdue cleansing, even if it means breaking the false truce between orthodox and heterodox forces in the Church.

My concerns as a journalist are a different matter. The open war between U.S. bishops, the medieval intrigue of the Roman Curia, the facts and counter-facts and drip-drip of innuendo -- all this is catnip to a working hack. The crisis also holds valuable lessons for all writers, Catholic or not. The most important is this: Always listen to the marginalized, the disgruntled “cranks,” the angry obsessives, those who cry out for justice from the peripheries of powerful institutions. 

Most journalists are hardwired to champion the weak and “speak truth to power” and all that. But the grimier incentives of the job can often smother that honorable instinct.

What are the "grimier incentives" of the religion-beat job, to be specific?


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That Theodore McCarrick crisis: New York Times started this nasty poker game. Now what?

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That Theodore McCarrick crisis: New York Times started this nasty poker game. Now what?

Step into the journalism Wayback Machine for a moment, please. 

So how did this wild game of Vatican news, commentary and rumors get started? While reporters continue to jump up and down on Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano (his infamous letter is here), U.S. papal nuncio from 2011-2016, it may help to look back at the first card that was played in this poker match.

Well, let's say that this was the first card played in public.

I am referring, of course, to the New York Times piece that ran on July 16 under this headline: "He Preyed on Men Who Wanted to Be Priests. Then He Became a Cardinal."

I realize that there were stories in June, when McCarrick -- one of the most powerful Catholic media figures for decades -- was hit with charges that he abused a male teen-ager. Our own Julia Duin began writing posts about McCarrick's shady reputation and how reporters had never been able to get the right sources, on the record, that would allow them to nail down reports about McCarrick that had circulated for many years.

But the Times report on "Uncle Ted" and his years of abuse and sexual harassment raised haunting questions: Who had protected McCarrick and promoted him throughout his career? How many men in red hats were loyal to him, because he helped them? How high did these connections go, in the Catholic hierarchy in America and in Rome?

This is the deeper background behind this week's "Crossroads" podcast (click here to tune that in), which focuses on what I believe is the core story linked to the Vigano letter. Yes, Vigano said that media superstar Pope Francis should resign -- a sure headline maker under any circumstances. But the real story here remains McCarrick and the network that surrounded him.

Was Francis part of that network, in recent years or in the past? If Vigano is telling the truth, then the odds are very good that all the details will be in church files in Washington, D.C., and Rome. Vigano is saying what a five-star source would say, as a story like this unfolds: Open the files. Prove me wrong. Make my day, pope.

Meanwhile, what about the news media? It the Times -- the ultimate game changer -- played a key card in this game, what will the media do next? 


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Believe it or not: Vigano testimony is producing a Catholic version of that 'Jesusland' map

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Does anyone remember the mini-wave of "Jesusland" maps that grew out of the nail-biter 2000 U.S. presidential election? Click here for some background on that.

Well, the famous maps of all those flyover country red states and the northern and coastal blue states evolved into images pitting "Jesusland" against the "United States of Canada" or the "United States of Liberty and Education."

You get the idea, especially if you check out some of the F-word map options that should not be repeated in public.

I thought of this the other day when I read the Crux feature that ran with this headline: "Reactions to Pope allegations offer x-ray of a divided Church." Truth is, at the time I was swamped with all of the commentary and advocacy-news reports about the Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano letter (see full text here). Thus, I really appreciated a rather calm look at one newsy angle of the story, from high altitude (so to speak). 

What emerged was this thought -- are the doctrinal wars in the American Catholic Church creating another Jesusland map?

What this Crux story did was chart some of the early reactions to this crisis by bishops who are speaking on the record. Here is the overture:

NEW YORK -- Within hours of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s blockbuster claims that Pope Francis knew about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s history of abuse, the bishop of Tyler, Texas issued a statement saying he found those claims to be credible, asking that it be read at all Masses on Sunday.

“I do not have the authority to launch such an investigation, but I will lend my voice in whatever way necessary to call for this investigation and urge that its findings demand accountability of all found to be culpable even at the highest levels of the Church,” wrote Bishop Joseph Strickland. He went on to include the 11-page testimonial of the former papal ambassador to the United States on his diocesan website.

OK, where is Texas on the Jesusland map? 



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Documents, documents, documents: It's time to get back to the McCarrick scandal

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(Sound effect: A loud sigh.)

I wasn't going to write about the Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano letter again today. 

Honest. I hit the wall yesterday, trying to read another 24 hours worth of coverage of this story.

What's frustrating, of course, is that most of the coverage is about Vigano and the letter, as opposed to what the letter is about -- as in the strange story of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and who -- in the global Catholic hierarchy -- knew or did not know about his love of sleeping with seminarians.

But people keep asking me this question: What is this story really about?

Well, I think I have found two passages that kind of sum things up.

First, there is a story from Reuters: "Defenders rally around pope, fear conservatives escalating war." The true story, you see, is not McCarrick and his network of supporters. No, the REAL STORY is that McCarrick had truly evil enemies and, now, those enemies want the head of Pope Francis?

Why, precisely? The top of this story is very concise:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- Supporters of Pope Francis have rushed to his defense after a former top Vatican official launched an unprecedented attack on him, a move they say dangerously escalates a campaign to weaken his papacy by conservatives who condemn him as too liberal.

Francis’ supporters say the accusations in Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s 11-page public statement aim to pave the way for a conservative pope to succeed him who would reverse his openings to divorced and homosexual Catholics.

Oh my, that's perfect.

The Reuters story is built on the views of the Catholic left, but it opens with several variations on exactly what I continue to hear from some -- repeat SOME -- conservative Catholics who are chanting, basically, "It's gay priests! It's gay bishops! It's gay cardinals!"


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Coverage by the conservative and global press raises the stakes in Viganò affair

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It’s now Day 5 after Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò dropped his nuclear bomb on the Catholic world. Although the best coverage seems to be resting mainly on media that have the good fortune to have Rome correspondents, there is some good work being done Stateside as well.

As one Washington Post columnist said, Viganò effectively nailed his 95 theses to the door of St. Peter’s. 

So this is a big deal. But in the secular press, it’s mainly two newspapers: The Post and the New York Times doing the heavy lifting.

But Viganò is not talking with them. He’s using conservative media as his outlets. I’m sure LifeSite News, a Canadian site primarily devoted to fighting abortion, never dreamed it’d be in the midst of a Vatican fist fight. But Vaganò trusts them; their articles must be bringing in tons of page views, so what’s not to like? 

Ditto for the National Catholic Register, which in the past has been overshadowed by the liberal National Catholic Reporter. These days, the Register is publishing exclusives and the Reporter is reduced to running snide analyses by Michael Sean Winters or stories like this one that only quote one side of the story.  

One newly published piece from the Register is by an Italian journalist who’s one of a number of people to whom Viganò released his 11-page “testimony.” Near the end, he repeats the dialogue between him and the archbishop.

“Monsignor, do you know what they will say? That you want revenge. That you are full of resentment for having been dismissed from the Governatorate and other things. That you are the crow who leaked the Vatileaks papers. They will say that you are unstable, as well as a conservative of the worst kind.”

“I know, I know. But that doesn’t matter to me. The one thing that matters to me is to bring the truth to the surface, so that a purification can begin. At the point that we have reached, there is no other way.” ...



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Vigano vs. mainstream press? Trying to find bright line between 'news' and 'commentary'

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It's an old question, one that your GetReligionistas have had to ask many times over the past 15 years.

Read the following material and ask this question: Is this hard-news writing or editorial commentary? The context -- #DUH -- is that blunt letter written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. He is the former Vatican ambassador to the United States from 2011-2016 who has accused Pope Francis of taking part in earlier efforts to protect and rehabilitate the fallen Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. 

The headline proclaims: "The Sex-Abuse Scandal Has Come for Pope Francis."

... (T)he pope’s defenders have characterized the letter as a smear against Francis, in part because of Viganò’s past clashes with the pope. The letter reflects the simmering discontent of conservative clergy in Rome, who dislike Francis’s inclination towards reform.

This piece was published by The Atlantic and, thus, it should be read as news analysis. Nevertheless, it helps to pause and consider the meaning of the word "reform," as opposed to "change." If you turn to a typical online dictionary you will find something like this:

reform ... noun

1. the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc.

Thus, Francis is -- on issues such as divorce and many matters of moral theology -- viewed as someone who is working to right what is wrong, to attack those who are corrupt. The use of this term presupposes that Francis is the hero, doctrinally speaking, and his opponents are the corrupt opponents of what is right, good and holy. You get the picture.

Now, what about this language from the Washington Post? News or analysis?

DUBLIN -- Pope Francis has long faced criticism from traditionalists -- a group that includes academics as well as cardinals -- who say the church is too willingly following the whims of the anything-goes modern age. 

Much of the dissent has remained within the Vatican walls, as Francis’s opponents worked to stonewall reforms. 

Is this news or analysis, in the context of a daily newspaper?


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Why did Vigano act? Reading Jeremiah and a New York Times op-ed at the same time

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As usual, I was preparing to publish a "think piece" post this past weekend. Then all hades broke loose in Catholic cyberspace, again, and that didn't happen.

It didn't require a doctorate in post-Vatican II sociology to see that the blunt letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Vatican ambassador to the United States from 2011-2016, was going to make some headlines in major media, while unleashing tidal waves of emotion online. It isn't everyday that a major Vatican player asks for the pope to resign.

So, before heading to Sunday Divine Liturgy, I pounded out a post: "Nuclear war in Rome: Vatican's former U.S. ambassador claims Francis protected 'Uncle Ted'." The key point for journalists: Vigano was in the perfect place to see and hear what he is claiming to have seen and heard. The issue is whether he has copies of any key documents, or other important voices, to back him up.

All of this is part of the drama of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a topic that has been the subject of a series of must-read posts by our own Julia Duin.

So what if I offer a "think piece" on Monday, instead of Sunday? I say this because the New York Times team published an op-ed page piece on all of this by, believe it or not, Matthew Schmitz of the conservative interfaith journal First Things. The double-decker headline proclaims:

A Catholic Civil War?

Traditionalists want strict adherence to church doctrine. Liberals want the doctrine changed.

It isn't every day (at least not for me), that reading an op-ed in the Times makes me think of the prophet Jeremiah, as in this famous passage:

... Therefore I am full of the wrath of Jehovah; I am weary with holding in. ... I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land, saith Jehovah. For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. They have healed also the hurt of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. 


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Pope Francis speaks out on Catholic world's biggest story: No biggie, saith the press

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Pope Francis speaks out on Catholic world's biggest story: No biggie, saith the press

The nearly 900-page Pennsylvania grand-jury report (.pdf here) about clergy sexual abuse cases contains all kinds of quotes that challenge notions about what journalists can or cannot include in news stories.

But journalists who have worked on this story for decades already knew that would be the case.

However, there is another passage in this secular document that bluntly addresses another side of this journalism puzzle. Thus, two questions: What words do we include in news reports? Do we speak clearly or do we allow parts of this subject to remain hidden in fog? We wrestled with these questions during this week's "Crossroads" podcast. Click here to tune that in.

Here is the crucial statement that I'm talking about, in the grand-jury report. It focuses on the methods that many Catholic leaders uses to hide these crimes:

The strategies were so common that they were susceptible to behavioral analysis by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For our benefit, the FBI agreed to assign members of its National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime to review a significant portion of the evidence received by the grand jury. Special agents testified before us that they had identified a series of practices that regularly appeared, in various configurations, in the diocesan files they had analyzed. It’s like a playbook for concealing the truth:

First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say “rape”; say “inappropriate contact” or “boundary issues.”

This leads us to an interesting story from this past week, as in the letter from Pope Francis that addressed the Pennsylvania report. This letter received way less coverage than I expected. Hold that thought.

One of the things that I like to do, when reading documents of this kind, is call up the full text and then run some computer searches to see what terms the text contains and what terms are missing.


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AP digs into 'gay priests' wars, starting with views of 'moderate' Father James Martin

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First things first: Let me point readers to a must-watch video feature that will be taking place in real time in an hour or so after this post.

At 2:45 p.m. Eastern Time, veteran Washington Post religion reporter will take part in a streaming video session focusing on the Pennsylvania grand jury report on Catholic Church sex abuse. Watch here: Watch here: https://www.twitch.tv/washingtonpost

Then, at 3:30 p.m. ET, Post editor Marty Baron will take part. The Post PR email said he will be talking about the "Boston Globe reporting and present day accountability in the Catholic Church." Baron was, of course, editor of the Globe during it's famous "Spotlight" project on clergy sexual abuse.

The Post media team said that video clips will be available -- hopefully on YouTube -- after the live stream.

Now, back to business. Needless to say, readers saw the Associated Press report that ran all over the place with headlines similar to this one, from Religion News Service: "Cardinal McCarrick scandal inflames debate over gay priests."

Yes, your GetReligionistas saw it, too. In fact, you would not believe the amount of email I am getting (lots of nasty "spiked" comments board stuff, as well) about how the mainstream editors and even GetReligion folks have downplayed the "gay priests are the problem" angle in this story.

It is certainly true that some elite newsrooms don't want to investigate the issue of sexually active gay priests -- period. However, as I stressed the other day, There are crucial voices on the Catholic left and right who agree that the "non-celibate gay priests" angle has to be seen in a larger, more complex context.

Please allow me to repeat my summary on that subject, included in a post the other day with this headline: "The must-cover 'Big Ideas' at heart of the complex Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis." I do this because I think that this is the clearest statement I have made, so far, on journalism about this hot-button topic:


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