A newspaper with the soul of a church
Kenneth L. Woodward, the former religion editor of Newsweek, has written a piece for us about the New York Times‘s religion problem. It is, Woodward explains, a question of rival magisteria:
No question, the Times’s worldview is secularist and secularizing, and as such it rivals the Catholic worldview. But that is not unusual with newspapers. What makes the Times unique—and what any Catholic bishop ought to understand—is that it is not just the nation’s self-appointed newspaper of record. It is, to paraphrase Chesterton, an institution with the soul of a church. And the church it most resembles in size, organization, internal culture, and international reach is the Roman Catholic Church….
[L]ike the Church of Rome, the Times exercises a powerful magisterium or teaching authority through its editorial board. There is no issue, local or global, on which these (usually anonymous) writers do not pronounce with a papal-like editorial “we.” Like the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the editorial board is there to defend received truth as well as advance the paper’s political, social, and cultural agendas. One can no more imagine a Times editorial opposing any form of abortion—to take just one of that magisterium’s articles of faith—than imagine a papal encyclical in favor.
The Times, of course, does not claim to speak infallibly in its judgments on current events. (Neither does the pope.) But to the truly orthodox believers in the Times, its editorials carry the burden of liberal holy writ. As the paper’s first and most acute public editor, Daniel Okrent, once put it, the editorial page is “so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.”
You can read the whole piece here.
Hmm. I would love to know what Peter Steinfels–and Peggy too–think about Woodward’s commentary.
I have no interest in reading the whole piece. Kenneth L. Woodward has bolagna protruding from every orofice of his body. The Ny Times is the best resourced and reported paper in America. But its opinions are just…opinions. I could not possibly disagree with him more.
While I agree with Woodward that what The Times *doesn’t* say sometimes deforms its reporting, what it does say is remarkably reliable. The same thing can’t be said for the curia. Woodward left that out and it deforms his otherwise interesting article.
The article lost me at the start, since it is standard procedure for reporters to go to plaintiffs’ attorneys to get access to documents received through the discovery process. It’s not unfair. It’s necessary, especially when a powerful institution battens down. For example, I’ve used it on stories investigating real-estate dealings of The New York Times Co. (to find out the true cost of taxpayer subsidies to The Times, which was as protective of its secrets as the Vatican is).
Beyond that, I think there is a lot of wisdom about the culture of The Times in this piece and I am glad Commonweal ran it.
In line with what Ken Woodward says, I recall Times advertisements that made it seem as if reading the paper on a Sunday morning was a form of religious experience.
Remember the New York Times and the Herald Tribune after September 21, 2001? The drumbeat of patriotic ideology drowned out critical reflection in a stifling way. This made the New York Times one of the institutions that bear guilt for the crime of the millennium, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq and all the horrors they brought.
Michael Perry: Not Jonathan Swift, but usefully offensive satire.
Not mention that the documents came from Anderson given his deep financial interest in this? Smells fishy to me.
God bless Ken Woodward for taking on the third rail of American liberals–The New York Times. I suspect that this thread will run to dozens of postings as so many come out to defend the Gray Lady. Sort of like what might happen if someone on The FIRST THINGS blog questioned or criticized the pope. We all have our idols which we will protect with all our might
Does anyone actually read NY Times editorials? From the ones that I’ve read in years past, I can’t tell that the editorial board was marked by any intellectual accomplishments whatsoever, any perceptive insight into any issue, or even any ability to come up with an interesting or witty thought. If you want liberal dogma, there are plenty of bloggers who package it with more flair, wit, and intelligence.
Matthew, thanks for providing this thought-provoking piece. I will say that I have found the public debate about the NYT Church coverage useful and heartening. It is entirely appropriate and in the public’s best interest for newspapers to be challenged. I wish that viewers of and listeners to other news outlets were as critical about all types of coverage.
However, in this apparent twilight of print media, one can’t help wondering to what extent Woodward has seized on an opportunity to criticize a rival publication. (Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post Company.)
But only God can see into the motivation of human hearts–though the NYT editorial staff, as Woodward paints them, might have the hubris to try.
What I find most unsettling about Woodward’s essay is that it illustrates the fact that many Americans–including high-ranking journos like Woodward–have forgotten what an American newspaper is.
So here comes my tangential rant:
I tell my students that when they pick up a newspaper or turn on a broadcast report, they should do so with this question foremost in their minds: “What do these people want me to know and how do they want me to think about it?” One of the most useful assignments in class is to ask students to follow coverage of a story in several different news outlets to see what angle the reporter takes and how the editorial pages–if the story gets to the editorial page–treat the matter.
It is important to remember that The New York Times is not a public utility. Neither is Newsweek, nor any other news outlet. It is an enterprise that provides information it thinks people should know about and attempts to shape public opinion based on that information within the very broad parameters allowed by the First Amendment.
Several readers of this blog have referred to the NYT as the “newspaper of record,” usually as a preamble to criticisim about Church coverage and to imply that the NYT should be held to a higher standard of reportage because it is the “paper of record.”
While I believe that ALL news outlets should be held to a high standard of reportage, the notion of a “newspaper of record” is a fiction. The paper has never so crowned itself with that designation. But crowning the paper with that moniker is handy for detractors who can then proceed to claim that the paper doesn’t deserve to wear it.
Some comments on this thread appear to have been censored.
Joseph O’Leary, about time!
Jean,
True, the Times doesn’t officially call itself a “newspaper of record,” but it comes pretty close every day when it prints, in a box at the top of the front page, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Back in the days when he was still a lefty, Christopher Hitchens used to say that whenever his journalistic motivation was flagging, he’d have a look at those words in that day’s paper and get angry all over again.
Actually, I think the best defense one can make of the New York Times is that it is, for all its faults and limitations, a kind of public utility, providing important information unavailable elsewhere. Whether or not the press is economically viable, it is necessary to a healthy democracy. Unlike most other public utilities, however, it obviously cannot be safely entrusted to the stewardship of the government. Big, big problem.
Those who rhapsodize about citizen journalism and the wisdom of crowds still haven’t told us how they’re going to get unpaid volunteers who speak our language and know what they’re talking about to go to dangerous places and tell the rest of us what’s happening there. So far at least, digital technology has been much better at destroying newspapers and magazines than at generating reliable alternatives to them.
I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. I think what has been revealed about Pope John Paul II and his connections with Fr. Maciel and Cardinal Groer is much more damaging than anything that has been said about Benedict XVI. It’s the National Catholic Reporter that’s doing the big Maciel exposé. If the Times really wanted to damage the Catholic Church, they could do in-depth coverage of the Maciel and Groer stories that would make anything they have said about Benedict look mild by comparison.
Also note Richard Sipe’s piece in the National Catholic Reporter. What if the Times were to do a series on the sex lives of non-abusing priests . . . and bishops?
For people who still can’t figure out why the Times gives more prominent coverage to the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church than to sexual improprieties in the public schools and the Boy Scouts, I think this paragraph by Sipe explains it well:
Over on America I have recently argued (provoking very little response) that in order to judge the costs and benefits of mandatory celibacy in the Catholic priesthood, it is necessary to be honest about how many priests and bishops are actually practicing it. According to Sipe, at any given time it’s about 50%. I find that stunning.
David-
Is there anything about the NYT that can be parsed, criticized or critiqued? I guess not according to you. We dissect and deconstruct the Bible. Why not the press? Hmmm. makes one wonder.
Also, as far as priests and sexual activity. here is one for you: 100% of baptized persons fall into sin at least some point in their lives. Now that’s a story!
Anthony
Also, I wonder what percentage of married clergy in other denominations cheat on their spouses. I would like to know that. If it is high enough, maybe we should abolish marriage too
Matthew, “All the news that’s fit to print” implies more about the paper’s breadth and scope than the quality of its reporting, so see your point, but don’t quite make the leap to “paper of record.”
Moreover, I suspect that Christopher Hitchens can work himself up into high dudgeon over just about anything. (I suffer from a similar affliction for which I ask St. Jerome, the patron saint of the impatient and choleric, for assistance every day.)
While I do not share some of your perceptions about the NYT in the larger context of the news biz, I do recognize that I am within a few years of retirement (I hope), and you are still young. So what the news biz will become will be shaped more by your opinions than mine, and I look forward to seeing what bright young people will make of it.
David,
The Times’s views on human sexuality are also clear and unequivocal, and at odds with those of the church. A latitudinarian moralist is still a moralist, and the editors of the Times marshal their own troops. The Times’s editors believe that it is judgmental or even bigoted — which is to say, immoral — to regard any sexual act between or among consenting adults as immoral. When those who defend a less permissive sexual morality are discovered to have committed acts that even the Times considers immoral, the paper evinces a special eagerness to report it. You seem to think this is only because hypocrisy makes for scandal and scandals are always news, and I would agree that this is part of it. But I don’t think Catholics need to have a persecution complex to notice that the paper’s reporting sometimes suggests, and its commentary often claims, that the church’s sexual teachings are discredited by the crimes and sins of its priests.
Joseph O’Leary: you write that the NYTimes is “one of the institutions that bear guilt for the crime of the millennium, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq and all the horrors they brought.” The crime of the MILLENNIUM? Are you serious?
I thought Woodward’s analogy limps too much to be really useful.
As to the dying print media, the expansion of WSJ, with its New York section, means the NYT is still the gold standard of news reporting here that Murdoch and friends are trying to overtake.
I think David Nickel’s coments are germane about the Church being “attacked” even if their approach is not one of catholic morality.
We continue, I think, to dwell on the critics of the Church be they media or lawyers or whatever instead of dealing with the issues of abuse/coverup/impact on the Church and what IT needs to do.
(Footnote: on the other hand, head of USCCB Cardinal George is reported as lavishing praise on the Pontiff for his symapthy in this matter. More adulation that needs refocusing.
Unfortunately, sympathy is nice but really is not what’s needed, but a real understanding of the problem and dealing with it justly and empathically.)
Is there anything about the NYT that can be parsed, criticized or critiqued?
Anthony,
Of course there is. I didn’t say the Times was beyond criticism. I just think in this particular case (and I am referring specifically to the coverage of Weakland-Brundage-Bertone-Murphy) the revelations were not distorted and not a big deal.
Also, I wonder what percentage of married clergy in other denominations cheat on their spouses. I would like to know that. If it is high enough, maybe we should abolish marriage too,
Comparing mandatory celibacy in the priesthood to marriage is comparing apples and oranges. Priestly celibacy is a discipline and can be made voluntary or abolished altogether any time Rome makes a decision to do so. Marriage is not a discipline. And I would have to say that although a 50% divorce rate is unfortunate, if a study were to show that at any given time, 50% of spouses were being unfaithful, it would be perfectly appalling.
I don’t think there’s any getting away from the fact that if at any given time, 50% of priests are sexually active, mandatory celibacy needs serious questioning. This is not a case of falling into sin at some point in one’s life. It is a matter of breaking a vow (or promise) half the time. Don’t try to minimize it.
But I don’t think Catholics need to have a persecution complex to notice that the paper’s reporting sometimes suggests, and its commentary often claims, that the church’s sexual teachings are discredited by the crimes and sins of its priests.
Matthew,
As I have been arguing, if the times really wanted to expose the “crimes and sins” of the Church’s priests (and bishops, and Cardinals), there is a wealth of material it is inexplicably choosing not to cover. According to Sipe, as I have been saying, at any given time, 50% of priests are sexually active. Thirty percent of priests and bishops are gay (some sexually active, some not). If 50 percent of the women in the pro-life movement had abortions, or 30% of Republicans were gay, we would ask how they get away with not practicing what they preach.
Matt, He means the third millennium, the one that’s only ten years old.
The Times’s editors believe that it is judgmental or even bigoted — which is to say, immoral — to regard any sexual act between or among consenting adults as immoral.
Matthew,
This is going a little far. Do you suppose the Times really approves of adultery? Did Maureen Dowd give Bill Clinton a pass on the Monica Lewinsky affair?
Adultery? The Times gives it a pass except for sitting presidents.
“Still, the paper’s institutional suspicion of traditional religions, especially when they assert themselves in public affairs, makes Orthodox Jews as well as conservative Evangelicals and Catholics feel like barbarians at the gates”
And barbarians at the gates they are. The intolerance of others, too often killing and torturing them, is a sin of religions that cry to the heavens. Catholic Relief Services and the many devout Christians working to help the downtrodden are the real church which has little to do with the hierarchy. Whether Archbishop Dolan is head of CRS or not. A pope who has the hubris to replace Oscar Romero is the face of a church of the last thirty years which has lost its way in the appointment of bishops who pledge loyalty but have no vision.
Barbarians at the gates? We know a few.
“But I am saying that the Times has created its own version of the scandal as if they had discovered something new. They haven’t.”
It is surprising to me that Woodward would say this since he is a journalist. Before the Times story we did not have it laid out as well. It was reported here and there without cohesion. The Times put it together which is what journalists are supposed to do. Take a poll about what people knew before the Times story and after it was published. The results I contend would be more than dramatic.
Further, the hierarchy was able to stonewall the abuse crisis until the Boston Globe made it incontrovertibly clear that the coverup was deep and continuous. Sadly it seems to take the secular press to bring fresh air into the church. Why do we keep getting offended? Is it because we are still just talking about the crisis without doing anything about it. Paul Lakewood says that from now on every Catholic, lay or clergy, cannot claim exemption if the abuse and coverup continue.
Jean –
It used to be said that it was a newspaper’s professional duty to report on issues of public interest. Thus they should present both sides of an issue. But, as omebody once noted, what is in the public interest is not always the same thing as what the public is interested it. These days the public seems mainly interested in celebrities, scandal and whatever confirms their own political beliefs. Since a paper’s survival depends on sales, one can sympathize with placing the latest scandal that the public wants to hear about on the front page. One might even call it prudent.
So what’s a poor editor to do when there is only so much front page?
Adultery? The Times gives it a pass except for sitting presidents.
I do remember them covering Tiger Woods, John Ensign, John and Elizabeth Edwards, and Mark Sanford. But this could get silly. Matthew Boudway said, “The Times’s editors believe that it is judgmental or even bigoted — which is to say, immoral — to regard any sexual act between or among consenting adults as immoral.” Can any proof be cited to back that up? As an editor, would he allow that statement to be published in Commonweal?
About “the newspaper of record”, it seems to me that it is simply a fact that the Times is often admissible as historical evidence in scholarly writings while the reports of few other papers are so accepted. Historians accept its accounts when it reports what might be called “surface facts”. I mean events that are perceptible by anyone, e.g., the bombing of Guernica, and events that do not easily admit of different interpretations, e.g., Bill Clinton’s angry reaction to his impeachment process. Not that the Times is always right or complete, but it is rarely flat out wrong about surface facts.
At least the Times has gotten the attention of the folks in Rome. That’s more than most of the center and left Catholic press here in the States can do.
The New York Times is run primarily by and for secular liberals. Is this really news to anyone? Also: does anyone under forty still think of it as the paper of record? Woodward, I fear, gives the Times too much credit in this regard. It’s a fading institution. Is Rome (to pursue his analogy)?
I share Mr. Woodward’s esteem for Daniel Okrent. His presence gave the Times added luster; his absence is sorely felt.
I find that the accusation that the Times is a secular and secularizing institution to be rather a rather trivial complaint given the commitment of the typical well-off Catholic parish to building multi-million dollar edifices and giving its offspring a leg up education while closing the schools in the poorest parts of major urban areas.
I also find Maureen Dowd to be more than Catholic enough (and even recently her conservative Catholic brother) voice at the Times to discredit Woodward’s thin-skinned proposition. The list of adulterers includes the recently disposed Governor Spitzer as well.
Woodward’s premise – wouldn’t we be better of living in the time of Henry the Eighth – clearly has appeal to many latinist Catholics, but where is the moral insight and resilient leadership for that Third Millennium?
“It’s a fading institution”
The Times is far from perfect but as a newspaper it has no equal by a considerable, almost astronomical distance. Even its sports is better than the tabloids like the News and the Post whose only reason to read them is the sports. Every day it puts out a book and the weekend edition is an encyclopedia. I know Woodward’s Newsweek is a magazine not a newspaper. But the NYTimes even has a better magazine section. With all the talk about the internet replacing newspapers the net cannot come close to the Times.
The Vatican might be more of a fading institution. It bullied its way to power for centuries and censured the best minds the church ever had. Now it is clear it is more empire than gospel. Many of us have known this. But the abuse crisis made it crystal clear to everyone.
The contrast as to how it treated Romero and Law speaks volumes as to its corruption. It will survive. But the elements of empire must be stripped away if it is to be a force of good in the world.
I see Commonweal is leading with tis essay next issue – in view of man ycomments here, I think, a questionable choice.
This is actually David Raber weighing in here.
To my mind Mr. Woodward has not proven that the NYT is like a church, but only that it is like a newspaper. He says, “Clearly the Times considers sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests more newsworthy than abuse committed by other groups.” It is indeed more newsworthy, by a country mile, taking into account both the abuse and the handling of it by bishops.
If the quintessential news story is a train wreck, then clearly the abuse/coverup in the Catholic Church is a much bigger train wreck than a similar series of events with the Boy Scouts or any other group imaginable, since the Catholic Church claims to be the one true church of Jesus Christ on earth, no less (well, maybe a tad bit less in 2010 than 1010, but the substance of the claim is still very much in force).
Big claim–big failure–big news; bad news for the Church, but there is no making it better by faulting any newspaper for printing the news.
David Raber
I am outraged at this journalist’s defense of the hierarchical church respecting the global child sexual abuse scandal. The hierarchy aided and abetted criminals–criminals who committed the most heinous of crimes, child sexual abuse–and ought to be held accountable for it. I applaud the New York Times for its shedding light on the problem not only of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, but of the systemic cover up of the crimes by the hierarchy. Not only should the perpetrators be tried and imprisoned, but those in the hierarchy who aided and abetted them ought also be held to account. The hierarchical church is not above the law.
The church desperately needs to be reformed. Not unlike other human institutions, it often takes a crisis for change to occur (you can’t convince me that an institution that aided, abetted and covered up sex crimes against children is of God). I pray this crisis compels the reforms that should have been made long, long ago. The hierarchical church’s closed structure should be the first to be dismantled, and replaced with a more open and transparent system. “”This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” (John 1:5). What’s outrageous is that it was not the church, but the Times, that shined light on the evil that lurked in the darkness of the church.
“Does anyone actually read NY Times editorials?”
I read them in lieu of reading the comics.
“It used to be said that it was a newspaper’s professional duty to report on issues of public interest.”
I’d quibble that it is a newspaper’s duty to report on issues of public import, i.e., things that have public impact. Which, I’d argue do NOT include the Octo-Mom, Kirsty Alley’s yo-yo weight problem or the disappearance of Tiffany Tehan, much as the public may be interested in such things.
Whenever I see these things on the news I am reminded of a comment made by a monk writing about some of the more incredible, sensational, and probably apocryphal elements of hagiography: “The collective mind is an idiot.”
“The New York Times is run primarily by and for secular liberals. Is this really news to anyone? Also: does anyone under forty still think of it as the paper of record?”
I don’t know that anybody under 40 reads any newspaper. They watch “The Daily Show.”
Signed,
Jean Raber. The REAL Jean Raber. NOT David Raber impersonating Jean Raber. Get into the 20th Century, Raber, and learn how to log in as you.
Jean Raber: We’re actually in the 21st century. Though perhaps being just a century behind would be an improvement for poor David Raber? I myself retain a fondness for the 19th century.
I wish I could share Stephanie’s hope that her prayers will be answered, and that the Vatican will be reformed. What I see happening is ranks being closed, and the Vatican becoming more insular.
The comments to articles in the mainstream media and in more conservative catholic ones seem to be more and more vociferous in concentrating on the bad apples, ignoring the complicity of the Bishops, and comparisons to the secular.
If Sipe is right, part of the problem would be that the hierarchy is complicit because they find it hard to judge, given their own sins of the flesh,
Bill Mazzella-
I got news for you. The Catholic Church, pope included, will be still around while the NYT is a just footnote in human history. The Catholic Church with its pope and all its warts and all. And you can take that to the bank.
Anthony
Anthony,
I understand your need to hold onto empire. But only the gospel is necessary.
And I would be cautious in taking anything to the bank. If you get my drift.
News outlets are allowed to have point of view, so long as they’re telling the truth, and I see no arguments here, even among NYT detractors, that the NYT has lied in order to “get” the Church.
So my hypothesis is that something else must account Catholic resentment against the NYT, which is that the Church’s dirty laundry is being aired too often and too prominently.
Lots of Republicans felt the same way about the Washington Post during Watergate.
As Dave-Raber-posing-as-Jean-Raber said, don’t blame the newspaper for reporting the train wreck.
(David G., it was a joke. Raber doesn’t understand about “log out” buttons.)
I got news for you. The Catholic Church, pope included, will be still around while the NYT is a just footnote in human history. The Catholic Church with its pope and all its warts and all. And you can take that to the bank.
Anthony,
I think you are almost certainly right, which is one reason why I am bewildered that so many Catholics find it necessary to attempt to discredit the Times. The Washington Post may have brought down a president, but there’s no way the New York Times is going to bring down a pope. The New York Times is a gnat buzzing around the ear of the Church.
Bill-
I am not holding on to empire. just the church, the community of believers. And we will endure long after the Times is relegated to the ash heap of history.
I think the Times will not last forever and will go down in history as a great newspaper. If by “ash heap of history” you mean to imply it is not a great paper, I disagree.
All human endeavors eventually wind up in the same ash heap. Sic transit gloria mundi.
From the Woodward piece:
“As executive editor, Keller is now responsible for front-paging journalistically questionable stories that attempt but never quite manage to make the pope personally complicit in the clergy-abuse scandal. He apparently thinks that Jeff Anderson has handed over the ecclesiastical equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.”
Pitch-perfect.
I agree with David Nickol and the others here who think that the Times is in many ways a great newspaper. It’s the only daily we still get at the Commonweal office, and it would be much harder for us to do our job without it. There aren’t many news organizations left, especially here in the U.S., that still offer the range and depth of reporting the Times offers. If you read newspapers only for their editorials and columns, then, yes, you can survive and even flourish without the Times. But if you want — or think you need — news about the effect American foreign policy is having on small countries far away, for example, the Times remains an important resource. There may still be a few other sources of this kind of information, but who could argue that we now have any to spare? It is possible to agree with what Ken Woodward says in his Commonweal article without agreeing with Catholics who say we all ought to stop reading the Times.
Jean, I hesitate to argue with you about what counts as good or bad journalism, since you probably know as much about that as anyone here. But it is perhaps worth mentioning that bad journalism isn’t always about getting the facts wrong. Sometimes it’s about a prejudicial presentation of facts. By running the story about Fr. Murphy when the Times did, where it did (on its front page), the paper suggested to its readers that the CDF’s handling of this case fit into the pattern established by recent reports about church officials covering up the crimes of pedophile priests and allowing them to continue serving in places where they could hurt more children. By the time it got to the CDF, that was no longer what this case was about. It was about whether — and how quickly — a retired priest in poor health ought to be laicized. The civil authorities had had a chance, decades before, to investigate this priest’s crimes and had decided not to. Bishops and archbishops had had decades to try to have him defrocked and did nothing until finally one of them petitioned Rome in response to impending lawsuits. One could argue that the CDF should have encouraged the bishops involved to proceed with the canonical trial that would have allowed them to defrock Fr. Murphy. (I think most Catholivs would now argue that; I know I would.) But the fact that the CDF did not encourage the bishops so to proceed does not demonstrate that Rome refused to acknowledge or respond to Fr. Murphy’s crimes, or that it was willing to let the priest continue abusing children, or that it didn’t care about the people he had already abused. The reader is left with the impression that, by not applying every available sanction — by not distancing the church as much as possible from Fr. Murphy — the CDF showed itself to be blind to the gravity of his crimes. No doubt some readers would have come away from the article with that impression no matter how or where the story was reported, but the reporter could have weighted the story much differently, so that the CDF’s late involvement appeared as little more than a footnote. The real story here is about what church and civil authorities failed to do fifty years ago, but that story would not have been given space on the front page.
“But the fact that the CDF did not encourage the bishops so to proceed does not demonstrate that Rome refused to acknowledge or respond to Fr. Murphy’s crimes, or that it was willing to let the priest continue abusing children, or that it didn’t care about the people he had already abused. The reader is left with the impression that, by not applying every available sanction, by not distancing the church as much as possible from Fr. Murphy, the CDF showed itself to be blind to the gravity of his crimes.”
Great summary, Matthew. But one does not expect a secular paper to understand that compassion for a dying man might in some circumstances over-ride the apparent moral necessity for legal prosecution. The question is: were the facts of the Murphy case such a circumstance? I think it is arguable either way. Dreadful case.
I wonder then should NPR’s Talk of the Nation should have given a half hour to Barbara Bradley haggerty on the scandal and the events of Fr. Baker, the questions surrounding Cardinal Mahony’s sealed deposition (in the light of e-mails released) and the whole question of how the Church both compares to other faiths in handling these matters and the problems of secrecy within?
Again, I feel the emphasis in the sex abuse scandal should not be on media (or lawyers) but on dealing with what should be done justly – a problem in terms of both secrecy and accountability.
Over at the America blog, Bisho Cupsich offers twelve lessons on what the Bishops have learned about this.
(He may have, but I’m not sure they have.) Still, I think he correctly notes that being defensive about the media is nonproductive.
But the fact that the CDF did not encourage the bishops so to proceed does not demonstrate that Rome refused to acknowledge or respond to Fr. Murphy’s crimes, or that it was willing to let the priest continue abusing children, or that it didn’t care about the people he had already abused.
Matthew,
From the Times story . . .
There was not a hint in the story that if Murphy was not defrocked, he would continue to abuse. It is quite clearly stated in the story that the issue was one of the impression that would be given if Murphy was not defrocked.
Matthew said:
“I agree with David Nickol and the others here who think that the Times is in many ways a great newspaper. . . .There aren’t many news organizations left, especially here in the U.S., that still offer the range and depth of reporting the Times offers.”
I am no fan of the Grey Lady, but I agree at the outset with what Matthew says in the main: the Times employs some very talented writers, and it still retains resources, especially overseas, that other news outlets simply do not have.
I will make a few more concessions up front: The Times has not only the right but also the responsibility to investigate the Church scandals. And when it does so, there is nothing at all wrong – indeed, much that is reasonable – in using trial lawyers as sources for these stories.
I don’t think Kenneth Woodward disagrees with any of those points, either.
The difficulty with the Murphy story, however, is that it didn’t use much of anything else in the way of sources for that story. That would be bad enough if the story ran on Page A26, but the Times ran it above the fold on the front page. No attempt was even made to reach Fr. Thomas Brundage, the judicial vicar who oversaw the trial of Fr. Murphy, or for that mater other key figures in the story. Because the Times did not understand the canonical process, it misinterpreted the process as it related to Murphy’s case, and consequently then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s quite peripheral role in it. When trial lawyers represent most – rather than just one essential component – of your sourcing, you are at risk for an inaccurate and one-sided story. And given the the high profile and import of the angle it was suggesting, that is especially hard to defend. The result was a very shoddy and slanted story. It did not have to be that way.
And unfortunately it is of a piece with Times reportage and commentary on religious affairs in general. as Woodward rightly suggests – not that this makes the Times all that different from the newsroom I used to work in, for example, but it still colors how we read it on these subjects, and why I have long thought that the meme of “liberal media bias” is mostly a canard – except when it comes to religion and related social issues. Their deep ignorance and secular uniformity of these subjects really hinders their ability to cover these things. I agree with those above who note that even the National Catholic Reporter – which has its own agenda, and quite limited resources, has still been more effective in reporting on these scandals, in part simply because it understands the subjects better.
Matthew, yes, of course, one can misrepresent without lying. And I think I opened my first post by saying that the continuing debate over whether the NYT has been unfair in covering clerical abuse within the Catholic Church is healthy for the public, healthy for the news business.
Anybody trying to come to grips with whether the NYT has been fair to the Church is also forced to examine their own loyalties, prejudices and sense of fairness, so there’s a double plus this debate offers.
However, even if the NYT is a tool of secular liberals as Woodward asserts, I would a) not make the leap from that that the NYT is out to “get” Catholics, nor b) lose sight of the fact that elements within the Church have left themselves open to being “got” because of their own misdeeds.
Finally, I would defer any day to David Gibson, Paul Moses, Paul Lauritzen or the Steinfelses as far more knowledgable about the world of journalism.
Yes, David, I can just imagine the headline: “Rome fails to spare Milwaukee church embarrassment over sex-abuse cover-up” — a little long, maybe, but I’m sure the NYT editors would make the space for it. I still think the timing, placement, and structure of that article suggest that Rome was guilty of something much worse than bad p.r.
Bob, I’m with you: the bishops are in no position to be complaining about the media’s unfairness. That doesn’t mean I can’t.
Matthew Boudway:
RE: “The civil authorities had had a chance, decades before, to investigate this priest’s crimes and had decided not to…The real story here is about what…civil authorities failed to do fifty years ago,”
Not exactly. Civil authorities could not proceed with prosecution due to the statute of limitations.
No attempt was even made to reach Fr. Thomas Brundage, the judicial vicar who oversaw the trial of Fr. Murphy, or for that mater other key figures
R. M. Lender,
Of course, Brundage was scathing in his criticism of the Times and the Associated Press, insisting that he was never told to abate the trial:
However, he had to change his story when it was discovered that the letter Weakland sent to Bertone saying he (Weakland) was telling Brundage to abate the trial was drafted by Brundage himself.
As reported on the Times website
Hello David,
Yes, that is all quite true. I was aware of that.
But as Brundage notes, it does not change the fact that the Times never bothered to try contacting him. That is quite a striking source omission. The point is not that trial lawyers should not be sources for these stories, but that they should not be the main or sole sources. (Likewise, diocesan or curial officials should not be the main or sole sources either.)
I LOVE the NYT and would find it hard to start a day without it (and coffee).
The editorial this morning about a bishop punishing nuns will probably annoy those who think the great NYT is “one of the institutions that bear guilt for the crime of the millennium”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01sat4.html?ref=opinion
I think there is much facility in singling out the Times, or Margaret Warner, when the beat goes on – I mentioned NPR’s peice of Talk of the Town on 4/29; last night, CNN announced a major piece by Gary Tuchman on the Oakland case and how it ties to BXVI to be shown Monday night. He previously had tracked down a Michigan pastor accused of several abuses and still functioning and proclaiming innocence,
Of course, during Holy Week, NPR ran a series from Rome by Silvia Poggoli.
But it’s really the Times that’s a problem some say.
Why the beat goes on is the difficulty of getting at the truth [Haggerty speaking of a “smoking gun” about Cardinal Mahony should send a few frissons.)
Yesterday came a report of a possible movie, using the style of All the Presidents Men, about the 2003 Pulitzer Boston Globe winners who wrote up and dug out the nightmare there leading up to Law’s resignation.
There’s more on the web today, including document stories out of Belleville that point to Bishop Gregory being of a kind with the other tansferers of that day.
At the conclusion of the Warner interviews, a young man notes that it’s about power.
Donald Cozzens in the current NCR says it not about the breakup of the Church but of the Roman Catholic empire.
Bu that empire dies hard, as the NYT editorial today points up. And that’s not old news but today’s news as the beat goes on and we try to understand the truth of what’s happening and has happened.A truth that is still difficult to get at by many layers of secrecy, protected by lawyesr lay and cannon and fought against by lawyers, rich or obsessive or not.
So at bottom, I think Woodard’s piece is a poor choice for alead essay here.
And a footnolte to Mark Proska: I read all his posts in lieu of the comics.
But as Brundage notes, it does not change the fact that the Times never bothered to try contacting him.
R. M. Lender,
One may fault the Times for not contacting Brundage, but the story itself that the Times published was factually correct, and Brundage’s statements in response to the story were factually incorrect. It was a more accurate account of what actually happened than it would have been if Brundage had been contacted. The Times may have committed a “technical violation” of the practices of good journalism, but given what we know now, the story would have been less accurate, not more accurate if they had been more thorough.
My point, briefly put, is that you have found something to criticize the Times for, but it is not something you can use to discredit the story. You may have scored a minor point against the Times, but you haven’t scored a point against the story they reported.
What is interesting about the editorial printed this morning (mentioned by Gerelyn) is the unambiguously positive resonance of “Catholic” in the final sentence.
The editorial writers chide the Gettysburg bishop for preventing the Sisters of St. Joseph from finding “new sisters who would care for the sick and dying and lead exemplary Catholic lives.”
This is a frequent refrain in the secular press: the problem is not with “Christianity” per se, but with institutions that frustrate humans who attempt to live true Christian lives.
Bill-
I am not holding on to empire. just the church, the community of believers. And we will endure long after the Times is relegated to the ash heap of history.”
Anthony,
Then we are in accord.
“All human endeavors eventually wind up in the same ash heap.”
That describes quite well the church structures and papacy as we know them today. Things weren’t this way in the beginning and most likely (hopefully, actually) won’t be this way in the future.
There is a rather major difference between the church as community of believers and church as authoritarian, top-down, hierarchial, male-dominated structure to which we are subject today.
The latest NCR editorial I think is quite right: the abuse crisis is really a hierachy crisis and the problematic top down Jimmy Mac notes is imploding in the face of its own love of power over service.
“Over at the America blog, Bisho Cupsich offers twelve lessons on what the Bishops have learned about this.”
Bishop Cupich’s article is available here: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12272
Reading it is an interesting exercise: while I found myself agreeing with every single one of his twelve points, the whole of it left me dissatisfied. It falls short of saying what I realized I was really longing to hear: ‘We bishops still have to do more – much more. The status quo, even post-Dallas Charter, is not acceptable. We are supposed to be shepherds, and we are not doing enough to be shepherds. Our people are crying out for an energetic and holy leader who willl show us how to do what we have so far been unable to do: deal the right way, the holy way, the effective way with the sexual abuse that has already happened in our midst, on our watch.’
This “dissent” by Kenneth Woodward is shocking and disappointing. He should know that there is at least one Catholic who strongly applauds the New York Times’s coverage of the clerical sexual abuse scandal, even as it touches on Pope Benedict XVI, and who considers that coverage to be doing nothing but good for the Catholic Church.
The brilliant Irish-American journalist/wit Finley Peter Dunne is said to have quoted the legendary journalist/social activist Mother Jones as pronouncing, “My business is to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.” We might observe that strong journalistic ethic informing such notable Catholic political commentators as E.J. Dionne, Maureen Dowd, and Mark Shields, to say nothing of that great fellow-traveler of ours, Nicholas Kristoff (with an Eastern Orthodox affiliation?).
And sometimes even the New York Times engages in that “business,” which is why the consistent reporting now, about what Benedict knew, and what did he do about it, is most certainly newsworthy. (Too often the Times fails, though, as was pointed out earlier in this thread, with regard to the quite anti-liberal martial drum beat, after 9/11, and especially the lead-up to Saint Joseph’s War, the invasion of Iraq on 3/19/03, and the disgraceful failure to investigate the Bushies’ claims regarding Saddam’s non-existent WMDs.)
The curious rant by Daniel Okrent, including its terrifying homophobic passage, which Woodward seizes upon as a powerful supporting text, does not really shed any light on what might be the Times’s failures. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher, is right to insist that their editorial position is “urban,” not “liberal.” Okrent used the image of specimens on a slide held up under a microscope, to describe the Times’s approach to a collection of people, such as “devout” Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and conservative Evangelicals, saying that if you belong to such a group, you will surely feel abused and misunderstood by the Times’s writers. But there you are: Any editorial position that would make any one of those groups feel “at home” — whatever Okrent intended — would hardly be hospitable to the other two. Sulzberger is right: All religious people who believe in free will prefer a truly urban, neutral forum. “Secular” and “religious” are not opposites, still less are they antagonists; religiosity can only flourish, truly, within a secular, pluralist, tolerant republic and society.
The current ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, soon to step down, is quite right to judge that Laurie Goldstein, Rachel Donadio, Daniel Wakin, and all other reporters and their editors, have done everything proper to their profession. The defensiveness of Catholics such as Kenneth Woodward, on the other hand, is simply grotesque.