I am always taken with the editorial decisions a newspaper makes: not only its editorials themselves, but what it chooses to report on, what placement it gives to the stories (page one, page twenty-one) etc.Yesterday, according to Catholic News Service:

For nearly two hours Jan. 22, a crowd estimated at 100,000 listened to three dozen speakers pledge to fight efforts to expand the availability of abortion and to oppose any increases in federal funding for agencies that perform abortions.

Now, at least in the edition of the newspaper of record that comes my Boston way, I failed to find any reference to said event. This is the same newspaper that will place prominently a story of some dozen folk sitting-in at a parish in protest. But somehow one hundred thousand pass unnoticed.However, to show its Catholic bona fides, said newspaper did provide today a riveting account of that hot-off-the-press item: Saint Francis of Assisi's "Peace Prayer" was not, after all, composed by St. Francis.And for this you need a Rome correspondent?

Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is a longtime Commonweal contributor.

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