Catholic fury over The Times's coverage of Pope Benedict XVI

[lemonbeam]

There is international outrage in Catholic circles over a headline in The Times this morning that many people regard as utterly misleading and part of the newspaper’s reliably biased coverage (reinforced by vicious cartoons) of anything to do with Pope Benedict XVI.

The headline, over a story by Richard Owen, reads: “Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry.” A universally admired Catholic journalist contacted me this morning and accused The Times of (and I am toning this down for legal reasons) an extremely serious error of judgment.

Another respected commentator, the American journalist Phil Lawler, takes the headline to pieces on CatholicCulture.org. This is what he has to say:

Count on the London Times to offer the most sensational coverage of a news story involving the Catholic Church. The headline on today’s report by Richard Owen screams:

*Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry
*
That’s grossly misleading, downright irresponsible. The reporter runs ahead of his evidence – standard procedure for a Times journalist – but even Richard Owen does not allege anything to justify the headline.

Here’s what we know: While the Pope was Archbishop of Munich, a priest there was accused of sexual abuse. He was pulled out of ministry and sent off for counseling. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger was involved in the decision to remove the priest from his parish assignment – got that? remove him. He also approved a decision to house the priest in a rectory while he was undergoing counseling. We don’t know, at this point, whether the priest could have been sent to a residential facility, to take him out of circulation entirely. That might have been a more prudent move. We don’t know whether he was kept under close observation. But we do know that he was not involved in active ministry.

Then the vicar general of the Munich archdiocese made the decision to let the accused priest help out at a parish. That vicar general, Msgr. Gerhard Gruber, says that he made that decision on his own, without consulting the cardinal. The future Pope never knew about it, he testifies. Several years later, long after Cardinal Ratzinger had moved to a new assignment at the Vatican, the priest was again accused of sexual abuse.

A grievous mistake was made in this case; that much is clear now, and the vicar general has sorrowfully taken responsibility for the error. Could you say that the future Pontiff should have been more vigilant? Perhaps. But to suggest that he made the decision to put a pedophile back in circulation is an outrageous distortion of the facts. The AP story carries a very different headline:

*Pope’s former diocese admits error over priest
*
That’s not so eye-catching. But the headline fits the facts.

And now let us turn to the commentary by Ruth Gledhill, under another nasty headline: “Scandal still not enough to threaten the Pope”. (The Times will just have try harder, eh?) It begins:

The case of a sex abuser being given accommodation in Munich with the approval of its then archbishop, now the Pope, is reminiscent of the scandal that engulfed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor soon after his appointment to Westminster.

No, it is NOT reminiscent of that scandal, Ruth. The Pope did not put a paedophile back into circulation; in contrast, the Cardinal showed very bad judgment in the case of Michael Hill and was lucky to hang on to his position. But, by writing such bollocks, you make it reminiscent.

And then there is this gem:

*The Pope is pretty unassailable. He is not elected…
*

Ruth, it long ago became clear to me that you do not know nearly enough about the Catholic Church to comment on it authoritatively. But surely even you have heard of something called a conclave.

Read more: blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100029771/catholic-fury-over-the-timess-coverage-of-pope-benedict-xvi/

 

[Digitonomy]

As much as I like to read Damian Thompson, his job is to get the loyal Telegraph readers into a tribal frenzy so that they’ll be suspicious of competing papers, and commiserate with their own kind by continuing to read the Telegraph. Toward this end, alarmism and misconstruing the intent of others are useful tools.

His three main points about Ruth Gledhill’s article seem to be

1. 
   *]Based on the headline, she is in league with the Times in hoping to topple the pontiff.
   It appears to me that the headline, and the thesis of her column, is to contrast her take on the matter with the way the Times article portrayed it. Here’s some of her column, which doesn’t seem to me that of an anti-Catholic or anti-Benedict partisan:
   

   What is often forgotten is how little was known of paedophilia. It was believed it could be cured, and that penitence was tantamount to recovery…Children’s homes made the same mistake…

   The Pope is pretty unassailable. He is not elected, he is a monarch, and the centralisation that has taken place under the last two Popes has cemented that power. Pope Benedict XVI has also indicated in his three encyclicals the depths of his own integrity and intellectual rigour.

   *]Contrary to what Gledhill said, the pope’s situation is not in any way reminiscent of the English cardinal’s scandal of a few years back.
   Well, there are distinct differences of fact, and there are also superficial similarities. Whether the similarities are enough to qualify as “reminiscent” is a matter of opinion.
   *]Gledhill ought to know that the pope is elected.
   In my view, this is Thompson’s strongest point, but it’s a bit of a cheap shot. Gledhill obviously knows the pope was elected, her point was that the pope doesn’t face election. Still, you have to say what you mean, and mean what you say, so I’ll give this one to Thompson.

 

[pnewton]

I am curious about something, not being from England. I have noticed that both the Telegraph and the Times notoriously have outrageous titles to their articles that deviate from the reported news. Is there a reliable news source in G.B?