Lord Rees-Mogg, are you proud of the way The Times is vilifying the leader of your Church?

[lemonbeam]

On Saturday, The Times attempted to drag Pope Benedict XVI into a paedophile scandal with this disgusting headline:

Opinion - The Telegraph

As I reported at the time, this headline was described as “grossly misleading and downright irresponsible” by the leading American commentator Phil Lawler on CatholicCulture.org. The then Archbishop Ratzinger allowed a priest accused of sexual offences from another diocese to go into retreat in Munich while he received counselling; he knew nothing of the decision to put the priest into ministry and by the time the priest was accused of further offences, Cardinal Ratzinger had been in Rome for years.

The German Church handled this very badly, no doubt; but it was not Joseph Ratzinger’s fault and the headline is (excuse the shouting) NOT TRUE. Fr Tim Finigan, one of the most respected traditionalist priests in England and certainly its most influential priest-blogger, described it as a “Disgraceful attack on the Holy Father in The Times”. Fr Finigan has since joined a Facebook group entitled “Catholics who condemn The Times (and other media’s) treatment of the Pope” set up (without my knowledge or encouragement, though I was happy to join) by Jeffrey Steel.

It has 600 members as I write, which you may not think is a lot – but look at who belongs to it. Professor Thomas Pink (one of Britain’s leading Catholic moral philosophers), Fr Tony Churchill (former press officer to the Bishops’ Conference), Fr Stephen Langridge (an influential PP in south London who is Southwark’s vocations director), Fr Dominic Allain (priest, Catholic Herald columnist and author), Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith (theologian and author), Fr Ed Tomlinson (a leading Anglo-Catholic vicar) – and Andrew Soane, press officer for Opus Dei in this country. Update: Since these people joined, the Facebook group has now taken the reference to The Times out of its title. Has some pressure been exerted?]

Let me make something clear: this is not a personal attack by me on Ruth Gledhill, who veers between sympathetic and wildly hostile coverage of the Church, and whose revulsion at clerical cover-ups I fully share. There is a wider perception that The Times’s entire coverage of the scandals in the Catholic Church, including Peter Brookes’s revolting cartoons, has the flavour of an anti-Catholic crusade.

Let me quote my colleague Cristina Odone, former editor of The Catholic Herald: “I have been shocked by the Times’s anti-Catholic coverage, which verges on the hysterical and fanatical. And I want to know: why is this happening?”

What I’d like to do is put The Times’s elder statesman, Lord Rees-Mogg, on the spot. How can he, as a former editor of the paper and a devout and distinguished Catholic, stand by as the paper he loves traduces the Holy Father?

Read more here: blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100030155/lord-rees-mogg-are-you-proud-of-the-way-the-times-is-vilifying-the-leader-of-your-church/

 

[Lutheranteach]

The question on any scandal are always the same:

1. Who did what and when?
2. Who knew about it, and when?
3. What did they do to stop it, and when?
4. Did they do nothing after they knew about it?
5. Did they try to cover it up? How? Why? When?

Having been in journalism for 20-plus years. I can tell you we’re very good at finding that stuff out. We always have been, and unlike the police we have far fewer rules to follow when in it comes to getting info. That said. Bad headline, really inexcusable and a violation of the code of ethics all journalist should hold themselves to.

spj.org/ethicscode.asp