Well, it might readily have come to mind as you were reading the Los Angeles Times story referenced above.

Something old

The Times reporters apparently found a few extra hours - in their otherwise hectic days of conferring with plaintiffs' attorneys in order to devise new ways of skewering the Archdiocese - finally to thumb through the Report to the People of God released by the Archdiocese to the public more than two years ago. As they thumbed through it, however, they apparently neglected to read the headline which says, "Examples of the Handling of Sexual Abuse Cases" and which ran above the section of the Report in which the Archdiocese detailed some of the most shameful of the cases of sexual abuse. Please note the word "Examples." For the edification of our friends at the newspaper with the rapidly diminishing readership, this means that the Report did not provide details of every case of sexual abuse. What it does mean is that the Report provided details about cases the Archdiocese felt were most egregious and which best illustrated the evolving understanding of the issue and how to deal with it. Examples, in other words.What it also means is that elsewhere in the Report were the names of all - and that means each and every one - of the accused known at that point, (a listing periodically updated to reflect new and credible accusations.)

The point here is that the Times folks apparently decided that they knew best about which priests should have been included among the examples. For not checking with them before it published the Report to the People of God, the Archdiocese humbly seeks pardon.

We say, "Something new" sarcastically.

The fact is that the Times put together the story about the 11 priests six months ago. How do we know that? Because the reporters bombarded the Archdiocese with email after email of questions, which the Archdiocese answered to the best of its ability, often by pointing out that the information being sought had already been made public. As we said, that was six months ago, and our educated guess is that the Times then couldn't figure out what to do with the story because it turned out to be nothing more than a rehash of information that's been publicly available for years. So they put it in the can, so to speak.

Then comes the news in April that the U. S. Supreme Court had let stand a lower court ruling requiring the release to a grand jury of some two dozen pages of documents involving two former priests who face criminal charges. "Aha!" The Times editors must have shouted, "so what if one thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other, this would be the perfect occasion to run the 11 priests story. It may be old, and it may have nothing new in it, but we put a lot of money into writing it and we better get something out of it or the owners in Chicago will be screaming at us even louder."

So, a couple days after the Supreme Court ruling, the 11 priests story runs. Sure, there's nothing new in it, but in the news business this is what's called a "follow" story. Apparently, that makes it all okay.

Something borrowed

Bear with us here.

In October 2005, the courts - at the urging of the Archdiocese - authorized release of summaries of certain pertinent information from the confidential personnel files of accused clerics. The Archdiocese immediately posted every single page - and there were scores - on its website, where they joined the Report to the People of God, and also released them to the public via the media.

Waking from their slumber, the Times reporters decided to put two and two together - the Report and the summaries - not a bad idea, although a pretty obvious one. The result was the 11 priests story, which, as we said, languished for six months while the Times tried to figure out what to do with it.

But here's the really amusing part. The story, which relies almost exclusively on information which the Times obtained - "borrowed," to get us back to our theme - from documents made public by the Archdiocese and from Archdiocese answers to countless Times questions, concludes that the Archdiocese was trying to "exclude" information!

How can that be when the source of the story was the Archdiocese itself? (And, just for the record, the Archdiocese and its attorneys spent many hours last fall answering questions from the Times and many hours again this spring answering questions from the Times for the same story and many hours on both occasions pointing out to Times reporters where they could find information in both the Report and the Proffers.

Something blue

This, of course, refers to Times readers, who must also be feeling more than a little perplexed (as are we.) It might also refer to the Times owners - in Chicago - who are wondering what exactly is going on in Los Angeles.