By Ann Rodgers
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
March 15, 2009
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09074/955170-44.stm
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| William Lobdell |
Religion reporter's story reveals incomplete understanding of faith and the power of sin
This book is not an attack on faith. It is the memoir of a man who became a devout Christian, began covering religion for a secular newspaper and lost his faith while covering corrupt Christian leaders.
I am slightly acquainted with William Lobdell, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, since I also cover religion for a secular newspaper. He has not written in anger, does not malign those who still believe, and makes a point of describing a man whose life was destroyed after a priest sexually abused him yet remains a devout Catholic.
It's a page-turner that opens with a blunt account of the mess he had made of his life by age 27 when a trusted editor told him he needed God.
If the editor had advised crack cocaine, Lobdell wrote, he probably would have been desperate enough to try that, too. But the advice sent him on a sincere spiritual journey that culminated with inviting Jesus to become his lord and savior.
Later he felt called to become a religion writer, not to promote his own beliefs but to write about the impact of many faiths on people's lives. He did great work.
But his goal was to promote happy news, avoiding the church fights that he believed dominated media coverage of religion. When another reporter handed him a copy of a sex-abuse suit against a Catholic diocese, he didn't bother to read it for a year.
At the time he was in the process of converting to Catholicism, partly in response to his wife's nostalgia for the faith of her childhood. Ultimately, he would back out.
From a Christian point of view, it's possible to critique his original theological foundations. While he freely confesses his own sins, he seems to lack a wider sense of the impact of sin on humanity.
The tradition he was in the process of embracing teaches that sin distorted all of creation in a way that clouds everyone's vision of God and gives us a vast capacity for selfishness and self-deceit.
Later in his career he adopts a Christian goal of cleansing the church through his reporting. While that is admirable and necessary, Catholic theology would suggest that sin will always find a way to seep back in.
As a religion writer, I would say that he took the job in 1998 with some myopia about problems in the church.
I'd been covering sexual abuse by Catholic priests for 10 years at that point, and others had done so for longer. While I identify with the pain he felt when meeting survivors whose lives were ruined by abusive priests and by bishops who protected the abusers, I think he acquired a second myopia.
He writes that he found no evidence of bishops who removed abusers, but in 1993 I covered Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh when he refused to obey an order from the Vatican's highest court to reinstate a priest who the bishop believed had abused minors.
Lobdell's negative assessment of whether Christianity has made a difference in the world seems far too tied to suburban America.
If the Salvation Army, Catholic Relief Services and World Vision suddenly shut down, I believe the impact would be dire.
But ultimately, this book offers crucial lessons to Christians. The essay on which it is based has become required reading at Fuller Theological Seminary, a major evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif.
His story forces Christians to confront the impact of their own sin and hypocrisy on others. Although it's not what he intended, Lobdell's book can be read as a testimony to the traditional Christian belief that no sin is personal, that it always hurts others and often in unpredictable ways.
Those who are tempted to criticize Lobdell -- including me -- would do well to look first to the state of their own souls.
Ann Rodgers can be reached at arodgers@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416.
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