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	Some Journalists Do Have It By Joe Borg Times of Malta April 14, 2010 http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs/view/20100414/fr-joe-borg/some-journalists-do-have-it Yes, I think that some journalists do have it. The "it" being "cheek"! Read this conclusion of a report by the agency AFP posted on this website on April 13: "The Vatican has adopted a strategy of blaming the media for playing up the paedophile revelations, accusing them of trying to smear the Pope." Oh, I see, it is the Vatican's fault after all! Breaking news 9 years old Let us look at some media reports starting with the same dispatch of AFP. The first paragraph states that "priests accused of sex abuse should "always" be turned in to civil authorities, the Vatican said yesterday in guidelines on handling paedophilia cases that were posted for the first time on its website." This sentence was contradicted in the second paragraph when AFP gave a quote from the above mentioned document. It stated: "'Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed,' the guidelines state." The difference is glaring. AFP and other agencies gave readers the impression that the Vatican had finally seen the light. However, no new guidelines were promulgated. The Vatican just gave a summary in laymen's terms of its policy enunciated in 2001! These agencies say it fit to bill them as new guidelines. "P" surely not for professionalism! Several agencies and newspapers - AP and The New York Times at the vanguard - tried their best to come with "scoop" after "scoop" to try to depict the Pope as a defender of abusers. None of the accusations held ground under scrutiny. On Wednesday of Holy Week AP reported as "breaking news," a 1963 letter "obtained by the Associated Press" about paedophilia that was sent to Pope Paul VI by Father Gerald Fitzgerald, who headed a now-closed treatment centre in New Mexico. This letter had been reported in The New York Times a year ago! Some breaking news indeed! Then AP published what was billed as the mother of all proofs against the Pope. This was the case of Fr Kiesle who asked to be dispensed from the promise of celibacy and the then Cardinal Ratzinger advised further study of the case for "the good of the universal church." At that time Fr Kiesle had already been condemned by the Courts for paedophile so taking some more time to study the case was no tantamount to a cover-up since the case was already public. Ratzinger advice to the local bishop to take paternal care of the priest is nothing but the curial way of saying that the bishop should see that the priest does no harm to children! Kiesle offended again years after he was defrocked! The Mother of all stupidities! Moreover, there is more still to come. Read the following two paragraphs from a blog posted by Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Example: The Washington Post ran an opinion piece on Palm Sunday by Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, whose claim to fame in the U.S. previously was for a Saturday Night Live performance 18 years ago when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II. As the Washington Post's theologian at the start of Holy Week, she declared that "all good Catholics ... should avoid Mass." The Web site of the same newspaper ran a vitriolic blog entry by atheist Richard Dawkins. The British scientist called the Catholic Church an "evil, corrupt organization" and a "rotten edifice" and spewed more of his anti-Catholic screed in, of all places, the On Faith section of the Washington Post-Newsweek blog. Neither Sinead O'Connor nor Richard Dawkins, while free with their opinions, seems an expert on Catholicism. They're simply well-known. Given that editorial criterion, readers might worry that if cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer were still alive, the Post would hire him as a food critic. MSNBC libelled the pope in Holy Week with a Web site headline - Pope describes touching boys: I went too far - which has since been removed. The headline was intended to grab attention - it did - but had not a shred of substantiation in the story it headed. Fellow media outlets, who rightly cry indignantly when they see plagiarism among their brethren, gave MSNBC a pass on the libel. MSNBC dropped the headline and apologized after the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights made noise." Could anyone blame the Vatican for seeing red instead of white and yellow? It is true that several church people have put their foot in their mouth during the current controversies. What on earth came over Cardinal Bertone to put together homosexuality and paedophilia? In addition, what about the other PR disaster committed by Fr Cantalamessa who publicly read a letter comparing the present attacks against the Pope with the anti-Semitic campaigns? These gaffes, however, in no way justify the many reports in several media outlets which abdicated to basic journalistic ethics and professional convention in their coverage of the child abuse scandal. It seems that for some, when the Church is concerned, everything is fair game! I hasten to add though that like the editor of L'Osservatore Romano I do not think that there is some grand anti-Church conspiracy. What is happening has a different explanation, which is too long to go into to-day. Welcome Pope Benedict Controversy or no controversy, Pope Benedict will visit us on Saturday April 17 and Sunday April 18. He will surely be given a most warm welcome by the Maltese. He deserves it as an individual, a great theologian and more so as the Vicar of Christ. We love you Pope Benedict.
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