BishopAccountability.org
	Perspective: No Media Bias in Sex Abuse Scandal Culpeper Star Exponent May 3, 2010 http://www2.starexponent.com/cse/news/opinion/article/perspective_no_media_bias_in_sex_abuse_scandal/56853/ Despite the sexual abuse scandal, the faithful continue to attend mass and to receive the Blessed Sacrament. Truly, the parishioners remain the rock. The strength of the Catholic Church, its power and its glory, rests with the faithful. One of the most distressful aspects of the story, albeit one of the most predictable, has been the attempt by the institutional church and its apologists to identify the church as the victim of anti-Catholic bias. The ploy insults the real victims. The mainstream press often seems to have little regard for religion in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. Yet to hide behind alleged bias is to compound the sin. The media did not invent stories of the sexual abuse of young people entrusted to the priesthood. And if the original stories proved disconcerting, then the follow-up stories almost always have proved worse. John Shelby Spong, the former Episcopal bishop of Newark (and former rector of St. Paul's in Richmond) recently said: "The bias in the media is not against the Catholic Church. That is little more than face-saving defensiveness. The bias is against the abuse of children and young people by priests. The bias is against a systematic cover-up on every level of the Catholic hierarchy. The bias is against saying how deeply this abuse is regretted on one hand and on the other promoting Cardinal Bernard Law, one of the most guilty prelates in America, to a position in the Vatican where he will no longer have to answer questions under oath. The bias is against the way Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Australia was treated by the hierarchy of his own church after his report on clergy abuse in that country was so overt and honest, that it did not serve their cover-up needs. It is not an anti-Catholic bias but a universal revulsion against this behavior across the world that finds expression in media coverage. There is also no rejoicing among other Christian groups, since this behavior in the Roman Catholic Church diminishes all Christians and hurts the cause for which all Christians work. For this Church to pretend that they are somehow the victims of an anti-Catholic bias in the media is simply one more aspect of their unwillingness to see the depth of the problem." Few Catholics would consider Spong a sympathizer with their beloved church, but in this instance he happens to be right. And the Catholic Church is not alone. Many are those who, when caught up in misdeeds of their own making, blame the messenger. The media often have an agenda, yet in situations such as the sexual abuse scandal, references to bias should be taken for what they are — admissions of guilt.
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