Follow-up: Rev. Thomas Doyle Now Attacks Themediareport.com with Falsehoods in Landmark Suit against Vatican

By Dave Pierre
Media Report
June 11, 2012

http://www.themediareport.com/2012/06/11/rev-thomas-doyle-misses-in-swipe/

Just makin' it up some facts: Rev. Thomas Doyle

In 2002, Church-bashing attorney Jeff Anderson filed the suit John V. Doe vs. Holy See, an attempt by the contingency lawyer to generate sensational headlines and blame the Vatican for the abuse committed decades ago by a priest in the United States who was laicized in 1966 and died in 1992.

Ten years later, the legal wranglings in this case continue, and now TheMediaReport.com has found itself caught in the crossfire.

In a recent declaration in the case, professional Church critic and dissident priest Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, O.P., who is acting as an expert witness for the plaintiff, falsely accused defense attorneys for The Holy See of obtaining information from TheMediaReport.com and then using it in a reply brief.

Doyle claims that lawyers for The Holy See used information about him from the profile that we posted of him last month.

The facts are the facts

However, TheMediaReport.com posted its profile of Doyle on May 15. Attorneys for The Holy See had already filed its brief on May 9, six days earlier.

In other words, in his declaration, Doyle has it completely backwards. TheMediaReport.com used information from The Holy See's brief, not the other way around. (TheMediaReport.com has been monitoring this historic case and has viewed much of the docket.)

[Click to read the relevant page from Doyle's June 1 declaration]

Doyle accuses The Holy See's lawyers and this site of "erroneous and inaccurate statements," but he fails to point out any specific examples. Doyle resorts to claiming that some of his recorded remarks and statements have been "taken out of the proper context." Other times he resorts to parsing and hair splitting.

Doyle asserts that The Holy See's claim that "Doyle has long criticized Catholic institutions" is "polemical, slanderous, and incorrect."

Really? What else can be concluded from someone which such a long and storied history of animosity against Catholic teaching and Catholic leaders? Doyle is the same guy who once told a national television audience, "They (The Catholic Church) ought to sell the Vatican to the Mormons or to Disney or something and go out and start all over again."

Doyle should come clean about his dissent. Meanwhile, as we have stated before, Doyle is hardly the unbiased "expert" that the media purports him to be. As his incorrect broadside against The Holy See and TheMediaReport.com illustrates, Fr. Doyle can improve his regard for the facts and the truth.