UNITED STATES
Commonweal
John Gehring
May 3, 2016
Tony Spence, editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service (CNS) for more than a decade, abruptly resigned last month at the request of an official at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The reason? Spence had posted tweets about legislation to protect religious liberty passed in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee, which would deny legal protections to LGBT people. “Stupid evidently contagious,” Spence wrote in one tweet that linked to a Reuters article about a Tennessee law allowing mental health counselors to refuse treatment to patients on religious grounds. In response to Spence’s tweets, self-appointed Catholic watchdog groups that in the past have targeted other conference officials unleashed a flurry of blog posts accusing the editor of “promoting the LGBT agenda.” This proved too much for the USCCB, which has made religious-liberty issues a priority in recent years and puts significant institutional muscle into promoting its annual anti-Obamacare “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign.
“That was the only imprudent tweet,” Spence told me in an interview last week. “I was so upset because Tennessee was my home state. The legislature lost its mind. But it’s not imprudent to say what has been happening in North Carolina. LGBT rights and other rights just went out the window. It’s just a fact.”
Spence, who in 2010 won the top award given by the Catholic Press Association and has been a consultant in the past to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said he was “shocked” to be forced out and told to immediately leave his post without the chance to address his colleagues. “I’ve heard from staff and from people all over creation. There’s been a lot of support,” he said. The former editor has observed a growing tension and anxiety among some Catholic leaders. “I think it’s a very tense time in the American church and some things are off limits for discussion in any kind of rational way,” Spence said. “It’s difficult to talk about religious liberty, sexuality, women’s issues. But we don’t live in a Catholic bubble. We’re a country of 320 million people.”
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