UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture
By Phil Lawler Apr 07, 2017
For someone who covers the news every day, it’s frustrating to read a story and know that important information has been left out. In such cases, when I have no good way to dig out the missing details for myself, I’m left with the uneasy feeling that I don’t know the real truth; I only know that I haven’t seen it yet.
Let me give a few examples from this week’s news stories, and the questions they have left in my mind:
* Why doesn’t Uppdrag Granskning want to see a rapprochement between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X? Uppdrag Granskning is a Swedish television program, which has popped up on my radar screen only twice. In 2009, it broadcast an interview with Bishop Richard Williamson, then of the SSPX, in which the bishop denied the severity of the Holocaust. This past week it broadcast a documentary program charging that the SSPX had covered up sexual abuse. The timing of these two broadcasts is interesting, to say the least. The 2009 program aired immediately after Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications of SSPX bishops; this week’s broadcast followed immediately after Pope Francis announced that SSPX priests could be authorized to preside at Catholic weddings. Clearly Uppdrag Granskning timed the broadcasts to do the maximum damage to the cause of regularization for the SSPX. Why? What does a Swedish television program have against a traditionalist Catholic group? Who is feeding information to Uppdrag Granskning to discredit the SSPX? If Pope Francis goes through with the reported plan to establish the SSPX as a personal prelature, will Uppdrag Granskning broadcast another bombshell?
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