Presswatch /Roman Scandals
Cony, John
Roman Scandals by John Corry John Cardinal O'Connor has not spoken to a reporter since last summer, and does not plan to speak to one soon. The archdiocese of New York has made no announcement on...
...As Archbishop Keeler said, "In much of the media, there is a pre-programmed Catholic story...
...Catholic Bishops and his reputation was unblemished...
...76 The American Spectator February 1994 T he New York Times once warned that same hierarchy not to press its views on morality too strongly...
...Elders had a point...
...It should also be noted that some Catholics who disagreed with church doctrine on these matters did so because they thought church doctrine "too liberal...
...You trustedhim," Bonnie Anderson, the correspondent, said softly...
...The Catholic church and the press are not getting along...
...The television pictures were fine, but the commentary was uniformly awful...
...We all seem to be guilty one way or another...
...Devout Catholics sometimes referred to him as a "holy man," a term they do not use lightly...
...In the Salem witch trials, "spectral evidence" was used against those convicted of witchcraft...
...The story, buttressed by spurious polls, says the church is in disarray, rife with dissent, and rent by feuding...
...Both were from the Archbishop of Denver...
...Catholicism canbe burdensome...
...Meanwhile, network news programs that were uncertain how to treat Michael Jackson, and hesitant to examine sexual charges against Bill Clinton, had no difficulty indicting Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago...
...Nonetheless, ABC used the $10 million suit against Cardinal Bemardin as its second piece of the night—right after the lead story on the New Jersey election...
...Presumably, they hoped the media would notice...
...The media recognize sin only in its collective and most political forms: racism or sexism, say, or homophobia...
...Catholicism and the sterner forms of Protestantism, though, insist that sin is an individual affair...
...The New York press let the remark pass almost unnoticed...
...At the recent conference of Catholic bishops in Washington, Archbishop William Keeler of Baltimore said in the opening speech that the media's presentation of the church amounted to "caricature...
...Cook, who had a history of alcohol and drug problems, said he had recalled the incident after undergoing something called memory-recovery therapy...
...It is just as well that he does...
...If she doubted Cook's story at all, she kept the feeling to herself...
...Conference of...
...When Clarence Thomas, who was educated by nuns, was nominated to the Supreme Court, then-Governor Douglas Wilder of Virginia asked: "How much allegiance is there to the Pope...
...The moral teachings of the one are inimical to the social and political values of the other...
...CI The American Spectator February 1994 77...
...In the recent mayoral campaign in New York, a prominent city councilwoman said on National Public Radio that Rudolph Giuliani's parochial-school education made him "suspect...
...Sin is quite specific...
...63 percent accepted its teachings on sexuality...
...Catholicism may be an alien religion...
...Bernardin, however, was an unlikely candidate to be a pederast...
...Obviously, there is a conflict here, and it is heightened by a residual anti-Catholicism...
...Catholics are unhappy with their church...
...They also gave him an ovation...
...CNN, meanwhile, seemed to have nothing else on its mind: first Cook's news conference, then Bernardin's, then cut to a taped interview with Cook, then back to a taped segment of Bernardin's news conference, and on to the anchorman's wrap-up: "He categorically denies the charges against him, but does admit it is the third accusation against him this year—one, a letter from a woman who accused him of satanic rites 36 years ago, one from a man who accused him of participating in an orgy...
...This, he said, would violate "the church's basic teaching about the sacredness of life and the evil of procured abortion...
...There is nothing abstract about Catholic thinking on this...
...As the editorial-page director of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a few years ago: "The Roman Catholic Church, it needs to be remembered, is quite literally an un-American institution...
...The syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman defended Wilder...
...It's the Catholic hierarchy...
...Few who know Bemardin doubt that his name will be one day cleared...
...And its principal policies are established by the Vatican in Rome...
...In one report, it used thirteen soundbites from Catholics who disagreed with John Paul's theology, and only two that were in agreement...
...A 34-year-old AIDS patient named Steven Cook filed a $10 million lawsuit charging the Cardinal with sodomizing him some 17 years ago...
...I was given some very nice gifts, and then I was led into his bedroom and he performed anal sex on me," Cook declared, describing what he said was his encounter with the Cardinal...
...Although hundreds of thousands of young Catholics had gathered in Denver to welcome the Pope, "Sunday Morning" could find almost no one who seemed to like him...
...You must answer to God, and shoulder the guilt yourself...
...On CBS and NBC, the coverage was also ample...
...It was a boobish question, but it was taken seriously by some...
...Possibly they thought Dr...
...Keeler named no names, but he might have had a story on CBS's "Sunday Morning" in mind as an example...
...The archbishop was exercised in particular by the coverage of the Pope's visit to Denver last summer...
...The bishops at the conference in Washington issued a statement saying they expected his "full vindication...
...Thus the media caricature: Most John Corry is a former New York Times reporter and media critic and the author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset/G.P...
...Joycelyn Elders accused the Catholic Church of having been indifferent to black slavery, the plight of American Indians, and the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust...
...L ittle of this nuance is reflected in the media, especially in the analysis heard on television...
...It found that a majority of American Catholics disagreed with Catholic doctrine on abortion and the so-called moral issues...
...You do wrong if you have an abortion, commit a homosexual act, or practice adulterous behavior...
...In fact, Catholics are not at odds with their church so much as the press is at odds with Catholicism...
...Putnam's Sons...
...Before she was nominated as Surgeon General, Dr...
...He noted that it would require the church to pay for abortions...
...As it happened, it was the same day that Archbishop Keeler spoke about the media's "caricature" of the church...
...Some say," "Sunday Morning" reported, "the real miracle is the American Catholic Church itself: still intact, yet still at odds with the man from Vatican City...
...Twenty-one people were put to death...
...57 percent agreed with its position on the status of women...
...The mainstream media, however, hardly noticed...
...Warfare is breaking out along the fault line...
...A Newsweek poll, not often mentioned, found that practicing Catholics agreed with the Pope: 62 percent supported the church's stand on abortion...
...It isn't liberals, and it certainly isn't Douglas Wilder who have reopened the can of worms marked religion," she wrote...
...The archdiocese of New York has made no announcement on the subject, but it does say off the record that the Cardinal now stays away from journalists...
...The Washington Post said in an editorial that this was "troubling," and Pat Buchanan fumed on "Crossfire," although few others in the media seemed to be bothered...
...He was once president of the U.S...
...The media urge protection, and even approval, for those who wish to behave in ways the church says are sinful...
...Cardinal O'Connor may have had that in mind when he attacked President Clinton's health-care plan the following week...
...The media, however, do not think of abortion, homosexuality, or adultery as being sinful or even particularly blameworthy...
...M eanwhile, the CNN interview with Cook had been conducted by a very sympathetic correspondent...
...Indeed, abortion rights and gay rights are staples of editorial pages, television commentary, and the general newsroom culture...
...The most frequently cited poll—commissioned by CNN and USA Today—seemed to uphold the perception...
...Blaming society or calling for new legislation is not enough...
...The other bishops rose from their chairs and applauded...
...The poll, however, included a great many people who were Catholics in name only, and seldom, if ever, went to church...
...If it did, the Times said, it might destroy the "truce of tolerance" that allows Catholics to worship freely...
...The cardinal was careful to make the attack in his archdiocese's own newspaper...
...This is the oldest of American prejudices, traceable from Puritanism right up through Clinton appointees...
...Spectral evidence was based on the recovery of apparently repressed memory...
...Viewers were left only with Cook's unsubstantiated charge—dredged up in memory-recovery therapy...
...In the last few years he had removed some two dozen priests from parish assignments after they were charged with sex abuse, and also set up hotlines for possible victims...
Vol. 27 • February 1994 • No. 2
