Among orthodox Catholics, the conservative National Catholic Register is often called "the good NCR," to distinguish it from the liberal National Catholic Reporter. If you wanted to read actual news about the sex-abuse scandal, the biggest story ever in American Catholicism, you had to read the "bad" NCR, which, whatever its ecclesial politics, treated the abuse story like, well, an important and legitimate story -- not an occasion for averting one's eyes.
Things were different at the Register, and by design. At a 2002 seminar in Washington about Catholics in the media (here's a partial edited transcript of remarks there by Joseph Bottum, Phil Lawler, Robert Lockwood and me), Fr. Owen Kearns, LC, who was either publisher of the Register, or there in some official capacity, praised the Register for its own coverage, or lack of coverage, of the scandal. Mind you, this was February of 2002, when these stories were front-page news everywhere -- except, of course, in the Register. As I recall, Fr. Kearns told the assembly that the Register had higher standards than to go grubbing in the mud with the muckraking secular press.
During a Q&A exchange, I challenged Fr. Kearns on that, saying that the secular press he looked down his nose at was actually reporting things that his newspaper ought to have been reporting on. I was angry at what I viewed as his attempt to make a virtue out of the Register's intentional see-no-evil policy regarding the scandal. The way the Register wrote about the scandal wouldn't be and shouldn't be the way the Boston Globe wrote about it. But not writing about the scandal is inexcusable. But at the Register, ignorance about the scandal wasn't just bliss, it was a virtue. Perhaps things changed over the years. I don't know. It has been six years since I saw a copy of the Register.
Anyway, I thought about that clash with Fr. Kearns when I read Fr. Raymond de Souza's remarkable challenge to the Register, for which he (a non-LC priest) writes, made on the First Things blog. Fr. de Souza, to his very great credit, pulls no punches when he calls on the Register, which has apparently trod so delicately around the Maciel story that even pussyfoots would be embarrassed, to stop the Potemkin journalism regarding the disgraced LC founder. This is astonishingly blunt, and good on Fr. de Souza:
In 2006, when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of Benedict XVI, prohibited Fr. Maciel from any public exercise of his priesthood, the National Catholic Register did not report the story itself. It published the official statements of the CDF and the Legion of Christ. Fr. Kearns published his own reaction, echoing entirely the Legion of Christ's interpretation. That interpretation, it will be remembered, likened Fr. Maciel to Jesus Christ in his silence before his accusers. It was left unsaid who was playing the role of the Sanhedrin or Pontius Pilate.In any case, the editorial, written by Fr. Kearns, specifically stated that the newspaper would not cover the story in the "common journalistic way" but would rather follow "the example of Fr. Maciel." As to the banishment of Fr. Maciel, the editorial took the position that it was an honor for the Legion of Christ: "We are not afraid of this cross--on the contrary, we are honored by it. If you pray for the Legionaries, don't pray that the cup be taken away, pray that we be worthy of drinking it to the dregs."
The dregs have arrived. The National Catholic Register's coverage of the CDF decision was deliberately inadequate. Whatever honor there was in it for the Legion of Christ, a Catholic newspaper ought to have considered what it meant that the Holy Father judged it best for Fr. Maciel to abide by the penalties usually given to elderly priests found guilty of sexual abuse. The unmistakable implication of both the Legion of Christ's response and the publisher's reaction was that the CDF had required an innocent priest to relinquish his public ministry. The newspaper failed to entertain the most obvious interpretation of the CDF decision: that Fr. Maciel was guilty of grave canonical crimes. That is not defensible journalism, let alone Catholic journalism.
What is to be done now? The National Catholic Register is a valuable contributor to the new evangelization. Despite failings on this story and matters related to the Legion of Christ--understandable perhaps, but not excusable--it should continue to make that contribution. But its credibility has been damaged, and needs to be restored.
The National Catholic Register must apologize to its readers for publishing what is now known to be false, and for not pursuing the truth.
The National Catholic Register should report this story, with its own writers and resources, according to the principles of good journalism. That means no longer accepting Legion of Christ statements regarding Fr. Maciel at face value. It does not matter whether Fr. Corcuera writes them before the Blessed Sacrament or elsewhere. The official statements have been wrong for a dozen years. An open, honest forum for examining these matters will serve our readers and the renewal, if possible, of the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi.
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The pseudo-journalistic handling of the Maciel case by the "good NCR" is simply a further illustration of the real problem: the Maciel-construct is so embedded in the "spirituality" (ideology?) of the LC that it might never be able to leave it behind and move on. To survive, the LC would need to do away completely with the personality cult of Maciel (the imperated veneration and imitation of the "Nuestro Padre" - mull on that!) upon which the entire edifice (in effect, and enormous spiritual Ponzi scheme) has been based till now. But this would require such a radical transformation that the LC could not survive as we've known it till now - for all practical purposes it would entail a suppression (perhaps followed by reconstituion under an entirely new, untainted leadership).
An "enormous spiritual Ponzi scheme"...
Interesting metaphor -- I like it.
I am going crazy with this Maciel stuff...who cares ? The guy was a sociopath. Any freshman at a community college in North America who is taking Psych 101 could see that. The Legion he founded is based on a Catholicism and a charism that is fantasy. Catholics never believed like that, they never lived like that, their "charism" is nothing more than dressed up, Disney world medievalism repackaged as a sort of reconstructionist Catholicism that will save the world. The L of C is a nutjob outfit. A moron could see that. Who do they think they are convincing? The world does not see them as leaders.
We need Catholicism to convince the world that a Godly life matters. It is the largest human organization that has ever existed. It is the oldest continually existing human organization on the planet. There are about 1.2 billion Catholics on the planet. That is a lot of power. Lets use it wisely in the witness of Christ.
We need a Catholicism that is down in the mud, gritty, hands-dirty real and helps people deal with the pain of life. Medieval goofiness that is the hallmark of the L of C must die. People find it odd and it is not helpful. Let us remake Catholicism so that it actually is a boon and not a burden to people.
I am a sinner. I make Maceil look like a saint. Get off the guy's back. He was an amoral, sociopathic nutjob who founded a Catholic group for his own self aggrandizement using old family connections and old world money from Spain and Latin America's oldest families. Let him rest in peace. He has a lot to answer for....
No credit where credit is due: It is certainly not the case that the National "Catholic" Reporter ("Distorter") was the place that you had to go to read actual news about the sex-abuse scandal. "The Wanderer" had been reporting for a decade or more on various manifestations of the scandal, before the scandal became a scandal. But The Wanderer is "actually-Catholic," and "conservative," and "traditional," and so was, of course, ignored by the right- and naturally the left-thinking. And even now credit is given to the Distorter over The Wanderer. No justice in the world; but I guess there's not supposed to be. Jon
One wonders if de Souza would have been able to get this in First Things and on the blog were Fr. Neuhaus still alive. And where is First Things' mea culpa for being a Maciel apologist all those years?
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