Blaming the Media

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 1/29/04)

At this late date it's hardly news that the Catholic Church has some sort of problem—or should I say problems?—with the media. As a small contribution to untangling some twisted threads of a tangled relationship, here are two anecdotes from real life that help explain what's wrong.

One day recently I got a call from a reporter with a Boston news organization. Not, I might add, the Boston Globe. Archbishop Sean O'Malley, O.F.M.Cap., the new Archbishop of Boston, had been speaking in defense of traditional marriage and unborn human life, the reporter said, and not everybody was well pleased. There were those who felt the archbishop should stick to the issue of sex abuse and not get distracted by anything else. Now, what did I think about that?

What I thought, I said, was that the Archbishop of Boston was doing exactly what might have been expected. The Catholic Church has a comprehensive commitment to human life and human rights—a commitment Archbishop O'Malley obviously shares. Nobody should be surprised when he expresses it.

"I suppose you're right," the reporter replied. "People have said from the start that O'Malley buys the Church's party line."

That's when I blew up.

To call it a party line was intolerable, I said. For years critics had accused us Catholics of being single-issue people on abortion. Now apparently we were blameworthy if we weren't fixated on sex abuse. Too much!

The journalist seemed taken-aback. "I was the one who said that about the party line, not my sources," he confessed. Then, after a pause: "I'm sorry."

The cynicism of journalists is legendary. Sometimes it's just a professional pose. In the case of the Catholic Church, though, something besides posing often is operative— cynicism expresses a world view hostile to Catholicism. Catholics can't do much about that except challenge it when they meet it. More challenges would be in order these days.

But the second incident teaches a very different lesson.

Not long ago I got a phone call late one morning from the producer of a radio talk show who wanted someone to go on the air at noon for a discussion of celibacy and priests. Considering the program to be a reasonably responsible one, I agreed.

I was glad I did. The other guests turned out to be a married ex-priest and a non-Catholic sociologist who told me privately he favored optional celibacy.

It seemed to me the show went fairly well. Some who listened to it agreed. A priest later told me that he and his brother, also a priest, had heard it and were grateful for what I'd said. If I hadn't been there, of course, there would have been no one else on this panel to say a good word for priestly celibacy.

Then the panel was deliberately stacked, you say? Could be. Yet the producer and the program's host both went out of their way to say they'd contacted two church groups with priests on staff in an effort to find someone who'd defend celibacy. Neither organization came through in the end.

We Catholics do a lot of complaining about how the media treat the Church. I've often complained myself. With justification, I think.

But if, given the opportunity to explain what the Church does in a fair media discussion, Catholics can't or won't produce, they have only themselves to blame if they don't like the results. It isn't always the media who are to blame when this relationship goes sour. Sometimes it's us.

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