BishopAccountability.org
	Is the News Media Being Fair to the Pope?…john Shelby Spong Answers Voice from the Desert April 25, 2010 http://reform-network.net/?p=4353 From the Q&A column of John Shelby Spong. Brought to my attention by my Tucson friend Lawrence Quilici. Thanks, Lawrence. * * * Sally and Jon from The Washington Post, write: Is the news media being fair to the pope? Is the media biased against the Catholic Church or its hierarchy? How would you advise the pope? Dear Sally and Jon: The bias in the media is not against the Catholic Church. That is little more than face-saving defensiveness. The bias is against the abuse of children and young people by priests. The bias is against a systematic cover-up on every level of the Catholic hierarchy. The bias is against saying how deeply this abuse is regretted on one hand and on the other promoting Cardinal Bernard Law, one of the most guilty prelates in America, to a position in the Vatican where he will no longer have to answer questions under oath. The bias is against the way Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Australia was treated by the hierarchy of his own church after his report on clergy abuse in that country was so overt and honest, that it did not serve their cover-up needs. It is not an anti-Catholic bias but a universal revulsion against this behavior across the world that finds expression in media coverage. There is also no rejoicing among other Christian groups, since this behavior in the Roman Catholic Church diminishes all Christians and hurts the cause for which all Christians work. For this Church to pretend that they are somehow the victims of an anti-Catholic bias in the media is simply one more aspect of their unwillingness to see the depth of the problem.
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