UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Michael Sean Winters | Apr. 17, 2015 Distinctly Catholic
“Pride of being first leads you to want to kill others; humility, even humiliation, leads you to become like Jesus. And this is one thing that we don’t think. In this moment in which so many of our brothers and sisters are being martyred for the sake of Jesus’ Name, they are in this state, they have, in this moment, the joy of having suffered dishonour, and even death, for the Name of Jesus. To fly from the pride of being first, there is only the path of opening the heart to humility, to humility that never arrives without humiliation. This is one thing that is not naturally understood. It is a grace we must ask for.”
Pope Francis spoke those words this morning, and they give every journalist pause. “Pride of being first” is part of our DNA. It is our job to break news. But, the verb “break” has a double meaning, and when that news can “break” the unity of the Church, how do the obligations we have as Christians reconcile themselves with the obligations we have as journalists?
Here at NCR, there is nothing theoretical about such questions. We were pilloried for breaking stories about the sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy. People said we were assaulting the Church’s hierarchy, violating the Christian call to unity, airing our Catholic family’s dirty laundry. All those charges were true – and thanks be to God, Tom Fox and others had the courage to run those stories anyway. Can anyone doubt that the cover-up of the sex abuse would have continued had we not shown the light of day, which is often the light of justice, on the situation?
Yesterday I wrote about the mess in San Francisco. It is hard not to lay the divisiveness in that archdiocese at the feet of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. This open fighting on the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle and Twitter did not occur during the tenures of the previous archbishops, one of whom, now-Cardinal William Levada. is not anyone’s idea of a doctrinal patsy. A bishop has a special responsibility to build up the unity of the flock, and in this case, it appears that Archbishop Cordileone has placed other objectives first. In the case of NCR and reporting on clergy sex abuse, the demands of truth and justice trumped the potential harm to unity. I do not perceive in +Cordileone’s statements anything that warrants inviting the kind of divisiveness his leadership has occasioned. The polarization that now characterizes the Church in San Francisco is a thing to be regretted, and it is far from clear how it will be healed. Having the chancery denounce concerned Catholics is hardly the solution.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.