What AP left out in its hit job on the Church

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Angelus News

July 12, 2020

By Msgr. Richard Antall

Sometimes the truth gets lost in the failure to give contexts to “facts.” This is the case with last week’s widely-circulated Associated Press article, “Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B.”

AP’s editors and writers wanted to use the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program for businesses hit hard by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, to put the Catholic Church in the United States in a bad light.

The first paragraph showed AP’s remarkable bias in leaving out significant details: “The U.S. Roman Catholic Church used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.

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.