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	Catholic Paper Recalls Covering Child Sex Scandal a Generation Ago By Laura Bauer and Eric Adler News-Leader April 17, 2010 http://www.news-leader.com/article/20100417/NEWS01/4170358/Catholic-paper-recalls-covering-child-sex-scandal-a-generation-ago Kansas City-- His audience once viewed him as the son of Satan, a destroyer, a groundless provocateur bent on staining the church. No other time in Tom Fox's life did he feel so alone. That was in the mid-1980s, 25 years before the current child sex scandal that is rocking the Roman Catholic Church and raising new questions about the response of Pope Benedict XVI in the past and today. Even then, Fox and his staff at the National Catholic Reporter wrote what they knew: Several priests in America were sexually molesting their charges -- boys who had come to them for leadership or comfort, some who held the cross at Sunday morning Mass. "We were the black sheep," said Fox of when his independent, Kansas City-based sheet, known as the NCR, covered the sex abuse scandal in every weekly edition. "We were attacked by people saying we were intent on destroying the Catholic Church." Today, one might think that Fox feels redeemed, but he doesn't see it that way. Maybe there's satisfaction that the 35,000-circulation newspaper eventually was proved right, but he wishes it wasn't so. "There's nothing to feel good about," Fox said, who at a salt-and-pepper 66 commands a midtown newsroom and tiny staff of eight. For much of the world, the church scandal is just another news headline, like those about miners in West Virginia or Tiger Woods at the Masters. But for the NCR, this has been a story it has never let go of. Several weeks ago, Fox and publisher Joe Feuerherd penned a powerful editorial that pulled the newspaper into the spotlight by calling on the pope to publicly address the allegations: "It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth. ... "Time after time, this is a story of institutional failure of the deepest kind, a failure to defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a failure to put compassion ahead of institutional decisions aimed at short-term benefits and avoiding public scandal." The Boston Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the priest scandal in 2003. The NCR had submitted its own coverage for the prize, but it was told its articles covered a span longer than the single year considered. "The NCR has been at it for years," agreed Thomas H. Groome, Boston College theologian and author of "What Makes Us Catholic." "I think they have been balanced. I think they try to be fair. "Every Catholic diocese in the country has their diocesan newspaper. They are ideological church organs that promote the (Catholic) church causes. I saw my diocesan newspaper last week, and it never once mentioned the sex scandal." The NCR still has its critics, though now they are quieter. But it is no longer viewed as trying to bring down the Catholic Church. And even within the church, there is respect. "Scrappy" is the term used by Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The paper's aggressive coverage of sexual abuse in the church has heightened awareness. "It occurs in the shadows, and when you can put light on that, you're doing a lot by getting to the root of the problem," Walsh said. "Sunlight heals, sometimes painfully, but it heals." What makes the Kansas City paper even more remarkable, Groome said, is that "the people who run and direct it are dyed-in-the-wool faithful Catholics. If you were rating them on the spectrum, you would probably put them slightly left of center, but still faithful sons and daughters of the Catholic Church." Fox, who can be found at Mass every Sunday, and the others concur. They support the church's fundamental tenets, its goals, its missions and theology. "We really are for the mission of this church as an advocate of justice, as an advocate for the poor, as an advocate for the voiceless, as an advocate of the marginalized in society," Fox said. The sex abuse scandal has been "hurtful, because I think the Catholic Church has much to offer and it's not capable of offering it when all we have now are stories of abuse and cover-up." The paper has hired some non-Catholic freelancers and staffers in the past, but the bylaws require that the editor and publisher be Catholic. The staff -- with the exception of freelancers and a full-time reporter who lived in Rome for seven years and covers the Vatican -- works inside a four-story brick building at the corner of Warwick and Armour boulevards. The founders of the paper, created in 1964 after the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, or Vatican II, chose Kansas City as home because its bishop at the time, Charles Herman Helmsing, was perceived as friendly to having a lay-edited newspaper reporting on Catholic issues in his city. From the beginning, the NCR has plunged into fiery topics and often taken unpopular stances. In the 1960s, it was the first Catholic newspaper in the United States to condemn the Vietnam War. Through the years, Fox said, it has championed the cause of women and others "marginalized in the church." In 1987, the paper's coverage of sex abuse in the church prompted a Jesuit priest on the NCR board to present a motion to have Fox fired in a vote of no confidence. Nervous, Fox said he stood outside the meeting room behind a potted plant, waiting for the board members to come out. "No one seconded his request," Fox recalled members telling him. "I thought, 'That takes real guts on the part of the board."' It was the Jesuit priest who resigned. Criticism of the Vatican, historically, has often been met with accusations of godlessness. In the current scandal, the Vatican's official exorcist told the Italian media that the "attack" on the pope by The New York Times was prompted by Satan. For years, the sexual abuse scandal was called mostly an American problem. But the latest allegations stem as often from elsewhere. There is no sign the story is abating. "It is not something we have sought out," Fox said. "There have been times over the years we've said: 'Let's just have a timeout on this. Let's hold off. Let's see if we can go a couple of issues without writing about it.' "Then something comes up that just demands something to be said."
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