BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Friday, August 08, 2003
Curioser and curioser. The
story about the story regarding that
secret 1962 Vatican document
is getting increasingly convoluted.
The website Catholic World
News posted an
analysis yesterday
attempting to show that the conventional interpretation -- that the
Vatican was giving marching orders to cover up the misdeeds of
pedophile priests -- is just plain wrong.
According to CWN, the
document pertained to a much narrower matter -- priests who solicit
sex inside the confessional:
The Vatican document deals
exclusively with solicitation: an offense which, by definition,
occurs within the context of the Sacrament of Penance. And since
that sacrament is protected by a shroud of absolute secrecy, the
procedures for dealing with this ecclesiastical crime also invoke
secrecy.
In short, by demanding secrecy
in the treatment of these crimes, the Vatican was protecting the
secrecy of the confessional. The policy outlined in that 1962
document is clearly not intended to protect predatory priests; on
the contrary, the Vatican makes it clear that guilty priests
should be severely punished and promptly removed from
ministry.
CWN specifically blasts CBS
News, which claimed on Wednesday to have "uncovered" the document,
and which reported that the Vatican "calls for absolute secrecy when
it comes to sexual abuse by priests." In fact, though, the existence
of the document had already been reported a week earlier by the
Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the Lawrence
Eagle-Tribune, and the Boston Herald.
Today's Herald includes
this
piece by Eric Convey that
covers much the same ground as the CWN analysis.
Yesterday, even as I was posting my
own item on the scuff-up over CBS's self-aggrandizing "uncovered"
claim, the Herald's Convey, the Eagle-Tribune's
Gretchen Putnam, the Telegram & Gazette's Harry Whitin,
and CBS News's Jim Murphy were going at it hot and heavy on
the
letters page of Jim
Romenesko's MediaNews.org website.
And contrary to my report yesterday
-- and to Whitin's assertion to Romenesko -- it now appears that the
Telegram & Gazette did not break the story all by itself,
but rather finished in a first-place tie with the
Eagle-Tribune. Both papers broke the story on July
29.
The T&G's, by Kathleen
Shaw, has slid into the paper's paid archives, but the
Eagle-Tribune's, by Meg Murphy, is still online for free
here.
posted at 11:07 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
