If you’ve been following the coverage of allegations against Catholic Bishop Raymond Lahey up in Canada, you know that things have not been getting any better for the former leader of the Diocese of Antigonish.
This leads me to a news story that starts with one of those symbolic details that makes you stop and ponder this question: When is enough, enough? When is too much, too much?
I have not made up my mind in this case. Also, the lede on a recent story in the Halifax Chronicle Herald is based on documents from the investigation, which means it is based on a rock-solid form of attribution. When critics tell journalists to just “stick to the facts,” they usually mean to avoid anonymous sources and to stay close to these kinds of documents and the public officials who produce them.
So here’s the top of the story. You know it’s going to be blunt when the double-deck headline proclaims: “Warrants detail images on bishop’s computer — Documents say some naked boys appear younger than 12.”
An image of a naked boy wearing only rosary beads was among those found on Bishop Raymond Lahey’s laptop computer, a search warrant has revealed.
The RCMP’s child exploitation unit obtained the warrant in order to search the bishop’s home in Antigonish and his apartment in Sydney. The document sheds more light on what Canada Border Services Agency officers found on the bishop’s computer after it was seized at the Ottawa airport on Sept. 15 as he was returning to Canada from overseas.
Bishop Lahey, 69, was charged Sept. 25 with possessing and importing child pornography. He resigned as bishop of the Antigonish diocese the next day.
Court papers state that the image of the “young, naked male” showed him wearing only “a set of black rosary and a set of white rosary beads around his neck.” The boy appears to be nine to 12 years old, court papers say.
It gets worse, including details about a young, naked male who has “red welts and marks” on his body.
The bishop told police that, to the “best of his knowledge,” that all of the people involved in his Internet activities — including alleged IM chats — were adults. There were 964 files in one computer downloads folder and 33 videos in another. All of these facts are from the warrents.
Testimony from a witness made references to the bishop possessing child pornography as early as the 1980s. But the story notes:
… (D)uring the bishop’s conversation with a Canada Border Services Agency officer at the Ottawa airport, he indicated that “he had no time for child exploitation, no time for child pornography,” the warrant states. He said he had a computer at home and that it had the LimeWire file-sharing system installed, the documents say. LimeWire was not on his laptop, however.
There is no need to go on, really.
These images are offensive, to say the least. On one level, the lede is offensive. I am sure that many readers, especially Catholic readers, were both offended and upset.
So here’s the question for GetReligion readers. Should the rosary images have gone in the lede? Would it have been better, or at least less offensive, to have taken that powerful image and placed it a few paragraphs lower in this news report? This question leads to another: What is the journalistic reason for doing this?
The conservative Catholic writer Leon Podles’ recently published a blunt, scathing, take-no-prisoners book entitled “Sacrilege” about the clergy sexual-abuse scandals of the past three decades. In it, he argues that it is impossible for Catholics to experience the fierce, holy kind of anger that leads to true reform without knowing the details of the acts that were committed against children and teens.
Many Catholics, liberals and conservatives, would agree. Many Catholics, liberals and conservatives, would disagree. This isn’t a pure, left vs. right situation.
For example, the consider this piece of a commentary penned by the anonymous “Diogenes” over at the “Off the Record” blog at CatholicCulture.org:
All indications are that we’re in for six or eight months of humiliation in the media following the now-familiar pattern: feeble ecclesiastical denial instantly crushed by a solidly documented revelation of moral squalor. …
So why doesn’t Lahey plead guilty now? It would spare the Canadian taxpayer the expense of a trial. It would spare all Catholics the death-of-a-thousand-cuts feeling as the media revisit the particulars of his sexual deviancy before, during, and after his weeks in court. It would spare Lahey the need to invent more falsehoods that dig him in even deeper. And perhaps, just perhaps, it might give a good example of a bishop who can act like a man and tell the truth about himself when it’s difficult to do so. Even the heathen might interrupt their scoffing long enough to think, “Hey, this guy was a slimeball, but he fears Him who can cast both body and soul into hell.”
If I were Lahey’s defense attorney, I’d want no part of a guilty plea. But then a defense attorney is not responsible for the souls of the Christ’s flock. Lahey’s brother bishops are. If it mattered to them, they could certainly convince their exceptionally invertebrate brother — they don’t come any softer — to do the right thing for the good of the Church.
If it mattered.
Left or right? Who is more angry, at this point? Should reports let the chips fall where they may, knowing that they will offend? Why or why not?
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Comments (14) |
October 26, 2009, at 2:19 pm
On the rosary lede —
When I’ve assembled a lot of facts, one of the questions I’m ask myself in choosing a lede is what the either the emotional or symbolic core of the story is. In this case, the boy wearing only the rosary wins both those categories hands down.
SInce when did it become the job of a reporter to spare people’s feelings? It would be one thing if the reporter had taken something out of context or twisted it, but as far as I can tell, this is just accurate journalism.
October 26, 2009, at 3:06 pm
I agree with Ms. Rogers here. The facts are the facts. What I find offensive is this man’s behavior, not the reporting of it, assuming it is accurate.
Not a journalist, nor a RC-basher, just a mom to a 9 year old that reads the paper,
Sophia
October 26, 2009, at 3:15 pm
Ditto to both the above. The outrage here must be directed at this sleazeball, not at those who write about him. And this must be part of the outrage—the blasphemous way he linked his evil with the symbols of religion, and the way he manipulated people through his position.
October 26, 2009, at 3:20 pm
I guess I’ll pile on the agreement here. I thought it was an excellent lede, and extremely appropriate. I fully agree with BC - this was blasphemous, and deserves to be shown as such.
October 26, 2009, at 3:37 pm
Rogers is right. The details might be offensive. But they’re very helpful.
When such details are included in child sex cases, it helps explain something that many Catholics wonder about a lot: “Why does it take victims so long to speak up?”
David Clohessy, National Director, SNAP-Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 7234 Arsenal Street, St. Louis MO 63143 (314 566 9790), SNAPnetwork.org, SNAPclohessy@aol.com
October 26, 2009, at 3:58 pm
The last time this question was asked here, I came down on not printing the most explicit pictures citing the National Enquirer. But, after reading this, I changed my mind:
So the first time I commented, I was only thinking of the sensationalistic aspects of showing the pictures. But if printing them does help motivated real, structural and lasting changes in the Catholic church, then it’s a horse of a different color.
October 26, 2009, at 4:01 pm
It’s not too much. It’s rooted in the facts of the story and illustrates the, at least, perceived schizoid duality of such a man as Bishop Lahey. It does not insult the Rosary nor the practice of praying it. Last year, I believe, The Congregation for the Clergy announced an initiative of adoration and prayer for the victims of priests and religious which got a HUGE amount of coverage in the catholic pre..oh, wait a minute..that was just my imagination; it dropped out of site as a story within 12 hours. Anyway, maybe this will help those very few people who heard of this initiative to be able to better follow it.
October 26, 2009, at 4:22 pm
The first three paragraphs were too much. I couldn’t read the rest. Sorry.
October 26, 2009, at 5:45 pm
The description of the pictures belongs in the lede, so people who only skim — or who, like MattK, can read no further — are still told how deeply this man has slid into his addiction.
October 26, 2009, at 9:05 pm
Secular journalists have shown far more of a Christian attitude to abuse by clerics than bishops have shown. As this lede shows, they are genuinely horrified by the sacrilege.
The mystery is why the pope, the bishops, most of the clergy, are not horrified and angered. Their reaction to the sexual abuse by their brother priests and bishops gives little evidence that they really believe in sin and the eternal fires of hell and redemption only by sincere penitence and the blood of Jesus.
October 27, 2009, at 12:32 am
It wasn’t inappropriate - it was the truth.
October 27, 2009, at 4:38 am
Outrage - whether justifiable or not - aside, I think the mention of the rosary is one of the more obvious “man bites dog” elements of the story. After all, how many reasons are there to have a picture of a naked boy wearing two rosaries at all? Rosaries have sometimes been used as jewelry, but that is certainly not what would expect of a Catholic bishop. So, what’s going on here?
I do not say that the simple fact of such a picture must necessarily convict the man (though the evidence presented does seem damning). Perhaps this is a tempest in a teapot along the lines of calling baby pictures pornography. My point is not the bishop’s guilt or innocence, but that the rosary-on-a-naked-boy element provides the question that one would expect to be answered in the rest of the article.
Please note carefully that I am not standing up for this man, but simply thinking aloud about “why a rosary in the lede?”.
TWH
October 27, 2009, at 2:50 pm
Put me down with those who think it was entirely appropriate.
As to what it will take to start fixing the problem, it would be very nice to read the next time a priest or bishop gets arrested this way, and we all know there will be a next time, that the arrest was made possible because police were acting on a tip provided by a fellow priest or bishop.
November 21, 2009, at 9:02 pm
I agree with the majority of writers here, especially David Clohessy and Lee Podles.
There has never been the outrage one would expect from the bishops but one has to remember that most of them have known about this for years while protecting and enabling these rogue priests in their abuse of minor children, young men, women and vulnerable adults by transferring them time and time again over decades without taking appropriate action. If they had even only observed Canon Law the institutional church would not be in the position it now finds itself - to say nothing about observing criminal and civil statutes.
Even now they appear incapable of taking real responsibility, being accountable or transparent.
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims’ Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com