Amy Sullivan is a senior editor at Time. She’s remarkably partisan, even by journalistic standards, and sometimes her views can color her writing. But boy is she taking some flak for her recent piece “Priests Spar Over What It Means to Be Catholic.” Let’s just start with the headline. Considering that what follows is analysis about the views of an archbishop and a cardinal (and not priests), you know that facts aren’t going to be the piece’s strong suit.
The piece purports to compare Rome-based Archbishop Raymond Burke with Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley. But it’s really all about how Burke is an extremely unimportant “bull in a china shop” who is embarrassing to the Vatican. Sullivan’s story says that Burke’s transfer to Rome from St. Louis wasn’t a sign of how highly he’s valued by the Vatican but something altogether. She says that the move was “widely interpreted” as a way to put distance between Burke and politics in the United States and quotes Trinity College’s Mark Silk saying as much. Burke had been actively engaged in abortion politics in St. Louis, as St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Tim Townsend could well explain and he hasn’t exactly backed off on the pro-life activism while at the Vatican.
Sullivan says that Burke’s new assignment “Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura” — that would be the chief justice of the Vatican’s Supreme Court — may sound impressive but that O’Malley’s minor and expected appointment to the “Pontifical Council for the Family” is a reminder that he’s got friends in high places. It’s sad that a senior editor of Time magazine could so mess up her analysis, supporting it with one of her trademark anonymous quotes from an American priest saying he’s seen Italian bishops “roll their eyes” at him. No, really.
And that’s not even the half of it. Sullivan — either through reportorial negligence or extreme hackery — doesn’t even mention that Burke was just given more responsibility by the Vatican. On Oct. 17 — three weeks before Sullivan’s article ran — Burke was named to the powerful Congregation for Bishops. National Catholic Reporter John L. Allen says this move, which puts Burke “in a position to put his stamp on the next generation of Catholic bishops all over the world,” is major. It’s no Pontifical Council for the Family, but hey, Burke has to take what he can get. In fact, Allen’s piece (headlined “Burke’s influence is set to grow”) reads like a direct refutation of Sullivan. Here’s the last line:
If anyone suspected that the decision to bring Burke to Rome last year was a way of muzzling him, or limiting his influence in the United States, it certainly doesn’t seem to be playing out that way.
Townsend has a very polite knock down of Sullivan’s piece, too.
But back to Sullivan’s piece in Time. She talks about how the funeral for Sen. Ted Kennedy — the popular Catholic politician who actively worked in support of abortion rights and was known for carousing and leaving a woman to die in the submerged car he ran off the road — ignited debate among Catholics. Here’s a bit about that:
But it’s one thing for partisans and bloggers to disparage a Mass for a dead Senator; it’s quite another for a Vatican official to do so. Even some leading conservative Catholics may find they cannot support Burke’s latest salvo. When told of the Archbishop’s assertion that pro-choice Catholics should not be permitted funeral rites, Princeton professor Robert George was taken aback: “That’s a very different, and obviously graver, claim than that with which I would have sympathy. I haven’t heard before any bishop say that pro-abortion politicians should not be given a Catholic funeral.”
Only problem? George says he was quoted selectively and that he had expressed concerns via email about how his comments might be presented. He says Sullivan assured him she would be fair and non-partisan when she wrote the story. He told a pro-life news service that he should not have been so trusting:
Asked for his overall impressions of the TIME article, the renowned U.S. political philosopher and strongly pro-life Catholic was blunt. He stated, “The article strikes me as quite partisan. It is not objective reporting. The author is grinding an axe. Perhaps she honestly believes that this is fair and objective reporting, but my own judgment is that it quite plainly isn’t. It represents the kind of partisan presentation that I was worried about when I wrote my message to her of October 2nd.”
George says that he had given her additional relevant quotes regarding O’Malley and Burke, including his support of Burke’s views on communion for politicians who work to support legalized abortion, his view that Burke’s statement on funerals for pro-choice politicians wasn’t unreasonable, and his view that O’Malley had made an error of judgment in how he handled the funeral. One other interesting thing is that he says he learned of Burke’s position on the Kennedy funeral — the hook for the story — from Sullivan. But the host of the dinner speech she sources for the quote says she didn’t quite get Burke’s statement right.
I’m not even addressing all of the problems in the article, but perhaps if Sullivan’s notorious anonymous sources are wrong this much, she should stop relying on them and find some better ones.
Either way, Sullivan’s journalism seems more about a desire to fulfill political wishes than reporting the facts or providing decent analysis. Get her a tutorial with John Allen, stat!
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Comments (12) |
November 10, 2009, at 8:01 am
Mollie, you are too kind by a league: “… and sometimes her views can color [Sullivan’s] writing.” That’s the understatement of the decade. Sullivan’s style used to be called unprofessional (or bigoted). Now it’s just routine.
November 10, 2009, at 8:59 am
Well, except that Archbishops and Cardinals are priests. As are the different ranks of monsignors. And some of them much prefer to be addressed as “Father” than “Msgr.” or “Your Eminence” and make a point of telling you so when you address them in the elevator or other prosaic places.
So, technically, no, the headline isn’t wrong.
November 10, 2009, at 9:25 am
It was time long ago to stop reading the major “news magazines.” Time, Newsweek off the reading list. Their eventual demise will remove one more soapbox for absurdly left-leaning partisan “journalism.” Eventually these disingenuous, covert mouthpieces for the left will go out of business, leaving only the newer generation of openly left-leaning (HuffPo) sources in the marketplace; readers DO know those more honest sources provide a daily agenda, so their damage to normal readers is less. Bring on the mass-mediapocalypse.
November 10, 2009, at 9:50 am
I wasn’t impressed with the article either — thought Townsend’s take on her story handled it well.
But I’m trying to see how Graves’ quotes (he doesn’t claim to be misquoted, just taken out of context) could jibe with what he’s saying now, in any context.
Sounds to me like somebody got caught in a quote he knew could get him in trouble and is backpedaling furiously.
November 10, 2009, at 10:04 am
Mollie is officially off Amy’s Christmas, I mean, holiday card list.
Excellent job of skewering Sullivan again, Mollie. As long as so-called MSM publications continue to employ partisan hacks like Sullivan, I will continue to give those publications a wide berth.
November 10, 2009, at 12:35 pm
I wrote a letter to the editor. In case it doesn’t get published or is truncated severely, here it is in its entirety:
To the editor:
It’s quite obvious that Amy Sullivan is pretending to be a reporter for Time. If she was a real one, she would never have written the screed that passed as objective reporting entitled ‘A Tale of Two Priests.’ It’s also obvious that she’s never spoken with Archbishop Raymond Burke in person or even over the phone. If she had, she would know that, like Cardinal Sean O’Malley, he is a media-shy man. What he’s not shy of, though, is speaking the truth and that’s what gets him in trouble with the rest of the world.
The question Sullivan didn’t ask was this: If Archbishop Burke is the Church’s top canon lawyer (which, as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, he is) and he says that pro-abortion Catholic politicians should not be given Catholic funerals, why is he saying that? That, to me, is the most obvious question. But it must have been so obvious as to make it totally obscure to Sullivan.
What must also have been obscure to her was the fact that, while Cardinal O’Malley certainly was appointed to the Pontifical Council for the Family, Archbishop Burke was appointed on October 17 to the far more influential Congregation for Bishops, a fact she failed to report. It’s unfortunately very easy to assume she didn’t report it because it didn’t fit into her preconceived storyline. Being kicked upstairs in order to get him out of St. Louis and out of the U.S. only to be made the equivalent of the Chief Justice of the Church’s Supreme Court and then assigned to help name other bishops around the world? If that’s punishment, then I wonder what a meritorious promotion would look like.
As one who worked directly for then-Bishop Burke for four years in La Crosse, Wis., I can tell you with confidence what really happened: Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI wanted Archbishop Burke in his current post ever since he worked at the Signatura as the Defender of the Bond, a job he carried out with great distinction from 1989 to 1994. He was sent to be bishop of his home Diocese of La Crosse and then to St. Louis to get the episcopal experience he needed before taking up his current post. While he was yet in St. Louis, he was appointed in 2006 as a judge of the Signatura and then in May 2008, to the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and the Congregation for Clergy. To say the least, it is more than unusual for non-cardinal archbishops to be appointed to multiple Vatican curial positions, so this was an early indication that he was not staying in St. Louis for long. Then in June 2008 he was appointed Prefect at the Signatura because the previous Prefect, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, was named Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome. And Cardinal Vallini was named Vicar after Cardinal Camillo Ruini had retired from that job at the age of 77, two years past the normal retirement age for bishops.
So for anyone who had the eyes to see, or who did just the slightest bit of research, Archbishop Burke’s appointment as Prefect was not “unexpected,” as Sullivan reported, but a logical appointment. And it had nothing to do with him “being kicked upstairs” or any attempt to shut him up. If that was the attempt, it has obviously failed.
Sincerely,
Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz
November 10, 2009, at 12:46 pm
To heck with the Allen session. Get her a tutorial with any half-competent high school journalism teacher.
November 10, 2009, at 1:36 pm
I just saw the Sullivan article in a doctor’s office yesterday. It was awful. She could not really document her claim of a fight between the 2 prelates. She over-stated her point of view, and underestimates the regard in which Abp. Burke is held. She sees it all through a political lens. Thanks for covering it. I need to read Townsend. He is quite fair. He’s a John Allen of secular religious media.
November 10, 2009, at 1:37 pm
..Not a good finish. How about “of secular media covering religion”?
November 10, 2009, at 4:50 pm
In relation to the latter part of Suzanne’s comment (See #4 above [I take it she meant “{Prof.} George’s quote,” when she wrote “Graves’ quote”]), here are more excerpts from the pro-life news service’s interview with Prof. George.
The gist of it is that he conveyed to Sullivan his personal perspective that a private funeral which was not a major media event might be acceptable for someone in Sen. Kennedy’s position. But even given that he would not be as strict as Archbishop Burke, he says that he told Sullivan that he would defer to Burke’s pastoral discernment and canonical/legal expertise.
In this excerpt, the interviewer first cites Prof. George directly:
“Here is what she did not include in the article, but readers should, I think, have been told: I also said that I thought Cardinal O’Malley made an error of judgment in permitting a large public funeral for Teddy Kennedy and personally participating in it. The error was precisely in failing to see the scandal that would be given. I am disappointed that she omitted these points and mentioned only my surprise at learning (from her) that Archbishop Burke has taken the position that Kennedy should not have been given a Catholic funeral at all — even a private one.”
The interviewer then writes,
“George says that at the time he was not aware that Burke had made the statement and that ‘it goes a step beyond where I would go on this issue.’ ‘At the same time,’ he adds ‘I did not suggest that the Archbishop’s position was unreasonable; and I acknowledged that it is certainly not my call to make. I am not a bishop or a canon lawyer. Raymond Burke is both.’”
November 10, 2009, at 7:45 pm
I have never had a problem with funerals being held for people who’s reputations as Catholic are not the greatest—to say the least. They need our prayers more than many others—and the Mass is the most powerful prayer of all.
The problem is that today Catholic funerals have become almost instant elevations to sainthood. Noone seemed to notice nationally in the media, but a day or two after Kennedy’s funeral there was a funeral Mass at St. Leonard’s Church in Boston’s North End for reputed Mafia Don and convicted gangster Gennaro Angiulo. According to local news accounts the huge church was full and his praises were sung to the rafters.
But a Catholic funeral is supposed to be a time of praying for the dead to assist them to final purification in the next life—NOT a canonization ceremony. Maybe it is time to do away with eulogies (leave them for the wake at the funeral parlor) and stop allowing the Prayers of the Faithful to be used as a platform for further over-the-top gushing praise or for out-of-place political harangues.
November 11, 2009, at 1:01 am
I don’t see much of what the Deacon addressed in news stories. This is probably because in a Protestant majority country, everyone assumes that funerals are for praising the deceased - all the ones we see for famous people on TV have euologies. [big exception being the one for John Paul II, which didn’t have a euology] In fact, one of the big items in the Reformation was opposition to praying for the dead. Most people (including Catholics these days) would probably be shocked to find out that the Requiem Mass is said for the soul of the deceased - the former recessional is a prayer that the angels will lead the soul into paradise, not a joyful statement that for sure the soul is there.
My grade school girls’ choir was responsible for singing all the funeral Masses at an Irish Catholic parish in the 1950s. First there were 2 or even 3 days of waking where there was lots of talk about the deceased and even toasting to his memory. It was obvious that everyone knew what the wake and the funeral Mass were for. Now I’m singing in a funeral choir again and the eulogies and even homilies give away the fact that Catholic funerals are now thought to be for the benefit of the survivors and not for the soul of the departed.
This past All Souls’ Day, I had the opportunity to sing the traditional Gregorian chant in a small group for a Requiem Mass of the ancient rite - black chasubles and all. We even sang the whole Dies Irae - boy, is that non-PC.
Anyway, it would make a good news story for a reporter to cover an old-fashioned Catholic Requiem Mass the next All Souls’ Day. If not in a parish, then most seminaries have them so their students can learn it. The reporter would see that more than the disappearance of Latin has happened to the Requiem Mass. The difference might give context to the widely divergent statements being made about the funeral for Senator Kennedy.
A funeral Mass of the old type was not the stage for praising the deceased - hence, no scandal is a Mafioso had a Requiem Mass. However, today the general perception is the funeral as a celebration of the deceased’s life - hence the possiblity of scandal.