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Clergy sex abuse news sparking fresh controversies in places like Dallas and Oklahoma City

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Here at GetReligion, Terry Mattingly and Julia Duin have done a fantastic job analyzing national and international media coverage of the recent barrage of Catholic clergy sex abuse news.

I'm referring to the headlines that have followed the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the allegations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

Here in the Southwest, I've noticed, too, that the world events have helped bring attention to previously unknown cases on the local level, specifically in Oklahoma City and Dallas.

These are cases that perhaps would have remained under the radar if not for the attention on the larger issue.

In Oklahoma City, for example, the Pennsylvania report drew attention to the fact that a defrocked priest who had been accused of abuse years earlier was volunteering at a local church.

Carla Hinton, religion editor for The Oklahoman, reported that news on her paper's Aug. 25 front page.

The basics:

Local Catholic leaders will publicize a list of names of priests who are credibly accused of abuse, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City said Friday.

With such a list posted on the archdiocese's website, a defrocked priest like Benjamin Zoeller likely would have been prevented from volunteering at a local parish.

That is the hope of archdiocese leaders who learned that Zoeller was volunteering at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 2706 S Shartel, when a staff member at the church called on Thursday to tell them about it.

"As soon as we received the call, we contacted the pastor and others to make them aware of his background and that he is not to volunteer or work at a parish or any archdiocesan entity," archdiocese spokeswoman Diane Clay said.

Clay said Zoeller was removed as a priest with the archdiocese in 2002 because "credible accusations of abuse" were made against him. She said he was laicized or formally relieved of his priestly rights and duties in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI.

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley asked for a review of Zoeller's file after receiving an Aug. 17 letter from a Minnesota man who said he had been sexually molested by Zoeller in the 1980s when Zoeller was a priest at an Oklahoma City parish. Clay said Coakley also called for an independent investigation into the matter.


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That Aretha funeral sermon: AP offers quick look at the painful issues behind the furor

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During the two decades that I taught journalism in Washington, D.C., the team at what became the Washington Journalism Center did everything it could to help our students -- who came from all over the country -- see a side of the city that tourists rarely see.

We urged them to visit local churches, black and white. For two years, our students lived in home-stay arrangements all over the city, with families we met through church ties. We sent them on research trips into neighborhoods, using the buses rather than the subways (ask any DC resident what that's all about). Students served as tutors in urban after-school programs and as helpers and babysitters for mothers linked to a crisis-pregnancy center.

In discussions with students I heard one question more than any other: Where are the fathers?

That's the subject looming in the background of media reports about the controversial sermon delivered the other day by the Rev. Jasper Williams Jr., during the epic Aretha Franklin funeral. We will come back to that.

In many ways, this topic has been a third rail in American journalism ever since a 1965 report -- “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" -- by Daniel Patrick Moynihan rocked American politics (click here for Washington Post backgrounder). Here is the key stat (see this stunning chart), undated to reflect what has happened since: More than 70 percent of all African-America children today are born to an unmarried mom, a stat 300 percent higher than in the mid-1960s.

Here is the overture to the Associated Press story about the Aretha funeral. The key question: Was the heart of this sermon religious or political?

A fiery, old-school pastor who is under fire for saying black America is losing "its soul" at Aretha Franklin's funeral stands firm by his words with the hope critics can understand his perspective.

Rev. Jasper Williams Jr. told The Associated Press in a phone interview ... he felt his sermon was appropriate at Franklin's funeral Friday in Detroit. He felt his timing was right, especially after other speakers spoke on the civil rights movement and President Donald Trump.


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What does it mean when a member of Pussy Riot shows up at a Christian arts festival?

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You’ve all heard of Pussy Riot, the defiant all-female Russian punk band that got headlines back in 2012 when several of them interrupted a prayer service -- invading the altar area -- at the Christ Our Savior Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow with anti-Vladimir Putin chants. (Tmatt covered that here). 

Since then, these anarchist/feminists have been known for disrupting everything from a World Cup game to the Moscow subway. But they haven’t been particularly known for any religious sentiments, other than a song addressed to the Virgin Mary called “Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.”

So I was amazed to read a Religion News Service story about one of its members appearing at Greenbelt, a famous Christian music festival held in the U.K.

From its shock-effect name to its defiant activist tactics, little about the Russian band Pussy Riot would suggest that the punk group is on a holy mission.

But after an appearance last weekend (Aug. 26) at Greenbelt, the U.K.’s foremost Christian arts festival, Pussy Riot’s co-founder Maria Alyokhina explained that the act, beginning with the 2012 protest that resulted in two years in a labor camp, should be understood as a “Christian gesture.”

Pussy Riot is better known in the West for its feminism and political resistance -- which almost prevented Alyokhina from making her date at Greenbelt. The Russian authorities had barred her from boarding a plane earlier this month as she headed on a tour of British arts events, telling her she was forbidden to leave the country until she completed a 100-day community service sentence for taking part in an unauthorized protest in April.

But Alyokhina, 30, is not easily deterred. She drove instead, crossing at an unsecured section of the border, and kept going until she reached Lithuania, where she boarded a plane to Britain.

What the festival-goers in England got was Alyokhina and other members of her band putting on a show, called “Riot Days.”


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In the jaw-dropping story of an NFL coach's search for his family, glimpses of faith emerge

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Even without a religion angle, this would be an incredible story.

I'm talking about ESPN's in-depth narrative on an NFL coach's long search for his birth parents.

"Absolutely amazing." "Unbelievable." "Just astounding." That's how various readers have described the piece.

Others have seen God at work in the outcome.

"Wow Just, wow," said one reader. "This story has all the feels. The God of Heaven watches over us all. No, that doesnt mean life is all roses & picnics. But His hand can be seen...for those who have 'eyes that they might see..'" 

"This ESPN story about @coachdmc finding his birth parents is absolutely worth the read," said another. "Someone recently said to me that God is doing more behind your back than in front of your face. This story says yes and amen to that."

Intrigued yet?

I'm doing my best not to give away any spoilers, in case you haven't read the story yet and would like to check it out before I offer a few hints.

Basic storyline: A young mother gives up her baby for adoption. The baby grows up to become a football player and later a coach. All the while, although he loves his adoptive mother, he searches for his birth parents. He eventually finds them — and it turns out he had known his birth father almost his entire life. 

But yes, faith makes various cameo appearances as the ESPN writer, Sarah Spain, allows the spiritual angle to unfold naturally.

Early in the story, the adoptive mother references God:

By March of that year, Jon Kenneth Briggs had been renamed Deland Scott McCullough, and he was living at home with his new parents, Adelle and A.C.

"We were still in love, a good couple," Comer says. "We went to church, partied, went to cookouts. We were working together and doing this together and wanting to make a home for our children. We knew that God's hand was in it. Deland came so fast to us. We knew that it was meant to be. Both of us."

But things changed quickly. Comer's father had a stroke, and though A.C. wanted to put him in a nursing home, Comer brought her dad to live with the family in Youngstown. Their marriage deteriorated, and when Deland was just 2 years old, A.C. moved out.

"They went through a lot of hurt and disappointment, but they took it," Comer says of her sons. "I said, 'God gives you an example of what to be and what not to be. You have to make the choice.' And that's all I had to say, and they got it."


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AP mixes Byzantine politics with Russian hacking to tell an Orthodox story that's way too simple

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Orthodox Christians around the world are waiting to find out what did, or did not, happen in a high-stakes meeting the other day between Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Patriarch Kirill of Russia.

The issue was one of the most important, and symbolic, landmines in the history of Orthodox Christianity. That would be Kiev, a city that represents the "Baptism of Rus' " in 988 (click here for background), when Orthodox faith entered the world of the Slavs.

For the massive Russian Orthodox Church, everything begins in Kiev. The presence of the great Kiev Pechersk Lavra -- a monastery founded in 1051 -- only raises the stakes in this struggle for control of holy ground.

The Associated Press ran a feature before this showdown that mixed in spies, hackers and a hint of Donald Trump-era craziness. But before we get into all of that, let me offer a sample of the confusing news -- the word "Byzantine" applies here -- that followed the meeting.

KIEV (Sputnik) -- Reports about the decision to grant autocephaly to an Ukrainian church allegedly taken by the Ecumenical Patriarchate are false and distort the reality, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) said on Saturday.

On Friday, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and the parties discussed "issues of mutual interest." Following the meeting, Ukrainian media reported that Patriarch Bartholomew had allegedly informed Patriarch Kirill of Constantinople's decision to grant Ukrainian church with autocephaly.

What, you ask, does "autocephaly" mean? It literally means "self-headed." Thus, the leader of an autocephalous church does not answer to a higher ranking metropolitan or patriarch.

Currently, the church In Ukraine that most Orthodox believers consider canonical (as opposed to two competing flocks, as I discussed in this 2009 column written in Kiev) is linked to Moscow. Back to that news report:



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Australia's new Pentecostal prime minister: Try to guess how the press is receiving him

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Australia has a new prime minister, which is certainly news. Reading the story’s domestic and international coverage makes clear that its newsiest angle -- for journalists, at least -- is its compelling religion twist.

That’s because the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, is an outspoken, politically conservative Pentecostal Christian. This mixing of religion and politics may be old-hat at this point for Americans. But it's an entirely new experience for Australians.

Morrison’s selection as PM is, for this American, something of a surprise, as Australia is among those Western nations in which Christianity is, by and large, gradually losing steam. However, it’s also a place where conservative politics is steadily on the rise, giving Morrison, a compromise candidate for the prime minister’s job, a leg up.

The coverage of his ascendancy to his nation’s top political post has also noted that his political style is “pragmatic,” meaning that while he’s clear about his values, he’s generally been willing to stand down when it's clear his traditional views on issues such as gay marriage are a bit much for the majority of Australian voters.

Here’s a chunk of a The New York Times story on his selection. 

Mr. Morrison and his faith represent a break with tradition in Australia, where politics has long been ardently secular. He is the first prime minister to come from one of the country’s growing evangelical Christian movements, leading many experts and voters to wonder how his Christianity might affect various issues, from foreign policy to social policy.

“The question is whether Morrison will choose to make his faith part of his political persona or to what extent he will,” said Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University. “At this point, he doesn’t seem to have shoved it in people’s faces.”

In many ways, Mr. Morrison cuts a markedly different figure than evangelical Christian politicians in the United States.


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Digging between the lines in UK media responses to the testimony of Archbishop Viganò

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The flight from reporting to opinion and advocacy journalism is on full display in the first day reports from the British secular press of the Viganò affair. Like their American counterparts, leading mainstream news outlets are portraying the revelations of coverup and abuse in political left/right terms.

While none have gone farther over the edge than the New York Times’ article: “Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce," journalists at the Guardian and the BBC have spent more time denigrating the accuser, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, than in reporting on the content of his “testimony." Conservative and centrist papers like The Times and Daily Mail focused instead on the misconduct of Pope Francis and Vatican insiders alleged by the former papal nuncio to the United States.

The British and American media responses to the publication of Viganò’s testimony in four conservative American and Catholic religion outlets confirm the December 2016 thesis put forward by Francis X. Rocca in the Wall Street Journal. In the lede to his article entitled: “How Pope Francis became the leader of the global left," Rocca wrote: 

When Pope Francis delivers his Christmas message this weekend, he will do so not just as the head of the Catholic Church but as the improbable standard-bearer for many progressives around the world.

In 2016 Rocca argued:

With conservative and nationalist forces on the rise in many places and with figures such as U.S. President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande on their way out, many on the left -- from socialists in Latin America to environmentalists in Europe -- are looking to the 80-year-old pontiff for leadership. … Pope Francis has taken bold positions on a variety of issues, including migration, climate change, economic equality and the rights of indigenous peoples. 

Reading the first day reports from Britain in the BBC and the Guardian leaves one with the impression that they will stand by their man -- Pope Francis.


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Vatican officials keep asking journalists to investigate them, but do they mean it?

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For all of you following the continuing drama that is the U.S. Catholic Church these days, another telling moment happened on Sunday. The networks were taping Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s sermon yesterday at Annunciation Catholic Church in the District when Wuerl asked for loyalty to Pope Francis, as "increasingly it is clear that he is the object of considerable animosity."

This was all too much for one parishioner, who stood up and yelled, “Shame on you!” The video appears atop this blog.

To dismiss all the recent ferment as “animosity” toward Francis begs the question of what happened to stoke that animosity. Despite the crisis his archdiocese has been in for two months and running, Wuerl is still tone deaf to why people are so mad.

It’s not just the laity who are upset. There's the fact that Catholic priests who are tipping off journalists. These clerics are giving them tips and sharing anecdotes and ideas on how to best investigate this crisis. They are the frontline guys in this drama who dare not say anything publicly, but can leak stuff to those of us who can. They know a lot. They’ve seen things, heard things. I’ve heard from a few and, at this stage in my career, I’m a bit player in this drama.

That’s why the religion beat is so focused on good sources: Who you know and where they stand. Because unlike government documents, church records typically are not subject to public records laws. So when you want to peer into a religion’s finance records or anything else, you rely on insiders to slip them to you. As tmatt has been saying for a week, it's really crucial for reporters to find documents, documents, documents.

But Pope Francis isn't going to hand them to us, even though he has invited journalists to investigate the Viganò allegations. But are we going to get to see all the files on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick at the apostolic nunciature in Washington DC? Or have they already been shipped to safety in Rome?

The pope appears to give us that clearance. Remember what he said on the plane from Ireland to Italy on Aug. 26:

Read the statement carefully yourselves and make your own judgment. I am not going to say a word about this. I believe that the statement speaks for itself, and you all have sufficient journalistic ability to draw conclusions.


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Thinking about religion-beat whistleblowers -- who are on the wrong side of history

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What can I say?

When GetReligion readers see a headline like this one, they send us the URL. In this case, we are talking about a Commentary Magazine piece by Sohrab Ahmari: "How the Media Fails Church Coverage -- Dissociation and projection."

When I receive URLs like that one, I fill them under "weekend think piece material."

So here we go. This one is really obvious, in terms of being something most GetReligion readers are going to want to see. Yes, it's about The Big Story, but not really. The overture begins:

The Catholic Church -- the religious body which I joined in 2016 and which I affirm to be Jesus Christ’s One True Fold -- is going through an ordeal. It is an ordeal, perhaps, of the kind that only comes about once every half a millennium or so. As a believer, my feelings seesaw between fear and joy. I fear for the future of the Church. I take joy in the long overdue cleansing, even if it means breaking the false truce between orthodox and heterodox forces in the Church.

My concerns as a journalist are a different matter. The open war between U.S. bishops, the medieval intrigue of the Roman Curia, the facts and counter-facts and drip-drip of innuendo -- all this is catnip to a working hack. The crisis also holds valuable lessons for all writers, Catholic or not. The most important is this: Always listen to the marginalized, the disgruntled “cranks,” the angry obsessives, those who cry out for justice from the peripheries of powerful institutions. 

Most journalists are hardwired to champion the weak and “speak truth to power” and all that. But the grimier incentives of the job can often smother that honorable instinct.

What are the "grimier incentives" of the religion-beat job, to be specific?


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