I am so over Mike Clancy and the Arizona Republic

Mike Clancy's latest piece for the Arizona Republic is painful to read (as usual), partly because of its falsehoods and distortions about the Catholic Church and Bishop Thomas Olmsted, but also because it's embarrassing for Clancy. His facts are so consistently wrong and his bias so obvious that it actually makes me cringe.

Now, of course I don't expect our local paper to fawn over the bishop or whitewash the Church, but is fact-checking and fairness too much to ask?

You can read the entire article, here, if you have the time and the stomach for it.* But as I did last time, allow me to comment on a couple of glaring snippets. Clancy says of the Catholic Church:

The church has taught that birth control is 'intrinsically wrong' since 1968, around the time the pill came into widespread use.

The statement is shocking.

It is absolutely no secret and easily ascertained that the Church has taught the intrinsic evil of contraception not merely for the past four decades, no, but since the establishment of the Church approximately 2,000 years ago. 

Not once (meaning "never") has the Church taught anything different.

Clancy is alluding to Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which simply reiterated, against the backdrop of the sexual revolution, the unbroken, unchanging teaching of the Church since her inception. 

How can a veteran religion reporter exhibit such a weak grasp of basic Church doctrine, the Church he's been covering for years and years? It's also troubling that he doesn't seem to have adequate knowledge of modern cultural history, either. For not only has the Catholic Church always taught that contraception is "intrinsically wrong", but until the 1930s, every Protestant denomination taught the sinfulness of contraception as well. When a committee of Anglicans was the first to abandon Christian principles on this well-established point of the moral law, even the secular world was shocked, as an editorial in the Washington Post makes clear:

Carried to its logical conclusion, the [Anglican] committee's report, if carried into effect, would sound the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be "careful and restrained" is preposterous. -- March 22, 1931 edition.

Call me crazy, but I think a reporter should know this stuff if he's going to be reporting on this stuff.

And later in the piece, Clancy repeats something he said in another article (that I also I critiqued), which continues to baffle me (emphasis mine):

….Olmsted ousted the hospital [St. Joseph's] from the Catholic family after a dispute about a medical procedure that Olmsted considered an abortion.

In the last article, he chose the words "...a lifesaving medical procedure that the bishop deemed an abortion…"

"Considered"? "Deemed"?

Seriously?

If it was not an abortion, what was it? What was this mystery medical procedure? To this day, Clancy has never actually named it. What was it? How does one train for it? What special tools are used? If it was not an abortion, then how could this mystery medical procedure result in an automatic excommunication? Why would the bishop pretend an abortion took place if it didn't? So many unanswered questions.

Including why the Arizona Republic allows this type of reporting to stand.

In the meantime, here is the full text of Bishop Olmsted's letter, in which he tells his flock: 

"We cannot – we will not – comply with this unjust law."

Oh, how I love our shepherd! He is a gentle, humble soul, but he has courage in abundance! A true disciple of Christ!

And for those still needing the basic facts about the HHS contraceptive mandate at the heart of this fight, go here to get informed:

The HHS Mandate for Contraception/Sterilization Coverage:

An Attack on Rights of Conscience

The battle for basic religious liberty has come to our doorstep, folks.




*Be warned that the comments following the article are vile and bigoted. If such comments were directed at Jews or Muslims, the Republic would never let them stand.


(UPDATE: Be sure to read JoAnna's excellent comment, below!)

A journalist's loaded words, a nun's proud dissent, and a bishop's humble faith

We all know that some things, like death and taxes, are inevitable.

And we Catholics know that misrepresentation of Catholic beliefs by the mainstream media is also inevitable.

And in Phoenix, we Catholics know it's inevitable that an article by Michael Clancy of the Arizona Republic will be biased against the Catholic Church.

Consider the recent piece Clancy wrote about Sister Margaret McBride, the nun who excommunicated herself last year when she authorized the abortion of an 11-week-old unborn child at St. Joseph's, which was then a Catholic hospital:

Phoenix nun speaks about censure

Let's hone in on the first part of the second sentence (emphases mine):

Sister Margaret McBride, who was targeted by Bishop Thomas Olmsted for her role in a lifesaving medical procedure that the bishop deemed an abortion…

Whoa, whoa… hold up.

Does anyone see anything fishy here? "Targeted"? Bishop Olmsted "targeted" a nun?

In reality, the bishop was made aware of Sister's approval of a direct abortion at a Catholic hospital in his diocese. The bishop later confirmed that, by her own actions, Sister had excommunicated herself. How does this constitute a "targeting" of the nun, exactly?

Seasoned journalists such as Clancy choose their words carefully. So, ask yourself why he would choose the loaded word "targeted" in this instance? Could it be that he'd chosen a side and wished to sway the reader? And, is that the job of a local religion reporter?

Now, on to the next curiously chosen word. "Deemed"? The bishop "deemed" the "lifesaving medical procedure" an abortion? Ummmm, no. The procedure wasn't deemed an abortion, it was an abortion. If it weren't an abortion, there would be no issue at all.

Again, ask yourself why the reporter would choose a word that implies deceit or pretense on the part of the bishop? Clancy leads us to believe that in fact some other procedure --a good and healing and moral "lifesaving medical procedure"* -- took place. Yet this mystery procedure is never actually named in the article. Call me crazy, but I don't think it's the bishop who is being deceptive here.

So, while the first part of his sentence tells us a lot about reporter Michael Clancy, this second part tells us something about Sister McBride:

…[Sister McBride] will be honored this weekend by Call to Action, a national group that supports a married priesthood**, women priests, gay marriage and other positions that the church opposes.

Call To Action (CTA) is a notorious group of Catholic dissenters that has been trying to remake the Church in its own image for decades now. Its members are embarrassed by Church teaching (especially on human sexuality) and disdain the institutional Church. They have an open contempt for faithful clergy, from the Holy Father on down. It's no surprise that these folks would honor a "progressive" nun who authorized an abortion in a diocese with a faithful bishop --the kind of bishop that CTA cannot stand.

After one courageous bishop, Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, publicly excommunicated the members of CTA in his diocese, the Vatican approved the action and stated:

 [T]he activities of ‘Call to Action’ in the course of these years are in contrast with the Catholic Faith due to views and positions held which are unacceptable from a doctrinal and disciplinary standpoint…. Thus to be a member of this Association or to support it, is irreconcilable with a coherent living of the Catholic Faith.

When this organization that is incompatible with the Catholic Faith offered Sister McBride the Call to Action 2011 Leadership Award, she was thrilled to accept. She was, in her own words, "very proud to be receiving this award".

'Nuff said? It is for me.

While Sister McBride is being feted by the those who despise the Catholic Church, and while reporter Michael Clancy continues to promote the "Victim-Hero Nun vs. Mean and Heartless Bishop" narrative that the public loves***, Bishop Thomas Olmsted has been faithful and humble through it all, finding his identity in Jesus Christ alone. Listen:

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great. 

 Matthew 5:11-12

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 

John 15:18

*Direct abortion of a child is never a cure for any medical condition. However, there may have been a truly lifesaving treatment available for the mother and her child: A doctor in Milwaukee has a 100% success rate in saving both patients in the case of pulmonary hypertension in pregnancy.

**For the record, the Church does not "oppose" married priests. The Latin Rite has a longstanding discipline of priestly celibacy that has served the Church well, but there are occasional exceptions to that discipline, including my own associate pastor who is married with six children.

***Check the vicious anti-Catholic comments that follow almost every Michael Clancy story on the Church. If such raw bigotry and hatred were directed at Muslims or Jews, how fast do you think the Republic would move to close down the comment box?




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