Just a short note today to encourage you to read this article from Damian Thompson. Thompson is the editor in chief of the Catholic Herald and an associate editor with the Spectator. He has followed the Catholic Church for years.

September 13, 2018

Just a short note today to encourage you to read this article from Damian Thompson. Thompson is the editor in chief of the Catholic Herald and an associate editor with the Spectator. He has followed the Catholic Church for years.

The article is about Pope Francis and the explosive allegations against him: that for years he knew about the heinous, criminal behavior of his friend, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and did nothing. More specifically, Thompson concentrates on the mainstream media’s abject refusal to seriously investigate and report the scandal, instead painting the issue as just an attack by Catholic conservatives against a progressively minded pope.

The allegations come from an August 22 “Testimony” by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States. The detailed, 11-page dossier states that the pope was aware of McCarrick’s serial sexual abuse of adults and children, and did nothing. Pope Francis’s response has been noticeably feeble.

Yet surprisingly, so has the response of journalists and the mainstream media. Referring to this dossier, Thompson wrote, “For more than two weeks, therefore, evidence that Pope Francis welcomed a privately disgraced predator into his inner circle has sat on the desks of every news editor in the free world. And what have they done with it? THE ANSWER IS ALMOST NOTHING—OR WORSE THAN NOTHING” (emphasis added).

It’s all a bit surreal. McCarrick’s sexual behavior was reportedly an “open secret.” Now a highly credible source has made a strong claim that this was covered up by the pope himself, leader of one of the largest and most influential religions and institutions in the world. AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS NOT INTERESTED IN INVESTIGATING OR REPORTING THE STORY?

How is this even possible—and right in the middle of the #metoo era, no less? Every day, journalists at the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and thousands of others patrol the planet like superman, looking for opportunities to expose prejudice and defend the rights of women, homosexuals, trans, immigrants and every other minority group. Each week, it seems, brings a new article filled with sordid details exposing the tyrannical behavior of generally male media moguls, politicians and actors.

Where are the in-depth investigations into the decades-long, organized sexual abuse of thousands of innocent little children and the organized concealment of these horrible sins (and crimes) by church leaders? What is going on here? Why aren’t more journalists and commentators talking about this?

This is a scandal of truly historic proportions. Yet executives, producers, anchors, editors and reporters are spectacularly failing in their coverage. Why is it that when it comes to this sex scandal, the media is stunningly silent? It reminds me of an end-time prophecy in Isaiah 59. “Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men” (verses 9-10).

Please do read “The Media’s Sins of Omission,” by Damian Thompson.

Brad Macdonald
Managing Editor, theTrumpet.com