Press coverage of New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan's recent election as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops exemplified what my colleague Meghan Clyne calls “paint-by-numbers” reporting. Like the paint-by-numbers kits that were a fad when I was a kid, paint-by-numbers journalism produces something rather childish and not very pretty. Both unhappy attributes were fully on display as the herd of independent minds tried to cope with the Dolan story, scrambling (and failing) to grasp its dynamics and meaning.
The first paint-by-numbers color in this particularly childish picture was the color “surprise”: It was hard to find a story that didn't peg Archbishop Dolan's election that way in the first sentence. And while there was some truth to this—the bishops overturned a long custom of electing as president the outgoing conference vice president—the real story was that a quiet, extensive, and ultimately successful campaign was mounted, often by younger bishops, to change The Way We Bishops Do Things.
You might have thought exploring that dynamic was worth some ink. Evidently, it wasn't. Why? Might it have been because the Fourth Estate could not concede to having swallowed its unimaginative and rather lazy pre-election reporting, according to which USCCB Vice President Bishop Gerald Kicanas's ascension to the conference presidency was inevitable?
Paint-by-numbers reporting on the Dolan story also featured those hoary clichés about “liberal” and “conservative” Catholicism. Or, as one let's-be-clever sound-biter had it, “liberal moderate” vs. “conservative moderate” Catholicism.” This is, frankly, getting tedious; its mind-numbing dullness may explain why few serious readers look to the mainstream media for serious coverage of the Catholic Church.
Moreover, running the election of Archbishop Dolan through the usual left/right filters led reporters to miss another big story: the transformation of the U.S. bishops’ conference from a body focused on institutional maintenance and being “in play” in the great public policy debates of the day to one in which a critical mass of bishops is committed to strengthening Catholic identity, evangelizing a toxic culture, and challenging political realism with a compelling presentation of moral truth.
The Dolan election stories were also notable for paint-by-numbers sourcing and quote citing, in which the same old same-olds were trotted out to say the predictable things. Paint-by-numbers sourcing also intersected with paint-by-numbers cliché-promoting, as most of the stories I read “balanced” a known-quantity “liberal” commentator with a known-quantity “conservative,” usually in such a way as to signal the reader that the latter was the bad guy.
In the immediate, post-election scrum, I tried to get reporters interested in the true significance of this year's USCCB election, which was that it marked the end of an era. That era was defined by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, who left a deep impress on the bishops’ conference he served as its general secretary, then its president, then its behind-the-scenes éminence grise.
So comprehensive was Bernardin's influence in defining the culture and the modus operandi of the conference that the Bernardin Era lasted for 14 years after the cardinal died on November 14, 1996, after a gallant and edifying battle with cancer. But it is now over, because of a generational change in the center of gravity of the American episcopate.
That generational change is a matter of Catholic sensibility as well as of age. Like the man they chose to lead them, the bishops who elected Archbishop Dolan combine a sense of excitement about the Catholic possibility in 21st-century America with serious reservations about the national drift into a utilitarianism in which “Will it work?” is the only question of moral consequence.
The bishops in the Dolan coalition are also willing to challenge the sexual revolution with the tools John Paul II gave the Church in his Theology of the Body; many bishops of the Bernardin Era were deeply shaken by the post-Humanae Vitae chaos in the Church and simply wished (and, in some cases, wish) that the challenging questions engaged by Catholicism's ethic of love would disappear.
The tectonic plates within U.S. Catholicism's ordained leadership have shifted. You can't depict that shift with paint-by-numbers.
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
Comments:
Inquiring Catholics want to know...
Weigel’s real complaint is that the media didn’t depict the change in leadership as “tectonic,” “generational,” and “exciting.” I wouldn’t expect a general publication to do so. The general public isn’t terribly concerned with such insider struggles. Why must Weigel always start with a dig at the mainstream media? Why can’t he just make his point without attacking some vague, anti-Catholic conspiracy?
For contrast, read John Allen’s day-after coverage in the National Catholic Reporter, “Three Keys to the Dolan Win.” He, too, wants to move away from describing the win as conservative over liberal, but he doesn’t need to swat others in doing so. It’s also just a smart article.
I am amazed at this author's take on the Bernadin era. His comment that "a critical mass of bishops is committed to strengthening Catholic identity, evangelizing a toxic culture, and challenging political realism with a compelling presentation of moral truth" completely misses the real reason for the change in the bishops' current mind set. Good try though. They are harried and challenged by their own institutional corruption so evident in the abuse scandals. The problem with the abuse was not so much the abuse as the response of the bishops. In an effort to take the pressure off, the bishops have basically drawn a line in the sand and stated you are either with us or against us. And many good people of faith seeing the lack of real caring, the lack of humanity in all this, the dearth of bishops like the saintly Bernadin (Weigel probably would consider him Liberal!) have simply said no thanks and have moved on. Pity.
Secular media coverage was basically straight-up, and included the broad themes Weigel mentions. It was indeed a "conservative vs liberal" election, which Weigel admits after saying it was not. And pre-election coverage was hardly lazy in reporting that the outcome was expected to be a foregone conclusion. The USCCB always previously just moved the VP to president. If any group is lazy, it's the USCCB.
Given that the CCHD "reform statement" issued only days before the annual meeting boasted of funding a Marxist organization, it's laughable that Weigel sees "younger bishops" "rising up" to change things. Only about 10 bishops have dropped CCHD in their diocese. Where's the revolt?
Kiconas lost by only 17 votes, 128-111, and in the third round of balloting. That's hardly much of a mandate and tells us at least 100 bishops are brain-dead on the scandal that is universally said to be the worst facing the Church since the Reformation. Where's the revolt?
The real story is how pathetic/corrupt the bishops are to have even allowed Kiconas to remain on the ballot -- or how he ever was VP in the first place! Or how absurd it is that not even George Weigel could weigh in on how disgusting it is that moving a pedophile to ordination is not an automatic disqualification from high office in the Church.
If anything is "frankly, getting tedious," to quote Weigel, it is the knee-jerk reaction of people on the Catholic payroll (like Weigel) to continually attack the "mainstream media" for reporting about contradictions and corruption in the Church.
I spent 10 years editing Catholic newspapers, and another 10 years before that editing secular newspapers, so I know something about journalism. If the sex scandals are teaching "serious readers" anything, it is that the Catholic press is not a reliable place for (again, to quote Weigel) "serious coverage of the Catholic Church."
To summarize: George, please revisit this topic in a year and show us how Dolan's election represents much of anything. I'm betting CCHD will still be funding pro-aborts, the USCCB will be as socialist as ever; and yes, more liberals will be hired on at the USCCB. And those presumably better "younger bishops" will be as unknown and as invisible as they are now. And you'll still be whining about the "mainstream media."
I don't know how any reference to all of this USCCB political business can mention Bernardin and Kicanas and not mention the protection that they provided for homosexuals in the seminaries, and in OTHER places, which either you know, or if you don't will be left to your imagination. Their homosexualism is a big part of the general rejection of those two people.
The CAtholic Church of U.S must get on and become a world leader in ensuring that the Foreign Policy of the U.S Government is changed.A policy which is militaristic and helps Islams most fundamentalist States like Pakistan the exporter of islamic terrorists all over the world, with the most modern armaments and weapons.Closes its eyes to what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a matter of fact of in all Islamic nations.What I am saying is that the Church must dare to take the role of making the U.S . once more the beacon, it was, by voting men and women leaders into seats of power to proclaim catholic teachings in all spheres and issues, nationally and internationally. Wall Street and those who robbed the american people and also caused the poor of the world so much suffering must not be allowed to escape .The U.S Church must show that Pope Benedict X1 is not what the mainline Press would like to make him out to be, by proclaiming his policies.That the Catholic Bishops made a change is an indication of what can be expected?
