THE BISHOPS AND CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE - SPREADING ERROR IS OUR BUSINESS

The corruption of the USCCB is being laid open for all of the world to see. How long will it be before Rome acts? This organization needs to be overhauled and made to conform with the Church it purports to represent.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Christian faithful had ready access to reliable media sources that consistently address important issues truthfully and completely while also communicating the authentic doctrine of the faith so dependably that the information provided could be received with complete confidence?...

...Enter Catholic News Service (CNS) - an agency of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that was created more than forty years before the Council specifically for the purpose of carrying out this very mission...

...Catholic News Service has long been viewed with a suspicious eye by "conservative" Catholic groups, but any perception that this wariness is confined to some traditionalist fringe, however, was officially put to rest earlier this year.

By January 2009, CNS' failure to consistently apply reliably Catholic editorial standards had become so problematic that Archbishop Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura at the Vatican, was moved to take the extraordinarily bold step of criticizing CNS from Rome.

"The bishops need to look at our Catholic News Service; they need to review their coverage of [the Church's moral and social teachings] and give some new direction," he said.

The problems at CNS, which has been under the directorship of Editor-in-Chief Tony Spence since 2004, are well illustrated by the case of Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec.

In the months leading up to the recent U.S. Presidential election, Kmiec - a Catholic - not only campaigned for Barack Obama, he became the self-appointed spokesperson for moral relativists everywhere by publically insisting that Obama's radically pro-abortion agenda fits comfortably within authentic Catholic social doctrine.

Naturally, Kmiec's views drew the criticism of a number of American bishops, including Archbishop Charles Chaput who said that Kmiec had "done a disservice to the Church, confused the natural priorities of Catholic social teaching, and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue."...

...How then can anyone explain why Catholic News Service - an organ of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops - would grant Kmiec's opinions a de facto Imprimatur by syndicating his columns for distribution to Catholic publications all over the world?"

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