Cardinal Sins in the Summer of Media Madness
Cardinal Wilton Gregory was among the outraged when President Trump ordered Capitol Police to forcefully remove demonstrators for a photo op, but was it even true?
A few weeks ago in these pages I wrote a post entitled, “Covid: The Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. News Media.” It made the point — now well documented — that the primary reason why some in the partisan news media rejected even the idea that the virus causing Covid-19 may have been leaked from a Wuhan laboratory is because it was President Trump and Senator Tom Cotton who first suggested it. I was warned to stay out of that minefield, but here I am again.
Those who assist me in publishing this blog share these posts on social media accounts which I have never seen and likely never will. We have all struggled with the advisability of wading into the social media swamp, but it is where people are. Placing before them a fair, just, and truthful idea seems to me to be a good thing. We have a presence in about thirty Catholic platforms on Facebook alone with a combined membership of hundreds of thousands. For the most part, what I write is well received there.
I was really smacked down, however, when we ventured into Reddit. The Catholicism Forum there rejected my recent post on the origin of Covid saying that it was off topic and of no interest to Catholics. Is there something about Catholics that makes them immune to Covid? I’m Catholic and I had it. It was awful. Trust me, we are not immune.
So after the Reddit Catholicism moderator’s terse rejection, we found a home for that post on Reddit’s News Media Forum. It felt as though I had stepped into one of the riots of 2020. Some people thanked me for writing it, but most openly condemned it — and me — for mentioning Donald Trump in something other than the required disparaging and condemning tone. “The author of this article is a convicted Catholic priest,” one commenter wrote. “So keep that in mind when judging his credibility.”
Several others reacted in fury, but no one disputed any of the facts I presented in that post. One person came to my defense, suggesting that who and where I am does not in any way alter the facts I presented in that post. Thankfully, another person challenged the commenter’s condemnation by telling him to do some homework. She wrote that The Wall Street Journal published a three-part series which determined the case against me to be a monstrous fraud, and many others concur with that assessment.
Most of the rest of the comments were the typical tribal insults accusing Catholic priests of sticking their noses into politics where, they insist, we do not belong. They actually made my point for me. Determining the origin of Covid-19 is about finding the scientific truth. It is not about Trump, or partisan politics , or any other realm into which our partisan news media let it descend.
Can anyone explain to me the dynamic in which the mere mention of Donald Trump in a benign, factual, but non-derogatory manner sends some people into a frenzy unleashing a diatribe of “woke” suspicion?
It’s like Deja Vu All over Again!
It seems that I have not learned my lesson, however, for I am about to walk into that media minefield again. One year ago this week, I wrote a post entitled, “The State of Our Freedom, The Content of Our Character.” It was about a series of events that unfolded in Washington, DC during the summer of 2020. My post was not a defense of Donald Trump. I do not have a defense of Donald Trump. It was merely about truth, and having the good character to tell it.
Before I go into what I mean by that, I want to refer you to Catholic League President Bill Donohue and his recent press release entitled, “The Bishops Are Not Partisans.” He made the point that our bishops, acting as a whole, do not support any political party, nor do they speak toward a political goal. If they speak on politics at all, it is to clarify the Church’s teaching on a matter of faith or morals.
I agree entirely that this is what should happen when bishops speak as representatives of the Church. It is not always what does happen, however, but Dr. Donohue’s statement lends further clarity to what went wrong in Washington in June of 2020. I wrote extensively in the above cited post about these events.
What prompts me to write of this again is a recent statement summarizing a year-long investigation by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, who recently testified at a Senate hearing in words quite similar to those of Bill Donohue in reference to Catholic bishops:
“The job of the Justice Department in making decisions of law is not to back any administration or impose one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans.”
I much respect Attorney General Merrick Garland for the content of his character. The context for that statement immediately preceded the release of the Inspector General’s report about events in Washington, DC in early June 2020. The most egregious of these was a widely disseminated media condemnation of Donald Trump for using the Office of the President to order Capitol Police to forcibly clear Lafayette Square adjacent to the White House to make way for the President’s “photo op” holding a Bible in front of Saint John’s Episcopal Church. He supposedly had the police use gas to disperse the crowd.
But it is not true, and it was never true. The Inspector General’s Report — released to a mostly disinterested partisan news media — concluded that the dispersement of the crowd took place several hours before Trump’s spontaneous decision to go stand in front of that church. The two events, the IG Report states, were not at all related. And the crowd dispersed earlier that day was not at all a “peaceful protest” as characterized in the media. The decision to use force to disperse the crowd came after 49 officers were injured trying to stop the mob from destroying property.
In “The State of Our Freedom, The Content of Our Character” written one year ago this month, I wrote that Trump’s decision to go stand in front of that church was not to force the mob out. As the IG report states, they were removed four hours earlier. I wrote that Trump went there to force the news media to cover the extensive damage inflicted upon the facade of that church. Even then, after calling the riots “peaceful demonstrations,” CNN and most (but not all) news venues zoomed in on the President holding the Bible and thus keeping from public view the damage done to the church. This is not a defense of Trump. It is a defense of truth.
Cardinal Sins
Some of the untrue rhetoric and misplaced public condemnation of the President that day came from a surprising and alarming source. At a time when the nation was in a state of violent chaos in the early days of June, 2020, Washington, DC Archbishop Wilton Gregory stepped far afield of the call for a pastoral and non-partisan demeanor called for by Dr. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.
On June 1, 2020, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visited the St. John Paul II Shrine in Washington to commemorate Pope John Paul’s papal visit to his native Poland on that same day in 1979. That event is widely hailed today as the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and European Communism. After the President and First Lady prayed at the Shrine, they proceeded to the White House where the President signed an Executive Order in support of International Religious Freedom.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board hailed that Order and visit to the Shrine as a remarkable message to the world that religious liberty must be affirmed. On the next day, however, Archbishop Wilton Gregory condemned these events in a statement given center stage in The Washington Post and America magazine:
“I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and in a fashion that violates our religious principles.”
Archbishop Gregory stated at the time that he had no prior awareness of a plan for the President to visit the Shrine, nor was he consulted in advance. In contrast, the White House stated that the Archbishop was invited to be present but declined the invitation to appear with the President due to “a prior commitment.” A shocking irony of the Archbishop’s statement above is that it could truthfully apply to the current President if you just substitute the words, “Catholic facility” with “Catholic Sacrament”:
“I find it baffling and reprehensible that a Catholic Sacrament would be so egregiously misused and in a fashion that violates our religious principles”
Later on June 2, 2020, President Trump made a highly controversial appearance holding a Bible in front of St. John Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square. The immediate media narrative was that he had Attorney General Bill Barr order Capitol Police to forcibly clear the park using tear gas to accommodate his “photo op.” That narrative took on the force of unquestioned Biblical truth. Democratic Presidential contender Senator Elizabeth Warren immediately called for an investigation into the “sickening and appalling measures to clear the park for a photo op.”
Senator Warren got the investigation that she called for. Earlier this month, the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior dismissed the story as entirely untrue. The report states, as described above, that the park was cleared of demonstrators hours earlier to protect both property and the Park police, many of whom were injured. This is the report of the current Inspector General and Attorney General in the Biden Administration.
It was an election year, and no one really expects partisan politicians to pass up a chance to distort the truth in favor of political points without checking the facts. That should not apply, however, to the Catholic Archbishop of Washington who issued a statement that day that was widely disseminated by The Washington Post and other venues:
“Pope John Paul II was a defender of the dignity of humans who would certainly not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter, or intimidate them for a photo op in front of a place of worship and peace.”
On the next day, the Archbishop’s office issued a group email to all priests of the Archdiocese of Washington summoning them to appear with protest placards while wearing cassocks or other clerical garb to join protesters in a staged demonstration in front of the White House that week. It is unclear how many, if any, of the priests obliged. Several said that this expectation was a violation of existing policy about engaging in partisan politics. It was also a violation of policy about pandemic social distancing. Others were alarmed that this placed priests in harm’s way.
After the Inspector General’s Report discredited the false media narrative about these events, The Washington Post issued a retraction of its earlier presentation. It also retracted its 2020 dismissal of the Wuhan laboratory Covid source theory as conspiracy theory. It is not easy for a major news outlet to issue a retraction of such explosive news coverage. However, there is to date no sign of a retraction, explanation, apology, or clarification from the Archbishop of Washington.
Four months after the events described in this post, Pope Francis announced his decision to elevate Archbishop Wilton Gregory to the College of Cardinals, an honor also bestowed on his two immediate predecessors, Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
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The State of Our Freedom and the Content of Our Character
