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Orlando, 27th May 2005 (CNA)
- Speaking to a joint meeting of Catholic
communicators in Florida this week, Archbishop
John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council
for Social Communications, said in a speech that
ousted ‘America’ magazine editor, Fr. Thomas
Reese, should have better represented Catholic
teaching during his time with the Jesuit-run
journal.
The Archbishop, who shared a podium with
Fr. Reese during the three-day long meeting of the
Catholic Press Association of the United States
and Canada and the Catholic Academy of
Communications Arts Professionals, said that the
cleric’s participation in the event was planned
before the recent ‘America’ scandal.
He said that while he believes Fr. Reese to
be a “fine gentleman” and a “fine priest”… “I
generally find myself in agreement with a recent
editorial in Our Sunday Visitor and with Russell
Shaw's op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that
a priest-editor, who in some way is expected to
represent the magisterium of the Church, cannot
appear to give equal weight in a publication
sponsored by a religious community to articles
which present the teaching of the Church and
articles which dissent from it.”
Fr. Reese’s resignation from the
controversial weekly reportedly came at the
request of his Jesuit order. Reese’s
supporters such as the National Catholic Reporter
have argued his departure has been the consequence
of “pressure from Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, recently headed by now Pope Benedict
XVI.
According to the Reporter, the Vatican had
long standing objections to several articles
published in the magazine, which favored condom
use for AIDS prevention, homosexual priests,
homosexual unions and other issues of dissent from
Catholic teaching.
Critics say that ‘America’ gave to much
support to those against the Church’s teachings
and too little support of it.
Archbishop Foley used his brief stint as
editor of Philadelphia’s Catholic Standard and
Times at the time of the document ‘Humanae Vitae’s
1968 release, by way of example.
“A number of Catholic publications”, he
said, “ignored the fact that there was dissent
from the encyclical; a greater number highlighted
the dissent and put the encyclical in a
subordinate position. I decided to use the
encyclical as the lead story and to use the
dissent as a separate story on an inside page with
the jump of the encyclical story from page one --
and then I did an editorial in support of the
encyclical.”
He explained that he “felt that the
encyclical represented the official teaching of
the Church, which had to be highlighted and with
which I happened to agree then, as I do now, but
that the dissent was a significant fact that could
not and should not be ignored.”
Highlighting this proper balance, he
thought that, “the official teaching of the Church
should be supported editorially -- both through
comment and through story placement. If I were
still an editor, I think that would remain my
publication philosophy
today.”
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