Age-Old Debate Dogs New Editor at Diocese Paper Ruled by Bishop

Early this year a group of Roman Catholic bishops and the editors of diocesan newspapers came together in an unusual conference to discuss, among many other things, how best to cover scandal, embarrassment and dissent within the church.

Out of the conference emerged an impressive 13-point consensus endorsing such high-minded goals as full and fair reporting, conveying the Christian meaning of human events, reflecting the unity and diversity of the church, and explaining church teaching.

But on one subject--how to cover scandal, embarrassment and dissent--there was no consensus.

“It’s an age-old argument,” Tim McCarthy, a staff writer for the National Catholic Reporter and a former editor of a diocesan newspaper, remarked recently. “It’s essentially an argument between journalists and bureaucrats.”

Now the question of the appropriate role of a diocesan paper has surfaced in San Diego, where the weekly Southern Cross is under new command. In a diocese dogged by reports of scandal never aired in Southern Cross, “the bishop’s newspaper” is being reexamined. Current circulation is about 20,000, just a fraction of the diocesan membership, and only part of the circulation is in paid subscriptions.

The new editor, a career journalist turned public-relations man, held his first meeting last month with a new editorial board appointed by Bishop Leo T. Maher. By January, he says, he intends to redefine the goals of the paper, which some contend has failed in its mission.

“Certainly the dilemma here is whether we want to put out a newspaper or a newsletter,” said editor Bill Finley, whose own position reflects the dilemma--a former reporter, now spokesman for the diocese, with an advisory board full of monsignors.

“There is a certain number of people who think that the vitality of the church is the debate within the church, and that any kind of discussion of theological issues and issues of the day within the church are healthy,” Finley said. “And there is a certain number of conservative elements within the church who feel that all those sorts of controversial debates are somehow unhealthy for the church.”

The San Diego diocese has not been starved for controversy.

First, there was a June, 1984, report in The Reader alleging that a prominent priest was being treated for a cocaine habit acquired during a long homosexual love affair. Then came newspaper and television reports of homosexuality in St. Francis Seminary, murky financial accounting and the transfer of diocesan property by Maher to his private secretary.

Meanwhile, the diocese “silenced” a University of San Diego religious studies professor after she signed a public letter calling for a dialogue within the church on abortion. Then last spring, Helen Copley, a major contributor to USD, resigned from the Board of Trustees of the Catholic university after priests questioned whether her presence was appropriate in light of the exposes published in her newspapers.

During most of that time, Maher declined to address the charges, published in the San Diego Union and the Tribune, except to condemn “these sordid attacks by the press.”

Never did any spokesman for the diocese or the Southern Cross, which purports to cover the church, publicly address the misconduct allegations.

But last month, the diocese hired Finley as a full-time communications director, superseding a priest who had held the job part time. Sources said the new position was created at the urging of one powerful monsignor who believed the bishop’s rigid posture toward the media had damaged credibility.

About the same time, there was muffled upheaval at the Southern Cross. The priest who was editor, Father Louis Copestake, quietly stepped down. His name vanished, unexplained, from the newspaper’s masthead. His home telephone was disconnected.

The diocese will say only that Copestake has taken an “administrative leave of absence” for medical reasons. He has left San Diego, Finley said. He said he did not know where Copestake had gone.

Now Finley has moved into Copestake’s office in the little newspaper wing behind the diocese’s headquarters. Whether the paper’s content or coverage will change remains unclear. But he warned recently: “I think we need to remember at all times that the bishop is the publisher of the newspaper. In that respect, it’s no different from your publisher, in that he had better be pleased with the product.”

Nationwide, editors and observers of many of the 157 diocesan newspapers say their quality depends on each bishop’s willingness to tolerate editorial independence. The history of many Catholic diocesan papers is one of recurrent tension over coverage of troublesome topics such as scandal and dissent.

The National Catholic Reporter, a large, privately owned paper, emerged out of a diocesan newspaper that had angered its bishop. According to current editor Tom Fox, the bishop withdrew its funding after the paper published an editorial opposing his stand on birth control.

A similar confrontation occurred recently, Fox said, recalling the ouster of the editor of an East Coast diocesan paper over an article on pedophilia among priests.

The editor of the San Bernardino paper recalled a disagreement with his bishop over his publishing a wire service report of the drunken driving arrest of the archbishop of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Other editors recalled skirmishes with their bishops over coverage of sex scandals involving local priests and lawsuits against the diocese. Other sensitive areas include letters to the editor, columns and editorials.

“The general rule is that the closer the issue is to home, the less likely the editor is going to utilize or express an editorial independence,” Fox said.

Julie Sly, editor of The Catholic Key in Kansas City, Mo., said, “They might think that to report on those issues would be a reflection on them, and most bishops are conscious of their public image.”

Perhaps the most troublesome issues involve personnel--in particular, scandals involving priests and diocesan officials. The question of whether to cover them goes to the heart of the sometimes-conflicting purposes embodied in the papers’ multiple roles.

Diocesan papers define their aim as “helping Catholics understand the world and fulfill their role in it,” according to the consensus of the Catholic Press Assn. conference held in February. That includes “reporting fully, fairly and accurately the events of the day as they relate to Christians” and “portraying the church as it is, with its strengths and weaknesses.”

But the papers’ goals also include “helping fulfill the bishop’s obligation to teach and instruct the people of God” and “helping to build up the local, national and universal community.” Several editors said they seek to inspire, as well as to inform.

“In a way, there is at least a theoretical conflict between the tradition of editorial independence, which is so much a part of American history, and the tradition of a newspaper which is attempting to portray the life of the diocese through the eyes of the bishop,” said Fox, of the National Catholic Reporter.

That conflict is made sharper by the fact that most diocesan papers are under-funded and understaffed. Many have part-time editors who are priests with little or no journalism background. Like Finley, some editors double as the diocesan public relations man.

“One of the things to keep in mind is that diocesan papers don’t have big staffs, so they can’t do investigative stories,” said Ethel Gintoft, editor of the Catholic Herald in Milwaukee. She added, “We don’t watchdog our officials in the same way a secular paper watchdogs elected officials.”

As a result, editors occasionally find themselves faced with the question of whether to address allegations of scandal first reported in the “secular press.” Some said they believe that by ignoring those stories, editors risk their papers’ credibility.

“I think that most Catholic newspapers don’t go around looking for dirty laundry,” said Dan Pitre, editor of the Inland Catholic in San Bernardino. “However, if a problem does develop, then I do think we need to air that issue, particularly relating the facts from the church’s perspective.”

“My feeling is that truth can’t destroy our faith,” said Monica Clark, editor of the Catholic Voice in Oakland. “I think we have to keep seeking after the truth. Sometimes the search is painful and makes us look at things we don’t want to look at. But I don’t see that our faith can hinge on misinformation and myth.”

These days, the Southern Cross is a bland little newspaper, a 12- or 16-page tabloid almost entirely in black and white. Its circulation is about 20,000 in a diocese believed to have many more Catholics than the official 382,000 count.

In a recent issue, most of the front page concerned the dedication of a church. The centerfold was a two-page spread on the 75th anniversary of a parish. News of the nation’s Catholic bishops’ latest pastoral letter on the economy was on page 12. There were no letters from readers.

In the previous issue, another parish anniversary was the lead story. Inside was a special 12-page section on vocations. Each issue also carries one page in Spanish, columns, occasional movie reviews and and listings, and plenty of photos of the bishop.

But the Southern Cross was not always shy of controversy.

During the 1970s it was edited by Michael Newman, who took over at age 48 after a journalism career stretching back to London’s Fleet Street. As Newman and members of his staff recall it, the paper in those times eagerly took up prickly issues of the day.

Newman said he was faulted for reporting the departure of a prominent priest who left his post in order to marry.

Week after week, the paper covered the debate surrounding Maher’s denial of communion to members of groups like the National Organization for Women that advocated the right to an abortion.

In the mid-1970s, Newman said, the paper won a San Diego Press Club award for an investigation into the finances of a Catholic high school fund-raising event. The paper revealed that comedian Bob Hope, invited to make a guest appearance, had ended up with $25,000 that he gave to charity while the four schools got only $2,500 each.

Newman also transformed the look of the paper--switching to tabloid form, highlighting photographs and cutting the length of stories. He put rounded corners on the photographs and on the trim framing the pages. He would tell bewildered readers, “It’s the TV age.”

Eventually, he said, the paper became the target of a “vilification campaign” in which nuns or women dressed as nuns encouraged businesses to withdraw their advertising. According to Newman, the women’s criticism was that the paper was not orthodox.

“We were getting away from the old church--what I refer to as pray, pay and obey--to the new church where people were told to think for themselves,” Newman said. “ . . . You don’t want to encourage people to lose their faith, obviously. But you must keep the faith energetic and alive.”

Newman, who has since become a deacon in charge of the diocese’s retreat center, left the paper in late 1979 to go into fund-raising. Three editors followed in rapid succession--a public relations man and two priests.

The first, Jim Bastis, was communications director for the diocese and a former information officer for the Archdiocese of New York. According to Bastis, he changed the paper’s design to “give it a look,” and he turned the front page into a features page.

Bastis said he tried to emphasize Catholic high school sports. He worked on a youth page for the paper. Every issue would have an article about what the bishop was doing that week. Bastis said he tried to emphasize Catholics’ “everyday lives.”

“I think there was a general idea in my head . . . that I didn’t need to wash the dirty laundry of the diocese in its own newspaper,” said Bastis. “It was a decision, if it was going to cause more trouble or pain to many people out there, why bother telling them?”

The paper “is owned and operated by the diocese to promote Catholicism and to inform the people about the faith,” Bastis said. “Now, if things happen that are going to destroy the faith of individuals, you’ve got to decide whether you want to put it in.

“I’m glad I’m not there now, because of all the things that have been written in recent years. I wouldn’t want to have to decide what would go in the paper and what would not.”

These days, circulation hovers at 20,000--a small fraction of the diocese’s size. And as many as one-third of those copies are not mailed to subscribers’ homes but are delivered to individual parishes for distribution among members.

Some critics of the paper complain that it is boring. Others say it is too doctrinaire. The representatives of some special interest groups that feel they have been poorly received within the diocese complain that the paper ignores their interests.

“No women’s issue has ever been correctly, accurately or in the least bit supportively covered by the Southern Cross,” charged Jackie Brown, who described herself as a “faithful but disillusioned daughter.”

“If you have a good story with a nun who is in habit, the Southern Cross will print it,” Brown said. “But anything having to do with issues of human sexuality, women’s rights or the equal rights amendment, it’s all been real negative.”

As an example, Brown cited the paper’s coverage of a vigil in support of Jane Via, the University of San Diego religious studies professor who found her speaking engagements canceled by the diocese after she signed a letter calling for a dialogue on abortion.

The article, titled “Pro-Abortion Pro-Life Forces at Cathedral,” described the confrontation between Via’s supporters and critics who disrupted the vigil. The article quoted Via once, then quoted four people criticizing her position.

In a recent interview, asked to say where the paper was headed, Finley said he was awaiting the results of a readership survey sent out in a previous edition and would be meeting with his editorial board as well as priests throughout the diocese.

He spoke of making the paper “brighter, more interesting to the people in the pews, so they might pick it up and see if their name was in it or if they know of anyone whose name is in it.” Asked if he was suggesting that it should be more of a community newspaper, Finley said: “That’s my inclination at this point.”

“I don’t think we should shun controversial issues just because they happen to be controversial. And I don’t think all controversy is bad, especially when it comes to selling newspapers. But certainly the newspaper is not going to espouse views which are absolutely contradictory to what the bishop believes.”