News Item: Diocesan Press Lacks Journalistic Heft

In their November issue, U.S. Catholic did a study (not yet published on the website) on the quality of the Catholic diocesan press. I was almost touched by the righteous disappointment of the author, Raymond A. Schroth, a Jesuit professor, at the irrelevance, clericalism and, well, parochial sensibility everywhere present. I mean, what can Schroth possibly have expected? We're talking about an in-house publication. If you could only access the New York Times through Mayor Bloomberg's website, you wouldn't expect it to really set the standard for municipal watchdoggery.

I shared a rueful laugh at Schroth's gentle sendup of the dribblingly weak columns that come off Catholic newswire and are pasted into diocesan back pages. In my youth, which is recent enough to be relevant to the discussion, we were for a time required to read the "Kids' Corner" out loud in the car on the way to church. It was like, "Do you ever feel sad? Sometimes when we hit our brother we feel sad. Sometimes Jesus felt sad, too, like in the garden at Gethsemane." My brother and I got so used to protesting this ritual that we were surprised when our parents, probably sickened by the steady drip, drip of treacle, sprung us from it. We were promoted to reading the "grown-up" column, only somewhat less insulting to the intelligence of all.

You ask if your diocesean paper covered the sex abuse catastrophe? A lot of diocesan papers won't even let dissenting groups like Voice of the Faithful and Call to Action print letters to the editor. But the mainstream press, willing to create at least the appearance of a dialogue, will make a call to Dignity on gay Catholics or WOC on women priests, putting the diocesan organs in the position of depicting something as newsworthy that appears to have no controversy surrounding it.

It's not an enviable position. (And Schroth does laud a few papers that buck the trend with relevant news and smart commentary.) I'd like to see diocesan editors taking pride in their role as press, and bishops (here as always) acting as though strength came from surviving dissent, not quashing it.

Certainly, Catholic readers have a responsibility to demand better quality. But on the other hand, so much good stuff is already out there: America, NCR, U.S Catholic itself. You can grab a Catholic Worker for your social justice fix, or Sojourners for a more broadly Christian take. Beliefnet's a good ecumenical tool and the blogosphere, though weak in radical Catholic voices, forever inventive. The secular press of late, though I will always hound them for selective reporting that verges on anti-Catholic, has done a good job of ferreting out the icky in our own dioceses. And since the secular press can't rely on piety to keep up their subscriber base, they respond to readers as well as publishers. Chicago magazine did a special issue on Chicago Catholics that conveyed better than any bishops' statement the diversity of people and thought in the American Catholic church.

If you've got enough good Catholic reading to get through without paging through the diocesan paper, I can't say I entirely blame you. Because sometimes Catholics feel sad--and sometimes that merits honest, uncensored attention.