My Reservations about Irish Journalism

The Archbishop and the Serious Catholic Press
In his recent address in Rimini, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin noted that there is no 'serious Catholic press' in Ireland. I'm not sure that my friends at the 'Irish Catholic' newspaper would quite agree with him, but I think that the substance of Martin's remarks is generally accurate. The Irish Catholic makes a valuable contribution to the life of the Church in Ireland and is certainly a serious newspaper. But, in a broader sense, we don't have a 'serious Catholic press' because outside of the niche which that publication occupies, there is no serious newspaper which approaches the news of the day with a Catholic outlook. One weekly publication - no matter how good - does not constitute a serious Catholic press in a predominantly Catholic country. Likewise, I don't think that any of the religion correspondents who report in the Irish dailies are particularly well-informed or sympathetic. There are some columnists, of course, whose work is worth following, but believing Catholics with a basic sense of loyalty to the Church will find few friends in the Irish media.

Get Religion?
I recently came across the American GetReligion website. Based on the premise that the media 'doesn't get religion', it examines religious reportage and showing precisely how - through either spin or ignorance - much of what is published is inaccurate or misleading. If I didn't have the care of my parishioners and my own sanity on my conscience, I wouldn't mind doing something similar with the Irish press. Hardly a day goes by without my coming across an article in one of our broadsheets which misses the mark. I don't expect the secular media to confine themselves to printing only good things about the Church, clergy and the laity; I do wish that our Irish journalists would write a little more fairly and a lot more knowledgeably.

A Typical Example
Take, for example, this report in today's Irish Times about Ave Maria University Professor Colin Barr's latest book The European Culture Wars in Ireland – The Callan Schools Affair, 1868-81. (I've met Professor Barr and he's an expert on the life and times of the 19th Century Irish Cardinal Paul Cullen.)

The Context
The headline reads: Mental reservation used 'to lie to jury'. Now, non-Irish readers need to understand the context of this. As part of an investigation (the Murphy Report) into the abuse of minors by clergy in the Archdiocese of Dublin, Cardinal Connell (former Archbishop of Dublin) explained that he felt justified in making certain seemingly mis-leading statements by virtue of the doctrine of mental reservation. The Cardinal understood that he was telling the truth, but in such a way that it concealed knowledge from the person asking the question either because the person asking wasn't entitled to know the information at issue or in order to justifiably prevent harm.
One such example given in the Murphy Report was Cardinal Connell's telling journalists that diocesan funds are not used for the compensation of child abuse complainants. He believed himself justified in saying that because it was a true statement. However, he didn't volunteer that diocesan funds may have been used that way in the past. For whatever reason, he either thought that the journalists shouldn't be told that.
Now, one can argue about whether Cardinal Connell was justified or not in dealing with the journalists that way. The point, however, is that when the Cardinal explained that he was engaging in 'mental reservation', this was seized upon by commentators as an example of how dishonest the Catholic clergy are in that they could cook up such an idea as mental reservation so that they could lie to people at will.

Did anyone bother to find out what was meant?
I don't know of any Irish journalist that bothered seriously investigating what was meant by 'mental reservation'. If any of them had done so, they'd probably have discovered that mental reservation is something they almost certainly do themselves and which they find morally unobjectionable. One could imagine a journalist being put under pressure to reveal a source, saying that he didn't hear about such-and-such a secret from Mr Purple, when in fact he had learned about the secret from Mr Purple. Perhaps Mr Purple had sent the journalist a note, so technically the journalist didn't hear anything from Mr Purple. That would be an example of mental reservation. Whether and when it's a justifiable thing to do is as open to debate. Whether Cardinal Connell was as honest as he should have been with the media is a question worth asking. But it's intellectually sloppy and ethically careless to use the expression 'mental reservation' as a codeword to suggest that Catholic priests can't be relied upon to tell the truth.

Latent Anti-clericalism
Anyway, Michael Parsons of the Irish Times explains:

“Mental reservation” allows clerics knowingly to mislead people “without being guilty of lying”, and came to public attention last year in the Murphy Report (on clerical sexual abuse).

Note the suggestion that mental reservation is a devious clerical activity rather than something which is part and parcel of pretty much everyone's generally accepted standard of truthfulness. (It should be noted that the Murphy Report itself doesn't help because of its statement: Mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a churchman knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying. One might as well say that alcoholism is a disease which leads to journalists getting riotously drunk on a regular basis.) Indeed, I would argue that most people are much looser in their use of untruths, half-truths and equivocations than the Catholic idea of mental reservation would permit.

Why is this a story?
Well, that explains the headline and probably explains why the launch of Professor Barr's book made the Irish Times at all - it's another example of clerical perfidy to be brought to the public's attention. So, how did [Cardinal Cullen use] the concept of “mental reservation” to “lie to a jury and commit perjury in a civil court case”? (The quotations are, one presumes, from Professor Barr's book.) The article doesn't bother telling us! I've read and re-read the article, and there is nothing about any testimony given by Cardinal Cullen in court. The article doesn't explain what truth - if any - the Cardinal was trying to conceal and what form of words - if any - he used in court to conceal it. All we have is the term 'mental reservation' thrown out there to blacken Cardinal Cullen's name without bothering to explain what charge is being made against him.

Now, it could well be that Cardinal Cullen behaved dishonestly - I have no particular brief to defend his memory, even though I think he gets a pretty raw deal from our journalists. (Interestingly, Mary Kenny writes very well about Cardinal Cullen in today's Irish Catholic!) I don't think one needs to be particularly cynical to suggest the fact that reminding us all of the Murphy Report and of Cardinal Connell's mental reservation is the probable motivation for the story and headline as published rather than telling us anything substantial about Cardinal Cullen or Professor Barr's book.

Postscript
In 1864 Cardinal Newman wrote his famous Apologia pro vita sua, an explanation of the development of his own religious thought in response to Charles Kingsley's attack on Newman's own honesty and the integrity of Roman Catholic clergy in general. The passage which Newman found objectionable in a book review of Kingsley's was the following:

Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so.

In the resulting exchange of letters and his publication of the Apologia, Newman roundly refutes Kingsley's charge and writes one of the finest spiritual autobiographies. Interested readers might like to read the correspondence between Newman and Kingsley.