Overboard on Myers

In the beginning, it seemed reasonable enough.  The editors of the Newark Star Ledger, (NSL), buoyed by intensive investigative reporting shone a bright light on the sex scandal swirling around Michael Fugee.  Simultaneously, it focused its attention on the role of the Archbishop of Newark (NJ) in this matter. 

Fugee has since been removed from the Roman Catholic priesthood.  Others alleged to have had responsibility or influence over him have been disciplined, demoted, or removed from contact with youth.

Once the Fugee matter was resolved, the NSL refocused its attention on the planned Hunterdon County retirement home of Newark Archbishop, John J. Myers. 

The NSL’s editorial staff considers the place too extravagant and too expensive.  It wants him to sell it and to donate the money to charity.  It further insists that Myers quit his job as archbishop.

 The purpose of this post is neither to comment upon, nor to challenge the legitimacy of those claims, but to highlight the caustic tone of the NSL editorials and their collateral damage.

I’m thoroughly familiar with the failings of the bishops and cardinals who mishandled the sexual abuse crisis that exploded on the national scene – first during the early 2000’s in Boston under Cardinal Bernard Law, followed by other such revelations in major centers of Catholicism in America. 

I was on top of this debacle long before newspapers in the New York metropolitan area broke stories about Cardinal Law’s failures in Boston.

What I discovered disgusted me.

One of the first credible publications in this area to have informed its readers about what was happening in the Bay State under Cardinal Law ‘s tenure was a wire report that appeared in The Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, well before the secular print media began to cover these scandals.

Anyone in this area who knows me understands clearly what my views are concerning church officials who have debased their responsibilities.  They are not pretty.

However, the concentrated, single-minded editorials about John J. Myers in the NSL have taken on the character of a noxious campaign. 

Many of those editorials have become unbalanced and derisive.  They have assumed a tone as haughty as that which NSL editorial writers have attributed to Archbishop Myers. 

That journalistic approach has caused undeserved collateral damage in places where it should have no influence:

The first is the tendency to diminish the reputation of priests at the local level.  The second is the negative impact upon local church contributions; upon yearly diocesan fund raising campaigns; and to the numerous charitable causes which they both support.

The editors of the NSL seem not to know, not to care, or simply to have overlooked the fact that there are many reputable priests, trustworthy men who are manning the front lines of their local Catholic churches, and who are doing their very best to carry out what is their primary function:  the spiritual well-being of their parishioners.

These good guys are supported by the core of Roman Catholicism in The Garden State consisting in its entirety of millions of women religious, lay men and women administrators, volunteers, and parishioners who simply want to practice their faith.

These Catholics are not under a rock.  They understand the necessity to clean out “the filth,” as Benedict XVI once emphasized while he was in office.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out to Newark Star Ledger editors that a quality – in this case good journalism – can, when stretched to its extreme turn into a fault.