{"id":165,"date":"2011-02-08T15:11:37","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T15:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html"},"modified":"2011-02-08T15:11:37","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T15:11:37","slug":"dont-stone-the-vatican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html","title":{"rendered":"Don’t stone the Vatican"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another document<\/a> that reveals a Vatican official urging a bishop to be, ah, less than forthcoming with the civil authorities about a priest sex offender has inspired reflections<\/a> from the NCR’s veteran Vatican hand, John Allen. Like a lot of reporters who have been on the beat a little too long, Allen has gone a bit native. He knows where all the bodies are buried, or most of them anyway, but his preference is to step back and clue everyone in to The Right Way to Make It Better. <\/p>\n

Let’s stop focusing on particular documents or even particular bad actors (i.e. Cardinal Castrill\u00f3n Hoyos), he urges:<\/p>\n

\n

Here’s the reality: In the main, it’s not that local bishops wanted
\nto cooperate but were barred by a secret Vatican edict, and neither is
\nit that Rome, aside from a few troglodytes such as Castrill\u00f3n Hoyos,
\nalways believed in full transparency. Until quite recently, the culture
\nin institutional Catholicism, at all levels, put a greater premium on
\nthe church’s independence and its right to privacy than on seeking
\njustice for the victims of sexual abuse. Everyone helped create that
\nculture, and everyone must share in reforming it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Enormous progress has been made, but it’s still a work in progress, and a hunt for smoking guns and scapegoats won’t help.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Won’t help whom? The papacy, one presumes. In Allen’s view, the object of the exercise is for all of us to enable Rome to get its house in order in as smooth a way as possible. We should understand that there was enough blame to go around–even to relative good guys like then-Cardinal Ratzinger–but certainly not expect the Vatican to issue a collective mea culpa. This is journalism?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another document that reveals a Vatican official urging a bishop to be, ah, less than forthcoming with the civil authorities about a priest sex offender has inspired reflections from the NCR’s veteran Vatican hand, John Allen. Like a lot of reporters who have been on the beat a little too long, Allen has gone a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nDon't stone the Vatican - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Don't stone the Vatican - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Another document that reveals a Vatican official urging a bishop to be, ah, less than forthcoming with the civil authorities about a priest sex offender has inspired reflections from the NCR’s veteran Vatican hand, John Allen. Like a lot of reporters who have been on the beat a little too long, Allen has gone a…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-02-08T15:11:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Don't stone the Vatican - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Don't stone the Vatican - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"Another document that reveals a Vatican official urging a bishop to be, ah, less than forthcoming with the civil authorities about a priest sex offender has inspired reflections from the NCR’s veteran Vatican hand, John Allen. Like a lot of reporters who have been on the beat a little too long, Allen has gone a…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-02-08T15:11:37+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html","name":"Don't stone the Vatican - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-02-08T15:11:37+00:00","dateModified":"2011-02-08T15:11:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/dont-stone-the-vatican.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Don’t stone the Vatican"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}