Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Is There Some Hidden Agenda Here?

Let's look at this paragraph from Aisha Sultan's latest Post Dispatch article:
About 250 worshippers attended a "solidarity" Mass Sunday at St. John the Apostle and Evangelist Church downtown to show support for Archbishop Raymond Burke and his efforts to wrest control of the church's governance from a lay board of directors. (My emphasis)
Pay close attention to the highlighted words above...

This is interesting, especially if we consider that this is the same terminology used by the Congregation of the Clergy to describe the St. Stanislaus Board of Directors' (BOD) actions. The Congregation's admonition to the BOD in its Nov 2004 letter stated, "you have attempted to wrest control of the parish from the Local Ordinary."

Uncannily similar, is it not? Would one be foolish to suspect that this is merely a strange coincidence?

Is Aisha Sultan's article biased? Slanted? Informed? Objective? Can any of these terms be used to describe the article?

Last year about this same time, Aisha Sultan wrote an article (which I can not find on the Post archives, BTW), in which she claims to have quoted Archbishop Burke. These are the links from last year reports: here, here, and here.

My email (in one of the above links) to Aisha Sultan (3/8/04)states:
The first sentence of your report titled "Burke cites "hedonistic culture" as a factor in church's problems" on Februrary 27, states:
Archbishop Raymond Burke blamed society's "hedonistic culture" as the most significant cause of sexual abuse within the church...
Nowhere in the rest of the article do you specifically and directly quote what the Archbishop said about this "hedonistic culture".

Can you please provide a direct quotation which substantiates your claim that Archbishop Burke stated that the "most significant cause" of sexual abuse within the Church is society's "hedonistic culture"?

Without some sort of substantiation of the claim you make in your article, I'm afraid the readers of the Post-Dispatch are left no choice other than to question the veracity of your other statements, not only in this article but in other articles which you may write.
Her response (3/12/04), which I never posted is:
That statement is a direct quote from the Archbishop. I asked him to elaborate and the only example he would offer was pornography, which is stated further below in the story.

One of the spokesman was told after the press conference that I'd like discuss this aspect of his comments further, but the Archbishop did not elaborate. The archdiocese officials were also present at this press conference. If they felt something was inaccurate, I'm sure they would have asked for a correction. In the editorial Burke wrote for the editorial pages following this story, he never denied saying what he was quoted as saying.

I requested that she provide a complete quote rather than a paraphrasing of her own words, and she was unable or unwilling to do so. As we can see by this exchange from last year and her most recent article, refuted and clarified by Jarek Czernikiewicz here, it seems that a reasonable and prudent individual would be negligent if he did not view her articles with suspicion and skepticism with regard to their veracity.

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