Newsbusters Looks at ABC Hatchet Job on Catholic Church

Note: I have a couple of extra things to add about the video that were not touched on in this article.

Apostolic Visitation of American Nuns a ‘Grand Jury Indictment’ to ABC

By Colleen Raezler

Newsflash: The media doesn't understand that the Catholic Church is not a democracy, and that the Vatican is not swayed by public opinion.
The proof of this disconnect came from ABC "World News Sunday" anchor Dan Harris and correspondent David Wright during the Aug. 16 "World News" broadcast. Wright's report on American nuns facing an apostolic visitation, labeled by Harris as "a controversial investigation," portrayed the Vatican as a big, bad bully of American nuns.

An apostolic visitation is "a formal but personal meeting with the superiors and members of a religious community which offers an opportunity to comment on various aspects of community and religious life," according to the Web site apostolicvisitation.org.
Two visitations are currently taking place. One concerns the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which "represents 95 percent of female religious orders in America," and the other is focused on separate Institutes of Women Religious.
Three of the four nuns featured in Wright's segments expressed concerned about the visitation. Sister Sandra Schneiders of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, compared the process to "a grand jury indictment." Sister Mary Waskowiak told ABC she has "lost sleep over this" visitation. Sister Mary Daniel Turner claimed the visitation is a reflection on American Catholics in general. "I think the question is, that are being raised about our way of life, are questions that are confronting every Roman Catholic in this country."
Wright noted, "Officially, Mother Mary Clare Millea is charged with looking into the quality of life of all 60,000 American nuns, but liberal nuns worry the Vatican is trying to reign them in." He left out how liberal the nuns he talked with actually were. Schneiders has championed the ordination of women. Waskowiak serves on the advisory council for the left-leaning Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. As for the LCWR, Wright correctly reported the Conference also called for the ordination of women. But he omitted the fact that it had also, according to the New York Times, "failed to ‘promote' the church's teachings on...homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation."
Mother Loraine Mary Clare, ostensibly brought in to provide "balance" to Wright's segment, insisted the visitation is "not an investigation," yet was not given the opportunity to explain the difference between the two.
And Harris insisted on using the term anyway, while working in a pro forma knock against priests. He said in his introduction, "It is not priests the Vatican is investigating, despite years of sex scandals."
Clearly, Harris and Wright's story proceeded from the assumption that Catholic orthodoxy is archaic and should be changed, and that Vatican efforts to ensure the propagation of that orthodoxy are sinister witch hunts.
The ABC report left out a crucial point: Membership in the Catholic Church is entirely voluntary. Besides, there is a long and venerable tradition of dissent from Catholic teachings. There is even a word for dissenters: "Protestants."
—Colleen Raezler is a research assistant at the Culture and Media Institute

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Am I surprized that ABC would slant their report? NO! The LCWR support the same agenda that the Main Stream Media & the "culture of death" does. So ABC is going to do all it can to undermine orthodox Catholicism & make it seem that the bad guys (LCWR) are the good guys.

The only ones that see this as controversial are those who know that they are in rebellion against the teachings (magesterium) & God's annointed authority (Papa Benedetto & the Vatican). If they didn't have anything to hide, if they were truly Catholic, then they wouldn't have any reason to not want this visitation/investigation.

2ndly, I highly doubt the LCWR represents 95% of the Catholic nuns, not even 95% of the nuns in the orders belonging to it. Given the orders I know of, & the numbers in them, that are not in the LCWR, I can be fairly certain that 95% is a false number. Another post I came across that was calling this visitation the modern equivalent of an inquisition had an interesting line. It quoted an article from the Washington Times that said: "The CMSWR represents 119 leaders of nuns’ groups, or 20 percent of the nation’s 400 Catholic sisters’ communities, “but we do represent 80 percent of the vocations coming in,” she added." (Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious) & there are many orders that belong to neither. So, you see why I say it doesn't add up.

Given that Frances Kissling, another well known dissident is using that number in a recent piece for Salon tends to make me all the more suspicious about its accuracy. (BTW, in the article Kissling actually takes the LCWR to task because "the LCWR leadership refused to allow survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic sisters to address the past few annual meetings". It makes sense to me that the LCWR wouldn't allow them to speak. Their presence would make them look bad rather than show the good gal image they want to project. IMHO, the LCWR wants the abuse issue to remain a male priesthood issue only so they can forward their agenda for women's ordination. So much for their so-called compassion. & you see part of my basis for this in the bit pointed out above about what Harris said on not investigating the priests.)

Finally, I do have to applaud ABC for at least getting 1 thing partially right. You will noticed they refered to them as liberal nuns. They got the liberal part right, even if the newscaster left out how liberal the nuns really are. But, even though they claim to be, their actions have long ago proven that they are not really nuns, JUST LIBERAL DISSENTERS.