COLM O'GORMAN - "POOR JOURNALISM SAVES A GUILTY CHURCH"

COLM O'GORMAN - "POOR JOURNALISM SAVES A GUILTY CHURCH"
by Thomas Sutcliffe, Evening Herald and UK Independent 3 October 2006

[THIS IS INTERESTING BECAUSE THE WRITER IS HOSTILE TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BUT STILL BELIEVES THAT COLM O'GORMAN'S EVIDENCE IS NO GOOD]

If you measure the success of an investigative report by the fuss it causes then Sunday night?s Panorama was surely a triumph. Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the Chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults, immediately denounced the BBC for sensationalism, misleading editing and prejudice.

Colm O?Gorman?s report, which accused the Pope of presiding over a deliberate policy of cover-up, had obviously done nothing to dispel his belief, expressed three years ago, that the BBC as an institution is hostile to the Catholic Church.

As it happened I watched Panorama because, - in a grumbling, muttering, slightly knee-jerk way - I am hostile to the Catholic Church. So it was a surprising experience to find indignation at the impunity of some abusive priests mingling with a whispering disquiet at the editorial approach.

The first doubt occurred when O?Gorman broke down in tears, after visiting the site of an incident of abuse in Brazil. It certainly confirmed the deep trauma of O?Gorman?s past abuse at the hands of an Irish priest. But shouldn?t his qualification as empathetic victim have disqualified him from the reporting role in this case?

?Presenters, reporters and correspondents are the public face of the BBC,? notes the corporation?s editorial guidelines, ?they can have a significant impact on the perceptions of our impartiality.? That was the problem here. Perceptions.

It wasn?t that O?Gorman?s investigations were necessarily untrue, but it was all too easy to dismiss him as an impartial weigher of contradictory evidence.

The second doubt occurred when I actually read Crimen Solicitationis, the 1962 Vatican document which was summarised by one of Panorama?s interviewees as ?an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy.? It took me close to an hour to get through it and at a rough guess, would take another 20 years to fully comprehend.

An abstruse, legalistic document of headache-inducing opacity it lays out the procedures to be followed in the case of a specific ecclesiastical crime - solicitation or using the confessional to tempt a penitent towards impure speech or deeds.

It is much preoccupied with secrecy. But much of this furtiveness seems to derive from the fact that the evidence and accusation occur under seal of the confessional, which must somehow be preserved through the subsequent investigation. Happy as I would have been to find hard evidence of a sinister cover up by the Vatican, it simply won?t bear the crude description, which, for the sake of journalistic brevity, Panorama gave it.

Crimen Solicitationis is hardly a document any institution should want to stand by in 2006 - let alone one that sets itself up as moral exemplar.

It leaves the impression that the all-important thing is to avoid damage to the church, rather than damage to vulnerable parishioners.

It would be nice to see Archbishop Nichols explicate that line as part of his rebuttal. But I fear it will be too easy for the Church hierarchy to disappear into the small print of canon law and that part of this programme made it easier still.