Angelus News | June 3, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 11

equest.
More broadly, the situation raises the
larger question of the role and mission
of Catholic journalism, both in St.
Brandsma’s era and our own.
Note that St. Brandsma’s arrest came
in the context of relaying an order
from the hierarchy to Catholic media
about their editorial policies. In 1942,
when most Catholic media outlets
were directly owned by the bishops,
and when the command-and-control
model of episcopal leadership was at
its zenith in the pre-conciliar Church,
that would have seemed an utterly
normal and appropriate thing for
bishops to do — and, of course, in
context, it was also quite a courageous
stance.
Decades later, the idea of bishops
issuing orders to Catholic media
about their editorial choices would
be considerably more controversial.
Since St. Brandsma’s day, most Catholic
media outlets have won at least a
measure of independence, and most
bishops recognize the value of a free
press. In many cases, Catholic media
outlets are no longer owned directly
by officialdom anyway, and thus are
not subject to ecclesiastical control.
Today, it’s easier to see more clearly
that the role of Catholic media is to
be close enough to the story to get it
right yet far enough away to remain
objective, with both ends of that equation
being equally important.
Reporters need to be close to the
story in order to know what makes
an institution tick, to be able to put
breaking news in context, and to
supply the proper perspective. The
problem with much coverage of
religious affairs in the secular press is
precisely that it’s too far away. Stories
are deprived of context and historical
memory, so that it seems everything
is always happening for the first time,
and too much bogus or sloppy reporting
makes it into circulation. (Anyone
recall the “dogs in heaven” fiasco
from 2014, for example?)
Yet reporters also have to retain a
certain critical distance from the
story, because otherwise the risk is
that stories will be distorted in order to
serve a particular point of view. That’s
the problem with much contemporary
Catholic media, where many outlets
have a clear ideological alignment in
internal Catholic disputes, and their
presentation of the news sometimes
seems shaped to support those commitments.
Maintaining critical distance
requires self-restraint, because most
Catholic journalists, by the nature
of things, are well-informed about
Church affairs, and it’s natural to
develop personal views about rights
and wrongs in the context of exploring
the issues we cover. Yet in the end,
the most valuable service any media
outlet can provide isn’t opinion but
analysis — not telling people what to
think, but rather providing them with
the tools to think intelligently whatever
conclusion they may reach.
To invoke a sports analogy, the
Catholic media shouldn’t be a player
in the game, pushing the Church to
do one thing or another. We’re more
akin to an umpire, calling balls and
strikes but not having an investment
in who wins or loses. Just as a baseball
game would be tainted if an umpire
slants his or her calls in favor of one
team or another, journalists do their
audiences a disservice when they slant
their reports in favor of one position or
another.
That’s a terribly countercultural notion
today, given that we live in an era
of extreme political polarization and
media fragmentation, meaning that
the market pressure on news organizations
generally is to serve the biases
of some share of the audience. Yet just
as St. Brandsma in his day resisted the
lure of Nazi ideology, today Catholic
journalists face the challenge of
resisting a different sort of ideological
regime, one which not-so-subtly seeks
to turn reporting into an extension of
politics by other means.
In that sense, perhaps St. Brandsma
actually would be an apt patron
saint for contemporary journalists —
even if, in all honesty, we probably
shouldn’t be the ones campaigning
for it.
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.
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