How 26 words were twisted

It is often astonishing and frequently dismaying to witness how badly Church documents can be distorted by some reporters. An example occurred last week when Pope John Paul II issued a new apostolic letter, Misericordia Dei (Mercy of God).

As we report, the gravamen of the letter is the Popes insistence that bishops adhere strictly to rules about how and when general absolution is permitted. He said that his message was necessary because in some places, there has been a tendency to abandon individual confession and wrongly to resort to general or communal absolution.

But that’s not what the secular press focused on. As an example, take a look at the May 3 issue of The Albany Times Union, which carried an Associated Press article under the headline Vatican: Habitual sinners cannot be receiving absolution. The article begins: Amid the intensifying American clerical abuse scandal, the Vatican...stressed the need for Catholics to confess their sins but said some habitual sinners could never be forgiven.

There are several things fundamentally wrong with that sentence:

1. It is imbalanced. The papal letter contains about 3,000 words; less than one percent of them only 26 words triggered the AP story. Here are those words: It is clear that penitents living in a habitual state of serious sin and who do not intend to change their situation cannot validly receive absolution. That is hardly ground-breaking news.

2. It makes a spurious linkage. The AP sentence connects the clergy abuse scandals with the document, but the letter was in the works long before the scandal emerged a few months ago. The reporter is imagining connections where none exist.

3. It is sloppily worded. The AP sentence says that habitual sinners could never be forgiven. In fact, the papal letter does not say that; it does not use the word never. It reiterates ancient Church teaching (and general common sense): You can’t be forgiven for a sin until you recognize that it is a sin and intend to stop committing it.

The AP story proceeds to two more sentences that are so garbled as to tempt one to wonder if they were deliberately scrambled so they could convey misinformation: The Vatican didn’t identify who these sinners were, but theological experts said Pope John Paul II was referring to homosexuals and divorced Catholics who remarry. The Pope said last week [that] priests implicated in the sex abuse scandal can be forgiven.

Those sentences, thus juxtaposed, imply that the Pope, while offering forgiveness to abusive priests, would not give the same mercy to practicing homosexuals and divorced Catholics who remarried. But the Popes point is that all people who stop habitual sin and intend not to commit it again can be absolved; that applies to a priest who ceases his abuse and seeks help (what should be done with him legally is a separate question), to gay people who are not sexually active, and to Catholics who regularize their marriages.

Habitual sinners-- a man who helps to kill Christians, for example, or someone with a mistress and an illegitimate son --have become some of the holiest people in history. Just ask St. Paul and St. Augustine. That same transformation is open to all --even reporters who have made sinning a habit, recognize their fault and want to change their lives for the better.