Former writer demands better reporting from NCRegister on Maciel

Fr. Raymond J. de Souza, a longtime writer for the National Catholic Register, has published an extensive outlining of how the same newspaper's reporting on the Maciel scandal has been woefully inadequate and goes on to demand that they face up to their collective journalistic obligations:

"Even at this late date, [the Register] has never reported the full extent of the accusations against Fr. Maciel. Worse still, it published what was false. Even if we once thought it to be true, we now know it to be false. Ordinary Christian morality demands of that the newspaper correct what it published. Fundamental journalistic ethics demands the same. Simple justice demands it.

... A good Catholic newspaper must not shy away from the truth. But it would frankly make the newspaper look absurd if the whole Catholic world is discussing Fr. Maciel and the Register’s pages largely ignore the whole matter.

Moreover, the odd way in which the news was made public, with rumors and leaks and vague statements from superiors, indicates that the Legion of Christ itself either cannot be or will not be a reliable source of information on this matter. The National Catholic Register might be able to do in part what the Legion of Christ seems unable to do.

[Read the entire piece in First Things.]

{update: for online newsies, Catholic.net is also run by the Legionaries of Christ/Regnum Christi, and similarly has nothing to say about the Maciel scandal, from what I can tell.}