Keep reporters honest

Or try to, anyway, as this priest did in the Bay Area.

AS AN avid reader who looks forward to opening the daily newspaper, I would like to voice a complaint about the way some religious news is treated.

Case in point: When Pope Benedict XVI speaks out on topics such as Latin Mass or how the Catholic Church sees itself in relation to other denominations, so often we get not the statement of the Pope, but what others say he said — and it may not be the same.

Usually isn’t, when the Pope or the Church is the case in point.

On July 11, an Associated Press article written by Nicole Windfield went out of its way to find controversy in a document which came from the Pope.

She wrote, “Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christians communities are either defective or not true churches, and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.”

Not true, as Rev. Larry Goode goes on to point out, with exact citations from Church documents. It’s research reporters ought to be doing. But they don’t, and people are left with the consequences of bad reporting.

How will these words affect the ecumenical movement? I don’t know. But as a pastor in East Palo Alto, where there is a church on almost every block in town, I spend a lot of my time with the other pastors. They are my friends. I don’t think that the actual words of the Pope will change that. But I am afraid that what was in the paper could have been divisive, and that bothers me.

Good for you, Rev. One letter, one at a time, can make a big difference.

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