Not surprisingly, key Catholics who were quoted/named in the article by Sullivan have released public statements rebuking distortions which altered their true positions.
On November 7th, in "TIME Got it Wrong - Prof. George Opposed Grandiose Kennedy Funeral" at LSN:
Noted Princeton Professor Robert P. George says he is "not pleased" with TIME's Amy Sullivan's "selective" use of a quotation from him in her article "A Tale of Two Priests." As well, contrary to the impression given in Sullivan's article, George opposed the way the Kennedy funeral was done and strongly supports Archbishop Burke's emphasis that Canon 915 requires that pro-abortion politicians be denied communion...
[snip]
...George had given Sullivan additional relevant quotes for the story that in his opinion should have been included, especially regarding his views on Cardinal O'Malley's participation in the Kennedy funeral and other comments on Archbishops Burke's statement. He told LSN:
Here is what she did not include in the article, but readers should, I think, have been told: I said that I thought Archbishop Burke was right to deny pro-abortion politicians communion pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. I also said that I thought Cardinal O'Malley made an error of judgment in permitting a large public funeral for Teddy Kennedy and personally participating in it. The error was precisely in failing to see the scandal that would be given. I am disappointed that she omitted these points and mentioned only my surprise at learning (from her) that Archbishop Burke has taken the position that Kennedy should not have been given a Catholic funeral at all -- even a private one.
George says that at the time he was not aware that Burke had made the statement and that "it goes a step beyond where I would go on this issue." "At the same time," he adds "I did not suggest that the Archbishop’s position was unreasonable; and I acknowledged that it is certainly not my call to make. I am not a bishop or a canon lawyer. Raymond Burke is both."
Yesterday, Robert Royal at The Catholic Thing had this to say (my emphases in bold):
I'm told by reliable people that there are readers of The Catholic Thing still struggling with mainstream-media addictions. If so, some of you may have been surprised to find your humble editor-in-chief named in a recent Time magazine article by Amy Sullivan as allegedly having said that the Church’s funeral for Senator Edward Kennedy was a scandal “on a par” with the priestly pedophilia scandal. I never said any such thing, of course, as any fair reader can see here, and I find the equating of the two scandals both absurd and repugnant. I’ve demanded a correction from Time and will take legal action if one is not forthcoming.Continue reading Robert Royal's analysis of Amy Sullivan's article, and how some within the mainstream media can be anything but objective.
But Ms. Sullivan was never really interested in accurate reporting. She brought me into the story merely to show that even other traditional Catholics, such as Princeton’s Robert George, disagree with a position I don’t hold. Professor George and I are old friends and have communicated to clarify this issue. His remarks, he has publicly confirmed, were deliberately taken out of context, which – for once – I myself would have preferred, since the view ascribed to me was made up from whole cloth. The manufactured disagreement between the two of us, however, was not the main point. Rather, Ms. Sullivan, who has done similar stories in the past few months, used the two of us as parallel proof for “A Tale of Two Priests,” which is to say the alleged feud between Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley (compassionate because he attended the Kennedy funeral) and (that evil conservative now resident in Rome) Archbishop Raymond Burke, who takes a harder line about Catholics who present grave and longstanding public scandal.
Te Deum Laudamus! Home
The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!
