Number of articles Religion News Service has posted featuring the McCarrick story: at least 20, by my count.
Number of RNS articles featuring the McCloskey story: ZERO.
Why, one wonders? Why the discrepancy? Or, more precisely, why the total silence re: the McCloskey story? /1— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 16, 2019
Yet Terry Mattingly maintains that it's the McCloskey story that has gotten much ink and the McCarrick story that has been ignored, due to the secrecy of Catholic officials about McCarrick (as opposed as their willingness to talk about McCloskey). /2https://t.co/FhQKbFOv91— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 16, 2019
See T. Mattingly, Some sins deserve more secrecy? Compare and contrast cases of McCloskey and McCarrick.
Once again:
1. Why has RNS absolutely ignored the McCloskey story? RNS decidedly has not done so in the case of the McCarrick story.
2. And surely Terry Mattingly knows this? So why is he trying to convince us that it's the McCloskey story that has gotten all the ink?
3. My impression is that the McCloskey story is already fading — is not being talked about much at all in the mainstream media, by the Catholic media, on social media. Why is that, one has to wonder, when the McCarrick story remains front and center in people's minds (as it should be, but along with the McCloskey story)?
These are questions well worth asking. They point to further questions about the considerable influence of Opus Dei and its powerful protectors, and also to questions about homophobic bias in many sectors of church and society.
To repeat: McCarrick deserves no pass at all because he preyed on young men and boys. Not in the least. This is not in the least what I am saying. But the disproportionate attention on his predation, while McCloskey's seems to get a shoulder-shrug in many quarters, says a great deal about homophobic bias in our media, in churches, among lay adherents of churches.
