The whole story
Someone has to get it.
Happy Saturday friends,
We closed the cycle on a series of developing stories this week, at least for the moment, and we just wanted to talk about that with you, for a second.
The Diocese of Charlotte has been in the news a lot over the past few weeks after Bishop Michael Martin issued new norms on the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy in the diocese.
That story led to the leaking of a draft text from the bishop proposing to restrict the Ordinary Form of the liturgy in a whole host of ways beyond or even out of step with what is laid out in the General Instruction for the Roman Missal.
The leaked text would have restricted various practices of personal devotion — including female headwear and private prayers said by priests before the Mass had even begun.
As you can imagine, all of that triggered a considerable number of complaints, both to the local chancery and to the U.S. bishops’ conference here in Washington, alongside those already complaining about the TLM decision — which the bishop announced this week has now been walked back.
But here’s the thing we wanted to talk about: many of the complaints, from what we are told, were made on the assumption that the document had already been issued — or was about to be issued — and that priests were on the cusp of being banned from saying vesting prayers in private, among other things.
It fell to The Pillar to get the full story — that the draft policy had actually been put in the deep freeze weeks earlier after significant internal feedback.
And that’s why people depend on us. We get the full story.
In fact, we’ve learned that when Catholics called the USCCB and other places to raise questions, they were told — by Church officials — just to read The Pillar’s coverage, since we had the accurate account of what was happening, as it happened.
Stories like Charlotte have a tendency to “go viral” and accumulate a lot of fast reactions and heated speculation — not to say assumptions and misinformation — as they mutate.
Serving as a factual corrective to that phenomenon is a tier one mission priority for us.
We were grateful that The Pillar was able to serve as such with this story, even if we wish we could get a higher return rate from chanceries on our requests for comment.
That’s part of the game, and we accept it.
Being truly independent, and having no tribal axe to grind, means we’re on nobody’s official call-back list, because we can’t be counted on to skip the hard questions, and run uncritical clean-up coverage when things get messy for someone.
But the flip side of that coin is that everyone knows our coverage can be trusted to bring you the whole story, as soon as we really have it — not just as fast as we can write something on whatever’s out there.
That is the kind of journalism we aim to do here, it’s the service to the truth we think we are called to provide, and we think it’s what makes The Pillar different.
But it only works if readers become subscribers.
The Pillar doesn’t work by asking for donations. It doesn’t work with a clickbait revenue model. It doesn’t work with deep-pocketed funders and their agendas.
It works when Catholics who care about the Church pay for the news coverage they depend on.
In return, in addition to helping us keep our news and analysis free to read, you also get our daily subscriber-only news round up Starting Seven, every morning, as well as bonus podcast episodes, and our frankly outstanding commentary section, with some of the best writing and most interesting writers you are going to find anywhere in Catholic media.
We hope that all of this is part of our vocation. We ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in our work.
And right now, to celebrate that, we are having a special Pentecost sale — happy feast!
If you subscribe right here, right now, through this button, you’ll get 20% off your first year’s subscription.
When you consider we only charge $8 a month to begin with, we hope you’ll agree this is more than just good value for your money.
Today’s the day. You need The Pillar. The Church needs The Pillar. And we need you.
Thank you, we mean it.
See you Monday,
JD Flynn and Ed. Condon
Editors
The Pillar