Context-Free Reportering Courtesy of the Register

It's always a guilty pleasure to see a new Orange County Register reporter--usually fresh from college--write a story in which the guy (or cute gal) has no clue about what's in his face. The latest example occurred today, in a piece by one Sean Emery, about the continued restoration of Mission San Juan Capistrano. Emery noted that Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine Faith in Rome, offered a blessing to the Mission's retablo in a Saturday Mass--but that's when the reporting stops.

Levada's position--most recently occupied by Pope Benedict XVI in his Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger days--puts him in charge of doctrine but also oversees the church handling of clerical sex-abuse cases. And as survivors of sexual abuse full well know, Levada is little more than a pedophile protector. In 1994, as archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Portland, Levada reinstated a priest he knew had molested children. While serving as Cardinal in San Francisco, Levada also promoted a priest despite knowing he was accused of child molestation. We'll stop at two examples (if you want more, click here for the Levada archives maintained by our sister paper, the SF Weekly). None of this, of course, made it into Emery's piece, but we don't blame him: even when the Reg had a full-time religion reporter, the truth had a funny way of not fully appearing in the rag.