"The Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth it is this, and Protestantism has ever felt it so; to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant." (-John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine).

"Where the bishop is, there let the people gather; just as where ever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church". -St. Ignatius of Antioch (ca 110 AD)a martyr later thrown to the lions, wrote to a church in Asia Minor. Antioch was also where the term "Christian" was first used.

“But if I should be delayed, you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.” 1 Timothy 3:15

"This is the sole Church of Christ, which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic." -CCC 811

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

AP issues massive correction on Ireland child burial story

The Irish flag. Credit: Michael Care Andersen (CC BY-NC 2.0)
By Matt Hadro
Dublin, Ireland, Jun 24, 2014 / 12:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Associated Press has retracted key claims from its reports of an Irish Catholic home for unwed mothers supposedly burying hundreds of unbaptized infants in a septic tank.

A correction issued June 20 explained that “the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the [septic] tank contains, if any.”

In addition, the AP said that it had wrongly reported that many of the children were unbaptized according to Church teaching.

“The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching.”

The organization also acknowledged that it had incorrectly identified the year in which the orphanage in question had opened.

On June 3, the AP had broken a story claiming that a researcher had discovered the remains of hundreds of infants in a mass grave by a former home for single mothers near Tuam, Ireland that was run by Catholic nuns.

The story had provoked widespread anger, and the local archbishop said he was horrified by the reports and encouraged a government investigation into the matter.

However, critics of the report quickly began surfacing, claiming that the story was distorted and exaggerated.

AP’s own source for the story, researcher Catherine Corless, lamented to the Irish Times that her work “has taken on a life of its own,” and said she never used the word “dumped” to describe the bodies being buried.

In a June 22 opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, commentary writer T. Becket Adams slammed the AP, saying that it “did the public and the Catholic Church in Ireland a major disservice.”

“The AP undoubtedly duped thousands of readers – readers who likely won’t notice the little-publicized correction – into thinking that a handful of Irish nuns behaved like monsters,” Adams stated.

“The narrative of child neglect and cruelty will stick, despite the story’s numerous inaccuracies, and it’ll likely stay that way as activist groups in the Emerald Isle increase their efforts to pull the Church to the left.”

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