Tom Hoopes Resigns

Tom Hoopes resigned yesterday from the National Catholic Register.

email from Tom Hoopes

Dear Friends,

This is a terrible thing to do in an impersonal way, but e-mail is efficient for getting this kind of information out. Don’t be offended. I’m sending this because I wanted you to hear sooner rather than later.

I have been offered, and have accepted, a position at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. My last day in my office will be Aug. 7.

This is difficult because leaving the National Catholic Register and Faith & Family magazine feels like leaving family. I have written for the Register for 20 years. My first paycheck as a published writer came from the Register. I’ve been its executive editor for 10 years. Six years ago, April and I became editorial directors of Faith & Family magazine. These have been the most professionally satisfying of my career. I love the work these publications do and hope to be more visible in them — with actual bylines.

I’m grateful for my years here also because they made my new position possible. I will be Director of Strategic Communications, helping the school meet advancement goals. I’ll also have the title Writer in Residence and hope to take the opportunity to continue journalistic writing. I will teach two classes and work on getting necessary credentials to do more.

This is a career change April and l and I have been talking about for years, and it’s great to see it reaching fruition. We are both excited about the great things happening at Benedictine, academically and on campus. It is led by a great team of innovative, committed people, and
there is a solid infrastructure in all departments that sets it apart. It is clearly becoming one of the great Catholic colleges in America.

I thank Circle Media and Father Owen, our publisher, for the enormous opportunities I’ve been given. April and I will miss everyone here very much.

Thanks,
Tom Hoopes

While a few months ago on Amy Welborn's blog, he said:

on February 3, 2009 at 1:11 pm

Tom Hoopes

All I want to say is, I’m sorry.

I want to say it here, because I defended Fr. Maciel here, and I need to be on the record regarding that defense:

I’m sorry, to the victims, who were victims twice, the second time by calumny. I’m sorry, to the Church, which has been damaged. I’m sorry, to those I’ve misled.

I did it unwittingly, but this isn’t a time for excuses.

The Church gave me great, great good in Regnum Christi.

The Church did bring justice, and did penalize this man.

Thank God for the Church.

I seek repentance and forgiveness, and I leave it at that.

Photo: Tom Hoopes and Owen Kearns. From www.regnumchristi.org

Tidbits from Oak Leaves II

And again from Oak Leaves:

Legionary Newspaper Cries Foul

The National Catholic Register, a newspaper owned by the Legionaries of Christ, is complaining. It sees a difference in the number of papers who reported sexual abuse by priests vs. those who published a recent article about sexual abuse by teachers. It thinks someone is picking on the church.

I’m reading another book about sexual abuse by priests. Jason Berry, Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). This is the first book on the subject, originally published in 1992, expanded from Berry’s research in the mid-1980s into Fr. Gilbert Gauthe, a serial molester in the Diocese of Lafayette, LA. This came out nearly 20 years before Cardinal Law’s problems; it was published ten years before then. Berry weaves the story of his own odyssey into the book–he tried to get various publications interested, but in the mid-1980s, no major daily newspaper would touch the subject. His series first ran in The Times of Acadiana and The National Catholic Reporter. When he wrote the revised forward in 2000, he spoke of a church that was first stunned by lawsuits, and which then learned to fight back hard, suing victims for libel. He wrote of a public that grew tired with the reports, and came to believe that victims were going overboard, and making too big a deal, and who maybe weren’t all that reliable.

Berry wrote another book, which I just ordered: Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (Free Press, 2004). It’s about the church politics in the scandal, which reached all the way to the top, involving John Paul II, who thought it a crisis made by the media, who refused ever to meet with any victims or to apologize to them as he had apologized regarding ancient wrongs, and who defended and promoted a man with a long history of accusations of sexual abuse: Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Renner’s articles in the Hartford Courant were the starting point for this book–a series that wasn’t picked up by other newspapers around the country, either.

It was a long time coming, but Maciel was finally removed from ministry by Pope Benedict XVI (see ReGAIN Network for details about this case). The Legionaries of Christ continue to deny he did any wrong. The National Catholic Register has not reported the cries of his legion of accusers. It continues to defend him. I don’t think that it has reported on Benedict’s quiet ruling releasing members of the order from their secret vows, either.

Alms and Tips for the Poor NCRegister

A family member of a consecrated got this email and sent it to me:


Before closing I wanted to ask a favor. Our half year subscription of the National Catholic Register will run out now on June 15th. If you would still like to offer us the year subscription I would love to receive it. You can start a new subscription under my name and at our address...














Now, is the Register, which is wholly owned by the Legion of Christ, going through such financial hard times? Well no worries for the Legion. Families will now be financing both of them.
Image source