BBC News fails again

Somebody senior in the BBC's radio news management is determined to seize any opportunity to knock Archbishop Rowan Williams. After the fiasco of the 'sharia law for Britain' episode in 2008 you'd have thought they'd have learned. But somebody thought it newsworthy to give last night's leading main news headline to a leaked interview in which Rowan Williams referred to the worrying possibility of the Roman Catholic Church losing "all credibility" in Ireland. Senior Catholic prelates were reported as 'dismayed' by the 'outburst'.

If so, then presumably they were even more dismayed by their own pope's 'outburst' in a pastoral letter they were instructed to have read in their parishes the week before in which Benedict XVI prayed that "the (Roman Catholic) Church in Ireland will overcome the present crisis and become once more a convincing witness to the truth and goodness of Almighty God", described a "present crisis" in which "child sexual abuse . . has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings", and told his "brother bishops" that "some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. . . grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility." Rowan Williams referred to the humiliation being suffered by innocent priests on the streets, echoing the pope's own words to the "priests and Religious of Ireland" : "many of you feel personally discouraged, even abandoned . . tainted by association." In some Dublin parishes, Mass attendance has plummeted by two thirds.

But underlying this non-news item lies either a piece of (possibly malicious) mischief or a complete misunderstanding of the Church. What the news chief is looking to stir up is a division between the Roman Catholic and Anglican Church - it's the only way I can make sense of such a non-story as a headline.

But nowhere in the Church have I heard any sense of schadenfreude expressed about the Catholic Church's misfortune. All Christians - Catholics and non-Catholics alike - are tainted by the abuses. Willams's tone is not an accusatory one but a sympathetic one. None of us wants to see the Christian faith losing credibility. And every religious organisation knows that 'there for but for the grace of God go we' - as, no doubt, does every Education Authority, Social Services Department etc.