ROBERT BLAIR KAISER
went through ten years in the Society of Jesus, then, three years shy
of
ordination, left the Jesuits to pursue a career in journalism. He covered the Second Vatican Ecumenical for
Time in the 1960s, worked on the
religion beat for The New York Times in
the 1970s, and served as journalism chairman at the University of
Nevada Reno
in the 1980s. Three of his eleven published books deal with the
Catholic
Church: Pope, Council and World, The
Politics of Sex and Religion, Clerical Error and A
Church in Search of Itself.
Kaiser
won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1963 for the "best magazine
reporting
of foreign affairs" -- for his reporting on the Vatican Council. Editors at three newspapers have nominated
him for Pulitzer Prizes, and the book publisher E.P. Dutton nominated
him for
another Pulitzer for “R.F.K. Must Die!”
-- his exhaustive 634-page book on the assassination of Robert F.
Kennedy, a
work that will be republished next year.
Since the fall of 1999, Kaiser has
been a contributing editor in Rome for Newsweek
magazine. During the conclave of April 2005, he also reported for Newsday and served as a television
commentator for Fox, CBS, and NBC, and for a variety of television
networks
from around the world.
In his reporting on the government of the Church, Kaiser tries to emulate the kind of reporting he has done on secular government, serving the people at large with the information they need to be good citizens – of the Church as well as of their city, state and nation. He says, “Our U.S. society gives awards to the men and women who do that best. Funny thing: totalitarian and corrupt societies don't give journalism awards. They give members of their captive press under-the-table payments to be lazy, or just keep quiet. And they become sicker societies. In the U.S. at least, the Catholic press is a captive press. No one rewards reporters engaged in independent inquiries about the Church’s non-accountability. And so the Church, too, has become a sick society.”
Kaiser says
things may be changing. “In light of the U.S.
Church’s sex scandal for the past four years, most Catholics, including
most
American bishops, would say those delegated to serve the people must be
accountable to the people." But it’s not too clear that everyone
thinks reporters
and editors have a duty to help make them accountable. Kaiser obviously
thinks
they do, and a duty to call the people to account, too.