Since its founding in 1964, Kansas City's lay-edited National Catholic Reporter has made a specialty of running stones that some members of the U.S. hierarchy would have preferred not to see in print. The weekly has, for example, revealed the secret texts of the Papal Commission on Birth Control and exhaustively reported repressions of outspoken priests. Last week Bishop Charles H. Helmsing of Kansas City-St. Joseph, issued a formal condemnation of the NCR. In a solemn four-page public statement, Helmsing denounced the paper for "its disregard and denial of the most sacred values of our Catholic faith."
Ironically, Helmsing had helped found NCR, which started as an offshoot of Kansas City's diocesan newspaper. But as the NCR became more adventurous in its reporting and criticism, relations between the bishop and the papers staff became strained. In his indictment, Helmsing formally charged that the paper "has made itself a platform for the airing of heretical views." Specifically, the bishop attacked an essay by Theologian Rosemary Ruether (TIME, April 19) denying the perpetual virginity of Mary, and a column by Philosopher-Journalist Daniel Callahan written after the Pope's encyclical on birth control, which recommended that Catholics detach them selves from an emotional dependence on the papacy.
Helmsing asked that the editors of the paper "change their misguided and evil policy" or at the very least "drop the term Catholic from the masthead." Shaken by the denunciation, the NCR initially refused to comment. But the writers criticized by Helmsing were less reticent. Said Callahan: "Whether my statements are heretical is a judgment for the future rather than for the emotional response of one bishop."