Winters then speculated whether CNA’s sources in the USCCB decided to “leak” their account to the press to push the conference towards what he called “their more conservative position.” He charged that these bishops who spoke to the news agency “chose to break the confidentiality of the meeting and to make Cardinal George’s job more difficult.”
He implied that the Catholic Key, the paper of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, was associated with one of CNA’s sources. Its post defending the substance of the CNA report was “one telling indication,” he continued.
In response, Catholic Key editor Jack Smith pointed out that Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph Robert W. Finn did not attend the June bishops’ meeting “and so any suggestion that he leaked the comments is false,” Smith wrote at the newspaper’s blog.
Besides the Catholic Key, defenders of CNA’s report include Kathryn Jean Lopez of the conservative web site National Review Online (NRO) and Deal W. Hudson of InsideCatholic.com.
In a blog post at the NRO site, Lopez said that John Allen’s interview with Cardinal George shows the cardinal’s “similarly adamant, scolding criticism of the Catholic groups that played a role in making sure Obamacare passed.”
She suggested that Osman “heard what she wanted to hear from Cardinal George,” noting the difficulty of arguing against the CNA report with no evidence to the contrary and with the cardinal making similar statements in the Allen interview.
“Clearly he is unabashedly critical of the Catholic Health Association, which should come as no surprise,” Lopez wrote at National Review Online. “The CHA did undercut the moral authority of the bishops (not to mention the natural and moral law) in the health-care debate, even as the bishops were unambiguously working to defend innocent human life, a clear obligation of the Catholic when it comes to public policy.”
“The Catholic Health Association did a lot of damage,” continued the commentator, saying that the bishops’ opposition to “left-wing policymakers” is going to be hard to deny especially as it becomes “increasingly obvious” that the executive order on abortion funding secured by Rep. Bart Stupak was “a lie.”
Deal Hudson responded to Osman’s comments and CNA’s defense of its report in a blog post at InsideCatholic.com.
“Given both the seriousness of the charges brought by Ms. Osman, as well as the insulting tone, I find it surprising that Ms. Osman claims to have a recording proving her account, but says she is not willing to make it public,” Hudson remarked, also calling for the recording’s release.
“I find it impossible to believe that CNA would put such a serious charge against Sr. Keehan in the mouth of Cardinal George, president of the USCCB, knowing the seriousness of the consequences. CNA has an established reputation for accuracy which Ms. Osman's attempt to defame will not harm.”
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