Distinctly Defamatory

In a self-destructive spasm of what we used to call Freudian projection, Michael Sean Winters claims that Archbishop Charles Chaput ought to apologize for and withdraw the remarks he made a week ago, in answering a question after his Erasmus Lecture, about the recent synod in Rome. This would be hilarious if it were not so pathetic. (Okay, I confess: it is also hilarious.) As I demonstrated last Friday, Winters—by partial quotation, distortion, and almost hydrophobic vituperation—defamed the archbishop of Philadelphia. He might plausibly have claimed that he relied on the bad reporting of another, in partial (but only partial) extenuation of his unwarranted screed. But no. His response is neither to retract nor correct anything he said, nor to defend its accuracy and fairness, but simply to double down and insist that it was the archbishop who acted badly, and his defenders such as me who “have to live with” what he said. But I am happy to live with what Chaput said, and the archbishop has nothing to apologize for, as anyone can see who reads his words in full. Winters, on the other hand, may well ask who would like to join him in his increasingly lonely foxhole.