They also announced that their Rome bureau would remain in operation for now.

As one of the few Catholic news outlets in the English-speaking world that covers the Catholic Church accurately, faithfully, and according to high professional standards, this news stunned the Catholic media community.

The decision was made as part of a "reorganisation" of the Communications Department at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which will result in 21 employees (mostly CNS staff) losing their jobs.

In addition to CNS's domestic operations shutting down, the USCCB Publishing Office—which produces many titles including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, and the Roman Missal—will also cease operations.

According to the official statement from the USCCB, these changes "will allow the remaining functions—including the Catholic News Service Rome Bureau and the Office of Public Affairs—a more sustainable foundation upon which to do their work."

For over 100 years, CNS has served the Church as a wire service, producing articles and photos (and more recently, videos and other digital content) about the Catholic Church at the local, national, and international level.

Just as local newspapers rely on subscriptions to wire services like the Associated Press and Reuters to cover stories that they don't have the money and resources to cover, Catholic News Service provides content for diocesan newspapers and other Catholic publications like America and Our Sunday Visitor.

In recent decades, as Catholic newspapers—as with the journalism industry as a whole—have struggled to remain financially afloat, CNS has provided them with valuable content that has helped them to survive.

It is important to note that although CNS is owned and funded by the USCCB, they do have a great deal of journalistic independence built into their contract and they are unionised.

CNS journalism is recognised in the industry as being competent and executed with high professional standards.

More important, however—and I know this personally—is the professional integrity of the CNS staff.

This is a veteran team of journalists that's losing their jobs.

Most of them have worked in the field for decades, and have earned the respect of their peers in the industry.

If you speak with journalists from other outlets, they recognise and respect the professionalism and high standards of the CNS organization.

As a Catholic media outlet, Where Peter Is does not primarily do journalism—although we have been known to commit journalism from time to time.

But as a site that regularly provides analysis and commentary on news and events in the Church, we rely on good, professional, and ethical journalism every day. And the quality and standards of the work done by CNS are top-notch.

You might be asking why they are being shut down if they do such good work.

Clearly a major factor is money.

Journalism, especially Catholic journalism, is no longer a profitable industry.

In fact, it's difficult to turn a profit in most areas of Catholic media.

Certainly, I don't ever expect the message of Where Peter Is to be profitable.

It seems the best way to make money in Catholic media in the current environment is to be sensational, ideologically-driven, and self-promoting.

The rest of us, including CNS, have to rely on donations or funding from people or organizations that believe in the mission of our outlets.

And for whatever reason, the US bishops decided that the service CNS provides in informing the public about the Church isn't worth the cost.

But in terms of effectiveness and public visibility, CNS is arguably one of the best things the USCCB has going for it.

I fear that this decision was made in part because some US bishops were not thrilled with the idea of funding a media organization that they don't have complete ideological control over.

Yet the decision to abandon CNS after a century of work seems to oppose the message of the Vatican II decree Inter Mirifica, which says that the Church "considers it one of its duties to announce the Good News of salvation also with the help of the media of social communication and to instruct men in their proper use."

Additionally, ending this service to diocesan newspapers and other Catholic publications seems to be a signal that the end is near when it comes to the US Church following the decree's call that "a good press should be fostered.

To instil a fully Christian spirit into readers, a truly Catholic press should be set up and encouraged…It should disseminate and properly explain news concerning the life of the Church.

Moreover, the faithful ought to be advised of the necessity both to spread and read the Catholic press to formulate Christian judgments for themselves on all events."

If good Catholic journalism is going to exist, someone has to believe it's worth paying for.

And if no one does, then the entire field will be left to people and organizations with ideological agendas and low standards.

I imagine that many US dioceses, assuming their newspapers don't also shut down, will turn to the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency.

In other words, the shepherds of the US Church will have turned their flocks over to an organization whose constant attacks were described as "the work of the devil" by the pope last year.

On the treatment of Church employees
This story hits particularly close to home for me because I was laid off from my job in the USCCB Communications department during the last reorganization in May 2017.

In late 2016 and early 2017—the months leading up to the layoff—we were told by upper management that our department was going to be reorganised, and how the new structure was going to benefit the staff.

Layoffs were never mentioned.

I was so foolish that I was looking forward to our department's fresh start. Which meant that I was completely blindsided by the news that my position had been eliminated.

At the time, I was already struggling emotionally—my dad had recently died, we had an infant at home—so the trauma of losing my job totally shattered me.

Adding insult to injury was the callous statement of the Conference's chief communications officer about the layoff, "It was based on positions and not people."

In other words: even though we've completely upended your life, your well-being is meaningless to us.

Recovering from the shock and devastation took me a very long time.

Seven years earlier, I turned down a much higher-paying job offer with another company to accept a position at the USCCB because I felt a strong call to work for the Church in the areas of media and communications.

Unfortunately, my experience there was doing mostly administrative tasks and working on dry and repetitive projects.

There was little collaboration and very little opportunity to propose ideas or solve problems.

Morale was low.

Staff members would watch as managers made poor decisions with money, spending huge sums on overpriced failures and cutting corners on things that produced clear results. (One wonders how many jobs could have been saved by repurposing the $28 million the bishops plan to spend to rent out a stadium for a few days in Indianapolis in 2024.)

In the end, it was only after the layoff that I was able to truly respond to that call and help the Church communicate the message of Jesus Christ with a group of my fellow Catholics through this website.

It's hard to ignore the irony that it was only after the institutional Church cast me aside that I was finally able to use my communication skills to serve the Church, share the faith, and to help amplify the message of Pope Francis to others.

But it was a difficult road, and all of it came at a high cost.

In May 2017, CNS was untouched by the layoff.

At the time, USCCB leadership explained that CNS was not affected by the reorganization "because of the tremendous content creation capacity that is there…It's a well-respected, well-known brand."

What a difference five years makes.

This week, many of my former colleagues, people I admire—many of whom I consider dear friends—were told they will be losing their jobs. And remarkably much of the leadership team whose vision dictated the last "reorganization" still remains in place.

Please keep these fine journalists and communications professionals in your prayers as they discern what's next in their lives.

And please pray for our Church leaders, that they may realize the importance of a healthy Catholic media environment.

• This is a repeat of a piece earlier in the year and is a way of highlighting the service that CNS brought to the Church. We are republishing this as this is our last edition for 2022, we know, sadly, we will come back to a global Catholic News media without the incredible support of CNS. So this is a way of saying thanks and acknowledging CNS, its writers, backers, visionaries, editors, and those who have made it tick.
• Mike Lewis is a writer and graphic designer from Maryland, having worked for many years in Catholic publishing. He's a husband, father of four, and a lifelong Catholic. He's active in his parish and community. He is the founding managing editor for Where Peter Is.
• First published in Where Peter Is. Republished with permission.

It was terrible, also, because of its ecclesial significance, which is a related but different concern, one that strikes at a deeper issue for the nation's bishops.

The commentary from Fordham University's David Gibson, touched on some of the reasons why closing Catholic News Service was ill-advised pastorally.

Gibson observed that CNS is "a counterwitness to the proliferation of ideologically driven Catholic media platforms that are driving the church apart, and regular Catholics around the bend — often right out of Catholicism."

That is surely true.

It is also clear that not enough bishops were alarmed by the prospect that the only remaining wire service specifically focused on news about the Catholic Church in the United States would be the Catholic News Agency, a subsidiary of EWTN.

More bishops need to adopt the posture taken by Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vermont, a former chair of the bishops' Committee on Communications.

"In Burlington, we don't want anything to do with CNA because of its affiliation with EWTN and the anti-Francis rhetoric on the network," Coyne told America magazine recently.

Several bishops have indicated to me that it was not clear that the complete closing of CNS was what they were voting for last year during the executive session at their fall assembly in Baltimore, when they chose one of five models presented by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, chair of the bishops' Committee on Priorities and Plans.

They told me that they understood there would be cutbacks, but not a complete suspension of operations.

What is more, there was no real discussion of the proposal except as a necessary budgetary measure.

Here, then, I need to disagree somewhat with the explanation offered by former CNS editor Tony Spence, who told NCR's Brian Fraga, "The culture warrior bishops at the USCCB have always had a certain amount of animus to CNS because it offers straight unbiased reporting.

"Culture warriors don't want straight unbiased reporting.

"They want an echo chamber where everyone has the same opinion."

That is true, but this was not presented to the bishops as a culture war fight and, if it had been, I doubt it would have secured enough votes to pass, or at least it would have generated more opposition.

No, the deeper - and in some ways worse - problem is that the bishops have lost their own commitment to civic engagement, of which the responsibility for providing reliable information is so integral a part.

One hundred years ago, bishops were princes, and they ventured forth into the public square from their episcopal manses as leaders of their flock, powerbrokers of a sort, more akin to a labour leader or a prominent civic leader.

Ironically, after Vatican II called for the church to be an instrument, even a sacrament of the unity of humankind in the world, the bishops lost their footing.

They were not clear what tasks were to be ceded to the laity and what remained in their competence.

The turbulence of the times, especially the focus less and less on issues of economic justice and more on neuralgic issues of pelvic theology that would come to characterize the culture wars, further estranged the bishops from any kind of civic engagement.

Their role was reduced to that of an ethical authority in the public square, and they never grasped the degree to which the church's traditional, personal ethics on sexual matters was difficult to translate into any kind of public ethics, especially in a pluralistic society.

Then came the sexual abuse crisis and many bishops resorted to hiding under their desks.

Now, the bishops largely focus on the internal life of the church. Continue reading

• Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.

They also announced that their Rome bureau would remain in operation for now.

As one of the few Catholic news outlets in the English-speaking world that covers the Catholic Church accurately, faithfully, and according to high professional standards, this news stunned the Catholic media community.

The decision was made as part of a "reorganization" of the Communications Department at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which will result in 21 employees (mostly CNS staff) losing their jobs.

In addition to CNS's domestic operations shutting down, the USCCB Publishing Office—which produces many titles including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, and the Roman Missal—will also cease operations.

According to the official statement from the USCCB, these changes "will allow the remaining functions—including the Catholic News Service Rome Bureau and the Office of Public Affairs—a more sustainable foundation upon which to do their work."

For over 100 years, CNS has served the Church as a wire service, producing articles and photos (and more recently, videos and other digital content) about the Catholic Church at the local, national, and international level.

Just as local newspapers rely on subscriptions to wire services like the Associated Press and Reuters to cover stories that they don't have the money and resources to cover, Catholic News Service provides content for diocesan newspapers and other Catholic publications like America and Our Sunday Visitor.

In recent decades, as Catholic newspapers—as with the journalism industry as a whole—have struggled to remain financially afloat, CNS has provided them with valuable content that has helped them to survive.

It is important to note that although CNS is owned and funded by the USCCB, they do have a great deal of journalistic independence built into their contract and they are unionized.

CNS journalism is recognized in the industry as being competent and executed with high professional standards.

More important, however—and I know this personally—is the professional integrity of the CNS staff.

This is a veteran team of journalists that's losing their jobs.

Most of them have worked in the field for decades, and have earned the respect of their peers in the industry.

If you speak with journalists from other outlets, they recognize and respect the professionalism and high standards of the CNS organization.

As a Catholic media outlet, Where Peter Is does not primarily do journalism—although we have been known to commit journalism from time to time.

But as a site that regularly provides analysis and commentary on news and events in the Church, we rely on good, professional, and ethical journalism every day. And the quality and standards of the work done by CNS are top-notch.

You might be asking why they are being shut down if they do such good work.

Clearly a major factor is money.

Journalism, especially Catholic journalism, is no longer a profitable industry.

In fact, it's difficult to turn a profit in most areas of Catholic media.

Certainly, I don't ever expect the message of Where Peter Is to be profitable.

It seems the best way to make money in Catholic media in the current environment is to be sensational, ideologically-driven, and self-promoting.

The rest of us, including CNS, have to rely on donations or funding from people or organizations that believe in the mission of our outlets.

And for whatever reason, the US bishops decided that the service CNS provides in informing the public about the Church isn't worth the cost.

But in terms of effectiveness and public visibility, CNS is arguably one of the best things the USCCB has going for it.

I fear that this decision was made in part because some US bishops were not thrilled with the idea of funding a media organization that they don't have complete ideological control over.

Yet the decision to abandon CNS after a century of work seems to oppose the message of the Vatican II decree Inter Mirifica, which says that the Church "considers it one of its duties to announce the Good News of salvation also with the help of the media of social communication and to instruct men in their proper use."

Additionally, ending this service to diocesan newspapers and other Catholic publications seems to be a signal that the end is near when it comes to the US Church following the decree's call that "a good press should be fostered.

To instil a fully Christian spirit into readers, a truly Catholic press should be set up and encouraged…It should disseminate and properly explain news concerning the life of the Church.

Moreover, the faithful ought to be advised of the necessity both to spread and read the Catholic press to formulate Christian judgments for themselves on all events."

If good Catholic journalism is going to exist, someone has to believe it's worth paying for.

And if no one does, then the entire field will be left to people and organizations with ideological agendas and low standards.

I imagine that many US dioceses, assuming their newspapers don't also shut down, will turn to the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency.

In other words, the shepherds of the US Church will have turned their flocks over to an organization whose constant attacks were described as "the work of the devil" by the pope last year.

On the treatment of Church employees

This story hits particularly close to home for me because I was laid off from my job in the USCCB Communications department during the last reorganization in May 2017.

In late 2016 and early 2017—the months leading up to the layoff—we were told by upper management that our department was going to be reorganized, and how the new structure was going to benefit the staff.

Layoffs were never mentioned.

I was so foolish that I was looking forward to our department's fresh start. Which meant that I was completely blindsided by the news that my position had been eliminated.

At the time, I was already struggling emotionally—my dad had recently died, we had an infant at home—so the trauma of losing my job totally shattered me.

Adding insult to injury was the callous statement of the Conference's chief communications officer about the layoff, "It was based on positions and not people."

In other words: even though we've completely upended your life, your well-being is meaningless to us.

Recovering from the shock and devastation took me a very long time.

Seven years earlier, I turned down a much higher-paying job offer with another company to accept a position at the USCCB because I felt a strong call to work for the Church in the areas of media and communications.

Unfortunately, my experience there was doing mostly administrative tasks and working on dry and repetitive projects.

There was little collaboration and very little opportunity to propose ideas or solve problems.

Morale was low.

Staff members would watch as managers made poor decisions with money, spending huge sums on overpriced failures and cutting corners on things that produced clear results. (One wonders how many jobs could have been saved by repurposing the $28 million the bishops plan to spend to rent out a stadium for a few days in Indianapolis in 2024.)

In the end, it was only after the layoff that I was able to truly respond to that call and help the Church communicate the message of Jesus Christ with a group of my fellow Catholics through this website.

It's hard to ignore the irony that it was only after the institutional Church cast me aside that I was finally able to use my communication skills to serve the Church, share the faith, and to help amplify the message of Pope Francis to others.

But it was a difficult road and all of it came at a high cost.

In May 2017, CNS was untouched by the layoff.

At the time, USCCB leadership explained that CNS was not affected by the reorganization "because of the tremendous content creation capacity that is there…It's a well-respected, well-known brand."

What a difference five years makes.

This week, many of my former colleagues, people I admire—many of whom I consider dear friends—were told they will be losing their jobs. And remarkably much of the leadership team whose vision dictated the last "reorganization" still remains in place.

Please keep these fine journalists and communications professionals in your prayers as they discern what's next in their lives.

And please pray for our Church leaders, that they may realize the importance of a healthy Catholic media environment.

• Mike Lewis is a writer and graphic designer from Maryland, having worked for many years in Catholic publishing. He's a husband, father of four, and a lifelong Catholic. He's active in his parish and community. He is the founding managing editor for Where Peter Is.
• First published in Where Peter Is. Republished with permission.

Wishing a "Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate!" the Tweet's accompanying image shows Roman soldiers carrying the spoils of the war, from the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem.

Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple in the second century B.C. Read more