Editors Note: A debate over accountability and editorial judgement — Dr Christopher Longhurst’s latest opinion piece examines how institutions communicate urgency and responsibility in the wake of abuse‑in‑care hearings. His reflection on moral consistency within the Catholic Church is followed by a full response from CathNews NZ editor Gavin Abraham. CVNZ News publishes both perspectives in the interest of transparency and fair public discussion.
Opinion pieces represent the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of CVNZ News.
The Straw Man That Avoided The Real Question
Opinion by Christopher Longhurst KSO
One of the most memorable papers I took as an undergraduate philosophy student was in logic. One lesson on fallacies has stayed with me ever since. When people cannot answer an argument, they sometimes answer a different one instead.
Logicians name this the straw man. Rather than engaging with the position actually advanced, an opponent substitutes a weaker version that is easier to defeat. It creates the appearance of rebuttal while leaving the original argument untouched.
That, I believe, is what happened following my recent piece “Urgency Begins at Home”
(CVNZ, 25 July 2026). Urgency Begins at Home — So When Will the Church Wake Up? – cvnznews.com
The editor of CathNews NZ, Gavin Abraham, dismissed my article as being “quite simply based on a false premise.” That is a serious accusation. Yet remarkably, he never demonstrated that my central premise was false. Instead, he challenged an argument I never made.
My article was not about whether CathNews formally endorses every article it republishes. Anyone familiar with modern journalism understands that news organisations frequently aggregate or reproduce material from elsewhere.
But that was never the issue. My argument concerned institutional accountability.
The New Zealand Catholic Church’s principal communications outlet chose to give prominence to survivors’ calls for urgency and accountability in relation to the Government’s response to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care. At the same time, many survivors continue to experience delay, defensiveness, legalism, and frustration when seeking accountability from the Church itself.
Those two realities sit uneasily together. Institutions cannot convincingly promote urgency and accountability from others while appearing reluctant to demonstrate those same virtues themselves.
Whether CathNews technically endorsed the article it republished was beside the point.
The significant fact is that the Church’s communications outlet judged criticism of Government delay sufficiently important to place before a Catholic readership.
Publication may not constitute endorsement, but it always reflects editorial judgement.
Editors decide what deserves attention, what deserves prominence, and what deserves readers’ time.
Those choices shape public conversation because they communicate institutional priorities. Publication may not constitute endorsement, but it always reflects editorial judgement. Editors decide what deserves attention, what deserves prominence, and what deserves readers’ time. Those choices shape public conversation because they reveal institutional priorities.
None of this is to question CathNews’ right to exercise its own editorial judgement.
Every publication decides what it reports. My concern was with what those choices reveal about institutional priorities. Those priorities are precisely what my original article sought to examine.
But Mr Abraham’s response sought to shift the debate onto whether publication implies endorsement. Since the issue I raised never depended upon that proposition, disproving it proves nothing.
The straw man was not the only fallacy in the CathNews editor’s response. He also suggested that CVNZ’s editorial judgement “might have been clouded by a misrepresentation.” He identified no factual error, offered no evidence that CVNZ had been misled, and yet speculated on both my integrity and CVNZ’s editorial judgement. Logicians call this poisoning the well.
Most striking, however, was what Mr Abraham’s response never addressed. Not once did he engage with the central question my article raised. Instead, his entire reply focused on a proposition I had not advanced. That omission matters because the underlying issue remains.
The New Zealand Catholic Church has rightly encouraged urgency and accountability in the Government’s response to abuse survivors. If the issue of timely redress applies to Government, why should it not apply equally to the Church?
Why should survivors who seek accountability from bishops, religious orders, and Church agencies encounter lengthy delays, defensive processes, lawyers, or institutional resistance? Surely the Church should aspire to meet the very standards it publicly encourages others to adopt.
This is not principally a debate about journalism. Nor is it a debate about whether CathNews endorses every article it publishes. It is a question of moral consistency.
Institutions earn credibility not by demanding accountability from others, but by demonstrating it themselves. That was the main point I made in “Urgency Begins at Home.”
If the New Zealand Catholic Church’s own news outlet promotes urgency and accountability from others, why should survivors not expect the same urgency and accountability from the Church itself?
If the New Zealand Catholic Church’s own news outlet promotes urgency and accountability from others, survivors are entitled to ask why those same standards should not apply within the Church itself. That is the question Mr. Abraham’s response never answered.
Response from CathNews NZ Editor Gavin Abraham
CathNews New Zealand’s stated aim is to keep people informed about the life of the Catholic Church and its people, as well as key issues that are affecting society and culture.
That is achieved by sourcing content that has already been published, and aggregating that material with clear attribution to the source of the original story. Inclusion in CathNews is not an endorsement of a particular story; it is an attempt to capture items of relevance to the Catholic Church, its people and its ministries.
The central premise of Dr Longhurst’s article was to accuse the New Zealand bishops – who have no input into CathNews’ editorial decisions – of joining their voices to those of survivors who are critical of Government inaction on redress. Neither CathNews, nor the bishops, did that, any more than it was backing a call for a new bioethics council (August 4) or telling politicians to revisit hate speech regulations (July 31).
The fact the author of the article admitted his writing misrepresented CathNews’ intent makes it puzzling that CVNZ has chosen to not only retain the article, but pursue a follow-up.
CVNZ News welcomes robust discussion on matters of public interest and remains committed to fair reporting and the inclusion of diverse perspectives.
