Free Losing My Religion by William Lobdell

first sight—the relentless ringing of the phones, the clacking of the keyboards, the smell of scraps of old pizza in oily boxes on the floor, the mess of old papers and documents stacked everywhere. This was heaven. I felt at home.
    “Excuse me,” I stammered lamely to the first person I saw behind a desk. “I’d like to be a reporter, maybe covering sports.”
    “Well, I’m the sports editor,” he said. “What are you doing this afternoon?”
    I shrugged my shoulders. He reached inside his desk, pulled out a skinny reporter’s notebook and shoved it in my hand.
    “There’s a men’s tennis match starting in ten minutes. Go cover it and have the story in by tonight.”
    I hustled out the door, stoked at landing my first assignment. A few days later, I opened up the New U and saw my byline over my sports story. My name, my words in print. I was a writer. I was a journalist. Eighteen years later, I walked into The Times ’s Orange County newsroom for the first time as a reporter—and as a full-time religion writer, to boot. It lacked some of the characteristic shabbiness of my previous newsrooms. This was, after all, The Show, the major leagues of American newspapers. Expensive signage pointed visitors to the Metro, Calendar and Sports departments. A news rack outside the editor’s office held neatly placed copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Orange County Register . Off in the corner was a library, equipped with computers linked to special databases, bookshelves full of reference materials, a morgue of newspaper clips going back decades and a counter full of current magazines. Still, at heart, my new newsroom wasn’t that much different from those at smaller papers. The phones rang, the keyboards clacked and the desks were covered with stacks of reports and newspapers. The most important difference was The Times ’s newsroom was home to some of the world’s best journalists.
    I had made it. I credited my faith and constant prayers. God had answered my prayers more completely than I could have ever imagined. Now I would be paid to learn everything I could about religion, and I would be able to help shape religion coverage at one of the nation’s largest media outlets.
    It seemed too good to be true.

FIVE
Shot Out of a Cannon
Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
    — PSALMS 37:4
     
    A FEW WEEKS into the job at The Times , in November 2000, a colleague stopped by my cubicle with a story tip.
    “Hey, Bill,” said Jean Pasco, one of the most respected reporters in the newsroom. “You ever hear of Father Michael Harris?”
    I shook my head. Jean, a top political reporter in her 40s who spent her free time running sub-four-hour marathons, was the dean of Orange County journalists. Her list of sources was roughly the thickness of a small city phone book.
    “He was principal at Mater Dei and Santa Margarita high schools,” she said in a voice that was famous for booming throughout the newsroom. “Raised something like $26 million to build Santa Margarita. Anyway, he’s named in a clergy sexual abuse lawsuit, and someone leaked me these documents.” She dropped a stack of legal papers on my desk. “They look interesting. Maybe we can team up for a story when the case goes to trial or gets settled.”
    I thumbed through a few of them—depositions, reports and motions. They formed a big pile. I promised myself I’d look at them by end of the week at the latest. But I never got around to it. At the time, it was an isolated, sordid story that didn’t set off any journalism alarms in me. I didn’t see that right in front of me was a tale that would cause upheaval and historic reforms within the Roman Catholic dioceses of Orange and Los Angeles, generate the first of more than $1 billion in payouts to hundreds of victims of sexual abuse by priests and foreshadow by almost two years the church’s national sex scandal. Fourteen months later,