Is no news good news? Looking for the scoop on the Catholic Church? You may not find it in your diocesan newspaper. Too many photos of bishops and not enough analysis have weakened the Catholic press. But journalists could help restore credibility in the church--if given the chance.

THERE'S AN OLD STORY ABOUT THE HEADLINE IN A Catholic paper in the Midwest: "Flood wipes out whole town. No Catholics drown!"

But that was in the 1950s, pre-Vatican II American church--ghetto-minded, turned in upon itself. All that has changed, right?

Well ... yes and no. For dramatic evidence of change, sit down and work your way through one to three copies each of 26 diocesan papers from all over the country, most from the first weeks of January 2005. That's what I did, and here's what I found:

Nearly every front page features coverage of the devastation of the tsunami in Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The most frequently reprinted story is the Catholic News Service (CNS) feature asking why God permits such suffering to occur. The "local Catholic angles" are pictures of corpses in a Catholic center, a nun shoveling rubble, and the address where Catholics could send money for relief.

Yet many of the old limitations remain: the dominance of the publisher/bishop and priest and nun news items; the conservative theology; the shortage of challenging intellectual meat, book reviews, and cultural criticism. So it makes sense to ask whether, in these years when the credibility of the American Catholic Church is under attack as never before, the church is using the media--TV, radio, film, the Internet, and particularly the potential of the diocesan paper--as effectively as it can.

But first perhaps we should ask what the Catholic press is for. The standard journalism texts say that the media exist to inform, to persuade, and to entertain.

In the January 14 edition of the St. Louis Review, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke calls the paper his instrument in teaching the faithful. It is to inform, inspire, and promote Catholic culture. In the venerable Brooklyn Tablet, editor Ed Wilkenson quotes Archbishop John P. Foley: The Catholic newspapers form community, "make us realize we are not alone in practicing our faith."

Diocesan papers emerged as one of the many parallel institutions the church created because Catholics saw themselves as excluded from the dominant culture. But more and more, beginning with the Second Vatican Council and now with the recent sex scandals, Catholics find out what is really going on not from the diocesan papers but from Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. Why? Because the institutional church is not an open society. The hierarchy does not really thrive, as they see it, from openness and free exchange of ideas. And this is their undoing.

CATHOLIC PAPERS DO STRUGGLE TO INFORM, TO BE THE community glue. Witness the countless photos of groups lined up smiling with the bishop, the soccer teams, meetings and award dinners and fund-raisers, the jubilees. They highlight the nun who blesses high school football players before their games, the four new postulants of a shrinking religious order, the seminarians on their knees, the priests who have been assigned, reassigned, made monsignor, made pastor, retired, and buried. But is this the best use of space in a 10-page weekly or fat monthly tabloid when the world is on fire?

To some degree last January's "news" agenda was set by Rome: emphasize the Real Presence in the Eucharist and promote vocations. These are certainly essential to the church, but they challenge the journalist to deal with them with some originality. More recent theology emphasizes the social role of the Eucharist and the presence of Christ in the community. But most papers featured the story of the special monstrance blessed by Pope John Paul II that toured the United States this year and was featured in services of eucharistic adoration.

Several papers made an effort to promote vocations. The Trenton Monitor profiled the diocese's 24 seminarians, one of whom is a kickboxer; the Wilmington Dialog wrote up a local priest, deacon, and nun; and the Milwaukee Catholic Herald heralded a 320-pound, 6-foot-5 football player who turned down a pro career because he got a better offer from God. Now how about asking sociologists to do surveys on why local young men and women no longer wish to join?

The Davenport Messenger and Wilmington Dialog stand out for their individuality and the variety and depth of their coverage and commentary. For example, the Messenger, in broadsheet format, displays six news capsules down the left column as well as two or three lead stories on page one; it clearly divides diocesan, national, and international news; and it has a long, thoughtful editorial, like the January 13 essay on the distinction between an individual act of charity and the "best-kept secret" of the church's teachings on social justice.

The same week, on the Dialog's opinion pages, a writer explains how the new vocations are not to the clerical state but to other equally valid forms of ministry; a mother watches her daughter pack to return to college; and a columnist asks where the new Catholic philosophers, musicians, and novelists are when we desperately need them. And there are three intelligent letters.

The Rochester Catholic Courier had a clever column on how the misuse and loss of the apostrophe has spread to parish names: St. Ann rather than St. Ann's.

For a while, however, I felt I was reading the same paper 26 times, with the same CNS stories and features. There is the familiar Question Box telling us why we venerate relics, why fallen angels can't repent their sin, and where to buy a coffin made by a monk.

DIOCESAN PAPERS' INFATUATION WITH THEIR OWN BISHOPS has diminished but not disappeared. Bishop Frederick Campbell wins the Cardinal Spellman Award for having his picture in the paper the most times: 13 times in the St. Paul/Minneapolis Catholic Spirit as it bade him farewell and 15 in the Columbus Catholic Times as it welcomed him to his new see. First prize for the most appearances in a regular edition goes to Cardinal Edward Egan for showing his face eight times in his monthly Catholic New York.

Second, except for the Florida Catholic, which had a series of reports from around the state by five writers, I didn't see any long, investigative articles. Third, responsibility for theological education seems relegated to the syndicated columnists, and too few carry Notre Dame's Father Richard McBrien or Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser.

On the other extreme, Connecticut's Fairfield Catholic features a column, "The Narrow Gate," by a priest graduate student of moral theology in Rome, which borders on a satire of the priests who used to frighten us in Confession 50 years ago. To stress the narrowness of the gate, he lists 23 mortal sins into which we are liable to fall. Meanwhile there are numerous well-trained scripture scholars and moral theologians who, if creatively used, could bring the readers into the 21st century where we belong.

FINALLY, A FAIR-MINDED VISITOR FROM MARS OR FRANCE could conclude that the American church is literally obsessed with abortion. Fully understood, the "life" issues include stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, abortion, health insurance, the living wage, police brutality, government-sanctioned torture, the prevention of HIV/AIDS, homelessness, starvation, the death penalty, killing noncombatants in war, the use of land mines and cluster bombs, and starting a preemptive war under false pretenses.

In early January only four writers--Liz O'Connor in the Long Island Catholic, Tony Magliano and Russell Shaw in the Wilmington Dialog, and Carol Powell in the Brooklyn Tablet--came out against the Iraq war or torture.

A. E. P. Wall, longtime editor of the Baltimore Review and CNS, wrote recently about the Catholic press in his newsletter, "The Catholic Church is losing its way in American life, losing its influence for justice and integrity, even losing its self-confidence in preaching the gospel."

If the bishops would give them the freedom, Catholic journalists could go a long way toward restoring the credibility and confidence of the church.

RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J., professor of humanities at St. Peter's College in Jersey City and media critic for the National Catholic Reporter.