If you say the Vatican is secretly running the US Military

...people (generally) recognize that's kind of loony.

If you say, "Vatican Warned Bishops Not To Report Child Abuse" and then follow that inflammatory claim up with documents showing that the Vatican said, "make sure to follow due process in canon law" everybody believes the headline and nobody thinks about the actual evidence of wrongdoing, which is mighty thin on the ground. The notion of the sinister curtain-gliding Jesuit is deeply entrenched in the English-speaking mind.

Jimmy Akin takes a look at the latest hysterical calumnies from the New York Times.