Religious believers of all faiths are perfectly justified in their suspicion of the media.
By Peter Rosengren
The media has an almost unlimited potential for the common good of the world. Instead, it has probably done more damage to social progress than any other institution in human history.
Episode 1: I still recall with something approaching astonishment the episode late last year when Pope Benedict XVI addressed members of the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s equivalent of the Public Service, and, in passing, called for a deeper human ecology – in other words, a refocusing on the dignity and worth of the human person as our prime consideration in caring for the planet.
The media of the world, taking their cue from gay activists in the main, transformed his comments into saying that saving the world from homosexuals (whom he didn’t mention) was as important as saving rainforests.
Episode 2: On his trip earlier this year to Africa Pope Benedict pointed out something that is scientifically crystal clear: condoms cannot prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The media of the world ignited an immediate controversy and global outrage directed towards this bishop who in their eyes could not care less for the human suffering and consequences of his blind adherence to the letter of the law.
It did not matter in the weeks to follow that many of the world’s top scientists in this field (many of them not particulalrly religious or not at all) bluntly made public statements explicitly saying the Pope was right. If anyone can send me a cutting from any of our daily or weekly newspapers in Perth reporting their comments I would be delighted.
The above two episodes, not the first instances of media-led and created controversy surrounding religious belief, were like moments from Alice in Wonderland, sad reminders of the fact that many journalists carry degrees from institutions of higher learning and schools of journalism but, in my (admittedly limited) experience, cannot spell and are culturally illiterate.
I once heard a rabbi say that the greatest insult he could offer anything was to describe it as beyond parody. In other words, some things are so ridiculous they defy the power of words to illuminate their stupidity or foolishness. That rabbi, whoever he was, was a good man.
In relation to religion it is worth recalling that billions of people around the globe are searching for the transcendent meaning of their lives or find consolation and a sense of purpose from the one thing that the media appear to stare at with their lower jaws hanging open, wrists hanging limply and bent backwards and with an uncomprehending look in their eyes: religious faith.
The most profound thinkers of our times have been men and women of deep religious belief. I think of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the man who singlehandedly intellectually discredited Marxism, or Malcolm Muggeridge, the journalist who fell so in love with God after encountering Mother Teresa.
The same pattern has existed for centuries with the greatest enemies of Christianity and religion who have found the Church finally irresistible because they have discovered that God really is Love.
Young journalists see the opportunities for fame and self-importance and career. They don’t see that just like any other corporation in the world they work for an enterprise whose primary motive for existence is money. They are trained in schools of communication or journalism where the dominant orthodoxies are theories such as post-modernism, deconstruction or cultural studies and often the tools of analysis are gay or feminist critiques and a host of other pseudo-intellectual approaches.
Such theories are inherently reactive against, and hostile to, Christianity but by the time young journalists emerge from this snowstorm of fashionable paradigms that hold sway over schools of humanities and the like they are convinced they are intellectuals.
They certainly do not understand that religious belief is a deep and powerful reality of human existence that is universal. They give every appearance of never having looked at the carved stone archway of a silent cloister and wondered what moved men and women of another age to create such a thing of beauty.