Is it Regensberg all over again? The world’s media, yet again, appear to have completely misread (wilfully or otherwise…) a line in a speech by Pope Benedict to the Roman curia on December 22. The resultant furore is becoming almost predictable. The Pope’s problem appears to be more that journalists are simply… well, ignorant when it comes to religious belief. Here, a same-sex attracted lawyer, a theologian, a priest commentator and a Rome-based Catholic journalist comment on the Church’s challenge, and what the Pope really meant…
FIRSTLY, HERE’S EXACTLY WHAT BENEDICT XVI SAID:
“Because faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian creed, the Church cannot and must not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility toward creation, and must exercise this responsibility in public as well. And in doing so, it must defend not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation belonging to all.
“It must also protect man against his own destruction. Something like an ecology of man is needed, understood in the proper sense. It is not an outdated metaphysics if the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order of creation be respected. In fact, this is a matter of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, disdain toward which would be the self-destruction of man, and therefore the destruction of the very work of God.
“What is often expressed and understood by the term “gender” is ultimately resolved in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wants to create himself, and to arrange always and exclusively that which concerns him. But this means living contrary to the truth, living contrary to the creator Spirit. Yes, the rainforests deserve our protection, but man deserves it no less, as a creature in whom a message is inscribed that does not mean the contradiction of our freedom, but its precondition.
“Great scholastic theologians have described marriage, meaning the lifelong bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, which the Creator himself instituted and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – incorporated into the history of his covenant with men. It is part of the proclamation that the Church must make on behalf of the creator Spirit present in nature as a whole, and in a special way in the nature of man, created in the image of God.
“It is beginning from this perspective that one should reread the encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as consumption, the future against the exclusive presumption of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.”
The Homo-Ecological-Papal-Pseudo-Event
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill
By John Heard
People everywhere, but especially same sex attracted Catholics, were shocked to read the sensational news reports that Pope Benedict XVI had linked homosexuals with the destruction of the rainforests.
Most of the world’s media picked up the story, and some reports even included specious direct quotation marks. Homosexuals (and some reports had transsexuals) are a threat; the Pope was reported to have said, on par with the forces that had prompted the movement towards environmentalism and ecology.
Even the more cautious articles claimed (or, more rarely, just implied), that the Holy Father had likened homosexuals’ unchosen, unwilled sexual inclinations to the immoral actions of those who would deliberately degrade the planet.
Forget Christmas, the Pope had decided to “spew hate” – that was the view of homoactivist after homoactivist – and the Church had been caught out encouraging bigots and “gay-bashings”.
The headline I woke up to was, indeed, deeply distressing: “Outrageous: Pope Bashes Gays”.
In the aftermath, writers in many English-speaking countries encouraged same sex attracted Catholics to leave the Church. Others called for the Pope and any priests who dared to repeat his language to be charged with “hate-speech”.
Happily, not one of the sensational reports was true.
Rather, what has become clear since the initial reports is that someone at Reuters and / or the BBC wire service mistranslated the Pope’s customary annual Italian address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2008). Various eminent news outlets then added, or else reprinted an unrelated, non-Catholic gloss that ensured a sensational reception for the Pope’s otherwise inoffensive comments about World Youth Day 2008, pneumatology, “gender”, Humanae Vitae, and “rock star” leaders.
Homoactivists, garden variety anti-Catholics, incensed ordinary readers, and otherwise good people of all sorts took it from there. The resulting free-for-all was remarkable; both for the venomous denunciations of Pope Benedict XVI and the Church, and the time it took for someone serious to check the facts.
Certainly, when they did, it became clear that the Pope had said nothing of the sort about “homosexuals”, “transsexuals” and “rainforests”. Indeed, he mentioned neither “homosexuals”, nor “transsexuals”. He certainly did not mention “homosexuality”.
Beyond solemn questions about journalistic ethics, accountability, and the transparent transmission of important leaders’ public remarks, there is always a deeper worry whenever these sorts of pseudo-events grip the mass media.
Like those who felt duped by the reports of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq, and the people who thought their homes and livelihoods were in the hands of responsible banks and investment experts, major breakdowns in the systems of secular modernity reveal a shadow-land between fact (e.g., news, intelligence, professional advice) and non-fact (e.g., bias, propaganda, advertising, sales).
The anxiety is that, alongside the sad men in Plato’s famous cave analogy, modern man will come to prefer flickering shadows on a cave wall to the reality that thrives in the nourishing sun just outside his comfort zone.
Indeed, American historian Daniel Boorstin coined the term “pseudo-event” to describe “a staged happening that becomes news not for intrinsic reasons but because those who cover the news deem it so”.
Boorstin’s term certainly fits this latest controversy.
For, while the Pope’s public statements are intrinsically newsworthy, this situation shows how the lines between reality and a pseudo-event can be blurred. Surprisingly quickly, the manufactured, bogus event – overlayed onto the real thing – took control. Repeated over and over, passed down channels of authority, traded on the prestige and power of the various news networks, newspapers, and other outlets that transmitted the story, the pseudo-event helped “create an alternate sham reality…where credibility superseded truth, invention eclipsed discovery…”
The effects of this phenomenon were most pronounced in those pundits and other commentators who, having been apprised of what the Pope actually said, displayed a surreal response. Who cares, distorted attitudes encouraged them to say; we know what he really meant!
While many ordinary Catholics are, now, outraged that such a thing could even occur, and not a few formerly solid journalists and politicians have to explain why they did not check the wording of the Pope’s address, it is this preference for anything other than the truth that is most troubling.
When it involves the Holy Father, and the authentic Catholic teaching on human sexuality, it reveals a posture of distrust that is – in the modern world – one of the key obstacles to the New Evangelisation.
In a world where pseudo-events take the place of actual papal statements, and the guardians of journalistic truth prefer inventions to the hard-won, but glittering prize of discovery, Catholics and good writers everywhere would do well to adopt a maxim used by Lois Lane, that hardened, noble press hound in the Superman franchise:
“Believe none of what you hear. Half of what you see. And everything you write”.
The idea is, of course, that if journalists are keeping strictly to the first two, the final truth of their statements, and the rigor of their headlines will not be in doubt.
John Heard is an Australian writer and a Catholic who is open about his own same-sex attraction.
By Anna Krohn
Most of us were munching mince pies or fighting with rolls of wrapping paper when a garbled news headline shot briefly but angrily across the media heavens: “Pope says homosexuality more dangerous that water pollution!”
Depending on our point of view and our level of Christmas pre-occupation, we either dismissed this as a now common case of distorted reporting and thinly disguised Pope-bashing or racked it up as more proof of the mean intolerance of the Catholic Church.
What this particular headline demonstrates however is how hopelessly little the reporters and their reactive audiences actually noticed or perhaps wanted to read of Pope Benedict’s Address to the Roman Curia (December 22nd) at the Vatican.
The address bears no resemblance at all to a reactionary attack upon any one group of people, nor is it a mere moral condemnation of one type of sexual activity.
The Pope’s address is a carefully crafted reflection upon the theology of Creation shot through with a rich and provocative theology of the Holy Spirit.
The Address covers many important topics which deserve extended reading not only by Bishops but by everyone. These include the real nature of World Youth Day, the role of the Holy Spirit in human history and the “inseparability of Christ and the Holy Spirit.”
Of course the secular media fixed upon the Pope’s comments about sexuality.
Indeed in his Address, Pope Benedict does not run away from addressing that most difficult aspect of contemporary evangelisation about the nature and vocation of the human person, and in particular about the importance of sexuality both as lived reality and as a basis of morality and spirituality. In doing this he builds on Pope John Paul II’s mammoth contribution in the Theology of the Body, and Benedict contributes his own distinctive concern that we return to an appreciation of the immediate presence of God in his World.
In doing this he casts his address far more widely than a room full of Curial officials. He knows that there are many international agencies and government ideologues who aim to drive a wedge between the love of the environment and the love of God.
Essential to these two loves, in Pope Benedict’s thinking, is the appreciation of the environment and our relationship with God and faith through a renewed understanding of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the divine loving communion we call the Blessed Trinity.
For many people today, God is only a figure as that pop song croons it, “watching us from a distance”. Jesus is seen as a “good bloke” but one who belongs to the remoteness of the past or to the innocent days of Sunday school stories.
Even most Catholics are vague about the Holy Spirit, imagining him in some cloudy way to be the late arrival at God’s party. As a result they are also unsure how it is that nature and creation (and with it the sciences) on one hand and revelation, theology and the Church’s teaching can be bridged. They do not know how to respond to the endlessly and often mindlessly, chanted secular refrain – that “The Church should keep its nose out of” the bedroom, the boardroom and the laboratory.
Pope Benedict has on many occasions both as Pope and as theologian refuted this dismissal of Christianity as private hymn singing and mutterings between consenting adults.
He restates this once again in his Christmas address. The “creator Spirit” is not simply a pious idea or some excuse for by my own “private revelation” but both the reason any of us can have faith and the reason that we can pursue science in the first place. God’s Holy Spirit is at work not only at the “beginning” of creation, but in forming and renewing the cosmos here and now. The creator Spirit, says Benedict, gives us the privileged gift of intelligence and creativity by which human beings can “interpret and remodel” that world we are blessed with. However this amazing power quickly becomes destructive and dangerous if we do not also heed the Holy Spirit urging us to see our place in creation as one of high “duty and responsibility”.
He says that it is precisely because we believe that God is alive and present in His creation and in our faith that “the Church cannot and must not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful the message of salvation alone … It has a responsibility toward creation… it must defend not only the earth, water and air as gifts of creation… it must also protect man against his own destruction.”
It is in this context of the grandeur and beauty of creation and of a true and complete ecology that Pope Benedict emphasises the importance of the teaching and insights of Pope Paul VI in the controversial and little understood Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae.
For Benedict XVI a complete ecology is an ecology of the human heart, of the family, and of the sexual relationship between man and woman. It is an even more delicate and important eco-system than the precious goodness of air, water and earth although intrinsically linked to these as all creations of the Holy Spirit.
This approach may explain why it is the women of the African and Chinese villages and the Nimbin communes who most appreciate the translation of Humanae Vitae into natural fertility methods such as the work of Doctors John and Evelyn Billings. They and the Pope are more “deeply green” than many of Westerners who live a life divided between concerns for rainforests on the one hand but a complete disregard for their own sexual integrity.
The created world and all that is in it, including the bodies and hearts of men, women and children are not merely fungible goods for sale, exploitation and dismemberment.
When his address is read alongside his exquisite Christmas Eve homily which sparkles with a joy and love for God and for his Creation the true radicality of the Pope’s ecology can be appreciated.
In almost Tolkien-esque vein touched by the cosmology of the great Psalms, the Pope proposes that it is not only men and angels that matter to God but also “the trees of the woods” who actually shout for joy. The Christmas Tree becomes not simply a bauble that is thrown on the rubbish heap on Boxing Day, but an icon of all creation joining in the great party hymn at the Birth of the Infant Jesus.
If the secular media read the Pope’s address rather than read into it their preoccupations and biases they might learn than ecological concern extends beyond the recycle bin and green house emissions calculations (important as these might be) and they might even catch some of his evident concern to restore humanity to a peaceful co-existence with itself and creation.
This is not something the Pope believes is the private property of Catholics but a joy that can touch the hearts and aspirations of the whole world.
-annakrohn@hotmail.com
Blind spots and biases in secular media coverage
By Father John Flynn LC
Accuracy and objectivity are traits often lacking in the media’s coverage of churches and religion in general. A case in point is the recent Newsweek article on same-sex marriage.
The magazine published a cover story by Lisa Miller in the December 15 issue arguing that we can’t take the Bible as a reliable source on what marriage should be like. Miller also affirmed that neither the Bible nor Jesus explicitly defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Miller’s article was widely criticised for its selective quoting of Bible passages and for simply ignoring much of what Scripture does say about marriage. Newsweek itself acknowledged that her opinions drew thousands of critical e-mails.
The ignorance displayed in the Newsweek article is, however, far from an isolated case. On December 15 the reader’s editor of the UK’s Guardian newspaper had to admit that they had confused Mary’s Immaculate Conception with the virgin birth of Jesus in a story published, no less, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
The editor also had to admit that, as one priest who wrote to them pointed out, this is a frequent mistake. In fact, seven times in the last 10 years the Guardian has had to publish corrections on this topic.
Another glaring mistake was made on July 7, this time by FoxNews, when it was reported that Webster Cook, a student at the University of Central Florida, smuggled a consecrated host out of a Mass. The reporter miss-stated that the host is believed by Catholics "to symbolise the body of Christ".
Commentators quickly pointed out that the Catholic Church does not believe the Eucharist to be a mere symbol, but to be the true Body of Christ. FoxNews did correct the story, but even so the current version, while acknowledging that Catholics believe it to Christ’s body, says that this comes about when the host is "blessed," instead of the correct term, "consecrated."
Getting it
Trying to understand why the media so often get it wrong on religion is the aim of a collection of essays just published: Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion, (Oxford University Press).
Edited by Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Roberta Green Ahmanson, the book’s foreword starts by noting that many journalists are simply illiterate when it comes to knowing what the Bible contains. Unfortunately, the foreword commented, a journalist with secular blinkers will simply miss out on many of the most important events and trends of our time.
In his contribution, Allen Hertzke, professor of political science at Oklahoma University, accused the mainstream press of missing out on one of the great developments in foreign policy in recent times.
Hertzke explained that a new human rights movement arose in the mid ’90s to defend religious freedom and human rights. Important legislation was passed by the US Congress, including the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.
He made an in-depth study of the media coverage during the years that the major legislative bills were passed and concluded that the role of the faith-based alliance of groups that were a major force in the process was often misunderstood.
The professor noted, for example, that the New York Times often seemed to struggle to make sense of the legislative processes, often simply characterising the push as a cause of the "Christian Right," thus ignoring the role played by the diversity of groups ranging from Jews to Tibetan Buddhists.
Likewise, Hertzke added, the campaign against trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation is another area where religious groups played a pioneering role, only too often overlooked by the media.
Papal focus
Catholic journalist and author Amy Welborn dedicated a chapter in the book to the media’s coverage of the papacy. She reflected on the coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II, the election of Benedict XVI, and the first couple years of the latter’s pontificate.
Frequently, Welborn commented, the secular media’s coverage has been marred by two flaws: first, a lack of knowledge on the subject; second, a reliance on a template for reporting that frames events in the language of contemporary political categories.
One profile of John Paul II published after his death by the Boston Globe described his rule as "authoritarian," and "disciplinarian." Many of the journalists, Welborn observed, portrayed John Paul II as "conservative," and ignored, for example, the pioneering contributions he made in areas such as the theology of the body.
When it came to the election of Benedict XVI, Welborn noted that only too often the media characterised the new Pope as being a hardliner and a disciplinarian. Only as time went by did the secular media get around to presenting a fuller picture.
Welborn did acknowledge that reporting on the Catholic Church is quite a challenge, given the historical depth and complexity of the subject matter. Deepening their knowledge of the Church would be a step forward for journalists covering Catholicism, she argued. This does not mean losing objectivity, but reporting on events in their proper context.
Resisting the temptation to portray every Vatican-related story as a battle between "conservatives" and "liberals" would also be a step forward, Welborn noted.
Ignorance
Terry Mattingly, a reporter and director of the Washington Journalism Centre at the Council for Christian Colleges, wrote on the topic of getting religion into the newsrooms.
He also commented on the amazing ignorance by some of the reporters who cover religion. Mattingly observed that he could not imagine that basic mistakes such as those committed in stories on religious matters would be permitted in other areas, such as politics.
Among the examples given by Mattingly were stories that could not even correctly describe the names of churches or denominations, blanket labeling of diverse Christian groups as "fundamentalists," and completely misunderstanding religious terminology.
This isn’t a religious problem, Mattingly argued, but a journalistic one due to newsrooms often being tone-deaf when it comes to religion – hearing the words but not understanding the music.
Mattingly quoted a posting by the editors of the Washington Post back in 1994, when they were advertising for a religion reporter. The "ideal candidate," it said, is "not necessarily religious nor an expert in religion."
Of course, he acknowledged, a reporter covering religion should not be chosen on the basis of religious beliefs, but to be a good professional reporter you do need to know the subject matter you are covering.
He recommended a number of things that can be done to improve coverage of religion. Mattingly’s suggestions ranged from editors ensuring that reporters who cover religion receive better training to a need for more diversity in terms of background and beliefs of those who work in newsrooms.
"The media must avoid becoming spokesmen for economic materialism and ethical relativism, true scourges of our time," wrote Benedict XVI in his message for the World Communications Day celebrated on May 4.
"Instead, they can and must contribute to making known the truth about humanity, and defending it against those who tend to deny or destroy it," the Pope urged.
An essential part of communicating that truth is to get the basic facts right about religion and the Church.- zenit.org
And what else?
By John Thavis
As every year, the Pope met on December 22 with his top administrators to exchange Christmas greetings and review the year as it draws to a close. His talk was not a simple “Best of ‘08” list, however, but a probing analysis of what lies behind some of the Church’s most visible activities.
In particular, he offered his own take on two issues that prompted headlines in recent months, but whose meaning the Pope evidently believes is misunderstood: the international World Youth Day celebrations and the Vatican’s increasingly strong pronouncements on ecology; his comments on the latter were what caused the furore.
Recalling World Youth Day, he said fears of paralyzed traffic or public disturbances proved unfounded and the encounter turned out to be a “festival of joy.” But what kind of celebration was it? Some view these World Youth Day gatherings as the Church’s version of a rock concert, where the Pope is just the main attraction, he said.
The Pope responded by saying these objections don’t take into account the power of the Holy Spirit. It was typical of the academic pontiff that in explaining this point he quoted first the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who once said throwing a party wasn’t as hard as finding people able to attend it with joy.
Then he quoted St Paul, who said joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit – something abundantly evident at World Youth Day. He pointed out that the Australian assembly was the culmination of a long spiritual pilgrimage for the young participants, one focused intensely on Christ.
“So even the Pope is not the star around which all this turns,” he said.
Those who describe the youth encounters as the Catholic variant of rock festivals, he added, are really trying to remove the all-important “question of God” from the discussion.
The Pope said the Holy Spirit was the protagonist of another important event of 2008, the Synod of Bishops on Scripture. The synod emphasised that, far from being a dead letter, the word of God is alive and is speaking to contemporary Christians in a modern Pentecost, he said.
In ending his speech, the Pope returned to St Paul’s description of joy as a fruit of the Spirit. The Pope underlined a point he’s made occasionally throughout the year: that Christianity should be seen not as a religion of rules and prohibitions, but as a source of joy that springs from Christ’s salvation.
“He is joy. Joy is the gift in which all other gifts are summed up. It’s the expression of happiness, of being in harmony with oneself, which can only happen when one is in harmony with God and his creation,” he said.
The nature of joy is to radiate, and to want to communicate itself to others – and in a nutshell, that’s the missionary spirit of the Church, he said.
He left his Roman Curia members with his Christmas wish: that this kind of joy stay alive and spread through a world filled with tribulations.
One journalist who got it right
Among the few pleasant surprises of the media coverage of Pope Benedict’s remarks was the story filed by British journalist Rhiazza Butt (pictured second from left in foreground).
Ms Butt is the religious affairs correspondent for The Guardian, a British paper usually regarded as leaning strongly to the left politically and to liberal positions in religious and ethical issues.
The pleasure was that, almost alone among her global colleagues Ms Butt got it right.
Apart from her adherence to professional standards of reporting, an additional reason may be that Ms Butt also attended The Church Up Close – Covering Catholicism in the Age of Benedict XVI, a week-long intensive seminar for journalists who cover the Church, held in Rome from September 8-14.
The seminar was organised by the School of Church Communications at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. Holy Cross was founded and is administered by Opus Dei.
The opening sentences of her story are as follows:
“Gay rights groups and activists yesterday condemned passages in Pope Benedict XVI’s end-of-year address in which the pontiff spoke about gender and the important distinction between men and women.
“Speaking to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, the Pope said that the Church viewed the distinction as central to human nature, and “asks that this order, set down by creation, be respected. The Church, should protect man from the destruction of himself”. He said a sort of ecology of man was needed, adding: “The tropical forests do deserve our protection; but man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.” He attacked what he described as “gender” theories which “lead towards the self-emancipation of man from creation and the creator”.
“Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, claimed the Pope had not wished specifically to attack homosexuality, and had not mentioned gays or lesbians in his text. Nevertheless, the speech provoked anger from campaigners, who interpreted the remarks as a papal call to save mankind from homosexuals and transsexuals.” These sentences convey the factual truth of what happened.