Sounding off on Vatileaks
Of course, you can't stop the MSM from imposing their chosen narrative - i.e., the herd thought of the day - about current events. In this case, on what's happening in the Vatican, and by extension, the entire Church. So they have decided on this line of reporting about the consistory:
In search of the next great scandal to visit upon the Vatican - after recent developments showed the Vatican is going ahead with its remedial and penitential obligations on the issue of sex-offender priests, so for now, that has ceased to be a red-meat issue - MSM was handed 'Vatileaks' on a silver platter.
The media have now taken some relatively minor exposes of alleged untoward activities behind Vatican walls - stories that originated from one Italian TV program and one Italian newspaper - and fashioned these trivia into something just short of a Watergate-size scandal.
And their whole case rests on how they choose to report and interpret the few actual facts available, immediately inventing myths that inflate facts completely out of proportion to suit their purpose. Just as the
New York Times's spin on the Fr. Murphy case to seek to incriminate Joseph Ratzinger was patently wrong from perusing the welter of documentation presented by the newspaper itself, the 'documentation' in this case of accusations against the Vatican (through the specific scapegoats Cardinal Bertone and an amorphous ill-defined 'Roman Curia') are found in a few letters and memoranda Even at first reading, a serious person would quickly conclude about these documents, "But there's no there there!" And nothing to cover up either, about bureaucratic infighting and farcical intrigue - the Vatican is right to let the flakes fall where they may!
In another world, the real issue for the Vatican in this round of the secular war against the Church would simply be
the lack of discipline, institutional loyalty and a fundamental sense of decency that led some employee(s) at the Secretariat of State to feed rat-bait to the media vultures. The traitors may have their personal and ideological motivations for being vipers, they may be moving as their puppet matters pull their strings, or they may live for the endorphin rush and ego trip that a Mighty Mouse might get who thinks he can make the Pope and all the cardinals jump with its every squeak and leak.
But in this world, media shapes public opinion - too many people would rather have someone else (the media) think for them, and in this way, they can also conform to the dominant 'popular' mentality (they join the herd). That public includes Catholics whose faith cannot withstand the slightest shake, let alone one tempest after another. And that's where and how the secular world undermines Catholicism and religion in general, unfortunately.
About the only positive thing one can say about this current media tempest is that no one has been shameless enough to make Benedict XVI the villain. Oh, maybe Marco Politi types have tried, on the grounds that leaving actual administrative work to Bertone et al means the Pope has no interest in governing at all, and can therefore be blamed for the apparent disciplinary chaos in the Secretariat of State [not necessarily the entire Curia, as the MSM have tried to make it appear].
The late Mons. Fulton Sheen liked to say,
"The truth is the truth even if no one believes it, and error is error even if everyone believes it". That's a very useful thing to keep in mind for those of us in whom the flame of faith may occasionally waver.
As for Vatileaks, the sooner the Vatican can identify the culprits and dismiss them for barefaced treachery, the more salutary it will be for the SecState itself. Until the next scandal, manufactured or not.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/04/2012 12:49]