Like the topic above, I mentioned the following 'issue' earlier in the BULLETIN BOARD on today's almanac page in the BENEDICT thread. But whereas I have not gone so far as to say Vian should resign - only that he seriously reconsider his mandate from the Pope and whether he will continue to shoot himself in the foot by all the unnecessarily controversial pop culture opinions that he chooses to play up in the Pope's newspaper - an American member of the Pontifical Academy for Life wants him dismissed .....
American Life League president
calls on the Vatican to dismiss
the OR editor for 'Simpsons' debacle
Pewsitter.com
Washington, DC, 20 October 2010 – American Life League president Judie Brown is calling on supporters to ask the Vatican’s press office to dismiss the editor of
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, after the paper made a pronouncement that cartoon character Homer Simpson is a Catholic.
Brown is a three-term member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the group that advises the Pope on life issues.
The story has drawn the jeers of an already hostile secular media ready to take aim at the Catholic Church.
“The Simpson debacle proves to faithful Catholics once again that it’s time to shake up the newspaper staff at the Vatican,” Brown wrote in her daily column, Straight Talk on Life. “Clearly heads should roll over this one.”
As evidence of the negative effect of the
Osservatore article, Brown points to
the relatively small coverage of the past week’s canonizations, papal letter to seminarians and important Middle Eastern Synod of Bishops by the secular media.
Instead, the narrative from the secular media reporting on the Vatican City this week has focused on the Vatican’s own newspaper pronouncing Homer Simpson a Catholic.
“Readers have left dozens of negative comments aimed at placing the Catholic Church in the realm of the irrelevant and the absurd, poking fun at truth and literally basking in the mindlessness of what the Vatican newspaper has done,” Brown said.
“It is our opinion that it is time for a complete change in management – the sooner, the better.”
If Vian does not already do it daily, I suggest that when he wakes up everyday, he should do a search for Papacy and Vatican News, and look at the list of headlines from media around the world. Because even today, with the names of the new cardinals announced, the Simpson story still got listed much more often than any other news 'item' about the Church and the Vatican.
Vian cannot be so self-engrossed over his own personal agenda of 'remaking' OR into his rather-shallow idea of a 'newspaper of ideas' as not to see that he is being counter-productive to the Church's communications effort - bad enough already - by providing the MSM with an opportunity to indulge in ultimately useless polemics about pop culture and worsening their distraction from the substantive developments occurring in the Church!
Someone blogs about the OR's pop culture penchant at FIRST THINGS today...but though the blogger mocks the opinions expressed in the OR on pop icons and culture - and nails the problem by saying "Their editorial staff reminds me of the stereotypical youth pastor: really nice, solidly Christian, but trying way to hard to be hip" [Pathetic, if you ask me!] - I think he takes the problem less seriously than it ought to be!
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/10/20/does-homer-simpson-read-l%e2%80%99osservatore-romano/#more-23225
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/10/2010 02:03]