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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
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02/07/2010 03:01
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In a way, this commentary is superfluous, because some things are self-evident! Just because Benedict XVI has managed to beat and confound his enemies so far simply by being himself and true to the faith does not mean his enemies will not try to strike every chance they get... No one in the Church, least of all the Pope, is letting his guard down.


The disinformation goes on
about the Church and Benedict XVI

by Gianteo Bordeo

June 30, 2010


Three years ago, I wrote that the Church led by Benedict XVI did not have a good press at all [Did it ever have one since April 19,2005, when some uncharitable UK newspapers headlined the news of his election by branding him a Nazi? And a German tabloid marked it by an almost completely black front page?]

There has been continual distortion of the Pope's words, arbitrary [generally negative] interpretations of his words, misrepresentation of his Magisterium and his acts of governance.

That things have not changed is confirmed by how most of the mass media reported two events in recent days. [Only by those events? What about the all-out assault mounted in March-April this year against the Pope himself????]

First, the news that the US Supreme Court did not take up the Vatican's appeal of a ruling by a federal appeals court allowing a suit to be brought against the Vatican by the victim of sex abuse by a Servite priest.

Summarily, the media reported it as a decision against the Vatican, pre-announcing - in many cases, not without gloating - that the Pope and his co-workers would soon be called to answer to a US court for events that took place more than 40 years ago!

Then, the media completely distorted the sense of the homily by Benedict XVI on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. Some TV newscasts or Italian papers made it appear the Pope had mounted an irate accusation against the Church itself, thus 'legitimizing' their verdict that the Church is nothing more than a miserable band of people dedicated to the worst crimes one can imagine!

Papa Ratzinger, of course, said no such thing, but in many press clippings of the day, he was once again the Grand Inquisitor this time lashing at the Church herself.

Now, this systematic disinformation regarding the life of the Church and the work of the Pope can certainly be explained - but not justified - in that the current system of information feeds on immediacy, on comments that are instantly disseminated on the Internet, on scandalous headlines that may not have anything to do with what the story actually says.

One might even say that newsmen do not always have the time to read an entire papal discourse [BS! Even his Christmas addresses to the Curia and the diplomatic corps - generally the longest of those he gives - will not require half an hour to read!], although the homily on July 29 was neither long nor complex!

Or, it could be said that the reason for such a habitual failure to understand the Pope's words is an ignorance of Catholic doctrine and the history of the Church - in short, that reporters lack the ABCs to correctly understand the reflections of a theologian as refined as Joseph Ratzinger. And in some cases, that is probably so.

[It's not as if Benedict XVI ever expresses himself in abstruse theological jargon incomprehensible to the uninitiated! It is just that some Rome-based correspondents who have covered the Vatican for years, even decades, continue to get simple things wrong about the Church, and their editors apparently do no editing at all - editing includes correcting facts - or do not know any better themselves. And they obviously can't be bothered to check their facts out. In the age of the Internet, when instant fact-checking is possible, that is completely unacceptable. Laziness, ignorance, bias, built-in hostility - today's journalists seem think they have no responsibility for anything at all except to grind out a story to meet their deadline, and especially, to push their ideological agenda while doing so.]

But it cannot be denied, considering published articles and broadcasts in recent days by the so-called 'secular media', that underlying the bad information on the Church and Benedict XVI is a firm and obstinate intention to place Catholicism in a bad light, to furnish public opinion with a distorted and negative image of the Christian experience, to propagandize - as the old Masonic and anti-clerical press did - the false as true, in a relentless ideological battle against a reality whose only fault is to propose to men in every age a truth which is 'a sign of contradiction' to the dominant worldly opinion, and against the usual way of conceiving the relationships of power, and power itself, whether it is cultural, political or mediatic.

A dramatic testimonial by the Bishop of San Marino, Mons. Luigi Negri, published in Il Foglio on June 29, is emblematic in this respect and compels reflection.

He wrote: "Those who attack the Church today also have a precise objective: to deprive Catholic parents of the right to educate their children as Catholics. In my diocese, from the time that the media started to drum up pedophilia among priests, parents have stopped taking their children to oratories (parish centers for community activities). In San Marino, we have never even had a single accusation of pedophilia against any priest. And yet, the parents are now wary!" [That's truly unfortunate, but does it not also indicate a 'weakness' of faith among the Catholics of the diocese? Surely the bishop and the priests can do something to allay their fears and strengthen their faith, especially if the diocese - located within a sovereign principality - has not had any case of priestly offenses!]

It is one thing to give out news and commentaries, even if often distracted and approximative, but quite another to foment, as so many information media are doing, a continuing witch hunt against the Church as a means of waging war against Catholicism, the Pope, and ultimately, the faithful, to whom it has been more or less suggested - to use a euphemism - not to entrust their children to priests, parishes, oratories, catechists, ecclesial movements, anything that has to do with the Church, because it would be unhealthy and unsafe for them.

No one, starting with Benedict XVI, denies the seriousness of the pedophile crimes committed by some priests, nor the need to expose such crimes and do everything to prevent them from happening again - or at least to minimize any such possibility.

But it is also evident that much of the media use it to fan the flames of hostility against the Church in its entirety - a campaign that must be opposed by anyone, secular or Christian, who respects freedom of thought, of religion, of education - and their full realization in so-called 'civilized' societies.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/07/2010 03:49]
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