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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
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15/12/2012 12:08
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For a change, the Anglophone press appear benign compared to the outright malice and downright (or down-wrong) misrepresentation of some of the Holy Father's general words in the 2013 WD of Peace message by some Italian media outlets, including the notoriously anti-Church and anti-Pope La Repubblica. In which what the Pope says about same-sex unions in the message was shamelessly extrapolated to him expressing support for a Uganda law [not yet a law, but proposed legislation] that purportedly prescribes the death penalty for homosexuality! Francesco Colafemmina in his blog Fides et Forma has presented a factual account of this outrageous claim, how it originated, and the actual facts that were falsely used to make the claim (I hope I can translate it later).... Meanwhile, Reuters's usually pugnacious Philip Pullella has this comparably benign report which constitutes a model of objectivity compared to the vicious misrepresentations in the Italian media.

Pope calls for new economic model
and more ethical markets

By Philip Pullella


VATICAN CITY, Dec. 14 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Friday called for a new economic model and ethical regulations for markets, saying the global financial crisis was proof that capitalism does not protect the weakest members of society.

In his message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, which is marked on January 1, Benedict also warned that a food insecurity was a threat to peace in some parts of the world.

He also strongly reaffirmed the Church's opposition to gay marriage, saying heterosexual marriage had an indispensable role in society.

The annual message, which traditionally centres on how to promote peace and how to reduce threats to peace, is sent to heads of state, government and institutions such as the United Nations and non-governmental organisations.

In it the pope said economic models that seek maximum profit and consumption and encourage competition at all costs had failed to look after the basic needs of many and could sow social unrest.

"It is alarming to see hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor, by the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism," he said.

The pope said people, groups and institutions were needed to foster human creativity, to draw lessons from the crisis and to create a new economic model.

The message had echoes of his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), in which he called for a world political authority to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies.

"The creation of ethical structures for currency, financial and commercial markets is also fundamental and indispensable," the pope said in Friday's message. "These must be stabilised and better coordinated and controlled so as not to prove harmful to the very poor."

He said food insecurity was becoming an ever-increasing threat to peace and social stability, calling the food crisis even greater than the financial crisis.

Ensuring people have access to sufficient nutrition should be central to the international political agenda because of inter-related crises, sudden shifts in prices of basic foodstuffs, and unethical practices, he said.

There had been insufficient control of food security by governments and the international community and he called for more help for poor rural farmers.

In a report in October, the United Nations food agencies said one out of every eight people in the world is chronically undernourished.

In his message, the Pope also attacked moves to liberalise abortion and euthanasia, saying they posed a threat to the fundamental right to life and again denounced gay marriage.

The Vatican has recently stepped up its attack against moves to make gay marriage legal following gains in the United States, France and Spain.

Like Colafemmina, our friend Lella (Raffaella) has been fulminating, as she does every now and then on her much=followed blog when the occasion presents itself, against the failure of the Vatican communications phalanx to immediately protest the outrageous claims about the Pope made by the usual culprits in Italian media.

The fact is those who are responsible (more often, irresponsible) for Vatican communications have no hard and fast rule for when to react to media outrages against the Pope. More often than not, the Vatican simply allows such outrages to build and peak and then deflate and fizzle out after the proverbial nine days. Yet they will react with rare promptness to some attack against anyone else in the hierarchy but the Pope. As though they think there is no need to defend the Pope against outright falsehoods and malicious misrepresentations!

Don't they realize that they are behaving exactly like the dominant secular mentality which considers the Church and the Pope fair game for any and all attacks - and open season all the time - though they quake in fear of their lives to say or do anything that might offend Islam or Judaism in any way? They are worse, however, because not only is there zero risk in defending the Pope but that it is their fundamental duty to do so, but they do not seem to think it is, at all!

Why can't a policy be set about how and when the Vatican communications behemoth (as massive, lumbering and retarded as that prehistoric creature) should and must respond to such outrages. Where to draw the line between respecting freedom of expression by journalists and commentators, and promptly denouncing irresponsible lie-mongering (to the point of calumny) about the Pope himself! Is Greg Burke helping in this in any way, or is he butting his head against a schizoid in-house establishment that, as Lella points out, rushes to embrace Twitter but neglects the ABCs of basic traditional communications?

However, I would not be so quick to disparage the Twitter initiative, if only because 1) it should be a fairly easy routine that can be the work of one person rather than a committee and several levels of hierarchy, and 2) it reaches a much wider audience than the parochial and provincial reach of, say, Italian news media. And 3) it has the precise advantage of the Pope speaking himself, minus a media filter, and in brief statements that are more likely to be remembered than any of the statements issued in labored bureaucratese by the Vatican - and therefore, 4) to have an impact that is both subliminal and overt (witness the overnight sea change in the content of Italian Twitter talk about the Church after the Pope's first three responses to @ask Pontifex).


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