'This language is too harsh':
When the Pope speaks Christian truth
Translated from
December 18, 2012
AS if it were a law inscribed in nature, the moments of recognition and success (by human measure) achieved by the Successor of Peter are soon followed by some brutal attacks by the powers of the world
[i.e., the media].
This has happened hundreds of times, and once again last week because of a few sentences in his Message for the 2013 World Day of Peace. Of course, many factors contribnuted: the presence of themes that are taboo for the dominant culture; the anti=Catholic virus which writer Peter Viereck has called 'the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals'; and, why not say it?, the lack of an adequate and foresighted presentation of the Holy Father's texts which would present, at least to some degree, the malevolent manipulations to which they become subjected in the media.
[There was the usual Vatican news conference to 'present' the Pope's text, but the presentors always come in with set pieces to deliver which simpoly assume that whatever text they present will not provide any occasion for equivcation. In this case, however, only the deliberately malicious could have manipulated the Pope's general re-statement of age-old Catholic teaching into the perversion that he supports the death penalty for homosexuals!]
What's certain is that following the success of the Twitter initiative (followers have now exceeded the two-million mark), which has so annoyed the fastidious on both left and right, there came the new hammerblows from media.
The grotesque tends towards the infinite when it comes to attacking the Pope, who has been presented as a warrior on a crusade against homosexuals. At least, a media outlet that can hardly be called pro-Church as the British Guardian has noted that the Pope remains Catholic - i.e., he continues to urge the teachings of the Church - but that in no case has he ever said that homosexuals are a threat to humanity.
[Restan appears to have taken the cue from the recent reproduction on Lella's blog of an applicable January 2012 blogpost by the Guardian's Andrew Brown - no defender of the Church by any means - who had made the argument in reference to the Pope's statements to the Vatican diplomatic corps in what amounts to his yearly state-of-the-world address. Andrew Brown's opinion, however, remains his personal opinion and is not necessarily the editorial position of the Guardian - though would it were so in this case!.]
The paragraph of discord from the World Peace Day message says: "There is also a need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union; such attempts actually harm and help to destabilize marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society".
It goes on to say that the Church does not promote this and other principles as truths of the faith, but that these are inscribed in human nature and are accessible to reason. It explains the action of the Church (as much enforced as it is badly receoved) from the perspective that when such principles are denied or misunderstood, grave danger is inflicted on justice, which along with truth and freedom, is the foundation of true peace.
In fact, it seems to me that the nucleus of the Message is in its affirmation that "The precondition for peace is the dismantling of the dictatorship of relativism and of the supposition of a completely autonomous morality which precludes acknowledgment of the ineluctable natural moral law inscribed by God upon the conscience of every man and woman. Peace is the building up of coexistence in rational and moral terms, based on a foundation whose measure is not created by man, but rather by God".
And one seems to hear from the editorial rooms of the global village that same grumbling that Jesus heard more than once said about him: "This language is too harsh".
Benedict XVI says that equiparating marriage to other types of human union does harm to justice, but in no case that he judge the conscience or the heart of anyone, least of all, of homosexuals who are not even mentioned in the message.
What the Pope said is exactly what the Spanish bishops have been saying [about the secular assault on teaditional marriage], as have the French opponents to President Hollande's proposed same-sex 'marriage' law and the North Americans against Obama's latest moves.
It is the Church's secular doctrine expressed in the context in which many Western nations are rushing suicidally to dissolve the very substance of matrimony.
One can debate the Church's increasingly lonely position, it can be criticized (with some reason, one must beg), and it is understandable that it could hurt liberal sensibilities.
But the media cannot lie about what the Pope has said
[or in this case, make up a story that he supports something odious to any reasonable person, let alone to a Christian!] - Or is it that when it comes to the Catholic Church, and especially the Pope, lying is allowed?
The Church speaks to the human heart and offers something good that corresponds to the heart's aspirations. That is why she continues to be followed by men and women in all times and places, and it is necessary that she strives to bear witness to the truth it transmits with wisdom, transparency and love.
But it is also true - and will be to the very end - that she is to many men 'the stranger', as the great T.S. Eliot once said. Because she is severe when men would rather look the other way but is tolerant and benevolent when they are rigid and intansignet.
In a very beautiful way, Benedict XVI affirms in his new Peace Message that "peace is not a dream nor a utopia - it is possible"
[actually, he was quoting Paul VI].
But peace cannot be achieved merely by proclaiming generic tolerance but through patient reconstruction of what is human. To which the witness of Peter contributes amidst the torrent of words without sense into which much of public debate has become.
A more direct angle of attack is taken by an Anglophone commentator:
The gay intimidation campaign
is now targeting the Pope
By Phil Lawler
December 17, 2012
In his annual message for the World Day of Peace—a statement of nearly 3,600 words—Pope Benedict XVI devotes one sentence to the campaign to redefine marriage. And what happens? Thousands of headlines announce that the Pope has condemned same-sex marriage as a threat to world peace.
This spectacular over-reaction to a tangential remark is, as the director of the Vatican press office observed, “lacking in decent composure and sense of proportion: it consists in shouting, not in reasoning; it is intended to intimidate those who want to support this view freely in the public arena.”
All too true. But here’s another factor. By focusing obsessively on the issue of same-sex marriage, the mass media obscured the remainder of the papal message. People who might have profited from the Pope’s insights have heard nothing about what he wrote, apart from that one sentence. The main thrust of the message is nearly lost.
[But that is the corollary objective of the anti-Pope attacks: make so much ado about an anthill magnified into a mountain that no one will pay attention to anything else said!]
Just last week, as the controversy over the papal message began, Roger Scruton wrote in the
London Times about the singular success that gay activists have achieved in demonizing their opponents:
If we ask ourselves how it is that the advocacy of gay marriage has become an orthodoxy to which all our political leaders subscribe, we must surely acknowledge that intimidation has some part to play in the matter. Express the slightest hesitation on this score and someone will accuse you of “homophobia”, while others will organise to ensure that, even if nothing else is known about your views, this at least will be notorious.
Isn’t that precisely what has happened to the Pope’s message? A few months ago Ross Douthat commented on the same phenomenon in the
New York Times. The gay-rights movement has advanced because of changes in public opinion, he conceded.
But it has also advanced, and will probably continue to advance, through social pressure, ideological enforcement, and legal restriction. Indeed, the very language of the movement is explicitly designed to exert this kind of pressure: By redefining yesterday’s consensus view of marriage as “bigotry,” and expanding the term “homophobia” to cover support for that older consensus as well as personal discomfort with/animus toward gays.
Douthat linked to stories about the gay-activist web site that advertised the names and addresses of California residents who signed a petition to stop same-sex marriage, thus making them candidates for reprisals; the successful campaign to close down Catholic adoption agencies in Illinois because they would not cater to same-sex couples; and, most ominously, the attempt to ruin the academic career of Mark Regnerus, a sociologist who dared to question the studies that have been used to claim that children flourish in homosexual households.
Regnerus has survived the fraudulent attempt to censure him for “scholarly misconduct.” But his standing in the academic world has unquestionably been damaged — only a brave conference organizer would invite him to deliver a paper on any topic today — and younger scholars who might be considering research on homosexuality have seen what could happen to them if they go ahead with their plans.
And now the campaign of intimidation has reached the Pope. The next time the Holy Father prepares a statement, and uses the argument on same-sex marriage to illustrate a point, Vatican officials will read the draft and ask him: “Your Holiness, do you really need to include this sentence? Do you want to run the risk that no one will ever notice the rest of the statement?” Even if that argument for caution is ultimately rejected, the fact that it will be raised — as surely it will — illustrates how successful gay activists have been in restricting public discussion.
What most commentators fail to point out about all this secular activism that happens to be anti-Church - whether it is pro-abortion, pro-SSM, anti-Christmas, or whatnot - is that what they all have in common is a virtual tyranny of the minority these days - in which the views of a fairly small sector of society are made to prevail over the rights and prerogatives of the majority. But that happens to be the objectionable and unconscionable principle that governs what is 'politically correct' today - PC has become the ultimate criterion of behavior, rather than common sense and those "values inscribed in the human heart that are part of the natural law" as the Church points out.The dictatorship of the unelected minority is a most odious offshoot of the dictatorship of relativism.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/01/2013 22:57]