They’re making this tougher than it needs to be
Today, on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, the most prominent news story was about a big layoff of some of Chicago’s most veteran and familiar news personalities by the local CBS owned station. That’s just one more in the ongoing saga about media cutbacks requiring smaller staffs and dwindled resources in the painful effort to keep up with hi-tech information delivery.
It’s a wrenching end of a long era and a new day. And it means they have a new excuse for not researching stories well or covering them accurately, though I don’t believe there’s an excuse for that. It’s not that hard to get stories right. Lots of hard work, but it can be done…on every story….and nothing less should be acceptable.
So that brings us to the buildup of coverage in the weeks before Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to America. On the one hand, the press put out stories about the dwindling Catholic Church in this country. And on the other, they say Catholics in America are eagerly anticipating the Holy Father’s arrival. But they don’t do the deeper research into the Church in America in relation to the universal Church.
This week’s issue of U.S. News & World Report has Benedict on the cover with this story.
As Benedict well appreciates, his upcoming six-day visit to Washington and New York City will bring him into direct contact with a nation that has not only the third-largest Roman Catholic population in the world but also the most diverse. In ethnic terms, that variety may be taking on an increasingly Hispanic cast—at almost 30 percent and rapidly growing—but most of America’s 195 dioceses can boast of parishes with a mini-United Nations of national flavorings as well as those in which the melting pot has effectively left no particular ethnic imprint at all.
Good so far, because it’s true that the Church in America is diverse with a hugely growing Hispanic population.
But the diversity of America’s Roman Catholic Church hardly ends with ethnicity. It also includes a rainbow of attitudes and convictions—political, social, liturgical, even theological—that reflect American individualism in ways that strain even the universalism of the Catholic Church. It’s a tough act to read this audience and even tougher to know how to address it. And it makes it no easier that this pope, a private man known for his formidable intellect and doctrinal rigor, follows in the footsteps of the charismatic and beloved John Paul II.
Bingo. Bill Donohue was right.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the United States, which begins two weeks from tomorrow:
“Look for Pope Benedict XVI to be compared unfavorably to his predecessor, John Paul II. All of a sudden, those who had no use for Pope John Paul II will now anoint him a positive force, the purpose of which is to discredit Benedict. Here’s what they will say.
“The theme will be interfaith dialogue. Unlike his predecessor, they will say, this pope has set back relations with Protestants, Jews and Muslims. He will be castigated for restating Catholic teaching on salvation and for challenging theological relativism. The green light given to the Latin Mass will be seen as another step backwards. And calling attention to the human rights deficit that marks Islam will be the subject of more aspersions. In short, he will be blamed for turning back the clock.
Some Catholic writers have expressed concern about that, shortsightedly I think. They’re worried about Benedict’s understanding of the culture he’s about to visit, as if the pope who made famous the phrase “dictatorship of relativism” will worry about how to tailor his message to this particular crowd. They’re worried that he may somehow offend, sensibilities may be provoked, feelings may be hurt…or whatever.
But the United States bishops have been working with media to lay groundwork for “the thought of Pope Benedict XVI” and how, at its core, it covers the constant and unchanging teaching of the Roman Catholic Church for two millennia.
U.S. News & World Report:
 “I think he has captured attention by what he hasn’t been,” says the Very Rev. David O’Connell, president of the Catholic University of America. “Now he can tell people what he is and is trying to achieve: the renewal of the entire church in the faith in which it has been baptized; a return to the core, the fundamentals.”
If there is a surprise to Benedict’s visit to America, that will be it.
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I hope he concentrates on what is diluting the salvific effect of the Church. I do not expect to try to make a definitive list, but those topics would include: liberation theology, since the Church has fought it quietly and has much to say to our country especially and especially now about what it is, what’s wrong with it, how to fight it; abortion; the priesthood–building it, defining it as a job that requires holiness, not computer skills, or speaking ability; the true and essential role of women in the Church and what actions Catholics are required to take as defenders of the faith to reintroduce our powerful and romantic vision of womanhood to the world; the true and essential role of the family in society and what actions Catholics are required to take as defenders of the Faith to reinforce the concept of family into society; the new clericalism; the real role of the laity in the Church, not the roles that were appropriated after Vatican II; the real role of religious orders, and his plans for them should they fail to comply and continue to exercise authority financed by the hundreds of years of property acquisition in defense of the Faith, now the inheritance of, in some cases, a feminist or marxist, un-Catholic, few.
What have I missed?
Would that he would address those issues, strike a blow that puts to rest forever that proliferation of ‘church groups’ focusing on changing God’s pronoun to She. Would that he would define Christianity once again, and expose those who cavort under its umbrella. Do we understand what relation that would have to the War on Terror, let alone the Church?