You know how The Screwtape Letters was written from the perspective of a senior demon to his nephew demon? This article on the Pope’s visit to Britain by Washington Post foreign service writer Anthony Faiola reads better — and much funnier — if you imagine it written by someone pretending to be a demon.
It’s bad. You don’t have to trust me on that.
To be sure, not everything on Ignatius Press’ tongue-in-cheek guide to the British press is there. Here’s a sample from that list:
—Prominently mention that young Ratzinger served in the Nazi army. Don’t provide any context—just let the association be made. After all, it’s pretty hard to dig out of that hole!
—Immediately follow up with mention of the sex scandals. Imply that it is somehow the Pope’s fault that certain priests are perverts and certain bishops are pathetic, or worse. Make it sound as though molestations and abuse are happening right now, rather than pointing out that vast majority took place over thirty years ago.
—Have plenty of quotes from those openly opposed to the Pope, as well as unnamed Catholics who question, doubt, or dislike the Pope and “his” positions. Anonymous priests, bishops, and nuns are best.
Here’s just a sample from the actual article, which I don’t think is intended to satirize itself:
Benedict’s unprecedented visit has provoked strong feelings across this island nation from the start. Months before he arrived, for instance, a memo making the rounds at the British Foreign Office suggested that the pontiff be invited to preside over a same-sex marriage and visit an abortion clinic while in town.
The young diplomats responsible were reprimanded, but the note’s mixture of comedy and outrage aptly captures the mood of many Britons. By visiting this heavily secular nation, Benedict is, to quote the Guardian newspaper, “entering the lions’ den.”
Various groups — including the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests — have banded together into an alliance dubbed “Protest the Pope” and are set to march Saturday through the streets of London as the German-born pontiff hosts a vigil in Hyde Park. A number of Britons, some with deeply held suspicions of Vatican motives, are also smarting from a campaign launched by Benedict to woo dissident Anglicans angry over the ordination of gay and female clerics. Still more are furious over the $30 million price tag for the trip, largely funded by British taxpayers as is customary for state visits.
There’s really no dispute that some Anglicans have worked tirelessly for years for, well, an Anglican option under the Pope. To spin those many years of joint effort as “a campaign launched by Benedict” is hilarious, if completely inaccurate.
The entire article reeks of snark and vitriol. If you are into that (and, frankly, many reporters are), you’ll love the article. If you were hoping for a more accurate or sober or respectful treatment of an important state visit by the pope, you’ll have to find it elsewhere.
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Comments (32) |
September 16, 2010, at 4:50 pm
I wonder if Faiola knows the source of that image.
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September 16, 2010, at 4:55 pm
Must be my godless bias or something but I’m not so adept in looking for things to be offended about in articles like this. If there’s a factual error fair enough! What else is bad here? The first two paragraphs in the bit you quoted, for example, are fine.
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September 16, 2010, at 6:15 pm
Actually, according to many Catholics and Anglicans, the Catholic Church in the past has been virtually unfriendly to the idea of large groups of Anglicans entering the Catholic Church under any arrangement of any sort.
One group in the Catholic Church which has been strongly against Anglicans crossing the Tiber in large numbers has been the “liberal” or Modernist wing of the Catholic Church. The last thing they want is for traditional and orthodox Catholicism to get any sort of reinforcements, as Anglicans most certainly would be.
There have also been stories in some Catholic media that British bishops have been dragging their feet on helping Anglicans enter the Catholic Church.
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September 16, 2010, at 7:15 pm
Mollie’s on the right track. But I don’t think that we need merely to *imagine* that this and most other “journalism” covering religion has been written by demons. Rather, we need instead to *recognize* the fact.
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September 16, 2010, at 10:28 pm
As evidence of this post, this from Newsweek …
Fiddling While Christianity Burns
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September 16, 2010, at 10:36 pm
I read these articles, and find this:
This type of statement has bothered me in both broadcast and print journalism. This can very easily be read to mean that the sex abuse is continuing to happen. The syntax is very unclear, and makes it seem that there is still unchecked sex abuse going on even though the church has (finally) started to grapple with the issue. I think what they mean is that the outrage continues, but I also get the feeling that the writer is not all that fussed if you misread it that the abuse goes on unchecked.
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September 16, 2010, at 11:51 pm
A bit off topic, but I really love some of C. S. Lewis’ books. Your reference to one of his books here caused me to wonder how Lewis might have written a reporter or editor as a character in “The Great Divorce” who refuses to do a good job. Perhaps one of you could be written in as an angel who tries to get the sinner to renounce his media sin and turn toward the light?
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September 17, 2010, at 7:28 am
We in the Uk did not throw off the shackles off the church of Rome four hundred and more years ago in order to stump up the cash to host its latest leader in a State visit.
If he wants to visit his flock..fair enough. Let them pay.
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September 17, 2010, at 8:23 am
Take it up with your queen, Peter. She invited him.
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September 17, 2010, at 8:28 am
Bill P., darn it, you beat me to it. I especially “like” the way Miller boldly proclaims that the Pope “flubs” the visit when the article itself is entirely composed of more or less groundless speculation about what he might do behind closed doors!
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September 17, 2010, at 8:50 am
The same accusations against the visit, the pope and the Catholic Church are made in a Times op-ed by Roger Cohen. Yes, it is an opinion piece, and that’s what Mr Cohen gets paid to write, but it seems all the music has the same drum beat.
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September 17, 2010, at 10:12 am
I do not greatly admire the pope but I think he deserves fair treatment. The article in Newsweek, mentioned in comments above, “Fiddling While Rome Burns,” seemed to me egregiously unfair. Seems like the only real basis for criticism, other than the groundless speculation mentioned by C. Wingate, was his choice to to actually visit Britain instead of Ireland in the first place. The writer is so eager to criticize she cant even wait for the pope to seriously blunder! And the headline and blurb even exaggerated what was said in the article….. I dont like to cry bias and victim all over the place, but I think this article was biased.
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September 17, 2010, at 10:29 am
Bill,
Yes, Cohen’s piece is an editorial, but I was struck by his factual errors - or at least, his critical omissions. For example,
As GR has covered many times in the past, the timeline of the Catholic priest scandals extends much further back than Benedict’s tenure in office.
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September 17, 2010, at 10:39 am
Rather than depending on the secular media for a “sober or respectful treatment of an important state visit by the pope”, I would suggest looking to the event itself and reading the Pope’s remarks at his various engagements.
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September 17, 2010, at 12:21 pm
Sounds like you only want managed news reporting of Pope Ratzinger’s visit. His service in the Hitler Youth and the German army are certainly relevant. Fans of the pope act as if this had no moral dimension because “everyone was doing it.” When I studied the Baltimore Catechism at St. Barnabas School in Bellmore, L.I., during World War II, we were taught that “everyone’s doing it” was no excuse for immoral behavior. Detrich Bonhoffer spoke the truth to power and paid with his life. John Paul II served in the Polish underground as a young man while young Benedict was doing the goose step and saluting der Fuerher. The sex abuse came to light—inspite of vigorous attempts by churchmen at all levels while Benedict was an Archbishop, a cardinal running the agency charged with oversight of the clergy and now Pope. Not a single enabling bishop has been called to account. Cardinal Law sits fat and happy in a Rome sinecure instead of doing time in a Massachusetts prison. The Primate of Ireland reigns on despite his self-acknowledged abetting of a predator. Yet, you seem to be preoccupied with the need to be gentle on a man who has not been gentle of the weak and exploited supposedly under his care as the Shepherd of Christ’s sheep. While Benedict is trying to blame “secularism” for the catastrophic decline of religion in our time, he ignores that what is going on among many of us is disgust at the reprehensible conduct of our putative leaders, the male caste system that runs the institutional Catholic church.
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September 17, 2010, at 12:42 pm
“John Paul II served in the Polish underground as a young man while young Benedict was doing the goose step and saluting der Fuerher.”
Dear Get Religion,
Is it impolite on this board to call someone an ignorant, bigoted asshole?
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September 17, 2010, at 1:07 pm
goodness, Bill Wilson, you should come here more often.
You’d learn a thing or two about the histories you try to describe here. I pity you, you have been indoctrinated by hateful people.
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September 17, 2010, at 2:08 pm
Kristy - A few months ago a Belgian Cardinal was caught on tape urging an abuse victim to keep quiet. Belgian police raided the Church’s offices looking for further evidence of cover-ups. The abuse story is definitely not a thing of the past.
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September 17, 2010, at 2:14 pm
“To spin those many years of joint effort as “a campaign launched by Benedict” is hilarious, if completely inaccurate.”
Of course, it was Benedict who breathed life into it and made it a Vatican priority.
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September 17, 2010, at 2:18 pm
Bill (Wilson),
Since your post follows mine, I assume the ‘you’ is me.
You assert that I want ‘managed news.’ To the contrary, our news is already managed, framed and edited according to the assumptions, preoccupations, and interests of the media who ‘mediate’ the public world we share in common, but in which they exercise a disproportionate (and mostly unaccountable) share of power.
I simply want the Pope to be able to speak for himself (or rather, for Christ)—and to be heard—without being managed. Your post suggests that the Church has relinquished that voice and the right to such a hearing, or at any rate, that affording the Pope a hearing is tantamount to ‘going gentle’ on a man whose lifetime of guilt you have already decided. I think this is terribly wrong and unfair, but since no defense seems likely to dislodge such a bitter and sweeping condemnation, I won’t offer one. And of course I do not wish to defend the abuse, which is indefensible, or the response to it in many instances.
There is nevertheless a real and very public danger in your anger, however righteous it may or may not be. One of the great costs of this scandal, in addition to its human toll, is the warrant it provides for a subtle kind of totalitarianism, reinforced by ‘template’ coverage from global media. The result is to banish from public life, simply by editing them away, such questions about God and the human being that the presence of the Church, even with its stains, forces us to confront. Perhaps you think the trade is worth the bargain, but I would hope that most of us would see that the danger or exorcising these questions extends far beyond the relation of the Catholic Church to secular culture, which many people do not care about, into all realms of life, which they do care about.
One reason why Papal visits, especially to English speaking countries, are so important is that they are a direct confrontation with that totalitarian tendency: they break through the media’s frame and command at least a partial hearing in their own terms. No doubt I am biased, but I still think, in spite of everything, that the Pope’s message—that is, the Gospel—looks large in comparison to that frame or, in any event, points beyond it. That will ultimately be decided in the souls of people, but only people who are permitted to make the comparison in the first place.
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September 17, 2010, at 2:23 pm
Bill W’s last sentence gives away the real burr under his saddle. The Catholic Church—for all its flaws, mistakes, and sins will not change its traditions or orthodox teachings to suit the latest leftward or rightward hurricane of demands.
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September 17, 2010, at 2:27 pm
“will not change its traditions or orthodox teachings to suit the latest leftward or rightward hurricane of demands.”
Except when it does. To pretend that the Vatican is not influenced by ideological winds is ludicrous on its face.
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September 17, 2010, at 3:07 pm
In addition to most “journalistic coverage” of religion being written by demons, a great many Get Religion comment posts are. Witness Bill Wormwood … I mean, Bill Wilson.
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September 17, 2010, at 6:53 pm
Mollie -
Thank you for leaving this comment thread intact. While it veers away from the main focus of journalism criticism, I think we see here the result of journalism such as Lisa Miller’s. I’ll admit I declined to read her article after noting that she declared the pope’s trip wrong-headed on it’s first day. Did she write last week or last month?
At any rate, the weight of factual inaccuracy expressed by Bill Wilson (does he know the pope didn’t actually participate in the Hitler Youth, at some personal risk?) only apes the general tone of press coverage of this papacy, as it did the last papacy, and many before that.
As to the sexual abuse scandal, well, it’s as good a club as any with which to beat the Church. We know the bulk of the cases are 20-40 years old. We know the problem never was greater than that of other religious bodies, or, for that matter, other social institutions (e.g. schools). We know that a lot of priests were turned over to the police (contra the popular myth), who did little or nothing. We know the bishops have done a lot to correct the real problems. In the meantime, everything the pope, or any serious Catholic has to say is dismissed because of the “sex abuse scandal enveloping the Catholic Church”.
A lot of us are really pleased at this, since our community gets a good cleansing while the rest of you continue to ignore your own problems, being too busy righteously pointing fingers at the stupid Catholics. The end will be quite good for us. In fact, it’s already getting better, though Lisa Miller and her friends will never let that be known.
In the meantime, the man most responsible for the progress made is routinely slandered by ignorant bigots. No surprise.
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September 17, 2010, at 6:57 pm
There’s a distinction between “being influenced by ideological winds” as in the Church responding to a trend in economics or politics or philosophy and changing its traditions or doctrines. If you’re stating that it does the latter so blatantly that denying it is “ludicrous”, I’d like to see examples.
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September 18, 2010, at 9:56 am
It’s telling how the story line on Benedict has to be maintained at whatever cost to the facts, which are that Ratzinger at the end of the war was a teen-aged seminarian who was dragged out by the authorities to dig trenches and who slipped away at the first opportunity. The familiar picture of blond-haired boys worshipping their leader just isn’t accurate, yet it seems to be the inevitable prefix to any story about the pope travelling here or speaking there. It’s hard not to conclude that reporters (and a lot of other commentators) can’t be bothered to free themselves of the carefully constructed fabricated Benedict.
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September 18, 2010, at 5:30 pm
A nice article, a bit fluffy, but notable for being in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/18/pope-benedict-hyde-park-speech
The protest article is equally fluffy, which is fair:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/18/pope-benedict-xvi-protest
The sex abuse article was standard fare with the standard voices:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/18/pope-victims-child-abuse-sorrow
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September 18, 2010, at 6:01 pm
John Paul II served in the Polish underground as a young man while young Benedict was doing the goose step and saluting der Fuerher.
Actually Benedict was still in high school living with his parents during WWII, whereas John Paul was a young adult in an occupied country. I’m not aware of an underground in Germany that Benedict could have joined.
It wasn’t necessary to sign up for Hitler Youth; it was mandatory. German teachers had to turn in the names of all their boy students of a certain age. It is well known that Benedict never attended a meeting - at great risk to himself, as a previous commenter says.
Finally, the irony is that Benedict is taking the heat for the more popular John Paul’s wrong-headed view of the “sex-scandal”. It is thought that he assumed it was the same tactic op false accusations as were used by the Nazis and then the Communists to undermine the Catholic Church in Poland. Benedict fought to gain authority over the cases in the early 2000s. Funny how the deceased John Paul is now lauded as being so popular whereas he was also regularly derided by the press during his Pontificate. You might get the idea from some reporting that Benedict made up all this unpopular stuff about abortion and condoms after the good John Paul died.
I keep seeing the same wrong “facts” repeated over and over in news stories as well as opinion pieces.
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September 20, 2010, at 9:48 am
The Pope is an integralist. He believe his teachings should govern the political lives of every citizen of every country in the world. How can anyone who does not share that point of view respect it because that point of view has no tolerance for any other?
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September 21, 2010, at 12:17 pm
See, Frank, that’s exactly the problem. You are simply one in a long line of people who have Benedict packaged up under a neat one- or two-word label. When I read the real Ratzinger/Benedict, I find that he writes a lot like his counterpart in Lambeth Palace: complex, nuanced, often resistant of summary. Finding the real person and his real beliefs inside of that is hard, not to mention that (and in the wise he is also like Cantuar) he seems to subsume his own beliefs to his position a lot. So you read an article about him, and it’s full of carefully balanced, dueling quotations from pie-in-the-sky traditionalists who want to believe he’ll fix everything, and nervous, angry church liberals (or worse, secularists) who think he’s going to make everything worse. The one thing I cannot get from that kind of reportage is the truth about the pope, because nobody is actually telling you about him; they are telling you their hopes and fears about him.
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September 22, 2010, at 3:37 am
Ratzinger was forced to be in both the Hitelr Youth and the German army. They are racial slurs against him and have no relevance at all. Ratzinger was never a partisan of Nazism and to claim he was is to engage in lieing and seeking to decieve.
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September 22, 2010, at 3:46 am
Benedict was born in 1927 so he turned 18 in 1945.
To compare the actions of occupied Poles to Germans living in Germany is grossly unfair. Poles did not join the underground from any love of anyone but themselves, and to act as if everyone supporting Germany in any way is evil is wrong headed.
If Ratzinger had been a concentration camp guard the “following orders is no excuse” rubbish would maybe work, but in his real case as an infantry conscript it makes no sense.
Anyway the “just following orders” claim is actually normally a lie. Most gaurds, SS workers and so on went above and beyond what they were required to do to inflict injury on the Poles, Jews, Gypsies and others being held and slaughtered.
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