Posted on 04/06/2005 12:41:17 PM PDT by wagglebee
The late Pope John Paul II is allegedly getting the so-called "Reagan treatment" and the liberal media do not like it any more than they liked Ronald Reagan.
"Many critics argue that the media are doing now what they did when former President Ronald Reagan died in June: reducing a deeply controversial figure to a warm, grandfatherly caricature," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
One critic peddled the current - and dubious - media line that the pope was out step with members of the Church in the West.
"This is a church with declining priests, with declining nuns, with declining church attendance," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Inquirer. "This was a very conservative pope. Most of his Western flock was not with his program."
Like the overwhelming number of her mainstream media colleagues, Miss Jamieson failed to understand that the program she mentioned was not John Paul's but the 2,000-year-old dogma of the Roman Catholic Church that he or any other pope is powerless to change.
Another popular media fiction is that the pope was a "polarizing" figure who created needless divisions within the Roman Catholic Church - a notion that avoids recognition of the fact that the alleged polarization arose from his defending what his church defines as good against that which it declares to be evil.
Jeff Sharlet, editor of The Revealer, a Web magazine about media coverage of religion funded by New York University's department of journalism and its Center for Religion and Media, adopted that line of attack.
"The reason we're getting sick of thinking about it is because this complicated story line is being reduced to a shallower level even than Ronald Reagan," he said. "The Pope was a figure of tremendous polarization. ... Now people are being asked to turn on a dime and consider him ... a mythic figure who had a simple and straightforward meaning."
Christopher Winner of United Press International, who the Inquirer noted covered both papal deaths in 1978, says the pope has been transformed in death into another one-dimensional cult celebrity. "The coverage to me is extremely manipulative. It's Hollywood coverage - it's celebrity coverage. It's uncritical. ... I'm not suggesting that he wasn't a remarkable figure - he was. But this is completely out of proportion."
Stewart Stehlin, described by the Inquirer as an NYU history professor familiar with the Vatican, disagrees that coverage has been uncritical and notes there is a natural tendency to speak well of the dead.
"I've read an awful lot where they would be laudatory but then say, well, he hasn't accomplished this, he was too strict on that. ... I would expect in a situation like this that most comments would be laudatory."
To the leftist media elite (who view Ronald Reagan - who, with the pope, brought Communism tumbling down - as an amiable dunce), John Paul is likely seen as a cranky old conservative wedded to outmoded doctrines who stood in the way of what they regard as human progress.
In 1992 there was a political cartoon of a Democrat Donkey reading a book about making "assisted suicide work for you". That 1992 cartoon just dovetails perfectly with this Democrat Party as culture of death.
anyone who know how to find this now that democrats are in desperation mode.
Yeah - he followed scripture instead of man - what a nerve>
He was, I believe, exactly what was needed to bring the church back from the brink...but don't take my word for it, I'm not even Catholic
What you said :O)
And Jimmah C. (the rabbit is after me) don't get to go. Yes, there is a God
Evidently, though whether it is the Catholic version of God is something we can debate at some other juncture.
Best quote I've heard/seen today - (supposedly, have no source) when queried about lodgings in the area, a Roman resident said "Rome is full. There are no rooms at the inns."
Imagine what hell they will go through after their own funerals, whenever God decides those will be.
" If they don't like the churches beliefs and doctrine tough luck, they are free to leave the church at any time."
Have to remember, none of these pundits are Christian, nor do any of them have enough respect for the church to actually find out what it is all about. They can't leave the church, because they wouldn't be caught dead in one to begin with. Pay them no mind. No one else does.
Amen. Amen.
People say sheep are stupid. I say there is nothing stupid about knowing you need the Shepherd.
Thompson was a freaking joke. The clown spent his whole life trying to be a character in a newspaper comic strip. I think he succeeded. I laughed when he offed himself. What a pitiful piece of trash.
progressive just means communist to me.
There were one million people IN LINE TO VIEW THE BODY today. They were going to have to shut the line down to newcomers today.
That's rich! thanks for sharing ;o)
it a way that is sad that it has come to that.
Once upon a time, progressive just mean progress. Progress like building the highways, erecting the sky scrapers. Progressive meant the march of progress. It did not mean the invasion of communists or leftists.
The communists took over liberal, the communists took over progressive.
Exactly. I can't believe the ARROGANCE of a lot of people I'm seeing on TV (a lot of them not even CATHOLIC) taking polls and questioning people whether they agree that the Church should change.
The CHURCH IS NOT A DEMOCRACY! It will remain true to the teachings of Our Founder, Jesus Christ, no matter if 99.99% wanted it to change!
The fascinating thing that no-one seems to report is, the Pope's popularity is specifically DUE to his strong stands on moral issues. People RESPECTED the man; inside they KNEW what he was saying was correct; they didn't agree with him because they didn't WANT to agree - it would mean changing one's lifestyle and sacrificing alot.
Church's teaching on women's ordination, artificial birth control, fornication and gay marriage will NEVER change.
End of story. Those wishing change should either accept this, or leave the Church.
You just summarized the baby-boom generation.
I heard the Pope disliked the self-centered baby boomer generation too, and that's part of why he bypassed them sometimes and reached out to young people.
In a way, I hope the leftists in the media get even louder and more vitriolic. It will make the vote-by-county map of 2008 a sea of red with pinpricks of blue.
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