Posted on 03/31/2007 11:59:19 AM PDT by NYer
PARIS (Reuters) - A top aide to Pope Benedict has blasted the media for highlighting the Vatican's views on sex while maintaining a "deafening silence" about charity work done by thousands of Catholic organisations around the world.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is effectively the Vatican's prime minister, also accused the media of deliberately misinterpreting the Pope's speeches, especially his Regensburg address last September which angered Muslims.
"We face an extremely grave problem. The church's messages are subject to a type of manipulation and falsification by some western media," Bertone said in an interview with Le Figaro Magazine published in Paris on Saturday.
"I see a fixation by some journalists on moral topics, such as abortion and homosexual unions, which are certainly important issues but absolutely do not constitute the thinking and work of the church," he said.
"Why this deafening silence?" he asked. "We have to say the press does not write much about the social and charity work of thousands of Catholic organisations around the world."
Bertone said journalists had twisted the Pope's Regensburg address -- in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor linking Muslims and violence -- into a speech on Islam rather than the discussion on the role God played in society.
"Pope Benedict's thoughts were neatly blacked out," he said. "Commentators who take phrases out of context in a misleading extrapolation are exercising their trade dishonestly."
He said the German-born Pontiff had made clear in Regensburg that he wanted "a healthy confrontation" with Islam and that several Muslim thinkers had welcomed his invitation to dialogue.
Bertone has been one of the church's harshest critics of Dan Brown's popular novel The Da Vinci Code.
In the interview he also took aim at "The Lost Tomb of Jesus", a new film claiming that archaeologists have found the tomb of Jesus and his family and indications that Mary Magdelene, one of his followers in the gospels, was his wife.
According to the Bible, Jesus never married and rose bodily from the dead after his crucifixion.
"This is a strategy against the church and the divine figure of Christ," he said. "These campaigns try to sap the faith of Christian people and the trust the faithful have in the church."
The apocryphal gospels used as sources for popular books and films were not new discoveries but well-known books written a century or two after the original gospels, he said.
"Authors who try to sow confusion between these two different sources profit from religious ignorance," he said.
Well Father you must understand that the western media is pro terrorist and most are the children of Hitler and Stalin, so they will do everything they can to destroy the Church and any religion expect Islam.
I like this cardinal.
I get so frustrated with all of the political talk about something that is nothing more, and certainly no less than an attack by ALLAH against JESUS.
You say to may toe and I say to mah toe, and the cabbage heads say no to us both and does everything to cut us off of the vine.
Personally I like Future Weapons on the Discovery channel ... melons and cabbages get blown to smithereens.
I like this pope, this is the second time in a week that he's come out swinging. Earlier, he made his warnings on the existence of hell.
Now if we can get him to use that same verbal firepower on the Muslims.
Is the church just tumbling on to the fact that 90% of the world's media is anti-Catholic?
The secular Left is determined to stamp out Christianty over the rest of this century; they are moving right along.
Gosh, I thought it was a twofer: I liked what the mediots said the Pope said, and I also liked what he actually said.
Rah, rah, Ratzinger!
I have followed AP articles over the years and I have written several "Letters to the Editor" Fortunately they have been published. We all know that Christianity and especially the Catholic Church is in the cross hairs of the media. It is up to the laity to follow what is written. I am sorry to say that the laity is larthargic especially in the Catholic Church. Following is one example:
April 26, 2004
Dear Editor:
I have a few comments about your recent articles and the religiosity of those of Mifflin and Juniata Counties.
It is amazing how a newspaper as yours can give a front-page headline above your masthead to a march in Washington, “Abortion Rights Activists…” April 26, 2004 and a five column spread to the story that you picked up from AP that is so full of miss-leads it makes your newspaper
appear to be in agreement with these people. Your using AP’s estimated crowd size “to between 500,000 and 800,000 strong” contradicts other published reports such as the leftist’s “Democratic Free Speech’s” estimate of 1 million strong or one Web site’s 250,000 strong. Which estimate was correct? Which crowd size should be published? Maybe leaving out unsupported crowd size would have been more objective on your part?
By comparison it is also amazing that the coverage you gave the Pro-Life March in January of this year consisted of a two-column article that consisted of as much verbiage from the Culture of Death people as the Pro-Life people. Not only was your coverage pale by comparison, you also disjointed the article by showing one picture and that was of the Culture of Death protesters. I noticed that your April 26, 2004 Culture of Death article was very consistent in that you gave prominent space to the usual “gang” of
Hollywood starlets who I would suspect would get such fanfare from the tabloids, not from a family newspaper.
In addition using a quote from Frances Kissling from the April 26 article that you failed to research is appalling. For me to quote her would be too inane but I give another of her famous quotes from another time: “I spent twenty
years looking for a government that I could overthrow without being thrown in jail. I finally found one in the Catholic Church.” That is how Frances Kissling, the president of Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), explained her mission to a reporter from the magazine, Mother Jones.” To print a quote from an apostate Catholic who has been rejected by the Church and who has rejected the Church is very questionable on your part.
For your information, on November 4, 1993, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) released a statement about Kissling’s group stating, “Many people, including Catholics, may be led to believe that it [CFFC] is an authentic Catholic organization. It is not. It has no affiliation, formal or otherwise, with the Catholic Church.” The bishops added that CFFC “is associated with the pro-abortion lobby in Washington, D.C.” and
“attracts public attention by its denunciations of basic principles of Catholic morality and teaching….” And in May 2000, the president of the NCCB, Bishop Joseph Fiorenza, denounced the group for its rejection and distortion of the Church’s teachings on life issues. As the foregoing quote
indicates, Ms Kissling is not quite accepted by the Church and if you did your research you would see such information on her.
Another example of your lack of research was the “Putting Kerry on the 'wafer watch” article by Ellen Goodman, April 15, 2005. You also printed a quote from Ms Kissling: “The whole thing, fumed Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice, turned us into a nation of "eucharistic Peeping
Toms": "I hope the bishops are satisfied that the sacraments of the church are now the subject of a media frenzy." The only “media frenzy” created is by Ms Kissling.
Your positioning and carrying of the abortion article with its lack of credibility and Goodman’s article comparing Holy Eucharist to a “wafer” is an affront to not only Catholics but also Christians as a whole. It is your responsibility to make sure the articles you carry are either correct or have truth in them. Neither of these articles has either. Do you not check your story content or is your reporting such that “we go with whatever is given us”. We surely do not want to be accused of yellow journalism, do we?
And while I am berating your newspaper let me turn your readers attention to the following: "So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:16)
The reason for the forgoing quote is that you recently had an editorial that made excellent points on abortion. At the same time as your editorial I was in the midst of sending 164 letters to churches in Mifflin and Juniata
Counties seeking their aid in starting a Pro-Life Chapter. To date I have heard from 1 person who said her pastor gave her the letter to check. I followed the letter campaign with two advertisements in your newspaper’s
“Religion” section asking for the same aid as in the letters. The advertisements received no response. The forgoing quote from St. John is what our Lord said to him about the church at Laodicea. It was a city of great wealth, so the Laodiceans didn’t have to rely on anyone. They had obtained their wealth from textiles, largely
the production of black wool, and from banking.
Our Lord did not “spit” the church of Laodicea out because of its wealth.
He “spit” it out because it did not have time for the spiritual things and for the luke warmness of its clergy and congregation towards faith and morals.
For all I know He may have “spit” out the church because it did not respond to a letter asking for some aid in a very spiritual, moral matter.
Let not our churches fit John’s description. 43 million abortions since 1973 means 43 million women’s lives have been affected. I would hate to be the person who will have to face these babies on Judgment Day when they ask,
“Why did you do this to us?” Let us make an effort in aiding those unfortunate women and babies now! Let us not be lukewarm but have fire in our spirit.
Kudos on taking it right back to the press! God bless you, Franky!
************
I can only imagine the response that received. :)
Good for you!
Seems to me that too often organizations, whether religious or secular, are afraid to call the media on their lies. Maybe this cardinal's words will embolden others to speak up and tell the media they are on notice for their coverage.
God bless you!
Fight the good fight!
Thank you.
I must say our local daily is very conservative. They support all conservative candidates and they publish all my letters.
The paper also carry Creator's writers. It really is only on occasion that a Goodman or someone of her speed gets published. I really get after them because the AP wire services send them that junk and the local paper subscribes to AP. The local paper, as with most small "Dailies", cannot afford a full time correspondent.
God Bless.
The world is evil. He expected otherwise??
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