[Mb-civic] The New Pope and Journalism?s Crisis of Faith - Give me a Break!

Tue Apr 26 02:46:56 PDT 2005

To Civic:

I must say that I am enjoying Civic's many flavours of consternation about the new Pope. 

Why all the hand wringing over a holy man?

Do staunch Liberals see in this mere Holy Man a threat of an onslaught against the PC pillars of conventional wisdom,
but never enquire how or why these policies emerged? What Good do they seek? What society ill is the target of all this effort?
The crazies are only a small number, but the Republicans are rounding up the sheep while the Democrats cling to their traditional sub groups. 

More than Evangelicals

The increasingly proactive American Catholics are scooped up and dismissed under the banner of "Right wing Evangelical radicals" but they avoid understanding what motives these Catholics to vote in such strategic numbers for a Republican Protestant, against a Catholic candidate,  for the first time in history. 
Why is there a slide away from a traditional loyalty to Equality?

What's Blowin' in The Wind?
Increasingly Catholics are using a litmus test for political candidates similar to the test that the Bush administration is doing for the appointment of judges.
Something distasteful is operating within a vacuum of meaning allowing voters to flee the Democrats. What is on the move here?  
Watch Hillary Clinton; she will sort it out and absorb any new Primary Colours.

The New World Alliance

The seeming alignment of the Vatican with national (USA) political constituencies down to parish activists is becoming visible. 
What are they intending to accomplish?  And with what constituency alliances? 

Most interesting, are the peaceful overtures (sharing that month-long Herculean TV PR pageantry of Rome) over international TV, with Jews and Muslims and Orthodox Christians, where the USA policy (seed so to speak), so vapid and solipsistic, both falls on hard ground and is universally decried outside the States. (No to Kyoto and Yes to oil war)

The New Ecumenism?

What Equality for minority groups became for the Kennedys, Ecumenism will be for the next wave of urban politicians- if the Democrats will learn the soft lingo!

These believers are finding common purpose in spirit things while giving deference, indeed honour, to ethnic Church groups who hunger and thirst for Justice. 
The Democrats used the same formula to gather in all the marginalized groups to win elections starting with FDR. 

What a formula! 

But soft, shall we say Equality as a token of Secular Humanism , falls apart when the more radical marginalized groups become not only visible but dominant. 
Same Gender Marriage as an idea destroyed Kerry, even against a tyrant bully.

The New Direction?

What will The Spirit People do with such an coalescing majority that yet the blind can not see ? 

Do not be surprised that after they round up the sheep by "shunning" publicly the "sex outside of marriage genie" or indeed "the same sex inside marriage demon",  the World Alliance of Spirit Believers will step up to the world's problem of how the excesses of Capitalism and how it is to be harnessed. 

This will be done in the name of ending the exploitation of the environment by the consuming First World. "Repent Ye Sinners. Give Up Yer Ole SUV".

Talk locally about SUV, But Act Global

>From a tiny Island nation off the West Coast of Europe, I imagine American Corporate Globalisation will be the real target. 
The French chefs will bomb McDonalds, Bollywood camp movies will be in the local cinema - at a lower price per ticket, Palestine will become the symbolic recipient of inward investment, etc. 
And what will China Do?

Save the Democratic Party

Democrats have lost the plot using human freedom to organise the oppressed, when the Oppressed are so sublimely convoluted.
It is one thing to grant lifestyle liberty to people in San Francisco, quite another for a local marriage registry office to be the focal point of Equality.

Families feel besieged...mothers are working to make mortgage payments...Dr Phil is the new Mr Rogers...college costs a fortune...universities use the MBA 
as an endowment enhancer...the fancy job is no longer available at the end of the $100,000 spend...it take two years in America  for what is done in one full year in Europe for $20,000! 

Something is wrong in the States...and the answer ain't about same sex marriage and pornography...And most people feel The Pope is not a bad guy.

The High Moral Ground

Remember the Vatican, like Jews and the Muslims think in terms of hundreds of years. 
>From that perspective, who will win the high moral ground in this century? 

Will Secular Humanism, that soft philosophy for illicit and unfair consumption, cease to be the common ground ...
of our beloved Democratic Party, once powerful and now marginal,
simply because it stands for nothing, as explained by Levi-Straus? 

Respectfully submitted,

Dublinjack
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ean at sbcglobal.net 
  To: ean at sbcglobal.net 
  Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 6:41 AM
  Subject: [Mb-civic] The New Pope and Journalism?s Crisis of Faith

  http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-04/22solomon.cfm

  The New Pope and Journalism's Crisis of Faith

  By Norman Solomon

  The papacy of Benedict XVI confronts journalists with a key question: How much critical scrutiny is appropriate when a religious leader gains enormous power?

  So far, most American media outlets seem to be walking on eggshells to avoid tough coverage of the new pope. Caution is in the air, and some of it is valid. Anti-Catholic bigotry has a long and ugly history in the United States. News organizations should stay away from disparaging the Catholic faith, which certainly deserves as much respect as any other religion.

  At the same time, the Vatican is a massive global power. Though it has no army, it is more powerful than many governments. And in the present day, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church is the capital of political reaction garbed in religiosity. Many dividing lines between theology and ideology have virtually disappeared.

  After more than two decades as a Vatican power broker, Joseph Ratzinger is now in charge as Pope Benedict XVI. He is extremely well-positioned to push a longstanding agenda that includes hostility toward AIDS prevention measures, women's rights, gay rights and movements for social justice. No one in the hierarchy was more committed to stances like vehement opposition to condoms while millions of people contracted cases of AIDS that could have been prevented. And he has been the commander of the Vatican's war on liberation theology.

  During the 1980s, it was Ratzinger who led the charge from Rome against the wondrous spirit and vibrant activism that galvanized Catholics and others across Latin America. While many priests, nuns and laity bravely joined together to challenge U.S.-backed regimes inflicting economic exploitation, intimidation, torture and murder with impunity, Ratzinger used the Vatican's authority to undermine such community-based resistance. He silenced outspoken Church officials and installed orthodox clergy who would go along with the deadly status quo.

  Hours after the smoke cleared over the Vatican and the world learned the name of the new pope, Mary Jo McConahay -- an insightful journalist who has long covered Latin America -- wrote for Pacific News Service about a question blowing in the wind. "What would have happened, Guatemalans and El Salvadorans ask to this day, if Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II had regarded the Latin American call for liberation from autocratic rulers with the same force with which the European churchmen supported the Polish Solidarity revolution?"

  For right-wing religious activists, Ratzinger has been a Godsend. And now that he's running a church with 1.l billion members, the odds are excellent that he will proceed to gladden the hearts of misogynists, homophobes, and anti-left crusaders around the world. Contrary to the predictable media spin since Tuesday about the uncertainty of his papal course (reminiscent of the claims in early 2001 that George W. Bush might turn out to be some kind of moderate president), everything we know about Ratzinger's extensive record during the last quarter-century tells us that he is a reactionary zealot who is determined to shove much of the world's history of progressive social change into reverse. He is a true believer whose ideological theology accepts scant diversity and no dissent.

  The new papacy is a huge gift to the minority of conservatives in the United States who are trying to impose their version of morality on the country and the world.

  Soon after the 2000 election, an astute analyst of far-right religious movements, Frederick Clarkson, wrote that "both the evangelical and Catholic Right are developing and promoting a long-term, fundamental approach to the practice of faith that links political involvement with faith itself. In this case, the Catholic Church is building on its own history and also benefiting from the Christian Right's recent efforts to create wider space for public expressions of religiosity in civil discourse." Clarkson added that "a shift in the political culture suggests that personal and unedited expressions of religious belief for political purposes are no longer considered unseemly. Indeed, the suggestion is that they are beyond reproach."

  And that's much of the problem. When a highly debatable position is "beyond reproach" -- when religiosity provides cover for all manner of manipulations and repression -- it's easier for demagogic power- mongers to get away with murder.

  Journalists should not let any pious proclamations intimidate them. When the policies of a president or prime minister result in suppression of human rights or fuel public-health disasters, the news media should not hesitate to expose the consequences. And the policies of a pope should be no less scrutinized.

  ________________________________

  Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," will be published in early summer. His columns and other writings can be found at: www.normansolomon.com 

  -- 
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     ---   George Orwell

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