Why media apparatchiks are hostile to Pope Benedict

Pope Benedict XVI turned 85; last week marked the start of the eighth year of his pontificate, the most extraordinary and brilliant of recent times. In Ireland this statement reads as unexpected, “counter-intuitive” – perhaps even perverse.

This arises, however, not because of objective circumstances, but because of those who stand between the pope and his people. In other societies, Pope Benedict has shown himself to be adept at reaching out to the educated generations of young people seeking to overcome the lassitude invoked in them by a globalised culture selling sensation and freedom but not the peace they crave.

Elsewhere, the initial prejudices which greeted this pope’s election in 2005 have long evaporated; here – doggedly maintained by a determined cadre of embittered media ideologues standing between the people and the light – they remain.

Were it not such a serious matter, it might become increasingly comical to observe the illogicality of Irish media positions towards the Catholic Church. Although there are no more than three or four print journalists working in our media who are other than relentlessly hostile to the very idea of Catholicism (I can think only of one radio presenter and no one on television), the only content of media coverage is an incessant clamouring for “reform”.

Pope Benedict makes written and spoken contributions on almost a daily basis about matters as diverse as the condition of modernity, the meaning of eternity, the conundrum of reason, and the quality of beauty, and yet we are only enabled to hear what he says when this is deemed to provide an appropriate – selective – backdrop for discussion of the favourite topics of media apparatchiks and their pet contributors. [More]

SOURCE

John Waters/Irish Times