Journalism's
Crisis of Faith
By Norman Solomon
AlterNet
Posted on April 22, 2005
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 1.1
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.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute.
All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21848/
Reposted by Bulatlat
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