Absence of Moral Authority in the Church

[Goldy]

frommi:

Depends on the definition of ‘anti-Catholic’…if anti-Catholic means reporting the bad news as well as the good…then they are probably anti-Catholic.

But think about when Cardinal Bernadin died…the media in Chicago went non stop from Holy Name Cathedral and carried the funeral LIVE.

Cardinal O’Malley’s elevation a week ago was covered by a large throng of reporters from Boston.

The death of one Pope and election of another received balanced and fair coverage.

The secular media does not exist to be an infomercial for the Catholic church. They are going to present multiple sides of issues…including dissent.

Well DUH!!! Of course the media had a huge coverage of JPII’s funeral. It affected 75 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide!!! That had nothing to do with the media’s subjective view of the Catholic Church. It was a huge story, plain and simple. A huge story will be covered by the media. Like I said before, I don’t have a problem with the media covering the priest abuse scandal. I DO have a problem with the media beating it into the ground. It simply fuels the fire for non-Catholics and secularists in this country. This is why I used the analogy of the Abu Graib story.

 

[snoopy]

Strider:

I can only speak for myself, but from what I read, I think I’m safe in saying that every poster on this thread ( and probably all members of this forum) would agree that each and every incident of abuse of a minor by a priest is an inexcusable moral and physical crime.
My point is that, in my opinion, the majority of the mainstream media have an agenda which is completely secular, pro-homosexual and anti-Catholic. They are using the instances of this criminal and disgusting abuse by Catholic priests, which is a much, much smaller perecentage of priests than public school teachers, coaches, ect, and even Protestant ministers than we are told.
They are skewing the data, under-reporting some things and over-reporting others in order to further their own agenda. They would like to see maried priests, female priests, openly homosexual priests. I believe this is because they think such a situation would further the rest of their agenda: unrestrained abortions, euthanasia, same-sex “marriage,” embryonic strem-cell research.
Given this, the sex and age of the victims of the priests is of critical importance. If most of the abusive priests are homosexual, the agenda I perceive of the MSM would suffer; therefore the state of the priest is ignored.
In my opinion, most of the MSM is completely secular after the French Enlightenment tradition and, therefore has no use for the TRUTH. Reason is all. That’s the point I’ve been trying to make.
I will pray for your friend.

Thank you for your prayers. My point is who cares what the media’s personal agenda is. I’m sure the agenda is different for every media venue anyway, and I can’t possibly police that. That is not what concerns me. What concerns me is the final outcome that with their constant reporting of new cases, we as parents, friends, grandparents, etc. were able to have the knowledge to protect our children better. I only wish that the reporting would have been done many years ago, but that was really in the hands of the victims to report it. Anyway, I think the media did an awesome job of exposing an abomination of astronomical proportions, and with their help this abuse has been greatly reduced and may someday be erradicated–but it will only happen if predators know we and the media are watching.Thank God for the media and its relentless reporting. Again, I don’t care what their agenda was, they got the job done when no one else would.

 

[chicago]

6) Chicago raises the point that this may have been a blessing in disguise. This is the only place where I have a disagreement.

LOL. Well, I’m certainly one who can raise a point that will make people think enough to disagree with it. And, I suppose, on some level I like it that way. For it means people are at least taking my thoughts seriously and battering them around towards some good end. Indeed, I tend to leave a certain degree of ambiguity in my statements so as to foster further discussion rather than just trying to settle an issue by fiat. Which, I believe, is what I was getting at in my comment.

It is not enough for people to just look to their pastor as the “all knowing, good and wise philosopher king” who speaks and we submit. The laity aren’t dumb or uneducated. They typically ought not to be poorly formed in the faith (at least in many a place in the world such as the U.S.) We are in a position to know well enough on our own to take responsibility for matters rather than merely play blind trust. I mean, come on, any simple street wise kid can do this. It doesn’t take a PhD to figure things out. (In fact, one might argue that a PhD will only more greatly confound).

So if this helps to awaken the laity (and religious and clergy for that matter) to the responsibility for our faith, for our brothers (whether those who are on a lateral level or those who are “above” and “below” us in the hierarhcy of things), for integrity and the protecting of dignity and binding up wounds of those hurt by sin rather than just sitting back in our comfy chairs “going along to get along” and “paying, praying, obeying”, then perhaps this will serve as a blessing to us; even if that blessing has come in the form of a nasty chastizement which leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.