FIGHT 'COERCED CONSENSUS'

FIGHT ‘COERCED CONSENSUS’
The website – cinops be gone – Monday, November 17, 2008
RESISTING A VIEWPOINT THAT SUPPORTS CULTURE OF DEATH,
MORAL RELATIVISM IS EVERYONE’S JOB

Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Colorado gave the keynote address to the 2008 Catholic Radio Conference in Birmingham, Ala. The following is Teresa Tomeo’s comment article in the Our Sunday Visitor, November 16, 2008.

Bishop Sheridan expressed with great clarity the severity of the culture war raging around us and the enormous responsibility of Catholic media to uphold, explain and affirm Church teaching day in and day out. He referred to the moral blindness in our World today as a “coerced consensus”that must be challenged, pointing to secular entertainment and news media as “the principal vehicles for the message of irresponsibility today.”

Bishop Sheridan explained that, according to sociologist James Davison Hunter, this “coerced consensus” involves a “self-conscious imposition of a viewpoint with the ultimate goal of an unconscious acceptance.” Our reality is redefined through the multitude of messages fed through us through our media-saturated culture. We come to an unconscious acceptance of these messages or ideas. The bishop stressed the “unconscious acceptance” factor makes dissent from this so-called reality practically an act of treason and insists through this secular media have accomplished and “extraordinary feat.”

“It is clear that coerced consensus is the principle tool of the culture of death. It was at work in the widespread societal acceptance of contraception long before the question of legalized abortion arrived on the scene,” he said. “It was and remains at the heart of the assault on the family by radical feminism and the gay marriage movement. It permeates the stereotypes of television and cinema, and its justification and expansion constitute the principle self-identified mission of the academy and the judiciary.”

Isn’t this how we feel when we turn on the television, go to movie or engage in an issue-oriented conversation around the water cooler or dinner table? WE ARE BOMBARDED WITH MESSAGES CONTRARY TO OUR FAITH. When we challenge those messages, we are often labeled as extremists and, in some cases, ostracized by co-workers, friends and families.

There is, indeed, this strong consensus that not only promotes and defends a culture of death and moral relativism, but attacks those who resist it. For example, Bishop Kevin Farrell of the Diocese of Dallas and Bishop Kevin Vann of the Diocese of Forth Worth, Texas, recently issued a joint statement about political responsibility and the importance of life issue. It was not only rejected by some angry Catholics, but also the cause for outburts at Mass and even a protest. This type of reaction to truth, Bishop Sheridan said, requires all of us to be ready and willing to persevere.

“In this blessed land, we may not be called upon to give witness with our blood, but we will continue to be called upon to resist ridicule, to resist the marginalization of the natural law, to resist the minimization of religious viewpoints, to resist the marginalization of the natural law, to resist an increasingly tolerant secular culture, to resist unjust laws, jurisprudence and bureaucratic decision making that militate against the Church, her rights and her humane values,” he said.

George H. Kubeck,
P.S. Another classic on this blog is the one by Rockford’s Bishop Thomas Doran titled, The Seven Sacraments of Secularism, and dated Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008.