"Remote" Popes - 1 of 2

“Remote” Popes – 1 of 2
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Sunday, July 26, 2009

Editorial – The Traditionalist – summer 2009 – P.O. Box 993, Ridgefield, CT 06877

Earlier this year, the Holy Father delivered a response to criticism that he is “out of touch” and “remote.”

To an impertinent questioner on his plane, Pope Benedict noted that he meets day in and day out with all manner of staff. We just had a plenary session “this morning,” he added, with the Congregation for Divine Worship. He offered other examples.
Unfortunately, the Vatican is too sensitive to media provocation.

For all intent and purposes, the Left and the press are one, and no amount of blather about “social communications” or “the need” to keep up with the Web makes the reality any different. On the contrary, the blather tends to confuse the faithful, incite the jackals in the media and in Hollywood, and paralyze the Church’s ability to respond meaningfully because even Vatican officials now think the blather is the key to persuading the world.

In truth, targets of the political Left in recent history are subject to relentless media abuse. Figures the left admires get media protection and heaping credit for being sensitive and bright. Representatives of Big Abortion like Obama get maximum cooperation and have icon status.

Because the criticism of Benedict being “remote” are media code, written and produced by the Catholic left – code for “we require a weaker pope next time”- Rome should ignore them and move on to the real battles.

The battles involve not just Catholic life. Untold millions of non-Catholics look anxiously to the Vatican for moral leadership – for example, in the abortion battle or the mushrooming obscenity threats. For these silent millions, the pope remains the standard of reference, never publicly applauded, never acknowledged by the good Protestant pastors of souls.

For decades, they, and we, have been getting mixed signals: good documents, indifferent bishops. Or worse than different. The scandal of the ex-archbishop of Milwaukee – who once ran the entire Bendictine order – and his memoirs make the point well.

Were the Holy Father to find men of character and spine to run our dioceses who backed him in the next media-manufactured crisis sure to come, the Vatican could then attack Hollywood and press as prime threats to family life in the West.

It would become a force in American social life (and perhaps the next election), harnessing the support of tens of millions of very worried Christians who vote…

George H. Kubeck,
“Journalism is meaningful only when it helps us learn the truth. It can be a genuine calling only when it is a truth that is good.” Pope Benedict XVI, Meditation, July 26th.