Pope Benedict XVI's Message to Catholic Media Conference

Pope Benedict XVI’ s Message to Catholic Media Conference
In pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Memorial - Ignatius of Loyola- Priest - Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Pope wrote this message in 1977* and in 1984.* There were several speakers at the 2012 Catholic Media Conference in Indianapolis on June 22nd. I believe the following remarks by the Pope are also very important for the Catholic media to digest and ponder.

“There is no such thing as a purely objective news report… Our reporting is always means a selecting. Therefore every report is an interpretation, even if only because of what is not reported, and what is not said.

“But this means that the technology of reporting without the ethics of reporting is inhuman and we must ask ourselves if we have not become, on the one hand, giants of technology, but on the other hand infants in the matter of ethics in general and of the ethics of reporting in particular.

“It is precisely in this context, I think, that the particular task of the Catholic news agency becomes clear. Not only does it bring the vast realm of Church news into contact with the realm of human debate and make it comprehensible, but it exists precisely to develop and put into practice the ethics of reporting.

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“Journalism is meaningful only when it helps to learn the truth. It can be a genuine calling only when there is a truth that is good. Then it is right and necessary to help this truth to find its proper expression.

“The fundamental certainty that Good does exist and that we are created for it is not an obstacle to the work of the journalist, but rather makes if possible. It must be the first pillar of genuine journalistic ethics.

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May I add the following for journalists to report on and which they do not cover.

Let’s focus on politicians like Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi, N.Y. Gov. Cuomo and Vice-President Biden. They use the Catholic label when they run for office. But their votes & actions are contrary to the ten commandments & the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is a yes or no answer on abortion and marriage which they prostitute with their votes.

1.) We have political correctness and religious correctness. Religious correctness censors the truth and is like a cover-up. The whole truth does not reach the reader and parishioner.
That is a scandal, wrong and destructive to American Catholic identity in the public sector.

2.) The time has come for the American Catholic Church to have a real divorce from the Democratic Party. All clerics and religious should register as independents. Some departments within the USCCB should be dissolved.

George H. Kubeck *Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth, Ignatius, 1992, Meditation for July 25 and 26th.