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BRIAN'S TAKE…
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 In the past few days a convention was held in Toronto, Canada for Catholic media professionals. The theme of the 2008 Catholic Media Convention was "Proclaim it From the Rooftops". There were two important addresses given at the conference — important in the sense that they were coming from two of the most highly placed people responsible for media and communications in the structure of the institutional Church.
Archbishop Claudio Celli, is President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and Father Federico Lombardi SJ, is Director of the Vatican Press Office, the Vatican Television Centre and Vatican Radio. The full text of their addresses have been published by the Zenit News Agency and can be found at the links at the end of this critique. The Church stands at a "Y-fork" on the issue of "what is truth and where is it to be found"… The Catholic Church stands at a "Y-fork" in its journey of proclaiming the "Good News of Jesus Christ" today. Media professionals, perhaps more than any others, face a conscience-testing choice. Are we primarily engaged in a process of discerning, and proclaiming, the truth? Or are we primarily engaged in a process of providing a public relations service to the present establishment and power brokers in the institution for proclaiming what they believe "the truth" is?
In his introductory words, Fr Lombardi says: "You are ambassadors linking people together. We are all involved in the work of communications -- of using words to build up, of connecting human beings across the face of the earth, giving deeper meaning to life and serving the truth. … In reflecting aloud with you today, I hope to encourage you in your own important work at the service of the Church and the truth." [Emphasis added] The bottom line for all Catholics today… "Serving the Church" and "Serving the Truth" are not necessarily the same thing. If you believe God only speaks to humanity through the Pope and the Magisterium then perhaps they are. If you believe God speaks to humanity through ALL people and the role of the Pope and the Magisterium is to discern and articulate what God is saying one might come to a more nuanced view. The bottom line today for all Catholics — lay and clerical — is that Catholicism has lost traction in proclaiming the Good News. People are no longer listening. Even the baptised are no longer listening to the institution. They no longer believe at least some of the "core truths" as they are presently proclaimed by the institutional leadership. Survey after survey around the Western world today conveys this information to us. The bottom line has been a massive drift away from practice. Father Lombardi, at another point in his address, explains how the late Pope John Paul II used to meet with the media professionals who accompanied him on his world trips: "A few days after the conclusion of an apostolic trip, the three or four people responsible for Vatican media who travelled in the papal entourage, would always be invited to a working lunch with Pope John Paul II and the monsignor from the Secretariat of State who followed the international print media coverage of the trip. The Pope wanted to know how the trip had been presented in the media. He wanted to reflect with his collaborators on what messages had gotten through and what hadn't. He wanted to know whether his message had reached the broader public or not." Fr Lombardi goes on to explain that Pope Benedict has adopted a similar policy. What I want to focus on is the last sentence of the quotation above: are the messages of the Church, is the message of Jesus Christ, reaching the broader public or not? The bottom line, of course — and self-evidently — is that it is not. Institutional Catholicism is today facing a crisis in participation that is unprecedented in at least the last 1500 years. Is this because the world does not hear "the truth" as it is proclaimed by such leaders as the late John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI? Is it because the "broader public" are lazy, mesmerised by the distractions and allures of secular culture, or is it because they simply no longer believe that leaders like the two mentioned any longer really know what "the truth" is? Have the "broader public" lost trust in the institution and in those who lead it? I do not actually believe the answer to those questions is of the either/or variety. The "truth" is to be found in a mix of the alternatives. I do think there is an element of "distraction" involved. Some people, or perhaps a part of all or most people, are distracted by too much information, too much affluence, too much entertainment and the whole litany of things our ecclesial leaders might broadly label under the terms "modernist", "modernism" or "distraction". That said it should be also self-evident that spiritual hunger in the world is perhaps more acute than it has ever been. There is huge demand in the media, in publishing, and in alternative spiritualities, religions and quasi-religious programs that people in the Western world are turning to perhaps now at a rate that almost mirrors the rate of disenchantment with traditional or institutional religion. People are searching for something. Ultimately I think they are searching for "truth". They're searching for "the answers" that give their life meaning — the answers which enable them to resolve the unresolvable uncertainties that occur in life. As Archbishop Celli says in his address, quoting a speech John Paul II gave seven years ago: "In all cultures and at all times -- certainly in the midst of today's global transformations -- people ask the same basic questions about the meaning of life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?" Why is "the message of the Good News" not getting through? The question each of us has to ask whether we are a media professional; whether we are a mother, a father, a grandmother or grandfather trying to provide direction to our own offspring; or whether we are a Pope, a Cardinal, a Bishop or a Priest seeking to provide direction to a flock; is this: why is "the message of the Good News" not getting through? It's all very well for the Pope to sit down with his media minders if he is actually himself not listening to "the truth" as it is perceived by "the masses 'out there' who have given up listening to him". If his media minders are only reporting to him what a great communicator he is, and what great communicators they are, and they are not actually providing him with information about why the people "out there" have given up listening to "the truth as they (the Pope and his minders) perceive it" the exercise is a waste of time and money. I suggest a good place for people to start finding out what has gone wrong is to get down into the nitty gritty of these internet discussion boards and just start "listening" — and really listening, I mean — to what different sectors in society are saying and thinking. The message I pick up is that there is massive division — basically along two incompatible and mutually exclusive paradigms. One believes in "the truth" of the institution. They are basically endeavouring to worship the belief that the institution is "truth"; the institution never gets it wrong; the authority figures that lead the institution are their personal guarantee or "truth". The vast majority today simply reject that. I do not proclaim that they necessarily have a better answer to replace what might be basically described as that Tridentine view or theology of what truth is, and where it is to be found. I think they are still searching for an alternative. In the collective though society has rejected intuitively the Tridentine view and theology that did serve institutional Catholicism well for a few hundred years without necessarily at this point having a better answer.
I am presently reading a new book which has not yet been released by Australian scholar Paul O'Shea[1]. The core purpose of this book is a scholarly analysis of the evidence concerning the controversy of Pope Pius XII's responses to the plight of the Jewish people in Europe during the Second World War. What I am personally finding most valuable in my reading is Paul O'Shea's analysis of what is essentially two incompatible paradigms of belief on this issue of truth. One was what might essentially be described as a Tridentine view of what "truth" is, and where it is to be found. And this view perhaps reached its zenith in Catholic belief at the First Vatican Council in 1870. Over the next ninety years the collective wisdom of the leaders of the Church came to eventually reject that paradigm and brought us a new paradigm in the collective thinking of Vatican II. Some though never accepted that collective wisdom. For the last half century we have had a Church engaged in trench warfare where those still wedded to the Tridentine paradigm of "truth" have at every turn endeavoured to turn back the thinking of the collective wisdom of the institution discerned at the Second Vatican Council. Today the result is there for all to see in the massive rejection of Catholicism by nearly 90% of the baptised flock across the length and breadth of the more educated and socially sophisticated sectors of the world. Pope Benedict may take the view that the Church is principally composed of "little people who need to be protected from thinkers and intellectuals"[2]. I frankly reject that. The responsibility of our pastoral leaders is to be educating and guiding "the little people", and those who feel insecure amidst all the uncertainties that life throws up, to "the truth" as it is discerned by those whose role it is in society to be thinking and discerning ultimately what our Creator-God is endeavouring to tell us through our insights into "the Divine Plan" or "the Economy of Creation". The role of our spiritual leaders is NOT one of trying to appease the insecurities of any sector of humanity. Their role is not one of trying to stroke the insecurities of "the little people" by playing some kind of "Mumma Bear" role tucking the people up in bed, patting down the bedclothes and saying "there, there, dear, mummy is here. I'll do all the worrying for you. You just go back to sleep." A question for media professionals… Coming back to where this commentary started. What is the role of the media, and particularly the Catholic media? Are we truly discerners and proclaimers of "the truth"? Or are we some expensive public relations outfit for people in power who do not want to face "the truth" and who want to persist in playing the role of Mumma Bear to "the little people"? A question for everyone… At the end of everything, and it will not matter whether we are Pope, President, Prime Minister or "little Person" we will all face some form of accountability. Personally I am not convinced it will be in the form of an eye-ball to eye-ball with some Old Man in the Sky. I do believe in the accountability though. Whatever form it might take Benedict will face it just as surely as you and I will face it. What answer will you be able to give: were you guided by the Tridentine view of what "truth" is, and where it is to be found, OR were you guided by the view that the collective of our spiritual leaders and guides discerned at the Second Vatican Council of what "truth" is, and where it is to be found? LINKS and REFERENCES: 
We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum. Brian Coyne can be contacted at: Brian Coyne <editor@catholica.com.au> ©2008 Brian Coyne |
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