Words of truth and friendship

“The media and the Pope: a difficult year”. This was the theme addressed by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, on October 3, in the framework of the Plenary Assembly of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE). The presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of the Old Continent attended the Assembly, held in Paris October 1 to 4.Neglected priorities. On the basis of analysis of the Italian experience, “it can be said that in the early period the media representation of Benedict XVI’s pontificate was on the whole reasonable and largely positive” said Cardinal Bagnasco. “Media attention has been catalyzed by Benedict XVI’s interventions on so-called “non-negotiable principles” or the Christian roots of Europe, which have caused a lively debate in public opinion in the major European nations”. Conversely, “less attention has been devoted to some meetings rich in significance for the ordinary life of the Church”, His Eminence added. “One detects here the risk, which already emerged in the second year of the pontificate and gradually intensified, of a disparaging media representation, which tends to undervalue the Pope witness and preacher of the Gospel and over-emphasize the intellectual and political Pope, to stress the interventions believed to be potentially confrontational, judged to be more useful for making news, and to ignore some basic themes which reveal the priorities of the Pontificate”. Namely, “the Christological” priority, “prayer and the unity of the faithful” and “the clarification of an authentic concept of freedom, necessary for the life of people and the good of society”. Media awash. To this regard, continued Cardinal Bagnasco, Benedict XVI “emphasizes that the freedom of the person is by its nature relational and cannot exclude responsibility towards the other person”. If one ignores or neglects this framework of priorities in which the Pontiff’s various interventions are situated, “it will be difficult to avoid partial or misleading representations, ideological and preconceived criticism, readings aimed at making the Pope say what in all evidence he does not say, even going so far as to nurture forms of ostracism alien to democratic dialectics”. This “media awash” include recent polemics, as for example those following the famous Regensburg address, the Motu proprio allowing celebration of the pre-Conciliar liturgy, or the remission of the excommunication of four Lefebvrian bishops, or the clarifications about the nature of inter-religious dialogue, or considerations about limitations of the use of condoms which arose during the trip to Africa.The major “yes”. In all of these cases, “a correct representation would have enabled the misunderstandings to be overcome and allowed for the clarification of the effective importance of interventions”. Instead, there was a “preference for a partial and rather often frankly mistaken reading, which leads oneself to ask if in some elements of culture and the means of communication an anti-clericalism interested in hiding the true face of the Church and distorting the significance of her message is making headway, so that the message appears to be incoherent and anachronistic and the Church seems animated solely by the desire to “build walls and dig trenches”, especially in ethical matters. This would be the Church that says “No”, enemy of humanity and indifferent to its needs, obscurantist and contrary to scientific reason”. In fact, pointing out the risks that the lack of absolute respect for the human person can signify for the dignity of the human person is “an indication of concern and friendship”. The most important thing about the Church can be summed up in the great “Yes” with which “she responds to the love of the Lord pointing Him out to everyone”. Some “No’s”, which at a certain time the Church judges to have to say, are the precise consequence of an ethics of “Yes”, and again more fundamentally an ethics of love, in the name of which, in order to obtain an easy and fleeting consensus, one cannot exchange, to the detriment of anyone, evil for good”. The role of the media. “Some environments would like a Church blindly aligned to the opinion which proclaims itself to be predominant or progressive, or a simply silent Church”. However, “the Church cannot fail in her own mission. To freely express one’s own faith, to participate in public debate in the name of the Gospel, to calmly make one’s own contribution in the formation of political-legislative guidelines always accepting the decisions taken by the majority cannot be mistaken as a threat to the laicity of the State”. The Church does not wish to impose on anyone her own “religious” morality. But she cannot not express – along with typically religious principles -“the fundamental values which define the person and guarantee his/her dignity”, “privileging the method of calm and constructive confrontation and the search for the common good”. An “essential role for the awareness of the dissemination of such values” rests today with the means of communication”. One can hope that in the exercise of “such a delicate task the reasons and criteria of ethical responsibility might prevail”, which finds its own ultimate verification in the capacity to contribute to the knowledge of and search for the truth”.