UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
* Former longtime NY Times religion reporter, Peter Steinfels, and Italy’s L’Espresso’s Sandro Magister, key journalists with decades of experience on Vatican reporting and analysis, appear to have broken free from the “herd mentality” of so many opportunistic journalist cheerleaders on Pope Francis matters. They are piercing through the Vatican’s smokescreens and raising for me serious questions about the growing gap between Pope Francis’ deeds and his words and spin. This spin is too readily accepted by a media looking for an easy story that gullible audiences looking for scarce heroes seem to love to hear.
* Magister recently observed [my italics], “The Francis of the Media and the Real Francis — Farther and farther apart from each other. The public narrative continues to depict the pope as a revolutionary. But the facts prove the contrary . When it comes to Pope Francis, there are now two of these who are ever more distant from each other: the Francis of the media and the real one.
* Magister adds, “The first [of the media] is exceedingly well-known and has been making the news since his first appearance on the loggia of the basilica of Saint Peter’s… . The Francis of the media is also to some extent a creation of his own, and brilliantly so, in the span of one morning miraculously overturning the image of the Catholic Church from opulent and decadent to “poor and for the poor.”
* Magister continues, ” … But as soon as one grapples with what the pontificate of Francis has brought that is truly new, the music changes. … . But when, at the synod last October, he saw that among the bishops the resistance to this reform was much stronger and more widespread than foreseen, he corrected his aim and from then on has not said a single word in support of the innovators. On the contrary, he has gone back to hammering on the controversial themes of abortion, divorce, homosexuality, contraception, without swerving a millimeter from the strict teaching of his predecessors Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. … . In spite of everything, the media continue to sell the story of the “revolutionary” pope, but the true Francis is farther and farther away from this. …”
* Please see Magister’s compelling examples showing this gap between the pope’s media spin and his deeds, here, The Francis of the Media and the Real Francis – Chiesa, and here, The Closed Door of Pope Francis.
* Peter Steinfels has pointedly focused here, Contraception & Honesty , on the important gap raised by the papal Family Synod’s failure to address seriously the papal ban on contraception. In an accompanying video here, Peter Steinfels explains what prompted him to write “Contraception & Honesty” and talks more about the issues he raises in it.
* Steinfels observes [my italics], “For not a few [of the Synod’s] bishops, self-censorship has become second nature, especially when speaking publicly with other bishops, and infinitely so when in the earshot of the pope. … . But could ingrained inhibition have accounted for the glaring gap in the synod’s work? I refer to the apparent lack of attention to the question of contraception. Why did the synod appear to treat so perfunctorily the issue that was, and is, the starting point for the unraveling of Catholic confidence in the church’s sexual ethics and even its credibility about marriage? To which, of course, one could add further questions about this baffling silence: Does it even matter? And if it does matter, are there grounds for hoping that the bishops who will be gathering in Rome next fall to complete the synod’s work can do better?”
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