An Out-of-Touch Ogre?

The media’s mau-mauing of Bishop Thomas Olmsted
By George Neumayr | July 2010
Catholic World Report

In the past, bishops sparked shocked headlines in newspapers by betraying Church teaching. Now a brave few make headlines by upholding it. Consider the case of Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has likened him to a member of the hierarchy during the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance.”

That sounds pretty bad. What, exactly, has Olmsted done? Shown corrupt indifference to the protection of children? Profited off the abuse of them? No, it turns out his cruel sin in the eyes of Kristof and company is that he wants to protect children, including the forgotten unborn ones often killed under the worldly logic of false compassion.

In May, it came out that Bishop Olmsted had upheld canon law after learning, to his alarm, that a nun at a Catholic hospital in the diocese of Phoenix, several months earlier, formally cooperated in the killing of an unborn child from a patient’s difficult pregnancy.

Olmsted had quietly, conscientiously, and properly followed Church teaching and discipline in the matter (under canon law, Mercy Sister Margaret McBride incurred “automatic excommunication” through her action; he simply informed her of that, and she lost her executive position at the hospital).

But the media, hungry for stories that pit “progressive” nuns against “reactionary” bishops, publicized it, at which point Olmsted issued a laudably straightforward comment:

I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition.

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.

Every Catholic institution is obliged to defend human life at all its stages; from conception to natural death. This obligation is also placed upon every Catholic individual. If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action. The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty….

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, where the abortion took place, also made a statement, though considerably more vague, saying that in “this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” and that its “ethics” committee signed off on it.

Just the “termination of an 11-week pregnancy”? No, an unborn child was terminated too. But it is easier to say a “pregnancy” was terminated than an innocent unborn child suctioned to death. Showing no interest in that victim, the media’s ensuing coverage cast Sister McBride as the big-hearted “saintly” nun and Bishop Olmsted as the out-of-touch ogre.

Yet he is the only figure in the controversy in touch with what actually happened: an unborn child was killed at a Catholic hospital with a nun’s formal cooperation and help, and he is not about to let that happen again. At a time when derelict bishops are justly criticized for ignoring canon law to the detriment of children, the media’s treatment of the conscientious Bishop Olmsted looks even more outrageous and perverse.

It always comes as a rude surprise to the media these days when an American bishop turns out to be a believing Catholic and displays a willingness to govern his diocese according to Church norms. The Fifth-Column newspaper National Catholic Reporter finds his conduct very puzzling indeed, breaking the news, through one troubled source, that Olmsted is “very much governed by canon law and obedience and fidelity to church teaching and the magisterium….” How odd. This makes him, in NCR’s telling, a “strict constructionist” and a backwoods simpleton. “It helps to know that he grew up on a Kansas farm near the Nebraska border and attended a one-room rural school,” observed another of the paper’s sources.

But, wait, Olmsted is also like a pampered Borgia-era bishop. One of Nicholas Kristof’s sources hissed, “True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas.”

It apparently doesn’t occur to commentators like Kristof that the very modernist scorn of canon law they demand from Olmsted is what got decadent bishops into the abuse scandal and exposure of children to harm, both spiritual and physical, in the first place. Kristof speaks of the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance” while oblivious to the cruel and debauched days of modern liberalism. Both came through the infidelity of soft and corrupt bishops to canon law and orthodox teaching.

Olmsted, needless to say, is the antithesis of a Borgia-era bishop. He has risked his comfort for the sake of thankless duty. He deserves praise for resisting the media’s mau-mauing and the Catholic left’s claimed monopoly on “compassion,” which never extends to the unborn child torn limb from limb.

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report.

The BBC and Anti-Catholic Bias

Director Mark Thompson Defends Its "Rounded" Approach


By Edward Pentin
www.Zenit.com

ROME, FEB. 11, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is not known to be one of the Catholic Church's closest friends.

Although it has a worldwide reputation for high quality programming, the vast state-funded broadcaster has often been accused of treating the Church and the Catholic faith unfairly at best, and maliciously at worst.

Many examples back up this accusation, beginning with a number programmes over the past 10 years that have been blasphemous and highly offensive to Catholics.

In 2003, the BBC broadcast -- to a large international audience -- a documentary entitled "Sex and the Holy City," which intentionally misrepresented the Church and its teaching on condoms and AIDS. Two years later, it aired "Jerry Springer the Opera," a blasphemous and very offensive programme that ridiculed Jesus and the faith in general. Earlier, the BBC had spent £2 million ($3.13 million) on a program called "Popetown" -- an animated series set in the Vatican that mocked the Church and included plotlines about bestiality. Due to protests, it was banned in Britain but broadcast overseas and sold in Britain on DVD.

The BBC has also been accused of failing in other areas when it comes to Catholicism. The persecution of Catholics in the Middle East or Asia is rarely covered or warranted adequate attention; the immense good work that Catholic priests, religious and laity do around the world is generally passed over; and the Church's invaluable contribution to Western culture tends to be disparaged in favour of focusing on the sins of Church members in the past.

The BBC has also been blamed for more subtle instances of anti-Catholic bias. Discussion panels, news reports and web articles tend to focus on the sensational; they also often comprise contributions from secular figures or dissenting Catholics but hardly ever from orthodox Catholics who will properly convey the Church's teaching.

The corporation's treatment of clergy not infrequently involves interrogations by disparaging and dismissive presenters who seem to view them as guilty until proven innocent. Stephen Glover, a non-Catholic British newspaper columnist, wrote how a BBC television interviewer, quizzing English Archbishop Vincent Nichols in 2007, "treated him like a member of some extreme sect, interrupting him continually, and sneering at him as though he were a half-wit."

Bias

Most of this bias is attributed to a predominantly secular mindset in the corporation that embraces, or is sympathetic to, the culture of death, whether it be abortion, radical feminism, the homosexual agenda, euthanasia, or unethical science such as embryonic stem cell research. "The BBC," Glover once wrote, "represents a materialist, mechanistic consensus which has rejected God, and deludes itself that science is capable of providing a complete explanation of existence."

Even one of the BBC's most accomplished journalists, Andrew Marr, admitted the difficulty the corporation has in offering unbiased coverage. "The BBC is not impartial or neutral," he told a secret summit of BBC executives in 2006. "It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."

At that same meeting, one veteran BBC executive was reported in the British press as saying there was "widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness" and that much of this mentality is "so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it." It was also reported that "nearly everyone" at the summit agreed the Bible could be thrown into the bin on a comedy show, but not the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.

Denial

The BBC's managers are, of course, quick to publicly reject most allegations of anti-Catholic bias. Last week, Mark Thompson, the corporation's director-general -- essentially its editor-in-chief -- gave a speech at Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross on the theme "Broadcasting and Civil Society." Disappointingly and perhaps revealingly his speech didn't specifically mention religion at all but rather focused on how well the BBC is performing as an independent state broadcaster, and how a forthcoming review promises to deliver better quality programmes.

But during the question and answer session afterward, he admitted some anti-Catholic bias "may be the case" in relation to news coverage, although as far as the corporation's religious broadcasting was concerned, he said the BBC tries and generally succeeds in giving "a rounded picture."

He then gave examples of BBC documentaries and live coverage of the Church, from the funeral of Cardinal Basil Hume, the former archbishop of Westminster, to the exposition in Britain of the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux. Asked if he believed the BBC tends to favour an ideology at odds with the Church's teaching, he replied: "No, I really don't," and recalled another programme, this time on the Passion shown at Easter in 2008.

Mother's advice

This wasn't the first time he'd had to confront such criticism. Speaking on the theme of religious broadcasting at a London lecture in 2008, Thompson, who is a Catholic, recalled how his mother shook her head when told her son had been appointed director-general. "The BBC is anti-Catholic and anti-God," she told him in no uncertain terms.

But such anti-God labels, he explained to the audience in London, were "not just too sweeping; they are not even directionally true." He said that naturally, inside the BBC are many people "who take a strongly sceptical view of religion," but you'd also find "thousands of people for whom religion plays a central role in their lives." He accepted that coverage of religion as "faith and lived experience" rather than as a story or controversy was "unusual" but noted there is more interest in "high profile" religious affairs programming than there was 25 years ago.

And yet on his watch, BBC television coverage of religious affairs has fallen, from 177 hours in 1987-88 to 155 hours in 2007-08. This week the Church of England's governing body, the General Synod, is debating whether the BBC marginalises Christianity, treating it like a "freak show" or a "rare species" to be studied on a nature programme.

Marginalization

At last week's lecture, Thompson said he didn't address religion specifically because he didn't want to put it into a special category, preferring instead to include religion in his comments on history, knowledge and culture. Yet such a vision risks sidelining it further, and is perhaps one reason why the BBC rarely airs programmes aimed at a particular faith but instead lumps them together into a relativist muddle.

As one priest asked after hearing Thompson's speech: Why not have programmes dedicated to each religion, for example one made up of a group of Catholic theologians discussing the role of works in justification, or another of Muslim scholars debating the interpretation of the Koran?

Speaking with Thompson later on, he appeared open to having an honest dialogue with the Church and to listening to ideas on how to improve coverage. The main purpose of his visit was to meet the Holy Father and Vatican officials to discuss the Pope's visit to Britain later this year.

A hopeful sign, though how genuinely serious BBC management takes the Church remains very much open to doubt.

Should any reader wish to propose ideas to Mark Thompson on how to improve coverage of the Church on the BBC, e-mail me and I'll send you details on how you can drop him a line.

Brit Hume's sin: he believed what he said

Thursday, January 7, 2010

There has been a torrent of news, blogging, raging, and opinion-shucking going on over Brit Hume's remarks about Tiger Woods, Buddhism, and Christianity, (the best I've read so far is by The Anchoress), so I thought I'd toss my thoughts into the great vacuum of blogdom (or is it "wheel of blogging dharma"?). My take on the aftermath is fairly simple: Hume offended three notable groups of people:

1) Those who claim that news is meant to be completely objective and free of any opinion whatsoever.
2) Those who cannot fathom someone making an unapologetic public remark about their belief that Christianity is objectively true.
3) Those who hate FOX News.

An example of #1 is Baptist pastor Welton Gaddy on the WaPo blog, "On Faith":

The picture on the television screen and the audio of reporter Brit Hume's words struck me as contradictory. Just below the image of the reporter's face, the insignia "Fox News" appeared in three different places. Yet, the content of Mr. Hume's comments was not that of a news reporter so much as that of a televangelist.

Strangely enough, I found it disconcerting to read a piece by a Christian pastor criticizing a Christian making a positive statement on an opinion panel on FOX News, especially when that critical opinion piece was under the insignia, The Washington Post. Did I miss something? Have we lost all sense of irony? Or just commonsense?

This would make a bit more sense if, in fact, news networks and programs of all ideological persuasions were obviously dedicated to objective reporting. But, sorry, that seriously ill bird fell out of the coop, oh, many years ago. Does anyone with half a brain really think that CBS News or CNN or MSNBC is really honed in on giving us "just the facts, ma'am"? In fact, on the rare occasions that I do watch network news these days, I find that within two minutes I am being lectured (sometimes obviously, sometimes with attempts at subtlety) by some perfectly coiffed, immaculately manicured talking head with the personality of an iceburg about what ordinary, middle-class Americans should be doing and thinking when it comes to, say, carbon footprints, universal healthcare reform, immigration, President Obama, Democrats, George W. Bush, Republicans, taxes, big business, /terrorism/ man-made disasters, education, taking care of pets, driving in the snow, nutrition, buying cars, movies, summer vacations, traveling to Europe, dieting, watching television, cell phones, and surfing the Net. What, exactly, is the difference between, say, Katie Couric and Oprah Winfrey? Well, yes, Oprah might just be a better reporter. Who can really tell?

A perfect example of #2 is John Aloysius Farrell, a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, who writes:

It takes a religious zealot to strap explosives around his or her waist and, murmuring prayers, blow up a CIA facility in Afghanistan, or take down an airplane over Detroit, or steer a jet into the World Trade Center. Or, for that matter, to treat the world to Crusades and Inquisitions and the kind of faith-based savagery we've seen in places like Belfast, Bosnia, Beirut, and Jerusalem. That is what made Brit's comments so creepy: the self-certainty that "my god is better than yours."

Because, you see, the man who is completely certain that "self-certainty" about a matter of religion is the doorway to violence and savagery is himself a noble and sophisticated creature. His certainty, be assured, is completely unlike the creepy and barely contained barbarism (nay, terrorism!) hidden within Brit Hume's dapper suit. How do we know this is true? Because he said so! Hey, Farrell is a thoughtful reporter with an opinion, unlike Hume, who is a thoughtful reporter with, uh, an, um, opin—never mind.

A number of folks have rightly noted that if Hume had suggested Woods take up yoga, practice TM, undergo counselling for sex addiction, or read an Eckhart Tolle book, no one would bat an eyelash. Again, it is the Christian claim to objective truth (and the inherent call to conversion) that upsets so many people. After all, they know for a fact that objective truth doesn't exist.

While making a little 2,600-mile drive a month ago, I listened to quite of a few sports radio programs (they keep me awake, for some reason), most of them fixated on the Woods story. Again and again various "experts" and pundits were asked to offer what they thought Woods should do to recover, to rebuild his image, to get his life in order, to address his problems, and so forth. The responses were all over the map, ranging from thoughtful to funny to stupid to incredibly stupid. Each of them reflected, even if not openly, a particular belief system (often very confused and amoral). So, why should one's beliefs about the basic nature of reality, morality, and truth be off limits when it comes to considering opinions about the news? Peter Wehner makes this very point in an NRO piece about Hume-inspired Sturm und Drang:

Rather than being mesmerized by the stupefying consensus that matters of faith — especially orthodox Christian faith — ought never to be raised in public, people like Buckley and Muggeridge (and Hume) should refuse to accept it. Not because they want to advance tired religious slogans and worn-out phrases; rather, because people are interested in dealing, in an authentic way, with the deepest questions of human existence, of which faith is often a key part. “The life of religion as a whole,” William James said, “is mankind’s most important function.” That, I think, is in part what Hume was getting at.

Most of us spend an inordinate amount of time on shallow discussions about largely inconsequential and evanescent issues; talking honestly about matters of faith and meaning shouldn’t be off-limits. In fact, we should welcome such conversations more often, in more forums, and in a more relaxed, comfortable, and confident way. It might actually interest people more than the latest daily tracking poll by Scott Rasmussen or the latest mutterings of Harry Reid.

Amen to that. Oh, as for group #3: turn the dial. But remember, using Mr. Farrell's logic, no news outlet is any better or worse than another.

Source: http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2010/01/brit-humes-sin-he-believed-what-he-said.html

ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA

ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE
Tue Jun 16 2009 08:45:10 ET

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

MORE

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:

Dear Mr. Westin:

As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC's astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.

Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party's views to those of the President's to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party's opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.

In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.

Respectfully,
Ken McKay
Republican National Committee
Chief of Staff

Developing...

DrudgeReport

More on the NY Times.....

"all the news that's fit to print".... of course..

UN NGO at the Center of New York Times Reporting Scandal

By Samantha Singson

( NEW YORK — C-FAM) It has been revealed by Canadian-based LifeSiteNews.com that the New York Times published a grossly inaccurate story about abortion in El Salvador and that it was assisted in the incorrect story by a notorious pro-abortion group. Times freelancer Jack Hitt’s April 2006 story, “Pro-Life Nation”, reported on a woman serving a 30-year jail term for supposedly having an illegal abortion. To get the story, the Times relied on a translator from a UN-accredited non-governmental organization called Ipas that, among other things, sells portable abortion devices over the telephone.

The Times writer was trying to make a point about what happens when countries have pro-life laws; that women go to jail for having abortions. The problem with the story is that it is not true. The woman, Carmen Climaco, was not jailed for having an abortion, but for strangling to death her newborn infant. Court papers revealing this were easily obtained by LifeSite who then complained to the Times. Two Times editors defended the piece as accurate.

Ipas, the pro-abortion group in collusion with the inaccurate story launched a fundraising campaign to “help Carmen [Climaco] and other Central American women who are suffering under extreme abortion laws.”

A UN-accredited NGO since 1998, Ipas works “to enhance women’s reproductive choices and to eliminate unsafe abortions” and “to expand the availability and accessibility of medical equipment and supplies that health professionals need to deliver high-quality reproductive health services.” To this end, Ipas sells and distributes the manual vacuum aspirator (MVA), a portable abortion device.

A pro-life expert from Latin America told the Friday Fax, “Ipas is doing a lot of damage in our countries. Their aim is to legalize abortion in El Salvador , in Nicaragua and all of Latin America because they want to sell their abortion vacuum machines in huge quantities. They shouldn't have the status of an NGO since they are really dealers, they distribute and profit from selling these machines.”

Last Sunday, the New York Times ombudsman reported on the scandal and concluded that LifeSite was right and the Times was wrong and reported further that the Times had no plans to print a retraction or correction of the story. The Ipas website did not mention the Times’ inaccurate portrayal of the Climaco case, despite benefiting from a fundraising campaign based on the false story. The Ipas’ website refers to the ombudsman’s report only as calling “attention to the tragic situation faced by women in El Salvador who must make crucial reproductive choices.”