The motivations behind the media’s coverage of the papal
conclave vary. For some outlets, it is just the “ecclesiastical
Oscars,” as the New York Times puts it. Like the British
monarchy, the papacy is good for ratings and its long and colorful
history makes coverage easy. But the more serious motivation is
ideological: the liberal media wants a liberal pope.
Desiring a Church that is at once lax and “reformed,”
journalists have eagerly floated the names of candidates who are
primarily known for their fecklessness and dysfunctional dioceses.
Prelates who can’t even keep heretics and frauds out of their own
chanceries are confidently described as the cure for corruption in
Rome. What “managerial expertise” and “firm governance” could they
possibly bring to the curia if controlling their local Catholic
college is too much for them?
Bishops who preside over seminaries that look like ghost towns
are said to be “dynamic” communicators. What exactly are they
communicating? Despite their Twitter accounts and
six-figure-salaried “communication specialists” to monitor their
“social media,” they have never had less to say. Some of them,
harboring a religious relativism, don’t even think the faith should
be communicated. So who cares if they are on Facebook?
The truth is that the media, which is pushing all of this
prattle, wants more corruption, not less, more miscommunications,
not greater clarity. Their ideal Vatican would operate like a
left-wing, trendy, vaguely “spiritual” denomination that mirrors
the low morals of the world and voices the bogus pieties of
political correctness.
Entrust the direction of the faith to those who believe in it
and practice it the least. That is the media’s constant advice to a
“troubled” church. “Most U.S. Catholics favor changes to modernize
church,” read a Washington Post headline this week, as if
that is an important consideration for the cardinals at the
conclave.
For the media, the wisdom of Catholics grows in proportion to
their infidelity. The failures of American Catholicism are somehow
in the media’s eyes a great advertisement for the ostensible
American candidates in the race and offer a lesson in what the next
pope should do. According to the media, he will need to “listen” to
these good folks in the pews. But, wait, they are not in the pews.
They left a long time ago, not because of doctrinal conservatism,
but because of liberal Catholicism, for which lapsing is the
logical terminus.
The self-appointed reformers of the Vatican seem to understand
that the next pope can’t formally change official teaching. But
they do hope that he ignores it, or, as they euphemistically put
it, changes the “style” of the papacy, which just means pandering
to the world.
Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley seems to meet with their approval
as a potential pope they could push around. He wears sandals, talks
about chic causes, attended Teddy Kennedy’s funeral, and employs
the brother of a chief Obama aide. What could possibly go wrong?
They wouldn’t mind Cardinal Dolan of New York that much either,
seeing him basically as a charming and harmless fellow with whom
they could chat on the Today Show couch or at an Al Smith
roast.
Looking abroad, they like, among other candidates, Cardinal
Gianfranco Ravasi, an “intellectual who quotes Amy Winehouse,” as
the Associated Press put it. They could also live with Cardinal
Christoph Schoenborn, who “overruled one of his priests and allowed
a gay Catholic to serve on a parish council,” noted the
Washington Post. They seem to have cooled a bit on the
idea of an African pope, maybe since Cardinal Turkson of Ghana told
Christine Amanpour of CNN that the abuse scandal didn’t hit there
because homosexuality is not “countenanced” by African society.
That’s not their idea of hope and change.
The key to the chattering class is that the pope be politically
liberal and “non-confrontational,” qualities they discern in
O’Malley. They see in him a community organizing pope to go along
with a community organizing president.
For them, the papacy is not a rock but a rug, on which these
“ecclesiastical Oscars” can be rolled out. Compatibility with a
worldly elite, however, was not one of the qualities Jesus Christ
had in mind for Peter, whose fate was to be crucified upside down
by them.
Photo: UPI
