ABC's News Breakfast cranks its spluttering anti-Catholic motor again

You have to think that the Executive Producer of ABC's News Breakfast program has a news bulletin scripting template for reporting on the Catholic Church. It is not a complicated template because News Breakfast only ever disseminates the latest anti-Catholic attack which is almost entirely about the Church hierarchy's multiple and nefarious attempts to 'cover up sexual abuse and protect its brand' - always at the cost of its victims. Of course, the dominant class's lurid obsession with Cardinal Pell will always get a run. This morning the anti-Catholic template was able to deliver a double whammy.

It is not necessary to go into the detail of the attack. It is more of the same. A bishop is accused of covering up the sexual abuse of a priest that lived in the same presbytery as the bishop when the bishop was a parish priest years ago. The bishop denies the charge. No evidence is given. It is all guilt by association and appeal to the anti-Catholic bigotry in the community - and the rerun of unproven charges that are taken as proven.

An integral step in the reporting is tagging in a Broken Rites spokesman from the tag-team of ABC-Age-Broken Rites. The Broken Rites spokesman was got in on the phone and he gave his usual political performance. It is always a political performance because Broken Rites is essentially a political organisation. It is just one of the many obsessive anti-Catholic groups who see the Catholic Church as nothing more than a corrupt political organisation that maintains its illegitimate political power and 'brand' with whatever means it has at its disposal. Michael Roland, filling in for Joe O'Brien, sounded like an automaton as he read the script and fed leading question to the Broken Rites spokesman. It was a nicely packaged job ending with a jab at Cardinal Pell.

Media reports are circulating that Cardinal Pell is soon to be appointed to head up one of the Vatican's more important congregations. The tag team ABC-Age-Broken Rites is suggesting that Cardinal Pell, as the head of a corrupt political organisation in Australia, is not suitable for the position, which raises a question about the reasoning powers of the tag team. If the Catholic Church is nothing more than a corrupt political organisation, the fountainhead of that corruption would be the Vatican. That surely would, on that reasoning, make Cardinal Pell a shoe-in for an important role there. But this is not about reasoning powers. It's all about unthinking prejudice.

Visitors to this site know that I have made frequent comment on the media's cynical exploitation of clerical sexual abuse for ideological reasons. At this point I have nothing more to add to the case that I have built up over the last few years. (I refer readers to the two pages that summarise much of what I have written: 1 2.) A pleasing development is the number of websites around the world that have been set up to defend the Pope and the Church, and to focus on the facts of clerical sexual abuse which point to serious problems in Western society. It is especially pleasing to see the numbers of young Catholics fearlessly giving witness to their faith. The numbers are growing.

It would an irony of the most satisfying sort if, as I suspect, the unrelenting attacks by the media and other anti-Catholics groups have filled the noses of young Catholics with the stench of lies and hypocrisy and led them to seek out what the Church is, what it does, and what it actually believes - and ultimately to see the attacks for what they are in essence. Support the Pope is just one of the many associations young Catholics are forming to defend their faith and their Church. Many are appearing on Facebook. It is as much a surprise to me as it would be dismay to those organisations that a decade ago thought they had the battle against the Church won.

See other comments on the ABC: 1 2 3

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com