Pope's US visit and the usual bias and hypocrisy of the media

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the US yesterday for a six day visit. This is, of course, a big media story with many different facets. And how did Australia's print media report it? From the sample I took, they lived up to the usual narrow anti-Catholic bias and the eagerness to put the boot into the Church at every possible opportunity.

Of the four newspapers I read online The Herald-Sun was to my surprise the darkest and most slanted against the Church and, again to my surprise, The Sydney Morning Herald the least slanted, though deficient in the same way as the other two newspapers, The Australian and The Age.

All four reports focused on the Pope's abject apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for the priests who betrayed their trust and office and were guilty of sexual abuse. This sexual abuse is termed paedophilia without qualification. The reports wallow in the Pope's humble apology highlighting the numbers of abused and the staggering $2 billion payout to victims, bankrupting some parishes. In The Herald Sun report much space is given to a spokesman for a victims' group who ungraciously sneers at the apology, doubting the Pope's goodwill and sincerity, and demanding more action from him. I suspect this last means grinding him into the dirt.

But there will no appeasing spokesmen like this man, whose motives should be the first to come under suspicion. Where there are large sums of easy money at stake, the media should be suspicious. It has been demonstrated that the easiest money of all is Catholic parish money, money raised through the sacrifice and generosity of ordinary citizens, sometimes very poor citizens who had nothing in mind except living the Gospel and helping in spreading its message.

In just every other case of large amounts of easy money, the media would be all over it, relentlessly pushing, hammering, demanding, implying... The claimants would not get that money without running the pitiless gauntlet of the media. Totally different with the Catholic Church. Then it's Get Catholics: smash, burn, ridicule, accuse, slander - no end of it. And if the money is funnelled away to someone else's pockets, all the better.

You would think from the above representative reports that the Catholic Church was full of paedophiles abusing children at every opportunity, that the Church did nothing at all about it, and that Catholics should be ashamed of belonging to such a criminal organisation. How could anybody attend a church where those who presided over the services were likely to be paedophiles? As 3AW's Derryn Hinch once quipped on his radio show: it would be easier to count the priests who aren't paedophiles rather than those are. Hinch's ignorance and open anti-Catholic bigotry is representative.

There is now a lot of literature on clerical sexual abuse. Some salient points:

The incidence of child sexual abuse is no higher in the Catholic Church than in comparable organizations. The percentage differs from survey to survey but it is between one and four percent of clergy over fifty years.
The majority of abuse cases concerned homosexual priests abusing pubescent males.
Homosexual networks formed in the Church often isolating orthodox clergy, and making access and protection easier. Some seminaries were known for the preponderance of homosexuals, and the blocking of entry to orthodox heterosexuals.
The majority of sexual abuse cases fell in the period where traditional (Christian) ideas of sexual morality were debunked in the media and gross sexual impropriety acted out in private and public. That period was the 1970s - 1980s.

This information is never mentioned in media reports. Why? Surely it's of significance. There's a simple mathematical calculation here: if two percent (to take the average) of Catholic clergy were guilty of sexual abuse and ninety percent of sexual abuse cases concerned homosexual clergy abusing pubescent males, then what is the conclusion? Surely not that clerical sexual abuse is primarily a problem of clergy rather than a problem of homosexuality? To fair, media commentaries on the Church and the sexual abuse by its clergy should mention these important details. But fairness is not the great quality of a deeply biased political media.

I reached my teenage years in the sixties and have clear memories of the political agitation and manipulation that was successful in debunking traditional sexual morality. Boundaries in sexual behaviour were done away with - often with the help of academic treatises. There was an atmosphere everywhere of total sexual license. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that the results of that success and license became apparent. Priests and other clergy were not the only ones guilty of sexual impropriety. There is a multitude of hypocrites in the media and academia in particular.

The priests and other religious who abused children and adolescents under their care are guilty of the worst betrayal. Let justice be done to those guilty after due process. But it is clear there are many individuals and groups cynically exploiting the clerical sexual abuse tragedy for their own gain and/or political ends.

Read the reports:
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Herald Sun
The Australian
The Age

GOODBYE, GOOD MEN: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church, Michael S Rose, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington, 2002

AMCHURCH COMES OUT: The US Bishops, Pedophile Scandals and the Homosexual Agenda, Paul Likoudis, Roman Catholic Faithful Inc, Petersburg, 2002

Sexual abuse allegations, real and unreal
A sobering analysis

Clerical sexual abuse in Catholic Church the lowest
Prelate at last speaks out about the media's bias in reporting sexual abuse cases

Report: Pedophilia more common among 'gays'
Research purports to reveal 'dark side' of homosexual culture
Pedophilia and homosexuality

Sexual abuse in social context: Catholic Clergy and other professionals
The facts about sexual abuse among Catholic clergy

comments: gerardwilson01@optusnet.com.au