Catholic Church High-Jacked by the Media

 

The media is often accused of being biased; however, it is far worse than biased.  The media frequently distorts the truth by omitting facts and making up information reported as facts. The father of what is called ‘Yellow Journalism’ is William Randolph Hearst (1863 -- 1951). He was an American newspaper publisher who built the nation’s largest newspaper chain and whose methods profoundly influenced American journalism. He created a chain of nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak, among them the Los Angeles Examiner, the Boston American, the Atlanta Georgian, the Chicago Examiner, the Detroit Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Washington Times, the Washington Herald, and his flagship, the San Francisco Examiner. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.

            He was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives and ran unsuccessfully for several national level offices. Through his newspapers and magazines he exercised enormous political influence and was sometimes blamed for influencing public opinion which pushed the United States into a war with Spain in 1898. His life story was the inspiration for the lead character in Orson Welles' film “Citizen Kane.”

Hearst "routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events." This approach came to be known as “yellow journalism,” named after The Yellow Kid, a character in the New York World's color comic strip, Hogan's Alley. One example is a story he concocted in which a grandmother fell off the bay ferry and drowned.  In reality, Hearst had hired an expert long distance swimmer, dressed him as a grandmother and instructed him to “accidently” fall off the ferry.  The swimmer did so, shedding clothes as he swam to shore. The following day Hearst ran a headline warning his readers their grandmothers were not safe on the bay ferry.

            Hearst used yellow journalism tactics in his New York Journal to whip up popular support for U.S. military adventurism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898. Hearst's newspaper employees were "willing by deliberate and shameful lies, made out of whole cloth, to stir nations to enmity and drive them to murderous war."  

            Hearst's "Universal News Bureau" re-wrote the news of the London morning papers in the Hearst office in New York and then fraudulently sent it out to American afternoon newspapers under the by-lines of imaginary non-existent "Hearst correspondents" in London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Berlin, etc. Hearst was charged with accepting payments from abroad to slant the news.

            Today’s journalists may not have had such a colorful career as Hearst, but they follow his lead in yellow journalism. They know their publication or TV channel is a highly competitive commodity and must be sold. Bad news sells! Scary news sells! If some journalists do not have bad or scary news they will make it up. In addition, they have their own not-so-hidden agenda of anti-Christianity, especially anti-Catholicism.

            The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was a good example of yellow journalism. It was difficult to follow the conjectures on the reason(s) for his resignation. One of the lowest level publications indicated he was avoiding arrest for concealing homosexuality among the Vatican clergy. Somehow, they surmised he would avoid arrest if he resigned.

            The coverage of the March for Life was another example of slanted journalism. The march was estimated at about 500,000 people yet it never received the attention of the Martin Luther King (MLK) march of less than 250,000. The MLK march received enormous attention at the time and is still a subject of conversation to this day. Similarly, the Million Man March had about 300,000 people and received enormous attention. In any coverage the March for Life receives, included are an equal number of pro-abortion people giving the impression pro-aborts were in equal numbers, when in truth it was difficult to find a pro-abort person anywhere near the March.

            The following is a quote from an article by Michael Dorner (who describes journalists more colorfully than I can) regarding the role of the media: “If the media are anything, they are dependable --- dependably leftwing and dependably agendist and dependably half-educated. I checked American and European sites, Catholic and secular. The secular sites were universal in the usual liberal garbage: Benedict was regressive; Benedict was conservative; Benedict was traditionalist; Benedict did not lead the Church on issues like contraception, abortion, homosexual marriage, women priests, celibacy. One could not expect more; after all, he was John Paul II's friend and successor. Benedict disappointed the "progressive" members of the Catholic Church. (Interpretation: "Progressive" is now the term de jour for "liberal"; "liberal" is too naked a word, describing the adherents of liberalism for what they are. Leftwing media such as NPR habitually term liberals as "progressive." It's the old liberal canard—they, liberals, stand for progress; all change is progress; conservatives and traditionalists are hopeless stuck-in-the-muds, are psychologically indisposed to "progress," etc., etc., etc.”)

Dorner continues to describe leftist journalism, “Benedict did not do enough for victims of pedophile priests, Benedict was not the star and showman John Paul II was, Benedict did not appeal to the crowds as his predecessor did, Benedict alienated Jews, Benedict alienated Muslims, Benedict never retracted his statement about Mohammedans contributing nothing but violence, and well he should not have, for such was and is historical fact—but half-educated journalists who know nothing of history and very little of anything else do not know what they were in history—and they choose to ignore what goes on around the world today: Muslims torching churches, raping Christian girls and women, beheading Christians, imprisoning or killing those who convert, etc.” (Michael Dorner publishes articles informing readers of Catholic Radio Association activity.)

The most widespread and successful attack on the Catholic Church occurred during and after Vatican ll.  Many changes in the Catholic Church were brought on by liberals, including clerics who indicated falsely that all kinds of changes were a result of the “Spirit of Vatican ll”. Some of these changes are: saying the entire Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin(biblical readings and other prayers were allowed in the council), turning altars around so priests face the congregation, bringing in an army of Eucharistic ministers at Mass, allowing lay people to give homilies, allowing female altar servers, receiving communion in the hand, standing up for reception of Holy Communion, giving nuns the choice to wear or not wear habits, teaching dissent in the seminaries, allowing a flow of homosexuals into the priesthood, destroying church statues and  sacred art and replacing them with tasteless, twisted pieces of metal, ripping out communion rails, replacing Gregorian chant with guitars and drums in protestant-style Christian rock bands, de-emphasize confession because no one really sins anymore, and besides no one believes in Hell anymore. None of this is found in the documents of Vatican ll.

            Want more proof? Surprisingly, nearly every priest, monsignor, bishop and cardinal performs the consecration at Mass while facing the people; yet the current General Instructions of the Roman Missal (better known as the GIRM which instructs the clergy on conducting the Mass) do not state this and, in fact, after the consecration, instructs the priest to then turn around and face the people, making the assumption he does not face the people during the consecration.

In addition to major changes in the Mass, the other huge change in the Church is in the abortion issue. With almost no abortion at the time of Vatican ll, we now have thousands abortions each day, and the majority of Catholics are voting for politicians who support killing the unborn.  Abortion kills babies, yet the media will not admit it is a baby who is killed. They call an unborn baby a glob of tissue or deny its status as a human being until it is born.  Abortion maims and kills expectant mothers, but the leftist press and politicians claim abortion benefits women. Birth control and abortion cause cancer and other medical and psychological problems, but the results of studies verifying this are rarely publicized.

Pregnancy is viewed through a skewed prism fashioned according to the leftist publications. We’ve gone down the path of birth control and abortion to arrive at a sorry destination where pregnancy is a disease, a preborn baby is a glob of tissue, and the woman getting the abortion is the heroine.

It has been said that there is no honor among thieves, and I would add there is no honesty among the vast majority of liberal journalists. 

Kenneth D. Whitehead, a noted author regarding the church councils, states: “What most attracted the attention of today’s media about this particular talk of Benedict’s to the Roman clergy was his assertion that there were actually two Councils. There was the true Council composed of the Catholic bishops of the world deliberating and deciding about the faith and practices of the Catholic Church. This true Council, Benedict noted, “was a Council of the faith seeking to understand the signs of God at that time, the challenges of God at that time, and to find in the Word of God a word for today and tomorrow.”

But alongside this true and authentic Council was another one which, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the pope called “a Council of the media.” The media viewed the Council, then as now, not from the standpoint of faith, but rather as what the pope characterized as “a political struggle… a power struggle between different trends in the Church.” The debates which took place in the aula (Latin for courtyard) of St. Peter’s were viewed in purely secular terms; they were seen primarily as an effort to decentralize “power” in the Church — ultimately, the pope suggested, to democratize the Church. Since this was how the media viewed the Council, it was how the Council got reported to the world and came to be understood by the world, including by not a few Catholics — thus creating a distorted view of the Church herself which has to some extent endured down to the present day.”

Why did John XXlll instigate Vatican ll? He said, “The sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously.” Here, after all, was the heart of the message Christ had entrusted to his followers to be spread. But to bring about that revival of evangelization, the structures and methods of the Church needed updating and renewal that would make them more effective tools. However, what happened? The changes in the liturgy that came after Vatican II often had little to do with what the council itself said. It added up to a sharp departure from centuries of Catholic faith and practice.

The secularist left and left leaning clergy high jacked the council.

Now 50 years after Vatican ll what are the results?  The results from the real decisions of Vatican II have been disturbingly spotty and incomplete. In some matters, we actually have fallen back. However, Pope Benedict XVI stated that he judged this false Council, which he dubbed ”a virtual Council,” to be finally breaking down, and the real Council, the Council of faith, to be emerging at long last. “And it is our task, especially in this Year of Faith,” the pope concluded, “to work so that the true Council with its power of the Holy Spirit is accomplished and so the Church can be truly renewed.” Lets all pray Pope Benedict XVI is correct!

Jim Fritz