Seeking bad news in reporting papal visit

Published: May 10, 2008

Msgr. J. Gaston Hebert

By Msgr. J. Gaston Hebert
Diocesan Administrator

As I mentioned last week, when Pope Benedict XVI was in the United States, I was in Italy. Therefore, the only television coverage I saw of his visit was on the international version of CNN. I'm grateful for all the news coverage of his visit, regardless of the medium, as without it the trip would have been a non-event.

To proclaim the Word to the U.S. and beyond, the pope needed news coverage. I've read that publicity agents believe that almost any coverage is good that keeps the name of a client alive and in minds of the people. Perhaps that's why we read so much of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

Grateful though I may be that there was coverage and that I could watch live coverage of almost very papal event, the tone of most of CNN's coverage was unfortunate. The first program I watched was live coverage of the pope's arrival in Washington. It was covered by a man whose name I believe was Robert Blair. It would have been difficult for him to place a more negative slant on almost every observation; I remember no positive comments whatsoever and he was remarkably uninformed. Time and again, I found myself thinking that his comments were simply untrue. I have no idea as to whether the commentator (he certainly could not be called a "reporter") was a disgruntled Catholic or simply grew up hating Catholics.

As the pope's visit continued, the coverage was less slanted but regularly evidenced a cynical tone which appeared to question both the integrity of the pope and of the Church itself. I'm aware that from the time of the games in Rome's Coliseum the crowd likes to see a little blood.

Was it really necessary, however, to mention the pedophilia scandal every time the pope appeared? Blair's uniquely uniformed initial comment was that the Church had done nothing about it. Conflicting with that statement would be the structural changes made by the Church to prevent a child being abused by either clergy or laity, the constant monitoring of those structures, the educational steps constantly invoked to warn all who deal with children as to how to protect them from sexual molestation and other dangers, the counseling given the victims and their families, the strong measures taken to see that priest and lay perpetrators no longer have access to children, the monetary payments made to victims, etc.

Rightly did our Holy Father express repeatedly the shame incurred by the Church over this horrendous scandal. Having attended the last USCCB meeting in Baltimore, I can assure you that our bishops are making constant efforts to deal justly with the crimes of the past and prevent any such blot upon the hearts of children ever again. But does such a gargantuan tragedy mean that the Word should NOT be proclaimed, or that the successor of Peter should not be respected in his efforts to do so? Would it not follow logically that if the Word were genuinely proclaimed and absorbed that it would be a strong deterrent in preventing such tragedies in the future?

Good news does not always make very good news. We read the papers and watch the news for the extraordinary, the deviation from the normal. One rarely reads of the good or the holy; it's so much more tantalizing to read of the tawdry or the immoral. There appears to be an effort to find the chink in the armor of the goodness of mankind and to relish its discovery.

Perhaps the problem lies in educating the taste of the public so that the Good News is really what they want to hear and read. The visit of the Holy Father would have been a good opportunity for commentators to teach that lesson; it's unfortunate that so many found it a time to probe open wounds and irritate those that had begun to heal.