Conservative> Brent Bozell> Losing Patience With The New Pope

	10 May 2013 Free Speech for Conservative Students? It sounded like a freedom-of-religion case when a Columbus, Texas high school relay-race team was … Read More.
	8 May 2013 Ted Cruz Has All the Right Enemies The Washington Post offered a splashy profile of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, and the most surprising … Read More.
	3 May 2013 PC and the NBA Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III started tongues wagging when he posted this cryptic … Read More.

Losing Patience With the New Pope

Many millions of Catholics around the world were joyous with the naming of a new pope — a holy man from the Third World no less. Even in choosing his name, Pope Francis is emphasizing a devotion to the poor, and humility in his clothing and manners.

The liberal media should be lapping this up. There was an accurate recounting of the global rejoicing, especially in Argentina. There were hopeful words about his pastoral modesty. But as the day came for the pope to be installed, the natural secular liberal nastiness toward the oldest Christian faith bubbled up in demands for "tolerance" and women's liberation.

On the March 18 "Today," co-host Matt Lauer noted the simplicity of Pope Francis — and then tried to suggest it was extreme. "So a lot of people like this move to simplicity, a move to the poor. Is it possible to take it too far?" If Benedict enjoyed revisiting the more regal historic Vatican garb, that was extreme. More humility? Also quite possibly extreme.

This is the kind of general hostility to religion that makes people turn the channel. The networks try to restrain themselves when the ever-necessary eyeballs are flocking to the TV set to see the Vatican news. But seemingly they can't hold out forever. Ultimately, they revert to sounding like jerks.

All three of NBC's regular "Today's Professionals" panelists agreed. Advertising man Donny Deutsch insisted this was a victory of style over substance. "It's great to do all of this style stuff, man of the people. But, and we've talked about this ad nauseam, until the Catholic Church starts to address what we all know are the real issues the Church has, which is the real concern of the people, this stuff doesn't matter. It doesn't matter."

Liberals demand that the Catholic Church bow to their infallible instincts. You can't just dress humbly, preach the gospel and serve the poor. You have to grant indulgences to the feminists, the homosexuals and the contraceptive industry.

NBC medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman lectured the new pope that "poverty without birth control begets more poverty. ... This is a chance to take the humility and the poverty and say now we're really going to talk about this in a civilized way and move it forward." Deutsch added: "And we can talk about tolerance with gays and attitudes towards women." Snyderman threw in "And women in the Church."

If only the Vatican had thought of that.

Is there anything funnier than a couple of pompous NBC millionaires lecturing the pope about poverty and humility?

One of the last times Snyderman addressed Catholics came during her short-lived MSNBC daytime show in 2009.

She was furious anyone would object to funding abortion in Obamacare. "The Catholic bishops appearing and having a political voice seems to be a most fundamental violation of (separation of?) church and state." Snyderman is an Episcopalian, so she thinks her church lecturing America for gay and female bishops and gay marriage and abortion rights would never breach the wall of church-state separation. There's no wall of separation needed, just a hug of ideological purity.

On Monday night, the networks exploited Pope Francis meeting amiably with the leftist president of his home country. On ABC's "World News," reporter Ron Claiborne described the two sides of a cultural war: "Cristina Kirchner stands for a new view of a changing world — embracing gay marriage, sex education in schools, free contraceptives in hospitals." He added, "But when (Pope Francis) was a cardinal in Argentina, Kirchner described his social views as medieval." Claiborne didn't call Kirchner a leftist. The code word for leftist is "new," as in "modern and fashionable." Claiborne warned the new pope would lose the current good feeling, since what "the world is just beginning to learn is how conservative he is on social issues."

The world is shocked. The pope turned out to be Catholic.

In case viewers didn't get the point, anchor Diane Sawyer repeated that the Argentinian president "once called his views medieval." On "NBC Nightly News," reporter Anne Thompson checked the same rhetorical boxes: "As archbishop of Buenos Aires, the pope opposed many social programs that Kirchner endorsed, including gay marriage and free contraception. ... She, in turn, had accused him of holding positions that she said were medieval, harkening back to the Inquisition."

This is how silly these TV news attacks are: President Obama opposed same-sex marriage until last May. Why was it not "medieval" and like the Inquisition for Obama to hold that position in 2012?

The obvious difference is that the pope will not change his position with secular media pressure like Obama did. Everyone who will bow to the libertine left is honored. Those who won't are just hopelessly gauche, crossing their own foreheads on the ash heap of history.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

1 Comments | Post Comment

Sir;... I would like to add my voice for democracy in the Church, the election of priests in the parishes they serve, and a whole lot less of Feudal form all the way around... It is nice to have a pope sensitive to the needs of the poor... For those who believe in charity to deny to people dispossessed the right to democratically reclaim their lost legacies is giving them nothing...As we can see with the evangelicals; when people are inclined to accept God they are inclined to reject all reason... No one should ever put themselves in a position of reasoning God into existence... As many people reject the Catholic faith because it is unreasonable as reject it because it is too reasonable...It is terrible to consider so many years after the age of reason how much of the world is still mired up to its gills in faith and fiction, ready to reject all science with a wave of the hand, and ready to make themselves slaves to any artist capable of painting an idealized portrait of Christ...These people have no claim to morality, and they have no claim to right. They may be meek in the minority, but tyrants in the majority... They are as capable of changing their character as a larve... They are collectively an imago, and no one knows by what they see what they have become... But we know what they were... We know what they were when they felt threatened... We know what they were like in regard to witches, and what perversion they followed into indignity...
The only reason there is religious liberty in this land is that each sect so feared the others that it did not want the power of government behind any other...Now we must all face the disaster of the religious in cooperation with the rich, that constitution of old made new again in collusion against the poor, forbidding justice or peace or liberty on earth...We see the privilage of property and religion working their will on government... We see them together making government powerless to help the poor and deliver justice... We see them making the people too poor to help their neighbors on their own, and everyone everywhere becoming more dependent upon government as they are deprived of their own means...
We do not need permission to believe as we do... Nor do we need civil sanction for a right we feel is God given... Yet we must understand that the constitution was bought for the rich with promise of the the rights accorded to religion and to property...It was because of promised rights to churches that it was possible to deny freedom and equality to the blacks until the north was powerful enough to make its desires fact...Where have these people ever stood consitently for human rights??? They have barely stood for human rights at all, and never stood for morality free of dogma...If we should ask why unity has so often escaped us, then look at these sects ready made for discord...Only one point has their agreement, and that is that they should together feed on human misery and do nothing that would seriously alleviate it...
With that said; the notion of any Christian living as he preaches is a marvel... To see the way these institutions of loafers eat up all that should go for human kindness as though it were desert is sickening... If it is possible to end the formality of the church, their self centered self serving behavior, they have found the right sort of man for the job... If he should succeed where Jesus failed without himself falling victim to the formal practicioners of religious magic; then that too would be marvelous...It is seriously time for this nation to get rid of religious liberty as an excuse for gum headed morons to meddle in the affairs of government...They ought to work their side of the street and keep it clean...
Thanks...Sweeney

Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:08 PM