Guarding the Church

by Editor · Published April 6, 2011 · Updated March 6, 2012

For Catholics it is becoming an increasingly frequent experience to face attacks on their Church and faith. These attacks can take many forms. The most obvious would be gratuitous blasphemy or aggressive sectarianism. Other attacks, as a report in this week�s edition notes, are much more difficult to pinpoint.

Jesuit Father Joseph Koterski of New York�s Fordham University makes the point that innuendo and suspicion, instead of traditional forms of scholarly argument, have been employed as a strategy to attack the Catholic Church.

In the same report, author Ronald Rychlak outlines how the strategy of innuendo, suspicion and rumour has been effective in inverting the reputation of Pope Pius XII, turning in the popular mind a publicly acclaimed opponent of Nazism into �Hitler�s pope�.

The strategy of insinuation can be accompanied and mutually reinforced by ignorance, willful or not. By repetitively misreading a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Benedict could be presented as having presided over the cover-up of clerical abuse of minors. It mattered little that the document�which was in the public domain and therefore open to examination�did not encourage cover-ups at all. By selectively misinterpreting and decontextualising the document, the narrative was bent to accommodate it as a supposed smoking gun.

Stunts such as the attempt to have Pope Benedict arrested on his visit to Britain entrenches the suspicion in the public mind, to the point where those who explain the facts of the case risk being labelled defenders of the indefensible.

Pope Benedict�s advice, as Fr Koterski points out, is to persevere with the truth and to attempt to reshape the narrative.

For example, when the Church�s critics accuse the Vatican of sitting on untold wealth instead of feeding the poor, Catholics might respond by referring to the immense charitable and developmental work of the Church worldwide (and perhaps ask their interrogators why they don�t likewise liquidate their own assets to give to the poor�perhaps through a Catholic project).

This is a wise strategy, especially when such discourse takes place in the public forum, for we are as unlikely to persuade out interlocutors as they are to convince us. Those who are yet undecided will not be persuaded by a belligerent or defensive reaction.

However, Catholics will be unable to stand up for their Church if they are not well informed about its structures, teachings and methods, and ignorant of successes, failings and debates. It is fair to say that most Catholics are not as well equipped and motivated to defend their faith as the adherents of most other creeds.

Some years ago, this newspaper, like many other Catholic media, received much criticism for even reporting on the abuse scandal in the Church. Our response was that Catholics would not receive the whole story from the secular press, which has not always been innocent of manipulating its coverage.

It was the duty of the Catholic media to provide the faithful with the facts and with answers so as to enable them to formulate a reasonable response when confronted by family, friends or colleagues (or, indeed, their own conscience).

It is one of the primary roles of the Catholic media to equip the faithful with knowledge of their Church so as to help enable them to respond to criticism or attacks, or at least to withstand them. In that way, the Catholic media�through news and feature articles, reflections and the exchange of perspectives�are a necessary but sadly underutilised component in the formation of Catholics.

The Church can be strengthened only when it strengthens its media. The failure to disseminate the Catholic media more widely plays into the hands of those who seek to attack and undermine the Church.