A culture of indifference

South African Catholics will have been disappointed, perhaps even angered, at the absence of live coverage of Mother Teresa’s beatification on national television in October. While subscribers to DStv, the satellite service, had access to the live broadcasts from Rome, the national broadcaster SABC evidently saw no merit in bringing this event to the South African public.

The SABC’s decision to withhold live coverage of a major international event is dismal. Mother Teresa certainly transcends parochial Catholic interest, which doubtless is why news channels such as CNN televised the beatification ceremony exhaustively and live.

One may well conclude that the SABC regarded Mother Teresa’s beatification as being of interest only to Catholics, and the Catholic community as too irrelevant to warrant such a broadcast. Instead, SABC viewers were treated to a rerun of the soap opera Isidingo and, ironically, a programme featuring the American televangelist Creflo Dollar.

The SABC is not alone in neglecting the needs of South African Catholics. As we reported last week, pay-channel M-Net still sees no obligation to voluntarily apologise for screening a poisonously anti-Catholic episode of the adult cartoon series South Park, evident outrage by many Catholics notwithstanding.

The alienation of Catholics even reaches the dizzy echelons of national treasures, such as Nelson Mandela. His office repeatedly declined, citing “time constraints”, to obtain from the former president a brief comment apropos the 25th pontifical anniversary of Pope John Paul for publication in The Southern Cross’ special edition, a copy of which was sent to the pope. In this way, Mr Mandela’s office snubbed not only the Holy Father, but also the South African Catholic public in general.

Simply put, the Catholic Church does not seem to matter much in South Africa’s public affairs (other than the media’s ghoulish fascination with the pope’s state of health).

Where in countries such as Britain the Church is usually accorded respect and hostility in commensurate measures, in South Africa the Church is faced with indifference and ignorance. For this, local Catholics, from the hierarchy to laity, must take some blame. The Church, as we have argued before, is not doing enough to make itself heard in the secular domain. A more effective media strategy must be identified to communicate the Church’s concern to the public. It is reassuring that the bishops reportedly are planning consultations to put such a strategy in place.

Likewise, individual Catholics should be encouraged to communicate with media outlets when these fail in their public service.

The problem goes deeper than that, however. Many Catholics are too apathetic about the activities of their own Church. In many parishes, and indeed chanceries, the Catholic media, the only source of information about the Church available for most Catholics, are treated with indifference or even contempt.

Few parishes actively and consciously promote The Southern Cross or Radio Veritas—usually not because of hostility towards these organs, but because such promotion is regarded as largely as an irrelevant distraction. It is here that the Catholic Church’s failure to assert itself in public begins.

The hard truth is this: if Catholics cannot visibly muster enthusiasm about their own Church through use of its media, then we cannot expect public broadcasters to do so. If we are angry at the SABC’s failure to broadcast events such as Mother Teresa’s beatification, we first ought to examine our collective attitude to ourselves.