Richness in diversity

by Editor · June 27, 2007

When one reads any newspaper, it is understood that the advertisement of a product, service or message be it for a bank or a political party does not have the implicit endorsement of the publication’s editor or publisher.

The only place in a newspaper where readers may legitimately draw conclusions concerning opinions or messages that have the editor’s endorsement is in the leading article, or editorial, such as that which you are reading now.

In recent months, The Southern Cross has accepted repeat insertions of paid advertisements from Rosebank parish in Johannesburg. These adverts contained the text of the parish’s Priests for Tomorrow document, which among others raises questions concerning the discipline of mandatory clerical celibacy.

Rosebank parish bought advertising space in this newspaper and could fill that space with whatever content they liked, subject to our policy governing advertising which rules out ads containing heresy, blasphemy, indecency, and so on. There are no valid grounds on which The Southern Cross could have rejected the insertions of the advertisement, regardless of the editor’s opinion about it or misgivings about how its publication might be received by some readers.

This week a reader has chosen to exercise the same prerogative in a paid advertisement, stating with fervour his objections to the Rosebank document. The editor’s misgivings about aspects of the advert’s content notwithstanding (he declined to publish a version of it as a Letter to the Editor), the newspaper decided to accept its insertion on the same grounds as it accepted that of Rosebank parish: advertisers buy space in the newspaper to convey their message without being subjected to editorial control. In other words, advertisements are editorially neutral space.

No advertisement has the editor’s implicit endorsement, nor do the opinion articles, letters, features or news reports in the newspaper.

All this notwithstanding, there are some who feel that The Southern Cross should curtail the expression of different perspectives.

One parish priest has gone as far as to unilaterally cancel his church’s entire order of The Southern Cross because the editor’s unspecified stances did not impress him.

It should be unthinkable that a priest might take the decision to effectively ban the only Catholic weekly in the country because he disagrees with some of the content a form of censorship that has no place in our society or Church.

The priest did not cite the particular reasons for his decision. In absence of such details, it could be speculated that the priest had a notion of the publication of some bona fide opinions held by fellow Catholics unsettling his parishioners in their faith. This would be an unfortunate condescension.

Should there be Catholics who are threatened in their faith by reading The Southern Cross, then the problem surely resides not with the newspaper’s content, but with the formation of such Catholics. This is a pastoral problem which is not addressed fruitfully by concealing the reality of debate (and, indeed, problems) in our Church, less so by scapegoating the medium that reflects these realities.

The Southern Cross seeks to serve as a meeting place for Catholics, reflecting all that unites us, but also the diversity in opinion, perspective and experience which has marked the Church since apostolic times.

This rich diversity is a blessing for the Church, provided it is exercised in good faith with charity and respect. It is our apostolate to bring this blessing to the Catholic community of Southern Africa.