Scorn and confusion

by Editor · April 2, 2008

When the Vatican�s Apostolic Penitentiary issued a modernised list of Seven Deadly Sins, it attracted much ridicule in the secular media (even from some nominal Catholics).

It is difficult to see why these should have attracted so much derision, because even liberal commentators should find much to applaud in the Church�s opposition to pollution, drug dealing or the violation of social justice (if not necessarily about the Church�s teachings on bioethics).

More likely, the scornful commentators took issue with the notion of sin. This may serve to emphasise Pope Benedict�s frequent lament that people today seem to have lost the notion of sin�a reason why the Apostolic Penitentiary issued the updated list in the first place.

The secular media seem to have taken literally what was really an innovative catechetical exercise. Most media, even the once venerable BBC, lacked the rather uncomplicated insight that a Vatican dicastery is not authorised to innovate unilaterally on a 1400-year-old teaching.

The trouble is that news outlets, in South Africa and elsewhere, have excised the religious beat. Many newsrooms lack skilled journalists capable of reliably interpreting religious news, and often lack the imagination or respect to obtain such interpretation from qualified sources.

It is disrespectful to media consumers and to religion when such stories are assigned to journalists who do not comprehend the field they are asked to report on. Would editors likewise ask their resident theatre critic to cover the finance minister�s budget speech? And so coverage of religion, and of Catholicism especially, is often steeped in ignorance.

At the same time, the Vatican should have anticipated the media�s reaction and the confusion the updated sins would create among Catholics�many of whom are woefully unfamiliar with their own Church�and non-Catholics.

It may be that this was a price the Vatican was willing to pay just to get its catechetical message out. If so, then its message got lost nonetheless, owing to its inadequate presentation.