When the media get it wrong

By Cardinal Wilfrid Napier OFM

Shortly before Christmas I participated in a BBC Radio debate on what that radio station had described as Pope Benedict’s “attack” on homosexuals.

In preparation I downloaded what the Holy Father actually said from the Vatican website. Guess what! Nowhere in his address in question does the pope even mention homosexuality, homosexuals or transsexuals.

My first task therefore was to challenge the show’s host, Ross Atkins, to point out where in his address the pope had attacked homosexuals. Mr Atkins responded: “Well, even if he did not use the word homosexual, knowing the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality, most people would take it that he had such people in mind.”

When pressed further to talk about what the pope had said, rather than what people thought he had said, Mr Atkins changed tack again: “Let’s not get caught up in semantics. Most listeners think he meant homosexuals.” That was no surprise since the BBC had been telling the world all day about the pope’s alleged attack on homosexuals.

What the pope actually said is reported in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano of January 7: “Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian creed, the Church cannot and must not limit herself to passing on to the faithful the message of salvation alone. She has a responsibility towards creation and must also publicly assert this responsibility. In doing so, she must not only defend earth, water and air as gifts of creation belonging to all. She must also protect man from self-destruction. What is needed is something like a human ecology correctly understood.

“If the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected, this is not some antiquated metaphysics. What is involved here is faith in the Creator and a readiness to listen to the “language” of creation. To disregard this would be the self-destruction of man himself, and hence the destruction of God’s own work.

“What is often expressed and understood by the term “gender” ultimately ends up being man’s attempt at self-emancipation from creation and the Creator. Man wants to be his own master, and alone – always and exclusively – to determine everything that concerns him. Yet in this way he lives in opposition to the truth, in opposition to the Creator Spirit.

“Rain forests deserved to be protected, but no less so does man, as a creature having an innate message which does not contradict our freedom but is instead its very premise”.

From here the Holy Father goes on to speak of the theological meaning of marriage, “understood as the life-long bond between a man and a woman, as a sacrament of creation, which the Creator himself instituted and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – then made part of the history of his covenant with humanity.

“An integral part of the Church proclamation must be a witness to the Creator Spirit present in nature as a whole, and, in a special way, in the human person, created in God’s image.

“From this perspective we should go back to the encyclical Humanae vitae; the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sex as a consumer good, the future against the exclusive claims of the present, and human against its manipulation.”

From the above it is clear that Pope Benedict is attacking any and every thing that runs counter to the Church’s teaching on marriage as the life-long bond between a man and a woman for the procreation of children and the mutual support of the spouses.

The fact that he quotes Humanae vitae and not the Catechism of the Catholic Church or other document which outlaws homosexual activity is clear proof that his emphasis was not homosexuality as such, but marriage as an intrinsic part of God’s plan for man to be his image and likeness because male and female he created them.