Bonaventure Hinwood OFM, Pretoria
I want to congratulate the editor, Günther Simmermacher, on his excellent editorial, “Discipline and dignity” (February 25).
Speaking about the criticism of Pope Francis’ remarks on disciplining children, the editor twice refers to the “Western media” and once to the “Western bias”.
What he is highlighting is the arrogance of people of the North Atlantic culture, Europe and North America, who take their own “liberal” way of reasoning and the behaviour which flows from it, as being the only valid way of thinking and acting.
The presumption is that they have reached a level of ethical perfection which they are consequently entitled to impose on the rest of the benighted world. Although many are without religious faith, biblical sayings are invoked to support the claim and give it a religious facade.
Within that culture the handful of people who effectively control the mass media set themselves up as the legitimate voice of the rest of the people within Western culture. These are the people who promoted the protests about the pope’s remarks about the disciplining of children, as though they are the only right-thinking people, and have the moral high ground from which to lay down the law to everyone else, including the pope.
As the editor intimated, other cultures have different norms, which have their own values when applied in a humane way, which the pope said should always mark the disciplining of children, whatever form it takes.
I am grateful that the editorial unmasks what lies behind the media’s criticism of the pope.
It is a warning to all those who belong to Western culture, including certain sections of our own population, not to presume the moral high ground from which to criticise, and even condemn, people who think differently.
The Western world may have achieved remarkable advances in science and technology, but this does not say that its moral and spiritual life in theory and in practice is better than that of all other cultures.
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